My First Real Painting

I moved up to Dallas is September, and, since moving into my new apartment, I have made it a point to create a space that I'm comfortable and proud of living. I have always believed that the things you put on your walls speak about who you are as a person, and that belief has always made me more cautious about my choices.

In my bathroom, I have a large wall that had been begging for months for something to give it a bit more character. I scoured the internet for months looking for the right poster or picture or painting that both fit the spot and that I felt strongly enough to want to add to my ever growing collection. I found a few that I kind of liked and weren't too expensive, and I found a few that I REALLY liked but were REALLY expensive. I couldn't find anything that was a happy medium.

Due to my failed attempts at finding a suitable piece, I decided on the ludicrous idea of creating my own picture to fill the hole. I've done a lot of over the top projects in my time, but none of them have been very artistic. I studied engineering and economics in college, so my artistic prowess has not been honed much. Ignoring that, I knew pretty quickly what I wanted to create. I had actually saved a picture with the intent of making it into a poster, but I decided to make it interesting and try painting it instead.

My blank wall

I started with sketching everything out in pencil, but I sadly didn't get a proper picture of that stage. Throughout the whole process, I listened to A LOT of podcasts. At the point of the picture below, I was probably 15 hours into listening to a 20 hour program about World War I.

This is the earliest stage I have from the process.

The next step here was to black out the rest of the canvas, painting the ground, and cleaning up the lettering. Painting around each of the letters took FOREVER!! And sadly, I had to actually paint the letters too in order to make all the white uniform throughout the picture. The lettering was easily the most intensive part of the process and probably took up about 50% of the whole project.

After finishing the sky, the lettering, and the ground

At this point, the next step was to add in the stars to the sky. The stars, took a long time, but the podcast I moved on to about Genghis Khan helped keep me entertained. Trying to keep the stars looking right and not quite TOO uniform was difficult. And was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be.

Here was the first stage of the stars

Completing the stars and adding the "grass" to the ground was the final stage. After 40+ hours, many long podcasts, and lots of tedious focus, I finally completed my first painting and now have a picture to wake up to and look at every morning before heading out each day.

 

F is for Friends That Do Stuff Together

Most people that know me well understand the fact that I've had a bit of a complicated and trying last 6 months or so. I've experienced some of my fondest memories during this period, but in a way I was thrown into the deep end in more way than one. The first most obvious one came in the form of acclimating myself to this so called "single life" and the obvious trials that have occurred during that transition. However, that's not the particular direction I plan on writing about tonight. I'm devoting tonight to explaining the very real struggles of attempting to make friends as a 23 year old guy in a new city and with basically no practice at it during the last 5 years.

Your first thought is probably, "what in the world does Noah mean by no practice??" Let me explain. During the last 5 years, I really made close to zero effort to develop close and worthwhile friendships with all of the new people that I found myself surrounded by throughout college. I mean, I hung out with people. I saw the same people 4 days a week on my soccer team for years. I worked with the same people on projects for multiple years, but I never really became close with them. I possessed more of a professional or coworker type dynamic rather than any sort tight knit, reliable connection with any of them. You may rightfully ask yourself how I could possibly have achieved that incredible level of separation from those around me? How could I know the same people for years and just never develop any sort of close connection with the people I saw daily?? It sounds ludicrous, but I'll tell you how. It was easy.

Throughout those years, I poured all of my personal feelings and emotions into my long-time girlfriend and a few already established best friends of mine rather than sharing anything personal or revealing with those immediately around me. In the last 5 years, I can count on one hand the number of new people that I have truly opened up to and would feel comfortable going to right now if I needed something, and I wouldn't even fill up the whole hand!!

This all leads up to my present day conflict. Right now, I'm living in a big shiny new city with millions of fresh faces around that all have a different story to tell. The only problem...I lack the faintest idea of how to properly go about finding out any of those stories. I've been out of the friend making game for too long, and I've forgotten all of the tricks of the trade. I feel like I'm playing checkers while everyone else graduated to chess years ago. How do I go about making worthwhile friendships without seeming like a complete lunatic? I mean, everyone is a little crazy, but how do I go about getting close enough so that we can bond in our mutual lunacy?

