A 2012 Mid-Year in Review: A Year Without Mom

I have not been writing very much lately. It has dawn on me that my skills as a writer may not reach a level worthy of recording every silly thought or review of a situation. Just seems irrelevant to pop online to talk about whatever movie, legal case, political issue, or economic turn happens to catch my fancy for the time it takes to organize some coherent thoughts. Other matters are more important than the contributions one makes via blogs.

Today, one year has passed since my mother's death and funeral. Obviously, it runs through my head a lot. July 4th is my grandfather's death to remember too. So while others prepare for food fests, live concerts, fireworks, tracker pulls, horse showings, and whatever else makes the Fourth, the fourth, I will likely ride my bike around campus a lot and watch movies for my own way to get through the holiday.

The year since has been one of reorganization and reality. I got into to Purdue again, achieved my best GPA ever and semester honors, and will take the GMAT in August. I moved to West Lafayette, and currently, paint apartments and bust up plaster that needs work while spackling over the rough spots too. My life too needs more spackle (and walls of plaster) in places we've discussed before, many years ago on this blog.

I spend most of my time alone. Have not made good friends yet, not for lack of trying. But again, as always,
past experiences and realities just are...there. A line from the movie, Hoosiers, by Barbara Hersey's character regarding Gene Hackman's plights before coming to Hickory to coach basketball: "A man your age comes to a place like this, either he's running away from something or he has nowhere else to go."
At Purdue, a little of both is probably true of me.

I saw this course as the last go at school and whatever that might bring. That there can not be much to gain from staying on a paper route, hoping I'll get ahead, and knowing it never did get me (or my mom) anywhere in the decade plus of time we both dedicated to that task. That I also have no where else to go and no one left in my life to share it with is true. This is due to a fear of intimacy.

To be clear: In the last moments and months of my mother's life, I found a closeness to her even as she could not always make clear her thoughts (dementia and cancer.) Being relied upon, and counted to do the right thing, is never easy. I made mistakes and stress was in every decision. Yet, I did my utmost to give my mother as much of a happy time as we could afford. (Her favorite: going to PETSMART to pet the cats. We went about twice a week as it was nearby.) Simple, frivolous to many I suppose, but it was something. Book stores too were treat. Shopping at Target. Watching the Cubs...

But outside of that one relationship (the easiest one to be closest, for many people, but not all), I have no real close relationships. Just superficial acquaintances and meager work connections that end at the juncture of mutual interests and quitting time. Years ago, I discussed this from the woe-is-me, victim-is-me standpoint. I was who I was then; flawed and failed and flailing around for answers. It was after the first time I seriously attempted to tear down a codependent, fear-of-rejection/intimacy wall as a recovering alcoholic in 1999-2000 while in a community organization. Later, I was duly burnt by pursuing an unavailable woman; reacted very badly to her salt-in-the-wounds rejection; was punished rightly for my bitter and spiteful words in retaliation; and had to accept lies told (to buttress the legal case) on top of that. And then...life had to go on with the damage done.
  
Now, I have tried to be more open, yet guarded also, since there are others out there that are just as hurt and
just as willing to repeat their cycle of re-victimization. So while I can hope to make things work, I realize what are the missing pieces to the puzzle: intimate relationships. What is worse - I have never seen them in operation in my own life. No happy intimate relationship while in any romance. (14 years since I've even kissed a woman.) Barely a friendship to count on. For some, I can hear, "well, you need to give more to others." 

The last six to eight months, in various ways, I have made strides on this area. At least dozen fellows, for various reasons, I have tried to advise in long form. Work-related, life goals, self-improvement mantras, or titles of worth, or just general encouragement in pursuit of the long-term. Sometimes a few minutes, others, maybe 1/2 to and hour in social atmospheres I probably should not be in - bars. Advise, not, "This is what you should do...period," instead just stories from my own failings... Yet, while worthwhile, it lacks. It's not fulfilling long-term. Still does not solve my own personal issues. But, I try.   (And for contrast: I've tried a couple times to talk to ladies. Not very successful at all - nor were they open to advice - in fact, plenty of know-it-all ladies must attend Purdue. Wisdom: the outcome of failed experiences. Or: You can learn a lot from a dummie. )

That said, you have to Run Your Race. (See Below.)

So, that's the year in review, mid-year. We will see where I am next year.

Will I still blog, if infrequently?
Will I be in an MBA program?
Will I make a contribution of note?
Will I cross a rubicon in my evolution towards a more whole and satisfying life?

