Begrudgingly

A few months ago, I wrote a guest post for Alise Wright's blog about my depression, health, and running.  Things were looking up.  Then I got frustrated with the running because I wasn't losing any weight.  Then, I went off my medication.  That's when the depression came roaring back.  I was unable to get out of bed in the mornings, sometimes lying there all day, for about a month and a half.  Things didn't pick back up at all until Amy had finally had enough and we had our arguments about the state of things.

I also put on another 35 pounds.  I'm up to 285.  Last year, my goal for this year was to be 200 and I've gone in the opposite direction.  I did get my job at IWCC back, but I have a lot of anxiety about it.  It gets in the way.  I'm just a ball of problems and I need help.  I can't fix all this on my own.  I plan to get help once the job's insurance begins in September.  I need it all and hope to get it.  I'd like to go back to counseling, maybe get back on some medication, and I want a personal trainer.   I've tried so many times on my own to lose weight and every time I end up weighing more than when I started my program that it's really making me angry.  I also want to go back to the doctor and maybe get some help with my diet.  Everything about my life has been and continues to be a serious roller coaster ride and I want off.

Well, that's it.  That's why I haven't written anything in months.  That's why I don't communicate with anyone.  That's why I sometimes avoid going out of the house.  Here's to seeing you.

Still With a View

We went to the open house meeting regarding the power company's plans for construction in the future.  Turns out that the word 'park' really did mean 'park' as in a fun area for kids to play.  Apparently, it was proposed by the city.  The language on the flier was just a little unclear.  I feel much better about this now.

In other news, I applied for a job as a part-time A/V tech at one of the local casinos.  As is my usual insane practice, I went for the interview, which went well, and then promptly got anxious about being offered the job.  I don't know why I do this to myself.  My anxiety about this kind of thing has undermined me before.

My Scale Broke

Literally, it really did. I stepped on it and heard a very unpleasant crack. Stepping off, I examined the bottom. Nothing looked abnormal. But when I stepped back on it read 218.something. Flattering but clearly incorrect. I stepped off and turned it over once more, checking the footpads. Each one seemed fine until I got to the last one. Mushy. Oh well. Whatever happened I don't think I can fix it.

I planned to buy a new scale this weekend. I really did. But I ended up working on some music and getting it out on the web and then I worked on my website and I connected my ReverbNation and Facebook and Myspace profiles and blah, blah, blah. I just never got around to buying a scale even though my weight check in was supposed to be yesterday. I felt a little bad because I really wanted to know if I'd lost any weight or simply just broke even since my eating wasn't perfect this week, especially yesterday.

But after my run this morning, again I feel good. Well, let me rephrase that. I feel OK. Not OK as in "blah", but like things will be OK. I'm running. It's more than I was doing a month ago. Anything could be. No matter what I'm eating, I'm still focusing on eating better than I was a month ago (damn you, Halloween). And no matter what I do, things will be OK. I'm doing the best I can do for the moment in time that I currently occupy.

I'm sure all of this sounds like I've found that calm little center in myself amidst all the chaos. Trust me, I don't think that's happened. But if I don't tell myself these things repeatedly, I'll forget to believe them. And I simply can't afford to do that right now. So I'm happy my scale broke. I don't need it. The distance between what I am and where I want to be is only a function of the effort I'm willing to put forward to get there and the time it takes to get there can be irrelevant if I choose to let it be. Some races, I still want to run. Others not so much. I just have to choose my battles and go with what I know. It's the one thing I do best.

