Good luck.
Fuck them
Fuck you
Fuck it.
Happy or bust Dude.
I will not stay here
Not in this proven sad…

And fuck ElPaso
And fuck Athens
Fuck it.

For the next few years I struggled with the cause celebre of what it meant to be a early member of the “this is my life online” culture, and also the fact that after splitting up with my long time collaborator Jonnie, I had no interest in doing an uptight site. To that end I can truly admit to saying that there is no better shame than the shame of hosting a variety show.

Through out this mixed decade I did what one does, fight and fail at routine, fight and fail at trying to find the voice that was, but isn’t, and shouldn’t be resurrected. You fight to express yourself in the visceral way that things come to you, and balance out how everyone loves it except the person you’re talking about.

I realize there is no balance to speaking out about life. I don’t talk about life as it relates to me, I talk about life as it relates to me and my relationships, it’s not always favorable, and I am not going to change that with a class in diplomacy.

In the last five years I changed a lot of who I was and it was important for equilibrium that both JLWS and I change together, that we share in that change and that we work during that transition to reweave our relationship and that has not happened as we planned. We don’t have the same dream. We don’t have the same pathing, or sense of purpose for what that route is, by the very nature of my transformation I am not who I was, our relationship is not what it was, that’s a problem. The new goal isn’t to stay married and get fiscally right again, the new goal is to see what is here now and if we can make a plan to make something new that we both want to be a part of. Cause what we have now doesn’t…

Did a building just collapse cause I said that?

Am I the only person who has every said “I am not who I was when I got married, and I don’t know anymore.” Am I the only person who decided to live their life out loud and be honest about it? Weird, everyone else talks about their marriages and relationships, my ears have heard the tales, but it’s a secret? C’mon now, this is silly, why can’t we just talk about it in the open.

This is still me trying to penetrate the tight confines of not being able to express who I am, not knowing who I am, not knowing how my relationships work for me. It’s an experiment, and it will remain in the public forum.

epilogue

I am surrounded by the aching souls of people who have few dreams left. I had a dream. I wanted to show people that hard work and sacrifice of everything for a period of time was well worth the delay in gratification. I had a dream that there was something more than just right now. I still believe in that dream. I don’t know if that dream works with another person, that’s the question, that’s what I’m going to explore here for the next year.

Post Mortem

It didn’t work… I’m told it’s cause i’m crazy.

Dig it.

If she remembers, she hides it whenever we meet
Either way now, I don’t really care

So this isn’t the story, and I don’t have any sordid details to dish out, but I will say a few things, hopefully tell you a story about two broken people who grew up, broke through the gravity of who they were, and are on the road to having two happy lives.

I used to always be awash in so much feeling that it has robbed me of movement. I have always loved so strongly as to run off the people who I cast that feeling on. Over the years I decided it was because of the great ache that I had inside myself, that it had little to do with the people I had that feeling for; that was a true though. I have more to offer than most, but do find myself completely engrossed in the feelings that I have for other people.

I guess I realized the truth when I got into shape (can’t say “got back into shape”) and when I realized I was having a greater comfort in accepting my feelings, for myself and others. I am an intense person and people mistake my shift in focus as me being obsessed with some new flavor of something, but that’s not true, being 37 I think backwards and the first ten years is a wash, the next ten were fun but somewhat frustrating, the next ten were just kinda sad, cause my love for someone was vine strangled by a thick mess of grief, and that stopped me from feeling much more than loss and sadness, so close to a person that when they died, it took a long while to remember I was still alive.

I am alive! And I want to love, first me, and then another. I am alive and I want to provide protection, and good to those who are in my space. It’s been a sad and lonely turn, doing what I knew was long term best/short term hard and being derided all the way, being misunderstood, not really believing I should have to defend myself, nor believing I could. Because I used to not be about shit, and I used to just dream and wish for things, and I didn’t just do it. And frankly there is a push in the small of my back to catchup, a strong desire to make this start to my life right. And I knew it was going to be hard, I talked about it ad nausea, and everyone said “won’t work dude.” And that didn’t make sense to me, why couldn’t two heart weary people, take five or so odd years out of their life so they wouldn’t have to worry about certain things. We didn’t have to, we could have lived a simpler life, we could have just sat in an apartment, absconded from dealing with Mr & Mrs Jones, their competitive 2.5 life, we could have just sat still, had fun, put money in the bank, found who we were as individuals, found who we were as a couple. There were infinite ways we could have gone about reaching our goals, at the time we were both emotionally stunted people. The won’t work was really “You’re fat and will always be fat. You’re in debt and will always be in debt. You are an emotional cripple and will always have that gimpy shuffle about you.” That’s what they meant, why try when your lofty goals will not reach fruition.

It is always a choice we make, how we decide things will shake out, how we gamble, hope, want things to be a certain way, vs how we make things. I make things, my sense of hope died a long time ago. I rarely float on hope and the times I have it was because I had no control over the situation, could only wish for good fortune. I am a person of action and have always asked people to be careful of what arrangements we make, as I will do anything to make what you want happen and will not deter from that plan; is that me being obsessed or is that me just serving the relationship.

People do not grow out of the scars of life, but we can grow past them, and we can overcome great emotional traumas and the truth is that it is usually the love and sense of safety that we take from another person that makes it possible for us to 4, 3, 2, 1… And in that way two people, who were both cold from death decided to make a go of painting by the numbers, hoping the to come from the cryogenics of sad, with routine, goals, and a loving hope they had of each other, to make things work, build something great.

