Well I'm not a very good blogger and with one follower (Hi Sweater!) I'm not sure why I should do this but it's kinda nice not having anyone to worry about as I write this cyber journal. I just got back from stating with my parents for two and a half weeks which was fun and ironically I think they have a striking resemblance to the Cunninghams on "Happy Days". I have given up on giving my brother a hello or goodbye man-hug. Last time I was in town he pulled away from me like I was going to touch his boob or something and when I asked him what was up he said it was because I was dirty. Whatever. I still love him and now am happy to shake hands with him as if I just sold him a life insurance policy. I am definitely done trying to cop a feel of his man boobs.
What else. Hmmm. I am going to revive Goal Club but only have people that want to be in it be in it. If there is someone else but Sweater reading this, Goal club is a club in which goals are made and then met. If they are unmet punishment awaits ye who hasn't met ye goal. I think I may make this a free club to people outside of my immediate local friend group.
I did do some Fonzie like behavior the night before I left Chicago when I kareoked my ass off at "The Rusty Nail" in Oak Lawn, IL. To me the best kareoke place in the world, although Utopia in Portland is a very close second just for its shear hilarious awkwardness. I acted like a major goof and actually relaxed. I went out with the other friends of my deceased friend Katie for her birthday. She hated the Rusty Nail but myself and her other good friend KT love it because we are huuuge hams and basically we have the bar to ourselves with just the local old guys in the corner watching the tv. I wish she was there to bitch about being there. She was going to be 32. She always told me that her 30s were going to be about her being hot and sexy and living the life she wanted to live. A few years from now 31 is going to seem a lot younger than it seems now and her missing out on her 30s will mean something different to me than it means now. No one talked about her that night but I sung the BeeGees "How do you mend a Broken Heart" and secretly dedicated it to her.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Year of the Fonz rules of Engagement
Rules of this year.
Time goes by fast and in order to gain as much as I can from this year of detached yet intentional coolness I have to set up some rules in order to follow to keep myself on track
These may change but so far I have-
1) When faced with anxiety about something, such as money, etc. count to 3 and then say fuck it.
2) Each week or thereabouts do something I am afraid of doing.
3) Be led by my interests instead of my fear.
4) Intentional embarrass myself at least twice a month with a Fonzie challenge that someone else has initiated. These have to be within reason; Meaning that they can’t be dangerous or illegal,etc. Maybe embarrass isn't the right word but I have to be stretched socially in the given challenge.
That’s all I got so far…
Sunday, November 6, 2011
On lifeguarding
I recently got a job as a lifeguard. I never thought I would ever do a job like this and if you found me 10 years ago and told me I would be doing that in the future I would have told you to,"Go fuck off". But here I am watching little kids play in a pool and making sure no old guys have a heart attack in the hot tub and die while I'm polishing the chrome ladders. This state of being I find myself in is very much related to my last "Year of the Fonz" which started last November. To declare a"Year of the Fonz" means to make a deliberate action towards detached coolness and allowing life to come to you on your terms. It also means defining success or "adult coolness" as a confident simplicity unrelated to the rest of the society. No more listening to the static of others or our cultural dogmas. The Fonz fits the bill for this kind of Zen approach to life. I don't think I need to compare fictional Fonz characteristics to what I'm talking about. I think you get the jist. And if you don't get it watch some episodes of Happy Days and realize that the most respected character on the show is at least 10 years older than his friends and lives above the garage at one of his friends parents' house.
Previous to my first "Year of the Fonz" I guess you could say I was a bit neurotic to the point where I had hypochondria so bad that I thought I was really dying. Like really. As a 25 year old who knew he had only 2-5 more years to live I remember thinking of the regrets or missed opportunities of my life and one of them strangely enough was, " I never got to be a lifeguard". I was unaware that I had any inkling to be a lifeguard. It was probably too many reruns of Baywatch getting stirred into my unconscious thought patterns but there it was. In retrospect I think it had more to do with the idea that you had to be in good health and happy with your body to be a lifeguard and sadly I was an overweight 25 year old that thought he had a deadly contagious disease.
