Unhoard Your Life

One of our most of basic instincts is to acquire things in life.

We get a job. 

We get clothes. 

We get money. 

We get material things. 

Then we get a place to put them into. 

We get more money.

Rinse and repeat.

We store the things we had already acquired.

We fill up our existence.

We run out of space.

Then what? 

We die.

Someone else has to deal with all of the things we acquired.

Some get tossed. 

Some get passed down.

Some get put into a box in some other space.

The cycle continues.

I am as guilty as anyone else in this life. 

I have an attic with stuff from years ago that I will never use again.  I have a foot locker containing things from my grade school years.   I have cases containing cassette tapes from my youth, and even from the days when I still had a car that could play a cassette tape.  I haven’t thrown them out.   I can’t play them on anything, but I can’t part with them.   I have stuff in my garage.  Broken bits and bobs that don’t belong to anything that works, but I haven’t thrown them away because, eventually I will fix them or find a use for them.   

No, I won’t.

I’m just as bad on a digital scale.   I have disks, drives, and files dating back to the Apple IIc era of technology.  I “try” to keep all the footage of gameplay I record for my YouTube channel as if I can reuse that footage for something else.  Multiple three or four terabyte drives sitting on a shelf.    I put quotes around the word try because, on occasion, the drives fail and I basically have a paperweight that lights up but does nothing else.

Look at video games, today.  You start out with nothing and then you have to acquire resources.   You get rewarded for getting things.  If you're like me, you hold onto things because even though you have no idea what they do, at some point, you may need them.  By the middle of the game, you are frantically looking to store things in your inventory or find uses for them because you have no more room.   Video games have mirrored my hoarding life or enhanced.  I'm not sure which.

Is it genetic?  Is it an illness?  Is it just laziness?

Well, the first thing you have to understand is that I am the child of a baby boomer, that ever aging generation that lived through the Great Depression and World War II.  They had to scrimp and save everything because there just wasn’t any money or materials during those times.  Everything was precious either from a KTLO (Keep The Lights On) perspective or because of the war effort.  My parents have a house full of things from the 60s through today and I do not relish the day I, along with my siblings, will have to go through it all.

The second thing you have to understand may also explain something about yourself if you find you have the same issue.   I tend to resonate from mnemonic devices.  I associate a time and place to listening to a song or a visual reference.  I can remember a memory from a smell or listening to a sound.  For me, the tactile response to seeing something from my past brings me back to that place better than just having to remember it.    Maybe it’s fear of aging.  Maybe it’s fear of mental deficiency in my later years. 

Maybe I am just lazy.

But I am getting better.  In fact, I have done a lot of junk dumping.   When I first moved into my house, I could actually park a car in the garage.  Then, slowly, over the next 12 years, things got shoved into every space in that garage until you could only walk a small path from the door to the back, after moving a garbage can or two.  Along one wall were cardboard boxes, just tossed on top of each other.  I planned to use those for building fires in my wood burner or fire pit outside.   Well, I quit using the basement because the cats basically took over the downstairs (i.e. destroyed) and the place needs redone, so no more fires and no renovating until they are gone.    The other side of the garage was basically things that just got shoved there.   After a horrible set of rainstorms this summer, the garage flooded and the place reeked of wetness and mildew.   So, shit got tossed.   All of the cardboard boxes were broken down and consolidated into one giant box.  Three weeks’ worth of garbage collection took care of all the bags that were filled.  Now, while I still can’t get a car in there, I can move freely about and it’s more organized and I should have no problems in the event of another flood as there is ample space for water to reach the drains if need be.  Not, that I want that to happen, but nature sometimes dictates these things, not you.

My daughter’s room was another sore point.   Now, I am totally ashamed in how this played out but it happened and I can’t change that. 

