So many "feels"

(In retro fashion to my older posts, I was listening to Straight No Chaser's cover of "Fix You" by Coldplay *or the original if you want* and would recommend it for maximum understanding of the "feels" in this post)

So many "feels" lately...I could sit here and say the same thing that I always do; "life is busy"...but everyone knows that! It's no surprise to anyone. I'm turning 29 in a month, life had better be busy or else I should probably check my pulse to make sure that I'm still here. Things don't slow down, especially at this point in a person's life. This is when life kicks it up and demands that you actually pay attention to more than your Facebook news feed. You're running, you're working, you're sweating, straining, getting knocked down, getting tossed around, tested, tested, and tested even more. Not just by your job but your family, your friends, your relationships, and your surroundings day in and day out. These things are no surprise to me. My world has been a constant whirlwind of emotionally charged changes ripping at every corner of my being, pulling me one way and then another leaving me tired, drained, and most of all, looking for answers...but if there's one thing that I've learned over the past couple of months it's this: Sometimes the answers aren't the most important part of the equation. It's the questions we're asking. Not literal questions, but the questions that we ask ourselves on the inside in the moments when life seems like the hardest thing we will ever experience...because that's the honest truth. There aren't instructions, there aren't cheat codes or level skips hiding along the way. There's one way, and that's straight through the middle of it all. And the biggest mistake is in thinking that there's some big prize waiting at the end...the prize is in the experience of living, of loving, finding relationships that are worth nurturing and doing our best to cultivate the passion and fire that sleeps somewhere inside every one of us. It's in taking a step back and looking around at the world you've created for yourself and others and being able to smile simply knowing that you did the very best you could to leave a footprint that will be felt for generations to come...I've been so busy and caught up in the fast-paced antics of a world in motion that I haven't really had a chance to step back and see how things are going. Recently I've been taking at least a day each week to immerse myself in something that I love. Reading. Baseball. Reading about baseball. Singing. Playing music. Being outside in nature. All of these things, however simple or childish, are things that I hold close because they all have special meaning to me and the person that I am. I can't even begin to describe how amazing it's felt to breath......just breath....without having to think about the million and one thoughts that try and stress me out daily. I've really started to see more clearly the things that are important. The things that I guess I've always known were important but somehow failed to acknowledge in quite some time...the biggest of these has been my family. There are so many things in my life that I am proud of. My job. My education. My health. But none of these things would have ever been possible if it weren't for the constant and unwavering rock of love and support that is my family. From my parents and my sister, to my aunts and uncles and cousins, and finally my grandmother. So many factors go into shaping a person and who they are or who they'll become but none more than the presence of a caring family. And I know that there will be people who read this who may say that they have broken families or no family at all for whatever reason but I don't believe that a family is strictly limited to those blood relatives. A family is anyone who believes in you and is there to have your back, to motivate you, to pick you up when your own arms don't seem to be enough. They're the ones who push you more than anyone else to go after what truly makes you happy. The ones who see in you things that you could never imagine. That's family. That's what's important. We all have those people. So do yourself a favor, thank those people in your world. Tell them exactly how much they mean to you. Tell them that you love them. You never know when you won't have that chance anymore. 

I realize this blog got a little long in the tooth and I kind of bounced around a couple different "thoughts" but as I said before, my life has been full of so many "feels" lately and I just needed to get some of them out onto the page. Thanks for reading.

This red stuff inside

I donated blood today... it's such a strange thing, to give your blood. The single most important thing in your entire body... the thing that keeps you alive, that heals you, makes you grow, protects your body.... to give it away... no money exchanged, no prizes awarded, no parade or portrait on a wall in some office with a brass plate hanging below stating "A Hero"... just saying, "Yep, here you go!"... I've never really thought about it before. I mean, it's the most valuable commodity on the planet... no value could possibly be placed on it... and here I am, just giving it away without a second thought. Yet I do it. No questions asked. It's what I've done for years except when I've gotten tattoos. Why wouldn't I. I'm making plenty of it right? And someone else out there is no doubt losing it... accidents, shootings, surgeries, transplants... cancer...... They say that one donation could save up to three lives.....THREE...just from one pint of blood. In my lifetime I could have possibly saved 60 people.....60 peoples lives could have been saved by me up to this point....add to that the fact that less than 6% of the world's population have my blood type (A-) and it makes it even more important! It's a great thing to think that I have, running through my body, a commodity, that saves lives...that allows people to live. It's a humbling thought...even more so when I think on the flip side that if something ever happened to me...that only two blood types would be able to save me... and combined, they make up barely 12% of the Earth's population...that means that I'd have roughly a 1 in 9 chance of finding a compatible donor if I needed blood... very humbling indeed.... I could sit here and spit numbers all night... but I won't... I donate because I like to think that maybe I save someone's grandmother... or sister... or father... their brother... their newborn who needed surgery out of the womb... maybe gave a few more years for their mother with cancer so she could see her grandson if for only a few weeks... that's why I donate... because I know that I helped someone to live.... and I will give that freely every time I can...

