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Check how your eyes can deceive your brain on this link a friend sent me… always stumbling on cool stuff…

Have fun.

The blue and the green | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine.

I can’t believe how life did a very abrupt turn some days ago, and I believe for the good too.

This post is about something I find interesting, something I have experienced over and over in life… the “second wind” effect.

During hardships one goes through some stages (I have not done any reading about this, but I will; so if you know a good read, let me know). I refer to hardships not as challenges you put yourself, but about something that goes the exact opposite of what you wanted it to go, and hurts a lot. Here are the stages I have gone through each and every time something has happened.

Please don’t question the logic, it’s my head after all…

1. Perception and shock. I become aware of the situation, and sometimes I’m paralyzed and can’t take any action related to what has happened, any action whatsoever for a second, a minute, an hour or even days.
2. Denial of what has just happened, my conscious knows, but my subconscious doesn’t accept it. I know it has happened, but still talk, and think as if it hadn’t.
3. Awareness, right, so now it has happened, and I know I have to deal with it, but that’s about all I know at this point, don’t know what to do.
4. Gloom, at this moment, I’m having a mix of emotions of anger, sadness and what not… I don’t know what to do, but at this stage, I’m more focused on my emotions than on the situation itself.
5. Despair, right after being sad/angry/<whatever else>, I start kicking and moving (figuratively speaking), but I keep sinking into those emotions, I can’t organize my thoughts, less can I organize my actions, I still don’t know what to do.
6. The halting, knowing that I don’t know what to do (haha, ok I couldn’t put it on other words), and seeing that my past actions didn’t have any effect, I lose hope and slowly start not doing anything at all whatsoever, and start to give up on the situation, and think I won’t be able to solve anything, and can’t go on. This is when anger fades away.
7. The drag, right after I think I can’t go any further I keep taking steps realizing that I was underestimating myself, note, this realization is silent. The “distance” I go “dragging” is probably as far as all the other stages mentioned above. I’m still not solving anything, just going along.
8. Solace, somehow without a solution I find solace in my steps, somehow I’m not “dragging” anymore but haven’t stopped moving. I realize that everything is clean and clear, at this moment is where acceptance takes place.
9. Solution, so, when I have ‘peace’ solutions come either by themselves, or made by myself.

So, what happens in (7) is more or less what is described here: Wikipedia; Second Wind.

I’m at stage 9 of a recent event, and now that I can think I can ask myself this question. Why do solutions come AFTER all that? haha.

Oh my very inactive (up to now) blog, but not forgotten.

Sometimes the only thing that can contain a my thoughts sometimes, is a piece of paper that is later scrapped after writing, and thrown away, to be found and read a long time after it has become irrelevant.

Something interesting happened today, I got a headache because of being angry at a situation. Yup, only a headache.

This headache/situation is because of a common practice, actually the MO of a lot of companies, they just expect you to be ignorant, and treat you like you are. So here I am, semi-ranting.

What would be the best sort of container for my thoughts? (I sometimes wonder).

• Music, I have been working on learning how to play guitar (classical/nylon strings).
• Prose, well, this blog is one, notebooks and journals are other ways of it.
• Verse, the fact that I stopped writing these long time ago, doesn’t mean I have forgotten.
• Code, yes… sometimes I can store my thoughts in programming languages… sue me for being geeky.
• Drawing, I’m not very talented at this, all I do is doodle most of the time.
• I know there are lots of ways more, care to suggest any? and or support any of the previous?

The question would actually be, coming from me… what would you pay attention the most? (leave comments, if you put [private] anywhere in the message, I wont publish it).

To write or not… about what? Meh… What to write about is a subject in and of its own. The big issue I find, whenever I start writing about something is: “Will this piece of paper, blog post, etc., be read?” At which point I take the decision to write about a said subject just because I want to, and because I want to express myself.

