Unavoidable Sub-blogging

I'm at an interesting spot in my life. In just a few months, I'll be leaving to go to medical school (I got in, by the way), venturing out into new waters where I don't know anyone, don't really have a comfort net, and don't really know how to go about it. 


As I begin to transition from one stage of my life to the next, I find myself questioning myself concerning the validity of my choices. 
Am I making a mistake by walking the path I am?

This might be somewhat of a spoiler, but I don't think so. (I'd appreciate it if you kept reading, though.) 

From certain experiences in my own life, I've never been more sure that this is the only logical path my life could follow. (It doesn't mean I'm not scared shitless, though.) But you've probably heard this tired story about why I've chosen to become a doctor before.

This stage of life isn't exclusive to me, though. I look around me at my peers as I finish up my final semester at UT and I see a lot of things, some good, some bad. 

I see some people ready to begin their adult lives, ready to start their careers, and begin the process of establishing themselves in a community. These people have definite plans, some more solid than others, but nonetheless, they seem to know what the fuck they're doing with their lives.

But my words aren't necessarily concerning them. 

As a disclaimer, there's nothing wrong with this: If you need to take time and figure yourself out, by all means, do that. But, too often, I've seen people get complacent with Business degrees or what-have-you and sell themselves out. 

This group branches in two directions: those that just need more time to organize themselves (like I mentioned) and those that have no interest in growing up and ceasing to act like assholes. 

Recently, I ran into a guy I went to high school with whom I had not seen since then. This guy was one of the smartest people I'd ever known. Consistently, I'd envy his ability to blow through calculus or AP Chem without so much as a second thought while I slogged through it, worrying if I was good enough to do the things I wanted to do. As much as I envied him, he was my good friend just the same. He would show me pictures of these cool machines he would build at his house, and I was amazed that someone so young could know how to build things like that.

There's another guy I've been good friends with since we were 10 years old, up until graduation from high school. I earnestly don't remember NOT laughing hysterically with this guy (I'll call him Guy #2 since it'll get confusing later) every time I was with him. He was one of my best friends, and, though we both went our separate ways, I still respect the hell out of him for reasons I will explain later.

I look back on the experiences I had with both of these guys fondly, from ultimate frisbee four or five times a week my senior year, to hiking trips, to going to grab food together, or even just hanging out during classes when we should've been working. Both of them were (and, to my optimistic side, still are) great people. As Guy #1 and I reminisced on old memories, the conversation eventually drifted to the current aspects of our lives. 

I sincerely felt like a MASSIVE tool when i said I was going away to medical school this Fall, because right after, I asked Guy #1 what was going on with him. "Are you still at [the college he went to]? I remembered you saying back in high school you had dreamed of being an engineer for a long time. You are doing some kind of Engineering or something, if I remember right." His face instantly lit up red with embarrassment. He explained he had moved back to Knoxville and was not in school anywhere at that moment. (I didn't ask, but my first thought was something along the lines of money had been tight or something, but....) After a few seconds of awkward silence, he said "Yeah, I, uh....didn't do so well the last few semesters. The work took away from my social life too much." (That's a word-for-word quote.)

Guy #2 has a similar story, with different explanations to his actions. Since high school, I've had a weird relationship with him, as I began to distance myself from church and faith, while he seemed to dive deeper and deeper. He got a fantastic scholarship to a school I probably would've loved (I didn't apply because I knew I was having the spinal surgery before college), but ended up dropping out because, to him, it wasn't helping him do what he wanted to do. I thought he was being an absolute fool, throwing away such a good opportunity. However, since dropping out, he has been much happier, from the limited interactions I've had since then. 

And now, of course, here's the quote that this whole thing plays off of: 


"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble." -Bill Waterson

I unabashedly love that. It probably helps that the guy who made Calvin and Hobbes is the one behind it, but still. 

Guy #1, whom had all the tools to make his life successful but threw it all away, sold out. In this world where, as Mr. Waterson said, wealth is measured by excess and ambition alone, he chose to disregard his drive and his potential. But, Zach, doesn't the quote say that those things are bad, and that this guy actually made a good decision? I personally think that Mr. Waterson meant something other than "don't ever ever ever get a job and make money and want things because that's what everyone else is doing".

I think he meant moreover that success is measured by working hard on the things you care about, showing resolution in the face of adversity that stands between you and your goals, and doing things that make you genuinely happy. By that standard, this old acquaintance of mine sold out. He sold out his ambition, he sold out his drive, he sold out his love of building things from nothing, because the work got too hard and he didn't like it. 