A Dream That Leads to My Major Weakness

It's been just over a week since my last post and I've still had a horrible time with sleep. This whole week has been identical in its pattern. Basically, I can squeeze in about four to five hours of sleep per night before I am forced awake. "Forced?", I can hear you ask. Yes, forced. When my mind wakes up, all it wants to do is process my current feelings of loss. I know this because of the dream I had tonight. Here it is, as much as I can remember:

I'm sitting in a classroom on the first day of a class at the college level. I am as old as I am today, but everyone else looks younger, fresh out of high school. It's a philosophy class of some flavor that I can't remember but it is being taught by Stacey Steele, the flute professor at my undergrad university and wife of someone I wholly regard as a model for my life and mentor, Terry Steele. When she arrives to class, it's field trip day so we all get up and head out towards a van in a nearby parking lot. Before I get in the van, I walk over to a grassy area next to the parking lot where there is full concert band seating arranged and waiting to be used for rehearsal. Nobody is there except for three people sitting in what I think is the low brass section. I don't remember two of them, but the person I do know is Jason Shaffer, a very intelligent friend of mine from high school, someone I always respected who was much more academically talented than I. I talked with him briefly about some classes that we were taking at school. I don't remember what he said. Then I headed toward the van.

The next thing I remember is that the van took us to the Steele's home. Well, it was a home that was the Steele's in my dream but not their actual home. You know what I mean. Anyway, we were preparing to begin the lesson and the other students and I were all sitting on couches waiting for Stacey to come back. I felt alone and out of place. I didn't like the people sitting next to me. I was finding ways to judge them, although I didn't know any of them.

Suddenly, Terry and Stacey's oldest son Jeremy emerged from a door on my left. Jer passed away a few years ago and at the time it affected me in a way I find hard to describe. Maybe I'll post about it later but for now I have to get this dream down. As he walked around the couches, eventually in front of me, he morphed. He was no longer Jer, but just a random guy with a beard. The random bearded guy made a comment about a house cat sitting on the stairs. I looked at the cat. It was grey and white. When I looked back, he was now a youngish Asian-American hipster sort of character with very long, black hair, moustache, and long goatee. He was very skinny, dressed in black. Black t-shirt, dark jeans, black bandana helping to maintain the long mane of hair flowing down his back, black low-cut Chuck Taylors, and one of those faux rock star belts with all the shiny metal studs you can find at Target now. He told me, "Hey, I am going to work for EA soon!" (Electronic Arts is one of the largest American developers/publishers of video games in the US.)

"What IP will you be working on?", I asked, feeling a huge pang of jealousy.

"Command and Conquer," he replied. Then he sprang up some stairs two at a time and out of sight.

And that's the end of the dream. I woke up not long after, not remembering anything that may have occurred in the dream after that. Once I was fully awake and began processing this dream as well as things I've gleaned from counseling and my own introspection, I had a major epiphany. Like, the second one I've ever had in my lifetime kind of major epiphany. I've only begun writing it down after two hours of typing. It will come next.

Where is My Mind?

Where is my mind? Where is my mind? That Pixies song plays at the end of Fight Club as buildings explode and collapse. It's a perfect metaphor in the film and it's a perfect metaphor in my own reality right now. This is the second night in a row I've risen at three o'clock in the antemeridian and haven't been able to get back to sleep. Last night, I woke because my son cried briefly. I couldn't go back to sleep because I began thinking about all the bullying I endured as a kid. With the recent rash of suicides of gay teens, the subject has been front and center and I've also brought it up in counseling a couple of times so it's been on my mind. I was basically lying there cataloging names and events, rehearsing the moments, remembering the results. When I was done, I started over again. It felt like my mind was perseverating on the topic. I got up and worked on the track I released yesterday. Anything I can do to distract my mind from that topic usually helps my anxiety. I still can't go back to sleep but at least I'm not lying there upset and anxious.

Tonight it was a dream. I was in a basement, standing near the bottom of a staircase. I was with someone but I don't remember who it was. We were both wearing tuxedos. The basement was leaking water and it was raining hard outside. The water rose quickly. It was soon up to my chest and the person I was with was now almost disembodied, like they were floating. They told me it was time to get out of the basement. I quickly climbed out of the rising water and closed the door to the basement stairs. I was now in a kitchen watching rain splatter on the window. I didn't recognize the location, but there was an island in the kitchen with a marble countertop. As rain spattered the glass panes of the windows covering the wall behind me, an adult Paul Arnold, a childhood friend also wearing a tuxedo, toppled from his spot where his was standing on part of the counter. At that moment, water began violently spouting under the crack in the door from the basement. When I woke this time, my mind was racing. I was anxious and my mind flew through topic after topic, all of which were negative. I can't remember any of them specifically. I was worrying about all of them. I tried to stop thinking and go back to sleep but after forty minutes I couldn't stand it anymore and got up again.

