Something’s missing

Posted on January 23, 2023 by RelvinGonzalez

No matter how perfect it is, our brain always finds whatever’s missing on a certain situation. We sit down on a comfortable chair inside a movie theater, only to take a sip of our drink and realize it has no effervescence, or we pressed the wrong button at the magic drink spitting machine. Maybe the air is several degrees too chilly and your sweater is thinner than a Scott’s paper towel, or we get that uncomfortable feeling in the middle of the movie: we need to pee. We can also zoom out and extrapolate this into every other area of our lives. By then, we realize that our purpose is not to make everything perfect, but to learn to discern between what’s in our control, and what isn’t. To work hard and carry out whatever is in our control as well as we can, based on our current ability, and leave it wide open for the rest to go terribly wrong, because it will. 

And even if by the end, once you get home from a week long road trip full of bumps, and you still think it was the best road trip of your life, and you plan it again for next year, chances are it will not live up to your romanticized memory of it. We romanticize things; we fill in the blanks to heighten experiences instead of recounting them as they were. The story you tell your friends becomes the reality, plus sugar sprinkled over the burnt crust. This is not to bum you out, but a reminder to keep it moving, stupid. Get yourself into new situations and take unknown risks. Same as plants, we grow when we move to new homes where our growth may fit.

The feeling of something always missing is our calling to always be on the search, not for something specific, but to embark on the journey itself. Yes, something’s missing. But it is not in the soil where you’ve been digging. Like Gandalf says: “The world isn’t in your books and maps, it’s out there.” 

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The First episode of my Kindle Vella viking series, Within the confines of the Universe, is up now! You can find it here: Episode one: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0BSG47DLD

The whole series: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BSG6BSLZ

Follow, favorite, crown, Like, and answer the poll. New episodes weekly!

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Don’t look for it, unless you really want to find it.

Posted on January 16, 2023 by RelvinGonzalez

We don’t realize this, but most things we have didn’t arrive by accident. At some intersection of our lives, we were looking for exactly this. It always surprises us when we find it, whatever it is, as if it magically showed up at our doorstep like a puppy in a basket. But we are the only ones to blame. It didn’t use to be like this, or at least it took triple the time, but in today’s society, everything we seek is at our fingertips. It can be an amazing thing, and a great help for our growth as individuals. Unless you don’t know what you need and you constantly seek things that are not good for you.

If you want to learn how to write, sure, seek it out and you will find it quickly. If you get a great idea about something and feel the motivation at last to get out of bed and work on it, just work on it. Don’t stop to look for it to see if someone else has already done it. Chances are, they have. But the secret is that no one is you, exactly, so even if you are aiming at the same general thing, it is very possible that the uniqueness you will bring to the table will make it different enough to be special. 

So only seek when you have specific questions that need specific answers in order for you to grow. Don’t go searching for solutions to non-problems, or you will find answers as tall as barriers. There’s a million reasons to why you shouldn’t do something, and no one needs to know about them.

The only answers you need are very simple to get, and chances are you already have them inside of you. You should know these simple things before you let your ideas run wild: Are you hurting anyone? And, Is it illegal? If the answer is no to both of them, you should probably start right away and feed that inch that’s left in your spirit that still gets as excited as a kid the night before Christmas. Because those moments don’t happen often into adulthood. No one taught us we can live a life of excitement, those feelings are often only attributed to childhood and once you grow into an adult, miserable and tired becomes the new accepted normal. 

Educate yourself only if needed

Of course, if where your ideas take you is the use of power tools or some unknown technology, educate yourself first. But again, these are very specific questions that you can answer with specific answers or courses. Is not an open question like: “Can I do this?”, but breaking the big ideas into smaller steps, and asking, for example “How do I make a 65 degree angle cut?”, or “What is the best affordable table saw?”

Search engines are a powerful tool, when used right. But they are simply machines. Code written to perform a task. The result is only as good as the question you put into them.

If you like my style, and would like to support me, I make all sorts of useful and cool things. You can use them, give them as gifts or ask for something custom. I make wooden stuff on Etsy, and show how I made them on my YouTube channel, and I write books and sell some of them on Amazon. Also, if you have no money, you can visit my short stories and give them a thumbs up or a comment. Anything helps! Thank you!

