Arm(less)chair Philosopher
Riding the LIFE Rollercoaster and other extreme sports…
“We are all riding the rollercoaster. You’re either just getting off, going through it, or getting right back on.” ~ Benjamin Young at Disrupt the AUC
You’ve heard of an armchair philosopher, now you shall hear and learn how to be a practical philosopher. One that philosophizes as one lives in order to better understand and guide one’s own life.
I dont have a fancy and comfortable seat to recline in; to assume the position: chin cupped, contemplatively in hand…
No… all I have are the nigh chaotic, bucking tides of life… and whatever arm-less chairs I can sit in while I tapatap away on this laptop.
All I have is my ability to stay calm and metacognitive no matter the external, or even internal, struggles I go through in this ‘first world’ lower socioeconomic class of the financially impoverished.
All I have is my sanity… and this handy internet that we somehow manage to keep on…
So this past month of March (madness?) was pretty terrible. Terribly great, terribly frustrating, terribly strange, terribly awe-some-ful…
I broke my phone, got in a car crash, got accepted into a super awesome codecamp, feared my $1100 laptop became a brick (for 2 days) right before said codecamp, started 2 podcasts, walked a collective of 10+ miles, changed my sleeping habits from waking up at 7 going to sleep and waking up again at 10 or 12 to waking up at 4:00am (with a grand total of 5 hours sleep, counting day-time naps), skipped/missed out on about a week’s worth of food, got a bad cold, maintained 30+ days of doing 25+ pushups every night as well as combatting chronic dehydration by drinking water every morning and night, did some super dope world-building for what will be my girlfriends first and biggest game, broke my streak of writing 10 ideas everyday as well as writing everyday, created a new streak of coding everyday, created and pushed out my website in 1 day (its super rough and pretty bad, but take a look: Elijah Claude) and got to talk with some great leaders and devs from Uber…
April (fools?) has turned out a lot ‘better’… at least there are more highs without so many drastic lows. The coolest thing being my 20 day code streak (even though I failed to push to github everyday) and my site design that I used to apply to the Oculus Launch Pad here: Vertiverse Hub —The Pretotype (created in 2 days); its super rough too.. but I plan on making this the new look and feel of the internet. I failed to get in to Launch Pad, but Im going forward with it anyways. So take a good long look at the future folks :D
I also got to grab coffee with some amazing people, such as the CEO of PolarNotion.. they came up with this: Turntable JS… you may have seen it around..
I got to tour around Kabbage, speak to the CTO of STORD, meet up with some Praxis Participants and Directors, participate in my first hackathon (as a mentor, interestingly enough), and connect with some amazing people. At the hackathon alone, I got to connect with the co-founder of Hackout.Ninja, a super cool Github guy, a super awesome Ag-Tech/Front-end dev guy, the President/CEO of the FECC…, and nearly the whole panel of incredibly well established black entrepreneurs doing huge things in Atlanta and around the world for the advancement of minorities.
But there were still downpoints… I had a ‘talk’ with my dad…. he’s really hard to communicate with; had some friction with my girlfriend… its scary to disagree on certain things especially with the one person who I can be 100% with; I procrastinated horribly on getting this very blog out, and I am still terribly unsatisfied with it; I still dont feel like I ‘get it’, 5 weeks into my 8-week Code Immersion program at Tech Talent South. I also dont feel like I am making nearly as much progress or taking enough initiative as I should be in my self-defined goals to start a hackathon, build a pretotype for Flubbi, or just make money. I failed to maintain a streak of pushing to Github everyday, with writing 10 new ideas everyday, and with learning a bit of French on Duolingo everyday.
But I’m still going. Still doing. Still … not ‘trying,’ but actually … reaffirming my consistency and grit to meet these goals.
Now, I am working on a way to create a digital hub of communication here in Atlanta. It will be a nearly tangible aggregate of valuable people and resources. ‘It's not a social network.. it's a visual network.’
I am also going to be not just a participant, but a director in this community by starting my own initiatives. 1) Writing/transcribing ebooks 2) Creating 3D web interfaces and designs for the neonet 3) Flubbi. All of which coincide and are directed by my own “Lighthouse Goal” (via Jon Westenberg) of creating a future where Hovercars are the most efficient and inspiring mode of transportation.
If this sounds nonsensical and unfocused/unrealistic to you… thank you… that means I’m doing something right :P
So yeah. Dope stuff.
This new confidence thing is weird too… part of the ‘perks’ of finding the love of your life perhaps... as well as feeling like you are actually doing something with your life.
So if you got this far in and are asking yourself what in the world all of this has to do with philosophy… thank you for getting this far into my rambles, and thank you for even clicking on such a strange-sounding article.
This whole blog has been an example of practical philosophy. Rambling… in your head… about your own life. But not just ‘rambling,’ not like you usually do anyways, but actually taking stock of said rambles. Actually questioning WTH you are even on about. Actually being aware of your thoughts and not allowing them to exist in isolation.
Philosophy is all about having a love of knowledge and connecting ideas.
The how is the Science
The why is the Philosophy.
Practical Philosophy is how you attain perspective, it’s how you learn and practice. In one big word… it’s metacognition.
Metacognition is what you need to stay afloat no matter what waves you crest or nigh drown in… it's your life jacket… and so much more…
When you think about what you are thinking about, you are inherently being a practical philosopher.
So. In the field of philosophy, that means taking your ramblings in your head, and testing them against real world observations. It means putting your assumptions and presuppositions and personal opinions out of your head and into the universe… or vice versa.
It means taking the good and bad things, the turbulent roller coaster ride and actually measuring those curves, the empirical ups and downs to see exactly where your ‘bell curve’ is in terms of events. What ideologies are actually influencing your thoughts and how close they are in measurable standard deviations to your actions.
Wait… what?! Did this… just turn into a math lesson?
Yes… Yes it did. Because practical philosophy requires a bit of ‘work’ and active thinking.
For instance. I was ‘sure’ that I could not accomplish these things. That I was not a networker. That I was no good at advocating for my own skills or talking to a bunch of strangers… especially not if those strangers all lived longer and done more than I can even begin to ‘compete’ with.
But, that was actually more of an outlier.. this assumption.
My actions thus far has proved that my default setting is to do whatever it takes to at least say hello to at least one person of interest. To drop the thing about my ambitions and let the audacity of my ideas do all the work.
Therefore, the existential materialization of my internal insecurities was inconsistent and inconsequential with the extroverted communications of said internal cogitations. In other words: I was scared of nothing, my actions spoke for themselves. I need not worry about connecting with people… I only had to decide how to go about connecting with as many people as possible.
Such a paradigm shift made networking far more enjoyable and palatable a task than previously felt. And that is how I was able to gain contacts that are worth a collective of nearly a billion dollars.
Practical Philosophy is all about questioning why you are questioning yourself. Putting your doubts to rest with the facts and figures of your own skills and knowledge. Creating ideals that can become your ‘Dao’…. your Way, your Purpose, your Life…
This is about inventing your own paradigm shifts to change your own life and cast away your personal chains.
How to be a Practical Philosopher, get out of that chair, and ride the LIFE Rollercoaster like a BAWS? Ask yourself how to be a BOSS… and figure out what that means for you.
Thanks for reading!
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