I Want You to Hit Me as Hard as You Can

I haven't written much this week, even though I initially vowed to write something every day. If I had stuck to that vow the last few days you would have seen posts that look like this:

l[FJKHASEL'FKAJSDF[OKASJF[OASIFNAS[ODKVM AW[IODJSVAWDF;LASKDFJASL[DKFJASDLFKJAS
FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKASDFJASDL;KFJASDFLKAJSDFAL;SKJDOIKKKOPLLKJN454LKJ!!!!????!!!!!!!!

...because that's more or less how I've been feeling. I've been struggling to stay on the straight and narrow and keep my mind right, and it's been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I haven't been able to focus, I haven't been able to carry on particularly meaningful conversations, and I've wanted to beat the living shit out of everyone I know at one point or another, most significantly including myself, Edward-Norton-in-Fight-Club-style.

Now, on Friday afternoon, I feel like I've achieved something monumental because I've gotten through five straight days without a cheeseburger or a candy bar or a coke or a piece of pizza or a bowl of ice cream or a burrito or an Egg McMuffin or a donut or...

You get the picture. All I've really done this week is eat food like a normal person. That's it. I haven't really exercised, I'm not counting calories or fat or keeping a food journal, I'm not making sure I get enough greens or fruit and not too much starch and all that. I'm just not eating really bad things that I really like, and I'm not eating too much of anything. And that alone has been enough to completely alter my reality and throw my mind and body into utter turmoil. That just shows how far gone I've been for the past few years and how much I have left to do.

But I'm a little closer, this week, to getting where I want to be. I'm closer than I was last week. I haven't defeated my demons, but I've decided fight them, and that's something. The casualties of that battle this week, in no particular order, were: my peace of mind, my productivity, my ability to see anything but the absolute worst in everyone I encounter, my ability to get a full night's sleep and my ability to provide the necessary emotinal care and feeding to my family.

So here's to next week.

Didn't Even Have to Use My AK

Today was a good day. I took it as it came. I felt even-keeled and clear-headed, at times even confident. I felt like a grown-up, I felt like I could handle what was in front of me. I haven't felt that way in awhile. It felt nice. I'll recognize it as fleeting and I'll try not to be too upset when I fall apart tomorrow or the next day, but today, I'll take it.

I was still incredibly fucking hungry today, all day long, don't get me wrong. But it felt like...background noise, if that makes sense. I felt like I could just recognize it and then move on with my business. I know I won't feel like that every day, but just knowing that I can feel like that every once in awhile is something. It wasn't a great day, but it was a good day, and there's still an hour or so left so I know anything could fuck it up and I ain't trying to tempt the Gods or anything, so I think I'll just stop there. Goodnight.

Appetite for Exhaustion

I had a bit of breakthrough this weekend in my quest to better understand what's really driving my own negative behavioral patterns, aided in large part by a friend who reached out and shared some incredible insights. And while I feel a certain relief at a glimpse of clarity, I'm also completely fucking terrified by it. This little experiment I've been engaging in with myself is starting to get pretty godamned serious, and I think I'm really approaching put-up-or-shut-up-time. This promise I've made to myself to tell the truth, to report what I think I see and by doing ask the universe for help is bearing fruit in it's own way, and it's not an experiment any more. It's shaking something fundamental loose from my consciousness and I'm getting a glimpse of how serious that is, how much work it will really take to see it through, how high the stakes are. And I freaked myself out.

So today I'm trying to take deep breaths and take it all in. Today my goal has been a simple one: be aware of my choices. Say this sentence in your head: I am hungry because I feel vulnerable. I am hungry because I feel overwhelmed. I am hungry because I want to escape this task in front of me. I am hungry because it's lunchtime and I haven't eaten since breakfast. Oh, wait, ok, eat. Now where were we? I am hungry because I'm not used to having turkey and brown rice for lunch and my mouth doesn't believe this is all it gets. I am hungry because all this thinking about why I'm hungry is making me fucking hungry. Take a walk. I'm hungry because I just took a walk and I want to reward myself. Ok, eat an apple. I am hungry because that apple tasted like shit. I am hungry because WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY. I am hungry because being hungry reminds me that I am who I am. I am hungry because I am overwhelmed.

