Seeing is Believing

Hey y’all!  I hope this blog finds you well.  As for me, things are moving along as per usual.  Ups and downs.  I’m making the gym a habit now and I’m feeling really good about it, so there’s one positive.  There’s a few negatives in there, but let’s not talk about those.  I’d probably get in trouble with some people if I did mention the downs anyway.  Which reminds me of something that I did too.  A few weeks back, I decided to disconnect my twitter auto-post thing from here on WordPress.  Since Facebook stopped allowing 3^rd party posts themselves last year at some point, I removed my link from my homepage on there too.  I’ve figured that I’ve got no followers from either one of those social media outlets and I don’t think anybody there cares anyway, so I might as well make this my own little community too.  The links to my posts are still there on my twitter timeline, so if anybody really cares, they can go fishing and find links to posts there.

Anyway, today’s topic that I’ve had in my mind to speak of for the past 2 days or so is road trips!  Here’s a question for y’all… What’s your preferred method of traveling?  Plane, trains, automobiles?  (sorry, too good of a joke to pass up!)  I mean, say what you will about air travel, sure it’s the fastest way to travel as of yet, but there’s no fun it in when you get right down do it, right?  I mean, first off, you’re in a line with other people just to check in your luggage, and depending on your airline, you’re having to pay for that luggage to travel with you too on top of the cost of the ticket itself which is usually crazy expensive, then you have to deal with all of the security just to get to the gate, then you sit down in sometimes cramped quarters just to maybe see a glimpse of civilization happening 30,000 feet below you, but essentially see nothing but the general outline of the planet.  There’s no discovery of things, no exploration, it’s just sanitized bland travel.  For those with pressing needs to be from one place to another at long distances away, air travel is definitely the way to go.  Let me say, however, I’m not a hater of it, but I do love to discover things when I go to new or old places and I can’t really do that when I fly.  With that said, you can imagine what I prefer to do.  YUP!  That’s take road trips to my destinations!  Sure, I can’t always drive over to the places I’ve gone due to time constraints, but whenever possible, I drive.  There’s no phobia or any mental situation I have going on like some people have (look up John Madden and why he had a bus take him to all the NFL games he called), it’s just that I the journey to the destination is filled with so much beauty everywhere I’ve been, that I feel as though if I had done nothing but flown to these destinations, I would have missed so much along the way.

Taking a look at my google timeline, and my own memory before google started tracking where I’ve been; I’ve been in or driven through 20 of the lower 48 United States.  WOW.  Took me a minute to count to make sure, but yes!  20 states!  I’ve seen everything from sand dunes to beautiful forests, to beaches and everything in between and have loved every one of them.  I’ve also visited or at least driven by a number of national parks, forests, and monuments as well that have truly taken my breath away at times.  I even have gotten to the chance to see things along the road that have inspired movies, been in movies, etc.  For example, there is a motel in Holbrook, Arizona by the name of Wigwam Motel that was the inspiration for the traffic cone motel in the Disney/Pixar movie Cars.  Instead of traffic cones, the real things are actually large concrete teepees!  How cool is that!  The even cooler thing is that a lot of the cars that were featured in the film, well their real life counterparts at least, are parked there at the motel too!  I came across the motel 2.5 years ago when I drove my friend from South Australia over to see the Grand Canyon.  We made an incredible drive from El Paso, up through a highway in New Mexico that ran through Gila National Forest and honestly some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen, into Arizona and the large national forest area and Grand Canyon National Park.  It was an amazing drive and actually come to think of it, I need to do it again!

That was just one of my trips.  The drive from El Paso (where I’m at) to Oceanside, California that I did last July was amazing as well.  I had no idea there was such a big farming and dairy area along the southern portion of Arizona on Interstate 8, but sure enough there is!  And the scenery is so amazingly beautiful along the way.  Once you get to and pass Yuma Arizona/California it gets even more amazing.  Sand dunes as soon as you cross the border greet you into California, then just as quickly you enter canyons in between mountain ranges, then enter a mountain range itself and climb and descend mountains through national forests until before you know you it, you’ve reach the pacific ocean.  Words can’t describe the beauty.

