In a theater near you......(no spoilers)

A long line wrapped around the theater. It was the longest line I had ever seen. I was so excited as I stood there with my brother. We had seen Star Wars an endless amount of times and while I was now 7 years old, I was wiser and thought I knew everything there was to know. It was the summer of 1980, and the line was out front the State Theater in my hometown. It doesn't get anymore Americana than that. A single screen theater, 1 of 2 in the little town that wasn't quite baking like it would in the coming July and August. No parents, just us two and maybe a neighbor kid, talking about the glory to come in the screeching of fighters and the blaring of blasters. There were no deep meanings of the Force and everything else to us, just seeing our heroes lit up once again on a screen in their quest to save the galaxy. They would have to do a lot to impress me, I was 7 after all. Of course they did impress us, whoever they were, kids didn't know or care about George Lucas. We just knew we wanted more Star Wars and they had delivered it again. We had went as a family to it in Drive-ins, and theaters with friends and cousins and Aunts. We travelled like mercenaries to any house that had a fabled Laser Disc(Google it, like the way of the Jedi it's time had passed it by with a remnant of it surviving in new technology). We owned all the figures we could get our hands on. It was not without controversy, like the now infamous R2D2-Chewbacca incident of '78, forgiveness is hard in these matters, but time heals most wounds. We spent endless hours in rooms and backyards in epic space battles, even crashing a TIE fighter complete with a carefully placed blue smoke bomb inside it's cockpit. First rule of Star Wars toys was find a kid who owned a Millenium Falcon and make friends with him. That glorious bucket of bolts that made a miraculous run in 12 Parsecs. We had no idea what the Kessel Run was or what a parsec was,(we didn't have google, and I don't think it was in the beautiful faux-looking leather binding of our World Book Encyclopedia's circa 1974) we just knew we had to make that infamous run. We made it in the Theater that night. I'm sure some folks further down the line behind us did not, I bet someone in a line like that went on to invent Fandango, so they would never miss a show of such importance again. This was Empire Strikes Back opening weekend there would be casualties and good men left behind in order to see it. We sat enthralled for the entire duration of that movie until the final end when Darth Vader reveals the true nature of his relationship to Luke. Did he just say that? He's lying, and it had to be a trick of the Dark Side, even I could see that. We had new heroes and villains that filled the canon of what we had already known about Star Wars. The theater erupted with applause at the end. I've been to a few movies on my life and I know there has been very few where clapping was involved. We walked out into the still warm night that drove the chill of the movie theater AC from us. If you've never been on the prairie when the sun is falling and stars begin to pierce the thin veil of wispy clouds and the slow turning of blue to soft purples to black velvet pin pointed by the lights of endless stars, well I might just feel sorry for you a little bit. This was one of those nights and one of those hours. We waited for the station wagon to come pick us up and we went home with thoughts of new battles and new adventure. As time wore on and we began to outgrow some of the magic the movies held over us(have to admit Return of the Jedi helped dissipate some of that enthusiasm, also the whole Luke kissing his sister thing was somewhat confusing for a 10 year old, for some people the controversy continues).

