Archives for September 2016

Someone asked me to explain myself and I told them you can say I am just getting started.

“Jack, I wish you’d answer the question I asked.”

“You can accept the one I have given or be disappointed. I have got a head of steam and a fire burning in my belly that I can’t ignore. The time for slumber has passed and we have moved into the age of action.”

It means that after having tripped, stumbled and fallen down and over cliffs I have picked my ass up and scrambled back up again.

Though it may be premature to say I have made it back to the heights I once lived upon it is no longer impossible for me to see myself getting back and going beyond where I once was.

But the difference between then and now is profound and the depth of appreciation I have is light years between what it was then and what it is now.

That’s what happens when you go through a financial catastrophe and come out the other side.

The shame you feel and think you deserve fades and you gain perspective that allows you to decide it wasn’t entirely your fault.

You may not absolve yourself of all responsibility but you no longer need to own all of it, just some of it.

Persistence, determination and an unwillingness to quit are the things that carried you through and maybe some luck.

Yeah, maybe as much good luck came around to equalize and or wipe out all the bad you got but didn’t deserve.

5 Songs

Moonage Daydream- David Bowie
Starman- David Bowie
I Know You’re Out There Somewhere- The Moody Blues
6th Avenue Heartbreak- The Wallflowers
Lola- The Kinks

A Father’s Help

There aren’t enough words to express my thanks and gratitude to my parents, but especially to my own father for his support during the rough times.

I am not ashamed to say that some of it was financial but the most significant and most powerful portion of it had nothing to do with finances.

It was his hand on my shoulder and his saying he was certain and confident of my abilities during moments when I had repeatedly beaten to my knees.

I remember telling him the only thing I was certain of was my ability to take a beating.

“Dad, I am not smart enough to just lie down. I am too freaking stubborn to accept getting kicked in the teeth without trying to bite whomever or whatever is hurting me. But none of that is worth a damn because clearly I am missing something else, something important.”

He shook his head no and said I was wrong.

“You got caught by the worst financial crisis since the depression. You may not realize it, but you are part of it and so are millions of others. It is bad luck.”

I remember telling him I hadn’t been raised to shrug off accountability.

“This isn’t you shrugging anything off. This is reality and you just have to keep pushing.”

I did because it is my nature to slug it out and because dad said to keep going.

But my attitude improved dramatically because of him and that made all the difference.

There is a lot of rage inside me but I can’t tell you if it is the good kind of rage or the bad kind.

I only know it is there and that has always been a part of me.

The more important question isn’t how it came to be but whether I am using it in positive or negative ways.

I like to think it is positive…mostly.

5 More Songs

At The Club – Ray Charles
Closer To The Heart- Rush
I Can’t Stop Loving You- Ray Charles
Everyday People- Sly & The Family Stone
I Started A Joke- The Bee Gees

The Story of 69 Murderous Mimes & 57 Catatonic Clowns

I still enjoy coming up with ridiculous headlines not because of the linkbait aspect of them but because it is fun to be silly.

Sometimes I wonder how many people know just how silly I can be because there is a whole slew who probably see me as being one of the most serious and intense people they know.

Or so they have said.

It is kind of funny to me to admit that I am ever bothered by that because most days I don’t care what people think.

Aside from a very small list it is immaterial to me, but every now and then what is immaterial becomes…material.

That is part of what makes me human and why when my kids tell me I can’t understand their lives I laugh.

Not to demean or diminish their experiences but because they don’t always recognize their old man has the same feelings as everyone else.

One day they’ll know for certain that I hold no secret powers and that the source of my strength is experience but we haven’t reached that milestone yet.

Anyhoo there is time for that day to come, for now I am focused on the coming days and making the dream I have inside my head into the life I am living.

I am just getting started.

There was a time not so long ago when I used to love flying. It was an adventure and one I never got enough of.

Can’t tell you when things changed but somewhere along the never-ending journey we call life I stopped enjoying it.

Might have been because of some bad turbulence.

Might of been because of things related to 9/11 or because my dysfunctional digestive system sometimes acts up and makes the flight more interesting.

Could be all, could be some, could be none.

What I know for certain is I am not a fan of 7 AM flights.

Facing Fears & Discomfort

Never been a big fan of Green Day but I like Wake Me Up When September Ends, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) and Boulevard Of Broken Dreams.

