Tag: humor

Good enough

I have struggled with the notion of “good enough” for most of my life. I cannot tell you how many of my nearly 60 trips around the sun have been spent in a state of self-imposed feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Now, I acknowledge the hyperbole in the previous statement, it’s not as if it consumed me. But it was always there. I’ve never felt good enough.

Then, one day I asked myself a question that changed my entire outlook.
“Who told me that I wasn’t good enough?”

Nobody. That’s who. Except for me of course. And I have absolutely no damn idea why. Maybe by my peers? I will admit that, despite boldly and loudly stating the contrary, I care what people think of me.
Not my co-workers. I have always been very focused in my work, regardless of the vocation. I always worked hard and, while I have been not so good at some things and received mixed reviews I have also received accolades for things that I am really good at. The accolades were fine. I liked them as much as anyone I suppose. I was raised to not only be a good worker but to also be the top guy, the irreplaceable one. So anytime my boat would sail anywhere close to that point, I enjoyed the moment. But it was fleeting for me at best. In my heart, I am really about accomplishment. So to me, an accolade is worth a tablespoon of dog shit if said deed or situation doesn’t end up with a meaningful outcome. I am an old-fashioned guy, I like to see results. Therefore, at work, I was always, at the very goddamn least, good enough.
My father certainly didn’t tell me that I wasn’t good enough. Dad, with whom I had a complicated relationship, would never, in a million years have said something as toxic to me. The worst thing he ever said to me was,
“I’m disappointed in you.”
That stung like a bitch in and of itself. But that made me want to do better. Because I have always, even after his death, sought his approval.

Looking at that last sentence, reading it again and again, I realize that I may have just answered my own question. I do seek approval, maybe validation is a better word, and I hate it. I really didn’t make the (perhaps apparent to everyone else) connection between that and the omnipresent feelings of inadequacy I have been plagued with for so long until now. It may be as small as wanting to be liked, or as deep as a fear of dying in obscurity.
I don’t want to be famous. I don’t care about money. I want to leave every place I go and everything I touch a little better than I found it. That’s it.

Am I comparing myself to the person I want to be?

I hope that’s it. Definitely something to explore further.

Entitlement

Nothing screams hypocrisy more than a tiktok video generated by a white woman in a car with leather seats, wearing a designer sweatshirt, with expensive sunglasses adorning her head screaming into a $1000.00 iPhone about “entitled Americans.”

I shouldn’t have to say this, and I probably shouldn’t, but here goes…all Americans are entitled. You can see it everywhere if you look for it. It starts with the sayings we hear all the time.
“I’m going to get what’s mine!”
Excuse me, but what exactly is yours? Is there a locker at the local bus station containing a box labeled yours? Are the contents a bag of cash and guaranteed happiness? No, nothing is yours. You have to earn it. Through hard work, dedication, and sacrifice. Even then there are no guarantees, just opportunities.
“I deserve it.”
The three words I will never, ever say. I deserved to get my ass kicked in High School when I shot my stupid mouth off to the wrong guy. I don’t deserve anything else. Nor does anyone else. If you’re fortunate, life will repay you for what you put into it. If you work, you get a check. If you help someone they may help you back. Any other expectations might as well come from rubbing a bottle. Nobody deserves a damn thing.
“The Constitution guarantees my happiness.” No, it guarantees the pursuit of it, not the actual happiness.

That’s the point here after all, when did we start believing that we are supposed to be happy and something is wrong and worse, that it is somehow due to a failure on someone else’s part?

We’ve been sold the American Dream, which is a bill of goods that basically says that we are exceptional and are not vulnerable to the same perils as every other country. So we feel comfortable in the future so we don’t save money; we don’t think about consequences because we believe everything will work out. We’re entitled to it, or a bailout when it doesn’t happen. And when it doesn’t, we expect it to even itself out. And there is no guarantee. Life is not fair, nor is it always fun, and in a lot of cases it just plain sucks. People have problems, bad ones, and it is often due to no fault of their own. Life can be brutal yet we, as entitled Americans, expect happiness. I am of the opinion that happiness is a subjective notion. It is based on expectations and those expectations must be modified for the times we live in. With all of the stressors of the world today, even those with a relatively problem-free life consider happiness what you can experience in your free time. After work, weekends if you’re lucky enough to have them off is the time that we do what makes us happy. Spending time with our families or friends or indulging in activities or hobbies, you get the point. If we get enough of that to balance out the effect of what sucks in our lives, we can say that to a point, we are happy. But thrilled is questionable, ecstatic unlikely, and euphoric is just not happening.
Because life is hard.


