|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| A week remains before Bay to Breakers, the days are counting down and I'm ready.. I admit I'm a little scared that I won't be able to beat last years time. But I'm going to give it the best shot I got! :)
When people ask me why I run its hard for me to sum it up in a few words.. I don't particularly like running itself.. I am running for more reasons than to just surpass myself. Just a year ago I learned what it really meant to have faith, to work to the limit, to be willful, to have real inner strength, and last but not least be proud of who I am. Running Bay to Breakers a year ago was the start of a new chapter in my life. It didn't just change the way I look at my health and the way I take care of myself, but it changed my entire view on life! When I think about beating myself from a year ago I'm thinking: Am I a better person than I was a year ago? Did I fulfill my new year goals? How is my faith? How did I handle myself this past year? Last but not least, Am I happy with what I am now and the path I'm taking for the future? It's hard to imagine getting all of these things answered during a run.. but I have faith that these things will make themselves clear for me when it is all over.
My dream for this run and the next years runs are to always overcome myself. To one day be fearless. To always get better in some way, to never settle on a physical condition, or a level of education, or a level of spirituality, or a state of mind, but to keep going on to better things. In my opinion the best way to condition yourself is to keep pushing a little harder. Doing a little more than your duty will always keep you above yourself and prevent you from getting worse.
Anyway this is to the final stretch!! Let's bring it!!
| | |
| This past week has been a real challenge for me. A loss of a family member and his funeral, school difficulties, bad luck, and a rejection after confessing my feelings for someone. Really strange and harsh timing for it all to come crashing down. I've made it through a really tough week. Pretty proud of how I handled it. It's an odd feeling when you think you know how things in life will play out and they just go in a direction you totally didn't expect. Lately there's a lot of different ideas that are clashing within my mind of how to handle situations.. totally opposites of each other in the way to deal with conflict and things. I've come to the conclusion there is no real right answer.. but we need to trust in our feelings on what it is we really must do. Upon doing that we need to learn to live with our actions, as horrible as the consequences seem. We need to have pride in our decisions, and belief in what we've been taught. We cannot run away, which is the hardest part for me. But I'm going to do my best to overcome it all and become a better man.
Lets tackle Uncle Ed's Funeral first..
Uncle Ed's funeral made me think about a lot of things and remember a lot of things I am thankful for. Hearing my cousins speak, seeing pictures and videos of my Uncle made me envy his life. A man who had everything he wanted.. a wife, good kids, a job he loved. A purpose in life that he believed in and worked hard for, his family. The way my cousins told me about him reminded me of my own dad, who is very much like him, he would do anything for his family. It hurt me to see my dad say good bye to Uncle Ed. My cousin Chris was telling me how much he wishes he could give his dad a big hug again.. and to give my dad a big hug for him. An interesting thing about that is, I'm really close to my parents. I will hug them many times whenever I see them and tell them I love them. In the mornings I come downstairs and hug them, they ask me what I'm doing they are busy.. and I tell them "Hey, I gotta say hello and hug my parents today you know?". Sure it looks a little funny at times to see me do it, but in this case it's always better to have your feelings heard before it's too late. Seeing my more disconnected family members grieve over my Uncle's death was very sad for me to see.. in our family its usually grudges over such small things that they will not talk to each other for years. Then they see that, "Life is too short" quote in action.. I hope to learn from their example and do my best to not hold a grudge against family and loved ones. Remember your family people!!
On the other side of spectrum..
