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.

Life After School

To say that the last two months have been a bit of a roller coaster is putting it extremely lightly. The incredible number of new experiences that have come and gone have made this one of the most memorable periods in my life. However, in less than a month, I will begin a completely new adventure that makes my heart race more than anything that's happened recently. I will soon be a college graduate and start my first "real world" job.

My academic record is anything but pristine, and just a couple of months ago, I had no job in the works for when I graduated. However, I broke the bank when I withdrew more luck than most people ever experience, and I somehow managed to get a job that suits me better than I could ever have imagined. As much as I am looking forward to starting work at Etherios, I am more excited at the infinite possibilities of being totally on my own and living in a new city with one of my best friends.

My brothers and I have always been fairly independent people. We prefer to get things done ourselves, and if we don't know how, we figure it out. It's a Quintana thing. That being said, I have never been truly independent. I am fortunate to have parents that have provided me with everything that I have ever needed (and some), and, because of that, I have never really known complete independence. It may get old quickly having to keep track of every little detail of my life, but I can just tack it onto my list of firsts.

Life for me at the moment is light years from where I was expecting two months ago. Plans that I had will most likely never see the light of day and will simply be locked away in my own mind. At the moment though, I'm just loving the adventure and the beginning of a new step in a life that has already seen and done so much. So thank you Austin for a great college experience. Let's finish this last month with a bang.

Never Say Never

As anyone who has had more than a 5 minute conversation with me would know, I am very passionate about my opinions. That being said, these snap judgments typically set me up to have to eat crow later on down the road. On those occasions when I give things a second chance, I'm always pleasantly surprised when my feelings have changed. Many of my favorite bands, movies, and people were first passionately despised before I later gave them another chance with a more open mind. 

When the whole Lana Del Rey obsession happened a couple years ago, I hated her music. I thought the way she sang was "moany" and obnoxious. I failed to understand what everyone found so great about her songs. Fast forward a few years and I mention her in conversation to a friend, but he hasn't heard of her. I instantly get on YouTube in order to show him how annoying her music sounds. Or at least that was the plan. As the song kept playing, I got legitimately confused because I was actually liking the song. It made no sense! I had decided years ago that I disliked her music!! What was the problem?? After that, I decided to check out her whole CD, and, to my great surprise, I loved it!! I'm even jamming out to her as I write this post!

It is still an infrequent event that I change my opinion towards something, but it is definitely getting more and more common as the years go on. Therefore, I request that if anyone ever hears me say that I "will never like something", please refer me back to this list: Radiohead, Mario Balotelli, Lana Del Rey, Archer, and See's Lollipops. I know there are many more that I can't think of at the moment, but this is a pretty solid list. Maybe some day I'll even come to enjoy peanut butter or baseball. On second thought, maybe just peanut butter...

Traditions Are A Must

I talked with a friend last night about A&M and their school traditions. The Aggies claim the title of most tradition heavy school of any university in Texas and possibly the nation!! They have so many different ceremonies and customs that each and every one of their students feels compelled to participate in them for fear of being a "2 percenter". Some of the traditions are kind of dorky, but some are incredibly fun. This talk of traditions made me think about what particular family traditions I grew up enjoying, so I thought that I would talk about 3 of my favorites. Here they go:

1. Smashing a slice of birthday cake in the birthday boys face - This tradition was mostly only supported by my Dad. My Mom would always try to convince him to not do it, but she would be inevitably overruled by 4 other sons that were all lining up to be the person that got to commit the treacherous act. This is definitely a tradition that I will be putting to use with my future children. Lots of laughs were always had.

(Or sometimes the neighbor would step in to lend a hand!!)

2. Roasting a pig for big family occasions - This typically occurs on 3 different holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. As Cubans, my family loves pork. Depending on the size of the get together, we do anything from one sizable leg to a whole 200 lb entire pig. Either way, it always comes out delicious and makes me overeat way too much.

(Dad, brother, and cousin checking the goods)

3. Books to send each child to college with - This one has probably meant the most to me personally. Maybe it is because I wasn't expecting it; none of my brothers mentioned this tradition to me before I received it. To each of the five boys, my parents have given the same 4 books: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Wealthy Barber, a new Bible, and The Book of Virtues. I've only really taken advantage of 2 out of 4 of these books, but that's not too terribly. The part that really made this gift significant to me was the one on the right in the picture simply called On Life. It is a written account of my life according to my Dad which documents all of the significant events in my life from my birth to the end of my senior year of high school. It is all broken down by year. Each son got one of these. Obviously, there are key events missing that I would include in my own autobiography (first kiss, favorite soccer moment, etc), but there was so much detail and love given from my Dad's account of my life as well as my parents lives that I would never have known otherwise.

