U.S. Centricity

It’s almost exactly a year ago. Fall is in full bloom in Chicago, but the heat and humidity has staying power in Hong Kong. It is my first time ever leaving the country. I have gone coast to coast, touched the southernmost point in the continental U.S., surfed in La Jolla, snowboarded in the Rockies, swam off Long Island, boated in the keys, but never once crossed a thicker boarder than state to state. It’s a work trip, and I am traveling alone, fearing not the fifteen hour flight, or the seven million people, or the two weeks away from home. I’m a cautious, planned fellow. I use my first day in Hong Kong to the fullest, getting my tourist on, exhausting myself, experiencing a new world, taking pictures, living. In this new world, on the other side of the world, I feel comfortable, at ease with the transit system, confident in my map reading skills, relaxed despite a non-international cell phone, which, upon arrival, renders itself as no more or less useful than a pocket watch. It isn’t until my first day in the office before I feel the gravity of the distance, and the egotism of my perception.

My time working is spent in a lab, with subject matter experts, lab managers, and lab technicians. The SMEs know the content, the mangers schedule the resources, the technicians perform the test. I’m here to document the tests with a handheld Sony and a reasonably steady hand, assuming my evening prior held an umbrella, and after scripting, recording, and editing, produce an on-the-job video reference guide along with a platform for international lab communication and discussion. I’ve done some of these back in Northbrook, and I want to show the entire team, the half dozen lab techs, two managers, and two SMEs, along with my ULU colleague, what I’ve done, and what I expect out of them at this morning kickoff meeting in a conference room that is less than accommodating.

I talk for seven plus or minus two minutes and show a short snippet of something I’ve created in the past, pausing for explanation and emphasis. My goal: simple, pressure-less scenarios where we stage very little. My role is that of a documenter, not videographer. I introduce myself, my role, my history, and my future. I’m received with wide eyes and cognizant reactions, with head nods and smiles, with understanding and eagerness. I’m dressed well, impressed with my speech of sorts, and feeling like I owned the room. I figure I’ve just kicked this week off to such high levels of production that people will wonder if it was two people sent across the Pacific and not just one, even though the flight from Chicago flies up through Wisconsin, across Canada, north of Alaska, steers just clear of the North Pole, then slides back down the globe, comes within an earshot of Japan, and finally comes to rest in the south of China.

This is where my world gets shifted. I glance over to my host from UL University, who, in the matter of seconds, deflates all momentum I ever dreamed I built.

‘Chris, do you mind if I translate what you said?’ What?

I literally talked at a group of twelve people sitting around a small conference table, grinning like an idiot, for seven plus or minus two minutes, and if I had to assign a percentage to how much, on average, was comprehended, I would put it at seven plus or minus two percent. How arrogant. How selfish. How naïve. How honest.

It’s two week ago. Fall is in full bloom in Chicago, and also in Switzerland. It’s my first time traveling to Europe. I’ve been to Hong Kong, Macau, and Penang, Malaysia in the last twelve months, but never crossed the Atlantic. The flight from Chicago to Zurich actually crosses the Atlantic, but up closer to Iceland. I’m traveling for work, alone, and the nine hours on a plane are nothing compared to the fifteen that I’ve graced six different times. A rarely discussed but highly useful benefit of international travel is that domestic travel is a breeze. My two weeks of travel before this flight negate the usual time spent on planning, but my international phone equips me with everything necessary to get from Zurich to St. Gallen, from St. Gallen to Horn, and from Horn to my hotel, the Bad Horn Hotel. Or so I think.

I de-board, make it through customs, and retrieve my luggage, all without removing my headphones, keeping my recent kick of Childish Gambino flowing. I know that a train will take me to St. Gallen, so I begin my trek through Zurich International, following the sign of what I can only assume is a picture of an engine car. I escalate down a few levels into a massive mall, and down one more level to a platform. The scene feels familiar. It feels like the Metra. So I retreat up a level to an automated kiosk that looks to be selling train tickets. English is an option. I can’t figure out which train line to pick, but I can search, and I find my place, purchase my ticket, and feel great. Then I remember where I am. The train ticket comes out in one hundred percent German. I speak no German. I escalate up, and down, and up, and down, looking for clues, and wind up clueless. I train pulls in and de-boards, so I ask a conductor what platform (of four) I need to be on. He says maybe three, not sure. I walk to 3, less than confident, until I find a timetable. In German. But I recognize ‘Zurich Flughafen’ as where I’m currently located, and I see St. Gallen, my destination. Platform 2.

