TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

#91 – Endstop Sweep::Init Part 2

#91 - Endstop Sweep::Init Part 2

My office has officially moved from the back bedroom to the dining room. Mounds of junk were sold off, I got almost $50 for some used books and I still have a laundry basket full of wires and other junk next to my files. After it was all said and done, my 8x11 space went down to 6x8 and I couldn't be happier.

Sometimes I feel like I'm holding my breath in expectation of all the major life-changing events that are bearing down on me like a freight train on Dudley Dooright's girlfriend. We're completing projects and getting stuff done and all the while looking at this unseen clock on the wall that is counting down to the day when our lives almost completely change.

I hate to admit it but this whole time for me is more scary than exhilarating and I know that it shouldn't be. For some people, they see the unknown and are willing to look at it positively. The dark room could be filled with people who are about to flip on the lights at some wonderful surprise party thrown in your honor. Or for other people…people like me…we're going into the dark room wondering if the Alien from Alien, the Predator and something with lots of teeth and claws is waiting for them with bated breath. It's not right, I know it. I'm looking at my child's arrival like I'm a convict on death row and I have a date with the needle not three months hence. It's not right.

But I still do it anyway. Every weekend is run at a frenetic pace while I complete all kinds of home projects, personal projects and work projects and try to get them all done NOW because I'm not sure how much time I'll have for them later. I'm sure I'll find some time…just not sure how much and so it's far better for me just to assume that I'll have no time at all.

Assumptions - there's a good topic; Titus has come and shattered one of the most basic assumptions I had about my adult life - that I wouldn't have kids before I was darned good and ready. Then life, the odds, whatever leaned in like a cartoon pugilist and knocked me out like that one Bugs Bunny where he tricks the other guy into catching a wallop from a boulder and a slingshot. I was not ready for this. I kept unconsciously repeating that mantra - I was not ready for this, I was not ready. All the while knowing that somewhere, somebody was saying "Listen, jerko, ready or not - here comes the rest of your life". Suddenly, all this HTML-coded navel gazing I was doing took a very specific and significant backseat to the reality I was confronted with. It stopped being an academic exercise and just became my life, for better or worse.

So here's one point - and this is a big one so I want to take some time and get this down before I forget. It's interesting how on one level - my child's life has really stripped the nonsense out of mine. As in, the amount of things that I previously was boring people to tears over is now immediately and irrevocably gone from my radar screen. The angst of the family crap (in all its multifaceted glory) or stuff about being an adult or being a good man? All of that's gone now, Jack. Now it's time to stop wondering and stop doing and that means that a lot of things in my life - things that I was spending so much time and energy over - they're just gone now.

This was a decision that was a long time coming. Looking at all the garbage that I was mooning over in the past 18 months, I have come to the realization that I let myself in for a lot more heartache than I needed to. Stuff about Janine and the family, Grandpa, whomever. I cared about making things better even if they didn't directly benefit me because I was trying to be a good citizen in the larger context. Don't wait until it's happening to you, I said, step up and try to make things better now while you have the energy and other people may not. Do the right thing, help get things on a track to something better now and when it's your time to benefit from it - you will and you'll just be better off from helping to make your own little world a better place.

So, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I know. What's trippy about it, in my opinion, is just how true that statement is after watching the good intentions and associated angst collect together to form a perfect storm of unnecessary family drama. Clearly, good intentions are not enough; you also need a helmet, a baseball bat and a can of some pretty highly concentrated mace. Keep your back against the wall, Jack - broadcasting that you're in a position to help other people out of the goodness of your own heart just invites all sorts of trouble.

