Its been months since I sat to write in any of my blogs. Its not that I haven't had anything to say its that I have been in need of a change. I needed to recompile my thoughts because I realize that a lot of my blogs are becoming more about me ranting about things that I find to be obnoxious, disturbing, frustrating, or just just plain wrong. There are too many blogs out there with people who are spending their time whining about anything and everything.... so this is going to be a different type of blog.
I want to write today about something other than the frustrations of the things that hit me on a daily basis. Today I want to talk about success. Yes, success... everyone defines technically the same, but the real question of sucess is based upon degree. For example. I've been working out for months now. I decided one day that I wanted to change my life and that I knew that if I didn't I would be headed in a bad direction. It wasn't long after I got into my position as network admin that I knew I would need to have have something to break up the monotony of my job. I didn't want to be that guy that took the job and sat in his office all day long and didn't do anything. Fortuneately I am not that guy... while I may be in my office all the time I am never without enough to keep me busy. Once I got out of work I would find myself going home and doing the same thing sitting in front of a computer and trying to get things accomplished, whether it be finding different forms of entertainment to get my creativity flowing or trying to control the ideas that I have for my current film project and get them put into a form that I can be constructive with the direction of the film.
So to break these activities up I signed up for a gym. I figure if I could work for 8 hours then work out for an hour for at least 4 days a week it would give me a positive change.
Well the change has been positive for the most part.... positive in the form of losing almost 30lbs. So this change has been a success for me. Am I at my goal yet now that I have gotten my alternating routine in place? Not even close. But the little changes that I have had happen are the first step of success. When I started I was able to drop 5lbs a week without even thinking about it. It happened that way for a few weeks and then it slowed down. This was expected as the body tends to adapt to the changes you make, and therefore you need to keep changing to prevent it from getting comfortable with what you are doing and plateauing. So for a while there were a number of weeks where I would drop only 1 lb others when I might only drop 1/2 lb. Its not a great feeling to see that no matter how hard I worked out my body compensated for some of it and made it more difficult to reach the same peak I reached the week prior.
I thought about how most people would respond to these results. I remember seeing people in the same position that I am in saying things like "I have to get strickter, I ONLY lost 1 lb this week."..... "I can't belive I ONLY lost a 1/2 lb this week, I worked so hard and it didn't pay off."....."I'm not getting the results I want and I am working out so hard, I ONLY lost....".
I decided when I began this process that there would be no "I ONLY'S" in my vocabulary. As long as I didn't gain weight then I would celebrate the week as victory.... and I have! No matter how minor the change I talk myself up as though it was the biggest loss in the world, and I plan to keep doing so because it means that the next week will be different.
So how has it worked? Great! I know that can honestly say that I started this regiment during one of the hardest times of the year and I am one of the only people that can say that I ate really well during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years and during each of those weeks I still lost weight. I had actually told myself that if I gained during any of those weeks I wouldn't beat myself up about it, I would simply go back to everything I was doing. I didn't exactly stay perfect during any of those weeks but I made sure that I would continue to hit the gym and push as hard as I can and stick to the path that I began a while back.
So even minor things can be a success....
My film that I finished last March has been touring around the world as most who know me have heard. It has been in over 20 film festivals and I have been able to attend only a small number of those fests, but the ones that I have been to have been a lot of fun! I haven't been able to apply for all of the festivals that I would have liked to be part of but I am happy to have been able to get into those that I was accepted to. The best part is that with all of the fests that I have applied for I managed to get accepted to about half of them. I have also gotten my fair share of rejections. The thing that I have a hard time looking past is that there are those who look at my film and they compare it quality wise to films that have 5 - 6 people helping them, or budgeted films and shoot it down. I even had one company write to me and say, "We received many good films, and we're sorry but but yours will not be shown at the festival: Reason: The story is poor even by short standards, and the ending makes no sense." I kept this response and I look at it everytime I get accepted into another festival. While I was awestruck when I got it, I have to say that I was laughing the second time I read it and I realized that the person that wrote it was not in my target audience.
I have to admit that last week I wanted to write back to this festival and let them know that I appreciate their input and they have helped me tremendously but not in the way they expected, oh, and if they want to give my film a second chance, they can watch it at ComicCon this year in San Diego. Sometimes the best revenge is just to do well with what you have, and what I have is a film that one of the largest Comic Book / Entertainment / Movie Conventions in the world wants to show.
I suppose life can be pretty funny sometimes.... it all depends on your perspective.
