Month: July 2017

Five Years

For me, this date will always be a day that signifies both the joy and sadness that we all carry with us in our lives all of the time.

Today marks five years since my dad became a victim of suicide.  Five years.  While in some ways it seems like it the blink of an eye, in many other ways there has been so much that has happened.  Personally, I became an aunt, I got engaged, I got married, I had a child, and that is just the big stuff.  Among the family we have celebrated births and graduations, but have also mourned the loss of others.  There have been a lot of ups and a lot of downs, a lot of big events, and a lot of the small events that make up a life.  There has been laughter.  There has been tears.  Life, although forever changed, has went on despite my dad not being with us on Earth.

This is a grief that will never go away.  When it comes to grief, I think “closure” is a dangerous word.  This will stay with me for the rest of my life, although how I feel about losing my dad has changed throughout the years.  While I wished my dad could have been physically here for my wedding and the birth of my child, I know he was there in some way.  I also know he has been and continues to be with us in some spiritual way.  I know my son experiences him as well.  I take a lot of comfort in knowing this.

Today also marks my mother’s birthday.  To have a happy event and a sad event on the same day at first struck me as very unfair, especially to my mother.  But, I have come to see that it truly exemplifies what life is like for all of us.  There is joy in the sadness.  There is beauty in the pain.  There is peace in the struggle.  Despite our loss, we will still celebrate, both my dad’s life and my mother’s birthday.  Today, I plan to listen to music that my dad and I both loved while I am working.  Then, we are going to celebrate my mom’s birthday.  Life does go on, and while we do have sadness to carry around, we also have our joy to carry alongside it.

Paisley Park

This last month or so has been full of all kinds of experiences and events.  Sometimes, I feel like I don’t get much of a chance to reflect on anything, but here I am going to discuss a particular experience.  Recently I had the opportunity to visit Paisley Park, which is where the musician Prince lived and worked.  As most of you know, he passed away over a year ago, and now they have opened up Paisley Park as a museum.

I am not going to discuss the details of what it looked like, but I really enjoyed the tour and a peek at Prince’s personal and professional life.  As we were looking at different rooms, I was really impressed by some of his interior design.  I was even thinking that I wished I had rooms decorated like his.  Maybe Prince and I have more in common than I thought.

However, what I really started thinking about was how interesting his philosophy and creativity were.  This was a person who performed “when the spirit moved him” and seemed to go with a spiritual flow.  He was also a person who mentored and helped others – my guess is that we have no clue how much philanthropy he was instrumental in producing.  While a lot of people have heard his music and that is all they know, I find it fascinating to look deeper at this complex person.  To understand (if that is even possible) his motivations, his goals, his hopes, and his dreams and how that influenced his art – that seems to me a better way to appreciate what Prince brought to our world.  While we have his art and Paisley Park, what bums me out now is the loss of all the other things Prince would have created had he lived longer.  In all, I am so glad I had the chance to visit and learn more about Prince’s intriguing life.

Adults

Today I am going to criticize a little bit – and with that, please keep in mind that this is my opinion and not a bunch of facts I found.

As I have gotten older, I have grown increasingly appalled at some of the slang terms that have developed in our culture.  For example, saying “cray”.  Why would you say that?  Was saying “crazy” and adding that one extra syllable that hard?  Another example is “jelly” instead of jealous – why oh why would you replace a feeling with a condiment?  There are plenty of other examples, but the one that irritates me the most right now is sayings such as “adulting” or “I adulted today”.  This to me has to be about the silliest thing I have heard recently.

When did the word “adult” get transformed into being a verb?  You are either an adult or you are not.  You don’t get to pick and choose throughout the day when you are an adult – it’s a full time role.  Now, your maturity level may differ during the day, and there are certainly moments where you may not be immediately responsible for something, but as an adult there are typically responsibilities around you all of the time.  I also understand that we live in a culture where the lines between adolescence and adulthood are blurred.  Sometimes I don’t always feel like an adult either, although being responsible for another human life has wiped away those feelings for the most part.

Overall, I am not here to say I am better than anyone because I detest this language.  I just don’t get it.  To me, it’s a waste of language and not really that amusing.  If you are an adult, words like “adulting” should not be in your vocabulary, and I hope these terms disappear soon.

Concerts

I feel like I have a lot of interests.  Some might even describe me as a “renaissance” individual – one who is curious about many things and dabbles in a variety of activities.  I don’t see anything wrong with that label, but there would be some who challenge the notion that because of it I can’t focus or become very well versed about a few particular subjects.  I get that, but I think everyone gets to choose how they spend their free time, as long as it doesn’t hurt themselves or others.

However, there are some interests that I would say I am at “expert” level.  One of those is going to concerts.

Attending concerts is something I have been doing since sometime in high school.  I go to enough of them that I have kept a list of concerts I have seen, and the list is pretty long.  I probably haven’t even done that great of a job keeping track, but if you look at my list, I have seen almost 80 different groups or performers.  Of those, some of them I have seen multiple times.  This spring alone I have already been to four events, and a few more are planned in the near future.  I don’t know if obsessed is the right word, but it is definitely a place where a lot of my money goes.

What is it about me and live music/performance?  I don’t know.  Perhaps it is one of the few ways that I actually do a good job of living in the moment.  Perhaps it is a way to get out and see others and the world and get out of my own head.  There are probably many reasons for my interest in attending concerts.  So, assuming no big changes, I look for my list to keep on expanding.

