Getting Old(er) Tomorrow
Last week I was surprised by my family in Illinois. I had gone home for a 20th high school reunion and while there my family seized the opportunity to get a cake and sing happy birthday to me a week early. I was caught up in the reunion at the time and so the surprise was pretty effective.
Today, technology chimed in to help remind me of my birthday as well.
A combination of Outlook reminders and spam email messages recommending Viagra as a back drop seemed pretty ironic or funny or whatever it is.
Tomorrow, is the actual birthday and I’ll be home on my birthday for the first time in several years. I’m looking forward to an easy going birthday with family, and then the day after that I hit the road for two back to back trips. One trip to Orlando for Affiliate Summit Un-conference at SeaWorld and the other the Digital Video Expo in Pasadena California. I suspect all that travel piled on to the travel from last week is going to make me feel my age a bit.
Goodbye January! Catching up after travel and sickness
I’ve never been so happy to see February come. For over a week now, there has been some one in our house that was disgustingly sick. I was home with the kids all but one day last week, after returning from a weekend trip to Boston for WordCamp. Thursday, I made it to the office for a day, thinking the kids were better, but two of them were sick again by the early evening.
The third got sick about 1 am Friday morning, and I joined her, Mya, about an hour later. I was completely wasted for about 24 hours and barely functional until late last night. I was able to venture out into fresh air a couple times to watch the kids sledding Saturday after we got hit by a nice little snow/ice storm.
Then later Saturday, my son got sick again, about 4 days after he got sick the first time. I told him he was lucky that he had been OK, enough to go sledding while he could. I think it was rolling down a hill of snow that ultimately put him over the edge and started him puking all over his snow boots.
Corbin was sick the rest of the night. It had been a while since he had been that sick, apparently several years. Despite the fact that he had just watched the rest of us empty our guts all week, he was very surprised that we couldn’t give him a pill or some medicine that would fix his eleven year old stomach.
I had to think back a bit and the last time I could remember him being sick like that might have been when he was about 3 or 4 years old. Talk about lucky, he just didn’t have the experience of being sick like that and literally didn’t know what to do, like not throw up on his own feet, the floor, etc. He’s regularly been the kid in class that received perfect attendance awards.
I don’t think I ever received a perfect attendance award in my life. When I was his age, I was typically sick with a flu bug like that at least a couple times a year.
He thought that after throwing up, he could just launch in and eat a couple hot dogs and drink 3 glasses of water. Big mistake.
I had to sit down with him and basically teach him how to be sick.
- No, there isn’t medicine that fixes this instantly
- No, you can’t drink as much as you want
- No, you can’t eat as much as you want even if you are hungry
- Yes, being sick might keep you awake most of the night
- No, you can not have something to help you sleep (too much TV commercials
) - Yes, its a good thing that you are awake, it might help save your life if you do throw up
- Yes, you have to carry a bowl with you when you walk back and forth to the bathroom
- In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson in the Bucket List, “You can’t trust a fart” (oops too late on that advice)
I had mixed feelings about the fact that he didn’t really know any of these life lessons. It was awesome that he had been so healthy not to have gone through this and learned it the hard way, but I also felt like maybe I hadn’t done something sooner to teach him these basics sooner. 
The good news, he knows now!
Finally, last night after the family went to bed, my own appetite finally came back. I had eaten my first normal meal last night, but started actually getting hungry last night around 10PM.
I started doing some basic easy work, busy work you might say last night. Stuff that needed to be done, but nothing that took a whole lot of brain power, concentration or effort. I was saving that for today, for a fresh perspective unburdened by sickness and misery, and now that I’ve finally written a blog article after weeks and weeks it seems like, time to get going on that!
Driving 800 miles to Get Some New Vibram KSO Treks on Wednesday
This week I’m heading home to the Peoria Illinois area where I’m originally from. I haven’t been able to find any Vibram KSO Treks, the leather cold weather version of Vibram five finger toe shoes anywhere in the Carolinas.
Then I had an epiphany and remembered that I’d be travelling and maybe I could check some stores enroute to Illinois.
I did a search in Illinois first, and found a store in Peoria, on Main St. I’m not sure, but it might be the same store that’s been selling running shoes in Peoria since well, about as far back as I can remember.
They are called Running Central (no twitter account but they are on Facebook).
I called and talked to Adam I believe and sure enough they had one pair left in my size! They reserved that last pair for me and I’m going to pick them up when I get there this week.
Sooo can’t wait, plus, my toes won’t get as cold or wet running while I’m in Illinois.
Squishing the Biomass between my Toes
Squishing the Biomass between my Toes
The audio is something of a podcast, or at least audio blog about my morning. It all started when I dropped by my youngest daughters school for Donuts for Dads. When I was leaving the school, I had every intention of going directly home and going to work on the computer, but just off to my right (the opposite direction from home) there sat this fine looking little mountain, called Crowders Mountain. . . .