I could go on and on about the places I’ve driven to and the things that I’ve seen, but you get the point.  I’ve experienced nearly half of the country I live in a mile at a time and I’ve loved every minute of it.  I’m getting the chance to blaze a new trail today and tomorrow as I will be on my way to the greater Houston area, driving it for the first time.  I’ve spent a weekend there 10 years ago for WWE’s WrestleMania 25 that was held at Reliant Stadium and got to stay at a hotel downtown and saw a few things along their light rail, but I flew in there and out.  I’ve had connecting flights through both airports in the city a few times as well, but never have I driven from here to there.  And actually, the furthest I’ve driven east along Interstate 10 is a turn off to highway 280 that takes you into Fredericksburg, Texas (which is an amazing and beautiful little town in the Texas Hill Country), then into the southern edge of the state capitol, Austin.  So, now tomorrow morning, I’m going to break that barrier and traverse I-10 in through San Antonio (where I’ve only actually been in for a day as well during a senior band drum ensemble competition trip to Austin) and into Houston.  I’m so excited to see it all.  I’ll say that I’m actually more excited about whom I’m going to see over in Houston, but the drive out there is almost up there with the destination and the reason to go as well.

I hope you all have a blessed and great weekend!  I’ll blog again soon!

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Creeping Death and Other Things to Ponder

Hey y’all!  I’m still processing the fact that we’re now in 2019.  What has happened to the time?!  I mean, I just turned 38 last month, but think about that… 1980 was damn near 40 years ago!  I’m still listening and prefer music from 1989 all the way back to the early 1920s!  Holy SMOKES.  The 1920s!  That was ONE HUNDRED years ago!  It’s hard for me to believe.  It really is.  I always envisioned the future to be, well futuristic.  LOL.  Maybe it is in comparison to the 1970s and 1980s with the tech I grew up with, but generally things are the same.

That idea of time I have which I could go into more detail about was brought on by a topic brought up to me yesterday.  Bucket lists.  Do you have one?  I thought I did for a second there, but I soon realized that I really don’t have one.  As Dictionary.com puts it, a bucket list is “a list of things a person wants to achieve or experience, as before reaching a certain age or dying.”  Right on Front Street, isn’t it?  I don’t know if this makes me even more weird than I know I already am, but I really don’t have goals that I want to achieve or things I want to experience by a certain age.  I find that putting things like that to strive for in the future just makes those things unattainable in a sense.  I lose my track in the present dreaming about the future and end up messing things up.  Does that make any sense?  It has happened too many times that I get distracted day dreaming about a possible future and end up messing something up in the present.  Plus, most of those things never came true anyway, so I figured why not live in the now?  Odd, right?  I mean, if I were pressed to say some sort of bucket list thing that I think could possibly be attainable or that I really want to do, it would be to visit Rome and The Vatican, specifically.  As a practicing Catholic, I should want to see that.  But those other worldly possession or vacation ideas that a lot of people strive for, I couldn’t care less for.  I know that may sound strange and out of left field, but it’s really how I feel.  I have no desire to climb a mountain, skydive, or do some other sort of potentially dangerous act.  I actually have a strong sense of self-preservation that keeps me from putting myself in too much of harm’s way.  Monetary desires, winning a lottery notwithstanding, are also out of the window for me.  I don’t strive to chase that extra dollar.  That’s not how God wants me to live.  What I need, He will provide.  I don’t need to worry, nor do I need to collect up treasures here on earth.  I have no desire to, either.

So what is it that I live for?  In a few words, I live for love, happiness, and comfort.  I want to give the people I’m close to all the love I can, and I want to be happy as much as I can.  I also just want to be comfortable.  Now, that last term can be a pretty broad one, I know, but comfort for me is more about peace than anything else.  I want to be comfortable with myself, with the people I associate with, with my surroundings, and with my life in general.  As long as all that is present, I want for nothing more.  I’m honestly a pretty simple person, actually.  I try to find the joy in everything that I do, even the most simple and boring of tasks.  I try not to dwell on the negative in life and I also try to live in the moment.  I have my good and my bad days, but for the last few years at least, I’ve had a lot more good than bad days.

On another topic that I have been thinking about, how do y’all feel about the typical adult tasks that we have to do?  I’m talking about cleaning, laundry, cooking, and shopping?  I’ve been in conversations recently where other people absolutely despise shopping and have gone out of their way as to do their grocery shopping online and picking it up instead so that they really don’t even have to do it at all.  Others I’ve heard of, for as old as they are, have no clue how to do laundry, clean, or cook for themselves and don’t have any desire to learn.  I find all of this to be insane in my point of view.  I know that I’m the weirdo, but one of the things that I like to do the most is to go grocery and other needed items shopping.  It’s fun to get dinner ideas, explore new items, and to just be part of society.  I know, as an introvert, I should be avoiding people, but I guess being in that environment, it makes me feel like I’m actually part of something.  Silly, I know, but I really just enjoy it.  As far as cooking and cleaning, man!  I have fun doing those things as well!  There’s nothing better, in my opinion, than that just cleaned house and laundry done and folded away feeling.  I look forward to that every week.  I like to have things in their proper place and clean at that!

So, I don’t know.  Am I the one in the wrong here to not have these grandiose ideas of wealth, fame, power, etc.?  Or am I in the wrong for liking to shop, clean, and do laundry?  Not in my personal opinion, because it’s what keeps me relatively happy, but I do think if I’m the exception to the rule in this world.

Talk next time, friends!

A Quick end of 2018 Note

It’s odd how some things just fall into place do they not?  I’ve had such a wild last week that I can’t even begin to tell you where it starts and where it ends.  I do know, however, that I think I’m in a good spot.  It’s December 31^st and what a year it has been.  There’s been a lot of bad this year, and a lot of good to go along with it too.  Bad people moved on from my life, and I’ve gained so many new good people that I’m finally feeling like maybe it’s not all so bad out there in the real world.

I really want to talk about the last 4 days, actually, and what’s changed because of that, but I think it would be unfair to mention anything quite yet.  Just know that your boy over here FINALLY has gotten dealt a good hand in life.  I’m going to take that and run with it as fast as I can until my lungs breathe fire, then I’ll just run even harder and faster.

I know one thing though.  I’m going to make some wholesale changes after tonight.  I’m going to get my sleeping right, I’m going to hit the gym like you read about again, gonna eat right, and get myself to be the super best version of me that I can be.  I have more of a reason to now.

Peace out 2018, and hello to the much brighter and beautiful future.

Stay safe tonight, y’all!  Merry Christmas and a blessed and very happy new year to you all!

Caeruleum Christmas

Merry Christmas everybody!  I hope you spend baby Jesus’ birthday filled with love and joy.  Mine, initially, wasn’t very loving or joyful I must admit, but things turned around for the better at the end.  That’s what matters, right?

It was such an odd buildup to Christmas for me too.  The weekend seemed to be just an odd blur.  I know I got stuff done on Saturday and watched Christmas movies then too, but it feels to me like I must have been in a coma or something because the days flew by so quickly.  Since I was out of touch with my football watching, I spent all Sunday watching the various NFL games too, so my Sunday flew by as well.  Before I knew it, Christmas Eve was here, and I was awake and getting ready to drive the 30 minutes to my grandparents’ house.  It was a quick visit, however, because everybody in my small family had places to go aside from my grandparents’ house, me included.  It was cool to catch up with my cousins and see my family together again, but I felt a little guilty for having to leave my grandparents in order to sleep to go to caroling at 11pm and High Mass at midnight, but I departed anyway.  I was still the last one to leave, so there’s that.

