Don't Have A S****y Day

"Sounds like someone's got a case of the Mondays!"

Has anyone actually ever said that to you? I hope not. If they have, I am in full agreement with the dude from Office Space. I think you reserve the right to whoop someone's ass for saying something like that, it's just the epitome of 'why are you talking then' phrases. Sometimes, nothing needs to be said. Sometimes, just don't even say anything, because anything you say is just going to make a negative contribution to the conversation.

Do you get tired of hearing the same phrases over and over, and you start to look at them really closely to try to understand what they even mean? I can't stop myself from doing this lately. A guy at the grocery store in front of me the other day told his wife and kids that they could 'kill two birds with one stone'. And for whatever reason, I pictured what it actually looks like when you kill even one bird with a stone. And it's actually a bit screwed up.

It's like, dude, why did you kill that bird? That bird did nothing to deserve that, what are you doing? You want to kill another one after that? And do it with the same stone? So you're possibly psychotic and lazy at the same time? Or does that mean you kill the first bird, walk over, pick up the same stone, and then kill another one? Somehow that's less impressive. Maybe you're killing more than one bird because of the size of the stone. If I lob a meteor the size of a football stadium at a wooded forest, I'll probably hit a few things, birds, squirrels, might even get a deer or two. But no one is going to turn to me and say "Good shot" over it.

So I guess details like that matter a bit.

Here's something that I think we overuse all the time:

"Have a great day!"

Again, I know I'm really turning up the microscope on this one, but what does that actually, like ACTUALLY mean? Because a lot of us have really great lives in the first place. We have jobs, we have loving families, or families that aren't plagued with violence and incest that we can deal with most of the time. We live in a part of the world that currently has all the basic resources needed to sustain life. We have things that entertain us that we don't even need, and yet we can allow them to bring us stress and interrupt otherwise boring great sufficient happiness. If you've recently felt angry or disappointed because of the result of a sports competition, or you were let down by a musical performance or musical album, or you are currently feeling unfulfilled because you finished a binge of a tv show and don't have a new one yet, then yeah, maybe life sucks, but on a much more basic level maybe life is going great and you are able to focus and dwell on details like that. If you didn't have to kill your own food to feed yourself and seven others using a spear and a rope, clothed only with the hide of the last thing you killed with that same spear and rope, you just might have more going in the right direction than you realize.

So when you say 'Have a great day", how are you saying it? Are you saying, continue having a mostly great life without interruption? Have an average day of excellence? Or are you trying to say, even for the great life you're living with no real problems and a ton to be envied by people in your own life, you need to go out there and just kill that standard by having whatever a great day is to YOU. Go out and finish first in a marathon, and learn Cantonese Chinese, and write an award winning screenplay, and foil a terrorist attack, and cook a perfect souffle, and then travel to Paris and have people excited to take pictures of you while you're the visitor in Paris, and then come back and have lunch and then keep going after that. Just get out there and kill it, have a great day to what is already a great life! Go, go now! Why aren't you having a great day life in this moment?! You're disobeying my enthusiasm and I won't have it!

What if your normal days are amazing and this great day that you're supposed to have is for normal people? You know, like you're used to mansions and cruises and champagne lifestyle and you have a great day for a blue collar dude with a trailer, a pickup and a case of Bud light? If you have one standard and the other comes at you, well, can you definitively say that ISN'T a shitty day? And I'm not talking shit about the case of beer. Bud light days can be awesome. Bud light days can bring great perspective. The mornings after Bud light days can also bring a requiem for why you move on from Bud light days at some point. Just like the day or so after the champagne lifestyle might not be great when you get the bill for all that shit and realize, 'Now I'm broke and have to go back to Bud light days for the rest of my stupid but still basically good life'.

I got the idea after listening to Ice Cube's "It was a Good Day". For those of you unfamiliar, it's a 90's gangsta rap song about a guy in South Central LA who takes you through what is considered in his world a good day. And he mentions things like how he played basketball and did well, had some good food with his family, won money in a card game, went on a date and got laid, his favorite sports teams won, more good food, got some drinks, ect., things that are relatable to many people out there, regardless of background. But then he mentions other things in his world that didn't happen, that also contributed to a good day. Like the fact that he didn't have to shoot anyone, and he didn't get shot or shot at. At one point he notes that he had to stop at a red light, and no one was waiting at that red light to try and rob him. Cool. To many of us, it's not just that "yeah it's good that no attempted robbery occurred", but more, "Holy shit, do you have to worry about that kind of thing regularly?" But to Ice Cube in the song, it's like, "Hey, nobody I know got killed today. Thumbs up."

Maybe the amount of focus we put on mundane things is way too much. Maybe we're using words like great too much. We call our days great. We call our jobs great. We have great cars, great families, great weekends, great grandmothers, great escapes, great walls, great balls of fire. Please, spare me your balls of fire, they are usually quite shoddy and ordinary. You gotta really dig deep to impress me with your balls of fire. If you don't have massive balls that are completely engulfed in flames that are burning everything that they touch, then I challenge your definition of what it means to have great balls of fire. I have now gone on this point for too long and will move on.

We definitely use great for things like food constantly. I had a coworker at a previous job go on and on about this 'amazing' burrito he had for lunch that day. He described everything about it, from the meat, to the cheese, and the toppings of guacamole and peppers and chilies and pico de gallo, and the way it was wrapped up and toasted, and the way it smelled, and how satisfying it was for him and how he doesn't think he'll ever have another burrito that good ever again. And just messing around, one of the female coworkers there at the same time said, "So then I guess it's all downhill from here, huh?" And I got a glimpse of the moment his face sank just a little bit. It was quick and subtle, but I think he honestly had a moment of consideration, where he thought maybe that six dollar burrito was the best he was ever gonna do, and everything in life had built him to that moment and now nothing else was going to measure up to it ever again.

But that wasn't quite the end of it. It would turn out later that this same burrito may have made a second appearance. I can't say for certain what else this dude ate, but the bathroom was uninhabitable shortly thereafter for most of the rest of the day after he paid it a visit. And it was definitely him, because I had the misfortune of being in the vicinity when it happened and I saw the look on his face when he left that bathroom. It was one of those faces where you don't yet know how terrible of a thing you just done. It looked kind of like this:



Suffice it to say, the next 10 people to use that bathroom had horrible days, or had their days severely downgraded, thanks to this god damn burrito that caused 10 seconds of euphoria to this admittedly aloof useless hippie type. And yes, I get that this could be taking several things out of context just to support my point here in an unnecessary way. Thousands of other things could have made other people's days shitty, and this guy may have just had his own personal Victor Green moment that he hopes no one ever finds out about, yada yada. And to all that I say-

...meh. I choose to believe it was the burrito that made all of this mayhem happen. And it's likely that this was not a great day for anyone involved. So let's go with that.

Maybe it's not about having great days. Maybe it's just about eliminating the awful ones. So let's try that. Go out there and don't have a shitty day. Let's raise the average rating of your days to where you don't even have to worry about having good or great days, because they already are that. Don't have a shitty day, everybody.

Until next time.

Super Hero: An Ode

My wife is not a super hero.

I try to explain that to her every so often, that she is not an invincible force. She doesn't have unlimited and unparalleled strength, she is not able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. She cannot take on the world all at once, all by herself. I simply mean to say that she shouldn't feel that she has to. It's possible she thinks that I'm setting it as a challenge.

Tara has known for a long time that she wanted to help people. She has studied it, she has practiced it, and she has lived it, both in her family and professional life. She has always been someone that can be relied upon, someone who can be trusted, and someone who can give and accept love in many forms. Someone who will deal with reality in whatever format it comes forward. Someone who will find solace and meaning in things that may shine on a cloudy day, or further brighten a sunny one.

