# When I was younger, I thought that if I could understand other people, I would be happy. Now I realize that all I need to do in life is understand myself and I will be happy. Inner peace is created by honesty which is created by understanding the self.

# If you meet someone and all they do is complain about their job, their life, their workmates, take your number out of their phone and walk away slowly. Some people are born to be miserable and there is absolutely nothing you can do for them. Some people just don’t see the sunshine, and when they do, they shit all over it anyway.

# In life, to maintain our sanity, if there are only two people we must love, it is our parents. If there is anyone who we must support, it is our siblings. If there is only one person to whom we must be true, then to thine own self be true. Knowing these priorities brings everything else into focus.

# If in life you do find someone…that one person who you want to love, support and be true to, then love them like there is no tomorrow, support them with the sweet knowledge that they need you and be true to them because they deserve to know you.. And if you are lucky enough to end up on the opposite side, then you must promise to understand the responsibility to be loved like there is no tomorrow, to be supported because you need it and to be trusted with the truth of someone’s heart.

# Trade everything for laughter; trade nothing for sex.

# In this world there will always be more lust stories than there are love stories, but the love stories will always exemplify themselves. Think of the person who makes 2 million a year but hates what he does vs. the person who pursues his passion.. Bill Gates? The Google Guys? Mark Zuckerberg? The other guy never makes the news.

# There are only two types of people in this world; those who step out of their box and those don’t.

# Every once in a while we have to say F it; F it creates the freedom, freedom creates the opportunity.

Happy Pursuance of The Dream!!

As babies we can learn 3 or 4 languages, but try and learn a language now and we are scared we might be laughed at, get it wrong, embarrass ourselves. Try to learn how to swim, and we are scared we might be laughed at or drown, yet as babies we thought nothing of failure……shouldn’t that be the case now?

We place all these limitations on ourselves for reasons unknown, because at the time they make sense, then look back and say dagit…I should have done that then. Life should be lived as a baby….my cousin calls it the power of rebound. I love that phrase. The power of rebound. It’s not that you fail or not, it’s that you get up and try again, or try different. The difference is when we step outside the Matrix of fear and make it happen…….I don’t know how much you read, but read about Ebay, Google, Microsoft; all these people did was follow some stupid passion…look at them now…not that stupid huh?

Of course, here I’m not talking about something as tangible as food. Probably more abstract stuff…….let’s think…hmmm, that job interview, that car, that woman/man….pick something you missed out on. Was it because you tried your best and it just wasn’t reachable, or did you think you weren’t entitled to it? I am sorry buddy; there are only two choices to answer this question.

Entitlement is a beautiful thing. It’s what divides the successful from the mediocre; it ‘s what took some hundreds of thousands of people from Europe to the rest of the world where they proceeded to set up shop and just take land like they owned it………because in their minds, they had the right to do so.

Entitlement. Any great acts of power are a result of a strong sense of entitlement…….Napoleon, Hitler, the African Diaspora. I mean, imagine a people who are so convinced that they are larger than life, that they believe that they are entitled to give a people their religion, their clothes, their slavery, their freedom and kill them off if they decide to resist.

While entitlement can be an evil thing, (WWII etc) channeled entitlement is beautiful. It can, and probably will, get you what you want in life. I have a friend who is so super duper about getting what is due to her, and it is really infectious. But to those who aren’t I ask: Why limit your blessings? Go out, put everything in, and only let go when the opportunity is past.
And today we end with anecdote; this one isn’t mine…but it’s a pretty interesting one all the same:

After conducting interviews and screening out the unworthy candidates, some companies are still left with a pretty large number of candidates to choose from. So, to make it simple, they let us eliminate ourselves. They call each candidate one by one and tell them that the position has been filled. Surprisingly, most candidates will say something like, “Oh dag, well that sucks, I really wanted that position.” But the candidate most people are looking for is the one who will say something to the tune of, “What? Filled…how? Who is this candidate better than me? I insist that you take a look at my resume again and reconsider.” The others just pretty much eliminated themselves.

