Music I enjoy

Idiocracy...on our way?

I try not to spend too much time watching tv but I do like to watch basketball, as well as Comedy Central, on occasion. The tv is often on in the house though (as well as at the gym) so I can't help but catch advertisements, commercials, etc. Every time I see an ad for a new reality show (Mob Wives? Really?) I can't help but wonder if we are just inching closer and closer to Idiocracy.

Scary.

Books and Books and Books...and Time Effectiveness

A couple of days into my combined stress reduction and time management exercise experiments/school projects, I am pretty pleased with the results. Avoiding time wasters like Facebook and messageboards has allowed me to spend more time at the gym, more time reading, more time writing and even freed up some time to watch some NBA playoff games.

I'm finishing up the books 'First Things First' and 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People', both of which are for my Management Development class. I was a bit skeptical of the Covey materials at first but I've really gotten into them and I think there is a lot of great information in both books. I would recommend them for anyone who's interested in becoming a better worker, student, friend, etc. or learning more about time management. I have been following my plan for the past few days, with a few misses but I feel good about accomplishing small goals and I'd like to do my best to turn some of them into regular habits, as well as trying out some others.

I had started reading 'Stones Into Schools' by Greg Mortenson but given the recent accusations that came out in the 60 Minutes special, I've been waiting to hear more information. I have checked out a few random stories online since the story aired and I found this one to be interesting and somewhat hopeful:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=4&partner=rss&emc=rss

I first read 'Three Cups of Tea' when I was in pre-service training for Peace Corps in Mongolia. I found it to be an incredible story, very inspirational and very beneficial to my idealism. In addition to people like Samantha Power and Rory Stewart, I found Greg Mortensen to be an incredible person, someone who accomplished feats similar to what I dream about. I was pretty upset and disappointed to first see the allegations but like anything that comes from the mainstream media, I took it with a grain of salt and I'm patiently waiting to learn more. In the meanwhile, I just started Rory Stewart's 'The Prince of the Marshes', about his time in Iraq. I really enjoyed Stewart's account of his walk across Afghanistan, 'The Places In Between' and a couple of chapters in, I'm already enjoying this book as well. If you haven't heard anything about Rory Stewart, I highly recommend 'The Places In Between', as well as some of his articles in magazines like The Economist.

I've also started a book called 'The Primal Blueprint' by Mark Sisson, a text recommended to me by my friend Ryan, from Peace Corps. Hanna and I are both reading it and considering trying out some of the diet and exercise recommendations. I'm skeptical of diet fads or exercise routines but I'm open to reading about different approaches and giving them a shot. I love and hate reading about personal fitness and nutrition because it's so hard to figure out who or what to believe, there is so much conflicting information, and it's such a profitable industry, it's hard not to think that anything you try is just profiting some scam artist. More on this as my reading progresses and I try different things out. :)

Playing basketball and working out for a few hours a day definitely feels good but I believe that I need to try some new things and be more active (especially outside) in order to reach my fitness goals.

No alcohol and no fast food for a few days feels nice as well, though I admit, I have been wanting a cold beer while watching basketball. Persistence, discipline, mental strength, I must focus. :)



Other thoughts for the day:

Every crime show on tv is pretty much the same. And...there's a MILLION of them. WTF?

Today when I was at Souper Salad, 'Africa' by Toto came on. It made me even more excited to go to Kenya in a few months.

There's a guy in one of my classes who earned a bronze medal in wrestling at the Beijing Olympics. Pretty cool, nice guy to talk to. His name is Adam Wheeler, look him up.

I hate writing cover letters. I remember discussing this with my friend Chris in Cambodia, extensively and cynically. I take all of this time to prepare my resume, which details my education, job history, etc. and then I have to write a letter explaining to a company or organization why I want to work there, to talk up my job experience, and explain why I'd be a good fit. I think I've written about two hundred cover letters in the past eight months. Even more frustrating is when you have to fill out an application, detailing your job and education history, AND submit your resume. Are both of those really necessary? If I give my resume, I shouldn't have to fill out an application that has the EXACT same information.

I'm starting to ramble. I'll write more when I'm focused and have something worth writing in detail about. :)

Kenya? Yes Please.

It's official. Tickets to Kenya in August? Purchased.

My good friend Jordan and I will be spending two weeks in Kenya in August, visiting our friend Chris (currently serving as a Peace Corps volunteer there) and enjoying all that Kenya has to offer.