Anticipation

In the last week or so, I’ve had a few events where I was anticipating that I would not enjoy them.  I wouldn’t say I was absolutely dreading them, but I figured they were going to cause me some discomfort.  Of course, once they were over and I looked back on them they weren’t nearly as bad as I had thought in my head.  These events have led me to think about anticipation in general.

Anticipation can work in several ways.  You can anticipate things you are not excited about, things you are excited about, and anything in between.  Not too long ago, I started realizing that big exciting events usually aren’t as awesome in reality as they are in my mind.  Sometimes that has been disappointing, but I feel like I have learned to understand that perception.  However, when it comes to events I am not excited about, I feel like I still dread those more than I know I should.  For the most part, I know it won’t be as bad as I think it will be, but yet I still dwell on it.  Why have I been able to be more realistic with the exciting parts but not so with the less exciting ones?

I’m not sure I have an answer for that one.  Maybe it’s a work in progress.  I imagine every individual perceives these things in different ways.  But, here’s a prime example – driving when there is a winter storm.  Every time I know I have to go out in a storm the anticipation of it is awful for me.  Usually, it is not as bad as I think it will be, but it always seems to be there.  Perhaps there is some protective or awareness instincts going on and it is supposed to be helpful.  Regardless of what it all means, it is important for me to look at the role anticipation plays into my emotions and life.

Air

As I write this entry, it has been over a week since we have had air conditioning.  At this time of the year, that may not always be a big deal, but we have had several days over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and they were pretty darn uncomfortable.  There was a night spent in a different location.  There was a night spent in the basement.  I wasn’t so much worried about my husband and me, but I could hardly stand seeing my little one so restless and unable to sleep.  Luckily, we did get a new air conditioner installed yesterday, so now we can go back to enjoying the luxury I pretty much took for granted.

And that is the key thing for me – taking it for granted.  When you think about it, air conditioning has not been around that long, and it is something that not a lot of people even have.  Not only have I enjoyed air conditioning all of my life, but I am pretty sure I am more intolerant of extremes in temperature because of it.  Air conditioning has made me wimpy, but I still look at it as a necessity.

Experiencing life without air conditioning when it is nice to have it has definitely been a case of not knowing what you have until it’s gone.  And boy, did I miss it.  Right now, I am all about gratitude for it and understanding that it is a luxury that most people don’t have.  I’m pretty lucky.  My guess is that life will go on and I will forget about it, but I hope not.  I hope that this helps me to expand my gratitude and focus more on all of the things that I take for granted.  Air conditioning is only one of many, many things I am fortunate enough to have in my life.

Shoot

Last week, I shot a gun for the first time.  Two days after I shot for the first time I also took a ladies’ handgun class, and I shot a gun again.  For any of you who knew my dad, this may come as a complete surprise.  My dad was a big outdoorsman – loved to hunt, fish, and shoot guns.  It almost seems unlikely that I would have gone this long before having this type of experience because of him.

Up until my dad died, I just always assumed that it would be him who would be there the first time I shot a gun.  I didn’t know when that day would be, but I knew that when I decided to give it a try he would have been super excited to show me how.  Unfortunately, that day never came, and while I don’t regret it, it has probably been the biggest thing that has still haunted me about my dad’s death.  Sadly enough, a gun was involved in his passing, so that made it all the more traumatic to think about shooting one.

I won’t go into all the details of why this was so hard for me, but I listed some of the general reasons above.  Grief can be a funny thing – there are some things about a person that you can let go of really quickly, and there are some things that take a long time to deal with.  Shooting has definitely been an activity that has been scary and sad and terrifying and many other things since my dad’s passing.  It has been almost five years, and up until now I couldn’t hardly imagine dealing with it.  There are many factors that have led to me giving it a try, but the biggest one was having a child and having someone I wanted to be able to defend if need be.  Never underestimate the power of a mother and how she will do anything to protect her child.

Now that I have taken that first shot, I feel a little lighter.  I found another way to move on without my dad here in the physical world.  I also know that my dad, wherever he is, is proud of me.

Something Great

To start off, I wanted to note that I think the clarity I am looking for is beginning to head my way, but I am not going to focus on that today.  Today I want to switch gears and talk about something new that I am very excited about.  It is called The Great Courses Plus, and I am thrilled about having this in my life.  Let me explain.

The Great Courses is a company that I found out about through my subscription to National Geographic magazine.  In general, they produce college courses from reputable professors that you can buy and consume on your own schedule.  When I first heard of them, you would have to buy an entire course, and the DVDs and/or transcripts would be mailed to you.  I have ordered several courses from them, but it was when I felt I had the time to get through all of the lectures of the course.  I was also picky about the courses I chose – I would only pick courses in which I thought I would enjoy all of the lectures, not just a few of the topics.  The courses also tended to be pricy, but there were usually a lot of sales that made them more affordable.

Even though The Great Courses had some limitations, I really enjoyed their mission and supported what they were doing.  But now with The Great Courses Plus, I am inspired all over again.  The Great Courses Plus is a service where you pay a monthly or yearly fee, and you can access any course or lecture you want during that time.  Nothing gets sent to you, you just watch the lectures whenever you feel like it.  What a great idea!  I signed up for this immediately, and I am beginning to enjoy the benefits of not having to commit to only a few courses.  The topics cover so many things – travel, history, food, music, art, literature, science, cooking, math, and on and on.  I am so looking forward to using this subscription, and I encourage you to check it out as well.