Change, Arrogance, the Universe, & Climate

This Friday is an important day in history: The United States will have a new president, and I will be in the studio recording more originals. The tabloids are debating which will have a greater impact on humanity - so I will celebrate with a list of questions:

• What is Change?
• Where is my mind?
• How long is our life?
• How many roles do we play, job titles do we own, impacts do we make?
• How many roles do I play that I deny?
• If I ride a horse, and wear trousers, than are pants a form of transportation?
• What was my name before my parents decide to conceive me?
• How old are my thoughts?
• Will my brain run out of storage - can I choose what to delete?
• Am I a cause, or am I an effect?
• Am I both, a percentage of each?
• At what age did I realize that 100% of my mind was made up of effects from causes that I haven't weighed in on yet?
• How have I effected people by the way I was before I examined how others have effected me?
• Does my mind decide how to be effected by causes without me?
• Am I my mind, or am I the gardener?
• If I eat an apple and plant a seed, do I own the tree, or does the sun and the rain own it?
• If I plant it in the desert and water it myself, is it mine?
• Do my parents own me, or do their parent's own us?
• I feed myself and take care of me, so do I own me?
• Are the questions, the answers, or the context more important?
• When do ingredients become dough, dough become bread, and bread become pizza?
• When does a stranger become a friend?
• Is trust an honor, a verb, a basic medium for treatment?
• Do I trust my heart to beat while I sleep?
• Does my heart trust me to notice what I eat?
• Does my dog know that I eat other animals that look like they do?
• Does my dog trust me, or does it trust me to feed it?
• Do my children trust me?
• Do plants have a conscious choice to grow?
• Is that why they don't choose to live in my home?
• Am I an animal?
• Do Animals know they eat?
• Do Plants hurt when they're thirsty?
• Do more animals die of climate change, or humans die of alcohol abuse?
• When I read this silently in my head, do the words echo into the things I read yesterday while I sleep?
• If I change my ethics and values today, does the sound of the echo change?
• If sea levels are rising, and 2 million years ago half of North America was covered in ice, why do we use the same land/sea maps?
• Am I arrogant?
• Is there a center of the universe, or is my thought the center of reality's now - walking on a treadmill in the Milky Way?

Dear Florida Flamingo

2016 was a bad year for blogging; I posted once, and now this. I need to re-brand that damn word blog and decide how it has a place in my life. As a human who loves music, I am often conflicted on how I want to emote. There's conversation with people, team sports, exercise, dating, work, journaling, songwriting, singing/practicing at home, gigging events, and where the hell does blogging fit in?

Blogging, doesn't sound sexy. Blogging isn't me flicking off the scoffer while ordering a light beer and having a cigarette. Blogging feels like ordering that craft beer that makes my mouth too spitty, and then smoking an e-cigarette and not knowing where to exhale my butterscotch flavored lies.

There has got to be a better way to express oneself than writing an ill-planned entry on a website that doesn't support emojis. Fuck. Smh.

Anyway, come this January 2017 I will have finished recording my first album of original music for release sometime in February. I've met so many wonderful people this year, and am grateful for all of the support that people have lent me while figuring out what the hell I'm doing alive. Can't wait to get out and start performing this album, to share my side of life, and to begin writing that next album along side a few other initiatives. Wishing everyone a fantastic last week to the year, and many blessings on their passions as we jump into the next week and we wake up making choices on what it is that makes each one of us human.

Florida Flamingo, this post is devoted to you who also rambled without a purpose, yet with care and intent to express self. Because who wants to live like an elf on a shelf (what?). Your unexpected reply filled me with joy, and I thank you for that.

Blogging

As of 15 minutes ago I have the internets in my apartment. Furniture comes tomorrow. I haven't worked in approximately 5 months, with exception of a music gig here and there. I start riding the desk again next week. Hmmmmpppffff. Brand spanking new to the North Hollywood area as of one week ago, and I keep finding out that people have the weirdest jobs. Not just that literally everyone has a headshot and is an aspiring actor, but Professional Blogger?

I need to up my game and post more. Maybe I should busk at the street corner, but instead of music I'll just have an iPad and an instagram account up for people to scroll through while I stare with an outstretched hand. haha. Do people do art for free anymore? 

Those meaningful, scroll worthy posts will come at a later date, for now...

