Tag: social commentary

Categories
personal

Syzygy

You held your breath and the door for me

Me: That’s a syzygy.

Her: What’s that?

Me: It’s a word that modifies two words different. Like Alanis Morisette’s song Head Over Feet where she says, “You held your breath and the door for me.” The syzygy is the word held that modifies “your breath,” in a figurative sense and ‘the door,” in a literal sense.

Me: I don’t know why I know that. I don’t know why I know most of the things I know.

Her: I’d guess that you were trained your whole life to remember facts and figures that you’ve read but not things that you experienced.

Me: (sighing) And that’s what sucks: I remember jokes about salmon and Janet, and what a syzagy is but…I can’t remember things about my dad…

…and Alison…

…and I so wish I could remember more. I don’t have enough.

Her: (nodding) I’m sorry, Logan. But, it’s cool that you know all these rando facts.

Me: I’d much rather be like normal people and remember…so many things I’ve forgotten.

I’ve forgotten more life than most people have lived.

Suppose that’s why I take so many pictures of such rando things.

Because I only remember things that don’t mean anything to anyone, not even me.

And not the things that don’t mean anything to anyone…except for me.

Location: in front of the tele, watching Monarch
Mood: wistful
Music: You are the bearer of unconditional things (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Not an entry about knives

Er hat ein großes Messer

Sara: What do you call a reluctant potato?
Me: I’m not…
Her: A hesitator!
Me: (sighing) Yeah.

I don’t actually watch much television or movies, but I did when I was younger.

I’ve always preferred reading but my attention span is that of a gnat these days – I blame YouTube and the rise of quick online articles.

But I still read every night, and I’ve been really trying my darndest to get the kid to read – oh he came back from camp today, BTW.

Him: It’ll be so weird to wake up without all my friends around.
Me: Sure, but I’m here.
Him: Yeah. And I get to sleep in my own bed.
Me: Always a good thing in my book, kiddo.

Speaking of books, I realized that, not only does he not fully understand how much he’s losing when he doesn’t read, I don’t think most people fully understand how much we’re losing.

Worldwide literacy only happened around 1965 – which is when over 50% of the world could read.

Assuming that 25% of the world being literate is considered widespread literacy, that only happened around 1925 – almost exactly 100 years ago.

That means that reading as we know it today was really only prevalent as a human-based means of communication for almost exactly 100 years.

Assuming, arguendo, that homo sapiens have existed for 300,000 years, that means that we’ve only been reading for .033% of our existence – not even 1% of 1%.

(I have no idea why I have that picture but, there you go)

  • If I show you a knife, you see the knife, and think, knife!
  • If I show you a picture of a knife, you see the knife, and think, knife!
  • If I show you either the word messer or 刀, you probably don’t think of a knife.

But Messer means knife in German while 刀 means knife in Chinese.

To know that Messer means knife, you have to know:

  • The alphabet and the sounds each letter can potentially make.
  • That the letters m-e-s-s-e-r together make the sound “mess-er.”

Only after you know those two things, you can picture a knife. It’s an added layer of complexity.

But if I said, Er hat ein großes Messer, to understand that sentence, you need to know all the aformentioned AND what each word means individually, AND the grammar structure of that sentence.

Then, and only then, do you picture a man holding a large knife as the sentence reads, in English, He has a large knife.

That’s a huge number of mental steps to achieve one single picture – that of a man holding a large knife.

And this ability to construct such a picture has only happened in 0.033% of our entire existence as a species.

It may be that the ability to write and read was only a blip in time for our species. We may well regress to the point where we can only communicate via the spoken word like children.

And then our brains will lose something singularly unique on our planet, perhaps the universe.

The ability to turn seemingly random squiggly lines into vivid pictures and understanding in our heads is highly unnatural and special.

Because, as I told you years ago, language is telepathy.

On August 23, 2026, at 9:03PM, I wanted to make you think of a man with a knife in Germany from my small apartment here in Manhattan, New York, USA and you did.

If you really sit down and think about it, that is amazing.

And that is what we’re at risk of losing if the kid and his kids don’t read.

That’s something I find just profoundly sad.