She's probably the most determined person I know. Working in mental health counseling must require the kind of inner will that most of us will never be able to appreciate. It's certainly not easy to push past some of the ugliest parts of the world and of life to make it to the good parts. Doing this is already a lot to ask in our own lives, but to do it for someone besides one's self is beyond admirable. That actually is heroic. For the record, I include myself in with those who will not truly understand selflessness at this level.

But again, my wife is not a super hero.

My wife is fiercely proud of who she is and where she comes from. Her family holds a place in her heart that cannot be rivaled. But please understand, this is not just the family she was born from. Tara has found others, from childhood through her adolescent and young adult life, that have become intertwined with her just as if they had sprouted from the same seed. She knows so well the definition of friendship as 'the family that you choose'. Tara has a knack for putting others before herself. This includes people close to her, but also those that she does not know well and owes nothing to. The trauma, the agony, the pressure, and the relentlessness of a calling like this still baffles me to consider as a daily endeavor.

This woman that I share my life with, whom I love more each day that I know her, does her best to share the best possible side of things, but it is inevitable that some of the darkness comes up at times too. It's only natural to acknowledge that this world of ours is unfair, and fickle, and at times even cruel. Yet I find myself sometimes glad when these dark forms show up, not because I am happy that such terrible things exist but that there also exist the people like her that can fight them tirelessly, and save the world from them, over and over again.

When we are together, I know she usually has a lot on her mind. She does her best to shut off work life at work and live independently of those difficulties and that trauma that is such a common part of the days. She must make sure that she finds time for self care, wherever possible. It is still difficult for me to not try to take on some of the weight of what she does. She would never ask for help in that. Perhaps, it is not Tara that needs to be reminded, but instead myself:

My wife may not be invincible, but I've yet to see a force that can defeat her.
My wife may not have unlimited and unparalleled strength, but it's strength that she still has yet to find the maximum to.
My wife may not leap tall buildings with a single bound, but she will climb every mountain put in front of her for what she believes in.
My wife cannot take the world on all at once, and I hope she never has to because she will try all the same, and the results may be closer than expected.

My wife is not a super hero.

Oh, wait... yes she is.

Help Me Not Help You

I know, it's been a while.

I've had things I thought about writing, and then didn't. Had things I started writing and still am working on, but never posted. Just a lot of stuff going on and not much time to stop and think about them in this way, blah blah, excuses and what not. It's actually one of the things that I like about doing a blog like this. I don't even owe you an explanation, even though I will give portions of one as we go here, for where I've been. But that's not what I came here to talk about.

Sometimes, people convince you to hate them. Or distrust them, or question them, or to just be done with them and forget they ever existed.

There was this cigar bar that was open a few blocks from my apartment when I lived downtown. We walked by it all the time, and it seemed to have a cool vibe going on, but we'd always have somewhere else we were going anyway. But one night, we stopped in, on a relatively cold night in winter, and decided to get some drinks and maybe a cigar(which was a bit over budget considering the financial place we were all in).

The lights were dim, the crowd seemed mellow, the prices weren't so bad, so we decided to check out the drinks at the bar. While we were up there, I noticed there was a DJ in the corner, adjusting his records as he already had something playing. Whatever it was, it was kinda weird, but not bad necessarily. So me, being my curious self after 2-3 cheap beers, I stroll over and ask him what he's playing, what kind of other stuff he's got lined up, just to kinda of chat him up, and the guy seems to take offense for some reason. Like it's weird to want to know what to expect from a new place or something. And I tried to not be taken aback, I just start to say that our group has a lot of new music constantly being thrown around and I like to know what new stuff is out there, and he says something to the effect of:

If you were really a music person, you'd know to just shut the hell up and listen to whatever I put on.

And I don't remember exactly how he worded it, but that was the gist. I walked away at that, and thought about what he said as my friends continued to look at the menu. Because I considered what he said, the idea that I could just be in that space and take whatever came next as a new experience, and maybe learn something new just by listening and not thinking too much.

And then I expressed this to my group by saying, "Fuck this guy and this place, let's find another bar on this street." They agreed, not finding too much they were excited for on the menu and realizing none of us could afford cigars at the time.

On our way out, I looked back at the DJ, and I'll never forget the smug grin on his face as he stood there, arms folded, basking in his accomplishment of having chased out 5 potential bar patrons. Like he'd won something, done what he set out to do. And I just shrugged and shook my head, because all he convinced me to do was NOT hear him out. Even if he felt that way, he seemed to intentionally have shrunk his own audience. And for what? To put a stranger in their place, about something that is no by no means a universal understanding in music? To make himself feel better about some other shit he was dealing with? Did he think he was teaching me an important lesson that would improve my life, too?

Well, in a way he did. I was reminded of the benefits of not being an asshole to the point that people stop being on your side, and start lining up against you. You may not always be able to make someone your friend, but I'm willing to bet you can just about always piss someone off more than they currently are. There's a phrase, "You can't always do right, but you can always do what's left." I think it's lyrics from a song by Queens of the Stone Age as I really think about it, but that doesn't kill my point. When something isn't great, do yourself a favor and remember that it can always get worse. Some situations, I feel, are just dying, just begging to get worse than they already are.

For example:

My last few months have led to me taking a new job in the Madison area. It's a good move for me and my career, but I'm still in touch with a lot of my former coworkers and I'm glad to hear that things are basically still moving along. I said that in that way, because it was a bit dicey over the past year. I'm not going to go into too much detail and I'm certainly not going to bash the company here. The company, for all of its faults, still did a lot of good for me over the past six years, and I could never disparage them for it.

I can, however, feel a bit more liberty in bashing some of my least favorite customers now.

You must understand, we worked in the medical device field with a lot of dentists and doctors students that would soon become dentists and doctors, and you have to believe me when i say i fear for the clients of more than a few of these bastards out there. Bruhhh, there are some stupid sun' bitches cleaning and fixing teeth in America. People that are incompetent, people that are entitled, people that are just assholes and assume because I work in this type of role, I must be a slack-jawed neanderthal that couldn't possibly understand how important these people were. And this is by no means a new concept in customer service type jobs, this is very much within the territory. Still, I had people go above and beyond the standard of acting shitty to those that, again, ARE THERE TO HELP YOU.

Something else I will mention about the past year in my now former job: my boss at the time, the manager, took another job within the company. I, the supervisor at the time, inherited a number of his responsibilities but was not interviewed as replacement for his job. Was I happy about this? No, of course not. Did I understand the reasons they gave me for not considering me? Meh...somewhat. But that's not the point here.

The point is that both my (former) boss and I were both overloaded and neither was in a particularly happy mood when this story took place. He was doing his new job while still managing our department where he absolutely needed to, and I was still straddling the line of working on the phones with the rest of my group, as I used to do regularly, while handling new responsibilities as a supervisor while also getting passed things that a manager technically does. I'm not bragging, I'm simply telling you what happened.

So we get a call that's an escalation. Some old dentist in New Jersey (or not) who's unhappy with something and wants to speak to a supervisor. So someone transfers it to me, and I tell them that I won't be able to take the call at that moment, and that they can either have the guy leave a message or they can take it to my boss, if it's that urgent. I didn't like passing things off to him like that often, but I remember I did at first in this case, so I had to have been just that far behind.