This is a situation that conflicts with my idea of having your feelings heard before its too late. I confessed my feelings for a girl I really liked last week, and I asked her on a date. She let me down pretty hard, asked me to be friends still like normal.. I said yes and things just got weird. She stopped treating me like a friend, not even much like a human being while I tried to maintain the friendship.. after a few days of going back and forth talking to her robot mode. I decided I guess she really wasn't my friend after all. As much as I really liked her and respected her enough to always be her friend afterwards.. friendship takes two people to make it work. The reason I confessed is because I believed we could be something more.. it was risky but I dam believed she was worth it.. being the first girl I'd ever ask out on a date. Some people tell me it was really courageous of me and bold to confess my feelings, and I shouldn't regret it. But I feel like a part of me should since it killed our "friendship". Its hard living with the consequences, but I really need to do it this time. Tired of running away and hating people. I've done it for the couple worst years of my life and it was absolutely painful. But for her to show that she didn't have enough respect for me to let me down easy, or even attempt to keep the friendship, let alone talk to me anymore just shows.. it's probably meant to be this way. It's sad but.. at least I tried.
I'm thankful for the things I've learned this week.. growing up is never easy.. life is the craziest teacher of them all.
I hope all of you are doing well.. its been forever since I've gotten to visit pages.. with all of these things going on its been really hard getting time to sit down and do the things I used to. Even video games have taken a back seat for a looooong while! :(.
| | |
| This morning my Uncle Ed passed away. A total shock for me and my family.. my mom called me very early in the morning to wake me up and tell me. The first call I ignored cause I thought it was something like, remember to do your chores or something.. But she called again and told me the bad news.. First thing I did was dash down my stairs to make see how my dad was taking it.. since they are brothers. My dad took it as well as a person could be. Truly in shock, he was telling me it all feels like a very bad dream. My Uncle Ed sounded like a really healthy guy, regular gym goer, non smoker, non drinker, that watched his diet.
After checking on my dad I went back to my room to pray for my Uncle and his family.. I wasn't really close to him so I prayed for a lot of things I hoped for were in his life before he passed away. That he died feeling proud and happy about his life, proud of the things he achieved, and happily loving the people in it. That he lived a life that he believed was worth living. Praying for his family and ours to be strong through a time like this.. and so on.
I went with my dad to the mortuary where we met up with my aunt and one of her sons. After hearing the story of what happened and things. I found out my cousin, my uncles first son, was going to graduate college next week. So heartbreaking :(. I couldn't even imagine how painful that must be, working so hard for a moment like that when your parents could be proud of you.. and have it taken away. :( Life is just so unfair when you see stuff like that.
On a good note.. my aunt was saying that recently, he told her that he was incredibly proud and happy with his life, that he had her, 2 good sons, stability, and happiness. Which is an amazing feat in my book. If anything I'm happy that my Uncle knew he lived a life worth living. While we will all miss him I feel like I really have something to learn from all of this... like spending more time with my family, and really doing things that matter while they are still around. I will continue to pray so much for my cousins and aunt. These next couple weeks are going to be rough with all of my midterms, a funeral and wake to attend, and a dragonboat race coming up.. sad that my update couldn't have been a happier post but yeah.
Take care everyone, love your parents like crazy everyday. | | |
| Once again... long while since I last updated lol. Feels like so much has happened in about a month. I finally have a moment to blog before spring break hits.. Where do I begin..? I've finished reading Bruce Lee's, "Striking Thoughts". Truly a great read and I think I've developed a sort of new outlook on life thanks to his shared wisdom. Really a brilliant philosophical mind within him. Makes you wonder just how many more things he could have shared with the world had he kept on living.
A few of the many things I've learned from Bruce are self actualization, the importance of being grounded in one's self and being centered in life, striving to be better. Self realization, the importance of wanting to be all that you can be and to keep striving for it. I also learned to look at adversity in better ways.. Overall my head feels clearer and I feel much more in control when things start going a little crazy in life.
I've experienced a couple of things in my life lately. One being a good friend of mine, a recent grad of my major, having to make a tough choice after not being able to find work. Shes an international student, in order for her to stay in America, (which she wants to) she has to find a job that will help her apply for a work visa. Incredibly though at this point. After months of searching and nearing the possibility of being deported, she gets an offer from a distant relative in Texas, he will hire her but she has to relocate there for 5 years+ working in a field possibly unrelated to what we studied. Its quite an ordeal as she is so similar to me I can only imagine how she must have felt and all of the things going on through her mind. Moving away from home and friends for a very long time, also losing a bit of the dream for all of us MIS majors, working in one of the awesome companies in Silicon Valley. All I could do is support my friend, I pray that things go well for her over there, and in her future.
