TACTICAL
I have been doing about as well as a cat could be. My struggles with my academics is only a surprise because of my hubris, but it also means that like most underachievers, I just have to work harder.
This past weekend was spent flailing away at a paper that is going to be late, working, and BEING A FRIEND. It is worth noting because I found a door mat that I shared on my Facebook that greets a would-be visitor with the command to "Go Away" that really encapsulates my desire to be alone with my struggles. Yet, by no means is it an indicator of the kind of person, or friend, I am to people.
HE LOVES TO SPEAK AND HE LOVES TO BE SPOKEN TO
Anyone who has met me (I've assumed) would be surprised to know of my preference for solitude, what with my verbal nature. I have rarely found myself out of my depth in conversations over a wide array of topics and interests, often coming up with a few choice comments or other bon mots. So it often catches a person as of the mark to learn of my true nature. That said, were I to really peg my character, it would be that of like that of the palm tree, standing vertical with an arch, an arch that allows it the flexibility to bend with flow of the wind no matter the direction it is blowing in.
The past weekend not only saw me struggle with my "Concept and Reaction" paper for Psychology, but attend two celebrations, the first a function at Creighton University; the other was a private dinner at Hiro 88, a sushi restaurant. The student that I work with on my own time doing boxing drills, a native of Hawaii, invited me to a festival that the Creighton students from that particular state throws each year. Apparently, the school has a long-establish program that recruits Hawaiian students to come to Nebraska for school. It is a pretty big thing, entertainment provided by the students, and a catered dinner. It was nice, seeing the young men and women of Creighton perform various skits and dances representative of the island's native culture. I was able a date, which in and of itself is scarcely worth mentioning. What is worth mentioning, was the meaning that being able to share the festival with "my pupil" had for him.
Now I have not been in that large of a crowd since the Terrance Crawford - Yuorkis Gamboa fight back in June of last year. Other than scrambling through a few airports (draining), the last time I was around that many people, it was the North Carolina - Michigan State basketball game at Ford Field back in 2008. Though I don't lead a life that lends itself to being in large crowds of people, I feel that in crowds I go through something that I refer to as "sensory overload". It did not take much for me to want to leave after me and my date found our seats, but I hung in, enjoyed the show, and most importantly, my pupil, happy.
Riding up the elevator after my date dropped me home, I took inventory of what I was feeling at the time. Nothing I reflected upon was about "me", it was about being able to share a special night that meant something to a person that I have invested time and commitment in. This was a night that he had looked forward to, an event that he thought a lot of, and he wanted to share it with me.
Sunday would find me watching Michigan State doing what Michigan State does in the NCAA basketball tournament, which is make the Sweet 16. Resuming my scuffle with my paper, I had the birthday party of a co-worker to attend. Fortunately, State played in the early game, leaving me enough time to struggle with homework and get ready for the dinner.
After first going to the wrong restaurant, I got oriented and joined my co-worker and his family. His in-laws, and I think one of the families of a brother-in-law... I am not sure, was there when I arrived. It was a few minutes before we were seated, and in the interim, the rest of the party arrived. As soon as we were seated, the first thing that I noticed were that there were enough chairs for everyone... which meant that he had counted me as part of his party before he had asked me! (well, actually he had TOLD me I was coming... much like I was told that I would be visiting Detroit and my Father last year!) And much like with the evening prior, my enjoyment came with seeing how fulfilling an event was for someone else.
In the "quid pro quo" view that I have for relationships, it was worth whatever discomfort or out-of-character awkwardness I had to get over to make people that I hold in high esteem happy... and it has been my experience that when you can really do something in the name of and for others, that you receive even more in return. I feel super comfortable with my relationships with people... though I do sometimes admit that for some folks, I do want to be a better friend, especially in light of the kindnesses that they have shown me. Even with me being who I am, I like to think that I do pretty well with what I have to work with. Sometimes, being friends means dealing with being a little uncomfortable, and if you can deal with that, you can make special things happen.
