Ashes

It's Oscar night and I'm angry. The two have nothing to do with one another; it's just happenstance. But what little interest I would have had in the Oscars has dissipated, transforming into acrid steam that is swept into the air, but not swept away.

I won't play out my anger here, except to say my plans have been turned on their heads. What I thought was a breakthrough decision apparently wasn't a joint decision. Apparently I thrust it upon the world.

So, now I bide my time and wonder what "my" decision will be in a month. Or a year. I'm angry. Maybe I'm angry at myself and my failure to plan and my failure to comprehend and my failure to get it in writing.

I'm so close to burnout I can taste the ashes.

Decisions

So, the decision's made. How do I go about implementing it? It's going to be tougher than I expected. And I'm dumbfounded that I feel pangs of remorse. WTF?

And, though it's made, the minutia have not been addressed. That's where the hard stuff starts, I suspect.

Why do I feel a sense of dread that I've made the wrong decision, instead of a sense of overwhelming joy that I'll be free?

Think

I enjoyed watching the Rachel Maddow Show this evening. But it occurred to me while I was watching it that I enjoyed it as much for the fact that it supports my own political point of view as anything else. And it occurred to me that I enjoy and appreciate PBS precisely because PBS seems to have no agenda. Many times, PBS reports what I believe are facts that I don't like because they don't provide ammunition to support my perspective.

I don't consider Rachel Maddow a source of unbiased information. I think she reports facts, but she reports them through a decidedly liberal lens. Sort of like Glenn Beck "reports" through a decidedly insane lens (well, it is). But PBS just tells it like it is.

Rachel massages my ego. Glenn makes me want to kill him and his spawn. PBS makes me think. I like that.

Pensions

I am concerned that many people who share my progressive political and social philosophies may be allowing their emotional attachments to ideals overcome their intellectual capacity to recognize problems. The stalemate in Wisconsin is a case in point.

Unfunded pensions are problems. I do not understand why it is so hard for my liberal brethren to grasp that simple fact. Moreover, I do not understand why more of us are not asking questions about just why there are "pensions" in the first place, whether taxpayer-supported or corporately-funded.

I'm in favor of a social safety net and an assured stream of income in retirement. That's why I favor Social Security. I am NOT in favor of placing responsibility for an employee's ability to enjoy a lucrative retirement in the hands of the taxpayer. Granted, if employees have been promised a certain level of retirement income, the promises should be met. But, going forward, the promises should not be MADE. They should never have been made in the first place, in my view. Until and unless a mechanism is in place that assures commitments contemplated can be funded without debt financing, they should not be made.

In an ideal world, none of us would have to worry about where the money comes from; it would just be there. This is not an ideal world. We MUST understand that, in our current economic system, there must be means of sustaining revenue streams before committing to their use for the long term.

I remain as liberal as ever, but I think we all need to take off the rose-colored glasses and look at realities. The governor of Wisconsin, as much as I disagree with his call for eliminating collective-bargaining rights, clearly is speaking openly about the 800 pound gorilla we all need to talk about. I hope the conversation continues, with some real communication about how to solve the problem.

Unexpected

I'm up early, sitting in the bathroom of our hotel room until my wife wakes up. Here, I can have the light on and get access to the internet. I suppose life on the road might be like this; a motel room or a little motor home or pretty much any other place to stay on the road would not provide the room to spread out that I have at home. I'd figure out a way to get used to it.

We're getting closer to the possibility of retirement or, if not that, at least a break for a few months before I look at some other way to make enough money to get by. I personally need to get away from the stress. My wife needs me to get away from the stress, too, and she needs to get away from it, as well.

I promised myself that yesterday would be a good day. Maybe it was. A prospective client didn't come through. An existing client made comments that annoyed me so much I decided I have to get out from under the group. Maybe it was a good day, after all, just in an unexpected way.

Sleep

Very tired of late. Not sure why. I don't feel sick, just inexplicably tired. It comes on suddenly. Last night, I slept 11 hours, more or less. This can't go on. Can it?

Happy Diamond Merchant Greed Day

I've a mixed mind about Valentine's Day. On the one hand, I believe the day is like any other, except it has been hijacked by capitalist pigs who will stoop to any level to make a buck, including extortion. On the other, it can serve as a reminder that we need to pause and reflect on our romantic love.

