Wandering Flagship

I saw the John Wick quadrilogy over the weekend. They had been on my list, but I had not made time to see any of them prior to last Friday. I was kid free this past weekend and as I sat there Friday night trying to think of what I was going to do for the weekend, I decided to scroll through what was playing at the theater. I’m a Cinemark movie club member and I have some extra credits built up, so that’s always an option for an activity. John Wick Chapter 4 was one of the choices, of course, since it was opening weekend for the film.

That got me thinking; maybe this was finally the weekend I should watch these movies, and maybe on Sunday, I could go see it in the theater? No, that was probably too much of a commitment. I would try to watch the first three this weekend, and then that would give me the option to see the 4th one before it leaves theaters.

So that settled it and I cued up the first one for Friday evening’s entertainment, and entertaining it was, although also hard to watch at parts. I mean, if it wasn’t bad enough that they killed the puppy, it tugs even more at the heart when he comes to and you see that the dog has managed to drag itself across the floor to die next to him, or to comfort him as her last act. Either one is pretty heart breaking. Despite that, the movie overall was good and quite a ride really.

The next morning I was in bed and happened to text my brother about something. The idea of hanging out was floated and he suggested we see John Wick 4 in IMAX. I said, “That would be a great idea except I just saw the first one for the first time last night.

“Well get to watchin,” he replied. “The show starts at 5. I’ll get the tickets.”

So began my impromptu movie marathon and a day that started off pretty empty and suddenly filled up. John Wick 2, followed by John Wick 3 and lunch simultaneously. After that was a shower and then jumping in the car for the drive to Kalamazoo. All of the films were quite good, including the 4th installment, however, I am going to save any review of number 4 for the time being since it still has a spoiler ban in my opinion. Instead I’m going to focus my thoughts on the first three.

At its heart, this trilogy is about loss. John goes through a lot of it, and he isn’t really given the chance to grieve. Having experienced a lot of loss myself, I found this difficult to watch at times. It wasn’t so bad in the first one because he gets his revenge, and then at the end of the film he gets another dog. There is at least the beginning of a rise out of the valley of despair that he has found himself in. The movie also has a lot of kickass fights in it along with a taste of some super cool, super secret assassin world building. 

The second and the third movies have even more of this world building and each one pulls back the curtain a little more on this secret society that I found so fascinating from the first one. 

However, with every step into this world, we also have another loss that John has to endure. This time with no dips up from the valley. It’s just one loss after another and there is zero chance to grieve. Again, it has a lot of kickass stuff in it, and the action keeps it moving to the point where you hardly have time to wallow too much in your feelings. At the same time, I can’t help but yearn for some kind of relief for John. 

Today I met with a financial advisor. While this was something I have considered from time to time, it was not a meeting that I sought out. Basically I got a random phone call from an old friend two weeks ago, and the short version of the story is that he is getting into the finance game and he wanted to meet with me. Like I said, I have thought about this thing in the past, but with the upcoming crossroads, it is not necessarily the best time for it. Still, I agreed to the meeting out of respect for my friend, and I put it two weeks out since I had to be in Colorado for work last week.

So today was the day and I was quite anxious for the meeting, partially because I didn’t know what to expect, and partially because of what I assumed I should expect. I hate feeling like I am being given a sales pitch, and I have come to realize that in our capitalistic society, everyone is trying to sell you something. You’re forced to question everything. You take your kid for a consult with an orthodontist and they are most likely going to tell you that your kid needs braces. You want to believe that they are being honest, and that they are trying to help; that they have your best interest at heart. The truth is, however, that they are running a business and they need to make sales to keep that business going.

What’s worse is that since being a salesman was something I had to do at Lowe’s for many years, I can usually spot when they are selling me something, but I am not always good at resisting it. For that reason, I have developed a rule that I don’t say yes to anything at the first meeting. I will find some way to delay. With things related to the kids this is usually easy because I can tell them that all decisions have to be made jointly with their mother. It can be more difficult when I am making a decision for myself.

So I went to this meeting with plenty of anxiety, but also with a couple of exit strategies. At the very least I knew it would be good to see my friend; which it was. The meeting itself wasn’t so bad. There was another gentleman in the room with us as my friend is not fully licensed yet. There was definitely a lot going on that was certainly a sales pitch, and at one point I put it out there that I have a rule against saying yes to anything in the first meeting. They both said that they respected that, and that it wasn’t the plan anyway. This meeting was to gather some info so that they could present a plan to me at the next meeting. Which means that my rule will have to be amended in this instance to being that I don’t say yes at the second meeting.