So, here we sat in another line decades later. 3 brothers waiting to see Star Wars again. The movie would be a continuation of our heroes' adventures. A renewing of the infamous Chewbacca-R2D2 controversy and bitterness pushed down in favor of keeping a good mood on the occasion. Once again I was older and wiser and they, as in Hollywood, couldn't show me much I hadn't seen or knew about. One brother had already seen it, but he kept his mouth shut, avoiding any new controversy. A nephew accidentally read something out loud from pinterest, so he ruined a few things for the oldest brother. I remained fresh going in. I had my thoughts and speculations, but I pushed them aside in favor of surprise. We were standing directly in front of one of the movie posters, the poster has all the elements we had come to know and love, characters standing in action poses, ominous enemies lurking over them and a gigantic planet-killing device that surely would destroy everything you knew and loved. Each of us had brought our children with us, ranging in ages from elementary to high school, there was 8 of us in all. It seemed like it should be a normal moment. It wasn't. Star Wars had been along for the ride with us since we were kids. Toys, Halloween costumes, family outings in Omaha, birthday and Christmas presents. Star Wars has always been common ground between kids, teenagers and adults since I was 4 years old. How could this be a normal moment including something we all had enjoyed for so long? It wasn't a nice warm summer evening though, it was the darkest of nights near the shortest of days in the year. Luckily we all fit inside the theater lobby. When they finally opened the theater door, we filed in with subdued excitement(fool me once Phantom Menace). No need to worry about tickets, thanks Fandango! We found a nice row of seats that would keep us all connected. We settled in and with little wait the theater screen lit up and the story began(after an hour of Preview Trailers). Much like life, our heroes had aged, they had gained responsibilities and had setbacks. I could draw the parallels of torches being passed between the old generation and the new characters and actors handing off batons. I thought about the collective memories our kids would have going to this movie with their Dad's, siblings and cousins. Then maybe the next movie that comes out, we'll all attend again. I have to admit, it made my 3D glasses go a little misty, of course it also might have been certain scenes in the movie, who knows. Much like things in Star Wars and life there will be myths and legends like the Kessel Run and the Chewbacca-R2D2 controversy, or even foggy 3D glasses. What really happened  and where the truth appears is always somewhere in the middle. What we usually always remember is the people we shared those memories with and how it makes us feel when we think about them. I will hear the laughter of the kids at the funny parts and the quiet whispers as they tried to figure out what was going on in parts or predict what was going to happen. It's a good memory, one I hope to hold on to until the reboot 30 years from now when I hopefully get an invite to go to a Star Wars movie with my kids and grandkids and maybe some nieces and nephews. As the movie came to a close, much like at the end of Empire decades ago, people in the theater began to applaud, I smiled. As we left the megasuperawesomeplexin3D I could almost feel the echoes of that summer night so many years ago,a couple of bushy haired kids in high tube socks, terrible tank shirts and awful shorts not knowing how something so simple as the memory of a movie would still hold so much magic. I hope I helped create a similar memory for my kids, not just with me but with the rest of their family. Those are the kinds of memories that only come around every so often.They can stick with you for the rest of your life. Memories can fade into family lore or burn bright, like ancient squabbles about how an older brother used his careful manipulation to trick a sweet innocent 4 yr old boy into picking the R2D2 action figure over Chewbacca, just so he could get Chewbacca instead of his little brother. Leaving the poor little boy crying all the way home from White Mart pissed off at a seemingly useless toy droid, I mean come on, he didn't even have a laser pistol. Sonnuvabitch.

(SPOILER: Personally I enjoyed every second of the movie, and I believe it got a full 8 Wilde approval rating from the entire crew. I understand some people didn't like it, I just don't understand that some people didn't like it.)

Dylan was right...................

I'll start this article out with a disclaimer "Bear with me...." So please, bear with me, we'll get there together........

 In one of my favorite books "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", there is a brief story about a race of aliens who demanded to know the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything, it took their super-computer(Deep Thought) 7.5 million years to come up with the answer, upon which the aliens were locked in stasis and woke highly anticipating the answer. With great pride Deep Thought told them: 42. As you might guess the aliens were quite dismayed at the answer. The computer answered that they really hadn't come up with an actual proper question, so 42 seemed just as appropriate as any other. When I had read this all those years ago I laughed a lot about it. I thought it was so funny I wanted to get it tattooed on my shoulder, but I figured people would just think I was living in some sort of glory days wanting my high school number on my shoulder or something. I would actually have to explain it, and I thought that wouldn't help me get any dates, which were already far and few between. Why make it harder on myself, but I digress. The aliens went on to let the computer design another computer that would come up with the REAL question that would allow Deep Thought to come up with the answer to the Ultimate Question. This took another 10 million years unfortunately while the aliens slept their world was destroyed. The guardians of the sleeping aliens(intelligent white lab mice who escaped) decided the question was: "How many roads must a man walk down?" so they could avoid the whole situation and call it good. This of course was just as funny to me then as it is now. The irony of all this is that while I was laughing about it, it never dawned on me to actually ask my own question of the meaning of my own life and the answers I needed to make it worth while. Mostly, I just looked at it and used it as reason to point out again the overall meaningless nature of life. Because you know it was the 90's and well.....grunge. Sigh. Sometimes I want to find 20 year old me and kick him in the nuts.