Him: But I read already.
Me: Dude you ate, right? But you’re gonna want to eat again, yeah? Books feed your mind like food feeds your body. And if you don’t feed you body properly now, then you won’t grow up ok. It’s the same with reading.
Him: (sighing) OK, another 20 minutes and then can I play?
Me: Oh for…OK. Read for another 20 minutes and then you can play. But you gotta read, man. It’s so imporant, you don’t even know…

Location: getting sidetracked in Brooklyn with my treasure
Mood: more complete
Music: der hat ein Messer doch das Messer sieht man nicht (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Getting from the world without expectation

Experience Camps

Me: I dunno, it’s a little early.
Him: (sighing) Ok, papa.
Me: (thinking) You know what, let’s just go. I don’t wanna be the reason we miss the bus.
Him: YAY!

The kid went off to camp today.

The same really wonderful camp he went to last year, Experience Camps.

Neither of us got any sleep last night: He, because he was too excited and I, because…well, I’m me and still an insomniac (although much better these days).

Even though we didn’t have to be there until 10:15 at the latest, we took off super early.

It was raining when we arrived – an empty parking lot in the middle of nowhere Brooklyn.

There was literally no one else around, so we just sat around for around 40 minutes until someone actually showed up.

Camp Counselor: So, what’s your…wait, you’re the guitar kid!
My son: (laughing) Yeah!

He was one of the first kids on the bus. He couldn’t wait to go.

I saw my own bus off in the distance and ran for it; it was gonna be a solid 15 minutes before the next one.

Heading home, I thought about something someone said once:

My son’s at an age where he still gets from the world, without expectation of giving anything return.

Soon, it will start to demand from him. And then Life will both demand and take.

And then my son, the child, will be gone forever, and he’ll be not-yet-a-man, and then a man.

None of which I’m prepared for.

Don’t think I’m ever prepared for the goodbyes.

Suppose no one ever is.

Him: I’ll be back soon, papa.
Me: I know. I’ll still miss you.

Location: in front of my non-functioning PC, realizing I’m gonna have to take it apart to get to a tiny battery
Mood: grumble
Music: I’m not losing you (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Everything is so plastic

Looking for something real

Met up with the Medemerge Doc the other day again for lunch.

It was funny because we’d ordered some beers and they didn’t have the one I liked so I got a backup.

Waitress: (walking over to our table with a full beer) The bartender got the wrong beer for someone and I didn’t want this to waste. Do you want it?
Me: (scoffing) Like we’re gonna turn down free beer.
Her: (laughing) Here you go.

While the doc and I were chatting – about AI again, but that’s another entry – I heard a voice call out:

NFL Player: Is that Logan Lo from Scenic Fights?!
Me: Hey! What are you doing in town?
Him: Had to take care of some things. Flying out first thing in the morning.
Me: Was it something I said?

Afterward…

Doc: That seems to happen to you a lot.
Me: That’s the kinda stuff that happens when you live in the same neighborhood for 32 years.
Him: (shaking head) If you look around and thought, “I wonder whicha these guys have been here 32 years,” I doubt they’d pick you.
Me: I choose not to get old.

Speaking of choosing not to get old, came across the most fascinating article the other day.

Essentially, the article says that the modern LED lights we use everywhere these days have very little red light in them.

And you know those red-light masks that everyone is wearing to fight wrinkles and such? Well, our modern lights are the opposite of those.

Perhaps that’s one contributing factor to why I age so slowly, because a solid 1/3 of all the lights in my apartment are grow lights – that is to say, full-spectrum light bulbs that feed plants.

I do it because I have plants all over the pad, which I feel we need – we need some bit of nature in our lives, more than just the 30 seconds it takes you to walk past the one tree on the street.

Well, it turns out that they may have more benefit to me than just that.

But that’s how it should be.

When we were walking to meet up with my Friends Around the Way the other day, we walked past this ground floor unit with all these fake plants in the window.

Her: What’s wrong?
Me: That just drives me crazy.
Her: The plants?
Me: The fake plants. Everything is so plastic and fake these days. Look at all the light they get – they could *easily* grow real plants, but instead of imperfect real plants, they want plastic fake plants. If that doesn’t encapsulate the world today, I dunno what does.

Everything is so fake these days.

I think most people are hungry for real things but don’t realize it until it’s too late.

