Back to the Gym

As a kid, I had always been noticeably thinner than most children. It never really bothered me though, for I wasn't concerned about it nor did I have reason to worry about it. It wasn't until my sophomore-junior year of high school that I started to really notice just how much skinnier I was than everybody else. This is no exaggeration either, as most people who knew me in high school would attest to the fact that I was the embodiment of Skeletor. One incident happened were these two kids wanted to beat me up, for whatever reason, when it hit me that I would not be able to defend myself at all. Like seriously, I probably wouldn't have fared well in any sort of altercation and that's when I realized that I needed to change something so that I could at least defend myself and increase my self-confidence. The summer, entering my junior year, I convinced my dad to let me sign up at the local gym so I could start getting in shape. Since then, I haven't looked back and have taken considerable steps towards better physical health. To this day, I still find time almost every day to lift or, at the very least, go for a walk to get active. Before I started working out, I was a solid 130 pounds (at my absolute max). Now, after about 2-3 years, I have made considerable progress and stand about 155-160 pounds. 20-25 pounds in about 2 years may not sound like a lot, but for me, it's something that I'm very proud of. I have spent a lot of time and effort in improving my physical being, and to this day I still am very focused on improving and maintaining my overall health. When I first started working out, I thought that I would only see physical results; the mental results, however, have been almost as great. I definitely feel much more confident and I enjoy staying active, mainly because it feels nice to be conscious of my overall health. Maybe one day, in time, I can look as cool as this guy: 

Source Image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailystar.co.uk%2Fsport%2Fboxing%2Feddie-hall-hafthor-bjornsson-boxing-23353361&psig=AOvVaw3j2ZnV6ePVxliGMQMQxjwd&ust=1633017628527000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCODD5PHGpPMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

Blog 5: Stress

    Everyone suffers from stress at some point in their life. It's part of the natural suffering of life. I probably get stressed at some point of the day almost every day and each time I find myself annoyed for getting stressed. Sometimes I get stressed for very meniscal reasons, such as when I'm not doing well in my video games or when we get busy at work or when the Steelers get blown out by the Bengals. Luckily, I understand shortly after these events happen that it's not that important to truly stress over and then I accept the situation for what it is and move on. On other occasions, however, I stress about important things to me such as school, money, my future and so forth. These more serious topics are not just things that I can move on from, but rather they sort of fester and grow and grow until it becomes insurmountable at times. I will say I've come a long way in handling stress, but still at times there are moments in which it becomes too much and I truly believe that's normal for everybody. The big question that comes from all of this is what can one do to help resolve their stress? There probably isn't just one universal way to solve stress, for stress is almost personalized for each person suffering and can vary greatly per person. That's why it is important to know yourself and what you like, because knowing yourself goes a tremendous distance in operating at your full capacity. It's not healthy to always be stressed, so perhaps this chart below may help someone in relieving their own stress!

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    Just remember next time when you are stressing about something that it's okay to take a break and step away from what you are doing to take a minute and just breathe. Not all things in life are worth stressing over, especially when it's things that you can't really control or are far into the future. With a little research and common sense, we can all agree that stress isn't too healthy nor should it be something that controls our lives. Life isn't always great, but try not to add on to an endeavor with stress because it will only make that endeavor much more challenging to overcome. 

Blog 4: Distractions

     I don't particularly hate writing/typing, but it's also not my favorite thing to do. I think part of my qualms with writing is the amount of time, brain power, and dedication it takes to actually construct something meaningful. Now I'm not a perfect writer and I will never claim to be highly proficient in writing, but that doesn't mean that it isn't important and a stable in most of our lives. I would be hard-pressed to pass college without having decent writing skills for a vast majority of my work is submitted in essay form and short responses. But one thing, from my experience, that takes away from the "writing" experience are distractions. I feel that I constantly get distracted away from my laptop to go do whatever else has caught my attention in the moment. I've always had this problem and I don't quite know how to fix it. People always tell me "just put your phone away" or "turn off the electronics" but sometimes that isn't even the problem. I can account multiple times where I've been typing an essay and all of a sudden my mind just drifts away from the topic into a whole other world. It's a blessing and a curse, because sometimes these thoughts aid in my writing while other occasions completely draw me away from what I was doing. 

Source Image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2Ftopic%2FThe-Thinker-sculpture-by-Rodin&psig=AOvVaw2Qu8GsMsIlMrQpl9Wy7O4d&ust=1632497303753000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCMChvsG0lfMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAP 

From my perspective, I'd like to envision myself as "The Thinker" but maybe that's a little bit of a stretch... Either way, I question whether I get so distracted because of the topic of the assignment or if it's just part of my own writing process. I've never just not finished a writing assignment because of these distractions and ultimately I overcome and submit the assignment before it's due, but it's usually a super inconvenient process. Perhaps writing at school more often will limit the distractions and push me to focus on what the assignment is since I'm completely surrounded by school. Like right now, at the very moment of me writing this blog post. I'm just typing away on my keyboard sitting in the NILS building on campus completing this very blog post. I don't know if there is a lesson to be taken away from all this rambling, but maybe you all can take something beneficial from this little blog post. 

