Intimacy please, you can keep the sex

I have never had an extra marital affair.  It's not for lack of trying though. Early on in my dysfunctionality I thought that what I was lacking in my life was sex.  This was the furthest thing from the truth and I am thankful now that I never "got lucky".  In my seeking I happened upon a woman and she was quite amazing to be frank.  Beautiful to look at but more importantly she was very kind and extraordinarily intelligent.  She shared a lot in common with me, this was my first glimpse at what a soulmate felt like.  In the end we went our ways because I made some bad choices at that time but I have never forgot that feeling and I have never forgot true intimacy.  What I was lacking in my life was in-fact not sex at all, it was intimacy.  I wanted someone to share my soul with that cared and could mentally and emotionally reciprocate with me.  I have never stopped searching for that since she cut communication with me.  I have yet to find that feeling again but I do know, it is not a myth. 


Disclaimer:  I am straight and love sex, I just realize what is important in life

Imagine

What do you imagine when you let your mind go? I'm not a very creative person typically.  I usually day dream about reality, the future, projects I'm working on, logistics and people.  When I day dream about people I try to think about what life would be like with someone I liked and then I wonder if I am the defective individual in my relationship.  Or has my troubled relationship gone on so long it has ruined me.  Today I was day dreaming about enjoying being home and I realized I never dream about being alone.  This is concerning to me because one of my primary tenets of my theory on successful relationships is that you need to be happy being yourself while being alone before you can be happy with someone else.  For this reason I am actively trying to fantasize about being with no one other than myself.  It's difficult but I will succeed I am certain.  

There ain't no such thing...

A saying that I have had when I find myself to be totally disappointed in someone or something is: "this is like finding out there ain't no such thing as Santa Clause".  In essence trying to capture my genuine level of disappointment in a  more humorous way. Some days this is how I feel about the prospect of finding someone that I can share life with.  I'm not sure that person is out there or exists.  I don't know what time will bring or if I will even want to be with anyone after I am freed from my captor.  

A hard days work

A commitment I made to myself upon graduation, was that despite my graduate level education, my "good job" and social standing in the community I would always strive to do hard manual labor when someone needs help.  This past month I have done an exceptional job of keeping that commitment.  Manual labor as a service to those in need is very rewarding and helps to maintain perspective.  No matter where you find yourself in life do not think too highly of yourself to not serve others or do a little work.  It will make you feel good while impacting others.

I never made a pretense of living with good sense.  That's not really my strong suit. 

Who's the boss?

An interesting role reversal has taken place in my house.  After years of putting up with the abuse and bullshit I have finally started standing up for myself.  Why now you might ask.  Well, more than anything, I think it's becoming used to being the boss.  At work, there is this weird moment, when people ask "who is the boss" or "who's in charge" and then I realize, it's me!! I have grown used to calling the shots, telling it how it is and making sure things run properly.  Being the man of the house, I should have been the boss years ago.  I was just too passive and amiable to fight when a fight was needed.  Were I to have been the boss more prior to this point in time, maybe things would be different for my life and my kids lives.  Who knows.

You can run...

You can run, but you can't hide!  Today, as I pondered what really made the difference for me in my life.  What helped me to get my shit together again so to speak; was I realized I was running.  And I quit.  I quit running.  I quit running from my wife, I stood up to her. I quit running from my life, I stopped drinking.  I quit running from my problems, everywhere I went there they were. In health you learn about the "fight or flight" response.  I got sick of the flight and I stopped to fight.  I still am fighting but it is rewarding.  I am happier and more confident in myself and a better person for it.  The thing I realized is no matter where I went or who I was with, there were my problems.  They were right there with me.  I could never evade them.  Why? Because they were MY problems. Not someone else's or the product of someone else.  They were problems that only one person could fight.  That person was me.  I will fight these problems until I go to my grave.  The battle gets easier daily, but it never ends.  Until you stop and face your problems and begin to conquer them one at a time you will not be able to have successful relationships that are fully realized, nor will you be happy with yourself.  Stop where you are, make a stand and fight.  Fight like hell.  Your life depends on it. You will be glad you did.

I will wait

I have been thinking alot about how I want a fulfilling relationship in my life and I struggle with trying to find it.  Maybe I haven't even met that person yet.  Maybe I have.  I don't know. But I do know this:  I will wait until I find that relationship.  I have 9 more years on my promise to my kids that I will stay here in hell for them.  Someday I hope that I am fulfilled in my soul though.  To be made complete by my other half that is floating out there in the nebulous known as life would be my finest moment on earth.  In my observations of human interactions though, I find that we settle far to often for that which is not what we desire.  We may know a person that fulfills us but we are in too big of a hurry to wait for THE right time and we fuck it up by further entangling ourselves in other relationships that are half-ass emotional and spiritual band-aids. Don't short change yourself, when you find that which is worth having, wait.  Wait for it.  It will be that much sweeter if you do.  I promise.  And I also promise I will wait.  I will wait for you until the end of my time or the earth's whichever comes first. 

