“These are strictly for my own selfish pleasure so I’m going to hold back on reading them until I can crank through some of this backlog, which is ironically composed 100% of books that I really want to read.”
These words are not even 48 hours old and I’ve already cheated.
250 pages yesterday I will probably knock the last 250ish out tonight and tomorrow.
DAMN YOU DAN BROWN!
Some of us had semi-important things to do tonight such as other reading, that painting, running, session, all of which was going to have to be worked around trivia at Andrew’s (although this might not come together this week) and the return of the Fall lineup for the major networks.
3 premieres tonight
Phi Denver was a roaring success. It was a glorious combination of fun, debautchery, drunkeness, and somehow there was even some football in there. I cannot wait until next year’s draft, wherever it may be… Chicago? Delaware? Jamaica?
The days following Phi Denver have been filled with random craziness from all sides. It’s been somewhat hectic and running pretty loose. I might need to add a little more structure to the way that things are going because I’ve been slacking on some of my goals. At the same time I’m having a ton of fun with it all, but the key is a little more balance.
Anyways, after an eventful Friday night around the neighborhood, we headed down to Wash Park for my friend’s birthday Saturday afternoon. It ended up being kinda crappy weather, but a couple of kegs and a ton of friends helped out with that. We had some great kickball/volleyball going on, and they even managed to get my bday friend a piñata for her to smash which was absolutely hilarious and I think that we might need to incorporate more of these into everyday life. We eneded up bringing the keg and the party back to our house when the rain started to pick up, and I honestly couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. We hung out played some games, had some scotch, enjoyed some quality beers and overall had such a blast with some really good friends that I haven’t gotten to see in a while. The Wash Park party was also in part for my buddy Sidley was in town again after a year or so of galavanting across Central and South America with his beautiful girlfriend. He is a special individual that I am very privledged to consider a close friend. He is just one of those rare quality people that are a true pleasure and bring joy to everyone that he meets.
I got to speak about this topic with my friend/mentor Sonny. We had a great conversation about value, validation, social proof, and a bunch of other things. It really helped me start to look at interactions differently and more clearly. We talked about not deriving value externally. Typically, social value is derived externally through some form of supplication (like me, like me, like me, type qualifying statements), combativeness (I’ll fight you!), or competitiveness (One Uppingness, if you will). However all of these are still externally located. I am finding that there are better ways to go about things than through one of these avenues, but I need to work that out and start really generating and distributing more value internally. I haven’t really gotten far enough outside of myself yet, but I’m working on it. Instead of remaining focused on one’s self, start being truly and genuinely concerned for other people, even complete strangers. Starting today (when I finally manage to get this finished up), it’s time to go out with the attitude that I should really look to make someone’s day.
Relating it all back, that’s one of the things that Sidley always naturally did so well. Congratulations man, we’re all that much better because of it.
Also, in lighter news, I stumbled across a great new (as in new to me but was right under my nose the entire time) comedian. He plays the landlord in Flight of the Conchords, Eugene Mirman. Somewhat like “Dave” aka Arj Barker, he is a solid comedian in his own right but he deosn’t really get to demostrate it on the show. Here are a few pretty money shorts:
Art – I’m going to need to get in there and finish this awesome piece that I’ve been working on for a bit. It’s going to end up looking something like this:
Hopefully I get that finished this week. I’m pretty stoked on how it’s turning out. Just a few more touch ups and filling in a few more coats on the yellow and a few spots of the darker red.
Books- Son of a bitch. I think that it’s about a 3:1 in to out ratio on reading these things. Time just seems to disappear. I did just order a book that I really want to read and two more that will be released in October. These are strictly for my own selfish pleasure so I’m going to hold back on reading them until I can crank through some of this backlog, which is ironically composed 100% of books that I really want to read. Ugghhhhh…
