Today I was thinking about the internet and how awesome it really is. I mean, first off, I can't even remember life without it. How did I know where restaurants were? How did I stay in touch with so many friends?
Pretty much anything is just a click away, how did I get through life? It must have been rough.
The one thing I do like most about its accessibility is that it allows me to explore multiple industries at once. Now that we're in the digital age, I can pursue whatever, whenever and whatever I want (pretty much).
When I was a kid I remember thinking about college and how I was supposed to pick a degree that was going to give me a job for the rest of my life. Finding a job after college has been so shitty, I fell into any industry that would take me.
(Take a guess...how'd you know it was retail?)
Industrial age thinking has gone out the door and I really need to adjust with the times (and so do all the laggards.) Since I was a kid, I was conflicted because I had so many passions. I loved so many different things and I wanted to do so many things in my lifetime that people looked at me crazy and gave me the side eye.
And with so much out there to choose from, I am going to take the bull by the horns and be successful in industries I'm truly passionate about. I can do multiple things at one time, I'm going to kick ass and I'm going to be awesome because they are things I love.
I'm pretty much over that notion I need to live by other people's rules because if I listen to them, I'll probably stay stuck in an industry I could really give two shits about.
It all goes back to that saying, find something (or multiple things) to die for and then live for it.
Let's check it out!!
I was never really good at marketing my last blogs so they didn't do so well. For me, it was kind of embarrassing to post to my social networks that "hey, I have a blog, so come read it."
(It's like I've been keeping a cool secret identity. LOL)
Well, I came across this tweet by Dave McClure and I figured, "well, what do I have to lose? Why not try it?" So I'm sitting at my kitchen table typing with one hand because I have this throbbing left shoulder...I'll probably go to the ER after this, but I was too excited to not give this a go.
On another note, my bottom post was an old post from a blog I started that focused on college grads and how to handle money. You know, become rich and start traveling....all that jazz. :)
Ever since I was a kid, I was an athlete. My Dad is a big sports fan and he had both me any brother playing all types of sports from the very beginning. Growing up, it was all about baseball, soccer, and gymnastics. In high school, I was a receiver on the football team and a hurdler on the track. I thought about it once, and I think I've played about 13 sports competitively in my life. Though I know plenty of people who were much more successful in their athletic careers than me, I was always one of the first kids picked and always in great shape. I took all that for granted.
In college, though, a weird thing happened. I got fat. I was probably about 8% body fat going in to college, the rest of which was muscle. Even before winter break, the love handles made an appearance. For spring break, I went to Hawaii with my family and I was FAT. In about 6 months, I went from being proud of how I looked to being the guy on the beach with a t-shirt on.
Throughout college, I lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again, but I was pretty much chunky the whole time. Not severely obese or anything, but I was not in good shape, not confident, and physically lazy. I'll talk about it more in a later post, but to make a long story short, I did not have a lot of confidence upon graduating from college. My grades were not good, I lost my social confidence, I lived at home with no job, and I was fat. To sum it up, my life consisted of a bunch of bad habits and very little positive momentum. That's not good for a 23 year old.
I found CrossFit in the summer of 2009. I weighed about 220 pounds at the time and had previously tried running to shed some of the weight. It just wasn't working. I don't typically enjoy running and it's not easy when you are overweight. I'd heard my cousin was into CrossFit so I checked out their website. I was already hooked. I'm going to spare you a description of what CF is as many of you probably already know and the rest can easily find out. I'll suffice it to say that CF is an extremely challenging training regimen from both a physical and mental perspective. It doubles as a competitive sport and a social outlet. For those of you fellow CrossFitters out there, you know exactly what I mean. People don't just do CrossFit. They live, breathe, and eat it.