Putting Good In

What does it mean to live a good life? To dedicate yourself to putting only good into your world, both internally and externally. To be your own relentless source of positivity.

We are free to pursue happiness, but few offer instructions on how to create it. They tell you to change, but not how to change. They sell you something -- A product, class, or seminar, that is meant to fill a void best filled yourself. Mostly, they tell you to change so the world can get more out of you; so you can fit into the world better. Rarely do they show someone how to control their own change so they can help define a new world. Your world. To be the writer of your own story. Because sometimes it's you that needs to change the world as you learn to cope and live in it.

This site is dedicated to one idea. The idea that life can be reduced down to one simple concept: You get out what you put in, but first you must understand what you're really putting in. My past is full of good intentions paving my road to a personalized hell of my own creation. It wasn't until I took several steps back and redefined whats really "good" that I began to see my patterns and how I was using toxic ideas taught to me by a lifetime of experiences (a.k.a. "the world") to craft my own destruction.

Story time.

Growing up was hard for me. I wasn’t one of the kids that could just be happy. Everything just seemed to click into place for my friends as they became fully functioning members of society. I hated them for being “basic” and “generic” but really, I just didn’t understand why it wasn’t that easy for me. Don’t get me wrong, I had a good childhood full of happy moments and adventure, but that wasn’t my narrative -- the voice in my head. I classify myself as extra AF and have always felt isolated and alone as a result. I was the embodiment of a millennial snowflake. So special and unique, yet drifting along aimlessly while the world melts me away. My high level of intelligence only served to trap me further in this. I understood everypony, but few ponies really understood me. I also had the “good guys never get the girl” martyr syndrome and it was a severe case, let me tell you (To learn more about that topic visit this link to a new year’s Cracked article that’ll give you a heaping dose of perspective. There’s no point in little ol’ me writing about it when there’s been a master class on it for years). 

Most importantly -- I didn’t know how to cope with intense emotions, both happy or sad, nor did I know how to heal emotional wounds. I felt that as long as the pain lived inside of me that meant my love and sense of care was real. I lived like a frayed, martyred nerve -- Gasping for emotional air as I actively worked to drown myself in feelings of my own creation. 

An intelligent, emo, hopelessly romantic, cocky class clown with mostly good intentions would be a pretty fair way of describing my younger self. I had the brains but hated the rules of society. I wrote my own narrative and lived by rules of my own creation; what made sense to me. That kept me disengaged and feeling trapped and alone. Don’t get me started on all the labels people gave me in an attempt to put me in a box. To try to define me. That’s western society after all. If you can put it in a box, then it has a place. If you can’t then it's rejected. I... was rejected. I learned how to blend like a chameleon to different groups so that I’d “fit in”. I was a friend to all, but only the weirdos and outcasts were truly friends to me. My chosen family.

My life was always some person’s or event’s fault, never my own. If my life was a car, it felt like the world was driving- with me in the passenger seat during the good times and being run over by it during the bad. I was saying where I wanted to go, even looking at my life's map and putting all the effort into getting there… and then getting pissed when "the world" took a hard right turn into every stranger danger detour it could find... But was it really the world or was it a series of small choices that I made which led me to the world smacking the shit out of me? Regardless, I was miserable. I was the walking embodiment of the “This is fine” meme. 

Thankfully, through a ton of introspective contemplation and tweaks to my mindset, I found more freedom and happiness in my early 20’s and then again, after a brief (multi year long) stint with ALL the addictions, in my early 30’s. Talk about life’s hard right turns...

I’ve been through a lot of the "optional" pain one can have in life, both inflicted on me and self inflicted, and it’s given me an incredible perspective on pain itself. How did I go from a place where life was a depressive haze, something to “get through”? A life that at best felt empty & numb and at worst was a living hellscape of my own design. How did I go from that and transform it into one where I don’t need to set alarms to wake up because I’m so excited to start my day? 

The answer, for me, was the hardest way possible. I had to learn every lesson, make every mistake first hand to know that it was real. I had to fully strip my ego down and inspect every part so that I could put only good into every situation.

That’s what this blog is about. I went from feeling caged, trapped inside the identity the world molded me into being, and transformed myself so that I have control. So that I define "me". I worked my ass off so that I could let my chosen future define me instead of my past; the person the world taught me to be. I started using my past only for knowledge & wisdom. I hope my story can help you so that maybe you can skip some of these detours... or at least get through them faster on your way to a happy life. 

-- J

Pro Tip: Each life lesson bleeds into the next. To fully understand everything, I encourage you to start with step 1 and not go to the next until you’ve fully embraced and lived with the last. Change takes time. Speeding through this wont get you there any faster.