Maybe it is just time for some baseball!

I have been asked to help several groups from the 9/12ers to the Tea Parties to lead them into victory over our fascist government. I have been thinking about it for awhile, mulling this over. I figured that if I could take a group of these 'so called adults' (50% of them are childish morons) and become the central leader again that they all need they will succeed. They do need a leader here in the OKC metro. Then I realized something, I pay the government between $5,000 and $15,000 a year and it takes them 3 months to send me a check. I ask for a movie from Netflix and it LITERALLY is in my mailbox within less than 36 hours. How is that? Then I realize that we all as American citizen are eventually going to become wards of the state with this health care debacle. I finally made my decision!
Baseball is starting up. I am going to watch baseball! Screw health care, Pelosi, Obama, the Demonazis, the Repubs, the White House, the House of Congress, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. I figure that if the Constitution has not learned how to fight for itself in over 200 years, it never will. The Constitution is always 'needing protection' and blah blah blah. The Constitution is like Walker's girlfriend in Walker, Texas Ranger. Half of the episodes is when Walker's girlfriend gets kidnapped or beaten and he tries to save her. I would always think that if she would just get a bodyguard or Walker would just break up with her, he would have a lot more time on his hands to start up a hobby like whittling or quilting. He never did. But I am. So Constitution, get a bodyguard or stand up for yourself or you are gonna get bullied even more. Good luck Constitution, I am going to watch some baseball!

Scars

When I was a boy, I was always doing daredevil things that would leave me scars. Scars were cool, they meant that you were tough and almost a man. Where you are an adult, we develop other types of scars. These scars you cannot see or flaunt them in front of your friends. And many times they take a lot longer to heal.
I am not saying that I am the only person on Earth that have scars, everybody has them, some more than others. These scars are like real scars, they don't ever go away, but like my boyhood scars, you learn things from each one of these scars. If you don't, then you are likely to get bigger scars. These scars can come from being molested as a child then turning to drugs in adulthood, having bad parents that are abusive, or even regrets.
The hurt lessens with time, but you will always feel down into your soul and feel those scars that remind you where you have come from. Maybe it was that old girlfriend that broke your heart years ago, or that relative that you will not speak to again because of a long-waged war.
The point being is that how are you going to keep those scars and also move on with your life? I think of myself as an expert in this, I have many scars, but I call them my battle wounds. I could turn to drugs or other things that can keep those wounds open, or give time to let my wounds heal. The best person to talk to about this is somebody who has the same scars, and with time, the won't heal up to normal again, but they will stop bleeding and let you live in happiness again.

5 Minutes To Speak My Peace

I was reminiscing about the past the other day when I remembered that my sister had gone to a summer camp back when she was younger. They told all the kids to write a letter to their families in 5 minutes like you were on a plane that was about to crash. This exercise was to speak your peace and I guess make you realize things about yourself. So I have decided to do this, and I am going to time myself for five minutes. In five minutes I will just stop writing, so here goes.
Dear family,
I have only 5 minutes to write this letter because the plane I am on is going to crash in exactly 5 minutes. So here goes, I want to be cremated and put in a nice coffee can right in front of the TV. With the rest of the money from my life ins. policy, blow it in Vegas or something, I don't care. If you want to have a good life, always garden, never trust fast women or hippies, and NEVER get into or talk about politics.
Never use the Lord's name in vain, but the other bad words just choose them wisely. Never board a plane where the pilot smells like Vodka. Always buy a Tundra, and never be cold at heart. Always love with genuine love. When you are a kid, always listen to your parents, and realize that when you grow up, your parents are going to be the IRS and they are MUCH more mean and strict than your actual parents ever were.
Always wear deodorant, and never move to California.

And this was all I could write in 5 minutes. I would hope that my will would be in place at the time, but I think the point in life is that life is like a roller coaster. You gotta hold on and just enjoy the ride. You can always look back and say 'What ifs', but that doesn't matter. Never take the little things for granted, and never 'enjoy everyday', some days just aren't for enjoying. So just go through those days and enjoy the days meant for enjoying. Read a lot, and not of the same thing. Never try tobacco, drugs, or alcohol, your body doesn't like these things at first for a reason. Always tell the truth, and when you want to hide something, don't lie about it, just don't talk about it, unless it has to do with other people, then you are on your own.
Get a dog, then notice how they live. They enjoy the most simple of things. Learn from that! Always listen to people that you respect and that have the insight and knowledge you need. Always ask them questions and soak in as much wisdom you can from them, it will make you a better person. Never watch the news except for the weather, they will give you a bunch of information that has nothing to do with you and will scare you to death.
Garden, plant something, take care of it. My favorite job was working for pennies in one of the hottest summers on record as a groundskeeper at Oklahoma Christian. You can be closer to God doing work like that than being in a church. Go to church, though, because everything has it's time and place. Talk to the Lord like he is you best friend, and more, even though he may not be every day.
Make a set of principles to follow in your life, then NEVER violate any of those principles.

