Life's Questions

What's your New Years Resolution?

2011-12-31T00:10:00.000-08:00

Goodbye 2011...
Hello 2012. Another year comes to a close. With a new year comes new resolutions. Two years ago this same day I made a resolution to quit smoking and improve my health. It has been the most difficult task I've ever put myself through. This year I didn't really set a goal but continued on my past resolution. I was addicted, although I never admitted it until I quit. Even though I new the consequences of smoking I continued on. In the beginning of that year I would struggle to stop. I tried everything, from the gum to the patch to just doing it cold turkey. I kept going back to it. "Just one won't hurt..." I would say. That "one" would end up being 3 turning into 6 and eventually I was done with a pack throughout the day. It took self examination, literally... looking at myself in the mirror and asking myself "why can't I quit?". As days turned into months, I started getting better with a bit more dedication. I had at the time and still have a girlfriend who I cared most about. I started using her as motivation to quit. Smoking isn't attractive, it ruins your smile, and makes your breath and clothes smell. No good girl is going to want to be around that unless she has that habit too. Luckily for me she didn't. Everytime I would think about lighting up a cigarette, I would just picture her disappointment in me and throw it away. After a while I started doing it subconsciously to the point where just looking at people smoke would make me feel bad for them. Long story short, I quit smoking and ended up making the most of my gym membership and now my health is the best it's ever been.
The key to living up to your resolution is to take baby steps before jumping into unrealistic goals. As you accomplish little things along the way you start making it realistic. Once you get into the habit it becomes a part of you and you'll see success is inevitable. All you have to do is self motivate. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do anything. The greatest feeling in the world is proving someone wrong.

My new years resolution is to finish up my Associate's degree and continue on keeping my health in good standing. Oh and also update this blog at least once a week rather than once a month (baby steps) lol

My question to you is. What is your New years resolution, and how do you intend to accomplish it?

ps. Writing things down is an effective way to remind yourself you have work to do! (LifeHack)

Do You Feel Like All Hope Is Lost?

2011-11-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

No matter the task at hand, sometimes life is a bitch. If you let it, it will beat you to your knees and have you feeling like tomorrow will never come. It's up to you to decide if you're going to get back up and fight back. All you have to do is be in C.O.N.T.R.O.L. of the situation.
I have compiled a list that can help you overcome even the hardest of obstacles and achieve your goals. The only thing you have to ask yourself is...how much do you really want it?

Count your Blessings

Take a mental break here and there to appreciate what you have around you. Just look at how far you have gotten. Every morning you wake up is a clean slate to start fresh! The sky is the limit, but even that's an understatement.

Optimism

Keep the hope alive, never give up, for your own sake, never stop pushing until you overcome adversity!

No-

This two letter word has enormous power. You should try it sometime. Say it often when you are feeling overburdened.

Take control

This one is obvious. If you're going to be successful at anything you're going to have to be in control of your legacy. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. Indulge in the positive and let go of the negativity.

Relax

Take a deep breath, count to ten... breath out. After all soldier, this is a long battle. Who ever said life was easy? Your success is a journey not a destination, so keep on fighting!

Others are important-

The ones you can proudly call your friends, the family who won't sell you out. Your significant other. Appreciate these people and be there when they genuinely need you. Not only are these people important, but they can be a hell of a lot supportive when it comes to your obstacles. These people make life a little easier by doubling our joy and also dividing our grief.

Laugh

Laughter after all is the BEST medicine. Your enemies want you to be as miserable and unimportant as they are. Let your smile kill 'em softly. Next time life throws an obstacle at you that seems impossible, greet it with a smile. You're letting the world now that you're coming for it.

-signing off, J

Just How Powerful Is Our Brain?

