With my birthday looming, I took a look back at past blog entries to get an idea of my evolution. I have created over 1,500 entries since inception which gives me a lot of material to sift through. I chose November 2010 and after reading a few dozen entries, my conclusion was that the blog was somewhat decent but miles away from where it is currently. The thoughts that were being produced were of someone who was going through the motions. This isn’t to say that I’m not still going through the motions, the difference is that now I know I’m going through the motions. What I mean is that my entries were exact replicas week after week. Basketball game. Drunk weekend. Random thoughts. I wasn’t striving for anything other than surviving which I honestly didn’t even do that well at. Which brings me to the obvious question, what’s different now?

My first answer is that I’m capable. I have more experience and can adapt to most situations. I’ve acquired life skills in talking to other human beings and understand how to communicate effectively and cut through the chit chat. I’ve learned to set things that I want to accomplish and then how to accomplish them. I’m scheduling a trip to Germany in February and have little anxiety around it because I’m comfortable in what I’m trying to do and how to do it. In those 2010 years I was just a dude who had good intentions but no direction. I see things differently now. I used to look at everything through a magnifying glass and now I see it through a telescope. Taking a big picture viewpoint will help put things in perspective. If you’re nervous about something going on in your life, consider that you are a speck and nothing that you do will matter significantly in the grand scheme of things. I used to dislike cold calling prospective customers until I realized that whatever transpires in that phone call most likely won’t mean a hill of beans to the guy on the other end. There are rarely events in life other than death that require stressing about.

I’ve improved on being me. I know what I want in life and have a rough outline on how to get there. It’s impossible to get through life without the help of other people. I try to treat everyone else in my life as I would want to be treated. I’ve done my best to eliminate the riff raff and am looking to consistently “make things happen”. I’ve spent the years reading and learning and now it’s time for doing. You can always learn but doing is something that separates the good from the best. I intend to make my 30’s better than my 20’s and can’t think of any reason why that shouldn’t be the case. I’ve matured at my own pace and have been going through life the way I planned it. This blog is a great resource on that adventure and it amazes me more people don’t document their life.

Where to begin. First I wake up and see that Brandon Jacobs might not play. This is immediately a problem because I have no RB’s to play with McFadden on a bye and Steven Jackson (this guy has been such a busted pick) hurt. I just spent 12 dollars on Jacobs because of this exact situation and knowing that I need a RB to play this week who will get carries. I could try to wait because this “news” might not be correct but with Fitz going for 2.7 and my opponent putting up big points with Russell and Marshawn, I can’t afford another doughnut. That being said, this happened to me last week with Fitz and reading at 1pm that he is hurt and probably won’t play, so I played Stephen Hill and benched Fitz and he ended up going for a 78 yard TD catch. So I’m sitting here scratching my head and eventually dropped Jacobs for freaking Mike Tolbert. This is what my team has come to – trying to find a replacement for Brandon Jacobs!!!!

Football talk aside, I have to repair the faucet that I incorrectly installed and I thought I was going to need new washers because they were too big for the sink but in reality I just didn’t install the washers properly (or at all would be better put). They don’t get screwed in from the top but underneath and I completely missed this on installation. I haven’t attempted this fix but I’m sure something will pop up that makes sure I don’t complete the task successfully.

I’m having more issues trying to fix how my speakers connect to the TV. This shouldn’t be a challenge but it’s blowing my mind. I have two HDMI cables and the one that goes from the cable box makes the most sense to connect directly to the TV. This gets me picture. Now I’d think I have the other HDMI going from the stereo receiver to an output on the TV but this isn’t producing any sound. I’ve tried multiple combinations and can’t seem to figure it out. It’s just one of those things that should work because I have all the components but isn’t. I also need to drill some holes in the back of the TV stand and I can’t do that until I figure out how to produce sound. Another problem.

My final headache comes from the turntable that I got from my parents. I thought it would be cool to listen to vinyl records and it probably would except, once again, I can’t produce sound. The turntable has red/white audio outputs. I bought a splitter that takes the red/white and turns it into an AUX cable. This should work if I plug it into a set of speakers with an AUX but it isn’t. Now I think that I have to purchase a receiver with the phono outputs. I’m 90% sure this would work but the problem is I have to spend money on something that I’m hoping works. This turntable is from the 70’s and I can’t prove it works. It spins and seems to be producing sound off the record but I can’t be sure. Another thing where I think I have everything, it should work, and it doesn’t.

At least football is on but even that is looking grim as I have to take a week off from Fanduel (3 straight 50 dollar losses) and betting (-200 through 5 weeks) so that will keep the action subdued. My fantasy teams are all projected as losers and life is kicking me in the nuts right now. I still can’t play any sports which also sucks because I have all these leagues going on around me. It’s what I told Chad on the golf course, the primary goal of life is to stay alive, everything else is secondary.