My mind is my drug

A quote from artist Savlador Dali once was "I don't do drugs, I am drugs".  I used to think he was being a bit facetious.  As I have gone thru life, however, I find this to be actually true for me.   I have tried some drugs and alcohol before but they only dampen my mind and make me more ignorant while thinking I am smarter.  I drank enough for a while that I was usually buzzed, hungover or just between beers, I never let my body fully detox from the alcohol.  In addition I usually had my personality muted by one SSRI or another to help with my depressing life. When I finally decided to detox and try to get my life together and make the best of it I was shocked with the sharpness and clarity with which I think.  I stopped drinking and quit my SSRI's for a month and I felt enormously better.  It was during that time I remembered I liked to write and I started writing again to deal with my emotions and feelings and thoughts.  I have a beer once in a while but I don't get drunk and I do it rarely enough I don't have residual effects.  The funny thing is I am more acutely aware now, when I am drinking, of how much it kills my psyche.  The constant state of my mind, though, is almost that of being high.  I'm not high on myself, I'm not high on drugs, I'm not high on life, I'm not high on other people.  I am high on thoughts.  I fear this is one of the primary problems we face today in the world as we know it.  Almost everyone is using a substance in one form or another to cope and try to make their life better when really, it is not.  Our minds are one of our most valuable assets.  Get high.  Get high on your thoughts.  I don't do drugs, my mind is drugs.

A rich man

Ya know, I hesitate to write this, because I hate coming off as a religious fanatic.  I over analyze everything, therefore, I fear being so candid because I have temptations, I curse, I don't have a good family/home situation but I do believe in God a great deal and I think alot about his written word and my life in light of his plan.  So I hesitate to write too much about my religious thoughts because 1) I don't want you to think I'm trying to make myself sound all "Christiany" or 2) I don't want you to think I'm a hippocrit.  I am simply a flawed human in need of God's grace and I try to serve him but fall short daily and need his grace.  That said....I have been thinking about the rich man of Mark 10:21-25

21 Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. “There is still one thing you haven’t done,” he told him. “Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22 At this the man’s face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!” 24 This amazed them. But Jesus said again, “Dear children, it is very hard[b] to enter the Kingdom of God. 25 In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”

This is a tough fact for me to swallow.  First I try telling myself I am not rich, but that's a complete lie.  America is a very blessed country and I am a very blessed individual in America.  Like the man in the story I am not yet willing to sell everything I have and follow.  I try to follow and take my crap along with me. My only consolation is that Jesus doesn't say it's impossible for a rich man to get to heaven, he just says it's difficult.  I hope to become more and more giving.  I know I am where I am in life for a reason, I know I have been granted my education for a reason and very few people are qualified for my job in the area I work in.  So I don't think that I am called to be a missionary in a third world country, but I do think God expects me to use my resources where I am to make a difference.  

Today  a gentleman came in my store he was very ill kept and clearly had some problems.  One of which was not having enough money to buy what he needed.  Upon my recent intropsection about my wealth and accountability to God I allowed the man to charge even though I knew he couldn't afford it.  I vowed in my heart that I will pay his bill when we send bills out next month because I am blessed on many accounts and I need to share in my wealth.  When I was leaving I saw the man walking off so I tracked him down and gave him a small wad of cash.  It wasn't much, but it's what I had in my wallet to spare.  I am trying to make it a point to serve this man because it is what Jesus would have done and I am trying to be more like him day by day.  

Keep your eyes open for opportunities to spread the love and word of Christ.  We as a nation are wealthy and I think God expects to see us put an effort in to be christian towards all people. 

Self made man

Today I have been giving some thought to my life.  I stated before there are a few versions of yourself.  The version of myself I see is that I am a self made man that has fought to get to where I am in life and deserve the spoils that I have achieved.   This could not be further from the truth.  When I take the time to recall my last 10 years I realize I could not have made it where I am without help from my mom and dad with their constant encouragement and financial support.  I also know I couldn't be where I am without my boss and some "chance" events that brought me to this point in my life.  I also know that I am blessed beyond belief by God.  Even events that were brutal to me like my DUI and the fallout from it academically and relationally as well as chronic failure have all played together to make me who I am.  I have had very little to do with getting where I am in life. I have simply had the tenacity and fortitude to keep trying and (barely) enough introspection to see when I need to make changed and execute them.  It's in this moment of realization, that I have had very little bearing on my ultimate success, it strikes me because I know many other people more deserving or skilled than me. I am not at all a self made man, I have been made by tenacity with the help of those that love me and blessings from God.  Wherever you are at in life, stop, and try to honestly evaluate how you've gotten there.  Take the time to thank those that have helped you get there and thank God for his blessing and plan for you.

