Day: October 5, 2020

Social bonds and blood bonds are unrelated. In truth, what we define as family is as much of a choice as what we define as our favorite comfort foods. Family is who we turn to when times are good or bad. Family is who we’ve spent the time with; the people who were most involved in our continuing socialization. I must say that I have less blood-linked family than I do family of choice and it is my family of choice that I feel the most bonded with and choose to spend my time with and energy on the most.

You can be both blood and choice. As I said, they are unrelated. I have three children. As a black man in America it would surprise no one if I chose to be absent from their lives. Somehow the single mom and the deadbeat black dad morphed into a cultural expectation. Last night at the end of the Giants v. Rams game two players ended up in a fist fight because one got the other’s sister pregnant and refused to have anything to do with her afterwards. This is not a standard of wealth or the lack thereof. It is simply how culture has come to be. So, I argue that my continued involvement with my kids is a matter of choice. I choose to be a good father.

I choose to build my life around my lady. The marital (or pre-marital in our case) bond is one of choice as well. There are social reinforcements telling us to get or stay married in life, but in the end it all comes down to what we ant to do and who we wish to involve in our lives. I choose her before all others. Likewise I choose not to continue to involve my mother in my life. I don’t have a responsibility to keep her in my life. There is no personal expectation of payback for being raised by her.

This is a tough realization for many to accept, as we all tend to bind ourselves in the armor of social norm and expectation. In truth and in sum, we get to choose the life we live and the people we live it with and the people we don’t.

I thought it would be nice to blog by the fire tonight, but the fire won’t start and the internet is spotty, and the mosquitos are hungry, so the entire thing is feeling less and less like a good time. Sort of how today went.

This was not a bad day. Overall it was a productive day. I am building a computer for the first born and windows was installed today. I cleaned the new space (loft 2.0?) a little more and I even added a new family xbox account to make it so anyone could play without using my account and causing untold disaster.

*note* the anyone clause does not apply to all of us playing madden at the same time because that would mean 5 machines and two copies of the game. I am considering a disk copy for one of the machines in order to make it so we don’t need to deal with that problem but a 3rd copy of a trash game???

In general it was the kind of day that reminds me how close I am to the kind of life I want to have and how far I am from having all the details down. As I write this I am resting my legs on a chair and the chair is sliding away slowly because of the pressure I’ve placed on it and the day feels sort of like that as well. And the life feels sort of like that as well. All of this is to say that there is a way to be in life and a way to make life be for you.

I am learning the way.

I am learning that part of the way is to be a hard worker when you need to be and to turn everything off sometimes as well.

I thought it would be nice to blog by the fire tonight, but the fire won’t start and the internet is spotty, and the mosquitos are hungry, so the entire thing is feeling less and less like a good time. Sort of how today went.

This was not a bad day. Overall it was a productive day. I am building a computer for the first born and windows was installed today. I cleaned the new space (loft 2.0?) a little more and I even added a new family xbox account to make it so anyone could play without using my account and causing untold disaster.

*note* the anyone clause does not apply to all of us playing madden at the same time because that would mean 5 machines and two copies of the game. I am considering a disk copy for one of the machines in order to make it so we don’t need to deal with that problem but a 3rd copy of a trash game???

In general it was the kind of day that reminds me how close I am to the kind of life I want to have and how far I am from having all the details down. As I write this I am resting my legs on a chair and the chair is sliding away slowly because of the pressure I’ve placed on it and the day feels sort of like that as well. And the life feels sort of like that as well. All of this is to say that there is a way to be in life and a way to make life be for you.

I am learning the way.