Three Years Strong

This Sunday was marked my third anniversary of quitting smoking.

Before I actually quit for good, I made countless attempts, all of which crashed and burned.

I feel that the reason for my failure was mainly because in my previous attempts, I quit "except for when I'm drinking," which (as we all know) is bullshit. Each time I used that as a loophole, it quickly turned into "oh, just this one cigarette, then never again..."

I never was smoking more than one pack per week, but at around $7/pack (that was about the price when I quit), that's $365 over the course of a full year! If you were to cost that over 10 years, that's easily over $5,000 (when you factor in the inevitable price increases).

This was one of the hardest things that I did, but it was well worth it. As I learned from Warren Rustand at an event I attended about a month before I quit, "It only takes 21 days to change a habit," and I found that those words could not be truer.

About a month after smoking, I did notice I had less and less cravings for them (not that I ever really liked the taste of them to begin with).

Three years into quitting smoking, I have definitely noticed a few things which serve to reinforce my decision to quit:

1. I get sick to my stomach every time I even smell cigarette smoke.
   
2. I have been breathing better. and can run farther than before.
   
3. I have been coughing less... much less.

This was one of the best decisions I have EVER made!
 

Baltimore Comic Con 2014

This weekend, I went to Baltimore Comic Con. It was AWESOME!

In addition to getting my picture taken with Peter Mayhew, the man who played Chewbacca, I got signatures from Marguerite Bennett, Greg Capullo, Dan Jurgens, Gail Simone, and more!

In fact, of all the signatures I was looking to get, I only left without 2 of them: Jon Cassaday and Dan DiDio.

I also got to meet Jerry Lawler and see a lot of great cosplayers at the convention, including Robocop!

Other notable costumes I saw included the Wicked Witch of the West (with flying monkey), some Starfleet officers (including Admiral Riker from All Good Things...), and Bishop from X-Men.

It was a great time and I can't wait to go to the next one!
 

PS: I'll be in New York City from Friday, September 12th to Sunday, the 14th. I hope to see you there!

Learning To Fly

One of the assets I am looking to acquire by the end of the year is a drone to help me capture aerial shots. (It would certainly be a lot cheaper than renting a helicopter!)

I feel like this is a worth while investment (the model I'm looking at costs about $650, plus I'd have to also buy a Go-Pro), but I am EXTREMELY nervous about crashing it.

I don't know if that fear will go away as I get more and more experience flying it, but I do have a solution to help ease those fears before I buy the actual drone.

This Labor Day weekend, I bought a cheap remote control helicopter and started practicing flying it. The principles of flying it should still be the same as flying the drone, but the helicopter costs $40.

If I total the helicopter during one of my test flights (or, G-d forbid, it gets shot down by a miniature F-16 for crossing into miniature restricted airspace), I will not be out a considerable amount of money. If anything, I would have gained a new lesson to help improve my flying skills.

This practice is known as firing bullets before firing cannonballs, which is a great concept from Jim Collins' Great By Choice. By using the cheaper helicopter to practice with over and over, I can nullify the risk of crashing the more expensive drone on its first flight.

The below video is a great explanation of the concept from Great by Choice:

Off we go, into the Wild Blue Yonder!

 

 

 

PS: I'll be at Baltimore Comic Con on Saturday, September 6. I hope to see you there!

What Can We Learn About Energy Management From The Ghostbusters?

I thought about this question last week when I was feeling a little full of negative energy.

Maybe it's due to the fact that the 30th Anniversary Ghostbusters Bluray set is coming out next month, but I got to thinking about how Ghostbusters II is a good metaphor for the concept of Energy Management.

In the movie, the collective negative energy from New York City manifests itself in the form of a river of pink slime flowing underground.

While investigating it, Egon, Ray, and Winston fall in the river and when they emerge, they are incredibly violent towards each other until they realize that the slime is causing them to act that way and they strip down to their underwear.

Just as in the movie, if you are full of/surrounded by (or in their case, literally covered in) negative energy, you're going to have a bad attitude which can definitely affect your actions. Similarly, being full of/surrounded by positive energy allows you to have a great attitude.

This is somewhat hinted at in the toaster scene, where the slime dances to (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher and Winston points out that if they were to market it to the public, the toaster would go berserk the first time someone gets mad around it.

Towards the end of the movie, the slime covers the art museum where the main villain (the spirit of a European Warlord trapped in a painting... I know, not as cool as Gozer the Gozerian). The Ghostbusters arrive and what do they do? 

They get their blasters out and try to gain access to the building by force. When this fails, the citizens of New York (wait... why are the people of New York ALWAYS at the site of a demon from another realm trying to take over the city?) get angry and the slime gets even stronger.

They decide that they need a symbol to rally the people behind, so why not the Statue of Liberty? Using positively charged slime, they walk Lady Liberty over to the art museum and crash through the skylight. 

Using a combination of their positive slime and their blasters (and the New Yorkers also singing Auld Lang Syne), they defeat Vigo the Carpathian (aka Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf) and the slime dries up and flakes off of the museum.

Just like in the movie, the only way you can overcome negative energy is by increasing your own positive energy.

I'd like to know your thoughts in the comments below.