Waterloo

Life is full of pivotal points, where who and what you are hangs in the balance of opposing forces and critical decisions.  Put another way, we all have our own Waterloo moments.

For the uninitiated, the Battle of Waterloo (Waterloo is a village in Belgium) occurred on June 18, 1815.  The battle was significant because it was the pivotal point of French expansionism under Napoleon Bonaparte.  Had the French been victorious, the world would be different today.  Instead, Napoleon was defeated by the forces of the Prussians (commanded by General Von Blucher) and the British (under the command of the Duke of Wellington).  After the battle Napoleon became a beaten, defeated man.  The stage was set for the further expansion of British power and the seeds of a larger, more powerful German state were planted.


But that's enough history.

Now our own Waterloo moments don't involve anything nearly as grand as imperial expansionism and epic battles, but smaller scale doesn't equate to lesser importance, at least on a personal level.  As I write this, I'm looking at something of my own Waterloo.  The details are important to me, but not so important for the Internet, and besides,  my personal Waterloo isn't the moral of this story anyway.

So what is the moral?

I guess for me...and for others...it's this:  simply facing it.  In some respects, I've faced this Waterloo a few times, and every time in the past I managed to basically walk away from the battle.  That was a mistake, a mistake I deeply and permanently regret.  It's time now.  It's time now to engage this battle...this Waterloo of my own...head on, eyes wide open.  Fortunately for me, there will be no bullets, cannons or bayonets involved.  Unlike Bonaparte, I will not be banished to Elba, unlike Wellington I will not be lauded as a hero.  No, this Waterloo has more to do with the daily things that make up a life.  For those of us who are not Dukes, Generals or Emperors, you don't get much more important than the "daily things that make up a life".  Think about it.

I've never asked anything of anyone in any of these musings over the years, but if you are reading this and are so inclined, wish me well as I march into my own Waterloo.  This time I'm not walking away.

All Typed Out

Despite what appears here, I have been writing at a furious pace over the past week.  Every thought, every fear, every anxiety about my current spat of life-changing events has been translated to the written word via bits and bytes.  Quite honestly, I am almost all typed out.  It's difficult just typing this.

The above reminds me of something that I was told this past week.  Basically it is good to write down your thoughts and feelings, but you have to spend some time feeling them as well.  Maybe I take it too an extreme at times.  It's time to start spending a little less time writing and more time just feeling.

I think it was during one of those deeply prophetic Muppet movies where one of the sock-puppets basically said that life is like a movie, except that you get to write your own ending.  I'm working on the "happy ending" script.  First though I need to probably starting feeling it a bit more before I start writing it.

Bad Political Blogger & Revenge of the Angry Middle Aged White Guys

I confess to being a bad political blogger.  I didn't vote yesterday (address change came in too late) and I didn't watch any election coverage (I instead enjoyed the combination of Dirty Jobs & talking to a dear friend on the phone).  The previous noted, I'll spend some of my in-between time today catching up on what happened.

One thing is sure right off the bat:  as I noted the other day, it seems that the legions of young voters that propelled President Obama into office weren't all that interested this time around.  Conversely, the crowd that looks surprisingly like me...middle aged white guys...pretty much came out to vote (with the exception of the bad blogger...see above).

Hell, we even have Frank Drebin as governor.

What seems apparently to me now?

1. President Obama accomplished quite a bit in his first two years, which is a good thing.  Played good offense.  Now it's time for defense.  Break out the veto pen.  Call Paterno and get some tips.
2. Work for the federal government?  Be worried.  The GOP has been playing the financial shell game for years, namely cut taxes but don't really reduce the size of government.  I think that era is just about over.  Middle aged white guys will be watching.  They want smaller government.  If they don't get it, in two years the Christine O'Donnell's will seem main-stream compared to what crawls out from under the rocks.
3. Work for the state government (or receive money from the state government)?  Be very worried.  Tom Corbett has been among the worst of the GOP shell game players.  The money simply isn't there to cut taxes, maintain the Delaware loophole, not tax drillers and still give every county, city, township and patch the money they are used to receiving.  Who will be hurt?  I have a prediction:  the least of our brothers (to get a little biblical).  Why?  Corbett has already said that he doesn't what to "hurt" gas drillers.  Drillers gave him a lot of money.  The MH/MR community didn't.  Do the math.

