another busy couple of days…

last night the management team went to the avalanche game in the corporate suite for team building. the avs got shut out 4-0, but just being at any hockey game is a good night for me.

tonight i worked late, followed by a good workout, and now watching the taped ufc fights. some friends and i got tickets for the ufc fight night that will be in broomfield in april, so that will be pretty exciting. i know i should be saving, but i’m generally pretty good about not buying things for myself, so i gave myself permission to buy it (and asked for permission from k, too, of course).

it was actually a pretty busy day, both at work and with personal stuff. mom’s dog had puppies the other day, so i have to do some updates to her website. i think we’re set to go to florida at the end of march. conveniently enough, there are a few tampa bay lightning games that week, so we’ll take mom to one. i think we’ll use my marriott points to get a hotel one night in orlando, too, and maybe go to epcot or something. i guess between that and the frequent flyer miles, something good will come out of all my travel. i’m headed east again next week, speaking of travel.

i don’t really have a point tonight. i want to get back in to the habit of writing, so here i am. i wrote a little this morning, too. i had a weird dream last night, and i woke up and wrote bits and pieces of it that i could remember, making minor edits as i went along. i don’t know if i’ll ever do anything with it, but like getting back in to working out, i want it to become a routine part of my day. although i’m pretty sure i couldn’t handle doing the new workout routine twice in one day. at least, not yet.

two of my best friends became parents on saturday. it’s so weird. i can’t imagine how they feel with this new life that has become part of the family. from these two people, their love and commitment, a third person is created.

it was an amazing thing to visit them on sunday. it was kind of overwhelming, which i guess is a term i’ve been throwing around way too much lately. but it really was. it was incredible to see my friends, who i had seen the day before, holding their child. and everyone was healthy, and everyone was happy, and there was this child, not 24 hours old, in their arms. and i got to hold him, this tiny little person who had not been out in the world long enough to even have the earth rotate once on its axis. me, i’ve seen more than 12,000 revolutions. right now, raj is working on his 2nd.

and now that his existence has begun, time will tell what becomes of him. he has a great family, and probably couldn’t ask for better people to have as parents. the extended family are going to be and are capable of being very positive influences, as well. and us, their friends. 2 days old. a lifetime to go.

usually, if i need an outlet, i either write or i take pictures; rarely do i do both. tonight was a night for both. i will try to get a picture or two up tonight on the main kettlepot site.

i have been reading some photography related articles, and i jotted down a few projects that i wanted to try and equipment i would need. after work, i grabbed my list and went shopping.

one stop was to the grocery store to pick up flowers for one of the photography projects. i walked in to the store, executing the traditional “head-nod-acknowledgement” to the young man gathering the carts. as i passed him to enter the store, i heard him talking but thought nothing of it.

having completed my shopping, i started back to the car. the same young man that i had seen earlier passed me and stood at the front door. he surveyed the lot, mumbling to himself, and darted right. as i walked back to my car, i found myself studying him. i had not noticed initially, but it became more obvious that he was different.

he hurried to the cart bin, collected the carts, and brought them in to the store. he quickly exited the store and headed to the next cart bin, repeating his tasks.

here was thing young man doing this amazing job on what most of us would thing is a very simple task. it really looked like he was giving everything he had to do his job. i thought about my office today, about the people that i work with. i thought about myself, and how i approach my job every day. i am pretty sure that the attention that this young man was giving to his job would have put shame to the attention i put towards mine. i think i have a pretty good work ethic, but sometimes, like everyone i think, i get distracted.

i think we take a lot of things for granted. we take our jobs for granted so much so that we find ourselves focusing on and complaining about things that do not matter. there are a lot of people that are unemployed. there are actually people out there, like this young man, that feel lucky for just being able to work at all.

i do not know why i was so fascinated. and as i read what i wrote, it does not do justice to my sense of wonder at the whole situation. but i just felt that i had to write something about this young man, and at least acknowledge how fortunate i am, even if i do not appreciate it.

