An open letter to Northern State University, the City of Aberdeen, the SDWCA and the South Dakota Wrestling Community

There are no selection show Sundays. There are no office pools on Cody Pack's chances at the Championships. Wrestling is difficult arduous sport from the time you pick up a headgear to the day you hang it up. There is little glory. Stands are usually empty with just the cheering of families and a few friends. Lessons are learned with your face in the mat or counting the lights. I often found the center of the mat was the greatest solitude I could find. The quiet muffle of the crowd making it through my headgear to my ears. A zen quality of thinking of your next two or three moves and the simultaneous reaction of the body putting those into action while processing what an opponent is currently doing. The delirious feeling of giving it your all, and sometimes your arm not being raised despite all your effort. It is living in the moment while thinking of the future and forgetting the past.

In recent years, the sport has taken a bashing, sometimes even by me. It has gotten better in aspects that shouldn't be part of the sport but have been integral to it's past and the old school ways of thinking concerning nutrition. It has fought it's way back from extinction from an Olympic Committee that would rather put more obscure sports in action than a rich history of tradition.
In our own microcosm of the world the wrestling community has been setback by the recent decision of Northern State University to halt the program for "study". I don't believe anyone is buying that. However, the quick reaction for consideration of the SDWCA is to cancel the State Youth Tournament in Aberdeen, SD next year. The tournament was a request by the NSU wrestling to have as a fundraiser for it's scholarships. Think about that! A university reached out to a youth program in order to save it's program. Smartly(can't remember if that's a word, but I wrestled.), the SDWCA agreed to do that in order to protect the sport it nurtures in youth across our State. What a great idea! Unfortunately the unfortunate happened, the NSU program was put on the chopping block. At least it got a courtesy excuse, unlike University of Nebraska-Omaha which was just summarily executed alongside it's football program. UNO had a very successful program, so the NSU excuse of 2 bad years doesn't hold much weight with me either.

Now, I have laid the ground work of the problem. I can see why the SDWCA is thinking about the decision to remove the tournament from Aberdeen. On the surface this looks like a reasonable request. However, wrestlers and their communities are tougher than that. We can not simply take our headgears and go home when things get tough. If the University is serious about a "courtesy study" then a committee of concerned wrestling parties should be formed. Frame the beliefs that wrestling deserves to be part of the University still. A solution should be found. If this wrestling team is that important then we should be looking to help still run this tournament in Aberdeen and as a complete community raise funds to help with scholarships to maintain the continuation of the program. Not just NSU, but all the colleges in the state maintain a program. I do not know where all the funds go for all the clubs, but combined we should be able to create some sort of scholarships for our South Dakota Wrestlers to attend university in pursuit of knowledge and to compete. This could help us retain the best of our wrestling talent instead of them leaving the state to represent other colleges. Should the tournament be held in Aberdeen and NSU fails to reinstate the program then funds raised should be disseminated in a fashion that benefits the sport as a whole in the state.

Facebook posts and petitions are nice, but funding is funding. Coaches in every sport and at all levels of education know this to be true. To protect this sport that so many of us grew up. Now we are passing on to our children, because we know it to be one of the purest sports out there. No ball, no pads, we all weigh the same(in theory anyways), just skill, desire, determination and work. We must truly combine the talents we all forged through wrestling and have taken into our adult lives and come up with a better solution than "let's just move the tournament". NSU may be the first shot fired, there are more Universities and more programs at stake. If we retreat in the face of this adversity, then every college knows that we are not just measuring our support with the number of facebook likes and twitter reposts. True support is measured in dollars whether through funding or butts in the seats. A hard truth, brutal but true. Wrestling is very much like life, you reap what you sow. The wrestling community cannot afford to let another program shutdown with barely a fight. Simply moving the tournament is barely a fight and will sow the thought process that this is alright. Supporting the sport needs to happen with calm, reason, and  viable solutions.

