Tomorrow I’m off on a new-ish journey. “Ish” because I’ve known about it for awhile. I’ll be working overnight at a medical/IT company here in KC. Shouldn’t have to Google very long to figure that one out.
It will, however, afford me the opportunity to have some “me” time. It’s not a luxury often afforded to the parent of two young boys, but here I am. I’m the type of person who has always needed time for myself. Just to think, to hit the reset button. My mind is always in motion, sometimes to my own detriment. I’m not always present and in the moment, but times like these help that which is usually most detrimental to me. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember, extending all the way back to childhood. Call it OCD, anxiety, whatever. I may or may not have been diagnosed, but I am what I am. I like to feel alive and connected, so I just deal with it. Take that as you will, sorry for being vague, but I never know who is reading.
With this job, I’ll have the best of both worlds. I love my family and I love being around them. Some of my best moments over the last several years have just been in this living room where I’m typing this. That said, I also get this same room to myself, which is something I need. It’s something everyone in our house needs. That isn’t lost on me. I know I’m lucky in that regard.
Even as a young 20-something, I needed the end of the day to be just me. I was never big on keeping people around. I liked unwinding playing a video game, playing my guitar, reading, watching a movie or TV show, etc. It always helped me be a more sane individual, which benefits everyone in my life. I’m sure that will continue to be the case.
Who knows, maybe this thing will get some more attention? Maybe I’ll do more than just write about me? Because really, that’s a subject that has been written about more than was ever needed. I’d like to get my thoughts about whatever out and into something constructive, rather than incoherent, too-long-yet-not-long-enough Facebook posts or Twitter rants. Because, again, there are already too many of those in the world.
And I’ve written quite a bit. Maybe just a modest amount. Before and after the advent of putting things on the Internet. Personal things. Private things. I don’t know what is going to become of this, but we’ll see, I suppose. I’m not sure where to start. I guess here is as good as any.
When you’re barely 20, you don’t understand why you’re sitting in a hospital room with your dying uncle. You’re just sort of there. Even if you’re compelled and don’t understand by what. My grandmother made the trip from Rapid City to spend a night. My uncle’s mother-in-law did the same. Well, stayed in the hospital, that is. Not travel from Rapid City. Anyway, I felt like I should, too. For a kid, because that’s what I was at the time, who wasn’t compelled to do anything other than something for himself, it was a move i didn’t recognize. But there I was. Slumped in my uncomfortable, barely padded if you can call it padding, vinyl pull out hospital couch. Dozing off only to be awoken a few dozen times that night by a restless and dying man and the instruments hooked up to him.
I was the point of contact for my side of the family. At least for those who weren’t in town. I found something in that responsibility, but I also realized a great deal about my family and families in general. It’s hard to get away, I know that, and it’s difficult to reconcile. I know that fact very well. What I thought I knew and what I actually knew was a gulf so wide, I didn’t really see or understand the space until recently. I didn’t realize that, not even looming death, could change the fact that sometimes people drift apart. Sometimes you make up because you know it’s the last time, and after you’ve made that peace, there’s not much left to do.
The next several days were a blur. Watching them move him to the hospice unit and processing that, only to be there in person as he died the same day. I’d never witnessed someone dying in front of me before. At least not in any sort of personal way. I haven’t since. It was something I couldn’t unpack for years. The impact it had on me personally, on everyone in the room and everyone left behind was incalculable. My uncle wasn’t just a guy. He had family, friends and other associates and acquaintances who he profoundly impacted. For better or worse. He wasn’t a perfect person. No one is. But that’s what you come to understand, because talking about someone in the past tense forces you to realize your own life and actions are not perfect either. At least it did for me. Directly, I stopped smoking. Indirectly, I learned how to live life on my own terms. I won’t share the things he and I talked about as that is much too personal, because he was a good sounding board when my parents split up, but he helped guide a lot of my sensibilities in that way that people who knew him would understand. But both times he helped me put a new starter on my 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, he was able to impart some words of wisdom, we’ll just leave it at that. When he employed my ex-girlfriend to carry out underage alcohol stings, we had some good talks.
I never really looked at things the same after. He was the first death in the family that really rocked the foundation of my idea of family. Other than my parents divorce, it was and still is the defining moment of how I perceived the idea of “family” from before and after both events. People tell you that you grow up eventually, they just don’t tell you what makes you a grown up. They can’t, because it’s different for everyone, is the cliched way to say it, I suppose.