Listened to them all in a row tonight and thought about the 4:15 AM wake-up call I’ll answer to make a flight that is way too early in the morning.

Reminded myself I don’t dislike or hate every flight, hell I enjoy more than I dislike, but as I said above it has gotten more challenging.

It is because there is this whisper that sometimes shows up inside my head and that dude isn’t always the kindest man.

He has a nasty streak and he knows where the soft and tender places lie and sometimes he stabs me.

I can’t always predict when or why he shows up but I have discovered the best way I have for stuffing him back into his cage is to confront him.

Ask me how I figured it out and I’ll tell you it was a mix of trial and error plus a healthy dose of FOMO or Fear of Missing Out.

I don’t like missing opportunities because of fear.

How I Help My Children

Whenever my children tell me they are scared or nervous I talk about three things with them:

1. Confrontation
2. Identification
3. Recognition

We talk about identifying what scares or make us nervous. We recognize it exists and then we try to confront it.

It is not a fool proof tactic or something that I have spent a ton of time fleshing out. It is just a system that seems to work for me and something they have had some success with too.

The point isn’t to eliminate fear because you’ll always be afraid of some things and sometimes that fear is a very good thing.

Rather it is about managing it so that it doesn’t stop you from doing what you need to do.

 

Got just a few minutes left to write because I shall rise before the cock crows and mornings and I aren’t the best of friends.

Tomorrow excites and frightens me a little bit.

It is the start of the new job and I think it could be magical but there are always some nerves in new ventures and I have a few butterflies going.

But if I have learned anything about myself it is that I do better when I am active and not sitting around thinking about what could, should or might be.

If I ever go skydiving you’ll probably hear that I jumped sooner than later because too much thought will kill my desire.

I suppose that could lead to a different sort of post in which we talk about how to make good decisions.

We could discuss how sometimes you just know things and sometimes you don’t but again that is for a different time and place.

I might not get back here to update before Friday or Saturday. Not such a big deal for many bloggers but the long time readers know I used to update every day and sometimes multiple times a day.

Once things get settled I expect the frequency to increase again, but for now we’ll have to look at multiple times per week or something close to that.

Maybe I’ll see you in the comments or maybe I’ll see you later this week, time will tell.

Until then I wish you well, I am off to bed and hopefully on my way to the next great adventure.

And then came the moment where the teenager whose hands and feet are mirror images of my own decided to really test his will against mine.

Much harder to make sure he feels the impact of my glare over the phone or through Facetime.

Love that kid so very much, but would like him better at this moment if he didn’t have to be so very much like me in this way.

Spent time under a starry sky looking for answers or inspiration but didn’t find anything that I could use to make this moment disappear or move more quickly.

It would be fair to say I erupted, or more accurately the voice of reason inside my head said “fuck this shit, it is time to get real.”

That is not something my children experience or see very often.

My voice is deep enough I don’t have to raise it to be heard and most of the time they recognize that when I get more soft spoken and quieter it is because they are toeing the line they should not cross.

Steiner the minor is old enough now to have his own thoughts and ideas about how things go and is usually willing to test out his ideas.

Part of me celebrates that because the goal has always been to help my children become self-sufficient and independent members of society.

But his not quite yet fully formed brain and lack of experience in some areas doesn’t always help him make the best choices he could make.

The question I often ask myself is whether I let him fail and flail around because it is the kind of teaching moment he’ll get something out of or if the consequences of not stepping in will be severe.

In the current undescribed scenario I see my son digging a hole for himself that he will not enjoy climbing out of.

He doesn’t see the entire row of dominos he has chosen to knock over and it could be pretty damn ugly.

Doesn’t mean he won’t be able to work things out or that this mess will forever be a mess but it does mean that things could last far longer than necessary.

And it hurts me to see him do things this way because I know what it means to do things the hard way.

I have had multiple conversations with him but thus far my advice has gone mostly unheeded.

I am not clairvoyant and I can’t say for certain which way things will go.

Can’t say his choices are going to lead to a much more horrible outcome than my advice will take him to with the sort of certainty he wants.

But when we discuss things and I tell him that fear isn’t always the best advisor to rely upon it is because I am intimately familiar with it.

