So I’m day drinking today. Figure I’ll be home and in bed by 7 but having a few beers first. Happiness is still allusive for me but beer is good and next week will begin the next chapter in my life. Might as well have some fun before I have to be a grownup again.
Tag Archives: happiness
Weekend Review
Today I did absolutely nothing. My kids are here and I’m still just laying in bed. I really ought to get up. But they are preoccupied and fed, so it probably doesn’t matter now.
I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately. My dark places aren’t near as dark as they used to be but they do rise up sometimes. My only saving grace is that I have a great girl in my life right now. She really keeps me above water, she doesn’t put up with my bullshit.
Maybe I will be normal and have real happiness again someday, but right now I’m still fucked up.
One day at a time and things will work out, or so they say…. More beer and maybe some whiskey that always helps for a while.
Update
So I’m back. I’ve been gone a long time, sorting out stuff and generally working on me. It was a rough spring and the early summer has proven to be a turning point for me.
Without a terribly long dissertation, let’s just say the job didn’t work out. In fact the career path has basically died. I was a good football coach, but my personal issues ultimately ended that. Someone told me that passion only takes you so far and that is absolutely true. I was passionate about coaching and that took me a long way, however, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for a new career path. That has begun to work itself out, like things generally do. I have a few real prospects and am looking forward to new challenges.
Life is moving forward too. My kids are being to understand the reasons and the reality of the divorce. The understand that everyone is happier. My ex and I have hammered some things out and it looks like the divorce is getting close to being final. And I’ve started seeing someone, so things are looking up.
Ultimately, this was a process that has been many months (years) in the making and now I am starting to reap the benefits of my life decisions. Although not an easy or completed road, it is one with a light flickering at the end of the tunnel.
So, there is the condensed version of my life update. Hopefully, I will start writing with great frequency again. I have felt that gnawing desire to write but honestly, was too fucked up to get anything down. Now that things are turning around, I can’t wait to write, a lot.
See ya soon.
Time With My Sister
I got to see my sister today. That was cool because ever since I’ve moved back to Oklahoma, I haven’t seen as much of her as I would like.
It was also cool because of the lifestyle she is leading these days. Eating right and running marathons are her driving forces. I admit to giving her all kinds of hell but that’s what a big brother is for, right? And while I don’t aspire to running farther than the fridge for a beer, I can’t help but admire her.
A big part of this blog has been about my personal struggles. I make no effort to hide any of that, in fact it’s really why I started writing. That being said, the thing that my sister does that I do want to find, she’s happy.
I need to figure out what that means for me and make it happen. Happiness is not an outcome but a journey. I am in the early stages of that journey but my friends tell me I am making progress.
Hope springs eternal…
The Lizard, Happiness, and Me
Our new civic and scientific and professional life, though, is all about doubt. About questioning the status quo, questioning marketing or political claims, and most of all, questioning what’s next.
John Stuart Mill argued, “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”
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These two statements express the reason that I’m always at odds with someone, notably, my employer.
They are both taken from Seth Godin’s manifesto on the state of public education in America, really the whole of the western world. It’s powerful stuff.
My point here is that these thoughts really kind of sum up my entire journey through this life. I have always been considered a contrarian. I have always rowed upstream.
I wrote a lengthy essay about the lizard brain and the desire to escape its clutches. It is, unfortunately, the industrial education system that Godin talks about that have trained generations of people to embrace the fear, to keep doing it the way it’s always been done.
Herein lies my personal struggle. I always challenge the status quo. I don’t want to do it like it’s always been done. Please explain to me why always equals correct.
Thus, I have always lived life as a human dissatisfied. Stuck in my simple mid-management job. Doing things the way my bosses tell me to, sometimes.
Which is why I have struggled to stay out of trouble professionally. Never enough to be fired, just a level of disgruntled that generally keeps everyone unhappy, me looking for a new middle management job that ends up badly.
This line of thinking inevitably leads to one of two outcomes.
The first and most desirable is to find something that challenges and excites me. I won’t lie, the lizard holds me back. I’m afraid.
I know that I can get a teaching job, I’m a good teacher. Such as that is, given the state of my psyche and education.
What I don’t know, what I’m afraid of, is what else do I have to offer? I can’t write code. I don’t have an idea for a better mouse trap. That damn lizard.
The other outcome is status quo. Continuing on this path because I’ve always been on this path.
I don’t know which scares me more.
On the road to happiness, there are many bumps and turns. I will keep fighting the lizard and reaching outside of society’s box until I find my true self.
Goosefraba
My New Years resolution is to relax. Reduce the stress in my life and focus on things that make me happy.
Now first of all I understand stress is a part of everyone’s life. It kinda goes part and parcel with being a grown up. Everyone has responsibilities and that naturally makes people worry. But I have been miserable for a long time. The underlying theme to my plan was happiness. Moving, divorce, health, all those things lead to a happier me. And I am immensely more happy today than I have been in years, it’s a start.
I have moved. I have left. I have quit smoking. I have started eating healthier. All of those things are me moving in the right direction. Now it’s time to focus on the things that make me happy. The aforementioned things are lifestyle choices, not necessarily happiness makers. Happiness makers are activities, things a person does to occupy their time in an enjoyable way. What most people would call a hobby.
So I am going to spend my time in a better way than I have been my whole life. No more smokey bars and the craziness that goes with that, well not all the time, but that is for another day. Focus on the things I enjoy doing. Cooking, writing, reading; these are the things that excite me.
I have this blog which has already been a great release for me. I am reading a book about one of my idols. I think I’ll up cook something exotic and fun tonight.
Creative and thoughtful releases of my stress and anger. Stuff is getting better, stuff is getting better everyday.