Whoever took the call walks into his office (the boss's), and he tells them to send it to me, and they mention that I just said I couldn't do it at the moment. And this guy, who we'll call Allen for this story, leans out of his office, and asks me if I can give whoever a hand with this. And I start to explain why I sent it over and that I need to finish what I have going, and halfway in I pause and I look him right in his eye, and he's got this semi-wide eyed glance that says, "I wasn't actually asking." And this annoying little smile comes across his face as he says, "Can you please take care of this?"

I know that look. It's the look of someone passed his limit who hopes you understand that this will only get less pleasant from here forward. And plus, he was still technically my direct report, and I was holding out hope that if I did a good enough job with these 2 (really 3) roles, maybe I could prove my worth and be given a shot at the manager role a bit later on. So I mustered a similar smile to him, nearly gritting my teeth, and tried to say, "kiss my black ass in as professional a way as possible." But it came out as, "Send him over to me."

I take a couple of deep breaths, reminding myself that the customer did nothing to warrant any retribution. I have to be professional, I have to be patient. This is my job, to take this on and make it better for everyone involved. Woosah.

Yeah, woosah my ass. This guy was a tool from the minute I clicked over. I told him my name and he told me our entire department should be let go, probably with me first. That's how he thought our conversation should start. The problem was that we had sent this guy's product to him in the wrong color, a color he originally requested but then claims to have changed a few days later. Which could have happened, but it didn't. So he wanted to send it back and get a new one with his new color choice. And so far, I had no issues with his request.

The problem, however, was that he was already using his product and didn't want to give it up. He had another of this product and had been using it for a while, but he wouldn't give this one back within his trial period until he had the new one. Which was directly against policy, and when they said they couldn't change it, he flipped out and asked for me. If this had been some little widget for like $20, maybe even $100 or $200, I wouldn't have cared and probably would have just sent it at no cost, don't even bother sending the old one back. But these things were like $3000, and it would take a while to make it between his prescription and all these other factors, and again, he's already lambasted me a ton for no good reason. The guy who was going to fix his problem. So I decided that I couldn't break with the policy.

The one thing I offered, I said we would remake a second one and give him a discount. The standard special discount for repeat customers, but a discount nonetheless. And he asks how much off it is, and I say how much (like $200) and there's a pause on the phone. And then I hear him just start to scoff and almost hyperventilate. And before I can ask him if he's okay, he starts to say, over and over again, "How dare you?! How DARE you?!" I'm not particularly sure what to say in response. I kind of can guess why he's upset, but this is a level I legitimately didn't anticipate.

Next, he says he's going to do his best to ruin our business in the U.S. And I came so close to telling him, "Give it your best shot." I wish I could see where that conversation went, even though the lines are recorded and it ultimately would not have been too professional. And I swear, through all this, I am as polite and courteous as I can be, while still refusing to give into this retail terrorist. This is not the kind of guy that gets what he wants and goes away. I fully expected, if we yielded to him now, he'd be back and would expect we give into his demands next time, too. So, with respect, fuck that. And with less respect, fuck him.

So he starts asking for my manager's name and info, and I tell him who Allen is and that Allen essentially doesn't work in our department anymore, so that for now, I'm the one he wants to talk to. So he asks for Allen's boss, who is a new General Manager that has been with the company for about 3 months at that time and doesn't really know what anything is or how to do anything. Not to mention, when our GM, who we'll call Aaron I guess, will almost certainly come to me to put anything necessary in motion. Again, I tell him, this still has to go through me at the moment.

But screw it, I give him Aaron's name, and this douche canoe of a dentist tells me to tell him to call the next day. And before he hangs up, he says something that made me laugh later. It went like this:

Douchbag: And Trevor, tell me something before I go.
Me: I'm sorry?
Douchebag: Tell me this, Trevor.
Me: (ignoring the wrong name) Yes, sir?
Douchebag: What's your next job going to me?
Me: Umm, I don't know yet.
Douchebag: You should figure it out. You're not going to have this one much longer.
<click>

Yep. This motherfucker was that sure he was going to get me fired. He proceeded to call the Better Business Bureau and complain about our return practices, which are stated pretty clearly on the website. He then stalked me on LinkedIn for the next few weeks, periodically leaving weird direct messages every few days, which, how the hell did he even do that when he was looking for a Trevor? I told Allen what happened, and he didn't believe me until he started getting notices from our marketing department because this guy also blew up the company Facebook page.

So I took it to Aaron, and he said he wanted to help smooth over the situation however he could, but he agreed with the policy and that we had been reasonable with the doctor to that point. He then basically gave the doc exactly what he wanted. Whatever. I was all to happy to was my hands of this assmuncher and the horse he rode in on, and in many ways, New Jersey (or wherever) as a whole.

But I looked up the doctor a bit later, because I was now more curious than ever. It turns out, this is one of the highest rated dentists on the east coast. This imbecile, Dr. Byers we'll call him, is actually highly respected and has won a ton of awards and has a 30 year practice established and blah blah blah, don't use your position and reputation to try to justify being a maniac. There are ways to talk to people to get what you want. This guy talked to several people in our company like he owned them, like he was better than them. Like he was the only one in the equation who mattered.

I know for a fact he called early this year and demanded some more free shit, and Aaron gave it to him. Because it got escalated to him again, because no one else would stoop that low to please him and no one else felt like getting bile spit at them through a phone call like that. So this was the whole concern the whole time for me, that he knows he can go to this length to get acquiesced to, so that's what he did. Asshole.

He had no idea that I had no issue with bending the rules a bit if I thought the customer deserved it. Or if I felt that we screwed up on our end. I am someone who worked in 3 different roles at the same time for that company, averaging 50-60 hours a week for years. I worked projects, trained new employees, helped troubleshoot issues within the building and across departments, went to trade shows on weekends, did after hours drops to UPS to ensure delivery dates, hell, I once cleaned up shit off the god damn carpet in that office. And Dr. Byers found a way to help me not want to help him more than I was obligated to.

Go ahead, tell me that I should have just done what he wanted and been done with it. Remind me the adage that the customer is always right (they really aren't. Customers are wrong about tons of shit on a constant basis, and not being aware of this is just a further detriment).

I maintain: you can't always get someone to smile at you. But if you are bad enough, you can always, always, always get them to flick you off, though.

And no, I can't tell you about the time I cleaned up shit. And NO, it was not my own. It wasn't Victor Green.

Bye now.

See, What Had Happened Was...

Dumb things get said quite often. You don't really have to pay attention to notice it, either. You'll hear idiocracy when it's nearby. I hope.

If you don't, I have some bad news for you. Or maybe I don't. I'm told dumb people lead way happier lives, and feel more fulfilled and keep reading this here if you really want to feel better about the idea that you might be an idiot and there's some sort of silver lining. Because, fuck it. Dumb people deserve good news too, right? You're not really still reading this paragraph, are you? I’m not calling you dumb. But I also cannot confirm that you aren’t dumb, as I have no idea beforehand who is going to read these entries. You’re probably not dumb, but you also might be. You really could just skip to the next paragraph and not worry so much about whether or not I’m going to try to qualify your level of intellect. This is going to keep going on for two more sentences. You really shouldn't feel obligated to ready every word of this unless... well, you could also be obsessive-compulsive as well. Regardless, let's move on.

And look, it’s not like smart people can’t be dumb at things too, or say dumb things that they later have to live down, or just momentary lapses. At times, there are signs that something near you is about to be a huge waste of time, resources, manpower, money, effort, opportunity, hell, signs that it's just going to be a waste. Perhaps it's what's going on, and you've taken part before and you know that nothing significant will get accomplished, like a procrastinator's convention, or a session of Congress in the U.S. House of Representatives. Maybe you know things will be pointless because of who is involved, people that have wasted your time before. Maybe you’ll be in a worthless and time consuming place, like the DMV. Or Toledo. I don't know. But after your time on this earth is severely waster a few times, you may start to look for signposts that something utterly fruitless is going to occur soon.

