Saturday, July 23, 2011

Inspiring People Since 1988

Inspiration. We all have it. At times we lose it. Other times we have more than we need.

Being able to control it though, maybe one of the toughest things in the world. I've seen the brightest days and I've seen the darkest. Nothing makes me want to create the best days of my life like from experiencing the worst.

When I'm at the worst days, it feels like nothing is ever going to go my way and I question, "Is this how my life is going to play out?"

But when I have those amazing days, it feels like I can't be stopped. I mean, on the top of the world kind of stuff, where everything seems to be able to just click.

I'm still only 23 and still a young'n with a lot to learn but this is just a tad bit of what I've learned from all the craziness I call life.

Inspiration is on my mind because, I'm sitting here. Getting denied by job after job. Living in a town that almost the only thing to do is drink on the weekends. (and drinking is getting real old for me... and my liver!)

I had a plan. After I returned to the states. It wasn't a solid plan but at least I had a reasonable sounds one. As I've learned in life... (This may be why I dislike planning) plans never work out like you think they do.

I've taken a lot of time to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my life. Whether it be more of a creative path way or a path of helping people. Somehow I'd want to mix both paths at the moment but jobs and opportunities are quite slim at the moment. (and let's be honest, no one wants to hire a Business Administration degree graduate... what do I do with that major anyways! ha)

I've been trying to stay on top of my creative side by reading a lot of books, fiction and non-fiction. Trying to keep up on my writing, creating a movie about my trip to Taiwan, painting and trying to learn how to play this 6-string of mine.

Helping people. If I could. I wish I could start a career out of that. But I've know people that are in that line of work and it gets depressing. Depressing to see how many people out there have it 10x worse. May it be their fault or not, the struggle is out there.

One of my favorites. Jacque Fresco states: "There is no purpose in life"
To me.. Instead of getting sad. This gives me inspiration to accomplish things because knowing that I have no purpose in this life makes me understand that I need to create and take what I want out it.

BUT...

I have troubles doing this. I have troubles knowing where and what path to take in life. I have troubles knowing whether or not to keep fighting or to give up and let go. Having such a structured path for the past 18 years of my life. To me it's a littleno it's really frightening to have such an open future. The ability to do anything. (finding the opportunity would be the hard part but nevertheless...) Region, demographic, climate, culture, etc... It's just a tad bit scary because... What way do I want to go? (I mean.. they all sound awesome.)

Within the past year, I learned about a little phrase called, "Blessing in Disguise." Which to me is a little better than what I always say. "Look on the bright side or it could be worse." (One of my best friends hated me when I use to tell her that.) But in all actuality, I'm blessed with all this free time to be able to sit down and figure out my shit. Spend time learning the things that I've always wanted to and to dedicate time to things that inspire me everyday. To take time and research what type of activities and gyms/clubs are in the areas of jobs that I'm applying too. Most of being able to spend time with all my friends.. even if I have to drive a couple hours to go see them every weekend.

The biggest inspiration in my life would be my best friend. Even if he isn't here with me on this giant rock of a planet we call Earth. He's still one of the most influential people in my life. Learning that life is short. There's no time for bullshit and worrying about the small shit. It's hard to reflect sometimes because it still seems surreal that it's been over 3 years.

The real question would be. What inspires you to do your best everyday. I think sometimes we forget to remember what inspires us to love this thing we call "life". It's always good to get back and remember so that we can keep living the dream. You've heard a couple of mine, and I hope you take time to think of the things that inspire you...(and/or thank the people that inspire you.)

Wish the best for you all

Cheerio,

Alastar Swift


PS:
he said... "It's not that I'm mad, It's I'm disappointed,"
It's like you just up and disappeared, never shedding a tear.
Leaving me with this empty feeling,
Along with a busy tone which would always appear.

"Hopefully this is the right choice," he said. 
Cause it's never easy...
To be so right

NLM - 7/22
 

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Book Report!

