Author Archives: Mark

Signs From the Universe

I have this working theory that I stole from skateboard filmer Beagle that if something pops up in your life three times in a week it is a sign from the Universe and it’s on you to figure out why. Two times it’s a coincidence. Three or more, something bigger is happening.

My wife had me listening to the Mel Robbins Podcast yesterday and that theory was reaffirmed. The guest, Dr. Tara Swart Bieber, detailed how one can change their brain based on visualizations and manifestations – something which is new water for me to say the least. But as one starts to change what they are focused on so do the cues that they see in the world around them. Opportunities open up.

Mel gave the example of constantly seeing a certain type of car in the wild once you started to do car shopping for that particular vehicle. Your brain starts to cue in on those similarities.

Knowing what I want is a hard thing for me. I’m driven by action mainly. I believe in doing and finding out why or what I want from it later. F

Let’s take this blog. My wife has been on me about journaling my feelings and taking some inventory. I have had an itch to start writing again. That’s how we got here. That’s about all I know right now.

The great thing about this approach is that I will constantly be doing. Which is important, I think. I try out things and see what I like. Fundamentally, do I enjoy this thing.

The problem with this approach is that I don’t necessarily prioritize or emphasize the strategy. If I just do for some vague reason but am not fully honest with the deeper why it’s good way to lose focus or burn myself out.

The why tells me what I want. Which means tackling what I think I deserve. A question that is not necessarily on the tip of my tongue.

What do I need to do, that’s something I’m much more comfortable asking. With need expanding into worlds like this, writing. Anything I decide I’m doing turns into a need.

I need to write. I need to make music. I need to work. I need to work out. And if I need to do anything I need to take it seriously. Pressure mounts.

But deserve, no. It’s an emotional blindspot. So let’s give it a whirl.

There are basic things in my life I deserve: happiness, trust, respect, love, comfort. These are things I want.

But diving deeper, more specifically: I want options in my life. Freedom. That’s the word that I have been cueing in on the last few weeks. What does it mean to be free? How do I get that? Where am I feeling constricted?

Normally, this turns into a reframing access for me a need of wanting to feel free pops up and I try to convince myself I am already free. I essentially am trying to constantly pour water on my own fire. You have this and this and this, why are you being ungrateful wanting more. I’m like a union buster for my own soul.

The more I learn the more I realize I need to be open to what I hear and see and think. The brain thinks something like 70,000 thoughts a day. If there are things that consistently pop up in your brain and in the world around you then something deeper is happening. Universe, brain, something is trying to tell you something.

I haven’t planned my future and sat and taken an active look at what I want or deserve. I also have heard the phrase Vision Board get thrown around quite a bit recently. Unrelated podcasts. Out in the wild. I

Coincidence? It’s been more than twice. It’s a sign now. It’s time. I’m listening to the sign. This weekend I have a date with scissors and glue. I’m going to start an asking answering what I deserve.

What’s the universe telling you that you are ignoring?

Dust Yourself Off And Try Again

This last year I lost a total of 70 pounds.

Weight has always been something I struggled with physically and more importantly mentally, ever since I stopped playing hockey in 3rd grade.

I gain weight easily. And fat goes to my chest first, making for some awkward moments in my youth as a boy.

My issues with my body have been ongoing and while I have had moments of weight loss – like when I ran a half marathon in high school or the summer I picked up playing basketball – it hasn’t been steady.

To lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you consume. This is obvious.

But it turns into a math equation pretty quickly.

There are 3500 calories in a pound. So you gain a pound it means you consumed 3500 calories more than you lost over that period of time. You lose a pound, then you burned 3500 calories more than you consumed.

So if you want to lose weight, you have to do some math – your body burns a baseline number of calories just by being alive, your BMR. For this purpose, let’s say it’s 1500. Meaning just by living, you burn 1500 calories a day.

If you wanted to lose 2 pounds a week, you would need to take 3500 multiply by 2 for the 2 pounds.