As for me, I bend to extortion by buying a card. I do not (at least not TODAY) go further down that primrose path, spending indiscriminately on heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, dozens of obscenely-overpriced roses, and diamond rings. I don't buy diamond rings on ANY days, not because I am a cheapskate but because I believe diamonds are not a GIRL's best friend but, rather, the fuel for greed of the DIAMOND MERCHANT.

I know, if there were a bah-humbug comment for this day, it would be in the dictionary next to my picture. Fine. I can live with that.

Alive...I'm Alive!

I'm back in the land of the living. Yesterday afternoon, I started feeling pretty miserable; an odd sort of miserable, like a mix of the flu, a cold, Crohn's flare-up, aching joints, upset stomach, and headache...coupled with extreme fatigue. Fortunately, going to bed before 8:00 pm apparently solved it. I woke up just after 5:00 am and feel considerably better.

So, I may write a book today. Or maybe not.

A Tropical Hate Wave

I left the house awhile ago to buy coffee. My supply of good beans was dangerously low; I wanted to avoid a meltdown in the morning. I returned with a full tank of gas in my vehicle and:

• a pound of coffee beans
  
• four boxes of Crystal Light popsicles
  
• a bag of amaretto-chocolate-covered pecans, and
  
• a bag of pecans covered with dark chocolate.

What was that about eating healthy foods? This followed a day of munching on peanuts, despite the fact that my Crohn's disease has shown signs of a flare in recent days.

I don't know...maybe it's the food, maybe it's the stress. I've had a lot more stress than food lately. I've been thinking about, but have not discussed with my wife, calling it quits much sooner than I had been contemplating. My office space lease is up at the end of October, as is my contract for very expensive telephone service. If I get a new lease, I'm looking at three more years, minimum. Do I really want to do that? The immediate, no-question answer: NO! But the question really is this: can I afford NOT to keep going? I don't know. I just don't know.

So, I'll go grab a Crystal Light pop and mull it over. The temperature tonight will drop only to 28 degrees, a veritable heat wave. Popsicles are perfect for such blasts of hot weather.

Caught Off Guard

The weather wizard on my computer tells me it's 18 degrees. The clock tells me it's 1:45 a.m. The weather forecast tells me to expect a ten-degree drop by daybreak. My brain tells me I should process these pieces of information in some way that varies from the way I'm processing them.

That's as far as it goes. My intellect and my emotion diverge here. I don't know what to think or what to feel. I attribute that lack of knowledge to being tired. That's part of it. As to the other part, I don't know.

This is not new. But I'm caught off guard by knowing that I know I don't know.

Anything but Work

For three nights running, I've had dreams related to work. One of them was a bizarre one in which the president-elect of a client organization made increasingly aggressive passes at me. I don't know where that one came from; she never has given me any reason to think I need to be concerned about that and I don't loathe the client (any more than normal). Another night's dreams are too fuzzy to really remember; I just know they were based on work. Last night, I spent the night dreaming about trying to find and update the Facebook page of a client. That one is real; someone (not me) created a Facebook page using the client's info/logo, etc. but hasn't updated it in three years but now it appears the board thinks I have been sitting on my hands since creating it.

All three nights suggest to me I need something else on my mind than work.

Right Place, Right Time

On my other blog, I just posted something that I think was about compassion and guilt and greed. But I'm not sure. I wrote it because I felt inadequately grateful for the good things I have. I do not know to whom I'm supposed to be grateful. It's not as if someone or something "gave" me the good things I have. It's more a matter of being at the right place at the right time, being born to the right parents, having the right color skin, living in a society in which education is (or was) considered a right and an obligation, and making a few good decisions.

Should I be grateful for accidental good fortune? Yes. But to whom? I don't know. I just think I should be glad and appreciative. I think I should be glad and appreciative every moment of every day. I'm not, of course, but I should be. And so should you.

If you're reading this, you have access to the Internet. You can read. You are not scraping by to put food in your mouth (or, if you are, you are approaching it with less passion than is wise...stop now and go search for food). You are DAMN lucky! OK, maybe not lucky. You are coincidentally in the right place at the right time.

Beans

A Facebook friend, formerly a fabulous blogger who doesn't care that her abandonment of blogging has actually ruined lives, recommended this: ranchogordo.com. Now, of course, I want to eat all the beans this place sells.

