Silence can be Deafening.

I've been working a lot with my therapist and reading a couple books about trying to be more present. Not always so trapped inside my head. Often my mind is like a run away train. Constantly running usually many disconnected thoughts leading my mind to memories or trivia or obsessive over analysis. It's exhausting and it makes me less present and I really hate missing out on things because I'm too trapped in my head.

Usually I multitask. Well, I call it multitasking but it's basically just sensory overload. Computer with a dozen windows open and two games, phone nearby, tablet for various searches, Netflix playing in the background. So much buzz that my mind can't ramble and wander and analyze and obsess.

I'm pulled in a thousand places at once and not really truly paying attention to any of them.  But it overloads the brain at least.

Lately I have considered that by overloading my brain during the day, I might be making my night terrors/dreams/subconscious worse. Not that I have any science to back up that idea. But the narrative works and as I am me, if there's a good narrative, logic and science be damned.

Tomorrow is a long day. 10 hours. Early morning convincing the kids that Tae Kwon Do is totally worth the early wake up call. Followed by work. So I thought maybe tonight I would try to just relax. Be present. Not overload my brain. Perhaps tonight my dreams wouldn't be so bad.

The dreams part is too be determined. But I have discovered one thing but only having one browser open and my phone nearby. So other sounds. No Netflix. No wagging war on Civilization 3 between reading articles. No trips out to the living room to complete another silent Skyrim or Rock Band quest. Just me trying to be present. Still. Relaxed.

Oh my god is it terrifyingly loud. The lack of white noise. The lack of constant variable stimulation. It's just so quiet and that lack of sound seems so overwhelming. I medicate with media and alcohol and over stimulation. This is like going cold sober. Even with the blog and the phone to ween me.

I can't remember the last time I didn't have at least 3 sources of distraction outside my brain. It's not a common occurrence. The irony (and I can't just Google the definition of irony on my tablet because it's not active, so who knows if it's really irony) is that the silence does seem to help me focus. Be present. But. I'm only focusing on the fact that there is no sound and wondering what is happening in the world or the fake world or the pretend world.

All I have right now...is me. And this blank blog. It's a bit terrifying and silly. But one thing is clear.

All this terrifying lack of stimulation is a great cure for writers block.

Hearing and Fearing

It's amazing what you can fear when you stop to hear
The sounds and subtext that can slip past the normal ear
Creaks and shudders up and down the house
Scratches and shuffles that convince you there's a mouse
Moans and whispers that betray your house as home.

But when you stare too long into the a mirror 
Things that aren't, tend to magically appear.
Apparitions and visions become all too concrete
Fears, Terrors and Horrors lay at your feet.
Tales enough to fill each and every tome.

Beautiful, smart, independent Women and why I love them even though they leave.

I have always fallen for beautiful, smart, independent, talented women. I love them. They are great. Passion. Fire. Self confidence. Natural beauty they allow me to remind them of. Intelligence they show me by accident at times. Independence that proves they are whole and worthy of partnership.

Ironically. The one thing I've really learned about beautiful, smart, independent, talented women is that eventually they realize they are beautiful, smart, talented and fully ready to independent from me.

Honestly, it probably has more to do with my perceptions and expectations. Can I really be surprised that no woman wants to be my Princess  Leia, Lois Lane, Detective Beckett and Taboo (from the Backlash comic, only I remember) all rolled into one? No. That's a bit unreasonable.

But I do love them. Lord do I. And I have tried to learn from them. Because more than anything, I want my daughter to be a beautiful, smart independent, talented woman who eventually no longer needs me around.

I am a flawed man. As a child I readily accepted the images shown to me. I loved old James Bond films. I assumed that a wife's role involved keeping her husband happy. I watched Leave it to Beaver and Father knows Best on Nick at Night and Full House and Remington Steele and Knight Rider on broadcast. I learned things a certain way.

I have grown. Mostly from my interaction with those beautiful, smart, independent, talented women form my past. I understand how the words that I use and the attitudes I have can affect others. Sadly this is not something I was well aware of before.

It changes when you have a daughter. Suddenly. You are not just a father. You are responsible for portraying the image of a male that will factor into your daughter's perception of how she should be treated. It's possibly one of the most terrifying realizations I have ever had.

