Stand-by.

This year I plan on running 1,000 miles!!! It’s just a start but my hope to get myself out and running EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  It’s a task that I find to be extremely difficult but I know with the motivation and the goal that it is something that I can absolutely do. 1,000 miles. Included in the 1,000 miles will be the 26.2 miles that I’m able to knockout after I run the LA Marathon.  (Oh yeah, I plan on doing the marathon again this year & I’m gonna have fun doing so tweeting/updating every step of the way.) 80 miles each month. 4 miles a day. There’s a thousand different ways to break it down but all I know is that when it’s 11:59a.m. on December 31st, 2011, I plan to be camping out on the streets of Pasadena for the Rose Parade and I’m going to have a giant class of champagne to toast this achievement. Each week, I’ll be providing the figures of how much I’ve run as well as the end of each month. There’s a lot to look forward to, exercising, being healthy, getting out and really pushing myself. I’m aware of all the obstacles that lie ahead as well, busy days and nights at works and school, sickness, my inevitable bronchitis spats and who could forget the Sunday morning lethargic periods we all go through but I’m going to have to get past all of those. I WILL RUN 1,000 MILES AND DON’T BE SURPRISED IF I SURPASS THAT GOAL. :-)   Here’s to a healthier and happier 2011.

Rejection as well as the fear of it are the two biggest evils in the world. Imagine how many things you’ve stopped yourself from doing because you were afraid of being rejected. Imagine all the people whose lives you give have changed if you would have started that non-profit but your fear of it failing stopped you from even trying. Imagine all those whose lives could have been shaped by your words with that novel you were planning on writing but then scared yourself into thinking it was not good enough or you were talented enough. This fear of rejection paralyzes us in the worst way imaginable, it prevents us from doing actual good in this world and it eats us up from the inside. I’ve been rejected in more ways than I could possibly ever keep track of. I’ve been told “No” on a daily basis since I was a toddler. It never uses to affect me back then, when someone told me to stop climbing up the tree, I’d climb even higher. When someone told me I wasn’t athletic to be on the cross country team, I ran a marathon (4 of them for that matter.) Unfortunately, these past few years I’ve allowed the word “no” stop me on multiple times, I’ve allowed the claws of rejections to rip me apart from every direction and because I gave rejection the right to do so I’ve found myself at the starting line of all too many of my dreams. But I’ve decided something this very second, I’m fed up. I’m sick and tired of planning on achieving greatness then settling with good enough. I’m tired of the constant bullshit and all of the excuses, every fiber in my being is destined to achieve greatness and shape this world of ours. I’m reverting back to my childish “ignorance”, when I honestly thought that the film I was shooting on my dad’s camcorder was going to win the Oscar. It was before I even knew what editing was so I did everything in-camera (including the credits sequences that I wrote on notebook paper.) We’ve all heard the advice time after time again but the only thing stopping us from greatness is ourselves. I am my worst enemy but I’ve decided it’s time to become my own best friend. I’m gonna become that boy again that didn’t take no for an answer but instead saw it as a pathway to something even better. I’ve always been a strong believer that everything happens for a reason, though it’s difficult at the time to see what that reason is there always is one. As I close my eyes now and I envision my future, I can see my office adorned with all the movie posters of all the films that I’ve made with my brother, I see my own house in Malibu Lake that I live at with my 5 kids with the love of my life, I put on my bow-tie at night to get ready to head to CNN Heroes Awards where I’m being honored for one of my charities that I started from scratch, I now know how to drive but I still decide to take the bus to get to and from my meeting and when I go to sleep at night, I do so with the knowledge  that my empire is running on its own and expanding by the second. I may sound crazy but the boy in me knows that this is my destiny.

My brother and I had the pleasure of working on a huge show in Italy which took place this past week. We created several of the videos and graphics projected on the building throughout the show. Adam is the real pro with everything, all I did was nervously eat too much and panic throughout the ordeal. He’s the single most talented person and I know and it’s surreal to know that a project he whipped up in the middle of the night was project on the other side of the world on 300+ foot building.

Today was just a normal day at the University of California, Los Angels except it wasn’t. After attending a full day of lectures, I was exhausted beyond belief and ready to head home. As I traveled from North Campus down to the Ackerman turnaround, I came across strange patches of people along my route. All of them had cameras pointed toward the same direction and were on stand-by. I thought that they were either filming a political extremist on campus or one of many religious zealots that frequent the campus. I kept walking and soon picked up on a trend. Many of the people in these throngs of people were wearing Miami Heat jerseys. I kept walking towards the drop-off area when all of a sudden I heard a roar of screams coming from my left. My journalistic instinct sprinted towards the commotion and within moment I ended up face to face with one of the most hated players in sports history, LeBron James.

He along with Dwayne Wade and the rest of the Miami Heat were practicing on campus. Being a native Clevelander, there isn’t anyone I hate more than LeBron James other than Jaime Foxx. I caught some images of LeBron as he walked to his bus and I may have screamed a few choice words at his direction. My favorite part of it all was when the mob of Bruins started chanting “Kobe!!! KOBE!!! KOBE!!!!!” straight to his face. Us Bruins have no shame whatsoever. He got onto his bus as everyone began  boo-ing!  It was one of the strangest 5 minutes of my life. I went from being exhausted to have a jolt of energy and joining a mob of people and unleashing all of this built up aggression within me at someone I utterly dislike. It was very cathartic. I think there’s only one way to describe my actions, I went H.A.M.