Friday, April 20, 2012

Making My Mark

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I’m going to make my mark on this world. What’s my purpose? How will I contribute? I’ve always wanted to do something creative but I feel like I lack ideas. Whenever I see a cool new invention, I dream of being an inventor and then I say “If I were an inventor, I’d invent....ah.....grilled cheese?.....no.....um.....oh forget it.”

Today I walked past a coworker who was wearing a hoody and from afar it looked like the hood strings were in his ears. As I approached, I learned that I wasn’t going mad and in fact his hood strings were in his ears and for good reason. THEY HAD HEADPHONES IN THEM! He puts his iPod in the pouch pocket, which has a headphone jack, and headphones at the end of the hood strings.

By now most people are probably saying “Well, yeah. How have you not heard of that?” That’s not really the point though. The point is I find myself constantly wondering about my legacy. I believe that everyone is born for a reason, but I’m having trouble figuring out what mine was. It’s like my brain is at war between what I think it should be and what it really could be. I’d love to own Detroit’s coolest comic book store and run it with my friends. I’d love to write plays and get paid to have them produced. I’d love to run a theatre company. All of these are completely attainable goals and who knows, I might take the shot one day. A Wayne Gretzky quote that was imparted to me by Kevin Smith’s new book “Tough Shit: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good” has been sticking with me lately. “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.” I think that’s inspired me to sit down and start working on some of the ideas for new plays that I’ve had. Sure, there’s a chance I won’t get past 5 or 6 pages before realizing I don’t like the idea anymore or it doesn’t have the legs I thought it did. But I can be certain I’m not going to write a great play if I don’t try.

In weight loss goals news (since I promised the wife), today was not the best week calorie wise, but it was balanced out by an increase in lunch time walks. I actually really enjoy lunchtime walks. It gets my exercise out of the way so that when I get home from work, I don’t have to worry about it and it’s easy to do. I only spend like 15 minutes of my lunch hour working, so why not get outside and wander around the Loop for the rest of the time. My weight itself has stayed the same since last week. Nothing lost, but nothing gained.

2 comments:

Badger said...

I want you to change this line in your profile ." There's absolutely nothing special about me."

You can't create anything if you don't believe you are special. I truly believe that anyone can do anything they want. But me believing it means nothing. You have to know it for yourself. Kick some ass! I know you can.

-Alan

Taking A Ten said...

You make an excellent point. Done and done sir.