But parenthood is about learning and growing and adapting. No one gets it right at first. Or so I assume. It's about learning and changing. So much of life is about changing. I didn't know that.

I have come to have a very hard time accepting certain words within the English language when it comes to referring to people or individuals of the female sex. It's been there in some ways since I was a child. (My son getting detention for pushing the kid who knocked down the girl named Mary in his Catholic preschool is still a favorite). But to be honest most of my youthful reaction was based in some Western cowboy or James Bond mythology. The thought I was to stand up or protect women.

Ironically. In my life it has often been women who have stood up and protected me.

In third grade I tried to stand up to a bully. He routinely would ignore my attempts and pick me up or shove my face into the water fountain or give me a horrible wedgie. No matter how many times I ran or tried to give him the patented Adam triple shake-a-fake. He would come at me every day.

Until a friend of mine told him to stop. She was a year younger than us both but her voice had more authority in it than any other. He stopped. I saved the triple shake-a-fake for another day. (She is still a close friend to this day, so don't let it be unknown that I have a bad-ass bodyguard if needed)

It is a silly but vibrant example. 24 years later, I still remember the moment. I was destined for a swirly or worse if not for her words. That is who I want my daughter to be. The one who stands up.

She is. Her love for the Leverage series may have led her to be a bit more of a Sophie Deveraux than I planned but I'll take it.

But there are still words that men use that I have started to not be ok with. "Chick" "Bitch" and if I ran into any 1930's gangsters, I'm sure that "Dame" and "Broad" would raise my ire as well.

Tonight I sat at the bar. I young man was talking about his dislike for certain TV series and their female protagonists being sitcom leading ladies. He used words I found objectionable. I decided to say something.

If not for the beautiful, smart, independent and talented woman I have loved, I might not have had the guts to point out that certain words have connotations that I didn't truly believe this young man mean to portray.

We talked. It was mildly heated at times, and in the end we came to the conclusion that his dislike for these certain individuals was more about this general dislike of actors and actresses he knew as sketch performers, taking a sketch type idea to a long form medium and how that rarely seems to create a cohesive product. Which I can see as a type of concern of and criticism.

He turned out to be a very intelligent young man and as we talked he did a good job of challenging certain idioms and notions that I have as a hopeful writer. In all he was a pleasure to talk to and I value the opportunity to discuss with him and learn from each other.

I only had the opportunity because of the beautiful, smart, independent and talented women that I have loved. As I heard certain words come from another mouth. I knew that the women I have loved would never stand for those words to continue. I couldn't help but question, ask, challenge and learn.

Thank you. Beautiful, smart, talented women who have eventually chosen to be independent from me. I have learned from you and will learn from you. And it makes not only a better father, but a better Man.

Spring Breeze and Trying new things.

Spring is supposed to be the time when new things start. New life flows from the earth. Grass turns green, flowers bloom, the sun returns from its 5 months hiatus. People fall in love. Summer brings summer love, vacations, rediscovering the great outdoors.That's the narrative that society has accepted.

But it's never felt that way to me. Maybe it was all those years of school. Perhaps it was growing up in a household of academics and marrying and divorcing an academic. It's probably something to do with learned behavior and expectations. It might be that my favorite baseball team has seemingly had it's season over before summer for the past 5 years.

Spring was the end of school. The end of an era. That grade was over. Friends wouldn't be seen every day. The order and structure of the year would dissipate. Spring was bittersweet. So longed for but it signaled the end. Summer vacation was like a weird beast that only came around for a little while and changed the entire world.

Fall was when the new year began. New teachers. New friends. New challenges. Growing older, stronger and bigger. Becoming the next step. Fresh clothes. Fresh books. Fresh trapper keepers or binders. It was exciting. It was the birth of something new.

All my life spring has felt like an ending. Events in my life have followed suit. It usually begins in March. It feels like most funerals I have attended, a thankfully small amount, have been in March. Most of my romantic interpersonal relationships have ended between March and June. And there's that baseball team thing too.

After 34 years, it's easy for my pessimistic nature to carve things in stone. Assuming that this the world and it is flat and we really don't need to talk any more about it.