Am I Allergic to My Wife’s Male Friend’s Text Messages During Sex?
If you have ever studied psychology at a basic level, you have probably been introduced to the theories of conditioning. There was Pavlov’s dog who was conditioned to expect food when a bell rang, which triggered the dog(s) to drool when they heard the bell ring.
Well there was a conditioning experiment involving an infant known as Little Albert. This experiment featured an infant of about 11 months who had been tested and was not frightened of a white lab rate; he even tried to play with the critter a bit.
Well the experimenters started introducing a very loud noise whenever the lab rat was shown to the baby. The baby could not see the source of the noise. Eventually the neutral stimulus, the rate, began to instill the emotion of fear in Little Albert due to the combined presence during the test of the loud noise with the rat. Little Albert was conditioned to fear the rat that he initially liked.
This experiment was done in the 1920’s, the mother did not know about the experiment and eventually took her baby from the hospital they were in and left. Today the experiment is considered unethical. Experiments involving fear with people are generally not condoned.
Text Message from the Other Guy during Sex
So the other night my wife and I are enjoying an intimate moment. Suddenly her cell phone buzzes and the room lights up as her phone comes to life with a text message.
For the most part, I have come to accept that my wife has a male friend and that they communicate very regularly via text, email, facebook etc. I do not think she is cheating on me, I do not think she plans to have an affair with Hobie, etc.
In the early days, I was surprised and felt a little blind sided by the establishment of this friendship and it hurt like hell, mostly because I was reacting and just didn’t know what the hell was going on.
Its been a few weeks, and I’m mostly over it. But I still experience triggers that cause me to feel emotional pain. I’m trying to work through those so that those triggers won’t cause emotional pain any longer. Essentially I have to find a way for my rational mind to over come the irrational fear of losing my wife, the irrational jealousy of my wife’s friend who happens to be a guy that hit on her quite a bit, and the irrational feeling that I’ve failed my wife a bit since I’m not able to connect with her and communicate with her like this other guy can and apparently does.
Oh, and if I talk about any of this with my wife, it pisses her off, makes her mad, and in general makes the whole situation worse. She feels like she is being dragged through the mud and punished for doing something she never did.
Hell I now fear that if I talk to her about this, she will get mad or think more about leaving me for another guy.
So the problem is one of a feedback loop negatively reinforcing several behaviors.
My wife receives a text message from Hobie
When I notice (and I don’t see the majority of these messages, but ever few days I happen to see or hear, like when we are having sex) I feel a little bit of pain from the fact that he has instant electronic access to my wife whenever and where ever she is.
If I exhibit that pain, become morose, sigh deeply, grimace, etc, it makes my wife angry because she thinks I’m blaming her.
When she becomes angry, she clams up and won’t talk to me. She fears anything she says will essentially be used against her.
When she clams up, she becomes more distant from me.
This in turn makes me feel even further removed from her (even though Hobie gets to talk to her) and that makes it harder for me to remain calm and balanced and feel like everything is ok, they are just friends etc.
That makes me more distant and makes it difficult for me to give her the physical comfort and appreciation that she needs in the way of hugs and kisses and things. ergo I’m having a hard time feeling it and then exhibiting it.
FUCK! Why can’t she just stop talking to him?
That appears to be the obvious simple answer, but I won’t ask her to do that. If he’s her friend, that’s fine. She doesn’t ask me to turn away from my friends and I won’t do that to her. We both need friends to stay healthy and happy , which makes it possible for us to stay connected and love each other.
So I instead have to find a way to de-sensitize myself to things like her texting with Hobie.
That’s what I have been doing, but a couple nights ago when she got a message during an intimate moment, I realize that technology (not becky and not her friend nor their relationship), but technology has created a situation where there are truly no barriers.
We can reach out and touch someone anytime, any day, any where.
My wife and I both use our cell phones for alarm clocks. The damned devices are with us almost all day long every day. I get calls late at night, typically for work, from my business partner and friend Joe Klein who is a few time zones away, sometimes from other friends or family, sometimes business meetings setup at late hours with other internet types who tend to burn the midnight oil. This issue is one that has been felt by my wife far more than it has been in reverse.
She’s learned to cope with it better than I have in part because I was talking to people about business and she HATES talking with me about my business. Which drives me to talk with others about it even more. But also, when I talk with people about business it is never someone that my wife has met and seen me flirting with in a very physical way. That’s because I don’t flirt with people in a very physical way mostly, no opportunity no problem has been my married moto I guess you could say.
She has texted a little bit with some of her friends and coworkers over the years, but it was almost never another guy, until recently.
So I’m learning to cope, but the negative emotional stimulus is still there and in the early days it rapidly conditioned me to feel negative emotions not only when he sent her messages but when her phone twirped at all. She turned her phone to buzz for a couple days, which gave me a audible break from all the texting going on. That did help, kind of like removing a person with cat allergies from a house full of cats.
