If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you to please take a look at the aesthetically pleasing Instagram photo below and the caption under it.
The woman in this photo is Danielle Moinet, more commonly known as WWE Diva, Summer Rae. In my opinion, this is the FIRST meaningful Social Media post of 2016. It is also what inspired me to write this particular blog post. And that's because she 100% hit the nail on the head with that caption. If she or I or anyone had to define #2016 in one word, its Change. I really can't elaborate it any more than with just that one word. Instead I'll just describe where I desperately want my life to be on any given year.
But before I do that, I want to give you a picture of where my life has been for the last 22 years. I'm being raised in the Bronx, New York. To the outsider, the Bronx is the home of the New York Yankees, the New York Botanical Garden, and the
1. Finances in Check
At the time of this writing, the Powerball jackpot is at $800 million and the odds of me winning a piece of that cash are 1 in 292 million. So you can rest assured that I will not depend on a lottery ticket/s to finance the next 30 years (at least) of my life. I'm a dude in his early 20's with a willingness to put employment over education. But I'm also someone with a résumé that could rival absolutely no one, because of the fact that the higher powers within my surroundings thought it was best for me to put full time education over any form of real world working experience. I've been manufactured to believe that an Associate's Degree is what's most necessary to fall back on for my entire lifespan. And after all that, those same higher powers have the impression that I'm a lazy person who feels like he doesn't have to seek employment any time soon. Here's the point that I want to get across. I. WANT. TO. WORK! I want that burned out feeling of working a 9-5 for 4-6 days a week and coming home knowing that I've accomplished something. I want to earn an income and save finances and spend them on the essentials, and then have the means to spoil myself or someone close to me. I want to be an ADULT in the United States of America!!! I've been pointed in the wrong directions by so many people during my adolescent years. Society has to realize that the only single person that knows what's best for me and the necessities that I'd like to have on a daily basis, is me. I currently don't have a surefire strategy to becoming financially stable, but I know for a fact that I have the determination to capitalize on the first thing that comes my way. You have my word and that's a word you can count on.
2. Move out of Mom's house (apartment)
I'm a post-pubescent person. That means I've reached that self-conscious point in my life where I want to move out of my parent's house (or in my case, low rent apartment). The thing about this is that I don't mind living in the Bronx. Sure it has its noticeable blemishes, but there are far worse and higher crime rated cities than the Bronx, New York. The single best thing about moving out of your parent's place is not even the physical aspect of moving yourself and your belongings from one residence to another but the feeling that you've turned the page to the next chapter of your life. That's a feeling that people would kill to have and that's a feeling that I will scratch and claw my way in to receiving.
3. Enhancing my friendliness qualities
When it comes to friendship, I've dealt with every stage of it that I could possibly think of. When I was very young, I was so dependent on friends. If one of my friends was absent from school, even for a day, I would feel like the loneliest person on the face of the planet. I needed friends to thrive in elementary school! Then came the 4th grade where I still depended on friends but an entirely new group of peers came into my life and I always kept my balance with them around. It wasn't until High School where I started to look at the idea of friendship in an entirely different way. I attended a Middle School/High School campus which meant that life long friendships were made before I even stepped foot in the classroom.... on the 1st day of school.... as a Freshman. It was in these 4 years that I became introduced to the "2-faced friend". The one that will force themselves to pal around with you because you share the same class/es but wouldn't personally want to commingle when it really matters, like at a non-school sanctioned social event. Friendship lost its importance to me within those 4 years and I had the intentions of living the rest of my natural life, as a loner. When I started to become this lone wolf, it felt as if an unbearable ton of weight fell off of my shoulders. I had no obligations to anyone and even being as dependent as I am living off of my parent's hand, I felt as free as a bird. Even after graduating High School, I've continued to play for my own 1 man team but felt a little bit different about it. In High School, I was a loner among people that I was familiar with. Post High School, I'm a loner within the rest of society and that just makes me feel like the lowest of the low. So I'm deciding to make another significant change in how I view friendship. If my life ends up where I want it to, making a friend or friends will become a top priority. In the end, I figure that if I'm comfortable with where I'm currently at mentally, then that would be such a good starting point for socialization. Its an ice breaker when meeting new people or that eventual special someone. But until that time comes, I'll be out and about, by myself with no one else.The power of positivity is real. Surround yourself with people who will only bring you up! More importantly,be that person for someone else!— Summer Rae (@RealSummerWWE) March 3, 2016
4. See what this world has to offer
We've already established that I want to be financially stable, live outside of the home that my parent has provided for me these last 22 years, and to have a circle of like-minded acquaintances. When you put all of those things together, you obtain what's called a social outgoing life. 8,400 days I've been alive, and in all that time I have absolutely no idea what that feels like. To combine the social interactions with other people and actually going out to places with them? And then doing so without the verbal permission of your caretaker? That's an actual thing? Well if it is, I've never experienced it. Yet I've heard about it. I thought it was a myth but I stand corrected. It seems that there are activities such as a sporting event, a live concert, restaurants, clubs, etc that are just a couple of examples of where these social events occur. Even a daily trip to the local Starbucks to purchase a premium quality caffeinated beverage seems like an exhilarating activity to do on a daily basis. Maybe I could even use this blog to share those experiences with a viewing audience! What a fantasy!
5. Taking an adventurous chance
6. Netting the Plus from the Apple Tree
I can say that I am currently hip to all of the latest top notch music videos thanks to the convenience of YouTube and owning a mobile device, if that counts.