I board and ride for an hour to St. Gallen, relatively content that I made it this far. I know I must transfer to a train to get to Horn, and I see another kiosk. I search, again, by destination, find Horn, purchase ticket, and walk away. The ticket, if you couldn’t guess, is in German. And absolutely nothing of it makes sense. The last ticket at least said ‘St. Gallen’ on it. This one just says ‘Einzelbillett,’ which I’m pretty sure isn’t where I’m going. I also see the word ‘bus,’ which I guess means bus. I know, I should have been a detective. Technology-able, I use a translator app on my phone to figure out that this is an adult ticket for a train or a bus that cost 6.80 Swiss Francs. There is literally no more information I can glean from this ticket, so I ask an attendant. She tells me bus, 31. I say bus 31? She says yes, 31.

I walk outside to see easily two dozen bus route pick-ups. I walk to every one, and not one 31. Frazzled, I pull my phone back out and check directions, current location to Bad Horn Hotel, and it tells me to take a bus. Which bus, doesn’t say. Just take a bus. At 11:31. Ah ha! There’s the 31. I follow a link to the transit website. I find information that it’s bus number 21016. I don’t think that’s a route. So I start with ‘210,’ which I saw earlier, walk to the route, and see on the back of the sign it says ‘Horn.’ I wait ten minutes and board, showing the bus driver my ticket to his confusion before he allows me on. Forty minutes later I’m at my hotel and all is well.

The point of this isn’t that I’m an awesome international travel when forced to improvise. The point is, in Hong Kong, and in Switzerland, I just assumed everything would be easy. I assumed everyone could speak English. I assumed that a foreign traveler would be catered to. I assumed that I shouldn’t have to plan ahead to get from the airport to a small country-side city 50 miles away. Then I thought about the alternative.

What if you were German, traveling to Chicago for the first time?

Your grasp on the English language was enough to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you.’ You land at O’hare, terminal 5. You follow signs that say ‘train to the city’ even though all you’re doing is looking at a picture of a train and hoping for the best. You have to buy a ticket to board a train, which, luckily, one runs one direction. You take the blue line towards the city. You’re buzzing by hectic traffic on 90/94, you’re checking out the buildings in Logan Square, all of a sudden you’re underground. There’s no end to this train. There’s no final destination. Looking at the map of the colored lines, you figure you should get off somewhere in the middle. So you do, and you follow the masses to the surface. Now you’re in the middle of the tallest buildings you’ve ever seen, since no building in Munich can be taller than the tallest church peak. You panic. How do you get to Cary? There’s no station in site. You pull out your phone. You can see all the train tracks lead to something called ‘Ogilve.’ That can’t be right. You walk to Union Station, because despite your lack of knowledge of the English language, Union seems much more American. You try to buy a ticket, but you don’t know what line to take. You finally ask someone, ‘Cary?’ They say you’re in the wrong building. It takes you 20 minutes just to get back to the street. You finally buy a ticket for the Northwest Line. Now you enter an enormous hanger of dozens of tracks, scanning the digital titles, hoping for a clue. Trains are coming and going faster than you can process, not knowing if it’s your train or not. More panic. You finally get the courage to ask someone, and they brush you off because we don’t have time for you. Then, you see it! There’s a 7 on your ticket, and a 7 up above. You finally board, hoping, as your train departs, that you guessed correctly, and for 75 minutes you wonder, so this is Chicago?

The Most Important Word

The closer and closer I get to being an adult, the more and more I realize that it can be boiled down very simply to one word, and for anyone who has ever read this blog, you'll be shocked to find out that the word is not balance, although I'm sure it factors in. Like balance, this word applies to every facet of life, whether it's work, home, family, friends, pleasure, pain, it broad strokes across everything and anything. It's so obvious how important this is, it bothers me that it took more than three and a half years to finally focus on it. Sure, the word has come up here and there, and the idea might have been breached, but never with the intensity or baggage that I plan on using here. It's how we can explicitly explain and define how we think. It's how we can explicitly explain and define how we act. It's so terribly integrated into our lives that it can be overlooked. I know I have. It's so overlooked, that I don't think anyone reading this has guessed it yet. Did I drag this out long enough? The word I am speaking of is priorities.

The time line could be short. I have 30 minutes before bed. Do I browse the movie channels and try to find something I've seen enough times to jump into, say Wanted, or Stomp the Yard? Do I watch an episode of Boy Meets World on my computer, maybe the end of Season two, where inexplicably Harley Kiener is replaced with pretty boy thug 'Griffin,' better known as Will Ferrell's older brother in Step Brothers? Do I make my lunch and get ready for bed, hoping the extra fifteen minutes will leave me with less than a dozen snoozes before I finally tumble out of bed and into a shower? Do I pick up my book for a few minutes of flipping backwards to figure out the last thing I read, presumably weeks ago, then a few minutes of new material, before reaching a point of dreary eyes that leads to a peaceful descent into mild hibernation? These decisions, while seemingly insignificant, are my priorities.

The time could be longer. Where do I want my career to end up? Do I like what I do enough to be complacent and ride this thing out? Do I reach, stretch, bend, and elevate my actions to possibly lift my current situation to new heights, to new people, to new opportunities? Do I only put in time on the work that I know is visible, or important, or easy, or do I give appropriate attention to each of my projects? Have I introduced myself to the right people? What kind of impression did I leave on my peers? My superiors? My subordinates (if I had any)? There might be some short term decisions in there, but each and every part, big and small, so clearly defines my priorities over a long period of time.

When you’re stuck in traffic for an hour to and from work, and you’re sick of scrolling through twelve different radio stations just to find a song you can tolerate, not even like, that’s when my thoughts tend to take over, at least when I’m not banging my head against the wheel, figuratively, because of the undeniable and saddening truth that the majority of the people in this world are bad drivers. So in those ‘down times,’ I spend my time clutching, shifting, and thinking. So you might assume that what I’m thinking about tells someone, say, what I’m interested in, or what’s current, or what’s been bothering me. It might be replaying a shitty decision at work, analyzing why I’m so easy to cancel on, or simply daydreaming about something that could be, someday. These are all possibilities, but more than anything, and maybe it’s just a different way of saying the same thing, but more than anything, this dictates my priorities.

So I have a thought about a girl on my way to work. There’s the priority. I open my work computer when I get home. There’s the priority. I join a kick ball and volleyball team during the week. There’s the priority. I spend money on food and drinks with friends. There’s the priority.

Your life can be broken down like a power ranking. Everything. Every piece of your life is a priority. And it gets ranked. For many people, family is and will always be at the top of that list. And that list will shift over time, because of age, because of circumstance, because of friendships, because of careers, because of money, because of literally thousands of things that you may or may not have ever thought about, but at the end of the day, at the end of the week, month, year, your life, there will always been a stacked list of priorities, and the one with the lower number will outrank the one with the higher number, until you see fit for that to change. This might not seem revolutionary. In fact, I can promise you that it is not. But next time you have a thought, next time you make a choice, next time you take a step, think about what you’re sacrificing, and make sure your priorities are in line.

Unless you’re too straight-laced. Then in the great words of Mitch Hedberg, ‘get your priorities crooked.’

Summer Til I Die

“Are you ready for fall?” I asked one of my roommates last night.

“Yes.”

“Want to get into some of those fall fashions?” I prodded.

“No it's 9 o'clock at night and it's 97 degrees out.”

“Ha.”

“And yes. By the end of a season, I start to get excited about clothes I get to wear again. At the beginning of summer, I was excited to wear questionably short shorts and boat shoes.”

We’re just over one month into the scientifically defined season of summer, but in the midst one of the hottest and driest summers in the last 50 years, there’s already an itch in the air, grumblings about the welcome that cooler air will bring, including but not limited to the ability to make a five or more minute drive without seriously considering planning a ‘driving shirt’ so you don’t prematurely change the color of your back from periwinkle to indigo before you’ve even splashed the scene. As a recent automotive surgery forced two buses, a train, and over a mile of walking to get to work while I once again wait for my car (yes, the same issue), I can tell you that it doesn’t get a whole lot more refreshing outside the vehicle. I’m thinking I should have worn shorts and changed when I got to work. Hindsight. Regardless, since June 8^th (an arbitrary date chosen to make the stats seem more amazing), so the last 49 days, we’ve had 41 days with a high temperature 85 degrees or higher, 25 of those 90 degrees or higher, 5 of those 100 degrees or higher, including yesterday. It’s been warm.