I do realize that I'm speaking in a lot of ridiculous rhetorical questions, but I don't really care. This blog is meant for me to vent a bit and say things that are on my mind. I know that growing up everyone always says "not to over think things". "Just be yourself". Well, I'll have you know that over thinking things is one of my favorite past times, and it sometimes feels like the people around me can't quite handle me being "myself".

All this being said, I still have a pretty amazing life. The few close friends I do have are incredible, I am enjoying learning my new job, and I still have the best family in the world. I know that friendships will develop for me as long as I keep working at them. Just like anything worthwhile, I can only get out of it what I'm willing to put into it. Fortunately for me, I now understand the importance of friendship, and I've got fresh legs coming off the bench.

Diving In Soccer Needs To Be Eliminated

Here's the video link to Fred's dive yesterday (Photo taken by Thanassis Starakis)

Alright, I am going to tackle a subject that is very near and dear to my heart...flopping in sports. If you are an avid soccer fan like I am, it's something that has gotten all too prevalent in recent years. As many people often remark, "people do it because it's effective for winning fouls and/or goals". Although that is true, punching opposing players in the face to leave them bleeding on the floor also aids your team in scoring goals, but I guess surprisingly enough, you don't see people do that all that regularly!! Why would that be I wonder?? Why would one action which achieves the same end result as another action be some much more commonplace in sport?!? I'll tell you why. One of them you'll get banned and/or fined for and the other will simply get you a bad reputation and some pundit finger-wagging until the next influential dive and he takes the spotlight. It's absolute incomprehensible garbage!!

I'm tired of watching the sport of love and care so much about be tarnished by these classless buffoons that go down with their arms raised yelling at the ref about a foul that never happened. Yesterday in the World Cup kick-off match between Brazil and Crotia, Brazil's incredibly mediocre forward Fred (yes, that is really his name) threw himself down in the box to a supposed foul from Croatian defender Dejan Lovren. You can watch the flop at he link below the top picture. Not only did this non-existent foul award Brazil with a penalty which completely changed the game, but it also caused Lovren to receive a yellow card which could cause him to miss a match later in the tournament. And how will FIFA likely deal with this incident? By shrugging it off and letting this issue perpetuate as usual. And it's not like FIFA is opposed to instilling swift decisive judgement on wrongdoers. All you have to do is look to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa where FIFA helped set up 56 special courts throughout South Africa for the month long tournament which dealt with everyone from muggers to Dutch women wearing orange dresses advertising a beer that wasn't Budweiser (it's official sponsor).

So how can we go about solving this seemingly unavoidable problem? Punish the players flopping!!! It really is as simple as that!! Do the same thing that every other sporting organization on the planet does. Review the video and punish the cheating pieces of crap until they're more scared of the punishment then they are desiring the motivation to cheat. It's a simple cost analysis problem. If every time a player is caught with video evidence of flopping for a call, fine them $10,000. That will get their attention quickly for the second transgression, fine them $30,000. And on a third or fourth time, fine them and give them a game's suspension!! It can't be any simpler than that. Every European league already does it with any sort of violent conduct. Why should diving not be enforced the same way?! Luis Suarez is 2013 got an 8-match ban as well as a £40,000 fine for biting Branislav Ivanovic's arm. I guarantee you he won't be trying that stunt anytime soon.

Luis Suarez biting Branislav Ivanovic

This really is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. Not only does it cheaper our beautiful game, but for us Americans it just makes it that much harder to gain respect and grow as a sport within our country. We already have a bad reputation as a pansy non-athletic sport to most of America, please don't give them even more reason to believe that.

Start Off By Making Your Bed

Well, I am officially a college graduate now. It's a kind of odd idea that I won't ever be sitting in crammed classrooms struggling to stay awake or cramming for the next days test due to those repeated days of sleeping. I suspect that the feeling won't completely sink in until August rolls around and I hear of others starting classes while I'll be moving up to Dallas to start my real world job. Fortunately for me, last night at my Commencement ceremony, I received some incredibly valuable knowledge from our keynote speaker. Admiral William H. McRaven who is a former Longhorn, trained Navy Seal, and was the lead coordinator of the raid that got Osama Bin Laden. In his speech, he spoke of the 10 lessons that he learned in Seal Training that he hoped would help move us forward in life. I won't go through the whole list (here's the link to the whole speech), but I will note one of the biggest points that resonated with me. Due to the fact that I know I won't do justice to his words, I will simply place his first anecdote here.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Viet Nam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed.