(I decided to use this blog for an editorial opinion piece, which is really not it's purpose per se. It is to work on my writing ability, so I kind of hit the objective. Also, I'm not a narcissist so I can't always write about myself. )

Life is full of coincidences. We all have them, some insignificant and some seemingly meaningful. These events are just occurrences to which we add our own stories. Still, what is life without a good story now and then? Pretty boring. We often look to our past to for signs of what we should do in the now. As long as we don't dwell on it and allow ourselves to move forward there is nothing wrong with that.
This last week my little girl turned 9 years old. It's pretty incredible to think in reality it was so long ago. Yet it seemed like yesterday. I realize this is cliché and everyone with kids says the same thing. There is a reason for that. It's true, these years fly by. The birth of any child is so embellished in your mind that it is so easy to pull up that memory because of it's intensity. So, yes, it seems like yesterday.
About 6 months prior to the birth of my daughter my dad passed away, and my grandmother passed away 3 months after him. It was a tough time to say the least. Stories are always thrown out between relatives at times like this where we remember some of the smart or dumb things the deceased did. My Dad was nowhere near immune to these types of stories. Dad had a workshop in my hometown, he was pretty good at fixing things, working on cars, etc.. It was full of part time projects he would work on after his day at the plant or on the weekends. His mechanical intuitiveness was always something I marveled at. His workshop was full of all the tools kids aren't supposed to touch today. Band saws, table saws, welding equipment, cutting tools, you name it. My brothers and I would screw around and try to play tag with welding masks on, inside this shop with all the machinery. Real safe stuff like that. Mostly, we wanted to learn how to use the equipment and maybe get to do something cool. I was 4 or 5 years old. I didn't get to do anything that required metal revolving teeth and electricity.
We also stored things inside the shop. In particular we had a bin of mostly sports equipment and some toys. It was full of bats, rackets,  and various balls. I think we kept it there so we would have some other things to do outside the shop when we were hanging out and getting under foot.
Now, as most people know Dad had a pretty good drinking problem and more than once I'm sure he drank beer(I believe it was the 70's so Olympia or PBR was the brand of choice at the time) while working at his shop. In one very good instance he was painting something yellow. Well, he either overshot his target or aimed on purpose, he was known to do stuff like that in his alcohol driven jerkiness. Long story short, he painted the bin full of our toys. The end result was a bunch of sporting equipment painted half yellow. The other half was facing down or away from the spray and retained their original colors. We held on to many of these items for years, and always produced the story when asked why our tennis racket was half yellow. We thought it was funny after a while (That's called a coping mechanism)
Now we shoot back up to nine years ago and my daughter was being born. It hurt like hell that Dad would never see his granddaughter. Despite all of our differences and arguments, I loved him very much, even in his various states of being towards the end of his life. So, even in that joyous time, there was some sadness leading up to Lilly's birth for me. I won't bore you with the details of her actual birth. A few highlights: it was a back-birth, forceps were used, at one point my wife caught me watching Seinfeld (The English Patient episode), Apollo Ohno won another gold(USA! USA! USA!)and we had one of the best old school nurses to ever walk the halls of Sioux Valley Hospital(Karen you will always be a legend and will be missed! She always remembered Lilly whenever we saw her after that!) It all ended around 3ish in the morning, and we had acquired our beautiful baby girl.

The next morning I walked down to get a coffee from the stand in the cafeteria. I ordered the usual mocha, grabbed a newspaper and handed the lady my ten and waited for my change. She handed me whatever the change was and as I was about to put it in my pocket, I glanced down in my palm. Nestled among the coins was a dime, it was half yellow  and the other side was the normal silver. I don't believe in much as far as a higher entity, but I took this as a good sign of things to come and maybe the old man had seen his grand daughter arrive in this world. Maybe....maybe not. I don't know if there is some sort of oxidization or science to explain why one half of the dime was yellow and the other was normal. I just know this is the only time I had ever seen, or have seen a dime like this. In reality as long as it means something to me, that is all that matters.I've held on to that dime for all these years. I never put it anywhere safe. It never gets spent. It has made it through 3 moves, including this last one as I'll explain in a minute. I let the dime have it's own journey just like the rest of us, and it always shows up so it won't be left behind.