I think we did alright. I think we probably could have done it differently. And my biggest fear (fear really is just as useless as hope folks) was that we wouldn’t do quickly enough, that it’d drag out, that we’d hit our goals, but not find each other in the journey, be too worn out, to turn inside, hold each other, ride out the grief of letting the past go, and taking on the new day. That’s another one, when people say “you are for the future, not living this life day to day”-they don’t really say it like that, those are my words. She would say it, but you can’t really pull off the future without seeing how every day is adding or taking away from whatever it is you want to have happen; I was here, where were you.

The greatest thing you can ever do is provide a place of safety and opportunities so you can focus on you, focus on your family. I grew up with an unstable childhood. We moved around a lot, money was always a concern, where we’d sleep was always an issue, that life made me live life for the minute and for the day.

I knew I was going to get into shape, I knew I had to-that we had to, so we could have a better life. I didn’t know who I would I be on the other side, I assumed a great change would come over me, that I wouldn’t be the same person, I was certain we’d do it together. Neither were popular wars, being an aggressive towards the debt load of the life we chose to live, and also denying the comforts of our first true love food. I mean here is the deal, most of us have a relationship and it’s not with a person, maybe it’s with empty sex, where you can feel just how deep your loneliness is, maybe it’s with precisely engineered food, designed to trigger physical and mental addictions, marketed to be deep in your thoughts. And there is booze, and drugs, and combinations of it. I for damn sure didn’t have a relationship with myself, that’s a new development.

I wanted an abstinence program; I wanted a complete reverse of behavior. I wanted a three year grind, nothing but crystal focus, on the other side of things we’d have been wrought more in the image of who we aspired to be. But in the process we’d have to give up our slave comforts, to reach down to who we really were.

It does make me sad. We didn’t do it. No recrimination, we just didn’t do it. We got the results, but not from work together, we were a bit separate in our efforts and execution. And everything was about the change, giving up our enabled behaviors, giving up our comforts, giving up the things which had literally imprisoned us, giving up the shield of comfort that fat or spending money seems to bring to those plagued with too much ache inside.

I didn’t ask for the divorce. I tell people that and they are still a bit confused by that. I am a Rounder, I grind it out; but only when I have to dude. For the last few years my disposition has been that we’re either going to do what we said we were going to do, which we planned meticulously before we promised ourselves to each other, or we were going to make a new plan and commit to that one. I used to really need a plan, that’s for sure, and it was always a plan I wanted to make with the people in my life, and now I suspect I need to leave those kind of plans to myself, and what I should have with the people in my life, should be love, sharing, and just an appreciation for the time that we share with each other. It’s why I left in 09. But before now, I didn’t have that in me, I also think it’s fair to say that we both wanted the same thing, but didn’t have it to give to ourselves much less each other.

And still, cause love is so fleeting, so just fucking scarce, we’re always one to say that talk of anything, like that practical shit to ensure that nothing interferes with getting your love, that shit isn’t kosher. I don’t want to have to worry about the mortgage. I don’t want to have to worry about the bills, or shit not working. I want to be free enough to just go to work and when I’m not at work, be wherever I want to be and do whatever I want to do with the person I care for. For me, all this talk of practicality, the whispered reasons of why my relationship must have absolutely failed ,cause of money and me not being emotional, ok motherfuckers, sure… I thought that if I was willing to sacrifice anything to do what it would take for that relationship to survive the hard times I was showing my love, better thin and debt free, vs fat, happy, in the hole, but for the most part nearly everyone disagrees with me.

We went into this dead. I am alive. I hope Jennifer is alive. It wasn’t about not being able to give it was about having nothing to give and that wasn’t something that just tipped the scales on my side, that’s where it gets annoying, but still I just figured we’d get the holes filled, cut the day to day stress and we’d make up for it with peace of mind and a dramatically changed life.

It offends me greatly. It has offended me greatly that everyone from my wife, to my closest friends have decided I was cold, not passionate, didn’t show love, didn’t speak in the poetry of passion. Why would I expect otherwise though. But it was my love for us, for her, and my desire to comfort the always moving child in my head that brought me to the focus I have today, I didn’t have it before, and it was Jennifer who gave it to me. I had a plan, but I could fill rolls of toilet paper with my plans. But I knew I wanted to find someone who felt just as much as I did, but who couldn’t quite express it, who was just as choked with death, but who wanted to feel, wanted to come from that, get it together (together!) do the hard work up front and fuck having to worry about it later on. Still, it’s a little sad. That whole challenging phase 1 situation is supposed to be hard, but you’re supposed to bond, be trimmed into better people, phase 2 is really supposed to be about the celebration. So this isn’t how it was supposed to go. We should really be transitioning to having a good time and benefiting from what we did, our Challenger made it to space, but there is no moon.

2.

When I express my love to people, when I express it to myself it used to be so overwhelming, to me, to them, even to the people nearby. I would sometimes just have to lie down and wait until I could feel the earth spinning again, cause sometimes I would stop it with how I felt. My wife before she was my wife made me hold myself to a better standard, she got me out of the living for the moment, she got me out of debt, she took me from being a sad, creative, unfocused, fuck off of a person and she helped me lay the framework for my goals, and showed me how to accomplish what I want to have happen, not just talk about it. You guys get that. It wasn’t my plan, it was Jennifer’s plan, she was a life coach and a visionary herself. I had a dream, and I had some very specific benchmarks to hit, but only on the basis of committing to a financial situation I was fundamentally uncomfortable with; hello Dr Frankenstien; Mother. Together we made a commitment to something really big, and it wasn’t about money, though it is the pink elephant in the room. But neither one of us went into the marriage whole or quite in touch with the good, we’d just wrapped our hands around the throats of the demons in our life, and we took turns trying to make better what ailed us, a lot of hospice, a lot of love, a lot of commitment, sure, there was a shortage of intimacy, but at the time intimacy was all fucked out for both of us, oh yeah we wanted it, we were just on empty.

