• Journey of Fear

    From the Darkness

    I fell into a dark period during my first year out of college – one that I can only characterize by the word terror. Dazed and Confuzed I think that many recent grads are a bit traumatized by the sudden jolt that being handed a diploma can induce. But for me, it served as a sudden exposure to the grim truth of life: that there were no more rules, no more curriculums, and that nobody would be there to point me towards the individual path that I was supposed to take. I was terrified by the sudden realization that everything was now up to me. Oddly, they hadn’t offered any…

  • Journey of Fear

    The Consequence of Thought

    I feel the necessity to be honest about something – to open up about a secondary goal that I’ve had for this trip, and one that I’ve been keeping a secret. I realize now that, if I hope to truly relate to you everything that I’ve discovered along my Journey of Fear, then I simply must come clean. This alternative goal has been to test and determine whether there’s any truth to the two main beliefs that I’ve been experimenting with for the past year of my life. And from what I’ve been finding, the answer is a resounding YES. The Two Beliefs #1: Your thoughts and emotions are entirely…

  • Journey of Fear

    The Consequence of Thought – Part Deux

    …continued I’ve experienced a profound increase in the amount of happiness in my life, due to my active decision to change the way that I think. But that’s not the reason that I initially chose to do so – that was just a side-effect. No, my reason for changing my thought pattern was because the books that I was reading on bettering my life all pointed to one, recurring concept: that what you choose to think about will, over time, make it’s way into your real-world experience. Put simply into an example, thinking appreciatively about the money that you do have will lead to more money in the bank. Thinking…

  • Journey of Fear

    Is it Coincidence

    Now that you know about the downward Cycle of Fear that I had to crawl out of whenever I moved back to Pittsburgh, as well as the Way I Believe Our Minds Work, I can explain to you the next stage of my trip. Hoosier Serendipity After spending a few hours hopelessly lost as I drove the state roads surrounding Patoka Lake, I eventually found a state trooper, who gave me directions to a free campsite. The site was absolutely beautiful, and I found a spot that was directly on the lake. Prime real-estate. There was only one other vehicle camped nearby – an RV with an American flag hung…

  • Journey of Fear

    Anatomy of a Traveler

    “The only difference between a traveler and a homeless man is a destination.” This is but one of many quotes that I took away from my stay at that Hoosier campsite, though most of them I can’t repeat. The family that arrived in the van (we’ll call them the Davidsons, for the sake of anonymity) was a fun, colorful bunch – pretty much my kind of people. For example, that experience would prove to be the first time that I’ve ever heard a three-year-old use the F-word AND the B-word together in the same sentence. But that family truly did teach me a couple of incredibly positive lessons, which I…