There's one phrase that many have identified as a direct correlation with a thought that will probably underwhelm everyone that hear it. And I'll share it with you, so that you know for sure the next time you hear someone actually use it, or use it to refer to something nearby that failed this test of using what was probably basic logic. The phrase is, quite simply,

"See, what had happened was..."

Listen for that exact setup to any discussion, and my guess is you are not going to find a well-planned sequence of events that were set in motion. The phrase, as far as I can tell, was first introduced officially in an episode of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but there's absolutely no way that it hadn't ever been uttered before that moment. Something about this phrase is timeless, almost as timeless as people trying to explain things that are without explanation.

I should know. I was in a situation without explanation once. At least not a good one.

Well, see, that's not true. Technically, every situation has an explanation. It may not be something anyone wants to hear, and it may just prompt more questions to be asked,  but there is always an explanation for how we got to where we are.

For example...

A few weeks ago, I left work later than I should have and got stuck in a flood situation about 5 miles from my house.

You see, what had happened was about a week prior, I got a flat tire coming home from the gym. It was in the morning, I had forgotten something at home and drove most of the way back to our apartment when I started hearing and feeling the car struggle to make turns or maintain a straight line. And I turned the radio down and, yep, tire's flat. So I get home, and we got the spare tire on the car that can't go faster than 58 miles per hour. So I can drive the car but very gradually and can't get it replaced until the following weekend.

Well, it would turn out that between the flat tire and the next weekend, our part of town would receive about 13-16 inches of rain within a 6 hour period, and would present a real problem. And it’s not like it’s never flooded here in Madison before, but granted I had never been directly involved in it and , frankly, I thought other people were just full of shit. I thought a foot or a foot and a half of rain would not be that big of a deal. So despite being warned by my lovely wife, Tara, who is always right about this kind of thing, I didn’t try to leave work as soon as possible at 5:00 on the evening that this rain started coming down. Now, in my defense, the rain had been coming down for a while prior to this time, so the events that I’m about to describe to you may have occurred the exact same. Not sure. All I know is that trying to finish some work and leaving around 6:15 did me absolutely no favors.

I hop in my low sitting Sedan on 3.5 wheels and note, quite calmly, that there is quite a lot of water around. Falling from the sky, in the parking lot that I am about to leave, pretty much everywhere. But there’s not a reason to panic. The car starts, more or less with the same normal rate of difficulty, and I start on the back road journey that I normally do. And again, there’s a noticeable increase of water from what I normally see on rainy days, but I’m chugging along, through what appears to be a constant quarter mile of a puddle. And there’s not a whole lot of other cars on the road, so it isn’t a big deal that I can’t actually see where the lanes begin and end, and the street lights don’t really seem to be working anywhere over in this area as I’m driving through, but hey, again, nothing to worry about.

Now, I get to Greenway Station, a shopping center area on my way home with a few restaurants, some bars, a bunch of shopping outlets, and a few hotels. I will swing back to why this is important in just a second. I try to continue through the back roads on my way home, as my wife suggested. And it was the roads right after Greenway Station that I began to have problems. As in, there were no roads to make it through to continue my journey. The first way I went had a Jeep parked in the middle of the road. And by parked, I mean, the hazard lights were on, the drivers side doors and passenger doors were open, and the road underneath was not visible because of the apparent river that formed there. So yeah, that wasn't going to work.

I hen turned around and tried to get back to the highway to get around that area, and found this also was not much of an option, because other cars were turning around that, again, had way better chances of getting through the water than I ever would. So I turned back from turning around and tried to get through another way, and this is the photo I took of the most feasible way to get across the area I was now trapped in:

To be fair, I have this photo because I actually stopped and watched an SUV make it through this. I decided to watch in case they began to be swept away by the current, not that I was going to know exactly what to do, but I felt better about it when I saw them pull out on the far shore. So with that, I turn around and head back to Greenway Station, and sit down at the bar area to attempt to wait out the storm for a bit. An hour or two pass, and the forecast reveal that there is not real end in sight to the rainfall that evening, it was not going to quit until at least the following morning. So I try one more time to get out, by backtracking to the way that I came in the first time to this shopping area, and that is more flooded than anything else I've seen.

It began to sink in that I may be trapped here, actually trapped away from home for an undetermined amount of time. I called Tara again to explain the current status of the situation, and she said she would reach out to one of the hotels and try to get me a room, since I would need somewhere to go as a fail safe. I reluctantly agreed, although very annoyed that under normal weather circumstances, I could walk home from here if I really needed to. I'm not naive enough to think that walking through a downpour and flooding currents would tilt the odds in my favor, though, and so I agreed to have dinner at the bar and chill out rather than try to venture out again. At this point, the cable service in the bar keeps going out, so there's nothing to watch on TV. The internet is spotty so completing my homework assignment out of boredom is also off the table.

About an hour later, Tara confirmed that the hotel had a room for me. I decided to close my tab and head over there so that I could at least try to relax for the next few hours, get a good nights sleep, and then see if I can confirm what's going on at work the next day. And I get to the car and realize that is has not stopped raining since I had last left the car. This is important because now the very parking lot that I am sitting in is no longer a given for me to leave, since I am so low to the ground in this death trap on 3+ wheels. The puddles turned into a mass lake in the parking spaces outside of Home Goods and Guitar Center, so I had to navigate my way around to get to the parts of the lot that my car would not need to float through. I circle around the next bank of shops and come to an apartment complex up on this little hill, the only area around that I am sure won’t be under water in the next hour, and I park in an open space for the night.

Only because I’m pretty sure how to get to the hotel from my current location, I grab my computer bag and start hustling through the rain to get to the hotel from my current spot. It’s no more than a quarter mile, right around the corner from where I am. But as i start running down a slight grassy hill, the power goes out. Like, every-fucking-where around me. Street lights, neon signs from the nearby stores, everything. Goes black at the same time. And I’m jogging when this happens so naturally, I trip and fall down this hill as I’m running, so I slide all over in the damp grass and mud, that’s cool, definitely needed that. When I get back to my feet, I’m fairly sure I know which direction I was running before, but there’s a bit of doubt, honestly. I get back to the sidewalk, and make my way around the same corner I was going towards, and I can see that the sidewalk ends and I will need to walk the last few hundred yards to the hotel (the right one, at least) in fairly high water. Which, at this point, is a small price to pay. Hurrying through the water, I make it to the front of the hotel through the mini-moat that has formed, and I’m a bit surprised to find several people out sin front of the hotel, smoking and shooting the shit with each other. Then I remember that the power is out, and the flood lights in front of the hotel are almost certainly emergency lights, so this is one of few places that have light at the moment. Moving inside, I come to a short line at the front desk. Who doesn’t have power. So how the hell do they know if they have reservations or not? I’m concerned that I wont have a room after all and will have to go back to my car. And believe it or not, I’m not in a great mood at this point of the evening, and that would not be welcome news.

Well, good news is that they had printed out the reservations about an hour prior, so they had my name on the list. Sadly, the guy in front of me did not call ahead. So he did not have a room set up, and it took way too long to get that part sorted out. Because he was so sure that the power was going to come back on while he was sitting at the counter. And it didn’t. So he gave up his credit card number and took two full bottles of wine from the bar area. So the lady at the counter was happy to see my name and give me a keycard for the room I had reserved.