The link to everything is here: https://linktr.ee/relvingonzalez

The link to my writings is in the about page here: https://relvingonzalez.com/about/

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The Resistance

Posted on January 13, 2023 by RelvinGonzalez

Have you read any of Steven Pressfield‘s books? (The War of Art, Turning Pro, etc). He talks about The Resistance, that little bastard of a voice you hear on your head telling you that you are not good enough, so why even try? Well, because not being good enough is where we ALL have to start. And then you practice for thousands of hours, ala Malcom Gladwell, until you master your skill and craft. It’s your choice!

I felt this resistance today, while I was editing a video I recorded in my dark and cold garage showing me making one of my Etsy products. I spent the entire freaking day editing that thing. Almost sweating, asking myself “what the hell am I doing with my life?” But I ignored that bullshit, and carried on working hard. What seemed impossible when I began, is now a FACT. I came through the other side with not only one, but three videos, one for every social media possible!

Sure, it doesn’t look as polished as the new Avatar movie, but it does what it’s supposed to do: To help people do some woodworking, and promote the products I make! It is a battle zone out there to get noticed.

I have to tell you one thing: Accomplishing what you set out to do in your journal the day before and again this morning feels AMAZING!

So for this weekend, and beyond, set ACCOMPLISHABLE daily goals. And MAKE IT HAPPEN!

I believe in you!

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Natural Selection

Posted on January 7, 2023 by RelvinGonzalez

How long until we build a machine that designs and builds machines, and we take ourselves completely from the equation? We will soon enough take our part in natural selection by becoming the hand that selects, and we will select ourselves out. If you find something that only a human can do, you’d best keep it secret, lest a company finds a way to automate it, replicate it, and replace it. The robot arm knows no limit for his reach, and all you can do is duck.

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The Wife

Posted on January 3, 2023 by RelvinGonzalez
Image
Photo by Foto Pettine on Unsplash

I saw it again today in the wild. Someone said: “the wife”. Let’s break it down. “The”, meaning: a thing. Not only that, but a thing separate from you, out there, somewhere. “Wife”, by itself represents a companionship, a union, a matrimony, but right next to “The” negates this and turns it into the opposite — a term of disgust, a source of pain, an imprisonment, an impediment, an object. Every time I read a man refer to their wife like this, I picture them lying awake at night staring at the ceiling, and regretting everything he has ever done. It is evident to me that they see their wives as the enemy. The villain of their masterful story, if their wives weren’t in the picture, of course. Why do we let society get away with little things like this? Why doesn’t anyone say anything at all? Why is it normal? It’s not about the economy of words. Certainly “My wife” is shorter than “The wife”, or is it a matter of being ashamed of being tied to this person? “My wife” puts me in direct relationship with her, whereas “The wife” just means she is someone’s wife, maybe mine maybe someone else’s; who knows, it’s a big mystery. As long as they keep it a mystery nobody can harm them, and they might still walk away unscathed, someday.

If there’s something I learned quickly is that once you include your wife in absolutely everything, life becomes a million times easier. She’s on your team, dude. Or at least she wants to be, if you’ll let her. Go and hug your wife or girlfriend today, and help her with dinner, and give her a massage, and ask her about her day, and tell her all about your frustrations and problems, and watch as your life flourishes and expands into horizons you never thought possible.

If you like my style, go visit all the other shit I do here.

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You can never have too many books

Posted on January 2, 2023 by RelvinGonzalez

I leave the comforts of home with a dozen unread books lying on the carpet, others leaning against each other in the empty spaces of the bookshelf, but I arrive with 5 more. This must be the shade of jolt they get from shopping. Shopping, the act of surrendering to the reality of not having an aim or a plan. The “Jesus take the wheel” of people who don’t have a Jesus or a wheel. I watch them from afar entering and leaving, entering and leaving, the revolving doors swinging. If it wasn’t from the small gaps of air that percolate into the store in this body exchange, they would all asphyxiate. Taking advantage of a sale becomes more essential than air itself. But not all spend is worthless, I continue learning. For collecting your time and giving it away in exchange of books is a wise gamble.

Today’s thrift store finds:

  • Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield
  • The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams
  • Art Class: A complete guide to painting by someone (I can’t bother to pick it up, and the author’s name is not in the front cover. Authors, put your damn name in the front cover!).

