Tag: observations

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personal

We’re all children until 33

It is I

Me: I don’t think you’d recognize me back then with my glasses and double chin.
Her: I’ve seen pictures! I mean, sometimes I look and think, “Is that Logan?” But it’s gotta be, he’s the fat one!
Me: …
Her: What? You were a fat kid! You say it all the time!

When did you truly first feel like an adult?

As a kid, I woulda thought that I’d feel like an adult at 21. What a laugh.

Being at my mom’s place last week was interesting for a host of reasons, not least of which was that she immediately fell back into being my mom circa the late 1980s/early 1990s, and I resisted – as much as I could – doing the same.

That got me to thinking about an article I read recently where scientists had identified five distinct ages of the human brain over a lifetime

Now, I always felt like I was pretending to be an adult alla way up until I was 33 or so. That’s when the Reporter and I broke up and I decided I wanted to see what it was like to just date a lotta different women.

And I brought you along. See, I turned 33 in 2006, 20 years ago. Right when I started this blog.

Well, it turns out that it wasn’t all in my head.

The latest research shows that we all have four major mental changes in our lives that occur at: nine, 32, 66 and 83.

I have definitely seen my own kid change radically these past two years.

And I know that 2005-2007 were the most impactful years of my life up until that point in terms of personal growth – when I was 32 to 34. I met Alison when I 35 and I often told her that she wouldn’t have liked me if she had met me just a few years earlier.

Because I wasn’t the me that she met.

In some ways, after she died, I feel I reverted back to my old self for a (long) while. I remember thinking familiar thoughts from long ago for a while that I don’t anymore.

I have to thank Sara for pulling me back, honestly.

Years ago, I told you the story about St. Augustine.

The story is that St. Augustine was once this womanizer who once famously prayed, da mihi castitatem et continentiam…sed noli (“Grant me chastity and continence…but not yet”). It should be noted that he’s also the patron saint of brewers, as an aside.

Anywho, he was a frequent visitor of prostitutes before he changed his life around. Afterward, he went back to visit an old place and ran into a prostitute he used to know in that biblical way. He continued on his way so she tried to get his attention for his usual and called out to him, Augustine, it is I.

To which, he replied without stopping, Yes, but it is not I.

It’s the opposite for me.

I feel like I’m more like the me that I was before everything went down with Alison and my dad than I have in…well, I guess two years before all the madness started.

The last day I can remember – which isn’t necessary the last day it actually happened – when I felt the way I do now was when I was in Hell’s Hundred Acres so many years ago.

It’s almost as if I was lost in woods in winter all this time and found… well, not my way out, exactly.

Rather, it’s like I found a welcoming cabin – still in the winter, still in the woods, but it warm, cozy, and familiar. I could rest before the next part of my journey.

I’m grateful for the rest.

And I wonder what will happen with my head when I turn 66 for my next journey.

I hope I will still write about my terribly pedestrian life.

And I hope you’ll still read about my terribly pedestrian life.

Location: the studio for Scenic Fights
Mood: ex. haus. ted.
Music: the man I was before (Spotify)
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The kid graduated from elementary school

Wanting but not ready to

I always try my best to keep all my entries in chronological order because it acts as my own personal journal – I can’t tell you how many times in a week I’ll search through the blog for some bit of information

But the issue here is that the kid’s graduation was actually a full four days before the last day of his school.

So, that means that the first part of this entry happened before the last entry about the baseball game and the second part, after.

The kid let me sleep in an extra hour but after he woke me up, we quickly made our way to the 84th Street where his graduation was taking place.

Sara took the day off to come and support him, which I really appreciated.

Unfortunately, we were running about five minutes late, which Sara and barely noticed but the kid was apoplectic.

Him: (upset) What if I miss it!? I can run there.
Me: Dude, it’s 85 degrees, the bus is here in two minutes, and it’s six blocks from here.
Him: But what if we miss it?!
Me: We’ll be fine. You gotta believe in the system.

Luckily, the bus did actually come in two minutes and we were there within 10.

Him: We made it!
Me: Never had a doubt, kid.

Before I knew it, they had called his name, and he was up on stage getting his “diploma” and shaking alla his teachers’ hands.

The last time he graduated from anything was five years ago and I had so many mixed feelings then.

This time, I still had them, but it was less so.

Alison would have cried because she would have been so happy and proud.

Like I was.

Afterward, I quickly hit up the gym for two reasons: (a) to work out and (b) to let the kid play for a bit with his friends.

