21Jul/100
Point Break
The good news is that I'm getting better at taking bad news. The bad news is that I'm not that good at taking bad news - I'm just better than I used to be. Life provides little tests and gut checks from time to time. I had one or several last week and it illustrates both progress and room for improvement.
14Jul/100
Pulling Back from the Edge
I love how family drama has it's own gravitational pull. It sucks you into exhausting situations and you're left angry with yourself for wasting so much time and energy on something so trivial.
The trick, I think, is to recognize when you're going down that path and pull back. Starting now, I'm instituting a moratorium on phone calls and email to reduce the amount of drama in my life. Drama has never improved the quality of my life, it's only detracted from it. Failing to participate in it has never really harmed me - I've never looked back and said "You know - I should have called and given her a piece of my mind!"
Life doesn't work that way.
I have some major projects due - I have a lot of personal projects I'm trying to make progress on. I'm turning off KDRM (Your 24 Drama Station) and resuming the normal broadcasting schedule.
8Jul/100
Deep Truths of Life and a New T-shirt I Want
I was trying to figure out why I felt so weird last week. I had so many good things come up last week that it scared me and stranger still was how uncomfortable I felt. Someone told me this and I thought it was worth passing along...
8Jul/100
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
I've talked about managing expectations before and now, after having a few 'Goofus and Gallant' moments I feel compelled to talk about setting boundaries. I've also said it before and it bears repeating: when you aren't taught certain lessons of life, you can feel like the retarded kid who is still struggling to tie his shoelaces while the other kids are learning to drive stick-shift. It can be enraging to see where your peers are and yet be unable to get there. It can also be depressing on a level usually not seen outside of a Lifetime made-for-TV movie. Now that I have spent months and years putting the puzzle pieces together - part of me wants to come back and tell you what the whole picture is. This is the reason I wrote this.
I had a bad habit before, of being too available. I was the guy you called to move the couch for free. I was the guy you called to sit in the hospital room or unclog the toilet. I'm good at doing the hard jobs and I used to, with not a small amount of wounded pride, talk about how 'I was the first guy to the job and the last guy to the party.' I think I've been saying it for years and now, I don't say it any more. Whatever source it comes from, I had the mistaken impression that helping people with something automatically brought you into their social circle and that just isn't the case. People are friends because they relate to each other and they have something in common; not because one person owes something to the other.
I had to break the connection between the two and then surround myself with people I could relate to - I had to build new fences (fences are both boundaries and connections - I use the metaphor interchangeably) with the people I wanted to be neighbors with. The thing that I had to get better at was learning how to respect myself as much as I respected other people. I think the family hammered that lesson home a little too well - maybe they were afraid I thought too much of myself. In any case, I never learned how to build and maintain boundaries when I was younger; now I've spent the last 10 years puzzling it out for myself.
I think a lot of people get to that point in their late 20s and early 30s, the relationships and the answers they had 5 years ago aren't working for them anymore and now it's time to evolve. I've been to that place before and although it's never comfortable, good things always come out of it. I'll keep you posted as to how it all goes.
1Jul/100
More New Rules
When I first posted some New Rules back in April, little did I know that drama would find other ways to creep into my life. After living through several different vignettes over the past week, I feel obligated to add some more new Rules for living that may be of benefit to you in how you live your life or at least help you understand how things work for me.
When I originally re-booted TimWoolery.Net - I posted some pretty clear thoughts about the intent of this space and it's bled over into how I communicate with people online. I'm not vulgar or crass but I am direct and people tend to perceive that intensity as abrasive. For me, it isn't so much about being abrasive as it is about being efficient: I'd rather figure out that we're not going to be friends before I invest a lot of time into you. There's nothing worse than spending months or years with someone, only to have them go "You know...I never really liked you in the first place."
30Jun/100
So let me tell you about the last few weeks.
I was approached to do some work for the company setting up a video shoot with one of our board members. Every practice and industry has its celebrities and Investments are no different. Dr. Harry Markowitz is considered the father of Modern Portfolio Theory, is frequently on shows like '60 Minutes' and '20/20' and can make Jim Cramer lick his boots. I got to film him talking about the math of investments and about his work that changed the face of trillions of dollars in investments.
24Jun/100
About the New Site Theme
It was time for a change, that is all.
I like WordPress but sometimes it can be a bit finicky about what customizations it allows you to do. Of course, I didn't pay for any of it so I'm looking in the mouth of the proverbial horse.
I'll shut up now.
18Jun/100
Neither as Smart or as Stupid as You Think
I pounded my head against the wall enough for the week and so I am taking a step back. I can never reconcile how easy it is to cross the line from thinking to over-thinking. It always manages to slip in as quickly and quietly as that transition you take when you jump into the pool - one second you're dry and the next second you're soaking wet.
| The more you put yourself out there, the more you are subject to how others perceive you. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm just saying that their opinion is subjective and if you don't want to deal with chopping away at someone else's opinion, you need to pull it back and stop broadcasting all of this ... what do I want to call it ... 'self.' I guess the key to figuring out that you're pushing too hard is to gauge how much people are pushing back. Even if you don't realize it, people will quietly start hinting when you need to back off - I need to start hearing that better. |
14Jun/100
The Imponderable…
You know you think too much when your quiet computer technology genius of a friend goes "Tim, you like to ponder the imponderable." Life cannot be completely processed or explained but sometimes I find myself compelled to try. Sometimes you need to understand because you don't like the idea of living with an unanswered question.
The mechanics of human interaction don't simplify with age - I have learned. On some levels, we're all still working with the same rules we learned on the playground. Or sometimes we assume everyone else is. We lower ourselves to the same level we think everyone else is at only to find that we had everything fish-ackwards. As a friend explains it 'don't think too hard about it' - there are too many variables and everything means something different to everyone. When they want you to know something, they'll tell you.
14Jun/100
The Days are Just Packed
I like packing my weekends with activity - stretches them out. I love coming in on Monday and feeling like I haven't been there in a week because so much has happened. Such is the purpose of a hot summer weekend. An old Calvin and Hobbes comic illustrates it better than I can:
Even though I was exhausted and dragging all of Sunday, I couldn't sit still with a perfect azure sky hanging overhead. Barbecue, pool party, kids playing until 10 pm. It's a mandate to use the time wisely so that I - or Little Man - can look back and think of these days as the best of times.
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