Here's what I'm NOT doing

I'll reiterate this once more.  

These posts are points in time.  That doesn't change the meaning or the truth in them but every day brings new thoughts, new decisions and new clarity.

So here's another entry into the journal.

I'm aware of the sadness and disappointment in my life.  I'm in touch with it, I own it, I understand it.  That I react so strongly doesn't mean I've given up, that I'm going to stop trying, that I believe things will always be this way.

Perspective is important but sometimes the lens is clouded and I end up groping around in the dark.  During those times all I can do is try to understand where all this crap is coming from.  I don't deny my feelings, that's just lying to yourself.

Lying never sits well with me: made worse when I'm forced into a lie of omission.  When things are left unsaid because airing them exposes dark places in others that they don't want to own.  When feelings are bottled up and shoved down.  To lie to myself about what I know and feel to keep the peace.

The question is:  Is it a peace worth keeping?

Is it worth shackling your soul just for the hope that "If I just wait it out" things will get better?  Will someday bring freedom?

Someday is now kids...

If you feel like you have to deny your own intuition, your own deepest held beliefs just to be accepted then I submit that whatever you're seeking approval from isn't the right place for you to be.

We all must suffer to learn.  That is the human condition.  Remaining in suffering, however, is not.

I express what I feel and eventually I can release it.

I can have bitter disagreements with people but I know that it's a temporary state.  I will always extend a hand and open my heart if the will is there.  

That doesn't mean I'm OK with being taken advantage of but being human I know that I don't always do the right thing and sometimes my decisions aren't based on my better angels.

We all do that.  

What I will NOT do is allow myself to be defined by someone else's prejudice, bias or intolerance.

I will NOT sacrifice myself for anyone who isn't willing to do the same.

I've got a lot to offer, there's nothing wrong with me and I'm capable of great things.

...and I know...

Those that choose to deny the pettiness of a societal premise that says we are more different than the same.  That look beyond this tiny spec of time and see the larger canvas.  That refuse to let fear, indoctrination and ignorance rule them.

Those are my friends.  Those are my people.  

And even if I must walk my path alone, I believe that if that is the core of my being....

I can't be that unique in the world.

I will NOT let anyone take that from me.  I don't claim that I'm always right, that I'm perfect or that I alone have the answer.  

I just won't allow anyone to project on me that which they refuse to deal with in their own heart.

It's up to you to NOT be lazy and listen to what you know to be right instead of what you THINK to be right.  

Love doesn't require thinking.  It just is....or it isn't.

I will NOT make it more complicated than that.

What will you do? 

C'mon...I dare you.

I dare you to reach beyond the grand facade of expectation, entitlement and fated outcomes.

I dare you to be more.

I dare you...

Sometimes I think God hates me...

Sing it baby, sing it.

If there's such a thing as past lives I must have been freakin' Hitler...

Because it seems nothing goes right...all at once.

I get to a nice normal place.  Things aren't perfect, normal trials and tribultations.

Then I get hit. 

Not just like, Ouch, wow that was inconvenient...

No, no...

More like, I'm going to threaten your entire life kind of crap.

I seem to end up screwing up relationships without even trying then I get hit with crap like..

So,  I drive older cars because, well, I can't afford newer ones.  

I've accepted that and all that comes with it.   Meaning a lot of time in the garage and I've become pretty handy.

BUT!

When God hates me, he hates me good.

So what prompted this?

Two things.

Drove home tonight from my Aunt's house after trying to help her out with her car and some stuff around her house.  

She's got awesome dogs by the way..

Here's a pic of a couple of them...

So I get off the freeway and the car starts acting funny...

Long story short the Transmission is shot.

Already got a quote.  Looking at around $1600

There goes the next month's paychecks.... Rent is going to be an interesting discussion...

OH!

But I have another car...

Except it's having issues too.  Issues that could make it as useless as the one sitting on the side of the garage right now.

Life happens.  

A bit much...

God do me one thing and please let me get it straightened out so I can at least go to work.

I already have no social life, my friends are busy with their own lives and.....who cares.

Somehow I screwed up things enough to be here.

So yet again, positivity is taking a beating.

I'm positive this is all happening for a reason but the knee-jerk is simply...

FUCK!

I don't know how much I'm supposed to take but I've heard that GOD don't give you more than
you can handle.

ok...

We'll see about that.