When she was born, we had her nursery all done up and just adorable.  As far as renovations go, I was quite pleased with myself for being able to do what I had done.  I hate painting and I suck at these kinds of room things, but it really worked out, well.  But, she didn’t stay a baby or toddler very long.  That tends to happen with humans, they grow up.   Yet, we still kept all the things; toys, clothes, furniture.  It all stayed in that room and soon, you couldn’t find anything.  You couldn’t walk.  You couldn’t sleep.  At the age of six and even seven, my daughter still slept on the mattress that came from her crib.   The crib itself became a day bed, but the mattress and frame remained in the same shape, basically, as the day she came home from the hospital, minus the front railing.  And you could not walk in her room without stepping on something.  You could not open the door all the way.   It was horrible and I didn’t have to sleep in there, so it didn’t get fixed for a long time. 

But, it got fixed. 

The crib was dismantled and stored in the attic.  A new bed was bought and all of her childhood things, like toys or clothes were thrown out, packed away, donated, or repurposed.  It was now the bedroom of a bright young girl who has room to move and grow and it’s not done, but it’s headed in the right direction.

The attic is another sore point but it’s on the list.  My room is just the same but it’s somewhat better than it was three years ago.   The rest of the house is slowly making a comeback and it’s hard and it takes time.   It also took something else.   It took someone else.

You see, my whole world crashed and burned in 2012.   I haven’t talked much about it or about anything else, really, because like this blog, my life became neglected.    

My marriage ended.

But that’s not what caused everything to go to hell in that house.   That’s what changed it all.  

Now, it’s not what happened during my divorce that’s important.  My ex-wife and I are still friends.  We live five minutes from each other.  We are still parents.  For the sake of our daughter, we swallowed any feelings of animosity or anything we had for each other and made it easier on her.   But, the things that didn’t get easy were undoing all the damage that had been done to our lives, by ourselves.  I still live in the house and it still has so many things from our life together in it.  So, it’s hard for us to un-hoard our lives because of all the moving parts.    Ashamedly, for a year, my daughter had to share a bed with me every weekend because her room was unlivable and maybe it was depression that was keeping me from getting my ass in gear to fix it, but it got fixed because someone, other than me, stepped in and helped.

That’s the key to un-hoarding.   You need someone who isn’t going to be a ‘yes’ man or woman.  You need someone to make you make a decision and then question that decision.  It also helps because you don’t get caught up in the trips down memory lane when half of the work is being done by someone who can keep things out of your hands.   There were times I stopped to reminisce over a onesie or a toy.   But, the fact that someone else is there helping you makes you feel more productive and… somewhat guilty that they have to help with all this work. 

You need a support system that isn’t going to say, “Aww, I know how you feel.  We’ll just keep a few things.”

No.  Kick it in the ass.  You’ll feel better.  

Remember, your kid isn’t going to be a baby again.  Someone else can use it or it can be discarded, properly.  Get rid of it.  

You’re never going to suddenly reconstruct that teapot that shattered into 15 pieces.  I don’t care how much Super Glue you use.   Get rid of it.

And then buy that person dinner or drinks or help them back.  It’s easier to throw something out when it’s not your stuff.  Just like it’s easier to move someone when it’s not your stuff.

Take back your life so someone else doesn’t have to when you’re gone.

If you live to be a grand old age, you should probably pare down to just the essentials.

Acquire memories.  Acquire friends.  Get rid of all those things you cannot use. 

Un-hoard your life.

What's In a Name

This will only make sense if you are the younger of two brothers or sisters.

I have had an identity crisis most of my life.  It’s probably one of the reasons why I thought that acting was a good career choice, albeit one I gave up years ago.   From the time I was in grade school, I really had trouble knowing if someone was talking to me.  This is because I have an older brother.

Now, older brothers are cool, like if you’re Ben Seaver on Growing Pains. And, unfortunately, sometimes they are shits like Wayne Arnold on The Wonder Years.  In any case, I don’t blame my older brother for my identity crisis growing up.  I blame everybody who knew him. 

There is a seven year difference in our ages and even with that gap, people had a hard time reconciling the two of us being different people.  I find this odd, in that we have a definite difference in looks.  We even have different hair color.  His is more brown and was even dirty blonde as a child, while I’ve had dark brown, even almost black since I was a child.  The only similarities in us is our voices and personalities.  We have the same traits that we probably got from our parents.  Yet, it’s odd that people had a hard time telling us apart.