So as I declared "Year of the Fonz" last November I found that I had a reason to do daring things that made no sense. I had to, that's part of what Year of the Fonz meant. Around this time or soon after I also saw the Steve Jobs commencement speech to Stanford on Ted.com and it inspired me. When I thought I was a person that was dying, swimming was a horrible thing I could never do because I had to show my body and people would be able to see that I was physically dying. So as part of the Year of the Fonzie I started taking swimming classes. I started in January of 2011. When I had completed all the courses for my Bachelors degree in Winter quarter of 2011 I decided to keep going to school for Spring quarter and only take whatever the hell I felt like. I took weight training, more swimming classes, a triathalon course, improv acting, and the lifeguarding CPR certification class. It was one of the best quarters of school I ever had and I really loved the lifeguarding class. It was strange to discover something new to love because I thought I had already found everything that I had liked about this world. I couldn't wait to get there everyday for the class and it was awesome to learn skills I felt were useful and important to others around me.
The job is a bit boring and I hope I can really help someone if they get in trouble but overall it has been pretty cool. The greatest gift to me is to watch the kids play in the kiddie pool. The kids take a shallow square of 3' water and turn it into a festival of aquatic life. They invent games, pretend their dolphins, pretend their searching for treasure, and most of all laugh and smile the whole time (mostly). I can see why they don't have time to get out of the pool and use the restroom, would you if you were having that much fun? Well, this job came at a good time for me because I needed to learn the lesson that life can be a fantastic festival of aquatic life if you pretend it is one.
Previous to my first "Year of the Fonz" I guess you could say I was a bit neurotic to the point where I had hypochondria so bad that I thought I was really dying. Like really. As a 25 year old who knew he had only 2-5 more years to live I remember thinking of the regrets or missed opportunities of my life and one of them strangely enough was, " I never got to be a lifeguard". I was unaware that I had any inkling to be a lifeguard. It was probably too many reruns of Baywatch getting stirred into my unconscious thought patterns but there it was. In retrospect I think it had more to do with the idea that you had to be in good health and happy with your body to be a lifeguard and sadly I was an overweight 25 year old that thought he had a deadly contagious disease.
So as I declared "Year of the Fonz" last November I found that I had a reason to do daring things that made no sense. I had to, that's part of what Year of the Fonz meant. Around this time or soon after I also saw the Steve Jobs commencement speech to Stanford on Ted.com and it inspired me. When I thought I was a person that was dying, swimming was a horrible thing I could never do because I had to show my body and people would be able to see that I was physically dying. So as part of the Year of the Fonzie I started taking swimming classes. I started in January of 2011. When I had completed all the courses for my Bachelors degree in Winter quarter of 2011 I decided to keep going to school for Spring quarter and only take whatever the hell I felt like. I took weight training, more swimming classes, a triathalon course, improv acting, and the lifeguarding CPR certification class. It was one of the best quarters of school I ever had and I really loved the lifeguarding class. It was strange to discover something new to love because I thought I had already found everything that I had liked about this world. I couldn't wait to get there everyday for the class and it was awesome to learn skills I felt were useful and important to others around me.
The job is a bit boring and I hope I can really help someone if they get in trouble but overall it has been pretty cool. The greatest gift to me is to watch the kids play in the kiddie pool. The kids take a shallow square of 3' water and turn it into a festival of aquatic life. They invent games, pretend their dolphins, pretend their searching for treasure, and most of all laugh and smile the whole time (mostly). I can see why they don't have time to get out of the pool and use the restroom, would you if you were having that much fun? Well, this job came at a good time for me because I needed to learn the lesson that life can be a fantastic festival of aquatic life if you pretend it is one.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Its been a month today
Its been a month today since one of my best friends, let's call her Kate, decided to murder herself. It' s been a strange month. I'm trying to not get overwhelmed by it and I think Fonzie would try his best to stay Fonzie if Richie decided to hang himself in the Cunningham garage, so I too as well have been trying hard to deal with this in the healthiest way possible. Whatever that means. Today that meant I went to my first Suicide Survivors group. It was kind of a surrealistic trip, because I went to a group that was in the same town that me and Kate first lived in when we moved to the Portland area in 2007. It's called Gresham.