Ok. Ok. Ok. I am hungry today. Ok.

Elephant

I started this blog as an outlet to force myself to be honest and process difficult thoughts, a kind of you-can-run-but-you-can't-hide-journal. I'm not sure that's what it still is. I enjoy writing in it, I think it has been useful to me in a number of ways--it's helped me organize my thoughts and I think it's improved my thinking and probably improved my writing in some ways. But I'm writing less and less about the things that are wrong with me. I don't think I'm being less honest than I intended, but I'm probably being honest about different things than I should be honest about in order to help myself. On a certain level I think I've started to try to impress the people I imagine reading when I write a post, which is not what I want to be doing. I want to use this as a forum to face the hard things I've been avoiding, not another way to avoid them and feel better a out myself.

The overwhelming elephant in the room that I'm trying in various ways not to confront is my atrocious physical health. I'm in real physical danger due to my unchecked obesity and I've failed for years to honestly address it. If I don't take real, drastic action now then I'm playing Russian Roulette with my life, and by extension the lives of my family and everyone who loves me.

I'm taking real steps, starting today, to get serious about my health. I'm approaching it with an open mind and a dedication to rigor and discipline. I'm probably going to be writing a lot more grumpy and boring posts about food urges and how hard it is to force myself to excercise in the next few weeks, is my point, and less long-winded whimsical meditations on family and the meaning of work. So I apologize in advance if it gets boring.

Guilt and Consequences

I drove out to the lovely Torrance Highway Patrol office this afternoon to pick up a copy of the official collision report regarding my recent traffic accident. The report, among other things, is a document of blame that exists to declare which driver was at fault. I was rear-ended on the freeway, completely blindsided, and was assured by everyone I spoke with afterwards that there was no way I could have avoided it. But for the last 3 weeks I've been obsessed with the possibility that I somehow did something wrong. A weird kind of guilt has festered and weighed on me in a completely ridiculous way. Even if I was at fault, somehow, it wouldn't really matter in the larger scheme of things. Nobody was hurt, everyone was insured, and surely if I had contributed to the collision in some way it wouldn't make me any less decent or valuable in the universe. It all has to do with some deep-rooted insecurity I have about my ability to function as an able-bodied, responsible adult in the world. I still see myself as an overgrown kid playing grown-up, wearing somebody else's leather shoes, using somebody else's disposable razor, depositing somebody else's checks in somebody else's bank account. I await the inevitable crack in the facade, the moment of unveiling when those close to me finally point and say "Who the fuck does this guy think he is? You're not fooling anybody, bub. Back to the kid's table." And I recognize that feeling to be as much wish-fulfillment as it is real insecurity. I don't want to be an adult! I don't want to have to think about credit card balances or cholesterol or living wills or ironed shirts or hotel reservations or any of that shit. I want to be at the kid's table, laughing until snot comes out of my nose and making fun of the grown-ups and sneaking a piece of pie before dinner. How the fuck should I know how to drive a car on the freeway? I don't have time for that shit. I've got branches to swing from.

But I am, as I heard someone say the other day, a grown-ass man. And I can take care of my shit. I'm not Fredo Corleone. I welcome my responsibilities, on an intellectual level, I want to honor them and I want to enjoy the life I have constructed for myself, because it is beautiful. But I also want to be able to shrug off the weight when I feel it pressing down on me, I want to keep it all in balance and *always* be able to take illicit joy in an afternoon alone at the movies or an inappropriate joke. I want perspective, in other words. Who the fuck doesn't?

Anyway the report absolved me completely. Party P-1 was at fault, and party P-2, yours truly, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I felt giddy when I read the report on the bench outside the office, I felt liberated. That's completely insane, I realize. But I kind of don't mind it. I'll take my liberation where I can find it, even if I have to invent oppression to get there.