And this is where I want to say “So fuck all of you. Fuck you Jennifer. And fuck all my friends and family. Think what you will of me. Call me whatever you might, I am what I am, that’s what Popeye taught me bitches.” It doesn’t matter Mr Roboto, you might as well be the Vanilla Ice of love, you are not of love Mr S, that’s the hammer I’ve gotten beaten with.

I’m a little too focused and a little to intent, got it, I’ll just keep that to myself. You sit around depressed for years and then fall in love with someone who loves you but can’t give it to you, someone who loves you but whatever, and someone who loves you, suffers from what you suffer from, is with you, but really isn’t with you. I know other couples and they talked great game, do great PDA, didn’t worry about the stability of their lives, looked so much more enviable and their relationships are no better, nor particularly intimate now. I know people who are together in misery.

I did what I did cause I wanted to spend the rest of my life with one person and wanted to be the best person and offer them the best life I could, and at the time I went from being nothing to finding something inside of myself, it was hard; we’re better for it. We grew up. Focusing on the fact that two emotionally fucked up people couldn’t satisfy each other, much less themselves perpetuates the foolishness, if I can feel now, if she can feel now, it is success.

It might be nearly impossible for two people so fragmented, so hurt, and so neglected to become in touch with themselves and then wake up to find that someone else is there, and in addition to having to nurture their new found inner self they also are committed to a relationship that a former them created. So I won’t say “Fuck you Jennifer”, and I won’t say “Fuck you family and friends”. Apparently no one heard me when I said “I’m going to take five years to get in shape, get my financial house together, and then I hope to hop a plane to somewhere and take the honeymoon I never had, get to know a girl who I met one day and knew was the one.” Mmmm.

I’ll say this instead. Your opinion is your opinion. I am moving on. Old Paul loves and misses the old Jennifer. Old Jennifer never liked new Paul, new Paul felt much the same about old Jennifer, that’s not ill to speak of. I’m glad both those people are gone though. And I’m glad to meet the new Jennifer, but technicalities aside I’m not married to her, don’t know her, she doesn’t know me. The resentment and negative energy we built over the last few years was just two strangers, speaking a foreign tongue, both in need of help, not quite breaching the barrier that stopped them. But what we had, what we made, the many people we came to be and then left behind in these eleven years, I’m glad I did it with her, it was truly what allowed me to change my life, her support, and her guidance, I hope I afforded her the same. This is new school though, what we had is over and it was over before she asked for a divorce, and that’s not a bad thing, it’s just how it shook out. And while we can both separately bemoan mayhaps, we’ve still had more grace and dignity for each other in our slow moving separation to independence than any couple I’ve ever seen before, it was hard, should have come much sooner, but we managed to keep it real and I think we’re going to both be ok, just not together.

Last night I had the strangest dream,
I sailed away to China in a little rowboat to find you
And you said you had to get your laundry cleaned
Didn´t want no one to hold you, what does that mean?

I am comfortable with intimate strangers, uncomfortable with anonymous strangers, with family, with friends, with lovers. I am still, not empty, prone to not feeling good about things, intent on finding the cure to my fears, but can’t quite apply that to my ability to interact. I have become a ghost to those around me, feel dead to myself, and desperately question the point of this life; all that said, things seem to be looking up.

2.

While my skies took months to fill with long ominous clouds, it was no surprise to me, nor should it have been a surprise to anyone else that I would change my handle from Chicken Little to Intently Focused. I did work hard to try to stay the storm and take communion with my friends and family, enjoy the lighter things; I just seem to be too foreboding for that. All conversation with me ends in indirect stares, slow words, and a crooked finger. Somehow my apologetic Schindler has been replaced with the menacing admonishment of a dustbowl farmer, dead stare behind closed eyes; weeding rocks, harvesting dirt, waiting diligently for the rain.

3

In my head…

I don’t fuck with you anymore because this stress is too much for you and for you, escape is as fragile and as joyous as not dwelling on what you cannot control. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause this stress is too much for you and for you, escape is as fragile and as joyous as not dwelling on what you don’t understand. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause this stress is too much for you and for you, escape is as fragile and joyous as not dwelling on being too weak to change what is nothing more than a trick of the mind.

I don’t fuck with you anymore cause this stress is too much for me and for me, there is no escape, and my “alone” is a prison and I take no joy, but do often times numb the long darkness that hangs just inside of me. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause this stress is too much for me and there is no escape, and my “alone” has been sometimes replaced with meaningful relationships, but still no Footprints; still no time when I thought to ask “When I was alone, where were you…?” and you know what you didn’t say. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause I am a fucking killjoy and misery is a nicotine stained smoke stack that throws a fine soot on everything, reminding me that instead of reflecting on how I should have done more, I best just start doing more. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause I’m looking for God and he is not inside of you.

4.

Every time I’ve ever said “I gotta go. It’s not personal,” I have always come back to recrimination. Its challenging cause before I usually leave I do my best to try to explain my exit. I even try to fake the funk, but it doesn’t work; it’s passé to call that depression. I do my best to communicate “I am not doing well, I’ll be over here for awhile.” I am an only child. I am alone. It’s not personal. It’s not personal that my life feels in ruin and I just can’t feel the joy. Just seem to be struck with ache, all the time ache. Usually some very narrow focus seems to help that. The worse thing is that the narrow focus doesn’t preclude, exclude, or push me from still just wanting to feel even more off, just a bit more numb than I already do. That is a dreadful feeling. I’m not having fun. It’s just a cycle I go through. Seriously, no one wants that, no one wants me around when I’m like that.What folks want is for me to not feel like that, what folks feel is a rebuff to the bond we share, when it’s the bond that I carefully try to hide away, as if to limit you from just how horrible I feel about things. I am sad.