Well, at least the grass is looking better on the front lawn.

I'm probably going to be healthier for NOT getting the Bacon Whopper at Burger King last night...

I've got a few beers left in the fridge...

That and, I still know that in the grand scheme none of this matters.  I can remember similar times.  Proud battle scars now.

Lord, I know I'll come through this somehow.  I've done it before.

Good thing I can't make any romance stuff work.  I'd hate to put anyone else through this crap. 

I must be pretty strong...

It'll work out however it's meant to whether I like it or not.   Just like the rest of my life...

Well, nothing happens without effort.  I'm not just going to sit here and sulk about it. 

Wish me luck with the other car.  That and a few prayers wouldn't hurt.  

I may not be as devout as some but I do clasp hands and do some deep talking to invisible people more often than some might think except I'm usually worried about other folks.

Yeah, My aunt, my folks and yes, my muse for all those "other" blog posts.

Still, you know what.

Whomever is reading this.

It'll work out.  I'm not going anywhere ( literally right now ) so no worries. 

Maybe a little more faith is what I need.

An extra prayer from me for the crap you DON'T have to go through.

To those who might be worried.  Nothing but hope and love in my heart.

Peace..

Your past experiences can ruin your present so do something about it.

There's nothing you've ever done that wasn't influenced by something you'd already experienced.  

That may seem obvious but the longer we live the more baggage we drag along with us and it can have effects we may not always be aware of.

Every experience, good or bad, has value.  We tend to cherish the positive and bury the negative in hopes that those unpleasant memories fade to oblivion.

Thing is, we can't escape our own history.  Regardless of how hard you try all that we see or do is part of how we approach everything that comes after.

So with that preface I share with you a strange ritual that I participated in with a close friend.

My friend recently started a great job.  It's just about everything you could ever want.  Great pay, great people and a solid organizational structure that encourages individual success.

He's had it for about 6 months and every time I see him it seems his enthusiasm for the position grows.  Thing is, in the midst of all that positive energy I kept picking up on hints of some negative baggage carried over from his last job.

Understandable considering he had his last job for 16 years, the bulk of his career to this point.  

I remember the tension and frustration of those days.  He learned much of what he knows from the experience of working there.  Unfortunately, the last few years of it had burned some rather unpleasant memories into his subconscious.  It was a betrayal of sorts rooted in a misguided bureaucratic process.

For him it became something he never signed up for.  There were demands put upon him that had little to do with his primary function.  Couple that with unrealistic expectations with no support from a management team without a mission statement.

It became hell.  One that finally required drastic action to escape.  In the end he left on good terms with enough of a parachute to get him to his next job.  He was fortunate to have rolled the dice and won and when his latest job came along he won again.

But as I said, we can't escape our experiences.  With all the positives of my friend's new job there were echoes of his past causing interference.  He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and holding back much as he did in his old job.  

Something symbolic had to be done so that the subconscious hangups from his old bad experiences didn't color his new ones.

Negatives can always be turned to a positive but you have to be able to put them in their place first.  To that end I thought about how we might be able to do something that would create in his mind a clear delineation between his old job and his new one.

I had it!

A few years back he had given me a shirt with the company logo on it.  It was a token gesture of thanks for helping him out on a project we worked on together.

The shirt didn't mean much to me other than preventing nakedness.  I hadn't worn it more than twice and never felt quite right about having it since I never worked for the company.  The interesting part about it is that he never wore it and made a point of giving it to me as though he were trying to rid himself of it.

It occurred to me that since we both had some level of discomfort over this shirt that maybe it was time to bring it to a dramatic end.

So I brought it back to him but not to rejoin the rest of his wardrobe.  No, I had a far more dramatic end in store.

We were going to burn that bitch....

A week went by when my friend surprised me.  There was the shirt still rolled up in the plastic bag I had returned it in.  

We were going to do this and without a moment's hesitation on a particularly dark night we took the shirt to his back yard and set in on fire.

As we watched it burn and tried to stay out of the toxic smoke that can only come from a 50/50 polyester/cotton blend we gazed transfixed at what was meant to be a dramatic and graphic bookend to a bad memory.

It was a gesture to put the memory in its place.  My hope is that the image of that shirt ablaze supplants all those subtle little naggings that can sabotage his new job.