I actually got my first job by asking the recruiter to look for a candidate better than me and if he found one, to send me an email. I also mentioned that I was probably the best thing he could do for his team. His voice was significantly higher when he responded. The most ridiculous part about this story is that my resume clearly showed that I had no experience. But yet, I claimed it, and he gave it to me.

If it doesn’t have a name on it, assume possession. Or, as my 7 year old cousin would say, “Finder’s keepers.”

…..assume formlessness and expect a lot out of every opportunity.

It makes sense when they say, “If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again.” But I have never heard a phrase that encourages one to keep pushing the limits even in the event of success. We normally have a tendency to say, “Hey, you know what? I had a pretty good day, good meeting or productive time, so I deserve to relax.” We step our adrenaline down a notch, when in actuality, on that high, we could push that day to a higher level; we could get more out of that day, or that situation; we could ride that wave a little bit longer until it crashes on the shore.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t relax and kick back once in a while, as it is crucial for the human body and mind to get its rest. But, as we know, a change is as good as a rest, and, more often than not, we need to discern whether we need to relax or we just need a change. As life is about movement, and movement is about momentum, it is more important for us to keep that momentum up more than anything, even though sometimes we need to change our direction.

The universe aligns with your dreams, but only for “five minutes”, to let you seize those dreams. If you don’t take advantage of that moment, it is gone, never to come back. So yes, if you don’t seize your dream, you will live, but who wants to live a mediocre life?

Aspire to live free, bonded only by your and, if applicable, your spouse’s dreams. And as crazy as this sounds, live by this……when in doubt, and all reasonable explanations fail, go with the unknown, your destiny lies down that path.

Finally I reasoned that the lady was just doing her job, and that this was really nothing personal. So I sucked it up and called the next restaurant on the list………..one ring……second ring………I held my breath; the third ring was cut short as someone picked up the phone and announced the restaurant’s name. I exhaled….

Me: Is this a Jamaican restaurant?

Him:(enthusiastically) Yes, this is a Jamaican restaurant

At this point I was listening carefully for an accent, and heard none….

Me: Authentic Jamaican?

Him: Yes, authentic Jamaican

Me: oh ok cool

He must have heard my accent because….

Him: Hey……..we don’t have goat and we don’t have curry

Me: Eh?

Him: We don’t have goat and we don’t have curry

Me: So what do you have?

Him: Well, we have Jerk chicken, skewered chicken, skewered beef, hamburgers, fries….

I don’t remember much of what I said after that, nor what happened. I do remember that we had some great Thai food last night though….

Yes, my issue with the “movements” was humorous, but in a weird way, life can get like that as well.

I normally tell people that if we stop moving we are as good as dead. Mark took this and in his final post articulated it so well. Life is about motion, life is about growth. My friend Nimu has a quote at the end of her emails that reads: “If you are not living life on the edge, you are taking up too much space” So I encourage you to take the experience of this trip, this example and choose how you must live. We all have a higher calling, but get stagnated into inaction by our fears and by our past experiences. To me, this move was about movement and growth, it was about taking my life from living at 40% to living at 80%. I often hear people talk about how they should have done this, if they had done that, they want to do this, and I always question why they don’t. Granted, I take way more risks that the average person, which normally comes back and bites me in the backside. But I have this need to feel alive with every waking day and as soon as I get bored, I am off to find next the radical thing that will give me that head rush, that feeling of being alive. I am one of those people who knows to stay away from drugs because I know how necessary it is for me to be on a constant high. In time I have learned to take this need and cultivate it around good planning so that it doesn’t always turn up to haunt me after the move is made.

But as crazy as I may seem sometimes, just remember that with everything there is risk; there is risk in change, just as there is risk in staying stagnant, the only difference is that people don’t realize the risk in staying stagnant because it gets so dag comfortable. The quest in life is motion to the higher degree. God Speed!

They always have a lunch-time show at this coffee shop. Sometimes it’s better than others. Today’s show is a good one. On any other day, I would be walking out of the cafe after every second song or so to answer the phone or I’d be deep into email. But it’s Wednesday. Nobody ever calls on Wednesday. Which proves that this market is pretty atypical of any other market; a whirlwind of activity on Monday and Tuesday as they just find your resume online or in the email sent late last week or over the weekend, then silence as your resume grinds through the wheels of process and red tape. I may get a call tomorrow, but no one ever calls on Thursday either. I would bet more on a Friday call asking me if I could meet up with them sometime early next week to discuss a position that just opened up. The positions always just open up on Friday, and they always want to meet up early next week.

