The RaBlog

I’ve changed a lot over the years. That makes writing this page a little difficult. While there’s a lot to potentially say, I don’t really want to say too much about certain things. I also want to put enough to make this page actually worth reading. I guess we’ll start with the present.

I am currently attending Lakeland College, with the hopes of achieving a Bachelor’s degree in Biology. My current plans are to attempt to get into medical school and become a physician or perhaps a surgeon. I don’t really know what area of medicine I’d prefer to practice, but if I get the opportunity to need to make that decision, I’m sure I will be able to find enough of an interest to be able to do so.

I don’t really have the desire to get rich, at least any more so than the average person dreams. I really don’t care that much about money, as long as I have enough to survive. My real interest is in helping people, and I feel that medicine would give me excellent opportunities to do so. There are certainly other ways to help people, and I’m open to pursuing other options, should the need arise or my desires change. My dream vacation right now is to go to Africa and help those in need of medical attention or other assistance.

Now, the past.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to decide what to do with my life, albeit not necessarily actively. Initially after high school, I attended college to become a pastor. It was a goal I had had my entire life to that point, and I felt content pursuing that goal. After two years in college, I decided to change my goal and transferred to a much larger public university for the pursuit of some sort of business-related degree. Having attended smaller, private schools all my life to that point, I very quickly found the lack of personal attention and contact to be quite overwhelming, and I essentially dropped out shortly after classes started. After that first semester, I dropped out of college completely.

Over the next two years, I had a rough time with what my life had become. I was depressed, as I had no real career ambitions, other than a project that a friend and I had been working on since high school. In June of 2004, opportunities presented themselves with that project, and I formally accepted a job with Steadfast Networks to assist with the beginning stages of open a web hosting company on a wide scale.

With this new job, I moved from Wisconsin to Chicago, and we began the process of trying to make that company work. I don’t really have a lot to say about that time in this post, but through a lot of hard work and dedication on the parts of me, Karl, Kevin, and others, Steadfast Networks soon grew to be a reputable company that had one of the better problems a business could have — not being able to keep products in stock.

Eventually, however, as the company continued to grow, I started falling back into my old problem of not really having a career goal. Sure, I had a great job, and, for the most part, I enjoyed it. But even though I had a large part in building the company to what it was, I was feeling more and more incomplete in my life. After a visit to a college friend over Thanksgiving in 2006, I began to desire more in my life. Through the next couple of months, I deliberated with myself constantly on the best way to proceed in life. After a few months, I finally came to a decision to pursue medical school. I applied to a few different colleges and ended up deciding on Lakeland for a couple of reasons, primarily that it was a smaller school at which I could have close contact to the professors for the purpose of seeking their advice on how to pursue my goals.

Now, the disclaimer. I love Steadfast Networks. I love the company. I loved working with my co-workers and customers on a daily basis. I do miss that, and I certainly have no regrets from my time working there. I still help them out with some things, as time permits, and I don’t mind this at all. In fact, I still enjoy doing that type of work. I simply needed something in my life that I had a hard time pursuing while working there.

So… that’s the past…. and I’ve already touched on the future. I guess that means we should take a look at some other things, like personality, likes, dislikes, etc.

Personality

I’m an easy-going guy. I’m also seem to be quite a bit on the shy side. While I don’t have a problem talking to people that I know, I like to keep to myself most of the time. I really don’t like to be the center of attention all that much. I also consider myself to be very intelligent, but I prefer not to let people know it. Though I seem shy, I generally have a pretty high level of self-confidence, though there are certain areas in which this is also pretty low.

Physical Appearance

I’m a large guy. Yes, I consider myself to be obese. I have, however, lost a lot of weight over the past year, and I am continuing to work on the goal of losing weight until I’m at a comfortable level. I am mainly achieving this by eating healthily and walking. I’m 6′ 3″ tall, so the ~285 pounds (at the time of this writing!) that I weigh is spread over a large amount of space, but I still am quite the large guy. Oh, I have brown hair that usually ranges from pretty short to much longer, depending on the date of my last haircut. I also have brown eyes. Not much else to say here, I guess.

Personal Life

I don’t really do a lot outside of school and work these days. Those things definitely take up the majority of my time. When I’m not doing things related to those, I like to watch movies or TV, read books, play video games, or just talk to friends online. I’m usually near my computer and listening to music.

Interests

I have a lot of interests, and I’d guess you can figure out most of them from what I’ve written so far. For starters, I really like having philosophical conversations with very good friends. When I lived in Chicago, there were many nights that my roommates and I would stay up far too late discussing anything and everything, from politics to religion to food to business to computers to… whatever. We’d let the conversation carry us to wherever it led. There were some pretty deep matters discussed during those nights. I enjoyed it greatly, despite missing out on a lot of sleep those nights.

Anyways, I suppose we can start with some lists:

General Interests: Biology, Genetics, Medicine, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Computers (Hardware, Networking, Linux, etc.), Cooking, Biking, Walking, Video Games

Music: Ben Folds (Five), The Shins, Guster, The White Stripes, Cake, Jack’s Mannequin, Weezer, Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Franz Ferdinand, Green Day, The Postal Service, Travis, Sufjan Stevens, The Beatles, Oceanvue

Movies: Amelie, Dr. Strangelove, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Godfather, Goodfellas, No Country for Old Men, Patton, Pi, Pulp Fiction, Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, Three Colors Trilogy (Blue, White, Red), Trainspotting

Television: 30 Rock, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Entourage, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, House, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Office, Pushing Daisies, Scrubs, Food Network, Discovery Health, Discovery HD

Video Games: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS

I think that’s about it for now. As I’ve been doing for a few days now, I’m planning to post “random” facts about myself quite frequently. The goal is daily, but it probably won’t be every single day. If you’re interested in reading more, check out the Random Facts category to catch up on those!