Excitement

Occasionally, I get extraordinarily excited by subjects that are utterly and completely outside my sphere of experience. For a few brief and euphoric moments...maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours...I allow my excitement to persuade me that I can change my life.

I believe, in those rare moments, I can change things to the extent that this new and astonishingly interesting subject will become my avocation, my vocation...truly the purpose for my existence.

Perhaps because I've just had a second Irish coffee or perhaps because I'm simply unable to articulate my experience in a way that can fully describe it, I can't adequately explain this remarkable experience. I wish I could. For a brief time, my experience makes me feel like my life has value and meaning and matters. Unfortunately, that doesn't last long. I become aware of reality all too quickly. But for a time, I can understand how people can believe the unbelievable. I can understand religion during that time. I can understand the development of myth. I can appreciate hero worship. All sorts of illogical things seem, momentarily, to be based on a beautiful and pure logic all their own.

That all disappears, of course, when reality sets in. The wonder of the world around me fades into dull, grey smudges and I lose that temporary engagement in glory.

But when it's there, it's amazing.

Tonight, I watched a program on NOVA. It was about how the brain works. And I got excited, really excited, about the research explained during that program. For a while, I envisioned myself in a new career, pursuing knowledge about the brain. I saw myself happy and enthusiastic and alive with energy. I saw myself doing research on how our brains work, how they control our lives, and how we can control them.

Oh, it was a sweet fantasy.

But now I know where I am, what I do, and how it all ends. It's painful to see that brilliant light fizzle into a dull sputter.

Beastial Chill

The weather took a fierce turn last night, transforming what had been a friendly excursion into Spring into a frigid beast. Howling winds and demonic cold stole my comfort and replaced it with icy pain. Brutally cold winds, horizontal sprays of ice and sleet, and heartless snow have taken hold. I stayed home today rather than face streets filled with ice, hidden beneath a thick coating of snow.

Tomorrow, the world won't permit me to stay home.

Tomorrow, I face the beast head-on.

Trying Hard to Smile

A friend's wife lost her job yesterday. The two of them invest too much of their sense of personal worth in their jobs and they attach too much value to money and the things money can buy. I worry about them. They are good, good people. But they are deeply in debt and they have ruined their credit through their own actions and through dealing with this age of putting too much value on things.

Damn.

Physics....Yeah, Physics

A week or two ago, I listened to a radio program that featured a physicist who discussed a theory of physics that explained the possibility of time travel.

She was not a strange nut-job bent on wowing the listener. She was simply a physicist who could wrap her head around concepts that seem, to me, to be impossible. Her conversation was simple and dry; nothing jolting about it.

It was interesting to me how she described space as a dimension in which we could freely move and then slipped in the concept that time, too, was simply another dimension. The argument, she said, was that there is no fundamental physical reason that one cannot move around as freely in the dimension of time as one can in the dimension of space. She then went on to describe arguments that suggest there may be many more "dimensions" than those of which we are aware.

After hearing the physicist's comments (I wish I could remember her name; she was fascinating), a comedian spoke about his appreciation of physics and, more importantly, physicists. He described them in a way I found funny, but enlightening, saying something like this:

"I like the way these guys think. You know, they base their entire lives on some theory that covers everything...EVERYTHING...and their life's work is all wrapped up in it. And then someone comes along and discovers that the theory is wrong. So everyone in physics just changes their mind. It's like 'oh, my life's work was based on a mistake, that's OK, I'll just change my mind and base the rest of it on this new information.' The rest of us would run screaming from the room, saying 'my life is ruined!' But these guys just say, "oh, OK, I'll just accept it and move on.' I love it."

I cannot imagine the masses accepting new information so quickly and so easily. Just imagine that all the world's religious leaders met inn conference and were confronted with irrefutable evidence that their religions were based on explainable misconceptions. Instead of simply accepting the fact and moving on with a new mindset, I suspect they would hold on to their beliefs regardless of what facts suggest. But physics isn't invested emotionally in beliefs; it's invested intellectually in demonstrable physical laws.

This morning, because I had nothing more important to do between 5:00 am and 5:15 am, I did a little research on how many dimensions there are, or might be. Here's a link to one of the more intriguing bits of information I found.

A Father's Pointless Lament

Oh, heavenly father, what the hell were you doing?

You let those boys drown when they went out canoeing.

You're supposed to be watching, but look what you did,

You turned away once, now I've lost my kid.

Oh, Christ almighty, look what you've done!