I see the moon

I see the moon

The moon sees me

God bless the moon

and God bless me

The last two nights the moon has been spectacular.  I really need to get a camera capable of taking stellar photography.  Last night was one of the best moon halos I have seen in quite some time.  I twas magnificent.  Tonight was just plain and simple a beautiful moon.  The moon is such an interesting thing to me.  It controls the tides and reflects the light of the sun, it goes thru phases and is very interesting thru a telescope.  The moon is a beautiful creation. I am very blessed to live where I do so I am able to see the moon and the stars in the height of their glory night after night.   One of my favorite pass times is to lay on the picnic tablet and wait for shooting stars.  It is in that moment I feel so tiny but loved by God and I know without a doubt his creation is indeed made by design.  God Bless the moon and God bless me. 

You can't give it back

You know something interesting, is sometimes people take a part of you, but they can't ever give it back. Like-wise  I can take some of you and never give it back to you.  Furthermore, if we know what we have taken of others, we can at least try to compensate them for our mental, emotional or spiritual thievery.  I know what's been taken from me and that makes me wonder what have I taken from others.  By nature the way we try to reconnect with those parts of ourselves that others hold.  Some of the ways I try to make those connections are thru relationships, words and music.  This makes me wonder though, are we very conscious of what we have taken from someone else?  I don't know. I hold the pieces to someone's heart but I'm not sure who's it is, or if they all belong to the same person or multiple people. I just don't know.  So it makes it hard for me to know who I owe of myself for stealing pieces of their heart.  For this reason I try to love as much as I can and spread true love.  The love that cares more for someone else than myself, the love that always looks for the best interest of the beloved.  I can't give the pieces of peoples hearts back but I can give love back, and I do. I think that's what was expected when I took a token of your heart.

In My Mind

A juncture in life a reprieve from the strife

Peace is found within, though borders are thin

Come by what may, in my sanctuary I stay

Bone and flesh surround this temple so crowned

Safe from intrusion my place for material spiritual fusion

All alone in my mind it's there where solace I find 

Discipline and peace

Here's a great scripture I was reading today:

"11 We do not enjoy being disciplined. It is painful at the time, but later, after we have learned from it, we have peace, because we start living in the right way."

That's taken from Hebrews 12:11. It's interesting to me, and at this time, because I it's this peace I have been in search of for the last year.  My new years resolution for 2015 was to get my finances straight and get my life back on track.  I wanted to be a better person and better father while trying to find peace in the life that I live. I have been pretty successful all around and this verse is affirmation of that. Not to long in the past I was the child that needed disciplined and I went thru some tough shit and it was painful at the time (and still for that matter) but I have learned from it and I have made the necessary about-face.  It is just recently that I have noticed the peace that comes with right living once again. It feels good.  There's some things that will never be the same in my life, there's some things that have been made better by my experiences and there are still some fences to mend but it feels good to be heading in the right direction.  After all, isn't peace what we all want?

Hip hoppin

Divine accident

Do you ever have something unfortunate happen that throws your entire day off and alters your plans?  I was going to go see a friend today when my car had a catastrophic event that mandated I cripple home rather than travel on.  Have you ever considered that these events may happen for a reason?  That is something that I do to try to better understand this sort of misfortunes. Maybe it's only a coping mechanism, or maybe it's legit, I don't know. Regardless, I always try to see these catastrophes in light of how they could have saved me from a worse fate.  Perhaps I'd have been involved in a fatal car accident today had I not broke down where I did.  Maybe I'd have gotten hurt doing what my friend and I had planned.  Or maybe I was just unlucky and needed to better maintain my car.  But where is the destiny in that?

A Love story: It is better to have loved...

Ya know what used to piss me off?! Love stories.  I didn't get it, I thought they were a crock of shit.  Period.  But in my life, I have tasted many things and love actually was one of them.  I am a very different person and so true love. true reciprocal love, is not something that is easy to come by.  Somehow by chance I did get to experience this for a very short time.  The intense connection with another human that thought like me and had the same interests as me and values.  It was an amazing experience.  The fact is, the time was wrong for me.  Very wrong and I fucked it up. The interesting thing is it has impacted me for years so far and I see no end to it.  I know I annoy the crap out of her now.  I try not to bother her but I am like an animal clawing at the door to get in.  I want to make her happy but it's impossible.  I know, without a doubt, not one single doubt in my mind that she still loves me too.  Why?  Because you can't experience the connection that we had and forget it.
So is it truly better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?  Well it's a double edged sword.  And I will say, once you have loved, you never lose.  I am not with my lover and soulmate, she won't even talk to me matter of fact.  But the joy she gave me for such a short time was beyond comprehension.  I can never explain what it's like, it's a deep feeling of connection that's just indescribable.  At the same time it has left me with the biggest, gaping wound in my life.  I know it was self inflicted but I feel an emptiness from the separation that I have from her. It goes to say though, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I am blessed to have known the love I knew and I am blessed to this day.  It was the brutal honesty she had for me during a time when I made poor decisions that has brought me about and helped me to get my life together and succeed.  I am considered very successful and I credit 100% of my success to her for shooting it to me straight when no one else could.  And truthfully, she's the only person that it mattered to me what they thought.  What I am today inside and out is a product of her love. A love that we still share no matter how hard she tries to avoid it.  Was it worth it?  You bet.  I never understood the idiom "it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all" until I met her.
Seek the love of your life, and when/if you are lucky enough to find it, do not hurt it or crush it.  Treat it tenderly and I pray that you are able to hold onto true love when you find it.  Now, when I hear a love story my mind goes to one person and my heart aches but my spirit smiles because I know for a moment I shared something real and powerful that few ever experience.  I hope someday she will forgive me of my wrongs and someday I will know love again.