You might be thinking, it’s an electronic card, how does the door work? I asked as much, and the front desk lady confirmed that the rooms all had battery operated readers. So I was fine there. But couldn’t see shit in the room when I first got in. But i was drenched, so I basically just stepped down and used the towels to dry back up. No TV, no internet, my phone is on 11%, can’t charge anything, so I just laid in bed, at what was around 1 AM. To make matters more annoying, the windows didn’t have any of the thicker sheets that blocked out light from the outside. Or it did, and I couldn’t find it there in the bedroom with me. Whichever you want to believe actually took place. But the parking lot across the way just happened to have someone sitting in a truck with their high beams on. Pointed right at my god damn window. After all of this, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but try to go to sleep, and someone’s high beams are pointed in my dam window. As you can imagine, I just buried my head in my pillows, curled up, and stuck it out for the next three hours until the power came back on.

See, I’m lying. About 20 minutes into it, I jumped out of bed and started trying to flag this dude down to turn off his bright ass lights. And I still had my clothes damp in the closet trying to dry them, so I am completely naked, using a hotel blanket to try to cover myself as I still try to get attention but not too much attention so I can tell, through interpretive dance, that I no longer want the spotlight pointed at my window. It was one of the few times in my life that I wished that myself and a large percentage of the population knew sign language. But even then, they would need binoculars to see my signs correctly, so honestly, it would not have mattered. Long story short, it ended, the power came back on at about 4 and the dude with the high beams left. I got a good 3 hours nights worth of sleep and came downstairs for the obligatory continental breakfast. Drove home in still a shitload of traffic, had to find a place to get gas on the way. Found several spots where cars had been abandoned but the after had subsided, so it just looked like a third world country. Yeah, it was that kind of morning. And then work was closed for all of that next day and most of the following morning. Fun times.

So yeah, that’s my story there, which doesn’t have a particularly great progression, but has the point that I already made. Dudes, just listen to your wife. For better or for worse. Just do what she says, or be prepared for the substantial consequences you’ll face. And then have to listen to how you should have just listened. That’s almost as annoying the story itself, is having to tell it back and knowing how dumb it sounds to tell any story that starts the with, “See, what had happened was...”

IHOP

I hope

I hope on paper

And write these thoughts through  hell and sweat and vapor

So I can sleep well and read it out loud later

I hope

I hope that I make it a minute to rest for a sec

So I can reclaim breath and keep anger in check

And later be pleased that my mind is a wreck

But that wreck is a beautiful mess to respect

Whenever it’s left to reflect

I hope

I hope on the keyboard in sight

That worldly frustrations can make the mutations

And patience can lead to delight

And as the apple of one eye, even if

It’s as a crabapple, I can still be worth the bite

Though I will not take it as a slight, if I’m not the leader

And I’m not the chosen one, I don’t just have to be right

But I can be what’s left as the option, and left

To defend and be stern and calm and

Unnecessarily polite

I hope

I hope that they’ll say I was tough

I hope that they’ll say I was up to the hype and

I hope they’ll say I was enough

I hope I’m enough of the grace under pressure

I hope that I’m built for the rough

I just hope

I hope on paper

When words cannot whisper what’s needed

And those sweetest thoughts I could let escape out

Are not worth it to be repeated

It’s not what I get every time that I seek it

Which is why I hope I don’t actually need it

I hope

I hope that I’m blessed with more strength than the stressin’

Can teach me the best of my preconceived lessons

And test me to not ask the epic of questions:

What am I actually hoping for here?

I hope

I hope I never have to hear that

Which I truly know I don’t truly revere

I hope the truth finds me as I become near

It all becomes mine and it all becomes clear

For maybe it’s your words that were burning my ear

And not rising flames to my sides and the rear

That advance me as wickedness quickly appears

I hope

I hope I’m prepared, that I’ve rose to the tier

Where I can just grin, and I can just sneer

And call in a favor to get to the clear

And labor enough to deserve all the cheer

And savor the flavor of tables of beer

I hope I combat through the fear

On the road that unfolds as I steer

I hope

Honesty, Brutal Honesty

One time, I was at summer camp. And I was in line getting food from the warmed trays that the kitchen staff was refilling. And One of the staff, this shorter black lady with that trademark spunky attitude that black women are known for, she was going on about what some cop had said to her as I was passing by, and she said something to the effect of, "I told him, 'You better arrest me right now, before I go 'head and arrest YOU and YOUR punk ass!" and the rest of the kitchen staff was cracking up. And I was curious, so I decided to ask what that meant, so I said, in so many words, "Arresting the cops? What the hell are you talking about?" And not in a flippant or disbelieving way, but trying to understand better. And this woman turns to me, and scoffs, and says, in words I will never be able to quite shake off, "Don't you worry about it, lil' BOYYYYY!" and she makes this really demeaning face when she says it, so I just kind of take a step back, incredulous that anyone has labeled me like this. I even retorted back at her, "Little boy? Me?" I wish I had had more to say back than just that, but I got at least that much out of my face. She just shook her head and kept laughing, carrying on with the rest of the kitchen like I already wasn't there. One of the other guys back there, a young scraggly looking white dude with a bunch of tattoos and a beard, just shook his head and chuckled at me. "Bertha's not to be trifled with, little dude!" It was a turning point.

I finished getting my food, paid for it at the counter, and walked over to the table with the other counselors that I was working the camp with. And I couldn't stop looking at the shirt I was wearing, with yellow and green stripes. And one of the other counselors asked me what was wrong, and I looked at her and asked, "Be honest. Do I dress like a kid in middle school?" She gave me a wide eyed, surprised look and stumbled through a response that didn't answer my question. That's how I found out I needed to update my wardrobe the first time in college. And It wasn't the fellow counselor that I was friends with, whose opinion I actually valued, that made the difference. It was little ass Bertha in the kitchen, calling me a little boy with her snap judgement evaluation of who I was based on (I have to assume) the clothes I was wearing.

And okay, maybe it was the glasses and how my hair would have looked, and maybe even just the way I carried myself. But the point is, she looked at me and saw a boy. And it made me realize that I kind of did, too. And that was what I needed to hear at that moment.

Now, a quick note: I could have told this story differently. I could have just left it as:

I was a summer camp counselor once. It was a lot of fun and it taught me a lot about myself. Particularly that I needed to update my wardrobe.

That's what I could have said. But that would not have been owning up to what the moment really was for me. I've had many moments of embarrassment and self-deprecation throughout my life, many of which I continue to share in this exact forum. And I've learned something from most of them. But each and every one of them, for one reason or another, I have had to own up to, because these are some of the most honest moments a person can know. You see, it's easy to own a proud moment, that you want to brag about and show off to the world. Anyone can take their best side and polish it up, and crop out the love handles and adjust the lighting to the best side of them, and show that off. But it ain't real.

Few people will show the uncut, raw, silly, unkempt, slovenly, crude, obnoxious, or sheer unappealing side of themselves. Nobody wants to be a villain, or a schmuck, or just whatever they truly are in their core if their core isn't pure gold. They always want to present a representative. They want to show the ambassador side of themselves because that's the side that people feel the most comfortable sharing. No one wants to share the posts they made that sound slightly homophobic, racist, or chauvinistic. It's about seeming like an enlightened, majestic aristocrat with a sense of humbleness and humor. No one wants to present the side of their relationship where they look like a villain that has their spouse on a tight leash or they don't value the opinions of their coworkers and customers at work or they park like a douchebag every morning at their favorite coffee shop because they're the only one in a hurry whose time matters. People want to be seen as confident, secure, and the epitome of loveliness, for all of us to envy.