...Save & Publish

A Tinder Tale of Dating and Politics

It came to my attention that I haven't added any thoughts in awhile. That's true. I've been too busy swiping down or left daily.

What have I learned?

Nothing. I'll be the first to admit that information comes so quickly today that all I'm considering each time I read 2 words is whether or not I want to read more, and I don't have a reason for when I do. Swiping and the knowledge of so much to go through affords me no time to process, and no time to uncover what could be hidden. I mean damn, my newsfeed is even pre-filtered by what Facebook thinks I'll enjoy more than the next. This is a problem for a few reasons, and I feel it's most ironic in Dating and Politics...two things we wish were more successful yet make no real strides to change. Time is valuable and we continue to gamble by passing on what could be made great in hopes of finding a better base to start with.

I'm vaguely convinced that there are two types of people - those who think deeply about why they feel, and those who simply feel and act. Yeah, this is just fight or flight but ignore that. And, it's likely more complicated, but you're probably on the verge of deciding whether the next paragraph is worth reading.

If you haven't swiped back to your news feed, that's good, but I can't reward you. There will be no cat memes, no wine jokes, and no funny videos of kids crying after their parents say they've ingested their child's halloween candy. All I have to offer is a one-sided conversation with someone I'll never meet (I promise it's nice to meet you). This is a lot like the current presidential debate, and a lot like trying to date outside your social circles.

I'm waiting for Trump and Hillary and the other runners, who are far less interesting, to add a profile on Tinder. Give me their first name (Donny is going to suffer), age, mutual friends, and a list of superficial interests. If they have time to craft 15 words to describe themselves I'll give bonus points, but only if they're attractive enough for me to click and see the detail. Then, it's game time - Right or Left baby. That's all this debate is, and we've asked for it.

While I see the older generation "stuck" on issues and the lack of change, I see the current one swiping so fast they haven't thought on one thing long enough to make any impact or see real meaning. Dates pass quickly - not interesting enough. Jobs change - not enough recognition. Diets lose - not enough improvement. Even intellectual evolution in the market seems to be stagnant - aiming toward the small agile updates rather than a well thought restructuring of society. Consider our devices - Smart watch built off the phone, fantastic. But what about all the redundancy? Smart TV, Smart Blu-ray, smart phone, smart laptop. Give me a belt buckle that holds the mind of my phone and laptop, and then I'll just buy displays in watches and glasses and cool beats headphones and other bullshit they dream up - but stop wasting my time and intellect to choose or weigh features; but that's another entry.

I want something new, fresh, and meaningful. Now, it's whether I keep swiping to find it, or dig the heels in and find the social change to be built on the last generations' astounding achievements. Oh, but dating, to the left to the left. Netflix and chill is far more rewarding when I can finish the whole pot of joe on my own.

Sister

Next week will be 4 years since my sister found a new home. She was in and out of hospice care for over a year. She was 37. 

Two weeks before she let go, on her birthday, she shared a quote. I want to share it with you alongside a picture she sent us years earlier:

"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."  (E.E. Cummings)

Jenny, I admire how you made those less fortunate feel that you had all the time in the world to listen and enjoy their thoughts, because they were valuable.

The full quote by E.E Cummings, which Jen did not share, says that "We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."

If there are people in your life that are valuable to you, tell them, make the time to understand their dreams and make time for the dreams they see in you. Risk it all to reveal your full spirit. After all, the most important day in the history of time has always been Today.

YouTube:  "Daniel Adam - Sister (Original Song)"

(Jennifer Marie Hedstrom, 3/16/1974 - 4/2/2011)

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Friday

Myers-Briggs says I'm an ENFP. In just four letters you can classify me into a group of people that have a propensity to act a certain way, based on my preferred method of perceiving the world.

An ENFP is an idea person and a people person. It says they see everything as a cosmic whole. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure if that introductory paragraph is repeated for every assessment. After all, we are all just an action of what we think, and we are all born from people and must live as one.

The one thing that blew my mind, a midst all of the feel good lines that the author introduced to satisfy my narcissistic mind and likely prompt me to give great reviews about the test, was that the author told me to take caution before sharing my thoughts with others:

"ENFPs who publicize their feelings too often may put off some of the crowds of friends they naturally attract."

I suppose to vocally disagree would be to lose.

Valentine's Day

Have you ever wrote an email, a blog, a status, or tweeted a sad thought while missing someone you loved... feeling a little angry, a little sad, a little broken and alone while you drift to the indie music that a sea of others are listening to all over the world?

