JJ's World Views

Tag: Self

  • This Semester

    This has been the hardest semester for me yet. I have been procrastinating too much. In away I have been doing a great job of self sabotage. In a way I  think I do not deserve to get my A.A.  Though I have put in all of the time and work that I need to, maybe even more.  I am less than two months away from finally getting my A.A. in Liberal Arts.  Maybe it is because I fear the success it could bring.  I do not want to let things go to my head.  I like the way I am now in a personal sense, I worry that I will become arrogant because of the success.  As I am now and how I hope I will see myself in the future is that I am just a guy trying to do more for society and not just for myself.

    The class I am doing the worst in right now is Spanish.  At this point I just want to pass the course.  That is the first time I have said that about any of my classes.  My history class I am a bit behind in but, I can make that up no problem.  I have liked all my social science teachers.  Hell, I have a crush on the teacher I had last semester for U.S. history 2.  The current history course I am taking is History of World Civilization 3.  And I have been looking forward to this class for awhile.  The reason for that is I want to try and understand what the more recent history of the middle east is like.  This way I can help to figure out a solution to some of the problems over there.

    Human Geography is another good class I am taking and I am all caught up in.  I only have a presentation, a short essay on urbanization and the final left for that class.  My teacher for this class I had last semester for Physical Geography so I kind of knew what to expect from him.  Then I have my Career Exploration class which helped me to decide to change my Major from Social studies Education to a straight History major.  I am doing this because I do not want to have to narrow of a major and a History B.A. can open a whole lot of doors as I found out.

    The last class is not really a class but a certificate program called Pillar of Leadership.  In this program we go over the different types of leadership but, focus more on the Social Change Model of Leadership.  This is a pretty cool program and is going to look good on my resume.  Though the main reason I am taking this is because I do want to help change the way things are in this world, for the better.

    I guess for me now it is crunch time.  I need to make sure I pass all my classes and by February I will have my A. A. degree in my hands.  Now I just have to find another job because the job I am currently working at is the student store on the Work Study Program.  So, I really do want to start looking for jobs and internships in my field of study.

  • My Thoughts on Thirteen Reasons Why

    So I just finished the series Thirteen Reasons Why on Netflix.  It was overwhelming to me even though I am a 41 year old male.  I sat through every episode in the past 2 days.  I thought it would be one of those shows I watch and end up turning it off within the first 10 minutes.  The story and the themes involved were so compelling I had to keep going.  I force myself to turn it off being I watched it alone, which I do not recommend.  Watch this show with people you love and trust.  Being someone who has been dealing with depression for 20+ years I feel for the characters.

    This brought forth ideas I have been thinking about a lot lately given the suicides of both Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell.  It brought me back to when I first attempted suicide in the Army.  I am glad I did not because of what I am trying to do with my life know.  I was lost for a long time, no one understood me it seemed.  I was lucky though I was young and stupid the way I tried to do it.

    I had only left home twice before one was to go to Boy Scout camp the other was to go work on a hog farm for 2 weeks.  I had a fuck of a hard time in basic training.  I was one of the weakest in my platoon, always getting the platoon punished for my screw ups, always being screamed at and being called names buy the Drill Sergeants and other members.   Though, my Drill Sergeant Terrance did pull me a side one time and gave me a little hope saying it would not be this way in permanent duty.  I joined to get away from bullies ironic right maybe get to travel and earn money for college.  I made it through my Advanced Individualized Training just barely there.  Granted I had achilles tendonitis for the last 6 weeks and I was held over till I could pass the physical fitness test.

    When I made it to my duty station in Fort Lewis, Washington I still felt alone.  I met a guy who invited me to his church group.  When I got there I was so out of place it was an Episcopal Church I think, they were dancing around speaking in tongues.  I could not deal with that I left after the service and never returned.  It was too strange even for me I was and an odd ball amongst a completely different type of odd ball.

    I did meet one man who took me under his wing Staff Sergeant Bill Lester.  He had been in for about 20 years and was kind of a loner himself in ways.  He stayed in the barracks during the week and went back to his home in Yakima on the weekends.  He even took me to meet his family a couple of times and celebrated my nineteenth birthday with me.  I felt good when he was there.   When he retired that is when I started having issues.  Some of the other guys in the barracks I did hang out with we even played D&D and Vampire the Masquerade a few times.  The issue I had was when I got back from doing a temporary tour of duty down in California.

    Two new guys had just been Dwight and Tom.  I did not have many issues with them so much as with the other guys in the barracks we had all gone out to see Rancid at an underground club where we met a woman named Velvet.  I was not interested in here but two of the other guys were.  Tom and I forgot the other guys name he was a real piece of work though.  Velvet was not in to the other guy who we will call Sam, she was in to  Tom.  Sam and the other guys said she was Sam’s.  This caused a rift in the barracks.  All the other guys were pissed at Tom because they had thought he had stole Velvet.  I was not on either side I was with Velvets choice which was Tom.  I was caught in the middle of it all.  I hated it Tom And D were not trying to make me choose sides.  I still felt like I was being pulled from both sides though.  Till one day I tried to overdose on about 8000 mg of motrin.  I knew nothing about drugs at this time except for what I learned from the DARE Program and what some of the guys in the barracks told me.

