• That’s Twenty-One!

    Sorry to disappoint but this is not a gambling post.

    This IS an open letter to my daughter on her birthday.

    Why open? If I’m honest with myself, it’s mostly for selfish reasons. Bragging about a child is feels like bragging about yourself, regardless of how much (or little) you actually had to do with the outcome.

    I’m going to say something that may sound like a back-handed compliment, but it’s not meant to be: you exceed expectations. THAT has as much to do with me as you. You see, if we switched places, I don’t think I’d be where you are. You may not believe it, but you’re more self-assured and self confident than I was at your age. I don’t tell you this enough, but I’m proud of how you’ve grow into yourself in college – setting goals and working towards them with resolve. I stumbled through majors like a lost hungry lion on LSD, in a field of red meat growing like wheat.

    You’ve cultivated a network of college friends, acquaintances, and advisors to lean on when you need help. I wouldn’t have known the registrar’s office from a dentist’s office, if I hadn’t gone to college with 90% of my high school friends.

    You’ve dealt with money shortages and the anxiety it brings, in addition to the challenges of a tough course of study, and excelled. I stopped going to a French class after only a week because I thought the professor was a dick. To be fair, I think I could have convinced a jury he deserved my scorn.

    You have done these things. YOU. You’re yet another reason I’ve been extremely lucky in life. In the moment I didn’t always see things as easy, but with the benefit of hindsight I know they could have been much harder, and that’s because you were a good kid. You ARE a good person. Instinct (to some degree) leads us to love our children. We cherish you, our oldest child, because you have such a good heart.

    Happy Birthday kid!

    Love, Dad

  • I feel her pain

    Let’s get one thing out of the way. All things being equal, it hurts way more when it’s my body doing the hurting – as opposed to someone else. My superpower is not empathy.

    That said, sometimes I’d prefer to be the one in pain, rather than watching.

    Chronic pain can feel mighty helpless but there are some ways to cope – and I’ve logged A LOT of hours in therapy and counseling over the last few years. I’ve been trying to overcome feelings helplessness in relation to MY pain. There can be a feedback loop to pain. You hurt, feel anxiety/stress because of the pain, which amplifies the pain. It’s much more complicated than that – and that’s only one component (of many) to pain, but breaking that loop helps.

    And if you’ve ever heard me say something dismissive about meditation, you’ll never hear it from me again.

    That’s not to say I don’t feel pain, but I rarely feel helpless anymore. I feel a certain amount of control. It’s not like I can flip a mental switch and make it go away, but I can do something about it – I can somewhat manage it. If nothing else, a bit of meditation helps take the stress/anxiety (at least partly) out of the equation, and the more tools you have to work on something, the more empowered you feel – and thus not so helpless. 

    I can’t say the same thing now, with Cheryl suffering some pretty severe, somewhat debilitating, back pain. Now I feel helpless again. Feeling helpless leads to stress. Feeling stressed triggers more of my own pain, which is always in the background… and garsh-darn-it-all, in a way I think I AM feeling a bit of her pain.

  • No más

    I can’t take anymore Facebook. I’m out. I’ve been beaten.

    My intention is not to pile on Facebook while it’s fashionable. Well, this post might be – but not my behavior leading up to it. I’ve poked my head in to check on a couple of folks I knew were going through a rough time. I’ve tossed in a few random thoughts I figured might amuse a few people. But all of my recent incursions have been surgical – in with a specific goal in mind, and quickly back out. I don’t linger. I don’t browse. The app no longer lives on the home screen of my iPhone.

    There are two reasons for this. First, Facebook doesn’t make me happy. As in, EVER. And second, I don’t feel like I accomplish anything there. I’ll try to explain, but first…

    “Who in their right mind goes to Facebook to accomplish something?”

    Well, if you’re really asking, I’d ask if you’ve ever shared or reposted something from the news that was AT ALL political. If you have I’d ask you: why? Simply to express your support? Again, I ask – why? Did you expect to change someone’s mind, or even plant a seed of doubt? My hunch is one of three things happened. A bunch of friends gave you an amen chorus, friends who didn’t agree with you ignored you, or friends who didn’t agree with you didn’t ignore you… and you’re not friends anymore.

    I don’t know about you but I don’t take a whole lot of pleasure from any of those possibilities. In fact, I find this self-segregating aspect of Facebook pretty depressing. So in November 2016, in a misguided attempt to deal with this depression head on (insert dramatic theme music here) – I decided to focus my commenting energies on Facebook posts I didn’t agree with or support. I figured the world didn’t need another amen in the chorus, so I went out with high minded thoughts of engaging neurons (both mine and others), and offered a voice of civil and reasonable dissent.

    Ask your doctor if poking a bear is right for you!

    Yeah, it went about as well as you’d expect. No wonder Facebook wasn’t making me happy – all I was doing was going around picking fights. Well, I didn’t mean to pick fights. I could try to ignoring or blocking certain posts, but does the world need another Facebook echo chamber?

    A few common themes kept coming up, and beating my spirits down.

    Some folks were quick to say they’re angry about the tone in politics. They polished their independent bonafides by decrying the behavior of “both sides,” then shared a string of inflammatory posts… from one side. Did they loose their sense of irony? Didn’t they see THEY WERE PART OF THE PROBLEM?

    Some (of the same) folks decried a biased (and therefore corrupt) “mainstream media,” then shared stories from some of the most blatantly biased corners of the internet. I’ll be damned if I was gonna read another post linking back to Ben Shapiro, Breitbart, Right Side News, Allen West, Gateway Pundit, or… crap, I think I’m gonna throw-up (my apologies to everyone I left out).

    “FOUL! John, you only named right-wing offenders! What about the left?”

    If you’re really asking you’re not going to like my answer. “They were doing it too…” has got to be one of the all-time worst excuses for bad behavior. What would you say to your child if they told you this after getting caught throwing rocks into traffic?

    So that’s it. I’m done. I was barely strong enough to raise my own children. I’m not strong enough for a world of them.

    See you back there next week?