Hello all!

For those of you who may not know me, my name is Josh, and this is my first blog post. However, It will probably be a while for those reading this to not know who I am personally.  Even more hopefully, a time when there won’t be a person who doesn’t know who I am.

Currently, I’m working on a project that I have creatively dubbed, The Project. In a sense, the goal of The Project is to consistently work towards reaching my absolute maximum potential while pushing those closest around me towards reaching there. Essentially, The Project is a dream.

The dream to figure out how not to miss the bliss.

I say dream, but no, its much more. To call it a dream is to call it a fantasy, a fight against the odds. The ultimate challenge. But why make it out to seem so dauntingly difficult? Its what I’ve done lately and the last few weeks has showed me the second side to dreaming. To perpetually dream of a better self is to never reach that better self. However, in realizing that in this moment I have the ability to improve and grow, I give myself the tools to be able to tackle those dreams.

The idea of The Project got its kindling back in summer. While doing simple work which let my mind wander, I looked 10 years in the future. Keeping my habits constant, I saw an extremely skilled gamer with plenty of online friends. I also saw someone who was chronically addicted to refreshing Facebook, a service which updates automatically. I saw someone who spent more time enjoying sitting and staring at a screen rather than walking and enjoying the world.

The Project’s goal is to avoid that future. This is where I catch myself make a mistake. I was about to write:

“Through The Project, I be more skilled musically, have a healthier body, and have an overall high level of happiness, etc.”

This thinking is highly flawed. I pinpoint success on an idea of a future in which was created by myself. How can I depend on The Project for guidance, or salvation, when I am the one who created it. Compiling the scarce success materials I’ve been reading along with this first entry, I can know see this truth for myself. I now see that in order to keep The Project alive, I will have to make a hard and conscience effort.

Explaining The Project to others is not enough. Thinking about The Project is not enough. Sharing The Project is not enough. The Project is a conceptual list of goals which I want to accomplish and documenting how I handle it. To give an example, the meta layer of The Project is the writing I’ve been doing about how I’m handling my challenges and deep thoughts and perspectives about any topic I care to discuss. I have written approximately 40,000 words since the first entry August 19th.

I was quite passionate about the writing. It was the crux of The Project. Yet, the last entry was October 29th. Its amazing how quickly our goals and dreams can slip away and seem like a moment of the past and not like the moment we’re in. I believe I know why this happened.

The main goal of the writing is to be a meta layer where I look at many of ideas and challenges I’m facing and how I respond, would respond, and where I stand on certain issues. A platform for me to continuously diverge on different topics and explore where my mind will go and what it will say.

The secondary goal of the writing is to share it with my family, friends, and whoever wants to read it. I love inspiring people and uplifting people over their sadness. I’ve been depressed before, and by definition, its not a very fun place to be. Even though I know without a doubt the depression I experienced is beyond minimal to that many have felt, I want to earn the authority and the knowledge through this writing process to be able to be a beacon of light in their lives.

In the last 3 months, I have those 40,000 words written yet this is my first blog post. I was achieving my main goal of the writing, but now I can see why the energy to write so much waned. I was failing my secondary goal. I shared snippets with few friends and they loved it and wanted more. However, to individually share different parts of the writing with many individuals would be a dauntingly unnecessary task. I didn’t want to deal with an e-mail list either.

I love the personal feedback from friends but most of the time was simply spent writing. I didn’t want to also spend it sharing. Some suggested I start a blog and well these were my main objections:

In the words of Joker: “If you’re good at something, don’t do it for free”. As much as I wanted to help others and myself, being an avid internet user, I cringed at the idea of posting my writing up there for free for all to see. This idea contradicts the ideas that I thought I had realized. That regardless of the monetary response to The Project, I had already gained so much. But to continue writing without sharing it to all who wanted to read it is doing not only a disservice to them but to myself.

You can not learn in solidarity. Through the response’s of the select individuals who choose to follow The Project I will be able to learn and grow much more than had I kept all of this writing to myself. I envisioned at one point having a finished book and to sell that. And if I wanted to have that, then to have a blog would be to simply give it away for free. This is a stark contradiction of where I know my inner morals should be. Through recent reading, I now see the value of having a blog.

I can now write what I want to write what I want while simultaneously reaching those who are interested in my journey of self growth.

I have plenty of topics yet to cover which I have wrote about in my writing but now I can take the bits and pieces I love the most, rework them, and share them to all of you.

The Project has a goal yet it has no goal. The goal of The Project is to find bliss. To not miss out on the greatest joys and satisfactions from life. Yet from my reading thus far, to find bliss is to understand that you already have it. How can The Project have a goal if by working on it continually realized that the goal is reached?

After four failed attempts to both answer the previous questions and conclude this blog post, I am just going to stop it here. On that note, I’ll leave you with this thought:

Happiness is not a future concept. Happiness is a realization of present satisfaction with all things that were, all things that are, and all things that might be.