Sometimes I want to sing

Do you ever want to just sing but everyone in the house is asleep?  Maybe you dont, but I sure do.  Funny thing is I won't sing infront of anyone but I love to sing.  It's so freeing and healing.  Music is the shit. It heals my soul and makes me feel connected.

Dear Death:

Dear Death,

I just went to visit my grandfather in the hospital. He isn't doing so hot.  I know you stopped by to visit the rest of my grandparents a few years ago.  I didn't take it so well.  I'm ready this time.  I didn't understand you.  I know that your visit is inevitable.  I have always known that.  I just wasn't ready last time.  You were so sudden and I was preoccupied with my life and trying to succeed.  Now that I am successful and I have got to spend alot of time with my grandpa and make sure he knows that I love him and he me, I feel much better about it all.  I thank you for waiting to visit him though.  Of my grandparents, he is the one I would take your visit the hardest from.  He had a great hand in my fetchings up.  We are very close and he has made me the man I am today.  I favor him in my personality and humor.  Thank you for giving me the time with him here on earth.  I know you will have to visit soon, just know, this time I am ready for you and so is he.  Someday you will come to meet me.  Be it soon or be it long, I will be glad to be reunited with my family on the other side.  Do what you may Death.  This time you will not shake my faith.  My faith in what lies beyond is greater than you and it is for that reason I am ready.

Yours Truly

Who was the first president

Trivia time: Who was the first president of the United States?  George Washington of course.....WRONG! It was in fact John Hanson.  We actually had EIGHT presidents prior to Washington.  They served under the Articles of Confederation.  George Washington was the first president to serve under the Constitution.  If you want to learn more check out this link and read about the eight presidents before Washington.

Used to be...behind the words

So this is kinda what my last short poem was about... I was doing some things tonight trying to get into an old account online to recover some stuff and I was going thru things that were associated with the account and it was SHOCKING when I saw some of the crap I was into and thought was OK or justified.  I realized how much has changed in my life over the years.  I started out as a young adult very very naive which is partially how I got where I was.  Slowly I started to get into crap I shouldn't be into and it almost killed me and almost stripped me of all my hard work and my career.  It DID strip me of someone I love and that has been some of the toughest aftermath from my low-life slump.  Now when I look back at the last two years and I see how much I have grown up and manned up and faced shit that I have made for myself and fought to become what I had the potential for it's very satisfying.  I graduated the bottom of my class after being kicked back twice for failure and academic deficits and I have gone from that to sitting in reserved seating at conferences and am a co-manager of a successful and revered business. Despite the success that God has blessed me with though there's one thing that still lacks and that is love.  True, sincere, deep love from one human to another.  All my success and overcoming cannot mend that and that is a deep regret, and an ever present scar on my life that is a part of my story.  It is as much a part of my struggle as anything else I have dealt with, but it serves as a reminder of where I have been and the value of how to treat people. 

used to be

I used to be really good, I used to obey all the rules and do what I should
Then I used to be a failure at school, i used to suck at life, i used to look like a fool
Then I used to be a drunk, I used to carouse the night, I used to be a flunk
Then I grew up, then I manned up, then I got on my feet and took a stand up
Now I am grown I make decisions and choices for which I am known
Now I sit in reserved seating and get pats on the back as I am retreating
Now I excel, now my morale is back, now I am a doctor but there's one thing I lack
I lack love inside my heart, I know what I have been missing all the way from the start
So triumphant and successful how can it be, yet something so crucial is missing from me

Parrot talk

Something I have been noticing lately, that I feel is very likely an indicator of a weak mind, is greetings and farewells.  They are often mindlessly repeated to one another.  For example, if I say "Hi how are you?" and you reply "doing peachy, how about yourself" and I return with "I'm doing peachy".  That is what I am talking about.  Or have you ever been greeted by someone and then you greet them back in the exact same way and you realize it and feel slightly foolish for basically repeating their greeting? It is this that I feel indicates weak mindedness, it shows that the individual is very receptive to subconscious suggestion.  I believe that persons who have a higher propensity towards subconscious suggestion have less of a sense of individualism or lack independent thought/fortitude and are, therefore, a weaker minded person.
For that reason, I try to make a conscious effort to have original, pertinent and thoughtful replies. It grates on my nerves mentally when I hear people great each other like two parrots squawking back and forth.  Think about what you say, think about how you say it, own your words and think your thoughts, don't be weak minded.  Be conscious, intentional and original.  Be you and I'll be me.

