2014 Power Rankings

1. Madden - Solon Comets - 2010
2. Madden - Solon Comets - 2009
3. Browns Offensive Line
4. Gary Knittle
5. Joe Susa
6. Patriots, not good offensive line
7. Christy Ross Freshman year Blow-js

What's the point of family?

About 3 months ago I was offered a couple of internships in order to get myself experience before ever heading into the workforce. Two of the internships had come from my dream company, IMG, and one was located in Florida and the other in Cleveland, Ohio. The other internship I was offered came from Standard Textile Company in Cincinnati, Ohio.

It seemed like an obvious choice at the time because the company I had always dreamed of had offered me a position and it was right in my backyard, about 20 minutes from my house in Cleveland. I was almost positive that would be my choice, and I certainly was not going down to Florida seeing as the company would not provide me with housing, nor would they be paying me while I interned.

The last internship was a sales position for a company I had never heard of, yet the found me and asked me to interview with them. After a series of interviews, all of which I really enjoyed and was treated like a Prince at, I was offered the position.

So here I was faced with a decision, to stay in Cleveland and take a position with my dream company, where they wouldn't be paying me, or head down to Cincinnati to work for the company that had treated me like I was one of their own.

The problem with the Cincinnati one was pretty much the same as the Florida offer, I needed to find housing (however, they were paying me in Cincinnati). Luckily for me I have family in Cincy. My cousin Gabrielle and her husband of 5 years Carlo along with their two children Nico (4) and Roma (2).

When I had come down to interview with Standard on site, I sat down with Gabe to ask about the possibility of living with her for the summer. She said yes without hesitation, partially because I am sure she was put on the spot, and also excited at the thought of it.

I knew that it would be an imposition to them seeing as they had a family, even though they had an extra bedroom. I mean, it seems like a fun and great idea on paper, but bringing in someone knew to an established family always throws a curveball. So, I assumed I would just await the decision from Standard to see if I even had to worry about heading down there. And, as I said, I was offered the position and was leaning toward their company for a handful of reasons. When I called Gabe to tell her about the good news, I had to also ask about living with her family. She told me she would talk it over with her husband and make sure it was all ok. Within a week I was given a call and they both congratulated me and invited me to come down.

They saw no problem with me coming down. They were so excited and so welcoming. I, too, was extremely excited to spend ample time with family members I rarely got to see, so Cincinnati it was!

Now that I am down here I realize how incredible a family is. The fact that they would take on the burden of a new housemate just to let me seize this opportunity is unbelieveable in my eyes. Furthermore, in my time down here I have been so comfortable spending time with them and getting along. I try my best to contribute to the house to let them know how much I appreciate it. Carlo has taught me many lessons about work and life and how to approach challenges so that has been amazing. But my time spent with Gabe has been even more rewarding. Her and I get along very well and I have gotten to know her much better. She finally has somebody that she can talk to about our family, and I finally get to know my big cousin who I had never really known before. I am so grateful for people like this in my life and so blessed to have a family like I do.

What's the point of discipline?

We always hear the word 'discipline', and most times we get the general idea of the word but do not fully grasp what it means to have discipline, or to be disciplined.

When I hear this word it makes me think about who would be considered disciplined, and the answer is- any person who has success. This success could lie in any walk of life, any hobby, any job, sport, lifestyle or whatever, but if the person is considered successful, then they are disciplined. Here is why I believe this:

In order to be successful at something, you have to dedicate some sort of effort to it. Therefore, it could also be said that the more successful a person is, the more discipline they have. For example, look at athletes. All of us have the potential to be a great athlete, some of us may not have the height, or weight, but there are many out there who have proven that your personal characteristics can be overcome by hard work. The ones who overcome those physical barriers do so because they are disciplined. They have the discipline to wake up every morning manage their diet, hit the gym hard, study the game film, take extra cuts off the tee, shoot 50 extra free throws, run 10 extra wind sprints, whatever it may be that they are lacking, they have the discipline to word hard to improve it. This holds business people as well. Someone like Bill Gates is not only truly blessed because he is smart, but he is incredibly disciplined. It is unfair and borderline stupid to believe that Bill Gates knew everything he needed to know when he invented his first computer, no he took his first premonition and researched and tested and repeated this process until he found something that worked. Imagine him trying to do something that had never been done before, there was no manual to follow, no help line to call when he got stuck! All he had was his brain and his discipline to complete the task. He sat himself down every day for countless hours to acheive his goal.

Many of us falter when it comes to this type of discipline. Someone like me who goes to class everyday, shows up for my meetings on time and so on, has discipline, but nowhere near the discipline that the greats have. There are many times where I want to watch tv instead of do my homework, or type on my blog when I have a test in 2 hours. I need to develop that discipline to go to the library, or turn off my tv, or log off my computer and get to work on the things that require my attention. Those who are great know what they need to do in order to reach the success they desire and have the discipline to accomplish it!

Develop that discipline today, no point in waiting to do it

What's the point of waiting?

This post has been a long time coming, and what a better time to do it, then when I taught myself the lesson. It has been so long since I have last written on my own blog and frankly it is embarassing. Why would I make a blog website, and never use it? What is the point? I actually received a phone call from an old friend who said exactly that to me, he asked "What's the point of having a blog when you never blog?" Needless to say I was at a loss for words and quickly changed the subject. So here it is.

