10 Minute Rule

Every so often there are moments in passing conversation that ring true. Today, for example, I saw a fellow professor walking to class and she saw me as well. She didn’t speak. Her head was down, blonde hair swaying slightly as she turned away to avoid the contact. I said hello anyway. It was polite, but also it was me forcing something in order to see how she would react. She smiled and engaged me in the type of small talk you do while you are both still walking in your separate directions. The kind that rises in volume and withers in value. Still the smile never rose past her cheeks. It wasn’t that she was upset or disliked me. We always have this banter. Instead I believe she was focused on getting to where she needed to be at 7 in the morning and not truly caring about building community while that task was at hand. That there is the true of it. For her it was a moment of deciding what was more meaningful and for me it was recognizing real vs. false. All too often I struggle with recognizing the things that are true and truly right in front of my eyes. The romantic in me likes to believe in the best of a situation, but when you reduce it down to the bare essentials, life can be like that encounter–one person trying to handle what needs handling but kept from that task by someone just screwing around.

I can apply this maxim over and again. It makes for good fiction and harmful reality. The people who tend to interrupt us in life come forward with a different agenda and set of values and ordinations of importance than those trying to accomplish a goal. I remember when my mother came to visit last the kids and I were watching our favorite show and trying to catch every bit of dialogue, as we do. She did not see the value there and interrupted us in order to ask questions and, specifically, question why we were not paying more attention to her in that moment as she was only going to be in town a few more days. Different agendas and one clouds the other.

There is truth in that. Everywhere.

 

I would argue the American philosophy is built on the principle of having what you do not. We are expected to constantly crave the newest model/upgrade/design. We treat our cars as disposable and our fashions the same. At the very basic level we are taught that what we have now is only temporary until we reach a level that requires new: Starter car, starter house, starter family, starter wife. This predilection for next limits our ability to recognize what is presently in our lives both to positive and negative affect. In other words, we lose sight of the now in hopes of the when.

But what about the now? Buddhism reminds me to remain in the present moment–to breathe in and out and to appreciate that moment I am presently experiencing. Lately there have been few moments of pleasure in the present. When I experience them it lasts an eternity, but when I experience those moments of disquiet, they too have a way of staying past their welcome.

Where I struggle the most is casting my mind forward to the ‘what if’ and to the future. Belief in a better future allows me to remain in the present moment–no matter how painful. But what if there is no better future? What if this is as good as it gets? We must be able to be happy and safe in the now if there is to ever be a later.

You can tell I was in a place of exhaustion yesterday, because I honestly thought it was Sunday night. Imagine my surprise to wake up on a Tuesday. This is how it has been over the past few weeks. I get tired, rundown, and then I keep going. Eventually it catches up with me and I say something pithy like, ‘I’ll sleep when i’m dead’ casually aware of how I am hastening that very event horizon. The facts: now is a lot to deal with and I am starting to crack again under the pressure.

I have a lot going on. There is too much to list here, but compounding work and emotional drama is the longstanding financial reconstruction of my life, which is not going according to plan. Not much is at this juncture and I feel a little out of control. I am struggling to find that one moment’s peace where I can just regroup and start knocking stuff off the list.

There is a very long list. It is incomplete but it is far superior to no list at all. Of course the sheer weight of the thing is enough to keep me sedentary, which it has. As a result everything is slowed and heavier and less able to get done. This tired saps the fight out of me big time, and already being emotionally bereft ain’t helping.

A late night post that comes purely from a place of need.

I haven’t had to drag to many of these out of me since 2.0, but here we are trying to spend 10 minutes being productive. Speaking of which, I topped out at 209.9 today, which proves that the work is paying off–except the bag of chips (family sized) I ate half way through tonight presents an unfortunate counterbalance to my ideas of good healthy weight loss.

I’m too tired to get much out of the limited time to write right now.

Some Thoughts:

1. It is becoming increasingly clear that there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Doesn’t matter. The people who love Trump will love Trump because he represents something to them. They will buy whatever distraction is tossed their way and will likely shift the blame to Clinton.
2. Either way it will be on a 24 hr news cycle.

