So let's get the awkward part of this out of the way first; I had no idea I had ever created a blog. Mind you, the blog was originally for an English lit class back in college, and was mainly for us to post our thoughts and ideas about the stuff we were reading, but I never really did much of anything with it. I think I might have at one point set up another blog somewhere under a fake name and email account so I can rant and rave about shit, be self important, and assume that people thought I had some good ideas. But that one, like this one from college, went no where fast. I don't know if I can still access that other account, but at least Google is letting me keep this one. Better yet, I can edit it, change the URL, and make the damn thing coherent and look nice (sort of). Over time, assuming I keep this one alive again, I might take the time to really make it look professional or something. For now, it'll be a rough experiment to see if I can't use what ever writing talent I have and make my thoughts interesting to other people. In that light, I have chosen to keep what posts I had already made (save for one that was nothing but pictures of a slideshow for a class long forgotten), just as kind of a benchmark of where I used to be.
And it is a bit funny to me that the subject of those old posts was all about fear, because that's a big part of the discussion I am still having with myself today. The biggest fears I know of, the fear of change and fear of the unknown.
I renamed this blog to be about discovering my personal legend. For anyone curious about that title, it comes from the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which follows the adventure of a young shepherd on his own journey to discover his personal legend. It was a book that came well recommended for me from a number of sources, and yet despite being published in the year of my birth (always a good omen for these kinds of things) I have only recently spent the time to read it. Or, to put it more truthfully, I listened to it via Audible on my way too and from work. And having now listened to it twice back to back, I wish I had read and or listened to it much sooner.
I am not here to summarize the book, and I am not here to give a book report kind of analysis of it either, even if this blog started as a means to do such a thing. No, I am instead going to say that because of that book, I have decided to rediscover my own personal legend before it is too late. I admit that I am not that old, but I can't help but feel still like I have wasted a lot of time and let a lot of opportunities slip by me. I have not always been the most active participant in my own life, and as a result have felt it lacking more often then I would care to admit. As a result, I have not been happy with myself and my level of accomplishment in some time. While I will be the first to admit that it is possible that I have simply set my own standards far to high, leading to a desperate cycle of never being good enough no matter what I do and eventually simply giving up on such a deep level to generate a perpetual feeling of self loathing, I have decided that to hell with my depressive tendencies, I want to at least attempt to do better.
But I finished my second listen of The Alchemist almost a month ago, why am I just not starting to post here at this blog? Well, a lot has happened in that last month. First off, it was the month of November, my birth month, and my birthday I was sick and unable to really enjoy it outside of binging on Fallout 4. Second, I got in trouble at my job as a bartender for following the law and trying to protect the company from allowing a client to do us harm. And third, I found out that I failed the California Bar Exam, a test I have more or less spent the last three years of my life preparing for. All of this combined together with my general disposition for depression and anxiety and it broke me. I was run through the gauntlet of emotions, feeling the extreme highs and lows of my spectrum, and was left shattered, drained, and empty of all life and feeling. So I decided to make a serious attempt to change everything in my life.
Now I am not one for New Year's resolutions. I am not a believer that a single, arbitrary day should hold the key to your future and success. Life altering decisions are meant to be meaningful and impactful, not something to just claim while drinking and then forgotten during the hangover. That being said, the timing of this change I suppose corresponds all too well with that tradition of making promises to yourself for the coming year. This difference of course is that I intend to keep these promises, and make the changes that I have decided to make. And I invite anyone reading this to come with me on this journey into the unknown territory of myself and the new world I am creating.
What you will get here is a brutally honest account of what is going on with my life, and I do not intend to censor any part of it. If you have an issue with anything I say, that is all you, and I do not hold it against you in anyway. Just know that I will likely not care, because what you do with this information is your business, mine is just to write it down. This may sabotage things in the future, such as any hope for a life in politics, but the fact is that if I cannot be honest with myself here, then I have no business in such a life style where I cannot be my most honest and genuine self. You may find things out about me that you do not like, but it is all me, and I will not try and pull my punches just to maintain a reputation. In fact, I hope that by being honest in this way, in showing you my raw self, that I can forge a new reputation that is much more closer to the truth.
I have a lot to say, and I have only used this post as a sort of introduction of things to come. Once I have digested the events of this weekend, I will post again. In the mean time, welcome to the next stage of my life. And welcome to my personal legend.
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