Then I took him and everyone else down to Chinatown to celebrate.

Me: What are you in the mood for?
Him: Hand-pulled noodles and soup!
Me: In the summer?!
Him: You said I could get anything!
Me: (laughing) So I did. Steaming hot noodles and soup in the middle of summer it is.

The next three days were weird as he “graduated,” but he still had school.

A lotta his classmates – he said about half – had already started their summer vacations. After all, we went to a baseball game until about midnight the day before his last day of elementary school.

But I suppose that he’s like me in that he wanted to spend time with friends that he would no longer see on the regular.

Because it finally hit him that he would never be an elementary school student again.

And, truth be told, it finally hit me just now as I wrote these words: He’ll never be an elementary student again.

He’s growing up, as he’s supposed to and as I want him to.

But, while I want him to grow up, I’m not ready for my little boy to grow up yet.

Location: Asheville, NC, having some fried chix
Mood: conflicted
Music: I never knew me a better time and I guess, I never will (Spotify)
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The Hakka Round House

Survival to Kitsch

Me: I dunno. I think we might be bored. And it’s in the middle of nowhere.
Her: I think we should see it. You’ve always wanted to see one and now’s our chance. I’ll handle all the logistics.
Me: Well, ok, I guess…

One of the things that Sara did for our trip, because I’d mentioned wanting to visit a Hakka round house – called a tulou (土樓) – was to discover that there was a replica round house built in a town called Miaoli in Taiwan.

I mentioned us visiting it briefly and said that I’d tell you about it someday.

Seems like today’s the day.

This is me standing in front of the replica.

It’s not so much a house as it is more a round apartment complex with an open courtyard in the middle.

For the replica, they built a glass roof over what is usually the open roof.

You can see how there are rooms all along the side of it.

Now, the reason that these things were round was pretty simple: The Hakka were living in a world that just didn’t want them and was always trying to kill them.

So, the buildings were round so that archers could defend the home from all angles.

They had walls that were up to six feet thick at the base to prevent siege weapons from breaking in.

On mainland China, there’s a whole preserved village of them in Fujian – what we saw in Taiwan was merely a replica of one.

Again, they weren’t so much homes as they were mini-fortresses that were meant to keep the inhabitants – my people – from being murdered.

I mean, think about that for a second.

Even if you’re not told that you’re hated and despised, just looking around you – being in remote areas living in fortresses that were meant to be completely self-sufficient – how do you not grow up feeling like an outsider and unwanted?

This was the mindset of the Hakka for thousands of years and one has to think that this mindset permeated everything about us.

In some ways, the Hakka are truly like the Jewish community in that, like them, the Hakka really focused on education and vying for positions of power.

Because, like the Jewish community, the Hakka were tired of being powerless and persecuted, so we have been over-represented in the military and politics post-WW2.

In fact, post-Mao, the most powerful man in all of China was Deng Xiaoping, a Hakka.

He modernized China more than any other single human being, including Mao himself.

In other words, (and this is purely my opinion but I think I’m right) he made modern China more Hakka-like and this is why China is so powerful now.

And that is why I’ve said, so many times in the past, that the US is not prepared to go to war against a country like China.

America is not prepared to go against a society that has, because of Deng, a culture based on education, power, and survival.

The Hakka survive shit.

You don’t know what you’re up against.

This isn’t the China that the US carved up in the 1800s and Japan beat in the 30s and 40s. This is one that’s modern and has learned its lessons.

Now, the immediately preceeding two pictures are of more replica round houses, this time, built on top of a department store in my my mom’s hometown of Hsinchu in Taiwan.

I find it funny that these things created for survival and defense have now become cultural kitsch.

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And like I said in my last entry, I think the Hakka culture explains so much about why I am the way I am: Focused on knowledge and education but never forgetting that survival is as much an issue of physical ability as well as mental acuity.

The Hakka round house is a synecdoche of the Hakka people, in my opinion.

Me: I think I’m finally gonna write about the Hakka round house. Hey, thanks for insisting that we go [when we were in Taiwan]. That was really cool to see.
Her: Oh, sure! I’m glad we got a chance to go.

The interior of the Yuchang tulou. By Gisling – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
The exterior of the Yuchang tulou. By Gisling – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Location: my regular rectangular pad
Mood: ridic busy
Music: I learned my lesson young (Spotify)
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The unexpected athlete

Couples Picnic Table Challenge

It’s funny – you know me as this peanut-butter, rum, and chili-obsessed dreamer but the world at large knows me more as Logan from Scenic Fights.

Which is definitely cool, don’t get me wrong.

But I find it humorous that most people know me as an athlete these days, something that I never woulda imagined in a million years growing up.

I literally played two games of base/stickball in my entire life.

And in high school, I doubt there was anyone in my entire school that was worse than me at basketball anything sports related.

And yet, somehow, along the way, I became exactly that.

Because we are what we constantly do and I’m as much at the gym as I am anywhere else.

The kid takes after Alison in that he not only loves to watch sports, something I have zero interest in, but also loves to play sports as well.

I think that she would be thrilled that he loves soccer and baseball, two things she always adored.

The kid unexpectedly got a chance to go with his school to catch a Yankees game the other night – he was out until 11PM – AND also got a chance to walk the field.

Plus, he came home with a ball from the dugout to boot.

Man, this kid’s face musta been sore the next day with the amount he was smiling.

Sara is pretty athletic herself – she played softball for years as a kid and tells me all about her childhood working with the track team in high school.

Seems everyone in her school was involved with athletics.

Plus, I marvel at her walking all the way to and from her office on the east side of Manhattan on the regular.

She also started coming with me to kali over a year ago, which is something that I really appreciate.

Which brings me to the videos below.

Before I messed up my back, Sara and I saw this video with couples doing the Couples Picnic Table Challenge.

Clearly, we had to try it.

The last time I did anything like this was with my buddy Lorin out in LA and he’s a professional. Ours was decidedly less refined.

In any case, the kid found it on his phone so I’m putting it up below (sound was awful so I just killed it).

This is not what I pictured my 50s to be like but, here we are.

Man, just watching this hurt my back…

Location: with the kids and my nephews having a sleepover
Mood: hungry
Music: We make it look easy, we make it look good (Spotify)
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The Knock-Offs

Seeing the moon

Me: (stepping outta the shower)
Her: (nods approvingly) Whoa!
Me: (grins)
Her: You are one good-looking old man.
Me: (frowns)

This weekend, Sara and I saw a movie for the second time with the kid.

The first film we all saw together was the black-and-white film The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Powell and Basil Rathbone a few months ago.

In that film, when Basil Rathbone’s character was killed, the kid was super upset. I had to tell him it was just a film and the actor was fine.

This time around, we saw Project Hail Mary and – while it took the kid a little while to get into it – we all ended up enjoying it.

The thing is that the ending upset the kid because it was so poignant and well done. I think that’s a good thing because it’s good to have a kid that’s empathetic.

Despite what some people think, empathy is a very good thing that the world needs more of and not less.

Me: Hydrox was the original; Oreos was the knock-off.
Friend: That I knew.
Me: (thinking) Well, did you know that the Big Mac is a knock-off, even down to its name? It was a copy of the Big Boy Hamburger, by…Big Boy Restaurants.

Right now, JFK’s in the news a lot because of everything happening in the Kennedy Center.

But JFK wasn’t supposed to be the leader of the Kennedy clan, his older brother Joe Junior was supposed to be the leader. But Joseph was killed at only 29 years of age while trying to bomb some Nazis.

Their dad, Joseph Kennedy Sr., knew he wanted a son as president, so he turned to JFK and groomed him for leadership – with equally terrible results, at least for a father.

For me, I don’t need or want the kid to be president. I just want him to be happy and a productive member of society.

But, if the kid vastly outshines me – which, let’s face it, shouldn’t be terribly hard because I’m a D- celebrity at best – I feel I would have done an outstanding job as a parent.

And I hope that Alison would have been happy with how I’ve been raising our son.

She trusted him to me and that, plus the fact that he’s mine, makes me want to do a good job raising him.

Honestly, I just want the kid to be better than me.

He won’t be a knock-off, he’ll be something better than I ever was.

That’s the hope, anyway.

Him: Is he ok? (asking about an injured character from Project Hail Mary).
Me: I dunno, I hope so.
Him: I hope he’s ok too.
Me: (nodding) Let’s watch and find out. You always have to wait until to the end to find out.

We all have to wait until the story ends to find out what happened.

I hope before my story ends, I can find out, someday, if he’ll see the moon.

Location: Broadway with Sara, daydreaming about apartments and al fresco eating
Mood: tech-y
Music: things go a little bit better when you plan it (Spotify)
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Everything you have now you once wished for

More than anything

Him: (playing guitar and suddenly noticing me) Hey, what are you doing?
Me: (standing at his doorway) Sorry, was just in the kitchen and heard you play. Didn’t mean to scare you.
Him: Oh. Do you want to hear what I’ve been working on? I can play you what I got so far.
Me: (wiping hands and sitting down) Sweeet! I’d love that.