    I ended up in the hospital in the mental ward for a night and had to do counseling sessions for like a week.  Eventually things calmed down though the barracks still felt divided.  I would hide in my room when I was not working watching movies and smoking cigarettes sometimes going over to Tom and D’s room to play some Playstation.  D is a good guy and he did encourage me to come over and hang out with them until I was released from the army due to physical fitness test failure.  I had failed one prior and I had to pass this one too stay in.  The NBC Sergeant who was one of my NCOIC’s (Noncommissioned officer in charge had dusted me the night before the test.  I had to continually hold a gallon bottle of pine oil in my hands while my palms were turned up having my back against the wall in a open sitting position.  Then he would have me switch to holding 2 bottles while standing and keeping my arms parallel to the ground.  this went on for about 2 hours switching positions about every 2 minutes or so.  Even though I had been through all that the night before I still tried my hardest to pass the test, I missed it by 2 pushups and 2 minutes in the 2 mile run.

    After is when I started using Marijuana it was on the bus ride home in Fargo, North Dakota.  I did not give a shit at this point and I was feeling rebellious and wanted in my mind it was a big fuck you to the army.  I ended up getting involved with a dude Named Mike Welsh.  He had started a group called R.A.I.D. (Revolution Against an Indecent Democracy).  I found out the guy only actually started the group to get laid and he tried to have his way with my sister who is younger than me.  After that I left the group and found out later that R.A.I.D. had fallen apart after I left.  That was the last time I followed politics for many years after.

    I did hang out and live with a few friends that I had met through Mike: Tony, Jesse, and Adam. Previously I had been diagnosed with depression after I had all this shit went down with Mike.  Then Kurt Cobain committed suicide and I was living with Tony we were talking about it.  I was not a big Nirvana fan till after his death I think it was because it was then I understood his music having tried to commit suicide myself.  When we were talking about it Tony had made it clear about his point of view on people who commit suicide.  He was of the mind set that anyone who did that was a coward and the he would not go to anyone’s funeral who did.  This is when I started to learn to hide my feeling and who I actually was.  I did not want to lose the few friends I had.  I started to live for them and not myself I was using Marijuana a lot and I was experimenting with other drugs as well like: LSD, Mushrooms, Opium and one time I tried Crack.  I remained friends with the guys till about a few of years ago when I had lost my job, wife, two hernia surgeries.  Once again I was lost this time I felt completely alone even when I was with people.  Tony had let me stay with him and his new wife.  Both good people I just was trying to find my way again every weekend I was getting drunk till one night I got so drunk I puked all over their floor while trying to make it to the bathroom.  I moved out shortly thereafter.

    In my new place I started pushing people away.  I was going through major changes and looking for reasons to stay alive.  I realized after a couple of years I needed to get help thanks to the story of Malala Yousefzai.  I was looking at my life in a whole new way.  Here was a young woman who had stood up to the Taliban and here I was battling the demons within my own head.  It was then that I decided that I was going to better myself but not for me.  I wanted to better myself to help build a better society for everyone.  From that point on word I have been battling those demons  going to the V.A. for psychological help and get back into school to become a teacher.  I am now almost done with my A.A. and doing it well.

    Basically the moral of this story is I know it is hard and things never seem like they are going to get better.  The thing is that you never know when something or someone is going to inspire you.  Things can and will get better.  If you are feeling lonely talk to someone anyone.  Society for now is tough but there are people out there trying to make this a better place for you.  Maybe they can help to inspire you to live and be better because life is not about trying to be perfect or living up to other peoples standards, it is about trying to make ourselves better and making the world somewhere we can all accepted.

  • Journal Entry 8

    This came from my old wordpress if it seems out of place.

    Ok so this is not a requirement for the course I am taking at school, but it is in the book “On Course” for which I am using in my paths to college success class.  I should have started it sooner, but I didn’t want to put more work on myself then I had too.  I am now doing this for myself.  The next entry’s I make are going to be journal suggestions from the book.

    In these journals, I am going to try using their guidelines for writing a meaningful journal entries till I find one that I like better.  These are accepting personal responsibility, discover self-motivation, master self-management, employ interdependence, gain self-awareness, adopt lifelong learning, develop emotional intelligence, and believe in my-self.

    Take inventory of your personal strengths and weaknesses as revealed in your self-assessment questionnaire.

    In your journal, write the eight areas of the self-assessment and record your scores for each.

