Day: October 27, 2017

Day 2 of the 30 day challenge. A letter to myself as a child

Open letter to my younger self

Dear younger me:

Your life will probably not turn out as you expect. Nothing ever does. I am not saying it will be better or worse, just different. Don’t force it. A lot will depend on the decisions you make. Please spend time on your decision making, it will pay dividends.

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.  You can only get experience by living your own life so I can’t make it easy for you. You are going to make mistakes. You will learn from all of them. Cuts and bruises are going to happen if you live your life. A good scar is the beginning of a great story. Try to keep your mistakes to a minimum. Know a bad idea when you see it. Bad judgment comes from your gut, so listen to it. If your gut tells you something is a bad idea it probably is. You have it, I know you do. When you were a Junior in High School Billy and Rick tried to make you get in the car after we had been drinking all night. You said no, they called you a pussy. But two mothers had to identify headless bodies at the morgue that night, not three. Please remember that night it will serve you well.

Listen to your father. He knows. There are going to be times that you think he has no idea what you are going through, you will be wrong. When you are impulsive, he will want to slow you down. Hear him out. Ask him about his childhood, it will make you understand why he is like he is. He doesn’t always show it, but you’re the best thing that ever happened to him. Don’t wait until all you have is a gravestone to tell him how much you loved him. Tell him now.

Don’t be ashamed of where you came from. There are some uncles and cousins that are white trash embarrassment’s but they are family and a reminder of what you could have been if your father didn’t work so hard to escape it. They are where you started, not where you will end up. When they call you the rich kid because your father worked hard, joined a union and bought a house it’s their journey. Not yours.

Don’t pick your friends. Just be yourself and it will happen. The best people in high school are the ones that talked to everybody. Don’t wait until after high school to learn this. There will be a time when Nerds are cool.

Don’t shy away from hard work. Someday someone will ask you where you learned to work like you do. You will thank your Dad. And you will know that they are impressed by you. You will have friends whose Daddy’s will buy them shiny new cars. You will work for yours, and because of that, it will be nicer than theirs. Hard work will give you something you will always savor and desire, the feeling of accomplishing something. Hopefully, you will never lose that feeling.

You will love the ladies. When looking for “the one” look for cute and nice. You will find that Hot often means bitch. The hot ones always look for the next, better deal. The cute and nice one, if you treat her properly will be looking at you and she will be yours to lose. After the looks are gone, you will still love her for the nice. And you will suffer a broken heart, maybe more than once, I can’t tell you how many. It’s ok to marry the 2nd runner-up.

  • Be a good friend. It’s a rare and valuable commodity.
  • Be kind to others. It’s free.
  • Talk to old people. You will love them and they will love you.
  • Listen more than you talk. It will serve you well and people will wonder what you are thinking about and it will piss them off.
  • Don’t argue with stupid people. You lose IQ Points and they don’t absorb them.
  • Wherever you are, that’s the place to be. Don’t look around when you’re with someone. They hate that.
  • Always tell people how you feel about them. They need to know. It might make someone’s day.  It might save their life. And it might be someone’s last day. You don’t know and that’s the bitch of it.

The rest you are going to have to figure out for yourself. Be a good person and life will be good. Your legacy is how you are remembered by others. Work towards building that legacy starting…now.

Oh yeah, don’t let bitterness drag you down. It’s like an anchor and it will sink you. Let some things go, you’ll thank me for it.

Fondly,

Your future self

Goodbye to the “Work Friend”

The wake was early, viewing 8:30-10:00 and funeral immediately after. I had a doctor’s appointment at 11:30 so I couldn’t go to the funeral. I was there at 9. I had to leave at 7 AM to do it but I made it.

I was pleased to see the turnout. For a guy that we thought was a bit of a loner, he had a lot of people come out for him today. Even though I have known since Tuesday of his passing, and memorialized him in a post yesterday, it didn’t fully sink in that he was really gone. As I stood over his open casket it became very real.

We said goodbye to a very good man today.

I wouldn’t call John a friend, more like a work friend. I don’t know what he did on the weekends but I always suspected it was boring. But Monday through Friday we had a great work relationship that started a little rocky, we had very different personalities but grew into one of mutual respect and personal familiarity. He was there when I started and we walked out the door together when the company shut its doors. It saddens me now that he didn’t cross my mind much after we said goodbye that day. Like a said, more of a work friend.

Of course, I didn’t know he would be dead in 18 months.

John was a nice guy. We all know the “dead mystique”, everyone is nice when they’re gone. I’m sure there are people who thought that Jeffrey Dahmer was a nice guy. There’s no accounting for taste (see what I did there?). But John really was. He never spoke badly of anyone. He turned and left if people began to gossip. He was always willing to help. He cared for his mother tirelessly for years. He called his brother every night at 8pm. He took care of himself. And the aneurysm that shot to his brain on Monday night didn’t give a shit about any of that.

I’m glad that I tell people how I feel about them, of course, it can go the other way also. I have lost too many people in my life and I am sick of talking to tombstones. It’s too late when you’re saying it to a piece of marble. I know that on more than one occasion I told John how much I appreciate him, and he scoffed it off in his self-deflecting manner. But I take solace knowing that I did.

Death is so random. It doesn’t care who you are, what you did or how you did it. Good people die young and bad people die old. It makes belief in God difficult if you are one to try to make sense of things. I am so comfortable in my not knowing how it works that I will continue to tell people how much I appreciate them. Because tomorrow may be too late.

The guy in the corner cubicle

Image result for lost friends

you were the quiet guy in the corner cubicle. The guy who nodded shyly as I was introduced around the office the day I started.

you were the guy with the tedious job that you were good at, or so you were told because no one else wanted to do it.

You wore the same outfit on the same day each week.

We jokingly called you “Rain Man”, not for your astounding intellect but for how flustered you got when you had too much on your plate. I felt bad for calling you that sometimes.

you would end up being someone I dealt with extensively every day.

You were the guy that took a while to make small talk.

you were the guy that I made a real effort to understand in order to better work with you. It was worth the effort.

you were the guy that when I spent time with him you loosened up a little.

you were the guy that started poking his head in my office to just talk politics. You were a news junkie like me.

you were the guy who gave me a box of newspapers from the 60’s because you knew I loved history.

you were the guy who I definitely noticed when you were not at work, which was rare.

you were the guy who lived with his mother and I suspect was a virgin.

You were the guy that asked me to keep him in mind when the company closed and we parted ways after 8 years.

you were the guy that got a new job finally after almost a year on unemployment.

you were the guy that didn’t show up for his first day.

you were the guy that was found dead in his house that night.

a guy that I am glad that I knew.

a guy that I am going to miss.

you were the quiet guy in the corner cubicle. Your name was John