I’ve been struggling a little bit
with what I should do with this new blog. Honestly, when I first started the
blog about Moscow I had only intended for it to be a way for my parents to know
I was still alive, but I received a lot of positive feedback, and really
enjoyed writing it, so I’m going to try and start something new here. The real
trouble is that I don’t have any idea of what I would actually like to write
about. With my last blog I started out just chronicling my weeks in Moscow very
literally, and it turned into something much larger, and more interesting in my
opinion, by the time I hit the “Boots” article. I want to aim more for that
“Boots” standard, and eventually surpass it, but that may take me some time, so
I hope you will all stick with me here.
To anyone who hasn’t read my Moscow
blog, I strongly encourage you to do so, because it is the spring board for
almost everything that I plan on writing about for now, and I hope I won’t be
rehashing it too much here, so if you’re feeling lost, go read my other blog real
quick to get your bearings.
Here’s a link for it: http://tylerjonesinmoscow.blogspot.com/
But now for something new….
During
the holiday break between my two semesters in Moscow I went traveling around
Europe with my friend Anton for 40 days. During a stop in Florence I bought
myself a small, leather bound journal to write in, because I thought that the
writing in something more physical than a word document would encourage me to
write more often. It’s really not much of anything special. Just a brown
leather book, filled with artificially yellowed pages, left blank to be filled
with whatever passing fancy I have. Currently it has drawings, recollections of
some of the better nights on our trip, as well as my close brush with death on
a scooter in Italy, and my thoughts on broader topics like art and national
identity. At some point I might transcribe those entries onto this blog, but
that’s not why I brought up my notebook in the first place.
The whole trip that brought me into one of a million
identical souvenir shops in Florence started out as a crazy dream, something we
kept talking about, but I’m not sure that either Anton, or I, really believed would
happen until we bought our first set of tickets out of Moscow. After I had been
back in Moscow for some time, I had an epiphany playing with LEGOs, and
realized I had totally lost my sense of child like creativity. I had forgotten
what it was like to forget about what people tell you is possible, and to work towards
my own goals, however crazy they may seem. I made a list for myself of things I
would do if time, money, and my personal skill set weren’t an issue, and it
only seemed fitting to write them down in that little book that had come into
my possession on an amazing trip that started as idle talk in a Moscow
dormitory. Every day I was feeling lost in life, I would flip through that
list, and remind myself how I was working towards those goals to help give
myself some direction again.
Last week I completed the first of
those goals I wrote down in Moscow, almost without realizing it. I benched over
100% of my body weight for the first time in my life, and didn’t even think
about what I had just done until I had walked away from the bench. I know for
some people that is not a whole lot, but for me that was a huge deal.
Growing up I was one of those kids who was chosen last when
teams were being picked, and usually just did my best to stay out of the way
during sports. I reached an all time low my freshman year of college, and
really began to despise myself for being such a slob. At the end of what was a
fairly unhappy start to college for me I began looking for a job, and a place
to live. I was lucky enough to have a friend who was able to help me out with
both, and I started working on a ranch out in Sedalia. The physical labor
helped to start getting me into shape, and kick started a change in my
mentality that allowed me to start taking some responsibility for my health,
and pushed me to try to be more active.
One of the milestones I set for
myself at the end of that summer between my first and second years of college
was to be able to bench my own body weight, and I can now finally say that I am
able to do just that. If I had told my freshman self that, he probably would
have said that sounded nice, and started feeling sorry for himself for not
being able to do it that very moment. I’m proud to say I’m not that person
anymore, and that I was willing to put in the time to reach that goal, and to
start getting into better shape.
Most of my goals are not health
related, this one just happened to be the first one that I can cross off my
list. The point I really want to make though is that there was a time that I
thought benching my own body weight was something far out of my grasps, and too
crazy to even pursue, but I did it.
One of the most common issues that
I’ve run into since getting home, and even to some extent while I was abroad,
was that no one my age has a clue what they’re doing, or why they are doing
whatever it is they are doing currently. I think as a generation we feel lost
in life, but we don’t see the beauty of that feeling. One of the most
terrifying moments for me abroad was realizing that everything I thought I had
wanted after college really wasn’t for me, and I felt adrift. I wasn’t sure why
I was even in Moscow, or why I had chosen to get a degree in international
relations or Russian in the first place. I had no direction, and at first that
was very painful for me, but I came to realize something very important during
that time: If my goal was to work hard to become something I didn’t want to be,
what was the point of it anyway? I went back to that list of crazy dreams I
wrote down in that little leather notebook, and I started to think, if these
are the things I want in life, then why am I not working towards these instead?
I
had asked myself this before, but had told myself that the things I had written
down were too far-flung, and too out of sync with what I was working towards
already. For some reason I allowed that to be a valid excuse for not trying to
achieve them at all, but then the beauty of that lost feeling hit me. Not being
tied down to one goal freed me to do anything at all. I used to be afraid of
that lost feeling. I used to let it swallow me whole, and paralyze me with
indecision, but then I saw that I could chase any wild dream I wanted. For me,
the first one of those wild dreams just happened to involve a bench press.
To
all my friends who I know are feeling lost; I just want you to know you’re not
alone in that feeling. I also want you to know that not knowing what you’re
doing does not need to be a bad thing. Try to remember the daydreams you
brushed aside for being too unrealistic, and ask yourself what it would take to
realize those half-baked thoughts. Ask yourself what is one thing you’ve always
wanted to do, but were too embarrassed to try, and give it a shot (for me it’s
dancing). You don’t need to be afraid of not having that sense of direction;
you just need to prevent yourself from being idle. Throw yourself into
anything, and everything new that crosses your path. Start taking little steps
towards the impossible, and soon you’ll see it’s well within your reach.
I
have over 50 more things in that little notebook to cross off still, but my
main focus right now is to find a profession for myself that I could see myself
enjoying for the next 30 years. I had an idea for a business I thought I might
like to start, but it was so vague it didn’t really have any legs to stand on.
The more I talk to people though, the more I refine it, and I’m beginning to
think it might not be that crazy at all.
I
think deep down, we all know what we really want, we’re just too afraid to fail
to really go for it. I know I’m guilty of that at least. I hope that some day
soon I’ll be able to fight for my goals without fear of failing though, and I
want to help other people do the same. That’s going to be the real goal of this
blog, I think. I want to keep track of myself as I try to achieve all those
wild, seemingly impossible dreams. I want to write down what the failures and
successes felt like, and I want to inspire everyone who reads this to do the
same.