The thing is that I could really use some help in the financial planning department. I’m good at budgeting and saving and all that stuff, but my investments are lacking. I definitely had some setbacks after the divorce and the various periods of unemployment in the last five years. For a time I could not afford to save much of anything, let alone for retirement. It is a regular source of anxiety whenever I think about it. So like I said, I could use some help, but at the same time, I have trained myself to be weary of these sorts of things. No one does anything for free, and the potential costs involved in it all is also a source of anxiety. The classic damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.

Truthfully, it likely doesn’t matter much right now because with the upcoming crossroads, I am not in a position to say yes to anything of this nature. I will need to wait until my path is set, and even then I may not be able to afford it. However, if I can, and this turns out to be as beneficial as it sounds, it would go a long way to bring some peace of mind to those aspects of my life. I have attempted to do this stuff on my own for many years now, and while I have had some success, I know that it is nowhere near the potential for success that is out there. I fucking hate capitalism, but it is not going away, so I need to do what I can to survive in it. I certainly don’t want to work for the rest of my life.

Later on in the day I looked at my Facebook memories and there was this picture:

Three years ago when I posted that, I was doing pretty well. I had mostly emerged from the worst depression of my life and things had overall become pretty stable. Work was good, my love life was looking promising, and one could say that I was feeling pretty great. Sadly, this would not last. I got fired from the job and the relationship didn’t last, but before it ended, it really took its toll on me mentally and emotionally.

Slowly I began the climb back up. I found a job with a really great team of people and I made peace with being alone for the seeable future. With that, I made the choice to prioritize my kids and to commit to being the source of my own happiness and strength. It was another journey through the dark and back to the light, but when I saw that post, I felt like I had finally made it back to where I was three years ago. Despite the aforementioned impending crossroads, I was feeling pretty good about where I am. I chose to repost the memory, and I went on with my day. 

I received a few likes and a couple of comments. One from my grandma telling me how proud she was of me. I’m never sure how to respond to that sort of stuff, so I usually don’t say anything. While I know how hard it has been to work through the pitfalls of my mental health, it also is hard to acknowledge that as any form of accomplishment.

Later in the day I got a phone call. It was the behavioral health department at my doctor’s office. I was expecting their call as I had asked my doctor last week to have them call me to schedule an appointment for an ADHD evaluation. The person at the other end of the call had the tone of someone who had long since lost their patience for anything. They inform me that my insurance is out of network for their providers (which I already knew), and that my costs would be out of pocket. Now, this whole situation will be its own post at some point to explain why I had willingly asked the out of network provider to call me for an appointment, but right now I can’t openly discuss some aspects of it. So for right now I’m going to skip to the part where I ask them what the out of pocket cost is, and they tell me that it is $418, which is more than double what I was expecting.

Suffice to say, this hit me like a gut punch. Over the last year I have been really exploring the possibility that I am ADHD as it would explain so much of why I am the way that I am. If I’m right, a diagnosis could not only get me medications that could potentially help me, but at the very least it would allow me a great deal of comfort in being able to say, “Yes, I am this thing.” Now, due to the culmination of all the various circumstances: the impending crossroads, my family doctor leaving practice, and most importantly, our healthcare system being completely fucked, I am likely going to have to wait until 2024 to continue pursuing this.

Needless to say I ended yesterday pretty crestfallen. Today wasn’t a whole lot better and the cloud of the crossroads hung over me a little more than usual. I didn’t have the kids today, so after work I made and ate dinner, and then I sat on the couch wondering what I should do with my time. For the last couple of months I had spent all my free time playing Minecraft. For the few months before that it was Pokemon. My hyperfocus on both had subsided and I was in between stuff. Over the weekend I had “cracked the code” on my gimmick for my replay of Breath of the Wild. I have been wanting to play it again before Tears of the Kingdom is released, but I know I need something that will keep me engaged to complete that. I could start that, but I wasn’t quite ready. I thought about writing, but it seemed too difficult.

Today I did something that I had legit never done before in my entire life. The type of thing that I have thought about before, but that my at times crippling social anxiety would never allow me to do. I took a risk and put myself out there in a way that I think I could only compare to doing the Open Mic Night. Not that this was music related, but in regards to the level in which I feel I stepped out of my comfort zone.

At some point I will probably go into more detail about what I did exactly, but for the time being I'm going to leave it vague while I bask in the afterglow of what can only be described as a combination of excitement over this thing I did, and my inevitable overthinking about how completely fucking awkward I was at it. Kinda reminds me of the time that I messed up performing one of my songs and I muttered an F-bomb into the microphone... In a room where families were dining.

Speaking of my music, I don't know if I ever posted any here, so in the interest of putting myself out there, I'm going to today.

