Ex Mente Mea

Morning tears.

ARodomus — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:09:59 +0000

Early this morning I woke up with tears in my eyes. I dreamed I was older. I suffer from the fear of aging. It scares me to death. If at 33 years old I’m taking blood pressure pills, I’m overweight, my body is tight and I can’t even move my wrists, then I can’t imagine what will become of me at 60 years old! As I woke up and dried my tears I looked over and saw my son, he’s so much bigger, he was still sleeping. I started thinking about my son and the passage of time, then I drifted back to a half conscious sleep. I dreamed about his future. Will he love me when he’s older? Will he be careful in life? I have some pretty complex emotional issues with my mom and dad, and I wonder if he will be that way with me? It breaks my heart to think it, after all we’ve shared.

So today as I thought and dreamed about those things in my half sleep state, I woke up, I was sobbing and I had tears streaming down my face. Welcome to my reality.

Dog whisperer and his lessons to me.

ARodomus — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:10:55 +0000

I’ve been watching the dog whispherer show pretty often lately, I DVR and watch an episode most nights. I’m so engaged by Cesar Millan and his methods that I recently picked up his book “How to raise the perfect dog”.

One thing Cesar mentions often is “a balanced dog”. He states how many factors play into a dog’s behavior. Starting with the puppy’s puppyhood, which has a huge impact on the puppy’s development. He further states that a dog sees the energy we project rather than what we look like, or what we say, etc. He always makes note of being a calm assertive pack leader to your dogs.

This has me questioning myself a lot lately. Externally I appear calm to a lot of people, I’ve gotten very good at appearing externally calm. People have told me “nothing bothers you ARod, you are always under control.” Little do they know, internally and energy wise I believe I may be far from calm. I’m nervous energy, always alert, tense, and ready to fight or flee. My mind is always on edge, and this creates tension and stress. I hide that externally, and I’m sure to an untrained eye I appear composed.

However I think a dog would be able to see through the human designed facade that I created and tap into my true nervous energy. So I question, how can I raise a healthy balanced dog when I myself am far from balanced? I find dogs help me relax, they make me smile, and I’m easy around them. But I don’t want a dog’s purpose to be my “stress absorber”. I want the dog to be happy with me and my family.

I’ve been working with myself, attempting to short circuit my triggers, trying to become calm when I feel uncomfortable. I find I clench my jaw and grind my teeth when I’m nervous or uncomfortable. I’m making a concious effort to relax my jaw during those times. On the subway I’ve started listening to calming spa and soothing classical music, I find it slows me down mentally and helps me be at ease.

There are times that I feel as though I’m being looked at by “everyone”, I’ve taken the time purposely to look around, assess everyone on the train, then I say to myself “who the hell do YOU think YOU are that these people care to look at YOU!”

It makes perfect sense. Its a classical delusion that anxious people have, “they are all looking at me”. I personally have the common sense, education and reasoning know how to understand that it clearly is not the case. I’m a fun interesting guy, but I’m certainly not enough to catch the interest of everyone on the train by simply standing there.

That being said I know its a personal and internal problem I have. At times in crowds I am very loud, humorous and grab everyone’s attention, life of the party so to speak. Oddly that’s a self defense mechanism I have developed.

“If they are going to look at me, then I will control the context under which they look at me, and what they see”.

I’ve purposely thrown myself in the public eye many times over the years, be it fighting in a Mixed Martial Arts show, as a leader in the Air Force, singing karaoke onstage at a bar, appearing in magazines, even doing a strip tease contest (albeit far from being sober). Even my job has me dealing daily with hundreds of different temperaments, varying moods, and all sorts of attitudes.

I often wonder if a career change would suit me? Perhaps I need one of those jobs where its just me and my computer screen, and perhaps a few select group of people to interact with. Though part of me feels this could be my solution to a lot of stress, I suspect this may not help, in fact it could potentially make things worst as my avoidence would reach even higher levels. One never knows.

It is one of my goals to discover, enter and remain in a calm assertive state. For myself, my family, and one day, my dog.

