I should have bought you flowers and held your hand. Should have gave you all my hours when I had the chance…

April 2nd, man that is just weird to say.  It seems like just yesterday we were ringing in the new year.  And here we are over 1/4 of the way through it.  The older you get, the faster time gets by you.  Maybe you’re too involved with work, or too involved in other things to stop and take notice of the little things around you, the things we tend to take for granted.

I don’t know how many of you remember the epic 1986 power ballad, “Don’t Know What Ya Got ‘Til It’s Gone” by Cinderella, but it’s so true.  You don’t fully realize the effect or impact someone has on your life until they’re not an everyday fixture of it.   Whether it’s because of mistakes you made that you don’t speak to this person as much as you would like, or whether it’s due to a death.  They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but is it a two way street?  If you’re the person that’s missing the other person, how can you be so sure they’re missing you?   Maybe they’re missing the person you were, but not so much the person you became.  How do you get back to the person you were?  The one that attracted that person to you in the first place? 

I’m not just talking about romantic relationships, I’m talking all relationships. It can happen in friendships, and it does. You hear stories like “well for whatever reason, so and so and I don’t speak anymore”.   Which person misses the other one more?  Is it ever equal?  Why do we as humans take things for granted?  If someone gives you all that they have, you should give that back 10 fold.  They’re trusting you with their heart.  Whether its a wife, girlfriend or best friend, these people are investing in you, but for some reason, we either don’t give back anything, or we give back just enough to stay afloat.

Why can’t we give back and then some?  As it has been documented in the past 3 months on this blog I have been doing a lot of self-exploration and things like that.  I was talking with a friend of mine tonight, that I find it refreshing that people read the blog, and I really hope they get something from it.  I get a bunch of different likes every day and the occasional new follower, and I wonder to myself, is something resonating in these people?  Can they relate to what I’m going through? Is that why they like this blog?  Are there other people out there who fake being fine on a daily basis because they’re afraid to admit they’re fucked up?

Does everyone take someone for granted or is that a mistake that I keep making?  Can it be fixed?  When things happen, can you do enough to correct what went wrong to ensure it won’t happen again?  There are so many questions that I’ll probably never ever know the answer to, but I guess through trial and error all things can be figured out. What’s the right way? What’s the wrong way?  

I envision myself down the road knowing how to do a lot of things better when it comes to maintaining all facets of a relationship.  Whether it’s my tone of voice, my overuse of sarcasm, my bottled up anger, and everything in between.  I didn’t realize how many people are effected by other people’s actions until you see the aftermath.

I don’t like getting completely personal on here, but I will use my brother for instance.  For those of you who know me in person, know that my brother has had his share of demons to deal with.  He’s been in and out of jail for a long time because of decisions and choices he has made due to his addiction to drugs.  I’m starting to get used to the pattern of his behavior, but when he is coherent and present in mind, he’s the person I remember him being, and I don’t like it when that guy disappears, because he’s a really good dude.  But his actions effect every single person that is around him, whether it’s me, my wife, my daughter, my mother, or my father, him making terrible decisions out of being selfish and taking his family for granted leaves us all with a lot of the same questions I was asking in this blog.  Will he ever learn from his mistakes? If he does how can he right his wrongs?  How long is it going to take him to fix the relationships that he has broken?  Things like that.  Granted what I’m going through in my own personal journey isn’t even remotely close to what he’s going through, there are similarities.  Has he done so much damage by being an addict that it can’t be fixed?  How many chances does someone deserve before you throw in the towel and just give up?

I’m no different from anyone else only because I’m a human being.  We all make mistakes, and we all do things we wish we could take back.  Can we take them back?  No, it’s impossible, it’s up to us to attack the day, and move forward everyday trying to become better as people to help one another, to not sweat the small stuff, to not take things or people for granted.  

Today’s lyric is from “When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars from his latest album Unorthodox Jukebox.  It’s about looking back and figuring out what went wrong and realizing you shouldn’t have taken something or someone for granted.  Until another time…

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….