And I’m not just talking about plants.

Editor’s note: Assume I make a tiny commission via Amazon Associates or something with every product link I have. I gotta figure out a way that’s not annoying to put this warning on alla my posts.

Location: all over Manhattan today
Mood: productive
Music: When I was a child, I loved the nature. Now I barely see it (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Self-loathing is a huge problem

I have a theory

Me: Lemme tell you this joke I heard once.
Her: OK, whacha got?
Me: A genie appears to this fella one day and says, “I’ll give you a $1 million but only if the person you hate most in the world gets $2 million.” Before the genie can even finish, the guy says, “Done!” And the genie goes, “I’m surprised you agreed so quickly.” And the man shrugged and said, “Why wouldn’t I want $3 million?”

We all have these secret and semi-secret beliefs that we keep to ourselves or share only with a select few.

For example, my friends in real life know that I believe that people don’t eat nearly enough fermented foods and that a hallmark of what it means to be human is empathy.

These are the kinda things that either one:

    1. doesn’t normally bring up in everyday conversation, or
    2. shouldn’t bring up in everyday conversation.

But recently, Hunter Biden said something that I’ve believed for years decades, which is that the most bigoted and angry conservative politicians that vote against LGBTQ+ rights are secretly closeted homosexuals that are deeply unhappy.

And it’s their internalized struggles that cause them shame and manifest in angry obscene rhetoric and homophobic policies against the LGBTQ+ community.

So, personally, I’ve always had this theory that, the more homophobic you are, the more likely it is that you’re gay yourself and just hate yourself for it.

Time-and-time again, we’ve seen things that seem to bear this out.

I mean, the number of examples we have are ridic:

  • The fact that whenever there’s a large conservative meeting, there’s always an uptick in Grindr – a gay dating/hookup site – activity in that area.
  • The number of formerly anti-gay crusaders like John Smid, the leader of a homosexual conversion group that ended up marrying another male pastor like himself.
  • Ken Mehlman: The former chairman of the Republican National Committee, and manager of George W. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, heavily touted anti-same-sex marriage initiatives to bring out the vote. In 2010, he publicly came out as gay.
  • Roy Ashburn: A California State Senator that never met an anti-gay rights legislation he didn’t like. But, the same year as Ken Melman, he too came out after being arrested for a DUI while leaving a gay nightclub with another fella.
  • Randy Boehning: A North Dakota State Representative who also never missed a vote denying any rights to the LGBTQ+ community. He was outed in 2015 after a man he was messaging on Grindr released unsolicited explicit photos Boehning sent him.
  • Ed Schrock: A US Rep from Virginia who co-sponsored the Federal Marriage Amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He dropped outta politics in 2004 after an activist leaked audio recordings of Schrock trying to solicit sex from men.

Those are just politicians. There are so many other examples.

If I listed them all, we’d be here all day.

Legit, every time I hear someone talking about how much they hate this person or that group, I always think: This dude probably wishes he was that person or in that group.

I think that so much of the misery of the world today comes from self-loathing.

There’s no way you can tell me the orange pedo and Musk don’t – deep and not so deep down – hate themselves.

Because they had awful parents and awful parents create awful kids.

I think so much of the world would be better if there were just better parents who loved their kids no matter what or who they are.

Even if they’re inveterate liars.

Man, Billy and Gertrude really knew what they were talking about when they said, The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

For me, there’s at least one person whose side, I am always on.

Here’s hoping that he’ll be better at being human than I.

Him: Can we video chat?
Me: Oh man, papa’s got…you know what? Sure. But let’s keep it to 10 minutes, ok?
Him: OK!

Location: a downpour, right outside of a hotdog joint
Mood: hot and sticky
Music: I hear the words I’ve spoken and everything comes out wrong (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Being squeezed out

Plus, a gift basket

NFL: My boys!! I am in NYC Tuesday or Wednesday. Drinks Wednesday 7pm? Or some other time?
Me: Tuesday works for me if it does you two?
Thor: How about Sugarfish sushi on 74?

The NFL Player moved outta my hood to a completely different state but hit Thor and me up to tell us he was in town.

So, we all met and caught up at the same joint we went to the last time around.

We’re all thinking more about retirement these days, so we talked about what our plans were.

