Pruning Oatmeal

Don't rush things. Finish up the bare minimum in order to establish a foundational starting point, framework, in order to cultivate potential paths ensuring backup plans. Take the time to know enough of yourself to gain needed confidence to navigate the deep waters of life. Expect success in what you know you can do. However, accept failure and defeat. Pick your battles. Decide which hills you're willing to die on. Learn to forgive. Make lists of priorities to determine which oatmeal to prune off as you can't do everything in life. Work hard but not too hard. Have fun but don't rupture your liver in the process. Consider running around a bit before settling down. Don't sell yourself too short. Take some risks and be ok with failing. It's ok to try something and fail. It's ok when you're not hired, when you're fired, when you fail at anything really. Failure is rain hitting the body. Learn to dance in it. Learn to thrive in it.

The Oatmeal Boat Meme by Roy Merrick

Pruning Oatmeal
Oatmeal Daily - 2023-10-01 - Sunday | Published in October of 2023

BY OATMEAL JOEY ARNOLD
ARTICLES | DIRECTORY | TIMELINE | TOPICS

Pruning Oatmeal

Should I settle down or run around? That is a big question in my life. Let me explain my thoughts, the back story context to the difficulty to tackling what some might say is a simple question.

I was born in the year 1985. I'm 38 years old right now. I taught English in Vietnam. I was never married. I had one fake GF for a month in 2013. I didn't have any children. I attended college. My life went down several career paths simultaneously even at times. I've made many mistakes through it all. I've failed a lot. I'm not perfect. This is a pretty general random outline of my almost four decades of life. They often say people have a midlife crisis in their forties which would begin in two years from now for me. Perhaps I'm doing it early. The conclusion of this article may involve balance.

What is applicable is that it's never too late to get back in track in your own life. It's also never too late to mess things up.

I'm going to say a few random things in this article relating to these vague topics at hand. After that, I'm publishing this baby without spell-checking and without proofreading for grammar issues. Here's some of my thoughts relating to where I might be. The title to this post is Pruning Oatmeal which means I'm trying to find balance in what I do in life in general. I'm reflecting on the choices in my life. I'm not really going to finish this web page up with everything I want to say. I'm not going through every minute or even every year of my life. I'm just going to say a few random things from the top of my head.

One of my many weaknesses is my curiosity which drives me to question, to search, research, google, investigate, discover, brainstorm, argue, debate, think, and explore.

These things are good. However, curiosity killed the cat. Only generosity can bring it back. My curiosity led me down bad paths. I want to say sorry for that. My intentions may be good but my the means therein may be otherwise. I've fallen for the scam of the ends justifies the means. I've learned a lot during the course of my life. I've felt like I'm in a much better place now than ever before. Some people struggle with being too lazy. I struggle with the opposite. I struggle with working too hard at too many projects spreading myself thin for too many years. My mind has been all over the years. I'm been in a transition and cross-roads in my life many times over the years and especially more so since 2018. In this article, some of what I say might be opinions of unreliable emotions and untrustworthy feelings and moods. Some of this may be what I think and believe.

I spread myself too thin at times working too hard, part of the reasoning was my feeling that I may not have the time to do it later.

I often wanted to do things and get them over with so I could move on to other endeavors and what not. I'm generally pretty wordy in my articles and videos and everything on purpose with a desire to express and put out there for the record enough of my opinions. This may not be my official article relating to this. In my life, I often felt like I would not have time to finish things. So, I would run around trying to do many things. Sometimes you got to like pick your battles. I may know better at least at times. I have so many problems. Part of the problem is caring too much about everything and everybody. I may not want to bore you too badly right now with a play by play of real-life examples of the crazy stuff I did in my life. You can probably just read and watch my content in general to get all that. I know I am curious. I know I am all over the place. I know I am a perfectionist. I know I think too much. I know I try too hard. I know I think other people already understand what I think, feel, and do. I know these things about myself. These things can be good. I have lost balance in my life. I can go on and on with trying to analyze myself. I sometimes wonder if I made the right choices in my life or not. It is hard to say. I mean hindsight is 20/20 they say. It's easy to say you would go back in time and change things. But that might be cheating. I learned many lessons from everything. I did bad. Others did bad. Some of it is my fault and some of it is not. It's a hot mess. I can learn many lessons and choose to make better choices in the future. I talked about this before in like videos and everything. I put out articles and many things talking about these topics before. I may not be linking to some or all of them here right now. But do know it is out there.