All in all, it's going to be an interesting two years, and not just for me.

Road Apples, #80

Prison Scandal....It was reported last week that state investigators found lots of things wrong at the Lackawanna County Prison, not many of which seem directly tied to the "stomping into a coma" of a former prisoner.  We also heard that Lackawanna County DA Jarbola, who also conveniently happens to serve of the prison board, has decided that there is no need for an investigation into the beating of Mr Pinto (reference HERE).  As I have noted on many, many occasions, Nicholas Pinto was a bad, bad man.  But he also deserved to be treated better than an animal at a slaughter house (in fact slaughter house animals must be protected from the kind of beating that Mr Pinto endured).  The trifecta of this all?  The Priest who warned prison officials that this kind of thing would happen has been permanently banned from the prison.

This story contains a bit of everything that is bad about Lackawanna County politics & business as usual:  an insular mentality of "insiders", protection for employees, protection for managers, finger pointing, and a general propensity to basically do nothing to rock the boat.  We should all be ashamed.

Election Time...and as I have noted, for the first time in my adult life I will not be voting.  The timing of my recent move just didn't allow this to happen.  I'll be watching the results closely, especially when it comes to the Kanjorski vs. Barletta race.  That one is too close to call, and in all honesty I can't say that I feel very strongly about either candidate, despite having met the Congressman and his very public work on behalf of employees being outsourced.  On the GOP side, Barletta is a self-indicted one-trick pony who apparently still has trouble reading the U.S. Constitution (as in the federal government is responsible for securing the borders and enforcing immigration law).

Every more interesting though is the Carney vs. Marino election.  The fact that there is even a race to talk about is remarkable.  Simply put, Carney is not the most liberal member of Congress and Marino is not the most ethically pure candidate out there.  If Carney does lose, it will end up being a horrible, horrible night for the Democrats.

The Next Governor...will most likely be Frank Drebin (I mean Tom Corbett).  I as I told my dear friend Kay Crawford (who happens to work in county government), "be afraid, be very afraid".  If you work for any level of government in Pennsylvania, I think you should be worried.  Some may think that's okay, and maybe in some areas a little job insecurity fear is warranted, but on balance Corbett's budget rhetoric will require some massive governmental cutting.  This is the man that is basically said "we don't need gas extraction tax revenue", so that money will have to come from somewhere else.  State services?  State funding for county programs?  We shall see.

Who Ya Gonna Blame?...that is when the Republicans take control of the House and possibly (but not likely) the Senate?  I blame younger voters.  The groups that came out to vote for President Obama two years ago are probably going to stay home in much greater numbers this time around.  In fact, I saw a recent poll that showed that less than a third of voters under the age of 30 will actually vote this time around.  Slightly more than fifty percent of those age 50 and older will actually vote in this election.  That's the problem with political power:  it's meaningless unless actually used.


My Next Read....will probably the new Keith Richards autobiography, Life.  I read some snippets of it in the last edition of Rolling Stone magazine, and it sounds great.  I walked away with a different view of Richards from just the few pages printed in RS.

Oh, I also forgot, the next installment in the Bloom County anthology (volume 3) series will be coming out shortly.  Lots of reading to do.

Thinking

My Myers Briggs Type Indicator is 'ISTJ', which stands for 'Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging'.  This isn't all that uncommon a personality type, but I tend to make it uncommon with how I score, namely that I am extremely introverted, extremely thinking, and extremely judging.  By "extremely" I mean that I get the highest possible scores in these particular indicators.  Of late the one that is giving me the most grief if "Thinking".

