Scratches

I scraped myself up last week for the first time in a long time. I was running on top of a low brick dividing wall, and I lost my balance. My foot slipped off the side and, as I fell the less than two feet to land with my feet on the ground and my butt on the wall, I scraped up the side of my left leg. I wound up with scratches on top of bruises. I am now almost completely healed but this event has provoked some reflection.

With the exception of the small scratches I get on my hands at work, I haven't been scraped up in a long time. It has been a couple of  years since the last time I fell from my skateboard and scratched myself up. I had a couple of choices on how to react to this event. I could have (and almost did) said that I was not dumb enough to do that again, and I could have decided not to climb on things or run on narrow surfaces any more. Immediately after that thought ran through my head, I rejected it. I am not nearly old enough to stop that kind of behavior. I landed well and because I am constantly testing my balance and therefore have a good sense of it. I will begin to loose that balance as soon as I stop using it, and I am not old enough to stop. I am ready to scrape my knees or palms or whatever again (just not the face plz). I am going to continue on as before: I will jump railings, and I will walk on the grass, and I will run on uneven surfaces, and I will slide down the banister.

I don't know how much longer I have left of the strength of youth but I will not give up on it before it leaves me.

Mead Batch 8

Novia and I put together our second batch of mead today. This is my 8th batch total. We made it with orange blossom honey and two vanilla beans. I want the vanilla flavor to be noticeable so when we are getting ready to bottle it I may add more vanilla extract to the batch. We also added toasted oak chips to the must. I am not sure how many chips we added but it was more than last time because I want a noticeable oak flavor to compliment the noticeable vanilla flavor.

Because we started with only 12lbs of honey and were using a yeast with a high tolerance, and are aiming for a medium sweet mead, we ended up with a must of about 4 3/4 gallons.

The details:
orange honey 12lbs
vanilla beans X 2
Oak chips 
Lalvin Yeast EC 1118 (Alcohol to 18%)
Original Gravity reading: 1.1

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.