So, while it hasn't taken me a combined 17.5 million years to find a question or an answer as useless as those two. It has caused me to waste at least 42 of them thinking about what to do with the rest of the Meaning as it is concerned to my own life. There are plenty of roadblocks, twists and turns to get to a moment where you think that "Holy $#%! This stuff is getting serious now!" I'm not looking for a Hail Mary or a dive for the endzone. I'm looking for a complete gameplan. Something that says I played the game right with everybody in mind and we all come out the other side a little further along and with a little more meaning. So, while in the context of most birthdays 42 is not a landmark like 16,21, 30,40, 50, 100, etc. To me it's a pretty big deal. Like the aliens in the book I spent a lot of time letting something else determine the questions and answers for the meaning of life as it pertains to me. Let's be honest. That sucks.

Nearly fourteen years ago today I woke up on my birthday to see one of the most surreal incidents in my entire life. Planes slamming into the side of two of the most iconic structures in America. At first I thought it was a video of the original bombings of the WTC in the 90's . Then the second plane hit. It's a sobering visual every year on your birthday to be reminded of something like that and reminds you to keep moving forward, never take a day for granted let alone another year of your life. Yet, it did lose it's urgency for a while. Life trudges on and memorials and glossy words fade into time. Some years you want to forget about the tragedies along with how the last year went, no matter how many memes you read.

But. Some years are like last year. This last year has been one of the greatest of my entire life(Top 5 at least). It's been full of epiphanies, goals, and an overall appreciation for so much I have in my life and so much that I have left behind for the better. I don't look forward to the endless parade of video footage today, but it is a grim reminder that I am still alive and so are so many people I love and the new lives created along the way. It has been about living in these moments that occur every day and trying to make it all matter.

So. What is my answer to the grand question we all seek to answer in each of our lives. First another disclaimer: I am not wise. I am full of mistakes, laughter, lies, truths, and a healthy amount of booze at times. So I ask myself what is my 42 at 42? Here we go.......

 Try to add something to the existence of others not just yourself, don't subtract. Wake up each day with a new outlook on something old and make it new again. Make amends any way you can when you and the ones you love don't see eye to eye. Admit your mistakes and correct them. Don't go to bed with regrets about the way you lived that day. Be good for the sake of being good. Love for the sake of loving. Be kind for the sake of being kind. Live a dream while you still live, and live true. When you fail at these things (and we all fail at them) do them over again in a different way and find out just how many roads you can walk down. 42.

Homework?

