I am a child of the space age. I was born just two days after Scott Sheppard made his 15-minute sub-orbital flight signaling the entry of the United States into the space race. I grew up with rockets and programmable calculators. I grew up a geek without realizing it.
I grew up lonely and isolated, afraid to let people see the real me. I felt that inside I was vastly different than the people around me and I was afraid of being shunned if they were to discover my secret.
My family was typical in many ways, and atypical in others. The defining moment in my young life was the untimely death of my sister to leukemia when she was 11 years old, and I was 12. Whatever emotional or spiritual energy my family had seeming died with her. I retreated into fantasies and books, where I wasn’t afraid of my feelings or afraid of getting negative reactions to them.
In high school I was that nerdy kid who didn’t belong to any one group, but eventually discovered the few other nerdy kids who also didn’t belong. For the first time I felt a sense of belonging, but only intellectually and then only briefly. Sometime in my sophomore year I was introduced to computers and I was hooked. I think the ability to control them completely was attractive to me. For most of my life I had felt out of control in one regard or another, and now I had something I could be totally in control of and totally responsible for. The fact that neither of my parents knew anything about it helped. I needed to get out from under their shadow and I had finally found a way.
By the time I graduated from high school I was prepared to go off to college and study computers. I wasn’t sure what kind of life that would give me but I was willing to find out. During the summers I worked at a YMCA camp, which gave me conflicted emotions about my future. At summer camp I discovered my spiritual and emotional self and a safe place to express them. The transition at the end of the summers back to the intellectually safe posture I used at school was painful.
I spent a lot of time agonizing over whether I should stay with computers and a financially secure future or switching to outdoor or recreational education so I could stay on at summer camp year round. In order to graduate from college I had to complete at least one summer of actual work experience in the data processing field. The summer I spent as a programmer was enlightening in many ways. For the first time I had proof that I could do this work and enjoy it. And that working a 9-to-5 job wasn’t so bad after all. Plus the pay was better.
So I finished college and set off on a career in data processing. I put my emotional self and spiritual self up on a high shelf and tried to forget they every existed. I tried to approach everything logically and intellectually. I was miserable, lonely and isolated once again. Sometimes, though, the pain we know is better than the pain we don’t know. I was too afraid of losing where I was to try and open up to anything new. Outwardly I led a good life, good job, new cars, travel, and toys. Inwardly I was slowly dying and hated my life.
When I was almost 30 I walked into a karate dojo and signed up for classes. Within in a week I was hooked. I spent the next 8 years practicing and working out. I advanced rapidly through the ranks and received my black belt in just over 4 years time. Within another 2 years I was a second-degree black belt. A ranking equivalent to a master’s degree. More importantly I had re-discovered my emotional and spiritual self. The philosophy of the martial arts appealed greatly to me, and I felt secure enough in who I was to finally start letting other people see parts of the real me.
I think that I grew from childhood to adult intellectually through my work experience. But I was still immature emotionally and spiritually, that is until my dojo experience. Not that I expressed a tremendous amount of emotion or spirituality in the dojo. Rather the confidence in myself that I gained from that experience allowed me to express my self more openly and honestly than ever before.
About this time I met the woman who is now my wife. We met online via AOL. After just one or two online conversations we started talking on the phone. Within a few weeks we were talking daily for hours. Over the course of the next year we met in person several times and decided that we wanted to be together. She moved to where I was living and we have now been married for over 6 years.
Our marriage has been a time of tremendous growth for me emotionally and spiritually. I feel like I am finally an adult in my emotions and in my spirituality. It has not been easy to overcome the years of self shunning I subjected myself to, but it has been worth the effort.
Today I am more myself in more situations than ever before. And I continue to feel more empowered and in control of myself than ever. I have decided that it is important for me to capture in more detail the story of my life. I need to do this for me, and I need to do it in a way that will allow others to view it. Some day this might become a book or memoir. For now it is enough to post it here and let the unknown readers of this site view it.
I found this to be oddly appealing. I’m not sure why, but I find I am attracted to it. Originally I found it on Leslie Harpold’s site.
In Place Of A Curse John Ciardi
At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected, I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who, having been slugged no harder than anyone else, never got up again, neither to fight back, nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.
