Category: Life

  • Today’s Sketchbook Entry

    Today’s sketch is based off a painting by Gabriele Munter.

    Crayon, Pencil, Marker on Paper

  • Happy, Yet Not Secure

    The other day, I was trying to explain to my wife how I feel most days, which is happy but completely insecure. And this, is a vast improvement over the last couple of years.

    The insecurity is not whole heartedly an emotional insecurity. It’s a financial and general safety insecurity. When I have written about our financial situation, I have always tried to be as honest as possible without betraying any personal information – and the honest assessment of our financial situation is that we are in debt. The debt (credit cards, car loans, and student loans) is manageable, but also just large enough to delay us from making sound investments in our future. Though we have made progress, it does feel like this debt will never be overcome, and because of that, the feeling of a disaster being around the corner is always with me. A disaster that will ruin us, or set us back for years. This is the feeling of insecurity that I have daily.

    But I can honestly say that this is the happiest I have been in a very long time. It’s been a little over five years since my mom’s passing, but it still feels recent. It’s difficult losing your mother, and I did have an especially close relationship with mine, and with her gone, everything felt sad. No matter what I did, or my wife did, or the kid did, there was the tinge of sadness always right at the edge of everything. It’s taken awhile, but the joy has started to return, and it’s fully based in an appreciation of the love that is around me. For that, I am grateful that I do have friends and a family to share with.

    Yet, I am left with this dualism in my life; there is so much love and joy, but also I can’t shake the feeling that I have sand underneath my feet. At best I can say that these feelings exist in a balance; nether one is stronger than the other. And the truth is that I often have to force myself to appreciate the joy and love that is around me.

    I believe that being happy is a choice. But security? Do I have to earn that?

  • ODDS and ENDS: Recovery, Tottenham’s Next Season, and This Year

    (The future is in your lap…)

    Today is the first day that I feel 100% normal. Yesterday was like 95%, and I think that had to do with the side effects of the medication I was on. Yeah, Covid sucks, and I am glad that I had avoided it for four years. I am also aware that I had a very mild case, as I would say that it felt more like I had a bad cold than anything else. Also, the being exhausted all the time made me feel like I have lost a week of my life; I just couldn’t stop sleeping, which wasn’t as pleasurable as I had hoped. I just felt lazy. Now that I am back, I have the desire to exceptionally over exert myself to compensate for my “time off.”

    Tottenham Hotspur will not play in the Champions League next season, but they will qualify for the one of the two other European football tournaments. With Spurs final game against already relegated Sheffield, odds are that Tottenham are Europa League bound. This is an improvement over last season, but I can’t shake the feeling that the team choked during the second half of the season. Ah… next season. And there is a European Cup this Summer!

    Does it feel like this year has flown by for anyone else? Swear to God, it feels like we were just wrapping up New Years like a month ago. I know that I wrote a blog about how we had planned our Summer already, and just the other day, the kid’s school sent out the academic calendar for 24/25, and it’s like Fall is basically here already. I got an email last week about getting ready for the Great Pumpkin Blaze for Halloween. But with all of this, it dawned on me that kid will leave for college in 9 years, which means we are halfway through our time with her. Nine years of being a parent has flown by, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but I wish it would slow down just a little bit. Perhaps I am to blame, as I forget that most of what I busy myself with really doesn’t matter.

  • I Got Covid

    I had a good streak going, but alas, all things must come to an end. I got sick with Covid.

    At first, I thought it was just a bad cold. In fact, I even posted on Friday that I was sick, but I thought it was only a cold. As my fever got worse, and the body aches wouldn’t quit, it started to dawn on me that this might be something worse.

    The wife was the one who first thought it was Covid, and she ran out and got a test kit for me. You know how the test kit says it might take up to fifteen minutes for the results to show? Well, my positive result took less than a minute. And it wasn’t some faint blue line. No, sir. I got a dark navy line… almost black. I didn’t have Covid; I WAS Covid.

    Four years of dodging the bullet. Masks and hand washing; going out in public to shop and run errands, and nothing happened to me. Maybe I took all the right precautions? Or maybe I was one of those people who had natural immunity. Maybe I would one of the people who would be around for The Stand?

    No, I’m normal. I get sick like everyone else.

    I am a bit surprised that I got it now. But… better late than never?

  • My Dog

    People love animals, especially dogs. If you have spent all of three seconds on my blog, you’ve seen my picture with our dog. She’s a mix, small, smells bad, has bad teeth, hates every other dog on the planet, but is wonderful with people. We joke that our dog won the Doggie Lottery, as she got a family that totally lets her be herself, and is even rewarded for it. Our dog doesn’t do shit, other than shit, pee, eat, sleep, occasionally play, and sleeps some more. And she’s wonderful and we love her.

    I bet if you have a dog, no matter how odd or awful that dog is, you’re going to tell me that dog is wonderful, awesome, and you love them unconditionally. AS YOU SHOULD! Dogs are great, and we are so lucky to have them in our lives. And if you haven’t seen it:

    And I bet you know where this is going. But I’m not here to beat up on a Governor who thought a story about shooting a fourteen-month old dog was a good one, and needed it to be included in her book.

    No, this is more about how Cricket did one thing that no politician, or leader, could do in this country. Cricket united us. On both sides of the isle, we all came together to say that killing a dog, an adolescent dog, for the crime of being “untrainable,” is wrong. Our dogs share their lives with us, are there for us when we need them, they give so much love, and can help us in many different ways.

    Rest in Power, Cricket. In your very short life, you proved that there are still issue that we all can get behind.

    This is my dog, and if you met her, she would love you.