Close to Now: Lilly just turned 9 last Thursday(as I have already mentioned). On Saturday I went back to Chamberlain to move some more of our stuff in a u-haul. As I was cleaning up and getting ready to leave I looked down on the floor of our bedroom and that half yellow dime was sitting there near a corner. I scooped it up and put it in my pocket. The drive from Chamberlain to Sioux Falls is a long one, if you've ever made it you know what I am talking about. It's a road that stretches as far as you allow your mind to let it, an endless landscape of snow, dirt and brown dead prairie. It was a nice time for reflecting on the coincidences of spray painted toys, the loss of my Dad, the birth of my daughter, growing up in South Dakota and the people(and things) I shared that journey with at the time and where I am going. I'd say that's worth a dime.

Writing is not hard. Not writing is hard. The past couple weeks have been doozies. It's been a mixture of moving, wrestling tournaments, getting the house ready for shows, preparing the kids, getting ready to move a business, a bout of good ole gout, changing insurance carriers twice, kids changing schools, starting a new position and just plain life. In all of that the goals have been hard to keep. Running on a gouty toe? Not fun, not even a little bit. I still did it on one occasion as I tackled what I assume is one of the steepest hills I think I have ever tried to run up in my life. I was in the army in North Carolina, so I think there have been comparable, although I was 18 and weighed 165 pounds at the time. Writing has been sporadic as well, a couple days during the weekend that a page didn't get put down as we were out of town and we were focusing on the kids having a nice time before the final move.Still in the back of my head I was composing and working some things out in between swimming pools, Discovery Centers, acute care, and wrestling matches. The Acute Care was for the toe again, everybody else in the family is fine. Nobody drowned or was hurt in a wrestling match. When you have so much going on that takes you away from your other goals it is very easy to fall back and listen to the time wasters in your head. Don't do it. Get back on those goals as soon as you can. Of course this is said by the guy who has been working on this specific blog for a couple weeks and is rewriting it in hopes of salvaging it.

Aging can be tough. It is the fighting of the midlife crises, all the goals, little to gigantic, that slipped through with the erosion of personal time and perceived responsibilities. The whole figuring out if you wasted the first 30-40 years or not(For the record, I don't think I did. i just didn't use them to maximum effect). The big deal is what do you do with the next 40? I often wonder at what point our internal mechanisms lock up the autopilot and we just say "I'm cruising for the exit signs! I can make it from here!" I was just about there in my own head, but there was a tingle in the back of it that said, "I'm not going to let you do this to us!" And there came the lack of satisfaction in the way I was handling life from family to career. Because in my head(I don't say heart, that's just an organ for pumping blood.)I knew I could do more, but at what I want to do. That's what is important.
I'm sure a lot of people don't feel they can change. That they have the weight of the world on their shoulders and there is no way out, but 65 years old and a social security check. My dad lived that way, it was a harsh self-torture of booze and hopelessness. Not recommended.

 There are a lot people who know how lucky they are living their dreams. True story: not all dreams are the same. Don't let anyone talk you out of your own. Every dream if pursued with passion, intent, and purpose can be achieved. It's as simple as that. The people that do that are the people that inspire me. Here's a tidbit, those people didn't "get lucky" they made those things happen for themselves by directing their focus and energy into making those things happen.

