I'm a Terrible Rule Follower

Rules are a lot like fruit juicers.  Everybody thinks they need a new one, but nobody ever really uses theirs.  I realize that as soon as a statement like this gets made, somebody immediately stands up and says "But I use mine every day!" and somebody else should punch that guy.  I've never met anyone who actually owned a fruit juicer that wasn't stored on a high shelf under several layers of dust.

Whatever.  My point is that rules seem like great and useful things until it comes around to actually adopting them and sticking with them.  Yes, we all know one or two freaks who live by some rigid code that dictates everything from which direction their bed has to face before they can relax enough to sleep in it to how many brush strokes they use to comb their back hair.  Those people are clinically insane and not to be trusted, as some of them may be serial killers.

Just like with fruit juicers (with exception of the crazies) I've never met anybody who really followed all the rules they'd made for themselves.  I was raised with a fairly high degree of cynicism in relation to people who start off sentences with phrases like "This year, I'm going to try..." or "You know, I think I ought to..." and, looking back, I can understand why.  It seems like there's always some new genius idea or fail-safe plan lurking around every corner, waiting for some dope to come along who's trying to change their lives, only for it to rob them blind of their time, money, and energy.  I can't tell you how many self-help/educational books I've purchased with the intent of learning a new skill or trying a different approach to relationships or finances, only to have it stare at me from my bookshelf like a neglected girlfriend I made a bunch of promises to, resenting me for my lack of dedication.

I read someone else's 'blog post today that brought this all to the forefront for me.  So far, I count 11 of 14 rules that I'm actively breaking, even as I write this, and I didn't even bother to look at parts one or two of the three-part series to see what else I'm not doing right.  Even though I don't think it was the author's intention to do so, I hate being condescended to, and it's hard not to feel like that's exactly what's happening when you're told that you've screwed something up completely from even before you started.

Okay, I lied.  I did read the other two.  I suck at this.

I guess the thing that gets to me about it is that everything she says makes complete sense and I don't know why I didn't realize it before.  Worse still is the fact that, realizing the truth of it, I STILL BREAK ALL THE RULES!!!  And it's not like this is a fluke occurrence in my life.  Everywhere you look, I'm going back on all the things I said I was going to do or that I believed were important to me.  Heck, it's been almost three weeks and I still haven't gotten around to that dopey "Why Jurassic Park Is Like Christianity" post I said I was going to write.

The aha moment for me in all of this is why it's so easy to want to fall back on a checklist, primarily because I don't want to have to think about what I'm doing.  It's hard to adopt principles.  It's easy to make rules.  If I can measure my own efforts against somebody else's template for success, I can pat myself on the back and feel better knowing that I'm doing the right things.  The difficulty is coming to grips with the fact that I'm not a very disciplined person; that I don't know everything I need to know yet; that my wants are all screwed up and I'm probably gonna suck at this for a while before things get any better.

But it doesn't do any good to stop pushing myself.  I made up my budget for the month before I went to bed last night.  I'm going to make breakfast and clean the kitchen and go to the bank today.  I'm not going to crumble just because I can't do everything right all the time.  I can still make a difference in how things turn out and it's time to go get started on it.

Later all.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

I'm back in Austin after almost a week in Dallas.  I can't remember the last time I was there for such a long stretch.  I think probably the summer before my last year of school.  Which would've made it the last time I saw Grandma alive.  Interesting.

I'm not gonna post much today.  Honestly, I'm still pretty wiped out from the trip and, hopefully, I'll be in better shape tomorrow.  It feels like the last couple of weeks have just been one big, emotionally-draining experience after another and I feel like I need a day-long nap or something to get my head back together.  Well, that, and pretty much everything I ate over the last six days was somehow cooked with bacon and covered in salt.  It's probably gonna take me close to a week for the food coma to wear off.

I will say, though, that it was good to have some time away from work and responsibility and just be around my family to navigate the thing together.  We're a hard bunch to be around at times, but we've got each other and sometimes, that's all that counts.

I'ma go nap before work now.  I'll talk at you guys tomorrow. 

Laters.

Short and Sweet

"Paul Lamar Wiggins passed away at approximately 9:30pm, December 7, 2010 at 88 years, 1 month and 28 days.  May God rest his soul."