They who are wholly broken, and they in whom mercy is understanding, I shall embrace at once and lead to pillows in heaven. But they who are the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters with extortions of a mock-helplessness, I shall take last to love, and never wholly.
Let them all in Heaven - I abolish Hell - but let it be read over them as they enter: “Beware the calculations of the meek, who gambled nothing gave nothing, and could never receive enough.”
Michele and I had a wonderful weekend. Little of any consequence was accomplished except for rest, relaxation and fun. We swam and napped, cooked in and ate out.
The breakthrough about my needing to write more to maintain my sanity was important. I have written two new postings that helped me a great deal. I plan to post more as a result.
As we wind down and head into the closing hours of this weekend I am feeling rested for the first time in weeks. It’s a good feeling.
Absolutely beautiful pictures of an incredible machine.
Someday…
I have been moody, morose, and feeling unfulfilled for some time now. From outward appearances my world is going in all the right directions. My employment situation is headed in a good direction, our finances are back under control. I have the love and companionship of a wonderful, beautiful woman; who is my friend as well as my true love. But at the end of the day I am not satisfied.
In the book “Messages from Michael” the ideas of “true work”, “true play”, and “true rest” are put forth. Without going into much detail here, I know that my true work is using computers to help people. I know that my true play is cooking and creating in the kitchen. However I have struggled with finding my true rest. I exercise, eat reasonably well and get enough sleep. Yet I am often tired and listless.
True rest isn’t just about the physical, it is about the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our beings. Getting enough sleep and taking care of your physical body isn’t enough. You have to feed your spirit, and give voice to your emotions too.
Michele and I talked about all this this evening. Today was my day to do what ever I wanted to take care of me. Originally I wanted to go to the movies. We spent the morning doing some household chores and then had a swim in the pool. Later we tried lunch out, but I had great difficulty in swallowing anything; always a sure sign that I’ve got some unmet need coming up to the surface. When it came time for the movie I decided I didn’t want to go, rather I wanted to go window shopping at the electronics store and book store. Neither visit was at all fulfilling. At the end of the day I hadn’t done anything that fulfilled all of me. I was still feeling antsy, and I was bone tired and grouchy.
As we talked I kept saying that I wanted to be creative and expressive but that I didn’t know what form that expression would take. Maybe a musical instrument, maybe wood carving. Maybe needlepoint or painting. I just couldn’t imagine what might meet this need. Then Michele, as she often does, helped me to see what was already working for me. Something I love to do, and hadn’t been letting myself have much lately. Writing.
Yes, writing. Putting these postings on my web site has a wonderful calming effect on me. I like the whole process, from constructing the flow of words in my head, to capturing them here, to reading my thoughts again later. It is truly restful for me to do this. All my life I have loved well written books and stories. I delight in the images words can paint in my imagination. I enjoy finding the best words to describe things to others so that I can convey my thoughts to them.
I have always discounted my writing as silly or not important. I guess because it comes so easily to me I never thought it had any import. Michele’s simple statement about my writing really struck home tonight. As we talked about it I could feel my self wanting to sit down and capture these thoughts. Just thinking about it made me feel better than I had felt in a long time. Giving myself permission to sit down and capture this posting has been a wonderful treat.
I don’t know for certain that writing is my true rest. Only time will let me decide. But for now it is fulfilling, and rewarding, and I plan on giving myself every chance to rest my emotions, spirit, mind and body through this medium.
I just cleaned out my spam folder by exporting all the August dated spams, a total of 4,917 messages. This brings my annual total to 42,702 spams for the year. In August my daily average slipped to a mere 158 spams a day. For the year my average is 175 spams a day.
175 a day sounds bad until you read about the man who gets 3,000 spams a day.
I’m thinking about trying knowspam.net again. I used it for a few days earlier this summer but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to accept a new paradigm for dealing with these messages. Currently I scan the list of spams that my rule set tosses into the spam folder for any false positives. For me, anyway, using a service like knowspam requires that I only skim the spam folder when I think I’m missing something.
When the spam folder is local to my machine I don’t worry about losing something to my spam rules. Even if I do have a false positive I still have the e-mail, it’s just filed in the wrong folder. With knowspam my false positives would be online somewhere, they’d be out of my control.
