Last Thursday I made my final payment toward my college loans, paying them off completely. I’m now debt free!

I graduated from Auburn in 2009 with a total student debt of around $26,000. The weight of this debt seemed crushing. Before I could venture into the world and discover unique and exciting ways to live, I felt I had to get this debt out of the way. My payments were $300 a month, and that seemed like an enormous obstacle to my freedom.

I saved up enough money to pay off my largest and highest-interest loan (6.8% interest!) and… bought a car instead. My 2008 Mazda3 was an excellent car at a decent price, but the purchase resulted in having more debt to pay off (about $9,000 more!)

Early in 2011, I finally came to the realization that being debt free really was a major goal of mine, and I ought to pursue it with all I had. So I started making extra payments on my car as often as I could. I moved to a smaller, cheaper apartment. I sold a couple hundred dollars of my junk (while donating a large portion of it to Goodwill.)

I paid the car off in April 2011, moved to a smaller apartment in June, and then sold the car in July for an older, cheaper, higher smiles per gallon Mazda Miata. I took the profit from the car swap and applied it directly to that largest, highest-interest loan I avoided paying in the year previous. I cut my expenses down as far I felt I could, and applied every penny I could to paying off my remaining loans.

After a peak of around $34,000 of debt, I am now debt free! Not only do I have my diploma, but I’ve also paid for it. February 9, 2012 was my graduation day.

Here a list of blogs that inspired me and kept me motivated throughout the debt payoff process:

• Mr Money Mustache
• No More Harvard Debt
• Man Vs Debt
• Early Retirement Extreme

Now that I’m done with debt, I feel free to pursue more exciting goals. It’s a little scary not to have a single financial goal anymore, as it means I need to solidify my plan for saving for my future, purchasing a house, and funding my dreams.

Even though the sheer number of possibilities seems dauntingly endless, I’m excited about my debt-free future!

I recently asked out a friend of mine that I greatly admire. She said no, but I wasn’t hurt or upset. I think she made the best decision for herself, and I continue to admire her and wish her the best.

Prompted in part by that experience, I felt it was important to clarify in my mind (and perhaps in others) what I believe about dating and relationships. This is my dating manifesto.

I believe we’re all looking for the same thing. On a fundamental level, we all want to love and be loved, and to be appreciated, accepted, and respected by our loved ones.

I believe there are a lot of guys who think they’ll find this love and acceptance by having sex with the most physically attractive women they can find. I also believe there are many women who think they won’t be able to keep a man unless they give him sex. I believe this is a terrible tragedy, and that dating serves a higher purpose.

I believe dating is the search for one’s future spouse. The end product of the dating activity should be the discovery of one’s soul mate. As such, I believe dating is a noble and honorable pursuit.

With the above as givens, I believe the following algorithm is the best to achieve the happiest results for all involved. I think both men and women should follow the steps below, but I have written them from the perspective of a man:

1. Find someone to be attractive.
2. Make your attraction known, and if the attraction is mutual, move to step three.
3. Date; spend time with each other alone and with other friends. Don’t have sex or any other intimate physical relationship; this is about getting to know a person, not a body. Keep Christ at the center of your relationship.
4. As soon as you realize that the relationship isn’t leading to marriage (if there isn’t enough attraction, there are fundamental differences in belief, habit, or manners, or you’re just not right for each other,) it is your right and responsibility to make it known ASAP. No lingering around and no waiting in an attempt to let her down easy. It serves neither party to remain in a dead-end relationship, especially when one party is disproportionately attracted to the other. If you know it ain’t right, stop it! Proceed to step one.
5. As time passes without step four happening, you’ll determine that marriage is right for you both. At this point, you should know the other person really well and have discussed marriage and family desires at length. At this point, propose!
6. Marriage: beyond the scope of this document. (This is where the real fun (and work!) begins :-D)

Step one is important and requires a fair amount of self knowledge. You need to be honest with yourself about what you find attractive in a potential mate, and only pursue relationships with those you find truly attractive. There’s a lot to attraction; it may be deserving of its own post another day. I’ll simply note that attraction must be mutual; in this regard, it is imperative to become as attractive as you possibly can by reaching your fullest potential physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.

