Archive for category Stuff

Ever notice some people just never move on emotionally from high school? Everything is a social party, a clique where they have to be the center of attention. If they can’t be in charge, they work passively aggressively behind your back to undermine you. Sometimes, the price is a collapse of an entire network of people who want to affect change. While you’re protecting your little hive, the entire ground is dropping away around you.

You could have been bigger than your own dreams if you had only let others in.

Grow up!

Early in my career — but but late enough into it where I knew I wanted out of the corporate rat-race — I worked for a Fortune 500 company. I had a young family then, but worked later in the evenings because the commute took two hours at 5:00pm but only one hour at 6:00pm. I also traveled a lot. As a young executive, you were expected to have a certain level of company loyalty. But the official stance of the company was that you were also expected to practice work/life balance.

I didn’t get paid by the hour, which is a fancy way of saying I was always working. My brain was always working through problems, juggling some program and the politics that went along with it. That’s the part of executive life nobody tells you about, especially your family. As a result, you’re never 100% with your family on the weekends, yet, there was always a “Martha Stewart-like” expectation that you were, which apparently made me a horrible husband and father.

And 5:00pm Friday came around every week and flaunted that expectation you knew you could never achieve. What gave others in our office motivation to duck out early gave me dread.

A long time passing, I still hate 5:00pm every Friday.

My dad was a philosopher when he was sober. I carry an image burned into my brain of him sitting alone at the head of the dining room table in the house I grew up. It was the middle of the day, but the room was dark because the black bomb curtains were drawn. The room was filled with smoke from the pack of cigarettes he was finishing off and the cherry of his lit cigarette glowed as he inhaled.

“Like footsteps on a sandy dune,” he said, holding his arms out and slowly bringing them back in to take another drag of his cigarette. “All of this — of me — will be blown away in the wind, like footsteps on a sandy dune.” And he seemed profoundly sad and broken. And I remember thinking that should be the title of his book. Years later when it became apparent he would never write it, I thought it should be the title of my book.

When I was ten years old or so, two aunts from my mother’s side came to visit us. They were always laughing, always happy. They wore bright store-bought clothes. The visit lasted less than a week, but when it was time for them to go, I grew incredibly and inconsolably sad. I remember crying so deeply that my chest hurt. They had gone and all I was left with were dark rooms, filled with smoke and the stench of beer.

Several days into my mourning, I drew a deep breath and told myself, “this never happened.” In that moment, I had deliberately forgotten my aunts had come to visit. I had forgotten the laughter. I had forgotten the new toys. I had forgotten the hugs against freshly-laundered lightweight linen. With the exception of three more memories since that I can’t seem to push down enough, I have never cried in sadness. I have never allowed myself extreme happiness either. My present is only endurable by deliberately forgetting my past.

Old people may not have dementia; they may simply be remembering the details of their lives they have deliberately forgotten that are not consistent with the narrative they have told everyone around them. It is possible they are confusing the facts with their truths.

Decades and a lifetime later, I still have not written that book, though each chapter has played in my head and then torn out to be carried off into the wind. To actually write down the memories would be too ironic. Memories last a moment before they are swept away. A book lives forever and is far too heavy to be erased by the wind.

Perhaps my son will want to write the book. A memoir should be written while you are a young man and can still believe the lies you tell about who you are.

I have lots of female friends who talk around me quite freely. Yes, I’m straight and yes, men and women can be just friends. Really.

Not much about women talking with each other rankles me. Except giggling and one type of comment that goes along the lines of; “I ran into the hottest guy at the store yesterday and I was wearing work-out clothes, my hair was in a pony-tail and I wasn’t wearing makeup. I was mortified.”

Wow. That kind of thing sends me through the roof.

Not only are you saying you are incredibly insecure about who you are, but you are saying men are really that shallow. We’re not. A woman with confidence and inner sex-appeal can make sweaty pony-tails and workout clothes just as sexy as a little black dress, heels and makeup. In fact — and I don’t reveal this often — the former is just a wee bit sexier.* If you have to rely on the packaging to sell, you deserve the kind of customer who is attracted to that. And you may not complain when he is disappointed after the wrapping is gone.

Invest in books, brains and a solid soul. Regardless of what you wrap yourself in, these will always shine more brightly.

And I lied; two more things bother me.
Talk about women being better than men as a fact of gender and women who use sex as a reward. One is a lie weak women tell themselves and the other is just a dreadful character flaw.

*It’s in the eyes.. always. You can’t fake eyes.

I’m about a week late commenting on the Old Spice thing, but who cares. It’s not anything deep or marketing related or anything anyone except me cares about. It is a personal experience that is probably a bit quirky.

My connection to Old Spice is an old college girlfriend who wore Old Spice deodorant. Swear. Everything else about her was girlie except her deodorant.

Anyway, that is my entire interest in the Old Spice brand; a long-ago memory.

You’ve probably seen “two-headed” Facebook profiles or Twitter avatars, where a husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend are posing together for one profile. I’m not a fan. I think everyone should be their own person.

Then I see shows like the Travel Channel where they show a husband and wife both working hard at a diner, pouring their hearts into the business and each other, unselfishly knowing that each is dependent on the other for success. Or couples like my grandmother and granddad who were sturdy Maine inlanders, who worked the farm with each other through a fifty-one year marriage, separated only by a short year when she died in August and he later that June. And I think these people are lucky to have another person who is not separate, but a part of the other. Everything — including their life force, hopes and dreams — is shared.

And I think that maybe I’m wrong.

But most of my experience say “all I ever learned from love was how to shoot someone who outdrew ya.”

For now, I have a single head. I think you should too.

*Hallelujah, written by Leonard Cohen, best performed by Jeff Buckley

Just a general rant and not at all thought out.

I hate it when people “engineer” helping you out to try to make it seem like you can’t do something without their help and then claim massive amounts of credit. “I made you what you are by being here for you” is the rally cry.

But you’re not there when I actually need you; when I am up against a wall or an immovable deadline. When my needs bump into your plans, you find all sorts of reasons why your plans are much more important. In the end, I know if it ever came down to it, I will lose. So, I don’t rely on you for even the smallest things. And you wonder why there is no teamwork?

I feel a bit better. Thanks for listening.

And Joe and I used to talk about it, and we’d say we were so lucky we have this wonderful relationship, we can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in. We can fly off to Rome on a moment’s notice. … ‘The thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment’s notice’ …. And the kitchen floor? Not once. It’s this very cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile.

This is about the most useful quote from When Harry Met Sally…. I hear it in my head every time I watch some episode of HGTV where they show a couple walking though a house they’re thinking of buying and she imagines the garden here and how they are going to entertain all their friends there, etc, etc.

And most of that never happens.

That spare bedroom that was going to be his office is now a junk room and he is working off the kitchen table. The modular sofa that costs way too much that was to be a relaxing chill space almost never gets used. The family room with the fireplace where they were going to entertain friends holds bookcases of old books and photo albums that are never read.

How much space do you really need to live and be happy? Chances are, not much. Not much at all.

I woke up today realizing that I no longer have any friends. It’s not something I planned as much as they all just slowly moved away or eventually revealed their true purpose for befriending me, whereupon I let them quietly slip away. And I’ve gotten too old and too lazy to make new ones.

And except for the odd moment when nostalgia or loneliness grips me tightly, I’m ok with that — with the exception of two people in my life who moved away rather abruptly. But had they stayed longer, we may not even be the occasional friends we are still, albeit tentatively.

I suspect it will probably be a regret I have later in life, that I did not try harder to collect and hang onto friends. But on the bright side, it is sure going to save a ton of money on finger sandwiches for the buffet.