The Highway Patrol office walls were filled with pictures of officers who were killed in the line of duty, with a brief description of how long they served and how they died. The picture above the collision report window was of a man who died in 1972, a year before I was born. He looked unbelievably young in his uniform, like a 15 year old kid dressed up as a cop for Halloween. The caption said he was killed when he responded to an accident call and arrived at the scene to find a horse trailer overturned, with three horses inside. The horses were injured and apparently going wild, and another officer was instructed to go inside the horse trailer and shoot them. The first bullet missed a horse, ricocheted off the trailer and struck the officer standing outside, killing him instantly.

I read it twice to make sure I understood the details. It's got to be one of the strangest, saddest, weirdest things I've ever heard about in my life. My elation at the absolution provided by the collision report was short-lived and tempered somehow by that photograph, and I keep imagining the scenario in my head. What happened after the guy got shot? Did they go back in and shoot all the horses? Did the horses get out and run down the freeway and get crushed by a semi? What happened to the other officer who fired the shot, how could he ever have gotten over that tragedy and gone on with his life? Did the guy have a wife, kids, parents? How did they react to the incredible circumstances of his death? Was it his it his first week on the job? Did he ever even really get to be a Highway Patrol Officer before that moment?

It doesn't matter if I think I'm a man or a child or a mongoose. The universe is deep and unknowable and harsh and beautiful. Until it isn't.

Work Beats Jail

When I was a kid I witnessed a knock-down drag-out argument between my mother and her younger brother that left quite an impression on me, one in a series of observed blow-ups that dot the landscape of my youth and doubtless did much to form my worldview, and not necessarily in a bad way. This particular event occurred when I was probably 12 or 13, one of those glorious endless summers when I had all the time in the world to explore the universe, lose myself in books, movies and the Pacific Ocean. My uncle would come down from Northern California and rent a beach house for a few weeks and everyone in the extended family would gather there, an open house overflowing with kids and adults and food and conversation. On one of those evenings my mother and her brothers were talking and singing and reminiscing, a few of them were certainly drinking or imbibing other aids to modern living, and the conversation somehow turned to the topic of Work, with a capital W. My mother, a high school teacher who has devoted her life to helping children and has inspired and changed countless young lives through her passion and dedication, made the statement that she "loved" her job. Her younger brother, then as ever a kind of mythical figure in my life, a brilliant, poetic, raucous, free-spirited and extraordinarily kind and sensitive man who also possessed a keen and biting wit and an easily ignited Irish temper, took issue with her proclamation and ridiculed the notion that anyone of substance could truly "love" their job, no matter what it was. Work, to him, was at best a necessary evil in the world and at worst a soul-crushing institution designed to destroy the spirit of humanity. He was also, at that time, a teacher, and a damned good one, but he made no bones about the fact that any good he was able to do in his job was in spite of it being a job, not because of it. To "love" your work was to him to admit defeat, to cede control, to shut the door on the wild and beautiful spirit of the world outside the closed parameters of your (then) 40-hour-a-week obligation. I remember him saying how horrendous he thought it was that the first question anyone asks when they meet a new person is "What do you do?", which really only means "What method do you employ to acquire money in the world?" Why is it that we have decided that particular question defines us? Why do we not ask "What do you love?" "What do you read?" or even "What do you eat?", "What are you afraid of?", "Where have you been, what have you seen?" You may have the right job, and if so good for you, you're luckier than most. But you don't fucking love your job. Stop kidding yourself, and stop devaluing the very notion of love by saying that.

It was a quite a scene, and it did not end well. My mother, no shrinking violet to be sure, was reduced to tears, and everyone else chimed in on one side or the other, and the night got out of control. It blew over, as those family fights always did, and there were plenty more summers and plenty more arguments to come. I, as a kid who loved his mother, was on one hand appalled and upset to see her attacked and felt horribly for her. But on the other hand I was quite taken by my uncle's ideas, and they stayed with me. A few weeks later my uncle sent my mother a letter, a beautifully written quasi-apology that continued the discussion in a much gentler manner. I don't remember all of the details but I do remember the last line. When he was young my uncle was a hell-raiser, and he spent a few months in a juvenile lock-up in Campo in East San Diego. He wrote vividly about the details of that experience and ended the letter by saying "Work beats jail, but not by much."