Over the course of those 49 days, how many days have I been active, as in, not just come home, make dinner, watch some TV, and go to bed? I don’t have that number, but I can tell you with wavering certainty that it closely resembles the amount of days that it was 85 degrees or higher, give or take, over the same time period. Have I been uncomfortable during drives home, distraught over what to wear on a first date, nervous with my sweaty hands on a softball bat, beyond exhausted after an hour of basketball, suddenly aware of even the smallest sanction of shade during wiffle ball? Unequivocally. But the truth is, I was able to see, do, meet, try, and live more in the last 49 days, if even at times despite the weather. These sentiments cannot be repeated in 6 months.

I’m looking forward to fall. Reasonable temperatures, football Saturdays, football Sundays, baseball playoffs, wearing hoodies again, reconnecting with my indoor volleyball team, celebrating my birthday, you know, the important stuff that everyone can appreciate. But in no way am I ready to give up on summer yet. Fingers crossed, we have two more months of 70s and 80s, giving me enough motivation to wear myself as thin as possible and do as much as possible while it’s still possible. The worst thing about fall is that it shares a border with winter. And winter only has about three things going for it. And two of them involve snowboarding.

So it will be nice to put together a nice outfit with dress shoes and not sweat like I’m being chased by a lion, in Africa, but I’m not ready to hang up the flip flops, sun, boat, BBQs, marathon bags days, street fests, outside drinking games, planning for fantasy football, being active 5-6 nights a week, and every other amazing aspect that summer has to offer, whether it’s 75 or 105, I will use up every ounce of summer I have. I know what’s coming. It will get here soon enough. What do to we say to it? Not today.

When You Die

“Where does it come from, this quest? This need to solve life's mysteries with the simplest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream?” ("Heroes: Chapter One 'Genesis' (#1.1)" (2006/II)) This is not the first time I’ve quoted Heroes to kick off a post. This time, there will be a little substance behind it.

The basket of simple questions that can never be answered is big enough to hold more than just the three examples above. And while I find those questions relevant to my eventual point, the one I want to dwell on falls into the same category: what happens to us when we die? After your final minute is expired, who you are, your being, your only connection to the living world, your perspective, your identifiable individuality, ceases to produce life, then what? Do the lights get turned off, or turned on?

I admit, this topic intrigues me. And honestly, I’m relatively curious about the answer; because there is an answer. Unlike ‘why are we here’ or ‘why do we dream,’ there are over one hundred billion people who already know the answer, whether they have the wherewithal to comprehend that answer remains to be seen, but regardless, there is no mystery. 93% of the population that has ever step foot on this earth already knows the answer. We just don’t have the means to retrieve it. This makes it a frustrating mystery. Figuring out why we are here is theoretically impossible, it’s just an argument. It could never be anything more than an opinion, an argument. You can’t have facts behind it. Figuring out what happens after we die is impossible for a different reason. Something does happen. Whether it’s drifting upward to heaven, south to hell, into the arms of one thousand virgins, reincarnated as a sea turtle, miserably stuck in limbo, decomposed back into the earth, or simply nothing, there is still a result; an answer.

Given you agree with what I’ve laid out, that it’s humanly impossible to know, how are there so many people in the world convinced that living this life is preparation of what comes next? This is going to sound like a criticism of the religiously fanatic, and I guess it can be interpreted that way, but those aren’t my intentions. If whatever you believe in leads you to living a better, more peaceful, understanding, nurturing, helpful, careful, caring life, spreading knowledge, joy, and patience, it’s ignorantly short-sighted to criticize the way you arrived there. Even if you live that life based on the belief that it’s your ticket into heaven, a decent life, in the context of good-intentioned, not just ‘better than average,’ is always worth living. But if you live your life in a way that is detrimental to your peers, intentionally hateful, blindfully narrow-minded, elitistly exclusive, all for an all-encompassing greater cause or commitment to an unguaranteed posthumous result, well then I have a problem with that.

