Foxx on the run!

Have I really written nothing here this year?  Shame on me.

This weekend, I really need to sit down and kick out a life update. I also need to use this thing more frequently.

I also realize how much I miss the days of LiveJournal being about a social hub for my friends; a way to stay in touch and keep up. LJ was so important in my formative, self-struggling years and it's a little sad that it's gone.

Back to work...

2014 – a new year, and as cliché as it is to do this at the beginning of the year, it’s a good time to look back on the year that’s passed on and think about what was good, as well as what was not so good. The first step to solving a problem is realizing there is a problem after all…
So, to start? Recap: January, flew up to Oregon for an interview. Went well enough that by the end of February I’d moved away from the only locale I’d ever lived and put 1200 miles of distance under my heels. New city, new state, new job, new living situation. Lots of new all at once. Which leads me to ‘what happened before?’
Before that? I’d become stagnate. I wasn’t making an effort to be social save The Usual Suspects who I could always count on to pal around with. I wasn’t investing in myself in the form of new hobbies, new things to do, new places to explore. I was so burnt out on my former job, and the struggle to escape into something new that I let myself just let everything else slide. And that had been happening for a few years, to be honest with myself. I’ve fallen out of touch from many more friends than I’ve made in the last few years. But that old assumption that I’d always be around a social scene where I could just pop back in and pick it up sort of stuck in my head. I still remember (Quite fondly…) the parties at Tess’s in Garden Grove, and how naturally we all sort of met, and friendships fell together. I never got that feeling at the PS, but for whatever reason that never set off any alarms that I should remain vigilant about being in touch with my friends, lest they one day be gone, and I be left struggling to remember /how/ to make friends again.
Now, back in 2013, when I was focusing on all the new at once, while running at a hard clip to learn my new gig, learn the ins and outs of a whole new living situation and basically just keep my head above water, everything was just peachy. When you’re busy, and in a new environment, it’s easy to only focus on what’s at the forefront of your vision, foregoing the periphery or far distance. After all, it’s what’s right in front of you that requires attention. And that keeps you from thinking too much.
But now that the new isn’t as bright and attention steeling, the change in location has highlighted some of the things I’m really not happy with about myself. Sort of how you don’t notice how bad the paint on your wall looks until you take a picture down and realize that time has rendered what was once a vibrant, pleasant color you loved more of a dingy, battered looking color you’re more embarrassed of. That’s when you know it’s time for a remodel.
And what is the first step to a remodel? Identifying the things you like, the things that need a refresher, and the things that have to go.
Things that need to go:
First of all, my perspective on myself. I’m constantly looking at what my friends are accomplishing, what they’ve done with their lives, where they’re going, and asking myself, ‘Why not me?’ It may be human nature to measure yourself against others, but when you’re already predisposed to be harder on yourself than you should (long story), it can and does cross the line from a healthy way to make sure you’re keeping yourself motivated and morph into a toxicity that you just swill down like some perverse mothers’ milk, but which only helps grow the negative feelings that foster it – a vicious cycle.
I need to remember that no-one has been through what I’ve been through, and in kind, I’ve not been in their exact situation either. It’s impossible to measure yourself against someone who’s had a totally different life, nor for them to measure themselves against you. It’s completely healthy to use someone’s’ accomplishments as markers or milestones, as reminders of what you’d like to achieve, but I have to work to limit it at that. More admiration and congratulatory feelings for them, and less resentment towards myself for not being ‘at least that good.’
That’s gonna be a motherfucker of a goal to work towards, let me tell you.
Second of all, habits. A creature of habit, I’ve grown accustomed to having a routine. I get up around the same time, I arrive at the office around the same time, I eat lunch about the same time. These are all fairly normal for anyone with a job. And then I get home. And I sit in front of a computer, either watching a movie or playing something or other on the PC or just surfing the same few websites errantly. Occasionally, I message someone on AIM (Yes, I still use AIM) and chat a little, but by and large, that’s it as of late. That withdrawal into my shell that stemmed from being just used up after a day at my old job has become less of a defense mechanism and more of a part of myself than I like. That’s got to go. I’ve started trying to reach out and see if there’s a scene in the greater Portland area I can hit up with the intent of making some new local friends to hang out with. So far, that’s been slow to start as it seems there was some great schism before I arrived, but just the feeling of trying is actually good. I’m going to continue trying to see what I can find, and see if there are a few folks I can start to bum around with.
Other habit? Drinking. I’d backed off pretty acceptably while still in SoCal, and was happy with that, and myself for making that change. All joking about being a Mick aside, drinking problems run in my family and I’ve had more than one run down the deep end of overboard. It’s cost me credibility, it’s damaged friendships and it’s left me with some shameful memories that no-one else probably remembers. But I do. Since moving away from my comfort zone, that’s crept back up to a level I’m disgusted with. Part of it has been trying to soften that shell – a few drinks certainly do lower ones’ levels of personal defense. Part of it has been pain management – between my knees, my hips, my neck, my back and both ankles and feet, not a moment goes by that something isn’t hurting enough to prevent me forgetting some of the damage I’ve taken over the years, and having that numbed down to a quiet background sound as opposed to a foreground instrument in your personal orchestra is nice. Part of it has been trying to goad myself into reaching out more to friends to chat online and catch up – helping me get over the nagging though that the have better things to do than waste a few minutes chatting with me. But part of it has been chasing all the good times I used to have with friends that are long since past. Thinking about the good ol’ days has left me, more often than not, introspective and a little sad. Memories are lovely, but when you’re spending more time chasing the ghosts of time past than making new memories, it’s time to sit down and seriously assess where you are and what you’re doing to yourself. This year past, 2 friends have ended up in the hospital from imbibing too much, and I need that to be a wakeup call for the physical aspects of what I’m doing to myself. As for the mental aspect? I’m not working through the issues I’m using alcohol to cover up, I’m just hitting the snooze button on that alarm and kicking it down the road. My intent was to knock this off from 1-January to the 30th at the least, but I managed to screw that up this week and weekend (To be fair, a work event where not drinking would have posed a challenge existed, but still…). So, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start over. 30 days is my first goal, and we’ll see what I feel like then. I know that whole ’21 days to become a habit’ thing is nonsense, so I’m going to see what a 30 day hiatus makes me feel like. If I feel like I’m game to give a cocktail a shot then, then great. But If I think I should hold a little longer, that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t want to stop drinking socially, but I need to work honestly with myself to make sure that I’m doing something enjoyable for the right reasons instead of something self-destructive for the wrong ones.
Last thing that’s got to go? Me. About 30 pounds of me. I’ve been unhappy with my personal appearance as long as I can recall having an opinion about it, but I’ve finally aged enough that the teenage acne and awkwardness are mostly gone, but the weight that comes with the onset of middle age has taken its’ place. Fortunately, that one’s a little easier to address, and requires a bit less explanation. We’ve started down the path of the paleo diet, and have started doing one of those fitness regimens – Power 90, actually, which is a lower impact version of P90X. It’s not bad on my joints even if my feet and ankles remind me how much they don’t care for it, and seems a good place to start adding that into my routine for the sake of shedding some excess weight. The other habit change certainly won’t hurt with weight loss, either. This isn’t as much of a goal I have to address as it is something I want to incorporate into an overall overhaul of myself. Exercise is good for mood, it’s good for overall health, and it ties nicely into my desire to form new habits and leave the old ones behind.
And honestly? Those are the things about myself I like the least.