I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s just a fact. Americans are entitled. Even the lowest among us has a life that any of the millions of people trying to get into this country would call happy.

Childhood and money

Have you ever been asked the question, “Would your childhood have been different (is that to say that you would be different?) if you had more money as a kid?”
Now, those of you that were raised in a wealthy family you can sit this one out. Myself, and everyone in my neighborhood, definitely were not. But here’s my answer.
I don’t know.
Well that was anticlimactic…
All I can say is that I never felt like I was in need of anything. As I stated in a earlier blog, I wouldn’t change my parents or my childhood at all, for anything.

I naturally led myself down this road of thought when I wrote about the varied and positive influences of my childhood, courtesy of 4 great role models; my mother and father and my grandparents on my mother’s side. I feel terrible saying this, but my fathers parents didn’t play a large role in my upbringing. But the rest of his family sure did, while they weren’t influencers they sure had an impact on my childhood and it was mostly a negative one.

Let’s look at the players and tie it in to the subject at hand.

My Grandparents on my mother’s side were born during WWI, graduated High School during the Great Depression, met during the booming ’30s only to go through WWII; money was never a major factor in their lives, nor were they fazed by the constant lack of it. They were conditioned to make do with very little. I knew them, from the earliest memory, to live a simple lifestyle and had few indulgences. My grandmother wanted little more than a decent home to live in. My grandfather liked a new car (never too fancy) every few years and he liked watches, also never too fancy. Oddly, despite their small home and frugal lifestyle they saved very little money. I was surprised to learn this, considering my grandfather was always working. Perhaps it is because my grandmother never worked after he came home from WW2.
Consequently my mother was very much like her mother when it came to money. She made her own clothes, even as an adult and liked to live simply.
She taught me well not to waste even though I thought it was a bit overboard to sew holes in socks and put patches on jeans. Fortunately for me patches became a fashion trend in the 70’s.



Generations

I am Generation X. I was born one year after the Baby Boomers. Gen X was followed of course by the much-maligned Gen Y, or Millennials. Without painting broad strokes about future generations, the reason for the generational mention is to paint the picture of the people I spent my formative years around. In addition to being fortunate enough to absorb the values of their generations, respectively (which I will delve into shortly), but my parents and grandparents were strong even for their generations.

I was raised during an era of political and societal upheaval. The late 60’s and early 70’s were marked by war, political scandal, youth finding their own voice, and a clash of generations. My family was very tight and traditional, and my Grandparents were around quite a bit and their old-school ways greatly impacted my earliest memories.
My Grandfather was a WW2 Veteran, a Navy SeaBee. He saw a lot of action. As many of his eras did, he dutifully volunteered to serve.. He was a lover of God and Country. His values defined him. Beneath his jovial appearance was a fiercely protective and serious man.
My Grandmother was as rigid as a soldier as she held down the household in his absence. They were both young adults during the Great Depression and “waste not want not” was the rule of the day. While my Grandfather had had a fairly normal upbringing, not rich but not poor, my Grandmother lost her parents very young as was raised by her Grandparents. They were strict and frugal and very tough on her and her siblings. The harsh childhood emanated from every pore.
My Father was also Military. He served during the Vietnam conflict but as he was to be sent to Southeast Asia I was born and kept him Stateside. He was a very hard-working and decent man whose upbringing, as was my Grandmother’s, emanated from every pore.
My mother, God bless her, was half a hippie. She never went to San Francisco or did mind-expanding drugs, but she was all about the empowerment of women, youth, and rejecting the Patriarchy.

What’s the point you may ask…well look at the influences I was exposed to. Patriotism, frugality, family, gratitude, simplicity, living within your means, and resiliency. Add to the mix 4 backstories that would make anyone take pause and you have a cocktail for a great childhood. To this day I thank God for the values I was taught and for the wisdom I was blessed to be on the receiving end of. The fact that I didn’t appreciate it then is an oft-regretted thought.

As they say, wisdom is wasted on the young, and I didn’t apply what I was taught as I tried to find my own way. Now, on the Back Nine, I recognize the greatness of their stories and work relentlessly to incorporate them into my life.

influences…

I wouldn’t change my Mom and Dad for anything in the world. They were great parents. My dad was a hard-working guy that did everything for his family. He had a terrible childhood and his reaction to it was to do better. Through hard work he rewrote the family legacy and became the only successful child in his family, and his siblings resented him for it. By success, I mean that he got a good job, bought a house, and planned for his future. He was a blue-collar guy that believed in work ethic and integrity. He didn’t care about how green the grass was on the other side of the fence. He cared about his yard.

