Mark - what did you call yourself reptilesblade for?


Tony

You are leading me way off thread!!

Thanks I love getting on with them - they are so cool - they usually see and hear and feel and smell so much more than me. I just studied from aged dot - started with a rabbit and an owl! I never had horses as a kid so I found 'unrideables' or no longer wanteds belonging to other people to ride. Its been years of being curious, experimenting , getting decked, going oh how interesting, changing approach, going to hospital, more training, then went to one of the best trainers in the world and learnt so much so quickly - had to unlearn mostly everything and start again and so on. Still learning - just this last week a massive Euerka moment and I realised that that something was probably the key to everything. How did I not see it before? So I phoned all the experienced riders I know and asked had they sussed that out? Turned out they hadn't but agreed they had experienced it and loved it but never really considered how you get to it and they thought like me it could be the key to getting to it. We were all like How did we not think of that - its so simple (the elusive obvious)?

Learning more NLP I think helped me make that connection and gain that understanding.

Donkey's and asses are the toughest equines!

The one in the picture is known as a primitive breed (as the DNA is closer to a wild Prevalsky horse than modern performance horses). Turned out he was super brainy.

Carol wrote:

Donkey's and asses are the toughest equines!

Now you understand my avatar.....I'm an ass, I mean, I'm stubborn.

russianbear wrote:

Now you understand my avatar.....I'm an ass, I mean, I'm stubborn.

I used to always see a bear rushing.

No, I'm Russian and a symbol of Russia is the bear, that's why Russianbear, not a grizzly running late or something. Sorry for the confusion.

Mark, I'm curious as to what the messages, advice, in this thread is doing for you.

russianbear wrote:

No, I'm Russian and a symbol of Russia is the bear, that's why Russianbear, not a grizzly running late or something. Sorry for the confusion.

Mark, I'm curious as to what the messages, advice, in this thread is doing for you.

Please forgive me, this will be either brief or really long winded because I am not feeling well (chest pain and such, typical for me when my system has been overloaded). All of the stress over the last couple of days over this has actually damaged my health over the short term and forced me to come home from work three and a half hours early. I will be fine by tomorrow but I need to rest.

I have taken many different things, but I believe I essentially got my questions answered though not in the way I initially expected.

I knew something was wrong but I believed the problem was an external one that I had to adapt to. I did not realize it was an internal one I had to modify. I never actually expected the source was the lifestyle I had envisioned and was trying to make reality; instead I thought it was some error in the way I was attempting to create it. To put it simply I thought I was running on at least something akin to C or C++ only to discover I was still using BASIC. And ten points for whoever gets that reference without resorting to Wikipedia.

I am essentially going to be focusing on a core reconstruction of my life over the next 30 days.

I will begin with a complete redesign of my living space this next weekend (again mine are Wednesday and Thursday) in which I will simply remove the TV and all furniture associated with it and re-arrange a few other things. This will give me the room to eventually do what my younger brother has done and purchase a nice flat screen TV (though probably half his size, I really just want something to watch DVDs on since my PC cannot play Miami Vice due to some kind of copy-write thing that pisses me off immensely). In the future when I get the new TV I will also relocate the PC to underneath it and possibly tie it into the TV as well to that as a monitor along with keeping the old CRT I love like he has done. As far as the cables for the internet and cable TV is concerned I can simply poke a hole in the ceiling and rerun the wire in a way I am fairly certain will resolve the issue I mention I had the last time I tried something like this of there not being enough free cable to go where I need it to go. Even I can poke a hole in the ceiling, run two wires, and then seal it again (where is my pocketknife >.>).

The next week after that I am going to get rid of the Accord. I love it beyond words, but I know it is a relic from my old mode of thinking and I am determined to end this perpetual misery I live in. I have not decided if I am going to sell it to a junk yard or just give it away by donating it to charity for a tax write off next year but I will get rid of it. This will be by far the hardest step and feedback on what to do with it would be appreciated. If you need to know anything else about this point feel free to ask.