Aren’t you a robot?

ARodomus — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:34:45 +0000

My team works from 6:30am to 6:30pm Eastern time. That’s half of the entire day with I.T coverage. On most days most of us work more hours than our shift indicates. Usually it involves work that couldn’t be done during work hours, or special projects that go into after hours.

Here is what prompted me to write this entry. I was sitting at a users desk working on one of those painful “afterhours issues”, and I see another user walking to our area. He never comes here so I know he must be looking for one of us. I decided to lay low and finish my own crap.

Now depending on who it is, and my relationship with them I may let the person know I’m still here, though I am technically off. This time however I decided I had no particular allegiance to this person, plus I have my hands full with my own issue that has me at work still at 7:30pm. So I decided to keep working on my issue and not announce myself.

My issue is that if I allowed it, people would keep me here till midnight everyday. Some are here and figure we all are here all day and night. Is half of the waking day not enough? We work hard for our users, so I understand there “expecting” us to be here 24/7, but it doesn’t work that way, we have lives and families too.

In any case, I’m done venting, got work to finish so I can leave. Grrrrrr!

This reminds of one time that one woman actually chased me and came into the toilet to talk to me. Crazy.

On a Power trip

ARodomus — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 01:24:30 +0000

After the hustle and bustle big money making is over for the day, a group of mostly Albanian men and women come to the floor. They go around and clean the common area, desks, they vacuum, etc.

I work late often, so I always see them. There is also the boss, a large, taller, stern Albanian woman. She’s not there often, but whenever she comes to the floor you see the workers all become nervous and scared, you clearly see it. I see her walking around, more often than not appearing to be scolding and criticizing their work.

I can’t understand her language, but I see the gestures, the reactions, and discomfort. To me, it appears as though she’s busting balls.

You can motivate people to work without needing to instill fear and discomfort on them. I hate when people go on power trips.

In my time I’ve been a good manager. I get things done, and always address things in a civil manner. That’s how it should be.

Kids deserve a chance

ARodomus — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:32:31 +0000

I just saw a video of some young kids dancing, they were grinding and getting down worst than most adults could. In spanish you hear someone say “Quemala, Quemala”. That translates to “burn her”, literally, and streetwise I believe the term means “Grind her”.

Mind you, these are young kids already showing explicit sexual tendencies through dancing. You can only deduce that those boys will eventually start pushing for the real thing. 2 things come from that, first is a boy that forces himself on a girl, and she ends up raped. The other is that she is willing and then you have two young unprepared kids engaging in sexual activity.

In both cases you have the same end results, teenage pregnancy, welfare, parentally forced abortions, and the unintentional potential spread of disease.

My question is why do parents allow this kind of behavior in their homes from young children? There is no good answer. But I have a theory, its a simple chain of repetition. The parents probably experienced the same thing, “oh my God, they are so cute, look at them grinding, just like big people at a club”. The parents are probably uneducated, leeches themselves, and they simply were not prepared to be parents themselves.

I recently wrote a blog entitled “The right to be parents”, and I spoke about those types already. I am a father, and I never felt that I was “ready” for fatherhood, even to this day I’m learning. However here are a few basic things I feel all parents should have:

1. An education. Before having kids you should be educated to the best of your ability and circumstances. And I don’t mean ghetto street education, I’m talking about get your rear in gear and go to school.

2. A job. How do you expect to have and care for children without earning a living? Again this ties to education, without an education odds are you don’t have a very good job. Unless you are a super talented rapper, artist, etc. But are you? I’m not. Even my closest friends who are talented have day jobs, for now.

3. Your own home! How many people out there are getting pregnant and don’t have a place to stay? Its amazing though, this also ties back to education.

I won’t even keep adding any more requirements. Let’s say if you get an education the rest will fall into place. You have a good idea of what you want for your kids and you do whatever you have to do for their well being.

So parents, even if you are deadbeats, and your lives are ruined, and you suck, at least, at the very least, try and get your kids educated. This way they don’t end up like you.