Quotes, quotes, quotes!

So recently I've become a fan of cool inspirational quotes. I know, you're thinking, "How lame is this guy? I read that first post and he sounded so awesome, but now I'm not so sure." Well, if that's what you're thinking, then I don't know how to assuage your concern. But, since this is my blog, I'm going to ramble about a few things that I like to talk about. So hold onto your hats, buckle your seatbelts, and enjoy the ride!

I left you last with a little one of my personal favorite quotes, so if you're too lazy to scroll up to the last post, I'll just restate it here:

"Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things." - Denis Diderot

That's the quote that's at the bottom of the information cards that I handed out to most of my orientation groups, so if it looks familiar, then give a little shout and rep good ol' group 7! Denis Diderot was a French philosopher -- whatever your biases against the French, and I know that a lot of Americans have some -- put them aside for a little while. Diderot was a prominent thinker during the Enlightenment, so he might be a familiar name to other people who haven't read my information cards.

But that's neither here nor there...

The subject of this quote -- passion -- is one of my favorite topics. My basic philosophy in life lines up pretty much parallel with this quote in that I've realized that I will accomplish nothing if I am not passionate about what I'm doing. I spent the majority of my first year in college trying to make it mirror my senior year of high school. Not such a good idea...I got way too involved in way too many things, without realizing that I was stretching myself too thin. I overcommitted to a few organizations, and it came back to hurt me during my second year. When I finally realized that I didn't have the desire to commit my time to those clubs, I found that it was much more difficult to quit them than it should have been. Because I had gotten so heavily involved -- executive boards and committees -- during freshman year, I couldn't exactly just make a clean break and be done with it. The process was heartwrenching, and I definitely made more enemies than friends, but eventually I found that, because I was finally following my passion, I was much happier in the end.

So basically, after all my meandering comments, what I want to say is: find your passion and run toward it. Find what makes you "come alive" and go do that. If you've heard of the artist Michelangelo -- no, not the Ninja Turtle, but that would be awesome, too -- then you might recognize this quote. Again I will leave you with a profound quote, this time from the aforementioned artist -- and again from Orientation.

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark."

So go ahead and pursue your dreams, follow your passions, and make a name for yourself. Not being overly corny, but that's what we were all meant to do, SO DO IT!

Until next time...
ET

So I have no idea what I'm really doing with this...

Welcome to the wonderful world of me. It's a world full of awkwardness, sarcasm, laughter, guitar, and overall awesomeness. I hope you enjoy it. If you don't, feel free to send the hatemail to Adam Gobin. He'll take care of you. And now...on with the show!

So I guess this would be my first ever official blog post. It feels kinda weird, as I've always been the sort of guy to sneers at bloggers and the blogosphere in general. And now here I am, beginning my very own blog. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I have no idea what to actually say on this, except to give a little shoutout to the brilliant Morgan Cogswell who, without any knowledge on her part, has inspired me to create this blog. I was reading her blog -- which I discovered from the Facebook, first of all -- the creatively titled morgangster while waiting for the Orientation placement test results in the wonderfully air-conditioned but still atmospherically suffocating Clark Howell Hall. Yes, I do Facebook whenever given the opportunity. But that's enough rambling for now. My battery is dying, and I need to stop typing before I become too incoherent. If you've read this far I should give you some sort of prize for tolerating my verbosity, but for now, I just hope you don't feel like you've wasted these past two minutes of your life. Maybe the next few posts will be more interesting...

For now I'll leave you lovely readers with one of my favorite quotes...maybe I'll talk about it in my next post:

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
-- Denis Diderot

Until next time...
ET