Finding Your balance

To me life is all about finding your balance. This theory has been artistically depicted for centuries as something called a ying-yang. This theory, illustrates that if life were to co-operate with you, you would have to co-operate with it entirely. For everything, everything else, and you to exist indefinitely, they, them, and you must exist in proper balance. Everything and everyone must be wholly compensated for by their match, while their their match should be completely compensated for by them. One may be holding the largest "eco-footprint" presently, but that may soon change, because that is the way it works. When you look back in the end, everyone will have had the same amount of resources. They didn't hold the same amount of resources at any point, and they didn't have them for the same amount of time, because it is ever changing. In the end they will have used the same amount of resources; but by means that are infinitely different. Those who sooner accept this and sense it will be the most consistently happy. By taking things as they come and sensing that they are always changing, you will be most consistently satisfied. Any balance you give up now, no matter how insignificant it may be will lead to your eventual fall. The more you effectively determine your balance, the more efficiently (longer, not greater) your satisfied.

Later Days

Kroz

Cocky Bastards?

Something that has always confused me is how frequently arrogant individuals are socially accepted. When reflecting on high school and those who stood out as socially accepted one can conclude that the most sought after individuals were often the most arrogant. The few political leaders in my high school's exclusive social network were arrogant. They had this outrageous self entitlement that everyone seemingly bought into or at least played along with. These individuals were never the most attractive or most athletic or even the most intelligent, yet they still were the most influential and sought after. To such a point that often the most attractive, athletic, and intelligent individuals accepted the less gifted individuals as their presidents and settled for advisory roles within the political network.

This thought train has awoken a thought from within that surely many have dawned upon. Along with athleticism, intelligence and beauty is another characteristic. This characteristic is insecurity, and like the the other traits people have varying levels of insecurity. Those who are gifted have a low level of insecurity; they are not bothered by their faults or simply do not notice them. The remaining individuals are more aware of their shortcomings and resultantly are more insecure.

Individuals with greater insecurities find it easier to pick out their own faults. Having a nature astute to ones own faults could plausibly make it easier for one to identify them in others. This could be the relationship that has given birth to the term arrogance. If a person lacking confidence crosses paths with a peer possessing surplus confidence who has identifiable faults then they would deem that individual oblivious (arrogant) or re-consider the identified faults.

To a person completely aware of their own blunders it must be seemingly impossible for another to overlook their own. Do they just pay no attention to these flaws so that others are inclined to do the same, or are they simply not bothered by them? After seeing how consistently "arrogant" many social leaders are one begins to think that the latter is true. That these people don't just pretend to have no faults, but it is in their nature to not be bothered by them. If this is true then varying levels of "arrogance" would be the result of differing levels of self awareness. This care free nature is desirable and the exclusiveness of it most likely increases the insecurity present in those lacking confidence. Similar to lacking intelligence, athleticism, or attractiveness, lacking confidence (being insecure) is frustrating and can be hard to deal with. For this reason many people are deemed arrogant just like others are considered smarty pants' for being enviously intelligent or full of themselves for being desirably attractive or jocks for being gifted with great athleticism. The same can be said for any other characteristic that an individual has been generously endowed.

Do you hate me?

Social dynamics have always been a funny thing to me; often I find my way of thinking is much different when compared to others. For the most part I have always tried to be nice. I figured that since I liked being treated nicely everyone else would. This theory worked satisfactorily, people just didn't seem to respond the way I had expected. People have always teased me, and I realize that I am no different from anyone else; everyone gets teased. What makes me different from the next person is how I interpreted the teases. I never really knew how to interpret them. Everyone always complimented me on how light-hearted I was; they often said it was amazing how much teasing I would take and brush off without saying a word. I was never really frustrated by peoples misinterpretation of my feelings. What frustrated me was, why was it so hard for me to comfortably interact with others. When interacting with others, I most frequently respond nicely, because I figure that is what most people would like. As mentioned previously, my results with this strategy were satisfactory at best.

These details made me think that, perhaps people could be put off by others who seem "overly" nice; as if thinking to themselves, "why could this person possibly be acting so nice." It is as if people have an alarm in the back of their heads that sounds when others are being overly nice. They just back off and cut you out, they no longer trust you.

Last Friday I went to a show that my friend was hosting at a local bar. My friend and I have very many friends in common, resultantly there were many people who I knew present. One of these people I met early on in the night and decided to try and interact with her atypically. In stead of constantly being nice, I made fun of her a bit. I said many things that I would usual deem insulting. She reacted positively; I couldn't believe it, she reacted more positively then anytime I had been nice to her. Over the coarse of the night I sporadically would poke fun at her to see how it would go over. After each she would seemingly come back faster then the last. She sought my attention that night bore then ever before.