I am telling myself to try to focus on the most critical projects and less time on the lesser items of priorities. I have been aware of time management since like 1995 or something. I found schedules I made dating back to at least 1996 for sure. I think some might be 1995. I was conscious since at least 1992.

Perhaps things would be better if I was married at 38. I can't totally say for sure. Like I might tell other people to take advice that I'm not even taking myself. I might be a hypocrite. I might say there are exceptions to people like me and maybe others. I might also say the situation we are in grants a pass. You might say they're excuses. Some of them might be. I admit that some or all of it is my fault in different ways absolutely to various degrees at different levels and everything else. I say it's a long story that should not be taken out of context. I can see both sides or many sides to the debate relating to whether or not I should have settled down to marry and have kids. Like I didn't end up making millions of dollars already in careers. I might argue to say I did do some things and made some money in my life. I might argue some of what I did in my life may turn into money and success in the future. But at the moment, it might not be there. You could say it will never come. You could say I wasted my life. Some of that is true for sure. We all waste time and everything. I'm not going to bore you with every single thing I did in my life right now but do know I am aware of the irony of my life in many ways.

I do say I'm transitioning as I get older towards making different choices or what not. Some of that is true. I run into writer's block. I run into scheduling conflicts. I run into Mary Martha situation in the Bible with Jesus where you can be too busy physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, literally, etc.

I'm guilty of many things. But people did me wrong. So I felt justified in seeking revenge, retribution, justice. I ran around like a chicken with no head trying to force the world to become better which is good in a sense but also destructive. I'm bipolar perhaps like Robin Williams assuming he was. Forgive me for being so random and abrupt in this article, I'm trying to say I'm a loose cannon. But I'm making progress. I feel like my content helps people. Feel free to burn my content. I beg you not to. Please let me know if my work has helped other people. Often times I feel like I'm all alone working on everything. I had a story around 2010 about going back to the Arnold Attic to publish the 44 tapes of Billy Breaker. What is odd is I ended up coming back in 2018 to do more of that. Right or wrong, good or bad, great or pathetic, legal or not, moral or not, justified or not, reasonable or not, logical or not, I did many good and bad things in my life. I tried rushing things. At least I'm not lazy.

But my passion turned into rage of anger and what not. It's like I know better at times but there is so much in me trying to get out like a volcano of ideas and stuff. I am not saying all the stuff that comes out of me is Einstein good. Not every shot Michael Jordan took went into the hoop in NBA basketball.

So, with all that said, I should start dating probably before the year 2030 or as soon as possible. I do some work. I do make some money. I probably should try to make more money as I get older. I probably should get a license so I can drive cars. I have a long bucket list of things to do before dying. I work on my autobiography, my home videos being the Article Attic, and a series of other projects or what not. I get busy as I always go down rabbit trails as I am curious about everything. I want to do everything. I started groups on Facebook and other websites including my Discord server with the dream of not only getting people to help me but also the goal of getting everybody together to help out each other. I chose many times times in my life not to marry and not to do many things. I want a wife. I want many things. But I felt like I was way too busy. I talked about this before. But I want wanted to go on a rant today mentioning some of this. But God knows the many things I didn't say today. I'm not saying I'm right about how I live life. I'm not exactly saying I will always do the same old things all my life.

If you want to help me, let me know. Together we can do many things. I believe in what I do. But there are always better ways of doing many things. Life is about seeking balance and stuff.