Fear and I have danced cheek to cheek many times and I am certain the only times I have gotten through some moments is because I grabbed fear by the throat and jumped over the cliff with him.

It wasn’t because of bravado but because of that whole Captain Kirk scene I sometimes share here.

Should the video not work for you here is the exchange I am referring to:

Spock: I will go with you, Captain.
James T. Kirk: No, I need you on the bridge.
Spock: I can not allow you to do this. It is my function aboard the ship to advise you in making the wisest decisions possible, something I firmly believe you are incapable of doing in this moment.
James T. Kirk: You’re right! What I am about to do, it doesn’t make sense, it’s not logical, it is a gut feeling! I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I only know what I can do.

That describes a lot of parenting and a lot of life now doesn’t it.

I generally move with purpose and intent because it doesn’t serve me well to enter into the land of paralysis of analysis, but it doesn’t always mean I have made the smartest or best choice.

Nor does it mean I have chosen the worst either, it just means I sail through life as the captain of my ship.

I do the best I can to find smooth waters and to avoid the rocks but the storms, well no one manages to sail around all of them.

The best you can hope for is to sail through them with minimal damage and to come out the other side a little bit wiser.

Guess we’ll see how this particular storm turns out.

I probably should write a love story using Roy Orbison’s I Drove All Night as the framework for it and not just because it is what I am listening to now.

But because some scoundrels aren’t smart enough to recognize I don’t suffer fools or that a physical response isn’t the only way a person has to express their displeasure.

Maybe it is because some Bozos aren’t smart enough to know about the digital footprints that people leave and I know where they work.

It wouldn’t take more than a moment to grab a screenshot and send it off to someone who might not be pleased with how some people choose to spend their time.

Much as I might want to give you a beating with the back of my hand it wouldn’t be nearly as effective or meaningful as the consequences of the screenshot.

 

I Drove All Night

It occurs to me the story about the guy who drove all night to get to his girl is one that has been done eight million times in eight million different ways.

Keep in mind the repetition demonstrates this is the sort of story that will always be of interest to people because it is timeless.

People are always going to read the tales of the love lorn and lovers who overcome all odds to be together.

Might be fun to go a different direction and set it on the water in some way.

Got Escape, The Pina Colada Song playing now so that might influence my thoughts a little bit too.

Would have to throw in The Bee Gees I Started A Joke as part of the whole bit as well because a good love story has to have some challenges in it.

Hell any good story about people needs some kind of hook that demonstrates people overcoming some kind of challenge or you’ll put people to sleep.

What Kind Of Blog Are You Running Here?

I am glad you asked.

Technically I have been a dad blogger for more than 12 years but I have never been the guy who only wrote about his kids or family life.

That is not because I can’t fill your screen with funny, interesting and or sad tales about fatherhood and kids because I can and I have.

Rather it is because I am not one dimensional.

The most important role I have in life is being dad but it doesn’t preclude me from having a ton of interests and from the joy I experience as a writer.

Not to mention there comes a time where it is incumbent upon us to protect our children by pulling back on the stories we share.

There is a big difference between writing about infants/toddlers and writing about teenagers.

I want my children to have some control over what sort of digital footprint they develop and I don’t want them to be teased because I shared some recent story I thought was funny unless we have talked about it.

So I write about many different things and sometimes I produce works of fiction here, some of which have been pretty well received.

Moving back to the love story that might use a convertible or a boat I am thinking about incorporating my pal Pablo into it some way.

That quote above is magical and it offers a fine lead into the one below.

I would argue if you can’t relate to that one you haven’t kissed the right person but that is probably a post for a different day.

Forgive me, but it also reminds me of a recent conversation with my daughter about how old she has to be to start dating.

Since she is only 12 we have some time but it is a bit surreal to me to think about how one day in the not so distant future my children will start to understand these things too.

I was 16 the first time I fell in love.

If life goes as it does some boy/girl will break her heart and that of her brother and I might have to try to console them.

Uncharted Territory

That is uncharted territory and if they are willing to speak with me I will do my best to help them, but it is quite strange to think about how close that time might be.

Used to be that we had years before school started or before we had to worry about helping them get into college and now not so much.

There is more that could be said or shared about the story and about how to help our children manage their lives but midnight has come and gone and some of us require extra sleep.

So dream big, sleep well and come by another day because you never know what you will find here.