Confessions From the Fog

A vice grip can be a handy tool. It can also be a metaphor used to define situations in which life is pressing down on all sides leaving one with little to no room to even exist. St. Paul makes reference to this. Money can be a vice grip when you live paycheck to paycheck and all your money is gone the day you get it and somebody always wants more. Friends and loved ones can pull you in different directions and, if you're a people pleaser like me, you can't satisfy them all and somebody is left feeling disdain.

The situation quickly becomes a mountain it seems impossible to surmount. And there you sit. 

Because of negative cognitive bias, we tend to only focus on the bad things, and it becomes like a dark veil overshadowing all the good things happening. Or a very dense fog that when you try to look through it all you see is a gloomy nothingness so close it's suffocating. 

How does one combat it? I'm currently trying to figure that out. 

When the sun does manage to come out and burn that fog away, the positives that shine through seem to be frail, fleeting moments of joy before night falls and the crippling fog sets back in, leaving one clueless as to when the sun will come out again, and this can be even worse than a vice grip, squeezing ever harder as like an addict fixating on his next high one seeks out the happiness that has just eluded. Motivation to do anything evaporates, as one no longer finds joy in things they once did. 

And the vice grip tightens, and even more pressure is exuded. All internalized, all encompassing stress constricts one's ability to think or act or do. One goes through the motions day in and day out, and even that is trying, like trying to get through one's day with a migraine. Life becomes a migraine, and all one wants to do is sleep. 

And then sleep comes, and you wake up in that same fog, not feeling rested at all. 

Not feeling anything at all. 

Nativity in Nothingness

As a husband and father currently living apart from his family due to economic situations semi-outside of his control, it becomes a substantial task to define the word "Home". for the first 10 years of my life I grew up in Suburban Milwaukee and the subsequent two thirds of my life was spent in an exurb about an hour away, and as such I cannot really ever use the phrase "born and raised in", or really claim to have a hometown, and for the last year of my life I've spent it split between two hour-away exurbs of the aforementioned Milwaukee. As such my children will also be in my predicament of never being able to claim a hometown. 

But is that really such a bad thing? One shouldn't be known by the identifying place of birth, not even the place one spent most of one's life. That should not define a person. 

But what is home?

When you're in my not-so-interesting predicament of having to decide between four plus cities to take up residence in, the question becomes muddled with very conflicting scenarios. These scenarios are further complicated by the fact that no two family units are alike, and what matters to one might not be so much a factor in another. One parent's job in one city, the other's in a different, children at school, parents and family in both, not really having a strong affinity for either city really...the difficulties mount. 

Through it all what I really want, aside from one roof, is some clarity. Direction. I want to know that whatever choice is made, it is what's best. The peace of "home" that some people take for granted, is everything I want right now. 

And not to have that makes me feel defeated. 

To not know what to do, to feel helpless in your current situation, to equate it with a hopeless cause, is one of the worst feelings. To struggle with it day after day is brutal. St. Jude pray for us. 

My life in recent years seems to be possible to parallel a plot line of Grey's Anatomy, complete with family drama from multiple sides, LVADs and heart transplants, deaths of family members, recently discovered family previously unknown, family secrets coming to light, diagnoses of autism, mental disorders, cardiomyopathy, on again off again platonic relationships, moving in and moving out, rushing around while life happens in the middle of it. For me, I identify closely with Meredith's coming to terms with her neuroses. I've learned a lot about myself over the past seven years, things I never realized about myself or had never taken the time to acknowledge. 

Home. 

The question quickly turns to "How quickly can I rectify my current situation" from "What's best for my family" and then becomes a dichotomy that my brain bounces back and forth between. But then...is it a false dichotomy, in that the two can overlap? Maybe it's not black and white. Maybe it's a gray of "What's best for my family IS to quickly rectify my current situation", that regardless of what locality we choose to base our particular family unit out of, we will truly be...home.

Easier said than done, because cognitive bias steps in to have its say, and soon you find yourself right back where you started from. And days, weeks, months pass, and nothing ever changes. 

To put it bluntly, a radical fire of change needs to be lit under my ass to get the ball rolling. But fire burns, and I don't like pain. But maybe it's a cathartic, purifying burn that will generate a Phoenix of loveliness that I, in my current situation and state of mind, cannot fathom. 

In Which I Dissect Living vs. Existing

I'm not having a good day.

I'm just going through a rough patch. 