Something that you might not know about me is that I love British panel shows. At this point, my YouTube feed is at least ¼ clips and episodes of British panels shows. This morning there was a collection of Sean Lock clips posted by Channel 4 (found here), and at the end, a caption of memorium for him. I audibly gasped as I sat by myself in my room, staring at the telly (as the Brits would call it.) “That can’t be right,” I said.

I hoped that it was a bit, one cooked up by his friends and fellow comedians/panelists. A sick joke, mind you, but my denial was searching for a better explanation than the truth, which was revealed after a quick Google search: Sean had passed away a few days ago after a short struggle with lung cancer.

My first exposure to British panel shows was a clip I came across of Joe Wilkinson reciting a poem he wrote entitled, “Hanging about in a Train Station Toilet Naming People's Penises.” If you want, you can watch it here, it starts about a minute and a half in. If you do watch it, one of the things I want you to notice is how hard everyone else is laughing. This is what drew me to want to find out more about the show this clip was from. What sort of show could have a room full of comedians, people who study humor and are often difficult to make laugh, laughing so hard.

As it turns out, much of it is available for free on YouTube, and so I dove head first into it. Starting first with Cats does Countdown, then the Original 8 Out of 10 Cats, and then into other shows like Taskmaster and Hypothetical. The thing that ultimately made it so engaging was the recurring cast of “characters” that you find from show to show and the history between them that ends up being a story of sorts that carries through. These relationships and history between them become part of the gag.

One of the greatest is between Sean Lock and Jon Richardson, both team captains first for 8 Out of 10 Cats, and then for 8 Out of 10 Cats does Countdown. To see these two riff back and forth between each other is magic, and will have you laughing so hard that tears will most certainly be in your eyes, as they often are for Jimmy Carr, the host of these shows. If you watched the first clip, then you saw their first head to head match of Carrot in a Box. You can find their rematch here, and if you watch that, then you can get a small idea of the comedy gold these two could make together.

Sean didn’t need Jon in order to be funny, however. Quite the opposite. Sean was always funny on his own. This sort of random genius that people often aspire to, but few lack the actually timing and delivery to pull it off. You remember that I mentioned I was drawn to the show because of how much the others were laughing from Joe’s poem; Sean could make the whole room laugh so hard that they were begging for him to stop talking so they could catch their breath. He wouldn’t though. He would keep the gag going to its conclusion, which would be some place you couldn’t possibly have predicted, but it still made sense.

I’m back. It has been an interesting couple of weeks. It started with the end of my relationship, and the after effects have been one of the running themes since. I have made a commitment to be honest on this blog, so I don’t think I’m going to talk too much about the relationship or it’s ending, at least not for a while. I think it is important to get some distance and perspective before I talk about it publicly, and I don’t desire to hurt anyone involved.

I’ve been in relatively good spirits since then, however. I am sad, but I have gotten adept at grieving things in the last few years. Between relationships, job loss and a death of a close family member, I have way too much experience with grief recently. If there is a positive to take from that, it’s the ability to take positives from negative situations.

One positive from my job loss situation is that I was able to take care of the boys last week for Spring Break. Since it made more sense to just have them stay in one location versus being dropped off before their mom goes to work, they stayed the whole week with me. We had a great week mostly filled with video games. The weather was especially good the first half of the week, so they spent some time outside while I did some yard work. We went mini golfing one day and I indulged them in a water gun fight yesterday.

Their stepdad picked them up this morning and I immediately felt a twinge of sadness at their absence. In the early days of their lives I said I would never get divorced because I didn’t want to be told when I could see them. Ultimately though their mom and I weren't setting the best example of love and marriage and the decision was made to try to find that with other people. Right after the divorce, I spiraled into a deep depression at not seeing them everyday, one that poisoned the relationship I had at the time. Since then I have adapted to life as it is now, and there have even been times that the stress of being a single parent has led to relief when they have gone to their mom’s. As they’ve gotten older and more self reliant, and I have worked through a lot of my mental health issues that split my attention from them, I think that we have reached a common ground and a new level of our relationship. I know that all parents say this, but I really do have some good kids.

Everyday my kids are with me they have to do their “responsibilities.” This amounts to an hour of skills practice divided amongst 20 minutes each of reading, math, and writing. In addition, they need to complete any homework assigned by their teachers. 

Wednesday Logan was helping Lucas with his spelling homework by playing Hangman. Logan would prepare the game and Lucas would guess the letters. This is the second week they have done this, and I half think that they are doing it because they think they’re getting away with something. Lucas likes to think that he is clever by memorizing his trick words so that he can guess all the letters without causing any of the hangman’s body parts to be added. Since the goal of the assignment is for him to know his words, I don’t split hairs much on how he chooses to demonstrate it.