My mother had a very different upbringing. While my dad was left largely to fend for himself in the hardscrabble section of town, my mother was under the umbrella of a very protective mother that tried to shelter her from the aspects of life what my dad would call an average Tuesday. Her parents were wonderful people and were a major influence in my life. My dad’s parents were less of an influence. His mother died when I was five and his dad was ill from emphysema for as long as I could remember and died when I was in High School.

Despite their very different backgrounds, there were a lot of similarities. While my dad was poor, my mother’s family had a better home in a better neighborhood. But the heads of both households were blue collar guys. Mom was an only child; Dad had several siblings. Obviously, many kids equal less household disposable income. The fact that my grandfather didn’t spend all of his money on booze and cigarettes made a difference as well. Mom’s father immediately accepted and respected my dad. He recognized the hard worker with integrity and what that brought to the table. They would share a wonderful bond as in-laws and friends. Mom’s mother treated my dad as she did all of her suitors and friends, as if he wasn’t good enough for her daughter. But she would grow to love and, perhaps more important, to respect him as well.

The commonality of the four is that they were all strong as hell. That strength permeated the dynamic that I would grow up with and it was unique and special. I didn’t know it at the time, it was just my life. But later in life, with life experience and access to the stories of others I recognized that I was fortunate enough to not only have 2 generations of good, decent and honest people to spend time with, but also the perspective of their experiences. Never has that evidenced itself than now.

more to come…

Food for thought

There is no limit to the stupidity of content on Social Media. From posts asking you if you remember your phone # or address from your childhood (an obvious attempt at identity theft) to the idiotic “everyone’s first job was at McDonalds, prove me wrong”. I don’t understand why anyone would comment on them but hey, that’s just me. One that has caught my attention recently is the “would you want your father (mother, sister, etc.) to be your father if you could do it over again?” On these, I immediately hit the comments. It is incredible how many people say no.

As it turns out, a silly FB post stimulated me a bit. I can’t begin to imagine a scenario in which the foremost influences in my life would be held in such poor regard? This interests me because I am a person that believes that good or bad, your experiences made you who you are and, in addition, it’s a waste of time to think about the past because you can’t change it.

I suppose if I had horrible parents, and was mistreated in some way that resulted in a traumatic childhood that left me a damaged and dysfunctional adult then maybe my thinking would be different. On that, I honestly can’t relate and will reserve judgment. But I still found a takeaway in the comments section, it made me think about my childhood.

After all, it all comes down to the childhood, doesn’t it?

Even if I could, I wouldn’t change a damn thing about mine. No revisionist thinking taking place here. I think I’ll dedicate a few posts to it.

On selfishness

self·ish[ˈselfiSH]
ADJECTIVE

  1. (of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure:
  2. “I joined them for selfish reasons”

One of my least favorite aspects of human nature is demonization. I don’t know if it is inherently human to seek ways in which to feel superior to others but it is absolutely everywhere you look. Racially, politically and socially we make assumptions and cast aspersions in order to well, let’s call it what it is, to feel better about ourselves. We call each other racist, rich, poor, spoiled, uncultured, and any other labels that seek to classify and denigrate others. One that has been sticking in my figurative craw is selfish.

It never ceases to amaze me how people, and this is a behavior that I suspect is here to stay, are compelled to compare value systems as if theirs and only theirs is the right one. How they have to weigh in on the way others live their lives. My take on this is simple and oft-heard. To each his own. If someone is happy, not bothering anyone, and not harming children and animals then I don’t care what they do or how they live their life. That extends to the extent of time and effort expended in the pursuit of their own interests.

Ayn Rand, the much-maligned Russian novelist known for strong and controversial opinions noted in The Virtue of Selfishness,

“In popular usage, the word ‘selfishness’ is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends . . . and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
“Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word ‘selfishness’ is concern with one’s own interests.
“This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.”

The long and short of it is that I think it’s ok to look after yourself. There are many popular euphemisms surrounding it;
You must take care of yourself before you can take care of another…
Put your oxygen mask on first…
Take a breather…
You can’t pour from an empty cup…
All of these allude to the notion that at some point you must come first. I find it to be a valid concept, especially if you are a person who dedicates a considerable amount of personal resources to the assistance of others. Yes, take care of yourself first. But what if you are a person who does the bare minimum, or maybe nothing at all in the service of others? Is it acceptable to villainize them for looking after their own needs only?

There are many people who, not out of contempt for charity or out of deliberate disregard for others, simply dedicate their lives to the pursuit of their own interests.

