Today I wrote my eulogy. To see all that I have done.   To see what those would say when I was gone. 

I wrote about my sister, who would sorely miss her brothers’ shenanigans.  I wrote about my mentor, who would miss my stupid jokes and us sharing a desk at work.  I wrote about my platoon sergeant, who would miss my antics and terrible jokes.  I wrote about a co-worker who would miss me sniffing him before our shift takes their posts.  I wrote about my friend, who would miss me asking stupid questions about cars as we changed the oil.  I wrote about my soldiers, who would miss the acknowledgement of a shitty situation, but a smile after getting yelled at for an hour because of pants.  I wrote about my mentee, I wrote about my brother who I enlisted with, who, although we are on different paths, we both are happy where we are.  I wrote about one of my best friends, who would miss working on my seemingly never-ending house projects.  I wrote everything down.

When we look at the last year or ten years, we never realize how much of an impact we have.  It is so easy to look at the negative.  The things we haven’t accomplished.  The things we wished we did.  However, we get so wrapped up in these things we forget what is important. 

We spend so much time reflecting on the past, or working towards the future, that we forget what is right in front of us.  

So instead of your life mission, or looking so much at the future, look at your eulogy, and if everything came to halt tomorrow….

It’s okay to not be okay….

A few years ago, I walked into my work like any other day.  I sat down at my desk, scrolled through my emails, and began the monotony of another day.  After a little while, I had to visit a coworker.  This coworker was someone who I had only ever said hello to in passing, and the normal smile as we walked by. 

On this day I walked into her office and said hello and then mentioned some paperwork.  As we talked avout the paperwork, her face looked sad, her eyes looked tired, and her mind somewhere else.  As we got past the normal “Good mornings” I looked at her and simply said…

Are you ok?

She paused for a moment, and instead of taking the easy road, like the majority of the population, she said 

“No”

And she broke down

Here she was, this woman old enough to be my mother, an experienced professional, opening up to a 20 some odd old kid.  She was worried about her daughter, who was her life and soul.  Her daughter was going off to chase some boy and wasn’t listening to her mother at all.  She opened up to me and tried to come up with a reason, she tried to understand.  

I explained to her that not all kids listen to their parents, and in hindsight, she will probably look back and realize her mother was right.

The average person would have said yes and went on along their day, trying not to burden a someone else, or to just take the easy way out.  But she wasn’t ok.

It is okay to not be okay. We all have our ups and downs, and those good times and the bad.  We all have our demons, our secrets our everything.  It is one thing to sit there and say we are fine.  But in the end, you are just lying to yourself.  Look in the mirror and realize that if you are not okay, its okay. 

No one is perfect, no one is immune from sadness, no one is immune from the treacherous trail we scale and navigate through life.  

It’s okay, to not be okay. 

Happiness is Kinetic

We all chase it 

We want happiness

We spend so much of our lives chasing this one goal, that seems to slip through our hands like the sands of time

Happiness is subjective

Nirvana to one is a warm summers day, toes in the sand, not a care in the world 

Nirvana to others is summiting a mountain, in the frigid cold, after weeks of walking

It is so subjective, and it is also Kinetic

As a child we seek the happiness, in the form of Lego blocks and tee-ball

As we grow older it is grades in school, winning a championship

Beyond then is getting a job, buying house, raising a family, starting a business

We are all chasing the same thing, however our end result is different, and ever changing

Today happiness is going for a run, tomorrow making smart financial moves

We all seek it, crave it, and spend our whole lives seeking it

Yet it changes every day and in every which way

Goals are attainable, yet happiness almost seems unattainable

As something so constantly changing, and by the time you reach what you think is your end goal, something new arises 

That taste that is always out of reach, that fruit that we cannot touch, the end result that never tastes as sweet as we expected

Accept that you will achieve goals, but never happiness, because what we seek changes with the times and the weather, and maybe one day we will get a taste, although it may be for a few moments, but a taste of achieving happiness, before it changes into our next goal.  

Where do we go to dump our mind…

With the tedious operations of everyday life, the monotony, the trivial pursuits of a 9-5

The work for so many years, the give your life to a corporation or cause that you might not necessarily believe in, but that pads your wallet and keeps your family fed

How many of us forgo the dreams and loves of life, to compromise for the paycheck to maintain order…

 For how many truly realize their dreams.   For how many truly realize their own ambitions and passions. 