3500*2 = 7000

So you would need be in a deficit of 7000 calories to burn two pounds.

If we divide that for the number of days a week, seven, that would get us 1000.

7000/7 = 1000

This means you would need to be in a deficit of 1000 calories daily.

So you would take your BMR + however much you moved each day to create your total number of calories. Let’s say we moved 500 calories.

1500 + 500 = 2000

This means we have burned 2000 calories. But we need to eat.

So we subtract our needed deficit from our total we moved.

2000 – 1000 = 1000

This means we can only eat 1000 calories if we want a deficit of 1000 calories.

Now burning 1000 calories is easier said than done.

If you run all out for an hour you might burn 1000 calories, maybe. Depends on your size and pace and all these other things. If you eat a Big Mac and a Large Fry you will consume more than 1000 calories, guaranteed. It comes in to about 1061.

So you can’t do this without calorie counting. It’s just impossible.

You got to move a shit ton and you have to be diligent on calorie counting.

This last month I gained weight. A good chunk. It started because I had been working out and eating clean for the last year and burnt myself out.

I was in my goal weight zone and figured ehh we can take our eye off the ball and focus on other things. Wrong.

I stopped weighing myself daily. A way to just gauge how things are going. And while I continued to work out, my food consumption increased dramatically.

I stopped calorie counting because I didn’t need it and I burnt myself.

After weeks of feeling like something was off, but attributing it to muscle, I finally weighed myself and saw I gained 10 pounds. In a month.

Cue the shame spiral. The extra long walk late at night despite being exhausted. The promises that are unrealistic. The plans to make insane changes to the diet to get back on track.

The point is I stopped paying attention.

When I did that, I gained the weight. I was no longer diligent.

These big, sweeping, emotion driven decisions are not going stick. They are not going to lead to success. If I want to get back to where I was, I need to do what I did. Count calories. Monitor my movements. Not feel like I got it figured out, only to order a pizza.

I’ll get back on track. But I was reminded a critical lesson in all of this.

Every single thing in life takes focus. If you want anything, you have to focus and stay at it. If you let up, that is a decision you have to live with because you will most likely need to work twice as hard to get back to where you were. So build routines to keep up your focus. And don’t ever think you are better than or have figured out the work.

Can’t bullshit the work. Just gotta do it.

Locked in Zombie

I’ve been waking up at 5 on the weekdays recently. Rephrase: I’ve been trying to wake up at 5 on the weekdays recently.

I’ve been aware of the passage of time the older I get, the more I want it and the less I have. Responsibilities increase, life progresses and next thing you know the routine has been set. Adding any skill, hobby, or even just time for yourself becomes a whole reframe in your life.

Back in college, I would try things out weekly it seems. Claymation, sketch comedy, even smoking a brisket, I was a Renaissance man. I appreciate that spirit – feeling free and open to try anything and everything. At the same time, I kind of lived in that headspace for the last 8 years post college and was not able to build momentum in my life. It’s one thing to try a billion things, but what am I actually doing? So now I’m trying to do that. And I’m doing that by waking up.

I have never been a morning person. I used to need two alarms in high school – one which was across the room from me so I had to physically get out of bed in order for me to snooze. Even with this design, there was still a flaw in the plan – me. I would get out of bed, slam the alarm off, and somehow end up back asleep only to be woken by my mom’s shouting voice.

In my young adult life, staying up late proved to be much more fun and rewarding than waking up early. Why rush to start a new day when all that was going to greet me was stress and work? Let’s ride out the excitement of night.

I’ve slowed down in several ways over the years and now have very limited opportunities for excitement. Which is a good thing. The stability creates room for my brain to challenge my old self what is truly rewarding and how I want to live my life.

Constant applied pressure is the phrase that keeps coming back to me. What I am acutely aware of if I want to achieve. It is not enough to want. You need to do, consistently. So when are you going to do it? How will you prioritize it?