I typically divide my reading time in two: non fiction during the day, and fiction at night. Non fiction puts oil in the gears of my brain and get me thinking and moving, while fiction tells my brain to make up dreamlike fantasies which put me at ease and ready for sleep.

I try to read all the time, every chance I get, in every pocket of time. Sometimes I read chapters, sometimes a page, and sometimes I am able to sneak a sentence here and there. As life itself has become more and more chaotic so has every other area of my existence, including my entertainment and learning. But I always try to set aside at least half an hour a day to read, and a couple of hours to write, something. Today, I opened this blog in which I used to write more frequently, with no idea what I was about to write until this thing started pouring out. Will someone read it? You tell me. But writing is a selfish act for me–I write for myself. I like how I feel after I have written a few paragraphs; it’s like the brain has unloaded and it hungers for more. And I can’t wait to feed it. It’s the recycling of the mind. Done with the old. Fit for a new year, a new month, a new week, a new day. Heck, fit for a new second.

Oh, I found a quote in a book I’m reading, How to Find Work You Love by Laurence G. Boldt. The quote is from Carl Jung, and it says:

“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents.”

Carl Jung

Let that sink in for a minute. If you have kids, let that sink in for a whole week and change your damn life. Sometimes parents get so hung up on providing for their kids in the form of money, that they forget all the other billions of ways in which you can screw them up. Live a life you actually want to live. Kids can see your relentless TV watching fueled by unhappiness, your white hair of stress and frustration, and your purpled eyelids of a night tossing and turning thinking of all it might have been.

P.S. Is anyone else sick of SEO and “tricking” the internet into skewing fortune in your favor? What happened with just making something great and being successful from it? Whatever happened to natural selection? Oh, speaking of creating something great, go check out my books and buy at least one of them: https://linktr.ee/relvingonzalez and leave a review. The book Luna I wrote back in college and I reedited it a few weeks ago and gave it a new fresh cover. The stoic journals are awesome, I ordered the one with the prompts for myself just to check out how Amazon prints them, and I now use it daily. It is my favorite diary journal I have ever used, and I have at least three dozen notebooks and filled journals lying around. I also designed one with blank pages, in case you don’t care about my stupid prompts forcing you to write about anything specific every day. They make great gifts. Stoicism is amazing. K, bye.

Until next time.

Relvin.


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Keeping the scar alive

Posted on December 28, 2022 by RelvinGonzalez

Another day, another rock and a sword stuck deep within it. It is sometimes enough to look back and gaze upon all the other swords on the floor and the cracked, crumbled rocks of my past laying on the ground. But then I turn around, and there it is, another rock, another sword, a new strength required. With atrophied shoulders, and eyes that can open just enough to let a ray of faint light in, I must act. Act as if I possess a strength I have only read in fiction books. And with this scam I convince everyone of the hero I must be, because there is no other way a human could ever do this; not with a human body, at least. The rains came heavy and they all stood back, away from the trembling walls of the overflowing dam; they don’t know it is me who shakes. I skirt the surface of the broken tracks, removing the bodies of them all one by one so that the train may roll swiftly towards the inevitable without further casualties. And then I go back to my rock, my endless rock with its shiny new sword, and my failing strength, my white strands of hair, my wrinkles, and everyone that depends on whatever I have left.