My uncle left his wife and two daughters behind when they were young. Both of whom may or may not read this. They are both strong mothers and beautiful young women. I don’t know them well anymore, because I don’t know much of my family that well, not as well as I would like, but you just sort of know. Seeing how it impacted them in the immediate aftermath shaped some of my approach to being a parent myself. There is always enough time to be silly and to make a fool of yourself regardless of who is watching, for your kids. You never know how long you’ll have each other. Hopefully it’s a long, long time, but you don’t control that. You think you do, but you don’t. At least not in the total way we’d all like to think we can.
When you have kids of your own, worrying about your own mortality ticks up. Maybe not worrying about it as much as you are more aware of it. Time will run out. Facts are facts. Death and taxes, they say, and for good reason.
I’m not saying you have to have kids to have a worthwhile life. People who say that to people who choose to not or cannot have kids bother me. They bother me more than I can write about in here. It’s beside the point of this ramble. Be good to each other, I guess is what I’m trying to say there.
From my Uncle Matt, to my great grandparents, to my grandmother and anyone else in my family who has died who has had an impact on me, positive or negative, it’s done it’s part to put me where I am at with my own family right now. Again, for better or worse. Maybe I’m thinking too much about it, but it seems to me the unthinking and unconsidering (not a word) parent is the parent who has given up on getting better. As an individual and a member of a family responsible for shaping the lives of their children. It just seems irresponsible.
So as I try to sit here and wrap up this whiskey driven post, about my uncle, about my kids and about me, maybe it’s best I’m not trying to put a stamp on something that just sort of came out. It’s not a transcribed episode of Dr. Phil. I don’t have a point. I have thoughts. That’s good enough for me.
Wayne Rooney, captain of Manchester United. Photo | ESPNFC.com
The sports world in our country revolves around NFL, and, to a lesser extent, major college football. Any argument to the against the notion would be seen as simply contrary to conventional knowledge.
So, now that football is done as a few weeks ago. what are we all doing? Watching college basketball? The NBA? NASCAR? Something international? Getting ready for baseball? Whatever it is you’re choosing to do with your free time, it seems with every passing year that it is just something to do between February and September.
What happened to the equity between sports? The NHL seems like it’s a niche sport. For most, the NBA is only interesting during the playoffs and baseball can no longer seriously be considered our “National Pastime.”
Some will say it is the perfect sports product for our television consuming lives, and I would tend to agree with that argument. It’s consistently contained within three hours. The action, albeit limited in time, is above most other sports. The athleticism and ability needed to perform at a high level in the NFL is almost second to none as well. Freakish plays from the Odell Beckham Jr.’s of the world is a part of a game that keep people coming back over and over.
Will there ever be a breaking point? Will concussions, CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) or domestic violence ever do the league in? Based on the television ratings and revenue from 2014, it seems unlikely the NFL bubble will pop anytime soon.
Over the last week, the NFL Scouting Combine enjoyed higher ratings than most daytime television programs. It’s not that difficult with 500 channels and Bob Barker no longer hosting the ‘Price Is Right’ anymore. For those that don’t know, the Combine features mostly college football players participating in a series of physical tests to measure their speed, agility and position proficiency which translates into their overall NFL-worthiness.
In 2014, the first round of the NFL Draft earned over 32 million viewers. Let that sink in. To compare, the popular drama on NBC ‘Parenthood’ had it’s series finale which earned around six million viewers. ‘The Bachelor’, ABC’s popular, uh, dating show earns about 6.5 million viewers a week. Some of the most popular shows on TV are a fraction of a group of NFL GM’s and other front office members playing poker and gambling on future talent.
The point of all this is, when it’s not football season, it’s still football season. While meaningful games are only played for about 20 weeks out of the year, it seems as if the NFL consumes all 52 weeks of the year. While I enjoy the NFL as much as the next sports fan, I’m still a tad uneasy about how some social issues that plague the league get glossed over somewhat. That’s not to say other sports don’t have their fair share of issues, it just seems different when you’re the sport at the top of the mountain. The NFL will probably never be perfect, nor should it be. It’s more the flaws in the way it tries to correct itself.
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