He had seen both work, jail and some third thing that was a life of his choosing, and he knew what he preferred. I can't help thinking now that I came into the game with a chip on my shoulder, in part because I took some of those notions to heart in a kind of idealized way when I was far too young to truly understand what they meant. My uncle did not choose to hate his jobs, and he surely would have been happier if he could have not hated them. My mother truly did love her job, and I don't believe she had to give up anything deeper or more valuable in order to do that. Both things are true. But I'm afraid I romanticized the idea that work is a "necessary evil" in a way that has done no favors to my intellectual or emotional development. I don't think I've earned that realization, the way my uncle did, I think I chose it as a kind of pose and have used it to define my own identity and set myself apart from the life that I am actually living. And that doesn't feel like bravery, the way it did when I saw it in my uncle. From this vantage point, looking in the mirror, it feels like fear.

I am 35 years old now, and I've never been to jail. But I've been to work, and I've not been to work. And I prefer the latter, without reservation, but I don't want to believe that *has* to be true anymore. I don't have to love my job, but I don't have to resent it either. I can try and make it part of a larger journey, I'd like to think, I can try and use it to find a way to be useful, to give and receive the energy of love, the way my mother has done her whole life. It's worth a shot, anyway.

My uncle died of lung cancer at the age of 55 in 1996, when I was 23 years old, and his death left a huge void in our lives that has not been filled. His legacy is one of love, kindness, beauty, art and wakefulness. He was courageous and sensitive and tortured, in his way. And as is true of all my heroes, I find him when I need him. I need him now, as much as I ever have. And here he is, slightly different than he ever was before, rolling around in my head, helping carry my thoughts where they need to go. Not this, that, or maybe that, or maybe this. Keep asking. Keep feeling. Keep laughing, and fighting, and then apologizing and admitting you know nothing except what you know and you didn't mean to hurt anyone, but what you really meant was this, and this is why. Keep your heart open, but call bullshit when you see it. Especially if it's in yourself.

Beaten Path

My weekends go by too fast these days. There's a line connecting Friday evening to Monday morning. It feels slack and loose for about an hour, and then suddenly I've pulled it tight and run smack into the week without even knowing it.

I had a bit of an abbreviated workday on Friday and took the boys to a local park in the afternoon that has a small walking trail. The summit of the small hill provides a breathtaking view of the The Olive Garden and Marshall's, our finest local merchants, so it's really not to be missed. We wandered up the trail together, meandering and poking trees with our sticks and I'm sure we cut quite a figure: two tow-headed rug rats bursting with energy trailed by a sweaty fat 35 year old in King Size Dockers, clutching a diaper bag and a Diet Coke.

But we had a nice little adventure in our way, and it felt good to get the blood flowing a bit and look at things from a slightly different angle. At the end of the walk i thought: I can do this, I can be a normal guy who goes on walks with his kids and points out the different kinds of trees, I can sit on a bench at the end of the trail and breathe in deeply and watch my kids on the playground and take in the moment. I need to remember that I can do this, that these simple moments are constantly available to me and are worth seeking out. The way to slow the weekend down is to slow myself down, and sitting here on Saturday morning I vow to give it my best shot for the next 48 hours.

You're Going the Wrong Way!!

Driving home from the airport last night, it took me 10 minutes to realize I was heading in the wrong direction on the freeway. I was in National City before it dawned on me that I should be on the 5 North, not the 5 South.

This afternoon at work I dialed my home number when I meant to call somebody else and was startled to hear my wife answer on the other end.

I routinely fall asleep in my living room watching TV after the kids have gone to bed, then wake up at 3:30 AM with a sore neck and a headache and drag myself into a bed that by that point is invariably already filled with one grown adult and two young children.

I thought I would be able to work from home tomorrow but I can't, I have to drive up to LA for a meeting. This weekend we have a five year old's pool party to look forward to on Saturday. And another five year old's pool party to look forward to on Sunday.

I'm fucking tired. My wife is even more fucking tired. Our kids, it seems, are never tired.