I realize some may not like Joel Osteen, but a few bits here in Run Your Race are worth listening to:

1) 20:25-22:30 Saul & High Maintenance People
2) 24:15-25:30 The Old Man, the Boy, and The Donkey, People Pleasing
3) 25:35-27:15 Dreams Untold (Joseph, Mary)
4) 11:55-13:00 The Pit: People Pleasing, Ignoring Advise

 

I'm Back!!!: Resistance was futile and March Madness Set In

I do like to blog. Yes, I get tired of writing the same old stuff that others do. Picking out f-ed up situations, and trying to find some silver lining, or otherwise, putting my spin on the mess as if 1,000,000 others are not doing the same.

It's hard to be original. Some will likely tell you, "I've heard that before, somewhere else." Or, "you have to have readership too."

I really don't know what works best - I just write anything for no one.

I went back to researching for the baseball book, and I changed the title to keep with the time frame I'll be covering. I've written a few blogs at my other sites: Bringin' Gas and Anything Written. The last one is about March Madness and a friendship.

Excerpt:

I used to be a total addict at tourney time. When younger, and free of
things like work and with a desire to spend money I really didn’t have, watching
basketball at a watering hole was just natural. Spending Thursday-Sunday that
1st week meant I could sluff off and kill time with friends.

My then best friend was a Minneapolis native, and we killed a few
March Madnesses off at the Mall of America. Patriotic to celebrate sport inside this
lasting monument to American consumerism. We’d go to the top floor where all the bars were, eat plenty of greasy food, drinking all of the world’s favorite
pints.

The games always seemed exciting. We’d have our brackets worked
out five different ways, with $10,$20 or $50 in the mix for a bet. The buzz
after a game-ending miracle shot, or a David smacking around a Goliath for 39
minutes, only to fall short, was a pleasure to be apart of.

The last picture is just a gratuitous shot of cheerleaders that will be cheering their bobby socks off for 6'1"-7'1" muscular athletes trying to put an orange ball through a hole. They (the athletes) will wind up with one or two of these females as conquests after the fray of battle that is March Madness. And usually will forget about these happy lassies before the sheets dry. Yet, we give athletes such credit for their work, and sometimes forget, they can be every bit the morons we dislike on Wall Street. (Yet, I too wish I'd been one of these morons for a year...)

Though I am back to blogging, here, I will not devote too much time to posting. Likely a post or two every couple of weeks at most. Depends on my ambition.

Like friendships, athletic endeavors and women, I never really know the outcomes of my efforts. The conquests are few and far between. And my ambitions are usually scattered.

A Dozen Years: What I haven't learnt yet

It's been a dozen years since I left the campus of Purdue University. Strange how that time has went by - never completely understanding what I was supposed to have learnt from college - and yet, I can remember many, many things that I did undoubtedly learn.

But the quest is still fuzzy.

One, I was never meant to be an engineer. I stayed in the major more out of respect and the hopes of my mother than any really skill or desire to work in manufacturing/logistical plants from 8-6, five or six days per week. The work was never too exciting, and I didn't belong in that crowd. Some can do it - pandering to management or taking on the tasks of greatest expediency - but I was much, much too cynical, yet wanting, desiring idealism in my work.

The next thing I gather is that I wasn't apart of the university like I should have been. In theory, we should get to know our profs, spend time challenging ourselves to learn things we once thought unlearnable and have the ability to gain the leadership needed to provide the guidance to others around us that didn't get the golden opportunity of attending prestigious universities.

Well, I didn't.

Most times I goofed off to the end result of a 2.07 GPA. I skipped more classes than any sophmore could have possibly attended 100% of the time. There were reasons, nay excuses, but I didn't optimize my 5 1/2 year stay at the Purdue U.

Friendships. We talk of those heady days and the people we hoped to make life-long buddies with during those Saturday football games and the weekday all nighters on Thermodynamics. I had my friends - not a constant group by any stretch - but they weren't of the appropriate mindset in regards to whatever they deemed their responsibility to a long-term friendship towards me.

My then best friend did stay around for a few seasons after our graduation from the campus of concrete, the bouncing of basketballs and us, the gadflies of Greekdome. We were mismatched - he the 6'3" man of Minneapolis with a Republican streak, me the 5'6" man of Democracy and small towndome - but we cracked each other up.



Our lives then were intertwined by the threads of card-playing, comic affinities, music flavors and being on the campus searching for Mrs. Right. (Pictured left minus decent clothes - She popped up in my email box as an ad for a Mate 1 singles site. Really, can we have any more adverts for sex, sexual-enhancing meds and the pursuit of something that might replace sex?)