This will be my first excursion to the African continent and I am really excited. Moving to New York City in the summer, spending two weeks in Kenya traveling with good friends, then starting graduate school at NYU. Awesomeness. Short post but just wanted to share, especially since I'm currently avoiding Facebook. :)

Stress Reduction + Time Management

Though I am transferring to NYU and will be moving to New York City this summer, I am still taking my public administration courses at UCCS and finishing the semester pretty soon. Even with my reduced work hours at the new part time job, I've done far too much procrastinating and have allowed myself to get behind in some reading and projects for my classes. I'm currently trying to remedy that and a big part of that is the course work for my Management Development class. I attended three weekend class sessions at the beginning of the semester but I have until mid May to finish all the assigned work. The work includes a Stress-Reduction Exercise and what's called a 'Quadrant 2' Time Management Exercise. The purpose of the stress reduction exercise is to identify five things I'm willing to do in order to reduce stress in my life and find a way to measure them over the course of a few weeks. The purpose of the time management exercise is to plan out my life over the course of about a month and focus on 'quadrant 2' activities, which Stephen Covey identifies as important but not urgent. I'm working on both of those right now and I'm sort of mixing them together. I'm planning out this week and working on prioritizing and getting the most important tasks done first and I've also made a list of things that I will be doing from today until next Sunday that are aimed at reducing my stress levels. Here's what I will be focusing on for this week:

1. No internet time wasters (Facebook, messageboards or forums, etc.). My time on the computer will be limited to responding to important emails, documenting my progress on these projects, typing other papers or researching for school, and maybe a little bit of news browsing.

2. No fast food, no soda, no alcohol. Also will be watching my calories, cutting back on foods with high fat intake, and eating smaller portions.

3. I'm going to wake up 20-30 minutes earlier each morning to start my day with some light exercise (pullups, pushups or crunches) and to take my dog Jack for a walk, before I go to work.

4. I will go the gym for a minimum of an hour each day (I've been doing this pretty regularly as of late but I want to make sure I continue and also focus on getting more out of my workouts). I am trying to lose weight and continue to get in better physical shape.

5. A minimum of 2 hours of reading each afternoon/evening for school. If I have more time to read books not required for my classes, great. If not, what's important is that I stay caught up on my school reading.

6. One French lesson per day. Hanna and I started the French language Rosetta Stone program this week and I want to make sure I'm doing lessons daily. A lot of the places I'd like to work when I finish my graduate studies will be much more easily accessible if I know a second language, such as French or Spanish. We decided on French. The lessons are about 30-40 minutes each so if I'm managing my time effectively, there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to keep up with this.

These exercises or attempts at increasing my time effectiveness/stress reduction (and potential for getting an A) are also tied into another project I'm working on for my Organization Management class called a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). My BHAG is focused on personal fitness, losing weight, maintaining a healthier diet and getting back into basketball shape. I won't go into too much detail right now but I have a few goals outlined that I will be focusing on. Working on these activities, as well as other papers and projects for my classes, will require a lot of focus, concentration, discipline and effective time usage. I'm going to record my progress, do my best to avoid excuses and see how things go. Basically I'll be doing school work while doing a lot of things to better myself.

Writing on my blog, while often an activity that helps me reduce stress, could be considered an internet time waster for the purposes of these projects, so I'll cut this one off before I get too far off track. :) More to come soon, thanks for reading.

Oh so true

http://i.imgur.com/FHlzx.jpg

One of my friends posted this on Facebook. I enjoyed it.

Stop Talking, Start Doing

For those of you who haven't seen the short CNN video on Narayanan Krishnan, I recommend you take a couple of minutes to check it out. I love seeing things like this and I'm not too 'manly' to admit it brought tears to my eyes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiC_9RHTvsA
Not able to embed the video but copy and paste the link. It's worth a look. :)

On a messageboard that I post on frequently, someone posted this video and a friend of mine made a couple of comments that basically said 'Don't just talk about it, do something about it' and 'Too many people talk about how horrible this and that is, but do nothing about it. All Talk'. I gave him a little bit of crap about it and he commented back to me that I am a 'doer', so he wasn't referring to me as part of the 'all talk, no action' crowd.

Assuming that there was no sarcasm, I was flattered. It did, however, make me think about what I've been doing over the past few months. I am happy to be taking classes right now, to be learning, reading, and writing and of course as I've mentioned before, I'm happy about my new job. I'm excited to be doing work that I feel helps people out, to be in a nonprofit environment and to be learning things I think will be useful in the future. I have struggled with some things over the past few months though. When I was working at my previous job and even at my new job, I still feel like I could be doing a lot more with my time and that with all my talk, all my concerns, frustration and far too often, anger, there's a lot more I could be doing with my time. I often think of things that I'd like to do or hear friends make suggestions that I get excited about and interested in but the important thing is to actually make them happen.

