Translator

By N2H

My Journey

All of us man or woman, are on an ambiguously  termed “journey” through life. Perhaps the term itself being ambiguous, is fitting when considering that is how the journey starts, in the ambiguity of dealing with the inside and outside self. As children we are dealing with and learning about our own selfishness versus the impact of our outside world. We learn that others don’t like us to be selfish so we adapt and become selfless and forget our own needs. At some point in life, we learn how to balance this out or we either stay selfish and we don’t get along with the outside world or we stay selfless and never nurture our own inside needs. I’ve personally jumped back and forth between selfish and selfless and would like to think that I have found the balance, but you never really know until you have the benefit of hindsight.

As I have made my “journey” I’ve put less stock in ideals or religion and I have put more worth in the immanence of the little things in life. While I’m an anti-religious person, I have found moments in my life that I felt were sacred. The best example I could think of happened while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. When I first arrived in country, I was having a tough time reconciling my personal dissatisfaction with where my “journey” had taken me, but while flying in a Black Hawk Helicopter, I had a sacred moment while flying above the sand between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. I saw a the most beautiful sunset on the dusty mountains hitting the green around the rivers. The view’s beauty can’t really be put into words but the experience somehow made this part of my “journey” all worth while. Simplistic? Yeah. It was like I was shown a painting created by nature and most people will never see it. That was my painting. Since then I feel that I share an interconnectedness with the things around me, even if I find all things religious generally inglorious.

While others say that part of our “journey” should be to claim our pain, I disagree. I find that claiming pain is actually dwelling. To claim pain is to acknowledge it, and acknowledging pain gives it power, power to influence you to not get hurt again or to avoid pain, just like a child that touches a hot stove won’t do it again or the women who never starts another relationship because the previous one was painful. I don’t avoid pain because it is inevitable and I attempt to not let it influence me in any unhealthy manner. Sometimes I even hold my hand above a flame to see how long I can overcome my physical pain, I find that the emotional kind is just as trying.

Along my “journey” I have found my voice. It took a lot. Now a days, we are constantly bombarded with how we should think and speak. The age of the television has made it increasingly difficult to think for ones self. The ironic this is, I found my voice by allowing others to do my thinking for me. I did everything I supposed to do, I even followed what the idiot box in the living room told me to do. Those voices sent me on a quest around the world and allowed me to experience different cultures and see how different people are. It sent me to college and opened my eyes to why or how things are the way they are. These were the things that shaped my unique prospective and have developed what some would call a warped view. My voice loves to scream hypocrisy and question the status quo, but only by following the status quo was I able to achieve it.

I’ve have always taken action and have never been a content person. I used to think something was wrong with my inability to become content, but I have since realized that I shouldn’t be. I used to take action by doing what I was “supposed: to do. Part of my “journey” was taken action by serving in the military, but I did that because I was supposed to do it. I don’t regret my service, but I find more meaning now in taken action in the changing of society. This is one of the reasons I now go to college, to give me the tool I need to facilitate change and perhaps contribute to a better society. Maybe even one that doesn’t need people to go to war someday.

For the first time in my live, I feel that I live in communion, not with society but with myself. I now know who I am, where I would like to go, and I have acknowledge my limits. I am a strong brave individual, who wants to influence the world, and I the only limit I have are the ones I put on myself. This is where I’m currently at in my “journey.” That really doesn’t mean anything when you consider that next week and the week after that, I will redefine my reality and change my path once again, but in the mean time, it is a fun ride.

Emergency Cell Phone?

Cellphone company tracfone, is a pre-paid wireless phone company that offers phones to people with no credit checks, and no contract. For $10.00, you can make calls to anywhere in the world for the same cost as calling within the United States. You must re-charge every three months or you can buy an entire year for only 99.99.  So basically you can keep a phone with a charged battery in your car and only use it if there is an Emergency. Not bad considering the price.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored post.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value to write it. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Privacy? Nah You Should Spy on your kids

The internet can be a very dangerous place. Between the forum fiends,  pedophiles lurking in chat rooms, stalkers following your every movement of Facebook, and pornography pop-ups its a wonder anyone lets their children online.

There is hope. If you do not mind invading you child’s privacy, you can use some form of Internet Safety Software.

Software like Spector Pro claims that it is like a surveillance camera for your computer. Specter Soft claims that their software records your child’s online activities, automatically taking hundreds of snapshots every hour, which you can watch like in video-style playback. They also claim that Specter Pro automatically records your child’s chats, instant messages, emails, the web sites they visit, what they search for, what they do on MySpace and Facebook, the pictures they post and look at, the keystrokes they type, and the programs they run.

It is an invasion of privacy, but this day in age it just might be worth it. Only you can decide.

What do you think? Have you ever used this kind of monitoring? Would you? Let me know in the comments section.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored post.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value to write it. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.