I’ve started to notice that I don’t remember things anymore. It isn’t a short term memory issue but more of a series of doors leading to entire segments of my life. The door stays shut and it sticks if I try to remember something. If I keep working at it I might remember and the remembering opens into an entire room of memories, as if that segment of my life is rushing back into existence at once. I don’t have a clear sense of what this might mean. My brain immediately sends me to every alzheimer’s site I can find. I think about the handful of years I played tackle and wonder if this is that coming to get me.

I don’t think I have any sort of brain injury. I get a sense that aging has weakened my mental abilities. I’ve been trying to fix it through increased reading and making efforts to ‘think harder’ and try to problem solve. It isn’t enough and may not even be how you get the brain right, but it shows intent–intent to remember and get right. I have to, because I haven’t written that special novel yet.

Some Thoughts:

1. Speaking of that special novel, I am moving towards creating something that is different and interesting if not truly fleshed out. My partner is helping and the entire process is invigorating. That alone is a good sign.

 

The other day my eldest son wanted the front seat. It wasn’t his turn to have it and one of his brothers had that opportunity. So the boy refused to ride in the car. This is what I’m dealing with at early 13. It feels like two. As I watched that boy and the rest of my players navigate a losing football game I realized it my just be like that at a certain age.

Here is what I dealt with: I had kids who struggled early in the game and that caused all of the other kids to get down on themselves and on their ability to be successful. We made a ton of mistakes and that resulted in a really lopsided game performance and lots of infighting. They got angry at each other over mistakes and fell out of the game quickly.

This is about the mind of a 12 yr old and not the ability. Part of my job as a parent and even as a coach is to instill the framework for them to understand a support system and how to use it. This is not an advertised part of the job, but it is crucial to moving forward in life.

I’ve reached a kind of checkpoint in my romantic growth. I’m at the point of trying to understand why I need romantic entanglement at all. What is it that you get out of a sexual relationship that you don’t get out of any other sort of connection? Well, sex for starters. However, as I stumble forward down this road of experience and understanding I continue to recognize tiny leaps in my emotional growth. Romantic relationships aren’t about sex for me anymore. Sex is a bi-product of love, devotion, and affection.  So then what are they about?

This is not an answers blog. Not today. You, kind reader, are walking through the evidence same as I am. I can say that there is a part of me that craves romantic entanglement. At times I feel it is a natural inclination to be with someone who loves you and that you love, but I get all that from my best friend and partner. So again, what am I looking for?

It could be piece of mind. It could be codependence. I’ve spent a good deal of time researching the latter as of late. As with most victims of psychosomatic illness, I’ll fire through a symptom list and pick out the thins I recognize as feeling and say, ‘yep, I am this for sure.’ The tendency allows me to label myself, which allows me to start some sort of self treatment–fixing a problem I don’t likely have. In this case, I see these symptoms:

• A sense of guilt when asserting themselves
• Fear of being abandoned or alone
• A need to avoid the feeling of abandonment
• An exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others
• A tendency to become hurt when people don’t recognize their efforts
• Lack of trust in self and/or others
• Rigidity/difficulty adjusting to change
• Poor communications

All in all, I sound like a hot mess. I sound like I should avoid human relationships entirely and get a rat. The fix for this mental illness involves similar behavior–limiting and considering relationships, reconstructing relationship dynamics, etc. Only, I don’t believe I have the ailment. I might not even have all the symptoms–not in any deep and chronic way. Some of this stuff is commonplace. I do however think a lot about the idea of loneliness.

I think the answer to my need lives in that idea of loneliness and the safety that someone investing in you emotionally brings. One more of the symptoms I toyed with was ‘An extreme need for approval and recognition.’ I don’t think my need is extreme, but I do want to be noticed and feel flattered from time to time. I want to feel that in a way that makes me think the flatterer is only saying that to me and only feeling that for me. This too feels natural and core to the idea of romantic entanglement. When I lose that in a relationship it changes the dynamic. I think that is a good starting point for figuring out what I’m after.

Some Thoughts:

1. Love is always going to be love. Always.

It is getting harder and harder to watch football. Think about how we structure the game these days. It is becoming more and more like it’s namesake where fans are clearly locked into a team and by that team, a belief system. Once your team starts rolling down the ‘ol hill, what do you do? You watch and support, because its your team and we have been taught that this is the team we watch. Maybe you have a second team–I see that more with younger viewers–but still you’re limited. In truth the league pushes fantasy football in order to create a schema where viewers are interested in what is happening in games other than their own. I quit fantasy football, and now I don’t have much of a reason to watch at all.

Quick review: I’m a Giants fan. My team has one win and six losses. Each loss was heartbreaking and ended in the loss of one or more players for multiple weeks. My team is battling attrition. Before long the Giants will be starting rookies off the practice squad. Wait, they already do.  So there’s that.

Since the season is such doom and gloom, I find it hard to finish a game. That means my Sunday plans do not involve live television. This is a strange thing for a football fan. Even stranger for such an avid fan as myself. I could watch other teams, but I don’t have that baseline investment to care. I only watch the Raiders for Marshawn Lynch. No other player means enough to me on his own to warrant a game watch–especially if the aforementioned player is on or against a team I dislike.

That’s it. All I got for now.

Some Thoughts:

1. Wound up with about 4 hours of sleep last night. I no longer believe that sleep is the cousin of death. In truth sleep seems to ward off death, and the less I sleep…
2. Love is hard and dangerous and leads people to behave outside of themselves in the absence of what fuels them.

I think we best structure understanding through the shared empiricism of experience and expectation. When I study those building blocks closely I see the code for purpose. I see in those the ideas that create what I think my life is supposed to be. What I expect (or learn to expect) and what I experience shapes the idea of why I am. This is, to me, why so many people get locked into a singular track and why so many others wind up lost upon the path and wander off into the woods only to be lost and aimless forever. Me, I’ve always believed in purpose–in what I was supposed to do, but purpose too shifts over time. It moves from what I am supposed to do towards what I am supposed to do now, based upon experience and (no surprise here) expectation. I fear that when you let go of one of those two blocks–one of those helixes in a double helix that is in of itself one half of a double helix–You lose the power in yourself to guide your path.

I don’t know my purpose. I did, for a time. I knew I was meant to teach and in that time of knowing I was driven and dedicated and absolutely certain of what was and was meant to be. After a while that purpose became unclear. I shifted towards a sense of not knowing and my certainty of a great many things crumbled. I was certain of only one thing: It was time for things to change. I resisted in very open and foolish ways and quite terribly damaged my life and my opportunity to be happy not only in the moment but in a lasting constructive way. I didn’t listen to the self. I broke away from the certainty and didn’t allow purpose to reestablish itself. In a phrase, I screwed everything up.

Now I sit in a space where I am listening to the universe, embracing my fears and my present, and I am allowing purpose and certainty to reassert themselves and rebuilding the double helix that is the rest of my life.

I studied the word for some time, rolling it around on my tongue; tasting it in my thoughts. A fact that something is going to be true. A firm knowledge that an event is going to take place. I dabble in certainty. I work to obtain conditions that clearly and reasonably are or aren’t. Some call this feeling the concrete beneath your toes. Some call this walking the safe path. It is neither of these things for me, because I find certainty to be clearing at the end of the path. It is the path itself that is difficult to see.

How do I get there? It is a question that pops into existence with every iteration of want. When I was a kid I knew beyond doubt that I would have six kids I’d be looking after. The number was right on my tongue but it wasn’t at all what I wanted. I wanted seven. I knew even then that seven would be perfect and would not be. Now I find myself in a situation where the path to my happiness means six kids. Always has. This is certain.

When I was a kid my grandmother told me that I was going to teach. I utterly refuted her claim. She’d worked for the NY board of education and loved her administrative job. Her daughter wound up being a teacher. In my mind I wasn’t meant for that place or that path. In that moment I knew two things: I knew I wasn’t meant to teach elementary school and I knew I wasn’t meant to spend the bulk of my life as a New Yorker. I was certain of these things, though I wanted very badly to be a New Yorker. One day after I was done with college and working as a youth coach in Iowa, a professor of mine came up to me after a practice and basically handed me paperwork for graduate school. I signed up. A month and a half later I was teaching my first class. I never even signed up to be a teacher, but here I was in this place I was certain to end up.

It was in those formative college years that I truly recognized that certainty didn’t necessarily work alone. It curled itself around another factor that at times also existed outside of my conscious awareness. That one was the hardest to recognize.