What is the point of waiting? Why do we put things off until tomorrow? Procrastination is one of the most common weaknesses you can find in just about any person. We put things off until tomorrow claiming that it will be better done then, and that you do not have time now. But, the whole purpose of having time to do things is so you do not wait until the last minute to complete it. Then when it gets down to the wire, we are all so consumed by all of the things we put off that we don't even have time to do things we want. School work is a perfect example. Even though in the world I live in I am still convinced I know everything, I am starting to realize that some of these professors know what they are doing. When they hand out projects at the beginning of the quarter, they expect you to work on them throughout the course of the quarter. This is for a few reasons. The first is that the material you learn throughout the quarter is intended to be applied to the project and it is much easier to use that knowledge while it is fresh in your mind as opposed to months later. The next reason is that they know your other classes will be doing something similar and you will be overwhelmed with work if you wait until the end to do it. And then there is the most important reason, there is an underlying lesson with these quarter long projects. This is something that I have inferred and probably isn't quite what the professors intended, but everything you do in life is a quarter long learning process just made on a much larger scale. Everyday we are presented with new ideas, new motivators, new things to spark our interest, new goals, new ambitions, new people, new likes, new dislikes and many more. It is up to us at that point to attack whatever it is. Often times we let our lives pass us by for exactly this reason, something comes to our attention that we consider to be interesting at the time, but a week later we forget about it because we took no action. You never know where that small little hinckling could have taken you, so how could we be so quick to write it off. We all need to trigger our spontaneous ambition and begin to live our lives in the "now". When you have a crazy feeling in your gut, follow it! Give it a chance. It might be a business idea, it might be a woman or a man, it might a motivator to go to the gym. Whatever it is, let it ride, go with the flow. We need to start allowing ourselves the freedom to follow our gut feelings, they are put there for a reason, we need to find out why. So my message is, don't wait any longer. Don't put things off until tomorrow when you can do them right now. Motivate yourself and discipline yourself to do the things today that feel right. If you don't start doing that now, you will have missed out on some of the greatest experiences your life had to offer to you. Never live with regret, and never give yourself anything to have regret for.

What's The Point of Time

What is time? Why do we always have to feel the pressure of time? Why do we use time to measure everything that we do?

I understand that time is the most realistic way of measuring your life and your "time" on earth, but why are we consumed with time? Aren't the activities in our daily lives more important than time? For example, is work really so trivial that you must say, "I am exhausted after this long 8 hour work day". I mean, 8 hours is a long "time" but is that really why we are tired? Did you accomplish what your boss wanted, what you wanted, or anything for that matter in the 8 hours you spent working?

So there it is, maybe we should measure what we do everyday by the accomplishments, the satisfactions, the victories, the losses, the gains we make, the advancements we make, the differences we make and so forth, as opposed to just the time we spent.

There is no point in using time to do things that you couldn't measure otherwise. What does that mean? It means, that if you go to work and at the end of the day all you could really say is, "I spent 8 hours at work today", then there is no point. Do something fulfilling, something that you feel proud of, something you can brag about at dinner with your family. Instead of bragging about the money you made from working so hard, brag about the positive changes you made from dedicating your "time" to something you found worthy.

Remember, your time is precious and unfortunately it is limited, don't let time pressure you. Use your time wisely, do things you love, then you will never measure what you have done by the time you spent, but by the enjoyment you had doing it.

What's the point of religion?

Many times when I am praying, or reading from the bible, or waking up early on Sunday to go to church, people ask me..."Why do you do that?". People don't understand the point of believing in something and that blows my mind sometimes. Maybe it is because I was raised in a family that always had faith that it was easy for me to get up and go to church and to go to weekly meetings to discuss faith.

But my answer to everyone is always the same, "You have to believe in something".

Here is why. If you believe in something, God for example, then you believe there is something better, you believe there is something greater. That type of belief needs to be in every one of our minds. If we can't develope that type of mindset then we can never acheive our full potential. You must believe in something greater in this world to believe in something greater in your life. And when that belief becomes a reality in your mind, so will your expectations on life.

Personally, I use my religion as a confidence. I know that no matter what I do I will have God at my side. That is what gives me my "go getter" mentality. I have never been afraid of trying something new (except for some of the food my mother used to put in front of me). There is no reason, because if I fail, I know God will guide me to make good from the situation. It will either be a successful experience or a learning experience, or both, but there is no such thing as a bad experience.

So I tell you, the point of religion, the point of believing in God or a god is the same concept of believing in yourself.

What's the point of joining?

In all of the organizations I am apart of, I see people who just don't commit themselves, people who don't exert themselves, people who don't share their opinions and people who simply don't do anything. And I have to ask, what's the point?

Why do people join organizations, play sports, go to class, go to college or do anything if they won't commit themselves. Put it this way... in one of the best life lessons I have ever received, a friend of mine's brother said to his younger brother (my friend) who had just failed a class, "Think about the time you have wasted, you attended a four hour class for ten weeks, that cost you forty hours of time. Then you did all or some of your work for that class, which we will say conservatively, is another hour each week, bringing your total up to fifty hours. That is fifty hours of your life wasted because you didn't care." My friend and I were both shocked at the reality of the comment, the silence sat in along with the truth of his statement. "What was the point of you ever going to that class, you should have never even gone because you just have to do it again".

This is a perfect example of my point, what is the point of joining. Why do we go to class if we aren't going to give our full effort? Why do we join organizations on campus or anywhere else if we don't intend to exert our efforts and share our opinions? The famous saying, "You get out, what you put in" is derived from this lesson. If you are going to do something, get it's full value, commit yourself. Don't be complacent, don't wait for people to tell you how it is gonna be, instead tell them how it is. Create your own success and give your full effort, otherwise just sit out and watch the people who are willing.