Case in point, Ms. Nancy Jones, our grade school nurse was the biggest offender.  For six years, whenever she saw me in the school, she would call me by my brother’s name.  Sometimes she would catch herself, sometimes she wouldn’t.  When I was about 12, I sensed that she was being facetious as she would wink when she would call me the wrong name, but it was still a thing in my mind.  Even my own parents were guilty of doing it.   I would never know they were calling me, because they were calling me by the wrong name.

The identity issue continued as I followed my brother throughout schools and into graduation.  We even went to the same college, but by then, it was a different problem.   Apparently, there are a lot of me in this world.  None of us are related.  In fact, when I was registering for classes in college, I had another case of mistaken identity when first of all, the admissions office lost my records behind a filing cabinet for three days.  And after it was found, they proceeded to question my class choices, insisting that I should be in the pharmacy program because my father was a big name in the field.  I said, “No, that’s not even the right first name on that file and unless he’s paying for school, he’s not my dad.”  In 2011, when this doppelganger who shared my name died, one of my former  classmates posted a “RIP” message up on Facebook.   He happened to be a former boss and it led to a few of our mutual friends thinking I was dead.  I had to jump in and give the old Monty Python and the Holy Grail quote just to clear things up.

As I approached my 30s, I thought I was finished with the whole naming issue.  I was my own person with my own life.  My brother was his own.   Then, my sister had a son.  Not only did he have a completely different name, he looked nothing like the two of us.  Yet, one day, as I was visiting my parents, I hear my mother yelling out my name as if I had done something wrong.  It turned out she was correcting my nephew and using my name.   And so it began again.

This is why I have a daughter.

A Letter To My Daughter For When She's Old Enough To Date

I am writing this in protest because you will never be allowed to date.  But I know you will, so I better at least acknowledge it.

When I was younger and thought about the eventuality of having kids, I always wanted a son.  I know that's a really bad outlook.  It's just that I didn't understand girls.  I still don't.  I just figured it would be easier, ya know.

And even while you were still unborn and camera shy at the sonograms, I thought, "Maybe it will be a boy.  You never know."  I'd drive around in the car and have these philosophical discussions, with an empty backseat where you'd one day be, dispensing all my worldly knowledge about whatever it is I'm supposed to know at my age.  Guess what?  It isn't much.  When I say "I don't know" to you, I really don't know the answers.

But, when you were actually born and I held you, knowing full well you were a girl, I died that day.  I died and in the ashes was a rebirth of a man.  And this man was a father of a beautiful baby girl and he was never more in love with any creature on this Earth than you.  My heart hurt so much with love that I couldn't breathe.  And I was scared, too.  What the hell was I going to do with a girl, turn her over and say, "Yep, she's yours... figure out, other woman"?  Was I going to lock you up from the world and hope that a boy wouldn't dare take one step onto our lawn?

No, I couldn't do any of that because I wasn't always going to be able to.   My biggest problem in life is that I've tried to just solve the issues in our lives and not actually let someone figure them out themselves.   Instead of giving a general idea of what needs to be done, it was just easier for me to say, "Just give it here."  I can't be the answer for everything, so you need to know how to take care of yourself.  That's why I am so damn hard on you all the time.  That's why I constantly say take a hands off approach and try to let you figure certain things out.  Turns out, it works to a fault.  You're smarter than me and can do more than I ever could at your age and it gets you into trouble when you shouldn't attempt certain things.

So, in about a decade, you're going to attempt something else that I can't control or figure out.  Dating.

It's something I never could do right, then, and I still can't, now.  It's probably why I didn't do it that often, when I was a teen, and pretty much gave up on trying to figure it out when I got out of college.

In that way, I can't give you advice on how to date or how to find love.  That's something else you'll have to figure out on your own, and with any luck, you'll be better at than I was.  I pretty much know you will be, so no worries.

But, what I will say to you is something someone once told me about this kind of thing.