I let them go on with what they are doing and I start looking through Logan’s folder. I am not completely paying attention to them, but at some point it becomes obvious to me that Lucas is getting upset, so I redirect my focus and ask them what is going on.

Lucas explains that he has two letters left to guess on the last word, but that he just has one body part left before he loses. He tells me that he has only made two guesses. I look at Logan to get his side of the story and Logan explains that they were doing the last two at the same time and so he was marking them both as necessary. Doing more than one at the same time is another stunt they think they’re pulling to make the work easier.

I go back to Lucas and explain what Logan said in different terms to make sure they are both on the same page with where they are at in the game. Logan hasn’t cheated him, and if he does two at the same time, it could have double the benefit, but it could have double the consequences. Then I compared his word list to the last hangman game to determine that the word could either be GLOW or FlOW as he already has OW. I tell Lucas that his next guess should be an L, and that his last guess could either be an F or a G, but that he has a 50/50 chance.

He guesses L, and then he guesses G, confidently exclaiming that it must be GLOW.

Logan promptly tells him that he is wrong, and that the answer was FLOW.

Now Lucas is upset and so begins one of the many conflicted parenting lessons that I get to deliver in an attempt to help them through this complex world. I turn to Logan and I tell him that he could have told Lucas that he was correct no matter which letter he had chosen, and pretended that it was the correct one all along. That it wouldn’t have made much of a difference other than that it would have made Lucas happier. I told him though at the same time I respected his integrity and his desire to be honest in the situation.

This is something that I do that I may have passed on to him. I tend to be honest in every situation, even ones where it doesn’t benefit me to do so, and maybe even have a negative side effect. Like if someone asks me if I like their new oversized sunglasses, and I think the glasses are ugly, I’ll likely say that they look functional. It would cost me nothing to just say that they look good, but for some reason, that isn’t my instinct. Probably one of the reasons that people think I’m rude when I’m trying to be the opposite.

So now it was time to help Lucas through his feelings. He still needed to do his writing assignment for the evening, so I tasked him with writing about how he was feeling. He wrote that he was feeling upset. I told him to say why. He wrote because he wants to be right all the time. I asked him whether it was possible to be right all the time. He wrote that it was not possible to be right all the time. I asked him what he needed to do to help (which he needed some help getting to this one.) He wrote that he needed to get better at being okay with not being right all the time.

Not a bad night’s parenting, even if I do say so myself.

Yesterday marked the five year anniversary of when my (and my cousin’s) Kickstarter went live. Kyle (my cousin) and I wrote a book together called The Comic Book Convention Survival Guide. It is what its title implies: a guide to having the best damn time at a comic book convention. There are some excerpts from it on this blog and you can see the Kickstarter here. Five years ago yesterday we would launch our campaign, and thirty days after that it would end with less than a third of our funding goal reached.

Having our Kickstarter fail was a difficult experience to say the least. Going into it we were very excited and full of confidence. We were also filled with hope at what this could mean for our future once it took off. We could be guests at conventions. We could expand the brand and sell merchandise. It could lead to other projects. The possibility that it wouldn’t even come close was not one that we were prepared for, though it was one we were warned about.

Our first warning came from someone we had solicited as a potential editor for our project. He told us to walk away from the project and to not waste our time. That it was too niche and that it lacked a way to appeal to its potential market of either con-goers or comic book readers. We had already done the work. Wasted or not, the time was put in. At this point we had nothing to lose. Besides, we were certain that this man had no clue what he was talking about.

Our second warning came during the Kickstarter when the editor that we did hire was sharing the project on his Facebook page. One of his acquaintances commented on the post and asked why it wasn’t in a different format. He also stated that he thought it was a missed opportunity. During this time we defended our product, but this would later be an epiphany moment for me. Combined with the advice of the editor before, I realized how we could have appealed to a wider audience. Probably still not wide enough to obtain our funding goal, as we were just plain asking for too much money, but ultimately that is just one more thing that we learned from the experience. You learn a lot more from failure than success. 

As you may have noticed, I left the details of how we should have done the project vague. That’s because we may still do it. I am still extremely proud of the work we did, and it would be a shame for it to go completely to waste. Right now it just sits around and collects digital dust. At times I entertain thoughts of just editing it again ourselves and releasing it for free online. That way it would at least be out there and hopefully be of use to some people.

