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 2011

Be A Better Parent Through Blogging

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It is a little past 1 am and John Michael Montgomery is singing I Can Love You Like That on the fabulous iTunes shuffle.  More than a few hours ago a 6.5 year-old girl told me that a boy in school tried to kiss her. I made a very stern face and told her that I am going to have to punch him in the nose. It had the desired affect as she suddenly burst into laughter. The dark haired beauty was quite pleased with herself because she fooled daddy.

I didn’t tell her that I am serious- one day I might punch one of these boys the nose and boy won’t they all be surprised. Damn boys, only have one thing on their mind and don’t tell me otherwise. They all want more Legos- just ask my son.

Been watching with some amusement the uproar over the Chinese Mom and her philosophy on raising children. I gather that more than 29,000 posts have been written about this topic generating more than 210,983 comments. Most of those came from outraged mothers who said that they would never raise their child in that fashion. Ok, I have no idea how many posts were written or how many comments came as a result of this Wall Street Journal column. I don’t know if the woman wrote it to try and promote her book or if she really believes it but I do know that I don’t c are what she thinks of my parenting skills.

I mention that because I have seen quite a few comments from women who really were upset by her statements. Frankly I don’t understand why someone would be upset by some stranger but that is me.

But the good thing about her column is that it generated more thought and introspection about parenting and that my friends is how we reach our title, be a better parent through blogging. While the headline might sound like link bait, don’t be fooled there is truth in it. Blogging provides you with an easy way to write down your thoughts and feelings about life. It provides a handy dandy corner where you can share your beliefs/philosophies about life.

And if you are truly introspective this provides you with an opportunity to read aloud what it is you think or feel. There is value in that. You might not realize it, but most of us make decisions based upon feelings and or arbitrary decisions that are not necessarily based in fact. We don’t always act logically. Not that logic is required to be a good parent, but sometimes we aren’t really aware of what it is that we are doing.

The act of writing it down provides a simple way to measure and understand. It  provides an opportunity to conduct a more careful analysis. Blogging isn’t just a chronicle of the life of your child, but a place where you can come to nifty realizations about what is happening at home. And by that I am not suggesting that bad things are happening, but there might be areas that you are concerned about. You might want to try to provide a healthier diet or work on improving study skills. Blogging can help you do all of that and more.

And now if you’ll excuse me, Our House by Madness is playing on iTunes and I promised myself that I would go to sleep when that came on regardless of whether this post was finished or not.

Blog Notes: Fragments of Fiction

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A quick note regarding Fragments of Fiction for those who are new. During the past six or so years I have written approximately 150 insertions for Fragments of Fiction. When I moved the old blog here I discovered that WordPress offers a feature that allows you to link posts that are part of a series. I started randomly linking the Fragments of Fiction posts with the series tag not realizing that it placed a numerical value upon each insertion.

The purpose of the series tag is to keep all of the posts in a series together in a chronological order. I sort of screwed that up. By tagging these posts randomly I locked them into the series set but created a crazy order. At some point in time I will get around to fixing that, but the truth is that there is an order for about 30 of these posts. After that it gets a bit jumbled.

But there is a rhyme and a reason to it all and like I said, I’ll get to it. Stay tuned.

Shine A Light On Our Soul

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Not so long ago you told me that you didn’t understand me. It wasn’t the first time that you had said it but it was the first time in a long while in which I felt you letting your guard down.  I read the email twice, took a deep breath and ignored it. It wasn’t because I don’t care or am uninterested, far from it. I ignored it because I love you. I ignored it because of the crap that had gone down between us. I ignored it because it was a foolish remark. Yes, it was simply ridiculous and we both know it.

I ignored it because you used both hands to push me away. I ignored it because you slammed the door in my face, closed the windows and told me to get lost. I ignored it because the man you fell in love with didn’t put up with that kind of nonsense.  I ignored it because I don’t wear sweaters because someone else is cold.  I ignored it because I woke up. I stopped pretending to be Rip Van Winkle. I woke up because I remember who I am, who I was and who I want to be.

Damn woman, I let you do one hell of a number on me. I gave in to the fear of losing you and got lost in it all. I got lost in the maze that we created and wandered through the haze and mist unsure and uncertain of what to do or how to get out of it. And while I wandered I managed to trip over every hidden root, hole and rock. I fell down more times than I can count and bloodied my lip so badly I don’t know if your lips would remember it.

