I really did fundamentally believe on some level that someone was going to give a shit. That's what all this was predicated on — it never occurred to me that no one would. And maybe that's arrogance. No one put me in the situation I was in but me. No one made me drink no one took control of my life I gave it willingly.
I just thought
That if I interrogated what got me there, how to get out of there, how not to end up there again. That if I pulled myself out of a hole into a motel into Lansing into London into a half marathon alone and sober that someone might say wow you have been through so much
I forgot the “alone” part.
Who knows what I went through but me? No one else was there.
What does that say about me?
New rule: Nothing sits in drafts. Let it fly. ~ JR
This is just going to sit in drafts probably because I do not feel like unpacking this fuck shit just yet thanks. I mean not that there's anything left to unpack. This shit is just. Somethings are sad but explaining why they're sad just seems fucking awful because not only do you have to relive why it's sad but you have to think why do I need to explain this to anyone and why am I always alone in these moments?
So yeah. This one is just gone have to cook for a minute.
Blogging from a Lyft is very...who was the drunk who has the statue in Mackinac? I have that picture and will update this post with it. That was a Me and Mom trip right around this time of year a couple years ago. Driving Up North where I had never been to sightsee and run the Labor Day Mackinac Bridge Run. Good times: I remember Mom saying she was looking for me in the crowd from her hotel room window. My Mom. This time of year.
It always this time of year, late summer in Michigan. Feels transformative like things are changing but in ways that won't be clear for a while, maybe not until school starts. Or you finish the move. Or start the job. Or get over the breakup. It's always right around this time of year, the time when you look back you'll realize you were holding your breath waiting for What Comes Next.
~ JR
We have got to stop taking “shrug” for an answer.
That's a bar. And that one goes all the way back to the beginning, doesn't it? The Lipton Iced Tea thing. We are not Lipton Iced Tea: we are a superior beverage, much more refreshing and with no added sugar or artificial sweeteners.
So we stand on that. Drink your fuckin Kool-Aid if you want. Five cent pack makes three quarts of. Then that's the other thing OK how do I balance letting people just enjoy their bland substandard drinks without seething with rage over their inability to recognize how much better hydrated they could be not to mention tastes great?
Tastes GREAT.
“Shrug.”
Fuck you.
~ JR
Here's what I like.
I like that we started today with a plan, hit some snags early, pivoted internally before a major external disruption caused a rapid assess response react review cycle that ended in an afternoon pivot which we brought in for a landing once we recognized we were out of gas. We didn't keep spinning.
That's a win no matter the outcome and those are the best kind because they endure.
I like also that we are writing this part, ourselves, with tools we built with our hands. Even if it's fucked up it's our handwriting I'll take that.
Take the W and possibly a nap.
~ JR
This hotel is the same.
I remember the silence. I remember the door. I remember I couldn't stand or get my things off of the luggage rack...I remember that taking forever and wondering how when all I had fit into two suitcases and my brother was about to drive off with my BMW and several of my medications that I wouldn't see again until the impound lot when I was allowed to retrieve them.
I remember trying to shower. I remember throwing up for the last time and knowing it was the last time...not sure how I knew but I was like “that was the last one of those.” Dialysis..trying to clean my dressing after getting out of the hospital with the infection I got from months of living in filth and the best healthcare poverty can buy. That was the first thirty days.
I haven't thought about the first thirty days in a while.
The silence is the same. Then it was such a blessing. Comforting. I guess I'm back there now. Or maybe I never left she was just visiting for a while.
The door is closed and locked and I've got the only key.
Doo doo do doo, doo do doo do...
I'm not going to do one of these every day. I am going to give it a sprint folder and put it next to the summaries in case I go on a wild tear one sprint and do a bunch of them. So this will allow for less than daily but more than once per sprint. Which works.
Speaking of sprints this one is wrapping in dramatic fashion with a drive eight hours to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to teach a five hour executive session on Entrepreneurship. As one does.
Ok maybe doing these all at once doesn't work or rather I should do them all at once instead of start stopping like I did this one. I started this breathing through the anxiety of an eight hour drive through rural Ohio and Pennsylvania as a single Black man with no friends family or anyone to call...ok that was a spiral my point is if shit pops off that's it. No one will know but me and it'll be up to me. I know this because that's how it goes. Every time. Maybe not every time but looking back to August 2019 at least it's been just me and the results of my stupid bullshit.
Another time for all that here's the point. I set up all this — the documentation system, the syncing, all of it — specifically because of how many “if this is it who will give a shit” moments I have survived and I am not so arrogant as to believe I will survive all of them. I just hope at some point someone goes looking for this. That's what I want ultimately. For there to be a body of work out there that someone some day says “I wonder what this guy was thinking...let's see what I can find out...“
I want to be the sort of person who doesn't have to tell you who they are because they know that you do yet they don't care one way or the other. Not even admired: Regarded.
~ JR
Isn't it funny how quickly something like stopping at Biggby for coffee on the way to the office in the morning becomes a habit. I did that (legit just stopped to backtrack my life is like that) two to three times a week for maybe three months and I just looked back on it fondly as “that time in my life.” There's that three month time period again...maybe that's it. Maybe it's the Gladwell thing but for habit formation: If you do something for ninety days it goes from something you do to something you do habitually to the point where not doing it anymore is jarring. Not stopping at Biggby is the part I remember about getting fired from the MDOT contract. When does the absence of a thing become disruptive enough to notice its presence? If I don't workout, I notice. When I started waking up alone, I noticed. These are habits but without an (I mix up intrinsic and extrinsic I did this on the CPT exam I think) motivator.
This is my research so I should probably lock this down sometime in the next checks two weeks.
OK now I know how to do italics that's cool.
~ JR
Either I'm going to write in this thing at the top of or the end of the day I haven't decided where in the workflow it fits.
Either way it's going to need to because I refuse for
Who? Oh wow I haven't thought of him in forever!
to be the story of me.
With the dates it lends itself more towards daily posting but that seems forced on some “Dear Diary” ish.
Or maybe that's what we're doing here.
I'll just keep telling myself I'm writing this because someday someone is going to care, whether it's a forensic psychologist or a Washington Post columnist.
Ha. ¿Porque no los dos? I should pick up Unicode for fun between this and effing LinkedIn.
OK that's a good idea: Stream of consciousness randomly, but maybe a end of day “Doogie Howser M.D.” summary done in Obsidian then uploaded here. Then the picture situation gets resolved because I can work out the hooks off-line.
This works. Hit the theme music. Yooooo I should do a CRT monitor theme don't think I won't do it.