Most of the time I just unintentionally forget that it exists. Which is weird because imposter syndrome likes to tell me all the time that I’m not actually a writer because I don’t spend enough time doing it. When in fact, I wrote a whole fucking book. Technically I’ve written three books, but my brain can’t keep me from qualifying that statement by recognizing that the first two are unpublished (and very bad) novels that I wrote during NaNoWriMo. The guide though is a complete book. We even printed a couple of proofs so I can even hold it in my hand. So why do I feel like a fraud when I put “Writer” on my business card? Your brain will lie to you, my friends. Do your best not to let it.

I had to provide a little surgery today. On a kid’s stuffed animal that is. One of my son’s came home with a stuffed Kirby from his mom’s house. This Kirby is an ice version complete with an ice crown. Sadly, part of the crown had come loose and needed to be sewn back on.

There is something about a task being done for one of my kids that somehow motivates more me to finish it than the average task. Fixing the stuffed Kirby was one of the few things that I did accomplish today. Another was a trip to the store to pick up items for a child. It’s not uncommon for me to forgo a trip to the store if the items are solely for me and I can convince myself that the need for them does not outweigh the effort of acquiring them.

Maybe it would be possible to harness this power in some way… To convince myself that every task is somehow for my children thereby motivating me to complete it. The issue is that I generally lack the ability to trick myself when intellectually I know that’s what I’m trying to do.

Besides, it’s not a fool proof system. There were times when my depression and anxiety was at its worst, when I could be convinced that something wasn’t worth the effort, even if it was for my kids. This was mostly little things, such as fixing a toy, or making sure that we didn’t run out of a favorite snack, or a trip to the park vs. just going home and playing in the yard. However, realizing this was one of the tools that helped me get out of that, the darkest of holes. I started to look for ways to be better for them. It worked, but the trick was that it had to be genuine.

So what is the takeaway? Helping others can be a way of helping yourself, but it has to be for the right reasons, and it can’t be faked.

One of the things that I have been writing about in this blog are the symptoms for anxiety and depression. A few days ago, a friend of mine made a Twitter post that coincidently mentioned one I had been considering writing about for the last week: Depression naps.

I’m not sure what her experience is with them, as we have not discussed it. So I'll just speak to my experience with it. I actually had one today on top of the few times last week.

Let’s start with today since it’s the most fresh. I woke up and commenced with my normal routine when I have the kids on a school day. I made sure their folders were in order, I filled their water bottles and snack containers, I packed lunch for the one that always wants it, and I packed their backpacks. Then I microwaved myself a breakfast sandwich and prepared to relax for the next 20 minutes until it was time to leave.

They both came out to the dining room and one of them asked if he could have breakfast, which turned into both of them wanting breakfast. Normally they have a snack on the way to school, and then have breakfast at school. I had caught them already awake, dressed, and on their tablets/game systems at 5:40 this morning, so I am guessing that this is why they were more hungry than usual. We had some time, so I asked them what they wanted. One wanted scrambled eggs and the other wanted pancakes, with neither willing to compromise. 

In moments like these I like to think of myself as a Super Dad who goes above and beyond to speed cook both pancakes and scrambled eggs in less than ten minutes. Really though, I’m just a guy who has a hard time telling one kid “no” and another kid “yes, when I don’t have a reasonable reason to do so. Really I needed a third option that would somehow either please both kids, or make them equally unhappy.

After I drop them at school, I put in a little bit of Pokemon Go time hitting a few nearby parks and one loop around a nearby campus. When I got home I searched for jobs and then I started to write this blog post. Around this time I could feel it start to creep in; that familiar exhaustion mixed with just the slightest amount of something that can really just be described as “feeling down.” My brain starts to suggest that I go lie down for just a little bit. I fight through it and keep going. Afterall, I’m currently trying to write a blog post about this very thing.

Eventually I decided to go take a shower in an effort to keep it at bay until noon. There is an event going on in a Star Trek mobile game that I play and I want to be up when it starts. I had some lunch, and I started to get the conversation going in Discord. The event began and my fleetmates and I had a good time discussing it and joking with each other.

Two hours later it hits me again and this time I decide to give in. I start by setting the alarm for 20 minutes later. When that went off, I quickly snoozed it. Ten minutes later I turned it off entirely. A half hour after that I woke up, and I decided to check my phone. The notifications are enough to keep me awake, and so I scroll on that for the next half hour. Finally I force myself out of bed and back to the computer where I start actually writing.

The first post I made on this blog (first in this string of posts that is) came from that cycle. I sat at the computer trying to write, felt down and exhausted, convinced myself that I needed a nap, took the nap, scrolled on my phone in bed for a while, and then got up and made actual progress with my writing. 

Did the nap help me feel better? The short answer is yes. The long answer is complicated because while I did feel better and it did lead to productive results with my writing, it also caused me to lose time. Not just the lost time from sleeping, but also the lost time from the scrolling while I tried to overcome my anxiety and depression to get back out of bed.