Not only that, but I know a lot of people get brave over the internet through all of it's anonymity and would never say half of the shit in person. It's easy to talk shit about someone's music when you see the video on youtube, but then you still want the autograph and the selfie in person if they come to the same mall as you. I have no issue with being brutally honest unless you don't have the balls to bring that same honesty in person. And it's not just an internet thing. Say what you were willing to say behind your least favorite coworkers back to her face too. When that snarky barista asks what you said after you make a backhanded comment about her service, tell her and fill out a negative comment card, just make sure you have your coffee in hand and you don't plan on coming back for a couple of weeks until this blows over. That cop that wrote you a ticket that you know you didn't earn? Don't say a god damn thing, you don't need this ass whooping. He isn't wearing a bodycam and there's no traffic to witness this, just be polite, take the ticket and get the hell out of here, what are you, crazy? Being honest is not worth it every single time. Keep your comments and your mouth full of teeth where they are.

In case you missed it, that was more honesty at the end of that paragraph, just to honestly convey that it's not actually always worth it to be honest. But sometimes, being honest and owning up to exactly where you are and what is happening actually makes sense. Sometimes, honesty is the one reason that things come back to a sensible station instead of spiraling into something really stupid and unnecessarily painful.

It was Halloween of my freshman year of college.

I won't go into details, but Halloween in Madison, WI is kind of a big deal.

Just saying, people know about it. Except I didn't really know about it until I was here for it.

I first figured out that there was something abnormal going on the morning of the friday of that weekend when a large group of students ran into my Calculus lecture and put on a performance that can only be described as, "what it looks like in Pac Mans world when he gets a power up." As in, there was a pac man costume, there were ghosts, there was once of the power up balls, and they actually simulated pac man hitting the power up and chasing the now white colored ghost out of the lecture hall. Best part about it was that the professor, this little Asian lady, tried to teach over top of this 'performance' and the pac man music that they brought in with them.

I'm not saying that happens to everyone's calculus class, but it definitely happened on my watch.

That's not the moment of honesty I'm talking about.

That moment came later on in the night. It came after a party that was spirited and boisterous and loud and all the things you expect from a typical Friday night on most college campuses, and that would have been fun enough. The notable thing is that after this party, a number of guys at the party decided to dress up in different costumes and begin running around campus like insane people. Now, you may ask, what were the costumes that these young men changed into? And my response is, they all had on man thongs, bright colored sunglasses, and gigantic afros. And basically not much else. Yep, you read those words right.

Now, it's important to note that the party I was at was for track and field team members, which I was a part of. The guys in afros were mostly short-and-middle distance runners, all of whom had just finished a long and grueling training season and were now preparing for the end of the semester before competition in a few months. They all had running shoes on as well, in case that isn't clear, and they are all familiar with this tradition that has been passed down for several years throughout our team around this time of year. But again, I knew none of this was going to occur.

Also keep in mind that this was right around the time that social media was becoming a huge thing, but not everyone had camera phones that could accurately depict what people looked like when they were moving fast enough.

Anyway, suffice to say, I was drunk at the time and thought this was both insane and hilarious. I might have been more disgusted if not for the fact of how hilarious this shit looked in person while intoxicated for the sixth time ever or so (I didn't drink in high school prior to this, so being drunk in itself was new and insanely entertaining despite the fact that I had no idea what I was doing on a nightly basis). So when these wigged marauders started jogging and chanting "Hoo-rah!" towards the campus and capitol building, of course I tagged along. I felt I had to see where this went. And it was a ton of fun, running along such ridiculousness and being connected to it but still not technically being a participant in case things went downhill fast. Which it really could have too. But it was fine on that Friday. I even jettisoned my shirt and jacket in a strategic spot that I knew I could probably retrieve it from along the way, and ran along with the group shirtless, adding to the chanting and running. It was way more fun than it probably sounds like, I totally get that.

But there was one moment that would have otherwise marred my entire weekend. Or semester, for that matter. And this is where the honesty comes in. And I understand the irony of talking about honesty on a night like Halloween. It's a day marked by dressing up and pretending to be something other than what you are. It's basically the third least honest day of the year, behind Valentine's Day and New Years Eve. Halloween takes lying and makes it fun for all ages. It's cosplay for amateurs, and it's festive and there's a dark scary history for some and, yeah, whatever, the day is about lying. And so I will do my best to tell the truth about exactly how this moment happened.

We had run all the way down State Street and were on the front lawn of the Capitol building, and were essentially catching our breath. And I realized, in the midst of how much fun I was having, that I had to piss terribly. I had been holding it in and all of the sudden it was a very serious need all at once. So I looked around for a likely restaurant or something that I could use, only to remember that we were surrounded by bars and restaurants that would all be absolutely packed full, and I couldn't get into the bars because I was 18 at the time, so I was very much screwed. I thought I was going to just piss myself right there on Capitol Square, and just blame it on the absurdity of the night and claim someone spilled a nasty drink on me or something. But then, to the left, I saw an upperclassman that I respected enough to not mention his name here, relieving himself in a nearby bush, with seemingly no consequences. So I shuffled over, not widening my stance too much, and proceeded to do likewise.

The instant I begin my stream of relief, he finishes and scurries away, clearly not proud of what he had just done from his gestures alone. I turn and watch, curious why he felt the need to flee the scene like that, and then I see it as I turn back around to mind the target I'm painting. The corner of my eye catches the lights on top of a bicycle riding on the ledge right above where I am let the river run. It's an older looking guy with unnecessarily tight shorts on for an October night, and a helmet and gloves on, and he has a toothpick in his mouth. And he shakes his head and calls out to me, "Come on up here once you finish, son."

I turn, and look at the guys I came into this situation with are standing there, trying not to look but obviously watching the situation unfold. A few are laughing openly, others are trying to keep it together in case I get taken into custody. In their position, I'm not sure which role I would fulfill. But I digress.

I was going to run at first. Partially because I had no money to afford a ticket, I was barely able to pay for all of my books and tuition and food as it was, so this would be much more than just embarrassing, this would be expensive, at least to me. Not to mention, I had yet to establish if police in this town were friendly or antagonistic, since I had not lived here long and generally assumed that police in the midwest were not fond of black dudes. So I was planning on running, after I finished peeing. But lucky for me, I had to pee a whole lot. Like floodgates, it just kept coming out, and I realized, standing there, trying to rush out the pee so I could flee the scene, how much I must have drank to pee like that. And I had an honest moment with myself:

Oh shit, I'm drunk. Like actually drunk. Running from the police is not going to be a good way to improve my situation. They will not be cool with that.

I also figured that with all of these mostly naked dudes in afros having accompanied me, one of them was sure to spill the beans on who we were and therefore it was possible that even if I somehow got away, I could later be tracked down and cited for resisting arrest (which was a long shot to even be a problem but I really thought I could get away in my mental state at the time, so again, pretty good thing that I didn't run). Last, but not least, I remembered a bit from Chris Rock, a favorite stand-up comedian of mine, whose advice was, put simply, "If the police have to chase you, they're bringing an ass-kicking with them." And I did not want to provide reason for anything like that.

So I resolved to face whatever music awaited me. I finished peeing and climbed up onto the ledge above, and hopped the mini fence area to where the officer stood next to his bike. Yeah, I forgot to mention, he had a bike. So I never would have gotten away regardless.

"Okay, let me see some ID." I hand over my drivers license. He takes a half glance and seems to get actually mad.

"Now tell me you didn't come all the way from Texas for a god damn Halloween party!"

And here was where more honesty came into play: I actually was a student here, and had not come to Madison, WI for Halloween alone. It took some convincing to get him to believe me, though. I didn't have my student ID. But for some reason, I did have my athletic ID that let me get into training facilities. So after a minute or so of going back and forth on where I had come from to party, I found this in my wallet and showed it to him. And the conversation completely changed.