Now when her phone buzzes or twirps, I get that sinking gut wrenching, my wife is leaving me feeling in my belly any more. . . . Well, except when the message comes from Hobie. Then I do still feel something negative, especially when she is spending time with me, especially when that time is later in the evening and we are um . . bonding.
I feel like we need a cell free zone in the bedroom or maybe in the bedroom after a certain time at night, even if it is just temporary until my Hobie allergies have a chance to completely subside.
Opposites Attract But Shouldn’t be Out of Phase
Over the years I have moved from completely unorganized to completely organized and back again many times. Typically, I make a decision to change and become more or less organized depending on where I am in my life and what I’m doing.
I tend to find that if I am too organized in an anal going to plan when to plan where to put your socks away, then my creativity suffers.
If I’m too unorganized then too much chaos prevents me from getting enough work done at all.
By the way, I realize this topic on the surface may seem rather mundane compared to my recent writing performing a lobotomy on my feelings trying to analyze my emotions and figure out what is going on with my relationship with my wife, but this actually relates a bit.
My wife and I are typically always the opposite of each other. When I’m organized, she is not and vice versa. This axiom pretty much holds true for everything about us. Usually it keeps our relationship in balance in an opposites attract kind of way.
Over the recent few months, things have gotten even less organized for me than normal, and Becky has swung back from Uber Organized towards less organized after she started relaxing a bit after ‘completing’ her National Boards last spring. (Unfortunately, she has to redo part of her boards this spring, so her relaxation break is about over).
My work schedule has also focused on working nights mostly, since I work from home and need peace and quiet for a good deal of the work I do when I’m in a large project. That night time work puts a little distance between Becky and I even though it gives me more time to spend with the kids.
So since the whole craziness surrounding the discovery that my wife had gotten extra-friendly with another guy, I’ve been looking at what I can do to change/improve myself, how we can repair/strengthen our relationship and a number of other things.
One of the things that I started working on (was already working on but now have a new focus and re-emphasis on importance) is getting more organized myself.
I’m in the midst of setting up 1 possibly 2 new offices, one in Charlotte for sure and I’m tentatively looking at setting one up in Savannah as well. If I’m going to manage multiple work locations (home, Charlotte and Savannah) I need to be more organized. If my wife and I are not going to be two ships passing in the night, we also have to be organized enough to know where we each are, when the other needs help or support, who has the kids on whichever event is happening on any given day or evening and a bunch of other stuff.
This weekend Becky and I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what we were going to be doing over the next month both in regards to work, the kids, business and personal travel, Christmas, parties, etc.
We organized it all through Google calendar, which updates both of our phones and is accessible via our computers.
That’s just an example, but we’ve actually been doing a number of things like that to get more organized, not just individually but together. If we are going to be attracted opposites, we have to be a little synced up.
Planning my Future While in the Military
Years ago when I was in the Army, I had a lot of time on my hands. Especially time where my mind was unoccupied, even though I might be humping a GP medium around on my back (probably couldn’t do that these days, but I could then).
It gave me a lot of time to plan in my head what I was going to do with my future. Back then I had not been to college yet, and getting there was one of my primary goals.
I wasn’t as concerned with a number of the details of college, like what I would study nor which school I would go to. I was focused on making it happen, getting there, and getting the most out of it while I was there.
Back then, I didn’t have the wisdom to understand the importance of school and path of study as much, partly because I was a blank slate and I was talented and smart enough to do something useful with anything I learned. I could do a lot of something with about anything.
Planning My Future While I Read Audio Books
Years later, I found myself planning my future again. I was in college finally, and approaching the end of my first degrees. I was also working full time for the USPS and running a business on the side. I was kind of a busy guy. Shortly after, Becky was pregnant with Corbin and life got more interesting.
During that time, not to mention my 52 mile round trip commute from home to school to work to home each day, I had a lot of time to think and plan.
I read hundreds of audio books back then. When I had been in high school and the military I read hundreds of books and more too. The reading gave me the perspective to think things through in my head and the material and resources to bounce possibilities around and weigh the good, the bad, the ugly and come up with a vision.
I would create short term action plans, but would not chart out the long term plan. That was always more of a vision that I strode towards.
Back in late 2005 – 2006, I had an epiphany around the concept of new media, sometimes called social media these days, and something that will be called something completely different in 2 years, but will probably still have the world media some where near it.
I’ve been planning since that epiphany and gaining some experience around the concepts I’m working on the whole time. But the last 8 months hasn’t really spared me enough time to plan the vision of how to get there. That’s partly because more and more my work has become more focused on creating things and to push my creativity things became less organized to the point where I didn’t have as much time to plan and envision the future as I would like.
So that also is one of the reasons why I needed a bit of a change and a reset. I even think this time around, I might try and perform my planning or ‘envisioning’ through my writing or maybe through audio or video, which might be more appropriate for rapid thinking.
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