Cliche? Perhaps. But you know what? That's okay. Mountain ranges are bordered by valleys. Plains even. And in the case of this country, the Great Plains seems to go on forever. Believe me I know, I've driven through Iowa and Nebraska. (Nothing against those particular states they are very lovely states) Flat, yes. But that's okay too. There's beauty everywhere if you open your eyes to see it. And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?" In the valleys of life we, or at least I, get pensive. It opens new perspectives. Granted, not being a perfect person I also get apprehensive and impatient and "grumpy af" in those valleys, but there is a time to be pensive in those valleys. This would happen to be one of those times.

Right now, if you were to ask me, in relation to the aforementioned Great Plains reference, where I am at this point, should I "find myself behind the wheel of a large automobile", I would say I am on I-80 just as you enter Colorado from Nebraska. I can see the Rocky Mountains in the distance, it's a ways off yet, but it's there, becoming more and more tangible the closer I get. Yet somehow...something seems to keep pushing me back eastward on the interstate, as it were.

And so the days go by, (insert subtle Talking Heads reference to Once in a Lifetime here), day after day equating hour after hour of driving through the flat plains states because you really just want to go to the mountains. You take a rest stop, see the World's Biggest Ball of Yarn, and that gives you a bit of excitement, you stop at a restaurant in Omaha that you've never heard of, and not one of those generic "Family Restaurants", I mean a greasy spoon truck stop where you leave almost wishing you hadn't eaten so much but it was so damn good you'd do it again. You stop at the Corn Palace if you happen to find yourself in South Dakota. Wall Drug even. You just do it.

There's beauty everywhere if you open your eyes to see it. Sometimes you have to force your eyes open and look, even if you don't want to look, because if you don't, you will be consumed by the valley. For the sake of one's sanity, one must tryto find the beauty. (I feel the need to apologize to Iowa and Nebraska again, for what could be inferred as you having to try to find beauty in those states. Again, they're very lovely states.)

A moment of clarity, enlightenment even, and you can visualize the road you must take to get where you want to go. I know I've made map/driving references before, but I can just relate that way. You realize that you are on I-80. And before long you will be on I-76 heading down into Denver. The Rocky Mountains are within your grasp. You are heading in the right direction. You really just have to be patient as you coast across the plains (OK I REALLY HAVE TO STOP WITH THIS METAPHOR OR IOWA AND NEBRASKA ARE REALLY GOING TO THINK I HATE THEM SECRETLY).

Same as it ever was. Nothing's changed, nothing's changing, I'm not really living but merely existing...no matter how you say it, this is the time where if you allow yourself to dwell on those thoughts your car will simply stall out and you'll be in the middle of nowhere (literally). Not only will you feel lost, you'll be lost, in that you know where you are and where you're going, but simply cannot get to your destination. You have to turn your head back and notice how far you've come. You may not feel like you've made it far at all. But you've just driven for a frickin day and a half, man. Some people go their entire lives and never leave their home state. You're two or three states over. You'll get to the mountains.

Look for the beauty where you are. In those corn fields in Iowa, you'll never see fields so green. Look at how deeply green they are against the blue sky dotted with cotton ball clouds.

It's not so easy to do. But if it takes celebrating the small victories along the way, as in "Yay I made it through Omaha!", "Yay, I'm halfway through this state!", "Yay, I'm straddling the Platte River!"...whatever the case may be, by celebrating those small victories you are acknowledging that you are getting somewhere. You are far from your initial starting point where you went "Okay, here we go...two days of driving and we're off."..........not much excitement there. This obviously can lead to bouts of impatience, "When the f*** are we gonna get there?!??" ....but even that, when you look back at your initial starting point, is tangible evidence of just how far you've come.

Shaking Fists at the Teacher's Silence

So here we are, 2016. And amidst all the "New year, new me" nonsense, I find myself in the same doldrums as I was in 2015. I still don't have a roof of my own, rented or mortgaged. I still find myself a level 2 with the hope of getting a promotion to level 3 this month. I still only have 27 of 120 college credits with a total of 40 by the time I finish the assignments I've been rescheduling since October. And yet, there is hope. Patience still needs to be exercised, and yet it seems easier. Everything is still as up in the air as it was a week ago, but the outlook is not so dreary.

Let me just state that Facebook and Vine are thieves of time! Thinking about what I do with my evenings...all I can come up is Facebook and Vine. Then I think to myself no, that can't be it. And then I realize that yes, it really is. Why do I really not read much anymore? Why have I not done anything school related for a couple months? Well, Christmas is one reason. But other than that, Facebook and Vine. For that matter so is blogging but for one, I didn't do that very often but for two, it's different because I get to tell a story. So I'm not counting blogging. So okay, now my challenge is to work on spending less time on them.