I think I need to get more exercise and chew some Valerian root. (I did go for a run.)

The Road Goes Ever On and On

A while back, I wrote a little about what it felt like to run out of goals, to consider giving up on one of my dreams.  It's been over a year since I wrote those words and that time has now come.  For exactly 25% of this entire year, I was interviewing with a company that I'd wanted to work for for a long time.  I applied once three years ago but didn't make it.  I waited.  This year, another opportunity came my way and I applied again.  I didn't make it again.  I got very close but still didn't make it.  For all but one of the opportunities I've encountered since I entered this profession, that has been the case.  I just never seem to be quite good enough, not quite the right fit, without the right experience.

Fourteen years ago, when I first had the epiphany of what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was excited and naive.  Weren't we all?  I didn't know what I thought I knew.  But that's what inexperience is.  I was understanding enough to know that I had a lot of work ahead of me, work that I would have to do on my own because there was nobody to guide me, no trodden path to follow.  But I struck out on that trail into the woods with gusto empowered by the idea that if you follow your dreams with passion success will find you.  I found a few hopeful paths, met a few really interesting people along the way, but as the years went by, I never quite found success the way I had hoped.  I was successful in getting a job but not successful at accomplishing my goal, at making my dream come true.  So I adapted my goal.  I compromised hoping that my willingness to be flexible with my ideas would also be rewarded.  In a way it was but ultimately what I was doing became unsatisfying.

However, after the compromise the same thing keeps happening again and again.  Those rejection letters keep piling up around my feet.  I found that in changing and adapting, I had gone down some paths that didn't have a way back.  I got lost in those woods.  One of my favorite quotes of all time is attributed to W. C. Fields, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."  That is exactly where I am today.  I have tried and tried again.  I've changed my approach.  I've tried to change my outlook.  Perhaps all of my attempts weren't fully-hearted but I forgive myself just a little for slacking now and again.  It's hard to stay motivated when you keep trying to climb that wall and never making it.

So here I am, giving up on the dream I've held for almost half of my life.  Maybe "giving up" is the wrong phrase to use.  Perhaps I should just call it downgrading.   After all, I still want to do what I love.  But doing what you love for a living is truly a privilege and one that I was obviously never meant to have.   Some people say they have no regrets but I certainly do.  I regret that I spent the past fourteen years working for something that I will never have.  It stings to say that.  A lot.  But ultimately I come back to W. C. Fields.  There comes a time when you should really just cash in your chips and move on and I think this is my time.  I don't know where I will go or what I will do but a wise hobbit once said, "The Road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began.  Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way where many paths and errand meet.  And whither then?  I cannot say."

Just Another Creepy Fan Letter

Dear Alex, Geddy, and Neil,

I've never written a fan letter before so this feels a little odd. Forgive me if I don't gush correctly.

I just finished watching Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage and I realized that I'm now an old second generation fan. Was I asleep when the third generation came along? Has it been that long? I guess it has. As Rush, your music has gotten me through. Through what? Well, just through. Through high school. Through college. It's inspired me to work toward my dreams. And when my dreams were (are) crushed and abandoned, you somehow make me want to pick them back up again. Why do you exist to torment me so?

Even if I know your names, I have no idea who you are nor should I. But somehow, what you've done, the notes and words that you've written and recorded somehow make sense to me. I see pieces of myself in what you make and it inspires me to make my own pieces. One thing that was made clear in the documentary was that Rush has endured. But it's not an endurance that tires and grows weary despite moving forward. Rush's endurance adapts, it changes and emerges once again as a different beast without spending an eternity looking backward.

Let's get one thing clear. You are clearly my favorite rock band. Ever. There, it's done. With that out of the way, I can get to the weird, awkward stuff. I'm currently going through one of the most difficult periods of my short life and there aren't too many things apart from my family that make me want to keep going. But I sat there watching you guys on the screen, knowing that you've come through worse and were able to pick up and keep going. It made me feel like I could do that, too.