It is important to segue into step two as soon as possible after completing step one. The longer you spend secretly attracted to someone, the more chances there are for things to go wrong (a la any Romantic Comedy you’ve ever seen.) Proverbs 27:5 says “Better is an open rebuke than a love that remains hidden.”

Step three describes the development of a relationship. This is the fun part! Make your relationship healthy and fun for both of you. Get to know each other in a lot of different contexts: at church, at work/school, alone. Go deep, laugh a lot, have adventures! Meet each other’s friends and families. Pray together!

Step four is probably the hardest step. It entails taking stock of a relationship, honestly assessing your own happiness, and making a hard decision. The important part is realizing that if a relationship is fundamentally flawed, it serves no greater good to continue it. If you know the relationship won’t lead to marriage but continue anyway, you are wasting your time and hers. I believe that no one wants to be with someone who doesn’t want them back. This is an important step to me since I’ve been on both sides of the equation before. I believe it is hard, but necessary to approach this situation with speed and compassion.

Step five is the end of the search! This is where you and your significant other agree that God is calling you both to a marriage relationship. How exciting! It may take getting to know a lot of people before arriving at this point, but since you’ve been an honorable gentleman, you now have a lot of actual friends as a result! Because you respected boundaries while dating, you have nothing to be ashamed about, and have protected your heart to give completely to your future wife!

I view dating as an activity that is very hard to get right, but very simple at its core. I think it’s terribly important for a couple to agree on what dating is about, and be honest with themselves about their goals in dating. Dating isn’t for sex; it’s not for personal pleasure, and it’s not required just because you’re single!

I recently felt that I found a clarity of purpose; I believe I am called to marriage. I have an exciting idea of what I want my future family (and spouse) to be like; I have a dream that I’d love to fulfill. I’ll be following the steps above and praying that God inform my conscience and improve my self knowledge so that I arrive at the one He has for me. I can’t wait!

It’s not often I’m here, but whenever I am, I tend to linger too long. All day is push push push. Fight fight fight. Search and struggle. Go deeper. Find more meaning. Want it harder. To be ready to sleep is a delicacy.

It’s Friday night at 11:33 PM and I could go to bed. Knowing I don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow makes me want to stay up just a little longer and just a little longer again until it will be too late to salvage a full night’s sleep from the time I have before work on Monday.

It’s a dangerous thing to have five minutes to kill.

So instead of picking up my latest addictions, or continuing my oldest ones, I decided to write. I guess I’m still pushing even now.

Tynan wrote an excellent post about working hard. Today was a great day to read it. I was tremendously productive at work today. I had the kind of day that redeems a whole week of lackluster motivation. That, coupled with this post I stumbled across on the Harvard Business Review convinced me to spend my focus on the truly valuable work of the day, instead of spending it lusting for a future that so far exists only in my mind. Tomorrow is not the place to live; the rent is too high.

Living in the present in my aim, which is difficult when my present seems dull and unexciting every once and a while. I’ve convinced myself that life ought to be brimming with excitement all the time. I just want to have it like they do in the movies. All passion and drive and romance and desire all the time, taking big risks and making big strides toward lofty goals. It’s hard to remember the virtue in the everyday grind. But it’s there, and I seek it.

What is the most important thing in your life?

Quick Stats:

2011 was a year of big changes and forward progress on my goals. All year I focused on determining the most important use of my time and energy and then spending them both accordingly. Two major themes this year were paying down my debt (almost debt-free!) and getting healthier/more skilled physically. These two goals will continue in 2012.

