burgs.net

i read something that lance armstrong recently "tweeted": "Lost like a recent college grad.".

so it gave me an idea for a topic...i totally remember being very lost when i graduated from undergrad. trying to pinpoint it, i think i realize the source: what was my motivation?

see growing up i didn't aspire to be cool (which i definitely wasn't) or have a lot of money or anything like that. i seriously wanted to make my parents proud. that was my motivation. i don't know if its wrong or not but i just wanted them to be proud of me. whether it was school or basketball or work.

but when i graduated from college, then what? who was i doing this for? my folks? they were happy i graduated from college but that was kinda the end of the road for them. it was like, cool we're glad you made it this far, now its on you.

so after some time i got to thinking and realized: wow time to do stuff FOR ME.

i mean this isn't how i'm wired. when i play basketball, i like to pass. in my frat, i did community service. i seriously enjoy making other people happy, and don't really do things FOR ME. making other people happy makes me happy.

fast forward a few years to where i am now. now i feel like i'm having alot of those feelings of loss of motivation. who am i doing this for? what am i doing this for? for myself?

i guess another reason i'm writing this is my grad school graduation is coming up and my mom asked me who i'm inviting. i told her just her, dad, and my bro.

what motivates you? what makes you want to wake up every morning, face the world, go to work, and then repeat that whole cycle day after day after day?

its tough sometimes isnt it? this just isn't me right? i'm not taking crazy pills right?

now i'm a sbtb fan like everyone else, but i loved that whole lineup on saturday mornings. saved by the bell, city guys...and california dreams. check this out...

thanks jogahs for the title for this post. good luck to guru from gangstarr who just got outta surgery.

paolo coelho posted this in his blog today:

"When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Carpe diem. Seize the moment."

and speaking of carpe diem and seizing the moment...

does anyone truly want to be a bad guy? i don't think little kids think, "i want to be hated/despised when i grow up".

so who are bad guys? meter maids? ceo billionaires? jersey shore castmates? even defining "bad guy" is tough b/c everyone has different shades of badness.

so let's take the most iconic case of "bad guy" for our case study: the dark lord of the sith himself, darth vader. (ok as you can tell this post is gonna get way geeky).

why was darth vader a bad guy? well b/c he hunted down and murdered jedi's during the great purge. but WHY? well you can talk about a rough childhood, stress, perceived lack of respect, parental issues, etc. but what it really come down to in my opinion is:

i don't think darth vader considered himself a bad guy..

that notion can probably be scoffed at but its true. even in anakin's final fight against obi wan at mustafar, anakin says that in his opinion the jedi were the bad guys and he was in the right.

i think that this analogy applies to most of us: whenever we are in conflict, we usually thing we are in the right, or we are justified in what we do. if this is truly the case. the line between good and bad starts to be blurred. its not just black and white. we are talking shades of gray here.

what's the point of this all? probably absolutely nothing. well it does give me a reason to post this picture, which is super awesome.

some people like the rocky 4 training montage best: rocky training in the snow vs drago training in the ice soviet facility.

some like the rocky 3 training montage th best: rocky and apollo training together capped off with their "sexually suspect" run at the beach (short shorts, slow mo hug jumping around in the water).

but for money, this one tops all. mick kills it with his quotes. the first 10 secs of this clip will fire up anybody who has a pulse:

fascinating article on espn on myron rolle. quick 411. florida state safety who could have been a first round pick last year but passed it up to study in oxford. here's the link

"Q: Are you chasing what you want or, because you are competitive and driven, are you chasing whatever happens to be society's agreed-upon definition of greatness? "

well, which is it?

ok yes, some of this might be labelled as "cheesy". but watch it. try to suck some of it in. there is definitely something to be learned here....

here we are again people, its lent. when people announce to the whole world what they are giving up. but really, what are they replacing with what they are giving up?

does it make sense to give up coffee and increase your intake of soda?

or give up facebook and use myspace more?

or give up fried chicken and just eat more pizza?

why do people do it? why have i done it? i realize now its more selfish. its not giving something up for god. its not a sacrifice done that makes us more spiritual. oftentimes its something done selfishly, so we have something cool to announce on our blog or our status update.

or maybe mandaya is right and lent is just another excuse for catholics to make another set of resolutions that they weren't able to keep during new years.

EDIT
reading this again, i want to make it clear that i am not AGAINST giving stuff up for lent. its a catholic tradition that many have done for years. i just want to say that people should think about what they are giving up and why they are. for example, giving up coffee is one thing. but what about giving up coffee at starbucks and donating the money you save to charity at the end of the 40 days? that to me is a combination of sacrifice and philanthropy. then again, this is all just my opinion, thats why i'm writing it in my blog.

so its that time of the year to renew burgs.net. i decided to renew it. b/c i just like writing in here even if its about nothing in particular. even if i don't even know who reads this anymore. thats ok.

i like this commercial. especially when rampage goes down and gets back up swinging