Guy #2, though, is just the opposite, though it might seem more obvious he was the one that sold out at first glance. Though he began his college career with a goal in mind, he dropped out to pursue that goal just the same. I might've thought him naive and foolish at the time, but I have so much respect for him doing this because he stuck to his guns and made the right decision for his life. He's never compromised his beliefs, his career, or himself to get anything. His life has come together in more ways than mine has: he has a wife with whom he is head-over-heels-in-love, he wakes up every morning and works on things that bring him joy, and gets to spread his faith at every turn. If you are reading this, I want you to know how genuinely proud of you I am. Though he admittedly struggles financially, he is happy, and he never sold out. 

In this world of greed and avarice, you hear people preaching to do what these guys did. "Give it all up! It's wrong and it feeds into a system that exploits the misfortuned!" For some people, they are right. For most, though, our goals and dreams can't be accomplished by lethargy, unmotivated apathy, and complacency. 

Doing what you love, even if it is difficult to do or hard to achieve, is better than selling out. Nothing in this world worth having, whether it be a career in music and ministry, engineering, medicine, business, teaching, comes easy. Your resolve has to be stronger than the trials around you. 

As always, I hope you hated it. 

See you soon, often, and for a very long time to come.

2013: The Year of New Stuff

This year was undoubtedly the best of my life, so far. Here are just a few of the material things that made it great:

Music:
Schematic - "Color (n.) Inside the Lines": Dave Elkins is the former frontman for one of my favorite bands, Mae. Since they're more or less done, he released this solo record and it's a fitting continuation of the 3 EPs that Mae departed with. It's an incredibly lush, dense, and complex record that really surprised me, honestly. While I'm not a huge fan of a couple tracks, tracks like "What It Means" really reaffirm how great of a songwriter Elkins is.
Stand-Out Tracks: Outside, I Am The Car, Where's the Soul?, and What It Means.

Coheed and Cambria - The Afterman Ascension: Part 2 of the Afterman concept album. Coheed's a band I really should've been much more into, but for some reason never gave them a chance. While I like the whole CD, "Dark Side of Me" is no-contest the best. "I gave my everything/for all the wrong things. In this cold reality, this selfish war machine. Oh, this has become hell, how can I share this life with someone else? I promise you: there is no weight that can bury us beneath the ghost of all my guilt." 

Five Iron Frenzy - Engine of a Million Plots: If there is one band that has shaped me into the person I am today, it's FIF. For a nerdy, awkward 6th grader that didn't really know his place in the world, their music sincerely connected with me. Their ability to have some songs with an absurd degree of silliness and some with such conviction and sincerity amazes me to this day. They broke up in 2003, a month after I got into them. In 2011, they launched a Kickstarter that went on to break records and make over $200,000. I donated immediately, and 2 years later, here we are. EOMP shows how the band has matured in the last 10 years, with extremely brunt and sincere lyrics, and it did my soul good to be blown away by them once more. While I no longer identify as a Christian, some of the songs reflect some members' struggles with faith as well. The song "Blizzards and Bygones" really captures the feeling of wanting to cling to what you once believed, but not being able to. "There's a flicker of desire and a memory of youth. A fainting, glowing fire for some truth....Can we stand the weather if winter lasts forever?". I was lucky enough to see them in Nashville this November, talk with some of the members, and it really just blew me away that I could ever get to meet these people that made such an impact on my life.
Stand-Out Tracks: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Someone Else's Problems, Blizzards and Bygones, To Start a Fire

Streetlight Manifesto/Toh Kay - The Hands That Thieve: Here we go. Streetlight carried the torch of FIF when I got older, with the absolute best songwriting and music I've ever heard. After a lot of troubles with their record label, they finally released their last album, and man, oh man, it's incredible. All the angst and defiance reaches a peak in the words of these songs. I can't really describe this album, as it draws from a variety of influences, from ska to Eastern European to punk. I can say, though, that this is the album I earnestly believe defines my year. Best lyric: "Who'd have thought, we'd fought so long, we started to see our enemies turned into friends, our friends to enemies and we sat somewhere in the between. But I heard someone say they knew that someday that everything would fall into its place and everything would be fine. And I really, truly, honestly, without a doubt want to believe that everything will be alright." 
Stand-Out Tracks: The Littlest Things, With Any Sort of Certainty, Toe to Toe, and Your Day Will Come.


Books:
American Gods
Fight Club

Movies:
5. Captain Phillips
4. Iron Man 3
3. The World's End
2. Don Jon
1. Her