Things that need a refresher:
Personal outlook / Make it a good day
Daily mantra (‘pills’, etc)
Communication with my friends
Finding things to make me happy about me
Feeling less self conscious about being social on blog sites like twitter, etc.
Writing in ElJay more.
More attentive with my finances.

Things I like as-is:
Wonder in simple things
Enjoyment of being quiet and reading
Desire to be a good friend
Desire to be better. A better friend, a better person.

-- All of those things will get their own entries. They’re all parts of what I need to work on so that both me and this year are good ones.

TL;DR
First, if you read through that all, thank you. I don’t expect many to do so, and with how LiveJournal has lost its luster in favor of snack-bite social media like Facebook and Twitter, sticking with something that long isn’t something any of us are accustomed to. Hell, I wrote it and kept remaking at both how long it was getting, but how good it felt to put that down on paper, even if the electronic kind.
So 2013 was both a good and bad year for me, but I’m going to try and focus on the things that made it not a good year, and work on changing those things so that 2014 is a better year. A new year, truly, not just a continuation of the one on which we’ve so recently closed the book in favor of another chapter in same series with the same plot and characters facing the same struggles as before. Time for something new…
Don’t be surprised if I message you just to say hello and catch up a little, and more, if I try and make communication a little less infrequent. And hell, if you’re bored, feel free to message me. It’s never unwelcome to get a ping from a friend, even if just to say hello.

And with that, friends, I thank you again for reading, welcome any comments you might have, and wish you and your loved ones a good 2014 and beyond. I’m sure we’ll be in touch…

New content to appear shortly...

Update time, I suppose. And I think I'm going to start trying to update this weekly. We'll see how that works out, but I need to write more, even if it does seem a bit against my nature to self promote (or self angst) amongst friends. Now colleagues? Different story, but that's business as they say - whoever 'they' are. And to preface? Should anything I write strike you as a personal attack? It isn't. Were I looking to do so, I'd send you a note. This is me doing a bit of a brain download, so to speak...

"Roll with the changes." It's a phrase everyone's heard, but while being cliche' it's also good advice. Sort of a more modern summary of the parable of the oak tree who stood against the wind and was blown down as opposed to the billowing reed who yielded to the wind and survived. It's been a hair more than a year since I turned 31, so what changes have I been rolling with?