It's not unlike the story I was once told of the guy who bought a new pickup truck.  The story goes that a man bought a brand new pickup truck to replace one that was old and beat up.  He was getting ready to leave when a salesman came up to him and told him admiringly how beautiful it was and how he was sure the man would probably want to try to keep it that way.

On hearing this, the man turned, thought about what he said and then proceeded to pick up a huge rock and throw it in the bed of the truck causing a huge dent and of course a number of scratches in the paint.

The Salesman, horrified, couldn't believe what he just saw to which the man said, " I need this truck for work and can't afford the distraction of keeping it pretty.  Now I don't have to worry about it."

Ok, a bit extreme but the lesson is relevant to the message.  You can't let irrelevant things distract you from what you're trying to accomplish.  If it takes burning a shirt or throwing a rock at a brand new truck to get the BS out of the way then do it.

A tortured hour

It's 3:34 AM....

The house is dark but then the house is always dark to me even in the middle of the day.

It's hot, too hot.  The thermometer says it's 88 degrees outside but in here it's closer to 100.  Why? I can't afford to turn the AC on.  Such luxuries are for other people.

Madness! a Phoenix summer where the weatherman cheerily announces weeks of 110 degree plus days. No escape, no money for a reprieve from the heat.  No comforts...

Things haven't been so good.  The refrigerator's almost  always empty and what little is there provides meager nourishment for body or soul.  Everything around me seems somehow broken.  Things that should have long since been discarded forced past their prime, patched together and pressed back to service until they can finally give no more.

Broken...

For five years it's been a tough row to hoe.  It's never been easy but this time it's harder.  I know, it's been that way for many but I'm most familiar with my own tribulations.  

Excuse the pain if you've heard it before...

It's the kind of thing that makes you hate television, especially the commercials.  Constant nagging about things nobody really cares about all with the promise of taking your woes away...for a price.

A price I can no longer afford which makes me hate them even more.  It's like being mocked, the proverbial carrot inevitably followed by the stick.  I don't hate them for selling their wares; I hate them for the assumption that I don't know any better.

Buy this car and save money on gas, Enroll in that diploma mill and have a brighter future.  Neither is true and I've got close to 100K of debt to prove it with nothing to show but the collection letters.  The worst part, they sell a lifestyle with expensive trappings but little meaning.

When did becoming a member of the middle class become a lifelong aspiration?  When did simple civilized survival become a goal?

It's 3:44 AM...

Something's rattling on the car, I know what it is, I know every sound it can make but all I can do is hope that it remains little more than an audible annoyance...

Comfort is a luxury.  There is no peace in my surroundings or my soul. 

Middle aged, underestimated, dismissed, hopeless but still defiant!

Pull myself up by the bootstraps!  But I have no boots...

Never cared for that analogy anyway.  It's a fallacy perpetrated by those who never knew the predicament.

Opportunity is made not found but opportunity doesn't happen in a vacuum but lately it seems I do.

Whose fault?  Mine I suppose.  But then far more worthy than I have a similar tale.  We can't all be wrong.

What can I do?  For myself, I'll try anything that doesn't risk the little that remains.  Is it enough?

Time will tell, but do I have the time? 

It's 4:00AM

Do something, do anything.  Unbridled ambition thwarted by petty finances.  Do I believe in myself? Am I all that I thought I once was?

Not a high bar, humility or more appropriately the edge of self-loathing has always been a companion.  Ego and hubris have no place.  But neither did confidence.  I rarely win so I refuse the gamble.

This isn't the life I planned or should I say any of the lives I've planned.  I've started over so many times but always end up in the same place. 

Here...

Keep trying, keep striving all the time fearful of losing the little bit I have left even if I hate the prison it creates.

Do I have time to try again?

It's 4:16AM

Damn! it's hot in here.  The winters are better but I still can't afford the heat.  I sit in the remains of my chair, it too is broken, drenched in my own filthy perspiration the only comfort being the memory of it that will come when I can see my breath waking on some January morning.

Not defeated, not giving up but lost.

How do I move forward?  What's the key? 

4:23 AM

Recruiters, agencies, headhunters.  Hardly better than TV commercials.  Promises not kept, selling a bill of goods only for their own ends.  The product doesn't match the consumer, no sale.

Still I try, find the needle, ignore the haystack...

My own pursuits?  On virtue success, on paper, failure. 