My last entry stuck in my head because of a line I wrote which was that there was once a time I dreamt of having all that I have.

    • I have a great kid that is smart, talented, kind, and healthy. That alone is worth the world to me.
    • Speaking of kids, as a kid, I had this thing called Compuserve for like two weeks because I got some sort of free trial of it somehow. It was pre-pre-prehistoric Internet. And I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. My mind could never have imagined internet and alla you people reading me.
      • This is to say nothing about the communication device/GPS/music player/video camera/photo camera/translation device/television/video game system that we all keep in my back pocket 24/7.
    • I regularly look at Sara and think, “How on earth did I convince someone as drop dead gorgeous and sweet as Sara to marry me?”
      • Granted, I may have incriminating dirt on her, but still…

    • I wrote a book, or two, that I’m proud of and this blog has been 20 years of me just putting my thoughts out into the aether, hoping someone responds – and, most times, someone does.
    • I was a respected member of the bar, and my office regularly tells me that they’d love for me to come back and do more work; I remember being in law school anxious that I’d never find a job.
      • Heck, I remember being sick with anxiety about even making it to law school, or college, or my high school, or my middle school.
    • When I was a fat kid, I dreamt, more than anything, to be slim and have friends. I’ve now been slim for at least 12 times longer than I’ve been fat.

    • I’ve always had massive imposter syndrome when it came to my ability to fight but I just destroyed a guy that was my level, twenty years younger than me, and 40 pounds heavier than me. Just…destroyed him. And this happens more often than I would have expected.
    • My mortgage is paid off some six years early and I live in the heart of Manhattan, something I dreamt of all the time when I was in Cornell.

I could go on, but I don’t wanna sound like I’m bragging.

I’m not.

I’m just reminding myself that everything I have now I once desperately wished – more than anything – for.

And I couple this idea with another one that I heard someone say once: You’re in the middle of the last big great thing you wished for.

Alison and I dreamt so much – you cannot imagine how much, which is why her death guts me – about being parents and now I am one.

Yes, it’s not at all the way I thought it would be and it’s far more difficult than I ever would have imagined.

But still, I have to remind myself that I’m in the middle of the thing that Alison and I (mainly Alison) worked so hard to have.

May is tough on the kid and me for reasons you know, and this year has been no different.

But I’m better enough now to recognize that I need to be grateful for all that I do have and not dwell on everything that I don’t.

I’m also not in a hurry for the next big thing because this thing I’m in now, is pretty good.

Mostly.

Me: Hey can I…gah! What’s on your face!?
Her: (face mask on face and with a southern accent) Look Logan, you’re used to “Tryna Get Me a Man, Sara.”
Me: Wha?
Her: This here is “Done Got Me A Man, Sara.”
Me: I don’t think this is what I signed up for. 
Her: (shakes head) Too late. No backsies.

Location: where I belong
Mood: grateful
Music: There’s so much more. Be grateful (Spotify)
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The daily horrors

The Horror We Share

Sara: [My friend’s] moving back to Milwaukee.
Me: Even after her dad died?
Her: Yeah. She still has her mom. Plus, being back home made her miss it.
Me: I get that. I’ve only ever known or been in New York.

Sara and I were taking a stroll in the neighborhood recently when she suddenly jumped back.

Me: What?!
Her: (pointing) Look!
Me: What, I don’t…gah!

And that’s when I saw it – a full-sized replica of the monster from the horror film, The Nun just chilling in the passenger seat of someone’s car.

It’s just not something you see every day on the streets of the Upper West Side.

Then again, there are so many daily horrors that assault us that we barely register them anymore.

Sara has at least two friends that are either stricken with cancer themselves or someone they love dearly.

And I was just talking to a good friend of mine and he told me that another buddy of mine just left his job and moved back home to Florida to take care of his parents, BOTH of whom have cancer.

It truly is the emperor of all maladies.

It’s May again.

I think of Alison and my dad every single day but it’s always worse in May, although it’s not been as bad as it has in the past.

But even if I’m not reminded of them or their plights directly, I’m at an age where someone I know – either directly or indirectly – ends up getting cancer almost every single week and I think to myself:

Man, I know exactly what they’re going through. I hope they make it.

Really do.

Because it’s both jaw dropping and horrifying.

And yet, people just seem to go about their days as if everything is fine.

