"Life isn't about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw
That is one of my favorite quotes and one of the truest things ever said. To find yourself means you are just the sum of the extraneous events on your life. You are not "you" but you are determined by forces outside of your control. While determinism may be theoretically true (and that is outside the scope of this blog) I do not feel that is a sound way to live a life worth living.
I saw the following infographic on reddit:
I definitely don't feel like I am "in my prime" since I continuously feel like next year is going to be better; that I can be better tomorrow than I am today. However, I am fast approaching "middle age" and I know that at some point I will objectively be in my prime and past my prime. The purpose of this blog is to serve as a written journey of me creating myself into something better than what I currently am so that when I look back at the end of my life I leave no doubt that I did as much as I could with what I have. This is about my attempt to transcend the circumstances of my life, which in many way determined the first 20+ years of my life, and
become something better (the concept of the overman) than what I currently am.
Here is synopsis of where I am at:
- I am 30 years old and in decent physical shape.
- I live with my girlfriend in an apartment.
- I am a winning poker player but after completing my PGC I find myself spewing since I have a large cash cushion.
- I have student loan debt and still have a loan out for my car.
- I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and can sit for my PE license this spring.
- I haven't read a book (although I listen to quite a few books on tape) for several months.
- I have been "working" on a novel for some time but most of it is thinking about it, working on the outline, and I have very few pages down.
- I have not done any extensive traveling in the USA or abroad.
In 5 years I will be 35 and my goal is to use this blog as a tool to achieve a series of goals that will be set both at the beginning, and during the duration, of this blog during that time frame. I resigned from my previous job last month and begin my new position as a consulting engineer tomorrow (September 8th, 2014). I'm also expecting to do a lot of introspection about the direction I'm taking and where I want to be.
By 31 I want to:
- Purchase several books and read them.
- Crush my new job and really advance my career.
- Pay off my car.
- Reach my goal weight of 175 pounds.
- Completely cut my spewing in NLHE.
By 32 I want to:
- Have my professional engineering license.
- Play in a WSOP event.
- Reach a point where I can be considered to be a very good computer programmer.
By 33 I want to:
By 34 I want to:
- Join the 1,000 lbs club (combined 1,000 bench/DL/squat)
- Have all the professional certifications I can have for my field.
By 35 I want to:
- Start a family.
- Purchase a home.
Some of these will occur sooner than others. I am currently splitting time between two offices and when my girlfriend graduates I'd like to buy a home near the main office (city 30 miles away) so I don't know if I can really take advantage of the low interest rates/prices now.
As part of my spew elimination I am going to keep a running total of all the money I spew off in cash games as my "Spewmanity Sum". I am also going to list a % of days I should be working out versus days I didn't.
Anyway, time to watch some football and hit the gym later. This isn't the most popular sub forum but I hope this gets some views and I expect this to be a really good long term journey.
Spewmanity Sum: $1,000
Lazy Ratio: DNE