Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Everything's changing again

I'm stuck at 238 approaches. My state has been absolute shit. I've also been going out this whole time, but I've been BAPping - a lot, actually. I haven't been blogging a lot about it because I really want to keep the negativity and the emo posts to a minimum in this blog. I just want there to be field reports, useful information, funny youtubes, and hopefully good things to report.

I've been thinking - here are a few things behind my change of state:

1. Seasonal Affective Disorder (check the post below). The carefree days of summer are over, fall is here and winter is coming. I'm sort of dreading the cold weather and the impending holidays.

2. I've been really focusing on my career and financial affairs, that shit isn't exactly fun, I've been spending a lot of time at home doing this home renovation and financial reorganization project. I'm naturally a worrier and I think this whole process of organizing all of my bills and responsibilities has just given me more stuff to obsess about. In the end this will be worth it because it is all stuff that will help in the future.

3. I notice my emotional state is very closely tied to my physical state - I have not been taking care of myself lately. I need to eat better, work out more, buy more clothes, and get my hair cut on a more regular basis. I have been gradually trying to eliminate smoking because being self conscious about bad breath also fucks my state. I'm also noticing that I'm drinking more lately when I go out - this is not only bad for my game but it also makes you fat.

4. Not playing guitar due to being busy with the home renovation crap. This may seem like a minor factor, but it's not. Playing guitar is one of the few things in this life that brings me any type of fulfillment.

5. Friends being all over the place, negative influences, unreliable, manipulative. This is a distortion - emotional reasoning, mainly, mind reading, overgeneralizations - basically the fallacy of 'if you feel it, it must be true'. Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you. Mind reading depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do. Therefore, you don't watch or listen carefully enough to notice that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to conclusions that are true for them, without checking whether they are true for the other person. It is very hard to be conscious of this when in the moment, dealing with other people. This is due to me not being more in touch with myself, and not believing in myself sometimes. I have to constantly check myself all the time when I slip into these types of thoughts.

6. Comparing myself to others. This is another distortion, a form of personalization closely tied to self esteem: This is the tendency to relate everything around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth is in question. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better, you get a moment's relief. If you come up short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a clue to your worth and value.

7. I've also yet to strike the right balance between going out and taking care of my responsibilities. It always feels as if I'm going out too much and neglecting everything my career and finances, or I'm staying in too much and missing out on fun stuff.

Last week my therapist told me he thought I should consider taking prescription antidepressents. I decided I didn't want to deal with the side effects like gaining weight or loss of sex drive. I've also heard it can freak you out when you try to get off them. I decided to try taking fish oil supplements and St. John's Wort supplements before trying the more hardcore shit. It seems to have helped a little - I'm definitely not as lethargic and depressed as I was before, my thoughts are still all over the place though.

I went out last Saturday with JCB and Effect. We went to to this restaurant called the Mayan for Mexican food. We then met up with JCB's friends at this place called Kingstone Mines, JCB's friend was getting married. He seemed like a cool guy. We BAP'ed hard at Kingstone, even though there were a lot of girls there. I did get in one - really long - but completely worthless set at Longroom later on that night with this totally horrendous looking brunette. The guys gave me hell about her when I rejoined them at the bar.

I went out on the town with Diva and the Photographer and Effect. The Photographer drags us to a bunch of bars, all of them semi shitty - Cleo's, the bar across the street from Cleo's, Uptown Lounge, the Green Mill. We decide to go to Darkroom. I got one really good set in this night that I should have capitalized on, and 2 shitty sets that I don't even remember. Some stupid drunk bitch started fucking with me and hit her in the head with my hat. We stayed out pretty late and I was pretty hung over the next day. It was a pretty good time, I usually wake up the next day with a hangover and regret over BAP'ing.

We also went out a few times with no approaches -

Sunday night, Did we go out that night? I think we might have gone to Wicker Park and BAP'd.

Wed. night, We were supposed to interview this biatch for our business but she never showed up. I drove over straight from work and ran in the rain to get there on time but she stood us up. We thought about going out later on but were just not in the mood for it.

Thursday night, Horrible night where I go to this Financial Planning seminar with JCB and meet up with a bunch of lair guys. I should have never went to that thing, now these financial planner lair guys won't stop calling me - why does it surprise me that I am constantly meeting inauthentic people, people who want something from you, or who pre judge you? Maybe this is my problem, and I am too distrustful of people, and am not to new experiences, but I think I am. I also think my lousy state from the past couple of weeks might be at play here.

Friday night. We went to Andersonville, looked in the window at Simons and saw a bunch of 50 year old guys in suits smoking cigars, very few women, and got right back in the car and drove home. Ugh. Just didn't feel like dealing with that scene. Fucking situation with the lair guys also that I don't want to write about right now.