If you could sum up your current life in three songs....

Dave Matthews "Ant's Marching": This song is very indicative of my relationship and life in general. It's hollow, monotonous and yet has potential in take some chances and break free and live, however, for one reason or another I typically bottle those chances up because it's not good timing.  

Jackson Browne "The Pretender":  This song really touches me because it talks about the people who we perceive to be living well, chasing after wealth but the truth is money can't buy us the things that really make us happy and in chasing of financial gain we sacrifice those things that really are what we want.  I find myself far to often chasing after my next purchase high but the fact is I won't be happy until I pursue the chances that I have bottled up because my happiness does not lie in the things that money can buy.  

The Avett Brothers "Tin Man": This is a good song that talks about how they miss the feeling of feeling.  I miss being able to feel.  I miss being able to get excited, being able to be sad or angry or happy.  I have had to remove these emotions and virtually have a flat affect from the mental and emotional abuse over the course of my life.  For this reason I can completely relate to the tin man and I wish to God I could feel again but I'm not sure I ever will.  

So, in three songs, what is your life in it's current state?  I hope in a year my three songs will have changed for the better!

When is wrong right?

When is wrong right? I mean, as many people say "everything is relative"; meaning the definition relies on that which it is compared too.  For example sometimes things that are generally considered by convention to be wrong is right given the circumstances.  Some would argue that it's ok to kill another human under the pretense they try to take your life.  As you well know, it's wrong to kill someone but in this example people consider it to be permissible in self defense. So given that example it seems that most things we consider to be wrong do have their place.  A question that has been nagging at me is how do my illicit friendships play a crucial role in divine plan?  There has been things that are very key to my success that have come to fruition because of friendships that are, what I felt inappropriate.  But then, the thing I have been trying to realize, just because they are inappropriate to my wife, it doesn't mean they are in appropriate to anyone else.  My wife forbids me to have female friends period.  I understand if I were a whoring man or not trustworthy.  The ironic fact of the mater is she is the one who cheated on me, not the other way around. So for this reason I am forbidden to have women as friends.  The irony of the matter is, without some of my friends that were women I would not have the job I have today and provide everything that I hand to her on a silver platter.  I have no idea when wrong is right in this situation.  When I come to an epiphany I will let you know. 

Where you are when you are

Lately I have been thinking about being where you are meant to be in life.  Not about being where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there, but rather where you purposefully meant to be in life by God or destiny to make an impact in life.  
It's interesting when I look at the masterpiece known as "my life" and I am actually able to retrospectively fit all the pieces, good or bad, into how they played a role in bringing me to where I am now in life.  It's kind of scary because at this point I KNOW I am, where I am, not by accident. Not because God wants me to get my way but because that is where He WANTS me to be.  
Naturally this begs the obvious question to follow: why does he want me here?  What am I supposed to accomplish and how?  This is where I struggle to understand.  Is there a specific goal for me to achieve?  Is there a specific life I need to touch or save so they can go on to impact the world in their own way?  I am I there to die a martyr in some dramatic event? We as humans have a hard time fathoming our purpose.  Personally, I think we make our purpose too great sometimes.  From a Christian perspective, I think that our purpose is not as significant or dramatic as we would like to make it out to be.  That is our human nature at work.  I think that our purpose, in a nutshell is simply this: Live a wholesome, Godly life.  One that people can see Christ through you and your actions as you serve them with a servant's heart.  That, to me is our purpose wherever it is we are placed in life. 
So how do you do that?  Well for me I think it is serving with humility and not being arrogant about my education.  It's about having compassion when people are in need and rolling the dice and betting on people when the odds aren't good.  Extending credit when it's questionable in good faith they will keep their word and sucking it up and footing bill when they cannot, and not holding it over them or against them but giving freely and without expectation.  I really think that is what God wants me to do, where I am at in my life and in this world.  What will the future bring?  Who will play a part in my future?  Only God knows.  But I do know this: I will do my best to understand what His expectations of me are and how to accomplish them in all things no matter where he sends me or who he puts in my life.   

The world is flat!

Have you ever wondered what in our current world state is our "the world is flat" moment? We look back and scoff at how silly it is that someone would ever consider the world being flat is a possibility.  But what is it in our day and age, that we accept as common knowledge, that will be scoffed at in years to come?

Please, don't ever forget me.