Can you keep a secret?

Me too.

Off for a little Chinese take out with my number one grandma Lorna.

Life is About Chance: So Start Failing

Don't you hate those quotes that have the cat hanging on the clothes line, or the frog choking the pelican while it's dangling in the bird's mouth ...."Never Give Up." How about the often heard, "Teach a man to fish..."? That one is used enough that people don't even finish the saying, cough-cough parable, anymore.

I'm sure you've had plenty of friends, family, and coworkers that can recite the old sayings but do not seem to have an original thought rattling through their brain. What does an original thought even look like, feel like, sound like? "I'll have it original, please". That doesn't mean much without context, does it?

Exactly.

Being original is nothing but the base product of whatever you'd like. It means you can take an old trick and make it new again, make it a signature, make it a new base. Iced cream was the original cream until vanilla went and stole it's thunder. Damn you Vanilla. But, now vanilla is used as the word for original - without anything extra.

What's this have to do with chance?

Recently, I wrote a poem called 7 billion dreams. It's about a girl who wakes up every morning and goes about her life by stuffing her dreams and her passions; a dichotomy of blandness of humanity vs the elusiveness of dreams becoming reality. She doesn't think she has anything special. And, special cannot exist without both the bland and the improbable. Enter the conflict of a restless dreamer.

When you consider how many people are in the world, I don't blame her. As the poem goes on an unseen observer begs her to stop lying to herself about her worth. The observer tells her that she's stealing her gifts from a world who needs her. You'll have to listen to the song to find out more. Even if the character in this story has a break through and is one of the rare to take a leap...

What are the chances she will be successful?

At this moment the camera reel should freeze, pan the scene, and we should reflect. What is chance anyway? How many absurd sayings talk about chance, and luck, and skill, and talent, and all of that bullshit? We don't need sayings, and we don't need luck - although it helps in some sort of black magic way that we never have enough patience to think about.

If the girl from my poem thinks she has no chance of helping the world, providing a beautiful art, being accepted, the narrator surprises by saying "You're absolutely right, your ambitions aren't new..." And there is no problem with that. Every person see's the world from their eye, and many have the ambition to make a difference - succeeding is the troubling part.

What is the best way to increase the chance for success?

Practice? No.

Skill? No.

Luck? No

Networking? No.

Blogging? No.

Damn.

We are so distracted by the overwhelming probability of failure at first attempt that we rarely realize our odds just improved. Try again, keep failing, and keep enjoying each day of your new-found art. Laugh. Be amused by the beauty of why you failed. Try again.

Case Study: What are the chances that any of my blog posts will make a difference? Probably 1 in 10,000. That's a blog a day for 27 years. If everyone in this world shared their thoughts and their dreams and their art as if they had a one-in-ten thousand shot and still pursued it, this world would be a different place.

I pray that everyone could find an art they love enough to fail at for 27 years, and enjoying every day of it. Now go, increase those nasty odds. I'm giving you a hall pass to just do it already! Dig deep and start showing those you love, those in your community, and maybe one day the world.

"...there is a cure, and it could be you."

Most of the people in the world I will never meet. Of those that I have, only some will know that I have a rather bloated passion for singing and daydreaming. And although I'm shy, my passion grows each time I'm able to perform and connect with an audience. I'm always nervous, and I don't think I'll ever shake the anticipation of being tossed of stage. My opportunities to date have been slim, but they're growing after coming out of the closet as a "singer". It feels weird to say. I'm a singer, nah, there's gotta be another adjective or noun... 

Even more bizarre....one day if my dream actually comes true and I can pursue music full-time, I'll inevitably have to one day answer the odd question during a date of "what do you do?" with the unpopular..."Oh, I'm a musician" (Suddenly the second date will seem as unrealistic as a 2.7 second rodeo ride on a beefy unicorn named Betty).

While music is a very personal part of my life that I have only recently made public, there is another private commitment I would like to share. Tomorrow will be my second time being a bone marrow donor through the Be The Match Foundation. I donated in 2011 by going through a direct bone marrow collection (the kind where they put needles through you lower back muscles and through your hip to collect marrow directly). I still hold the award for hardest bones, I'm told. The award was paired with my uncanny ability to flee from the OR table after being put under - Nice, apparently I'm not so courageous when unconscious. All in all, it was an easy procedure. I played in a Stegman's Old Boys Soccer game the next day.

