Phil's Brain Cloud | Page 2 of 18 |

I need to grow a spine

People make jokes at my expense. I laugh along with them.

I’m laughing on the outside. I’m hurting on the inside.

I try not to take myself too seriously. Maybe I don’t take myself seriously enough.

I’ve never been good at standing up for myself.

I don’t like to be laughed at.

Made fun of.

Bullied.

I need to grow a spine.

I need to assert myself. To not worry about who it will offend.

My feelings are important too.

If you don’t think so, you can get lost.

Prince EA – We need to talk about mental health

There’s too much negativity in this world. It’s made us sick.

I only have one issue with what Prince EA says:

We can’t rely on government. We can’t rely on schools.

We need to solve our own problems.

We need to be positive as individuals.

I’m not saying we should ignore anything negative. Ignoring problems doesn’t make them go away.

But we should focus on what’s positive. What’s good. What we can do to help.

Take care of yourself.

Do what you can for others.

Encourage them to do the same.

Make your world a better place.

Missing my boys

Sometimes when I can’t be with my boys it hurts. It feels like there’s a huge hole in my heart.

Other times I’m fine.

I don’t know what makes the difference.

When I was younger I would dream about marriage. I wanted to get married as far back as I can remember.

Fatherhood was something I rarely gave any thought.

I figured I would have kids at some point. I didn’t think about it beyond that.

Sometimes it’s all I can think about now.

I want to spend as much time with my boys as I can.

I want them to have the best future they can.

I want to do whatever I can to make that happen.

I want to have the best relationships with them I can.

I want them to be the best men they can be.

I want them to learn from my bad choices.

To not go through what I’ve been through.

Freelancing?

Do I want to be a freelancer?

I’ve been thinking about this for years now.

I think it’s what I want to do. Or at least where I want to start.

I’m scared, though.

Will I be able to get jobs?

Will I be able to support myself?

It’s so different from anything I’ve done before.

That’s what scares me.

It’s also what makes me want to try it.

Changes

It’s been a while since my last post.

I’ve moved out of our apartment. Into my mom’s basement.

I’ve only spent one night there. A long night.

I’m still staying at the apartment most nights.

I got a new laptop. The old one kept overheating.

The wi-fi connection on the new one is flaky. I’m not sure why.

No job yet. I’m not sure what to do about that.

I ought to start a business. I’m not sure I’m up to it.

I need to do something, though.

Quora

Earlier today I read James Altucher’s article, Do You Want To Have Money or Impact? In the article he says, “I tell people who want to learn to write better to check out a site called Quora.”

I’ve visited Quora before, looking at answers to other people’s questions. Today I decided to try answering a few.

I hope I did more good than harm today. I guess there’s no way to know. At least not yet.

It felt good, though.

Quit social media

This video is going to be tl:dw; for a lot of people. I wonder how much of that is due to social media addiction. 😉

It’s a TED talk by Dr. Cal Newport on the dangers of using social media.

The main points he makes are:

Social media is a slot machine in your phone (or computer).
You don’t need social media to succeed professionally.
There are harms associated with using social media (anxiety, fragmented attention).

Here’s the full talk, for those of you who still have attention spans.

Drowning in a sea of social media

If I’d stayed on task I’d be done by now.

I meant to spend the day packing. Instead I spent the day on social media sites.

Again.

It’s embarrassing.

It’s frustrating.

I’ll never accomplish anything if I don’t take care of this problem.

I think it’s time to leave social media behind.