Maybe I can. Thanks for making me think I should keep trying. I've quoted this one before.

Though we might have precious little
It's still precious

I like that song about this wonderful world
It's got a sunny point of view
And sometimes I feel it's true
At least for a few of us
I like that world, it makes a wonderful song
But there's a darker point of view
But sadly just as true
For so many among us

Though we might have precious little
It's still precious

In the sweetest child there's a vicious streak
In the strongest man there's a child so weak
In the whole wide world there's no magic place
So you might as well rise put on your bravest face

I like that show where they solve all the murders
An heroic point of view
It's got justice and vengeance too
At least so the story goes
I like that story, makes a satisfying case
But there's a messy point of view
That's sadly just as true
For so many among us

In the softest voice there's an acid tongue
In the oldest eyes there's a soul so young
In the shakiest will there's a core of steel
On the smoothest ride there's a squeaky wheel

Though we might have precious little
It's still precious

The Toothpick

Between my grandmother and Al Jaffee, I've been heavily influenced to be a snarky bastard. Sometimes I just can't keep my mouth shut. Case in point, yesterday evening. Amy and I went to a short seminar at the local children's hospital on how to deal with our two year old. They even give you a small sack lunch for dinner that includes a cold turkey sandwich. The sandwich isn't great, it's a slice of american cheese on a pile of turkey between two slices of bread, but want do want for a free dinner at the hospital?

Anyway, for whatever reason, they put a single toothpick in each of the sandwiches. One of the helpful hospital attendants greeted me when we showed up and made a very distinct point of telling me to be careful of the toothpick. Being polite, I thanked him for the warning and tried to continue on my way. He persisted. "Sometimes it's kind of hidden so do make sure you take the toothpick out."

"Well, if I forget it's a good thing I'm at a hospital!", I replied jokingly.

He didn't really know how to take that and seemed a little dazed. I really wasn't trying to be mean or snarky, though. He said something about the hospital not being in the business of injuring people and then proceeded to offer to take the toothpick out of my sandwich for me. I turned him down stating that I could probably handle the toothpick on my own. It was one of the more surreal moments I've experienced recently.

I Just Can't Find the Words

This was the title of a continuing education session that I attended this afternoon as part of my professional development required by the college for which I work. It was the creepiest, most insulting fifty minutes of time I've endured in recent memory. Let me describe the scene.

The speaker's style was breathy and flowery, full of tangential anecdotes that made no sense. He would frequently pause for a few seconds before inhaling deeply and proclaiming "Oh boy," for no apparent reason. He would also take up to thirty seconds to study a piece of paper while the room, thirty colleagues full, sat in silence politely waiting for him to collect his thoughts and continue his presentation.

Style aside, if the presentation was worthwhile, we should overlook these quirks in the delivery method, right? It wasn't. He spent fifteen minutes introducing himself, talking about his youth in Queens, every place he went to college in his entire life, and why he ended up in Omaha. Now, as an Omaha transplant, I understand the need to explain yourself if you've somehow found yourself residing here after coming from, say, New York or Chicago, but the classroom probably isn't the place for that.

He then began a thirty minute stream-of-consciousness ramble about politicians who spoke without considering the ramifications of their words and why that upset him. However, he gave no solutions about how to go about prevent such atrocities of communication in our own interactions. Also part of the thirty minute poetry slam were descriptions of emails with colleagues in which someone said something he didn't like or used a word that he didn't feel was appropriate. Of course, no examples of that behavior were left without a complicated, tangent-filled rant about how he responded to the attack. No one in the room, including me, had the heart to ask him to consider why people reacted to him they way that they did.

Following the descriptions of emails that probably should have remained private, he then began to rail on contemporary mediums of communication like email, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. It was easy to understand how much he detests these things because every time he mentioned one of them he would intentionally mispronounce it, as if he were some kind of incredibly stupid Luddite who couldn't figure out that it's not pronounced "MyBook" or "TwitSpace." His reasoning for the contemptuous behavior? Everything in an electronic medium can be copied and printed, potentially ruining a reputation in the process. I found myself thinking that I could understand why this would be threatening to him.