What are your hopes and dreams for your children this year? Pretty weighty question to be asking parents as they are trying to rifle through open house night at the elementary school. Moving quickly from class to class to answer all the necessary information and paperwork in each class, so you can get those kids out of there and get your daughter to dance and go watch your nephew play football. It must be the question du jour, because both teachers asked us the same question. For my son I just wrote an infinity symbol with achievement written in the middle, mostly to baffle the teacher and also to speed things along. My daughter's teacher asked that we write a letter and send it with our daughter to school the very first day. Oh my, that poor teacher to have to read the endless drivel that we parents will spew out about our hopes and dreams for our children. How we hope they will climb the highest mountains and meet each challenge because they are geniuses that know no bounds. Yawn.
Here's a shocker, I have no hopes and dreams for my children. It's their lives. It's their hope, it's their dreams. I will not instill my hopes and dreams into them in an effort to mold their lives like I would like them to be. That's not my job. I will advise them, guide them and love them. That's all I have to do. If they tell me they want to be an architect, then I will help them figure out how they are going to achieve that(if only Costanza would have had such support). I will support them and cheer them on as they try to move through life. I will not tell them what they should do with their lives or set a goal out for them that they have no interest in achieving, or worse try to achieve it because if they don't, somehow they have failed me. It is their job to explore and report back to me on what they find. I'll help them translate their findings, but in the end their life is their gig. I have 3 pieces of advice for them: Don't break the law. Find someone that loves what you love. Learn to swim. Pretty easy really.
Parents may not like to hear this but the hopes and dreams we place on your children as they grow older are literally the boxes we place around them. A lot of times they will be the very obstacles they need to overcome in order to achieve what they truly want to achieve in this life. Once again a lot of therapists make a lot of money off of it, so I don't think I'm far off. If they say human beings have nearly 95%(it's around this number) of their behaviors locked in by 18 years of age, why would I try to over-incorporate my hopes and dreams into my kids? I ask them what they want to do, and yes they may tell me one thing and we do it for a month and they find out it isn't for them. Now we know. We of course talk about commitment and all those important values. Otherwise there are very few things I won't let them try (except baseball, never f$%^& baseball, overzealous parents and tournament organizers have ruined that sport. I'm just kidding, kids should play 4 baseball games in a day every Saturday for the most of the Summer. Everyone loves that.). When I was a child I remember I wanted to be almost anything, my Dad once told me I should be a lawyer because my mouth constantly ran and it was somewhat quick-witted(he used another term, but I'll stick with quick witted). Of course my Mom said being a lawyer wasn't any good because they are greedy lowlifes. So, what the hell does a 10 year old kid do with those two thought processes? Regardless, I found out lawyers go to 4 more years of school and I threw that idea out instantly. I also found out you had to study a lot and work in an office everyday. Offices had no moving parts, machinery, or noise. It sounded very boring. Still, this is a good example of the boxes we create for our kids. My Dad and Mom were both trying to create a box, instead of asking me what I wanted to do and defining what I should or shouldn't do with my life. They didn't mean to of course, at the time they could have just been trying to get me to at least think about the future. So, this begs the question, what the hell is the teacher doing asking me for the Hopes and Dreams of my children. Ask my child. Ask them what they want to do, and let's support them in their hopes and dreams rather than ask the parents. If the kid says I want to design toys, don't laugh at the idea, find out what it takes to design toys. Someone out there is designing toys. Why not that child, if it is their dream?
In the end a writing assignment is a writing assignment. Since I am required to write the letter it will be penned as such(please cue theme song for Breakfast Club): I accept the fact that I have to sacrifice a portion of my last Summer Saturday to write this letter. But I think you're crazy to make me write a letter telling you what I we think my child's hopes and dreams are. My hope and dream is they work towards following their own hopes and dreams and explore the world as fully as they can in that endeavor. That they will disregard anyone who stands in the pursuit of their hopes and dreams,including their friends, family and educators. In the end, you see each of these children as you want to see them—in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But you will find out is that each one of them is a brain...and an athlete...and a basket case...a princess...and a criminal. Does that answer your question?
Sincerely
The Man in the Box.
(I'm counting on it that a teacher never asks me to write another thing)


 (It's Gaaaammmmmmmedayyyyyy! I'm out of here. Go Jacks!)

Pobody's nerfect!

