The New Renaissance Man

So I start by asking myself why I am making this blog exactly. Is it for me? Is it for others? Seeing as this is my second time holding this domain, I hope that second times the charm. I would say I don’t have my goals and aspirations for what this will become clearly formulated. As I write this, I have a mountain of work of work I must complete, emails I need to send, books I need to order from amazon, and an almost debilitating unsureness and unease to as what I want to do with my future. Hence the putting of my mountain of work. I am unhappy with where I am now, and where I see the world is, politics aside. I felt like at this point in life I should have accomplished more, done more, but instead I have seen that I have walked through my life on semi-autopilot, operating at the bare minimum. Only kicking my butt into high gear at the last possible minute to accomplish a miraculous completion, and turn around in my work. Completing what should have been done throughout a month or even a semester in a night, a weekend, a week. And a more shock trend I have seen in myself; finding myself giving up in the face of what I saw as an insurmountable amount of material in front of me. Me giving up, it scares me to frank. My modus operandi, dick around for as long as possible doing the bare minimum, then frantically bullshit and grind through a weeks of work, and miraculously (read: work hard), and push through the other side of the tunnel victorious. The comeback kid, as I lovingly called myself. Comeback kid. It sounds ridiculous to me now writing those words. It has seem to become a title I have come to rely on, to define me, to be what I had to do. I could get by and then snatch myself from the jaws of defeat with almost herculean bouts of effort. But I had never asked myself what would happen if and when, it was too great, or more accurately what would I do when I felt it was too great.

The first time I failed in this manner was my freshman year of college. It was General Chemistry, a weeder class, I was naïve and excited about finally being a college student with bright eyed ideas of being a prem-med student and future doctor. The details are blurry but I started of sitting in the front row, every day at an 8am class, dutifully taking notes. Then going to the designated student help center/study area for chemistry almost every day. Not really doing much there to be quite honest. I was doing some problems and I didn’t really try hard to understand the underlying concepts. I came into it with the same mindset that I cultivated in high school: skirt by, study hard at the very last minute, don’t worry your smart you will do good. That’s exactly what I did. The very first test, I got a D+. Granted the class average was 50%, but I got a D+ after the curve, and the really disturbed me. I had never failed so spectacularly before in my life. Instead of this being a wakeup call for me to shape up, and fix my study habits, I retreated into myself into what can only be described as a form of depression. I stopped showing up to class. I stopped studying. I just showed up on testing dates, bubbled in random answers, not even one letter all the way throughout which would at least given me a chance to get some write, but haphazardly and then I was almost always the first to turn in my paper. I sometimes imagined the people looking at me as I stood up and turned my test, 20 minutes into the testing time. They were probably thinking I was some kind of chemistry genius, blazing through the test, I probably gave some people anxiety. Thinking this guy did it so quickly, and I am not even a quarter of the way through, so there must be something wrong with me, oh my god I am going to fail this. Well I for sure failed that class, except the Lab portion I got a B+ on that. But since then I haven’t really gotten much better. As I write this now I have repeated my modus operandi, I currently have 2 exams at the end of this week, and I haven’t even begun reading or understanding the materials for it, all the while my other obligations and commitments pile on top of them. All of it manageable had I kept up with all my work when I needed to. I am determined not to let them crush me this semester.

Now I am about to graduate with a degree that isn’t too bad, and a semester earlier than I thought. Needless to say I feel like I am in crisis mode. Asking myself what am I going to do? What do I want to do? But at least I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to be stuck in the city that I live in now. I don’t want to be like the people I see around me, who don’t aspire to improve themselves and their life situation. People who are in the same place today, that they were in last year, and the year before that.

All of this is not well thought out and articulated, but I had to put something on here or I feel like I was going to explode, or worse, this website would have nothing posted in it, yet again. This post is momentum, and as my ideas become clearer in my head so to shall this post in particular. I want to operate on one of the freemason mottos “making good men better”. In particular making myself better. This will be a journal of sorts so that I can improve myself, and track it. This will also be a place for men, as fellow brothers, improve themselves. I make a solemn oath to myself and to you that I will get my butt into gear, and get what I need to get done done. I will also write an essay every week, on any particular topic to post here. I hope this will sharpen my mind and my writing skills, so please forgive my writing as I improve. So, to wrap this up, this is my first step and post to becoming a new renaissance man.

Your Lie in April

Why I made this Blog

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