Be in something extraordinary.  Don't settle.  If they're not the best person for you, then you shouldn't be with them.  But remember this, too.  Guys don't know anything more than you do.  So, you have to be careful, but you also have to be better.

Now, I've made it as a personal mission to make sure you don't grow up just being a girl.  If you choose the tea parties and princesses route, I won't love you any less.  But, I know you, and you're rough and tumble just as much as you are tiaras and tutus.  I've hated how gender biased toys are in this world and you can be a scientist or a beauty queen with equal chance for success.  But what you need to realize is that with boys, we are pretty much stupid.  We need things spelled out for us but don't think we don't like you because we don't say it.  Sometimes we're just afraid you'll laugh at us.  So, give us a chance to show you before you break our hearts.

Also, don't let a boy hold the door for you, if he wouldn't do it for anyone else who isn't a girl.  Don't let him pick up the check if it means that much to pay your own way.  But talk about it.  Let him know why you would rather him not, if you so choose.  Then, let him pay anyway, just so he knows it's not an invitation for anything else.  You're not obligated to do anything.  You are far too independent to be coddled and even though chivalry is a nice concept, you are certainly no one's damsel in distress.

Definitely don't let a guy treat you badly and don't ever accept that you deserve it.  Just as you should never treat a guy that way.  As I have tried to raise you to be just as equal in strength and character as a boy, they are just as sensitive and vulnerable as girls.  But there are some men AND WOMEN out there that feel that people should be treated a certain way for whatever reason and it's not right.  You will never happiness at the receiving end of a harsh word or fist.  Also realize that it works both ways, too.

Be clear with a boy, because chances are more of them are going to fall madly in love with you than you will with them.  If you're not into them, let them know up front.  Be decent enough to explain that you don't feel that way.  Believe me, it will be a lot easier on the both of you let him down easy and early.   If not, he might shower you with praise and affection until you want to crawl out of your skin and he won't understand why it's not working.  Worse yet, he might overstep boundaries because he felt you were a tease.  I just don't have the money to bail you out of jail when you kick his ass for stepping over the line.

If you like a boy, and there's a chance he likes you, tell him.  Don't play games.  Don't make him pass tests and try to figure out his intentions.  The worst thing that ever happened by telling someone how you feel was for them to not return the sentiment.  No harm. No foul.  It's embarrassing and will probably hurt for a bit, but being honest is better and you might find it works a lot more.

Oh, boy... when it comes to um... being intimate....OK, man, pull it together, respect yourself.  I cannot stop you from having physical needs and I just hope you are safe and healthy about it.  Don't ever, EVER, think that you will make someone love you more because you give into them physically.  If you are not ready, then you are not ready.  And, don't pressure them because you think that they need to show you how they feel by being intimate.   And this will probably get me in trouble because, well, I'm a guy and it's still different, but you can say no at any time and it's not wrong to do so.  Any man worth your time will immediately understand and comply.

However, understand that even though you have every right to say no, that word may fall on deaf ears.  It's not you, it's them.  You should never be ashamed for being who you are, but sometimes, people are assholes and usually, it's someone you trust.  Don't ever forget that no matter how strong you are, there is always someone stronger.  I will never blame you for something happening, but you cannot expect everyone to be the best possible person in every scenario.  That being said, I will go Liam Nesson on their ass.  Just understand that you have a power that isn't fully quite understandable by you or others who are interested in you.

And eventually, you will probably find yourself with someone you love enough to want to marry.  For all that is decent and holy, let's not have a huge wedding.  I mean if you really want one I will do whatever I can to give it to you but realize that your wedding day is never for you.  It's always for other people.  It's for a DJ or band to be heard.  It's for a photographer to add to their portfolio.  It's for a caterer to drum up business.  It's for family and friends to share in your day or get free food and drink at the cost of a crock pot.   If you want a day for you, do whatever it is that makes you happy.  And that means finding someone who makes you happy, too.