I got the preceding from my father in a text around 10:15 tonight.  I'm not gonna say much about it, since the text kinda speaks for itself and I feel like I've already said all I can about it up to this point.  I'm not really sure what comes next as far as the emotional process is concerned.  This is my third family member now, and it never seems to get any easier over time.

That's pretty much all I've got right now.  I think the only thing I feel like I can do at this point is say that I'm going to go ahead and stick to my guns with what I set out to do, which is make a trip to Dallas and be a part of my family.  I'm gonna take a shower and go to H-E-B and buy some Sweet Leaf Mint & Honey and play a little bit of WoW tonight and then get up in the morning and head north.  I'm not even gonna entertain the idea of getting drunk or downloading porn or engaging in any of the other overt acts of self-medication that I'm historically famous for.  The only difference between what my plan is now and what my plan was at 2 o'clock this afternoon is that I'm gonna stay through Monday morning instead of Friday and be a pall bearer at some point while I'm there.  

The funeral probably won't be until Saturday, so I'll be dealing with all of that leading up to and through it.  I know I said I'd do the dinosaur post this week, but I feel like I get a bye on this one.  I might 'blog at some (or a few) point(s) throughout the remainder of the week, but I also might not and, frankly, I'm leaning pretty heavily toward "might not" right now.  Thanks in advance for understanding.  See you when I see you.

Manoovas is fo' Loozas

Still no dinosaur-post.  I promise, I'll get to it this week, though.  Just not today.

I'm going to Dallas on Wednesday.  I don't really want to say why because I'm not quite to the "put it out in public for all the world to see" stage of dealing with it yet.  Suffice it to say, there are times in life when the metaphorical crap hits the proverbial effing fan and it's good to get the band back together while you all figure out what to do next.  As much as I hate Dallas, it just seems like a good time for a show of solidarity and togetherness, or at least whatever reasonable facsimile that will pass for such among my crew.  It's one of those instances where the degree to which one person can affect another kinda makes me wish God had designed people to reproduce asexually, like sea sponges, but the need for compassion and understanding from others makes me simultaneously thankful that he didn't.

I've been thinking a lot about the metaphor-with-legs I talked about in Saturday's post ever since it happened and the only thing I can really land on with it is just simple and sincere gratitude at having experienced it at all.  I don't know how everybody else processes reality, so maybe I'm not that special, but it seems like there's no end to the number of things I've had to learn and re-learn about myself since I quit drinking.  It's like I spent 27+ years thinking of myself as a particular kind of person with a specific set of needs, only to wake up one morning and realize that I had totally gotten it all wrong.  I mean, other than an overwhelming affinity for the Derek Trucks Band and turkey pot pie, there's pretty much nothing about who I thought I was and how I thought I was wired that hasn't been or isn't subject to change.  I always wanted to be a super-relaxed person who never freaked out about stress and difficulty and, once I realized I couldn't just decide to be that, I turned to alcohol and other, harder substances to try and level those emotions out.  At first, it worked, but it came with a cost: not only did I not freak out about anything, but I wasn't passionate about anything and I lost the ability to really want anything at all for myself.  Everything about my life was just an effort to get out from under any type of painful experience as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible and get back to being relaxed and comfortable.  If I had to whittle it all down to a motto, it would've been "Just go with the flow and don't make waves."

What's really interesting is what a hypocrite I was.  In avoiding problems from outside sources, I would create problems for myself, basically saving myself from being shoved into a ditch by jumping head-first into it on my own.  You never really spare yourself any hardship, you only remove the question of when it's going to happen and whose fault it will be when it does.  It's such a stupid and petty quibbling of pride, but one I took very seriously and wasn't prepared to let anyone talk me out of.

I guess that's why Saturday was such a surprise to me and why I'm still at odds with myself about how to handle this trip to Dallas.  The climbing trip was so out of character for who I used to be and the trip coming up will be something of a litmus test to see whether or not that character difference is evidence of genuine change or just an arbitrary fluke.  Historically/statistically, I don't go anywhere without a plan, even if it's a terrible one that will screw up everything.  At the very least, I've always felt a need for some sense of what I'm walking into, and not knowing has only served to make me more irritable and unwilling to stand up and face the music.  But I've changed a lot in a relatively short span of time and I keep finding myself neck-deep in situations I wouldn't have gone anywhere near over a year ago.  Stepping into something without having made up my mind in advance how it's gonna go rubs against the grain of every instinct I have, and yet it seems like I do it all the time now; like something in going forward with it is calling me out of my suspended adolescence and helping me grow into the man that my body makes it look like I am.