For in this everyday life, however normal or chaotic, we all seek to make sense of exactly how we feel. Exactly our emotions.  Exactly how to piece together this never-ending and ever-changing puzzle of life.  

The chaotic conglomerate of thoughts an ideas…..

Where do dreams go to die.

We create, we believe we plan nad we execute

But where do our dreams die

Do they diie in an idea we feel is too outlandish?

Do they die because they weigh too much, stacked upon dealing with our life?

Do they die because instead we choose a pipe, a bottle, something more carnal, a momentary sense of satisfaction?

It is easy to dream, and it is easy for those dreams to die.  

It is hard…

To execute

To put dreams before others

To put dreams before yourself

It is hard to put these momentary feelings of nirvana to the side to achieve a much higher dream.  

Whether 5 or 50, to be Batman or own a business, to lose 50 pounds or to climb Mt. Everest, we all have dreams.

But how easy it is to give in to temptation and complacency and forget these dreams.  

So, do not have dreams….

Have small goals, fight complacency, and after enough small goals, your big goals will be yours.  

We sit in fear

We sit there in worry

What does tomorrow hold?

What does this next move, next decision make, what does it mean?

Life is a funny thing

Many people feel as if they are not in control

However, we are all in control

We make decisions every day, every moment

We accept lies and truths

We justify our actions to others and ourselves

They say there are three face’s

One is who most people see you as

The second is the face with those whom you hold closest hold you

And lastly is you behind closed doors

Most people will never truly know the true you

Who you are at the darkest hour or brightest light?

Who you are in the bliss of day or the deepest dark of night?

But who you are is controlled by you?

When you are happy or sad, mad or glad, it is controlled by you

On this crazy ride of that we call life, remember that we hold the reigns.  

A year before my grandmother passed, we had a very frank conversation.

At 92 years old, she said she was ready to go.  

As a 24-year-old guy, I understood.  For age is an excuse when it comes to life experience.  Some are 19 and understand this world as a 55-year-old and vice versa.  Age and life experience are two very different things.  

I looked my grandmother back into her eyes, and said I understood.  She has lived her life to the fullest, and for a long time.  She accepted her life

What more can you ask, when death comes knocking?

For when death rings your doorbell after a full life, do you huddle behind a door and pretend it’s not there, or do you open the door, allow it to take a seat, and offer it a cold drink.

We should not fear death, but welcome it when it is our time.  

For one who cannot accept that it is there time, cannot accept the fact that they have not experienced enough.  

This crazy ride we call life, if you were to pass tomorrow, what is your legacy.  What was your life.  What was your mark

If it was no mark, then make one.  

If there was no impact, then strive for one.  

We live but one life, so when the devil comes knocking, today or thirty years from now, make sure you are ready to go, and the book of life you live is one worth reading.  

Why do we sleep

Why do we drink

Why do we smoke

Why do we binge eat

Why do we sleep around

We do these things, to escape reality. We live so much of our lives hating our own realities.

When you sleep, you sleep to recover, but you sleep to make the time go by. So that maybe when you wake up, your life will be better. Maybe you’ll have a dream or just wake up rested, but you are waking up in your same reality.

When you drink, you skew your own reality. Putting yourself in an altered mental state, it makes you feel better about your current situation. It skews your reality into somehow making it bearable for you, as long as you can maintain a buzz.

Binge eating, sleeping around etc are all things that make you feel good….momentarily. It’s a band-aid on the overall hemorrhaging wound. It does nothing in the long run, and is usually more detrimental to you then successfull.

Why don’t you start today by owning your reality?

Why don’t you start to own your reality everyday?

Get after it

-Lil Kevy

I don’t care about awards. I don’t care about trophies, plaques, or certificates. It’s fun to go out and bust your buddies for what you have and they don’t *cough-Dan check out my German Armed Forces Proficency Badge* but at the end of the day, it’s a ribbon, or a coin or a plaque that sits on a wall or a rack and slowly wastes away.

Some people are in it for the awards; they want to be known, and they want to display their accomplishments; different strokes for different folks. But awards are trivial, material things. Very few material things hold a lot of meaning. Most we can do without.