Find someone who you will never get tired of in life.  Find someone who surprises you every day with something new and unexpected.  Find someone who will fight with you as much as for you.  Find someone who isn't afraid to cry because you hurt them or astound them.  Find someone who makes your heart break just like you broke mine on that very first day.  Find someone who pushes you to be better and will be better because of you.  Find someone you can talk to about anything.  Find someone that doesn't just like everything you like but likes their own things and appreciates that you like yours.  And be the same way.  You don't have to adopt every little thing they love, just love them for loving it.

And for all the love in the world, find someone you love as they are, not as you want them to be.  Don't try and change someone.  Don't try and save someone.   Find the man you want, not the man you need.  Because, quite frankly, you don't need a man.  You need a partner.  You need a teammate.  You need an anchor.  You want a love.  You want a family.  You want someone to complete you.   You want to find someone that even when they are at their worst, they are still better than everyone else.  You want someone that even when the world falls apart, they will be right there with you and you'll both save each other.  You want someone extraordinary.  You want someone better than me.  You need that, too.  But, no matter who you pick, they are the lucky one.  Because you picked me once and I am the luckiest man on Earth and I will always love you no matter who you love: man, woman, or whatever.

Just do it all after I'm dead.  OK?  Because the day you come home and tell me you're in love, it will probably kill me. 

I love you sweetie.

 

Dress To Suppress

At the age of 38, I have come to the conclusion that I have no one to impress on a daily basis.  Unless I am looking to advance in my career or I am mandated by certain mores such as company dress code or acceptable for the event, I will dress mostly for comfort.  Now, granted, being a t-shirt designer, after work and on the weekends I’m liable to be wearing a tee I love or designed, which has a message or is used for marketing purposes.  In any case, the my morning goes like this.

I get up, shower, and then put on clothes that satisfy the following criteria: did I wear that shirt last week, and is it comfortable for the weather  Beyond that, I don’t put a lot of thought into the manner or style of dress.   However, if you were to ask the me that was 25 years  my junior, you’d get a vastly different answer.    There was no comfort involved.  It was dress to suppress.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, in the case of eight to ten year old me, I wore a good deal of hand me downs.    Being the youngest of three, by seven years, I was subjected to wearing the clothes my brother had from a previous decade.   Factor in that my parents didn’t have a huge bank account, I wore the same clothes for multiple years while they fit.

But at some point, I wised up.  I went to my mother and thanked her for my impeccable fashion sense but asked if my older brother could take me clothes shopping before the first day of 7^th grade.   In my town, you had K-6 (Grade School) in one building, 7-9 (Junior High) in another, and then 10-12 (High School) in yet another.   You see, the division in schools also determine the threat level to one’s psyche from their classmates.  In grade school, you could get away with wearing sweat pants, a ¾ sleeve baseball tee, and Sears’ brand Velcro running shoes without drawing attention.  However, in sixth grade the natives begin to take notice and you prepare yourself for the inevitable catty comments about how you dress and how you look to your peers.   So, I decided to keep that from happening and turned in my running shoes for Nike high tops, just so I could keep up with the pack.   Then, in the summer before Junior High, I went on that all important clothes shopping trip to the mall with my older and infinitely cooler brother.  I came back with Ocean Pacific and Shah Safari shirts, Bugle Boys and Dockers pants, a pair of Chuck Taylors and assorted shirts from 80s mega trendy stores like Chess King and Just Pants (I’m kidding).

That first day of school was all about blending in and not sticking out.  It wasn’t about the clothes drawing attention.   It was about disguising myself to look like the enemy.  That way I could infiltrate their ranks and they could see me, not what I wore.   In those days, if your parents got your clothes at stores like Gabriel Bros. or Montgomery Ward, you were an easy target.  The cool people could zone in on you like a geek seeking missile, claws bared, ready to attack your fashion.  It was survival of the fittest.

