Carpe Diem!

Carpe Diem is phrase from a Latin Poem by Horace. It means seize the day.

I say this is the time. You look at our lives and the way we are living and it is almost embarrassing. We go about our days doing nothing mentionable. We hate every driver around us, we hate every customer in the stores we are at, and we hate our jobs. Well, maybe hate is a harsh word, but it will do for right now.

Why are we this way?

Why do we have to be?

Why do we assume that everything everyone else does is with malice?

I was 22 and just lost my job and my fiancee. I already went to "college", if you call ITT Technical Institute college, and didn't feel accomplished. I needed something else. I needed something, that when I am old, I can tell my grandchildren about something that their grandfather did. At the rate I was going, I wasn't heading in that direction at all. I was heading for embarrassment. I was voted "Most Naive" in my graduating class. As funny and small as that sounds, it honestly really hurt. It made me feel inferior to my peers. I needed to fix this idea people had of me. I needed to be bigger than I was. I didn't know how at this point. I wasn't the trash-talking and confident sort, you know? I have a way about myself. If I make a decision, I stick to it. I don't want to be "wishy-washy" like Charlie Brown. What do I do though? So, I signed up to be in the Army. I could have joined the National Guard or the Reserves, but if I was going to do this, I was going all the way. I signed up on January 31st, 2002 and left for Basic Combat Training on February 13th, 2002. I didn't waste any time. I completed all my training by October 12th, 2002 where I arrived at my first unit and was told to pack my stuff I am deploying. Wow! Talk about a wake up call.

Seven years later, here I am.

I guess the point of the short story is that I had a need and a desire to change myself for the better, so I made a rash decision. Now, I am definitely not recruiting because the military is definitely not for everyone. What I am saying, however, is that if you are in a way that you don't want to be, then change it! Don't just sit there and hope it will all clear up. You will not be happy. You need to fix it because you can't claim you fixed anything if you don't do anything about it. That was quite a sentence.

That is where my title comes in. Seize The Day! Do it now! Don't wait around for everything to fall into place perfectly. Do something about it. Stop being unhappy. Being unhappy reflects on how you view everyone else and how everyone views you. I am not saying that I am the model you should follow because I am back into close to the same boat once again. Nothing is perfect. I need a change and am working on it.

The only model of my life you should follow is that I wasn't doing anything, but now I am.

You may be asking how does this relate to our teams? I will tell you. We have a Superbowl staring us in the face, we have the Stanley Cup Playoffs we are trying to get into, a winning season, and a college National Championship possible for 2009.

Superbowl XLIII is on the horizon and we have a possible dynasty. We have a great team and we will still have a great team next year and the year after. In the current salary cap era, that is very difficult to come by. The Rooneys have been nothing short of miraculous in constructing this. I am proud of what we have.

Sitting in the 10th spot just after the All Star Game is better than most, but not good enough for us. This is also considering that we went to the Finals last year. We do, however, have the chance to turn this ship around. We really have nowhere else to go but up. We do have the talent, the will, and the drive, just have to pull it off. We have 34 games left. That's 68 possible points. I would say the cup is half-full right now.

The revolution has started in our clubhouse. We changed out everyone practically. We are being led by the right people this time and we have the opportunity to stop these losing ways. We have 162 games starting in April to prove this.

Currently ranked #3 in the country, we have the closest thing we have had in a while in a college winner. We have the talent to win it all.

We could have the best year in Pittsburgh sports since the early '90s and I am ecstatic.

Take my advice or not, believe it or not, but if you read down to here, I have you thinking. Follow your heart and do what is right and what you need to do.