After his personal account of my life, he goes on to impart advice and knowledge about specifics subjects such as college, marriage, children, and money. This simple 28 page document means a lot more to me than most anything else in my apartment. I'm pretty sure that if there was a fire and I only had 30 seconds to grab whatever I needed. The only two items I would grab would be the hard drive out of my computer and this incredible little book.

Nothing better than some pancakes and soccer on a Saturday afternoon

I Hate Network News

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people (generally older) see something on the news or on the "world wide web" and try and generalize how terrible the world is turning into. Typically, when I hear someone try and claim that, I make two critical judgments about them. 1) They are not very well educated about the history of the world and 2) it's probably not worth my time to try and convince them otherwise. When you look throughout the history of Earth, today undoubtedly is the best time to live in. Granted, maybe certain things have gotten worse. The glaciers probably aren't the most thrilled with humans at the moment, and, yes, certain diseases such as cancer have become a much scarier threat. Overall though, I'd much rather live through the unintentional consequences of human development such as global warming and child obesity than having to worry about being shipped off to Germany to fight Nazis or wondering whether the Russians are going to end all human life. However, the real issues such as global warming typically aren't even the examples people claim when they argue the world is going to the dogs. They wouldn't use the ozone layer or fat middle school kids as examples, because those are actually their fault. The baby boomers. The real problems that these highly evolved individuals point towards are the really hard hitting issues that shape our world's future. Things such as kids playing too many video games and random ghetto kids attacking people for gang initiation. And what's to blame for them believing this. 24-hr news.

Yes. News networks love to blow anything and everything out of proportion. It's what they strive for, because they know that there are millions of uneducated people that will gobble it up like a fat kid on the last cupcake. The news is no longer about focusing on the important issues or making people question relevant topics that need explaining. It's about ratings and views. Granted, some networks and news sources are better than others, but the majority of them are interchangeably useless. News will latch onto absolutely anything and rant about it for weeks and weeks making it seem like judgment day. Why?? Because most people don't care and it gets them ratings. Do these networks really care about this random Malaysian flight that went missing? No. They couldn't care less, but there's nothing else interesting enough to the average layman for them to change the subject. There's no big war to talk about, Justin Bieber has kept out of the lime lite, and the controversy with Russia and Ukraine is too complicated for them to want to delve into that mess. Explaining a celebrity DUI or a disappearing plane is much simpler. My favorites are when they latch onto whatever troubling teenage fad is going on at the moment.

A few months ago, when the whole story broke about the whole "knockout game", everyone over the age of 40 were losing their minds over it. Here's a video if you don't know what I'm talking about.

I actually even got a phone call from my mom asking if I've ever heard of anyone playing this stupid game and warning me to be careful. No Mom. People I know don't play that because I don't live in Detroit or Compton, or it's the fact that it is not a normal activity. The fact of the matter is that anything that being reported on the news is not normal or regular enough to worry about. If it was worth stressing over, it wouldn't be on the news. I guarantee it. Why can't the news networks just do something constructive by maybe trying to figure out the cause of the activity such as an spike in urban poverty and make that the focal point of the discussion? Maybe because that's just too complicated of a question to try and answer. Fear mongering is much less complicated.

The fact of the matter, and the reason for this long winded post, is that with the structure of today's news networks being 24-hrs a day, you have to take the stories that talk about with a grain of salt. Think of it as if you're sitting in a 12 hour interview for a job where everything you say matters. At some point, you're gonna run out of things to say and just latch onto anything you can say to keep appearing interesting, and only the interviewers that are still conscious are going to call you on your bullshit.

Speaking Up In Class

I'm not sure where this particular habit comes from, but, for as long as I can remember, I have always felt the need to step up and try and answer questions in class when everyone else refuses to bite the bullet. There's just something so depressing about seeing a teacher trying to stimulate a class only to see the enthusiasm drain from their face when they realize it's so obviously not working. It honestly breaks my heart. Some teachers bounce back from their disappointment alright and just put people on the spot to answer, but from my experience it's the younger teachers (such as my Intro to Philosophy teacher) that take it harder and seem to refuse to call someone out and force them to start the collaboration.

There's something so satisfying when you inevitably raise your hand and see the blood rush back to their face and a new exuberance to discuss whatever monotonous topic they brought up to begin with. There is almost an unspoken "thank you" to express how grateful they are to escape from a rather awkward situation. Typically, their appreciation allows them to not judge whatever bogus reply you blurt out in the process. You can try and claim that Paul Revere defeated Hitler at The Battle of Bunker Hill in 1492, and they would still let you down gently just to ensure that others wouldn't feel threatened to join in the conversation. I may not be curing Polio or rescuing a kitten from a tree, but, every time I get to bail a teacher out by speaking up in class, it makes me feel like I did my charitable deed for the day.