Saturday - was pretty fun, went out with Diva, Effect, and the Photographer to 3 parties. It was cool, but again I didn't approach anyone. Effect tried to get me to approach but I was a huge pussy about it. First party was this loft party held by this guy called Saverio. Pretty cool, Saverio seemed like a really nice guy. Second party was this party at this girl Ana's house, Ana is this cute girl that Effect is trying to either network with for a job or trying to get with. She had a lot of cute friends but goddamn that was a boring party - they were all sitting around watching Freddy vs. Jason. Cute girls though, also a bunch of dudes were there, of course. We bailed pretty quickly. I would have really liked to have stayed and talked to one of those girls. Third party was the best party, just wild. Held by Diva's friend Pam, her band was playing - they're called the Electrodes. Crazy dance punk type of music - two guitarists that look like the Misfits. Awesome crowd - street people, indie people, punk rockers, hot girls in halloween costumes, the whole gamut. We saw this girl spit on the guitar player for 'flashing her pussy' whatever that means.

So that's it. I'm at

238 approaches,

trying to snap out of whatever's come over me. Effect may think that he was weird, but that new age guy at the gallery party the other night was on the right path. I have to learn to let go of my need to control and the feelings of anger I keep bottled up inside - they are keeping me from getting in touch with my infinite and unbounded spiritual essence, which is pure consciousness, pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity, and bliss, and is one with the power that manifests everything in the universe.

SAD hitting hard

My state has been absolutely horrible lately, I think this has a lot to do with it ...

What is Seasonal Affective Disorder?
Some people suffer from symptoms of depression during the winter months, with symptoms subsiding during the spring and summer months. This may be a sign of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is a mood disorder associated with depression episodes and related to seasonal variations of light.

SAD was first noted before 1845, but was not officially named until the early 1980’s. As sunlight has affected the seasonal activities of animals (i.e., reproductive cycles and hibernation), SAD may be an effect of this seasonal light variation in humans. As seasons change, there is a shift in our “biological internal clocks” or circadian rhythm, due partly to these changes in sunlight patterns. This can cause our biological clocks to be out of “step” with our daily schedules. The most difficult months for SAD sufferers are January and February, and younger persons and women are at higher risk.

Symptoms Include:

* regularly occurring symptoms of depression (excessive eating and sleeping, weight gain) during the fall or winter months.
* full remission from depression occur in the spring and summer months.
* symptoms have occurred in the past two years, with no nonseasonal depression episodes.
* seasonal episodes substantially outnumber nonseasonal depression episodes.
* a craving for sugary and/or starchy foods.

Possible Cause of this Disorder
Melatonin, a sleep-related hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, has been linked to SAD. This hormone, which may cause symptoms of depression, is produced at increased levels in the dark. Therefore, when the days are shorter and darker the production of this hormone increases.

Treatments
Phototherapy or bright light therapy has been shown to suppress the brain’s secretion of melatonin. Although, there have been no research findings to definitely link this therapy with an antidepressant effect, many people respond to this treatment. The device most often used today is a bank of white fluorescent lights on a metal reflector and shield with a plastic screen. For mild symptoms, spending time outdoors during the day or arranging homes and workplaces to receive more sunlight may be helpful. One study found that an hour’s walk in winter sunlight was as effective as two and a half hours under bright artificial light.

If phototherapy doesn’t work, an antidepressant drug may prove effective in reducing or eliminating SAD symptoms, but there may be unwanted side effects to consider. Discuss your symptoms thoroughly with your family doctor and/or mental health professional.

nonchalant REVEALED yo!!

Finally, candid video footage of yours truly. :P

Surging - It's kinda like a business...

I wake up today with a massive hangover. I had five beers last night, which is a lot for me since I am not a huge drinker. I usually only have one a night if that. First thing I do is check my email, my laptop freezes on me so I hit the power button and attempt to reboot. It hangs during the reboot process for several minutes and I realize that my laptop is busted. Losing my laptop is equivalent to the Def Leppard drummer losing an arm or Beethoven going deaf - so of course I freak. I spend the morning with a hangover, trying all kinds of repair maneuvres with the AppleCare guys on the phone, none of them work and they tell me to take it into the Apple Store and talk to the mac genius. So I take it to the Apple store, and the guy tries a few things before telling me I will have to try erasing and reinstalling everything, which means I lose everything that was on my computer. This wasn't a big deal I guess, I just had some audio books on this computer and some mp3's I hadn't backed up yet. I'm more upset that I wasted a day trying to get my computer running again when I had a bunch of crap I wanted to do today. It's back up and running and I'm typing this out on a fresh installation of os X on my laptop.

