michael.havard's blog

Just want one day of relaxation. ONE FREAKING DAY! One day of not having a headache. One day of not fighting. One day of not having a child do something idiotic. One day of not having to deal with anything but my own needs and maybe someone putting me first for a change. But noooooooo! I have work, I have kids to take care of, I have a wife camping, then camping again, then on a trip to Tennessee, then what? Everyone has their own shit and so there's no one I can rely on to talk to or help me through. I just have to suck it up and deal with being alone in this.

Think on this:

If today I avoid the axe, for fear of the blisters it will bring, then I will fail to cut down the tree that will build my house tomorrow.

This is what we do. This is what a lot of married couples do. We pick some line, some pain, some event that we want to avoid and we make that our focus. We avoid some line or some task that will bring us pain; for fear of the blisters.

In application development (aka programming) you have this construct called the Application Programming Interface (API). The API is simply a set of rules defining how to interact with the application in the way that gets the desired outcome. For instance, if I'm dealing with a financial application and I want to get the balance on an account the API might say to use the "getBalance" function. It might also say that in order to get the balance it needs an account number, as in "getBalance(111477)".

Yesterday was a good day. Today was a good day. Tomorrow is going to be shit (literally). Tomorrow is my cleansing day; The day before I go in for a colonoscopy... woohoo :( So I'll be at home with all kinds of disgusting things to drink and nothing substantial to eat and it will stink. But I will get to remember that the past two days have been good. I'll remember that things are getting better. I will remember that I'm on the road to a better, happier me.

I could safely say, however indelicate it might sound, that l would prefer the distraction of rubbing my testicles against a cheese grater over this feeling I have right now. I'm exhausted. I'm tired of faking it,; putting on a happy face; smiling and sucking it up. While inside I'm waiting for that call, that text, that sign that everything is okay, that we are okay. I miss talking. I miss what was my normal. I miss being able to share openly and honestly. Now I'm alone. My self imposed exile from those I love.

My cuddle buddy

At 40 years old I've come to realize how much my 5 year old self still holds influence. While I try most days to pretend to be a grown up and to be beyond all the hangups of my childhood, nothing could be further from the truth. I drone on and on about people using their parents as an excuse for bad behavior and yet I am mired in my own parental muck. Through our experiences we learn patterns of behavior, repeat the experiences enough times and the patterns become locked. It's like muscle memory. Imagine if you played dodge ball with someone for years on end.

"What should one say about love except that life would be better were it not for love's many pains. Oh people will wax poetic about great achievements, fortunes, and battles won all for the sake of love, but how many explore the failure, the fortunes lost, the countless lives disposed of under the banner of love. How many poets have extolled love's virtues versus how the ones that have decried its pitfalls?

Maybe it's me, but I've noticed that as people get older they begin to over analyze every situation. Whether it's a new purchase, a child's behavior, or personal relationships. As we age we begin to put more focus on the risks and reduce focus on the rewards, and thus stretch out the decision making process as long as possible. In some cases this stretching allows the decision to be made for us; someone else making the decision or the set of circumstances changing and the opportunity is lost.

I think that sometimes people see coincidence and think "that's serendipity!" Like being broke and finding a twenty in a coat pocket. But serendipity isn't just a beneficial coincidence. I mean how many times have you been broke, found some money and then been broke again just as quick. It's not just needing something and then finding something. It's when you've stopped even looking and then SURPRISE you get something even better than what you stopped looking for.