5

I want to be somewhere in the middle of a violent thrust; a surge! I want to be surrounded with people who feel the same way. I want folks to understand that I am sick of the “Journey, not the end result” fuckery they keep saying to me, and fuckery is what it feels like, cause I’ve made a good point of chronicling that I live for the journey and expect the journey to pay handsomely. Understand the fruit of my efforts are just that, the fruit of my efforts. That I speak so much about what I expect of the future does not mean I do not breath in the air, take in the moment, live for right now. That’s silly. You don’t go years with a commitment to things being a certain way cause you’re just living for tomorrow. Tomorrow came. I’m debt free. I’m trying to diversify. I’m trying so hard to find some balance.

The freedom is in my past. Do you get that? The freedom is in your past. I swim in vertigo from this twelve monkey nonsense. It makes me wonder why I ever come back to change what cannot be changed; those who live are not among us and we are the squabbling dead. It is no irony that I only feel free when I travel now.

I am a slave to the future and hold more kin with the jazz police than you might understand. The reward for hitting that goal is so short-lived. There is a new goal now and maybe if I hit them quicker, I’d be more satisfied. I am a slave to a life I chose and have done everything to distill it down to be beholden to just one person, to see if we want the same thing, to make it work to whatever end result, whether we’re together or not. So many people continue to pass the most peculiar judgement on me and the practicality in which I live my life, but in the end, I’ve tried -not always with success, but it’s always been my goal to leave people better than I found them. Sometimes I leave, but I don’t try to plunder. I don’t usually think only of myself.

6

I often times take payment at the end of the job. I am not usually one to ask for all or even part up-front. I sometimes work months or years for people before there is an exchange. I do not do well at living in the moment in a way that you might think of it. The only thing that seems to fill my “moments” is the peculiar distant association of taste as I shove shit in my mouth and try to analyze what compulsion it is that makes me treat food like a missing component to my spirit and not just like a fuel. I also seem to like a lot of near death experience, the sense of control, the all-in feeling. Those are two great examples of how I prison-thrill, but can’t explain stimulation as it effects me in the now; I dunno, it’s how I am. Past that thing which seems to be my compulsive and dangerous side, my Footsteps, my journey, my big picture is about making things happen and experiencing the final result, which often times is so delicate that I am usually consumed with the burden of how to maintain and care for the accomplishment, all the while leaving it to plan and execute another one.

I don’t feel like I’m going through the rough times alone. I see some other bedraggled, kelp-clothed, haunted figures, throat-slit gills gasping desperately for something that is not around to fill their insides.

I spent a lot of time directing my self loathing outward. I thought maybe this go-round I’d forgo the distraction and id conspiracy and this time direct it inward; either it or I will win. If I am to lose, then I say goodbye now. If I win, I must still bid you adieu. Who I was… Who I will be…. And who will be there to watch it is anyone’s guess.

Eh?

I didn’t ask for this serpent’s crown. I don’t think I ordered this perfect poisonous fit that grips my skull, but my head nonetheless is full of snakes, and my heart is choked by some invisible grip. The ground beneath me is moving in a sickly fashion. The lights are on, my eyes are closed to nothing, but I am blind still, to almost everything.

Losing weight was a catchup; when people say “you should be proud of yourself” I always feel a little shame instead. I can separate success from failure, I feel both when my weight loss comes to mind. Becoming debt free has brought on many of the same feelings for me. I am not proud and I make no assumption that my weight loss or freedom from debt are lasting, both states are dynamic. You stay away from your fat former self if you keep shit out of your mouth, if you keep moving; nothing else works. You keep yourself away from debt if you can always provide for yourself, and if you plan for the accidents of life, cause they’re coming.

It’s not just my goal to be something more than what I am, it’s not just my goal to remain free, it’s also my goal to head off, to anticipate, to fight anything which might take me in the wrong direction, anything that might harm my goals. When you’re married you are part of a collective, you are no longer an individual, you’re a member of a team, and your team is only as good as it’s objective, it’s members, and the project plan they’ve devised to hit their goals. If you don’t agree on the objective, you can’t really plan it, you are not likely to succeed. My survival instinct which is my will to live is coming into direct conflict with the health of my marriage, cause I don’t trust things anymore.

My center comes from planning, my balance comes from seeing the future, I am not psychic I just plan what I want and I do it. When I gain weight it’s cause I choose to eat bullshit, we can debate how much of why I overeat is because of compulsion, and negative comfort, we can talk about the darkness inside of me, how it is seeming filled with junk food and vino, we can talk all you fucking want. I am in control of my life, where it relates to me. I speak to my demons, I speak to my ache, I hear, they obey, i accept that my life is a roller coaster, i accept that I should be more, be better, but I am not. I accept that i’m idling on certain things. I accept that I am not a better husband. What I do not accept is that I have to suffer other fucking people and whatever the fuck their internal struggle is, this ring says otherwise. The reality is that I will suffer myself, I will suffer my wife, i could lose everything. If this relationship fails and I can honestly say that I always accepted it could, but I never believed it would. I don’t know which is worse, being reasonable enough to believe it could happen, or not believing it would, I’m actually a little perplexed by how things are now.

I know this is a contradiction. I know I can explain some things. I do not believe we act in reason, I believe we act in relation to events that move us, whether that movement is caused through true force, or just stating the obvious. I know all throughout this relationship I have been awarded with condemnation for speaking about the reality that only about 49% of marriages actually survive; that people think it’s disdainful and counterproductive to even mention that marriage is friendship, love, business. So be it, that condemnation has always come from people who either didn’t want to deal with their unplanned life, or people who suffer fair weather and see no reason to discuss such contingencies. I have always believed that their is nothing to be lost from discussing the future good and the future bad. Couples should discuss what it means to their dreams and goals if they suffer fiscal setbacks, you just can’t sit around and say, “We’re going to have this success and that success and it’s going to be juicy peaches.” Apparently that is what we do, and doom on any scabs who cross the picket line.