I recently posted a meme on my facebook wall. This should be news as I detest memes for the most part, I usually find them vague and too much fluff to hide behind. Sometimes I think people use them as shields and "cyberwalls" as we fakebook through to the next post about what we are having for a noon meal. This meme spoke to me, mostly because it was a said by one of my favorite people in the entertainment industry. The quote goes like this: "No such thing as spare time. No such thing as free time. No such thing as down time. All you got is life time. Go." The man who said this is Henry Rollins. He has been around for decades in music or spoken word. If you've ever followed his music or his poetry or his interviews, that guy believes it. Intensity doesn't even begin to cover his demeanor and go at it attitude. I hadn't thought about him in a while and when I saw that meme. It just blew me away. It's entirely true. If I truly live in the present and try to make sure I am moving forward and building the life I desire. I don't have a second to spare. If I am thinking, better be thinking about improving myself. Every second on the couch not spent with my kids is another second spent manufacturing my own Cat's in the Cradle. Every second you read this blog is another second you don't spend with your wife, your family, your friends, your goals. Tricky, for me, because of course I want you to be reading this blog. Hopefully, you are using it to help yourself, or at the very least discredit what I am doing under your breath from the personal discomfort I am causing you. The goal is to use every moment to fulfill the life you wish to create. There are no wrong answers of course, it's all individualistic. If at the end of the day I really threw 100% of myself at every situation, then I can't be unhappy with the result. I did all I could. However, if I hold back, if I tell myself "I can't" or "I didn't" or "That wouldn't work", then I've self-sabotaged my own goals. Everyone knows when they do this, admitting it is another story. If I do that, why set out to do anything at all. Use your life time wisely. Tricky thing is you spend some of that life time every second.  No refunds.

The hectic panic of trying to strive through life at a 100% is challenging to say the least. You set goals, you manage your kids, your job, your relationships. You still have to find time for your dreams in there somehow. There is interesting viewpoints on living at 100% from all facets of life. Slow down, enjoy life or life's too short, you got to keep on moving! If that is not clear enough: Part of life wants you to sit with a Corona on a beach, part of life wants you to be Bud Light and play ping pong against Arnold Schwarzenegger! The good news is either way gets you a beer in the end. Goal accomplished! Do you see where these mindsets can butt heads pretty quickly in my internal monologues? At the suggestion of one of my friends, I started reading a book to help me learn to try and not cram so much writing into one day with instant expectations that I will publish after a year, as well as it takes time to craft a book/story/manuscript. (Unless you're Stephen King. He has made some sort of deal with something Unholy and wakes up with a manuscript under his pillow every 3 months. That's strictly my opinion with no real proof of Mr. King's unholy deals.). To really slow it down, rather than just stream words onto a page and hope it sticks. The different methods various writers use to arrive at the end of their stories. All are varied as snowflakes. There is no one way to do it. I guess I kind of knew that. Internally I am taking it that the difference between a decent writer, a good writer, and a phenomenal writer is the extra time taken on working on their books. In short the book is telling me to find my own time to write and how to write. The most interesting part of the book is to do an experiment where I take an average day and put all the things into various time slots. Then see how that scheduled day fills up. This exercise would work for anybody really. If done mentally, that schedule fills up pretty fast for any of us. Work, kids, kids' activities, friends, family-time, Spouse-time(or significant other for you non-committal types), hobbies, exercise and of course personal dreams. That's a lot. It's easy to see why so many dreams or even hobbies fall to the wayside. I also see why parents try to get their kids to enjoy the same hobbies and activities. Which there is nothing wrong with that in the least. Schedule-wise if we all enjoy the same activities, it frees up a lot of other time and I think we bond better as people.

Living in the 100% doesn't mean you have to take every thing that is thrown at you and say "yes". It means accepting the things you want to do and putting all of your effort into them. If you choose to do it, do it. It's O.K. not to want to do everything. It's giving your all to the things you have CHOSEN to do. If you are going to be in a relationship with someone, be in that relationship. Schedule time for that relationship and be present in it. My wife and I figured out the other day(well, we probably always noticed it) that she'll sit in her chair and I on the couch when we have our At-Home-Date-Nights and watch our DVR'ed shows(The Blacklist, Modern Family and Parenthood should always be part of your 100%). Mostly this puts a nice side table between us that we each use for snacks and beverages. Is that 100%? How dumb is that? The whole time past the age of 12 I wished there would be a hot girl sitting next to me. Now, I have one right in the house, and we sit in two different spots because we need a place to put the cheese and crackers. Silly. The new rule is we sit next to each other, and of course the dog will not leave us alone. So, she sits with us as well, like our own chaperone, obviously she is just trying to get her paws on the snacks. There isn't anything wrong with some new rules to break up habits we fall into as people. Sometimes spontaneity needs a kick in the pants with some ground rules.