Showing posts with label Doing My Duty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doing My Duty. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Monday, November 22, 2010
GOING UP A HILL AND COMING DOWN A MOUNTAIN
NEBRASKA: FTW
It was a sketchy beginning. I did not get a drop of sleep Thursday night. I was pretty clear-eyed as I slid out (as I would slide back in Sunday afternoon) unnoticed. For some reason, that made me feel good as I knew I would be gone at least until early Monday morning, when the bus was scheduled to arrive from Chicago and drop me back in Omaha. My home.
I felt like the trip there was short even with the bus leaving an hour late. It seems that the ‘road warrior’ that would ride non-stop from Carolina to the Metro, and from different towns represented by dots on the map as a boxer, has no problem being a passenger. My sister kept calling me, not nerve-wracking in frequency, just enough to let me know she was looking out for me and concerned about whether or not I was on my way to take part in her wedding. Though the trip itself was not bad, the trip I was on in my head was.
But there would be something that would happen at the end of the night that more than made up for the obstacles I had to overcome and put up with once in Chicago. Fitfully tossing and turning as I tried to go to bed trying to fall asleep, I received a phone call, with the caller instructing me to open the door to my room. I did so unhesitatingly, and there she was, Nebraska. Whatever discomfort I had been feeling started to leave, falling away from my body as it leeched from the marrow of my bones.
Out of all that would take place from my departure from Omaha early Friday morning and my eventual return on Sunday evening, the most important happening was that moment. Without that, we would not have been able to have the conversation that we would have nor would the current level of understanding that now exists between us.
There isn’t going to be any talk about the irony I felt or how I had to endure any part of the weekend because her appearance immediately made any insecurity or discomfort a non-issue. Three years from the week we actually met from the first time our relationship took another huge step forward and this time we can ride the momentum from ‘this Chicago’, together.
For someone who lived a life that has been apathetic when it comes to personal sentiment, it felt different being a part of such an emotional event with someone that means so much to me. Nebraska and I sat for a bit with my Father and she was able to observe the bride-to-be and get a better feel for the nature of my relationships with people (since I feel the same way about this sister as I do my other two sisters) that I don’t care for, despite the smiles and displays of affection. What was huge is having walked my sister down the aisle, saying good-bye to some of the heavier chains from my past has officially taken place. The scale may not reflect it but I have lost a LOT of weight. And thanks to Nebraska, instead of ‘surviving’, I was able to shine and be ‘the man that I KNOW and love’. Oh, and bring THAT MARK home with us to Omaha.
Much of what I thought I was needed to work through by discussing people I had most recently had a relationship with (which is such a relative term) now has been made a moot point. All, or nearly all of the conversation about my life for the past two years has been archived, hopefully forever.
I did get emotional, shedding tears for not only the little sister who was leaving forever, for our Mother for whom I felt I represented, but also because this meant I that I could walk away without any regret or bad feeling from worrying about the relationships from my upbringing. And THAT was due in no small part to (and I cannot begin to tell you how MUCH her showing up meant to me) Nebraska showing up and helping me bringing my direct participation in the lives of my sisters to an end. And for our relationship finally taxi down the runway, with nothing but wide open spaces above us…
It was a sketchy beginning. I did not get a drop of sleep Thursday night. I was pretty clear-eyed as I slid out (as I would slide back in Sunday afternoon) unnoticed. For some reason, that made me feel good as I knew I would be gone at least until early Monday morning, when the bus was scheduled to arrive from Chicago and drop me back in Omaha. My home.
I felt like the trip there was short even with the bus leaving an hour late. It seems that the ‘road warrior’ that would ride non-stop from Carolina to the Metro, and from different towns represented by dots on the map as a boxer, has no problem being a passenger. My sister kept calling me, not nerve-wracking in frequency, just enough to let me know she was looking out for me and concerned about whether or not I was on my way to take part in her wedding. Though the trip itself was not bad, the trip I was on in my head was.