Important discoveries this year were:

• Continual improvement of myself is a big unifying theme in my life. Self improvement is my largest desire, and being surrounded by those who are not afraid to progress all the time is highly important to me. (Realized via Tynan’s excellent post on the subject.)
• Personal finance is a solved problem (philisophically.) Once you know what you wish to achieve with your money the focus is clear: get out of debt, spend less, earn more, and use the difference to better yourself and the world!
• I don’t need a late model car.
• While I don’t need many material possessions, some are essential to my creative pursuits. I will probably always own enough things to fill a 1 bedroom apartment. (Living in an RV would seriously hamper my creative process.)
• I don’t like to travel. Travel is necessary sometimes, but (for me) it is not an end unto itself. I rarely grow or progress when I’m on the road, and I’m not interested in merely collecting singular experiences. My attitude towards travel may change once I’ve achieved certain key goals or when I ever get an opportunity to travel with good friends (shared experiences are more valuable than solo experiences.)
• I want to find important friends and spend as much time as possible with them. (Post to follow on this one.)
• It is almost more important to me to have a dream than it is to have it fulfilled. In this way, I always strive to better myself. The trick is learning to enjoy today while still working to achieve my bigger dreams. This balance is one of the hardest to attain, and I still struggle with it.
• It is important to know your most important problem.
• It is important to know your ideal situation. (Post to follow on this.)
• My ideal situation includes bacon, which is delicious.

In order for you to solve a problem in your life, you must believe two things: the problem is important enough to solve, and you can do something about it. Barring these two beliefs, problems in your life only get solved by accident.

I came upon this line of thinking recently after meeting a special person whose zeal for their work and enthusiasm for helping people impressed and inspired me. This person was also morbidly obese. As I listened to this wonderful person speak, I couldn’t help but wonder what they had tried over the years to lose the weight. I also wondered if they had since given up. Or if they were currently in the midst of another attempt, unknown to me.

You can’t exactly meet a person and say, “Hi, you’re awesome! Also, you’re fat. What have you tried to fix that?” (Well, you could, if you were given to a particularly rabid form of radical honesty.) Sometimes I wish I could. I believe the US is in the midst of a terrible epidemic of obesity. People are dying every day from their lack of belief that their weight is important enough to solve, or that they have any control in the matter. Many feel like they’ve tried everything, and nothing works.

When I graduated college in 2009, I weighed 160 pounds. I’m 5’8″, so this weight put my BMI on the very top end of “Normal”. But for me, it wasn’t. I have a naturally small build, and at 160, I was the heaviest I’d ever been. I started college weighing 125 pounds, and by the end I had an unattractive spare tire starting around my waist.

It wasn’t until I had been working for about 4 months that I realized I needed to do something about my weight. I didn’t know what to do, as I had never been overweight before, but I new I had to try something. It became the Most Important Problem of my life. After trying a few different forms of exercise, I found Capoeira and started working out with the class 3 times a week. I also started studying nutrition, trying to find the ideal diet for myself (this is ongoing; a post to follow will explain my current theses about diet.)

These actions combined over the course of 6 months brought me down to a healthy 130 pounds, but it was the hardest thing I had ever done, physically speaking. Whenever I worked out or went out to practice Parkour, I felt heavy. If I worked out too hard, I had a panic attack. I felt like I was suffocating under my own weight!

And when it came to diet, I felt lost. No one seemed to know the answers! I kept reading contradicting opinions about what proper nutrition really is.

But I never lost the two required beliefs: I felt my health (and weight) were the most important problems to solve in my life, and I felt I could do something about them.

Everybody has their own Most Important Problem. For some, it’s finding the right job, or finding a mate, or finding their religion. My current Most Important Problem is how to get enough sleep at night. Whatever it is, you have to start with two beliefs: your problem is important enough to spend your time solving, and you can solve it if you live long enough. All that’s left is to keep trying new things and learning more, and trying more things until you’re sick of trying, and then trying even harder until you make progress!