The third week I will buy a new wardrobe to improve my chances and image for every aspect of my life, especially in regards to looking for a better job that allows me to actually have a life by:

A. Not being a thirty mile one way drive from where I live.

B. Gives me evenings and weekends off so I have more time to enjoy or even simply have a life.

C. Preferably pays more but at the very least the same $11.11 an hour I make now.

The fourth week I will complete the redesign of the resume I have been and will continue to slowly work on and finish my preparations to actively pursue the focus of week three.

After that I am only just vaguely thinking about. As Matt suggested I am going to try to think in the near term for the next 30 days or so during which time I will keep everyone who has so graciously assisted me so far updated on my progress in this topic.

As far as the subject of personal happiness goes I have come up with this. I have Jay's idea of the cards to thank for this, so this one is yours buddy. I started thinking and discovered the times I have been the most happy is when I am cooking for and entertaining friends or family. This directly lead me to realize I loved cooking more that I initially realized and this in turn also lead me to the path I think I will take to find someone to love. If that so then asking all those questions and all the stress was worth it.

For some months now I have had the idea of attempting to attract a lady friend by having special shirts made and wearing them every place I go in my free time (especially to the grocery store) that say in bold red letters on both the front and back "I'm single, come say hello." I knew the idea was sound but the execution of it was not exactly right, then the previous revelation corrected that problem. Instead the shirt will say this. "I'm single and love to cook." The tag line on the on-line dating site profiles will be changed to reflect something similar. I have always believed that when you cook a meal for someone you are giving them a gift, a part of yourself, and anyone who has ever tried my cooking has flatly stated that sentiment comes through in the finished product.

This should assist me in finding the type of woman I want, someone whom I can cook for and with.

I know I am still looking for a more traditional woman, but I am intentionally not fleshing it out much more than this. What I need to do instead is focus on what type of man I am going to become in order to correct this horrible emptiness in my love life. All I know is that I will not be a slave to massive amounts of debt like my mother and step-father, I will maintain a comfortable positive net worth, and I will not become a worthless sonuvabitch like my genetic father. This will start to be addressed in latter posts, probably starting around Wednesday.

Keep in mind I am still in the Alpha built stage at this point and I am very serious when I say this is going to be a rebuild from the core outwards, expect more questions in the future though nothing like the swarm of them in the opening post.



And to answer Carol's question about my name choice. When I was a child I loved reptiles, so much so I nearly became a herpetologist. Only in my mid teen years did I abandon this to pursue business after learning more of myself and what I believed I wanted to do with my life. Due to this I was given the name “Reptile Boy" by my oh so affectionate classmates when I was not in the hospital or being home schooled (sarcasm deeply intended). When the game Mortal Kombat came out with its subsequent sequels and gained popularity I was able to change it to simply Reptile. Then when I began to venture onto the internet back in late 1997 I discovered that user name was often already taken along with most variant of the other one I attempted to use back then of MasterMind. Back then, and still today, flaming and otherwise verbally combating others for fun was a common pastime on the then virgin wasteland of the Internet. Then one day, at roughly 8:00 PM on June 19th in 2002, while being frustrated for the hundredth time that my preferred username had been taken again by someone else my current username came to life in a flash of inspiration. I suddenly recalled that in Mortal Kombat 2 the character Reptile had a finishing move where he turned invisible then crept over to his weak and defeated opponent and then neatly (or rather not so neatly) used an invisible sword to cut them in half thus ending their lives and the match. It was a particular favorite of mine at the time.

And thus to this day I call myself ReptilesBlade as an official moniker whenever the option of a username is given. There was a time many years ago you could do a Google search and find literally hundreds of listings for ReptilesBlade and 98% of them would have been myself. Even to this day I almost never have trouble coming up with a unique username.

I hope that answers your questions for the time being as all of you have so patiently answered mine.

And now time for bed.

Hi Mark

There is a saying in NLP which goes:

If what you are doing is not working try something/anything different.

Wow, you are doing that in spades, brilliant.

You may also be feeling a bit anxious. I have been in the software industry since I was 18 (nearly 40 years) and that strategy would be the worst possible approach to dealing with bugs and changes to programmes you could think of.

When chasing a computer problem 95% of the effort is finding out what's causing it. Once you have done that, and this confirmed for me right up to last week, fixing it really is a piece of cake.

