Life is Awesome

Recently in English class we watched a TED Talk on how life can be awesome if you let it be; it talked about the three As of awesome: Attitude, Awareness, and Authenticity. It was done by a man named Neil Pasricha, who has a blog and has published a book called "The Book of Awesome". I'm not going to go very in depth into it because the video is everywhere and it would serve you better to watch it than to read my description of it. The basic idea, though, is that with these three things, you can see awesomeness in everything. This has got me thinking about everything that I think is awesome in the world, from simpler things like cold fall afternoons and snowy nights to more obvious things like cycling and physics. In this blog post I'm simply going to list a few things that I find to be exceptionally awesome, each followed by a brief explanation.
(Here is a link to the TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_pasricha_the_3_a_s_of_awesome?language=en)

Going out of your way while walking to step on the crunchy leaves
I love walking home from school and taking very wide, awkward strides just so I can crunch as many leaves as possible. When I see a leaf ahead and plan to step on it, only to find, when I do, that it is very soft and damp, a pure sense of disappointment runs though my mind. However, that disappointment is countered many times over by the amount of satisfaction that I get when I step on a leaf and hear that wonderful 'ckrunch' sound, like biting down on a kettle-cooked potato chip. This is even better when my feet are cradled in my wonderful Swiftwick socks.


Walking down the road at night after a fresh snow
Snow on its own is incredibly awesome, as is night time, and peaceful walks. The combination of all three is really too good for words, but I'm going to try it here. Walking down the road at night after a fresh snow when my footsteps are the only disturbance on the pristine white surface is definitely on my list of "Top 10 Things that I Live For".


Mountain biking in the fall
I love mountain biking, of course, and something about doing it in the cool fall air with the leaves on the ground makes it that much better. There are all kinds of reasons but I'll try to mention the less obvious ones. The leaves crunch when you ride over them - as you can tell I love the sound of crunching leaves. You don't sweat as much; sweating isn't that bad, but it's definitely more comfortable to be slightly cool than boiling hot. It's also awesome that my Kenda Slant-Six Pros work all the way until the first snow-fall.

Physics
This one is pretty simple to explain: physics is everything. Snow is physics, biking is physics, driving is physics, living is physics. That's all for this one.


Music
Music is awesome. I'm always amazed by how music can relate to so many people on so many different levels. I'm also amazed by the fact that music being so relateable means that somebody else knows pretty much exactly how you feel, happy sad or otherwise. I love music and recently went to a concert for my favorite band, The Front Bottoms. At this concert I had a great time with people who I've never seen before and may never see again. Music brought us all together regardless of how different we might be, apart from our music tastes. Music is incredibly awesome.

The idea for this blog popped into my head late in the night. Being dark, I couldn't really get a good picture of leaves. Being not winter, I couldn't get a picture of snow. I didn't really know what to do for the picture of physics or music. For these reasons, all these images came from a simple Google search, which is actually awesome as well - that I can find some beautiful images(and so many more amazing things) with a simple key word search. I Wish I could have made this post longer but I was feeling pretty enthusiastic about the idea and wanted to write it down before I forgot about it! I also have to get up early for the ABRA Franklin Cyclo-Cross race tomorrow morning!