I feel like in the recent months I’ve been living my life with my head down. I’m only looking at my feet… watching them slowly shuffle down the sidewalk. I haven’t bothered to look up to see where I’m going. You know what’s really shitty about that? I’m not that kind of person. I’ve been a person that has a task, but looks way down the road… even standing on my tippy toes and using my hand as a sun visor so I can see further, just to make sure when I finish my task it will be beneficial to the big picture. I like to plan as far ahead as possible and ensure each step takes me in the right direction.

Its like when you’re driving down the freeway and see rain in the distance. You’re driving in perfectly sunny weather but you can see that a storm is a few miles off. You think to yourself, “am I going to be driving that far? Yes I am. I’ll be on this freeway for another 30 minutes and surely I’ll be in that weather.” You look at your back windows, make sure they’re rolled up, try to remember if you have a coat and umbrella in that trunk. Check the sunroof. Glance at your wipers. Everything seems in order here.

Stop and think about that. I’ll wait.

Are you still driving? Yes. Did it take any more effort to plan ahead? No. You’re still driving just as you would have done even if you didn’t look ahead. But now you’re that much more ready for the storm. Your task at hand is the same but you’ve made minor changes to ensure success in the future. But you have to know where you’re going to make those decisions.

Walking through life with our heads pointed at our toes is easy, and if you think about it, so is looking forward. But you need to look forward.

But knowing what direction you’re moving is different than knowing where your destination is. You can’t get to the moon by aiming “up”. And shooting for the sky will only disappoint you when you realize the “sky” is just a direction. You need a goal. It has to be ingrained in your head like GPS coordinates.

So lets bring this topic full circle and back to why I brought it up. I think I might have mentioned once or twice that… well, cancer sucks. And I mean that literally and figuratively.

Cancer sucks the life out of you. Happiness, energy, motivation, that feel-good feeling. All of them whither away. I stopped looking at my life on a macroscopic level and started looking at my days in microscopic form. How do I feel this hour? How am I feeling now? Am I happy? Do I need to throw up? How am I feeling now? I was like the fucking Verizon guy but instead of “can you hear me?” it was “how am I feeling?”.

The big picture blurred away and blended in with the horizon. In my mind it didn’t exist anymore. I only cared about the “now”.

Until… now (you gotta admit that’s pretty funny… irony at its best)

I can’t tell you why or how, but over the last few days I’ve started to look up again. I don’t know if its because I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with my treatment, getting out of the house more, the fact I’m starting to feel better in general, or something else I’m completely aloof to… but something has changed.

That’s why I’ve changed my mind. The statement “cancer sucks” isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to those who don’t let it win. Let’s refrain from defining what cancer does and say, “cancer can suck… but only if you let it”.

Yes there are days it will suck the energy out of you, it will suck the motivation out of you, and it will suck the happiness out of you. Cancer will even literally suck the life out of some people. People will lose the battle. But lets honor them by not looking at our toes but by looking forward to where we are headed.

So today, cancer sucks. But way out there, on the very edge of what I can see in my future, it does not suck. And that’s where I’m headed. So I need to make changes to my today so that tomorrow I’m closer to where I want to be, and not somewhere I hate.

Making that decision isn’t easy. Shallow words and empty promises have no roots. They won’t weather a storm, they won’t last and they’re a waste of your time. You have to really want it. You have to NEED it.

Have you ever been pulled under by a wave; twisted, turned and pushed into the dark of the ocean? I have… many, many times (I think it comes from being born and raised in California). Once the wave has passed there is a quick moment of silence… followed by panic. At this exact moment your mind locks on to a single goal… “air”. Nothing will stop you. Your goal has become the single most important goal ever defined in your life. The salt water you were so worried about getting in your eyes is now nothing. Your eyes are wide open, pupils dilated and searching for a small glimmer of light. The seaweed you avoided touching earlier is no longer a threat; you press your foot through it to find the solid ocean floor and press yourself up to the surface. Kicking your feet with every ounce of energy, your muscles burning from the lack of oxygen you struggle to the surface.

In the end, when we reach our goal… that first breath… it is the single most refreshing breath we’ve ever tasted. Every goal in our life needs to share that same dedication.

Whether it be happiness, success, health, fame, fortune or whatever else you’ve set your sights on… want it like you want to breathe. It cannot be an option.

Right now my goal is to be happy and healthy. I want to smile more often. I want to be outside and smell the fresh air. I want to eat right and live right and do whatever it takes so that 10, 20, 40 years from now I’m still happy and healthy. I want to be successful in my career, which means I need to get back to work (which will only happen when I’m healthy again). Every accomplished goal is a building block for the next goal.

So right now… uncross your feet and take your hand off your chin and think about your goals. Sift out the unimportant, egotistical nonsense and focus on the goals that matter. Take a deep breath and prepare for the next wave. I can’t tell you when its coming, but your goal isn’t an option.

Reach it.

It’s been a while, but in my defense… fuck you. Anyways. Post-holiday time is always hectic. It’s like you’re starting a new year and you have to first pick yourself up from the lazy holiday season. It’s a really poorly designed system. The holidays should be in the middle of the year, or like right after we get tax returns. That way when the government coughs up a bunch of cash back to us slaves, we can inject it right back into the economy… instead of trying to save it (which we don’t) and end up being broke by holiday season.

So yesterday was my daughters birthday party; good times. But because we have some new people working on my shift which I’m still training (and aren’t ready to work alone yet) my work schedule has been fucked up. I have to work 7 days straight and I didn’t even get the day off for her party. So I had to come home from work, help finish everything for the party, take a few hour nap and wake up and act all happy. Then after everyone left I tried to get some shut eye… a whopping hour and a half before work. Needless to say I was totally tired as a mudda fucka and started hallucinating on my drive home!

Couple of things I plan on doing this year: Chad and I are still discussing our game, we’ve even created a svn repository and sorta tinkering. Well it’s mainly Chad tinkering and me thinkering. I haven’t actually contributed to the code yet, but I did upgrade my Visual Studio installation in preparation for it! From what I can tell we’re going to make Zinger into a stand alone game, or maybe not… we don’t know yet but the first step is the game engine anyway.

I also started using my Google Calender; such an epic tool. I have so many things going on at any given time that I lose track of them so easily. I made a promise to myself to start utilizing it. WHRY?! Dude the service is free and it iterates into my phone perfectly… why wouldn’t I?

Since GATM went down I find myself playing games more often… love it! But my developer side is hungry. Luckily I’ve found a friend in Waxx and the Mine-Dog community. We’ve been working together a lot more lately and I’ve been able to tinker with their website and all that fun stuff. Will be interesting to see what we can manage in 2009.

Speaking of which, in 2009 I’ll be aiming to keep my blog more frequently updated, and add a Twitter thingymajiggy. I’ll probably start that right after I finish this blog post. DONE!

Let’s see, I think that about sums up this post. OH! One last thing, I think I want to take a film class of sorts. Possibly a filming techniques and editing course. I’ve always wanted to make machinima but lacked the video editing ability. I downloaded a demo for Sony Vegas once and I felt like a fag in a titty bar.