If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack—rack—that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection.  It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day.  It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.

By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

-Admiral William H. McRaven

Needless to say, I couldn't disobey a direct order from such a high ranking official. My bed was properly made for the first time in probably 2 years!! I love what this story signifies. Starting with a simple win in the bag helps to create a mental edge for the rest of the day. If you start by accomplishing something and seeing the satisfaction of completing that menial task, it allows your mind to see the enjoyment that comes with seeing a goal through to completion. This effect really does seem to work. I made my bed when I woke up and next I cleaned my whole room of clutter and junk. It's almost as clean as the first day I moved in 4 years ago! Then a few hours later after getting home, I summoned the motivation to cleaned the rest of the apartment. I even swiffered all the dirt stains off the wood floors which I've only ever done once in the last four years...

Needless to say, I had a pretty productive day, and I firmly believe that this speech had a great impact on that. It's been a wonderful 5 years at The University of Texas. It's had tons of high points along with a few low ones, but I wouldn't trade any of my experiences. I've grown and learned so much as a person these last 5 years, and I'm proud to say that, even on my last day as a Longhorn undergrad, I still learned something amazing. Thank you Admiral McRaven for your wonderful words of wisdom, and thank you University of Texas for contributing to the man I am today.

Finding Audrey

I thought today being Audrey Hepburn's birthday, it would make sense to commemorate such a classy and amazing woman by telling the story of how I got MY Audrey and how I came to name her after such an inspirational icon.

Well, the story starts back freshman year of high school. I began to get obsessed with classic cars (in particular Ford Mustangs) when my Dad and I discovered a few classic car dealers near our lake house in Conroe, TX. After discovering them, I forced my Dad to always take me to them and check out all of the beautiful pieces of history that to me had so much more character than present day cars. Thus started my determination to get a classic Mustang as my first car.

I read books. I did research. I spent hours on Ebay and classic car sale websites looking for great deals on 1965-1966 Mustangs. I knew every detail about these cars. I could tell you their history. I could tell you the year with a single glance. I consumed every possible ounce of information in order to show how my parents how determined I was to get an old Mustang.

As I got into my junior year, I felt the tides turning in my favor. My Dad started to slip over to my side and thought it would be a ton of fun to have a father-son project with fixing up this beautiful old piece of history. This takes us to my 17th birthday the summer before my senior year. 

I woke up on my birthday without really expecting anything special. I don't remember if it was when I woke up in the morning or later at night. I just remember standing around the living room with my family when my parents gave me a gift bag. When I pulled out what was inside, It was a simple framed picture. That framed picture still hangs in my room within arms reach of me typing this post.

(It was this picture in the frame)

The three kids standing in the car are my cousins. The kids of my uncle in California that I knew supported me getting my dream car. I immediately recognized what was going on and freaked out!! My parents informed me that my Uncle Ralph found a really good deal on a 1965 Mustang at a swap meet in Los Angeles and immediately called my Dad. My parents decided that it was too good of a deal to pass up and decided to surprise me on my birthday! Sadly, I had to wait another month to see her while she was being shipped across the country, but I couldn't complain! I was on cloud 9!!

Thus started one of the longest months ever. I knew that I wanted to give her a name. Any classic car deserves to have a suitable name to really show how special they are to their owners, and my car was no different. Therefore, the brainstorming began.

I spent weeks thinking of names. I felt like a single dad that was forced to name his newborn daughter. I knew that I wanted something classy. Some name that to me just spoke of elegance, because, unlike what most people believe, Mustangs were not originally created as muscle cars. They weren't originally very powerful or meant to be on racetracks. That spawned out of the later generations and into the muscle car craze of the 70's.

I still distinctly remember when I came up with her name. While vacationing in Lake Tahoe with my family, I slept soundlessly in one of the downstairs beds, and that's when I had a very vivid dream. I dreamt that I sat in the backseat of our family Suburban (the car I actually took to college with me), and I asked my family who was in the car with me what they thought of the name Audrey for my new car. My whole dream family loved the name!! They all thought it was a perfect fit for my dream car.