It's just hard not to fight against it so much.  I know it gets easier the more you go along with it, but I'm just so inundated with and enamored by the idea of being self-sufficient and trying to work things out for myself.  It's such an automated response for me to immediately react to stress by dreaming up these intricate machinations and battle plans for "What we're gonna do now" and start informing everyone around me of what their role should be, regardless of whether or not they asked to be included in it.  It's difficult to shut that mechanism down once it gets going and wait for something else to come along, particularly when that something else is a vast and invisible God with his own plans and purposes for which he has asked neither my input nor permission.  But he makes very clear promises in the Bible that he will never abandon me or bring me harm which, taken on the whole, is good news, as it seems he is resolved to make a man of me, with or without my consent.

Dawning Revelation

...no, I'm not going to 'blog about dinosaurs today.  Bahahahaha!!!  Eat it, suckers!

It's no secret that I've had a fairly rough week, and I was really hoping for some R&R this morning before going to work.  I had envisioned myself sleeping in 'til 10 o'clock and then then 'blogging until about 11 or so and then sleeping some more and/or playing World of Warcraft until I needed to leave for work.  However, during/after the events of last night, my friend Bryan invited me to have breakfast with him and then go rock climbing on the Greenbelt.  Not being much of a climber myself, I figured breakfast sounded great, but I would try to pull a Chris Chan when it came to going to the Greenbelt.  (For those unfamiliar, "pulling a Chris Chan" is when you get offers from people that invite you to things and you agree to show up but then go do something completely different.  It's named after my friend Chris Chan.  He does this sometimes.)  

Bryan supplied the bacon and I brought the biscuits and eggs and we made a grand time of it.  I caught him up on my week and we talked about scissor bacon and the ratios of hospitals to oil rigs in West Texas.  It was awesome.  And then, just when it was time for me to weasel my way out of the day and go on about my business, it occurred to me: of all the things he's cramming into that giant mountaineering backpack, some of them are for me.  He was packing extra harnesses and shoes and water bottles and so forth, I guess because he assumed that since I had said "Yes, Bryan, I would like to go climbing with you," that I had meant "Yes, Bryan, I would like to go climbing with you."

I don't want to give the impression that I was unhappy about all of this because I love Bryan and I've always wanted to climb with him, I just didn't think that I was actually gonna follow through with it today.  Like I said, it's been a rough week and I really just wanted to go home.  I've done a good job intentionally putting myself in the company of other people this week, and I felt like my social quota had been reached.  I was ready to be at home, around my own stuff, and not have to step out of the way for every pretentious Greenbelt jogger in Austin and, literally, their dog.

Nevertheless, within an hour, I'm standing at the top of a fifty-foot cliff and wondering how I went from not really feeling like being social to out in nature doing something I have no experience with.  I'm still not entirely sure.  I think it was just 'cause I was invited and I never actually said "no."  But anyway, I'm standing on this cliff and I'm seeing very small people who were not that far away twenty minutes ago and I'm watching Bryan tie knots and talk to some other guy using words I don't understand because (I'm sure) they refer to some aspect of climbing and/or climbing gear with which I am completely unfamiliar.  At this exact moment, it occurs to me why Bryan has asked me how I'm doing about five times in the last fifteen minutes, because I it hits me just exactly how vulnerable I am and why.  I'm wearing this external jock-strap thing that's "secured" into something else by a clippy-deal that looks slightly bigger than the one I use to hook my keys to my belt-loop when I'm walking upstairs and I don't have a free hand.  I don't know or understand exactly what we're about to do, but I know that there's a rope and gravity involved, and that's about it.  My safety and well-being are currently at the mercy of the rock underneath me and are about to be transferred into the hands of Bryan's ability to tie a proper knot.  I realize that, basically, I got here because I followed Bryan.

A process fires off in my brain that plays out something like an alternate reality and I think about how I would have handled this exact same situation eighteen months ago.  Nothing about these circumstances are in any way under my control.  If at any point, Bryan runs out of ideas and asks me what I think we should do, we're totally screwed.  I didn't get us here and I can't get us out.  Whatever security is to be had in all of this has next-to-nothing to do with me.  I don't know if this makes as much of an impression on you as it did on me, but for an alcoholic, this is exactly why I used to drink.

