Grow, grow where you are. Anchor your roots underneath. Doubt your doubts, and believe your beliefs…

April 1st. 2013 is moving in WARP SPEED I tell ya.  Today was the single greatest day for any baseball fan in the entire world.  Opening Day!  I love it, everything is fresh, every team has a clean slate, we all have expectations for the teams we follow, unfortunately being a Cubs fan, I know how my season will end up, but hey, win or lose, I’m always rooting for em 100%.  Anyhow, it was also Dyngus Day.  For thos of you who do not know what Dyngus Day is, Google it because I don’t have time to explain it.  I will summarize what it is where I live, free public transportation, and a ton of drunk people roaming the streets.  The older I have gotten the less, and less desirable it has become.  The older I get, the younger and dumber the patrons become, meaning there is more trouble than what it’s worth out there.  

So this year, I went to Buffalo Wild Wings, watched my beloved Cubbies, came home and slept.  Although I did get many a proposition to come out and play, which I’ll admit was sort of tempting, I didn’t partake in the festivities.  I have actually been Dyngus free since 2010.  So this is my 3rd year not doing the festivites.  Tomorrow my body will thank me as it has in years past.  

At any rate, this blog has served many purposes since I started writing sporadically in July.  First it was to hold myself accountable for things I was trying to achieve.  Over time it has become a quasi-soapbox for my feelings and goings on in my life.  I do like the direction it has taken.  I have gained some followers who are complete strangers, which means that what I’m writing must be resonating with people.  That makes me happy. When I was in high school, I was really into writing, not so much about personal things, but short stories and things like that.  

I really wanted to become a writer at one point in my life.  I kind of got away from that the older I got, but when I learned how to play guitar, I found a new outlet for writing and that was songs.  It was so therapeutic to write about events that were taking place and putting them into song.  Some pretty darn good, some not so much, but they all served a purpose in my life.  Then I sort of quit that as I mentioned a number of blog posts ago.  I did write a couple of new songs, but I haven’t written much since then.  The only writing I do is on here.  I took a week off from the blog because I was just busy with work and had really no spare time to write, then a friend of mine sent me an e-mail asking when I was going to blog again, and that made me really happy to know that at least one person actually looks forward to my blog. 

So as time has progressed, this whole thing has developed into me helping myself realize things and putting my flaws out there, and being comfortable with that.  I have never been a confident person, for whatever reason.  It’s just me, it’s not that I had a bad upbringing and my parents suck and were terrible, they are quite awesome and were good at boosting self-esteem and all of that.  Somewhere along the way, you fail a few times at things, and your confidence just kind of leaves you.   

As I type my blog nowadays, it’s become a lot more than self-actualization for me.  I am now hoping that while I’m figuring out myself someone who follows or someone who just happens to stumble upon the blog gets something out of it.  I didn’t try to make it that way, that’s just the natural progression that it took.  Take my friend www.willpowerthru.com for example, his writing style is very, very different from mine.  When I read his blog, since I know him personally I can hear him tell me the story, so it makes it even funnier to me because I know his mannerisms and tone of voice and things like that.  The average reader may still find it funny, which it is funny, he’s a very, very funny guy, they don’t get the same humor out of it that I do.  Ole Benihana is the guy that’s responsible for me blogging, if he didn’t do it, I never would have even dreamed of it.  

My writing style can be funny at times depending on my mood, see also the blog post about the guy who didn’t know Phil Collins was the drummer for Genesis, I was a in a mood that day and felt like telling a funny story.  Mostly now I’m down to brass tacks, getting down to the business of getting down. I don’t try to be so serious, because if you know me outside of the blogosphere, you know I do have a sense of humor and like to have fun, but this blog, as I have mentioned has turned into something else.  

When 2013 began 4 short months ago, I was in shambles, I still am.  I have just taken each day as an opportunity to try to improve myself somehow whether it’s a physical improvement, or if it’s something mental.  I think my outlook on things has become more positive than it ever has been in my whole life, which says a lot.  I feel like I can actually try to help people just by sharing my experiences or talking about how I’m feeling, and I never in a million years thought my life would take me to that point. I think throughout the past 4 months I have become less selfish and willing to give more to situations and people than I ever would have before, and maybe it’s because of the blog, or maybe its because if you want to grow as a person, you have to make an attempt and whatever seeds get imparted into you, you have to water and nurture those because they were given to you, to pass on to someone else. 