If you don’t know what I mean, go live out of a backpack for a few weeks and you realize how much you really need in life.

There is something though, that is better than any reward I’ve received.

As I wrap up my time in Michigan, I did receive a small award for my time here. Coins in the military have been a long-standing tradition, and are still a very cool thing to this day. But the real award I got wasn’t a certificate or a coin; it was from the people I worked with.

It was at 0200 when my eyes were bleeding from reading another training document and working with QC’ing. It was grabbing a co-worker a coffee when they didn’t ask for it, but surely needed it. It was asking what I could do to help, and doing quality work when someone wasn’t able to delegate themselves.

The real reward was that person standing next to you, ready to take on the next task and a silent acknowledgement of “we are in this together, let’s get it done.”

And at the culmination, the person I worked for turned around and said “Sir, you’re good people.”

A simple phrase, but one that carries more meaning and recognition than any material thing.

The acknowledgment of not being a good soldier or officer, but being a good human being. And I would much rather have those who matter realize the good people, as opposed to those who don’t matter recognize me.

When it’s all said and done, although grim, I like to think of my eulogy sometimes and what someone would say. And at that eulogy, they don’t remember awards, they remember the man.

-Lil Kevy

The game of telephone, is simply data management. It starts at the source, with quality data, and then, through multiple steps in the process, gets to the end user who has something completely different to say.

Data is simply information, and data management is simply the maintaining of that information.

For years, I have worked in some form of data management. Whether it was in college, working in data collection, entry and sorting, to then working at a hospital in sorting data and maintaining my own database on safety events.

Very quickly, you learn that data runs the world.

With this experience, it now seems trivial when I look back at the goals I have been trying to achieve and how I have not been applying or tracking the data in it.

“I want to lose weight, I want to save money, I don’t know where my money goes, and I have my goal and I don’t know how to reach it”

All these simple goals and questions can be answered by looking at data, and then adjusting your behavior of the data.

Even if you know where things go, such as wasting your money on eating out all the time, seeing the hard data of exactly how much you spend, will maybe help jolt you awake! Even better, it shows you how re-allocating your funds can further another goal you have.

But it doesn’t just work for money, it works for other goals too.

By using the data you already have, and then projecting and tweaking your future decisions based off of this information, will actually allow you to accomplish your goal.

So get out there, lay out your goals, and get after it.

-Lil Kevy

The biggest difference between money and life, is money is replaceable, we are not.

We invest in our retirement, invest in our stocks, our business, in whatever to get that return on investment, that coveted ROI. Real Estate has about a 3 percent annual return, other avenues we try to get 8 or more percent to make it worth putting your money there.

People are so quick to look at all their monetary investments, because its quantifiable. I put in $100 dollars and a year later I get $120 back.

But would you spend that $100 if you knew you were only going to get $50 back? Or if you knew you were going to get nothing back?

No, because it’s illogical.

Now take that same concept and apply it to your emotions, your time, and the people you surround yourself with.

When you apply this to your emotions, you realize that there are things you can and things you cannot control. When you realize and begin to recognize that, then you begin to invest your emotions more wisely. If I know you cannot change the fact that a car accident happened, or that my boss isn’t moving anytime soon, then you realize that wasting your time and emotion on the issue is pointless. Not only is there no return, but there is negative consequences of this. It can not only affect you, but affect your loved ones, affect your job, your goals, and your life. So don’t invest your emotions, in things you cannot change.

When you apply this to your time, you can see how much time you waste in a day. We have 24 hours in a day, if you sleep 8, work 8, and then use 4 hours for getting ready, commuting and eating, which still leaves 4 hours a day of complete white space. 4 hours to do with as you please. Granted, some work more or sleep less, but the principle is still the same. As each day goes by, you do not get that time back. So don’t waste it.

When you apply it to the people around you, you realize who the people who you should keep in your life. If you invest your time and emotions in a friendship, or relationship that is one-sided, or you are constantly being used, then you are wasting this. Now the heart doesn’t always agree with the head when it comes to things like love, but using logic can help you make poor decisions.

In the end, whether you’re 27 or 72, continue to invest wisely, and always make sure you get some sort of ROI.

-Lil Kevy