I don't know where I am and I don't know how I got here and I don't know how I'm going to get down.  As long as I can have a drink and "settle my nerves," I'll be okay, but make me face this sober and I will metamorphose into a nine-headed monster that you've never seen before in your life.  I will cry and rage and beg and shout and swear and bargain until I am absolutely blue in the face, but for the love of Almighty God himself, don't make me do this.  Please don't make me do this.

And, strangely, as quickly and quietly as I saw the thought form, I saw it pass.  Bryan is my best friend and I trust his climbing skills implicitly.  There is nothing up here to throw Bryan off balance or scare him to death.  He got us up here and he is going to get us down.  He's got all the tools he needs to make sure that all goes according to plan.  All I have to do is watch what he's doing and do it exactly the same way.  My body and my brain are about to completely revolt against me because I'm about to ask them do something that goes against all of their safety protocol to observe Rule 0 ("Don't die"), but I'm doing to do it anyway because I can trust Bryan.

The parallels with faith and recovery are too easy to spot, so I'm not going to waste time or insult your intelligence by picking through them.  I didn't really leave my house this morning looking for a sermon illustration, anyway.  But this happened to me today and I had a realization about myself in it and I'm glad I went along for the ride.  I guess maybe all I can say is that this is the kind of thing that happens when you're willing to walk outside your front door.  And maybe that's all I needed for now.

See you Monday.

Friction Addiction

First, I feel the need to own up to the fact that all I've been doing lately is mentioning stuff I'm going to 'blog about later instead of actually 'blogging.  I feel the need to 'fess up because part of me feels like I'm not taking things seriously or that I'm not really honoring any sort of commitment to discipline with my writing.  I worry that people are gonna think I'm some kind of pathetic masochist who goes out looking for drama so that he can complain about it later, or like I create trouble for myself because I'm either afraid to be happy or just don't know how.  However, there's another part of me that is completely astounded that I'm holding together under all the pressure of late, and that part of me thinks the guilty-feeling/worried part of me is a total sissy and needs to chill the eff out.  I'd give names to those different parts to characterize them better, but I don't really have time to think about that right now and, besides, I feel crazy enough as is without naming the different voices in my head.

I heard once that moving and changing jobs are two of the most stressful circumstances in an average American's life, on par with experiencing loss through death or divorce.  I always thought it was B.S. but here I am... looking for a job and a new apartment.  Add to all of this the situation with my grandfather and the recent development from last night (which I still don't feel like talking about, by the way), and I feel like the only thing that could add any more anxiety to my plate is if I got held hostage or drafted into the military.

I should probably be more careful with what I say.  I don't wanna wish things worse than they already are.  I could wake up tomorrow with scabies or a vestigial tail.  So I guess there's that to be thankful for.

Bad as it seems, though, I really am keeping it together pretty well.  I'm sticking to my schedule, going to work on time, I met with Bobby C. today and got some much-needed counsel... I'm doing well, all things considered.  Tonight's excuse for not really having time to 'blog is going to the Marx's house to make s'mores with their kids.  I realize it's not the coolest thing in the world to go hang out with married people and their children on a Friday night, but I could really use the normalcy associated with being around a somewhat-functional family right now.  It's at least better than hanging out in the troll cave all by my lonesome and playing World of Warcraft all night.

I really am going to try and set aside an hour or so to 'blog tomorrow before work.  I'm honestly not going to feel that bad if I don't, but I think it's at least a good goal to shoot for.  Who knows, maybe I'll feel like talking about last night by then! ...or maybe I'll just do the Jurassic Park bit I've been teasing for most of the week.  I'm not a betting man, but if I were, I'd pony up on the dinosaurs.

Love you guys.  See you tomorrow.

Speechless

I don't even know what to say.  It's like, you wake up in the morning and think you've seen the worst of it and you're just grateful to have survived, and then somebody projectile-diarrheas in your mouth.  I'm obviously not averse to using profanity to express myself, but I don't know a cuss word bad enough to truly capture the essence of how I feel right now.  If you know what's going on, great.  If you don't, I'm sorry.  I have neither the time nor the energy to explain it.  It's not my grandfather, just so we're clear.  Not yet, anyway.  