Fortunately, I remembered my dream when I woke up. I loved Audrey Hepburn ever since my parents showed me My Fair Lady as a young kid, so when I remembered the name, it really just felt right. I then went to have breakfast with the family and told them about my dream. As if already decided by fate, they all loved it just like they did in the dream! Thus stuck the name of my soon to be partner in crime, Audrey.

She's come a long way since I first got her. She looks quite different then she used to, but she's still my pride and joy. It's been a long 6 years together with plenty of blood, sweat, and tears (literally!), but she's been worth it all. Thanks for all the memories Audrey, and here's to a lifetime more of them.

I Should Probably Be Asleep

Well, I decided that I am finally comfortable enough to write about this topic. Most people that are close to me know about the fact that I recently went through a break up. I dated one of the best girls that I've ever known throughout most of my college life. However, although I care about her immensely, I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to try being single during some of my adult life. I have now been single for almost 3 months, and I'm starting to realize that I'm just not very good at it. Let me explain...

There are two types of single. The type that just want to be casual and fool around for a night and then go their separate ways, and the type that are analyzing everyone of the opposite sex as a possible mother of their future children. I, however, fall into an odd middle ground. Having been in a serious relationship for almost the last 5 years of my life, I am hesitant about the idea of getting back into a committed relationship. But at the same time, I am not really the type of guy that can just casually have a fling with a girl that I am not interested in at all.

However, I can't help but label every physically attractive girl that I meet and enjoy talking to as a candidate for a serious relationship. Because of this conflict, I feel at times like Golem from Lord of the Rings with my incompatible inner dialogues. It's infuriating!!! Like I said, I'm just not good at this whole being single and keeping things casual thing. I'm not Fabio. I'm not a womanizer. I'm much better at being a boyfriend. That's what I'm used to. I feel like a complete fish out of water.

I hope that it gets easier as time goes on and I get more comfortable with it, but at the moment, I just feel like I'm treading water and everyone just keeps stepping on my head and think they're helping. I am definitely not enjoying single life as much as I would have anticipated. I'm naturally a lazy person. If I can ever find an easy solution to something, I will exploit it. This whole single life is way more work than I foresaw and there's no cheat sheet that I've been able to figure out. And at the moment...it's way more than I bargained for.

Life Is All About Balance

The more I experience life and learn more about the world, the more I realize that the importance of balance. I actually just talked to my brother about this particular topic and that's what spurred me to write this post. Any activity in life can be unsuccessful due to lack of balance. A basketball team will always lose if they pass 100% of the time and never shoot. A dog will be spoiled if they only ever get treats and never get disciplined. And a student's college experience will never be fulfilled if they always sit inside and never go out to meet other people.

In many ways, my college experience lacked this attribute. Early on, I fell into a comfortable routine which I convinced myself had all I wanted and ignored the inclinations to go and experience anything out of the ordinary. This wasn't caused by anyone or anything in particular. It was simply my default, lazy mode. I've always been fairly lazy in that sense.

I still remember being in middle school and having my Mom asking during the summer why I wasn't going to hang out with friends. I would always respond with the same dumb answer, "Eh, I just don't feel like hanging out with anyone". That was never really true. It's not like I lacked any friends to call up or hated having a friend to play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater with. The fact of the matter was I simply lacked the motivation to get up the nerve to call people. I convinced myself that sitting alone at home was enough to tide me over until a friend would call me up instead. Sadly, this habit persisted during much of my college career. Until recently, my cruise control mode remained engaged with no particular inclination of switching off.

This past year has easily been the most enjoyable year of college. It's had its hiccups and rough nights, but, overall, it created incredible memories and lessons that I will never forget. I am an incredibly annoying barrier of letting myself go out and have fun. If there's the slightest reason why I should not go out and do something, I typically latch onto it and allow it to keep me in that night. However, those times I give in those outings I was initially reluctant about, I always have a great time. That's why I have learned to ignore those thoughts and remember how much fun I have when I hangout with people.

I still have those extremely lazy days (like today). And I have those nights that I just refuse to leave my apartment and do anything. That's not the point. The point is that there needs to be a balance. A balance between alone time/inner reflection and group activities/adventure. Each person has there own particular balance that they need, but the fact is that you need to be open to always testing that balance. Step outside of your comfort zone and try something different because those will become the great memories and stories that will last.