People in relationships can disagree about every mother fucking thing under the sun but if they do not agree on their survival they will not survive.

In my head I always think that Latter Day Saint mentality means be the better person. If I was the better person I’d be more nurturing, I’d be more understanding, I’d be footprints in the sand.

I don’t bring up Footprints in mockery, I bring it up cause I always saw it as a kid, my grandmother had it in her living room, it always sticks in my head.

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”

I’m frustrated. I want things to go one way and they are not, and they are also not going the way of compromise, we are instead saying we’ll do one thing and we’re not. We are in the grave and dangerous place, we are surrounded by a murder of crows, we are disagreeing silently, we are not in agreement and we are not expending every last resource to rectify that issue. I am and have always been wary of the silent disagreement, no good comes from forgetting that it is better to fight, demand, scream for things to be a certain way, anything but silence. Silence fuels concern. Silence breeds darkness, silence makes distance. When you grow silent, you are hoping that things will work out, you’re hoping the silence, the tension, the ill will, all the negative acquired through the silent period will be forgiven, just a bad run. Silence = Death.

In the healthy relationship that has problems couples suffer dark periods and they don’t always talk about how to get through them, it is sometimes organic, it is sometimes Footprints, you just do better, the relationship needs you to just forgive and carry forward, wait, work, help the other come around. Some relationships are made stronger through the experience of surviving crisis, they survive first on the faith of one person, and the infectious quality of that faith, they build a trust, and they believe, not just in themselves, but in each other, and in something more than each other. From what I hear, these relationships are strong, they are solid, they are real, they exist.

When i read Footprints I think about God and I think about carrying the people you love. When i read Footprints I think people can be like the lord, cause as you well know there is a part of me that says “there might be a God, but this is your show, your actions”, and I’m married to an atheist, we’re not going to pull God into too much of our dialogue.

There is a conflict going on here, the conflict is that I want to plan to minutia, I want all actions to be based on the plan, I want variation from the plan to be assessed as pro or con for the plan. My God, my faith, my belief in marriage, everything goes back to the plan. When we speak are we speaking to the plan. The plan is our God. The plan is our footprints. Serve the plan and it will serve you, unlike footprints though, the plan can only carry us through the darkest periods if we remember that nothing matters before the plan.

Is that crazy? Did I make my life the plan? Did I forsake some part of living so that I could worship a project plan? So far any effort i’ve put towards any of my plans have paid back. The plan isn’t dogma, it’s just the way, you can change the way, you can make a new plan, but you can’t not have a plan, there is hell to pay for that, there is darkness when instead of stating and making a plan, you have an uneasy silence in place of the plan, a silence heavy with disagreement. The plan doesn’t care about you, it doesn’t care about me, the plan doesn’t care about itself. The plan is just really an idea for defining how at least one part of your life will not be infected with your bullshit, or your genuine problems, or your ache, your hurt, your emptiness. The plan is just this situation that you say you will commit to no matter what. Put a plan into your life, nurture it, gives back, it will not fail you, you can only fail it. When you protect and grow a plan though it reminds you that you can change your life and you can change your life with nothing but tenacity and will power, when you can’t commit to a plan, when you can’t nurture an idea, live by a metric, it’s cause you don’t believe in yourself, and that’s not a plan, it’s a suicide letter.

There is no epilogue to this…

My marriage isn’t growing anymore. My marriage is faltering and has been for awhile. My marriage is more a cooperative and less a union, and I no longer feel nurtured by it, and I know I am not delivering nurture. My marriage is in dark times and my wife and I aren’t discussing it, hope is standing against dread, and neither feelings are delegates capable of finding resolution.

For some peculiar reason it is taboo to speak of the faltering in the relationship; I’m not supposed to discuss this out loud. I’m also not supposed to say that the last pillar to tumble in this relationship is the financial one, and it was load bearing. I’m not supposed to admit that things have been a bit hollow and empty ever since I started to change and we didn’t change together. I’m not supposed to say that i wish the best for my wife but I’m afraid she’ll pull us both down if she doesn’t shift her perspective on many things. I’m not supposed to say that I would consider leaving if the two of us weren’t financially chained together. I’m not supposed to mention any of that. Silence = Death.

I know I have a choice to just soldier on and ride this one out, it seems completely nuts to me, like there is a passive aggressive push on her part, in my head I question if she wants out more than me. I always weakly lean on the statement “it’s a better story if we pull through”. And i’m learning to understand that maybe I just don’t have enough feeling in the whole ordeal, maybe I haven’t given enough to her. And so this is my last recourse as I’ve talked to Jennifer a number of times directly about what is going on in our relationship and it seems like maybe I’m a ghost to her, and by the measure of emotions and empathy I have given I might very well be; we are on different planes it seems.

I’m starting to feel those early twinges of regret about life.

The old ones always warn how you’ll look back on life and begin to feel regret. During the Schindler years it didn’t seem like i was talking about regret, those years it seemed more that I was innocently observing regret, maybe I was speaking on it and not quite feeling it? Maybe I just have more regret, or maybe I was speaker for the dead back then and now i’m just speaking for me.

The end of my teens and my early twenties were littered with death, and there was a fatalist sense about things. I know I stopped believing, just starting living in that way that people that don’t care live. My twenties became a pursuit of excess and a time when I began to scalpel away the bad and the good; cutting out huge chunks of myself. The last half decade has been about capturing momentum, and recently things have been about trying to reverse the strange sense I have, inside looking out.

I am lost, and this is one facultative island I have found myself trapped on.

