One of the things I’ve always tried to do in my life was absorb the information given to me by older people, as I always knew that there was no replacement for experience, and I knew that my youth was a disadvantage when it came to making big decisions, so with those two things in mind I have always listened to people who had a few years on me that I respected.

Now thats not to say that young people cant offer advise or have nothing of importance to add to a decision, or that older people are always right, but it is to say that generally older people have “been there, done that” quite a bit more, and thus can typically offer a much more thoughtful reply than a younger person. Many times those older than us are trying to help us avoid the pitfalls they have made in the past.

As I’m sure many people can relate, two of those people are  my parents. My mother has been invaluable in my life and I’m not discounting her influence with the name of this blog, but this particular entry focuses on my dad. I’ve probably been taught more than I realize from the old man, but one of the key lessons he taught me as a kid that has stuck with me into my young adulthood was, like most good ideas, very simple:

You will never feel bad if you’ve done the right thing.

I’ve tried to incorporate this “philosophy” into my life every day. The idea is very simple, but that doesnt mean that it is very easy. Doing the right thing is often hard, and sometimes leaves you with a pit in your stomach because the right thing can even be emotionally painful … But at the end of the day, if you’ve truly done whats best, you cant help but feel good about the situation. The feeling you get making a bad decision is not so easily relieved I’ve found out.

Now this lesson didn’t fully sink in until I was probably 20 or so, after I had made a few of my own bad decisions. These weren’t life altering decisions, and honestly they probably didn’t even affect anyone else all that greatly, but I’ve made sure that they have affected me greatly. If only I had listened to my dad back then… So now I use these bad decisions as a watch dog for myself, to remind myself how I felt and continue to feel about making those types of decisions. I hope by using my past indiscretions as examples I can make the right decisions in the future.

It doesnt happen very often, but on the road of life when I come to a fork and one side leads to the path of least resistance, and the other is long and winding, but in the end will be the right road to choose, I think back to those words my dad told me as a kid and I think back to those times in my past where I chose the easy road and how that made me feel… And then taking the long road doesnt feel quite as bad knowing that my dad is walking with me.

So here’s to all the mentors that have helped me in the past. Here’s to all the people who took the time our of their day to impart a little hard earned, age-acquired wisdom on me. Here’s to you dad. I’m sure you all have taught me a great many things I haven’t even realized yet.

As always, now its you’re turn. What lessons have been passed down to you that you try and incorporate into your lives? Share in the comments section below.

Its something we hear about all the time, but real life changing experiences are exceedingly rare as far as I can tell. We all have moments that affect us and stick with us for years, some times our whole lives, but an actual event that fundamentally changes your behavior, your philosophy, or your thought process is pretty hard to come by. I remember the day it happened to me. It starts with an iPod.

A Shot In The Dark

The restaurant I was working at back in college was holding a contest to see who could raise the most money for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society by selling $1 Donation Balloons, the winner of the contest would get an iPod. This jazzed me up quite a bit as I had been somewhat behind the times in acquiring an MP3 player, so this would really be something worth winning for me. Flash forward to the end of the contest and I’m walking out of the store with a shiny new iPod in my hands, excited to get home and load it up with all of my music.

While uploading I noticed that iTunes had a category called “Podcasts” in the store, intrigued I checked it out. Unknown to me at the time, Podcasts are talk radio style shows that come in any number of subjects. It sounded interesting so I headed to the categories that usually interest me the most, Science and Technology. Browsing around the selection one particular podcast caught my eye, The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. I had always been “skeptical” but I had no idea what this show could be about or that there were people who identified themselves as “Skeptics”. So I downloaded a few and gave them a shot.

As any person trying to develop into a well rounded individual, I have a couple of hobbies that I try to spend my free time on. This blog, my piano, and recently I was reminded of how much I like the art of magic so I decided to add that into the mix. There is always one problem you run into when you attempt to pick up a new skill or hobby, particularly one where the learning curve is big like a new instrument, and that problem is that you are going to be quite bad at it for what will most likely be a long time. You have to go through what I call The Suck.

No one catches me now

The first time I picked up the piano as a hobby and gave it a good effort I was making decent strides at it and doing things that seemed nearly impossible to me in just a few weeks time… But I was still playing Old Macdonald at the end of the day, two handed or not. I want to play Mozart and Bach damnit! I want to improvise jazz! I want to be able to sit down, have someone request a song, and be able to play it. And I want it NOW!

The same thing happened when I picked up magic again. Sure there are plenty of tricks you can do that dont take that much time to master, but if you want to do the real cool stuff, the stuff that people just cannot possible fathom… Well, it turns out thats like, really hard. Whoulda’ thunk it? I was investing hours upon hours on single sleights of hand, and still wasn’t great at them. I think almost everyone at my job knows how to do the 2 Card Monte now because they caught me at some stage in the trick. I used to suck at it, but not any more. No one catches me now.

Here’s To The Suck

The hardest part to come to terms with about The Suck is that its going to take a while, and it probably wont even be all that much fun. Hell, it might even be aggravating and downright frustrating at times, but as the old saying goes, anything worth doing isnt going to be easy. People who I admire in various fields all typically have one thing in common, and thats the sheer amount of time they have been doing it, which can typically be measured in YEARS, and not weeks or months. And chances are they sucked at it back when they started too.

Got the Blog back up and running. Hope to see it flourish here in the near future.