I’m Billy Pilgrim, and this is why I have this blog

Word Vomit

That’s the purpose of this blog. Putting into words the chaos in my mind onto paper/screen so that I might be able to organize my thoughts more clearly. I will extrapolate on this further, but let me first introduce myself. I’m Billy Pilgrim. And if you don’t believe me, you shouldn’t.. But you also should. Let me explain. 

Why Believe in a Lie

I think that every person needs to be the hero to their own journey. Maybe I’ve watched too much television, but “Woe is me!” seems to be a status quo for many. It should not be. A large part of my growth over the years has been learning that life is a confidence game. It’s not a lesson learned through an epiphany you have after hearing an anecdote or two about it, it’s one that must be applied and practiced on the battlefield of life. It’s when you choose to be the hero to your own story and you are able to practice that confidence by executing those heroic actions. That’s how one can live up to their highest potential. To sum it up, you get to choose who you are. The good guy, the bad guy, the ugly guy, you are in control as to who you are and how you approach the challenges in your life (lets refrain from using the term ‘problems’ as it implies something unwanted). 

For this blog, I choose to be Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim is the protagonist in the book Slaughter House Five. It’s an odd choice to say the least, he’s an average joe who survived the second world war and suffers from PTSD. He’s physically weak, tall and skinny and some would probably argue that the war drove him to insanity. But his redeeming qualities are that he is kind to others even when they’re vile to him and most importantly he attempts to teach others the lessons and pieces of wisdom he learned from the aliens that abducted him (for all intensive purposes, they are higher level beings that have a God’s eye perspective and understanding of the world and time). I intend to write so that I might be able to share the wisdom and lessons I have learned so that I might better understand it myself. So I’m Billy, and I’m here to be kind and teach you what I know. 

Why write? Because I’m a shitty writer..

At least I believe I am and have lots of space for improvement. And it’s not an unwarranted or harsh statement either. I grew up as a math individual. Solving problems and building legos was all in my comfort zone, so writing has always been outside of it. The idea of having to write, for more than half my life, was not enjoyable to say the least. But I’ve come to learn that you’ll surprise yourself as to what you can learn to enjoy if you let it resonate in your life for a bit. 

Benefits?

Writing also has benefits that I want to experiment with. Are the myths true? Will it really make a difference in my life? Only one way to find out. 

Writing is a tool to organize your thoughts so that you can become a better thinker. I dig deep into many different sources that inspire new ideas and ways of interpreting the world, and one of them has been Tim Ferris. To be honest, for many years, I was on the fence as to whether or not Tims blogs and books were truly genuine. But I couldn’t deny the fact that there are many aspects to his thinking and teachings that are valuable and shouldn’t be discounted simply because of my bias distrust. 

To sum up Tims words to my own words and push it a step further, it will give me a space to put everything in my mind out into words so that I can visually see the flaws. Maybe they’re idiosyncrasies, which is fine, but better to know where they exist. When they are written out, not only can you see where your argument falls short, but it’s a powerful way to trim the fat. If analysed properly, you can practice removing excess terms and redundant sentences so that you might not only become a better writer, but speaker too. 

Undoubtedly, having a peer editor that can critique can go a long way. For most of these posts, that will not happen. I like to keep these writings to myself and lets just say I’m not ready to share this with people I know to edit. But the benefits are not completely lost. What’s important for me at this stage is to write, write, and write. Maybe it won’t be a daily habit, but hopefully it becomes something I feel comfortable with and that I can learn to enjoy. I will use other mediums of writing to exercise the benefits of exterior critique. 

Another benefit that I’ve noticed and want to take further is getting my mind focused. I have done this on and off for years, of which it has slowly been accelerating into my day to day life, and that is writing in a weekly/daily journal. One journal is filled with maxims that I deem to be important and try to write them every morning to remind myself of their value as I approach the day. Another journal has been of me writing what I’ve done right and wrong from the previous day or week and what actions I can do to improve. Putting the pen to paper often clears the junk in my mind and refocuses my mind away from unimportant tasks.

There are many more benefits to writing that I glossed over or have not properly recognized or learned about. The answers are more than likely a google search away, but that’s neither here nor their. For me, the above explanation was more than enough to convince me that this will improve my life for the better, and in turn make make me a better man.

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