Such posts are called by me puddles of ink, mere blobs of (could be virtual) ink, that have no meaning, unless you’re a likeminded person. Please bear with me when all I have to write is that, like now. This puddle spree is definitely going to end, and this blog will meet its purpose soon enough when I start writing what you guys want to read.

I have always marveled at the fact that I can’t, most of the times, form a habit. As annoying as it is, I just don’t seem to have the mind or memory for that. Even when it’s something beneficial, or that I really like, I always have to consciously think about doing it, and a lot of the times forget about it. It is almost as if the only habit I have is breathing, and well, I forget about doing that too. Lucky me that I continue doing it regardless.

So yeah, one of my favorite movies is Memento (as old as it is). I have sometimes thought about creating a system to follow, but I always seem to forget what it is, or even that I have one .

A lot of my long time friends say that I’m just overloaded with work (or monotony, or just not stimulated enough), since I wasn’t always like this. I hope that this new job (first day is today) helps me on that. I also hope school starts loosening me up a bit since that could also be part of the combo.

For some time now, I’ve been working on my “Listening vs. Hearing” when I’m receiving constructive criticism and advice from someone. This experience in working my ways has given me the eyes to see how Ill-tempered a person can become when you are giving them advice yourself, or just pointing out an aspect in which they could do better with a slight variation of their ways.

Beats me how people can, not only disregard whatever you are saying, but try to cover the fact that they can improve, by either saying: “but you do it too” (if the case applies), or just toss you into oblivion. I would love it if people understood that I’m NOT judging when I bring something to someone’s attention, specially when I tell him/her in a private, one-on-one, and in a kind manner.

Another thing is, I’m expressing my love (or friendship, or appreciation, pick one…) towards that person when I bring those things to his/her attention (and not anyone else). I just want said person to be better; to help. We all need to be mature enough to listen, and humble enough to accept that we need to improve. I’m currently working on polishing those two.

On Luke 6:42, Jesus tells us:

How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

So, while I’m working on fixing my problems, won’t I be able to bring similar issues to the attention of others? And what about the problems I don’t have? A lot of the times the (constructive) criticism and advise will be frowned upon and disregarded.

I guess I need a piece of advice… both on the lines of improving my own listening and my dilemma of others not listening to me.

One of the questions I found quite interesting in the last few days was: “What happens when a certain population does not know (one or more) of their rights?”.

The answer I found to that question was that they will not be able to exercise it or enjoy it, let alone defend or fight for it. And there is an interesting thing about this case.

According to Wikipedia:Citizenship and forgetting the political shades in there:

Purely ethical and moral duties tend to include:

• …
• respecting the rights of others
• defending one’s own rights and the rights of others against those who would abuse them
• exercising one’s rights

We usually see that the rights of one person/party are tied to the duties of another. So if a certain population, person or party does not know one or more of their rights, they can NOT defend their right, nor enforce that the other party complies with their duties. That can lead to exploitation, which is definitely not right (no pun intended).

Something interesting I got as a response from one of the people I was talking to about this was: “Having the right to do something doesn’t mean that it is right”. Coupling that with the duty<->right relationship, and taking into consideration the rights of others, I sincerely think that on most contexts exercising or enjoying one’s rights WITHOUT stepping on another party’s rights, is correct, but this has to be threaded very thin (treated with care/taken with a grain of salt).

Along with that point one should consider the case of the “Freedom of speech”, which is the case I had in mind when suggesting the grain of salt. One has the right to speak freely, but one has to be well versed on what one is saying, and take into consideration a LOT of stuff (e.g. what others think, that one could be wrong, etc…), so that one respects others.

So, I’ll go ahead and leave this point open, and expect comments to know what you guys think, and learn from that.

As with most of the stuff I do, I poke a ‘hey, I can do this’ try.

Please make sure to visit the About Page. And post comments on whatever you feel like. Comments will be moderated for the most part, to keep spam off of them.

This is it, a post to signalize the birth of this blog, and also to have something for myself to see how it would look on the web.

I will allow myself to use smileys and post just a random image to see how this could work.