"Oh, you're...heh heh you're a track guy, huh? Good thing you didn't try to get away from me though, huh?!" The guy started cracking jokes and completely opened up to me about chasing people on his bike or training for a half marathon. I did my best to keep it together during the conversation, but I was flabbergasted that not running had turned out to be the right decision. Two other cops came up to us and joined in on the conversation, and struck a similar, friendly and understanding tone. I learned that while my decision was not a particularly good one, it was not even close to the dumbest thing that they had seen that evening. They were telling stories about some dude that tried to scale a building in a Spongebob Squarepants outfit, and had actually hooked himself on a window sill and had to be rescued. They kind of forgot I was there for a bit.

But at one point, the first guy turned back to me, and I had my final, sobering, honest moment of the story. I looked him in his eye and said:

Sir, I have no idea what came over me. But I don't have a good excuse for what I was doing. And if you have to write me a ticket for it, I understand.

Because I did. There was no defense for peeing in the bushes of the capitol building of the state. This could be seen as a fairly direct way of pissing on the state of Wisconsin. This, or what the Dallas Cowboys did to the Packers several times throughout the 1990's, as I was reminded of many times right after becoming a Packers fan a few years ago.

The three cops all nodded at me, and the guy handed me back my license. "You seem like a good kid, just don't do it again, and try to have fun that's not gonna get you in trouble." And I kind of was taken aback a bit, but I wasn't gonna sit and ask if they were sure or anything. I just started thanking him, and I reached out and shook his hand.

And then we both remembered at the same time that I had just taken a piss and had yet to wash my hands. So he was a bit disgusted by that and, yeah, kind of a weird moment in time there. I asked if he'd prefer a hug, and he said he would not. So I thanked him again and ran before he actually did change his mind. The other guys I was with all thought it was lucky that I got off with a warning at the time, but I got some shit for it the rest of that year, which is a pretty small price to pay considering I might have had to explain my way out of police custody if I had decided to try to flee.

All I'm saying is, you're going to need that brutal honesty now and again, when other forces are telling you that you've already studied enough, or that fight with your spouse wasn't your fault at all, or that you definitely aren't too drunk to outrun the bike cops.

Until next time.

Life is Plan B

Are you who you thought you would be when you were younger?

Of course you aren't. I mean, who the hell would have come up with YOU?

Or me, for that matter. I certainly didn't.

I'll tell you more about it another time, but I really didn't think I'd even be alive this long. I know that's weird to hear, but you gotta understand I was a really weird kid. I didn't pay attention to most things going on around me, and to tell you the truth, it was a lot of fun not paying attention and then having to try to snap back into the moment afterwards. You probably think the goofy, silly, unfocused, wayward, and abstract people that you know can't help being who they are. I'm sure most of us can't, but the great majority of us also don't really want to help it. Or we do. I have only met a fraction of the other abnormal people that walk the earth. And I must say, one thing we don't do well is let others know what to expect from us.

To let others know what to expect from us, we would have to know for sure what we were capable of, and that's just not realistic. You don't usually see what your future holds as well as those around you, usually that have been down the path you are starting down or that have been around you long enough to observe something you couldn't have seen for yourself. As many realizations that we have in our own heads, that are complex and are built with all of this insight into our own experiences that no one else could possibly know, some of the most clear and crystallizing moments in our lives are made up by other people introducing concepts to us that we never imagined we'd hear, that in tun shift fundamental ideas in our own minds for years to come. The most mundane piece of advice, that another lives their entire life on and doesn't even consider worth taking seriously, well that may be the missing piece to the puzzle of unlocking the true potential of you have always been searching for in your entire existence. You never know what thoughts will end up blowing your mind, or another person's mind, or starting a thought train that takes you way stage left and brings you to a realization that you can't believe no one ever told you before.

Realest piece of advice I ever got was on a plane that had touched down in New York City. The plane got into La Guardia airport sometime around 10 in the morning, and I was barely paying attention as the passengers started trying to get off the plane and the person in the seat behind me asked if I'd been to NYC before. And I hadn't, so i said I hadn't. And she asked why I was there. And I told her I was there to visit Columbia University and that I might end up running track there, which was also true. I don't know why I keep affirming to you that I didn't lie to this stranger on the airplane, but the point is, she said that was great and that I should enjoy the trip, even if I decide I don't like the school or the city is a bit too much for me.

And for some reason, that surprised me a bit. I had been looking away, out the window trying to see what I could of the city, barely even really talking to her. But the last bit, about not liking the city or the school, it made me turn and ask, "You don't think I'll like it here?"

And she shrugged and said, "No, it's not that so much. It's not for everyone, but that's not really what I mean."

Now my interest was piqued. "Well, then what do you mean?"

And she just shook her head and said, "Life is Plan B. You have absolutely no idea where this is all going to take us. Just enjoy the ride." And she smiled and pulled her bag down from the overhead bin, and there she went.

And it's not like I didn't enjoy my visit. The city itself was massive and chaotic, but fun and inviting all at the same time. And Columbia University had a beautiful campus, and it was a great school and an amazing opportunity and I was so blessed to even be in the running for admission there. And yet...

I didn't really want to go there. I mean, would it have been really cool? Probably. Would it have changed my life in ways I would not ever fully realize? Almost certainly. Was it going to be way too expensive? Yup. This place was also going to cost me an arm and a leg, and if I was going to run track, those were going to come in handy. Plus, I wasn't sure about the coaching staff, because they didn't really have a coach for my events, just one main coach for all of the mens events and a few others that basically walked around praising whatever advice he gave out. The coach was a former olympian, so it's not like he didn't know training in general, but watching the little bit of the practicing that I did, there wasn't a lot going on that I was going to learn from. I was going to be, at least for the time being, largely on my own. Which may not have been such a bad thing all the time, because I definitely liked doing things my way and still had an idea of some of the things I could do to improve, but I also knew that I benefit from being pushed, and working by yourself doesn't usually have that built in.

There were other factors, too. It was going to be too expensive in retrospect, and I knew it already without wanting to admit it. Also, I was going to be cramped into this little corner of Spanish Harlem far from home where I would need to learn a lot of things in big city living that I don't think would have sunk in as quickly as they would probably need to for me to not get robbed or get a severe ass kicking or both or worse. So just other stuff for why I didn't end up trying to go there. I told the coach I was not interested, even though I thanked him for the opportunity to see the school and the training facilities, and that was that. And I ended up attending Wisconsin, and ran track for them, and blah blah, other stuff that was amazing and a great time yada yada National Championship and Big Ten Triple crown, I know, you don't really care and it's not the focal point of the story.

But this is. I had this friend that I met freshman year that played another sport, who we'll call Cynthia. Cynthia was a hardworking, goofy, enjoyable, successful woman, and I don't think she ever once believed that anything she did was good enough. She was always pushing for the next thing on her list or trying to find points to improve on everything she did. I noticed this more than a few times with her while we were both undergrads, and then after we graduated, I lost track of her for a while. But I ran into her randomly on campus a few years ago, on a summer weekend with my fiancé and her parents on campus. I had to run to the car to pick up, of all things, my wife’s purse. And on the way back, I run into Cynthia, and we chat for a bit, and it was nice seeing her and all but I could tell right away she was still frazzled, like always. And I asked her what was up. She said, in a nutshell:

I’m in the middle of moving my life from here (Wisconsin) back to my home (California) and I don’t know how long I’ll be there or what I’ll be doing when I get there, or if I’m going to grad school or law school, and I’m basically freaking out and not knowing what I’m doing. So I have about 3 days left to figure out my life.

