The Greatest Word in the English Language

I had dinner last night with a friend of mine and we ended up talking for a couple of hours. We talked about the basic stuff (work, family, friends) and then got into some deeper topics (faith, love, life, happiness). As we spoke, he asked me what my biggest weakness is. Without even thinking, I told him that I have so much trouble saying, "No." As I said that, he smiled and nodded and said that he was my age when he finally understood the power of that word (he's 39 now). He continued by saying that "no" is the most liberating word in the human language.

As we spoke a little bit more, he explained that through the word "no," we find out who we're really important to, who cares about us, who genuinely understands us, and who our true friends are. He said that if someone becomes angry or upset with you for saying no, they assume that your time is less valuable than theirs. This conversation really resonated with me because I thought about it all night and all day at work.

Who's to say that their time is more precious/valuable than mine? Although I love doing things for other people, I really need to start doing things for me. When requests come my way that interfere with personal plans, I need to learn to say no. I have a right to say no. I have a right to be happy. I have a right to do what I feel like my time should be used for. I have that right. Why should I be expected to compromise that right?

Going forward, I am going to attempt to do things for myself. I am going to work towards happiness and I'm going to try to not be taken advantage of. I don't mean that I don't want to give to others and I'm not saying that I don't want to help others anymore. All I am saying is that I need to do things for me and begin to enjoy life a little bit more.

Once I know how people react to my saying "no," I will know who truly cares about my best interest and my well-being. I don't want people to think they can't rely on me. That's not the purpose of this post. I just want people to understand that I can't be everyone's everything. Once that is understood, I feel like I will be much better off.

What is happiness?

I was in COMM395 (Deliberative Tradition and Democracy) tonight and we decided to hold a "Socrates Cafe"..Dr. Phillips wrote a book entitled "Socrates Cafe" that illustrates exactly what one of these consists of. Basically, it is an opportunity for people to gather and talk about things with no sense of authority/hierarchy present. We were asked to bring in a philosophical question and everybody voted on which one we wanted to talk about. We settled on "What constitutes a happy life?" Needless to say, there were some pretty diverse answers and I really took the opportunity to self-reflect. Although there is not one true, objective happiness, there are some similar traits that made people happy in class. It really allowed me to realize that I'm working my ass off and I'm wasting an opportunity in my senior year to enjoy myself and socialize with people I may not see very often after graduation. Taking 18 credit hours, working an internship, working at the gym, cheerleading, and balancing a social life is extremely difficult. The one with the least amount of mandatory responsibilities is my social life so I usually elect to defer it to another time. Unfortunately, it happens over and over and over again and I'm so tired of it. I feel like I need to take more opportunities to relax and hang out with friends and stop being so uptight about school and work. It's doing NOTHING besides stressing me out and I don't like feeling like this all the time. It's gotten to the point where all I think about is what I should be doing as opposed to what I am doing when I'm trying to have a good time. The combined definition--among the other students--seemed to reflect a "well-balanced life" or "a valuing of important people in your life." It made me think about how much all of my day-to-day friends, professors, acquaintances, and others mean to me and I'm slighting everybody because I worry too much about the bullshit that stresses me out. Therefore, I'm asking all of you to keep me in check. These habits won't be easy to break so I would LOVE for you to make me relax, make me hang out with people, even if I say I have something due in three days and I need to work on it. I have to think about the mayonnaise jar and coffee story (if you haven't seen it, definitely google it!). There's always time for a cup of coffee with a friend.

First Step Towards a Career

I woke up this morning a little bit more anxious than usual. I had an interview today; however, it wasn't really just a typical interview. I don't get anxious about those. I realized that this was my first interview that could turn into a career opportunity. This realization made me think about graduation and the idea that graduation is coming up really soon.

I don't feel like I'm unprepared; however, I'm terrified of going off into the proverbial "real world." I decided that I should make a blog to highlight the high (and low) points of my journey from the beginning of my final undergraduate semester, on through job searches, graduate school admissions, relationships (both romantic and non-romantic), parties, struggles, triumphs, and indifference. I don't really have a set purpose for this particular blog YET, but I really want to keep track of my journey through these times so that I can look back on these experiences--hopefully--as a successful, hard-working, family-oriented adult who cherishes his time as an emerging adult.

In case any of you were wondering, I did end up getting the job and will be starting in public relations at Newport News Williamsburg International Airport on February 1st, 2010. The job seems like it fits my personality, research interests, and career interests perfectly. I couldn't ask for a better opportunity, and now that I have it, I'm going to run with it! I'm REALLY going to try to keep up with this blog and update it frequently. I'm looking forward to this process and think the future has a lot in store for me.