2011-10-26T23:04:00.000-07:00

Let's just use the concept of being tired. Not exhaustion, but sleepiness. Why is it that your body always eventually urges or even forces you to submit to unconsciousness? Will we ever know the real purpose/importance of dreaming? We go through hours of, not just hallucinations, but complete alternate realities each night. Your brain is powerful enough to create entire realities, yet we can study for hours and still do shitty on a test. You look around a room in a dream and your mind is creating every inch and crevice you can see. Just like taking strong psychedelics, your brain and mind is capable of unbelievable things. Why is it that we can't create alternate perceptions of reality, or alternate realities all together, in what we consider our normal, sober state? There are parts and abilities of our mind that we just can't tap into...what is the purpose of these insane feats of the mind that we can't experience in a 'normal' state, and why can't we realize the full potential of the minds we possess?

Shit, what is the mind? Where is the mind?

This shit blows mine all the time.

The Trillion Dollar Question...

2011-09-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

So how much is a trillion? The U.S is in debt well over 15.6 trillion dollars already and the number keeps climbing every second...

Take a look for yourself WARNING: NOT FOR THE EASILY DISCOURAGED seeing the actual debt number is scary.

Back to the question. How much is a trillion? Prepare your brain and try to comprehend.
1 Trillion= 1,000,000,000,000

A Trillion can also be thought as a Million Millions or 1,000 Billions equals 1 Trillion. Imagine that you were to have this fantastic job that paid you one dollar for every second you work. There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. If you were only getting paid for a 40-hour work week for all 52 weeks of the year (2080 hours), you would be getting paid $7,488,000 in a year.
If you were getting your $1/sec rate for every second of the year, thus including weekends, you would take in $31,536,000 for the entire year! At this rate, to earn a trillion dollar, you would have to work more than...wait for it... 31,709 YEARS! holy f*** xD Even if they magnanimously paid you $1,000/sec, it would still take you more than 31 years to earn that first $1 Trillion.

U.S. Budget and National Debt
One Trillion is 10 to the 12th power, or a thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand. To Put things in perspective, current estimates put the number of stars in the Milky Way at somewhere between let's say... 100 and 400 billion. The U.S. population is slightly over 303 million, and the world population is around 6 billion.

Million seconds= 11.5 days
Billion seconds= about 32 years
Trillion seconds= about 32,000 years

100 single, $1. dollars in a stack= 1/2 inch high
A Million $100.bills in a stack = 4 feet high
A Billion $100.bills in a stack = 4000 feet high
A Trillion $100.bills in a stack = 789 miles high

To spend a Trillion at the rate of $100./day = 2.7 million years!

Thus, the national budget of $3 Trillion= the distance of children (4 ft high) standing on each others' shoulders = distance to Saturn's rings.

If you found this post informative go ahead and click that +1 button and share this on Facebook and Twitter!

Thanks for reading!
Until next time, signing off,
-J

What Is The Meaning of Life?

2011-08-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks for submitting this question Last Days. If one of your hobbies is Starcraft then check out his blog!

Although most of the questions submitted were good, this one is the one I found that most people ask themselves but cannot answer. Well let me open your mind a bit here and assist you in seeing the bigger picture.
So what IS the meaning of life? The answer to this question will primarily depend on your perception of life in general. There is no true universal meaning of life as everybody’s life story is different. We all come from different backgrounds, live different lives, have different goals, have different interest and hobbies. I can tell you this though, the ending to every story is the same, and quite boring I might add *SPOILER ALERT* … you die. No matter what you do in your life time, you will find yourself heading 6ft deep soon. Death is inevitable. When people realize this they start to see their life as pointless. That doesn’t mean you should stop caring about your life. As a matter of fact, you should value your life even more. Be who you always wanted to be, don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. The only person stopping you from accomplishing your goals is yourself. The greatest enemy a person will have in their lifetime will be their own reflection. We live to fight ourselves every day. When you wake up in the morning and get out of bed the first time, guess what? You have already won one battle and are ahead of the game! Congratulations, keep going! You reading this blog already sets you apart from many people, you’re opening you’re mind and gaining certainty of knowledge. Intelligence is gained by questioning the material that is given to you. Critical thinking my friends, it’ll get you places.
So in conclusion, the meaning of life is life itself. Just live your life and be at peace with yourself. If you practice a religion, by all means study it! Live up to your beliefs 100% . Just like all obstacles in life, you shouldn’t half ass anything. Become that better follower, lead by example and embrace it if that’s what you find peace in. Just don’t force it upon anyone as not everyone will find peace with it. Leave your mark here on earth. You’re only here temporarily, so go out there and do something productive!