This is closer to accurate than you probably think. Anyway, I tell her my story on the airplane and the whole “Life is plan B” gist and I think it helped. And I admitted to her that she didn’t actually have to  listen to anything I had to say. I mean, what the hell did i know? I was holding a purse like a football because I thought it was somehow less awkward that way. But I just said to her, "You're gonna be fine. No, you're gonna be great. You are great. So stop worrying about how you're going to do it all and just figure out what you want to go do first. I mean, shit, you've got this one random life, just go do it all, right?" I'm fair certain that was my ending advice to her, which wouldn't be advice for everyone, because not everyone is going to go off and do it all. But she might, I really believe that she could and she probably wants to. I hope Cynthia is doing well.

Anyway, she may also be on a completely different path than where she was when I last saw and spoke with her, and that's cool too. But I believe you're better off finding out for sure what your plan B is than insisting that that your personal plan A has to, HAS TO come to fruition. You don't have to go do it all, you don't have to settle for plan B, but you do have to... well, I guess you don't have to do anything. You could just sit here, reading this blog over and over again, and no one could necessarily stop you, if that's the path you really want to adhere to. But hopefully, you expect more from yourself than that, and others around you do, too. And something like that will build you to do more than just accept whatever is on the path for you, but to go and choose the path you want, even if it means preparing for a backup and a backup to that and so forth. After all, life is plan Q sometimes too.

Talk at ya later.

The DSW DJ

My sister and I were talking a while ago about something that occurs to me today: persistence. We were talking about it because she wants to be an actress, and is trying to pursue this on a few fronts in a crowded and talent-packed place like New York City. And we were talking about actors that had to struggle for a long time, and work shit jobs and almost give up and then break through. And you know who came up? Peter Dinklage.

Who some of you may only know as Tyrion Lannister, while others only know that he's the midget (or little person, my bad) in Game of Thrones. And people know the movies he's shown up in and the success he's had now, but probably don't know that he had to struggle and work a data processing job for years, and then decide if he was going to quit the job to pursue acting seriously the whole time and be broke until it pulled through. But he did it. And he's one of the easier actors in Hollywood to recognize, both from his talent, his distinct roles, and his diminutive stature.

My point in bringing it up to my sister was just that it could have been someone else that broke through in his first big role in "The Station Agent" or who appeared in "Elf", "Find Me Guilty", "Death At A Funeral", another "Death At A Funeral" or a bunch of other roles. There were like 30 other little people that didn't get the parts, and had to keep struggling. Everything the dude had to do to get by allowed him to progress, but we've never even heard about all these others that could have had it worse or been more talented, all of whom probably hate Dinklage's guts for taking all the good little jobs.

Here's a link to the video project my sister recently posted, if you're interested.

My point is just that you have to take advantage of whatever opportunity you have, and basically not worry one bit how it looks while you're going through the process of getting where you want to get to. It's not something anyone wants to hear, especially while you're going through the rough, ugly part of this particular process. But going through ugliness or unpleasantness, or even randomness, tends to bring us to opportunities we didn't plan on hoping for, and that can lead us to discover things about ourselves that we may not have realized otherwise.

It can, of course, also break us and ruin the opportunities we thought we would have, and leave us clawing through the remaining opportunities. And when that happens, we have to push through with whatever we have left to work with. And that is easier said than done basically every time. It is tough to stay positive before, during, and after the fall, except to acknowledge that what you're dealing with 1. probably won't kill you, 2. hasn't killed you yet, or 3. didn't actually kill you even though maybe it still will slowly without you realizing it. And I know this might not sound overly positive, even though I kind of do mean it in a positive way.

Okay, let's try to explain this a different way.

A while back, I got dragged to shopping at the Designer Shoe Warehouse with my wife, who was at the time my fiancee. I'm fairly sure it was in 2016, the year before we were to be married, and I was all about doing things for her and spending time with her but still very much not a fan of shoe shopping. Come to think of it, I've been in the stage of hating shoe shopping since before I met her. I think I was born there, and I have no plans of leaving anytime soon. But there I was, on a football Sunday afternoon, stalking my fantasy teams while wandering up and down the wide aisles, aimlessly and apathetically while Tara was in her zone trying to find options to match several of her outfits and all this other stuff I really couldn't bring myself to focus on.

I remember being a bit mad at myself for allowing her to bring me out of the house at this particular time, regardless of how much I love her. I remember quite specifically that the Packers were playing, and it was a good game, whoever they were playing, and here I was, trying to give as little pushback to whatever my wife-to-be said so we could get out of there and back before at least the 4th quarter. I also remember being mad at others in the store with me, both male and female, that were wearing Packers gear. I mean, what kind of shit is that? You'll go out and buy the Clinton-Dix jersey and then not sit and watch the only game of the week that the guy wearing that shirt appears in? What kind of lame poser punk-ass mother-...see, I need to stop for a second, it's still fresh in my mind. Gotta just bring it back calm and remind myself that this is how much I must love my wife, to be discussing the colors of heels and cross trainers on any given Sunday.

There was another reason this day stuck out to me. Don't ask me why, but there was a DJ working at the shoe store on a Sunday afternoon. No crowd dancing, no hype man, no one singing or rapping or playing alone. Just a dude with two turntables set up about 20 feet in front of the entrance, with a little mini light show going along with his beats. Probably the lamest possible setup for a performance of any kind (I understand if you want to debate that DJing is ACTUALLY a performance, but that's not the point here). I mean, the light show was a sign that this guy might have had promise, a sad reminder of how out of place this set up was, and completely useless with the overhead lights all at once. Encouraging, dismaying, and curious all in one fell swoop.

Here's the thing, I was half paying attention to what he was spinning, and I must say, this dude was actually setting up a good vibe, all things considered. I found myself nodding back and forth to some of the tunes, even mouthing out some of the words, which meant I knew lyrics to whatever he was putting down. So regardless of not really enjoying shoe shopping, not wanting to miss watching a football game and not wanting to be a punk to my future wife, for several moments I found something to enjoy at the Designer Shoe Warehouse on this chilly afternoon.

At one point, he played the Cha-cha slide, and I lost some respect for him. But that means I had respect for him to be lost. He was DJing at the god damn DSW during the Packers game, and he still made his way up the ranks in my book. And it reinforced a valuable lesson for me: You better make the most of every opportunity that comes your way. I had to tip my hat to him as we walked out, because not everyone can take a job like that seriously and still thrive. Because he could have showed up drunk, or messed up on mollies and been just a shitshow. He could have panned to his demographic and played overly emotional pop songs to further emphasize feminine vibes where it was clearly already the main focus of everyone in the building. Hell, he could have played stuff just to mess with everyone there, like orchestral opera or Himalayan monk chanting, or playing popular records backwards and pretending it sounded normal. But he didn't. He earned that check and grooved his ass off and damnit if I didn't get a bit inspired from it.

My point in all of this is that this DJ almost certainly had other shit he'd rather be doing. I really hope so, anyway. The DJ that turns down other gigs to play records at a shoe store on a Sunday afternoon, he's not thinking too far down the road, is he? But the dude, he showed up, and did what he does, and he converted a skeptical bystander, me, which means he can probably do this kind of thing in a better environment. And don't get me wrong, this guy may have gone home that night and smoked a ton of meth because this was his last night of sanity before a breaking bad moment. But maybe, years later, he will look back at that same afternoon as one of the reasons he grinded through a relatively less successful part of his career like a god damn champ.

And truth be told, I'm now a bit let down when I get dragged shoe shopping and there's not a DJ now. Payless needs to step their damn game up.

Bubye now.