"I'm not perfect!!" If you are visualizing me saying this, then you are probably heading to your calendar to write it down, including date and the time you read it. Another likely outcome is you have read all you need to read and will disregard the rest. I accept that, because, yes I deserve it, but, we've all used that statement to hide behind at one time or another. Sometimes this statement is used to get out of an argument or hide behind when things didn't quite go our way. I'm not perfect. Nobody is of course, for the most part(I'll get to that later). Yet we all believe we are perfect. I've seen the people that believe they are perfect, I've believed I am perfect. We all believe we are perfect because as a general rule we believe our way is the right way to live and act as a human being. The only time we don't believe this is when we get caught not being perfect. The reason is we all think we know what perfect means. We can label our lives as perfect, relationships, golf game, and dogs. All perfecto! The stretching and reaching for perfection has plagued mankind for his entire existence. It's a need for everyone of us to display an outward appearance of perfection. We've got our shit together. Some might be reading this and thinking that I am being a sanctimonious ass. True, I am, because I am just as guilty as the rest of humanity. Just look at facebook. It's littered with the endless parade of "look at me", "look at what I chose for dinner", "look at all of the perfect things I have displayed for you to make up a story in your head on how I am living my life. I'm a perfect spouse. I'm a perfect parent. My kids are perfect. My parents are perfect. My Fantasy Football team is perfect(you drafted Romo? Come on. I don't need to be perfect to know that was stupid.)We all groan a little when we see a picture of this or that, and I'm sure I've posted stories of this or that, that have caused eye rolls. I accept that, but it's all superficial surface feelings that I don't need to be Professor X(I am required to have one geek reference per blog) to pick up on.
 Now, people might say, "But, I don't think I'm perfect." Honest answer? B.S. If at any time you have believed that your answers on an abstract subject are unequivocal, you have believed you are perfect by the default your opinion is the correct one.  I'm not saying ditch every thing you believe to be a truth. Innately, we will all cling to the core of our belief structure, just be accepting that their are people who have a different belief system(Yes, I know, sometimes I go for the throat on this myself). There are moments of honesty and truthfulness where people let themselves be vulnerable, that are straight out beautiful to read or know. I do love those moments and I do celebrate them. I would like more of this connection between people, more of the honesty. "Dan your an ass! And this is why....." That's perfect, of course then you think you are perfect! "Traffic was so bad on the way home from work today, I shit my pants. LOL!" includes a pic. When's the last time you saw that on a Twitter feed? That would be honesty on a whole new level and letting people in to say, I'm not all that perfect. It's difficult to let down that guard of your perfect public persona. The one that let's others know everything about how you look and nothing about how you feel. I hear the voices again saying "But Dan you comment on a lot of stuff and try to impose your thought processes on me!" True. I'm not perfect, also it's good to bear in mind, I quite literally hold back 95% of the things I want to say, it used to be 25%. I'm working on it, I know I used to say pretty much whatever I wanted with little thought of caring what people thought of me. That's not true though. The people who say they don't care what other people think, usually care the most. Otherwise, why research 15 stories, share 10 other posts, and 45 memes all supporting a personal position? Because they don't care right? We've built ourselves up so much in our lives, our passions and our own personal stories, we have difficulties accepting other viewpoints that aren't in harmony with our own. Part of this is our inability to accept our own imperfections in an effort to remain in our concept of perceived perfection. Great right? Only the price we pay is this prevents us from moving forward with the changes we truly desire in life. In short we can't get to know people, especially the ones we love, if we don't accept where they operate from emotionally. If we can shed all of that and work towards a true life-balance with our surroundings and literally just drink it all in. Life-Balance to me is an achievement of the entire person that moves a person forward emotionally with the rest of society with the least amount of conflicting energy that is possible while maintain a changing sense of self. With a true Life-Balance there is enough positive energy in life that generating any conflict should become non-existent. In short, get along, find out what stuff is about, and in general be open. Following this can create a path of multiple individual successes, when joined together can create a direction of infinite possibilities. Does this mean I won't call out a clearly biased story or lie that is presented as truth? Of course not, but I will try to respect your belief structure as long as you respect mine. I can discuss everything with a clear head, as long as another person does as well. Does this mean I am perfect? No, of course not, my buttons can be pushed as easily as anybody else's can. The anger that anyone displays when their belief structure is put to the test is perhaps one of the most frightening and puzzling aspects of being a person. It's so tough to say after 10, 20, 30 or whatever amount of years...."I'm wrong. I'm not perfect.I have to change now."
Pretty heavy stuff for a Sunday night Ogre. Sometimes I still wonder if Dog really spells Cat(google it Nerds). On the other hand I don't know if this is brilliant or regurgitated hippy crap. I do know the expectations of perfections is a deep seated issue in our society. Therapists make a pretty good living off of it. The truth is we all have achieved our own level of perfection that we have allowed ourselves to reach, and that's where we all will remain. Unless we break through our individual "perfection"ceilings and come together as a human race we will remain in a state of "perfection is bliss" and It's hard to let that guard down and just say "hey, by the way I shit myself on the way home from work today. LOL!" But. maybe we should all try it just once instead of posting pics of today's egg-salad sandwich, which incidentally, might have caused you to shit your pants on the way home from work.

(Once again...I am not a therapist, I am in no way accredited in any way, shape or form other than I probably think too much.  This advice is strictly for your amusement, if you decide to incorporate it into your own life. Be careful: It may increase thinking, cause questioning of who you are in the universe and cause you to get "lucky" at least 1.5 more times a year)

 Fear. It's a tough emotion. It can grip you and hold you down. Rob you of rational thought, passion, and of course confidence. We all have our little fears. Some are little, like spiders and clowns. Some are huge, like spiders and clowns. Some fears will drive us forward into success and passion. Others will hold us back and keep each of us from fulfilling a part of our lives we always wanted to be successful. Sometimes we need help from others to get over our fears.
The other morning while driving to work, the local DJ's were discussing moments of their greatest fears. People were calling in and sharing their stories. Moments where they didn't face their fears and turned back. It's not too hard too imagine how every single person's life could be different if they had faced their fears. I easily thought of my own greatest moments of fear. Let me take you back in time to 1991. It was magical time the Simpsons were on T.V., a Clinton and a Bush were running for President, Jurassic Park is King in the theaters and we were just finishing up a war in the Middle East....wait-a-minute.......anywho.....
My initial military training was loaded with fears. I was a 17 year old kid from a small town in South Dakota. I was cliché as it gets. I was handed a ticket and a time I had to be in Atlanta, GA for basic training and advanced training. My family and a few friends saw me off at the airport in Sioux Falls SD. At the time, the furthest I had ever been was Omaha to the south, Minneapolis to the east, Aberdeen to the north and Devil's Tower to the west. I had never ridden in an airplane. The first two I would land like a  normal person. The third one was an experience altogether different.
 The military was a whole different world for me. I knew no one. Mostly, everybody was in the same boat. When in high pressure and tension situations like this, bonding and working together come together quite quickly. The fear of failure was always in the back of my mind. What would it be like to go back, never having completed training? It pushed you to try harder. Firing rifles all night and all day long might seem fun to some people, do it while someone is screaming over top of you alongside a few hundred others who had never had any sort of gun safety courses while growing up. Visions of Full Metal Jacket danced in our heads. The good news is nobody died during my training, there were drop outs, people who couldn't cut it physically or mentally. It happens, they aren't bad people, they just weren't made for it. Fear drove me the whole time. Fear of being singled out, fear of punishment, all of it. It would seem that a guy like me, who had spent his fair share of detention and probation officer conferences, would have somehow gotten in trouble. I didn't. We were identified by individual numbers on our lockers and helmets. Drill Sergeants called you by that number until they learned your real name. they usually learned your real name after you screwed up a lot. The last week of training the Platoon Drill Sergeant asked me my name because he hadn't learned it and asked what platoon I was in. I told him that I was in his platoon with a wide smile. Fear. I had laid low and stayed off the radar. It was my only goal the whole time I was in training to make it out of there without being brutalized mentally or become the whipping boy for the Drill Sergeants. Fear can be used to push you forward, it also can lock you up.
After my initial training I went on to Jump School. 3 weeks of training to teach soldiers how to properly exit a military airplane alongside a couple hundred other soldiers at the same time. I'm not sure who pitched this idea to the military during WWII. I assume it was Don Draper who had sold them this idea as a good one. If you had a fear of heights, you learned pretty quick. Thankfully by this time I had turned 18 during Basic and I was still young and stupid enough to buy in to this idea. Fear was still there everyday as we learned to fall and roll to minimize the damage to our knees(and heads). Every exercise was designed to build confidence. Finally the last days of training we loaded onto C-130 planes and headed up. There were about 50 soldiers in my plane. Fear. A plane full of people who had never jumped out of airplanes that were flying in a roller coaster like fashion, because the Air Force pilots think they are funny. The third plane I had ever rode in, I didn't plan on landing in. Failure to jump, as we were told could lead you to be tried by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. At least that's what they told the wide-eyed idiots that were about to fill the air over a drop zone near Ft Benning GA. This is where trust comes in. