Everybody is Different.
Nothing has Changed
Good from far. Far from good
Sometimes, I’m George Constanza's and Jason Bourne's love child. Half of me doing exactly the opposite of everything I’ve ever done. My other half doing everything else because I have no idea who I am. But I guess the real news here is that I like it. It’s weird. Kinda that weird pain that as a kid you induced just to see if you still felt shit. Just me? Oh. Ok.
This whole reunion thing has got me thinking about life. My life in particular. Since I am the one loving it right now. Full disclosure: My brain told my fingers to type living. My fingers typed loving. I left it that way. My fingers know better.
I have proven through my writing that we all share some very basic universal human truths. A milestone on my journey was my collaboration with Valentina Petrova, who writes Life Intelligence here at Substack. I learned so much from her and still do every time I read one of her posts.
Our collaboration was built around three simple questions that I posed to her that she answered. We then shared our reactions with each other and our communities. In all honesty, it was built around my insecurities, and the self-awareness it takes to grow in meaningful ways as a human. She helps with things like that. It’s like her job or something.
That post dropped on 11/19/21 and I just read it for the first time in months. I can live with it. Sitting down here today, I felt a touch scared. That I’m blank. The Bowl gig is awesome, but the hill takes no prisoners. And never gets smaller.
Saltines are Heaven
I came home Sunday night after my first week, melted into the jacuzzi, crawled into bed, ate a sleeve of saltines for dinner, and died until 4 am the next day. Then got up and completed eleven real estate inspections. Something is missing from this task list.
Writing. Oh yeah. Woke up this morning (Wed 8/24) at 3 am in a slight panic. It’s gone. It’s not falling out of my head anymore. I actually started thinking conspiratorially. Fuck, is it aliens, or what is controlling this force in my head? You know, future-broken-free-world-leader and all that.
Then I made coffee, and the bed, and sat down. And now we’re here. A thousand words in.
The phrase “Holding You Back” has gotten to me this morning. It’s gonna stick with me today and I will let it brew. It’s almost like the word “try”, a word that I discarded from my vocabulary. It’s kinda useless. How can a try move it forward?
The craft of writing enforces in me a discipline many of my former friends and colleagues begged for back in the day: Word Brevity.
Tied into that concept is Thought Clarity. Which is different than Group-Think or Same-Think. Thought Clarity is my ability to see a concept in a 360 view and in reverse motion. As my professional life unfolds, I’m forced to scrounge around deeper yet into the proverbial Skill-Set Toolbox, searching for that long-lost wrench that loosens that longing for liberation.
How I feel about DTLA is how the lonely drunk feels about the homely girl at the end of the bar. Sliding over after sending a couple of drinks her way, he soon swallows the bitters.
What was good from far has become far from good. For whatever reason. Call the drunk homely and the girl hot. The outcome remains. Heartbreaks get dealt to all. Some undeserved. Some suffered willingly. Love hates again.
The start of the road back starts soon, but it’s the same road that carried me here. Wielding that wrench I picked from the bottom of the box, I plan and prepare like Bourne.
Roberta Bixler and the 5th Grade
We moved after 4th grade, obviously. Living in Flora Vista, New Mexico meant school-bussing to Aztec, New Mexico. Aztec was the next biggest little town besides Farmington, NM. All 3000 residents.
Yeah, Flora Vista was smaller. Not just smaller, but dirt road smaller. Country road smaller. We met new neighbors: Larry, Sharri, Perry, and Karri. For real. We moved onto a 5-acre farm. A Hog Farm. With a Big Green Tractor and a barn.
My focus is on frozen moments in time that somehow circle back later in life. I’m a solid believer in optimistic fate and empathetic karma. Leaving Ms. Conklin’s class, and Farmingville, readied me for my many first days of school in new cities after that.
Of course, all of the details blur to fuzzy when pressed against the lens of time. But squinted-eye images flash into focus and jar the whole thing loose. Somehow I, me - not the 6’4” imagined me - but me, ended up in band class playing the snare drum.
Yeah! I could hide in that case. And I rode the bus. I know the somehow: drunk-ass dad relives glory days in his hi-school garage band. As an aside, the drunk-ass dad actually did play in a band with a guy that turned out to be somebody.
There was no bigger crush in elementary school history than the one I bore for Roberta Bixler. Sturdy and first-chair clarinet, she captured the attention of a newly-minted hog farmer. Poor Roberta.
Gathering the courage needed to kill or castrate a pig, I made my intentions crystal clear after school waiting for the bus
Roberta Bixler, will you be my girlfriend?
Memory Lane is scattered with potholes. The kind that never gets filled. They’re unseen and unknown, almost. But when driven over, the impact feels familiar. We knew it was there. We drove around it forever. What made us not give a fuck today?
She slapped me! Knocked my glasses off. She picked them up and gave them to me. She never said a word. I put them on and asked her, “Does that mean no?”
She turned around and got on her bus. I turned around and struggled with the goddamn snare drum.
This playlist will open up some thought channels. Grab a cocktail and your favorite medicinal substance and melt away for an hour. Your brain will love you.
It ain’t Always the Cowboy
Bonus track here. A final stab here at making sense of it all. Or maybe not. Maybe the stab to make is satisfaction. Call it contentment or acceptance. I wouldn’t call it settlement though.
Don’t settle for less in yourself than you would accept from another. When you do that, you give away yourself.
Happy Friday,
Ric
Oh wow! Thank you! Best wishes. Keep up the good work. Thanks for the good music recommendations, too.