This leads me to a potential theory, a theory which I am going to call the Stop Light (SL) theory. I call it the SL theory because of the way people stop positively interacting with you when you act "overly" nice. One possible explanation to this theory is that people are suspicious of others who are "overly" nice. Through my quest to find the acceptable amount of niceness to great others with, I have found that this stop light does not go off consistently. The stop light is completely unpredictable and you have to be on your toes to catch it going off.

Missing this light has a reaction similar to missing a stop light in car. There is going to be a collision; which leads the driver into thinking that there is something wrong with you. The more times you make this mistake, the more readily your assumed guilty of other faults. Be careful not to miss those stop lights because sooner or later you not going to be permitted to drive up to them. If you find this confusing than don't even think about starting from that red light, starting before a green lights repercussions will be just as severe as missing a red, if not worse.

Those who have trouble catching these lights are called poor drivers. As mentioned earlier I am a satisfactory driver, I frequently come on too nice, missing the red light and deeming myself untrustworthy. I don't know of any tricks that help identify red lights faster. To my understanding these social "stop lights" are random at best, with no "right" technique for fast identification. The only real way to figure it out is by trying other methods, which I will hopefully be able to find.

Later Days

Tim

Rants?

So hear I am citing in my kitchen, wondering, what should I write for these blogs I do not want to write? which transitions to reminding me of a thing I did not like. Tonight I spent a little bit of time outside. I felt chilled, cold enough to catch my self thinking about it several times. To the point that when I got into my friends car, I instantly looked to see what the temperature was. The thermometer read -1 degrees. I reacted instantly;" -1,?! Is that it? is this thing accurate?" To my disappointment he said, "yes, yes it is". Shortly after my brain unhappily reminded me of a few nights last year, a few really cold nights. Which scares me because if I am sitting here in a garage thinking to myself, "damn I feel kind of cold." What the heck am I going to do this winter if it does the same thing? I will tell you what I am going to do; I'me just going to have to find out.

Later Days

Tim

Summer is Around the Corner

School is beginning to race by, the days are getting longer, assignments larger, and days nicer. This all means one thing; the end of school is near and that summer will soon be here. I sit here today writing my blog looking out the window to find sunny sky that is supposed to heat the air up to a comfortable 14 degrees; not bad for the first week of April. Nights have been cool, but they have not dipped below zero in quite some time making for comfortable mornings.

The finishing stretch of school is shaping up to be a real short and steep one due to the usual procrastination of major assignments. It is going to be quite the grind to the finish, but once there the satisfaction of my first completed year of college will certainly sink in.

Recently because of the nice weather I have been able to get outside and spend a substantial amount of time on my bike. This makes me excited for whats to come. I am currently comfortable riding in a sweater each night when the temperature dips down to around five degrees. I can hardly wait for when the nice weather arrives and I am able to ride outside in a t-shirt always and be comfortable. Also having no school activities during the day or assignments at night will make for fewer time commitments making riding much easier. I will have a full time summer job, but it is at bike store with people who also ride. I am excited for this because it provides me with people who are eager to go on ride with me each and every day.

Another great thing about summer is, it means that it is time to go home. This I am especially excited for as I growing tired of living in Pembroke. Over the last two weeks I have probably hit every single spot that is worth riding more then once. I am excited to move back to a bigger city where there are more good spots to ride and different people. As much as I like my friends here I miss my friends from home and am quite ready to go back.

The thing that I am most excited for is complete freedom. Obviously when I go back for summer there will be responsibilities such as work and general housekeeping duties. But there will be beautiful summer days where I have nothing to do but enjoy myself. Those are the days that I loan for. Days that I can go out and ride for as long as I want, and when I get tired of that I can go swimming or just relax. You can have days like this in the winter but they are never as good because you simply can never be as comfortable. The preparation involved in doing outdoor activities makes them more of a hastle then the summer. Believe me I love to ski in the winter, but nothing beats being able to leave the door comfortable in what ever you have on. Not having to work to be warm is amazing.

In summary I am excited for warm weather, biking, friends, and no more school. I eagerly anticipate many long fun days of riding, the days where you and a group of friends push each other to acquire new skills. Summer is the one time that I find people truly live life to the fullest. Fewer people complain about life's day to day hastles and just look to have fun. As an outdoor loving person having fun is a lifelong goal of mine, and being around people who are truly enjoying themselves will make it that much easier.