Lil Miss Perfect

My evenings sometimes consist of letting go of the remote and letting my wife watch trash. Tonight she was watching another one of those shows that follow little pageant girls and their parents in a pursuit of perfection. I have a very important list of what is very wrong with this crud.
1. This is a child molester's dream. They can just turn on the tube and watch these parents whore out their girls. Why not put them in a two piece bathing suit and tell them that they need to loose just a little bit of weight. I mean c'mon, you 4 years old, it is about time to watch your carb intake.
2. Most of these parents have a lot of issues themselves. They are not the attractive ones and it seems they want acceptance through pimping out their children.
3. 'I like being in pageants, they are very fun and I like them a lot' is what these poor girls say. Sure, and I can convince my lil bit that bending a paper clip and sticking it in electrical outlets can be very fun. C'mon lil bit, the 110 volts get easier to handle the more you do it, stop being such a baby!
4. In college I dated a girl that was made to enter those pageants. She was so messed up in the head 10 years later I felt really scared breaking up with her when I did because I was really scared she might take her own life (no joke, and luckily she didn't).
The point I am making is that this is child abuse that is celebrated in our society. I can't even watch these shows. I know first-hand what happens to these girls when they grow up. Oh, I am sorry, they are already grown up.
*DISCLAIMER* If you think that child pageants are OK and that I was unfair to attack these parents, screw that, you are sick and need to see a psychiatrist, NOT a therapist, but a doctor that can prescribe heavy doses of medication to you!

The Most Important Thing I Have Learned

As I am going through this new year, I am excited and nervous. I have noticed that I am not as nervous as I used to be. Certain 'unknowns' about work have come as a daily thing to me and I am getting used to being a large part of a small business. I love it a lot more than what I was doing last. I enjoy talking with the people, working with my helpers, and my worst day is still not as bad as it used to be. I have also learned something I was sure I would never learn.

I was scared because when I became a daddy, I had not read all of those books my wife had bought for me. In fact, I think I skimmed through the first chapter of one book and that is all. She read over 100 books front to back and that was when she was pregnant. Then she continues to read the books labeled 'Our First Year' and so on. She knows everything it takes to raise a child with the right nutrition, sleeping habits, learning and motor skills development, and other stuff like that. I pretty much just do what she does. When she says lil bit needs this or that, I do it.

Before I know it, I have learned to be a daddy. The funny thing is that lil bit has taught me. Between the H1N1 (Swine Flu) outbreak that lil bit introduced to the household, to the excessive vomiting in my truck that left her mom and I sick, to the teething and fits she has taught me how to be a daddy. I am a germaphobe, but I had to let that go about 2 years ago. Lil bit has taught me to just let it all hang out and don't worry about the fact that she is chewing on something in the trash, or got a cupfull of urine water from a toilet that I accidentally left open (true story), just let it roll of your back (or splash on the bathroom floor like lil bit did to the urine water and got daddy in deep trouble with mommy).

After a long hard day at work, I love to get lil bit into my truck and we drive around doing the 'air drums' to daddy's music. We rock out pretty good. Or when she smiles when I walk in the door and acts just like my dog, that no matter what, they are REALLY happy to see me! Chillin' on the couch and eating Cheetos, and watching the Olympics can be really fun. Or trying to eat snow for the first time only to find out that it is really cold and tastes like water.

You see, we take life too seriously because we have to. Our work demands it. But we don't have to be that way when we are at home. I might have to 'fake it' around a client during the day, but when I come home, we will just put on some of that good daddy music and rock out.

The Old Me vs. The New Me

I haven't had much problem getting along in life. Well, most of the time. I have had bumps in the road and I have been able to move on from them. I spent most of my twenties changing. I started out in my early twenties having fun at parties, going to college and living a bachelor's life, and just hanging with my 'bro's'. I never really had anything to worry about because I really had nothing I owned that was worth anything and I liked it that way.

Then I met my wife and got my degree. I settled down and had fun with her being a young couple. I worked up the ranks of a property management company, and earned the trust and friendship of the owner. I took care of my wife while she went to school and I was on my way. My yearly salary would go higher every year, and our standard of living would improve with every year. Then I became a daddy. The greatest event of my life. I loved it, 2008 gave me a daughter, the best year in my 'professional' career, and a promise of greater things to come.

