Self doubt

At this point in my life, at 38 years old, I have no idea where I am headed. I can say that with honesty. I am prepared to go on to the University. But, in truth sometimes that plan seems like a pipedream. I have a hard time seeing myself in that world... Acadamia, the scholarly pursuits. By the time I get my BA I will be 40, I'll be graduating with people half my age.

I scheme and plan to take this ship I call a family into calmer waters. I tell myself that I will finally get the career that will allow us to live comfortably, and with dignity. But, I don't know if I am being honest in my optimism or if I am just telling lies in order to look my wife in the face each day. It hurts me to realize these thoughts. But, if I wish to be moral, and seek the truth I must explore these feelings.

I really have nothing in the way of a compass these days. My father has pretty much given up on me amounting to anything. I don't have a mentor or even a friend I can trust to help me sort this mess out. I can talk with my wife, but as a husband and the cohort of this family, I cannot instill fear and doubt in her with these bouts of weakness.

Still, she knows. She has gone down this path with me before. First, it was moving to Eureka, then it was moving back here, then it was moving to Seattle and then Memphis, then it was coming back here again. A fine, loyal and noble woman forced to live like a gypsie, for what?

All I can really say for myself is that I aspire to be a better man. Sadly, for most of my life I have generally failed at this venture.

Reflections on the wind

I'm up late tonight. The howling of the wind on my bedroom window stirred a lonely spirit within me. I began thinking of my own mortality and the "legacy" I have left. I can say that taken as a whole, life is full of disappointments. Opportunities lost, harsh regretful words said in anger to loved ones, portents of ill things ignored. All these things can only be seen in hindsight, in the present they are witnessed with foolish eyes. Still when I look at my life as viewed from one who lives in the moment I see that things are not so bad. In fact, I am quite blessed.

What do you want people to say about you at your funeral? Shall it be a rushed affair with little to say? Or do you want a day long ordeal filled with much lamentation and regret? I say for myself I don't really care, I won't be there anyway. I am no great man, I have no wealth or legacy to leave behind. I have not impacted peoples lives in any positive way. I would even venture to guess that my passing would be a relief to some.

Perhaps what I will leave behind is this journal. Though I am quite sure that like me, it too will pass away. But, it remains here in this lonely, dust covered corner of the internet as a means for my loved ones to at least have a chance to understand me. You see, I did not write my ramblings down here for them to read, or as an extension of my vanity for the world to read. No, it is here simply for me. It is the sanctuary I come to in order to make sense of the demons that plague me.

The dream that destroyed us all

So, yesterday I took my lady out to the movies for Valentines day. We had planned to go to the city, but the snowstorm kept us local. Anyway, We had a nice dinner and watched two movies, Taken and Slumdog Millionaire. Taken was a decent movie. It played on our fear of other countries. Slumdog Millionaire was an excellent movie, if you like human dramas. However, there was on thing about the movie that was very disturbing to me, the ending.

Slumdog Millionaire was the first movie I had seen from Bollywood, that being the movie companies producing films in India. My impression of the general theme of the film was that of a boy that overcomes extreme hardship, works hard and shows initiative and savy as a businessman, then eventually gets a chance to obtain fantaatic wealth, thereby freeing him from the cycle of poverty. Sounds a bit like the American Dream doesn't it?

Let me tell you what I think of the American Dream. It is in its essence freedom through hard work and the eventual aquisition of wealth. Sounds great, but if you consider a population such as that in the United States all vying for the same resources to get rich, then you have a problem. What happens when the resources become scarce and the ability to chase that dream becomes non-existent? Basically you see what we have going on in the world now.

Now, lets transplant that dream into a country of over a billion people who live mostly in grinding poverty. The scene at the end of the movie makes you understand that India loves and admires western culture. Theme of the movie imples that they also love and admire the American Dream.

Let me say clearly now that this dream, this way of life, will destroy this world. Not in the Death Star blowing up Alderaan sense, but a fundamental change in climate that will inhibit our ability as people to sustain our way of life and our population. This will happen in our lifetimes and will serve as trying, painful times for our children and grandchildren.

This is the price of our greed.

Intolerance

So, I learned two lessons this past weekend.

First, I need to lay off cold medicine. I have allergies, something here in the mountains sets me off because when I travel anywhere else they pretty much go away. But, since I dont have anything resembling health insurance I have to finds ways to deal with my allergy attacks. I have two methods, one is I eat alot of cough drops. I have no idea why this works, something about the menthol soothing my nostrels. The other way is to take cold medicine. I can't take the daytime stuff because it makes me real sick, so I take nighttime. Consequently, it makes me very sleepy. Anyway, I've been doing this for a number of years, and I think my body can't tolerate it anymore. This weekend I got real sick, extreme drowsiness combined with heart palpitations. For a while I thought I was going to have to go to the emergency room. That was on Saturday, I still don't feel right.

Second, I played paintball on Sunday. Not much to be said there, typical game(no mean self did not prevail). But, before the game got started I got into a fight with Chicken. Not a fist fight, though it was going that direction. I made a dumb joke concerning him, he took offense and called me an SOB, so I got into his face. Anyway, I apologized later and we made up. Ends up he has been feeling slighted by me because I have not spent any time with him for the past couple of months. In reflection, I guess I just assumed that he was with Tubbi in not wanting to be my friend. He made it very clear that was not the case. So, I feel stupid for neglecting a friend and making assumptions.

Wisdom comes not from perfection, but in making mistakes and learning from them.

Conversations with the self

Intellectual self: I really should give Tubbi a call today to see what he is up to. I haven't talked to him in a while.

Pragmatic self: Oh no, not that again! Why don't you just leave him alone. He doesn't want to be our friend.

Intellectual self: What are you talking about? You don't know that for sure! Your so negative about people.

Pragmatic self: Oh really, maybe your just blind and over-optimistic. The man snubbed you on your birthday, he never comes to see you, and every time you try to get him to go do something with you he makes up lame excuses.

Intellectual self: Well, we have been really hard on him. For instance, we were more than cruel to him this past summer by teasing him. We kept on harassing him without mercy. He has a right to be mad about that.

Cruel self: Ha ha!! Yeah we really did lay into him. But, he set himself up for it the dumb ass.

Pragmatic self: First off, he has no right to hold a grudge against us for anything! We stood by him when no one else would, and we have helped him out of binds more times than we can count. Second, if he does hold something against us then that is clearly a sign that he is not worth having as a friend. Lastly, thanks to religion boy over there we apologized to him for letting cruel self out of the cage.

Religious self: If he does have a grudge we should forgive him for it an move on. We don't need to get pulled into his hatred.

Cruel self: *scoff*
Pragmatic self: *rolls his eyes*

Intellectual self: Point well made RS. With that in mind perhaps we should do something nice for him and show him that we still care for him.

Pragmatic self: Bah!! Have you heard anything I have said! Wake up and smell the burning house!! He doesn't want to be our friend. How many times have we gone over there to make amends? How many nice things have we done for him without him ever reciprocating? He is using us and will continue to do so as long as we let him! Sure, lets forgive him for our sake, but we need to just let him go and move on!!

Intellectual self: *grumble grumble* What about all the fun times we have had in the past? Don't you want to try to get that back?

Pragmatic self: We can't live in the past. Some people are left in our past because they have no place in our future. Tubbi has no place and you all know it.

Cruel self: Fuck him!! Lets go slash his tires!!

Religious self: Lord have mercy on me!!

Intellectual self: Sure, that will make things better. He'll never guess it was us that slashed his tires. *rolls eyes*

Pragmatic self: No, we will just have to remain distant from him. He wants us to play paintball this weekend, we will go and be civil to him, but that is all. We will shoot him down like everyone else we play against.

Cruel self: Hee hee I'm gonna light him up!! Full auto!! No Mercy!!

Intellectual self: No your not!! PS is right, no special treatment either way. Maybe he will see that and realize we are a true friend, maybe he'll apologize for the birthday thing!!

Pragmatic self: Ugh! Do you ever quit?

Know thyself

As I type this post I am sitting in the cafeteria at the college waiting on my wife. Its a Friday so everything is winding down here and its fairly quiet. This is my first post on my, new to me, laptop computer(I got a real good deal on it from the local computer store).

School is so far quite engaging for me this semester. Its funny that in my last semester in a community college I would have the most interesting classes. Perhaps it is simply the light at the end of the tunnel. Oddly enough I am even finding my Anthropology class interesting, even though my instructor is a fanatic when it comes to the myth of evolution. I guess in light of my dive into Philosophy I am seeing evolution as another of humankinds thought processes. Perhaps if it wasn't so powerfully tied with nihilism it would be better understood as an instrument of creation. But alas, we are creatures of extremes even if it obscures wisdom and truth.