Which is an awesome segue into the lyrics for today.  The lyrics are from “Ode To Chin” by Switchfoot off of their 1997 debut albume The Legend Of Chin.  I haven’t heard that song in awhile, and I actually listened to it while typing the blog tonight.  It makes sense to me to continue to grow and plant your roots and make sure you are a solid foundation before you do, don’t let any doubt get in your way and always believe in what you want, don’t let anyone shake your core, your foundation, it’s what makes you, you.  So with that said, until another time….

Old man, look at my life. I’m a lot like you were…

So it’s been a few weeks since I’ve blogged at all.  A lot has happened that I won’t particularly delve into because I don’t really feel like it.  I will say that I did start a new job, one that I was particularly stoked on hopefully getting.  So yay me!  So 2013 is here.  That’s pretty crazy to think about.  I didn’t really make a New Year’s resolution because they normally fail for whatever reason. 

What I did decide to “resolve” for myself is to become a better person in general.  Over the years I have had bouts with some anger issues and that is pretty much based on me not wanting to speak of things that are bothering me.  Is it good?  No, not at all.  I take it out on the people nearest and dearest to my heart and it in turn effects my relationship with them.

I am not proud of things that I have done in my past and I need to re-dedicate my life into making sure the relationships I have that mean the most to me are at the forefront.  When I started to sacrifice other people’s happiness and well-being to make way for my own is where I started getting myself into trouble.  I lost sight of what was truly important to me. 

I had the wonderful opportunity to play a lot of gigs this past year.  Probably the most gigs I have ever played in a calendar year ever.  It came with a price though.  I was going out after gigs and my wife would ask me why I wasn’t coming home until 5 in the morning and why I felt like I had to go out every time I played.  My response was what I felt, but it was a very selfish one.  I said to her “Because, I want to feel relevant.”  Which to me made perfect sense.  To her it did not.  I have quite a few friends, but I would never hear from them, so it makes me wonder as to how good of friends they actually are to begin with.  I would see some of them out and they would seem genuinely happy to see me as well, and I would comment to them, “You know, just because I’m married and have a child, doesn’t mean I’m dead…”  They would laugh and what not and so I got it in my head that in order to keep some of these people as friends, I needed to make as many public appearances as humanly possibly in order to prove to them that even though I have wayyyyy bigger responsibilities, that I am still relevant and can still come out and “play” every now and again. 

For about a 3 month stretch, every now and again was every weekend.  Not coming home until very, very late.  Taking whatever anger I had out on my wife or sometimes just holding it in and lashing out at someone in the bar because they “took the wrong tone”.  I have never been known as a fighter in my entire life.  I used to be more of a pacifist.  Something changed a long the way.

I completely lost the plot an alienated the people I should have been worried about being relevant for.  My actions have caused a ton of damage in my personal life and I am currently feeling the effects of this.  I don’t blame anyone but myself for what I did, and I am surely not looking for any sympathy at all.  I don’t even know why I am putting all of this out there in the blogosphere.  I guess I feel like I needed to get it out there that if you have a family and you have friends, you can find a balance between the two, but your true friends will be part of your family when it matters most. 

I have had some time to think in the past week and I have begun to make strides into building a better me.  Or re-building a better me.  I need to be the guy I was before the crap hit the fan.  I have begun trying to find peace and solitude within myself, which is not easy to do, but it is what I need to do.  I posted on Facebook into the new year that I was planning on laying low in 2013 and not be out in public as much.  I vow to stick by this.  The only people I need to be with are my wife and child.  I have begun to discover that I took those relationships for granted and basically took advantage of my situation. 

Those of you who know me personally, know I’m not a horrible person.  You know I’m not a malicious person.  I don’t intentionally want to hurt anyone ever.  It’s when you unintentionally hurt the people you love the most in the world, you hit rock bottom.  I am struggling day to day within myself to repair myself in order to repair my family life.  I made some mistakes.  I am human. 

I love my wife and child more than life itself and I vow to prove this to them not only this year, but for as long as i am alive.  I know that’s a tall order, and I’m not saying I will never disappoint them, because human beings disappoint all of the time.  We let each other down on a daily basis, but to own up and take responsibility for your actions and right your wrongs is what is important.  So while I am going to be improving myself for 2013 and beyond, I urge you all to do the same, there is always room for improvement.  We are not a perfect people by any means.  What it boils down to for me is learning how to be patient, which is something I have struggled with my whole life, but it’s a one day at a time sorta thing. 

I just felt like I had to be real and put this out there.  Thanks as usual for reading and Happy New Year!!!!