Entries Tagged 'Incompetent Navel Gazing' ↓

I woke this morning to the realization that I don’t have a job to go to on Monday. I have one less email account to check obsessively. I have one less team to lead. I have two fewer keys on my keyring. This is by design, but it still caught me off guard. I’m not used to not having anything to do for a couple of weeks.

Have I ever had this degree of confident lack of responsibility? In other words, have I ever had a period of time where I was free from the last thing and confident enough in the next thing that I wasn’t engaged in a pretty solid search? I don’t think so.

It’s not that I won’t have *anything* to do. I still have a wife, a kid and a couple of dogs, all of which come with a (pleasant) obligation (or seven). But two weeks should be enough to learn a programming language I have avoided, eat a burrito or two from a taqueria (or two) that I haven’t tried yet or maybe polish off a short story.

We’ll see. I don’t want to get to the end of these two weeks and simply be caught up on Jersey Shore. I don’t want it to be about consumption.

I’ll keep you posted.

I bumped into my ex-wife on the way home from work yesterday.

No one was more surprised than the two of us. It had to be 7 maybe 8 years since the last time we actually saw each other or spoke in real time. So we grabbed a drink and caught up as much as we could before our 6p trains.*

Short version (which is all we had time for): we’re both fine; her kids are cute, my kid is cute; our extended families are fine.

So: “Angry”? Yeah. We married young, and for the wrong reasons.** It wasn’t exactly a train wreck but close enough. When it ended, I was angry. I had a lifetime of anger stored up and it came out. And it stayed out. I wasn’t just angry at her, but she caught most of it.

To put things in some temporal perspective, my masters degree took longer than the marriage. The marriage has now been over for more than three times longer than it lasted. I practiced karate (and have now not practiced it) longer than we were married.*** I have several shirts in daily rotation that I’ve owned for longer than we were together.****

At 24, no one in the world could have talked me out marrying her–not even a ghost of divorce future. It was a mistake, but one that I needed to make.

It’s nice to be far enough away from all that — one of my personal growing pains — to have been glad to run into her, to have enjoyed a few minutes catching up.

It’s nice to be not angry.

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* No, gentle readers, I did not attempt to induct her into The Cult of The Metra Lotto.

** Other people who marry young do it for the right reasons and are fine — that just wasn’t us. What was mine? Other people were doing it. It seemed like “the next thing”. There were probably more but they don’t really matter at this distance.

*** Which, coincidentally, means that the time since my last bench press and now is not quite twice as long as we were married.

**** Upcoming post: Reid Carlberg, fashion icon.

One change I didn’t think about with The Critter: how important it would be to me to stick to a standard schedule at work so I can see him.  This importance manifested itself today when a co-worker scheduled an all hands event from 5-7p in a couple of weeks.

I just can’t go.

Or maybe: I just don’t want to go.

Or maybe: it’s not that I don’t want to go to the event, it’s that I want to go home more.  And maybe it’s that I resent being presented with a decision point that pits one thing I love — my job — against what I love more — The Critter.

And I got a little energetic in my expression of that fact.  The co-worker was a little taken aback.  It could be because they thought it wouldn’t be an issue. It could be because I was overly enthusiastic in expressing how much of an issue it is for me.

Either way, if you, my co-worker, read this, sorry if my objection crossed the line from enthusiastic to personal.  It wasn’t about you even if it came across that way.

I’m sure this isn’t the only time this will come up, but it is one of the first times it has come up so clearly for me.

Ah, Zippy: you captured my mood clearly enough at the time that I photocopied this and faxed it to a friend 3000 miles away. He later moved another 3000 miles or so. I doubt it was in response to this fax, but you never know.

Post college was a challenge for me, as I struggled to figure out what I wanted to do. I worked at Mrs. Fields Cookes (still had the paystubs), an Austrian powder coating company, sold leather jackets, started Napkins By Reid (yes, as bad as it sounds), and worked on a wide variety of other business plans: Cafe Tomo–mini van based mobile espresso, World Wide Comics (also a non-starter, but it got me a free copy of Margot in Bad Town, which is still awesome) and an electronic BBS for the Washington State Japan America Society, corporate sponsored adventure travel. There were probably more. All within about 16 months.

Did I mention the bad, non-rhyming poetry? Hopefully that never surfaces.

Most of that stopped by the time I made it to Chicago in fall, 1992.

But the interesting thing is that I wasn’t even close to going through it all alone. The vast majority of the letters I had from friends at that time were similarly aimless.

A little aimlessness is probably good for the soul. We all seemed to find our way, more or less. I suppose it might come back (never say never, right?) but I’m pretty much hoping it was an “I’m 22 kind of thing”.

Oh, and to the 19 yo poetry major I spoke to the other day: I now remember the “midlife” crisis feeling you described. It won’t last. Something else will probably take it’s place in due time, but that’s another store.

OK, that’s it: enough with the indulgent nostalgia trip. I need to eat breakfast.

Given half a chance, I will tell any college student I run across that they should go abroad for their junior year (in fact, I did this on the way back from NYC the other day). Why? It can be just a great experience and although you college students may not believe me on this, such adventures require significantly more effort later in life. So, go.

How life changing can it be? Well, it can inspire you to carry around a Burger King place mat that a friend who went to Germany sent you in Japan. For 19 years. OK, maybe I’m a little extreme — and it’s going to the recycling shortly — but you get the idea.

One of the things I had completely forgotten about that pre-email* era was that we not only wrote letters to people, we also sent a wide variety of artifacts. If it could be mailed, we’d mail it. Now all that takes place digitally. That’s not a bad thing. Just a little different.

But it sure was fun to return home to the host family in Funabashi, Chiba, Japan, only to find an overstuffed envelope from West Germany (1989 — remember?) and open it only to find a BK place mat.

* ok we had email — even Internet email — but it was far from the ubiquitous means of communication it is today.

What started off as a basement cleaning lapsed into completely indulgent nostalgia when one of the boxes I thought I could simply shred turned out to contain a wide variety of memorabilia: letters, ephemera–that kind of thing.

Above–my acceptance into Kenyon. I don’t know if my high school grades would be good enough to get me in today. Maybe.

The other college I applied and was accepted to was Wooster. Reading over the letters, I know immediately why I picked KC: the letter from Wooster was almost completely impersonal. The one from Kenyon included a detailed description of why the chose me. Not that I decided this based on the letter, but that’s another story.

The letter didn’t mention grades, so maybe I could still get in. The AP European History class might stop me — my grade for the final quarter? 66. Yes, out of 100. I guess I’m doomed to repeat the 100 years war. (Get it? That’s my one history joke. You know–how if we don’t know our history we’re doomed to repeat it. Awesome.)

Anyway, it was pretty entertaining to Google a few people. Most I couldn’t find, but a couple generated hits that looked promising so I sent off a couple of get-in-touch emails, the kind that were more popular in, say, 1998, when the Internet was exploding. It would definitely be fun to connect, if only to play a round of “remember when…”.

Oh and I found stuff from the usual suspects lurking here: Yo Imintex, Meg & JDA.

Pretty much awesome.

I feel vaguely like Vincent D’Onofrio in Men in Black when he emerges from the crater in his new Edgar suit. Awkward. Incapable of anything but gross and inelegant movements.  As awkward as that comparison.

I’m only thinking about one thing: The (Forthcoming) Critter.

OK, two things. The second being how long it will be before The Lovely J smacks the shit out of me when I ask, “How about now? Feel anything now?”

Just found out that my Aunt had one contraction and my cousin was out. Interesting.

Off to work. I have to go pay attention on an early morning conference call.

Goodbye, 1998 Jetta GLX VR6, originally uploaded by ReidCarlberg.

A last picture of the Jetta (notice how I left off the “god damned”–I’m learning restraint; all it took was getting rid of the car). Original purchase was in 1997. Total mileage: 56,877. And it still looks damn good, better when it’s just been washed. On a complete side note, I don’t think I ever made out with anyone in this car. One more reason I’m glad to see it go.

One of the facts of my life I’ve been contemplating for the last couple of years is this: adolescence never really ended for me.  I just never grew up.  Sure, I have a job, pay a mortgage, obey (most) laws. But that’s not it. I just don’t feel like I ever made it made it to the real world.

Among my peers, I don’t think I’m unusual.   I might be — I don’t know.  I can’t really speak for them.

Then, last week, I had a moment, a satori: this extended adolescence I’ve been on, it’s about to end.

When? When The Kid finally arrives. All this before kid time — it ends.  Before child exists — BCE, if you like — moves to CE, child exists.

It’s not often I’ve had such a clear boundary in my life. High school, college, sex, business — not so much.

I’m so freakin’ excited. I can’t wait.

I just returned from Whole Foods.  My visit left me with more questions than answers.

One.  Why are the chips always just out for passing children to rifle through with their likely filthy hands?

Two.  You’re no longer accepting checks?  Really?  In order to speed checkout?  But you still accept cash.  Are you sure you’re not going down the route of that Visa debit commercial?  Right?  Please don’t buy into their idea that we shouldn’t use cash.

Three.  You’re getting rid of disposable plastic bags by Earth Day?  I don’t disagree–in fact I love it.  But I’m anxious.  Does that mean that mean I’ll have to start bringing my own bag or shopping at Jewel?  Please don’t make me shop at Jewel.  Please remember that I don’t usually have a bag with me.

Four.  How do you make better lattes than Starbucks?  I mean, seriously, you make a great latte.