Using time effectively is something I feel I struggle with and I'm working on changing that. Some of the material I've been reading for my Management Development class has been very interesting and eye opening and focuses a lot of using time effectively, learning the difference between urgent and important, etc. I highly recommend Stephen Covey books, pretty interesting stuff. One of my favorite quotes is 'Be great in act as you have in thought'(Shakespeare I believe) and I try to keep that in mind as often as possible. Day dreaming, imaginative idealism produces some (in my mind at least) great ideas and goals but they mean very little without any action.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. An opportunity recently presented itself at a nonprofit called 'My Play Date', which is where Hanna currently works. It's basically an organization that works with kids who have developmental disabilities. From what Hanna has told me, a lot of the kids have varying levels of autism and aspergers. She really seems to enjoy her work there and always has interesting stories about her day when she comes home. She told me that they are looking for some extra help, preferably males. I thought about it for a bit and while I do enjoy the free time that my part time job affords me, I decided to apply and see if I could work some extra hours during the week. I filled out an application, had an interview and this Friday I'm going in for an observation. With my current work schedule and school work load, I told them I could only really work about ten hours a week, which they are fine with. If things go well, I'll be starting that next week, working a couple hours here and there in the afternoons. I've had almost no experience working with disabled children, mentally or physically, so I think this will be interesting and challenging. The pay is not much and while a few extra bucks is never a bad thing, I'm doing it for the experience and to learn something new. Obviously because we are moving to NYC this summer, it will be short term but I figure it's worth it.

Even though I've struggled with my idealism and optimism in the recent past, I feel it has made quite a comeback and I've realized that I need to work in fields where I'm helping people, where I'm doing something to make the community or the world, a better place. I like money, benefits and stability/security, sure who doesnt? It's not what motivates me though. I'm all about the experience and I want to experience new and interesting things, while helping others. My recent reflections and realizations have helped me select what my concentration will be as a graduate student, Human Rights and Humanitarian Assistance. :)

I'm sure many others have felt the same way but when something terrible happens around the world, whether it be a tsunami, an earthquake or genocide, I feel helpless to do anything. Sure we can make donations and I'm sure that often money raised during and after disasters helps a lot of people out but it's hard to be trustworthy about where your money is going and it just doesn't feel like it's helping that much. I've had a strong interest in human rights and genocide prevention ever since I read Samantha Power's 'A Problem From Hell' as an undergrad and I feel that this is a field in which I could learn a lot, experience a lot, and hopefully help a lot of people. I figure with that as my focus at NYU, and some smart networking, volunteering and taking any sort of related job opportunites in these fields, I could work towards some great career opportunities.

I have more to write about but delicious home made Korean food courtesy of the girlfriend awaits!

The Gay Bar..and other profound thoughts of the day

1. Hanna and I went up to Denver and met up with a number of my friends, some from Colorado Springs, some from Denver, some RPCV's, some from Castle Rock, etc. We had a good group of people, many of whom had never met before. We did some bar hopping, played some games, drank some beers, ate some delicious pizza and had a grand ol' time on Broadway. Everyone got along. At one point in the evening, on our quest for further greatness, we ended up going to a....wait for it *gasp* gay bar.

Now I consider myself a pretty open-minded guy and I feel that over the past couple of years I've become increasingly open-minded. I have made a lot of new friends in my experiences overseas and a number of them are gay or bisexual. It doesn't bother me and I recognize that gay/homosexual peeps are no different than anyone else. We all want the same things, we all want to be loved, to be accepted for who we are and we don't want to be harassed or oppressed because of how we live our lives.

That all being said, I was appalled by what I saw in the gay bar. These people, the gays, were out of control. They were drinking alcohol, dancing, flirting, laughing, and engaging in all sorts of fun. I couldn't believe it. As I watched these people engaging in their debaucherous behavior, I couldn't help but think to myself....'We can't allow these people to marry, they would ruin all that is sacred and beautiful about marriage. Straight people would never engage in this sort of behavior'.

Wait, what? O_o

Sarcasm aside, in my first excursion to a gay bar, I think the most licentious thing that I saw was a man in some crazy leather strap outfit working up a sweat on the dance floor. Looking back, it probably wasn't any more provocative than what the majority of girls wear out to the clubs here. I admit, before I made friends with more gay people, I was guilty of saying 'I don't have a problem with gay guys, as long as they don't try to get on me'. I've learned how ridiculous that sounds and now if I hear one of my more obviously insecure/homophobic guy friends say something like that, I laugh and shake my head. I'm pretty sure that the majority of men in that club knew that I wasn't gay and I'm certainly not arrogant enough to think that they all wanted to man rape me.

My name is Matt Becker. I'm a straight male and I survived my first gay bar experience, unscathed.

2. Whenever I'm driving and Lady Gaga comes on the radio, I want to swerve my car into oncoming traffic.

3. Today for breakfast, I ate an omelette that was about the size of my head + three pancakes. I finished all but 2-3 bites of the omelette. I was both impressed and disgusted by myself at the same time.

4. Today I farted....................in the library.

No oil? No humanitarian intervention.

We are supposedly bombing Libya and have CIA boots on the ground to prevent a humanitarian crisis, to prevent the slaughtering of the rebels, etc. etc. etc. Just saw on CNN that the Red Cross is reporting 800 massacred in Ivory Coast.

Too bad they don't have any oil. Maybe then we'd offer some 'humanitarian assistance'.

Digusting.