I don’t know the full story of my new acquaintance I mentioned above. This person is filled with a zeal and a love of life and people that few encounter, much less embody in their daily lives. I know that this person has chosen the Most Important Problems in their life. I sincerely hope that one of them is their weight. The world need more people like them, and I hate to see anyone ill.

What’s the Most Important Problem in your life? And what are you doing to solve it?

It’s two in the morning and the normal order of events is unchanged: get home far too late, waste too much time on the internet, then go to bed. As soon as my head hits the pillow my mind starts running full tilt. So, with a prompting from Seth Godin, here I am.

You should be aware of this:

This beautiful video is from Kevin Olasula. He’s covering Julie-O by Mark Summer, and it is brilliant. It is rare to find a perfomance filled with such lightness and joy.

These last few weeks have been pretty incredible. First, I had an awesome time at a parkour jam in Piedmont Park with some old friends from Auburn Parkour and new friends from all over. Then, I was off to Miami (Ft. Lauderdale, actually) for a Capoeira seminar at Mestre Branca’s school near the beach. The next weekend was Dragon*Con, wherein a troop of breakdancing spidermen broke it down in sufficient style. The next weekend was the Red Bull parkour jam in Auburn featuring Ryan Doyle.

While my adventures were fun and exciting, I’m always trying to strike a balance between documenting trips with pictures/video and being as present as possible to the experience in the first person. In the case of Florida, I got no pictures or video. In the case of the Piedmont Park jam, I got slightly more video, but not nearly enough to publish as a standalone video. For Dragon*Con, I got progressively more video, but not very many pictures. And for the Red Bull jam, I only got 4 pictures and a few small clips of video.

Altogether, I hope to make a little video of my adventures the past few weeks and post it to YouTube. I’m still trying to find a good balance between experiencing things first hand and creating artifacts to share later, but I think I’m getting better at it.

Here are few of the pictures I did take:

Group shot at Piedmont Park Jam:

I found some friendly Ghostbusters at DragonCon:

Randy was so happy to meet this guy:

This Tron bike was pretty cool:

Dan breaks it down with the spidey crew:

Randy as Venom tearing it up in the Marriot:

Me and Ryan Doyle:

Vincent is way better at having his picture taken:

Cody in mid air: (I can’t remember if this was a front tuck or a gainer)

Red Bull jam day 2 group shot:

I love this video. Reminds me of staying up all night at Auburn and seeing the sunrise. Great song, great voice, great rhythm!

Also,

This last month has been a month of big changes for me. I moved to a smaller apartment, got a new desk at work, got a new cell phone, and sold my car to purchase a smaller, cheaper one. Part of the downsizing is financially motivated. I have a lot of college loans that I want to pay off and finally be debt free. Part of it is my desire to be ready. Ready for exactly what, I’m not sure, but it might involve travel, or moving frequently, or meeting the love of my life and starting a family! In all those cases, it will be to my advantage to own less.

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t own very much, but what I would own would be very high quality. So, with that goal in mind, I’m downsizing.

I started with several large boxes of toys from my childhood and other miscellanea which I took to Goodwill. Then, I got rid of my old trophies. I sold my oldest computer, so now I only have three machines. (I realize “only” three computers is a relative statement.) I also sold my electric guitar, amp, and effects pedal. I sold several of my childhood toys, with many more remaining in a box, ready to be listed on e-bay. My next areas of downsizing are:

