Leaps of faith

I'm not one to stress out about things.

I had a pretty terrible mental breakdown in 11th grade, due in no small part to pressure my mom put on me to overachieve academically (I was made to take the SAT six times because a 1420 wasn't good enough).  I was a good student, albeit a slacker at times, but at that particular junction in my life the jenga tower was teetering.  I was in danger of failing calculus, I was doing 8 hours plus of homework a day, and I was writing 3 papers a week.  I could allot basically 4-5 hours a day for sleep and even then there was so much shit going on in my head that I could barely consider it restful.  I wasn't burning the candle at both ends; I was throwing my life supply of candles underneath the launch pad of the space shuttle:

About March I had a pretty serious meltdown.  It didn't look like I would pass 11th grade, let alone graduate and go to college.  Mom of course went even more nuts about this, telling me ridiculous things like I'd never amount to anything and I wouldn't even be admitted to the community college.  I don't know what her endgame here was, but at the time she was doing her best to make my life miserable.  We've had some conversations about it since then but I think the preference is to just leave it as an unresolved dark spot in our relationship.  It doesn't help either of us to revisit it.  While I didn't need to be on suicide watch, I was definitely evaluating why my life was worth living.

I eventually got to the point where I had to just shut myself down.  I slept for three days.  When I woke up I prioritized what was important.  I decided that I didn't care if I got a D in math.  I'd have to work more efficiently, and accept that some things just wouldn't get done.  I think I began to care too little.

Revisiting it now, I feel like it was coping with a deficiency I have on trying to bust my ass on things that aren't interesting to me.  My grades definitely declined, but I was sleeping through the night and I was happier with myself.  I could see friends and pet projects flourished.  I developed a habit of prioritizing things that were important to me.  My physics teacher in high school dropped a hard truth on me after he started noticing a decrease in the quality of my work after the meltdown - "You need to learn to do well the shit you don't like."  I've carried that with me because he's one hundred percent right.  You can't just run through life doing whatever in the hell you want unless you have stout financial security, no matter how much you want to.  I will work through the night on things I am passionate about, I will never ever quit on something or someone I care about - but if it's something I don't want to be doing there's a good chance it won't get done.  That is perceived as laziness.

One needs to strike a balance between the extremes that I peaked and troughed between.

When I burned out, I blocked stress.  It has been wonderful to a degree.  Since then, I have really not stressed out about anything.  I can have emotional mood swings, but external factors rarely if ever brought my blood pressure up.  Now I'm concerned it may have been damming up in the back of my mind and my mental "little dutch boy" has taken a leave of absence.

I bring this up because I'm in a situation now where I'm concerned that without action I'm going to have a relapse.  I'm going critical shortly and I need to release some pressure.  I know I need to make a change with my job and my lifestyle.  At some points I think I just need to throw caution to the wind and jump into the unknown.  I can't say it's the fiscally responsible thing to do, but one truth I came out of the meltdown with is that I need to enjoy waking up and doing whatever it is I've chosen to do every day.  If I can't sleep through the night and don't want to get out of bed, I'm not doing something right.  Life is too short to not want to wake up and live it.

My brain hurts

I was late to work this morning because traffic is miserably unpredictable. I did the prudent thing and sent my "boss" (by boss I mean the guy who supposedly babysits me but I really don't have a boss) an email guesstimating what time I would arrive. The following is the exchange.

Me, 5:58 AM to Bertram:
I will be in today around 9:30.

Bertram, 8:35 AM to Me:
Is there a reason?

Me, 8:55 AM to Bertram:
1) I left richmond at 4am to get in on time
2) Moving at 10mph blows

3) I'm less than ten miles away now but it will still take a while because traffic flares up around here like a bad herpes breakout

4) The technology for teleportation doesn't exist yet

Bertram, 8:59 AM to Me:
You didn't provide proof of the teleportation issue.

Me, 9:29 AM to Bertram:

A traffic essay on the proof teleportation doesn't exist

- the global economy hasn't collapsed. With no need for transportation of any kind, we would no longer have any need for the following industries: automotive, roadway construction, shipping, airline industry, and all ancillary businesses associated (callahan auto parts, the michelin man, the inmates in jail that stamp your license plates, the TSA buttholes, hotels motels holiday inns, etc). State troopers nationwide would be out of work

- demand for petroleum products would evaporate almost immediately. Furthermore real estate values would shift dramatically; there would be no need to live in a particular area. States like montana would see massive population growth as land with natural beauty would be gobbled up as it wouldn't make any difference that it was in the BF.