Signing out
-J

Do you have any questions?

2011-07-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be busy the next couple of weeks getting ready for school, and job hunting (damn U.S. economy). So I'm posting this update for my followers to submit any questions about life that you want me to tackle. Leave your questions as a comment or if you have a twitter follow me @JGuevara9 and leave them there (I'll get to read those submissions faster) The question I choose from you all will have their blogs linked in the post. As always thanks for taking the time to read my blog, I love learning knew things so don't be afraid to leave your input about my previous posts if you don't agree with everything I say.

Once again thanks for your support!

Keep the mind active!

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signing out,
-J

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

2011-07-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but we also are entitled to gain certainty of knowledge. The truth is out there we just have to seek it ourselves. I put this blog together to recruit as many open-minded people out there and help one another come to peace within ourselves and assist those who need help in critical thinking to think outside the box. Life is hard, especially when we don't understand the meaning behind it. Religion plays a major role in the perspective people have towards the world and their own life. It comes in many faces. Some people see religion as something good. Others see it as something evil. Many conflicts have been fought over it, many people have died in the name of their beliefs. Who is to say either side is wrong. It's always wrong to try and shove your beliefs down someone’s throat. It doesn't have to be that way. Black, white, brown, yellow, purple, green, it doesn't matter what color we are or where we come from, we are all human trying to make it through life.

I don't expect world peace. My message is just tolerance. Put your differences aside and come together. Instead of fighting for something that may not even exist. Try progressing towards a better future for our generation and future generations to come. If you somewhat agree with me or are interested as to what myself and others have to say, by all means join the conversation. I welcome feedback with a smile, negative or positive. I’m always eager to learn new things. Knowledge is power, and our minds are capable of the impossible. We just have to follow through with it's potential with critical thinking. You never know, you might learn something valuable, you just have to let your guard down and take that risk. Life is all about taking chances.

College isn't what it used to be anymore...

2011-07-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

I came across an interesting video. I just had to share it with all my followers. It's pretty long but well worth the view. Check it out. Although there are some parts that I don't agree with, it helps in seeing the bigger picture behind the value of a college degree.

How much is enough?

2011-07-02T01:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last update but here is another question to think about...

What is it going to take for America to revolt against their own government? Seems like everyone is either expecting other people to worry about their problems or expect things to fix itself. Enough is enough and it's been enough. Seems like "We The People" is losing it's meaning as the years pass. What is it going to take for people to get fucking ANGRY!

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn’t get mad when the Pentagon misplaced $2.3 trillion.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the Abu Grahib photos.
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.
You didn’t get mad when the debt went up $5 trillion under Bush.

Illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer,corporate America bending you over and fucking you dry are all ok with you.

I'm Angry!

The one thing politicians fear is losing our votes. No votes, no one gets in office. Obviously they haven't proven they're responsible enough to run a country. I think it's about time "We The People" stand up for ourselves and take this land back

What Language Do Deaf People Think In?

2011-06-22T21:07:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought about it?

The Better question is... Can you think without language?

Answer: No, at least not at the level humans are accustomed to.

That's why deafness can have far more serious consequences than blindness, developmentally speaking. The blind suffer many hardships, not the least of which is the inability to read in the usual manner. But even those sightless from birth acquire language by ear without difficulty in infancy, and having done so lead relatively ordinary lives. A congenitally deaf child's grasp of communication may never progress beyond the rudiments. In what language do the profoundly deaf think? Why, in Sign (or the local equivalent), assuming they were fortunate enough to have learned it in infancy.

