Classes

I am back in school part time. This session I am taking classes that are 90% review for me. I am taking them mainly for next semester, where I will actually be making progress.

Ahh, progress. What am I progressing towards? I am trying to get a bachelors degree. I have come to a reversal of my earlier decision. I thought that I didn't need any more schooling and that the people who become rich do it not because of school but something else that they don't teach in school. That opinion hasn't changed but my understanding of the business world has grown up. I am back in school not because of the things I will learn here but because of the degree that I hope to earn. The degree is a passport to an entire world of better jobs. It doesn't prove how smart you are but is a clear indicator of the ability to complete something. To that end, I am back in school putting classes behind me. I am a bit apprehensive because in order to do this, I am blocking off part of my schedule and making myself less employable. I have to decide between the crumbling now and the unknowable future.

Patience

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I tend to make rapid emotional changes when I dont like something. I tend to be very laid back until I reach a saturation point. When I get there, I tend to shut down and turn away from whatever has gotten me to that point. It takes some people by surprise because I am suddenly out of patience when just a few seconds ago, I was easy going and relaxed.
I'm not sure where I developed this from. I would guess that its because I am not a very patient man my nature. I can be patient but only for as long as I expect to be. After the time I had expected to wait has elapsed, I am done. I'm ready to leave and get on with my life.
Tonight I find myself at a karaoke bar past my limit. I sat for almost an hour starting at the song book and couldn't decide what song to sing. Suddenly I didn't care any more. I didn't need to be there any more and would have left in that minute if I had been there alone.
The place where this is a topic for reflection (and thus a blog post) is that I was in a place where I could be trying to meet new people and instead I chose to write this blog post. I was ignoring my girlfriend, and being generally anti-social. People who know me well will pick up on my mood when I get into this kind of funk and it can ruin their good time. At this point I keep on insisting that everything is fine but my friends (our in this case Girlfriend) will pick up on my mood and often out of empathy the night its ruined. I can be a serious downer sometimes.
I'm not sure if there is anything to do about this situation, but there it is. I am impatient, and when my patience ruins out I become apathetic or despondent. I wonder if I was being unfair.

School and Hustle

It seems that I will be returning to school. I have been looking for a job for a while now and I don't seem to be making much progress. I have decided that getting a bachelors degree will be valuable for my future.

This is quite a change of attitude. I had come to the decision that I didn't need school to be successful. I finished my associates degree and went on  my way. I have worked since then at the same job and now that job is crumbling beneath me. I have been applying to different jobs but having no success. I am convinced now that I need the credentials to be taken seriously, and that means getting a bachelors degree. To that end, I have begun the process of going back to school. I am going to take the last class that I need to transfer to a four year college and then next year (the soonest I can) I will transfer as a Junior to Cal Poly.

One of the concepts that I am having trouble with is "Hustle." Let me stop here with a definition. Hustle is the act of working very hard to make your dreams come true. I am finding that I do not hustle very well. I find any number of reasons not to try things. When things are good, I relax. When things are bad, I hibernate. I need to find a way to motivate myself to get the things I want, even if those things are an imperfect version or an intermediary step. Even if I cannot achieve a dream, I must make progress to it.

What a Novel Idea

I have had a great deal of spare time lately and so I have started writing more. I know that I have written less in this blog over the past few months but this is a different kind of writing. I have had my girlfriend in my life ever ready to talk about whatever I need to get off my chest so I have had less need to write things here in my blog.
The writing I have been doing has been fiction. Novia has written the first draft of a novel and is currently in the process of revising it. While she is writing I need to find thing to do that won't distract her, so I have turned to writing my own stories. I have never had trouble thinking of settings. Places real and fantastic come to mind easily. The problem I have is creating a story arc. A conflict and a path to resolution. I am now stuck on what to do next in my story. I am at a fork in the road and I need to take one path or the other. I have started a few things and begun a few mysteries but I have yet to commit to anything past the initial premise. It is time to break out the big guns and start making the hard decisions. It is daunting but I must proceed or I will fail by default.
Wish me luck

Mead Batch 7 Part 2

Today Novia and I moved the mead to secondary fermentation. The cherry flavor comes through strong, and the yeast managed to consume nearly all of the sugar. The specific gravity reading was 0.995 which is a serious drop from the 1.090 that we began with. The alcohol percent is up around 12-13% which is about all this yeast can handle. I figured that I could add more honey to compensate for the dryness and the tart of the cherries but all I had on hand was 3/4lb of clover honey in a honey bear. We added the clover honey to the mix and tasted again. It is better with a little more sweetness, but is still harsh. I hope that time will smooth it out.

Mead Batch 7

Today Novia (my girlfriend) and I started my 7th batch of mead. We are aiming to make a medium sweet cherry melomel. We used twelve pounds of cactus honey and one pound of dried tart cherries, I am a little concerned about the cherries releasing enough flavor to be noticeable. Next time I might buy cherry juice to use instead. The starting gravity was 1.09 which means the must has an alcohol potential of 13%.  I used Lavlin 71B-1177 wine yeast which has an alcohol tolerance of 14% I am concerned with how sweet the result will be. I will have to recheck things after two weeks.

Victoria

My girlfriend and I just got back from Victoria, BC. She went to the University of Victoria, and we went there so that I could meet her friends and be shown around it was also my first trip to Canada. It is a beautiful place, sort of like a mix between San Diego, CA and Olympia, WA. The weather was clear and sunny almost the entire time but colder than I am used to. The city was an interesting mix of old and new buildings with that "college town" feel of tons of pubs and hip stores.
Meeting my girlfriend's friends was awesome. We all hit it off immediately and had fun chatting and taking pics around downtown.Vic. It makes me wish that I could live everywhere at once. I thought it was a drag having friends in the OC but that commute is nothing to the double flight required to get from LA to Vic. It also made me realize how much better I have gotten at connecting to people. I was able to enter conversations with people who were almost complete strangers and be laughing it up and carrying on in minutes. I will definitely have to make it back on a semi-regular basis. There are so many places in the world that I want to go and want to return to. One thing is certain, however, I want to go there with my girlfriend.