It's been... I don't know, maybe 11 months since I've done a book report. I was actually hoping to say like 11 years, but then I remembered my senior capstone class of college required me do a book report on War Games. And if you knew about that class, I learned just about everything I need to be a successful business man. (or so they say). Surprisingly, this book report is going to cover a little known series written by, Stieg Larsson, which I read solely for leisure purposes. There are only a select few books I've ever read for those purposes, Harry Potter series, blink, and the Alchemist. (Great books I might add)

Before I get started, one of my biggest pet-peeves is when published books (be it a college text books or a novel) contains spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. Now I do understand that I am no where being perfect in the whole writing department as my spelling and grammar have always been horrid but I'm just disappointed in seeing it in places where I have to pay money. This novel series only had a couple mistakes, which were just minor spelling mistakes. [Challenge: Can you find them?]

I highly recommend these novels to anyone that enjoys reading fictional novels because this was a spectacular read. I don't want to ruin it because I would love if everyone had time to enjoy a little light reading with it and I had no knowledge of what this series contained when I first started. I first started off buying this little thick packet of pages with a green cover that contained the orange letters, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Then I blasted off into this surreal story that plops down in the snowy hills of Sweden. Honestly, this had me captivated the entire time. My imagination led me to create this entire story in my own mind and every single chapter just brought more elements to this create this "movie" in my head. The author does a great job of moving the story in the beginning even if the first 100 or so pages are quite boring. [But trust me, it's totally worth fighting through them!] 


By the end of the first book, I was blown away. It had me just dying to figure out what happened next. It was like that itch where you really couldn't do anything else without thinking, "Aaah I want to know what happens next!" So I try the impossible. I try to find the next two books in the middle of Taiwan. Where the English book section in book stores are way in the back and have the smallest shelf space. It took me a couple tries (pretty epic adventures I may add) but I finally did find both of them. I usually did a lot of the reading in the mornings as no one really woke up in the dorms until 11 am (early) through 1 or 2 pm. So I usually read for a couple hours until everyone woke up and then went to grab food together.

I pretty much finished the second book in a week. I couldn't put the book down. It was an insane adventure. It was pretty much my favorite book of the 3. It picked up right from the end of the first and didn't stop moving until the very end. There were no slow parts and there were parts where I had to be, "Put the book down. Now." The only bad part of the book, there wasn't an end. It just stops and rolls straight into the beginning of the 3rd book. That's where you have to have the 3rd book, or else you may go crazy not knowing what will happen next.

The third book took me the longest, as I pretty much stopped reading because it didn't really fall into an importance in my life anymore. (There were some other factors that made me stop reading it, but that really isn't important at this moment) I did just finish it now though... finally after about 3 or so months and I am very glad that I finished it. Starting up again brought back the story line, all the characters, and the side plots that I had forgotten from taking long breaks from the book. This book differs a little bit from the other two as it's setting is different than the other two. By no means is it the worst though. I could argue that the last one is the greatest, as I'm sure that one could argue vise versa. Either way, it's still a solid book full of captivating moments and paragraphs.

To be honest, to write a good book you really only have to follow a couple rules. {just my thoughts}

  1. Your main character(s) has to have something they didn't have in the beginning.
  2. The character goes through a sensible situation that creates that change or difference
  3. The plot makes sense. It's realistic to a reason and it's able to connect with the reader
By none, am I saying that writing a good book is easy. It takes some writers years to write a great one. With that said, this book series contains excellent character development which contains a wide variety of different personalities for each. Each character had their own struggle which tied them to another character with surprisingly great twists. It always astonishes me how authors are able to tie everything together, which always leaves me speechless after.

I do have to throw out a thanks for the one that recommended this book. As I learned a lot from this book. I would love to tell what I learned and what I pulled from it but at the same time I wouldn't want to chance that I may ruin any part of this book series.

So I hope that one day, someone will finish this book. Be as captivated while reading it as I was and I would love to chat-chit about your thought and share mine. 

One more thing. Please don't watch the movies. Just like everyone else says, "Movies ruin the book." I watched the first two movies while in Taiwan with some great friends but it just didn't bring out the story line like how it is portrayed in the book. Anyways, until next time... 