When we first moved there I thought it was like paradise except with loud neighbors that fought all the time. I lived like a block from a Taco Bell/Long John Silvers!!!! Our experience together has been complicated and interesting and I won't tell all of it now but I moved to Portland because Kate wanted to move to Portland for some reason she couldn't explain and led me here where we suffered together through intense poverty and intense co-dependance but where I finally felt free from the crushing anxiety and depression that defined who I was for so many years before. Our Oregon adventure peaked with her suicide attempt the week before Thanksgiving 2007. The church where the group was tonight is the same church I took her parents to for mass after we found out that she was relatively ok after not knowing for more than a day whether she was going to make it out of the coma she was in. I counted that survival as a miracle. She regarded it as another failure of hers. I didn't pray to God to save her really when she was in the coma but I'm sure I probably did at some point ( In crisis I drop my aloof agnosticism and pick up where my intense Irish-Catholic childhood left off) but I do remember a moment of clarity when I just asked God to be with me during this intense time of suffering. It was refreshing and quite wonderful to feel God's presence as an accompanying force of love instead of as a Father you beg for help when you're in deep shit. I felt double blessed that I felt that connection as well as received the miracle of her waking up from the coma and pretty much having no side effects from the poisons she ingested. Her first words were," I'm not supposed to be here, I can't even kill myself right". It broke my heart but I was happy she had another chance at this thing we call life.
Anyway, the group tonight was okay I guess, and I'm not allowed to say much but it was pretty much me, a strapping young Fonzie like man with four older women and another man (not as Fonzie-like) who was the facilitator. The trippy thing about suicide is that you can drive yourself insane thinking about the would've, could've, should'ves. Most people in the group could relate to that and most of the suffering still felt seems to be about that and the intense anger about someone you love deeply choosing to take themselves away from you when you still need and want them around. The thoughts of, "There is no reason for you to go and things will change. They always do. You are needed and wanted and loved beyond measure by everyone that knows you. But we're all imperfect. We can't make you feel everything you need all the time. I can't babysit you! Take care of your shit. I can't believe you let those bullshit lies win! Why didn't you ever take care of yourself? Your job is to be here and you can't do that? Fuck you. What the fuck? I thought we had a deal?" As you can see there are mixed emotions that take place.
To be in the church where I sat and thanked God for the miracle of her survival four years earlier but now be there with others to share our lack of hope of ever seeing our loved ones ever again felt strange but also kind of good. I rode my bike from the church in the cold night air through the vast strip malls that define Gresham to me. I felt okay as I rode past the sidewalk where we quit our jobs together over the phone to our inept boss and laughed hysterically for hours as we berated him and made fun of our fucked up situation; 2,000 miles from home, no money, no jobs, but in a strip mall like anywhere else in the country watching kids trick or treat at the Dress Barn and then on to Fashion Bug. I felt okay as I waited for the Max near the Lane Bryant where she was offered a job right before her suicide attempt. A place that I stared at in 2007 as she lay in a coma and saw a vision of her, happy, waiting for me to pick her up from work during Christmas time. She was wearing a red sweater and smiled her perfect smile as I opened the door. A vision so real I swear I could see with my eyes every detail created by my mind. I cried in the sidewalk that day, not knowing what I would do if I lost her and at her lost potential as shoppers walked by on that November day. I thought that vision didn't mean anything anymore since she survived and was doing alright up until a month ago. Now its reality. She has no more hope. No more potential. She will never get better. She will never get a seasonal job at Lane Bryant. Maybe that's a good thing. And I guess she will never suffer with depression anymore either.
As the Max pulled up I got on and felt okay. Happy to get inside to the warmth and out of the cold. Happy to travel back to the future of my current life. I tried to look out the window but all I saw was my own reflection on the window and the darkness of night beyond it. I looked old in the window and my hair looked like a cat had been sitting on my head for days (No more bike helmets). I watched a young drugged out looking couple as they entered the train together, sat down, and then got off at Rockwood station. They were talking to each other the whole time. Lost in their little world together. After they left I tried to look out the window but again only saw my reflection looking back at me. Suddenly I felt very alone and knew I was no longer ok.