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The ideal

Posted on May 6, 2015 by RelvinGonzalez

From what I have gathered through conversations and experiences, my own or not, is that the ideal person often is described as having the body of a greek god/goddess but with the comedy depth of Louis CK, the character complexity and darkness of Christopher Nolan’s Batman but the simplicity and kind heart of Forest Gump, the intelligence of Stephen Hawking and the confidence of, well, Stephen Hawking. In order to prolonge a relationship at any given moment in time into infinity you would have to possess characteristics that profoundly contradict each other. When have you seen a funny and intelligent nerd who happens to have the confidence and looks of Brad Pitt? This also begs the question:why do you make such high demans, are you Angelina Jolie?
All human beings have deep seeded insecurities. They may be different in shape, size, color or texture, but they all make the room smell like shit. If people know for a fact that we are all insecure animals, then why do we seek to bring this insecurities out in others? Why do we make such unrealistic demands? And why do we tell stories or details about our day that we know will make another person insecure? Them feeling that way is inevitable. Why? Because Brad Pitt can feel insecure about his intelligence if Angelina can’t stop rambling about Stephen Hawking the same way Barack Obama can feel insecure if Michelle can’t stop yapping away about how good looking their unfamous, underachieved pool boy is. There is no completely secure being on this Earth, one way or another we can make someone feel insecure about something. So, in plain words, if you don’t like the smell of shit, stop kicking people in the stomach.
From some time now I have been trying to think befote I speak. For example, if I am going out with someone and I get propositioned by someone else while I’m at the gas station, I won’t tell the person I’m dating. She does not need to know and I don’t want to risk making someone I care about feel insecure. Surely there must be millions of other topics to talk about. Some people love to talk about their day in great detail, and they sometimes forget that something they say might push the wrong button. Sincerity is the foundation of all relationships, but also is omission when the thing you are about to say is not important or constructive. Remember that episode in Friends when Monica tells Chandler she met the funniest guy at work? It is exactly that.
There are people who when they talk about their day they always leave in those details that make the hair on your back curl. They talk at length about the lines they get from people everyday, then they proceed to tell you that they are going out to a party with some friends. It’s like saying :”Purple balls explode, I am going to go to a sea with swimming purple balls on Friday…trust me, bye! Don’t be worried. Don’t react. Don’t have feelings!”
Just be careful and mindful of what you say. We are human beings, we react and we feel insecure. We are not ideal. We are not machines, yet. And even when that day comes, don’t talk about the dude with the 20 GB graphics card and quad core processor. Just keep it to yourselves.

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You are not a grown up!

Posted on April 24, 2015 by RelvinGonzalez

Remember when we were little? Our parents gave us a weekly allowance if we did our chores and homework. We put on our uniforms and went to school to sit on a chair and do something we did not enjoy for 8 hours a day. When we were lucky enough to finally get home, and we were about to partake in an activity we actually chose for ourselves, we were reminded of all the leftover work from school we needed to do before we could at last enjoy our day. When we got around to finish it all, it was almost time to go to bed and start it all over again the next day. Our light at the end of the tunnel was to graduate with the promise that all our effort would be rewarded someday. The reward being, in the adults’ minds, in the form of monetary compensation.

I have already voiced my opinions that school/college is nothing but training us to push down whatever makes us happy and replace it with what we “have” to do in order to receive what we “should want” (money) so that we buy what we “need”. This post is not about that, but about this notion that I have seen or heard before: “grow up” or “be a grown up”. What they mean is: get a job, get your own place, get kids of your own and start the cycle all over again.

But think about this: is that really the path to being a “grown up”? When we were kids we used to wake up earlier than when we wanted to, put on an uniform, go someplace for 8 hours and do something we did not enjoy, do this five days a week, and if we kept our head down and did our chores and homework we received an allowance from our parents. Now, we wake up earlier than we want to, put on an uncomfortable uniform and/or long sleeve shirt and shows, we drive ourselves through the traffic in order to get somewhere and do something we do not enjoy for 8 hours, in order to get an allowance from the grown up (boss). How is that any different? How have you “grown up”? PLEASE TELL ME!

For some people, growing up means doing all those things without complaining. For some people, it means to be a corporate robot and being really proud of it, for some reason. Or maybe to them it means to be able to afford the things you really, REALLY do not need using daddy’s(boss’s) weekly allowance. It is like through the years they become more and more blind to the fact that they are not growing up! They are shrinking down. Their spirit being tore from existence. Their will to take risks in order to achieve their wildest dreams is replaced by a two-week vacation a year that they never get to actually enjoy. While the kids are running around having the time of their lives, they are thinking about their next company deadline and their significant other gets mad because they are not enjoying themselves, making it even worse.

Which reminds me of the parents that make their kids their only reason to live. They make them the reason for why they stay at that crappy job. And then the kids feel the pressure to never fail or make any mistakes to not let them down, which stops them from taking any risks and learning anything worth learning from life. And the cycle is just never ending!

Now, don’t take me wrong. I respect the people that use corporate jobs for their own personal plan. Maybe they need the money to do their own personal projects or to pursue their passions in full without having to work for a couple of years living with their savings. Or maybe they want to start their own business but feel like they need to be part of someone else’s business in order to learn and perfect their trade. Or maybe their company offers to pay for their master’s degree and they want to use that. That’s fine. That’s awesome. It is the people that never leave their jobs because they think that they are being a grown up, they are the ones that rub me the wrong way.

