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 January 2009

It is The Middle of the Night

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It is the middle of the night and I suddenly find myself awake. I fell asleep on the couch and apparently no one managed to cover me with a blanket. Can’t say that I totally blame them as the children seem to have run off with all of the spares.

Makes me think that just as I have an auto club card I should have a blanket club card that I can call when I am in need. It would be nice to have some sort of service like that. Maybe it would help prevent me from waking up in a foul mood.

I am cold, my leg has a cramp and my back hurts from sleeping in some sort of fetal position. What the hell. I spent nine months curled into a ball. Shouldn’t there be some sort of rule that says my body should automatically remember those days and consequently I should be exempt from cramps and discomfort.

Woke up having had a dream about my best friend, an irritating dream in which I was given some sort of stupid, illogical and unreasonable answer about an argument. Can’t say that I quite remember what it was about, but suffice it to say that I am right. Oh yes, I am right.

Going to try and go back to sleep now. In fact had I not noticed that the computer was still on I would have gone straight to sleep. I probably should have, but I am awake and irritated so I took a moment to try and vent.

I hate waking up like this. With any luck I’ll fall asleep without any sort of struggle and have the sort of dream that you never want to wake up from. But if I can’t or don’t you’ll probably hear about it.

When Bloggers Meet

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I have often mentioned that I didn’t spend any time considering whether I was interested in blogging. It was nothing more than an impulse. One day I thought that it might be interesting to try it out and so I did.

Had I really spent any time considering it I would have done things differently. I certainly would have come up with a better moniker than Random Thoughts-Do They Have Meaning? Who would have known that so many other people would use such a non-descript title. I really don’t like it, but after all this time it is developed a bit of brand equity so I don’t know that changing it makes sense.

Having jumped into the water without any regard for temperature or depth I didn’t have any idea that I would enjoy it as much as I have. I really was surprised by how much I got out of it. I never kept a journal or any sort of diary. This was a new sort of experience for me.

As I treaded water and learned how to swim in the blogosphere I experimented with topics to write about and discovered that I enjoyed being able to recount some very personal moments. I didn’t have that many readers and the few that I did were complete strangers. That made it easy to discuss things that I probably would never have volunteered.

In the early days a number of bloggers approached me with invitations to meet for lunch or a drink. I routinely turned those down as I was very guarded about peeling back the curtain. It was more comfortable to be the all powerful Oz and not just a man whose balloon had crashed near the Emerald city.

Over time I found that I developed relationships with some people and when the occasion presented itself I found myself agreeing to meet them in person. I recently added a new person to the few bloggers that I have met in the real world.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting The Misanthrope from Toner Mishap. After four years it was nice to put a face to the words and ideas. If you ask me if he matched the image I had of him I can’t really say. I really didn’t have a sense of what I expected his voice to sound like so the real thing wasn’t shocking at all.

But he did look a bit like some of the old pictures he had posted on the blog so I suppose that you could say that he looked as I expected him too.

The conversation was quite comfortable, not that I find that to be surprising. After four years of reading each other’s blogs we actually knew quite a bit about the other.

It does make me wonder. I had a nice time with a misanthrope. Whatever does that say about me. Maybe it is just proof that I am a curmudgeon. 😉 Anyway I am glad to have had the opportunity. We’ll have to do it again sometime.

Feeling Sad & Defeated

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A new entry for Fragments of Fiction

“There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it nowThe child is grown,
The dream is gone.
but I have become comfortably numb.”
Comfortably Numb– Pink Floyd

“I can’t pay my bills. I can’t find a job. I can’t support my family, can’t even support myself,” he said. At least I think that is what he said. Slumped against the wall he stared off into space and began mumbling again.

“I feel sad and defeated. Whatever I touch crumbles into dust. Relationships, jobs, friends all they do is go away.”

It wasn’t the first time I had heard him speak this way. He was a man who lived and died every day. His own personal rollercoaster never stopped running, at least that is how he had once described it to me.

I understood. We have been friends for most of our lives so I have borne witness to it all. I have seen the triumphant moments. Walked with him through the fire and saw him emerge unscathed. We share a million memories and a million dreams and nightmares.

He is not the easiest guy to get along with. At times he is moody and temperamental. He is a man who consumes life and that takes a certain toll upon oneself. I have often told him that if he could figure out how to take the middle road he’d be happier more frequently. The highs and lows can’t be good for you.

It is a fruitless discussion. This sort of behavior is part of his core. It is who he is. It is why whenever he has dropped back down inside his personal hell I don’t worry. Ok, I worry a little but I have never seen him not find a way to rise above it. Never seen him lose all hope, at least not until this moment.

Because now is the first time that I haven’t seen that fire in his eyes and I wonder. I wonder if the flame has truly been extinguished. Has he lost that edge or is it my imagination. Sometimes it is hard for me to tell.