When we first moved there I thought it was like paradise except with loud neighbors that fought all the time. I lived like a block from a Taco Bell/Long John Silvers!!!! Our experience together has been complicated and interesting and I won't tell all of it now but I moved to Portland because Kate wanted to move to Portland for some reason she couldn't explain and led me here where we suffered together through intense poverty and intense co-dependance but where I finally felt free from the crushing anxiety and depression that defined who I was for so many years before. Our Oregon adventure peaked with her suicide attempt the week before Thanksgiving 2007. The church where the group was tonight is the same church I took her parents to for mass after we found out that she was relatively ok after not knowing for more than a day whether she was going to make it out of the coma she was in. I counted that survival as a miracle. She regarded it as another failure of hers. I didn't pray to God to save her really when she was in the coma but I'm sure I probably did at some point ( In crisis I drop my aloof agnosticism and pick up where my intense Irish-Catholic childhood left off) but I do remember a moment of clarity when I just asked God to be with me during this intense time of suffering. It was refreshing and quite wonderful to feel God's presence as an accompanying force of love instead of as a Father you beg for help when you're in deep shit. I felt double blessed that I felt that connection as well as received the miracle of her waking up from the coma and pretty much having no side effects from the poisons she ingested. Her first words were," I'm not supposed to be here, I can't even kill myself right". It broke my heart but I was happy she had another chance at this thing we call life.
Anyway, the group tonight was okay I guess, and I'm not allowed to say much but it was pretty much me, a strapping young Fonzie like man with four older women and another man (not as Fonzie-like) who was the facilitator. The trippy thing about suicide is that you can drive yourself insane thinking about the would've, could've, should'ves. Most people in the group could relate to that and most of the suffering still felt seems to be about that and the intense anger about someone you love deeply choosing to take themselves away from you when you still need and want them around. The thoughts of, "There is no reason for you to go and things will change. They always do. You are needed and wanted and loved beyond measure by everyone that knows you. But we're all imperfect. We can't make you feel everything you need all the time. I can't babysit you! Take care of your shit. I can't believe you let those bullshit lies win! Why didn't you ever take care of yourself? Your job is to be here and you can't do that? Fuck you. What the fuck? I thought we had a deal?" As you can see there are mixed emotions that take place.
To be in the church where I sat and thanked God for the miracle of her survival four years earlier but now be there with others to share our lack of hope of ever seeing our loved ones ever again felt strange but also kind of good. I rode my bike from the church in the cold night air through the vast strip malls that define Gresham to me. I felt okay as I rode past the sidewalk where we quit our jobs together over the phone to our inept boss and laughed hysterically for hours as we berated him and made fun of our fucked up situation; 2,000 miles from home, no money, no jobs, but in a strip mall like anywhere else in the country watching kids trick or treat at the Dress Barn and then on to Fashion Bug. I felt okay as I waited for the Max near the Lane Bryant where she was offered a job right before her suicide attempt. A place that I stared at in 2007 as she lay in a coma and saw a vision of her, happy, waiting for me to pick her up from work during Christmas time. She was wearing a red sweater and smiled her perfect smile as I opened the door. A vision so real I swear I could see with my eyes every detail created by my mind. I cried in the sidewalk that day, not knowing what I would do if I lost her and at her lost potential as shoppers walked by on that November day. I thought that vision didn't mean anything anymore since she survived and was doing alright up until a month ago. Now its reality. She has no more hope. No more potential. She will never get better. She will never get a seasonal job at Lane Bryant. Maybe that's a good thing. And I guess she will never suffer with depression anymore either.
As the Max pulled up I got on and felt okay. Happy to get inside to the warmth and out of the cold. Happy to travel back to the future of my current life. I tried to look out the window but all I saw was my own reflection on the window and the darkness of night beyond it. I looked old in the window and my hair looked like a cat had been sitting on my head for days (No more bike helmets). I watched a young drugged out looking couple as they entered the train together, sat down, and then got off at Rockwood station. They were talking to each other the whole time. Lost in their little world together. After they left I tried to look out the window but again only saw my reflection looking back at me. Suddenly I felt very alone and knew I was no longer ok.
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