I suppose I should examine the incoming spam for a time and determine just how many false positives I really get. This summer as I was entertaining the idea of switching jobs I got a fair number of e-mails from unknown senders, which I treat as spam, that I actually wanted to have in my inbox. Now that I have made my monster and dice resume inactive I suppose I don’t have to worry about that kind of e-mail for a time.
All of this sounds like another case where I am making a mountain out of a mole hill. If I can figure out why I am obsessed with the fear of losing even one e-mail to a spam filter, then maybe I can relax enough to allow a service like knowspam to work for me.
Until then, I’ll be spending some time everyday buried in the latest pile of crap in my spam folder.
Sigh.
We have been dealing with my mother-in-law recently. I love her, and actually have developed a like for her in the 6 or so years that I’ve known her. She can be very sweet and caring, and a lovely person to know. She can also be the most obstreperous, cantankerous, passive-aggressive person I know. She has been known to visit these two poles of her personality in the same conversation with you.
Currently she lives, alone, in a small one-bedroom apartment in Manteo North Carolina. Manteo is on the same Outer Banks’ island as Jamestown, the Lost Colony. It is remote and isolated. She has family living about an hour drive north in Currytuck county. Her relationship with her sisters is volatile. After an illness forced her into a brief hospital stay last January she felt like her sisters were trying to run her life. She has talked about moving away ever since.
Her goal appears to be Wilmington North Carolina, or about 300 miles farther south. During our last visit to see her in February, we drove down there, but without any objective defined, no progress towards moving was made. Now we are planning a new trip to see her in early October. Once again she is insisting that we travel to Wilmington to find a place for her to live. We have requested that she make some calls and schedule some appointments so we’ll actually accomplish something. Since she doesn’t like being told what to do, even by her daughter, it remains to be seen if she’ll follow through. If we were to call and schedule appointments she’d refuse to go, or to participate if we did get her there.
Both my wife, and my brother-in-law, feel that she would be better off if she lived near family. Either stay in Manteo, near her sisters, or move near one of her children. Michele is not interested in having her mom near us. My mother-in-law has no concept of boundaries and the only reason we get along with her as well as we do is the 1100 mile buffer zone. My brother-in-law is interested in having her live near him in Tampa. Everyone except for my mother-in-law likes this idea. When presented with it as a possibility she gets very evasive and coy about everything. Talking to her at all about anything becomes an incredibly difficult and exasperating chore.
My wife had a tortuous conversation with her mom this morning. Nothing was resolved and, from subtle clues dropped along the way, it appears her mom maybe taking a vacation. Of course she won’t say where, or when. I expect we won’t be able to get ahold of her for several days now, and then she’ll turn up in Tampa or, yikes, here unannounced.
A part of me knows that she isn’t having anymore fun with this style of life than the rest of the players in this little black comedy/drama. I wish I could unscramble the world for her so that she’d be more at peace. However I know that this is not something I could accomplish with a willing participant, much less with an unwilling one. And, as I look towards my own future and I wonder what it will be like for me, when someone starts trying to tell me where I can and can’t live. I’ll probably be a bit obstreperous too.
This article says it all. As of today more American servicemen and service women have been killed since the war “ended” on May 1st, than were killed during the official war.
My heart goes out to every family who has members in harm’s way. Your debt is one our society is ill-equipped to ever repay.
About 2 weeks ago our cleaning lady noticed that the throw rug in front of the kitchen sink was soaking wet. We couldn’t imagine how it had gotten this way, unless we had spilled water on it without realizing our clumsiness.
And we have noticed that from time to time that our new kitten, Taz, shows up in the early morning hours with damp paws. We know she is fascinated by water, and that she freely ventures into the still dripping shower after it has been used. I guess we though she was playing in the toilet bowl during the night. Where else would she get wet paws?
From the leaking dishwasher, that’s where. Usually we use the time-delay feature on our dishwasher and run it over night. Yesterday morning, however, it was full and we ran it during the day. Afterwards I happened to notice a rather sizable puddle of water on the floor directly in front of the appliance when it was in the dry cycle. Suddenly the wet throw rug, and mysteriously damp paws had been explained.
Sears is on the way.
I set a new uptime record earlier this week. Until I goofed my Powerbook had been running for over three weeks.