Fantasy or reality

Something that has struck me, and I am very guilty of participating in, is the fantasy world known as "the internet".  When you really stop to consider things, the internet allows you to create your own reality.  There are so many realities to choose from, you can select multiple types or just subscribe to one genre.  But the thing is that you literally create your own virtual persona online. It may be who you are, it may not be. It's up to you.  To maintain this online persona though it takes time and dedication.  You have to take pictures that portray what you want to portray, write things, read things, repost things. It can be time consuming.  So time consuming, in-fact, that we rarely have time for reality.
One great way I am guilty of this is exercise.  Exercise and physic are no longer part of my electronic persona.  I am getting older and more out of shape, I am not as attractive as I once was.  So now, I find it hard to find time to exercise since it's not part of what I am trying to portray.  I don't take pics of my flabs and post, I don't post my workout routines or my before/after pics. I don't talk about what nutrition supplement I'm using, I don't rant about roids and natural muscle growth.  It's just not my thing.  So I find myself being either involved in my electronic persona or things that  perpetuate my persona.  Whatever happened to being who you are and not worrying about who people see you as.
When I was in school I had a professor that was completely enamored by the saying "be here now".  He would repeat it almost every class period.  It was quite frankly annoying.  At this moment in time, however, I see more than ever the relevance of this cliche.  We are too involved in who we want people to think we are, that we don't take the time to be in the moment and live.
This has been one of my recent concerns and a reason I think I do not live my life to the fullest at this moment in time.  I constantly look forward to my next achievement or land mark in my life. I am trying to slow down and pay attention to the reality around me and become an active participant in life rather than a casual observer.  I hope that you too will take some time and try to be here now.  Be in the moment no matter where you are or who you're with, realize you are living and breathing and experiencing life.  Shape your moments in life and enjoy them rather than your electronic persona.

Emptiness

Don't forget to put your socks on!

A great photographic throwback to some classic RHCP

Loving not liking

How is it you can love someone you don't like? I suppose there is a difference in the two is how.  But what's the difference?  Well it's this: love is a choice, like is a preference.  So you can choose to love someone but you can't choose to like them.  Either you like them or you don't, and your opinion can change over time.  Liking someone is often a function of how they treat us over time, where as love is a daily choice to care for someone and keep their best interest in mind.
I don't like my wife.  But I love her.  I love her every day and I seek her best outcome even though I don't like her because I choose to love her. I used to like her but after being betrayed over and over in different ways I really don't have much like left in my bones for her.  Some people don't understand how you can say you love your spouse but not like them, but that is exactly what I feel and for me, it doesn't seem to be such a long logical stretch.

It's the thought that counts

It's been several years since I quietly made a promise to myself.  I don't generally make promises to myself.  Promises are hard to keep sometimes and I don't take lightly when I break a promise.  Matter of fact, I generally use terms that get me accused of being "vague" or "non-committal".  But this is just it, I don't want to make a promise or commitment I can't keep.  Plain and simple. I suppose it's my up bringing.  My dad always said "I have worked hard to take care of our family name son so that you could have a name you're proud of, when you tell someone you will do something, they know it will be done.  That said, it's now your job to take care of our name, so your son will have the benefit growing up that you had." So being a man of my word has definitely been ingrained in me since I was young.

So what is my promise you ask? I promised myself I would stay with my wife until my kids were grown.  This has been a very tough promise to keep.  Matter of fact more than once I was on the brink of failure.  I have moved out a few times.  It was more than I could handle at times to go to school and try to succeed and put up with her incessant need for adversity. In the end, I was able to pull it together and maintain my promise to myself.
But does it matter? I mean after all isn't it the thought that counts? My thoughts are set on the day my son is grown and I will be free from being ridiculed and put down daily. So my thoughts betray my promise because my actions are in-congruent with my thoughts. I argue though, that despite knowing mentally that it's already over.  I have been violated too many times. I stick it out, not for myself, but for my kids.  I have had to stand up to their mother before to protect them from verbal abuse and physical abuse on more than one occasion.  I have had to protect them from drunken words that hurt and pushes and slaps that were undeserved.  I have had to get in her face and tell her that NO ONE talks to my daughter that way, not even her mother.
Is my promise really discordant with my actions though?  Who does my actions betray?  My promise is that for my children, I will stay with their mother. To protect them and see they are cared for and not neglected.  To ensure they go to school, get an education and become the best that they can be. My promise isn't to love their mother and stay with her because I love her. So even though my actions are to get along with my wife, it's to my children my commitment lies.  With which my actions are in alignment because I suffer for them every day I wake up beside the person who makes my life and theirs hell.  So for now, I remain a man of my word.  Even though I have come close to breaking it several times, in my new found occupational stability I think I can make it until my kids are grown.  That is my goal and that is my promise to myself and my children with you as my witness. 

Adversary

I have come to the conclusion there are people in this world who actually enjoy adversity. Perhaps enjoy is the wrong word for it.  There are some people that feel more comfortable in the midst of adversity than if in a time of contentment or peace.  But why is this?  Why would anyone prefer to be in strife instead of solace? My best assertion is because that's what they knew growing up as a child.  In my experience I have noted that the people I know that tend to induce unnecessary adversity, typically had a stressful family life growing up.
I am kinda curious how two people that enjoy adversity interact as well as two people that like peace interact.  My suspicion is this is one of the biggest forces at work in a divorce.  I have known people to be married until death, that you'd have thought they disliked each other, but they were just adversarial.  They never got along, always fought, but always stuck together.  Then again, I've known people who married who stayed married, but they were also really peaceful people and got along most of the time.  The relationships I see that split are the ones where one person constantly causes angst because this is what they are comfortable with, and the other person seeks peace because that's what they know.  This doesn't work at all because the adversarial person will constantly take from the one who seeks peace because they are trying to cause some level of tension to achieve comfort.   The peace seeker will constantly give in to the adversarial partner because they constantly seek peace, because this is what they are comfortable with.  At some point one of the two parties has to give in and change.  It's that or the adversarial partner makes the peace seeker snap because they have been pushed too far and the family is split.  This is a very important observation to me and I think is the key to seeing you have a good marriage.  Know yourself.  Know if you like peace or tension.  Be honest about it.  Then determine which your potential spouse is and be very mindful of this. It wills save you alot of a headache.

