Listicle

List + Article = Listicle. Or basically the easiest blog post ever, just writing a list.

Things Rowdy Is Going To Do Today
-Return RedBox movie
-Lift weights
-Mail taxes and other stuff
-Garbage day
-Water outside plants
-Practice shooting
-Play with my camera stuff
-Lunch w SuperD
-Watch the Oregon bowl game!
-Figure out the rest of the week.....

Professional Spite.

I saw a commercial tonight from Johnson&Johnson with the main tagline of "nurses heal".

Which is funny, because if you're a clinician the saying is, "Nurses comfort, physicians cure." Which aligns with my professional opinion of nurses in general. Glorified errand girls/boys, doing what others tell them.

Did the nurse in the commercial place that venous access? Did they choose the medication given and the amount? Did they diagnose the disease? Nope.

Not saying that nurses aren't good people and great professionals, but I think they believe a little bit too much of their own press and have a tendency to overstate their role.

But then again, I'm the one who failed two years in a row to get into Physician Assistant programs, so what do I know?

I got your 7 right here!

Ok, in my life I've owned a few cars from brand new, but not many. A Ford Escort, Toyota Tacoma #1, Acura RSX and now Toyota Tacoma #2.

The Escort was sold, Taco #1 was stolen and died in a fire, the RSX was sold for some inexplicable reason and I wish I still had it! But Taco #2 had lasted longer than almost any car I've owned and definitely longer than any other car I've had since new.

Both in years and mileage. My truck hit the lottery just a while ago, 77777. Yeah, I took this pic at 77mph at 707pm as well.

This truck has taken me everywhere! Deserts, snow, mountains, mud, streams. CA, NV, AZ, UT, CO, WY, ID, OR. Bikes, motorcycles, guns and anything else you'd like to haul Tommy.

Here is TacoTruck and I having some fun.

Last year at this time....

I'd just gotten back from Strasbourg France, Vienna Austria and Buda-Pest Hungary. An amazing winter wonderland tour of music, markets, history, food and sights. Wow.

This year? I look like I belong in eastern Europe as I'm sitting on the couch in Adidas warm-ups, unshowered drinking a quart of egg nog non stop.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. But my hair and beard look better than they did then, so there's that. Right?

Daily

I've used a saying in the past, "Successful people do daily what other people do occasionally," and have found another I like to add, "Winners train while losers complain."

With that in mind I actually have already started my New Year's goals a few days after I first wrote them down here. I am motivated by just wanting to do better at the things I care about. My mind, my body, my spirit, my talents. Learning a new language, working out and swimming, reading and my shooting hit each of those respectively.

Yeah for me, right? Well at the same time there are also things I wish I'd never done. The opposite of doing something good all the time, especially as it seems one bad action can undo 12 good actions.

So in all fairness, to present a more true and nuanced version of me, here are some things I wish I'd never done, let alone occasionally. Here you are, regrets I still feel............

Things I Wish I Had Never Done

-Drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.

-Sell my first motorcycle.

-Refuse to get braces as a teen.

-Came home early from my Iraq job.

-Cheat on my girlfriend.

-Say mean things to my family/kids/friends/loved ones.

-Doing poorly in high school, on purpose.

They say people can't change and I don't really believe that, I know people can change. Not easily, but it can happen and for that I'm grateful. Daily.

Not Sure If I'm Ready.......

I'm not sure if I'm ready for this, but I'm moving forward on it anyways! Because it really is something I want, just need to work through my doubts. Mind gym!!

What is it? A business in San Diego made an initial approach to me about sponsorship for a shooting team. WOOT! Yesterday I spent a few hours writing up a sponsorship proposal targeted for their company and I sent it off to my point of contact person this morning.

Getting closer to my goal of having my shooting sports become a job. With all the attending rewards and pressures.

Guess who will be practicing much much more now????????

Not a Nerd

So I just finished my recent term at Mesa College, a community college here in San Diego. I originally graduated with my BS in Radiologic Science in June of 2002. I've been to college before, I worked full time for three of the five years I went to school and I graduated with a 3.3 cumulative grade point average. In 5 years of full time class work I only ever earned 4 C grades and actually finished one term in the hospital recovering from surgery. That I had no health insurance for. And with $37,000 in student loan debt that I used solely to pay my child support while in college.

I think I understand what it means to be a struggling college student. Having spent the last 10 weeks watching numerous people flail at being successful in college and listening to, to me very obvious, poor thought processes I thought I would share some characteristics of the successful college student. From my own experiences and from those struggling whom I just witnessed up close. Stop being your own worst enemy!!

-Make success a positive goal. Change from saying to yourself, "I hope I do good. Man, I wonder how I'm gonna do?" and such ilk to phrasing things in a positive. Always frame things in a positive statement. Whenever you catch yourself saying something negative about school, find a way to rephrase it as a positive statement.

-Get the right amount of sleep.Not too much, not too little. The biggest causes of lack of sleep I see in students? Partying and procrastination.

-Manage your time wisely. This is a key component of everything on this list. It's like carbon, it makes up everything. If I were ranking these in order of importance it would be one of the top three.

-CFL. Chronically faulty lifestyle. If you're continually getting bad results, it's probably "you". So you need to change some things about yourself. Stop getting drunk or high soo much. Stop waiting till the last second. Stop skipping. Look at what the people are doing who you think are the smart ones, do what they do if you're not already.

-Check the boxes. By this I mean do the stuff you're supposed to do, ALL THE TIME. Go to every class. Be on time, every time. Do every homework assignment. Read every page assigned. You need to be consistent and doing these little things, continually, daily.

-Know your learning style. I take in information poorly from reading. I do best when seeing something or hearing something. Followed by my writing it down. With reading a distant last place. Honestly self assess and see how you best learn and retain information. Then study in that style. If you look at my college notebooks, a whole 10 weeks of classes equals and most 4 pages of notes for me, across almost any subject. But I am super attentive in class, as I need to see the presentation and hear the lecture, that's the best way fro me to keep the information in my brain. I know my style.

Couple this with being well rested, in a positive frame of mind, having done all my homework and on time and you are giving yourself the best chance for a successful start.

Please don't be the person cheating, late, not having done the work, unable to concentrate 'cause you're tired and pissy about the whole thing. If so, the reasons you are doing poorly are really all your own.