How did this come to be an issue for me? Last night we(once again "We" means my wife and I) started brainstorming all the things we wanted to do once our family relocation was complete. Eat better, drop a bunch of the processed foods, go on family walks, date nights out, etc, etc. That list can build pretty quickly. I understand we didn't need to do all those things and it was just brainstorming. In my head though, it was conflicting with the book I was reading about limiting your commitments in order to make time for writing. Not finding time, MAKING time. A big difference when you think about it. I would say I started to shut down about it after a bit. I was seeing my dream being pushed to the wayside. My internal daily planner was filling up rather quickly and I found I didn't want to suggest anything because my goal is to write, but my family, my wife all take the 100% as well, because without them what is the point anyways? This doesn't mean I don't want any part of those ideas. It just was a little overwhelming to think of all that being implemented, when I have suppressed a personal dream of my own for so long.

Instead of shutting down, I should have kept going and then offered the solution I had been reading about. We should have mocked up the previously mentioned personal schedule with all the items we absolutely want/need to do. Then insert the new ideas/tasks/dreams in to the same schedule, in short find a place and time for them. I'm not usually a draw-out-a-plan-guy-for-my-personal-life, but I'm getting there(I don't think I shocked anybody with that bit of information). However, I like the idea of actually penciling in what a day looks like. It's not set in stone, but it can show us what we do or do not have time to accomplish. Maybe, list things as being part of the 100%, generally things you can not do with out: family, work, a goal. The insert the ideas we may not be sure about, but it's always something we have wanted to try. Stressing to make sure we have the tasks in our schedule that we normally do no matter what. For instance personally, I always like to have some screw around time, especially as a person who likes stories. So, yes T.V., music, and reading are important to me, as they do lend inspiration. It's also always nice to sit and think for a half hour about nothing and everything(I believe people call this meditation, but I'm not that deep). I need to put those in a timeframe and when I would normally do them. After all that is done look for actual win-win situations that actually may free up time: Go for a walk with family, maybe that could count as exercise as well for the day. Get to exercise and get to spend time with family. Win-win.  T.V. time can be part of Stay-at-Home Date-Night. It's all good. After it's all done and penciled in look at it together. Can we scale it back? Or do we see we have plenty of time on other days to accomplish/do things left on our brainstorming list?

I find that everything we really want to do can fit into a schedule with my family. As long as we talk it out and communicate and work towards our win-win solutions.  Everybody loves puzzles and making things fit.We are on the same team, working on the same schedule balancing puzzle. It's not such a bad idea to put that 100% effort into the puzzle that constitutes our daily life.

(Once again. I am not a life coach, what may work for my family may not work for some. If you feel you need a life coach please get one. I am for hire. Currently my advice is free, mostly because I haven't found anyone willing to pay me for it yet. I would also like to thank everybody that supported this blog by reading and sharing it. Between this site and the first one around 2000 people have visited it, no confirmation for sure if they actually read it. Anyways I feel that is a win-win and makes me feel pretty good about my efforts as well as gives me lots of practice writing non-fiction. I also apologize if Mr. King or Mr. Schwarzenegger are offended in any way. I would love to play ping pong with the Governator. I also would love to have as many published works and movies as Mr. King, except for Graveyard Shift. I still want my money $4 back from that awful movie. Thank you!)