But getting back to that friend, I do miss the odd conversations about his bank account, his roommates (now roommate/wife), working in sales or other woe-is-me-this-week situation. Maybe he respected me for where I had come from, maybe he didn't. But it seems when the going got too tough (for him in knowing me) that ended that road. Looking back, though it was never a friendship of equals, it did matter to have someone to talk or run around with during the 1990's. I kept my sanity likely due to it.





Since graduation, I have been searching for the life I apparently was suppose to find in the classrooms, study lounges, student union (Purdue Memorial Union pictured right) and other places of reflecting on task at hand.





I started going to bookstores more often. Attempted several times to write things of some personal worth (a psychological fiction called The Warehouse and the Watchtower - about 200 pages in, I stopped), poems, journaling, etc. I almost immediately started looking for ways out of Industrial Engineering as a career. I took to law - not the criminal stuff, hopefully, environmental - but got only as far as the LSAT. (Not necessarily due to lacking of desire or ability...personal as usual.)


Little did I know that my only solace came in writing stuff. I began that trek about one year after my graduation on July 4, 1997. I had sparingly journaled before that, but since that time, I have jotted down more than fair share of garbage thoughts, quirky ideas, personal tragedies and the like.


I still haven't learn how to be me. Whether in writing, Memorex (Ella Fitzgerald below) or Alive and Kickin' (Simple Minds, simple pleasures below.)



I was a hick child of the 1980's, a naive college guy of the 1990's and a poor man of the new millennium. That's one way I see it. Through that unerring looking glass of wealth and privilege most suspect is the only way to go in this want-more-stuff-because-it's-cool-techno-junk world. If zeroes and heroes are born via the computer, then zero me in. I learnt just enough to actually be dangerous to myself - since my problems started with an e-mail.

The experiences of a dozen years hence haven't taught me enough to overcome the very things I wish were not in my life. Unlike Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, I'm still closer to food stamps than my field of dreams written with the not-bitter audacity of hopefulness.

There lies an outcome somewhere - but I haven't learned what that is.

The trek is still underway. The tools have changed, the map is gone and there is no sherpa to follow on my own personal Himalayan quest.

The quest for knowledge & life meaning, not found in college (yeah, The Police reared its head in this line) has been the problem.

Maybe, as many noted philosophers/screenwriters have said, "you need to get laid."

Oh, how funny that is...

Happy Mother's Day, moms.

A Superbad ID: Just call me McLovin

Yep, that's me from a June 1999 CSI employee id. (Not that CSI, the popular super-sleuth, technology-will-find-the-killer show, but Cold Storage Integrated.)


For some reason I was happy on this my first day working in a refrigerated warehouse of 380,000 square feet, 7,500 forward pick slots, over 30,000 reserve level, 95 dock doors, and nearly 200 pieces of lift equipment. Each day, CSI generally saw 200,000 hand picked cases shipped to nearly 400 Kroger destinations. The record, while I worked there, was 271,000 outbound about a week before Thanksgiving 2000.

I actually was a more than content while I spent my days creating labor standards, doing analysis on better efficiency, working on Pro Forma statements and going other places to see why this industry is so hard on people. (A good picker will handle 2,000 medium weight cases (average 13-15 lbs.) in a 8-hour shift at this place. (The house standard was between 195-200 cases per hour.)

I think most of all, I was finally in a niche that worked for me.

After a year there, I got to the point where I was doing other things that were positive. I took a Con Law course at IUPUI and joined up into a community organization. My time was spent well.
I didn't drink for over a year. I still went to bars, drinking diet coke or coke, but just more for the "scenery" than the practice of blowing off steam or getting beer muscles to join the typical fray of college, post-college stupidity. Sometimes it was relaxing, but under it all, a tension inside evidently built. I wanted more to come of the future.

My best friend, will call him Jethro, was moving in with his future wife. He hadn't exactly been a model character, but he was a long time cohort, defender and supporter of whatever our weird little minds came to as a crossroads.


He is a Green Bay Packer fan in Minnesota. He's a sharp dresser (unlike me.) Loves, absolutely loves music. (Was a producer at a now-defunct local Music station, 93.7 The Edge and a trumpet player at Purdue.) He was terrible with finances and used me as a calculator on more than one weekly phone convo. And we both found most of this noisy ass life amusing, at least then. (South Park was a soundtrack we really dug together.)

But I became "Superbad", at least in the minds of some, and sadly, to him.


We tend to overblow the bad deeds of people, to shame them into some conformity to the rules of an often harried society, and in a stark way, that happened to me. Around this Holiday time in 2000, as I faced my worst challenge - and made some rash and rude statements - my then best friend no longer wanted much to say or do with me. Avoidance was the operative word.