I don’t belittle people’s issues with their mental health. It is just as important as physical health. I also think that it is important to have a wide variety of tools in your belt. However, this is a tool that I wish I used less often. If I was working full time right now, or if I was able to write full time, this would interfere too much with getting the work done. So personally, I need to find some other tools, and only keep this one for times when it is the only thing that will work.

As you can see, I did not write a blog post on Saturday or Sunday, and “See you tomorrow,” has turned into, “See you Monday.” My apologies for that. I probably should have just said, “See you Monday,” when I made the last post. I considered it, but I wanted to push myself. In hindsight, I might have given myself the break and had I posted, been extra. Live and learn.

I did do some writing on Saturday. Not a lot, but what I did do was significant. I wrote 169 words. 

“How can that be significant?” you’re probably thinking.

Well, the words that I wrote were a part of a story that I have been working on for literal years. I started it back in 2016, and I hadn’t worked on it at all since June of 2019. I’m sure that I have opened up the document many times since then. I feel like I had read the last sentence a few times and had been unsure of what the next sentence should be. Finally I made a breakthrough.

I started by going back and reading the story from the beginning. It’s just a short story, and what I have so far is not a lot. Just 7 pages so far and I’m on the third chapter. The time that I have taken to write what I have, has not been without its production. The story, which started as a very simple prompt, has spent a lot of time rolling in my head. As a result, there have been questions that have both been raised and answered in that time. One of those big questions was why this story was even being told from the perspective of the main character. Also questions about how certain things in this world worked have more clarity to me now.

Reading it again, I did not want to get too heavily into an editing stage, but it was important to me that there was a consistency across the board in regards to story, plot, tone, etc. I wanted to not only make sure that what was written before fit where I was planning on taking it, but I also wanted to make sure that where I was going made sense with where I had been. Five years is a long time to be writing a short story, and a lot can change in that time.

Another benefit of reading it again was to remind myself of what I liked about this story, why I wanted to tell it, and to help motivate myself to finish it. Also there was the hope that once I reached the end of what I had so far, I would have the momentum to keep going. Yet once I did, I was once again stopped in my tracks. I sat there staring at it, the cursor mocking me as it often does. I wondered how I would move past this.

Then I started to ask myself less broad questions. I reminded myself of the mechanics of this story and what it was showcasing. My mind started to see the answers in this train of thought. Where I went next should be impacted by the objects in the story. There should be more reason for their existence. From that, the idea came, and then the words to follow.

It’s no question that this story is helping me to be a better writer. If only it could get me to just write more. Practice as they say is the secret to everything. I just need to do it. I shudder to think of all the time I have wasted. I need to keep from wasting more.

Today is my step dad’s birthday. The calendar notification has been on my phone all day, reminding me that I need to call him. I don’t want to dismiss it for fear that I will forget, and yet I cannot bring myself to make the phone call either. I like my step dad. Sure, we had some bumps in the road when I was a teenager, but I have forgiven those. I just don’t like talking on the phone. Which in itself is a problem, but is exacerbated by the fact that I neglected to call my mom on her birthday back in January.

Yes, I’m that son.

My relationship with my mother has had it’s ups and downs. I look back on much of it, now through the lens of being a parent myself, and I see someone who didn’t have all the answers. Someone who was likely doing the best they could with the knowledge they had, and would fall short. I have read stories on reddit of parents who were outright cruel to their kids. This was not my childhood in any shape or form. I want to make that clear. 

I am a child of divorce, and so often is the case with divorce, things were not always ideal. My parents were not always able to put their emotions aside, and as a result, I think they both made choices that they would probably take back if they could, but they have unfortunately stuck with me through the rest of my life. This is why one of prime goals of my own divorce has been to not replicate my parent’s divorce. 

Things with my mother have been strained the last several years. She and my step dad live in Florida and until last year, would only visit every six months. There were a few incidents during those visits in the early years of my children’s lives where she upset me, and as such, I have guarded myself and them since then. Still, I made it a priority to see her at least once when she visited, and I always called her on her birthday and Mother’s day.

The last few years have been tough on me. I have struggled with both my depression and my anxiety, as well as had many ups and downs in my life, and it’s not something I always like to talk about. My mother wants me to discuss these things when we do talk on the phone, and she takes it as a slight if I don’t want to. She also will say things multiple times during the conversation that are designed to make me feel guilty for not calling more often, in the attempt that it will make me call more often. What she fails to realize after all these years, is that it doesn’t make me call more often, it makes me call less.