i remember the first time someone told me that there was no such thing as santa claus. i was in my neighbor eddie’s back yard with a group of my friends, and i was probably 10 years old. joey, who was a few years older than the rest of us, broke the news. he stood on the concrete wall that stood in the back corner of the lot, like a preacher on a pulpit speaking to his flock. at first, i could not believe what he was saying. of course santa is real. my parent’s told me he was real. almost everyone i knew believed he was real. how could this be? but as he explained the logic to his declaration, my reality unraveled. it all made sense. how could i have been so blind? so foolish? my parents had lied! my family had lied! i was living a lie!

there is a certain feeling you get when you come to the realization that something you believed to be true, or took for granted to be true, proves to be otherwise. whether it is something as traumatic as learning that santa claus does not, in fact, bring you presents at christmas or something as simple as realizing that those pants do, in fact, make your ass look fat. there is something that comes with that realization that is unsettling, regardless of scale.

the feeling is magnified when it involves a person. we all have our perceptions of the people around us, some based on fact but most based on our brief interactions with these people who, as we all do sometimes, may put on the fact they want to show us instead of their true self. when that true self is finally revealed, the result can be devastating, particularly if you held that person in a certain regard. maybe you thought that a person was different from everyone else, only to learn that he or she is the same. maybe you thought that a person was the same as everyone else, only to learn that he or she was different.

a number of factors influence the impact of learning the truth. the closer a person is to you magnifies the hurt. the higher regard you had for the person magnifies the disappointment. the more you truly believed and truly wanted a person to be the way you thought them to be magnifies both.

is learning the truth better? could i really be a thirty-something who believes that santa is going to bring me that gift i have wanted for years and years (please, santa, please!)? there are obviously cases where the truth does set a person free, and the pain and disappointment are short lived.

but what about when the truth is not about saint nick? what if it is about someone in your family? someone you work with? someone you are attracted to? someone you are dating? these are very real people with very real, personal connections that may or may not have been built on those illusions of truth?

dis-il-lu-sion: to free of illusion.

i would hate to go through my life only to realize at the end that those relationships that i held most dear to me were anything less than genuine or based on anything other than the truth. i would not want to force myself to believe a lie simply to maintain a connection to a person. i would rather find out that the girl that i have had a crush on is not who i thought she was. i would rather find out that the coworker i looked up to is not any different than those coworkers that i do not look up to.

the truth shall set me free.

the last few weeks have been filled both with new opportunities and resurfaced memories.

today i was looking on google maps and i pulled up my grandparents house in connecticut. i have a lot of memories from there, even though i did not spend nearly as much time with that side of my family as i did with my mother’s side. their house was a marvelous, old, new england style home with a wood burning stove, though i wonder if the stove is still there. i used to go there for the christmas celebration for that side of the family and remember loving that house and the smell of that stove. they also had a pool that we enjoyed in the summer. it was a round pool, and i remember everyone making a whirlpool by circling the pool in one direction and i thought it was the greatest thing to try and swim against the current. the house was also next to a cemetery, and i remember being petrified to be there at night while my sister and aunt seemed fearless.

looking at the satellite image of the house, i never realized how amazingly close to the house we lived when we lived in our apartment complex. i mapped the directions and it was actually less than a mile. less than a mile, yet it might as well been on the other side of the world. with everything going on right now, i am overwhelmed with sadness.

i was listening to a talk radio station last night and they had mitch albom as their guest. mitch, who wrote tuesdays with morrie and the five people you meet in heaven, was promoting his new book for one more day. i haven not read his other books, but i believe they were pretty popular as i recognize the names. as he was discussing his latest book, he talked about how he came up with the idea and it struck a chord with me. how many relationships do we have that if the person was gone tomorrow we would be wishing we had them for one more day?

i thought about my grandfather. i think about how little i talk to him. i think about how that mile seemed like a thousand. i have it on my to-do list to write him. it has been on my to-do list for almost a year. what if i never get the chance to send it?