And in between the falls and the twisted ankles I’ll be damned if I didn’t find myself battling the monsters of the dark. There in that twilight I fought them, monsters both real and imagined. Sometimes it was so dark I couldn’t make out their faces but I felt the bite of their teeth and the sting of their tail. My right shoulder bears the scars of one of those battles. Something large and powerful clamped down on it and did its best to try to tear it loose from my body. And though the pain was significant I never gave up.

I pummeled it with my left hand and screamed in rage. In fact it is fair to say that whatever it was touched something primal and deep inside of me. There were moments there where I wasn’t sure if I was turning into more of animal than a human. Truth is that when I finally tasted its blood I felt a surge of adrenalin- the sort of endorphin rush that normally would have come from working out. I suppose that you could say that it set off some sort of beserker rage because I went a little bit crazy or maybe I should say crazier.

Eventually it became clear to me that whatever fear I had once felt had been transferred over to whatever it was I was fighting. And it also became clear to me that the man I was when I first started fighting would have let the creature go- but I wasn’t that man any longer. This wasn’t about defending myself well enough to survive. No, it was about making a statement. It was about shock and awe. It was about wreaking the kind of havoc that echoed in ways that would make the others avoid me. I was tired of being hunted, now I would became the hunter.

You see, when I woke up from wherever it was that I had been I remembered things. I remembered the good and the bad. I remembered what it was that had happened and why I had been afraid. But I also remembered the look in your eyes and how you made me feel like a hero. I remembered how very much I loved being the hero, your hero. I remembered how easily you fit inside my arms and how I could carry you without ever growing tired.

But mostly I remembered the day I realized that I loved you and how happy I was to know that you loved me. And I remembered how we said that no matter what would happen our hearts would never forget. And they never did. They never lost touch. Our souls never ended their embrace. What broke was logic and reason. What broke was our ability to try and understand that which could never be explained.

So I ignored your comment about not understanding me because you understand me just fine. And I stopped trying to knock down the wall you built because it wasn’t making things better it was making them worse. The more I chased you the faster you ran away. So I placed my faith in something else and decided that the best way to try to bring you home was to try and shine a light on our soul.

Yes, our soul, not yours or mine but ours.

It is a risk. It is a gamble and it is something that could end up biting me in the ass. But sometimes you need to stop and evaluate whether what you are doing is working and clearly what I did wasn’t. So here I am working on other things. So here I am living my life in a different place and a different way than I once thought I would. But that doesn’t mean that the place I find myself in is forever. It is just a temporary spot to occupy and if what my heart says is true than life will change when it changes.

And when you turn off your head and listen to your heart you’ll find your way back. Just remember whose eyes will always be staring back at you and that when you think of me I will be thinking of you.

Master of My Destiny

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“Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures.
~ by Vince Lombardi ~

Every time I think of writing this post I am tempted to change the headline so that it reads “Master of  My Domain.” I blame Seinfeld for infecting my brain for this. It was a memorable episode that has secured a place as a pop culture reference.  Even though it is supposed to be funny it is applicable to the real topic of this post which is about taking control of our lives.

I really shouldn’t say our lives because I am not writing this to motivate you but me. Sure, I hope that you find it to be inspirational but that is entirely for selfish reasons. If you find inspiration you will come back to visit again and that will help me in building this blog so that eventually my goal of turning it into a significant source of income will be realized. It is one of a number of different objectives that I have established for myself and part of the mental map that I have constructed.

The mental map is something that I keep inside my head. It is a list of things that I want to do. Some of these items are things that I have been dreaming about since I was a boy and others are more recent additions. The mental map is where I store them along side the guide for converting them from something that I dream about into reality. I often write about being a dreamer and how I see visions of the future. Or  maybe I should use my preferred term, echoes of the future.

People need to have dreams. It is part of what keeps us going and it is most definitely part of how I motivate myself. It is not secret that I have been fighting some battles for a while now. There are things going on that are troubling me. There are challenges that have presented themselves repeatedly and I have done my best to meet them head on. Sometimes I have found myself feeling frustrated and angry because it has felt like I have been handcuffed. My ability to confront them has been limited because so much has been outside of my control.

It is not easy for me to accept that. It is not easy to feel like I am being forced to play a game whose rules are unknown or subject to change without notice.  And I find myself thinking about conversations with my paternal grandfather. “You have to play the hand that you are dealt” was one of his favorite lines. The memory makes me smile even if sometimes the words feel flat.

But as a father I hear something different. As a father I hear myself talking to the children about what is and what can be. I hear myself telling them to stop fighting battles that you can’t win and to adapt. Meaning, you shouldn’t bang your head against the wall because your head will break long before the wall does. So figure out a way to do things differently.