I don’t live a perfect life. I have never claimed to. I can’t even claim that I’ve done everything I can to live a perfect life. But I also don’t live my life in fear that what I have or haven’t done will have an impact on what happens to my body, my soul, my essence, when, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, I cease to exist. I am unequivocally pleased with the current state of my life, the people in it, the actions I’ve taken to reach it, and the future that it holds. I don’t need to trudge out a list of seemingly redeemable characteristics that would be my proverbial ticket-punch into whatever the desired afterlife party might look like. I just know that when my head hits the pillow, there’s nothing making me lose sleep.

I’m not breaking new ground here. There are enough ‘inspirational’ quotes out there that succinctly state what I’ve meandered to through the last four paragraphs. Hell, I’ve even written about it before Leave it all on the Field. Most of us go through life with some form of motivation, some purpose, some reason that keeps us getting out of bed in the morning. Whether you’re a good person to set an example for your kids, or you’re a drug dealer who wants to get out of a shitty life, whether you’re a pious member of society hell-bent on being heaven-bound, or you’re an anarchist, convinced that breaking the system is the only way to not become part of the machine, there’s usually an over-arching structure that gently guides our day-to-day like wind gusts to butterflies. Regardless of your beliefs, motivations, or inspirations, it would be foolish to not see a bigger picture. If you can’t take a step back and see the framework, if you’re too far in the forest to see the trees, if you’re so immersed in the ultimate outcome that you’ve lost sight of the existence of the other 7 billion people here, then you’re a little misguided.

Any belief, too strong and too cemented to waver, can be dangerous. Take a step back once in a while. It’s a pretty impressive piece of work.

Honesty is the Best Policy, Right?

Honesty is the best policy, right?

You meet someone. You hit it off. First, just a night of a couple drinks. Next, a real date. A good one too. Better than you would have imagined, given your track record. A second, real date is scheduled before the first date concludes. A few nights later, the second date. Schedules don’t align for a week or so, and while trying to schedule that seemingly elusive third date, a response: I’d like to keep hanging out with you, but only as friends, is that okay?

Honesty is the best policy, right?

We’re all adults. We’re all friends. When things don’t go according to plan, we offer up half-hearted but not required explanations. After all, we’re all adults. There’s no hard feelings, and we all move on. More so, we understand each other. There aren’t really any secrets, even if we think there are. After all, we’re all friends, and there’s no hard feelings.

Honesty is the best policy, right?

I had a hard time getting my car back last week. Supposed to be a one day job. They ordered the wrong part. It took an extra day from the manufacturer. The one technician that can do the job had an emergency and had to leave early. I asked to have it done by three on Friday. They hadn’t started on it by 11am. Finished at 5pm. I was already gone. A 3-hour job. My car sat from Monday, 8:15am, until Friday, 9pm.

Honesty is the best policy, right?

I don’t have a lot of drama in my life. I don’t have many overtly serious conversations that carry weight farther than the people in the room. I’ve lived my life, for the most part, and as best as I know how, as honestly as I can. Is there information that I’ve withheld? Sure. Have I told a lie in the last week? You betcha. Does it make my hands sweat to know I have to face the truth and tell people what I feel, to tell someone I care about, what I’m thinking? I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. But for the majority of my life, that’s just what I believed. If you can’t face the truth, then you deserve what you get. It might make you reconsider some decisions if you know that you’ll never be able to cover it up. I guess I believe that if you tell the truth, that’s forgivable. If you lie to cover it up, the same thing, whatever it is, and get caught, that’s unforgivable. Is that fair? Maybe not. But it sounds right in my head. Or at least it did.

Recently I’ve been on the receiving end of what I believe to be interactions that I would classify as less than honest. And while I’ve nearly unintentionally spent an unreasonable amount of time kneading and plodding over those interactions, eliciting the opinions of others, attempting to draw out the truth in future interactions, I’m not entirely sure, regardless of my previous convictions, that knowing the truth, whether it aligns with my predictions or not, would be satisfying. What happens if I’m right? I get no reward. I just get the truth, which was most likely withheld for a reason. What if I’m wrong? Then I just feel like an asshole. But I hate the fact that I just justified lying.

