Wednesday, July 06, 2011

If you knew then, would it really matter, now?

"If I knew then what I know now..." is a famous phrase we always say as we get older and when we make mistakes.
The real question is, if you did know then what you know now, how much of your life would actually be different?

Have you ever seen the movie "Time Travelers Wife?"
It's a story about a man who does have the powers to escape to his past and escape to his future. He knows what will happen but there's nothing he can do to change it.
He can go back in time to see his mom but he can't go back in time to save his mother when she died in a car crash.
He also can't change the path of his life to avoid the day he dies. He didn't know the actual year, he just knew the holiday and what he would be wearing.
He knows who he will marry.
He knows he'll have a beautiful daughter. What he didn't know was that his wife would have several miscarriages and stillbirth's before his daughter was finally born.

If I knew at 20 years old I'd be here today, sitting in this house, living on a Lake in North Carolina with no husband or kids, what would I have done differently in the last fifteen years?
What experiences might I have missed out on? What experiences, if any, would I have had?

Would I have avoided my move to Upstate, NY? What did I learn or what did I benefit from that year long experience? If moving there was a lesson to learn, I can say I learned something valuable that will benefit me today and in my future relationships.

If my family knew that my sister would've had a still birth, would we have enjoyed her first pregnancy as much as we did? If you ask me to be honest, I remember how excited I was and how much fun it was to plan her baby shower.

Maybe the reason we don't know our future is because we must learn to enjoy our life as it's happening. It'll unfold as it's meant to unfold.

Would it be more depressing to know your future and that you couldn't change it?

Let's talk about another movie, Butterfly Effect with Ashton Kutcher.

In this movie, his character does have the power to go back and change a situation.
One scene I remember the most was, when he was a teen, his friends and him were in the woods one day and his buddies decided to throw a fire rocket to a mailbox, what they didn't foresee was the woman of the household coming home; she got out of her van, got her baby and walked toward the mailbox. The rocket went off and killed the baby. He woke up in his future and it wasn't too bright; he didn't like it so what happened next was he went back to that moment in time, he changed things. He fought with his friends and the rocket was never launched, but, it went off anyway and he woke up years later, missing his arms.
The movie was confusing.
The point is, best choose wisely. I understood that movie to be have a "damn if you do, damn if you don't" kind of meaning.

It follows my, "which poison do you prefer?" philosophy of life.

I ask you the same, would you want to know you can look ahead to know now what will happen in five years?
If you knew now that one day you were to stumble across millions of dollars by winning a lottery, would you work as hard at your day job? Would you accept promotions and learn more about work to better yourself as a person in hopes of receiving financial rewards or would you not care because you know you'll win enough money to quit your job?
Or would you rather know you can go back in time to change the situation, even if you had to suffer a different consequence?

Friday, July 01, 2011

Life w/out a car

**very important disclaimer: this was my FIRST blog that I've ever written. I've re-posted it because of another blog I wrote today, "Out with old, in with the new: Myspace." I have owned a car since 2006.**

I have been living without a car since July (2005) and I honestly believed I would be used to life without it by now, but I'm not.
Not for selfish purposes either. I hate the cold (weather outside) but it's not reason enough. I miss my car for the independence it gave me, for the freedom to turn the radio up full decibel and drive to work at my pace. Or even to run errands, to visit friends and family, to go away on vacation for the night. I also miss my car because, I may not want to work here in Boston forever, and the thought of leaving the city sounds appealing right about now, but without a vehicle, I do not have much choice.
I try to remind myself of the pros : no payments, no worries of gas, maintenance, insurance. Then I realize, isn't that all part of adulthood?
To accumulate assets, not decrease them.
Owning a car also shows personality. I owned a 2000, black, 2 door Cavalier Chevrolet, grey interior. I loved it, I loved driving it and most of all, I loved to show it off. This was the closest I was to my dream car, kinda. I'm not so sure what my dream car is, but this, for an every day life, this car was perfect.
At least, selling my car to my dad is a mistake I can fix. Granted, to come up with payments to own a car, and a studio will be a challenge, but a challenge worth pursuing.
I hope the next time I own a car, I keep it forever, and understand the importance and value of the car, and to not make an impulsive decision.