Post #3: Music

    All week I've been contemplating what to write about for this week's blog. I wasn't too sure what exactly to write about for this week, until I drove home Wednesday from college listening to one of my favorite artists ever, Isaiah Rashad. Music, in general, has always been a part of my life. I've never had any real interest in creating or producing any type of music or art myself, mainly because I don't think it would be very good, but I've always loved listening to music for as long as I can remember. When I was little, I was always majorly influenced by my parent's taste in music, mainly because it was all I knew. As I got older, however, I branched away from my parent's music and jumped into a giant world of music that I've never experienced or really even knew about before. The event that launched my journey into this vast world of music must've been about 8-9 years ago; I was at my grandma's house and my two older cousins were there, and like my most annoying little cousins and siblings, I wanted to follow and hang out with them. We oftentimes just played videogames or played sports outside, but on this day we were bored of that so we decided to watch YouTube off their Xbox 360. The first thing they put on was this song called "Domo23 - Tyler the Creator", and initially I didn't really know what I was watching. There was so much sound and action happening in the video that absolutely intrigued me. Up to that moment, I had never really listened to rap music because, as mentioned above, my parents never listened to it. It was something that I had never really seen or heard before, but I loved it and so much so that I went home and listened to Tyler the Creator essentially the rest of the day. 

Source Image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fconsequence.net%2F2013%2F02%2Fwatch-tyler-the-creators-amazing-video-for-domo23%2F&psig=AOvVaw3oO5Ln5eGRVNptTxiB2A7_&ust=1631390122532000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCMDfgYaY9fICFQAAAAAdAAAAABAJ

    The picture above is from the "Domo23" video, and honestly the whole video is just chaotic. But since this odd moment in my life, I've almost exclusively listened to rap and hip-hop music. Not only that, however, but I feel that music plays a large role in my life in general. Through most things in life, I am listening to music. Whether I am driving, working on homework or studying, playing video games, hanging out with my friends, at the gym, while I'm walking my dog, and the list just goes on. I think about that one day often, how that small, normal moment of just watching a music video with my cousins somehow launched me into a greater exploration of a large and unknown territory to me. I wonder if other people had a music moment like this, or if other people associate certain songs and music to particular times or moments in their lives. I do the latter often, like when I hear "Gangnam Style" I start to think about life and events that happened in middle school, around the time in which the song was popular. Either way, I guess I'm just grateful that music has always been a part of my life. I'm so excited to go to my first concert soon, something that I have been too anxious to do for a long time now. It's been long overdue, but sooner than later I'll be in Chicago to watch one of my favorite artists today, Isaiah Rashad, perform and I cannot wait. 

Source Image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redbull.com%2Fus-en%2Fisaiah-rashad-outfit-tx-blue-the-misfit-live-photos&psig=AOvVaw143PJ3pWnKUxr0wcsKIglq&ust=1631391094036000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCOCRxNSb9fICFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

Chasing Coral: Guided Reflection

     The documentary I decided to watch for the documentary project was Chasing Coral. I love nature and the idea of learning more about the world we live on was mainly the reason I chose to watch this documentary. Marine life has always interested me; even as a little kid, I remember having a greater interest in seals and sea lions because they always reminded me of my dogs. The only sort of previous knowledge I had going into watching this documentary was from what we watched in class. I knew almost right away, however, that this would probably be the documentary of my choosing. Multiple scenes stood out to me, but I was most touched by people's reactions to the footage that these researchers captured of coral bleaching. These researchers put forth so much time, effort, and thought into how to capture coral bleaching with video footage. The documentary takes the audience through the process of placing specially designed time lapse cameras in these areas where they suspect coral bleaching would happen. 

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    These camera's were specially designed for underwater, because normal camera's wouldn't be able to withstand the pressure or film at such a high quality for an extended period of time. Nonetheless, I'd have to say watching the culmination of their work being presented in front of an audience and seeing their reaction's to this rare event of coral bleaching was the most touching part of the documentary for me. Some of the audience members were crying as their film was being played, which made me think of the researchers crying and the hard work they put in to even capture this film. It's touching to see how many people care, but also tragic to see little action and coverage on this immensely impactful species. That's one of many things that surprised me, however, I was most surprised when the coral was almost creating a sunscreen for itself to defend itself from the rising ocean temperatures. The fluorescent color they were giving off in the documentary was beautiful to witness, and knowing that the coral were trying to defend themselves gave me a glimmer of hope. 

Source Image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.siliconrepublic.com%2Finnovation%2Fmysterious-glowing-coral-sunscreen&psig=AOvVaw3zlo6axUVSsDmE6HSkiPzr&ust=1630788105414000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCPD156zV4_ICFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

    I have many questions after watching this film, but I think the most important question would be what is the future of coral reef? I wonder if our future generations will be able to witness one of the most important factors of the ocean's ecosystem. I wonder when changes will be made to help preserve our Earth, not only for trees, coral, other animals, and so forth, but for the human race. Disappointment was one of the biggest feelings I had after watching this documentary, mainly because I feel like other species are being negatively impacted because of human actions. One can only hope that we find alternatives to preserve our Earth, because we only have one. Research shouldn't be included in one's summary because that's not work that the person writing the summary did, which then adds other people's perspective thus making the summary not entirely one's own.