Choose which battles to take, like which hills you are willing to die on. I think about that. So, I am still in the middle of many things. But please know I'm making progress. My advice is to consider taking the time to find your foundation. Try to get some things done in life which are most important. You can't do it all. So, try doing at least one thing. Failure must be expected in a sense. But don't be lazy. Don't mess up with that on your mind. In other words, accept defeat. Maybe not expect defeat. For some things, you can expect victory. Sometimes you may instead get defeat and failure. You can accept that. I am learning to forgive. I am learning to accept my failures. I published and uploaded bad content many times in my life. There may be many reasons why, right or wrong. It's a long story, but do know I decided many times to upload a lot or else because otherwise nothing gets done kind of thing. Sometimes it's better to get some things done than nothing. As a perfectionist, I wanted all or nothing.

I made a compromise of putting out some meaning even bad unedited poop as Roy Merrick calls it as I'm his legless dog. So, my conclusion for this article is none. I mean, do what you can each day and enjoy yourself in each moment. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How did I handle writing this article? By simply ranting.

Perhaps not a good idea in some situations. But at least in theory, you could write a bunch of words like this as a starting point. Then go back and edit it. I'm not really going to spend too much time looking at all of this before publishing. I still have many questions regarding who to marry, where to live, what to do, like in life in general. I have millions of questions. I'm not going to bore you for another ten hours tackling these topics and more. I mean I will probably be online each day talking about some of this and more. I always do that. I do worry about not having enough time to do everything. So, I have to revisit my list of top priorities, my goals, dreams, projects, missions, work, etc. So like once a day, week, month, season, year, decade, etc, I try to reevaluate everything or what not. It's tough. My conclusion for real might be it is ok if you don't know who you are. Again, I might be wrong about many things. But I believe in so much of what I do or at least in the spirit of many things.

Part of me doesn't know if a woman would want to marry me knowing all or even some of what I've done in my life. We're not going to unpack all of that right now.

It would take like hundreds of hours to unpack. And I could be totally wrong about that too. But I feel like it might be difficult for a woman to actually want to be with me for many reasons. We're not going to fully unpack what those reasons are right now. So, moving on.

Take the time to find yourself before settling down and before it is too late and everything as you never know. I think I am finding myself as I do what I do in life. I am trying to build a foundation in my life in everything I do. After that, I plan to consider what might be next.

I may stay where I am. I may consider travel like I did before in life. I lived in different states and countries in my life. So, I may venture to do things again. But I don't want to do that right now. I am thinking I may need ten more years or less. After that, I should try to do things. Like things. Whether it's like travel. Whether it's starting a family. Whether it's like buying a house. Do I want to move to Texas, Florida, New York, other countries, or what? So many questions. I wanted to be off doing these things by like 2020. Here I am three years later. So, perhaps I need another year or longer.

This article is incomplete as a rough draft preview thing. I should go back and add videos and links to other related articles, videos, and content that I've put out there in the past.

I wanted to fully explain all my thoughts regarding some of these topics and more. I am not totally trying to say I know what I'm doing with everything. Truth be told, I don't. I'm learning to forgive. I'm learning how to move on. I'm learning to pace myself in finding balance as a super busy crazy person that I am. I'm learning disciplines and everything. Learning how to be ok with failures. I'm learning to be ok with publishing this article even as I'm not satisfied with it because many reasons. I always have more to say. I always have more to show you. I try to connect the dots regarding everything. To be continued.

I'm trying to get enough done before hitting that next fork in the road. But I don't want to make the same mistake I made in the past in rushing things.

I'm not trying to get everything done as that may never happen. My point is a foundation in getting the minimum done before moving on. I always ask for help as to discover who might be my allies/partners/friends in the coming decades or what not.

I'm pruning my oatmeal.

2015 SAIGON VIETNAM OATMEAL ENGLISH CLUB PARTY