Congratulations to Matt on the recent addition to his family, Ava Sophia.
Category Archives: Life
A little respect
I wish there was a legitimate excuse for not being able to keep up with writing, but there’s really not. Part of it is my recent attempts at working (a client who I fired after only a month, long story) as well as serious attempts at building a solid clientele. This has proved significantly harder than I’d ever imagined, but some real success stories happen this way so, why not?
I seem to have developed either an increased self-worth, or woken up to the fact that one just doesn’t get rich working for a living. Which is a bit of advice that I took away from my first, and BY FAR, worst job that I had in the past 12 years as a professional designer. So, instead of trying to market myself as a person who is worth $XX dollars per hour, I’m going at it from a different approach. That approach is selling myself and my skills as a product instead of clamoring for some hourly wage job. Of course, it’s the road less traveled as it is surely the more difficult one but will most definitely pay off better in the end.
I’ve been investing some time into discovery as well, this has given me a new found respect for pretty much anyone who can barbecue well (and those that know the difference between BBQ and grilling) cause it’s fuckin’ hard to do that if you’re not sure what you’re doing. Also, my respect for single parents has gone up ten-fold. I really have the ideal situation when it comes to raising a little one, so all of you single parents out there–my hat’s off to you. Kids are a damn hard job and doing it alone can’t be easy.
Convergence
So really, there’s apparently a time in your life where all things come together whether you like it or not. The past, the present and the future all converge into one big pile of fluffy somethingorother and you’re not sure what utensil to pull out. I’m not exactly having a mid-life crisis or anything but the past three months have sure been a whirlwind and I’m very thankful for my sanity–and as always, my wonderful wife–cause this wouldn’t be easy otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually happier than I’ve been in a long time and certainly don’t regret anything that has happened in the past three months, but one small event that took place this past weekend made me think about things pretty hard. Allow me to sum up.
I lost touch with a high school friend some six years ago due to a number of reasons, primarily that it seemed I wanted to grow up and he didn’t. That friend is now engaged to be married and hopefully preparing to take some serious steps into adulthood since he mentioned that he and his bride-to-be are thinking about having children in a short amount of time. Side note: why is it so much more difficult to end a platonic friendship than a romantic one? There was a period in my life when I wanted to pretend that everyone I hung out with before the age of 26 didn’t exist and that everything post wife was it. I’m fatalistic and lazy with relationships anyway, what would it harm? Well, a lot.
I have a new view of someone else in my life that leaves me with a horrible feeling of despair and even fear. In the past year, this person has changed in my eyes to the point that I don’t see him the way I used to, and it hurts– a lot. I’m sad that this person can’t enjoy his life and all he’s worked for but instead seems to spend his days living in turmoil or some kind of mysterious shame. Should I continue on with my view that friends are disposable and that the past is something that shouldn’t be revisited– at least in one form or another–I could become this person very easily. I don’t want that at all and hope sincerely that my friend can find his way.
This is by no means an acceptance of past acquaintances back into my life, but my willingness to accept that I am as much a part of other people’s lives as they are a part of mine. As I’ve had a generally charmed life, I’d like to think that there’s not much that can be harmed by inviting the past over for a cup of coffee every now and then–but I’m letting it sit at the end of very long table and getting a butler.
Everything else that has come together recently has been the most fantastic, albeit challenging, set of tasks to come my way in some time. There are few people who’s opinion of me I value greatly–and they know who they are–watch out cause I intend to make you smile, big time.
Rewind
I’m not much for dwelling on the past, especially when it comes with cheap, ugly luggage. There’s an event happening tomorrow night that is being built up by some as the event of the century. Frankly, I see it as just a beer with some old high school buddies and don’t really think that there will be a lot to write about afterward. Stay tuned either way, there will be a blow-by-blow exclusive, commercial-free recap here after it happens.
Finally
I’m done. After much ado about nothing, I finally got my grade situation straightened out and will graduate from Illinois Institute of Technology with a 4.0 average and a better opinion of the place than I had at the beginning of the year. Now, I’m not sure what transpired over the past 10-ish months that caused one (very necessary) course’s grade to go unchanged to the proper grade and crediting me with the requisite amount of credit to actually graduate, but I’m very sure that there was something in there that caused me unnecessary stress.
The quality of the education that I got out of this university was top-notch and I’m proud to have attended there; however, the administration snafus were plenty. I’m not going to get into particulars and the college itself seems to be aware of certain shortcomings, but for the amount that this education cost me I would have hoped that some of the situations that arose would have been handled a litte more gracefully instead of a snipe hunt.