i thought about my father. i think about how i have not talked to him in ten years. i think about the opportunities i have had to contact him but never did. what if i never get the chance to contact him?

i think about my friends. i have the best friends that i have ever had at any stage of my life, and i try to show them in my own way how important they are to me. if i have enough to drink, i may even tell them. i feel that i am doing some of the right things now with my friends, but that i never went back and took the time to do the same thing with those strained family relationships from the past.

i have already lost some people that were and always will be important to me. there will always be things that i wish i had said or done differently. the question, i guess, is whether I am going to make the same mistake again.

about the same time i reformated my server at home to install linux, the portable hard drive that had all of my music on it died. actually, i tripped over the cable and sent it crashing to the floor. oops.

i thought i was going to have to rescan in all of my CDs, which just didn’t sound like fun. since all of my songs were still on my ipod (luckily, since i had to reformat that a few weeks ago, too), i knew there had to be an easy way to pull the files off the ipod back to my computer. as you may (or may not) know, the ipod file system isn’t exactly intuitive.

enter igadget. it actually does a lot of things, but it provides some useful tools to grab playlists and songs from the ipod and puts them in a nice, intelligent format back on the PC. you can select by playlist, artist, song, whatever. very, very handy.

http://www.purpleghost.com/ProductDetail.aspx?productid=9

i haven’t written anything in a while, even after i made a decision to make more of an effort. actually, i just noticed that i said the same thing on my previous post. in my defense, the last few weeks have been pretty chaotic & intense. i was actually going to make a longer entry, but i haven’t been able to find the right words & nothing really seems right. i think i’m still trying to get a grasp of everything that has happened.

i cleared a huge obstacle in my life last week. many aspects of my life were on hold while i worked on this obstacle and now that it is done, i’m trying to figure out what’s next.

next. i had all but given up on “next”. i’ve been so focused on this obstacle that i think i conditioned my mind to put up barriers to anything after. the obstacle took a lot of my time and energy. i put a lot of things on hold, and have slowly started to work things back in. photography, reading, writing (no arithmetic).

next. what is next? one of the things i put on hold was dating. maybe it’s time? i haven’t exactly had the best luck in that department. there is lucky, there is unlucky, and there is me. but as unlucky as i have been, i miss…maybe not dating, but the potential. i miss sharing things with someone. i have my friends, of course, who i share a lot of things with. but when you are with someone, things are just shared differently. there is significance in that sharing that is more meaningful. it starts with the little things, the “this activity is so much better when you share it someone.” my friends have gotten to the sharing of their lives together, to sharing the experience of pregnancy and, soon, to sharing the birth and raising of their child. but even without the huge life events, the sharing isn’t any less significant. how do you know that your next first kiss won’t be your last first kiss? how do you know that you won’t be discussing the seemingly insignificant event that made you laugh with your grandkids some day?

it all seems very deep for a guy sitting on the couch in his scooby-doo boxers and an underdog t-shirt.

i haven’t written anything in a few days. i sat down to write tonight, but my tiredness is catching up with me. i did manage to post a picture on the main kettlepot.com site, which is good although i’m finding that none of my recent pictures really says anything to me. i think they still fit as technical experience, but that’s about it.

i really should write more. this week has been…interesting. so many ups and downs. i went to the burgundy and white game last night, which was an up. hockey season is always awesome. but work is a downer for a lot of reasons that i won’t get specific about tonight. i reconnected with a friend, which was both up and down. i’m going to chicago to see some other friends, which is definitely an up.

i’m really distracted tonight, so i’m going to cut this post short. i need a vacation.

bonus points if you know where the title of this post comes from without looking it up.

another show on the dave list…dead like me. here is the plot summary from IMDB:

Meet Georgia Lass (who prefers to be called George). She is a young Seattle college dropout who is unhappy with life. She is always at odds with her mom, Joy. One day coming back from her temp job as a filing clerk, she is hit by the toilet seat of the re-entering Space Station Mir. Finding out she is now dead, she is recruited to become a grim reaper. As in life, she is a pain in the butt in death. She does not like the details of her job, and is always at loggerheads with her boss Rube. Her fellow grim reapers don’t really take much of a liking to her either. She also learns grim reapers don’t even get a free ride in death, as they must hold down regular jobs along with their death duties.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348913/

the show was originally on showtime and only lasted two seasons. personally, i think it fits in the “brilliant but cancelled” category.

i write tonight because of a specific episode which aired tonight on the sci fi channel, which is currently re-airing the two seasons. the episode is entitled “vacation”. the reapers find themselves on a holiday where no one is scheduled to die so they use the time to catch up on some paperwork. the paperwork involves the cataloging of the last thoughts of the people that died. the categories turn out to be ones such as should have, could have, would have. pet regrets, past regrets.

there are two parts of this episode that draw my attention. the first one involves a dialog between georgia, the main character, and daisy, another reaper. through most of the episode, daisy is relating her many “conquests” of famous men throughout history to mason, another reaper. as they talk and continue to catalog last thoughts, daisy becomes visibly emotional (although she tries not to let on) and heads to the copy room where georgia is making copies( Rube demanded a copy of the hard copy. He’s still a little skittish about the whole digital thing.)

Georgia: Daisy?
Daisy: Doesn’t it bother you Georgia?
Georgia: What?
Daisy: Everybody’s thoughts are the same.Two-thirds are people who regret, the rest are people who forgot to do stuff or are praying or…are alone. Shouldn’t there be more?
Georgia: More what?
Daisy: More piles, more words, more thoughts.
Georgia: I guess.(George is fiddling with the machine)
Daisy: and then you die and you might become a reaper, and…the magic of creation, well…that turns out to be a nine to five grind with lots of paperwork. It’s just so.. It’s so everyday.
Georgia: Lots of people…leave. There’s something “Everyday” where they’re going
Daisy: How do you know that’s true? Maybe we just keep moving from one filing job to the next. Oh My god…We are all temps
Georgia (Voiceover): It was strange to hear the secret of the universe tumble out of the mouth of a fallen starlet, in a copy room at 3:00 in the morning but considering what the secret was, it was perfect.

shouldn’t there be more? how tragic it would be to have my last thoughts be one of regret or of things i wished i had done. but how do you life your life that way? we make our choices, and those choices have consequences…sometimes good, sometimes bad. regret, as it is defined, is sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment. it’s the latter part that makes me feel like it is impossible to live life without regret, even if we try to call it something else. i think when someone (myself included) says that they life their life without regrets, it’s more that they accept the consequences of their actions and choices. my thinking goes along the line of: i am happy with where i am in my life. if i changed any of the choices i made, i wouldn’t be here where i am happy. sometimes i wonder how true that is. maybe i would be in a better place? there are aspects of my past that “have come back to haunt me”. if i had made a different choice in the past, maybe i wouldn’t have that which haunts me? maybe my life would be better? maybe it would be worse?

since it is impossible (at least for now, Einstein) for me to go back and change my choices, why obsess over them or focus on trying to change something i can’t change? it’s a futile effort. instead of focusing on how i could have done things differently to yield a different result, i try to focus on learning from those previous choices and making decisions in the present that will change my present and my future in a direction in which i want to head. no, it can’t change how i lived my life. but it can certainly change how i LIVE my life. and can go a long way towards living a life without regret. if the end result is what i want, how can there be regret?

would i want to change any of it, even if i could? i have heard (and said) many times that i am where i am because of the choices i have made…i am the sum of my choices and my experiences. so why would i want to mess with that? i’ve had a lot of great experiences in my life that i would never want to change, and i would most certainly regret it if i went back to change a “bad” thing about my life and then missed out on all of those experiences that i have had that i will hold with me for the rest of my life. ok, Einstein says that if i changed it, i wouldn’t know that i missed out on anything because that stuff would never have happened. but i know about it now, which is good enough for me to not want to change anything about my life, even if it proves to be an obstacle sometimes (yes, i am thinking of a particular aspect of my past). as crappy as it seems sometimes, or how some of those bad choices seem to creep up now and again, i’d rather have them there with the life that i have than to not have them but to be in any place but here.