But the world isn't flat and spring doesn't have to be an ending. Luckily and somewhat embarrassing lately I have tried to work on changing my actions. Doing the same thing expecting a different result is the definition of insanity after all. So I need to do different things. New things. Things that make me grow.

Sometimes it doesn't work out so well. Gathering many of the spare sticks in the yard and breaking them down for the fire pit led to a lovely allergic pollen congestion.

Sometimes it does. Last night, as the sun was just setting, I picked up my daughter from dance. Which I have done almost every Thursday since September. We usually head straight home and get our evening started. Instead I had the impulse to take them down to Minnehaha Falls in the dying light and walk around for just 20 minutes. It was perfect. Today instead of video games and netflix before work, I tried a very light workout and spending 20 minutes outside in the sun. Soaking up the vitamin D. Trying something new.

I am sore and I'm sure I may regret the lack of sunscreen tomorrow. But it felt good to try something new. To sit in the sun in silence and listen to the birds and breeze. To breathe and try and slow the run away train of thought that constantly runs my mind and my heart. Hopefully this spring will be seen as just another day, another moment. Not the end of something but the beginning.

Dream a Little Dream

1. 
   Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. - Google.
   
   
   
   Dreams are a pain in the ass. - Adam
   
   
   
   Here it is, 4 am. Luckily not the day after Christmas. But all the same. I am awake and disquieted.
   
   
   Tonight it was a dream about the speed/life/id force being sucked out of my body and needing other people's help recapturing it and putting it back in.
   
   
   Red and yellow lighting that had to have been stolen from repeated viewings of CW's The Flash represented the energy pulling extracted from my body. I spun around and around like a tornado as it ripped out of me. I could feel myself tossing and turning from pillow to pillow as I did so.
   
   
   That's part of the weird joy of my dreams. The consciousness. Like I can almost pull myself out of it. But not quite.
   
   
   It was a pattern. The lightning or whatever would be ripped out by some unknown force. Then it would crackle and explode back into me. A reverse spin of course.
   
   
   It took the pattern of so many of my dreams. A series of events that always unfolds the same way and has since I was a child.
   
   
   1. An elaborate process of creation (puzzle, build, speed force withdrawl)
   
   
   2. Repeatedly increasing the process and the speed of the process.
   
   
   3. Building anxiety about trying to keep up with the conveyor belt, the screaming monkeys or the stomach churning vertigo from constant spinning.
   
   
   4. Complete systematic failure. Conveyor belt collapse, puzzle disintegrates, bridge burns, monkey's throw poop. Etc.
   
   
   As I kept spinning it was obvious that I wasn't going to be able to continue. And as my body grew weak, it became apparent that some of the force or id or energy had been lost or broken or flawed. Energy crackled from a spot in my chest where I had put the pieces back together wrong or had missed a step in my twisting panicked state. The missing energy or id or bleepity bleepity corrupted the entire process and me and it spread and spread and burned and burned....
   
   
   BOOM.
   
   
   Awake. Wide awake.
   
   
   
   Sitting up with a jolt. Double checking my chest to make sure that it didn't explode.
   
   
   It didn't.
   
   
   But tell that to the part of me that decides that sleep isn't really something we want to do again tonight. Thanks but no thanks. I'm good.
   
   
   It's anxiety. It's stress. It's all things that will pass with time and patience and morning light.
   
   
   It might even be the left over Chinese I had before bed.
   
   
   Whatever it is, it's been an uncomfortable guest for most of my life.
   
   
   But luckily, I deal. I have dealt and will deal again. It's not going away and it's a part of me. So I gave it a theme song. Everyone needs a theme song. You know you have one in your head right now.
   
   
   So my dear recurring dream, my inescapable and traitorous nighttime sidekick, this song's for you.
2.  

The Ache.

It comes on slowly and with little warning.

At first, a twinge of memory or a random inkling of longing.

Then the weight. So heavy and hot and pronounced

It burns like fire, it's arrival announced. 

I push it away. I drench it with drink.

I fight my own mind. I resist the think.

Silent screams pound through my head

It’s permanence, its solidity that I dread. 

Yet with time it starts to wane.

It becomes a fire I can contain.

Proving yet again, though I often doubt;

There is no fire - I can’t put out.