The teacher is always silent during the test.

I'm trying to redirect my impatience into Hope. While my current situation leaves a lot to be desired, we've come a long way from where we were a year ago. Two years ago even. I tend to lose sight of that fact more often than I should. Lately I've been focusing on what is happening now versus how far we've come. And I've taken steps already three days into the new year to make some necessary changes to how I do things. I've started reading The Hunger Games, I've begun work on one of my overdue assignments, and I'm writing this blog post, as well as brainstorming ideas for my children's series. And really, why should I care about Facebook anyway? Nobody pays attention to my posts anymore, and I'm tiring of seeing all these dog posts anyways.

Time management has never been one of my strong suits. Neither has organization.

So I'll take it week by week. I'll set little weekly goals as long as my attention span allows. Then revisit on Sunday, reassess and reassign as needed. Why does something so obvious seem like the greatest idea no one ever came up with before? Duh moment. (Spoiler Alert - since writing that, I have put it into play, and it has truly worked wonders for me. Out of the 5 acheivable goals I've set for myself, I've already done 3 and it's only midweek.)

"Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset." St. Francis de Sales

So I'm talking to one of my best friends while walking on my lunch break, and mind you, he is a dairy farmer. So we're talking, and I can't even remember what it was about when all of a sudden I hear on the other end a noose, followed by him saying "Ugh, thanks for Crappin' in the foot bath, Wanda." That will now never not be a thing.

I've been told recently that I have an "elegant and sophisticated writing style"...on a college paper I wrote that I got back to make revisions on because it just wasn't quite ready to be considered "mastered". I believe I will share that in an upcoming blog post. It's one thing to hear from your friends and colleagues, but from a complete and total stranger who doesn't even know what I look like, it just blew me away.

And really here's some insight I've just now gathered regarding Facebook. I'll go through my "on this day" section and yeah for the most part it's a trip down memory lane right? Then you come to this far out post that you made years ago about something big at the time. My example, my getting-fired-slash-quitting the bank. One comment. You open it up and apparently that person has blocked you. Dafuq?! So you spend all this time creating this life--sometimes pseudo life--on Facebook when clearly who are you really out there to impress!? People don't give a shit as much as you think they do. You really want to diary your life? Make a blog or YouTube videos. For me, that's my scrapbook of My Life as I Know It. A video scrapbook is even better. A blog will capture your inner feelings, your true insights on life, way better than a stupid flash-in-the-pan-Facebook-post or share will ever do. A video brings that person to life, as if they're right beside you as you remember them.
That's what I'm going to focus on this year social media speaking. Thanks for crappin in my foot bath of life, Facebook. (Ironically enough I will share this post via Facebook.)

No But Seriously...

Patience. 

Every time I say or think the word I think of the Guns 'n Roses song. It is one of the hardest things to do. Be patient. Wait. It's one lesson that for the past few years has been driven down my throat from Above. And not just for me either. Everything involves waiting. Waiting in line, waiting for payday, waiting for job opportunities, waiting for promotions, waiting for credit to heal, waiting for a baby to be born, Waiting to find out whether it'll be a boy or a girl. Waiting on a transplant list, waiting to hear results fr a test determining whether or not you have cancer, Waiting for a job interview while going about day by day at a job you hate that barely pays the bills. Waiting for summer. Waiting for a vacation. Waiting for the ratchet girl in front of you to turn her damn car.  Need I say more?

We are creatures that want answers and we want them now. Unfortunately there are just some things that Google can't answer, though how much would we love to just type it into the search bar anyway?

The situation can be likened to a road map (one of my favorite things). Because we can't see the future, we are zoomed into a neighborhood of a city. We can see the local streets but we can't see the principal arterials and highways that take us out of that city. We know what we want, or where we want to go, but how to get there is the big question. And the more patient we are, the more the map will zoom out so we can see it. Kinda like using internet explorer as your browser...and when the time is right, the map will zoom out far enough that we can see the highway to get out of where we are and begin the journey to where we want to be.

And so we wait. While we feel like the wait will physically kill us, we know that it is just a test. We are being tossed into the crucible to be tried by fire and we know we will come out of it a better person, and the lessons we learn during the wait will last going forward and afford us a greater level of patience and understanding. The circle turns, the hourglass fills up, and we sit hands folded in our laps (remember computers class, 90s kids?)

And if we don't get the answer we want, or have to wait longer...take heart. Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on (apologies to Led Zeppelin). A new day will dawn for those who stand long and the forests will echo with laughter.

And it makes me wonder...