Leadership

My brother and I have upgraded our memberships in our HapKiDo dojo to include the leadership program. This means that we have access to Wing Chung lessons, selected weapons training (currently eskrima), and actual leadership development that includes reading books on the subject. I have missed the two classes so far that have been held since I joined (because of work) but I bought the book and am reading it.

I have realized for a while now that leadership is a skill that is unparalleled. With good leadership skills you can leverage your knowledge and the skills of others to create something that neither could create individually. It is somewhat like investing, you find a good vehicle and put money into it and then the money grows. With leadership you find talented people, put ideas into them or link them with other talented people and you can build something very rewarding. I wish to develop this ability because I want to spend my life building things. I am also inclined to do challenging  things myself and ignore or procrastinate on the easy things.

My job is currently at a plateau. The company needs more work if it is going to survive and in the absence of work I am left doing things that are less than productive (like blogging). I am going to have to find work for us somehow, that is what a leader would do. I am going to take some advice from my friend Rob, and make an attempt to become more active in the post-production social scene, whatever that means. For now I am going to try reading and posting on boards, and getting the company name out there.

Personally, I have an idea that I want to bring across to reality. I know that I want to create a website for the various crafts that I do. I want it to be a reference, and a magazine. A place with how-tos, reviews, interviews, and studio tours. I think that if I was looking at doing this 15 years ago, I would be trying to put together a magazine but since we are firmly in the internet age I am going to try to make a more rounded and linked together website with a wiki, blog, video channel and whatever else I need to get the job done. I have some very talented friends and hope we can pull this thing together.

Dangerous Choices

I had some friends over to watch the movie Thank You For Smoking, and one of them left her keys here. So we figured out a midpoint and split the hour drive. When I got to the agreed upon Denny's and passed off the keys, I was approached by a young man in need of some help. This guy was wearing plaid shorts and a couple of t-shirts, he had a lot of tattoos and buzzed hair. He also had a fresh white bandage on his arm and was carrying a plastic baggie with what looked at first like hospital bed restraints but turned out to be his belt and the contents of his pockets from his recent arrest. He needed a ride back to the shitty hotel that he and his pregnant fiancee were reduced to living in. He was very worried about her because the last she had heard from him he was going to jail.

I was very suspicious of this stranger asking to be allowed in my car in the middle of the night, especially when I noticed that he had a large swastika tattooed on his left calf, but he showed me that his pockets were empty and offered to let me hold his bag of belongings (a pocket knife, belt, prescription drug bottle, and a hospital wristband) I asked my friends that I was there to meet to follow me and said yes. I know that this was a dangerous situation, and that this guy could possibly hurt me, but I relied on the facts that I was holding his knife and that I have martial arts training ease that fear.

As I drove him what wound up being just under a mile to his motel, I got filled in with the bits and pieces that where his story. He is 24 and his fiancee is 30. She is 3 months pregnant with his child. She lost her house and her two kids recently. all that they have is a car and no phones. He was recently bitten by a brown recluse spider and the bandage and pills were from an infection. He had taken too many pills and was out of his head in a WalMart where he started to use his knife to open a package that he was thinking of buying. They called the cops and he was arrested for petty theft. He cooperated and they processed and released him, but he had no phone and no transport so he needed help.

I wonder how wise it was to help this stranger, but I really wanted to help him. It was raining lightly and he was in a shitty situation. I wish I could have helped him more but the safety factor plus the late hour and a rather cynical thought that there was nothing that I could say or do in the time I was willing to commit would make any kind of meaningful difference in this man's life. I simply told him to take care of himself and his baby and dropped him off.

Its moments like this that I really appreciate all that I have, materially and through the relationships I have with friends and family.

Don't read this post

I am home now and it is late. This is probably the worst time for me. I sit here thinking about what I have done and what I have yet to do. I think of my goals and how far away they are. Now my computer changes wallpapers every 10 minutes and here I am staring at a beautiful woman in a white blouse looking down through glasses. I am suddenly struck by how much I miss kissing.

Its not the hot heavy hollywood sex scene that I have floating through my head, it's my first kiss that I miss. the slow tenderness of the moment. A soft expression of affection.

Falling

Tonight I went to HapKiDo practice to train for my brother's black belt test. I need to train for his test because I will be hitting the mat over one hundred times as his partner. Defense against kicks, defense against punch, defense against knife, and first moving attacks. That's a lot of falls, and a lot of them are high falls. We used whats called a "crash pad" today for extra comfort but one things for sure: over the course of this training I will get stronger.

Getting Worse

Today at work we had a little talk. It seems that things are not going so well. I have to decide what to do next.Weeks ago when a friend called to tell me about an assistant editor job, I considered the possibilities of moving on into a related field. I talked to the boss and he said that he wanted me in the company so I shelved that idea and stuck around. Now I don't have that offer and it seems that the company is in serious trouble. We had an offer to buy the company but that seems to be gone due to legal matters. The company may dissolve and re-form but that is not certain and the time frame is questionable. Now I am losing money and facing tough decisions. I still have a good amount of savings but the future looks scary.

Wanderlust

Lately I have been thinking of other places. I have always lived in Los Angeles, and given my chosen careerpath in the entertainment industry, I would have trouble selling my skills in other places. I am also deeply rooted with my friends so leaving them would be very difficult for me. Nonetheless I keep thinking of other places that I have or have not been. I think of my friends or family in Olympia Washington, Las Vegas Nevada, Bacolod Philppine Islands, Portland Oregon, Morriston Florida, London England, and somewhere in Italy. Its nights like this that I wonder if it would be a mistake to live only here where I am most comfortable. The longest I have ever been away from California is about 6 weeks on vacation to the Philippines. Friends and family of mine have moved away and sometimes back, lived away and seen and gotten to know places that I will not know.

In German there are two verbs for "to know," wissen is to know facts and kennen is to get to know someone in a personal sense I have never had the time to get to know another place in that personal sense, to know how things are done and what is special in that place. I could probably do much more exploring without leaving Los Angeles but there are farther places with different things to offer. I wonder if I am losing out on something. I wonder if I should move on.

The problem is one of work. If I were to uproot myself and move on I would have to find new work and a new place to live in a down economy and with limited marketability. I think that I am too practical and not adventurous enough to just light off for the territories.

But am I missing out on something?

Selecting Social Scenes

I went out to play pool and drink some beers tonight. Afterward. on the walk back we talked about social scenes and meeting new people. Of the three of us, two of us are single and the third is not so sure about his relationship. We were mainly talking on meeting new people with a focus on meeting women.

I was in a relationship for seven and a half years, and before that I was not a very social person. Now that I am single and looking at the dating scene with dismay. I don't drink much and so I see the bar scene as fairly pointless and uncomfortable. I don't dance so that kills the club scene. I am not going back to college and that kills that idea. Now I have to find a place to meet new people that is comfortable to me and is a place that I can find the kind of people that I want to be around. I am at a bit of a loss as to where this place is. I know what I am looking for in a partner but where to find her eludes me. I don't really know how to proceed.