- Banks would be robbed regularly as (presumably) no measure of security could keep me from appearing inside the vault. Privacy would cease to exist, anyone could instantly pop in on you. Citizenship would be useless as border controls wouldn't make a difference at all. Drugs could flow freely between countries. Some jackass would probably send a bomb somewhere important.

- I am not there yet.

This paper makes the assumptions that teleportation would presumably require a finite quantity of energy and would be affordable to a layman. If it were regulated and perchance structured in such a way that there were "stations" and it wasn't available on a whim it could possibly exist in tandem with the aforementioned industries. I should also note that while it's technically not provable that teleportation doesn't exist, its certainly isn't currently viable or available. Someone may indeed have been taken out by big oil to prevent it from going mainstream.

I would expect, however, that tourism would see a sizable jump in revenue numbers. Not that it would matter, over 65% of the population wouldn't have a job.

Bertram, 10:15 AM to Me (in person, as I did eventually arrive; moderately jovial but with that smacking tone of uneasy intimidation):

Was not expecting that answer. You caught me off guard.

Me, 10:16 AM to Bertram (in Ray Bans because I'm living in the land of the uncool this morning):

I've ... thought about it ... before. Caught you off guard eh? I'm known to do that.

Bertram backs away slowly.

I hate this place.
And yes, I was texting while driving.

The Grandparent Road

Looks like I'll be on the highway again this weekend. My paternal grandmother is in the hospital after heart surgery and I want to go see her; I'm told the operation went well and although they did a quadruple bypass instead of a triple she's supposedly sitting up in the chair in the recovery room today. Kind of good to know I'm working with robust genes. She's quite fond of exclaiming "Ah-woooooh!" with a pitch upturn as you approach the end of the pronunciation, and I'm sure I'll get one when I see her tomorrow. My dad has reassured me that I don't need to go out of my way to visit, but I want to. I regret not seeing my maternal grandfather as often as I could have and should have when he was recovering from a similar surgery; although all was apparently well he never fully recovered and died six weeks after the operation. It's not convenient for me to go see her; there's a lot of driving time and gasoline burned, but none of that matters. Friends and family and friends who are family are, in that order, the most important reasons we ring around the sun on this rock we call home.

As we're all familiar (and as the old cliché goes), life is a road full of interesting turns. We explore relationships and find those people with whom we do and do not want to spend time traveling with. My grandparents traveled very different roads - my mom's parents were very well off while my dad's parents (and my dad) grew up with nothing. My dad slept on a cot in an unheated room until he was ten, often complaining of scraping ice off the inside of the window in the wintertime; my mom's parents owned several large houses, had servants, came from money, and were high society in Guilford County. The love between my grandparents was very different on Dad's side and Mom's side. My dad's father worked shift work in the paper mill his entire life after serving in the army; my mom's father was a successful lawyer until the day he died. Both worked very hard and valued family, but they showed love differently. My dad's parents had a reserved love - one restrained and not flamboyant; as a child I didn't even think they loved each other at all (this naiveté wore off as I matured). Borne of convenience, it grew into what it was when my paternal grandfather passed - a warm, country romance with no frills where each had deep stoic need of the other. My mom's father courted my grandmother in far more ostentatious manner- lavish parties and weekend getaways to the coast and tea at the country club... she was a southern belle and he loved her for who she was and her stature in society. As they grew older they traveled the world, they attended soirées, they raised a large and well-mannered family under the shade of the money tree. I have never seen a more textbook "proper" romance of the well-to-do, even in literature. But they too loved each other; visibly happier when in proximity to one another and I have never been more crushed in my life when I looked at her face the day I carried his casket to their grave.

Between the two, I don't feel one of their loves is better than the other; beyond what is ostensible they're not really even different. More like different manifestations of the same idea. I think when you find the person you are meant to love, you'll share your definition of it.

Since I'm borderline overusing clichés in this, here's something you might not know about the origin of the word "cliché." In earlier days synonymous with "stereotype," these words come from the world of the printing press and typecasting (which is another word with similar meaning in today's vernacular). Stock sentences used often in literature were "stereotyped" or cast into blocks for easy reuse in press plate making. Cliché is quite literally the onomatopoeia of splashing the typecast into metal and casting the stock sentence. It's basically your origin of a canned response - a hackneyed phrase tailored for ease of use and repeatability.