I hate playing the waiting game. I start to distract myself with other things to do…….as I drift slowly back into the Irish Music….

So, I have been in Portland for about a week and I finally started getting hits on my resume like I think I should. My average turnover time between contracts in Maryland was about two weeks, and for a while there last week, I started to wonder if I could actually pull it off. The Portland market is a tad different from the Maryland market in a couple of ways:

Firstly, the Portlandese love Portland and even though once you are here you feel terribly welcome, if you are not here, it feels like they are discouraging you from moving here. This is especially obvious with the influx of Californias and the resulting phrase: “Everything was fine in Portland before the Californias started moving in.” LOL. So my first big hurdle was my phone number. Since I don’t have a Portland area code, my first week here was spent dealing with distance emails cautiously warning me that this was a Portland position and that if I was not in Portland, then they weren’t interested. The vibe of the emails were all the same….”If you are not here, please don’t move here for this job.” I laughed at a lot of them because it almost sounded like no one wanted to accept the responsibility of bringing one more non-Portlandese into beautiful, cherished, beer-drinking Portland. After being here a couple of days, I understood why this was the case. You see, Portland is just one big community of many little communities; it is easy to get a little possessive about this place. It is easy to say, “This is my Portland, and me and my fellow Portlandese drink our beer, and ride our bikes, and ski our mountain, and swim our ocean, and run our beaches, and hike our trails and..” You get my point, right?

My second hurdle is easily related to the first hurdle. The people of Portland form a tightly meshed community. It is easy to live in Portland and be a complete outsider. My first few days were really frustrating, as I couldn’t seem to break into the inner circle here. It was like everyone knew of someone, but no one was offering any information… well, until my third and fourth day. On day number three, a friend of a friend mentioned a diversity networking meet that would be taking place the next day. On day number three, I bumped into Brad at the bar. Good old Brad, whose directions had me sitting at a Goth Party later on that night, but I digress. That in itself is a whole other blog, once I compose myself enough to write it. Brad also hooked me up with about 3 or 4 events that were happening around the city that I would be a good match for. These were not jobs, but a foot into the inner circle. On day number four, I attended the networking meeting, where I met Kendall. From Kendall I got 2 warm hits on my resume and one pretty hot one. So now I am more or less plugged in, my resume is making its rounds through the Portland software industry and the beloved (503)-xxx-xxxx number showing up on my caller ID is no longer a finger crossing event. Today I started off with three interviews, and after cancelling one, I ended up having 4 instead. And so that is how the ball rolls in Portland. And I am still living out of a box, which is a bummer for interviews…

As far as the living situation goes, it is waaay more complicated than I would have imagined. Portland is a small little city, about the size of Baltimore, where I moved from, except for one key difference. Everyone in Portland lives in Portland. There are no suburbs worth mentioning and everything seems to happen within 42 blocks east, 42 blocks west and maybe 20 to 30 blocks North and South. The city is divided into 5 major neighborhoods: N, NW, SW, NE and SE, of which N, NE and SE seem to be the only three places worth living in. Some people would argue with me and swear that the NW is the best place to be, but I am from Maryland guys; all they are trying to build in the NW is another little DC and that is exactly what I am trying to get away from. I love style, but I refuse to live in a neighborhood where everyone’s sneakers and track pants match their t-shirt and their poodle’s t-shirt. The SW…well the SW is the SW……

Now, within each of these neighborhoods are communities. On about each major street, which run about 5 or so blocks apart north and south you have the movies, restaurants, bars, bookstores, coffee shops. So realistically, people just go downtown to work and spend the rest of their time in their lil’ hood. So you can imagine the dilemma of finding the one with the best vibe. So that bet, I may lose and have to push the “finding of a place to live” deal a month or so back. But trust me, when(if) you come visit, you will be in the best neighborhood one can find in good ol’ Portland!!! Oh yeah, apparently I am supposed to get a fireplace too…….