Guys,

How to go from feeling shitty and not accomplishing anything to feeling good and making progress:
What works for me

Recently been doing a lot of thinking, and one of my faults is that I don’t open up. Well, unless I’m incredibly drunk. So I just wanted to get out there and put some Paul-istic info out for you and how to start turning things around -

Turn Around: You can do it too.

1.) Locus of Control: Some background on external vs internal
External Locus of Control: People believe that other forces control them and their circumstances. A weak, disempowering stance…
“I can’t find a job due to this economy. I can’t leave my current Job/Relationship/Home/Move out because whatever I find won’t ever be as good as I have it now”
Internal Locus of Control: People believe that they control their destiny and their surroundings. A sanity-reinforcing standpoint, confidence building
“This shit sucks, but dammit, I’m going to try harder, stop slacking off and go out there and kick ass. I will find a better job, I will find a better relationship, I will find a better home because I will try harder and use my talents.”

Which sounds better? Who would you rather hang out with? Someone who is constantly blaming everything around them or someone who is taking control of their life and situation?

2.)Goals: Doing something everyday makes it easier.
Write down your goals. no, seriously, every single person I’ve talked to who comes off as ‘motivated’ or at least just not ’slacker’ has goals. I’ve adopted this too, just write down your top 5, every day before bed. You CAN spare 5 minutes before your head hits the pillow right? You can place a notebook next to your bed, and just scratch that down? Then move it to 5 goals when you wake up and 5 when you go to bed.
“What the fuck will this do for me?” Guess what, this loads those thoughts into your subconscious like a clip of kickass into the gun that is your life. Eventually it’ll become almost muscle memory, and you’ll be amazed at what you’ll start to notice, you’ll see patterns that lead to job opportunities, you’ll start being able to make long term plans, you’ll be able to resist short term temptations for bigger long term payoffs. When you have something kicking around in your head 24/7 you will be amazed at what sort of ‘coincidences’ just so happen to pop up.
“I call bullshit. That’s just confirmation Bias/whatever” Well, if a placebo cures your fever every time you get one, would you still pop that sugar pill when you get a fever? Try it yourself, you have nothing to loose except 5 minutes a day, perhaps 10. I’m certain you’ve wasted that time doing less productive things. (A note from personal experience: give this method a few days to start churning though, and write good goals)

2.5.)Good Goals: Use the machinery properly, it’ll work. Wack it with a wrench and you’ll get nothing.
Present Tense: I have/I am/I own
Time frame: By May 10, 2010
Accountable: Check back and see how you’re doing!
Repeat from memory: Don’t look at the previous day’s goals, start each day from scratch – if it’s important enough, you’ll carry it over without having to check back!

Example:

“I weigh less than 250lbs by Dec 31st, 2010″
I’ve sort of been using Dec 31st, 2010 as a catch all, and I just recently broke the 245 mark by joining the local swim club at the YMCA and eating lots of fruits/veggies – it’s EASIER to make the right decisions with this thought kicking around in there 24/7 – Subway or a sandwich at home? I haven’t been under 250, let alone 260 since I started College. Ex: Well, subway I know is less healthier, and my weight is important, I’ll take the time and put in the effort to get what I want… etc. But I’ve KNOWN this for YEARS and had this goal for years, but never actually ‘wrote it out’ so I never actually put effort into it, it just slipped my mind, constantly…
“I have a job I enjoy by Feb 28th, 2010″
I started writing this daily back in December ‘09 when I was dissatisfied with my job at Beaumont and they told me that I was due to get my job cut any moment. I revealed this to my family and facebook, and I think terry mentioned it to Joel, and Joel told me about the Datacenter job, and a few interviews and months later, here I am, in literally the best job I’ve ever had. This also overlaps with the next:

3.) Ask. Ask and you will receive -
Some of you might start to realize that A lot of these concepts have been around, and have been said about a million times by other people, it’s because they work IF YOU PRACTICE THEM. for the longest time that was my disconnect, I’d read, understand, vocalize, but not practice these. I’d write my goals once and forget about it for a month. I’d sign up for the gym and only go 3x a month. Self improvement is the same way…

Ask your friends, ask your work colleagues, ask the cashier at the random place you buy things.

4.) Cheating – learning during downtime [OPTIONAL]
For the purposes of education, if you wanted to say, grab Peerblock and utorrent, and then get audiobooks from piratebay.org, (totally legal audio books, of course) or grab video lectures and rip the audio or lectures of stuff that interests you (for me it’s been self-improvement, psychology, productivity stuff) I find it’s an amusing way to pass the long drives, or kill time during workouts.