When I discovered NLP I knew that it would be with me for the rest of my life and one of the points I picked up on early on is that although the word 'Programming' is in the title, Human Being are chemical computers so complex we still have far to go in understanding how they are made let alone how they work.

Analysing what is wrong until your brain hurts, unless you are a neurologist, may not always be effective for people and that is OK.

ReptilesBlade wrote:

Please forgive me,

Mark, nothing you have said or done here needs forgiveness from me, I admire you immensely for making the changes to your life that will improve things for you. And HEY if some of them don't work - GOTO the top of this post.

ReptilesBlade wrote:

B. Gives me evenings and weekends off so I have more time to enjoy or even simply have a life.

Why wait Mark. The changes you are making are great and you can have fun while you are doing them. Look, life if not a punishment, unless you are a Catholic I guess. It's to be lived and enjoyed. Only you can make that happen which of course is what your post was about.

Find and do enjoyable things NOW while you are making those changes. If you spend the day reorganising you rooms then send out for you favourite pizza and treat yourself for all your hard work.

ReptilesBlade wrote:

And now time for bed.

And well deserved too, I hope you slept well.

John

Patience only come to those who wait for it

Or to put it another way, you are going to continue to do everything apart from go out and meet people and have some fun?

I went for some swimming lessons a few years ago. Me and all the other novices were stood on the side of the pool in our swimwear and not feeling too confident about getting in to the cold and unwelcoming pool. "One at a time slowly climb down the ladder and show me what you have learnt so far" announced the swimming instructor. A few people who were in the que ahead of me and slowly lowered themselves into the water and whilst holding the side of the pool as if their life depended on it then let out a nervous laugh and stated to the instructor that this is as far as they have ever got. Next it was my turn, I have never swam before and so I have no frame of reference in how to achieve it. What I need is a book! Of course, so, I ducked out of the que of people who were about to get into the pool and headed for my nearest library- Awsome, I'll be swimming in no time. I spent the next 6 days studying every aspect of swimming. I changed my bedroom so that it matched an olympic style changing room, I modified my trunks to look like Michael Phelps, I could not wait until next weeks lesson.

That following week I found myself in a familar situation. We were stood in a line and while some of the people we now on first name terms with each other I was happy, I was prepared for this session. Along came the instructor who bellowed "one by one, lower youselves into the water and show me what you remember from last week". The first lady lowered herself in and after a few deep breaths she managed to duck her whole face under the water. This got her a huge round of applause from the group. The second person got in, a male. Once he was in the water, he bobbed about for a few seconds to pysch himself up and then threw himself under the water, legs kicking, arms spinning and after expelling enough energy to run a marathon he managed to propell himself about 4 meters across the pool. It was my turn next. I took 2 paces forward and quick as a flash I grabbed my bag full of books and started reading. I read about Duncan Goodhew, triathalons and about swimmers from all over the world. I learnt so much in that 1 hour session.

Week after week I would put my heart and soul into my swimming lessons, I sat on the pool side and read book after book. It was a distraction to keep being interrupted by the group who kept shouting "go on Brian you can do it" or "I'll support you Gillian" and even more annoying when they would all start randomly banging their hands together everytime someone fetched a brick from the bottom of the pool or swam a width across the pool.

During the last week I worked out that I had read 10 books and am getting close to having a frame of reference. So, I was stood on the side of the pool in silence as all the other learners were celebrating their achievements, badges and certificates, I didnt even know any of their names. Anyway, I had a frame of reference and I was ready. The instructor shouted "get into the pool and show me what you have learnt" With that I started to lower myself using the ladder and realised that the feel of the water was nothing like how Michael Phelpes had described it when he won his first gold medal. While I was lowering myself I turned my head and to my shock all the other learners had slid in from the side of the pool and were half way across to the other side and without even touching the floor.

For me, of course, my frame of reference was all wrong. So I climbed back up the ladder and headed off to the library.

Thanks

Matt

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P2jJdrz9bY&feature=related[/ame]

Matt,

That is hysterical! You've already got me laughing out loud and I haven't even finished my first cup of coffee.

But somehow, weirdly, I have the urge to go to the library -- just the same.

Venus

Highly reccomend "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Robert Glover as a starting point.