Still, I had every intention of calling her on her birthday. I thought about it several times, but I lacked the calendar notification that I have today, and ultimately I forgot. And then I forgot the next day, and the next day, and so on and so on until weeks had passed. So now I dread this next phone call because I will inevitably have to hear about how she wished I called more, and it is doubtful that my apology will be enough to silence that.

I imagine this post makes me sound like a jerk. I know there are tons of people out there who have great relationships with their mothers. I know there are people out there who have lost their parents and wish they could pick up the phone and call them and I know that’s what those people would tell me I should do. But while my relationship with my mother isn’t a bad one, it isn’t necessarily a good one either. And anxiety makes you not want to do things like this.

Anyway, time to suck it up and make a phone call.

I had an interview scheduled for today. It was an in-person interview scheduled for late afternoon/early evening (a time frame that Sheldon would describe as “prevening.”) A little while ago I received a message stating that the meeting needed to be moved to an earlier time and would now be a phone call.

Que the anxiety.

Among the handful of idiosyncrasies living inside my head, there also resides, the overthinker. Together with the over analyzer, they want to get to the bottom of this sudden change. You see, yesterday I took an assessment for this job, and now I can’t help but think that it has something to do with the sudden change.

The assessment consists of two parts. The first is a basic IQ/Problem solving test. It is a timed test; twelve minutes to answer fifty questions. They state several times throughout that they do not expect you to finish all of the questions, but I was determined to. I consider myself to be of above average intelligence, and I can prove that if I can finish their test. The answers have to be correct though, which means I can’t guess and I have to read the questions. This is where I lack because I tend to be a slower than average reader. I think it was on question 46, maybe 47, when I ran out of time, but I felt confident that I had answered 95% of those questions correctly. 

The second part of the assessment was a personality test. I've taken a lot of these the last few weeks, and they don’t tend to stress me out. One might think that they would given the various things that I have already discussed on this blog the last couple of days, but this is a good time to point out that I do not struggle with my mental health issues at work. Something about being paid for my time snaps me out of any sort of depressive or anxious behaviors. As such, I answer these types of surveys by basing my choices on how I would react at work. 

Really, based off of what I just told you, and what I know intellectually, the results of the survey could only impact me in a positive way. Yet I can’t help but think that maybe this has turned from an interview to a screening call because they did not like the results of my assessment. Of course, the opposite could be true: I could have scored so well that they want to talk to me sooner and less formally.

Or…

She could have just had something come up, was no longer available for a full interview, and wanted to have a short call to get the ball rolling so we at least spoke today…

Which is exactly what happened. We had a lovely conversation about the position. She was going out of town suddenly, which is why the meeting changed. We have a follow up call scheduled for early next week in order to schedule an interview for later next week.

So...Yeah… Your brain will lie to you, folks.

I lost an hour yesterday to a browser game. Honestly it probably was longer than that. The path to my demise started with a random pop-up that I had dismissed at least a hundred times prior. Designed to target some basic human desires and posing a simple choice between two options, it can be easy to overlook the third option; to not engage at all. It entices you to pick. After all, what could it hurt? Maybe you’ll even get something out of it. Maybe the fantasy that they are dangling in front of you will come to fruition somehow.

Intellectually I know that nothing is free, and whatever they are dangling in front of me will come with some sort of cost. Likely monetarily, as generally, people and businesses don’t do things for free. This knowledge tends to guard me from these types of things, but on this occasion, I decided to say, "Fuck it. What's the worst that could happen?" In theory, I can only lose what I choose to lose, and they can't get my money if I don't give it to them.

So I make a choice and I click a button. In hindsight, I believe the choice to be inconsequential, an illusion in which the only true choice is whether to play the game or not. I say this because the choice was between two characters, and on the next screen, the one I didn't choose is having a conversation with another character. The one I did choose is nowhere to be found. The game takes me through the basics. I have played enough world building mobile games to get a feel for it quickly. I start to build my business and all the while it still appeals to these base human desires that it used to get me here in the first place.

I finish the first episode and when the next one begins, it takes me back down to almost nothing. The characters are just as confused as I am, so I start again with the building. Thankfully, some of the items I acquired are still around, and I'm back up and running in a short amount of time. At this point, the barrage of special deals start to grace my screen. They want me to spend real money and in doing so I will get ahead faster. I dismiss them and push on, reaching the end of episode two and on to episode three and… you guessed it. I lose nearly everything I had built.