Sometimes you just know...and that's enough.

How do we know...like really know...who the right person for us is? Although the Internet has a plethora of websites indicating they know who your perfect match is, how can you be sure? There are literally billions of people on Earth, and yet people still insist that there is only one....singular...true love out there for each person. I've always been a realistic and scientific thinker of sorts and when you put the math to work...these are some pretty incredible odds to try and overcome...the kind of odds that even the riskiest of Vegas sharps would look at and laugh. Save your money. Walk away from the casino sir....but.....what if those two people did find each other...against all odds, through any doubts, those two people found each other...whether it took them 12 years to realize or only a couple of months....they fell in love... and they just knew. All science and math and statistics out the window...they just knew... Today two of my best friends are getting married...and as much as I believe in math and numbers and probability...I believe more in the love that they have for each other. I believe that it can happen...for anyone, just as it's happened for them...no matter how long you have to wait for it. When I look at them...I know...and that fills me with so much happiness. Congratulations Jordan and Val. I love you both more than these words will ever be able to say. 

I think I'd like to bet it all on green ❤️

kintsugi

So many things on my mind....I want to write so bad...I want to write it all, yell it out on this page...every thought, every feeling, every emotion, every little detail of everything that I've felt....I mean, where else is there? These aren't written instructions or guidelines or a help sheet that I can refer to whenever I want to in order to make sense of what's happening...this is my inner self...my being...my soul....and tonight, this page is the medium...there is no narrator underscoring my life, no subtitles translating the feelings and emotions that I've become all too familiar with despite the fact that I know nothing about them...there's only me, tapping away at these keys with the hope of perhaps organizing some coherent combination of letters into words that might somehow come close to shedding even the faintest glimmer of light onto what I've been feeling...A huge sizeable, full, chapter of my life has come to a close...so many emotions...happy, sad, painful....the feeling of closing something that had taken up all of my being...all of another's being...and now it's done...but it's not gone...it will never be gone, never be wrong, never be regretted, never be something to be ashamed of or felt sorry for, it's something that was a part of us...IS a part of us....there will be confusion... hate... anger...frustration...denial...betrayal...and ultimately........hope. hope that tomorrow will be a little better than the day before it, hope that the pain will eventually go away, maybe not fully or completely, but it won't be as intense as it was yesterday....hope that perhaps this wasn't a waste of time or something that we look back on and regret...there will be hope....hope that perhaps the best thing in our life isn't what we left behind us but what is just up the road a little further.....a few more steps....better people....better memories...better happiness....if we only pick ourselves up after a breath or two and find the courage to keep walking...for what other option is there.........[kintsugi].......I haven't been able to get this word out of my head since the first time I heard it....the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery using a mixture made with either gold, silver, or platinum, to accentuate the breaks and flaws of an object because they are just as much a part of it's history as the rest....this philosophy has stuck with me...we should never feel the need to hide the "breaks" and "cracks" that have brought us to where we are at this point in time. They are a part of us...proof that we can keep walking...with our heads up...ready for whatever might be just a little further ahead...because that next step...that next chapter....could be the greatest chapter that you never saw coming...if only you have the courage to turn the page......

Because sometimes substance trumps volume

There's one thing I can do nothing about...

Somewhere a heart is hurting. Somewhere a soul is writhing. Somewhere a future is disappearing. Hurt. Anger. Confusion. Denial. Hate. Hopelessness......






but then






.......Discovery. Growth. Faith. Hope. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Humble. Somewhere a heart is healing. Somewhere a soul is calming. Somewhere a future is being born.

Simplicity.

What ever happened to simplicity? I mean, it's quite a nice word that rolls off the tongue very pleasantly and often times makes you seem more intelligent than others would normally assume you are just by the fifty cent quality of it (not the rap artist 50cent). I often try to take moments out of my day to stand back and assess things; How am I feeling right now? Am I doing right by me? Have I helped someone else today? Do I feel that I'm any closer to where I want to be?... Most days, the answer is extremely simple: yes. 

However, it seems like that word isn't really sufficient enough in itself. It seems that the simplicity, the innocent curiosity and excitement surrounding life, has all but disappeared from my everyday existence...and (I'm not going to sugar coat it) that scares the hell out of me. 