Stomp!

Life

Another day, another dollar, another pill that's tough to swaller.
Holding on, holding out, something that may-not be gone.
Looking far, looking close, wishing on a shooting star.
Long toiling for not and for wrong, life wasting yes spoiling.

Throwback

I saw this whilst perusing the world wide web today.  

Made me think about a friend I had...or maybe it didn't make me think about her, maybe she was already on my mind. 

This is a poem I wrote a while back (3/13/12) to try to convey my feelings at that time, which are still pretty accurate to how I feel today truthfully. 

In the darkness lies my love- hidden, smitten, forbidden

In the light lies my life- miserable, contemptible, deplorable

In the darkness is found my Soulmate- faultless, flawless, solace 

In the light is found my Captor- demanding, remanding, commanding

In the darkness is where I find peace and release

In the light is where I find sweat and regret

In the darkness I have found amour

In the light I have found immure

Someday the darkness shall become light and the light darkness

Speed the coming of that day O' Lord!

Someday my love that is hidden will become known

Someday.

Soul to share

I'm sitting in the dark thinking, remembering, yes reminiscing of days gone past.  How is it you don't know, how is it you can't show, how is it you turn your back, how is it you give me this flack.  Three years gone by, wait, no four.  Yet I am still waiting, still searching, and so I will until my body hits the floor.  Your existence makes me a better me, wait, the best.  Even when you walk away and it's no longer in your arms I rest.  It's because you share a part of my soul, and that you don't deny. It's your breath, yes your life that makes my spirit fly. Though I have walked through purgatory, and yes my steps did falter, I am sorry for the wrong I've done, I've gone before the alter.  I hope someday you forgive me and can at least be a friend, but I can assure you, I won't stop trying until the end.

meaningful relationships with meaningless people

Do you think some people are incapable of meaningful relationships? I do.  From my experience, people that have not had the fortune of being raised by loving, meaningful parents, tend to have problems being able to co-facilitate a meaningful relationship. Does this mean they can never have a meaningful relationship? I have no idea.  I wish that were not the case, but so far 10 yrs of data says otherwise in my life.  The interesting part is my wife does seem to be able to have meaningful or relatively meaningful relationships with our children, but it's more of a peer type friendship than a parental type relationship.  Could it just be her general immaturity? Maybe. Interestingly enough a few days ago I was having a conversation with my daughter and laughing and joking and I realized that I could not have that same relationship with my wife because at every turn she refutes it.  Is there hope for me and her?  I am beginning to seriously doubt it.

I am a sepiosexual!

I learned a new word.  Sepiosexual.  That's someone that's attracted to someone's intellect.  Very interesting.  I'm so glad their is a word for that.  Don't get me wrong, I like your regular boobs and butt sexy, but it's worthless to me without a beautiful mind to go with it.  Are you a sepiosexual? If you are, I doubt you're a dumbass.

In love with ideas (3 of 3)

So, having made the two former points, I now want to talk about loving someone or more accurately the idea or essence of someone and relate it to the experience I sorely regret...even though I may not...

We have all fallen in love with the idea or essence of someone.  We do it all the time with movie stars, actors, politicians, professors, people.  This is when you form in your mind, correct or not, an idea of what this person is, who they are, what they stand for.  You ascribe a certain definition to them that you have created and you love this definition.  The truth is, often who they are, is not confined within your definition of them. For this reason we find disappointment and surprise in people we "thought we knew".  Now one step further, how often do we "fall in love" with someone we have only known a few months, weeks or even days?  This is where it gets really crazy to me because I have been there.  But the truth is we are falling in love with not only the idea of a person, but the snap shot of and idea of a person at that single point in their life.  This is grounds for a very volatile relationship.  This is where my relationship with the un-named wonder-woman had gone wrong.  I feel, she was in love with the idea of me, and that idea was correctly portrayed by me, of who I was and had been for the last 26 or 27 years of my life up to that point.  Going thru what I was going thru in life though, I was acting contrary to what I believed and this became evident because of my behavior.  What she saw was a man who said one thing and did another, which is altogether not that uncommon.  But she judged me on a snap shot of the shittiest part of my life and that ended our friendship.  That entire situation has caused me a great deal of mental pain, but it wasn't until recently, thinking thru all that that I realized, maybe she's not as great as I think she was?!  Maybe I judged a snap shot of her, because after all we only knew each other for a month before parting ways.  The snap shot I had of her, I loved and adored, but I never knew anything more than a snap shot.  I would love to some day get to see the whole film and maybe then I would better understand why we both came to the decisions in our lives that we have.  Maybe I would love her less, but I suspect I would only love her more. I wish to God that she stop to see the whole film of my life because I am very confident she would love me more.  It all only serves as a reminder to me, though, to be true to myself and always be who I am in essence and morale because I don't want to be judged for my poor decisions in time of weakness and trial there by suffering the consequences for the rest of my life.  