Their stories are theirs to tell so I’ll just keep that part to myself but my own retirement – and, to a lesser and different degree, that of my friends – has been upended by (a) all the AI activity in the market, and (b) the pedophile in office.

Despite being a life-long New Yorker, I do think that, at some point, I’ll have to move as well because of the crushing taxes at some point.

Me: The only reason why I’d pick Florida myself is for taxes and easy access to cruises.
Thor: Yeah, but you’d also have to deal with the weather.
Me: And the guns and people.
NFL: The cities are blue.
Me: Yeah, I think most states – including NY – are like that.

When I was younger, paying taxes meant paying my fair share and that’s something that I still agree with the Democrats about.

But, it always seems as if it’s the middle class that’s being squeezed and the ultra-wealthy aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.

I think so much of life is balancing youthful ideology with older pragmatism.

I’ve met so many people that talk with pride of never changing how they think or who they are in decades.

I wonder if they realize they’re bragging to me about how little they’ve grown in all the time they’ve lived.

After all, At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide.

Before they left, Thor brought us to his whip and handed me this enormous gift basket.

Thor: [My wife] and I are sorry we had to miss your wedding celebration (because we were sick).
Me: Oh man, you shouldn’t have – thanks!
Sara: (later at home) This is beautiful! [Thor’s wife] has great taste.
Me: Hey, Thor’s an artist himself. He could have picked this out.
Her: Maybe? I just don’t see him buying us candles, that’s more of a woman’s touch.
Me: Fighters are secure in their masculinity, baby.

Location: the West Village this morning, doing work
Mood: productive
Music: conversations travel in the space that we find (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
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)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

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.

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by V O L T R E X (@voltrex_44)

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)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

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)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

The key to happiness

VR DINKS

Me: Facebook just asked me if I wanted to join their VR High School. (long pause) That sounds just awful.
Her: (laughing) Agreed.
Me: Like, who on earth would do such a thing? Who thinks that’s a good idea? Why not just have “VR Let’s Stick Two Burning Red-Hot Spoons into Our Eyes?” It’d be about the same.
Her: I would want VR DINKS – Dual Income No Kids.
Me: Yeah, young adults with freedom and just a bit of scratch.
Her: Exactly. But VR High School sounds awful.
Me: What on earth was Zuck thinking? VR High School: Relive having no freedom, no money, and constant anxiety?

Went to the kid’s school the other day for a presentation he had.

Essentially, it was a business project, with every kid playing a role in sourcing materials, crafting, marketing, and selling bracelets.

Went in and bought the middle tier bracelet ($3.75) because all the other parents already cleared out the first-tier bracelets ($5).

Him: Thanks for coming!
Me: Dude, have I ever missed anything you’ve done?

Don’t envy the kid having to go to school.

Granted, I liked being a kid and I liked parts of school – it was the only place where I didn’t feel that oppressive loneliness – although I’m not sure the alternative was much better.

Having said that, I remember wanting so much to be older. I try to tell myself that, there was once a time I dreamt of having all that I have.

I think being grateful for the things we once wished for and now have is the key to happiness.

While VR DINKS sounds like something that might be fun for a bit, I can’t really imagine life without the kid at all.

He’s just such a good little guy and I’m so proud of the fact that he’s so resilient.

Which is good, because he’ll have to be with the dense people that seem to surround him alla time.

Me: How was your field trip?!
Him: Below average.
Me: Oh man, do you wanna talk about it?
Him: Not really. (pause) Well, we were on the bus for three hours each way with NO AIR CONDITIONING. Everyone was super hot.
Me: Oh, that’s not good. I’m sorry, kiddo.
Him: And…the person there asked a bunch of questions. One of them was “Whoever lives with your mom and dad, step forward.” And (long pause and a cracking voice) I was the only who didn’t step forward.
Me: (sighing) I’m sorry, kid. Adults are really stupid sometimes.
Him: Yeah. I didn’t…it didn’t feel very good.
Me: (sighing again) Yeah.

I still sigh a lot around here.

Location: the gym, worried that I crippled someone. I did not. But he’ll need ice for a while.
Mood: forlorn
Music: she never dies. Wipe that tear away now from your eye (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.