I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong. Alright, I am complaining. I'd like to have a nice romantic dinner with my wife. I'd like to get a full night's sleep. I'd like to spend a lazy Sunday reading the New York Times from cover to cover.

WAH!! POOR ME!! I'M SO TIRED!! WAH!!

Yeah, I feel like I shouldn't be complaining. It feels self-indulgent and ungrateful and juvenile. I'm not suffering, I'm just whining, and I feel like I have to temper those complaints with a declaration that I'm happy about the choices I've made. I am grateful for my life and I don't take it for granted. I want my children to healthy and young and crazy and demanding, I want to be challenged by my job, I want to be busy.

But I'm just really fucking tired today. And if that's my biggest complaint, that I really should be grateful, I suppose. So take this as a giving of thanks rather than a complaint, then. Take it however you want. Take it up your ass for all I fucking care.

Whoa, where did that come from? Sorry. I'm going to go ahead and not delete that sentence because it just made me laugh out loud. I can't offer profundity every day.

Did I mention I was tired?

Ground Control

I'm traveling today so I don't have time for a long post. Sitting in the airport bar 10 minutes away from boarding my flight home from SFO. Double Jack and Coke, thank you very much. And me without my vicodin. Can I squeeze in one more drink before the flight? Who am I kidding, I could squeeze in three. Room for lots of Jacks in here, the more the merrier!

I am not a good flyer, to say the least. I've gotten better over the years, out of necessity, but all that really means is that I've gotten better at concealing my sheer terror. In addition to my mental anxiety I face the very real physical reality of being a HUGE man attempting to squeeze his HUGE ass into a seat made for anorexic toddlers. As always I'm praying for an empty flight. Pity the poor motherfucker who gets seated next to me if it's full.

Last call, time to drink up and face the music. What a wimp I am.

Anger, Management

I grew up in a very loving household overflowing with laughter and energy and encouragement. We also had more than our fair share of yelling, slamming doors, the occasional flying object or punched wall, cars peeling out of driveways, etc. One was not taught to hold back.

I took me awhile to understand that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily operate that way, that sudden dramatic outbursts aren't always taken in stride and shrugged off as necessary venting by people who aren't used to being yelled at, to understand the unintentional harm my anger and aggression could inflict on people I love and respect. I'm still trying to strike the right balance, trying to temper my temper without sublimating my emotions, trying to unlearn what needs to be unlearned and keep what needs to be kept. Trying to find the wisdom, as they say, to know the difference.

I had the good fortune to meet an earnest, intelligent, open and spiritual person today who exudes a kind of even-keeled stillness, a man who has clearly dedicated his life to trying to learn how to live and seems to have found a way to use his work to explore those issues as well. It was an example I needed today; I needed to feel that energy. It made me calm down and breathe and hum a little song under my breath, just sitting in a meeting for a few hours and taking in somebody else's beautiful spirit. It gave me a kind of hope. How great is that? How wonderful that we possess the capacity to be surprised by each other, the capacity to give other people what they need without knowing it, the ability to spread peace and stillness by finding our own peace and stillness? Man may hand on misery to man, like the poet says, but he can hand on a lot of other things too, the things you need to make the misery bearable. I think you just need to find them when they're offered, you have to know when to be quiet so that you can hear them.

So I guess that's the balance I'm looking for. I'll always need the catharthis of a good throat-clearing, chest-stomping outburst now and again--it's part of who I am, it's part of how I process. But I can channel it, I think, if I can slow myself down, if I can do the spiritual work of tuning up my mind and spirit. "Teach us to care and not to care; Teach us to sit still," as TS Eliot wrote, probably trying to get at a very different thing (but that's ok too, I'll hear it how I need to hear it today).

Assault on the Temple

I heaped abuse on my body this weekend. Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. Every fucking thing in sight. Correct that--I looked at everything in sight, then added bacon, then ate it.

My appetite is a money changer in the temple that is my body. I need a savior to chase out the defilers, quick, before the walls come tumbling down.