• My VHS/DVD collection. My goal here is to have all DVDs digitized, their original plastic cases recycles, and the liners and discs stored in a custom solution that takes up a very small amount of space. The VHS’s will pobably be digitized, then the original tapes recycled and the VCR sold or given to goodwill.
• My musical instruments. I already got rid of my electric guitar, but plan to also sell my acoustic guitar, violin, harp, and antique cornet. These sales will hopefully generate enough money to buy a Taylor GS Mini, a very high quality small guitar. I’m currently undecided on my digital piano (pictured above.) While I can find a smaller and lighter model, my current one is such a high quality instrument that it may be worth keeping.
• My clothes. I only regularly wear a small portion of the clothes and shoes that I own. The idea here is to pare down the wardrobe to the essentials, only keeping the highest quality clothes that fit me the best and look great. The rest will be sold and/or given to Goodwill.
• My kitchen. I have a lot of single-purpose appliances that I can probably do without, such as my George Foreman grill. I may decide keep most of the kitchen stuff as I get better at making time to cook meals at home.
• My furniture. I currently have an Ikea table and four chairs, a rocker/recliner, a couch, and a bed. The rocker/recliner is probably the only item I can downsize here.
• My unicycle. Yes, I unicycle. I have a 24″ chrome steel unicycle that I almost never ride. The idea here is either to get a smaller unicycle that more practical for indoor use, or sell it outright and avoid replacing it. (I’m not sure I ride frequently enough to warrant owning it, and I’m not sure I want to ride more often.)
• My longboard. I have a nice longboard from Jati Boards that I hardly ever ride. I’m still undecided on this one.
• My books. I currently have every Computer Science-related text I got in college, as well as many novels and other books. I rarely use them, even as references. My goal is to replace most of my books with an Amazon Kindle, and e-book versions of the ones I actually do want. I might bring the really good textbooks (like my Algorithms book) to work and keep then on my shelf there, which is where I’m probably most likely to want to reference them anyway.
• My notes/papers/drawings. I have a lot of old schoolwork, completed tests, and drawings from when I was young all the way through college. I read this post on miss minimalist about an artist who decided to embrace minimalism, which meant getting rid of his past work. I think I may have to adopt a similar attitude to my own creations.

Getting rid of old schoolwork and art projects is probably going to be the most difficult of the items above, since I was generally a good student who took school seriously. My old notes and tests are the product of years of work, and often show the good grades I made. It’s hard to let go of momentos of a time when I worked hard and got recognized for excellence.

My strategy for getting rid of excess possessions is to take a photo of the item in question before selling it or giving it away. Have a ritual surrounding the process of downsizing makes it easier to let go. Most of the time when I have a hard time getting rid of something, it’s because of the memories attached to it. Most of the time, a picture will suffice to help recall whatever memory I’m trying to keep.

I realize my possessions fall into two categories:

• Stuff I own to use (furniture, computers, instruments, bicycle, skateboard, car.)
• Stuff I own as keepsakes (pictures, drawings, toys, trinkets, and ornaments.)

My goal is to have the second category be as small as possible, taking up the least room in my apartment and life. The first category should be limited to things that I actively use on a day-to-day basis. I’d rather not own a bunch of things that I only use once a month, year, or even less frequently.

Have you ever downsized your life? Let me know how it went in the comments below!

To kick things off, I’ll start with one of my oldest favorites:


This is Ronald Jenkees absolutely killing a sweet freestyle improv on his keyboard. One of the things that makes Ronald so great is his impeccable phrasing on the keyboard. He can coax a lick out of a keyboard that would seem more at home on a guitar or other stringed instrument, were it not so perfectly executed on the keys. As a piano and guitar player myself, I’m blown away by the expression that Ronald packs into every run and trill.

While I’ve enjoyed every improv that Ronald has posted to his Youtube channel, I felt his first CD was a little too “clean”. That is, the music seems more emotional and impactful on a “live” Youtube video than it does when carefully produced for the CD. That being said, I’m still a big fan, and I’m glad I bought his first album.

Ronald is truly an exceptional talent, and he’s so fun to watch. Here’s another of my favorites:

I still remember seeing this one for the first time while I was in the midst of one of my toughest semesters at Auburn. I had traveled to Ohio for a cousin’s wedding and decided to check Youtube before going to bed. I was tired from the long car ride and my allergy to dogs was getting the best of me. As I waited for sleep to come, this tune just washed over me, calming my thoughts and bringing me joy.

Music always sounds best when I’m tired.