My therapist tells me that the psychological effects of alcohol can linger for days after the actual drinking happens. I am feeling a little run down, and today my state was all over the place. I still have a bit of a headache, and my body feels dehydrated. I totally didn't need this laptop crap to happen today. It's just been a crazy week and I wanted to get some responsible adult stuff done today, instead I have to drive all over the place and hunt down all the dvd's with my digital audio applications on them so I can reinstall my shit. JCB wanted to hang out tonight at this place Central, but I cancel due to this computer crap and my hangover.

I have a couple of nights of sarging, er - surging :P, in the words of Diva - to report. Me and Effect went out on Thursday to the old reliable Wicker Park. It was Thursday but the place just seemed dead. Hardly any people around compared to the summer. Maybe it's the change of seasons. Thursdays are usually good nights, though, I'm hoping this trend reverses itself soon. We decide to drive a half hour out to Rogers Park and pick up the Photographer to go to this place Morseland and hit on some Loyola girls. This was a huge mistake. The Photographer decides to be a massive pussy and stay home, and Morseland is deader than a doornail. By the time we decide to abandon Morseland it is already past midnight. We curse the Photographer for ruining our night and decide to just hang out at Clarke's and then go home.

At Clarke's Effect is ruthless and uses peer pressure to force me into opening sets at the diner, so I go table to table asking girls if they know any good late night clubs, and if they think a man having six cats is feminine. One of them is cute - she is in a 3 set at a table, and I realize one of the 3 is her mom, who is like 50 years old! I feel like a pedo, and eject, even though the girl is cute and volunteers the information that she just moved here from out of town and is a student at Roosevelt. I also open these two blonde sorostitutes who give me some patronizing attitude, so I eject. I didn't want to go the whole night without pushing myself a little. As I am fond of telling Effect, if you BAP and don't approach, you just wasted a night of your life and you haven't grown at all. In fact, you have regressed into BAP-dom.

Friday was a rough day at work and I drive over to Wicker Park and meet up with Effect immediately after work. We are excited about this new idea for a business venture. I will expound on it in this journal if it takes off past a certain point, right now it is in the planning stages. It has a lot of potential as far as both making money and meeting women goes, put it that way. The little gears in our brains are turning about all the money we'll make and company cars and so forth. I do a preliminary set of these 3 artsy chicks at McGearty's and head over to the Flatiron building for First Fridays at Around the Coyote. The place is semi dead, although there were some HB's there. There was a lot of free food and alcohol, which we helped ourselves to. We drank a lot and discussed our business plans surrounded by these art installations I didn't really understand and some hipster dj guy played stuff like LCD Soundsystem and Fleetwood Mac.

I am well on my way to getting drunk when we drive over to Life During Wartime night at Darkroom. The place is not very busy when we walk in, so I start up a tab and we continue our drinking binge. As we drink, more people come in, but they are mostly dudes. The girls that are there are mostly UGs as well. I don't know what's up with the bars lately, but, being process oriented rather than goal oriented, I have to get some approaches in. Me and Effect play this game where I point to someone at the bar and he has to go and approach her, then we switch and I have to do the same. I wind up approaching a few UG's - this one french girl I approached before, who seemed really shy and flattered when I approached her and asked her if I knew her from somewhere. This one blonde chick who looked good from the other end of the bar but up close was rather large. This two set of really tall but pretty black chick with an afro and her blonde friend who was semi fugly. And this really bitchy Indian chick who wasn't even attractive that totally blew me out.

Apparently JayDog is getting action from lovelypurdyflowers. I guess that's cool, but what about our surging?? Afterwards we went to (the other) Clarke's, and I drunkenly attempt to catch the attention of some redhead girl at the next table by asking her to pass the ketchup and pass the salt. I came up with some diner game, which I plan to use: Hey can you pass the salt/ketchup? and Hey, you gonna eat those fries? I think I will have to be really drunk to use these situational openers, like last night. Sometimes the game is a little frustrating when I'm not feeling it. This was just a night on the town getting drunk with my bud. I will not give up the game, though - those nights when everything comes together and I meet someone I connect with are what I live for. I also know that one day I will strike up a random conversation with someone, and realize that this may be the person for me.

234 approaches

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time is a book about getting more things done in the (limited) time that you have. This book is written by Brian Tracy who is a self-made millionaire. The basic premise of the book is that to be more productive, you have to find out that one task that you need to do which will make a difference (and not the task that you feel like doing) and take steps to do it right away with urgency. The book has a lot of good ideas to help you find your biggest frog and eat it!

Recommended for the perpetual procrastinators (yes, that means you!)