I believe every person has a purpose in life. Many people feel as I do and they strive for that purpose in building a career, growing or creating a business, and working towards countless goals. There are too many to list. But bottom line, they are comfortable enough worrying about their own lives. I don’t condemn people for this. The reason one person stands out as giving and generous and selfless is because there are plenty of people who are not. It’s just how we are wired as individuals and it is not always something that can be changed. Or villainized.

No person is more villainized along those lines than the person who has the brave audacity to admit in a crowded room that they don’t want children. I feel for these people because they are constantly forced to justify it. They are challenged;
“Don’t you want to carry on the family name…?”
“What about the joy of creating life…?”
The list goes on. It’s especially bad for women. It’s as if it comes down to the fact that because they are able to conceive then they must. How Catholic. It is perfectly valid, especially in 2022, to not want to bring a child into this world.
Parenthood isn’t for everyone. There are a lot of BAD parents out there. There are also a lot of children that are born into despair and poverty with little hope for survival, never mind a future. Raising a child is prohibitively expensive, physically and emotionally draining, and requires complete and total commitment. As I always said, once you have a child your life is no longer about you. It is not something that everyone can even do. Recognizing that and choosing not to make the leap is perfectly ok. It doesn’t make you selfish.

Selfishness can be a bad thing and I’m not defending it. But not everyone who is focused on their own life and goals is necessarily a bad person. In many cases a person is barely able to handle their own life, never mind assisting others. The term is used as yet another harmful and judgmental label. To me, it flies directly in the face of a saying that I believe should be in the Declaration of Independence…

“Live, and let live.”

Situational people watching

I have written about this many times, my proclivity for people-watching. It is a natural extension of my curiosity about humanity. I’ve always done it and it has been brought to my attention more than once and I have come close to being punched over it. Note to self, when a large drunk at a bar says “what are you looking at?”, don’t say “you don’t know either?”. I barely talked myself out of that one. Generally speaking, I don’t mean anything by it I’m just very aware of people. I study them.

It has occurred to me recently that people-watching is situational. Sometimes it is just observing, casually playing the guessing game.
What does that guy do for work?
Is she happy or just pretending?
Is that dad a good dad or not?
Sometimes I dig a little deeper and in a more melancholy manner.
Does that guy playing on his phone while out to dinner with his family know that he is missing out on a memory right now?
Does that clearly harrowed professional-type at the bar know (or care) that he is killing himself for a job that would replace him if he dropped dead tomorrow?
Is that older gent sitting on a park bench at 11 on a Tuesday enjoying the day or missing someone right now?

The great epiphany I recently had was that my inquiries and observations were based on the place I was in at the time mentally. To be more specific, was I in a good mood or bad? Was I healthy or ill? Was I feeling good about my place in life or battling with the ever-present-in-my-life inferiority complex. That revelation opened up a whole new line of thinking for me. I realized that much of it, and this brings me no joy at all, was a comparison/contrast. In other words, how, if at all, do I compare to them? This extends to Social Media as well. Am I the only person to ever see someone’s profile and wish my life was as good as theirs? Sure, there are people who give credence to this…

But there are also people who really do have a great life and their FB is accurate. While I genuinely try to be happy for everyone and I enjoy the aspect of FB that allows you to see what people you know and like are up to, depending on where I am at the time I am capable of comparing notes and subject to the green-eyed monster known as envy.

This was never as bad for me, in real life as well as scrolling Social Media, as when I was sick on dialysis. I was broke, sick, and depressed and everyone’s life looked better than mine. Despite not really believing that my current situation was in any way a result of bad choices but instead illness, I people-watched as a jealous fucking teenager.

When I recovered from my illness, I people-watched from a much better place both publicly and on Social Media. I was outwardly and genuinely happy for people and able to study people in a more objective, superficial, and harmless manner. On social media, I mostly marveled at the apparent failure of the educational system for graduating people with no knowledge of spelling and sentence structure. In public, I was drawn more to the happier people and focused on what their secret to happiness was. Any negative observations were mostly focused on negative and angry people. I also identified with the unhappy. I will always be the champion of the unhappy among us and will always want to understand. Maybe to identify causes that I can understand, definitely to help. Any envious tendencies would focus on the physical; mainly guys in better shape than I because I will always, always, always want to look better. This damn body dysmorphia will never go away.

I could, but won’t go on and on. You get the point (I hope). I am pointing out that people-watching, as in life itself, depends on the perspective from which it is being viewed. It is just another layer to contemplate as I watch my fellow humans on their journey along this giant spinning rock…

From what place does this observation come from, where is it going and what can I learn from it?