Think about this...

2011-06-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

I Know it's a sensitive subject but here it goes.

Just A thought...

Imagine for a minute that your parents didn't corrupt you in your early ages of childhood with the idea of God, religion, anything of that sort. Hell, pretend there's no religion at all. Now you've grown up a normal person, wife, kids and what not and out of nowhere some man comes up to you with a book in his hand and starts to tell you about an Invisible Man in the sky that controls everything you do but you can't see or hear him. You can also talk to him telepathically to praise him for giving up his only son for the human race. Then he goes on to tell you that said dead son turns into a zombie three days later and does some crazy shit. There was also this one guy who built a giant ark and put two of every species of animal on it along with his wife a kids and then the entire world flooded, killing everyone but the people on the ark. Which since they were all from the same family, means that we're all inbred. Now I'm assuming you'd brush him aside and call him batshit crazy, no? What keeps you from doing that now? Because your parents told you? Because some old guy in a building says that everything in this 2000 year old book is true? Where is the sense in that?

How big do you feel right now?

2011-06-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

That's where you are. That's what you call home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of. Every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager. Every creator and destroyer of civilization. Every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer. Every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician. Every "superstar," every "supreme leader." Every Saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

How big do you feel now?

Do Blind People Dream?

2011-06-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

Simple answer-Yes they do. Why should a lack of sight affect someone’s ability to do the same? The way blind people dream is quite unique, but dream they do, just as frequently as anyone else.

On the other hand,
“Do blind people see in their dreams?” has a much more complex answer.

Visual stimulus is necessary for the wiring of the brain centers that process and interpret vision. The way the brain works is to develop, early in life, a huge number of neural synapses (connection points between neurons that are used in cell-to-cell signalling). As you grow and learn, these synapses are pared away to make the brain function efficiently, and that's the central basis of long-term learning. However, if the brain or any part of it fails to get infromation from hard-wired inputs, then that part of the brain will atrophy (at best, fringe areas of a cortical region might be adopted by adjacent cortical regions for different processes). But the take-away message here is that the brain needs visual stimulus in order to devolp the cortical regions that process vision. In the use-it-or-lose-it sense, the brain will not waste energy building and maintaining processes that aren't used. The optical cortex would never know how to function as an optical cortex in a person born blind.

Dreams are not only visual in nature, its an amalgamation of one's senses. hence, if a blind person dreams, he/she might feel, touch, hear or smell the virtual reality that is called dream.

If someone has been totally blind since birth, they only have auditory dreams.

Science can explain why people dream in term of phyical and anatomical aspects of human beings. Otherwise, they cannot explain the the behaviors that they could not understand. Sometimes dreaming takes a lot of phenomenons that the dreamer himself could not understand. Anyway, his dreams would be something that he alone can understand. That is, he understands only things that his remaining senses felt. What about you? What do you think?

The Impossible

2011-06-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

Impossible, the ultimate paradox.

Think about it. If something was impossible then it would also be impossible for the same thing to be impossible meaning that it is both possible and impossible for something to be impossible. Always remember, if something seems impossible, look at it from another perspective and you will be amazed how the impossible becomes possible.

Death makes you think...

2011-06-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

As a child I never imagined life would be painful sometimes

but hey, pain brings along lessons. Brighter days are up ahead, just remember that.
Time waits for no man. It's not fate, things don't happen for a reason. It's the space between a blink and a tear where death blooms. One day it's all smiles. Time passes by and the next thing you know you're lost in your own insanity and tears because you never said goodbye. Hold on to your loved ones, Hug your family right now and tell them you love them if they're next to you. Call them if they're not. Hold on to the person you love, Appreciate them to the fullest extent and then beyond. Hold tight to the people you love truly, because you never know if tomorrow brings more despair. Don't wait until its all gone and you're sitting at the church wishing you could hold that person just one more time.