2009 ushered in something that would grow inside of me and I would not know of the consequences until it was too late. I have always believed that depression is something that people used as an excuse because they were weak, or lazy, or just wanted to complain. I was wrong. Depression seeped into my head very slowly and very quietly. I in fact didn't know that I was really depressed until it was too late. I was in full mode depression when I went to my Doctor, and he sent my to a psychiatrist who just wanted me to take a LOT of prescription medication which I chose not to. I stopped going to him.

The Depression was a thing now, it was something that could not be controlled, it was a runaway train. My job performance started to suffer. After 6 years of solid and profit making performance, I was terminated for 1/2 a year of poor performance because of my depression. They let me go, they took the one thing I had that kept me out of the house, and they kicked me out like I had been stealing money from them for years. In fact, I was a party to a few firings of people who were stealing from the company over the 6.5 years I was with them and they were let go with more tact than I was. I left graciously not to prevent me from burning bridges (because I knew I would never even work in that field again for any other company), I just wanted to be the better person.

It has been a cold winter, the coldest and snowiest I can remember in my 3 decades of living. I spent my first 6 weeks of unemployment collecting the small checks they would give me, and being treated like a second class citizen. I would watch T.V. and sit on the couch. It was dark in my head. Then Christmas came and went. In 2010, I chose to get off of unemployment because it was hurting my pride (for lack of a better word). I have taken up working for my old company doing heat and air, which is always very slow in January and February. I do as much work as I can scrounge up just to make ends meet. The depression hasn't gone away, but I have been able to fight it with every bone in my body. I decided with the new year, I was going to dig in my heals, and not give anymore ground. I didn't fight this foe right away, I was just trying to keep it from taking more ground. In the past 6 weeks or so, I have taken the fight to it. I haven't been able to take a full step, but I have taken some ground away from this disease. Everyday, I fight and everyday I try to advance. Some days I don't. But on those days, I dig my heals in again and weather the storm.

I have great fear of the future. Will this year bring me the business that I need to support my family? Will I be better in the head? These questions remain unanswered everyday. However, this is when I truly see what I am made of. I keep my depression a secret from many of the people I deal with in my life. I choose to do this because I do not want to be considered weak. That is the social stigma. When Tiger Woods can screw around on his wife and go into 'sex rehab', he is a man that is thought of as somebody who is great. He chose to screw around on his wife, I never chose my burden. There is no such thing as a 'sexual addiction'. That is like saying I am addicted to breathing.

With those who are infected with this depression, or who have been, I am sorry for thinking that you were weak or choosing to be this way. You can fight this with meds and professional help, but you need to find the ultimate power inside of yourself that everybody has to fight this foe with everything you have. Will I wake up tomorrow with depression, maybe. But I will live to fight another day. In good time, I will fight my depression harder than it fights me, and that is how I am going to win. Day by day.

Alan

What I have learned from a one year old.

As of my last post, I think it is known what I think of last year. Now is a new year. However, I was thinking of what I had been through in the past year. Organizing a tea party and speaking in front of thousands of people (a first for me), getting canned from my job that I really did not like (a first for me), raising a child for a whole year (again, a first for me), and going through a very deep depression that I am glad I have mostly shaken off now (a second for me, I really think I attribute the deep depression to the job that I was terminated from).
I have learned a lot in the past year. I think the most important thing I learned is what I had already known but forgot. It was 14 years ago when I had to get out of a hole and press on with life. Say goodbye to a bad year, and look at the new year with promise and hope. That is 2010. Lil Bit has just been growing into becoming a little girl from being a little baby. She walks around now like a drunk because she is just learning how to really get her legs underneath her. She falls all the time, but she gets back up with more determination and does what she was going to do. She doesn't want help, she is focused and determined. When she fell ill with the swine flu (the first week I was unemployed), she took her cuts, then got back up and had that zest for life that we as adults can lose.
I had a choice now that I am without a job, get a job working for somebody that sees only dollar signs and I can just be one of those people that person take for granted, or I can do what I have always wanted but was too scared to do. Go into a small business. This small business I have already worked for in college, and the owner wants me to pick up more of the business as he gets older. Last year I declined because I was afraid of the recession. He raked in more profits than any other year last year, while I was at my steady job, getting my steady paycheck, and hating myself for it. I was going to quit the job I had been fired from this year to work for this guy in about April, but who knows if I would have the bravery to actually do it. Now I have no choice, and it feels good. I only do my best work in life when I have my back against the wall. And this is who I am, who I have always been, a small business owner.
I have no idea whether I will succeed, but I will fail if I don't try. This year is when I start to fight back and I am excited about it.