I eat out of boredom. I eat out of anxiety. I eat to soothe pain. I eat to celebrate good fortune. I eat to numb existential terror. I eat because, well, bacon tastes goooood.

I suppose it's better to lose a weekend to food than to heroin or alcohol, given my responsibilities at this moment in my life, but that's pretty cold comfort when it comes down to it. At a certain point "at least I'm not a drug addict!" becomes a less than satisfying excuse. Especially when, in truth, I am absolutely an addict and it's probably only an accident of circumstance and maybe biology that I tend to choose deep fried drugs rather than opiates.

Man up, Huntington. Put down the peanut butter pretzels, right fucking now. Just walk away.

Fat Suit

I don't have much left in the tank right now, but I promised myself I'd write something here every day so I'm going to give a quick shot before I wade into Friday evening traffic.

I have a weird kind of social anxiety that is based largely (pardon the pun) on my weight issues and it always tend to manifest itself in surprising ways. I'm a social person, at my core, I enjoy meeting new people, I thrive off the energy of others. But I've carved out a very specific identity for myself in social settings that is, in many ways, insincere, and I'd like to get past that. I think it's the same for everyone, to some extent: I am always, quite self-consciously, the Other, to borrow the parlance of my old literary theory classes. I have to do a tangled kind of dance with myself to get past that feeling in every new situation, and what I usually do is try to use my own anxiety and insecurity to invent a persona in each new conversation. It's starting to exhaust me, my own self-pity and self-consciousness, the way I nurture my own discomfort and turn it into a fat clown suit. If I met myself at a dinner party I think I'd pretty quickly find a way to migrate to the other side of the room. That may not be entirely true, actually, but I do find it very hard to get out of my own head and interact honestly and sincerely with new people. My friend Peter, who I haven't spoken to in years, unfortunately, was one of the most intense and most sincere people I've ever known. He used to get very upset when I'd turn on my self-deprecating fat loser schtick and he always used to call me on it. He would tell me it hurt him to hear me make those jokes, he would tell me I needed to give myself permission to love myself the way he and others did, he would tell me that the way I see myself is not the way the world sees me and I should stop assuming it was and stop trying to punish everyone for my own insecurity. And fuck...he was right. I was too cool for school back then, and I liked to pretend that he meant well but just didn't get it, didn't really get me, didn't understand the sophistication of my oh-so-meta verbal somersaults. But in truth he nailed me, and it was not much for to process at the time. So thank you, Peter, wherever you are. I love you too. And I'm working on it.

Add Some Extra Just For You

My wife and I decided early on that we wanted to make parenting choices that would instill a sense of warm, unconditional love in our children; we wanted to create an environment of support and encouragement and empowerment that would hopefully give our children the tools to be kind, loving, confident and, most importantly, happy individuals; we wanted to help them discover and nurture their own individual spirits, to have the courage to love who they are, and we vowed to evaluate all our choices against that criteria. We didn't want to raise obedient, well-mannered, respectful children, necessarily, unless we believed that being obedient, well-mannered and respectful were necessary steps toward becoming kind, loving, confident and happy. If rebellious, rowdy and loud is what it takes for my kids to be kind, loving, confident and happy, then so be it.

And boy have I gotten what I was asking for, or what I had coming to me, depending on how you look at it. My children are beautiful creatures, but my children are also...my children. We have two boys, 5 years old and 2 years old, respectively, and, like most children, they can be total and complete animals. Maybe not like most children, actually. In the movie "Dangerous Liasons," there's a great line about Valmont, the John Malkovich character: "What's true of most men, is doubly so of him." And I suppose you could say the same about both my kids: imagine your normal, rowdy, spirited, trouble-making toddler. Then double it, for each of them.

So I don't have obedient, respectful, well-mannered kids. They're not monsters, don't get me wrong, but they're also not very good company for the faint of heart. But that's all fine with me, I even kind of appreciate the anarchy to a certain extent. The real question is: are we actually giving them the tools to be kind, loving, confident and happy people? The answer, right now, is: fuck if I know.