Tomorrow I will be donating a different method. It's called PBSC, or Peripheral Blood Stem Cells donation. For this style of donation I've been going to my local hospital for the last 4 days. Each day they give me two injections of a drug that stimulates overproduction of blood-producing cells. The cells, which normally are in your bone marrow, magically (of course) make their way into the blood stream, which will be filtered out tomorrow by an Apheresis machine. We will save the details for another day - they're not important.

I'm not here to blog about Apheresis, although I'm sure you find it riveting. I'll be on the machine for maybe 6 hours they tell me, watching movies, sitting in sweat pants. Actually, sounds similar to what I would otherwise be doing if I was at work in my office....except that would be for 9 hours and I wouldn't give someone a chance to live, and it's work.

All I want to share today, is that I hope you sign up for the Be The Match Registry. It's free. It's easy. All it takes is a Q-tip swab of your cheek from a Fed-ex package while you sit in your underwear and spill cheerios on your chest. The result? You may be the 1 in 500 that is asked if you'd like to give someone a second chance at life. If the day isn't a good day for you, you can pass like you pass up Jury Duty. But, you'll never know if you might be the one to give someone a second chance. Seriously, everyone should be on the list - clever Jury Duty analogy right there...

You only have this life once, and I know your ass is puckered too much to donate money, so register your name and do the Q-tip swab instead. It's easy. One day, if you're asked to donate, worry about it then.

Keep practicing the courage of giving and it'll keep taking you places you never imagined. So will daydreaming, but lets keep this blog full of purpose ;)

Enjoy your Thursdays riding those office chairs.

Over and out. Oh, and here's the link:

Join-The-Marrow-Registry!!

Once upon a Bridal Championship Football Show Sunday

Considering all of creation, I think humans are all pretty damn similar. There may be some remarkable exceptions, but even the most unique are just like the rest of us. What makes me so confused, is how two different people can have such extraordinarily different feelings toward a football team. Love, hate, disdain, nausea over a loss. 

If you like sports, America, baby Jesus, Yahweh, Muhammad or whatever it is that makes humanity and the world special, I dont understand why you can subjectively hate a football team or take joy in another team's sorrow when the person on the other side of the table absolutely loves them.

Haha people are so weird. Great game Pack! Hawks, way to not give up or get cheap when everything is going wrong. Excited to watch the AFC ship! Feels good to be done with another Bridal Show, see the smiling faces, and kick the feet up.

46 minutes remaining...

Let me just clear the air: I suck at blogging. Between the tweets, the facebook, the journal, and the selfies (jk) I often feel like I have no more thoughts, nor the energy to share them on a blog. With 46 minutes left in my first expo, let's talk.

For those who know me, and those who might get to know me on here, my mind doesn't stop spinning. If I could one day capitalize on the mindless daydreaming, I might actually be able to eat more than Ramen and Tuna. My ex-girlfriend knows, however, that I eat Ramen and Tuna for sheer desire of a quick meal... (my dirty excuse).

Today is my first time at an expo. I haven't talked to many people, I think my presence at the booth cramps it's style....so I find myself walking around and eating butternut squash soup and drinking too much coffee.

30 minute set was a blast, and I got rid of more cards in those 30 minutes than all 5 hours at my table, But hey, it is fun to "work" at an expo while I in fact blog secretly and snicker at the patrons as they walk by thinking of dresses and dishes and the big moment in their lives...

...but what about after the ceremony? How often to couples plan and prepare and get nervous excitement for events in their life? How often do you cry because something is so beautiful that you heart breaks in half, both that it's so stressful and that you're so relieved it's over? 

Weddings are Weird.

A couple distractions later, I better start breaking down. Time to drive back to Alexandria and go to a work party all by my single self. Maybe I'll wear sweat pants and slippers so the other couples have something interesting to talk about  :)

Talk soon-

"Start a blog", they said...

I think the bloggers association maintains that it is terrible luck to start a blog without an entry the same day. 

Also, you should know that it's an accident that this website got published on January 1st, 2015. I've been pushing through with new trails each day, and it just happens that today was the day that I had time to sit down and create.

Thanks for visiting the page. Please come along on the journey, I'll need the help. Check back often and feel free to comment with all the love and hate you have in you.

Every thought has a purpose, don't let yours grow stale. 

Daniel