back to the show..

the other scene also involves daisy, although indirectly. mason is finishing up the paperwork when he comes across the file of “Adair, Daisy.” her last thought goes directly to explaining a lot about her character. throughout the series, she is big on appearances. she “lived the life”, having flings and relationships with actors and other celebrities and eagerly sharing her tales of exploit with the others. it’s a tragic trait of a character in a fictional series. it’s even more tragic that there are real people like this. people that are so wrapped up in maintaining appearances and being the person that everyone is jealous of, but all the while lacking what they really, truly want out of life. the whole facade is a cover for the big, gaping hole in their life that they cannot or feel that will not ever fill. it goes towards the whole concept of being true to yourself and working towards what you want, instead of living your life for the approval or envy of others. so what is that important? money is great. so is fame. but i think the things we can get out of life that will keep us from having our last thoughts catalogued in to “regret” or “forgot to do stuff” are less complicated, but can be harder to find if you aren’t aware of their importance. our society is so focused on money and fame that people have long stopped being themselves and have been focused on being what everyone else wants them to be in order to make it big on a “reality” show (the concept that its reality is laughable, but i digress). no, i think one of the biggest treasures we can get out of life that will keep us from our last thoughts being of regret is something we get from being ourselves. it’s something we freely get from our family, and our friends, and hopefully from finding a partner in life. it’s something that, even with her telling her stories of how she lived, is reflected in the last thought of one Ms. Daisy Adair. her last thought?

“why has no one ever loved me?”

a few months back, i bought a little notebook. i found myself getting easily distracted and forgetting to do things–big things, little things, everything. i became very frustrated both that things weren’t getting done and that i was forgetting them, which probably affected me more. i had hoped that keeping a list of things to do in my little notebook would help. my plan was to add a task in my little notebook when it came up. when i finished a task that i had written in my little notebook, i would cross it off.

at first, my little notebook was overwhelming. i was adding tasks faster than i could remove them. my little notebook was a big, glaring reminder of how far behind i was. water the plants. pick up dry cleaning. finish the downstairs bathroom. mow the grass. routine tasks that under normal circumstances would seem like a grain of sand were huge boulders that i felt i could not move. i was discouraged and more frustrated.

after a surprisingly short period, however, my little notebook began helping. my little notebook was my chisel as i chipped away at the boulder of a task list. the boulder became a rock, the rock became a pebble, and after a while, the pebble became a grain of sand.

did i find myself falling behind again. why? because i abandoned the tool that got me to this wonderful task-less bliss. my little notebook sat lonely and forgotten in a dark drawer having only done its job and having been rewarded by being discarded.

this week, i found myself again being frustrated by the chaos of a task list that had no form. i was forgetting to do things and was poorly prioritizing the tasks that i did remember. it struck me then that i had turned my back on my boulder breaker, my chisel, and that which brings order to chaos. frantically, i searched for my little notebook. an outsider looking in would assume i was a drug addict looking for a hidden stash that i had misplaced. i was emptying drawers on to the floor, turning each drawer over and quickly scanning the contents as gravity pulled the contents downward. dump, scan, next. dump, scan, next. dump, scan. jackpot..

my little notebook didn’t wonder where i had been. my little notebook didn’t wonder what it did wrong. my little notebook didn’t harbor any resentment. my little notebook allowed me to open it and start a new list, welcoming the responsibility of organizing my life.

one of the first things that i crossed off my list was booking my trip to chicago. i love having friends across the country and around the world. i love that they allow me to visit them, and open their homes to me. my chicago friends have a new baby and a new house, and i am as eager to share that excitement with them as i am to not be here.

here, however, is a topic that i will cover some other time.