June 20, 2007

Father's Day

I am ashamed to think that I didn't think about you on Father's Day. I have, however, been thinking about you a lot. We were downstairs waiting on B to shower and I had the TV on to Jerry Springer (trying to turn my brain off to prep for vacation and get out of the cobweb of stress from leaving work in the middle of something) and noticed her watching it and flipped around until I found the Cosby Show - wholesome TV as I remember. The episode was one in which Mrs. Cosby was out of town so Cosby Sr. comes over to help out and teaches, scolds, encourages the Cosby kids with such skill and grace that the main point is that the old man taught Cosby what he knows, that it is handed down as natural as the sun coming up every morning - that some men were born to be fathers. I cried and thought of you.

When I think of you my emotions are uncontrollable, scattered, wild, and they scare me. I feel a deep sadness for you, for the sense that you might regret later on that you aren't a part of what happened. I feel a sympathy, for what would I have done at your age on the same road? I can say I would have acted differently, and that you not being a part of our little play is a lack of courage, of 'being a man', but it rings hollow. Like all of our dealings with SK's mom, to think that it would have gone differently if you or her had turned a different way is to imagine a world without our little family, and this is equal to imagining your spouse or child no longer alive - unborn even - and it gets harder and harder every day to imagine it.

I also feel anger. That you, who were chosen - not chose - to be her's chose only to be a father and not a Dad. This normally comes at the happiest moments when I hold her and she is looking at me seriously; I break down thinking of you and where you are, so young and unaware perhaps of all of this. You know how this has gone down but didn't meet us, haven't seen either of them, haven't tried? I don't know; how often do you think of her? Do you know that she is a girl? Do you know her birthday? Will you some day wish and pray that she looks for you? How will this feel to me, to her? What will I tell her when she is older and she cannot meet you and gets only hate from the others about you?

What information do I have on you really, other than the features that appear as if from thin air on her face. In that way you are and will forever remain a member of my family; generations to come will have you - an unknown man - tracing through them. For this reason I pray for you and hope that you are well and try to understand the hard path that you have had to scramble up unexpected, ignorant, and afraid.

I also feel sometimes the clean and pure weight of having been chosen by God as your replacement. I hope that I will be there always for her and her mother; that neither fear nor circumstance will keep me from my natural duty to be her Dad. I pray that God gives me the natural skill and grace to be Daddy.

01:04 PM part of sk

Dear self part 2 (part 1)

- She is very small now, 5 months and smiles and grabs her hands like she is playing or praying and sometimes just stops and stares at them seriously now, then looks up and studies your smile for about 5 beats then returns it and then turns away grinning, shy, beautiful
- Work is work and you work too much. Attempts to cut down on it have met with some success, and you are slowly getting your feet underneath you as some sort of PM while building out some technical skillsets as well.
- Your commute is not that busy anymore, and just not busy enough to annoy you that you can't ride your bike. You ride a lot now, and just finished your first organized ride (3 days of brag in which you did 45/102/47 and did very well; first century and kept up with some big boys on the other days for 30 miles and then a 10 mile 18-21 mph sprint that suprised even you)
- You are wondering - around books, around faith, around what to do with spare time, around getting healthy, around your career, around money management, whatever. Lots of learning going on.
- Your parents are suddenly aging fast. Your mom had knee surgery that put her away from the caretaker role for your dad and you finally realized what the next few years might be like and don't even know what to say about it; you can't even think without getting angry and sad and lashing out at someone; you say extreme things - verbalize the end a lot and it bothers B.
-

01:00 PM part of personal

My Goals for this week

A) Identify why you lost your mojo
B) Get your mojo back

Progress on A)

1. Someone at work is undermining, annoying, negative, and has got hooks in you when they shouldn't be allowed to. They point out all the problems that you are already aware of, have prioritized, have thought about and worried about and sweated over late into the dark hours, and complain about lack of progress without taking ownership and really closing anything down. Disease.
2. Just like when your parents told you that the Gameboy was ok if you paid for it yourself and you made As and Bs in the sixth grade (looking back, good hard line 'rents) you started making your first Cs for some reason and it took you 12 weeks to get the stupid thing just so that you could play Double Dragon until the right 20% of the screen starting shows these weird lines so you couldn't see the bad guys coming - you are choked at the thought of *having* to work, being the sole provider and unable to change jobs because this one is, after all, pretty sweet.
3. You have to work this weekend - your anniversary and when you were supposed to see your family. Also, you were going to exercise to keep it up after the greatest athletic weekend of your life last week and the rising feeling of losing weight easily and better sleep is slowly dying.
4. You were right to force a decision on yourself after the family got started, but fear that you lost something important when you chose what you chose and feel typecast and unable to grow in your position. Still basically undecided on this, but so far it feels like an alley and not a freeway. Teaching others does help you learn, but not the same stuff over and over - you need growth and you need to feel stretched.
5. Lack of overall progress feeling suffocating - like all you have time to do is make plans and prioritize important work that you aren't doing and that your team isn't doing either.

B)
- Read ftrain.com for one hour *at work*, (checking on critical things and fixing them of course - that is what the second monitor is for after all)
- Prepare some sort of list of action items that makes me feel better about this weekend
- Clean up "the list" or at least count it and see what is up
- Suck it up you piece of shit

12:29 PM part of work

At the purest moments of my new life, I fear the car wreck. The two of them clipped out unaware and unexpecting by a truck with a blind spot - a rental, guy with a map sending my life into a trajectory doomed to the eternal churning of loneliness and memory of them together smiling at each other over and over.

12:01 PM part of things beyond my control

I am in at work early - the morning shift. Which I created. To provide lots of support for our clients in different time zones. To make sure that blah, bluh, blih.

I got in a full hour earlier than the required 7am - I have no idea why (I think I suprised my alarm clock and the girls), and have spent the time so far trying to get back my mojo after a too good vacation at the end of which I realized that for the first time in years - the first time since I took my current job - that I was dreading going back.

It is very hard for me to recover from this realization; it always has been. I give up easily in the face of constant reputation-harming failure. Personal failures of certain types don't bother me, but a demotion, a trailing project, constant lack of progress that is visible, all get me in a internet-browsing-when-I-should-be-working frenzy that can last for hours, days, or sometimes until the next weekend bookend to an unproductive blitz.

And so it goes; off to try to get something going.

11:57 AM part of unavoidable sadness

June 19, 2007

"Oh, there is a McDonald's - do you want McDonald's or Subway?"

"McDonald's, but I'm surprised that there is one here."

"There are always McDonald's where there are white people."

01:12 PM part of fragments