Honesty is the best policy, right? I don’t know. Maybe.

Healthy Optimism

So, from the day I owned it, my car has given me issues. I bought it used, but under warranty, so my twenty two year old mind was convinced that regardless if it took a literal shit in the middle of the road, at least it was free to fix. Well, a half dozen trips to Arlington Nissan later, I thought I was in the clear. But another half dozen trips to Ashland Tire, a few trips to Tiger’s Body Shop, a few trips to Gerber Collision and Glass, and now a trip to Pep Boys has left me nearly regretting the purchase. Granted, if I had to go back and do it again, I don’t. But after just crossing my 4 year anniversary with her, and putting on 50,000 miles, I couldn’t imagine myself driving another car, at least not any time soon. So for me, the effort, the cost, the patience, the frustration, it’s worth it. Sink a couple hundred in now to save me from settling on a car I don’t love. Whatever, it’s a testing theory, but it’s worked out for me so far. You never know what tomorrow brings.

That brings me to today. I dropped my car off Monday morning at a neighborhood Pep Boys in order to get the master and slave (right?!) cylinder replaced on my clutch, which, if you’ve ever been in my car with me for more than 30 minutes, becomes a constant place of my frustration, until, you know, 15 minutes later, when it magically fixes itself and drives itself like it just rolled out of the plant. Then I get in my car and the clutch is on the floor.

We’ve had our ups and downs.

So this master and slave cylinder replacement is a two hour job for a qualified mechanic. They had already ordered the parts, all I had to do was drop it off at 8am, walk two miles back home, spend the day working from home, wait until the hopefully early afternoon call, walk two miles back to Pep Boys, and drive home, happily ever after, assuming, of course, I remember to stop next door to exchange a recently purchased pair of shorts that I swear were either improperly marked as a 32” or Merona has some cross-eyed factory workers. That’s all I had to do. Well, I did that. Until I received a phone call telling me that the part they ordered doesn’t match the part they took off my car.

‘Well, we’ll check in the morning, but we might have to go back to the manufacturer.’ Awesome. I guess I’ll wait another day.

Tuesday afternoon: We couldn’t find an aftermarket master cylinder that matches yours, so we went to the manufacturer, but there isn’t one close, so we have to order it. Hope to have it tomorrow (Wednesday), but might not be ready until Thursday.

Wednesday, no communication. Nothing until I got a ride from my roommate so I could pick up my softball cleats and glove from the trunk on my way to a game. Didn’t even have time to yell at them for keeping me in the dark.

It’s Thursday now. Mind you, this week I’ve been taking public transit into work each day since Monday. For those of you out there that have lengthy public commutes, you can sympathize. For those who don’t… My morning consisted of leaving at 6:20am, walking .5 miles, taking a purple line train, transferring to a yellow line “Skokie Swift” train, jumping on the 626 Pace bus all the way up to Northbrook, getting off at the Lake Cook Metra stop, and walking just a hair under a mile to my building, arriving to my desk between 7:45am and 7:50am. Reverse that and add a few minutes for my afternoon commute home. So it’s Thursday, the last day they are allowed to have my call, and 3:30pm rolls around.

‘We got the part in, but the technician working on your car had an emergency and left early.’ Apparently no one else in the shop can complete the task at hand and finish the job, so I now wait until some time on Friday to pick up my car, praying what they did actually fixes the damn problem.

I have every right to be upset. The inconvenience of not having a car to someone who usually has a car and drives it on average six days a week is relatively substantial. I turned back to my work, trying my best to focus and stop the overheating that swarmed me. Before I hung up, my Pep Boys contact promised he’d take care of me for this, hopefully rewarding my patience with some sort of percentage discount, which, for the price of this job, would be nice, but possibly weaseling his way into a 25% off your next purchase or some shit like that. We’ll see what he can do. In the meantime, what do I do?

Well, in the three days of public commuting, I’ve saved $3 a day over what it would cost in gas. There’s $10. And if I can get maybe 10% off my bill, there’s another $60. And while on the two trains and a bus, I managed to knock a decent chunk out of the weighty block of pages I call the book I’m currently reading, which, considering how long it has taken me to get this far, is a big deal if I ever want to start a new book. And I’m lucky enough to have a boss nice enough to give me the chance to work from home Friday, ensuring my plans don’t get postponed, since I have to be in the loop by 4:30.

