EARLY SUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM

TACTICAL

The trip to see KT graduate was very fulfilling.  I think that the joy and love in this picture says it all.  I told her mother, Nixxie, that it was the second-best event I was a part of, the first being KT’s birth.  I don’t believe that any event will surpass these two moments as far as being the “right thing” in terms of my own course of action, but subsequent moments can fall in line and join them on the list!!
 

I don’t have a lot of details, but because it was about KT and NOT about me, the yardstick that I used to determine if it was a good trip for me was how happy she was, and she was VERY happy!  So that is all that mattered!!
 

Finally, there was measures of validation between the bond that two of us have, with family members on her Mother’s side recounting how I doted on KT, letting her sleep on my chest (it was something that I read somewhere) among other bonding moments that when you examine specific traits that she  and we share, can only be explained by her being “her Father’s daughter”.
 

Ooh, one more thing… being close enough so that she could meet with Lexxie, we tried to contact her sister, who was busy but tellingly, never returned my calls.  When I got back in town, I checked my Facebook and saw a message from Pecan Sandie, scolding me about not visiting Lexxie, saying that it is things like this (my not visiting her while I was in Carolina) is part of the reason why she feels like I don’t care as much about her as I do others (KT and Skye).  Rather than try to explain the “this and that” with me and Lexxie’s two older sisters, I replied by telling her that I spoke with her Mother several times while I was there but never received calls from Lexxie in return.  So, you can just about figure out not only what this means, but what this HAS MEANT for a long time… Grammy is a “hater”!  Not going to get into specifics, but she has made a conscious decision to complicate an already complicated relationship.  Pecan Sandie can’t say it, but I can -- f*ck Grammy!

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London is up and at ‘em!  I will check on Madison (my other bike) later this week and hopefully the Trek dealer can work something out with me with regards to compensation for Maddie’s broken frame.  Next, we will start looking at plane fare to South Bend for later this summer.  Haven’t looked as of this writing but I have to figure that round trip plane fare has to be less to South Bend than it was to Andy Griffith country!

                             

This is also the week I will begin the start of grinding for my Personal Trainer’s certification as well as going over my Accelerated Algebra and Algebra I syllabi as I get ready for more math in school.  I don’t plan on taking Algebra II in the fall, maybe not until January, actually.  I would like very much to push through whatever science classes I have to go through and any other required stuff to transfer over to UN-O.  Right now, everything is looking right for me, and I am curbing my “friend trolling” on Facebook. But it is difficult, because the contradiction between the unimaginative posts that are being made and the reality of their character is a very big target for me to pass up.  And I guess this is where I will jump off into my thoughts…
 

“IT’S NOT THE RIGHT WAY BECAUSE IT’S MY WAY, BUT IT IS MY WAY BECAUSE IT’S THE RIGHT WAY.”  -Jon Gruden, former Super Bowl-winning football coach and current ESPN analyst
 

For a long time I believed that it was hard for me to get my ideas across to people because of the way that I thought, the way that I created my opinions and how I think.  “Rare” sounds better than “unique” to me, because “unique” has always seemed to be self-serving and egotistical.  “Rare”, at least to me, connotes something that can be found, of what is reasonably possible if you put forth the effort.   There are other people who construct their thoughts by connecting the seemingly unconnected, and for me, the knowing that other people who minds works differently from the mass density of any particular group, knowing that they exist, well, that has always been justification enough for me.  That I did not know of them personally, that never bothered me.  In fact, one of the indelible moments where I realized this was when I read "Nightcrawler’s Inferno", the story that was published in the comic book The Uncanny X-Men Annual #4 (which introduced me to Dante).  From there, the leap to books like Salinger’s “ Catcher in the  Rye”, Wright’s “Black Boy” and “Native Son”, and most importantly for me, "The Outsider", along with Dante, Socrates, Plato, and my fave German philosophers like Nietzsche, Kant, and Schopenhauer.
 

Going back to Wright, his book, “The Outsider” and his anti-hero Cross Damon was the one literary character I always have identified with the most directly, letting his suffering and fail objectify the life that I was leading/lead.  From his suffering wife, confined to her role not only by the social mores but her own limited vision of the life that could have been for her; his immature and naive young concubine; as well as the reality of the informal apartheid and how, in what had to be an ironic turn, that ostracized him for being “too smart”, not allowing him to be embraced by a community that had yet to see themselves as more than “just the colored, the negro”.  From that moment, reading a book given to me by a teacher who tutored jr. high school children part-time, I begin in earnest down the path I am on today.
 

This processing that takes place in my “brain computer” (term borrowed from Dr. Frances Cress-Welsing) which aggregates and compiles knowledge from many different sources,many different dimensions of life, making it nearly impossible for me to accurately notate and reference “the how” to much of what I believe and think.  What makes this important and why I would rather not be bothered with people is that without being able to make this annotation, poking holes in arguments tethered in “magical thinking” are difficult, if not entirely impossible.  Now, with my injury, I am going to "trust” in the data I have compiled (and constantly see reaffirmed)  and the constructs that I build in my mind based over the less-than-tangible evidence seemingly offered by others.  And never is this more prevalent in my dealings with people.
 