At one point, he even told an incredibly insulting story about a conversation with a garbage man, which I paraphrase here in his voice:

I don't mean to insult anyone in the garbage collection profession, here, but listen to this story. A garbage man was emptying my recycle bin and mentioned something about the can 'not being able to withstand such an excessive impact'. I was impressed that he used such big words for someone without a lot of higher education.

Then he paused and continued, "But it's the recession so I guess we all have to do what we can," implying that the only reason the man knew such big words in the first place was because he had to take a job below his normal stature because of the poor economy.

At the end of his lecture, he asked the standard question, "Does anyone have any questions?" Of course nobody did because not only were some of his comments, in an unexpected twist of irony, completely inappropriate, but his thought process was so broken, so twisted in its logic, that I don't think any of us in the room could have even begun to decipher exactly what the hell his point really was in the first place.

As people filed out of the room, I felt like I was the only one who found his presentation completely insulting and worthless but as I discovered, everyone else was similarly disgusted by what they'd just witnessed. Thinking back to the event, I wish I'd had a recording to device to capture the insanity I'm attempting to describe. When it comes to describing it in this medium, I just can't find the words.

The Classroom is Flat

There's so much on my mind this morning. As someone who at this point I am sure succumbs to a very mild form of insomnia, I can tell you that it can be quite liberating mentally. Trust me, I have tried all sorts of techniques to regain my sleep state but none have them has been foolproof. My brain amazes me when I can almost feel my synapses firing and making all kinds of orderly and non sequitur connections and frankly, it keeps me awake.

One of the techniques that has never worked for me is reading a book. I don't read books to be entertained anymore. Fiction is so out. I mostly read to learn and be amazed at things I never knew before. But that doesn't stop me from trying to read a book to go to sleep despite it being an activity that usually activates my grey matter. My latest effort has been Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat," a book I always meant to read when it released but only remembered when I spied it at Half-Price Books for six dollars this past May.

The book now has me thinking about the flattening of education. One thing we examine constantly at my school is the generational gaps between our students and teachers and how we can fill those gaps by better understanding their expectations. Some have said that The Millenials, as they have come to be known, expect products or in our case, knowledge, to be handed to them without much effort. In faculty meetings, this idea usually inspires some rounds of groaning and gnashings of ivory tower teeth at the idea of corporate culture infecting the pristine halls of academia.

But corporate culture has come to be a part of our general culture, like it or not. People expect some service and they expect that provider to meet them at where they are. So I can't blame the current crop of students for having these expectations. How do I meet them where they are at, to use the parlance of our times, while still doing my best to push them to greater heights? According to Friedman, one of the biggest flatteners of our world has been access to technologies that allow us to connect to both people and information at a moments notice and that is what is keeping me awake this morning. I am brainstorming possibilities of what this concept looks like to educators, what sorts of solutions we might already have or that we might find, and what those solutions mean to future of academia.

I have not been a huge fan of academia at any level throughout most of my educated lifetime. I have had some fantastic teachers, however, and I would wager that none of them made any impact on me because they made sure to follow policies and procedures to the letter or to uphold every esteemed tenet ever devised by the system. They made an impact on me because they did something I saw as unique or, in some cases, simply listened to where I was coming from at any given time on a professional or personal level. I'm trying my best to be like them.

Drifting?

What happens when you run out of goals? What does life look like without a dream to drive you? I've never known. I've almost always had a goal of some sort. Sometimes they were quite small. Keep my girlfriend. That's a good one. Complete school. Another good one. Then they got larger. Make something of myself. In my case I wanted to make audio for video games. That one was a huge one. I even remember what year I figured that one out. 1996.

So I worked really hard to get there. I did everything I could to learn what to do and everything within my power to figure out how to get there. That little idea took me a long way from home and a long time to figure out. But even with the effort I put in, I never quite made it. I got comfortably sidetracked with decent jobs that were related but not nearly the same thing.