A storyline of a sort of time loop becomes a focal point as I begin again. This time I'm smarter, I know more about how the game works, and so I invest differently and I gain money faster. I hit a few bonuses and for the next hour I'm going to earn 10x the norm. At this point they ask me to set up a login so I don't lose my progress. Ironic, I know, but I do it using a throwaway email account I had just set up specifically for the game. Offers continue to plague my screen, begging me to spend my real money and still I deny them. I have done countless mobile games F2P and I will do this one too. All it costs me is my time…

Wait a minute…

About this time I finish the third episode and I hope as I click that button that we are no longer stuck in the time loop…

Fortunately… we are. In this moment I realize that this whole thing is shit, and I hit the X on the browser tab and I don't look back. Except… I do. I look back at this hour (probably more) that I have lost and I feel regret. I feel shame. What could I have done with that time if I had just been a little stronger?

This is the thing with depression and anxiety. Things like this can suck you in because they distract you from the things that you should be doing. The things that seem like too much of a task, and so you find anyway to put them off. Even if that is completely wasting your time. 

The time is gone now. I can't get it back. So there is nothing left for me now but to forgive myself, and to try and do better next time.

Depression sucks. Anxiety is just as bad.

I begin each day with the same ambitions: I want to find the right job. I want to improve my home right. I want to write. I want to do right by my kids. In short, I want to make the most of the day that has been given to me. I want to make the most of my situation, which was not one of my choosing, but one that I am now forced to endure. 

“No more wasted days.” That was the mantra that I adopted back in November of 2019, and while I did well for many months after that, I fall short in recent months. Simple things can often become the biggest struggles. Brushing my teeth, drinking enough water, or even just getting out of bed can seem like climbing a mountain. 

One of my current goals is to organize my basement. I want to make better use of the space and increase accessibility to all items there. If I am keeping them, I should be able to get to them and use them readily. Progress on this task has been in small bursts with days in between them. I have so much trouble getting myself down there and keeping myself motivated. Yet I will spend hours on end playing a video game, searching for a shiny Pokémon. What’s the difference? I’m not sure. Is it because the stakes are lower? Is it because I have to think less about it? It doesn’t involve constant decisions, which is a problem with making progress on my basement project. If I had spent the amount of time in the basement as I do in the Galar Region, I would be done with the basement and onto the next project. Instead the chances of finishing the current project slowly edge towards being worse than 1 in 4096.

Obviously none of this is new, and writing about depression and anxiety is far from ground breaking anymore. I am not discussing anything that many others before me haven’t discussed.

However, it does get me writing again. “Write everyday.” That’s been the goal for years and I have never managed to do it. I often have trouble knowing what to say. I often feel like I don’t have anything to say, while at the same time knowing that I have a lot to say. So until I have something to say, or until I can say the things that I have to say, this will have to do.

I sustained a lot of major loss in 2017, and into the first day of 2018 for that matter. This loss has permeated itself throughout my life. The last eight months have been a near constant struggle with grief and mourning which at times has felt impossible to escape.

On October 31st I had a fairly full key ring of eight keys. On November 1st I lost my job and with it, four of those keys. Now everytime I locked or unlocked the door of my house, everytime I started my car, I was reminded of the betrayal I had suffered from the company that I had given over a decade to. This is a prime example of how the grief can seep it's way into all aspects of your life.

On November 17th, my divorce was finalized. A next step in a process that began back in May. Evidence that just when you think you have dealt with the grief of something, it pops back up on you. I had lost my marriage, I had lost time with my kids, and I had lost my best friend. All in a pursuit of a potential happiness and effort to do what is best for your kids, but is so hard to see when you're in the heart of such loss.

On January 1st, I was T-boned while passing through an intersection in my Jeep. The kids were with me, thankfully unharmed, but I could not say the same for my emotional state for the next few days thinking about what could have happened. There was also a total loss of my Jeep, and so I lost another key from my key ring. I loved that car. I had taken good care of it. It had served me well. But I had to say goodbye, and again, I was reminded of it's loss everytime I had to use those keys.

On January 6th, my now ex-wife moved out of the home we had purchased together, the home that would now be mine. Again, the feelings get brought back up, the feelings must be processed again, and I lose yet another key as I no longer need a key to her car if she isn't going to live with me.

So if you have kept track, I am down to two keys: one to the house, and one that opens all my padlocks around the house. Not much left to lose, and though at no point have I considered myself immune, I hope that I have come to the end of it.

They say that to build something new that you have to tear the old thing down. They also say that you shouldn't be afraid to start over as it gives you the chance to build something better. I don't care much for these as it implies that what came before was bad. In many cases, it wasn't bad, it just wasn't enough. As I said, I have mourned each thing I have lost. I have done so because I recognize the value it had, I am sorry to see it go, and a part of me wishes it didn't have to, but I want my kids to have more, I want my ex wife to have more, and I want myself to have more.