From Davenport to Chicago... my lovely seatmates!!
Out of all that would take place from my departure from Omaha early Friday morning and my eventual return on Sunday evening, the most important happening was that moment. Without that, we would not have been able to have the conversation that we would have nor would the current level of understanding that now exists between us.
There isn’t going to be any talk about the irony I felt or how I had to endure any part of the weekend because her appearance immediately made any insecurity or discomfort a non-issue. Three years from the week we actually met from the first time our relationship took another huge step forward and this time we can ride the momentum from ‘this Chicago’, together.
For someone who lived a life that has been apathetic when it comes to personal sentiment, it felt different being a part of such an emotional event with someone that means so much to me. Nebraska and I sat for a bit with my Father and she was able to observe the bride-to-be and get a better feel for the nature of my relationships with people (since I feel the same way about this sister as I do my other two sisters) that I don’t care for, despite the smiles and displays of affection. What was huge is having walked my sister down the aisle, saying good-bye to some of the heavier chains from my past has officially taken place. The scale may not reflect it but I have lost a LOT of weight. And thanks to Nebraska, instead of ‘surviving’, I was able to shine and be ‘the man that I KNOW and love’. Oh, and bring THAT MARK home with us to Omaha.
Much of what I thought I was needed to work through by discussing people I had most recently had a relationship with (which is such a relative term) now has been made a moot point. All, or nearly all of the conversation about my life for the past two years has been archived, hopefully forever.
(Monkey in a Tux w/Dad over his shoulder)
Thursday, November 18, 2010
THE MISSION IS ON
THAT’S WHY THEY PLAY THE GAME
I know weddings are supposed to be stressful to the nuptial couple but why is this event so stressful for me? Even solving for my personal feelings toward my sister and how inconvenient it is going to be for me financially (can you say HARDSHIPS! Ooh!!), the even still is a spiral of cracks across the windshield of my life.
One of the things I have been straining hard not to allow myself to say is that ‘I hope this… (Or that since it is related)’ to anything. Hope is a last refuge, and I think if I start ‘hoping’ for things that I should have made sure was planned for, then it is a slippery before I would begin to fall prey to thoughts…
I will be waking up and walking down the block at 0430 hours Friday morning so that I can catch the bus to the Dan Ryan Terminal in Chicago. One of the reasons that I shaped this as ‘duty’ instead of a joyful trip’, is because of the uncertainties that will result as a result of traveling to ‘walk the walk’. What I will end up doing is exactly as I had initially planned, which is to go and make the rehearsal, the wedding and then back on the bus.
Nebraska had loose strings that caught her up. That is a ‘hit’, but I will manage. My sister will be picking me up and I will be running around with the bride-to-be for the rest of the day. Don’t know who is going to take me from the hotel to the church, but after that is confirm, I will put my head down and grind away.ed
If you want to know, I sort of prefer things shaking out the way that they are. All I wanted to do was go perform in the ritual, anyway. I may take some pictures and I may not, we will see.
Please, oh please, no one remind me how much better it will be that I go, because it won’t feel that way, though objectively, it clearly is. But to hope this is a benchmark for the renewing of a sibling relationship would be to hex me. I don't want to push this too far, you know? I am not hoping for some great reconciliation, not with the 'et tu Brute?' me and this one have between us.
IT IS NOT AN ‘AVATAR’
The guy in my Face Book status box to the right of the text, ‘he’ (make NO freaking mistake, there is nothing asexual about HIM) is a CHARACTER. More on him later, but I wanted to make it understood that there is nothing related to ‘Manga’ or any of the other simulation role playing symbols that have exploded in media over the last decade or so. He looks the way that he does for a reason, and that reason is why he is there.