On to another step in my career development, finding a job. Anyone hiring?
Babies, marriage and death
I’ve been to my share of funerals, but never planned one. I’ve been to a few weddings and planned one. I’ve had one planned baby. With that, I’ve experienced-or been witness to- the extreme costs that these three events can generate for those involved. My wedding was small, not necessarily on the cheap side, but by no means extravagant. Having only one grandparent left, I’ve been on the business end of three funerals and got familiar with the costs involved through my parents. Although these two events differ from the third (a baby) they are not necessarily cheaper.
As I’ve made somewhat of an attempt to become a more practical consumer in recent years, unfortunately I’ve entered a new phase of consumer spending-baby goods. Luckily, the beginning of this journey was set off with a proper shower that took care of quite a few necessities. We’ve also been the recipient of many generous packages filled with baby clothes and other items that would normally have a heavy price tag-strollers, seats, a crib. For those in the know, there’s nothing baby goods manufacturers like to better while they say “congratulations,” is charge you an extra fifty bucks for something that you’ll most likely use for a couple months, or just break without warning. So, if you’re not in the know, consider this a warning.
Different items for babies vary in price in a simliar way that adult goods do, but with a twist. Typically, cheaper items meant for adults tend to last a little longer than the act of removing them from the package or wrapper; baby good on the other hand, not so much. There are a few items that were purchased for said baby that were the cheaper version of whatever item we were in the market for, this turned out to be a bit of a mistake. The items in question were not high-ticket items but did come with an expectation to work-even if only for a reasonable amount of time. The other problem with these items is that sometimes, even if the product that was purchased does indeed appear to work, you may find out that it’s not working well or even at all. The baby goods market is filled with these types of products. Unfortunately, this does not help the psyche of the already nervous parents.
So far, we’ve had good luck with Eddie Bauer, Medela and Fisher-Price branded items, so-so luck with Evenflo items and horrible luck with anything branded Babies-R-Us. I accept that there’s some chance involved with buying retail products in general, but Babies-R-Us won’t be getting any visits from us in the near future.
Sad dinner
My wife gets upset sometimes because she doesn’t think that she’s my muse. In a way, there’s some truth to it, but only because I don’t consider myself a true artist, at least in the fine art sense. I’m a bit flighty when it comes to being an artist and haven’t really come across one thing that had driven me to be passionately creative the way that it’s normally portrayed in movies or whatever. It’s just not in me and I’m creatively lazy, I’m also a conflicted person, and have had a left/right brain conflict my whole life. My undergraduate degree is an art degree and my master’s is a computer science degree. I flipped majors from art to finance to computer science to art again and eventually came up with a mix of the two brain halves some 30-ish years later.
I absolutely adore my wife and she’s been the inspiration to make myself a better person for the last nine years, in quite a few areas. It makes me sad when she says that she’s not an inspiration to me because that’s quite far from the truth. More specifically, I really love to cook. I’m a self-taught chef and have a good background in restaurant work that afforded me a bit of time to learn from some great chefs. I got some good tips was exposed to some wonderful different types of cuisine and for the past ten years while living in the city, ate at some fantastic restaurants. My wife was my primary dining companion for almost all of that dining out and one of our first dates was dinner at my apartment, which I made. She loved the dinner and a new relationship was born and it had a sound foundation on food. I’ve been cooking for her ever since and have cooked some meals that made her squeal with joy after the first bite and it’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced.
There have been occasions where dinner didn’t turn out, well, all that great-tonight was one of those meals. I’ve occasionally used boxed rices as a side to what I was preparing (e.g. Uncle Ben’s mushroom whatever or something like that) but never as part of the dish. I tried making a kind of dirty rice with shrimp inspired by a cooking show I just watched. The shrimp got good reviews, the dirty rice didn’t. Thankfully I can blame Zatarain’s for the dirty rice failure and not myself. I’ve had luck with Zatarain’s products before but this rice just came out rubbery. The resulting dish was overall, disappointing. This led my wife to become-yep, sad. It’s something that she says she’s done all her life and in the few times that I’ve made meals for her like tonight, the reaction has been the same. It never fails to make me miserable, like I really let her down. She’s the reason I continue to cook with the passion that I’ve got, cause really I could live on cereal and peanut butter and jelly.
I hadn’t thought of the idea of a cooking muse until Ginger brought up the idea that she didn’t think I inspired her to be creative awhile back. I suppose I did have the same idea that is thought about when thinking about a typical muse, the flippant Edie Sedgwick kind. Really, there’s always someone in your life that drives you to be better at something and I guess that’s your muse for that particular thing. I’m still not sure if they pick you or you find them, or any combination of all that but when you’ve found yours treat her good, she’ll make your life better.
10 music regrets
1. Never seeing the Ramones live
2. Never seeing John Lee Hooker live
3. Not taking full advantage of playing in high school and college bands
4. Not buying Cindee Dakin’s drums. (5-pc tri-color Ludwig Vistalite for $100)
5. Staying with the same guitar teacher for six years.
6. Living in the city for 10 years and only going to about 2 dozen shows.
7. Not seeing more industrial shows in the 90’s.
8. Having a full conversation with David Yow and not knowing who I was talking to (although he wouldn’t stop talking about poop).
9. Not seeing Frank Zappa live.
10. Being too young to have an opportunity to see the Smiths live.
Gee Whiz, I got laid off.
My career has been pretty flat, drama-wise. I got laid off from my first job out of school on my one year anniversary at the company. After that I spent a good chunk of time floating around at ad agencies doing whatever I could get my hands on, enjoying every minute of it, and there was plenty of work to go around. I didn’t have a pot to piss in but it was ok, I didn’t have any responsibilities either. Ten years later, I find myself jobless and faced with the same situation but life is significantly different. I just had a baby and bought a house a little over a year ago. I’m more prepared for unemployment than I ever have been in my career, but I can’t help but still feel pissed off about the situation.
I was at the company way too long considering I hadn’t been all that happy with things for some time and steady jobs make you complacent. Either way, there’s no shaking the feeling of betrayal concerning the way things played out. I feel that the decision was made on a personal level because of certain variables and people involved.
The more I think about it, it’s a good thing that it happened cause I’m more marketable than ever and I would have probably stayed where I was until they turned the lights off on us. I finished up a master’s degree in web development last year and had the intention of looking for something new this year because I was just plain unhappy, there hasn’t been a better time for me to look for a new job-market conditions aside of course. Anyone wanna hire a really loyal, intelligent designer and developer? I’m cute and I have good taste in music, too.
I haz a baybee
Tonight is the one month anniversary of the birth of my son. I haven’t put much down about the event since the actual birth (we tweeted it and posted the event on Facebook). In a month’s time I’ve learned a few things, mostly about my family-the previous (or existing) one. The most interesting thing that was learned is that all the shit they tell you about how difficult it is to bring a newborn home and that you’ll go crazy due to lack of sleep, for me, was total bullshit. So far (yeah, I know it’s only been a month…whatever) taking care of a newborn is relatively easy. His needs are simple and there’s typically only three things that make him a crab-ass. One, he’s hungry. Two, he’s gassy. Or, three he needs to be changed cause he flopped his shorts. There’s not much else to the little bugger, it’s a relatively simple formula. Sure, it takes patience to deal with something that expresses needs only through screaming, but I’ve worked for grown men who do the same thing and learned to deflect well.
The surprise revelation, and one that our peditrician said was ‘the secret’, is that other members of the family are the hard part and that babies are, in fact, easy. We made sure that grandparents got a visit in soon after we were home as to avoid what would have been a barrage of phone calls. The only problem is after the initial visit, the mind games started. There were more than a few times when family members thought that they were entitled to voice their opinion on subjects that they had absolutely no right to, or times when a visit turned into a power-play and only ended up creating hurt feelings.
With these things, I try to remember that it was more than 30 years since these members of my family had to bring a newborn baby into their house and that the stress of the experience isn’t so fresh in their mind-not a real excuse but an excuse nonethless. Some of the other instances I’m less likely to forgive because it’s just a case of blind ignorance and I don’t suffer that well. Really, most of the problems that occured happened right away, were dealt with and are pretty much over, everyone seems to be behaving themselves for now.
The last surprise I got was the one tha tdealt with time-or, how I was spending the time I had before my son was born. Oddly enough, I seem to have more time now. It makes me sad because that means I was wasting a lot of it before and I’m not ever sure what I was wasting it on. I’m a gamer, so video games was one thing. I like movies so I was watching a lof of those, too. I’m not playing as many video games in the past month as I was prior to the arrival but I’m watch twice as many movies and getting a lot more done. I set up this blog, have continued improving my web dev skills and am keeping a cleaner house than before.
My father always said that I suffered from lack of urgency, I knew that was true but I didn’t know how much so until it became evident that if I didn’t keep up with things that they’d crush me. I’m hoping to keep the momentum going and see if it might change some bad habits that I’ve accumulated in recent years. If not for me, I’ll do it for my wife-who continues to be my hero, and for my newborn son, who deserves a good role model. Happy birthday Charlie, I love you.