Firts Impressions of WFR

This Tuesday marked the beginning of the winter semester's final skill, wilderness first aid training. All first years were scheduled to meet at 8:00 at Wesley United Church which is a few doors down from the college. The courses instructors are Jill, Laura, Ben, Greg, Shannon and Geoff.

We began with an introduction given by Jill. Here she provided us with an overview of what to expect over the next two day. She also revealed to us another hidden course fee. The thin paper textbooks for this course are forty dollars. This came as unpleasant news to me considering my house just got robbed.

After the brief overview we separated into three groups. Each group was to spend roughly 60 minutes at three stations. The first station was with Jill. Here we were given the hypothetical scenario of finding an alone unresponsive victim. Jill asked us to try our best to go through the scenario as if it were real life. We had to approach the victim and ensure that our surroundings were safe, and then we had to attempt to diagnose what is wrong with the victim and move them into a safe position. The scenario was concluded by us developing an evacuation plan. In this case we chose to airlift our victim out.

The next station was with Greg and Ben. Here we discussed the three vital systems. The Circulatory, Respiratory and Neurological. The circulatory is you heart, veins, arteries and capillaries. The respiratory is your lungs and the oxygen exchange that takes place in the aveoili. The final system is your brain and nerve system that transports signals throughout your entire body. We used the analogy of a three legged stool, without one system the others are as good as dead.

At the next station we discussed the importance of learning the details in patients history. These details are critical in properly diagnosing the victims problem. Sample is a slogan that helps first aiders remember the details. It stands for symptoms, allergies, medications, past history, last in/ out and Events. If a first aider fails to address these details they will not truly understand the depth of the task at hand.

The stations after lunch were dedicated to doing scene surveys. A scene survey is the entire investigation of the incident at hand. Soap notes are tools used by first aiders help remind them of all the issues that need to be address. It begins with a scene survey; in a scene survey rescuers check that state their group and themselves are in. They must ensure that the location will not cause any harm to themselves or their group. Next they try to diagnose the mechanism of injury. Did the environment cause the victims injury or is it an underlying medical condition? They must also establish a number of victims and rule out the possibility of a spinal.

After the scene survey has been completed rescuers must complete the primary survey. In doing so rescuers check the patients level of awareness, airway, breathing, circulation, look for deadly bleeds and check environment / exposure.

The secondary survey requires rescuers to observe the victims vital signs. These include LOA, pulse, respiration, ski condition, blood pressure, temperature and pupil condition.

Next to be addressed is the patients medical history. To do so the SAMPLE method is used. This stands for symptoms, allergies medications, PMHX, Last in/ out, and events. Once this is completed the scene investigation ends with a physical assessment and action plan.

This lesson was completed around four o'clock. For the remaining thirty minutes we discussed the legal implications of giving a victim first aid. We talked about when the rescuer can be held responsible and when not.

Biking

At last spring is here, this morning I woke up to birds chirping and yesterday I stepped on a few wasps that were walking on the side walk. The sun has been out constantly and temperatures have lingered above ten degrees for the last two days. The snow has been melting up a storm and grass is beginning to show itself.

My favorite activity is cycling. I can't think of anything more pleasant then riding a bike on a warm and sunny day. Unfortunately those not so warm days can be quite miserable on a bike. This week was luckily both arm and sunny and provided me with an opportune moment to break out my bike for the first time this year.

The one major plan with spring riding is the roads are often covered in street salts and water from the snow melt. This concoction can prove to be quite detrimental to the drive train of a bike. But with careful maintenance any damage from street salts can be reversed.

By last Sunday I couldn't wait any longer to go out and ride. So as soon as I finished work I went straight home, grabbed my bike, and went out for a rip. Dylan was also quite antsy to get out and I met um with him at the PMC arena.

We set out just to have a fun ride, mess around, and try to do some tricks. This is exactly what we accomplished also. We rode down to the East end mall stopping every where some feature caught our eyes. Tall curbs, banks ledges, jumps and other obstacles were what we were looking for. We found a fair number of features in the mall's parking lot and as a result we spent a decent amount of time there.

Once we got tired of riding there we headed down to the high school. In front of this school there is an excellent wall ride that I wanted to spend a bit of time on. After finishing up here we headed down to river side park and down town. Now it was around seven so traffic was not to much of an issue. We could ride features that crossed the streets without much worries.

Our first ride of the year came to an end as the sun sunk into the horizon. And I am quite satisfied with the way it went. The following days were also warm which gave me a few more chances to go out and ride. Now I can only hope that the nice weather is here to stay, and that it will keep on getting nicer.