No. You are not a grown up. You are nothing but an oversized child still living on a grown up’s allowance, keeping your head down and sinking your face in mountains of papers and taking part in projects that have nothing to do with your interests, spending your own time and LIFE doing someone else’s HOMEWORK because you don’t have the BALLS to be a grown up and follow whatever the FUCK you actually want to do. Don’t make your kids an excuse, don’t make your debts an excuse (you can sell EVERYTHING, and your kids will be fine). Just… GROW…THE FUCK…UP 🙂

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Catfish in real life

Posted on April 20, 2015 by RelvinGonzalez

Have you seen Catfish? You know, that TV show about people who fall deeply in love with the picture of a good looking person, only to show a face of dissapointment and disgust when they find out that the person they have been talking to is very far from being a supermodel.
The person being catfished then proceeds to make some excuse about how they have been lied to so no relationship can come out of this. Then they go back to their hotel and meditate towards finding a way to save face the next day they go back to confront their catfish one last time.  To make it look good to the cameras they end up “forgiving” their Catfish. They let them off the hook in hopes they swim far away… and fast.
What is the point of this post? I am not quite sure. I am addicted to that show, for some reason. It is my guilty pleasure. Maybe it is because I was victim of a Catfish once (or twice?). Or maybe I feel identified with the fact that when someone beautiful comes along we fill in the blanks for them. We want them to be as real as our wildest fantasies.
Maybe we all have a hint of superficial. Or maybe we think our insecurities can be covered up if we bring our own beautiful elephant to the room, and make them sit next to us everywhere.
The truth is, nothing ever lives to expectations. People who look a certain way, have probably have a certain life. The world reacts a certain way to them based on how they look, and they react to the world a certain way based on that. So expecting someone who looks differently than you to have a similar outlook in life than you is unrealistic. Their life experience will be so vastly different that you will have a hard time understanding where the other is coming from when they think the way they do or when they act the way they do.
Picture this, a beautiful woman named Sarah gets asked to be the protagonist of the play without any prior acting experience. She stands on the stage on opening night and everyone loves her. This type of thing has probably been happening to her throughout her life. So she has developed this positive reinforcement to being “on stage”, to just being in front of people. She has no reason to believe that whatever she does or says will be taken in any other way other than with applause, pat on the back, request for telephone numbers, a date, proclamations of love.
Now take Jerry. Either morbidly obese or pitifully skinny, his experience in life has been slightly different. First of all, trying his best to not look at any mirrors before he leaves his house is hard enough, but then his mind catches up with him. The looks of pity of women everytime he goes on a limb and asks one out, even though he has anxiety problems and knows he will make a fool out of himself. Or the disrespect given to him by anyone when he says he wants to do anything out of the ordinary. Everyone knows Jerry is not meant to be anything BUT ordinary. The negative reinforcement he has carried throughout his life has ever so turned him into an introverted shell of a human.
How can a relationship between a Sarah kind of person and a Jerry kind of person ever work? A person like Sarah, carrying all that positive reinforcement will never have to stop and think. She has never been really challenged in life so she thinks everyone’s life is just a playground where toys just fall from the sky for you to play with at your will. And Jerry thinks nothing good ever happens and that going on a limb and working hard just leads to dissapointment and sadness. Now they have been set up on a blind date and here they are. In a restaurant Dave picked up for his friend(a Sarah type) because he can’t believe how someone could ever be afraid of talking to a woman, let alone be single in this day and age. And Lisa(a Jerry type) told Sarah to not go with such a revealing dress because she remembers the last time she wore something like that and some men were laughing at her in that pub, but Sarah wore it anyway because that surely is a joke and it could never happen in real life. 
It would be simpler if the Sarahs and the Jerrys stuck to each other. But there is something about conquering the unconquerable(?), taming the untameable, being witness to an unlikely event, being part of the extraordinary. The thought alone that something like could happen makes life interesting. Like dog chasing cars, what would happen if we actually caught one? We surely will drive them away by being paranoid it won’t be there when we open our eyes again.

(Written on a cellphone. Sorry for any errors. Leave a comment. Ok good night 🙂 )
 

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