5.) Further Reading – [OPTIONAL]
Does this self-improvement stuff interest you? I HIGHLYHIGHLYHIGHLY recommend Steve Pavlina’s web site/book/pod casts (all but the book is free) (The Law of Attraction How to Stop Complaining How You Give Your Power Away)

and the Crimson Curtain (Laws of Darkworking) don’t let the name scare you, just take it at the personal development level

You might be able to find at the local library of Robert Greene’s stuff (40 laws of Power, 33 Strategies of War) for situational help in specific ‘I need to win’ scenarios…

There’s lots of free info out there, written by talented, intelligent people – look for it.

IN CLOSING:

1.) Internal Locus: You control stuff. Accept this. If shit sucks, YOU MUST CHANGE IT, no one will come to save you.
2.) Write your goals out: What’s the worst that could happen? 10 minutes gone? The best that could happen? You get what you want.
2.5) Write good goals: “I want to be happy” is vague. Your subconscious won’t be able to help you. “I spend 30 minutes working on my music daily” is much better.
3.) Ask: put your requests out there! let your friends know, let your friends ask your friends, if there’s anything you’re looking for, I mean, hell you’re only 6-7 degrees away from Kevin Bacon, right? fucker has pretty much everything.

4/5) Optional, I like em’ Most of these tips are summaries of the basics of those two sites, but they go WAY into more detail that I have here.

CONCLUSION: This shit has worked for me. Will it work for you? Depends if you try and put in effort, really. Want to bitch at me about confirmation bias? Leave a comment, or bother me on my formspring -

“Why would you want to help me?” – Every time someone succeeds it makes this place better. every person that is aware, happy, and can make others happy is the start of a ripple effect. I love my friends, and I see that sometimes, some of them show signs of where I used to be as a person… If I can help then I’ll do what I can to help.
“Why did you wait until now to write this?” – for a long time I under the whole stupid “I can’t write well, people won’t listen, it won’t help anyone” mindset. What does it matter if no one listens? if even ONE person gets ONE idea or hell, 5 minutes of hope, then it’s more than worth the effort. maybe someday someone will find this and it’ll help them turn their life around, it costs next to nothing for me to leave it out on the internet, and It’s a solid use of my free time, in that I feel good about it.

Damn, Can’t remember the last time I’ve written so much. I must obviously feel strongly about this issue.

Well, anyone who has seen steam lately has probably spent upwards of 20 bucks on awesome games that are just now becoming cheaper – steam decided that a smaller profit margin is better than no margin at all – and the typical ‘it’s a steal!!’ mentality takes over. I am ashamed that I have falled prey to this insideous tactic and bought, god help me, ‘Mr. Robot’

Let me set up a format for each game here:

Now, after seeing it as a deal, the grey line slashed epically through the previous price I said to myself: 4.99$/1.99$/7.99$? I’ve spent more on food! And I tried the demo/previous game from them/something simliar to it/etc.

Well lets start:

Cogs: yes, I love puzzle games! Except I don’t. What the hell am I thinking? yes it was an interesting 10 minutes for 1.99$ but that’s money I could have spent on hookers and blow.
JUDGEMENT: Pass.

Mass Effect: I’m certain there’s a million different reviews out there, but suffice to say, bioware is one of my fav. companies, and I love this game. I started playing briefly on the 360 when my roommates brother left the game at our house and loved it, then forgot about it for a while, and now I have it on my comp. I loved KOTOR I and II so this pretty much the same, minus lightsabers, plus more guns and FPS/ThirdPersonShooter, and you get to take advantage of the NPCS in naughty ways. (still working my way there, however) if you remember an age ago when this game first came out it was possible to have lesbian relations with one of the characters, causing various pundits to be upset for about a week. Now biowares newest game, dragon age (going to play that eventually) allows for male/male gay couplings, which elicted the same reaction for about a week and then everyone went back to not caring.
Verdict: if you haven’t beaten it yet (i’m sorry I lived under a rock for a few years) def. get it. I think it’s down to 5$, how sweet is that?