Out with old, in with the new: Myspace

It was going to happen; there was eventually going to be a time when I would have to delete Myspace page but I had hoped to have had taken the time to save and archive my blogs from there - before something went wrong and I'd lose some of my favorites.

Myspace was originally started to promote artists work, whether they were musicians, writers or models but then it changed to a site where everyone could have a page and connect as friends, make new friends, find old friends you were thankful you lost touch with and there was new way to stalk an ex. On Myspace, you could design your own page and have a music player and I thought that was cool.
The internet and social media has changed so much that Myspace never kept up with the trends. Their application is a copy cat of facebook and their blog page, forget it. It used to be cool, where I could design my page to look different all the time but now, it's plain and boring and not even worth promoting.

I started to blog six years ago this fall to be exact. It was in November of 2005 when I realized I could share my stories with the world wide web. At the time I was living alone in a studio apartment in Boston and I was sharing my day to day adventures about being single and a city slicker. I remember thinking I'd write a book, Sex and the City meets Boston. I wasn't an avid blogger at first, as a matter of face, I believe my very first blog was posted right here my blogger page, titled, "Life w/out a car." I've edited it but it's funny to think how far I've come as a person and as a blogger. I remember believing that blogging was nothing, then I went on to realize how it could help me as a writer. On Myspace, there was a blogging community where people considered themselves, "Myspace celebrities." Then I connected with a blogging site, SIN, and tried to blog for them but it lasted a few short months. Those days, I made internet and blogging friends and I've stayed in touch with at least five of those people.
I then moved on to another site call PNN and met some amazing ladies that I'm still in touch with. I moved on to write a few articles for a marketing and events promotion site called 704Events.com in Charlotte, NC. It was the first time I had my own media credentials. It was a short lived and great opportunity. Now, I can be found at Skirts and Scuffs where I write articles about NASCAR. Because of this site, I'm allowed to attend events and races with media credentials. I've interviewed drivers and my articles are more than just blogs.

I think back to my past and realize, I wasn't much into the whole computer thing in my earlier twenties.
For starters, I had an old and used computer that I hated to use and secondly when I did get a new one, I used it for school work. At twenty something before 25, I was in love with work. I interned at the courthouse and I was looking for a job in a law firm or in a law department of a corporate company. When I found that job I devoted myself 120% and I kept that momentum going until 2008. Between 2002 and 2005 I had found training at my gym and competing more exciting then the internet and what do you think I did with the fiction stories I was writing? I didn't share them, I kept them on disks, which I've since lost since computers went from floppy disks to CD's. Then in 2005, when I had my lap top, I had started to focus a lot more on my writing. I had even found a website (or two, three maybe four) to post my fiction stories. The first time I shared a fiction piece was on writing.com and lots of people read it. I wrote "Missing." A story of a young girl gone missing and it was a mystery; I led the characters through a series of events where they'd have to discuss what could have possibly happened to lead their friend to either runaway or worse, could've led to someone doing harm to her. She was eventually found at her friends house in Florida when she called home to confess to having runaway. She needed time alone and purposely left without notice to do something spontaneous and unexpected and out of character. She was also running away from a broken relationship.
I loved that story that I tried to edit in a creative writing class I took. That story went missing even though I had it saved to disk.

Everything comes and goes. Internet sites, bands, singers, music genres, shoe and clothing styles, hairdo's, athletes, records, cassettes, VHS, MTV. We all have our time when we hit our prime and then it all fades away and some disappear forever.
According to NBC Today's News from last week, Myspace is one of the ten brands that will not be around in 2012. After reading that, I went over to Myspace page that I've long neglected and tried to retrieve old blogs, but, their blogger page has changed and I'm stumped; I need to learn how to re-do it all and it's such a hassle. I'd love to re-post and re-read some old blogs I used to write. There was a time when my voice was at it's best, my writing may have needed work but that doesn't matter. In 2007, I was a different person going through different trials and tribulations. I wonder, should I find a way to keep it all or get rid of some of it? At this point, I worry I may not save all 365 blogs that I wrote on Myspace. Guess I'll have to find time to sit back and retrieve it all and make decisions, shouldn't be so hard, should it?