I never wanted to do anything that didn't matter to someone.  It seems that's a dying...virtue.

It's 4:24 AM

Everything still seems broken.  I look around me and see so much that could be done.  I want to fix it, I want to fix me...

I'm not in a vacuum. Others suffer for my affliction.  I want to fix that too.

Keep trying, keep looking, deny the doubt...

Fix it...

It's 4:34AM

Never give yourself the opportunity to do nothing.

At times I get annoyed with myself.  Maybe I didn't get the house cleaned up or the car washed, it doesn't matter.  It's not the thing that I should have done so much as I didn't do it when given the opportunity.

Which is my point.

When you've got a lot of down time it's tempting to just resign yourself to a lifestyle of procrastination.  After all, there's always tomorrow right?

So isn't it strange that when our lives are consumed with the demands of career and family that what we wish for the most is free time.  Then when we have it, we squander it.

It's human nature to adapt to our environment so it's no surprise that when we're busy we tend to stay that way and when we're not...

Newton's third law comes into play here.  Just as it's hard to stop a speeding train without a lot of effort the same can be said for getting it going.

The problem is that trains aren't people and while the long term effects of a train sitting idle can be corrected rather quickly, idle people take a bit more of a push.

It's far too easy to just lie around and put things off.  After awhile we go from relaxation to atrophy.

That's not a good thing.  The deeper we descend into inaction the more dire the consequences.  Things pile up and as they do you feel worse about them.

The distance between disappointment and depression is dangerously small.  Like anything else a condition left untreated won't improve on its own.

So I'd suggest that instead of bringing that train to a stop to watch the weeds grow around it that you at least try to keep it in motion even if you can't crank it up to full throttle.

Speaking of weeds, I bet there's some that need pulling or a floor that needs washing.  It doesn't matter what you do so long as your engaged with something other than your sofa.

I've seen it in myself and my friends.  That awful limbo between jobs or projects can work on you like an ice cube on a hot sidewalk. 

So if you're an IT guy maybe it's time to populate one of those VM's with the latest Linux distro.  Turn wrenches for a living?  I'm positive there's a neighbor that could use some help.  Maybe even deal with those weeds that mock you as you try to enjoy your morning coffee.  No matter what you do, the simple act of doing it pays dividends that far surpass the task.

The only people who are meant to do nothing spend all their time in a box, they're called corpses.

Men, Sit your butt down!

WARNING!

This will be my most irreverent yet insightful post ever!

Here's the deal.

Men, you know you wish you had a urinal in your house.  I mean really now.  We spend far more time taking nature's call standing up than sitting down.  

Look at any public restroom and the first thing you notice is that the Men's room has located the urinals far more conveniently than the standard commode.

There's a reason.  

Urinals are quick, convenient and fit in with the male "go go" lifestyle of get in, get out and keep movin'!

Whereas the standard commode requires far more commitment.  Not only do you have to half disrobe to use it but overuse in public can bring into question your manliness.  After all, real men do their business on their feet not their ass!

But let's be practical here.  

Sure, out in public there's usually a convenient urinal available in the men's room (movie theater's usually have the highest ratio of urinal to commode BTW)

What about at home?

Let's face it guys, bathrooms are sexist...

I mean really now, how many times have you seen a urinal in a private home?  I'd wager even Donald Trump doesn't have one in his bathroom(s).

Yes, home conveniences are still stuck in the 50's where the idealized woman cared for the idealized home and the male just visited long enough to get some rest before returning to work for a spirited day of more manly pursuits.

I'm sure someone thought it was a compromise but when it comes right down to it the average commode is openly hostile to the male of the species....

Either the seat is sized wrong or it's virtually impossible to use the facility without making some degree of mess which left unattended will bring the wrath of the significant other/partner of the opposing sex.

This problem is compounded by the simple fact that once the male of the species has imbibed enough alcohol they are going to have a need to use the facility in a manner other than its principal design.


Here's the issue.  

No matter how hard we try, the male of the species will make a mess in the commode when  relieving themselves of liquids.

Therefore I submit that the stigma of being "girly" by sitting down to urinate be removed.  

Look guys, if you can't aim straight and you don't have a urinal then you just need to (literally) sit you ass down.

It will promote domestic harmony and sanitation.

Men, the world of sanitation is against us therefore we must adapt to conquer it!

Consider this the next time you head to the 
...ahem...head...