etc...

It's Thursday morning and I'm exhausted. Yesterday went very quickly, but it took a lot our of me.

I started work at 6, but I had been up since before 5 kicking nothing with restless legs. I was very busy at work. I don't sit while I work, and I worked straight through all of my breaks. My Fitbit says I walked over seven miles and took over 13,000 steps while I was at work.

I punched out at two and walked six blocks to catch the train to the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, where I was due for a routine exam. I'm always so worried about being late for anything, that I arrived with 45 minutes to spare. I checked in, handed her some new insurance information, and slumped over in a chair. I will be as early next time, and I will wait nearly an hour as I did this time, but I will never be late.

Anyhow, I was greeted by a Dentist, not a student, and told that I would be in and out in under an hour. I liked the sound of that. I sat in the chair which began to recline as we went over the basics as is the standard for any medical visit. She looked over my information from my previous visits, and she went to town.

45 minutes later I was all cleaned up. She said I had been taking care of my teeth, which I was happy to hear from a professional, because I have. I had no cavities or even any areas of concern, so we parted ways.

I've been paying insurance for months and I hadn't used it. The original plan was to use it to see a Doctor about my RLS, but I don't know how to call  a Doctor so I just deal with it. Anyhow, my insurance covered the whole visit which was great because I have a lot of expenses coming up and I thought I'd be out $100.

Fast forward a bit, it's just before 6pm and I head out for the last session of my fourth step workshop. The last part of this "fearless and searching moral inventory" deals with sex. Well, I've got a few pages to write and I'll just leave it at that. (Right this moment I found out Prince died, RIP.)

Ten minutes after that lets out, I go upstairs to where I chair my home group. It's been my favorite part of every week for a long time now. As usual, it's a great meeting and I leave with a sense of happiness. I make the short drive to The Nook on Randolph and Hamline where we suffer through slow service and have a blast playing cards against humanity. It's been a long day and I'm somewhat relieved that I have to be home by 10:30 according to the law.

I sleep, fitfully at best.

I'm awake at 5am again. I toss. I turn. Fuck it. I watch a few episodes of Its Always  Sunny, and I get ready for the day. I drive to the Firestone shop by my work to get an oil change and to have them make sure nothing will fall off or explode on my road trip this Sunday. I get a call saying everything checks out except for the front brakes. Sweet, I can afford to have that done.

And here we are now at 12:50pm, Thursday afternoon. These days, weeks, and months have been flying by. I wish I could make the fun parts last longer but I can't, so I will just try to enjoy them even more.

I am really pumped for Sunday down in S.E.MN. Food. Fun. Friends. That's what it's all about.

I'm tired. I'm done writing. 

Platypeople

For two weeks now at work I’ve been laminating yearbook covers for various schools in America, mostly up and down the west coast, to include Hawaii, and the lower east coast, mostly Florida. I’ve watched hundreds of versions go by, most of them in the range of 200-400 per version. The whole order is for 60,000 sheets, so that’s a lot of schools. Anyhow, I’ve noticed a trend and I must say I don’t like it.

For the most part, schools have picked out a generic layout and have added their name. A few have been creative, a few have been drawn by students themselves, and my very favorite one is very simple, but a colorful drawing of the school in Crayon, and the school’s name written in cursive by a fourth grader. Cursive isn’t quite lost yet.

What I don’t like is the high percentage of school mascots, and team names that are all the same. Or, within a few similar names. First off, cats win hands down. In order, Wildcats, then Tigers, then Lions. What the hell is a Wildcat? Beats me. But next we have birds. Very specifically the Roadrunner(s). In the cartoon, the roadrunner stands as tall as his arch nemesis, Wyle-E-Coyote. But in real life, they are much smaller, and hardly deserve to be chased by a large dog. I get it, they’re fast. Anyway, Eagles are next, and then Falcons. And that makes up about 90% of all of the team names for the high schools that I’ve mentioned above. The remaining ten percent are mostly super heroes, horribly depicted Native-Americans simply labeled, “Indians”, and then obscure, I’m sure local, animals.

I was thinking of what I would use for my team mascot for my life. Of course my life-team is made up of sooo many players. It would only make sense to use the platypus. I didn’t say duck-billed because they’re all duck-billed. I did think it would be neat if there were people-lipped platypuses, because in my head, I could talk to them.

Here are some reasons I think my team should be the Platypi, which is absolutely not the plural of platypus, but for the sake of the team, I’ve created the word. The male platypus has spurs on his hind feet that are connected to a gland that produces toxic venom. I would use this to kick my opponent before a big play to render him useless. This wouldn’t work well on a pitcher in baseball because the defense controls the ball, and the pitcher would just be laying there on the mound, foaming at the mouth. Grow up. The poison would kill a dog, but not a person, so stop letting your dogs play with them at the platypus park.

It's a mammal, but it lays eggs! I’m not a Doctor, but I think eggs are fertilized outside the body? I don’t know, but I think people can fertilize eggs, which means I can make a whole army of platypeople and I can train them in all sorts of intramural activities both during, and after school.

Here’s my favorite platypus superpower: They don’t have nipples, but they do produce milk! Much like my friend Erik Paulsen, their milk oozes from the ducts of their mammary glands onto special patches of skin. That is my favorite sentence that I have ever written, anywhere. I hope he reads it.