My wife read a book about priorities and one of the major take aways was that we as a culture don’t understand the definition of the word itself. If you have a job, you probably have heard or even you yourself have cited that something is a priority. Or you will add something to a list of priorities.

The word means sole focus. Priority. Nothing is more important.

How can you have a list of nothing is more important? Why isn’t it just one thing? Who is actually arbitrating in your life what is and is not on that list? Do you have boundaries in place for it?

As I get older my priority has shifted from having fun to growing. Challenging myself and the habits I have created for myself. Truly questioning what is serving and not serving me in the life I want to lead.

I am not a morning person, but that has become a priority to adjust. My sleep has decreased. My focus on other things in my life has shifted due to the lack of sleep. I am operating with a headache for most of the day. I feel the impact. I’m letting the new schedule truly take priority.

I am investing in a future of the life I want. That takes pushing myself to grow. Not just staying comfortable.

How are you challenging your complacency? What is your priority lately?

The Guitar In D’Angelo’s Lady

I’ve been teaching myself piano. Ehh, zoom out. I’ve been using a piano that I plug into my phone to play in the GarageBand app. Ehh, zoom out. I’ve been using this piano attachment, a MIDI Keyboard, to clack my way through making beats. Ehh, zoom out.

I’ve been faking it until I make it.

Ironically, my wife got a guitar the same exact time as I got the keyboard. We both went to Guitar Center on our way back from our honeymoon and spent some of our wedding money on something totally impractical and for us to – my grandmother’s demand.

It’s been a truly rewarding experience for both of us. If not approach in entirely different way – hers driven through structure and a curriculum, mine based on pure vibes, baby! I clack my way through the myriad of sounds on the GarageBand app, adding layer after layer until I have something that feels right.

I love playing around with my keyboard. I like the tinkering and problem solving of song production. How little choices can lead to bigger moments. How things grow. How adding one section all of a sudden changes the entire context of the song for me.

It’s kind of like writing for me.

But on the other hand, I am grossly aware of how unproductive the process is. Blindly creating. Unchecked. No structure. Just tapping my way into coherence.

I envy my wife’s structure. Both her acceptance for it and the understanding that part of the learning process is admitting that you actually need to learn something.

You don’t go into class expecting to be the teacher. There’s probably something deeper about gender politics that we could explore here, but suffice to say it’s starting to feel like a blind spot.

Of course, what we want from the product is different. I want to create. She wants to play. I want to escape. She wants to honor and master.

The process for those look very different.

And I did spend a chunk of my youth learning saxophone – around a decade ago – but I wasn’t the most studious there. And the thing about music production is it’s not just learning a piece of the process or an instrument; it’s the drums, piano, harmony, chords, bass, etc. The whole shabang!

Not something that some half-assed saxophone practicing from 15 years ago is really going to serve me.

I feel the clock staring me down. I hear the ticking. The seconds wind down. and I wind up.

I don’t want to miss anything. I don’t want to slow down. I don’t have time to stop and learn.

I’ll learn as I go. Build the plane while flying it.

Everything is too important. Nothing is not sacred.

It’s unrelenting from what I’ve been told. Intense.

The way I create and make music is akin to freebasing creativity. It feels great, but it’s the most raw hit. It gets you the highest.

I also know so much. But feel like I know nothing. I have no tangible vocabulary for the skills I have acquired. I know what reverb does to track and when to use it, but couldn’t at all explain it.

I can’t recreate shit. I don’t have technique – it’s all feel!

If you can’t recreate, then you can’t really be inspired by the things around you. You will watch YouTube videos lost.

Of course, I’m happy making music this way. It serves me. That’s good.

I also have no reason to believe I am running out of time. It’s good to slow down.

I fundamentally understand that when I die and ask the higher power what the meaning to life is balance will be one of the three answers. Right next to love and happiness.

So why do I fight it?

Maybe I should pick up gardening next. Teach my impatient ass to slow down.

Or maybe I should just enjoy that I have something to relax.