And that is what I have been doing. I have been focused on finding different approaches to these challenges.  I alternate between finesse and brute strength.  It is not always necessary to knock down a wall if there is a door that  I can walk through.

Alongside that mental map is a little storehouse of quotes and life experiences that I draw upon. When I feel like I need to recharge my batteries it is one of the places that I like to visit. It is also where I made the decision that I was going to work harder on focusing my energy on doing things that are fulfilling. Life is short and our grip upon it can be tenuous. I don’t want to just be. I don’t want to just exist and pass through my days.

So the things that I do and the people I hang out with are those that stoke the fires of my passions. Part of being the master of my destiny means that I focus on that. I understand and recognize that it is not possible to limit myself to that. There are still things that I have to do that aren’t going to fit into that category or people that aren’t really part of that. But if they help me to get to the places I want to be or to stay there than it is a reasonable compromise.

If you have managed to read through all of this mental nonsense the takeaway here is the following.  I am focused on living a life that is meaningful and not wasted. I may not achieve every objective I set out before me, but if I actively pursue them then I am still being true to trying to be the master of my destiny.

Dear June- It is 2011

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Dear June,

It is January 2011, second week already. Hard to believe how fast time moves and how much can happen even when it feels like time is standing still. Sometimes the reflection that I see in the mirror startles me. He looks a little older and more weathered than I expect to see. It is hard to reconcile that face and the body that goes with it with the mental image in my mind.  That kid you knew apparently is a little bit older than when you first met him.

In so many ways he is still that same goofy guy and in others….well life has taken a bite out of his ass. He hasn’t quite decided what to make out of it all. There are parts and pieces of him that fight to make sense of some things. The rhyme and the rhythm of his life is out of whack and he finds it disconcerting. Sometimes when gets out of the shower he drops his towel and stares at himself in the mirror. There are relatively few things in life that he feels like he has control over so this is something that he has grabbed onto. Call it ego or whatever other term you want but he knows that he can control this.

That is, he feels like he can take control of this little piece of his life. He can focus on his diet and pump the weights a little bit harder. He has no misconceptions about being able to turn back the clock. That is not going to happen- he isn’t going to be 25 again but he doesn’t really want to be. All he wants is to slow things down a bit and create a better foundation for the future. So when he looks in the mirror he is checking his progress.

Not so long ago he made a number of other decisions regarding his life and the future he wants. He still dreams of the things that you two once spoke of and he wonders if the truth of his heart will match the reality of his day. He has reacquired the edge that he had when you first met and he works on sharpening it. In part it is a defensive measure that he takes to protect himself. While he never did stop dancing in the fire he had to figure out a way to turn down the flames so that he could focus on making the changes that were necessary.

And he has come to believe wholeheartedly that if lightning could strike once than it could strike twice. That crazy gypsy woman and the astrology all spoke of it and well…he doesn’t want to fight it. Doesn’t want to fight it because if things happen in the manner his heart whispers of it there is no point. It feels silly to say it. He has given that wistful smile a chance to grace his lips on more than one occasion because he knows that some things just are.

Because even when he tries to forget he remembers when a girl loved a boy so fiercely he learned how to love her back with the same intensity. And he remembers what it was like to lose that love and how hard it was to accept, if he ever did. Yet he also remembers the promises that were made and the bond that was forged. Those aren’t things that one can just forget or ignore.

So he delved deep into his heart and found the truth of his soul and decided to follow it no matter how hard or how painful it might be. Followed it because instinct said that if he didn’t he would be forever sorry. In the quiet of the night he wondered if he was a fool but still he followed it. Sometimes he walked under star filled skies and other times he wandered through forests in the black of night. There were more than a few occasions where he questioned his judgment and wondered if he had placed himself at undue risk.

Sometimes he would hear things stirring in the dark and he would wonder if friend or foe were close by. Periodically he would find a place to stop and rest. Some of these stops are among his favorite moments. Favorites because he would stop and stare at a full moon and feel your presence. He never had to search for it- it was always there. And he came to believe that the connection had never ever been severed. If anything interference on the line had made it become a little bit garbled and he had confused that noise with meaning that it was absent.

But ultimately it became clear that the two really were inextricably linked and for the time that was enough for him. He had things to do before a second meeting could be arranged and that was what he was focused upon. Time would tell whether he would sing the song of his heart by himself or if once again their hearts and hands would be intertwined.