Mr. Robot: I liked MoonPod’s one other game… Starscape. I liked the demo, Liked the ‘idea’ of an RPG with traditional platform/puzzler (lets move some crates!) BUT there is a vital problem with this: the CONTROLS. I have very rarely Rage-quit a single player game. usually I’ll put it down, come back, and beat it. I’ve actually Rage-uninstalled this game. the controls are akin to describing the actions to you want to do to your drunk friend as they play. I can’t count how many ‘room-restarts’ I had to do because my robotic clogs slipped on the floor like it was ice, inching the crate a HALF A FUCKING INCH to far and now I can’t get behind it to push it out and fix it. the crates sometimes snap into place, but more often than not, whilst ice-skating around you’re going to fuck up the crate placement. Jumping retarded, it makes me hate gravity with a firey burning passion until I remember that this game was developed in outspace where the game developers actually had no idea of what earth gravity was like and jumping is hap-hazard and often ends with you in a pool of electro-coolant that causes you to blow up, for the 8th time in 5 minutes. while being able to sort of navigate in the air, during the hang-time is nice (I imagine little robo-jet-boosters that are invisible) but ultimately infuriating when trying to make the longest possible jumps if you do not jump at the exact last second before the edge. Lastly, the RPG fighting elements leave something to be desired. Namely graphics that weren’t cutting edge cyberpunk in the 90’s. Having a wireframe model of the normal hero only a different color doesn’t do it for me. the bad guys all look like amorphous blobs and the fighting is slow and clunky. (After each battle I ask myself why I don’t split my time between FinalFantasy and some other platform/puzzler instead) the graphics aren’t bad in the ‘real world’ if you love looking at the same tile set for the next couple hours. Eventually I started crossing my eyes and looking for magic-eye pictures. but then I missed my jump and landed in the electrified coolant (not water, the game assured me it was ‘corrosive coolant’)
VERDICT: if it were $1.99 and I had already beaten mass effect, maybe. Otherwise, Pass

Multiwinia: Holy shit did I love Darwinia, so I thought 1.99$ for an expansion pack of more puzzles? hella yea. Bought it and turns out it’s like a multiplayer-expansion, which is amusing for the first 10 minutes – the game play and controls are def. an improvement over the last game (which was still pretty awesome) I will def. go back to it, and the new game modes are intuitive, innovative, and now you can get flame-thrower turrets. so yes. Although apparently there are only 6 people playing the game world-wide. so whatever. the AI is more than capable of raping you, so don’t worry. I should mention that anything must be SUPER compelling as a single player game or I won’t play. I love multiplayer games that are snazzy.
Verdict: for 1.99$? Maybe! Do you like wierd, off the wall type stuff and medium-fast paced RTS elements? (check it out to see if it’s for you first) maybe even trick your friends into thinking that steam and multiwinia are a porn site and getting them to buy it as well. Maybe i’ll ‘gift’ it to my brother, brother in law, and sister’s boyfriend and guilt them into playing it with me.

Torchlight: Yes, a diablo clone to tide me over until Blizzard finishes D3! Actually made by a few of the guys who were a part of Bliz North, they decided to include all of the elements of diablo2 (including some sound effects) trim the classes down, remove the synergy effects from the trees, and give you a pet who can run to town to sell your crap(What an awesome move. I love the pet) it’s solid, the engine is GREAT looking, but it’s single player. I just advanced a bit and lost interest – I guess all of my time in WOW before I gave it up made me really, really want to play multiplayer with people. I know Runic Games is coming out with a MMORPG (or just multiplayer version?) of it, and I’ll pick that up when it comes out (and hopefully not let it destroy me like wow did) but Maybe I’ll go back to it?
Verdict: Yes, it’s what? 5$ now? If you want a single player way to while the hours, waiting for Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 to come out, go grab it.

Trine: A very slick, nice looking, pretty snazzy physics-game platformer – Imagine Lost vikings, with three characters with different abilities…I would have liked a little bit more variety in the enemies (I haven’t gotten to far yet) since bats and skeletons are old hat. Hell, I saw a skeleton at starbucks getting a fucking Mocha Latte. they’re passe now, sorry. And I love bats, I feel bad having to kill them, now who will eat all the insects they subsisted upon? Only video games can make me feel like an eco-asshole for slaying virtual bats. Thanks, Trine. Aside from a few random glitches and lame voice acting (it’s indie though so meh) it’s fun, fast paced, and there are usually more than one way to beat the puzzles. I still have yet to try playing it with others, but I imagine it might be amusing, perhaps?
Verdict: Not bad, maybe worth the 5$ if you haven’t had a good platformer recently and haven’t gotten/beaten Mass Effect yet.

So there you have it. 6 reviews for you. Anything I missed?

Peaceout

Hey gang, first of all, one of the big things with my laziness about blogging was not wanting to slog through the darn user interface which sucks. I mean it’s a good interface, but having WP have to chat with my browser every time I just wanted to upload a photo killed my desire to live. Now however I’m giving this free software ‘BlogDesk’ www.blogdesk.org/en/index.htm a whirl – so we’ll see how that goes

Hello, all – I am here to welcome you to the blog’s opening. I avoid saying ‘grand opening’ as it is not grand at all. I aim to have this blog hold a few tid-bits that might be interesting and a few useful how-to’s for some common computer programs – As I progress further into my schooling and research I’m hoping that the quality and novelty of my posts will increase dramatically with time! so stick with me and let’s see where we go…

-Paul