7. Giving my overall psyche a makeover
Lets move on to emotions. Mentally, I just want to wake up every morning at least 4 days a week ready to do something that I'm really looking forward to doing for the course of the day. I want to go to sleep at night with the feeling that I've actually achieved something big or small and that I made a positive impact in someone's life today. Happiness is what I'm in dire desire of. Happiness as an adult in my opinion is that on a daily basis, you spend hours of that day doing something so self-gratifying that it doesn't even feel like work, and getting compensation for it! Currently in my life, I kinda feel the opposite. I wake up in the morning stressed over the fact that at 23 years of age, I haven't grasped on to life yet. I'm stressed out with the little activities that I do at home. I'm stressed out as I sit in a desk in a classroom in Nichols Hall at Bronx Community College just being the last person who wants to be there and the first one who's dying to leave. I'm stressed out between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening aka "the weekend", when I can't even find the emotion in me to trigger the interest to get off my butt and do something active outside of my own bedroom, let alone outside of my apartment building. There's just one huge wall blocking that one opportunity currently heading in my direction. Its been doing that for so long that I'm so tired of waiting and that's why I feel this way. I just don't know how people have done it. Its become so hard for me to even watch television or check up on my Social Media because every time I do, I see someone that has grabbed life by the horns and they're living it. They're really, really living it with very little to complain about. As far as I'm concerned at this present moment, the happiest moment of my life will be the very 1st day that my eyes truly open as a result of feeling that feeling for myself.
8. Giving my overall physique a makeover
At 6 foot 5, and 180 pounds soaking wet, I'm not where I want to be physically. That's mainly due to the fact that I haven't lifted a dumbbell in 5 years. I'd like to have a more muscular physique to the point where my arms and midsection show a bit of vascularity. I hear so much about supplements, cutting the carbs/processed foods, consuming more of the h2o and vegetables, getting on a high-intensity training regimen, and most importantly, hitting the gym and picking up those weights! I not only know that I have to do all of these things, but I really want to fall in love with that lifestyle. I want that list of things I need to do to get in shape, to be embedded in my mind and for it to just play out. With the living I strive to work for, this is something I feel is of a high importance to spend that $$$ on. I want to invest in myself in this sense as well as what I'll explain in the next topic.
9. Down payment on my internet aspirations
I've been producing and publishing amateur looking videos of myself on YouTube for the last 6 years. In those 6 years, I thought I found the secret ingredient and cracked the code to getting viral attention from my fellow online commuters. But, no luck. I can't complain about 6,700+ combined views across 29 videos though. But with the topic that I consistently bring up, I really expected more than that. It's not that there's a lack of interest in my content, there's just an audience of people in this video consuming world that is completely unaware of me. The majority of the stuff I've posted are videos of me advocating for Myspace in a way that if an audience eventually discovered this and shared it around the internet, would probably be of significance. The shaming that Myspace receives as a brand is a serious of an issue to me personally as anything you'll see on the news. But, I will never promote that issue in such a way because I fully understand that defending the Myspace name against critics is one of the least important things that society should care about. That being said, I've been doing so for half a decade, and I have no reason to give up on this mission even after being given every possible reason to do so. When you're struggling this long to get attention to your YouTube self, and you make an honest living, the best thing to do is to invest money in yourself using "Google AdWords" for video. With the right budget, I can basically advertise myself as an aspiring entertainer, and promote my principles to people that I know will have the 1st reaction of "Myspace? I gotta see this!" on their minds. Understand this, viral videos and viral awareness aren't as easy as its made out to be. Especially when you have no connections with people that have connections to connections. I've been patiently and anxiously waiting for my break. Its an inevitable bound to happen circumstance. And I know in my heart of hearts that I've got that hook to grab people's interest with what I have and will continue to put out, year after year. http://www.youtube.com/mrfreshlemania
10. The urge to give back
Something that I attempt to think about every single day of the week are those who are less fortunate than I am both monetarily and physically. I obviously want to have an outgoing and responsible life of my own with the salary I plan on earning, but the sentimental part of me would feel greedy if a portion of that money wasn't going to a good cause on a monthly basis. Charity. When you give to charity, you're basically giving an organization and the clients they serve, a reason to exist. Its the "Come To Jesus" meeting that I, as well as the 7.3 billion+ of the rest of us, want out of the present day. Even before the destined day when I become financially independent, I've already made sure to follow up on my heart's intentions to provide that monetary reason to these charitable organizations whose names and donation pages are all individually hyperlinked below if you'd like to contribute as well:
- Dean Thomas Moinet Foundation
"Fill the spiritual, emotional & physical needs of families with medically fragile children being treated in local hospitals."
(UNC Children's Hospital and Duke Children's Hospital)
- Susan G. Komen
"A mission to save lives and end breast cancer forever by empowering others, ensuring quality care for all and energizing science to find the cures."
- Make-A-Wish Foundation
"Granting the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy."
- Connor's Cure
"Supporting research by Ian F. Pollack, M.D., chief, Pediatric Neurosurgery in the Brain Care Institute at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, including laboratory-based research and a vaccine-based immunotherapy research."
and others in addition to that. I know my heart is in the right place in giving back to these important causes, but soon after my credit card has been charged and these foundations have officially received my money, the first thought that pops in my mind is "When am I going to be able to do this again?" And when I do donate again, will it match the last one, will it exceed it, or will it be less than? In my mind, I'd feel selfish if I lived this one and only life only for me, myself and I. Using my independence from my current state of dependence to provide a non-curfew, non-permissive, totally live by my own rules life for myself just sounds so wrong. I'm not only going to promise to continue to donate money (that I'd probably use otherwise to purchase something that I don't even need) to a foundation on a recurring basis, but with this fully functional body that my soul is occupying, it'll also be a goal of mine to devote time out of my day to repetitively lend a helping hand in volunteering as well.