In looking back at this time last year in my journal, I wasn't especially cheery. I felt trapped in a part of the country I wasn't fond of, in a job that had me over-stressed and decidedly underpaid and with the feelings of hopeless despair that comes from watching the sands of time pour through an hourglass while my friends achieved milestones in their lives (granted, with either different circumstances than I was in or with some fairly nice outside help...) and I...stood still. Continuing to rent instead of buying a home, staying in the same stagnant job instead of progressing in my career, wondering why I had wasted so much of my blood, sweat and tears turned into money for a degree I wasn't using.

A lot of the angst and unhappiness was of my own doing. I could have quit, I could have moved someplace else, I could have asked for help. Unfortunately, none of those things were really options for me. Personally, I find myself unable to quit one job without another, unwilling to simply leave for ports unknown without a plan and with the sense that others need help more than I do that only comes from years of dogged self reliance driven by a myriad of self personal self-value issues.

And then in November, and opportunity presented itself. Just as I was feeling let down after what was probably the 8th time I had come to just the end of the interview road only to be told 'Yeah, thanks but we found someone better...," I was told that one of the companies I was working with was interested in filling an open spot - an open spot that I was literally a perfect fit for. So I jumped at it.It took some work, some trust a few leaps of faith ("Hey, [Supervisor at the time that I've worked with for 6 years and who now counts on me for all the lower and mid level management responsibilities after a massive downsizing], would you mind calling this company we work for and giving them permission to interview me so I can leave this job and move onto the next one? Oh, and please don't go apeshit on me for letting you know I'm trying to leave, reducing your staff once again by 50%. Thanks!) and an airplane ride to Portland, OR., I had taken the next step in my career. There are more details to the story, but we'll keep this top level instead of diving into the weeds, for now.

I'd previously written about the move, the new job, and life in northern Oregon, so I won't belabor those points again, but there are some of the changes to which I alluded. I live in a new place, in a new home (still renting, but that's hopefully going to change this coming year) and with a whole new set of challenges. I'm happy about that, and that makes for a whole different headspace than I had been in many years past. For example, the projects I've been driving look to net my company about $4M in gross sales between the 3d and 4th quarter. It's been hard work being both a salesman and a project manager, a diplomat and a taskmaster all while learning a new set of ropes, but it's been a lot of fun. Just this week past was a meeting with our top leadership where the game of 'nail the new guy to the wall' ended with "Huh. This guy has himself pretty locked and loaded." No-one knocked me off my pedistal during that particular jousting match with the heavy hitters.

Most recently, and almost a month back, I marked my 32nd revolution around the sun. It was largely an unnoticed affair, which I blame on myself. I've not been around my friends much these few years past, which I fear has rendered me a bit of a memory of 'back in the day' as opposed to someone my old friends notice or think about (and to be clear - the few folks that reached out to wish me a pleasant day absolutely made my day!). While I was a bit melancholy on the days surrounding, I'm going to try something that's a bit outside of my 'I'll just move on by myself under my own power' nature - I've started a little side project reaching out to some of my friends from the past with a little letter-writing campaign, which I announced on twitter. While that only received a scant few responses when compared to the number of people who subscribe to my 143 character drivel, the prospect of hand writing a note to a few long-lost (and admittedly, not so long lost!) friends was appealing. I'm learning that it's better to have a few friends that you keep up with and who keep up with you than to have a plethora of acquaintances who put no more stock in you than any nameless person that might run across at a con. I'm slowly working my way through the first few letters, and may solicit interested parties for future writing projects in the future. We'll see.

The mention of a con makes me think about my future plans where I might run into some of my current and former associates, and I can't say I have a firm idea when I'll attend the next one, despite being so close to Rainfurence. I have a room reserved for FC this year, but I have no idea if I'll attend or simply offer the room up or discard it and call the deposit the 'cost of doing business,' where 'business' would suggest reconnecting with friends past. I've also considered hitting up a con that isn't on the west coast, as I've accumulated a goodly number of frequent flyer miles, hotel miles and so on that would make travel affordable, save the food/con expenses. Nothing firm, but still...thoughts.

The last thing that's been on my mind has been how I should go about reconnecting with some of my friends, with the goal being to be more involved, and have my friends, more involved in my life, but I'm at a loss. I've been so far removed, as I've mentioned, that I fear I've lost the knack for socializing online as so many of my peers do. Mostly, I'm terrible about assuming that my messages opening a conversation are either ill-timed or unwelcome - which is something that I'm trying to overcome. I shant expect that will change overnight, but still - should you get a random message from me, that's why. And should you have read this far and find yourself bored and so inclined, feel free to reach out. Even if I'm not the most verbose to start, I swear, it's not you, and I'll be working to be more outgoing.

So many changes. And while change is scary, change is also a good thing. Rolling with it isn't always ideal, but if you don't, you stop and stagnate. If you do...you move forward. So I chose to roll with the changes, and see where I end up between now and year 33.

With that, I think it's time for a late dinner and a bit of music that's less introspective and more neutral...

Thanks for reading, and I hope this finds you well.