I don't believe in you, don't believe in your son.

What can I do, now my little boy's died,

What about his poor mother, and the tears that she cried?

Who can now help us, how can we last

Since we have no more future? It's all in the past.

No one to answer his desperate prayer.

No one can listen, no one is there.

Serenity

I am trying to adopt a more serene outlook on life. It is not easy for me. I'm not saying it's "hard," but it's not easy. That is, serenity does not come naturally to me. I am not a naturally calm person. I have to focus on it.

I have to devote energy and thought and energy to it. I have to reign-in my natural inclination to be intense. There's something wrong with that, I think. Not wrong to have to reign in my inclinations, wrong to have to fight so hard to be at peace. Maybe I don't understand what serenity is. Or maybe I do, but just can't achieve it. I suspect most of us can't, if truth be told. Is the Dalai Lama really at peace? How can he be so intense, then?

How is it that I can achieve some sense of serenity only through rather intense effort? The serenity achieved thereby, I'm afraid, is not serenity. It's more like forced relaxation. There are competing forces at work and they do not comfortably inhabit the same body, nor the same brain.

I've been told yoga could be an answer. But I don't yet know whether I'm asking the right questions. So the answers I might get could be responses to irrelevant remarks, retorts to inquiries about inexplicable tensions between forces that are not opposed but simply incongruous. I mean, the questions may be unrelated and completely disconnected. Like asking whether it's better to be kind to violent children or to prefer morphine to dandruff shampoo.

Am I being sufficiently opaque? I don't mean to be. I really don't. But I'm exploring long explored, but still-uncharted, waters here. These are things I've long questioned, but about which I've never found satisfactory answers.

Perhaps calmness and serenity come only after turmoil and intensity. Smooth stones, frequently seen as symbols of serenity, are the result of long and violent interactions with the forces of nature: water, wind, collisions with other stones and sand. Perhaps my serenity will come only after I, too, have experienced sufficient exposure to the broken shards of life on Earth to wear me down.

Delay

A prospective client was to have decided on whether to select us yesterday, but could not finish its deliberations. But, we'll know in another week or less.

Planning

Meetings. Budget versus actual. Setting priorities and matching resources to them. Establishing strategic objectives.

It sounds more interesting than it is.

Choices

A new week, full of opportunities and potential danger. I hope to make choices that will maximize the opportunities and make the exposure to potential danger worth the ride.

Strange, Silly, and Sauternes

My intent with the creation of another blog was to allow myself to post things that I would be comfortable sharing with the world, not just that small part of it with which I have become comfortable sharing here. But that hasn't quite happened. I'm writing things there that I should be writing here, and perhaps vice versa.

My schizophrenia may have kicked in. Or some other psychosis. Or perhaps old age, senility, or dementia of some form or another has set in earlier than expected.

None of my blogs are dependable sources of anything...humor, gloom, political rants, self-examination...there is nothing consistent about them. I don't want to be consistent...and that's always been my attitude about things.

It doesn't matter to me what readers think of what I write. I hope everyone understands what I mean by that.

When people read what I have written, they tend to see that my attitudes, beliefs, and emotions are subtle and malleable, everything is painted in indistinct shades of grey. I don't know how much clearer I can be about that; it's a plain as the nose on your face...either you get it or you don't, there's no middle ground.

I take great joy in retreating into the deepest recesses of my paralyzing depressive state. From there, I erupt into inconsolable laughter. And then I have a dessert wine to restore my sugary self.

Singing

Singing the song with a different voice doesn't make it any better.

Speed

The speed one reaches in getting from joy to despair in the shortest space of time possible is astonishing.

Poor Poems

My best writing begins, and ends, in the shower. It's especially good when I'm alone in the house and I can sing what I write without need to control the volume. If only I captured my poetry there, I'd have something I might consider worthy of publication. But the flashes of brilliance are too dazzling for me to remember, at least I can't remember them correctly. So later, when I try to write them down, they're no longer what they were. The good parts are lost. I'm stuck with what I remember of them. My memory is poor. And so, therefore, are my too-late-recorded poems.

Self-Starvation or Auto-Cannibalism

Dissatisfaction feeds on itself. The way to cure it is to remove its source of nourishment.

If one is dissatisfied with one's self, then, the best way to address the problem is to become someone else. Is that the same thing as starving oneself to death?

And if dissatisfaction feeds on itself, is the person who is not happy with himself engaged in auto-cannibalism?

Less

I'm trying, with my new blog, to improve myself. But maybe I should fully adopt the Buddhist philosophy, which as I understand it would consider that I'm OK as-is. I should be happy with myself. The person I am is the person I am and I should be content with that person.

Maybe next year.

At the moment, I'm feeling very much like strangling somebody (don't worry, you don't know the jerk). I don't want to be so pissed off with the guy, but I don't find it easy to just accept him. He's the sort of guy I would have suggested as a candidate for euthanasia a few months ago. And I may not have gotten beyond that.

In other news, I think the end is near. The end of my time in the business I'm in. Near is a hard term to define, but near (in time) feels to me like 2 years or less. Please, let me be right. And, please, let it be less.

2011 - Jade's Birthday

Many, many years ago, a woman whose first name was Jade, worked for me. Her birthday was January 2. I suppose her name and her birthday remain the same. For some reason, I always remember her birthday. For years, I sent her birthday cards or birthday messages, but I've lost track of her. I think she's in Iowa now...that's where she lived the last time I had her contact information...which was her home state. She and her husband returned there to rear their children in an environment they thought was more conducive to chid-rearing than was Houston in the early 1980s.

It's extremely unlikely she's see this post. But I'll say it anyway. Happy birthday, Jade! I hope your life is going well and that your children's lives are better for your decision to leave the madness and chaos that was Houston in the early 1980s. Iowa is probably more conservative than is Houston. It's probably a more insulated environment, too.

You're probably in your early fifties now, Jade. I suspect you're still thin and athletic. Enjoy!

2011 - The First Day

It's Saturday morning, January 1, 2011. As I sit in my kitchen, drinking my first cup of coffee of the new year, I remember my first post of 2010. I recall writing that the new year starts when I decide it starts. That remains my philosophy, but I've decided to begin this new year today. It's a choice I'm happy to be able to make. I'll get to how that came to be, and who helped me adopt what is, for me, truly a new outlook, shortly. First, a little history.

My life really did begin anew rather late in 2010. In August, I decided I needed, desperately, to lose weight. I weighed more than I ever had. While I was not morbidly obese (at least to the same degree that I equate with morbid obesity), I was at least 70 pounds overweight. So, I started what I thought was a diet. That diet turned into a new lifestyle for me. I've not yet achieved my target weight, but I'm well over half the way there and, despite a holiday detour, heading in the right direction.

Losing weight was the objective, but better health was the byproduct and I realize, of course, should have been the objective all along. After a bit of a fright shortly after starting the South Beach diet, it became clear that my new lifestyle was paying dividends in terms of a healthier me. I'm no longer taking medication for high blood pressure, high triglycerides, and high cholesterol. Those problems resolved themselves through my healthier diet.

I suppose it was the remarkable change I've felt and seen since August that has changed my attitude about new beginnings and about controlling things that once seemed beyond me. There were external forces at work in changing my attitude, people who probably have no idea how much they contributed to altering my world view to the extent that I started making better decisions. Many, though not all, of these people are friends I've not met face-to-face. They are people whose comments and experiences have played out in a virtual world, through their blogs or other forms of online presence.

Let me start this new year by acknowledging and expressing my appreciation to the following people (bloggers all), whose words and experiences contributed to my “new” way of thinking: Ellie, Phil, Bev, Robin, Teresa, Kathy , Betsy, Tara, and Audra. Most of these bloggers occasionally come by my blog.

There are many others to whom I owe appreciation for their contributions to whatever newfound wisdom I might have collected during the past year: Clay, Joan, Kathy R., Woods, Tom, Karen, Libba, Cathy, Jane, Jim, Vicki, Maggie, Jennifer, Rebecca, Kim, Julie, Anne, Jeff, Joyce, Elle, and (I am sure) others. My wife, of course, if key among them (she is not a blogger and does not read my blog...maybe she knows something no one else does).

At the core of it all, for me, is this: each of us can control one thing and that one thing is our response to the world around us. We can decide what to do, how to react, and what to feel at each moment. Someone suggested to me that the words of Ram Daas encapsulate that philosophy: Be here now. I like that, but I also like contemplating what I can make of life tomorrow. Whatever I make of it, and whatever it throws at me, I can control my response to it.

I wish everyone a peaceful and productive 2011, filled with opportunity and abundance.