Parenting 100% (You knew it had to happen)

Parenting at 100%. That is a sentence that scares the heck out of me. It is introspective, because I am constantly thinking to myself: Am I doing this as well as I can? It is external, because I am often thinking: Do people think I am parenting as well as I can? I shouldn't be worried about the external. People will never tell you that you are a bad parent, just their friends. My story is it is to hide some insecurities about their own parenting or elevate themselves. We all want to be good parents. Parenting is not a contest, though I think for many people it has become one. I see the memes on facebook all the time. If you love your kids share this meme. Problem solved. Modern society has made it so easy for us all to look like good parents. In fact(which this isn't a fact at all) I believe that someday if you don't share those memes it will be fed to some sort of Orwellian computer ran by Child Protective Services. 100% parenting is not helicopter parenting, it is about being in the present, not consistently inserting yourself into the present in order for my child to succeed at another's expense (pretty difficult to do in sports, but that is another blog for another time).

 Parenting in the present is tough, so much fights for our time and resources. When you just want to relax after work and not....do....anything. It's your time right? Oh....so.....wrong. I chose to have these children. I didn't have to. We could have skipped our way through life with not a care in the world. I chose it. My wife chose it. In fact if you are reading this rather than reading your child a book or going outside with them. I would prefer you stop reading this and go do that. You can always come back to this when you are pretending that you are working tomorrow. (That's a joke. Your boss will definitely let you go if you think reading this specific blog is more important than taking the hourly reading at the Nuclear Power Plant or watching the radar at the airport.)
I put out a lot of effort with my children, especially my 7 year old son. The effort for him is mostly all physical, and I barely can keep up with him. He volunteers me to be "All times quarterback" with him and all the neighbor kids. If you have ever worked a 10 or 12 hour day on your feet and come home to a kid happy to see you, but then wants you to do some running and throwing. It can be a monumental effort. It also should be noted, he is the only person to wish I would be his quarterback. So,I should be flattered and want to do this every time he asks. He also thinks Manning is a terrible QB and pulls up his college records as some sort of proof. I don't argue anymore, I just nod my head. He is constantly checking the interwebbery for any sort of proof to back up his teams and players as the best. I have no idea where he gets that from. OK. I have a small idea. (The key here is my son somehow sees me as better QB than Peyton Manning, and that's what is important. I have gone through painful effort to bring that to light in this blog.) If you haven't noticed he is ALL boy.

My 9 year daughter is a little more difficult. She has the creative side of my wife and I, and maybe a wee bit of stubbornness. She likes dancing, art, writing and reading. She also likes the sensory overload of television, ipads, computers and whatever else blinks. It has become something of a struggle to get her to go do something constructive. She has a great and quirky mind that is wonderful to watch when she is being creative or coming up with some of her entrepreneurial ideas. Sometimes she is very focused on her tasks and maybe directs a little too much.  She is assertive, something I think she'll need in life, as I see too many people that are not. She just need to learn a little of the cooperation and coaxing different situations into win-win. She's 9(going on 36), so that is something she will develop over time. She reads herself to sleep at night and it isn't very often we don't wake her up in the morning surrounded by dozens of book on her bed. If you haven't noticed she is ALL girl.

In order to achieve some 100% parenting with these two. We have started doing little weekly goals with them, as well as a family night where we establish the goals and play some games. Last week our family goal was just to be a little nicer to each other. This went well, and I think the kids had minimum fighting and arguing. If either of them were mean to the other they would have to buy the victim a small toy, trinket, candy or gum. I think he only owes her 3 little items.

Personal goals went well for the boy. He said he would be nice to the dog. This doesn't seem like it would be hard for most kids, but a lot of kids have littler or older brothers to practice double leg takedowns and half nelsons on. Trying to perform an inside cradle on a black lab will more than likely get you bit. He did a great job, and the dog paid more attention to him than ever, even laying with her head on him. His goal for the week is to do 12 pushups, 12 sit ups, 50 jumping jacks(down from the 100 he originally threw out there)and run a mile every day, except a couple where he would not have the time to do it. Although he offered to just run in place for 20 minutes. I agreed to do those with him.(That's why I convinced him to do 50 jumping jacks. I'm still a little too floppy to do 100 and retain my self esteem).