I can’t walk along the razors edge the way that he can. It makes me far too nervous. But that is part of the friendship. We complement each other. There is a certain balance that we provide. So I stand there next to him and debate whether to yell or coddle.

He is a grown man. I don’t need to do this. I shouldn’t have to do this. But he is my friend and I have seen him do some incredible things in the name of our friendship. So I suppose that the question of whether I will help him is moot. The bigger and better question is what is the best way to help. How am I most likely to get through to him.

Slowly I slide down the wall until my butt hits bottom and I find myself just a hair shy of sitting in his lap. For the moment we sit in silence and then he tells me that if I think that this is our Brokeback Mountain moment I better be prepared to get punched in the mouth.

It is said with a hint of feeling and I almost believe that he is better than he is. But something feels off to me, so I am not quite prepared to accept that.

Instead I say nothing and wait for him to speak again. It is a noisy silence and it is disconcerting. But whether it is because I am really concerned or just confused is still up for debate.

A Good Father

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The beauty of attending a reunion like I did is that it forces you to look at your life and think about what it is that you are doing. Because when you run around a room telling people from your past about your present you have your nose pushed right into a pile of life.

I spent a chunk of time Saturday night listening to people spin tales about who they are and what they do. I am not trying to say that people were lying or embellishing the truth, but in many cases that is exactly what they did.

Some of the people that we thought of as being goofballs or least likely to succeed are incredibly successful now. And some of those we expected to be a huge succeess were not. It is not easy to look some of them in the eye and tell a story about a life that hasn’t lived up to what you wanted. It is even harder when you listen to someone shout with such exuberance about how things are better than they ever could have imagined.

Now it is no secret that the last four years have been harder for me than I would have ever expected. I have faced some challenges that I couldn’t have foreseen. I have dealt with unfair situations and circumstances and done the best that I could. Sometimes I fell down. Sometimes I simply failed.

But there were other moments when I didn’t. There were moments when I succeeded in spite of the stumbling blocks that were set before me. I’d like to say that there were more succcesses than failures, but I am not completely sure that it is so.

What I can say is that these experiences have provided a sort of hard scrabble education. I have learned things about myself that will inevitably help me. I have stood in the fire and watched the flames burn me. I know, it is bit melodramatic but it is how I feel.

It has also helped to clarify not just what I want, but what I need. And that is something that some people never quiet figure out. I can tell you what I want with a lot of detail and know that it is accurate. I can also tell you that I am working to achieve those goals and that I am doing my best to do it without wreaking havoc everywhere.

If you want to know how this applies to being a good father, well I can give you a number of explanations. I am a good father. I work hard for my family and do a lot to give the children a great life. But I can do better. I am falling short in some areas. There are some things that I can improve at and I am working on it.

I can tell you that I believe that my children are going to be able to look at my life and learn a lot from it. They’ll be able to see that I have made a lot of mistakes but that I have also made a lot of smart moves.

If all goes as I hope it will those lessons will serve them well. One of the most important lessons is how to keep going when it feels like the world is collapsing. It is something that I saw with my parents and something that I hope that I can pass along.

When it is all said and done I think that the most important part of being a good father is giving your children the tools to live a good life. If I can do that then I am fairly confident that they’ll make good choices, at least I hope so.

I won’t be defined solely by the deeds and actions of my children, but I do hope that when I am gone they have nothing but fond memories of me as having been a good father.

Some Blog Stats to Share

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This is post number 6,408.

The most popular posts of the last year include but are not limited to:

The Duggar Family Revisited
What Are Your Favorite Song Lyrics?
War in Gaza Update #16
The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants
A funny email about anger management
Weird Signs
No! No! No! Eye Tattoos Are Out
Morality Without Religion- A Comment to The Self-Righteous
Name a Song That Makes You Cry
Haveil Havalim- The Almost Purim Edition

I suppose that a two second analysis shows that people enjoy my fiction, humorous tales, some Jewish and political content.

Recent keywords that led to the blog include:

how to win a woman’s heart
how to hardboil eggs
Duggar family
favorite song lyrics
what makes a community
how to care for sick parents
sexual incompatibility in marriage
fixing a broken man
how do you name your blog

My blog is read by people around the world. The countries that send the most visitors include:

U.S.
U.K.
Canada
Israel
Australia
India
Phillipines
Germany
Netherlands
France

I started blogging in May of 2004. Sometimes I think that I’ll do it for the rest of my life and sometimes I think that I won’t last another year. Sometimes I think that I have already published my best work and sometimes I think that it lies ahead of me.

Bottom line, I haven’t a clue as to how much longer I’ll keep doing this, but I guess for a while. We’ll take it one day at a time.