The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for December 2008

My 20 Favorite Actresses

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My friend Robert tagged me with the 20 favorite actresses meme. I had to think about this one for a while. 

Initially I wasn’t sure that I had 20 favorites, but I think that I came up with a decent list. It is not what I’d call risky, but then again there aren’t really any right/wrong answers here.  But I can guarantee that I am going to want to to change it.

Some people will agree and some will disagree. The way I see it if it moves you then you can consider yourself tagged. One more thing, the list is not in order of importance.
  1. Meryl Streep
  2. Ingrid Bergman
  3. Raquel Welch
  4. Glen Close
  5. Cate Blanchett
  6. Ann Margaret
  7. Lauren Bacall
  8. Katherine Hepburn
  9. Kathy Bates
  10. Anne Bancroft
  11. Diane Keaton
  12. Julia Roberts
  13. Sandra Bullock
  14. Emma Thompson
  15. Diane Lane
  16. Gilda Radner
  17. Kate Winslett
  18. Susan Sarandon
  19. Judi Dench
  20. Fay Dunaway

The Search For Happiness

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You can call this post The Search For Happiness. It is one of those posts in which I find myself thoroughly unsatisfied with the end result. I had 800 words or so written down but I decided that I just didn’t like it so I nuked it and started over. This is the result.

As a child I had a lot of different dreams about what I would be when I grew up. Many of them were the typical things that you might here. Professional athlete, Fireman, President, Lawyer, Doctor, Sports writer.

As time passed so did my interest in some of those dreams. I suppose that you could say that my interest in being a pro athlete never did pass, but my ability didn’t allow for that particular dream to continue. I’ll write more about this in a different post.

My interest in some of those other professions waxed and waned over the years for a variety of reasons. Some of it was due to practical reasons and some of it due to what you could call extenuating circumstances. It is fair to say that part of the personal challenge for myself and a number of my friends is the lack of burning desire to become a (fill in the blank). I’ll readily admit to feeling mild jealously to those few people I know who are doing exactly what they love.

I don’t want to live to work. I work to live. See I can rattle off all the little cliches. I don’t want a job, I want a career. But there is so much truth in those thoughts. Life is very short and I want to enjoy it with passion and with gusto. I want to wake up feeling like I am ready to attack the day. It still happens from time to time, but not with the frequency I want.

If you ask why I can give you a list of reasons and I can give you a rudimentary framework for how I am trying to change the areas that are deficient. But I would be remiss if I didn’t try and explore how I got to this place and why.

The simplest answer is that people change. I am just not who I was. Many of the things that used to be important to me are just not all that exciting or interesting to me. Many of the things that I thought that I wanted fall into the category of not necessary.

When the boys and I sit down and discuss this we all agree that life experiences are responsible for creating this change in us. It is a bit unsettling. I have always found big changes to be a bit tough. But I also know that I can’t continue along the path I am walking on without making some adjustments.

One of the guys told me that he fears that he won’t find a place where he feels truly happy and that right now all he wants is to focus upon being happy in the moment. I understand that. I have always been a bit restless and felt this sort of wanderlust. I have wondered if that is always going to prevent me from really enjoying life. But when I think about it I realize that I have a lot of really good memories and some of them are in the very recent past.

The very recent past. That gives me hope and strength. It is a reminder that I am not looking backwards and saying that the best is behind me. It means that there is no reason why the best is not yet to come.

This search for happiness is a very personal and intimate thing. For me at times it has been a struggle and I suspect that there are going to be some very tough moments ahead. But I have to do as I teach my children.

That means I need to identify the problem and try and determine what the solution is. And as I tell the children it means that before I ask for help I need to determine if I can solve it myself. Too bad it is not as simple as the challenges that they come to me with.

In the not so distant future the kids and I are going to have more discussions about how to deal with a challenge head on. I see too many of the parents of their friends creating future issues by always fixing things for their kids, but that is a separate issue altogether.

What I do know for certain is that if I want my children to succeed on their own quest for happiness I have to give them the tools to do so. One way to do so is to let them learn from their father’s experience.

And that is all I have to say about this for now.

Taking a Risk

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So my pal the Rebbetzin’s Husband is concerned about being young and dynamic. I get it. That is sort of a theme lately, the idea of being young and dynamic. Or maybe I should clarify and say that the boys and I are really wrestling with this aging thing. We’re out there kvetching to each other about all sorts of crap about life.

In our band of merry men that I refer to as the boys we have a motley crew of fellows I have had the pleasure of being friends with for what feels like a thousand years. We have been through marriages, childbirth, divorce and death. I know that I have said a million times, but I still think that it is bizarre to be able say that we sound like the model for a bad sitcom. We’re not supposed to be the stereotype.
I mentioned that to another father and he looked at me and said, “what makes you so special that you wouldn’t fit into the stereotype. They are built on reality and then exaggerated.”
I suppose that the answer is that my mental image of myself is different. In my mind I am not pushing 40. I am somewhere between 19 and 25. It may sound ridiculous, but sometimes when I look in the mirror  I am shocked to see the guy looking back at me. The face has more wrinkles than it should and the hair isn’t quite what it used to be. The belly is a bit soft. If I flex I can still see the cuts, but takes a bit of doing. 
If I really was still that kid I wouldn’t have to flex. So what are we really saying here. Are we really bemoaning the changes brought upon us by age? Yes, to a certain extent. I miss being able to eat whatever I wanted without worrying about what it would do to my ability to wear jeans. I miss being able to wake up ache free. 
And it would be a lie to say that I never miss the freedom. Sometimes I do miss that sense of anything is possible. I had no worries other than myself. At any given moment I could decide to do anything. Pick up and move to a new country? No problem. Quit my job? No problem. Chase the girl around the world if I felt like it? No problem.
Now things are different. Now I have to measure the impact of my actions upon the family. But the passage of time hasn’t been all bad. I have an awful lot of good things that I can list upon my chalkboard of accomplishments.
The advantage of age is that now I understand some things about myself and life far better than I did when I was younger. Now the goal is diferent. Now the goal is to position myself so that I am living a life that is thoroughly satisfying. Now the goal is to focus upon my mental/emotional satisfaction.That is not to say that I didn’t do those things before, I did. But when you are 25 it feels like you have a thousand years ahead of you.
I don’t feel like that anymore. I don’t feel like I am going to die anytime soon either. But I have learned that life is too short to be locked into doing things that aren’t fulfilling. So I refuse to be guy that lives in drudgery.
Life is full of challenges and sometimes it is worth taking a risk to get the brass ring. Hell, why settle for brass when you can grab the platinum one.
Time is too short. I don’t know about you, but I am not going to live a life based upon someday. I am going to live one that is based upon making the changes that I need to make to really live. Stick around and I just might blog about a few of them.