By when you reach High School, the claws retract somewhat.   The rules are more relaxed.  In Junior High, the bodies and minds of teenagers go completely nuts.  All the instability of hormones and growing fight your ability to be comfortable in your own skin, so you lash out at others as a way to justify your own metamorphoses from ugly caterpillar to butterfly.   In High School, you stop focusing on how to take others out of the race and work to getting to the finish line first with flare.  It’s called preparation for college.  Soon, you start to compare acceptance letters to schools like you did with shoes or earrings, years before.  It’s not about how you dress, it’s about how you will succeed in your post High School career.  Still, I did do my best to keep up and went the route of the Boyz II Men, Olive Garden waiter route with jeans, white button down shirts, and ties.  Some days loafers, some days sneakers.     But I never got called out by the worst offenders from Junior High when it came to my clothes.   I mean I caught a glimpse of it in sixth grade with my clothing.  In Junior High, there was that one disastrous pair of blood Red Pro Keds high tops that nearly destroyed me.  Luckily, the poorest of the poor kids had on Moon Boots and the geek seeking missiles locked onto him instead.

Funny how, when you get to college, all of that goes out the window and you end up wearing pajamas to class or sweats with a ball cap, and you’re just fine.  Sometimes you wonder if uniforms in the education system help to tone down bullying or other harassment of not so cool kids in those years.    My argument for that is to a kid going through all the agony of adolescence, their clothes should be a coat of arms for their individuality.  I wouldn’t bow to inappropriate or obscene clothing, but as a form of expression and a way to help that transition, clothes do make the man they will become.  Why suppress that?

Mess With My Kids And...

Trawl around Facebook for any given length of time and you’ll undoubtedly see a lot of inspirational images with words emblazoned across a magnificent background, denoting how you should live, love, or leave those around you.  You also see ecards about wine and aging, but that’s beside the point.

A lot of times you see quotes about parenting.  You see pictures of parents doing it right, and you see a lot of pictures of parents doing it wrong or worse yet, missing children.  Then you see fifteen comments about how awful people can be, followed by one link to Snopes where you find out it’s all fake.

In any case, I’ve taken a different approach.    As it is, my kid is out of control.  I mean that in a good way.  She’s way too intuitive, but unrefined.   She said yesterday that she didn’t want to start first grade.  She was smart enough.  “You already told me I’m too smart for my own good.”

It’s only going to get worse, people.

Here would be my ecard/memes/etc.

Away Alone

It’s that time again, the time when they shut down half of the streets in Oakland while yellow laundry carts crisscross the campus, stuffed to the gills with lava lamps, microwaves, and refrigerators.

Mothers will weep as they say goodbye to their little birds leaving the nest.   Yet, Fathers will dispense words of wisdom to their sons about responsibility and adulthood, all while noticing the crop of young coed girls.   Moms will sigh, Dads will say, “Sick em, boy!”  And thus the cycle begins, again.  Those clean cut kids from suburbia will turn into tattoo getting, bong toking, mistake making animals, all the while surviving solely on Rum, Ramen, and Red Bull.

However, research says that the average college student isn’t having any more sex than the ones from 25 years ago.  Really?  Maybe not, unless they just aren’t admitting to it.  I’d venture to say they are, or at least they are redefining what the definition is and who it is with these days.  I'm sure patrols are still set up in the quad to take note of all those participating in the Walk of Shame 5K.

Now, before parents go completely bonkers over this kind of thing, you have to understand, college is uncharted territory.  Remember that scene in Home Alone?

That’s what it’s like.  You go from a sheltered environment to complete and utter freedom.  No one is there to make sure you get up, go to class, do your homework, or take care of yourself.   You step onto that campus and 7 years of suppressed primal freedom just explodes.  You lose your composure.  There’s vice everywhere and no authoritative body to say no, outside of campus police.  Kids are basically kicked out of the nest into the real world and expected to make the right decision.  And even if you are the best parent in the world, expect there to be some bad choices made.  And also realize, that it’s OK. 

Your kids will be fine.  They are going to have to go through this, eventually.  Would you rather them have that moment in the real world, when they are completely on their own, with no parachute, or benefits?

Even adults have these moments.  I was left alone to my devices last weekend and for two days, I managed to eat at Sheetz twice for lunch.  I did, however, do some work around the house, cut the grass, and kept the place from catching fire, so win!