Of course, if you ask my wife she’d say she’s envious about my way to just dive in to life willfully ignorant ready to learn.

Something about opposites attract. A true better half.

Fresh Starts

I just created this blog after some light prodding from my wife as to why I don’t write anymore.

I started by telling her it was complicated, only to end up searching for the WordPress app within five minutes. Turns out it wasn’t that complicated.

I have this really cute thing I like to do where I get a big idea, get all jazzed up about it, think about what my life will be like once I achieve this plan, and burn myself out in a short order due to the pressure I put on myself.

Like hip hop? I’m going to create a blog for it.

Enjoy movies? Well I’m going to be a screenwriter.

Learn how to make a pizza? Guess what now I’m detailing how to open a pizzeria.

I feel like the phrase this is why we can’t have nice things is a perfect summation of why I can’t have dreams/ambitions/interests/likes.

It goes from 0 to 100 real quick.

And writing quickly became a mechanism for me to daydream around. Escape. My ticket out of whatever I was in. My way to be somebody. Desperate to matter.

So I used it. I used it like I used a lot of things in my life. And got off on the belief that this thing mattered and it would take me somewhere else and I would be important and whatever the fuck.

And then when it didn’t I strategized on the next way to escape and matter – sometimes taking another approach at another world writing – screw stand up, I’ll be a screenwriter, blogger, journalist…I must have had at least 300 different ideas, attempts, plans.

And nothing hit. And I felt like I couldn’t have a healthy relationship with writing because of it.

When I was younger, I used to make my 9th Grade English Teacher – let us free write. It was a super basic exercise, she set a timer and the whole class would just write for 25 minutes non-stop. Pencils couldn’t stop moving.

It went from a challenge to something deeper for me. A way to tap into that voice in my head. Formulate my thoughts, ideas, opinions.

I fell in love with writing somewhere in those exercises. And I got half-decent at it. And I took that bit of talent/learned skill and passion and applied it. Went off to LA to have dreams of being something.

There is an old Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee – with maybe Kevin Hart – where they talk about LA. “L.A. is undefeated – no one has ever conquered it.” They say something to the effect of that.

I couldn’t agree more.

I love LA. Still live here. But fuck man, this place is undefeated.

It puts you in your place over and over. A city fueled on dreamers – literally – the dreamers are pumping gas, flipping burgers, making this shit run. From immigration to US Transplants, everyone comes here with a plan. And then that plan gets derailed when you move into Koreatown or Hollywood or The Valley. All of a sudden you realize you have to make money fast and the dreams can take a back seat.

Of course, by the time things start coming back around and you can focus on the dream, you’ve met enough people who’ve been eaten up by the machine that you don’t even know what you want or why you wanted in the first place.

I used to do those free writing exercises in the park in Boston on the weekends in high school. For fun. I tapped into myself so quickly with them.

This is just a free writing exercise. I could do the whole editing thing, but by the time I reread it and shape it, I lose the reason why I wrote in the first place. Its importance diminishes.

But I couldn’t trust writing anymore. Writing gave me unrealistic expectations. Writing fueled me with dreams and not a lot of actions. So I stopped.

I stopped the dreams.

Focused on other things. Stopped getting burnt by ambition.

So when my wife asked why stopped writing I said it was complicated. She asked why and I said you wouldn’t get it in that way that us men say that when we don’t want someone to push.

It’s complicated because I wanted it to be complicated. Because in my head I made it complicated.

I stopped writing because I couldn’t trust it anymore. It let me down. It gave me big, impractical ideas.

I don’t meditate, much to my wife’s dismay. My free flowing writing is essentially a tap directly into my psyche. It’s as close as I can get with it.

So I stopped writing because I couldn’t trust it anymore. But writing is an extension of me. So I couldn’t trust me anymore.

And I had to ask myself – is that still the case? I’m working to prove myself wrong.

Not by making dreams come true. But by writing and being free.

Here’s to round 301. This time it’s just for me.