The training for Bay to breakers is going okay.. I've built up a lot of muscle since a year ago and I'm tiring out kind of easily. But in the range of health I've honestly never been healthier my entire life. Weighed in at 5'8 176lbs with 12.5% body fat..(wiki says that's in the body composition range of athletes! haha) the strength is incredible.. When I dragonboat I can feel the boat picking up when I paddle. Its pretty amazing being healthy.. I hope I can keep things up.. Looking forward to blogging and much more during Spring break! | | |
| Today is another Valentine's day (Single awareness day for me I guess? I've never had a good Valentine's day with a girl since my exes were.. yeah.) , but also the day of 8 years on my xanga, also marking that I am 23 as of yesterday (Feb 13th) I had a great birthday weekend.. crazy amount of fun.. I admit I was feeling at a bit of a low point before the weekend started due to that whole, "project manager" business of my last entry.
I started off the weekend by seeing 1 of the 4 screenings in San Francisco of, "I AM BRUCE LEE" a new documentary on Bruce Lee. I managed to get some tickets at the 4 star theatre on Clement st. the theater was packed to max capacity and there was a huge line just to get inside...It was really nice to see the love for Bruce Lee still out there. It was a very amazing and inspiring documentary.. just digging into his philosophy and all of the things he accomplished in his short life inspired me, they were legendary stories. One story that really stood out for me was when he retrained himself to walk, after the doctors had say he would never walk or do martial arts again.. They talked about Bruce's journal.. where he wrote the words, "Walk on.." and he did rigorous rehabilitation to not only walk again but do martial arts and continue making movies. I left the theater feeling like I need to make something of myself, I need to fight back for my Project Manager spot. Or at the least not let people and the competition in the world deflect me from my goals in life. I need to join dragonboat again.. I need to sign up for Bay to Breakers too! Another one of Bruce's quotes, in a letter which he wrote to someone.. I forgot who it was to.. said this, "My obsession is to make, pardon the expression, the most fuckingest action motion picture ever." after watching "Enter the Dragon" again on my bluray player this weekend. I think he accomplished that :].
My family took me out to Benihana for a birthday lunch on Saturday, one of the best times I've ever had there. The chef was great, he did quite a few awesome tricks. Loved the food, ate all of it! To top it off I got a paper Benihana hat at the end for me to wear haha! Chef in training? lol.
I guess a part of having a birthday so close to Valentines.. a lot of times I've been tempted and had succumbed to using my "birthday cake wish" on finding an awesome girl friend that year. Let me let you, it doesn't work! (Shame on me I know :(. ) LOL. After a ton of years of doing that I've decided to make a special wish this year.. we shall see what happens..
On my actual birthday (Monday), my friends came over and took me to see lunch, a movie, dinner, and to our usual ritual of having the person who's late buy everyone a Mcflurry at Mcdonalds. Overall I have some pretty great friends and it was nice to spend my actual birthday with friends. The movie we watched was, "The Grey". I'm going to talk about the ending a little bit so if you don't wanna know then STOP READING FROM HERE. I thought it was a good movie.. The ending makes it look like the main character could have died or lived. You can't really tell.. but somehow I felt that Liam Neeson fought off all those wolves. Usually we always stay for the credits but the one time we leave early.. there was something.. Now I'm going to have to see the movie again?! haha.
Overall one awesome weekend..two inspirational movies.. great time with friends and family. Although I am celebrating Single Awareness Day, I hope you guys had a great valentines.. Thank also to xanga for the 8 years and counting. I'm feeling incredibly rejuvenated after my last dealie and I'm anxious to tackle another year.
| | |
|
True