My daughter's goal went about nowhere last week. She wanted to make something new on the rubber band loom that she had never done before. She watched youtube videos, maybe even started a little. I admit the rubberband loom perplexes me as much as Minecraft. In the end she gave up even when I prodded her to keep trying. So, I'm not sure if she is on board with the whole goal setting yet. Though she agreed to go two nights this week without electronics of any kind. I agreed to do that with her as well. I will maintain my phone, other than that we'll be cut off from the world for a couple nights this week. I'm also hoping she will do the extra exercise with her brother and I.

In all of these goals we are trying to keep open communication with the two of them. Really get answers about their days and if anything is bothering them. The goals should take effort, but should be achievable for them. This hopefully will make them better goal setters and achievers as they progress, or they could end up hating goals. It's a fine line.

We(when I say we, I am talking about my wife and I, I am not implying the readers of this article are part of we. If you are inserting yourself as part of said "We", well then I guess my work is done here. I'm also using the term "article" pretty loosely here.) know we can't be perfect parents, but I also know we can always do more. There are plenty of times in the past I'm sure I should have went outside with the kids, versus finishing watching the last 10 minutes of a Simpsons episode I already had seen before. Now, I try to live in the present with them, which is in my goals. If I am not doing anything that is part of my other goals, I respond quickly either to help them or to give them a reason they may have to wait until one of us can help them. Parenting 100% is by no means meant for perfection, it is giving it everything I have, and knowing we did do the very best we could, rather than sharing a meme as a bleak offering to the facebook gods and soothe my own insecurities. Of course we love our kids, but what are we doing about it? Have a nice week!

(Small disclaimer: I am not a certified child development specialist, or a specialist in anything really. Most times I am glad we get up and get these kids to school on time with very little frustration. These are my own observations, tips, tricks, and goals. If you want to use them and they don't work, remember I don't have any money so don't come blaming me. (You also may notice I love parentheses, I am well aware.) If you think your child needs real help and professional therapy, please do so.)

I think I need to back pedal a little bit. Not in a bad way. I need to explain what this whole 100% thing is about. It's not about running off and having these amazing adventures that have me hang gliding off of cliffs in the Caribbean. People who do that are great, but my question is did you love your family with all your heart and action? Did you succeed in loving yourself and who you are? If not why were you doing something so stupid without accomplishing something far greater. If so great, then jump off the cliff! It's about a life of actually giving a 100% into everything I want to do, especially if those things are what I choose to do. It's about loving my wife and family 100% and not going through the motions some mornings or night or whenever. It's about being in the present with those people when I am with them. It's about not waiting until the commercials to do something for a loved one. It's about attempting to actualize my own dreams and launch a career that I want, not the one that everyone else thinks I should have. It's about the little things that can be taken care of just by getting up and doing them rather than just talking about them or complaining to the person that will listen. 100% means you are giving it all you can, it does not mean that you will be instantly successful. Not everybody's 100% is the same, I would say Warren Buffet's 100% is a  little higher in the field of economics and investment than mine. Play the game the best you can and if you look and see that you did everything you could and it didn't work out, then I don't think you can hang your head on that. It is all 100% application to get a desired result whether it's love, kids, work, or self. The point is you choose to do something you choose to do it 100%, or don't do it and explain why, or even remove yourself from that situation when neither your heart nor your head are in it. The best results are always when you have given 100% and achieved a win-win!