John, there are actually multiple reasons for waiting until April first to start my new job search. The first quarter of this year the economy and job market is going to suck beyond belief; this will give me time to ride out the worse of it. Another reason is to ensure I can put a solid six months of experience as an inbound call taker, technical assistance specialist, and service job scheduling on my resume thus opening up thousands of new career opportunities previously denied to me. The stats for my new job are tough to make but I am 95% of the way there already and have been told on multiple occasions that I am performing better than most other people out on the floor. If I can meet them and keep this job I will learn the lessons needed to ensure those opportunities remain permanently open to me, both inside ADT and outside of it. I also need just a little more time to get an entirely new wardrobe; I do not have anything that could be considered nice or business cloths or even remotely close to a suit for interviews and daily office wear. I still need time to finish rebuilding my resume as I mentioned earlier in the 30 day plan. The final motivation for this decision is the one of fear. The last time I searched for a job was a six month endless nightmare in my life, I want to ensure no less than three quarters of my debt is gone this time and that I have no less than $2000 cash in savings to protect me incase something goes wrong. I will not allow myself to wind up with $9700 in debt I cannot pay and $40 to my name, poverty is one of the few things I actually fear from growing up in a lower middle class family and from being penniless for most of the last six years.

I have a saying, “luck favors those who are prepared.” Last time I went job searching I believed I was prepared and found out too late that was not the case. That was a powerful and painful lesson that will not be repeated.

This will be a supplement to the 30 day plan, a way to further outline and define it.

Goals and guidelines for myself:

1. I will follow the 30 day plan as I have already laid it out, and upon its completion re-assess my situation and adapt as needed to continue positive personal growth and permanent elimination of being single/not having a young lady to love.
2. I will begin attempting to go to church again on Wednesday night service; it is the only time I am fairly certain I will be able to attend regularly due to my current job.
3. The financial goals will be changed to living debt free with enough emergency capital to live comfortably in a place of my own for six months with no cash flow coming in. No other financial goals will be set until this is accomplished.
4. I will activate full access accounts on three dating websites and contact and maintain communication with no less than one new woman a week on each site until one of them is dating me regularly.
5. I will only actively date one woman at a time. This is to ensure she has access to all of my resources and affection. She is a fellow human being and will be treated as such.
6. I will make an effort not to whine so much, as Matt so eloquently put it.

Since I may not be capable of doing the remodeling of my room as I planned this week but instead next week when my step-father is well again and better able to assist me (I am simply not strong enough to move my queen sized bed by myself and I seem to have injured my back again and thus cannot stand up strait at the moment) I will instead focus on general cleaning and removing of some clutter and preparing the Accord to be given away or sold next week.

The websites I intend to utilize will be Plenty of Fish (PoF), Yahoo Personals (YP), and Adult Friend Finder (AFF). I have actually gotten a hand full of women over the last three years of using PoF to actually briefly talk to me and I feel I might have the best luck there if I approach this honestly. I also believe the quality of ladies of YP is fairly high so if I can actually fully use their service I might get something for my trouble. The third one, AFF, is to hopefully not fully discount the “5 that would probably shag me anyway” as Matt put it and possibly increase that number (hopefully double it).

I also just discovered a new site called Christian Mingle. I was looking through it a bit and this looks like an excellent place for me to find the kind of lady I am looking for. I will be adding this one to the list of the other three.

I plan to approach the women with complete honesty and straightforwardness (the method I usually prefer to use to achieve any other goal in life) and see what that gets me rather then attempting to modify my letters or profile by what someone recommends would be romantic. I had used this method sparingly and got mixed results in the past thus leading me to utilize some profile and letter templates, changing them every month or two to improve my results because I did not trust myself due to my lack of experience. Unlike then I am now confident enough that my linguistic capabilities will be able to supplant those earlier efforts. I will also modify the goal of all these profiles from a strictly long term relationship to simply dating in an effort to simply get out there faster and lighten up a bit.

I may even make a personal or two on craigslist and see what results that net me if any. This will be implemented in week three or four in order to give me time to build the right profiles this time around and to get some better clothing in general for dating and pictures.

As an addition to that I have tried to re-define what I am looking for in a relationship and a lady-friend. I have elected to throw out roughly two-thirds of my old qualifiers for this abbreviated and simplified list.