Thinking is good, when there is a problem to be solved.  Thinking becomes toxic for me though when I don't have a problem that actually can be solved, or even a problem at all.  Yes, dogged mental determination comes in handy at the office or when I've had the personal crisis in my life to handle that require logical decisions, but what happens when the thing you are constantly thinking about is more of an emotion or series of emotions?

Here's the answer to the above question:  You get the perfect storm of personal dysfunction.  For me it becomes this almost endless feedback loop where my mind is constantly thinking about, thinking around, thinking through feelings and thoughts that don't have solutions.  It's a computer trying to compute the value of pi, pulling more and more CPU time into something that doesn't have an answer.

The trick for me...make that the "opportunity for personal growth"...is going to be one where I try and suspend my constant over-thinking when I know that the situation isn't one where there is a "thought" solution.  Maybe this is as simple as "Acceptance", maybe it is as complex as "Faith".

Road Trip

Well it's off to West Chester (Pennsylvania) today for a campus visit.  My youngest daughter is strongly considering the school, so in about 20 minutes we will be on the road.  After the obligatory campus tour and festivities we will head back to Scranton, but with a stop in Kutztown to visit with my oldest daughter.

I really enjoy the campus visits, as they bring back tons of memories for me, and they make me very excited for my daughter.  It's the kind of thing that a father does.

Road Trip!

I've Heard It Said...

...that human beings have an almost infinite capability to change and adapt.  This is how we, and we alone, ended up dominating our planet (although you could argue we haven't been Earth's most successful species:  that probably goes to ants or cockroaches or Norway rats).  Given the mechanics of modern life and how we all fall into patterns of behavior, I wonder how we ever survived so far.  Then again I'm probably putting too much of myself into the "typical" bucket of humanity.  For all I know I could be the "blip", the one who is an abhors change.

Well whether I actually abhor it...but put on a good front...or actually carefully embrace it doesn't mater.  Why?  Because sometimes changes almost becomes this necessity, pain and difficulty aside.  The way I feel now is like the climber looking up at the peak of Mt Everest from down below, knowing that the journey is long and perilous (about 150 people have died climbing the mountain), but yet I'm compelled to climb anyway.  Sometimes I'm energized by the climb, other times I'm tired by it, still other times I just climb anyway, knowing that progress (in climbing mountains or moving forward in your life) sometimes requires a certain blind determination.  Maybe this is faith, maybe this is fate.  I'm not sure.

As for me, my mountain isn't quite so dangerous, at least not physically.  Unlike the a real mountain though, I don't necessarily know what's at the top of this climb.  I can imagine, and I am certainly have real hopes, but it's still that "undiscovered country" that both invigorates and frightens at the same time.  The toughest part isn't the actual climbing though, for me the toughest part has been, and will continue to be all of the feelings associated with simply making the journey.  Did I wait too long to start?  Am I equipped for it?  Both questions create a certain level of anxiety for me.  Yet though the answer to both questions is pretty simple:  it doesn't matter (because I'm making the climb anyway). 

Here's to big rocks looming in front of you, here's to fear, and here's to the undiscovered country.  Regardless, I'm climbing up.

The Song Running Through My Head Now...

Kind of strange when you consider my present circumstances, but hey, we don't always get to pick the ear worm...often the ear worm simply picks us.

Some Good Advice...that I Need to Remember to Heed

Howard Jones - Life in One Day

Smoking & Alzheimers

On page 6D of today's USA Today there is an excellent article about the connection between smoking and the risk of developing Alzheimers.  The bottom line:  Heavy smoking in midlife more than doubles your odds of developing Alzheimers disease.

You can read the article HERE.

I can think of far fewer worse way to go than to simply have your brain cells atrophy as you slide into a walking-dead like state.  That's the kind of thing that makes even people faith question the notion of a loving God.

As I've noted here on many an occasion, please, if you smoke try and quit.  If you can't quit, keep trying.  I don't care if I know you or not, as no one deserves to deal with the very real health hazards that are caused by smoking.  Come on people, this is simply not worth it.