But they won't call it that, no sir. No, they'll start out by being extremely grateful for your support. As the weeks go into months and after a hundred episodes of e-mail chains, phone calls, etc. - you start developing a very real sense of compassion fatigue. You become weary of yet another scrap, feeling like every time you see it start up again you're just getting pushed farther and farther back from where you need to go. At the end of it all, after you've obligated yourself to more trouble than you needed to, after the vignettes and skirmishes, the protracted crusade to improve your family dynamic - the whole thing ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

On the other side of it, you realize that the older you get the more complex family politics become. To step into the quagmire is to get just as mud-splattered as the rest. You can't maintain a sense of personal dignity and moral superiority so just trust me on this one; you can't win that battle no matter how hard that you try.

Whether you'll admit it or not, whether you know it or not - there's a small place inside you that just wants to be out from under this burden. Let me make one thing perfectly clear - if all your family interactions are doing is to perpetuate a burdensome dynamic (and you'll know when/if things are that way) then it is living on borrowed time. Sooner or later, you're going to figure out that you don't need to live like that. Daily life will provide that information to you. Either you'll figure out that you don't need it or you'll become so tired of living under a chafing yoke that you'll throw it off for *anything* in it's place.

And then you figure out that you're more or less okay without it. Weird, really. That whole analogy that I used before about carrying around the stinky diapers - it's weird to know that these can also apply to the relationships you always thought were to be maintained despite all else failing.

You find yourself reaching some very familiar territory after a long enough period of time. You find yourself struggling to become something other than what you see on a daily basis. To be someone who isn't callous and doesn't take it upon himself to teach the younger or less-experienced what jackholes (you know what I mean) that people can be. You knew the hot burning anger that came from being that younger, less-experienced person. You swore to yourself that you wouldn't let it be like that for other people. You would help, you would get involved and you would communicate to them that not every older person was apathetic to the point of indifference. That it was possible to survive in the adult world without becoming a hard-shelled caricature of every adult you hated or feared when you were growing up.

That was the plan, anyway.

The reality was that to aspire to be a sensitive, strong person assumes a much higher standard of behavior. Not only must you become that stronger, kinder and more accomplished human being but you must also not become discouraged by the other human garbage that you inhabit close spaces with.

You may want to be a better person, you may want to be above the more depressing realities of human behaviors but that does not apply to everyone. More to the point, the jackholes will take your behavior to be weakness and then it just puts you right back into elementary school where the weak kids are picked on more and the strong kids have all the tetherballs.

I'm sorry to be the one to say it, because it's an indictment of the whole human race. People don't really evolve socially beyond what you see in junior high school - they just get better at pretending that their more obvious and silly prejudices actually have an intelligent though process behind them.

But don't believe the hype.

You have reached the end, young traveler. You have reached the end of this course and all that you thought you were going to accomplish in terms of your life, your family and your daily living perspective have completed their useful purpose. As I quoted from Louis L'Amour in my high school yearbook, there will come a time when you think everything is finished; that will be the beginning.

The countdown means that you find yourself watching the passage of time with a mixture of excitement, resignation and trepidation. Your life is becoming a gestalt of your relationships, your aspirations, your fears, your strengths and weaknesses. Recognizing each for what they are, seeing how to make them better or less of an impact on you - this has been my journey. It's not done yet, it's gotten to a specific point on a line that stretches forward to an indefinite point. You look forward and you reach back to other people on their journeys because you feel obligated to somehow make the way easier for them the way that some simplified things for you. And all the while knowing a simple truth, you can lead a horse to water, etc, etc.

I've been at points where a major portion of my life was over. High school, living at home, various jobs, being single. Major portions of my life have come to their end on a number of levels within the last 3-4 months. Now we're in an extremely fluid state where we look to see where the road will now be taking us. It's where we let go of the side of the dock and start paddling out into the deep, dark waters. The little pink animal that's floating on top of an enormous lake and it isn't for you to say just how far you'll get or what the view will look like when or if you reach the other side.

I wanted to write this down for a specific reason. To talk about how afraid I am of all the change that is happening in my life. To talk about what I'm hoping the new parts of my life will become. To talk about how a little boy who hasn't seen his parents yet is already stronger than I am.

I'm rambling…sorry.

- Tim Woolery - 04/30/2006