DO NOT TAUNT ‘HAPPY FUN BALL’
In the movie, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, before Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) goes off on his newest mission having survived the landing at Normandy, he asks an admin soldier if he spoke French. Once he affirms that, he orders the soldier to accompany him and his other soldiers in his small squad to go look for the titular character of the movie. The unwilling draftee was quite craven and cowardly. Since he did the same job as I did, with my smattering of high school French, I could not stand the guy, because he was me at the same time, he was NOT me. I would not have been such a pussy in combat. I know this as a fact, because I WAS NOT a pussy in combat. End of freakin’ story.
Am I a nice guy? I don’t know and there is a reason for this. Getting picked on for a variety of reasons, being ‘pleasant’ was a calculation. I reasoned that if I came to you with an open palm, you would eventually reveal more about yourself than if I eyed you warily. In short, I gather more information about you being nice than I would if I was suspicious and frightened. That said it is unlikely that I intend to do or say anything offensive to you, especially if you are in that amoeba-like structure that is my circle of confidants.
It has been a while since I have spoke on the slang of false confidence, those words or phrases that are used to explain larger concepts that I think people cannot process in their own minds. “It is what it is”, “And I am just being real”, are a couple of phrases that come to mind.
Now it is not too far of a leap for one to go from my dislike of ‘hood vernacular’ to being able to guess that ‘how’ you talk to me is as important as ‘what’ you are talking about. I think people confuse my general pleasant demeanor for being meekness and will say the most insensitive and unthinking things to me. What usually leads to misunderstandings between me and folks, is that, they don’t realize that they have created a ‘track’ in my mind, and from there is where I base how I speak to THEM. Because I have NOT responded to what they may have said that I felt slighted or demeaned by at the time, do NOT mean that I am not capable of being cruel with my words. A lot of the anguish I feel about this weekend is because of that. Were they not my family, how would I have approached the dilemma I am in?
Remember, I was a soldier. Because the counter-strike did not come when and where YOU thought it would, does not mean that it isn’t COMING. Perhaps more baiting is necessary, to make one forget that there are consequences to their words and that the mistress who judges what they are, does so very harshly.
I appreciated the comment DB left on the anxiety I am feeling and what it signifies. The emotions roiling inside of me is the cost of being able to feel free of my past. I do believe that is true for me, and I am in a place where I honestly think I can make a new life for myself.
Another overlooked aspect of my character is that I was a boxer. That is important, because I would tell anyone who ever saw me fight that they would get to know more about me than I could ever tell them. Thing about that is, I am retired and no longer fight. How do I get people to understand what I am trying to share about myself, then?
The sister in the Army famously said about discerning when I am angry from my usual obfuscation, is that ‘I will tell you’. Meaning, when upset I tend to speak in short, clipped phrases, and they are direct. In my mind they are also impersonal but sometimes that is not the case, at least, not when they are heard.
Does it matter? Why should it, when at the end of the day, it is all going to be on my shoulders anyway?
I know weddings are supposed to be stressful to the nuptial couple but why is this event so stressful for me? Even solving for my personal feelings toward my sister and how inconvenient it is going to be for me financially (can you say HARDSHIPS! Ooh!!), the even still is a spiral of cracks across the windshield of my life.
One of the things I have been straining hard not to allow myself to say is that ‘I hope this… (Or that since it is related)’ to anything. Hope is a last refuge, and I think if I start ‘hoping’ for things that I should have made sure was planned for, then it is a slippery before I would begin to fall prey to thoughts…
I will be waking up and walking down the block at 0430 hours Friday morning so that I can catch the bus to the Dan Ryan Terminal in Chicago. One of the reasons that I shaped this as ‘duty’ instead of a joyful trip’, is because of the uncertainties that will result as a result of traveling to ‘walk the walk’. What I will end up doing is exactly as I had initially planned, which is to go and make the rehearsal, the wedding and then back on the bus.