Stay Classy

Alastar Swift


PS. I'm working on a sweet Taiwan Project. Be on the look out!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Make Money!


So it’s been quite interesting being back in the United States of America since I spent about 5 months in Taiwan. I’ve came back to an almost dead town where I don’t really have any close friends, nothing is open later than 10 pm except for Kwik Trip and the good ole’ 24/7 Super Wal-Mart, and there is no gym that is worth paying for.

This has almost made me go crazy since I ask myself… “What is there to do?” Other than spending most mornings 8am – 12pm in a local Internet CafĂ© so that I can job search, I have nothing else to do. Except that I have a million things I need to do. I think it comes to that point where I have so many things to do, that I just don’t want to do any of them. I have about 4 books that I need/should finish reading, I’ve always said that I need to get better at playing guitar (which I have a very nice giant guitar book and a Guitar Chord Bible*), practice and learn new words in Chinese so that I don’t forget this awesome 2nd language, and my current goal… learn how to play the piano. I’ve always have had this passion for writing and creating music, but I never acted upon it since, well… I couldn’t (still can’t) sing, back then I couldn’t play any musical instrument and never had time because of sports or [in college] I just partied way too much.

So at the moment I’ve been looking for a very cheap but decent keyboard so that I can start to practice learning piano since I pretty much have nothing else to do. Also I’ve picked up a notebook and some color pencils so that I can practice drawing/doodling. This hobby is important because it compliments one of my most fatal flaws of having to multi-task everything I do. Like this very moment, I am writing a blog post and watching a movie (Prince of Persia). It has dawned on me [since I’ve been here] that I cannot just do one task. I always have to do multiple things except surprisingly I can read a book for hours. Weird, I know. But usually, I multi-task by watching movies/tv shows with surfing the web. I’ve been trying not to spend so much time on this MacBook, and have been trying to spend more time on productive things… or at least things that I think are worthwhile, like: guitar, drawing, Chinese, reading books and writing. It’s been surprisingly tough. I didn’t think that I was so addicted to surfing the web/[let’s be honest] Facebook.  Even though, I do practice my Chinese on Facebook by writing to my friends overseas only in Chinese. But still, it’s FB.

Since I have no job and no income what so ever, I have had to turn to desperate measures. Donating Plasma. Today was the first time, and in 2 days I will have my 2nd appointment for the week. I found a coupon where the first two times will give me a whopping $100. Rock On! Anyways, this process is the weirdest thing in the world. It sucks out your blood and separates the plasma and blood for 5-6 minutes and then it reverses the process and pumps back the blood into you. This goes one for about 45 minutes and then at the very end they pump an IV back into you, since plasma is made up of mostly water. Having the IV pumped back into you was the worst/weirdest part. I could honestly feel the IV being pumped into my arm, then into my heart, and then being pumped down my left side. It was the weirdest feeling. The feeling was a little painful just because it was so much colder than the blood in my body. I felt a little lightheaded but nothing too bad as I drank a lot of water before hand and the night before. But it’s all worth the great $40 I made and I’m sure next time it’ll be worth the $60. The only thing right now that I’m thinking about is to keep continuing this process. After this week it’ll only pay $20/40, respectively. But then again it’s kind of like free money. Except for the fact I give a little bit of myself to some stranger.

In the end I can always say… A little bit of me will be in whomever I save…. Creepy

Well until next time,


Cheerio & Rock On


Alastar Swift

P.S. * the Guitar Chord Bible… Funny story, my old roommate let me borrow his Guitar Chord book since I was playing guitar almost every day. After a while the time went by and I forgot about it and he forgot about it. Then when it came to me moving out [so I could go to Taiwan] we realized we had two books. He never bought another one and I never did either. So for some weird reason that house has the power to create stuff out of thin air. That’s what I call, Skillz!

P.S.S.  Speaking of creating things out of thin air, have you seen the 3D printer that is out there?!? I can’t wait until that technology gets 10x better.