Snap shot (1 of 3)

This is the first of a series of three thoughts I have been having.  They kinda of build on each other to explain my final thought.  
Have you ever taken a picture of something?  Of course you have.  What about a video?  Which is the truer representation?  In my opinion it is the video because capture things that occur around us, we can't change the back ground quickly or without editing etc.  A picture can be made "picture perfect" because it is a very minute moment in time from one angle so we can make everything perfect for just that instance.  If you make a candid video it's much more difficult to control all dimensions.  So what is the difference?  The difference is time.  A snap shot is taken in a split second where a video is taken over a period of seconds, minutes or hours.  The snap shot if often an idealized representation of what we want people to see or how we want people to interpret that moment.  A video, especially a candid one, often times show how things really are.  Have you ever watched a birthday video from your childhood?  There's usually alot of noise, a few people with unhappy banter, someone crying, someone yelling.  Maybe the child blowing out the candles is being yelled at to hurry up before the wax melts, but when we look at the picture from it, man does it look like a happy time. 

So what does this have to do with my writings?  Well, it's an interesting thought for one, but to take it one step deeper, it's to say, some people have taken snap shots of my life.  Some of them picture perfect, others when I was an absolute mess but please do not judge me by the snap shot, judge me by the video.  The video isn't done yet either.  But over my life I have been a pretty good guy, then for a few years of struggle I have been a pretty horrible guy.  In the end I will be the best guy but I am just now starting to make him. So when you look at others, remember, you are only getting a snap shot of their life.   Take time before you make indelible opinions of them so you know you are judging the video and not the snap shot.  They may look better in the picture, they may look worse, only time will tell.  Give it time. 

Finding yourself (2 of 3)

This thought will be is conjunction with the previous blog and the next one to come so it fits nicely in the middle.  
So here's some observations I have made about finding yourself.  Particularly finding yourself to be something other than yourself.  What I mean is, have you ever done things that weren't "you".  You know, things that violate your moral/ethical standards or just things that are out of character for you.  I definitely have. Matter of fact I have on a relatively regular basis for the last four or five years to be truthful.  So just recently I realized that the things I am doing are not congruent with who I am and I sought to define myself better OR change what I was doing and correct course so to speak.  It is important to be yourself both in essence and action because it confuses those around you as it does yourself.  If you have an ill defined persona/existence then people do not know what to expect.  They don't know what you stand for, why you like/dislike, what you believe and this is frustrating when trying to be involved in a friendship or relationship with someone. The major problem comes when someone who likes/loves you for the essence of yourself rather than the actions or morale of you and vice-versa.  It makes it virtually impossible to have any meaningful and deep long term relationship. 
I was recently reminded of this because of a relationship from the past that I still think about often. I tried to contact that person but was completely shut down.  I have never gotten any closure to our friendship because I did some things that were in-congruent with who she believed me to be and that drove her away.  In all honesty I have not been who she believed me to be for the last few years. What she knew me as is what I was for the prior 27 years.  It is in this moment recently, rereading things she wrote me and evaluating myself I have learned that I was indeed portraying my ethic and morale appropriately but I was not living by what I believed or who I thought I was.  My actions were contradictory to my ethics, beliefs and morale. 
Often times these changes or inconsistencies, I think, are related to traumatic experiences in life.  I am not making excuses for my actions or what I did or didn't do, but I am saying that I think that when someone has behavior that does not line up with what they believe that it is an uncomfortable state for that person too and there is something deeper they are often trying to cover up or make better, they just don't know how.  For me, it was the death of several people in my family, the stress of professional school and a broken home life.  All of which piled on me at once and made my life unmanageable to me.  Furthermore I did not know how to deal with these stresses so I ended up finding out that drinking helped me to ignore them.  For the last three and a half years I have managed to ignore problems in my life.  Subconsciously I knew I was doing things I didn't think were right. I always said to myself in the back of my mind that I would stop and understand it all and learn to emote when I was done with school and able to think introspectively once again. So here we are ladies and gents. Why am I a disembodied soul?  Because I have alienated my soul (ethic/morale) from my persona/actions.  This blog is my attempt to reconnect them and set my life in the direction in which it should go.  Will this mend all my past hurt and wrong doing?  No.  Am I the same person I was 4-5 years ago?  Nope.  But I am trying to unify my spirit with my life so I can sleep at night knowing I am, indeed, who I am.  Are you, who you are?