I guess the point of this shitastic story is, shockingly, everything can be shitty in shitty light. But if you can find the time to look at what positives have emerged because of this shiterific series of events, it goes a long way to live a less stressed life. I’m not saying I’m pleased with how it all went down, nor am I pleased that I bought a car that most assuredly should have had a carfax report run, but at the end of the day, I’m probably a better, strong person. Not just because I endured the shitty end of something to make me appreciate and learn for the future, but because every shitazing moment along the way has taught me patience, balance, and a generally optimistic outlook, which, as much as physical health, goes a long way to living a healthy life. 

 Picture comment: just a random picture of 'optimism'

Rainbows and Butterflies

Yesterday, I had a shitty day. If this was the kind of blog that everybody assumes it is when I tell people I write a blog, I’d probably spend the next few paragraphs explaining the details of the shitty day in melodramatic, self-centered prose, hoping that anyone reading might be willing to feel sorry for me and I would feel justified, united by relatable circumstances. But I don’t write one of those, so I’ll spare you the details. It was one of those days where, aside from the always entertaining episode of Game of Thrones I watched, the bad shit just kind of kept piling on top of itself in different iterations, culminating in a night of sleep so poor, I can’t remember the last time I experienced anything like it. I literally couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back over the parts of my day that left me in such a weary state. That’s not a good place to be. Especially considering how well everything in my life has been going for so long, now. Sometimes, when the cards keep coming up aces, you convince yourself that it’s never going to stop. So when the shit card gets flipped, its way more of a surprise than it should be. Consider this my fault. It rains in paradise, too.

So this morning I was faced with a decision. Not just ‘how much longer can I stay in bed to make up for the abbreviated segments of unrewarding pauses that we’ll call sleep while still making it to work in time to squeeze in 8 hours and a workout before the gym closes at 7,’ although that crossed my mind. No what I had to do was decide how to react. Bad news happens. Bad things happen. And while continuing to write in vague details, let’s just say I had the choice of dwelling on the past or moving on to the future. I can assure you, it would have been very easy to dwell on the past. To delve into each or any of the less than fortunate situations that I find myself in and break it or them down with more depth than an NBA on TNT halftime show. The opportunity to feel bad for myself was laid out like a fleece blanket on a cold night. More than just available, but tempting, inviting, alluring.

I’ve spared you the details of why I had a shitty day not only because I’m almost positive no one wants to read them, but to write about them now would reinforce my inability to let them go. Instead, I’m writing to prove that I can, in fact, let them go. And that’s what is keeping me happy today. Well, at least part of it.

It’s easy to have people tell you to focus on the positives, the silver linings, the glass-half-full side. It’s easy for people to tell you to focus on other stuff, big stuff, like health, a job, friends. It’s easy to get caught up in American Beautyisms like ‘I need to remember… sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world…’ in order to maintain your sanity. But being thankful for my health isn’t enough to pull me away from something right here, now, that just rocked my world. The only way to do that is to make a decision. Making that decision isn’t easy. It is not the path of least resistance. But once you’re able to flick that switch, and decide, not hope, not plan on, not try to, but decide that what’s done is done, and the future will be brighter than the past, then that’s it. It’s black and white. There’s no second guessing. There’s no regret. There’s what happened, and what will happen. And your eyes are only looking at one of them.

I’m not saying that what I endured yesterday was catastrophic. In fact, writing the word ‘endured’ makes it seem much loftier than reality. Maybe I can say that because I’ve moved on (last night, ‘endure’ was the only thing on my mind), or maybe I’m just being dramatic. It’s hard to say for sure. And the same way that no one will ever get to feel someone else’s pain, no one will know what it was like in my head under the covers last night. Which is a good thing. But I’m a believer in what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and only the strong survive, so where would I be today if I rolled back over, closed my eyes, and replayed everything I did or didn’t do that lead me here? I’m not all rainbows and butterflies today, but let’s be honest, that’s a pretty elevated goal.

Being happy isn’t a result, it’s a choice. You’ve just got to have the will power to make it. 

Picture comment: I literally found this picture AFTER I wrote the above line. Fate?