That’s about the point where things started to go south for me.  As soon as I got home, of course I was wide the hell awake.  I could not fall asleep for the life of me.  To make matters worse, I think my neighbor upstairs had kids or something visiting him because all I heard was the pounding of feet and God knows what else hitting the floor making percussive thuds down onto me.  Normally I tune those things out, but this time my brain was still working in overdrive so I couldn’t fall asleep.  I think I only slept about 45 minutes before I got up and got ready to go to my parish.  As soon as I got into the church and sat at my normal pew I started to feel ok until the choir started singing.  Apparently, I was so relaxed that I started to feel myself slowly wanting to go to sleep.  I fought it all the way through until Mass started and thankfully I was very much awake for the entire Mass.  I didn’t think I’d make it, to be honest.  So, after Mass concluded and I walked down the aisle to exit the church, a bit of sadness came over me.  And this is going to sound stupid and narcissistic and for that I apologize, but I started to feel sorry for myself.  Actually, I started to feel this before Mass even started, but of course as Mass takes place I tend to focus on that.  Anyway, the reason I started to feel sorry for myself is because a wave of loneliness took over.  Normally, I prefer to be alone, but there are certain days and activities where the bad light of being alone hits and this happened to be one of them.  I started to feel pretty worthless, actually.  How sad is it that there were a lot of families there celebrating the birth of our Lord ready to celebrate even more as soon as Mass ended in whatever way they were going to choose to, and there I was attending Mass alone, going home alone, to an empty house.  The emptiness of it is the part that bothered me, actually.  I’m used to being alone and as I just mentioned, prefer it most of the time, but that 10 minute drive back home was the saddest I’ve had in a while.  There are a few questions that go through my head sometimes like “Why is it that my life is this way?”  “What the hell did I do to deserve this?”  They were sure dancing through my head then.  Where did I go wrong?  If you want me to be honest, I don’t think they’ve ever been right in my adult life.  How sad is that?

I don’t want to be misunderstood, though.  I’m not seeking sympathy or anything; I’m just merely stating the facts of my life as it’s stood for 20 years.  I always have the worst luck in trivial things, but trivial things that make the most emotional impact.  I think I’m the only idiot alive who wants to have a family life that currently doesn’t.  I know there are probably a lot of men in family situations that would kill to have my life too, so I guess it works both ways.  There have been a lot of blessings in my life likewise that people would die to have blessed onto them.  It doesn’t change the emotional feelings when you’re right in the middle of them, though.

Anyway, I got home about 1:45am and decided to watch The Polar Express since I wasn’t going to go to my dad’s house (as I found out we weren’t getting together at all on Christmas day, which was a first for me) for Christmas and I doubted that my nephews would want to see it as they’ve never been interested in it, so even though I was going to see them later on in the day I knew I’d only have this opportunity to watch it.  I made a cup of hot chocolate and tried to cheer myself up.  It only masked the hurt because I still felt lonely and just empty, and of course the exhaustion I had still was lingering so that made things worse.  Well, I only lasted about an hour until I was in and out of sleep before I decided to shut the movie off and go to bed.  A heavy sleep brought the morning quickly and for as much as I was hoping that my Christmas blues would kick rocks, of course they didn’t.  I opened my cards like they were pieces of mail because nothing about it felt special.  I appreciated the gifts and the cards, but it just felt… what’s the word?  Ordinary.  There was no Christmas spirit there at all.  I went back to bed since I felt like I had a hangover even though I didn’t drink and when I woke up again still feeling bad, I had no choice but to get up to go deliver the Christmas gift I gave my dad as he was at work, then I drove back home to wait for my sister to show up.  By this point, it was 1 or so in the afternoon, my head was pounding, I was starving, and I felt pretty bad emotionally to boot.

When my sister finally showed up about an hour later, things really turned around for me.  Seeing my nephews made all the difference.  I was glad to have them over and I was glad to watch a few Christmas films and other films with them too.  The loneliness was gone and I was just glad to spend time with the kiddos.  I’m still not playing with them as much as I’d like, but that’s because I’m so busy always catching up with the adults that time just slips by.  That’s my fault too.  The need for solitude that I have means that I have to get in all my catching up when I do see my sister in person, so that kinda leaves the kiddos in a bind.  I gotta do better with that.  I will.

So, there it was.  Christmas.  The good and the bad.  At least it ended on a good note.  I’m relatively happy today, and I have a short week so there will be nothing to complain about.  I’m looking forward to a visit I’m getting on Friday and to go through with my traditional New Year’s Eve festivities too, so no more reason to be blue.  Let’s finish off 2018 on a high note, y’all!

Merry Christmas and may God bless each one of you!

Burning out FAST

Hey y’all.  Oh man.  I didn’t want to blog before posting my trip across the country blog post, but I feel I need to let this out somewhere where I won’t be judged with what I’m feeling before it starts eating me alive and really starts messing with me.

Here it is.

I’m done.  Like really done with everybody right now.  I woke up in a F everybody mood today and I’m having a very hard time hiding it.  I’m tired of adjusting my schedule for everybody else’s needs and doing things I don’t want to do just to please others.  I don’t feel like talking to anybody, seeing anybody, or doing anything right now either.  If it were up to me, I’d be locked up in my apartment right now with the phone possibly even shut off.  That’s how bad it is.  What a time for it too, right?  Christmas Eve is in 3 days and I’m going to have to go to my family get together thing, but I’ll tell you right now that I don’t even want to do that, nor do I want to leave my house on Christmas day to go to my dad’s house.  F ALL of that.  I just want to stay home and be left alone.  These are the times where I feel sorry for myself for not standing up for myself to say “Lookit.  I’m just not in the mood.  Even for you guys.  I’m just going to stay home.  Don’t call me, don’t text me, nothing.  Just leave me alone.  I don’t know everything that’s wrong with me right now, but I just need to go away for a while.  Take it easy.”  Of course, I’m too weak to do that, so I’ll go and dream of the things I’d rather be doing alone instead and feel sorry for myself all over again.  Nobody understands and I don’t expect them to.  I just wish I could feel better about it and just snap out of it, but I know it won’t happen.

Ugh.  Time to try and continue to hide my negative feelings and get through the rest of the day until I’ll be able to get home, lock the door, and get back to doing me.  Maybe, since I won’t be able to watch my Christmas movie marathon on the days I really want to, Christmas Eve and day thanks to those family obligations I just mentioned, I’ll just do it tonight.  To hell with it.  Why not.  Maybe that might cheer me up.  I might just put my phone on silent and leave it in my room too, as to not be bothered with the twitter and Instagram updates I see from people.  Just worry about pleasing myself for once.  We’ll see.

Birthdays and Trips

Hello all and happy December!  Now that we’re in the full swing of things, I think it’s safe to say that we are heading towards the home stretch of this holiday season.  I’ll be honest, I’m still not fully feeling it, but not for any bad reason per se.  I mean, yeah, I’m pretty broke at the moment, but I have so many other things going on right now that I can’t even think about setting myself up in the Christmas mood.  December is typically a crazy month for me because my birthday is on the 9^th, so I’m generally setting things up for that first and before I know it Christmas comes and goes after that.  This year was no exception.  Funny thing though, is that I thought it would be.  I wasn’t even feeling my birthday this year.  Go figure, right?!  I turned 38 this past Sunday, so in birthday years wise, it’s lost its significance.  When you think about it, the ages that matter (at least here in the U.S.) are 18, 21, then the 5’s and 0’s after that.  I added 37 to that thanks to Writer/Director/Comedian/Podcaster/Nerd Kevin Smith, and I celebrated that last year with a little film festival, but this year I really didn’t have much to look forward to.  I mean, yes, it was my birthday and I was looking forward to getting bombarded with wall posts on Facebook, but in reality all I wanted to do that day was stay home, watch football, and relax on my couch.  Maybe have a celebratory meal of steak or Whataburger (oh man… Whataburger… THE BEST ever!) and call it a day.  Nothing special, you know?  Just stuff that I love.  Instead, I ended up going to my dad’s house to eat a meal that although was freaking awesome, wasn’t something that I was craving.  I didn’t even get to decide whether or not I even wanted to stay home instead and have my family come to me instead.  I guess I’m just that much of a pleaser.  Oddly enough, I was actually giving more gifts than I received on my birthday too as I bought Dallas Cowboys stickers and plain white candles to make Dallas Cowboys velas (look up Raymond Orta to see the reason I do these things) for myself, my dad, and at the end of the night, I ended up buying one for a friend of mine!  Go figure.  She even said it too, “It’s your birthday and you’re still doing things for me…”  Yes, I was and no I didn’t even get a choice as to how I was going to spend my own damn birthday because that’s just who I am.  I’m always putting myself last when it comes to other people.  Even on my birthday.