Then again, perhaps I truly am the weird one, because I’m so terrified of getting it and leaving the boy alone in the world.

Me: D’you know how many people get cancer in America?
Him: I gotta figure like…50%?
Me: Yup, you got that right. One outta two. That means, statistically speaking, you or I will get it. How people aren’t radically changing everything they’re doing in light of this information is beyond me.

My own mom is dealing with her own health issues – not cancer, thankfully, just age-related stuff.

But it reminds me that she’s mortal and not the young, vibrant woman that I picture in my head whenever I think of her.

It’s a bit like staring into the sun, I can only think about it so long before I have to turn my thoughts to something else because it’s too much to bear.

Can’t bear the thought of losing any more of my family. I’ve lost enough of them as it is.

I suppose that’s why people don’t radically change everything about their lives – because I think we’d all be paralyzed with fear if we truly thought about all the horror surrounding us on the daily.

Her: (staring at the nun mannequin) That’s so creepy. Who does that?
Me: Someone who wants to be in the HOV lane and doesn’t have anyone, I guess.

Location: home, trying to push all that doubt to the side of my mouth
Mood: horrified
Music: For when you go come in misery (Spotify)
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The last analog decade

The 90s were seminal for me

Her: Listen, you old geezer.
Me: Did you just insult me with a lame name?
Her: …yes.
Me: I don’t know what I found more offensive, the insult itself or the lameness of it.
Her: I apologize for the lameness. (pause) But not the sentiment.
Me: Fine.

Heard a fact the other day that blew my mind:

Back to the Future, which I saw in theatres, came out in 1985 and was about a distant time in the past, 1955 – which was 30 years prior.

Welp, it’s 2026 now and 30 years prior was…1996.

That was three years AFTER I graduated college.

This was Sara in college – waaaay after the 90s. But I did wanna say that she was probably outta my league back then (and maybe now too – don’t tell her).

Sara essentially grew up in the 90s but I went to college and became a young adult in the 90s.

The 90s were when I stopped being my parent’s kid (mostly) and started being my own person.

In any case, I read something the other day that echoed this about the last analog generation, which was GenX, my generation.

Me with Taiji master Erle Montaigue – he was a pretty polarizing figure, but he was always really nice and cool with me. Died years ago. I’d been doing martial arts since I was a kid.

If GenX was the last analog generation, then the 90s was the last analog decade.

I say this because I worked – deeply – in tech during this time and I saw firsthand that:

    • Analog media was still the default – newspapers, magazines, etc.
    • Online social media wasn’t really a thing yet – Friendster came out in 2002 and was the first real social platform that anyone used.
    • We shared stuff physically – tapes, minidiscs, CDs, etc.
    • We communicated both digitally and analog but digital was optional.

By 2010, this wasn’t true at all.

And now, literally nuthin is analog anymore.

That’s my buddy Kar who now has FOUR kids – one of whom looks pretty much exactly like her.

Everything is digital, which – let’s be honest here – is often better than what we grew up with.

But there was something about a life that was less superficially connected back then versus now, where we all seem to feel pressure to keep up with…everything and everyone.

Like, in the 90s, to have a social interaction, you actually had to walk out your door and strike up a conversation with someone or pick up the phone and give someone a call.

I met alla my good friends at that time either at college, or through people I met in college or law school.

And we all had more shared cultural experiences because we just had fewer choices available.

I can’t think of the 90s without thinking of this show.

The other thing is that I – and a lotta people my age – grew up as a latchkey kid, which really came about in the 80s.

For those of you that don’t know what that term means, a latchkey kid was a kid that came home to an empty home after school and let him/herself in and took care of him/herself.

But that meant that we were free from supervision and were pretty self-reliant.

Compare that with how attached people are to their phones and their social circles – even if a kid did come home to an empty apartment, he would hardly be “alone.”

Nowadays, there are cameras and speakerphones for a parent to check in on their kids, and a kid has any number of friends online with which to chat with.

Being alone is barely possible these days.

Rain and me, probably at Cafe Orlin or Yaffa Cafe downtown. A lotta the late 90s early 2000s was in cafes.

I honestly don’t know how much of the 90s remains with me nor do I know how those things manifest from me.

And that means I truly don’t know how much of my old analog life comes out in my current digital one.

But I know that it’s gotta because the 90s were such a seminal part of my adult life.

Looking back at all these pictures, it didn’t feel like it was 25-30 years ago, but the numbers/dates don’t lie.

While the 90s are long gone they definitely shaped how I see, connect, and move through this modern digital world.

And even though the digital world is better in a thousand ways, it doesn’t replace the feeling of growing up in a world where you had to show up in person to matter.

Maybe that’s why the idea that the 90s were the last analog decade hits so hard for me; it was the last time most things were analog and digital was a choice and not a requirement.

And the echoes of that last decade are something only I, and those of us that lived through it, can hear.

Location: in my head, the corner of West 45th Street and 6th Avenue at 3AM sometime in the mid 90s, stumbling home drunk from a club with numbers scribbled on my palm and wondering when life would be grand, not realizing that it already was.
Mood: nostalgic
Music: I can do whatever I want, I can see whomever I choose (Spotify)
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Visiting Cypress Hills

The Cemeteries of Queens

The other day, I had to head to Queens for a client.

Not my usual part of Queens – which is typically the northeast or northwest part of Queens, but the southwest part, that I never go to.

For those of you not from here, there’s this HUGE cemetery – which are actually several contiguous cemeteries – roughly in the middle of Queens.

That’s it dead in the center of that image above, that large green mass.

Anywho, I’m rarely south of that green area and, in 53 years, I’ve actually never been inside the cemetery, although I’ve driven past it my entire life.

Think most people around here would say the same.

Because I had to travel all over that part of Queens that day, and because I wasn’t really interfacing with any clients, I did it all on my scooter, which was actually pretty fun – especially considering that it was a gorgeous day.

Afterwards, I had to get to a station to get home and decided to cut through the cemetery.

Honestly, it was one of the more peaceful things I’ve done in my life.

There almost wasn’t a soul around and it really felt like I was in a completely different part of the world.

I did see one somber group of people all dressed in black like a murder of crows but, aside from them and a few grounds-keepers, that was it.

It was weird, because I could hear the birds clearly and the roar of the cars and the city in general sounded distant, the opposite of how it normally is for me.

Even managed to come across the Chinese section.

I was only there for maybe 30 minutes or so, but it was sobering.

Figured that every single one of these headstones had a story that ended in tears in some manner.

Thought about my own dad and Alison.

It’s May again.

I’ve still never gone to see Alison and I don’t expect to any time soon.

The kid’s been asking questions, so I’ll have to address that at some point.

For some reason, seeing my dad isn’t quite as bad.

In any case, I managed to exit the cemetery and make it back to the real world not soon afterward, but it stayed with me the rest of the day.

That’s all for now, I guess.

I’ll tell you more some other time.

Location: back in the grind
Mood: irritated
Music: For their curses to be broken we go wander ‘neath the arches (Spotify)
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The Elusive Obvious Villain

Turns out, it was me all along

Me: You know what I realized recently?
Her: No, what?
Me: I never really thought of it but, I’m 52, which means that I’m over half-a-century old.
Her: That is how math works, Logan.
Me: (laughing) I’m aware. It’s just one of those elusive obvious things that are obvious once you think about it but completely invisible to you when you don’t.

Years ago, I once told you this apocryphal story about Columbus and how he was able to stand an egg up on one side by itself.

In the end, someone said that it was easy, to which Columbus was said to have replied, “Everything is easy once someone shows you how.”

A more succinct way of putting that it was simply something that was the elusive obvious:

Those things that are stupidly and patently obvious, if you just sat down and thought about it for little bit.

In many ways, this entire blog is fulla the elusive obvious.

Was talking with a buddy of mine the other day – we met in our 20s and he’s a couple of years older than me so he’s now in his mid-50s and I’m catching up.

With my birthday coming up, I’ve been finding myself looking back on my life and realizing a lot of things that shoulda been obvious to me but simply…weren’t.

Me: I’ve reached an age where…you know what I’ve realized?
Him: What?
Me: Looking back, in so many interactions, I was the villain in the story.
Him: I have that – mine were mostly with women.
Me: Some of mine as well. I mentioned that to someone once and she asked if I’d consider calling them to apologize. But what would that do? It’s really just to make me feel better, they probably just are happy that I’ve never reached out to them. Better to just let sleeping dogs lie.

It really is such a wild thing to look back with older, and calmer, eyes and realize that you were the villain in someone’s story.

The thing that’s been bothering me the most, lately, though was that I’d never really realized just how often it was me until only recently.

Yet again, the elusive obvious.

And with most elusive obvious things, once I’ve noticed it, I can’t un-notice it.

Location: The middle of the Atlantic
Mood: It’s tricky
Music: I’ve gone identity mad (Spotify)
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