I'm so happy to see people around me growing, learning who they are and what makes them tick, finding people to share that joy and happiness with, moving forward, working hard but keeping things simple...and yet, why is it so hard for me to re-embrace that in my life? I've been told by some that I'm standing in my own way... Other times people tell me that I'm just being too picky about what I want and that I have to settle and compromise sometimes and where I want to be because "I'm not getting any younger"...which I ALSO get...but I don't know......

I came home tonight and had a lot on my mind. For the first time in a long while I decided to turn to the keyboard for some thought processing...but as I sat here getting my tunes going and firing up Blogger I noticed a small calendar sitting on top of my printer...

The calendar is the 1986 edition of the Salamanca Rail Museum's annual calendar. It was open to March. To most, the image that was chosen for that particular entry would, today, seem like something from an old history book. It depicts eighteen rail workers standing in front of a train engine. Some of the men are smiling, some are blinking, and some look like they wanted to get back to work. The year of the photo was 1955. 

You see, my grandfather was one of those eighteen men in the photo.

As I sat here thinking about simplicity and where things were for me in my little orb, I couldn't help gravitating back to the photo on that page of that calendar...thinking, "What was simple for him? Did he ever feel this way? Frustrated over the challenges that were undoubtedly woven throughout his life in those years?" 

Here was a man who had been raised in Buffalo during the Depression, barely enough food to go around let alone clothing or shoes... here was a man who had served his country during the "War to end all wars" instead of playing professional baseball.... a man who had three children by the time this photo was taken and who would go on to raise three more in a house that he, himself, built for his family in the small railroad community of Salamanca... were things simple for him?......

Things were probably never simple for him...but I'm willing to lay just about any amount on it that he made them seem as simple as he could because one thing was for sure, he wasn't going to let any of it get the best of him...he couldn't...he had a family to provide for, to raise, to take care of, and to love. Simplicity didn't exist back then, not under those circumstances. The "simple" was in taking comfort in knowing that you had given your all in whatever it was that life had handed you that day.

For me, I thought it was rather fitting that I happened to notice that photo in the midst of all of my frustrations at the moment...I'm not really one for believing in fate or destiny but something tells me there was a reason I had left that calendar open to that page. Perhaps to some day remind me that things won't always be simple...but in some small way, that's ok, because "simple" is a mindset, a mental state that each of us defines differently based on our own own specific life circumstances. 

The simple in my life hasn't disappeared...it's merely reshaped the way it looks because, let's face it, life changes, every single day it changes! And there isn't a thing that we can do about it other than embrace the new and unknown possibilities that it means for us. 

So here is my challenge to not only myself, but for anyone else who might find themselves in this same frame of mind: Don't let the complexities of life scare you off of the path that you choose to walk. Life is ever-changing and we should be glad for that. No one likes to watch the same episode of the show over and over and over...they want to see how the characters react to the ever-changing landscape of the script. 

Take a breath. Take two. And be ready to play the best role of your life no matter what scene change comes next. 

[Curtain]

 

(my Grandpa is the man standing in the front left... with his eyes closed)

Under Pressure

I feel like I've missed something...a stop or a turn somewhere on this "road of life". Maybe I wasn't looking or maybe I'm just not there yet but I feel that I should have been looking for the stop labeled "Adulthood". Or perhaps I just think that I should have seen that sign since so many of the people who are close to me are exiting the freeway to buy homes or get hitched or (dare I say it) MULTIPLY! (dun dun dun).

Peer pressure is a funny thing. As much as you've been raised your entire childhood trying not to succumb, it's in your adult years that you learn how much society expects you to "follow the herd". You grow up, go to college, get a job, find someone to love, buy a house, a dog or cat perhaps, pop out some babies and voila; you're A-OK. 

If there's anything I've learned about myself throughout my (almost) 27 years, it's that I'm not a huge fan of pressure. Of any kind. Some people are, and I tried to be at one point, but when it comes to these big stops that I know are looming just around the corner, I'd rather pump the brakes or take a detour. 

Don't get me wrong, someday, yes, I will have a house, I will have some spawn (as my sister so eloquently refers to children), and I hope I will have a job that will support all of that. But for now, I'm content to live a little more for me. I don't like to use the term "self-discovery" because it implies that I'm trying to find something out about myself and that's really not the point of all this. 

I'm just waiting for the time when it all feels right. That moment when I just know that I'm ready. And hopefully I'll be smart enough to recognize when that moment is. 

Thanks for listening folks.