My concept of obtaining a meaningful relationship took a sharp and dangerous curve and I fell off the cliff of life. I went back to drinking. Didn't do much at work - except get an offer for a new job, which offered me an escape from the situation, but wasn't an escape - and starting hating all the people around me. I was mad at myself...guilty about things I wrote in an email.

I was so sorry.

I wish I had had McLovin's guidance somehow. Even in their raucous ride, these cops meant well for the kid.

In the end we all have to learn how to make it day by day with the losses, the lessons and inevitability that we are going to fuck up more than grow up...

But as Officer Michaels aptly put it in my case,"Prepare to get fucked by the long dick of the law."

It kinda is like that...

The Power of 10: People you've met and befriended

By now, I figured I've met roughly 35,000 individuals in life. (Maybe more, or less, but that's a ballpark full of individuals.) That's a 1,000 per year, or roughly 2.5-3 new people per day. It may be many more than that for others (depends on your openness.)

By meeting those 35,000, I mean had conversations with that lasted a few sentences. Maybe went on for a period of minutes. Face to face, or at least I hope it was.

Far Acquaintances: Of those 35,000, 3,500 I spoke with at least one other time, maybe a bit more. We may have done some business, had another by happenstance meeting, talked at sometime during school, etc. Anyways, we likely made contact for a period of about 1 month. We at least knew each by name and something else more personal. (Once again this number may be higher for you, or me...)

Short-Term Friends: Of those 3,500, 350 became someone I knew for a period of 3 months to 1 year or perhaps a little more. They might have been school teachers, classmates I knew well enough, bosses, ex-girlfriends (such as they invariably were) and people I became friends with for a while in my ever fluid life. We were added to each other's non-Myspace page of life's toil. They could also include bloggers, people I've emailed for a while (but never actually met face to face.)

Long-term Friends: Of those, 35 became influential to my path (lasting more that 1 year.) They were people I called regularly, maybe close relatives, a college friend I never lost, a boss that mentored, someone that mattered beyond the friendship we first initiated. They are people you may have respected for their input during tragedy or life's turmoils. They assisted you in giving you a leg up. Maybe they were your first true love, but things fell apart.

Life Influencers. Of those, 3-4 have been greatly influential, possibly detrimental. These typically have not been my friends. Likely, they are relatives that for some reason, made an impact that lasted for years....negative in my case. Maybe a ex-husband or wife.

For others, these could be uniquely positive people. Your mother and father, a brother, a school teacher that was a true friend for life, a distant friend who knows your every secret. Someone you trusted with all your hopes, dreams, desires and flaws. This grouping could be a group of one, or maybe 10. It depends on the "openness issue" once again.

You may disagree with the premise of this - but if you look at it with an open mind - you'd find that pretty much reflects how communication works. We narrow people down from the moment we meet them. We put them into categories (not purposely, at least not always) but subconsciously we narrow the scope (of our interaction) by each gradient I mentioned. (You may have a better structure, but that's to be discussed in comments.)

You may make some groupings bigger (Pareto Analysis - 80/20 rule of things) than I did. I was just reflecting a pattern to it all, human contact, acquaintance, friendship, influence and mentors.

Depending how you do this, you are likely shaped by it as a person.

If everyone you meet becomes a "long-term friend" then you are likely a very outgoing, happy, striving to fit the mold of great person, person.

If you have plenty of "positive life influencers", you may be much wiser than and much more successful than others are. You get it. You make changes based on those you allowed into your inner circle.

If you mainly have "short-term friends", then you might be superficial in your dealings. You never allow people to move too close to you. You get restless in relationships. I think plenty of people fit this mold.

An analogy I used a long time ago between friendships and cars:

New friendships are like new cars. When we get them, we take really good care of them at first. We take them out, show them off, clean them (in friends, we keep it fresh and open) and are very happy to be with them. We are excited by the prospect of having (driving) our new friend (car.)

As time goes by, we start to let our friends down. We treat them with less regard. Like a vehicle that has 50,000 or 75,000 miles, we don't take it to the car wash, or put much effort into fixing the dents and dings that invariably happen from "using" the car. Same with friends we've had for a while, we get lazy, forget to call, don't always think of them first, ignore an email,etc.

Very few people have antique cars. Very few people have "antique friendships." You may have one friend for twenty years that you call your best bud or gal pal that you always think of. A husband or wife that fits that mold. (Course, if you get divorced, that changes.) But is that relationship pristine? Without dents?

Most old vehicle were restored with painstaking work. Friendships likely need that too.

Be well! (Said the pessimist.)