    38   Accepting Personal Responsibility

    42   Discovering Self- Motivation

    27   Mastering Self- Management

    26   Employing interdependence

    43   Gaining Self- Awareness

    44   Adopting Lifelong Learning

    36   Developing Emotional Intelligence

    40   Believing in myself

    Write about the areas on the self-assessment in which you had your highest scores

    These scores were out of 80 points each, so none of my scores were rather high most hovered in the mid to lower point ranges.  I knew I had a lot to work on even before I took the assessment.  My highest scores were in discovering self-motivation, gaining self-awareness, adopting lifelong learning, and believing in myself.  I have been working on believing in myself for years going to therapy off and on for my major depressive disorder It just had not sunk in till started going to CBSST (Cognitive Behavioral Social Skills Training) at the VA.  The next one up would be discovering self-motivation.  This is so true of me my mind races so fast that I hardly have time to write ideas I have down and I do get bored easily.  Gaining self-awareness and lifelong learning are at the top of my list thanks to the internet.  You may be saying how does the internet help create self-awareness; well I don’t just use it for cat videos and viral videos I watch a lot of things that give me pause for thought like the Crash Course series and the multitude of independent news feeds and if I have questions about something I just check their sources or research it on my own if I Want to know about a subject.  Doing this give me insight in to who I truly am as I have lost myself through the madness of life.

    Write about your lowest scores

    Employing interdependence, mastering self-management, developing emotional intelligence, and accepting personal responsibility these are my lowest scores.  Employing interdependence, I understand why this one is low it is one that most older generational men deal with. We hate to ask for help this is the way we were taught “real men don’t need to ask for help I can do this on my own”.  This is something we are taught just by observing our fathers and other male role models.  The way I am combating this is by going back to school you have no choice in college you need to work with others if you want to survive.  Mastering self-management, I have always had issues with this.  It is no secret among those who know me I am a slob and my time management sucks.  This I am working on through today I was finally able to get some things out of my room and in the shed.  I also reorganized my room for a better study space; doing school work in the kitchen with 2 other guys in my mobile home made it challenging.  I put things on my walls to inspire and keep me on track like a world map with the places I would like to help when I join the Peace Corp and a work schedule for school work.  Developing emotional intelligence this has been a pain for me because I tend to bottle things up till I blow (and not in a good way).  This usually takes the form of a fight and I hate to fight I don’t want to hurt anyone or myself that is one of the reasons I am posting this in a public forum.  I want to be open and not hold in the all my feelings and if I can help anyone else who has these problems I am happy.  I do sometimes cry for no apparent reason I think that is my bodies way of relieving some of the pent-up emotions I still carry and don’t realize it.  Accepting personal responsibility, I have often blamed many things on my passed experiences for why I do or don’t do thing and more often allow other to dictate how they think I should live.  Dealing with this one is hard I have had to remove certain people from my life for now so that I can find myself and do the things I want to do.  Certain people I have allowed to have too much control over me and let them guide to who they think I should be.  I can’t let that happen anymore I realize the more I allow them to have control the more I hate myself.  I feel I am at a pivotal juncture in my life where I need to focus on who I am and who I want to be.  I cannot allow them to have so much influence on me or I may slip

  • Day 3

    Today was a long at school, this wasn’t because the classes were boring I just had a long break between classes.  The classes were rather interesting today with Freshman Comp.  and Theory and Practice of Tai Chi Chuan.

    In Comp. we watched a Ted Talk on “The Danger of a Single Story”.  What is a single story?  A single story from what I have gathered from the video is a one dimensional look at the world (seeing things from one point of view).  An example of this is the way we see Donald Trump speak about illegal immigration and the people in the middle east.  The issue with a single story is: they have a tendency to breed ignorance, bigotry and hatred in those who are not willing to do research and/ or go out and meet people who are different then them.  At least, that is what I had gotten from the video.  We see people who buy in to the single story trap so much in our society today, it is astonishing to see in this day and age.

    In between classes I had a lively and invigorating discussion in the smoking area about religion, politic and corruption.  This is one of the things I love about college, actual intellectual conversation about tough topics.  I get to practice my conversational skills without the pressure of hurting someone’s feelings or someone just getting up in my face.  I just can not to that with my old friends and family. That is one thing that has stifled my personal growth as a human being.  I am someone who enjoys that type of conversation, because I get to actually exchange ideas with people instead of having them dictated to me.

    Then in Tai Chi it was a basic first day until we started learning the moves.  I am so out of shape.  We first learned a stance, then practiced breathing and lastly how to walk.  Doing the stance was difficult for me because I had a hard time keeping my toe connected to the floor.  The breathing was not too difficult, it is something I have been practicing for a while to keep my stress level down.  The hardest part for me was the walk.  I am a big guy, out of shape and extremely right side dominant.  When I was done with the walk my left inner thigh was killing me.  The muscle had started cramping up on me it felt like a bunch of needles poking in to a single point on my thigh.  I am going to need a lot more practice and push myself to make sure I can do this correctly.