I know “who” my ex-wife is.  I also knew who Mookie Dee and who Tee Jay were.  But the fable of Pandora and her box was meant to teach us that despite what is swirling about us in the storms of life, is that we always have hope to cling to.  In relationships, hope can sometimes be deadly.  Again, our Facebook feeds are filled with updates of those who have what I call “hopeless hope”, people who are in unhappy relationships, people who are yearning for companionship IN SPITE OF CLAIMS TO THE CONTRARY.  Hope really isn’t the problem, at least, it doesn’t seem to be.  I think that the shallowness, the selfishness of one or both parties is, combining to undermine the commitment to strive towards change.  But that is because I think that people don’t understand how the word “hope” is supposed to work, grammatically.  And even if they do know how to properly use that word, they do so in a diminished fashion.
 

The comedian Louis CK has a “70-to-90% rule”.  In this rule, he states that if you are 70% sure of anything that you should just do it.  This is because once you make a decision, the happiness you will gain from making a choice and freeing yourself from the inertia of having so many options is worth an extra 10%.
 

"And," he continues, "when you get to 80 percent, you work. You apply your knowledge, and that gets you to 85 percent! And the thing itself, especially if it's a human being, will always reveal itself—100 percent of the time!—to be more than you thought. And that will get you to 90 percent. After that, you're stuck at 90, but who the f*ck do you think you are, a god? You got to 90 percent? It's incredible!”  While I try to bring at least 80% certainty to a particular thing in my life, lets just go with Louis and his metrics for the sake of argument (after all, it IS pretty sound!).
 

Perhaps it is egoism that causes some of us to feel inflated with our contributions, often at the expense of crediting others who have contributed to our moments, to our successes.  As I did with my ego (a separate entity from my self-esteem), I allow others to assess their contributions to my means to an end, and I accept their efforts for what they were TO THEM.  Whether it came of great effort or not, my appreciation is the same, regardless of the commitment to my cause.
 

“A FOUND PENNY CAN MAKE MY DAY”
 

No matter the contribution, the smallest gesture can make my day.  I am not too particular to what goes on the “left-side-of-the-ledger”, because when you are broke, both financially and emotionally, adding to the black is always a good thing!  Whatever I am given, I try to make the most effective use of it, because I believe if you are asking for something and you get it, then it is upon you to make of it what you will, to make your “something” happen.  Since I asked for this opportunity, I am doing everything that I can reasonably expect of myself to make the most of what I have.  I have always been that way.

From positive comments left in my blog, to someone genuinely smiling and being grateful for crossing paths with me, I have a keen appreciation for the positive, the “good” in my life.  I hope that I have been at least as thankful for my slot in the time-space continuum, and I want to make as much out of this life as I can.

Yes… finding a penny can make my day.  Not only do I feel better when I find loose change, but when I am able to find Coke product bottle caps or cartons with the point code on them… these are among the small things that bring happiness to my day.  And here is the thing about that… because I am often discovering something that makes me happy, I get to do pass my good mood on to others.
 

In watching Simon Sinek’s talk titled “Why Leaders Eat Last”, one of the takeaways that I got from it is a sharper understanding of why many relationships fail, including ones that I have been a part of.  It is about the choices you make and the motivations that lead directly to security in that relationship.  The willingness to do for others, to make sacrifices that may involve cost but still are done selflessly, those are the acts that count and matter both collectively and individually.  Of course, it is the individual aspect that I am going to focus on, mainly because I am not leading anyone to anywhere right now!

Whether you want to be full partners in a life with someone or have the head-of-household dynamic, there needs to be some sort of recognition of what is important to individuals and what is important collectively, so that full value and respect can be placed on goals and desires.  I believe that without this fundamental understanding that no matter what level the relationship exists upon, that it will not deliver on its promise and is at risk of becoming a full-blown fiasco.  To that end, some of the hallmarks of identifying who is and isn’t “a leader” has nothing to do with material anything, no money, nothing of the sort.  What is on the much-maligned “Successories” poster?  “A leader knows the way and shows the way?”  If you don’t know what you are doing, if you don’t know where you are going, then there is a good chance that you shouldn’t be the leader in a relationship.  Of course, the things that you are can also determine whether or not you are the leader.
 

Now I know that the talk is long, but his first story about an engagement in Afghanistan, speaks to the level of commitment that I have always expected from another person in a relationship.  Sinek contrasts the military and the business world as far as the reward system is concerned.  Other than being naturally geared to solitude, this would be part of the reason I have for not wanting a lot of people in my life.

From my family who should have been naturally inclined to be supportive, to deep and supposedly committed relationships up to and including marriage, finding a supportive partner or entity has been littered with fail.  But because this ramble has gone on long enough… that is IT for now..!