Welcome, greetings, salutations, ohla, hi

                                              4-7-11 Connor Michael Metts was born.

 You, your mother, and I hit the ground running and now, 8 months later, I realized that I have slacked off on this project since you've gotten here. I have had enough for several posts just about the silly faces you make but there is so much more. I didn't realize I would have so many memories to keep up with, there is no way I could ever write or even recall them all at once. I plan on writing some posts in the future about what makes you, you. For today I will stick to this advice.

 I sit here at work (currently Counselman Automotive) Sick. As. A. Dog. I haven't been sick in about three years, I owe that to eating properly, training, good sleep and as low stress as possible. Most of those have gone out the window as of late though. I know what you're thinking, I'm about to blame you. I mean thats how it goes when you have a child. Actually, your amazing mother has made it easy for me. She is unbelievable with you. She knows that I have to work long hours right now to provide for the three of us and she does more than I could ever ask or expect.

 I can only blame my illness on this job. It will be the death of me if I don't find a way out soon. Which brings me to the point of this post.

 Do not let the weight of your worries turn into the weight of your regrets. You will have to carry that weight with you for your entire life. You can do this by finding the one thing you love to do most, I don't care if it's reading books, working out, or jumping off of houses, then spend every ounce of energy you have to find a way to make money/a life out of it no matter the cost or consequence. This is age old advice but sometimes the simplest ones are the ones you ignore until you realize how true they are.

  You can find what you love by looking at what you do when you should be doing something else. What you do with your time alone when you don't have any obligations. It will be the thing that when you talk to people about it they have to tell you to stop because you have rambling on for an hour. Find that thing and then figure a way to make a living around it. If you can make enough money to survive while doing this, I promise you will be more happy than if you have a job you don't care about that makes 4 times as much. This is because when you have a job just for money, it takes time away from what you love and this makes you resent your job and ultimately your life. But if you have a job based around what you truly love, even if its a poor paying job, you are making money doing what you love. This is so important in life I wanted to make it my first topic since your birth.

  Also, equally important is how soon you start working towards that goal. Do not wait til you are 30 or even 20 to start. Start as soon as you read this. If you follow this advice, I can pomise that you will consider it the greatest advice/gift  I will ever give you.

  I implore you to not fall into the same line your grandfather and I did. We are good people but made poor choices when it came to following our heart instead of our bank account.

 Now for the first time on here, I get to tell you I love you and know that I am saying to a living breathing human being. My son. And though you will find it silly or trite until you are my age with one of your own, I will be proud of you no matter what you choose to do or how far you take that choice. Good luck.

"Dirty Food"

THIS SHOULD UPSET YOU:

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/menshealth/10-dirtiest-foods-youre-eating

Notice that most of the foods in this article are Paleo? The reasoning behind these foods being "dirty" is 100% attributed to poor handling and lack luster storage enviroments. Yet nowhere do they mention that these foods are actually good for you under normal circumstances.
We, as americans, have developed such a low standard for where and how long we are keeping foods from the "Processed revolution". Most of you are already aware of the laundry list of negative affects these "foods" have on you. That would be an entirely different subject for a later post. Real food is perishable. The faster you understand this and remember it at the grocery store the better off you and your loved ones will be. We eat REAL food, not science experiments. In order to do that there are certain precautions we have to take. You would think this would go without saying but you can't leave real, once living food out for days (some will go rancid within hours at room tempurature) and expect for it to have the same positive affect on your body. Would you take your aunt that died last thanksgiving out to a dinner party in June? Not unless you're Andrew McCarthy. Perhaps that's a stretch since most of us also don't eat our dead relatives...most of us. It's still a good movie though. The point being, we have to work at eating just like we have to work at everything else in life. This means not just putting effort into preparing our food but also how we think. Buying in season, buying only what we know we are going to consume within the alotted time, cooking things first that have a shorter shelf life, trying not to resort to freezing foods unless completely unavoidable, cleaning everything thuroughly before during and aftercooking. These are things that are lost on a large portion of the younger community and I can only blame it on being lazy. If you don't know how to properly store or prepare something, ask someone who does. Your Mother isn't just there for christmas gifts, and if she doesn't know google it. Yes, I said google it. Don't act like you don't use it for everything else in your life. Don't let this be one more excuse to reach for the hydrolized modified high fructose cornstarch syrup dipped in caramel and packaged in airtight cellophane developed by nasa to outlive most of the human race and withstand a nuclear holocaust.
I promise the more effort you put into what goes into your body, the more benefits you will reap. Now get out there and eat some turkey, eggs, and cantalop!!

Human interaction

  By the time you start reading these posts social networking will most likely be such a big part of our society that no one will think it is weird to hardly ever see your friends face to face. Mobile data devices and the gradual disconnection from human interaction will be the down fall of mankind. I can only hope that a renaissance will come before you get too engrossed in it and the art of building relationships by shaking hands and looking at the person you are speaking to will once again be the common thread that holds society together.
By the way. This message was sent via SMS on my smart phone ;)

Months and moods

Since my culmination as an adult my favorite time of year has been fall and my favorite holiday Halloween. That wasn't always the case however. Of course as a child it was summer and Christmas. I mean come on, how could it not be? It's funny how things change for no certain visible reason. Yes, I suppose if I were to look into it, in this case, I would find that it has much to do with the different amenities that seasons and holidays have as you grow up, but who cares. The fact is, they change and it is not always by choice.
For me, months come with preset moods. Of course they can waver and change depending what you are going threw during that period of your life but if you strip away all the outside interference and small issues we deal with, I would bet you a red nickel you would find that you have a "clean slate mood" for certain months as well.
Is finding this and realizing its validity a hinderance to your actual mood itself there by altering your mindset and ruining the entire idea in the first place or is it the opposite, in that you can not realize this concept and embrace its importance until you undertand the futility of attempting to rationally analyze it? .....and now I've gone crosseyed.
Nevermind that. Think about your monthly preset moods and reflect on why they are what they are. Past important events, relationships, movies or music that left ideas and the sense of a season in your head even years after experiencing them for the first time. Ponder the good, but try to focus more the bad, you should find that once you undertand why your head is in a negative place, it is much easier to dismiss it and get through to the next month with minimal injuries.

Here is a bit of scientific back up for my idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology