My Rant About The DMV

Ok. It isn't a rant. Not really anything close. While I can't say it was a pleasant experience, it wasn't a bad one. I don't recall ever having a negative experience there. Much of the time, I enjoy sitting watching people do things so the DMV lets me see a group of people sharing a cultural situation together, not unlike my joy of watching people at a high school football game.

On of the endearing qualities of being me is that I'm always trying to figure things out. I remember my mission companion in Switzerland getting annoyed at my constant watching the trains come and go out of the train station. While I do have a pleasure in looking at infrastructure, much of that staring had to do with my figuring out the circuits established by the locomotives through the overhead lines. I do that kind of thing a lot.

So I was at the DMV. I picked up my number at a desk and sat down. The ticket said H258. That was an odd number. As I sat and watched the workers come in for the morning, I tried to work out if there was a situation where certain agents did certain things. You know, this one spoke spanish and armenian, this one handled motorcycle renewals...that kind of thing. I didn't see much rhyme or reason so I just decided to sit there and watch. Some people were late for their numbers and didn't get to their agent so they had to wait again. Others were coming in for their driving test or their first licence...

Which reminds me. About the only thing truly interesting that happened to me in a DMV was when I lived in Arizona and needed to get a license. A young man went up to the counter and next thing I know, yelling ensued. I don't know what the laws were but something about marking the license so he could buy liquor or something like that. He wasn't 21 so the agent said he can't do anything about it so he'll have to wait. He didn't like that answer and stormed out yelling about how he'd still get his booze regardless.

Anyway, while I was sitting there, I mused about that odd number. I followed the way the numbers were called out and looking for a pattern. I did discern one and I eventually got it. The numbers were somewhat random and knowing a bit of human psychology, I think I realized the genius behind the number selection. Have the numbers random or at least seemingly random enough so that a casual observer wouldn't see the pattern. Having it like that means that the people waiting would have to be somewhat alert. No trips to the bathroom in anticipation for a long wait. No snoozing lest you miss your slot. Also, it wouldn't allow the user to become annoyed by having to wait 30 people back. They'd have no idea how long they had to wait. I almost wanted to verbalize "That's freaking genius!" when I figured out the reasoning behind it. It used our own psychology against us, not unlike what Disney does to use while waiting for the rides. Yep, the DMV is manipulating us too, probably to avoid riots.

Still, I highly recommend a mid-week, early morning visit if you must go. It is a lot less crowded.

BTW, this visit also elicited a dream which I posted on Facebook on November 16.

I had a dream last night that I took a woman on a date...to the DMV. 
I never realized what a failure of a human being I am.

My Biggest Fear

A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life.
Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.

~~~~~~~

I never expected this to be my most popular poem out of the hundreds I’ve written. I was extremely bitter and sad when I wrote this and I left out the most beautiful part of that class.

After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.

She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.

Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.

The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.

The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.

Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.

I no longer fear the day someone who swore I was their universe can no longer see the stars in my eyes as long as they still choose to look until they find them again.

~unknown

Without Tracy

Tracy and I take separate vacations.

I don't know if I ever mentioned that before. It started when we adopted children. It was mostly an economic thing at the time. Adopting children is expensive and like many married couples, we have different interests. While Tracy wouldn't mind spending time at a Disney park every other year, my interest tend to be wilderness filled with granite mountains and lava. Kids on vacations can be time-consuming and taxing and both of us can be quite driven when we are out and about. Tracy builds schedules and lists that are hard to meet with kids in tow. I am a hard-driving, ADD-addled tourist that stops unexpectedly. My main activities are "I want to touch that rock" "I want to climb that" "I want to sit here for 10 hours and watch that crab walk across the beach". There is no motive to my travels other than see and do things I haven't done before.

It's Tracy's turn this time. She's out of town visiting family where she can feel free from the burdens of motherhood, and those are many, and doesn't have to have her guard up when she decides to tell them what a jerk I am. I get it. We sometimes need time away. I did earlier this year when I visited Oregon. My love of the West this time made me rethink much of my life. I'm sure my wife is getting tired of my epiphanies. Well, I don't think she'll be getting any epiphanies out in the stinking desert, but I'll give her that opportunity.

It is times like these when I realize.., well, not really. I'm always very aware and very appreciative of all that Tracy does. She runs this home. She pays the bills, makes the food, does most of the parenting. I know exactly how much she does. I do sometimes think about what I would have to do if she died, left me or decided I wasn't worth the trouble anymore. Would I be able to operate and run this house? I know that the kids adjust to my parenting style fairly well. I do things quite a bit different than the way she does. It really only comes out when she's gone for more than a few days. Otherwise, I mostly defer to her style.

I do the dishes regularly. The floors get swept. Homework is finished. Just this morning the garage was cleaned and swept, the bikes were put away for the winter and I did a workout at the gym. Not bad for finishing at 10:30 am. I think that is what drives the kids crazy the most. I'm a morning person. It also helps that the kids are getting older and don't complain about everything like they used to. About the only thing I got a complaint about from the three oldest was Ellie wanting to go on a road-trip with me. I might have to consider that. Bennet has a temper and if you look at him just the wrong way, he goes into a tantrum. I'm learning how to work with that.

There was a time a few years ago where I thought Tracy and I would have to separate. I felt I was being so disruptive to her and the family that I would have to exit, at least for some time, for us to get our stuff sorted out. I didn't know what I would do at that point. I did contemplate life without her. I wanted her to be happy and if I was blocking that, then I had to move aside if that is what was required. The thing is, separation and parenting requires rational adults. We had to play nice. If that is what was needed then, why couldn't it happen now? Separation would just compound the difficulties.

Things worked out. We both had to adjust to being married to different people than we started out with. We became much more verbal with each other, instead of just letting the unspoken similarities and familiarities between us rule the day. Some things were hard for each other to hear but we said them.

But we still take separate vacations. It isn't that we are having problems now. We have taken family vacations and some were epic. We did go to Hawaii for our 25th anniversary but it also required effort from family and friends in order for us to be away with each other. We got along pretty well. We still are the best of friends and want the other to be happy. For now though, until the kids start their own lives, I see separate vacations as being the norm. Our adventures were mighty and strong before the kids and will be after them.

As for you empty nester friends of ours, why the heck aren't you out having the times of your lives? Lord knows I would.

Crazy Ex Girlfriend

I think I have a new favorite show.

I don't say this lightly. I like a lot of TV. I'm particularly drawn to The CW lately which caters to a younger audience. I'm not sure if that means I'm young at heart or immature in my preferences. I have The Flash (where the protagonist is named Barry so what's not to like), iZombie that I simply adore, as well as binging on older shows I catch on Netflix.

This show isn't for everyone. It has singing and a humor that is subtle. I really like the lead. She's gorgeous, smart and witty and while that can draw you in, and even sympathize with her on a lot of levels, she does things that send alarm bells ringing all over. In one plot point she starts feeling attraction to a man that took her to a carnival and to overcome her feeling trapped by that feeling, leaves him standing there and sleeps with a carnie. The man that took her out can't understand just what is wrong with this girl but he still is fascinated with her.

The lead, Rachael Bloom, isn't quite as overtly crazy as Liana Morris of Overly Attached Girlfriend fame but she does have a history of portraying obsessive love as demonstrated in her earlier Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury video.

I won't go into the psychology of the situation and my own latent fears of appearing to be the crazy ex-boyfriend to my past significant others. I have my own issues with appearing to be stalkerish when I really just like to talk and be social. You know, social media, I figure if they didn't want me to look at their 6 year old photo albums and post a random like, they wouldn't keep them there, amiright? I also try not to tag their photos with my name, but sometimes mistakes happen.

It's a good show. Not for kids as there are plenty of references to body parts and functions as well as the whole psycho thing. Still. it is good for some of your remaining time on the earth. At least that is my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

It Will Have an End

Well, maybe not "THE" truth, but the truth as I see it now.

I never intended to be an activist. I don't intend to now. I merely have opinions, and I'm getting rather sick of it.

My church, or maybe it should be called "The Church I Attended" (TCIA) made an announcement about its positions on homosexuals. I'm not really all that interested in that. I am interested in the stance it takes against their children. I think it is deplorable. I'll leave it to the reader to do some research and see why I might take that stance.

No, I want to talk about the divide it creates and thoughts that I have on the side. Some of these thoughts aren't that charitable and don't make me look very good. I think these show my own humanity. I don't really want to be vocal about my disagreement of TCIA and its policies. However, I have been fascinated with the process of my own life and why I made the decisions of my journey through it. I think I have a lot of that figured out. The past year has helped me make peace with most of who I am and what I have done to arrive where I am.

I have always been interested in church history. I found the early TCIA church history filled with fascinating things and new ideas. Some were great and uplifting. Others were completely disturbing, but I had made my decision so those conflicts were pushed off to the side. Considering that TCIA was consistently pointing to its own history for guildance, I felt safe studying it. It eventually lead to early Christian history which gave me an interest in patristics. That led to apologetics through some well-placed internet links, which led to other items in TCIA history. Some of that I was told not to read from TCIA, but I did. The first was the Nauvoo Expositor. That is the printing press that Joseph Smith destroyed and led eventually to his violent death. Why? I read it. It had the truth in it. The things that it accused Joseph of doing, he was doing. So, he didn't want it known. That is why he took offense and had the press destroyed.

I let that sit for a bit. Like years.

So, long story short, my conscience just couldn't take it anymore. I was sick of the lies and obfuscation from the institution that I had dedicated most of my life towards. That led to a lot of other problems personally. I've weathered them. My family has too.

In the interim, I have seen TCIA publish essays that disavowed its past leaders, its own scripture, and in some regards, the foundational teachings of Judaism and Christianity. It is quite entertaining, and that is the problem. I don't want it to be. There are people behind this. I've seen friends defend what I once defended. I don't  want to consider them as lacking empathy, but I also realise that I was there once. I thought those same things. On my mission, where my own sanity and well-being was being carved away, I had those thoughts, that TCIA could not do wrong; that I was to blame for my problems, not the church. That others that I gave my moral authority to knew better than I did. I was there. I was fully onboard.

Now I look at it and I know how harmful that was to me. All the rebuilding my wife and I had to do emotionally to claim our lives back and now I was looking at friends and seeing such a lack of empathy and disregard to others on this life's journey.

*sigh*.

At times I wish I didn't have opinions. I know that I've changed a great deal. I don't want to be that person who forgets what it is like to be a believer, and now look at them with the same disdain that I once viewed atheists. I can be better. I can be better than I was, than I am, being more moral, more empathetic.

I won't have the hubris that others I know have, that I have outgrown TCIA. I think lessons can be learned wherever in life a person exists. I have decided to try the wider waters than I used to sail. I know my reality isn't others'. I want to fully understand "He who is without sin, cast the first stone." and the message behind it (Even though Christ probably didn't say it.) I want to find truth, even if it is only my own.

Forgive me of my faults. I will forgive you for yours. Ultimately, I don't have any other choice. I don't want to walk this earth bitter to my own past and future while honoring only the present. At some point we may all meet our maker and I hope She isn't in a ticked-off mood. Maybe we'll only fall asleep never to know anything ever again. Either way, I want to live my life as I see it and I want you to live yours.

Are Men Threatened by Women?

I take as my text for this morning's sermon, a quote.

“Why do men feel threatened by women?” I asked a male friend of mine. […] “I mean,” I said, “men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.”
“They’re afraid women will laugh at them,” he said. “Undercut their world view.”

Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, “Why do women feel threatened by men?”

“They’re afraid of being killed,” they said.

~ Margaret Atwood, Writing the Male Character

I had posted this on my Facebook wall and I suggested that I could write more about this. I don't know if it was wanted or if someone might want to just have more quotes. I don't have a lot of other quotes like this as I tend towards depressive romantic quotes and poems, not insightful things. Plus, I project a lot of these things onto me and wonder how bad of a person I have been in my life. Really, there's only so much introspection I can do and still be a functional human being.

I did want to address this though, even if it is from my perspective only. I guess if you weren't interested then you wouldn't be reading this. Ok. that aside, here it is.

I don't have that much of an ego. I'm aware of how badly I have acted at times of my life. My own stupidity is constantly getting in my way. I know I'm rather intelligent when it comes to particular aspects of technology but I know I'm nowhere near the smartest. My wife capably runs our home and does the most of the parenting. I consult her for any and all decisions that affect both of us. I'm rarely a unilateral person. I hope people don't consider that as a lack of confidence. I view it as respect for the other soul that travels this life with me. At those times when I did act unilaterally, it didn't end well and provides a life lesson that I'm not alone and can't just do what I want in things that concern us both. Because of this, I have a hard time with the idea of a woman laughing at me and undercutting my world view.

Now whatever my enlightenment in this particular aspect, that doesn't mean I would be impervious to ridicule. There are certain things that would be deal breakers, as I hope would be deal breakers with the women I know. I'm more than open to a woman calling me an idiot, especially if I do something idiotic. However, if I was called an idiot by a woman that I was in a relationship with and she MEANT it, then there is a problem. I wouldn't be open to demeaning conversation. I wouldn't tolerated that as I hope no woman would tolerate that either.

I don't know if I would have a problem with my wife earning more than me. It hasn't happened yet but I can't envision that being some sort of imasculating event. I will soon express my opinion in another post about women that are smarter than me, but I don't consider that an unreachable feat. I've had several women that were my supervisors at work and I can't say that I acted or felt any different about them. I think I view men and women as humans more than any other category. I would think that I'm a pretty mellow guy when it comes to my world-view. My wife might think differently and you'd have to ask her for any contradictory opinions. She might have a completely different view of me than I have of myself.

Do I know of men where undercutting their worldview would upset them? Yeah, but to tell you the truth, I'm not that intimately aware of other men's worldview to say that too definitively. I don't have too many male friends and those that I do I'm only taking on the deeper issues of personality with a few of them. I wish men were more comfortable talking about this aspect of their lives. Maybe that is an aspect of the topic at hand. Men don't share those deeper aspects because they don't want to open themselves up to that kind of inspection by their peers.

<later> After a few days of reflection, I realized that most of my world-view changes happened directly because of women. I remember going on a date and tooling around the woods in our truck and the road was very rough. The girl I was with was smiling and laughing all the way through it. I remember glancing at her and catching her smile. Right then I knew that is what I wanted to do the rest of my life, do whatever I could to make the woman I was with smile. I'm not saying I was successful, but that definitely changed my world. Women I dated after that refined my goals, made them deaper, but it was all part of that life-changing realization of what was important to me.

While attempting to create a good life and be a good person as I it was defined to me, I spent time and mental effort to be a good religious person. It wasn't without its struggles. When someone I trusted and respected let me know that she had stopped going to church, it put my own life in a tailspin. I could no longer rationalize certain goals with the knowledge that I had acquired over the years  The house of cards that I had built with my belief started falling around me. Did she do this purposefully? No. She had no idea how that would affect me. It just put other things into focus and it became a life changing event.

I also would be remiss if I don't mention a woman I knew from high school. We didn't talk much in school, if at all but we became more talkative via Facebook. As we became for comfortable with each other, she helped me talk through the tsunami of personal issues I had at the time; she became my sanity check. I treasured her advice and friendship.

When I rehearsed some of this to my wife, she let me know that she appreciated the effort I put into understanding her positions, that I visibly considered what she tells me. Indeed, sometimes it changed some very key narratives in my life and made me rewrite what I thought had happened into something new with the new information.

Perhaps I am odd in this regard. Women have changed my life many, many times. Perhaps I just have surrounded myself with considerate, intelligent women who are honest with me instead of those with a demeaning soul. I do consider myself blessed by the women I have known and shared a bit of our lives together.

I don't know what to say about the situation with women being threatened by men. I know I'm very aware of my position as a male and that women have no idea about my intentions when I talk to them. I've come to know many women that I've met on the web or reconnected from other times in my life. I do have a tendency to talk about things that most men don't. I didn't want to be seen as a stalker or some other mal-adjusted individual. I try to behave myself. I recognize that women can take their lives in their hands by opening themselves up to any man.

Sorry for the meandering writing. I wrote this over several weeks and ideas that I thought would gel, didn't. You read this for free. You got what you paid for.