I know why people pack up and leave now. Everything is lining up and seemingly saying “You had a chance, but shit happened, so just sit back, sop up the gravy with the last of your bread, make room for those who haven’t had life happen to them.” I am confused that suicide isn’t more prevalent these days. I am surprised that more people just don’t disappear and truly start from scratch.

For years my friends have said “I know what you’re doing but it won’t work.”, it didn’t seem like much in the way of advice, or resolution, it didn’t offer alternatives, they just knew it wouldn’t work… What did I want to achieve? I think i wanted security, and a relationship that was built, and shaped with hard work, vs a relationship that felt good and then we tried to build support around making it “work” when it stopped feeling rosy; cause we know that’s not a recipe for fool proof success. They said it wouldn’t work, I know they didn’t do it my way, whatever way they did it definitely hasn’t worked for them. Relationships, success, this whole life thing definitely seems to either work great or spectacularly fail. I don’t feel like a failure though, and I don’t feel like it can’t work, but it’s not working.

And I guess I don’t feel like a complete failure cause I know what makes it work. You got a few choices; you can believe in God-most any God will do, you can believe in family, you can believe in the other person and if they believe in you it’s ok, any of those three deals will work. The other deal is the “deal”, you get to know each other, you decide on a plan, you make it happen, you sweat, you toil, you hold each other up when it gets hard for one another, and in that deal you are actually likely to find God, Family, and a person you believe in. I’m not going to ask for an amen, i’m just saying…

2.

People find a comfort in me, something about the absence of whatever it is that they somehow can’t share with others, and then they resent that about me, usually when they are more comfortable, ready to share intimacy with me, after they’ve grown comfortable, and trust me; quid pro quo eh… the truth is that I am Ra about life and I have always kept it buried for two reasons, i’m too intense and I want the intensity back, and if I don’t get it i’m not happy, who needs that twofer in their life. Cutting back on the intensity was seemingly easy, people seem to consistently prefer me on the downlow vs my full-on version. I always thought I would be happy with someone who was comfortable with playing the down low intensity game, and I guess I have settled for that, but i’m starting to think that isn’t going to work for me much longer.

I want someone who I call out to and they call back to me. I want my competition to be my lover. I want that person who pushes past me to pull me forward. I want someone who instead of saying “that’s an outrageous plan”, instead suggests that my goals are not lofty enough, that we should do more.

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last

So I say again, this life isn’t easy and whatever you want you have to either take or make it happen with hard work. I am not one hand reaching out anymore, there is still sistine hope, but i’m not in denial.

You are taking and taking doesn’t work in relationships. You have to give, and you have to give, and you have to give and you have to give, and you have to give… And if the other person doesn’t want what you are trying to give to the relationship, you should leave, someone should fucking go.

I’m not asking you to give to me, i’m asking you to give to the bottom line, i’m saying leave your luggage behind, drop the memories to the bottom of the sea, just escape with me, or let me paddle away. Who you were, the scars you think define you, they are heavier than fools gold, their is no answer in the pain of the past, there is just truth in how you are leading your life, that’s my take anyway.

Busy.

This entry is a flag in the ground. This is virgin soil. We brought all of our shit with us for this camping trip, but we’re into the wild.

Back to Facebook and Twitter though, they aren’t bullshit, they are amazing, my space is bullshit, but these two community apps are very usable, very lovable, but they are Strange Days, it’s not the real thing, it’s a version of your friend, it’s social farts, perfumed fragments of the people you know. They aren’t the real, this blog isn’t the real, if you don’t see me in the flesh, if I don’t see you, if I can’t breath a little of your space, it’s just our echoes bouncing off of each other. Don’t let these bits and bytes replace the touch and company of the people who are now populating them.

I am really busy right now, but I would like to see folks, and hope we can get together soon.

It’s been a long time. When you go away life goes on. The internet has survived without me.

I haven’t been writing here. I haven’t had my heart. My heart has changed.

I haven’t had the anchoring relationships that for better or for worse have made me who I am. I have had to realize that while on this journey I have had company at times, but this is my journey and my journey alone. I am infected or I am amplified through my relationships. I am chained by tenure, I feel guilt of those I have turned my back on. I do actually miss Jonathan-scorpion that he is, and I am very perceptive of the fact that for me my relationships and the people I am closest too are integrated, the people in my life are on the inside, there is no firewall. Your doubt can become my doubt, your fears can become my fears, we drift and float, we fight and claw our way to success, a lot of times it’s a bit of both.

This piece is about my friends and family. This piece is about closing the past on a lot of things.

My relationship with Sarah and Tanisha are two interesting relationships, they have gone both ways. These are two people who helped me in my weight loss over the last three years. I am eternally grateful to them, and to a lesser degree Bogle, who took me so far with wisdom and then pointed me to the bottle for my graduate studies, warned me softly that some things would be despite any disposition I had. But both of these women through encouragement, by being there with me, and even by their own struggles, they have changed my life and helped me realize that I control my life and that doubt Is my mortal enemy. Thank Sarah. Thank you Tanisha. And thank you Bogle, cause you were the first, and you did do it like a guru, though you should drop that moniker eh.

My mother, Dr Frankenstein recently spoke with me about my work ethic, I think we were chatting one day and I mentioned to her how she gave me my work ethic, and in her backhanded way, she came back a few weeks later telling me about a family reunion we were at –twelve years ago- and how I vehemently made a point of expressing how she had nothing to do with my work ethic. I thought it peculiar. My mother raised me to always have a job, “a good government job” she’d say, and ever since then I have always had one. She raised me to keep my job till I got another one. She raised me to be a good employee while I was at a job. She told me not to make friends, keep my head low and do right, till they actually hired me. My mother told me a bunch of shit that parents don’t seem to be imparting to their children today, and many of my peers missed this lecture series as well. My mother told me to pay my bills on time, and while she often times put the stamp on the envelope for me, just like how my wife does today, it was me having a job that stuffed the envelope with money.

