Older and Wiser....

I remember when I was young and dumb, when the things that mattered most were the things that came in a box. GI Joes. Model airplanes. Those little Snap-Pop things they sell around the 4th of July. Then I aged a little and the things that mattered most came in other packaging. The thrill of jumping my Huffy off a homemade ramp in my driveway (I still have rocks in my knee from a terrrible geometry miscalculation). Swinging from a young tree in the woods behind my house. Still, I aged a little more and the things that mattered most came in the form of little animated dudes with guns in a video game. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with a little Contra every now and then still. Once again, I got a little older and a little wiser and the things that mattered most changed yet again. My POS Grand Am that was the key to my freedom as a teen. Shooting some pool with my friends like it was the last day a pool table would ever be found on Earth. Then I graduated from good ol' St Clair High and thought I was the wisest I would ever be.

Then at the ripe old age of 25, I had a newborn baby girl thrust into my waiting arms and everything I thought I knew about life went out the window. Over the course of many, many nights alone with the coolest little person I had ever met, life's lessons were rewritten over and over again. It was a constant state of flux. Once I thought I had it figured out, then teeth came and life proved me an idiot yet again. Without too much detail, the world did a complete turn around one day and I had to start learning all over again. All of it. How to function in the world. How to be a person. How to let other people be people. Every single aspect of life had to be relearned all over again. Well, maybe not so much the whole walking and talking thing, more like the my place in the world thing. My 30th year came and went, a cross country move did too. Unknown midnight drives up to a mountain to discover that the one thing I couldn't move 1500 miles away from was myself.

In year 32, I came home. Things were rough, I won't lie. Wrongs couldn't be righted fully and halfway isn't good enough sometimes. History can't ever be undone or even forgotten about sometimes. 3 years have passed since I made it back here, to where I was born and raised. In those 3 years I've learned more than I have in the previous 32. I realized that yesterday. I put aside my personal bullshit that stood in the way of things being okay with me and did what was right. I didn't do it to prove someone wrong, which I used to do all the time. I didn't do it to piss someone off, which I used to do all the time. I didn't do it because I thought it was the "cool" thing to do, I did it because I knew it was the "right" thing to do. Ya know what? I woke up today feeling like life had finally arrived. Like I had finally crossed over that line between immature and mature. I'll still crack the poop joke like the 12 year old boy I can be sometimes, but I think I finally found where I need to be in life. It's in the exact same spot it was when the things that mattered most came in the form of PB&J sandwiches with the crust cut off. In this little 4ish square foot patch of Earth I'm currently occupying.

The prodigal son....

So, I spent a few hours in the place of my birth this past weekend. I'm not gonna lie, it was weird for me. Ya see, I don't have what you would call a "normal" relationship with my family. The farther apart we get, the better off things seem to be. Don't get me wrong, i wasn't abused as a child, or locked in a closet for days, or chained to a radiator or anything. Well, there was a cement block story once but that's besides the point. Anyhoo, I have one family member left that I'm tight with, my cousin. Actually, he's more like a brother than he is a cousin, largely due to the fact that we grew up next door to each other basically and we're both such the black sheep of our family that we should have sheep based nicknames. The whole point of the trip up there was to hang out with him for the night, which is something we don't get to do nearly often enough, as well as get together with someone that I hadn't seen in forever. Again, I digress. Back to the point here yeah? There have been a ton of things in my life that have drastically altered the course its taken, all of which have taken place in that sleepy little town and its immediate surroundings. Twice in my life I moved extremely far away, both times finding places that would allow me to....just be. Twice in my life I've been compelled to return home, home is home after all ya know. Both times, holes have been patched, seams have been mended, wrongs righted. Both times things have gone swimmingly for a while then they just kinda fall apart. The glue that holds my family to myself seems to be of the Elmers kind, weak even at it's strongest. I used to beat myself up about that pretty good back in the young and dumb years. Know what I've realized lately? It's just not worth it. This is where you can insert any kind of cliche that you may find acceptable. It takes two to tango. Its a two way street. Any relationship is a two way street. I tried. Finally, after many years of failure and many years of holding things together, tenuously at best, I became okay with things not being the classic example of a nuclear family. Now I've become comfortable with doing my own thing and letting go of the guilt I've carried for things always seeming to zero bend before the break. Which is why I couldn't understand why the trip was weird for me. Maybe it was middle age setting in and the realization that things I used to enjoy just aren't the same anymore. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been living elsewhere for so long that it wasn't "home" anymore. Regardless, things have obviously changed for me. Whether or not they have changed for the better remains to be seen. I'm just glad that the status quo has changed and I no longer feel stagnant in things. Here's to moving on....and Great White hopefully calling it a career soon.

Introduction, Part two

I originally posted this over on Facebook, right before the calendars went from 09 to 10. I've tried to live life this way this year, instead of spending too much time pissin and moaning about what I don't have. Being relatively new over here, I figured I'd give ya this as a warm up to who I am. Excuse the lack of capitals and apostrophes, I didn't like them last year. So, here ya go...


i had a conversation with someone today that got me thinking bout what we should all do with our lives. i dont mean hey go to college, get a degree, get a job, get married etc etc. i mean what we should DO with our lives. life isnt a journey in my book, its an object. granted its a pretty damn big object but hey, an object is an object right? ive always thought that life was just there, a day in day out drone of monotony. groundhog day but with different characters i guess. well lately ive been thinkin differently bout that theory. i was wrong. yes, mark your calendars, i just made a public admission of wrongness. heres where i was wrong, life isnt groundhog day. life isnt doing the same pointless act moving towards a predetermined goal that opens its curtains to the audience upon our birth. its what we're (i just used an apostrophe!) given to have and to use as we see fit. its a tool that we can either carve a masterpiece out of a bar of soap with, or a bucket to hold our self pity in. whats life but an ocean to swim in, dive into fully, embrace like a drunken lover and let the currents carry you where they may? why not treat it as that? as something that we can throw ourselves at, like it were a 1000 piece kitten puzzle, always challenging us to find that one last piece to make it all come together. this is my gauntlet i throw down at the feet of everyone of you this year. use your life for something. carve yourself out a place in the history of those around you. pull the pin on the lets do somethin grenade and chuck that bitch. dont be shy, dont be afraid. just do. get up off the couch, chase that dream, even if its miniscule in relation to whats spinnin around you. i spent so many years diggin myself a rut, being so frustrated with things that i couldnt see straight about it anymore. then i realized that nothing in the world is more important than seeing what it is around you that youre missing. so get up, go see what youre missing, or sit there on the couch and watch me wave as i go bye.

to all my friends that have made the last year of my life feel like the first one to move forward again finally, i thank you with everything i am. those of you that will be around for the next year to come, i hope i can repay to you what you have done for me.

Testing the waters.....

Picture a victim of stage fright peeking out behind the curtains, checking out the audience and the potential results of the upcoming performance......that's me right now.

I've kicked around the idea of starting a blog for quite some time now, only to talk myself out of it time and time again. Why? Cause I get stage fright. Sometimes I can't even use a urinal. Totally kidding. So, here we are. This post will pop my blog cherry (which sounds both somewhat kinky and mostly disgusting, all at once). I really can't tell anyone what to expect with this, I don't even know what to expect, but you can count on the one thing I've always been....honest. I promise you I will pull not punches, tell no lies (only ones for the sake of entertainment, heh) and not hold anything back. At times I'm sure some of this will be boring, mundane, and pointless BUT it all will have a point. So hold on to your floaties, cover your girlie umbrella drinks....time for a cannonball into the pool.