I just wonder some days how anybody can actually believe in karma when the scales seem so biased toward everything just falling apart.  I don't know, maybe some people are just dumb enough to believe it when other people piss in their ear and tell them it's raining.

It helps me when I think that Job is the first book of the bible chronologically.  It's like God wants to make sure we're all aware of the situation before we get into the rest of it.  I'm kinda glad he gave us an example of someone who had the mother of all bad days, because it's like a post it note that says "I know how bad it gets.  Trust me.  I love you.  God"

I'm going to bed now.  Maybe I'll 'blog about this later.  Maybe not.  At this point, I'm doing good just to hold on to my commitment of posting every day and be honest about my feelings.  I'd apologize for annoying and/or boring and/or disappointing you with my lackluster content, but I honestly just don't have the emotional bandwidth to care right now.

Goodnight and God bless.

- Pairsh -

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return.  The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."

Big Day Tomorrow...

I'm not gonna take too long on this because I feel like my 'blogs get long(er) and boring(er) when I think too much about what I'm trying to say.  Maybe there's something to be said for just throwing stuff out there and finding out what sticks.

First, no new updates on the grandfather situation.  He's been in pretty bad shape for a long, long time and this isn't the first time we've thought the end was near.  It's hard to know how to respond in a situation like this because, on the one hand, it'd be nice to drive to Dallas and be with my family and just have some time to process everything that's going on.  On the other, if I take time off from work to go do that, I won't have it available to take off if and when I do need to be there for funeral stuff... which is kind of a morbid thought and makes me feel like a gross and awful person for talking about death and my grandfather so casually, as if it were no more important to me than whether I want my long weekend to start on a Friday or end on a Monday.  But, oh well.  I've pretty much resolved to just keep on keeping on in terms of going to work and taking care of business and I'll just rearrange whatever needs to be rearranged whenever the time comes.

Second, I'll go ahead and put forth the jist of the idea I've been mentioning for the last couple of posts.  For some reason, I've been thinking about how long it's been since I've read Jurassic Park and what a shame that is because of how great a book it is and how much I like it.  I read the entire book the whole way through in one day when I was twelve or thirteen, because it was about dinosaurs and I was totally enamored with it.  I read it again a few years ago (though not in a day) because I was smoking a lot of pot at the time and I discovered that reading was a whole new dimension of fun when your brain is all tuned in to conjure up some really elaborate mental images and I was totally enamored with it.  I've been thinking about it lately because, for some reason, I ended up reading the Wikipedia entry about it and it mentioned an aspect of the book that I never really considered before.  It characterized Ian Malcolm as being pessimistic about the park's operation, decrying it as "an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system."

I probably am going to go ahead and write more about this later, since I just did two paragraphs that kinda rabbit trailed away from the "not gonna take too long" idea.  For now, I just wanted to throw the basic premise of it out there and assure you: there is an actual idea rolling around somewhere in my head and I'll get to dealing with it eventually.

Third thing, I read about a contest on a 'blog I really like where the guy will give you advice on your 'blog if you buy his new book.  I'm not sure if it'll pan out into anything or it was just a scam to try and up his sales, but... well... I'll be getting a new book in the mail in a couple of weeks.  We'll see if I get any feedback from him about it.

Last thing... I have an interview tomorrow.  It's with a real estate agency downtown and I'm pretty excited about it.  I don't know if it's gonna be a total bust or what, but it's the first company that's actually wanted to sit down and talk to me, so I'm kinda jazzed about it.  Real estate is something I'd like to get into, but I'd also like to get into a good opportunity where I can learn and grow and have greater opportunities down the line.  I don't wanna jump on the bandwagon of some kinda bum deal just because it's not Home Depot.  So I'm trying not to get my hopes up and put myself in a position where they lure me into something terrible just because I got dollar signs in my eyes.  Then again, I also don't wanna be hucking toilets forever.  We'll see how it goes.  I'll probably have plenty to write about tomorrow.

That's it for tonight.  I'm gonna get a little something to eat and head to bed so I can be up and at 'em early tomorrow.  Maybe I'll get around to the Jurassic Park idea then.  Maybe not.  In the meantime, stay classy and I'll see you on the flip-mode.