I do know they give and receive huge doses of love. I know they exude joy, laughter, energy and intellectual curiousity. I know the feeling I get when I watch them sleeping or hear a belly laugh or get a hug is real, and I know it's reciprocated, in their own way.

But it turns out there's another hugely important factor at play beyond the values we consciously instill in them and the behavior we decide to allow or not allow or punish or praise, and that's the behavior we *model*, on a daily basis. And really, that is far and away the most important thing in the end. What kind of person will my child turn out be? What kind of choices will my child make? How comfortable will my child feel in his own skin?

Look in the mirror, bub, and you have your answer.

Yikes.

A friend of mine once told me that somebody once told him that the best way to be a good father to your child is to be a good husband to your child's mother. If I stop and think about that too much I find some problems, but, then again, stopping and thinking too much is in and of itself one of my biggest problems. So just go with it, for a moment, Of course it's true, on a certain level. And of course it follows that the best way to be a good husband is to be...a good man.

I've always wanted to be a good man, I think. But I've also always been lazy. It's a different thing to want to be a good man because you want to be a good husband and a good father. I can read all the parenting books in the world and espouse the most beautiful ideas about nurturing and unconditional love, I can feel all those things and even put them into practice but at the end of the day, what really matters is what my son sees me do, what my son sees me feel, how my son sees me live. And by that standard, I've got a lot to work on. If I want my children to be kind, loving, confident and happy, the most important thing i can do is to become kind, loving, confident and happy myself.

That's a tall order, for me. Am I a kind man? I think I can be generous, but that's not the same thing as kindness. I have an instinct for kindness, I think, for which I largely credit my own parents modelled behavior, but I pull back on it too often. Loving? Whoa. That's the hardest one, by fucking far, and probably the subject of a whole other post. Suffice it to say that one of my life goals is to truly learn how to give and receive love, and I'd like to think I'm on the journey to get there. Confident? Not quite. Not yet, not truly. I've got some important work to do in some key areas on that front. And...happy. I think that comes down to giving myself permission to experience joy in my daily life, and on that front some days are better than others.

When I think about things that way it changes some key decisions I've made about how to be a parent and what it means to really be present in my childrens lives. In some ways, I think, it means my wife and I both need to give ourselves a little more permission to have our own lives, to make ourselves fuller and richer people, with the faith that those experiences will turn us into better parents. I think we've both been circling this revelation recently, but haven't quite come to terms with it. And, you know, it fucking hard to find the time to read a newspaper article when you have two young children, let alone carve out a self-improvement plan. But we'll get there, I know we will.

I just don't want to fuck up my kids too badly. I want to give them the best chance I can. And there's a delicious kind of irony in the fact that I've been using my Role as Father to avoid dealing with my own fucked up shit, when deep down I've always known the only way to really play The Role of Father is to deal with my own fucked up shit.

Back to the old drawing board.


(The title of this post in take from one of my favorite poems, "This Be the Verse," by Phillip Larkin, the text of which I now present to you in it's entirety:)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
 They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
 And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
 By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
 And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
 It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
 And don't have any kids yourself.

Life in the Fast Lane

I was in a car accident last week. I've been spending a minimum of four hours a day on the freeway since early February, driving from North San Diego county to West Los Angeles every day, so I suppose my own personal "Crash" moment was inevitable at a certain point. I was hit from behind while slowing for traffic on the northbound 405, and at the time of impact I immediately understood exactly what was happening and for a split second felt sure that this was it, this is how I die, slowing down in the fast lane in Torrance, California on sleepy Tuesday morning.

That didn't happen, of course--my car is totalled, I've got a weird bruise on my left arm and some sore ribs, but nobody was seriously hurt and as freeway collisions go mine turned out be relatively mild. But the accident stunned me, in more ways than one, and I don't think I've fully processed the experience yet. It wasn't a "brush with death re-evaluate the meaning of your life" kind of thing--I don't think my subconscious will let me engage in something that cliched at this point in my life--nor was it quite a traumatic "how can we all be spiralling toward our destruction in these death traps every day" kind of thing either, though that kind of panic is more up my Lexapro-soothed anxiety alley.

As I get some distance and sort through my thoughts I think my reaction to the accident is more about reminding myself to pay attention. I wasn't at fault (I'm saying that now less any Geico claims processor stumble across this blog) and I'm not sure I could have done anything to avoid the collision in any way, but I was on auto-pilot, drifting with my morning thoughts, abstent-mindedly sipping coffee and half-listening to the radio, taking my foot on and off the brake at the same places I take my foot on and off the brake every morning. I was not, as they say, "in the moment," until the moment reached out and grabbed me and punched me in the ribs and poured coffee all over my Sirius radio receiver. The moment decided it would not ignored, in this case. And all I think I should say to that is: thank you. I receive you. I'm grateful to be awoken and I'll try to keep my eyes open as best I can from now on.

Cold Water

I'm trying out a new blog as a way of shaking off some dust and holding myself accountable for my own thoughts and plans and shortcomings. I think I need a kind of living document to play around with, both as an outlet and a way to provide myself with some structure and focus and a way to get out of my own head and create a dialogue with myself. Strangely, it seems like a good idea to do this in a semi-public way. I think that will force me to take the whole idea more seriously and as a consequence my thinking will end up being less precious, less self-conscious and hopefully more constructive and useful. But who the fuck knows. I'll probably end up abandoning the whole thing after a few posts, but that's ok too. On the Internet, no one can hear you give up. For the immediate future, at least, I vow to update this blog at least once a day, and I'm going to limit my subject matter to...me. My only goal is tap out something every day that honestly reflects my state of mind at the time. No theorizing, no grandstanding, hopefully a minimum of bullshit. Which probably means it will be boring as hell to anyone but me, so you might want to just go ahead and close that browser window now. Thanks for stopping by.

I feel a little numb today, bloated and slow. It's a far too familiar feeling for me, a recurring rhythm (shit I had to write that word four times before I got it right. R-H-Y-T-H-M. I've never been able to spell that fucking word. I'll choose not to speculate on what that may mean) that I can't seem to shake. PASSIVITY, my old enemy, my crutch, is rearing it's head again.

I want to shake it off. I want to splash a little cold water on my face, get my ass moving. As a first step, I submit a kind of state-of-the-nation status report from Republic of Tom, as of June 2, 2009:

--I can't get my eating under control. I'm a 35 year old husband and father who is grossly overweight and does not take responsibility for his own health, and whatever else may be true about me I don't want that failure to end up being my legacy. It's a complicated and silly lifelong saga, but the current crux of it is that I can't seem to find the will and discipline to focus and give my own physical (and by extension, emotional and spiritual) well-being the attention it deserves. So, yeah, I should probably keep working on that one.

--On the other hand I'm feeling relatively healthy creatively, intellectually and, as a byproduct, professionally. My wheels are turning in a lot of the right ways, and it's leading me down some surprising paths. The key is to find the strength to follow those paths, but I'm not trying to rush that. My goal right now is just to keep re-working the muscles that I had let atrophy for a good 15 years, and that's a process, not a flip of a switch. So far so good, for the most part.

--I love my family. I worry about my family. I worry about my ability to be who I need to be for my family. I miss my children, still, every day, when I'm not with them. I obsess about how the choices I'm making now are affecting them, in both practical and emotional ways, in both the long-term and the short-term. I worry that I am not the best husband that I could be, I worry that I am not giving my wife the kind of foundation and support she deserves, I worry that I am taking my incredible fortune and good luck for granted. I breathe in the essence of my family with every breath. My instinct is to define myself completely and totally and only by them, to shut out the rest of the world, to cocoon ourselves with each other forever. And I know that's not healthy. And so I don't. And yes, I'm on medication. It kind of helps.

--I don't care about sports anymore. I just don't.

--I miss reading novels. I'm reading like 10 fucking scripts a week but I haven't read a novel in the last 4 months, and it's hurting my brain.

--I want a drink. Right now. My name is Tom, and, in addition to lots of other things, I think I'm probably a high-functioning alcoholic. So there's that.

Well that should do it for today. That kind of felt good, I think.