I got a lot of my blog audience from Twitter. And amongst you, I’ve met 21 of you in real life so far. Hoping to bump that number way up this year.
So you know, I’m short. I was a whopping 5’2″ in high school, which pretty much meant the love of my life would come to an end – American football.
No way I’d make college.
Which turned out to be great. Everyone who’s ever done anything physical with me, whether it was American football, wrestling, boxing, or soccer knows I put 100% into everything I do.
I’d have CTE today if I played college ball. No doubt about it.
I’ve always been fearless. In an almost psychotic way.
It’s because I hate losing. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As Coach Lombardi said “show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.”
So senior year of high school, this guy comes into the classroom six months late. And the teacher asks why he’s so late and he said “I just got out of jail.”
Needless to say, no one else wanted to have anything to do with him.
We quickly became best friends. And you know what? He’s still my best friend today.
Early on, he said “Roman, you should buy a guitar.”
So I did.
He played Randy Rhoads just like Randy Rhoads. I copied everything he did, from his riffing to his lead playing. Then he got kicked out of his house and moved in with his mother and I didn’t see him again until years later.
Over the years, I became an elite guitarist. A damn good wrestler. A mediocre boxer, but still in phenomenal shape (and even in my mid-50s, I would knock out 95% of men within 20 seconds with my bare hands). People who have never boxed don’t understand that that boxer who got knocked out in the 5th round would still knock out 99% of people with his bare hands in seconds. You take your body farther than you ever thought possible.
One example – I had a platonic friend that I used to fool around with. She ended up becoming a bikini model. I’ve talked about her in my newsletter before.
Anyways, she was in phenomenal shape. She loved rollerblading.
So I would run with her while she rollerbladed. For miles. And I kept up!
I clocked 6 miles in 45 minutes once. And no, I was far from skinny. I had muscle on my muscle.
I’m even stronger now. But way slower and much more blind. I wouldn’t last 30 seconds against the 30-year-old version of me.
That’s just physical shit.
What about mental?
My girlfriend in my sophomore and early junior year of high school said I’d never amount to anything and there’s a good chance I’d be dead or in jail before I turned 20. Which is a good thing.
See, this is what people don’t understand today. People are so fucking afraid of “bullying” that they don’t understand there’s no motivation like negative motivation.
That lit a fire under my ass.
I went from being pretty dumb to pretty smart. I ended up going to college. I got a degree.
Then when the dot com craze was going crazy, I learned this thing called UNIX. I got really good at it.
I found out that there was a cheap version called Linux. So cheap that you can stick it on your regular computer.
I got really good at it. So good in fact that I ended up submitting a few things that made a Linux distro. I won’t tell you which one because I used the same name that’s attached to some of the pornography I shot.
But needless to say, you have to be smart to do that stuff. And my ex thought I was stupid.
Once again – negative motivation.
I went from barely graduating high school to getting a college degree and getting a few things that actually made a Linux distro.
Sadly though, Mom died. She never got to see my greatest triumphs because she was already dead by then.
I got us into the upper middle class. Then learned orchestration. My mother would have been amazed.
I paid some lady to teach me how to read notes. Then studied scores from everyone from Tchaikovsky to Beethoven to Brahms to Wagner to even some 20th century weirdness. I highly recommend both Walter Piston’s Orchestration book and Hector Berlioz’s orchestration book (updated by Richard Strauss). Read those books cover to cover several times and now I can compose Classical music. I put it on the Opium Tales YouTube channel, with one piece even showing the notations. Yes, I hired orchestral musicians to actually perform the pieces. Cost me over $10,000 but was worth every penny. Now if Twitter Guru wants to do a dick measuring contest when it comes to mental accomplishments, I’ll prove I got the bigger dick.
And remember – my ex said I was stupid and will never amount to anything.
I can assure you I’m nothing special. Just a guy with an insane work ethic.
And I’m not saying this to brag. I sincerely hope I inspired you to take your body and your mind as far as you can possibly take it. That’s why I wrote this article. It’s for YOU. If me, a short, nearly blind, mediocre guy can accomplish all this, imagine what you can do if you managed your time correctly!
Go out there and kick some ass!
Oh and this takes me about an hour to do now:
That’s Allie, 11″x14″ drawn with #2 pencil and a 4B pencil, 100% graphite.
I’m getting faster and faster at it.
That’s the thing my friends. Push yourself. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Heck, use it as FUEL instead.