Now I find myself in a quandary that I haven't experienced for a long time. See, I keep thinking about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life and the strange thing is, I don't know anymore. Things haven't quite turned out the way I'd hoped with my current goals and opportunities. I'm sticking with it for the time being, but I'm just not sure about the long-term potential for satisfaction. The truly difficult part for me to accept is that my goal became my expertise. My whole life for the past thirteen years has been driven by that single directive and after a lot of thinking I've found that I just don't want to do that anymore. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why. One major reason is that things aren't the same. What I wanted to do 8, 9, 10 years ago has completely reinvented itself many times over and I've lost track of the skills.

So what do you do when you the path you've taken has come to what seems like a dead end? It would kill me to turn around and go back. I'm all about trudging forward. But I don't know where to go anymore. I don't know what I want. I don't really know who I am like I once did. It's been a long time since I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. When you're 14, you know you have your whole life ahead of you to figure it out. At 34, you don't have that luxury anymore.

This entry was inspired by a long-forgotten song that came up on the iPod today. It's by a long-forgotten band, The Gin Blossoms and it's called "29".

Time won't stand by forever if I know it's true
And I've learned not to say never
Or else I'll seem the fool
Twenty-nine you'd think I'd know better
Living like a kid
When my lies may seem less than clever
Is when I fall for it
Only time will tell if wishing wells
Can bring us anything
Or fade like scenes from childhood dreams
Forgotten memories

Some rides don't have much of a finish
That's the ride I took
Through good and bad and straight through indifference
Without a second look
There's no intentions worthy of mention
If we never try
So hang your hopes on rusted-out hinges
Take 'em for a ride
Only time will tell if wishing wells
Can bring us anything
Or fade like scenes from childhood dreams
Forgotten memories
Only time will tell...

Writer's Slack

It is sometimes difficult to get the wheels turning or the gears grinding in my cognitive machinery to write on a regular basis once again. There can be so many reasons for the apparent writer's block, none of which have anything to do with lack of subject material. First, after being gone so long, where would I start? So much has changed that filling in the monumental gap would take time that I quite frankly do not have. Second, if time is of the essence, should I record the major milestones from the minutiae of our existence, simply denoting events that occurred, or should I dig into some mental gewgaw, some philosophical plaything to purge some of that intellectual energy? In time I should get to both if I once again make a habit of sitting down to weave together these pointless threads of introspection that will someday be the only extant map of my existence. Onward.

The minutiae did indeed include some remarkable events during the last two months. We moved out of bucktooth central, our apartment building of six months, and into a house in a suburban Omaha neighborhood. Not so mysteriously, our physical and mental health improved drastically. Also, we celebrated Nicholas' first birthday on the 14th of February. He had a great time visiting with his Grandma and Grandpa B. and Nana (his great-grandma Moore). We did take some pictures, but I will have to find some other time to share them. Finally, Amy and I also celebrated ten years of marriage. It is a significant milestone, a testament to our devotion to one another. Also, we rolled over another number into a higher decimal place on the ball-and-chain odometer, like watching your car hit 50k miles, which is always a good time. On a side note, I find it wholly self-satisfying to not only have our wedding anniversary in such close proximity to a Hallmark (R) holiday but also the birth or our son which allows us the freedom to celebrate more personally meaningful events and avoid the trappings of an otherwise overblown day.

As for the other thoughts I have that I'd like to share, I will save that for later in the week. I am currently on Spring Break and will hopefully have the time to sit and wonder as I wander, metaphorically of course.

The Ol' Antichrist Hitler Ploy

I know I've been absent for quite a while, but this particular video made me poke my head of the hole for a couple of seconds. This is the funniest segment I've seen on The Daily Show for a long while. I don't know who is giving these crazies a legitimate voice but I know that this group must be stopped. Or laughed at. Heartily.