Nebraska had loose strings that caught her up. That is a ‘hit’, but I will manage. My sister will be picking me up and I will be running around with the bride-to-be for the rest of the day. Don’t know who is going to take me from the hotel to the church, but after that is confirm, I will put my head down and grind away.ed
If you want to know, I sort of prefer things shaking out the way that they are. All I wanted to do was go perform in the ritual, anyway. I may take some pictures and I may not, we will see.
Please, oh please, no one remind me how much better it will be that I go, because it won’t feel that way, though objectively, it clearly is. But to hope this is a benchmark for the renewing of a sibling relationship would be to hex me. I don't want to push this too far, you know? I am not hoping for some great reconciliation, not with the 'et tu Brute?' me and this one have between us.
IT IS NOT AN ‘AVATAR’
The guy in my Face Book status box to the right of the text, ‘he’ (make NO freaking mistake, there is nothing asexual about HIM) is a CHARACTER. More on him later, but I wanted to make it understood that there is nothing related to ‘Manga’ or any of the other simulation role playing symbols that have exploded in media over the last decade or so. He looks the way that he does for a reason, and that reason is why he is there.
DO NOT TAUNT ‘HAPPY FUN BALL’
In the movie, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, before Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) goes off on his newest mission having survived the landing at Normandy, he asks an admin soldier if he spoke French. Once he affirms that, he orders the soldier to accompany him and his other soldiers in his small squad to go look for the titular character of the movie. The unwilling draftee was quite craven and cowardly. Since he did the same job as I did, with my smattering of high school French, I could not stand the guy, because he was me at the same time, he was NOT me. I would not have been such a pussy in combat. I know this as a fact, because I WAS NOT a pussy in combat. End of freakin’ story.
Am I a nice guy? I don’t know and there is a reason for this. Getting picked on for a variety of reasons, being ‘pleasant’ was a calculation. I reasoned that if I came to you with an open palm, you would eventually reveal more about yourself than if I eyed you warily. In short, I gather more information about you being nice than I would if I was suspicious and frightened. That said it is unlikely that I intend to do or say anything offensive to you, especially if you are in that amoeba-like structure that is my circle of confidants.
It has been a while since I have spoke on the slang of false confidence, those words or phrases that are used to explain larger concepts that I think people cannot process in their own minds. “It is what it is”, “And I am just being real”, are a couple of phrases that come to mind.
Now it is not too far of a leap for one to go from my dislike of ‘hood vernacular’ to being able to guess that ‘how’ you talk to me is as important as ‘what’ you are talking about. I think people confuse my general pleasant demeanor for being meekness and will say the most insensitive and unthinking things to me. What usually leads to misunderstandings between me and folks, is that, they don’t realize that they have created a ‘track’ in my mind, and from there is where I base how I speak to THEM. Because I have NOT responded to what they may have said that I felt slighted or demeaned by at the time, do NOT mean that I am not capable of being cruel with my words. A lot of the anguish I feel about this weekend is because of that. Were they not my family, how would I have approached the dilemma I am in?
Remember, I was a soldier. Because the counter-strike did not come when and where YOU thought it would, does not mean that it isn’t COMING. Perhaps more baiting is necessary, to make one forget that there are consequences to their words and that the mistress who judges what they are, does so very harshly.
I appreciated the comment DB left on the anxiety I am feeling and what it signifies. The emotions roiling inside of me is the cost of being able to feel free of my past. I do believe that is true for me, and I am in a place where I honestly think I can make a new life for myself.
Another overlooked aspect of my character is that I was a boxer. That is important, because I would tell anyone who ever saw me fight that they would get to know more about me than I could ever tell them. Thing about that is, I am retired and no longer fight. How do I get people to understand what I am trying to share about myself, then?
The sister in the Army famously said about discerning when I am angry from my usual obfuscation, is that ‘I will tell you’. Meaning, when upset I tend to speak in short, clipped phrases, and they are direct. In my mind they are also impersonal but sometimes that is not the case, at least, not when they are heard.
Does it matter? Why should it, when at the end of the day, it is all going to be on my shoulders anyway?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)