Dreams and thoughts happen in your head, they do not conjure themselves into the real world without a call to action by yourself. If there is no call to action then your dreams will remain in your head. Ask anyone I know what my dream used to be, it would be that I wanted a restaurant. Any day of the week I wanted a restaurant. I get to call the shots, I'd get to design it top to bottom, blah blah blah blah. Now ask me how much thought I put into action. I've spend most of my life living the boss' dream. I have no money. I didn't know anyone with money. I didn't want investors because then it wouldn't be my restaurant. All the stories I ran in order to prevent myself from buying into a conjured goal I never wanted. I chose that line of thinking. I chose not to try and fulfill what I perceived as a dream at the time. Two things good came out of the fact I don't own restaurant. The first is I don't own a restaurant and the 2nd is I don't own a restaurant. My mind turned that into a form of ambition and would be a measure of my success. Instead of really looking at it and saying "You don't even want this dream." Perhaps I did at one time, and I might again in the future. When I'm ready for that and I want to do it, I will and I will put 100% behind the action of bringing it to fruition. The worst thing about having this kind of dead-end Dream, I never moved past it to really see the Dream I wanted. I would set no other goals, because I had told everybody else this is what I wanted. In hindsight it might be actually the only time not putting 100% into something produced an inadvertent win-win. I didn't end up with a restaurant I didn't want to own, which is a win! And I didn't drag anyone else along for the ride of a dead-end Dream! A win for them, though they'll never know it!

Setting goals is probably second nature to people. I have set goals. Not often and had really no plan behind the goal, other than I am going to do it. I'm sure many people that read this might think I am just plain weird. How in all these years could I possibly never set any real goals? I really just back-burnered any goals I set for work and just took those work-oriented goals as my own. Goals you don't set for yourself are very rarely successful in my opinion. Even if they are, they don't have any real meaning. Those were someone else's goals I just succeeded at. That's pretty joyless. In order to achieve anything in this life it's imperative to set a goal that I want, and I'm pretty sure most people could agree with that line of thinking. However, if the work is your goal and you are doing the goals because of work, then that would play out in your favor.

Not giving 100% robs a lot of things from a lot of people. If I don't give your family 100% emotionally it robs them of truly getting to know someone they love and vice versa. If I don't give a 100% in taking care of my health, it robs me of the energy I need to achieve my goals! If I don't choose a career I want to give a 100% to, it robs the employer or myself, and my family of a lot. If I don't give a 100% to anything I choose to do it hurts someone or myself.
I've done all of those things. it's not something you want to stand up in a room full of people and throw out there as an ice-breaker.

Now, this might seem rather bleak than a victory after running down those paragraphs. I will turn the conversation towards good news! I have been setting goal after goal, and with great success! My wife and I have a weekly goal chat, as well as work on our relationship through a specific set of goals. I am writing 1 page(or more) a day in one shape or another. We are helping our kids set small goals and getting them started on making that a part of their lives so they can make it a habit. I am running 1 mile a day. It's not much but when you see 240 pounds thundering at you, it's truly a sight to behold! I am not stating these goals to brag. I am calling myself to action. The consequence of failing at any of these goals means I have to answer people to asking me and either answering honsestly or flat out lying. Living at 100% doesn't necessarily include lying, except for telling people that you haven't planned them a surprise party when you have. I love tips, tricks and any other little tidbits you may have personally to help me out, and in turn I agree to keep writing these blogs as payment. I choose to do this, it did not choose me. Living 100% is not easy, and I don't know if I'll ever TRULY achieve it in an existential sense, but it's good to have goals.

(Some quick housekeeping:Yes I am moving the blog from simplesite.com over to BlogSpot.com. It is an infinitely better blog site and instead of lamenting and trying to force the issue on the other site, this one has a lot more versatility. I choose to move it! I will cut and paste and move all previous blogs over to this site and let the other one go bye-bye. Moving the blogs over is one of the reason I rehashed the theory behind living 100%. Another sidenote, I infinitely love the restaurant business and everything it entails. The people are some of the best friends I will ever have. Anyone opening a restaurant has my support. I just don't want one of my own or to work directly in the managing operations of one.)