Here is a summary of 21 ways to stop procrastinating and getting more things done faster:

1. Set the table: Decide exactly what to do. Write down goals and objectives.
2. Plan every day in advance: Think on paper. Every minute spent in planning can save 5-10 minutes in execution.
3. Apply 80/20 Rule to everything: 20% of activities account for 80% of results. Always concentrate efforts on those top 20%.
4. Consider the consequences: Most important tasks and priorities are those with most serious consequences. Focus on them.
5. Practice the ABCDE method continually: Prioritize tasks from A - most important to E - least important to make sure you always work on the most important task.
6. Focus on key result areas: Identify and determine those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long.
7. Obey the Law of Forced Efficiency: There is never enough time for everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important things. What are they ?
8. Prepare thoroughly before you begin: PPPPP Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance.
9. Do your homework: The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at your key tasks, the faster you start them and sooner you get them done.
10. Leverage your special talents: Determine what it is that you are very good at doing and throw your whole heart into doing those things very well.
11. Identify your key constraints: Determine the bottlenecks or choke points, internally or externally, that set the speed at which tou achieve your most important goals and focus on alleviating them.
12. Take it one oil barrel at a time: You can accomplish biggest and most complicated jo if you just complete it one step at a time.
13. Put the pressure on yourself: Imagine that you have to leave town for a month and work as if you had to get all your major tasks completed before you left.
14. Maximize your personal powers: Identify the periods of highest mental and physical energy and structure the most important and demanding tasks around those times.
15. Motivate yourself into action: Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive.
16. Practice creative procrastination: Since you cannot do everything, learn to deliberately put off low value tasks, so that you have enough time to do the few things that really count.
17. Do the most difficult task first: Begin each day to do the most difficult task, the one task that can make the freatest contrivution to yourself and your work, and resolve to stay at it until it is complete.
18. Slice and dice the task: Break large, complex tasks down into smaller pieces.
19. Create large chunks of time: Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks.
20. Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks.
21. Single handle every task: Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task, and them work without stopping until the job is 100 percent complete.

Back Into the Fray

I went out for Ethiopian food with the Lunch Crew from work and J.'s roommate Carrie. I really enjoyed it, although it is like Indian food for me in that I can already tell that I probably would not be able to eat it all the time. D. apparently eats Ethiopian a couple of times a week, but he has some of the more unusual eating habits I've seen.

I had a couple of Red Stripes at dinner and was feeling frisky. After dinner I meet up with Effect and we go out to Clarkes, where I inform him of my 10 year goal of becoming a millionaire. We then brainstorm about another possible business venture, a 'pivot girls' service - sort of like a non sexual escort service for guys who need social proof in the bars. I will write more about this when we hammer some stuff out further. It may not fly. There are no pivotgirls service in the Chicago area, but I know they exist in other parts of the country. We did the math, and even at $50 bucks an hour, there is potential to greatly supplement my monthly salary and provide a nice cushion for me to invest in real estate and stocks. Best of all, the business would involve things that I love - bars and clubs, women, and the game. Hopefully this pans out but, you know, I will keep plugging away at this 10 year goal of becoming a millionaire regardless.

Afterwards we picked up the Photographer, who is housesitting for this dude in the DePaul area. Apparently all of Effect's stories are starting to rub off and the Photographer is becoming more and more interested in the game. We drive out to the old reliable Wicker Park and hit Jazz Night at Rodan. Again, it is a sausage fest but there are workable sets there. We hang out for a little while and I get in one set - some redhead girl in a sixties mod dress. This was my first set since my emotional breakdown last weekend and I was a little nervous. I could feel my knees shaking a little. She was ice cold too. She shook my hand and was pretty friendly but in the end she blew me out to talk to her friend. Whatevah.

Afterwards we go for the 2 dollar specials at Sheffields, which the Photographer has been hanging out in quite frequently lately in order to accidentally run into this girl he shared a cab with but did not get a phone number from a couple of weeks ago. There are no sets at Sheffields, we sit there sipping out beers and talking about punk rock music for a little while. On the way out I wind up getting another set in: Some HB7 brunette opera singer from NYC, we bonded about the East Village and I started riffing on the homeless cats routine. I merged the Photographer into the set and even tried to close by inviting her to a party. This was semi rude of me because she was there with some guy - this weird looking guy wearing a green spikey wig, I don't know what that was about, but he started getting a little anxious looking when it was obvious that I was blowing him out. I think if I saw this girl when she was not out on a date I could have closed her. Who knows.

I have been doing a lot of work lately around the house - just totally cleaning everything out and getting my financial records sorted out and entered into this financial software I downloaded. I spent practically all last weekend doing this, it's starting to look pretty cool. I threw out a ton of junk and gave away a lot of old clothes to the Salvation Army. I have an appointment tonight after work to check out this filing cabinet I might buy from someone on craigslist. I also have a maid coming in this weekend to scrub the place down. My mind feels a bit clearer.

227 approaches