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Based on one of the best movie endings ever, one of my favorites anyway:

The Darkness

There have been a few moments these past months when things have been really dark: losing lots of money on our potential house sale, not being able to find a place to buy in time for our move, neighbors that don't seem to care that our building is on fire, Nicholas being sick twice in a row just when we have more work to do than ever to get things done for both work and house, Nicholas refusing to give us a full night's sleep, my school announcing massive budget cuts, no raises in the near future, and the potential to cut low-enrollment programs (i.e. mine) in the coming months. It just seemed to be getting worse by the day.

But there have been good things happening too. For instance, during the first week at least, I'm not finding my job an unending well of stress like I did last semester. Don't get me wrong, it's still stressful. But I can see how things fit together now. I can see the big picture for most of my classes because I've been through them once, so I know what I want to change and how to change it to communicate the concepts more clearly. I no longer feel the need to work 70+ hours a week to keep up. If something goes wrong, I'm trying to let myself write it off as experience instead of berating my lackluster abilities, which is something I've done for a very long time and a hard habit to break.

As for the school's budget cuts, I've been assured by my dean that my program will not be cut. The justification was something that I'd thought about, too, but needed to hear from someone more in the know to believe or trust. Basically, my program is new. They've just dumped thousands of dollars into it and it has the potential to grow rapidly if we can figure out how to best capitalize on the demand. Therefore, music tech stays despite only having about 12 majors to speak of right now.

Finding a place to live has been a giant bummer so far. We've basically resigned ourselves to renting. With the astounding amount of money lost on our house in Illinois, we cannot afford the healthy down payment we need to get the loan we want. We'd pretty much tap our liquid resources to muster 8-10%, which in the current climate, is still not enough for some banks to grant you the loan. So, the rentals we've seen so far have been pretty terrible until yesterday. We found a very nice house that a couple would like to sell but is willing to rent for $1100/month, about the same amount we'd pay in mortgage for anything we could currently afford to buy. It has three bedrooms, a family room with fireplace, a relatively new kitchen, a two car attached garage, and a mostly finished basement. It's very clean and well-kept, something we can't say of most of the other places we've seen. The only catch is that the owners would rather sell. So, we're hoping to get a lease drafted and signed before any potential buyers swoop in and snatch it away from us, not to mention our stuff is moving out here next week and we'd like to put it where we are going to live rather than a storage facility.

Again, I won't lie, things have been looking rather bleak around here. I look at our situation and in some ways it's the same as when we first started out, me working 60 hours a week for the $17K yearly salary that would just barely pay for meager shelter, food, and clothing, while Amy finished her graduate degree. It's certainly just as difficult, we just have higher bills to match the higher salaries. But if we can get out from under the house in Illinois and rent the house that we found yesterday, things will start to look up, some pressure will be relieved. If one thing should fall in our favor right now, we need this to be it. I hope it works out.

Postulating Theorems, Formulating Equations

A comment left on the previous post has me thinking about learning. How do we learn best? The comment involved learning from television, specifically sitcoms and cartoons. Is that such a bad thing?

We know that there are a number of different learning styles as well as multiple intelligences. I would imagine that there are quite a few studies out there that describe how these theories interact; however, I am too lazy to find them so I will just have to stick with pondering out loud.

I stopped and thought about where I learned the story of the tigers and the strawberry. In that case, I learned about it from my mother who learned it while studying environmental science in college while I was in elementary school. She loved the story and repeated it often, taking the strawberry as a personal symbol of contentedness. In other words, I grew up with the story. It's hard to remember not knowing it.

But what about things that were not taught to me by parents or teachers? I have an armchair fascination with philosophy. Why? Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Philosophers Song. Here were five or six men standing around singing about philosophers drinking beer. I had no idea who any of the philosophers mentioned in the song were when I first heard it. But I started looking into them. I started reading some of those philosopher's writings. Did I understand most of it? Hardly. But I kept at it and after taking a couple of college courses and reading on my own, I know a little bit about a few of them, specifically Kant who wrote quite a bit about beauty and the nature of the sublime.



I am not a Renaissance man by any stretch of the imagination. I have no interest in learning so many bits of trivia that I can out-remember someone on a quiz show. To me, the process is far more interesting than the outcome. After all, if I start exploring a subject and find it boring, is there any reason to continue? If I start a project that requires learning new information but fail, was my attempt a failure or did I at least learn something from the experience that I can take along in the future?

