SailorJ.com

Category: Who I Am

  • Can you see the real me?

    It is a fact that we can only see reflections of who we are. No one can see their true self.

    Recently I went on the Lensa app and let them do the deep AI art on my profile photo to see what they would come up with. It was crazy and amazing. I enjoyed seeing it, but it made me ask, how do I vision my own appearance to the world.

    Sure I look in the mirror and get weirded out about every hair out of place, but to see myself with a full head of hair and smoothed out wrinkles and just a bunch of changes and outfits was eye opening.

    Who am I?

    We always want to know if we are more than what we think we are. It just goes to show, we can visualize ourselves to be something different and embody that.

    Is any of this the real me?

  • The Value of Friendship

    Anyone who knows me knows that I value friendship. There are a lot of things in this world that one could talk about being important, but the bonds between people mean so much to me.

    Friendship is about giving one thing of yourself to someone else that you can never get back, and that is your time.

    We choose who and how we spend our time. Having shared experiences and recalling them with old friends over the years is more than nostalgia, it unlocks parts of our brains that make us feel alive and remember how full of life we are.

    We have acquaintances and we have friends. It is important to know the difference. If you look at a place like Facebook or LinkedIn and see your “Friends” or “Connections” you might ask yourself, are these really my friends? I think some are friends, and some are just casual online connections. Even if you’ve met them in real life.

    What is a friend?

    A friend is someone who actually wants to be part of your life. They are more than an online Facebook birthday wish (And believe me, I am all about the birthday wishes). A friend sees and hears, then picks up the phone and calls you, or drives over, or engages you. A friends checks up on you. A friend wants you in their life.

    But what about that friend that you don’t talk to for a year, then you re-connect and it’s like you bridge the gap of time and it’s like the quiet time didn’t matter? We all get busy. As we get older we do find ourselves getting busy. People have primary romantic relationships, kids, jobs, and there is only so much time to have connections; so it can be easy to think we’ll get back to that friend and forget.

    Forgiveness

    Friendship is about knowing you have an amazing history of shared experiences, and a breadth of life that at one point you intersected with and sometimes that intersection will diverge. That’s ok. But forgive yourself for not being as engaged. Forgive your friend for not being as engaged. When the opportunity comes, and there is time, make it happen. Forget the past, and let bygones be bygones. Holding on to hurt feelings will never let you move forward, and you’ll only have bitter memories.

    Don’t have disposable friends

    I do not have disposable friends. I would like to believe that I would go out of my way for my friends. Sometimes I have not be able to be where I wanted to be to help a friend, but life hasn’t always workout in the ways that I think they would. Be consistent. Show up as much as possible. I saw a meme that said, tell your friends you love them and make it weird. I agree. Why spend time with people you just tolerate, that’s work.

    I have been very fortunate to have people in my life that have shared the path on my journey, and stick with me. These are the people I value, they are in no way disposable. Sometimes they are distant, and sometimes they engage me in ways that make all the difference in the world. There is nothing more appreciated than someone who takes the time and reminds you that you are important to them. Take the time and be a friend.

  • DNA Tests…

    I recently had DNA testing done and I used to separate DNA testing companies. So basically I found out that I am of one lineage only 99.7% in fact. But what I realized is that I believe we all hope to find out some thing magical in our DNA testing. It’s as if we want to know that we are part something else. We want to find out that we are a mix of many different cultures and many different things that eventually make up the person we are today. So I guess in someways I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping to have this special connection to something else and in fact I didn’t. But then you wonder how positive it could be that your DNA line comes basically from the single stock of a tree. Usually something like this would have a lot of DNA issues where people have birth defects and things like that but in my case according to the markers for genetic illnesses I had no signs of any issues whatsoever.

    It’s pretty easy to go and have your DNA tested these days and the prices pretty reasonable but I think that the majority of people will not find themselves to be extremely surprised and at this point with the limited numbers of people who have the testing done you probably will not find many close relatives if any at all through DNA testing. Secretly I was hoping to find out that I had a stepbrother or stepsister but that didn’t happen either. So maybe in time more people get tested and I’ll find out more to the mystery of who I am even though I can pretty much tell that there isn’t a mystery to it at all.