Qualifications for her:

1. She has to enjoy cooking; this is so she and I can spend time cooking together.
2. She has to be Christian; I will make no denomination restrictions unless she starts asking me to hold snakes or something similar.
3. She cannot have any diseases that can be easily transmitted to me; pre-existing health conditions (like my own cardiac and lung conditions as an example) do not apply. This is because I have a weakened immune system and am fatally allergic to penicillin and many other antibiotics and drug treatments. This only exists as an absolute medically necessary protection.
4. When I give her a hug, my hands have to be able to touch each other. I do have a twenty-five pound weight limit set by my doctor, not that I really adhere to it very much.
5. She has to have bigger breast than me. I am a man, I like breast.

This is the first time I have ever been able to actually acknowledge that I have sexual needs in my entire life. I do not know where this path will take me but I want to follow it for simple curiosities sake and because the old path has surely failed me. Thinking about this also lead me to thinking about something else. When I was a teenager I spent several summers attending a Southern Baptist church youth camp. One of the things they had us do to keep us “pure” was sign a pledge to abstain from sex until we were married. Because I am a man of my word I signed and have used that to partially guide my old way of thinking. It was only in meditating upon this did a thought occur to me, every one of us was given those little pieces of paper and forced to sign them. An agreement made under duress is not one that is binding! These are the same type of people that quoted us “facts” like “only 2% of women enjoy their first time” without the explanation of why. It was not until many years latter that I found out why that might be, if it is even remotely truthful at all.

I had believed that when I had converted over to being a Lutheran I had finally escaped this Southern Baptist hypocrisy in my life. I am truly unhappy to discover for many years afterwards it has been running and ruining my life still. I want this old programming gone, and I mean f*cking NOW!

In an attempt to do that I asked a close friend for help as well, a nice young lady who was the last girl I dated. In the depth of my confusion I also asked her the question “What is Sex?” in a text message conversation we had together. I knew she had considerably more experience than me and a woman’s opinion in this matter is always helpful. Her answer was “Sex is sex. Sex can be lust. It can be love. It can be just for fun.” I told her I did not understand. Her response was that she had laid it out for me. I then asked her for advice on which direction to take and she told me to go to a bar and take a drunk girl home. I asked in response “Isn’t that taking advantage of her? Isn’t that hurtful for her?” and she responded with “Lol good answer.” Then she told me to just reach for the moon. I asked her if that was some kind of test and if so did I pass and her response was a simple yes to both but I could not get her to extrapolate further.

I posted that conversation because it confuses me and I feel I am missing something important still though I am certainly a hell of a lot closer than I was a week ago. Does anyone have some insight on what she might have been talking about? And why test me like that or was it really a test and perhaps I failed somewhere and she was just to nice to tell me?

And I just bought that book "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Robert Glover you recommended cowboy. I remember seeing it someplace before and nearly buying it then. I read enough before the purchase to know it is something I should own and read. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Mark, I'm very impressed with your dedication to seeking answers for yourself. In seeking them, most of it will come with experience and the patience that entails though, of course.

When your friend said sex can be fun or sex can be love she meant just that. The reasoning behind that is a bit more complicated though. When you're done with "Mr. Nice Guy" I recommend "Practical Female Psychology for the Practical Man"

Mark,
Rarely do I ever read posts that are as long as yours. I can help you, there is no question about it, but I must say, you have a lot of work to do. It can be done, you have to be willing to do the work.

Mark,

I kinda lost the thread of this conversation a bit in all the postings.

So I wondered can you let me know in 250 words or less (less is preferable) what you want? and if you have a list can you prioritise the top 3 items on your list?

Thanks,

Jason

aikijason wrote:

Mark,

aikijason wrote:

I kinda lost the thread of this conversation a bit in all the postings.

So I wondered can you let me know in 250 words or less (less is preferable) what you want? and if you have a list can you prioritise the top 3 items on your list?

Thanks,

Jason

No problem Jason. I would have given you this a few days ago but I have been very busy with the 30 day plan. Getting rid of that car was hard on me. When the guy for the charity came to pick it up he took one look at it and commented that he could tell it had been loved.