Last but not least, another platyfact as I now call them, they don’t have teeth. Sort of like birds, they have grinding plates, so as they are hunting, underwater, the only place they hunt, they scoop up gravel and rocks which they use to grind their food into digestible pieces.

And that is my recipe for a school mascot. Don’t judge me.

We Have Nothing to Fear, But...

Fear. It’s a strong little word. It motivates people more so than love, hate, or courage. It is behind anger as its root, and is the cause of failure in my life over, and over again. As part of my fourth step, this week I am doing a fear inventory of myself, and I decided to write a post about the subject to get my mind working. The process for writing out this step, and associated inventories is not a format I am used to, it’s actually quite difficult for me and I don’t think I’m being as thorough as I should be, but it only asks me to be progressive in my action, and I will do this step repeatedly over the years, so I can do a little better every time.

So, what am I afraid of? Well, spiders, dancing, needles, and swimming. But those are not the fears that I am asked to write about. I will attempt to explain some common fears in the following treatise. I hope I’m thorough.

Failure. Even the word itself invokes fear. But why? Failure is in our nature, and has been the building block of human evolution (if you believe in that sort of thing). For me, it ties in with perfectionism. I put unrealistic standards on myself and society, and anything less than perfect is failure, which I beat myself up for. I expect that everything that I do or try for the first time to be flawless. I’ve always thought this way, and I’ve never succeeded. My mother wrote in an old post about my first experience with rollerblades. I put them on, rolled down the garage driveway, and fell. I got up, took them off, and stomped into the house and in a fit of rage threw them onto the ground and proclaimed that they were stupid and I would never try them on again. Or some such shit. I put the blame on the rollerblades. Interesting. A few short months later I was a pro. All I had to do was practice like anybody else would. But I assumed that when I first donned the wheels-on-shoes, I would be an expert, something I still assume about things today, but I see now that I really have made progress in that area. Just in writing this I can see that I have developed patience. And although I still want to be perfect in everything I do, I’m willing to go through the learning process to do it. It’s taken me over three months at work to learn how to run two very complicated machines, and I’m getting there, but every day it seems like I’m finding something new.

So, I am afraid of failure because failing makes me sad, which turns to anger, which can lead to resentment. What a path. I have a lot to look into there.

Next, let’s look at my fear of confrontation. This lead exactly to built up resentments, and can turn into anger. Confrontation isn’t just about fighting. It’s simple, really. I think normal people do not have issues with confronting a bad boss, or a friend that’s making mistakes in life. But not me. For years I worked in a restaurant with a terrible boss that had unrealistic goals and expectations, and paid me less than I thought I was worth. But I never said anything, I just let it all build up in my head until I found ways to get what I wanted in the form of dishonesty in stealing, resentment in talking bad about her to friends and coworkers, and selfishness in doing things my way. Not a surprise, I was terminated with the explanation that none of us were happy in the arrangement, and I went on unemployment, which I blamed exclusively on the boss. I wrote about this in my resentment portion of my fourth step, and will put her on my 8^th step list and I will be willing to make amends for the damage I’ve caused.

I could go on and on, which makes me fairly confident in my abilities to write out the rest of this step for my sponsor. I would appreciate hearing any feedback on this one. Especially from you “normal” people. Do you struggle with the same issues, or have you conquered your fears in life? And if you have, how have you done it? Thanks for reading!

Jaime

Ten years ago when I first developed my addiction to meth, I met a girl who's impact on my life I wouldn't fully realize until yesterday.

She was beautiful, funny, and smart. Those happen to be the things I looked for in a woman, and we hit it off right away. I was a full time drug dealer, having just been let go by Kemp's, so I had time to hang out and get to know her. We got high together, but more importantly, we did fun things together like played games, rocked out to good music, and had seemingly endless conversations about nothing and everything.

The meth world is a terrible place, and the toll of the never ending job was heavy on me. I changed. I became needy, controlling, and useless. We weren't dating, although we had been intimate for a few months, but that was over and she said one day that she was moving to Winona. I was hurt, and unwilling to face the truth: I was a mess.

We communicated of and on for months, and even after I quit meth and moved to Fountain. Eventually, we stopped talking altogether, but I still thought of her often.

Years later, when I got back into meth, I asked around about her, but never did see her. That was a good sign.

More years passed, and when I was released from prison I decided to look her up on  Facebook. She took a while to accept my request, but eventually she did which is when I was able to finally see her profile, and see what she'd been up to for the last decade. Fortunately she had quit using many years previous. But...

Sadly, yesterday, Jaime died after a long battle with breast cancer. I am grateful that we were able to reconnect over the internet however intermittently it was. The world is a worse place without her, I can assure you. Never in one conversation did she seem sad, or say that she got a bad break. She was always upbeat, and had positive things to say about all life.

She knew she was dying and yet she made everybody around her happy with her constant smile and upbeat attitude. Why can't we be more like that, knowing that we are living?

Jaime, you were a blessing to everybody you ever met. You introduced me to this amazing song that I still consider one of my favorites. I think of you every time I play it, and that will never change. I wish our time together had been more meaningful. And I pray that you are at peace wherever you are. Thank you for The Golden Age.

I don't believe in Heaven, Hell, or an afterlife. But yesterday when I found out about her passing, for the first time I wished there was something, and I felt a little glimmer of hope that just maybe there is more out there for us after this world. I mean, why would He take her away so early unless he had more important things for her to do?

 Rest in Peace, Jaime.