Sometimes when I look to the future, I wonder "how does one look for someone to become a grandparent with?" I don't know nor do I pretend to understand what celestial forces create the ebb and flow of human emotion on the heart; I try to draw from relationships I have seen in my life and find my own path. It's hard at times. It can seem to take you where you don't want to go. But I don't believe that love is a stock phrase. It's not a mold you should try to press upon yourself. It's not hackneyed. It should be unique when you find it - or maybe, more appropriately, when you define it - and what it creates should inspire others to find it for themselves.

I'll part with a thought of a favorite unknown writer of mine. Enjoy your weekend, and best of luck on your travels.

We orbit. Erratically. Sometimes we are so close to each other; sometimes we are so far apart. Cyclical. Unpredictable. When we are pushed apart from one another I feel your pull tearing at me even though I want to keep moving away. I know I'll be drawn back to you and you to me even if we don't want that to happen. I fight it because you fight it, because I don't know if anything good or bad could ever come of it, because I want to believe I could find someone else that attracts me as much as you do. That my future isn't written. As we drift now, so entangled, so intertwined in this grave ballet, we have to be on a collision course. It's my best chaotic logic. We are destined to collide. After that we'll see if we skip off one another and cease to exist as a pair, or - maybe - if that collision is so cosmic we will no longer be able to separate. I don't want for a quick resolution; such celestial events take time.

- Terrace Wind

We have to take our clothes off... to have a good time

Ran 5 miles tonight. I'm out of shape. Should this have been a tweet? Shut up.

I haven't had cable for almost a year now. Sometimes I miss it. If I miss out on some shows I like I usually can watch with a friend (preference) or find them on the internet, but I don't think I'm totally out of touch with reality... The fact is I'm not home a lot and I feel like I'm wasting money if I am paying for something I can't use. Why don't they have something where I could subscribe to TV and get it over the internet, anywhere? Sure would make my life easier. I am not home tonight either, and my friends are all out having a delicious evening in Raleigh and I'm marginally jealous that I haven't been able to attend Thursday night fun night in a long time. One day soon.

A mind lost to the æther

Everyone's first blog post is always something to the effect of "oh, I've been toying around starting a blog for some time" or "I never thought I'd write a public blog" or some musing of the like; I'm for all intent and purpose the opposite. I just sat down today and started one up. Being that I'm in the process of writing a book anyway, I concede that I'm not sure how this fits into my master plan for my literary career but for the sake of argument let's call it a tool with which to whittle my prose. It certainly can't hurt to have, and while some of the content may bleed to and from here and my printed work upon it's eventual release, I can only hope it won't deter sales.

That being said, here's what I'm about. I live in Raleigh. I have trouble fixating on the now; I'm very cognizant of decisions I make today effecting what choices I'll have tomorrow (in perpetuity). Equally as deadly, I draw a lot from human history and my personal past when I'm over-planning what I do. Basically it's difficult for me to live in the present, but it gives me what I'd call a unique perspective on reality. I'm in a constant tiff with myself about being chaotic or exercising logic. Believe me, this is not to say I can't be spontaneous. I'm actually pretty good at spooning out a big helping of random when the mood strikes; kind of like today with the blog.

Oh, and I over-punctuate. I use parens and semicolons and hyphens and words you may not have seen since you cursed over them in SAT Prep. Sorry, it's how I am.

It should be noted that while I love the minutiae of the past, current events are still a big part of my life and I like gossip. It'll be interesting to see what makes its way in here because, in all honesty, it should be pretty random.

Did you know that today in 1862, Admiral David Farragut took New Orleans in the US Civil War? Generally, being Southern, I side with the Confederacy but you have to give props to a guy who lashed himself to his ship and shouted "DAMN THE TORPEDOES, FULL SPEED AHEAD!" when attacking the Confederate blockade defending Mobile Bay. He spent 60 years in the navy and had balls of steel. For his troubles, he has named after him (among other things) a school in Boston and Chicago, cities in Iowa and Tennessee, a US Navy destroyer class, and two Metro stations and a public square in DC.

an excerpt from "A Psalm of Life" - H. W. Longfellow

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

Full speed ahead, chaps.