Basically I am looking for a young lady to hold and love preferably for the long term. I am absolutely fed up with being alone. To be honest there are only three real traits I am looking for, the last two above were meant to be a sarcastic type of joke that I do not believe went over well. Here is what I am looking for and why.

1. She has to enjoy cooking; this is so she and I can spend time cooking together.
2. She has to be Christian; I will make no denomination restrictions unless she starts asking me to hold snakes or something similar.
3. She cannot have any diseases that can be easily transmitted to me; pre-existing health conditions (like my own cardiac and lung conditions as an example) do not apply. This is because I have a weakened immune system and am fatally allergic to penicillin and many other antibiotics and drug treatments. This only exists as an absolute medically necessary protection.

And thank you for the other recommendation Brian. I will look into it as well.

What thirty day plan?

It is in the above posts near the top of this third page. I will summarize the 30 day plan as it may have gotten lost in all the posting. Week one started on the eighteenth of February and at the time of this posting I have completed week two as well as some preliminary work into weeks three and four.

I am essentially going to be focusing on a core reconstruction of my life over the next 30 days.

Week 1

I will begin with a complete redesign of my living space this next weekend (again mine are Wednesday and Thursday) in which I will simply remove the TV and all furniture associated with it and re-arrange a few other things.

(This has been for the most part accomplished. I still have some minor modification of the new design to go but the improvements are pronounced. I was able to get rid of one third of my furniture that was crammed into this tiny little living space. I actually have room now and was able to get out my weights and place them in an accessible area now so I will begin exercising moderately again very soon.)

Week 2

The next week after that I am going to get rid of the Accord. I love it beyond words, but I know it is a relic from my old mode of thinking and I am determined to end this perpetual misery I live in.

(This was done yesterday. It hurt more than I could say in words. When the guy for the charity came to pick it up he took one look at it and told me he could tell it was loved.)

Week 3

The third week I will buy a new wardrobe to improve my chances and image for every aspect of my life, especially in regards to looking for a better job that allows me to actually have a life by:

A. Not being a thirty mile one way drive from where I live.

B. Gives me evenings and weekends off so I have more time to enjoy or even simply have a life.

C. Preferably pays more but at the very least the same $11.11 an hour I make now.

(I have already done some preliminary job searching without applying for anything and updating of my resume at this time and have the final information needed to finish the resume update and to go where the jobs are.)

Week 4

The fourth week I will complete the redesign of the resume I have been and will continue to slowly work on and finish my preparations to actively pursue the focus of week three.

Supplemental goals for these 30 days to be completed at the end of the fourth week or the first week immediately afterwards (fifth week).

1. I will begin attempting to go to church again on Wednesday night service; it is the only time I am fairly certain I will be able to attend regularly due to my current job.
2. I will activate full access accounts on four dating websites and contact and maintain communication with no less than one new woman a week on each site until one of them is dating me regularly. I may even make a personal or two on craigslist and see what results that net me if any.

Anything not completed by the end of week four will be finished in week five, just incase I run short on time somehow.

Damn I'm glad I'm not in his shoes. It was so much easier for me to change from chump......to Adonis.

russianbear wrote:

Damn I'm glad I'm not in his shoes. It was so much easier for me to change from chump......to Adonis.

more like from chump...... to chipmunk no no no I meant champ, champ, lol Natural Confidence good!! Ego bad. bad ego bad find balance my friend.

J

But Jay, I was lacking natural confidence. I had to do something, otherwise I would've ended up a loser for life. I don't think I was as messed up as some guys, but I was lost. I found the map and I am now headed down the right path. When I look out before me, it is a daunting task that lies before me, but I now have the strength to do it.

I don't know who gave you a thumbs down, but I gave you a thumbs up to cancel that out.

The Thumbs mean nothing-and with hypnotic hallucination all I see when I get a thumb down is a nice set of boobs in the place of the thumbs down- so if people want to give me thumbs done please do, I am working on adding a collection, so the thumbs down with give more practice. so my post was and is in jest- I think you have come a long away from where you was a little while ago, and I sent you a PM, the other day to give you a pat on the back as you know, keep doing what you are doing its good, to see you being the you, that you can be,

MMMMMMM more thumbs please.

J