In other news for the busy-ness of it all, tomorrow, I’m going to embark on an insane journey with my heterosexual lifemate.  We essentially called a bluff on moving a vehicle and some small items from a temporary home in Annapolis, Maryland back here to El Paso, Texas.  We got the “Are you guys serious?  You’d do that?”  “YES!” we replied and here we are.  We got a paid flight and a per diem to get said vehicle back here by next Monday night.  It’s going to be my first time ever in the northeast, first time ever to be able to visit our nation’s capital, and my first time ever seeing the cities we’re going to pass through along the way.  I’m super excited to experience it all.  All told, we’re going to drive over 2,100 miles in 4 days.  A crazy feat for sure, but a once in a lifetime experience for sure! I’m sure I’ll have stories to tell and a good blog to post about it too, so look for that possibly next week!

Speaking of travel, another form of travel has really taken over my interest lately.  Travel via rail.  It may be something that is still a normal way of traveling in other places, but here in the spread out southwestern part of the United States, rail travel isn’t such a big thing, especially after the dawn of the national interstate highway system and the blossoming of air travel.  Locally, we had Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe (better known as simply Santa Fe) Railway and Southern Pacific Railroad to service us and we had passenger train service from each, but now since the 1970s, we’ve had Amtrak (which is the consolidated national passenger railroad service), but only 2 or so trains come by a week.  Granted, you can get to just about anywhere on said trains, your options are limited on the days you’re able to go.  In any event, during my last vacation this past July/August when I went to Oceanside, California, I noticed the abundance of commuter rail travel that takes you from Oceanside down to San Diego and passenger rail that takes you up to Los Angeles available from there.  Amtrak is kinda a big deal in southern California and being a lifelong railfan, I was loving seeing all of the passenger trains go by as the rails go right along the beachfront.  Anyway, all of that got me thinking about going back to Oceanside and instead of driving, I’d take Amtrak.  Sure enough, there is an actual station in Oceanside itself, so the need to jump on the commuter train from San Diego is not needed.  The route there would take me from here, westbound stopping in a few places in New Mexico, Arizona, and a few more in California until reaching Los Angeles.  Then from L.A., I’d get on another train that goes down to San Diego and back, so I’d just get off in Oceanside.  How cool is that, right?!  Now, the travel time is 20 hours, but seriously, I think this would be the coolest thing EVER to do.  I’d still have that road trip experience without actually being worn out from the road itself, I’d be able to relax and watch shows on Netflix, read, or listen to music, and get to Oceanside ready to relax on the beach and do my thing.  You can’t beat it!  The great part is that its costs just as much or a little less than air travel or driving, so aside from the time benefits of flying, it’s the best deal.  I think I’m going to aim to do it sometime next year if I can and if not, for sure in 2020… God willing, of course.

So, here we are my friends.  We’re 2 weeks away from Christmas Day and 3 weeks away from 2019.  I’m looking forward to what lies ahead!

Future’s End

Salutations, y’all!  I hope you are having a great day.  As I write this, it is December 6, 2018.  Yesterday, a State funeral was held for our 41^st president, George H.W. Bush.  Now, I’m not going to get into politics because well A) I can’t, and B) I don’t really want to share my personal political beliefs and frankly I don’t want to hear yours, so I won’t do it.  The one thing I do want to say though, is leaving politics aside, from most accounts George H.W. Bush was an awesome dude.  He was a funny, kind, caring, loving person who put family first and didn’t take himself too seriously.

I had the opportunity to see the entire funeral yesterday and I was just struck by it all.  The reverence that Washington, D.C. showed towards this man was moving in itself.  The eulogies were moving, and I was surprised at just how Novus Ordo Catholic the Episcopal service was, or maybe surprised/saddened at how much the Mass of Pope Paul VI was protestant in its nature.  In any event, the thing that moved me the most was President George W. Bush’s eulogy of his father.  As has been discussed at length over time, President Bush (43) is an emotional man, as was his late father.  What I knew but didn’t think I needed to hear, however, was just how much he meant to him.

Let me backtrack a bit.  Even before he mentioned that, another thing struck me.  “The idea is to die young as late as possible.”  Man, how true is that phrase, right?!  I mean, really?  I know I just spoke of this a few blogs ago about me being too grown up to play with my nephews and now that quote.  That’s so true.  Do young people things and you won’t grow old, man.  It’s as simple as that!  Then another thing, when President Bush mentioned that his father made sure to cherish the gift of life and live each day to the fullest thanks to his two brushes with death early on in his life struck another chord with me thanks to my near suicide attempt 7+ years ago.  Yes, my brush with death was self-inflicted, but it was a brush nonetheless.  After those few dark days, I purged the darkness and let light flood me and I made sure to shine that light on those whom I love and cherish to this day.  Some people think that I’m putting on an act, like I’m really some sort of a jerk, but honestly I’m not.  I’m always trying to go out of my way to help my friends in need if I can, let them know that I am there for them, even if it’s just an ear beating they need to unleash to a waiting person.  That’s what I do best.  I hope my friends know that.

The things that got me, however, was President Bush speaking about how great of a father President Bush was, giving unconditional love even when his kids tested his patience.  It got me to think about two things.

First off, I thought of my parents.  I know I put my parents though some things in my teenage through mid-20s years, and even though I had sort of “Come to Jesus” talks with them, they knew that I knew I messed up.  They didn’t need to tell me that I was messing up.  But not once did I feel they gave up on me or didn’t care.  If I think about it hard enough, I can go back to the handful of times I hurt my mom and even though we have a deep love for each other, sometimes I feel like I never actually got the chance to let her know just how much it pained me to have been an idiot and made her feel bad.  I know it’s too late now, as she’s passed away, but I would hope to think that she knows now just how bad I feel for my mistakes in my youth.  As far as my dad goes, we have a great relationship.  There’s nothing on my end that I need to tell him that he doesn’t already know.  I don’t know what his expectations were of me when I was born 38 years ago, but I hope he knows that I’ve tried my best at everything I’ve set out to do.  He taught me a lot and I love him.

The second thing that I thought about as President Bush continued to eulogize his father was that I wondered about legacy and the things we’ll leave behind when we die.  I know, it may sound morbid to some people, but death is something that none of us can avoid.  We all have to think about it.  In giving that some thought, I wonder what I’m going to leave behind.  As it stands now, not much.  I mean, I have this visual record of my last 7 years writing down my thoughts about the good and bad in my life.  I also have the 2 recordings I made with my band that will live on forever.  I have the memories that will live on with my friends and family as well.  But the one thing that, as of this writing, won’t go on will be any legacy of children.  I’m one of those weirdos who actually wants to be married and have children.  I want to raise children to follow in the faith in Jesus Christ as I do, to love everybody unconditionally, to be that kind soul that a friend or family member may need from time to time, to not care about worldly possessions, to appreciate the arts, everything that I love and stand for.  As of now, that is probably never going to happen.  It hurts, but you know what?  That’s ok too.  Let God’s will be done.  The thing that worries me though is who is going to bury me and give me the proper Catholic Traditional Latin Rite rosary, requiem Mass, and burial?  I’ll have nobody to trust to ensure that happens as it stands now and honestly that scares me.  My soul won’t be at rest with some sort of protestant “service” *insert nauseous chills here* or some sort of offensive guitar/percussion music filled novus ordo Mass at a protestant looking Catholic Church either.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m over thinking it.  But I do like to know at least of a few things that will eventually happen in my future.  Perhaps I should start looking into preparing my funeral arrangements to ensure that what I need, I’ll get.  I know it may sounds nuts considering my age, but the future is never guaranteed for any of us.  Might as well make sure your last wishes are respected while you still can plan them out.

Until next blog, y’all!