I guess what I'm trying to say in this giant ramble is that learning from sitcoms and cartoons isn't necessarily a bad thing if we take some time to find how the things we learn are interconnected and then explore those connections. If we do that, we'll never stop learning. In the end, I believe that if we take that idea far enough, we'll somehow arrive at Kevin Bacon.

An Overdue Apology

I used to be one of the thickest people I know. As evidence, I offer a true tale that takes place many years ago in which I went on a date. But, see, the thing is I didn't know it was a date. Now I'm getting ahead of myself.

The phone rang and when I picked it up, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to go to the movies. I asked her who else was going. She hesitated and replied that nobody else was going. I thought that was strange but maybe we'd run into some other friends there.

We didn't. The movie was Sister Act 2, a movie so abysmal that we should have been making out during the opening credits. We didn't. We watched the whole thing, mostly in silence. After the credits rolled, we chatted as I drove her home. I pulled into her driveway, thanked her for the offer of going to the movies, and politely said good night. She returned the pleasantry and seemed irritated as she got out of the car and went inside.

As the screen door slammed, I realized three hours too late what had just happened. It's been about fifteen years since that night and I never apologized. So, for what it's worth, if you ever read this, I'm sorry for being so dense and snubbing you so harshly. I don't think I could ever convince you that it was completely unintentional. I was just a dullard.

Strawberry

The last day of November and Nicholas is sleeping as I look outside through the sliding glass doors of our apartment. There is snow on the ground for the first time this season. There is still a month left to go in 2008 and already I find myself reflecting on all of the change that I've seen this year. Nicholas was born. I left my job of over four years and even made a slight shift in profession. We left Chicago, our home of seven years, for Omaha of all places. We also left our house for a temporary two bedroom apartment where I now sit on the floor. There was an election of some import. The economy staggered into problem territory like we haven't seen in 80 years.

Some of these changes are good. Some maybe not so much. But I mention none of them in order to attach labels. I'm just sitting here amazed that so much can change in a year. We expected Nicholas. The rest of it has been a surprise unfolding at every turn.

Looking at the snow now is like looking at a clean slate. Things are quiet and I feel a strange kind of peace that I haven't felt in a long time. It's taken me three paragraphs to figure out that the feeling is one of being in this moment and no other, being reflective but not in a critical way, again without assigning those labels. I'm also not planning for the future, something that tends to keep me up nights. I'm only dreaming of what it may bring, what other surprises could possibly be in store.

These moments are rare, but it's during these short epiphanies that I best understand the zen story of the tigers and the strawberry, which apparently, according to the link, had a very different ending depending on who told it and when.

November 4, 2008

Wuh Wuh Wuh

Yes, the switch to all-digital transmissions should be easy and painless for everyone.

Five Things

1. What were you doing ten years ago?
I had just finished undergraduate school and was getting ready to move to Pittsburgh. I may have just finished house sitting for a friend's family while they were in Europe and I was looking for a job. Just before I moved, I found one doing telemarketing calls for Time Life. I quit after a week.

2.Name five things on today's "to do" list:
a. finish my presentation
b. help Amy with planting the new flowers
c. spend some time at the neighbor's barbecue
d. change poopy diapers
e. enjoy my deck, some relative silence, and the beautiful weather while I relax on the intertubes.

3.Things I'd do if I was a Billionaire: I'd make sure Amy and I were set for retirement, set up funds for Nick, and make sure my parents were ok. Then I'd be a philanthropist.

4.Three Bad Habits: eating too much, procrastinating, general laziness

5.Five places I've lived: Slippery Rock, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, McDonald, PA, Chicago, IL, Morton Grove, IL.

6.Five jobs I've had: Composer/Sound Designer, Church Music Director, Cable Modem Installer, Music wholesale shipping department gorilla, dishwasher

7..Five People I'm Tagging:
JuJu, V, W, oKo, and that's all I got. :)