Hot summer days

I miss those hot summer days
Basking in the sun’s rays
Always outside, even when skies were grey
The knock on the door…
Can Billy come out to play?
Cops and robbers in the yard
My shins and elbows were always scarred
Streetlamps were my curfew
Go home already? There’s still stuff to do
Wax bottles and candy cigarettes
Eight-tracks and mix-tape cassettes
Hot afternoons in the pool
Mirrorshades, trying to look cool
Sleepovers at summer camp
Motocross bikes, let’s jump that ramp
Swimming and fishing
Shooting stars and wishing
Cool lakes to dive in
The Saturday night drive-in
Talking to my first cutie
Worried about getting cooties
Bad music and One-hit wonders
School dances and social blunders
First day of school, new clothes and sneakers
My first Hi-Fi with the big speakers
The sound of the crack of the bat
My very first Red Sox hat
The first day of tryouts
Please don’t make a flyout
The ground ball heading to first
Missed it. I’m the worst

Those days were the best
I just didn’t know it
Let me go back
This time I won’t blow it
I don’t want to play adult
Tell Zoltar to stop winking
I wanted to be Big
What was I thinking?
I miss my old house
I miss my first dog
I miss not worrying
About every damn thing
I miss feeling good
rugged and strong
I feel like I lost my joy
I used to be a happy boy
My longevity is fleeting
I’ve taken a beating
I’m tired of this, my downward phase
I want to go back to those hot summer days

The awkward reunion

I did a series recently on the trials and tribulations of a new job that I had started at a local restaurant.

The long and short of it was that it didn’t work out. Among all of the disappointments, one stood high above all. I was mad at myself for walking out. I have never in my life left a job without leaving notice and completing it. But this one time, I had an argument with a co-worker that drove me to leave at the end of my shift.

I had trained a kid with a smug expression and an entitled attitude. It wasn’t an assumption, I knew from the moment I met him that he was going to do a bare minimum, help no one but himself and think he’s entitled to more than he deserved. Sounds like a leap to you I’m sure, but I was right on and he took little to no time to prove me right. But I tried to make it work, I may be cynical but I’m fair and I trained him the best I could. He proved to be a decent worker but I knew his snarky attitude was going to cause a problem. On his second week, it happened.

On a busy Saturday he became overwhelmed. I stepped in to help him and he snapped and started yelling at me. He didn’t want help. I knew for the sake of the business that he needed it. It got ugly. I was furious. Normally people who talk to me like that end up spitting out some teeth but I walked away. But I was so disgusted at the fact that my owner did nothing and my coworkers showed me no support that I decided that there was no way I could work there anymore. I was pissed off, and I was embarrassed. The only positive was that I didn’t say or do something that I would regret to the kid. I’m not a violent person but I can be spiteful when wronged and he really pushed my buttons.
I finished my shift, three and a half hours of barely suppressed rage, and I headed for the door. I gave my friend and boss a chance to say something, anything, and he didn’t so I punched out and never went back.

I took a few days to process it. I felt real bad about leaving with no notice and I would address that later. My anger at the kid was still boiling up inside me. I began to imagine scenarios in which I would see him again. What would I do? It’s a small area, I knew there was a good chance that we would meet again.

Last week I went to my local Wal-Mart to pick up some prescriptions. When I approached the counter I saw a familiar face. Yup, my little friend from the restaurant was now a Pharmacy Tech. He saw me and his face was priceless. I grinned as he ducked into the back room. I was told that my scripts were going to be a few so I sat and waited. I watched as he moved about and knew he was clearly avoiding eye contact with me. I averted my stare and asked myself how I wanted to handle this. Several minutes later, I watched as the woman at the counter asked to leave for her break. I laughed to myself as my little friend reluctantly approached the register to replace her. I nearly laughed openly when I was called. Yup, he was going to be the one to serve me. It was too perfect. By then I knew what I was going to do.

I approached the register, gave him my name and DOB and waited for him to gather my order. As he began to ring me up, with almost ZERO eye contact, I stepped to my left to get around the plastic sneeze shield that separated us and I said “Kid, for all it’s worth I have no hard feelings. The past is the past.” The relief visibly washed off of him. He smiled and replied,
“I was hoping that was the case.”
We talked a bit about the restaurant, I congratulated him on getting a better job and I left. I thought about it on the way out. Sure, I could have wanted an apology. I also could have been rude in so many different ways. But I was pleased with the way I handled it. Anger, bitterness and resentment are heavy and cumbersome. I don’t like carrying it around. I chose to forgive it for me, not for him.

I think I did the right thing.