Today is my youngest daughters birthday. She amazes me at what a good soul she is. She is so intelligent and happy. Best of all, she is creative. She doesn't know it but she is now in the best time of her life. She is innocent and open minded enough to learn about whatever she finds interesting. It is the sad fate of the human condition that we grow out of, and leave behind such a blissful existance. Clearly this is why Christ calls us to be like a child.

The day of my birth

Well, I survived another birthday.

What more is there to say? I guess I could add that I tried real hard not to get melancholy again this year. Sadly, I did not succeed.

As a kid growing up my birthday was always a major disappointment. I rarely(if ever)got anything nice on that day. Instead, I mostly got a guilt trip laid on me from my mother, who was usually upset that my dad didn't get something nice for her birthday the week before. I ended up being the scape goat for my mothers frustration.

On top of that. Honestly, I didn't feel like I was really wanted as a child. I was made to feel like I was a mistake and that my mother and father were just putting up with me as opposed to raising me. I imagine that when my mother found out that she as pregnant with me she cried because of having to bear the burden of another child so late in her life. The pain in these thoughts are a bit too much for me to contemplate at the moment.

I feel bad mostly for my family here. They try hard to please me on my birthday. This year they went out and got me a Chinese food dinner and my youngest daughter baked me a very nice cake. I think that when they see me get sad by their efforts they believe that they have somehow disappointed me. That can't be farther from the truth, the fact is really that I don't feel worthy of their affection.

The right track

On the last minute last Friday everything came together, much to my relief.

So, I showed up at the college and signed up for a math tutor to help me to pass the math placement test for intermediate algebra. I was told to speak to someone in the computer center to get started. However, when I arrived the lady responsible for the program left early for the day.

Refusing to give up so easily, I started asking around and I ended up finding the person that was filling in for lil-miss-leave-work-early. However, instead of getting set up with a living, breathing tutor, I got paired with a computer and a tutoring program.

So, an hour later I had exhausted the math tutoring program and was left with several questions that I needed answering. Namely, what the square root of negative one is(I might note that I never got an answer to this). So, being eager to make a good showing I set out for the math lab to fill in the gaps. However, upon arrival, there was not a single soul in the math lab.

Not letting despair get to me, and with time running out on when I can take the placement test, I made my way to the counseling center. Once again, I was faced with a roadblock. Despite the fact that he told me the day before that he would be there, the man who administers the placement test had left early for the day(grrr). So, one of the aides took me in to set me up on the computer that does the test. However, she apparently had the wrong password. So, for a long while she wasn't able to even get me into the software. After a bit of cussing on her part and a few phone calls, she was able to get me into the software and I was off and running.

After 45 mind numbing, nail biting minutes I finished the test. Out of the 20 or so questions asked I can honestly say I guessed on two of them. One, just made no sense at all and I think was put in there to throw me off. However, in the end I scored a 48 on the test. Thats not a percentage, I needed a 41 to qualify for the math class I needed. So, I joyfully took my test results to registration to sign up for the last math class that was open to enrollment.

Do I think this is any of my own doing? Of course, but with blessing and love from God in heaven. So, my thanks goes to him.

Dancing on Glass

So, I feel myself on the edge of despair.

I have been accepted and am planning to attend Chico State University next year. Honestly, I am overwelmed with anticipation. However, today I had what may be a major setback.

Last semester I signed up for the wrong math class, and naturally I did not notice the mistake until the last minute. So, by the time I went to sign for the correct class everything was full. So, in reviewing my options I retook the placement test for math hoping to get into a higher level of math, which I might add are all open. I scored 6 percentage points short of advancing. So, my counselor suggested I ask the instructor if she would allow me to take the class, today she told me she would not. So, long story short I am facing the possibility of being put a whole year behind on my educational plan.

As you can imagine this has me pretty down today. I am afraid that if it happens it will put me into a depression again.

All I want to do is rise above my current situation and chase my dreams.

Vindication

hahaha

So, I found this article today on Yahoo News.
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Science : Discoveries
3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late

1 // You may need more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were "well rested" actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours. That figures. Until the invention of the lightbulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered 10 hours a night.

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, "evening people" almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.

3 // Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You'll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.
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