My mother also keeps it real and she raised me to keep it real and I do KIR. I’ve also had to learn how to use it less like a blunt instrument, and less to my own advantage, and less so out of anger. It was my mother and her keen sense of being able to filter out denial in others that has made me the observant person that I am today. My research shows that understand KIR can develop other technologies. For one, most people who Keep It Real do that for your life and not their own, my research shows that it’s hard to do but if you analyze every KIR interaction and apply it to yourself, you get a thirty percent improvement on personal results, vs if you wore a WWJD bracelet and actually fucking did it, this could also come in handy for saving you from feeling the need to hang on a cross.

My mother told me weeks later “I told you do keep a job, I told you to do good cause your father was a drug addict and I wasn’t really all that into working myself” I quote it, but this a summary of her statement, the whole conversation is between she and I. My mother and I have had a caustic relationship for the last six years, and a big part of it has been because I felt like she retired when she should have stayed more engaged in the process, like the process of having a job. I felt like she made a critical life choice and that it was a mistake. As Travis McGee likes to say “taking your retirement in increments”, hard to stand and watch when you were raised to KIR and keep a good government job. It’s a challenge in my marriage as well, as my wife has been too comfortable with our life and our progress, and we are now in that early worse case scenario, a place where five years of coming to hate each other, could all be for naught, vs the foundation it was supposed to me. All of this is for another paragraph though. I thank my mother for KIR, I thank her for telling me to keep a job, for washing my clothes and sticking my money in an envelope to keep a bill paid. I likewise thank my wife for doing much of the same, and for telling seven or so odd years ago “you can pay off all that debt”, she was pretty good with math back then.

This is so long. There is so much I want to say.

Paul is dead. Paul is dead and his death, his memory, the images of his body, and the sad truth that his physical vessel left us to contend with the fact that if you ignore life, it will ignore you is haunting, so much so that I Gerard is at peace. Gerard is an old friend from high school, he drowned, sad, very sad, but he is a memory. I gave up ten odd years of my life dwelling on the someone who no longer existed, that person was my soul mate in a lot of respects, but still. Do not become walking dead, do not become muddy, do not wake up to the ground hog day proposition of living a pointless life cause some one you loved is dead. Gina are you listening? Gerard is dead and everyday Paul pops in my fucking head like those little cable tv “the next show coming on” animations, that pop up in the corner. I’ll be in the shower and he’ll be there, and it is his reminder, his gift, the only thing that his death does for a person like me, something it does not do for you eh, it says LIVE YOUR FUCKING LIFE and don’t ignore your health, don’t put off what you want to do, or want to be, and breath for fuck sakes. Poor bastard. It is an easier life for the dead though, sidelined, watching us, haunting. The clothes are a bit of a drag, and hauling around chains and props from your tragic finale suck, but man, life has got to be easier right. Someone else go figure it out. I am in this shit to win it, let my third oldest friend haunt me, let him remind me to live a good life. I’m glad for Gerard. I am still sad for Paul.

About a year or so ago I came to weigh 225lbs less than I do now. I came to my senses. I came to the gym. I went to the park, I came out of the aisles of the grocery store and just lurked around produce, dairy, and meat. I did not have surgery. I did not go to therapy, though I have been to a AA for fattie meeting or two-they’re somber and not at all what you expect. I took a three year journey, I learned to move, I learned to eat right. I did this cause I married someone who I believed in. I did this cause I knew we would either get really fat together or we would get thin together. I didn’t think I’d be alone, marriage is not about being alone, stange, now that I’m married, I know so many lonely people.

People said in the beginning “We all say that, and do it awhile, but no one actually changes, you’ll get used to than” and to them I said “fuck that, I won’t go down quietly.” And I didn’t I start a slow and consistent journey of change, the consistent part is way more important than the slow part; I say. And I picked up some people along the way. I did the first seventy pounds on my own, and then Sarah helped me dramatically with the next hundred, and then Tanisha came along somewhere in the middle and told her one day while I exercising how I couldn’t do something, and she said “yes you can.” And I did.

You don’t get to be as successfully fat as me without training, obsession, some major holes, not just in your mouth and ass, but in your life. Imbalance and compensation are why we abuse our bodies and come to accept that abuse as normalcy. More challenging still, you disturb the status quo, you can be on a bus with sixty fat folks, everyone will talk about wanting to lose weight, few will have the strength or ability to stay the course, to be consistent, to see it to the end.

There is no finish line. But if you want to lose the weight, you should go read Richard Bachman’s The Long Walk, and you’ll see what your head has to be like to at least get into the game. There were a lot of people who exercised with me, who took the journey with me, there is no shortage of obesity in my peer group, and many of those people are still defending their fat, many of them are still angry with themselves, that they can’t escape the gravity of how their obesity is not the problem, it’s just the sign of another issue.

I am tenacious to a fault, put my mind to it and it will happen. Try some.

This is from my heart. This has always been from the beating that makes me breath. I have always had a fear that I would fail, that all the mistakes of my past meant I could not succeed. We walk in a world where there are some people that life just seems to organically work for and we are not those people. I am not those people. I make a shit ton of mistakes and the only saving grace is that I look back and try to learn from my mistakes, and I believe-just as strongly that while I would prefer not to fail, would rather not make mistakes, if I embrace them, learn from them, I will be stronger. It is not that fear that guides me, it is that fear that sometimes paralyzes me, and it’s usually with a gravity so intense that the only thing that overcomes it is the excess of nothing else mattering, till I overcome it. My earliest memory of that was teaching myself how to ride a skateboard in secret. Top heavy fat kids don’t skate often, but I figured it out. The fear I have is a fear many people have, and it is infectious, when we tribe and village those fears are the things which corral and limit us. And those group fears and doubts are things that we strengthen and commiserate on, including our inability to overcome, we comfort ourselves in the acceptance of fear. Some of the same people who have saved me claw at me and pull me down, led by their fear. I lead. I lead not by fear, it’s a quiet hope, hidden by a overwhelming intensity that draws and repels people at the same time.

This is from my heart, I am changing and I am living life in optimism not in fear. I choose the worse time in our history to do it, but now is the best time to know the truth, I will survive, I hope other people make it to the other side with me, but I will breath survival or I will die. Nothing means as much to me as overcoming and being a better person, for me, and for my relationships.

This is the last post for KungFu, this is a symbolic statement as the new new is already in play. I left this site a few months ago and began working on the new site, and the new me. Now that I have lost the weight I have to keep it off. Now that I know that I will not turn to brute force for success, and now that I know I am obsessive about things, I am exiting a six month examination of how I came to be the Paul I always was, the Paul I am not now. It’d be easier if every relationship from my marriage to each friendship I have would cease to be, that’s not in the cards, and I’m thankful as I love my wife and friends. But this is a harder task to live up to. Even with the change that is external people do not completely relate to or understand the change that is within. People always want you to be you, getting people to understand you is maybe pointless, but changing your life so that the perimeter of actions doesn’t affect you, people doing and wanting you to do what you did, that is a challenge.

Goodbye. Goodbye friends and family. Goodbye me.

Hello. Coming up after the break is the new story of my life. I can’t tell you what to do with your life, and I’ve gotten a bit better about not pointing out what you’re blind to, people aren’t comfortable with that, and there is a burden of conflict that seems counterproductive. Hello to the new new. I will live a healthy life, in all ways. I will be a better person, and I will have to protect myself from the people who are not optimistic, from the people who are burned by the heat of their own doubt, it does not serve you, it does not serve me. Relationships support but do not float, will not carry, cannot overcome what is within you. The greatest and most sensitive lover in the world can comfort and distract, but they don’t pay interest on the debt you owe yourself to change. So change I will, and I hope you do to, cause if you do I’m on the other side waiting.

Changing your life is a change in thought, and then a change in action, and then a change in interaction and then a change of motivations. These changes are taking place. These are changes I believe in.

I specifically left KFO and went underground so that I could find my voice, and it is not there, not in the anonymity, there are some things I want to say and can’t. There are some things I say and shouldn’t. there are some things which don’t quite come out, cause I don’t want to feed the collective of fear, and I feel a failing on my part that I can’t do it, but understand it’s not in my heart to do such things yet. I also needed time to figure out how to change my voice from the “I’ve realized this cause of an interaction with you” style that has been my way these last few years. Some new voice must emerge in my writing and I am not trying to guide it, so for now what I write might very well be all over the place. But I will not write about you and then tell you how I learned from you, that was a period of being able to understand my shortcomings through talking with people about the shortcomings. Got it. I want to learn from successful people, I want to learn to be more successful now.

Everything right now is about pushing on the membrane of my comfort zone and doing more; at work, at home, in my own business, and in my body, heart, and soul. It is no easy undertaking and I am failing everyday, but I’m learning. We’re going to do some production stuff on the backend, and then merge the sites together, we’re even trying to bring out some of the old school. So I should be back shortly.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me this far, and sorry if I wasn’t more help to you. I hope your journey to be something comes of something, I hope you overcome your demons and begin to breath life, it’s busy and hectic over here, but I know I’m doing the right thing.

If I could work out before I woke up life would be good, but since that really isn’t possible…. Working out is an advantage, starting your day with your body is not something I think of as being good, it’s necessity, it’s awkard at first, especially when we’re iraq about our weight, when you’re not on game, movement is just a constant reminder of how you’re failing yourself. Overcoming that initial shame and negative flow that you experience with your body though, well, once you move on and just catch your health rhythm it’s very powerful, the mind clears.

Mid morning is kinda random for me of late, I’m all over, just putting out fires and trying to go with the flow. At 11:30 I start prepping for the gym, and this is really the time of day where I put my time in, and by that I mean to say that this is when I am working to maintain or lose weight. I am currently losing. And lately I’ve tried to make my return to work more mild and peaceful.

My life isn’t just work and working out. My life isn’t just the need, and has to do. I enjoy the things I need to do. I enjoy the things I have to do. If I didn’t enjoy it- sometimes it’s a hot mess and not enjoyable, I’d be unhappy. I have been unhappy a lot lately. Too much interference in my life, but really because I’ve been dwelling on things I cannot change, things I would rather erase then say make better. What we ignore becomes the hot breath of a demon, and our horror movie running from the demon always throws us into it, we can’t hide from our shadows, we can’t hide from the face in the mirror. As sworn enemies go, I am trying to kill myself with kindness.

I’d like to say that I still do not put encouraging post it notes on my mirror, save that shit for forty. I did take a little time off, I had to accept some things that I don’t want to accept, I had to come to remember and feel why I became that thing that I exercised away, I came. I saw. I am not that person anymore, but he lives inside of me, and he lives inside of your, our weakness is not who we are, it is just what we need to be vigilant against.

I want my time with food, and drink, and anything else to be about having a good time, and I want it to fit in my life, I don’t want it to control me. I want to be a better person, and I want that for me. Every time I am successful I realize how much more I have to do, it is daunting. Every time I do something right I realize how many things I have done wrong, and that same realization is why people just don’t do it. I’m not going to let my mistakes, and all this time behind me dissuade me from my future, I’m excited.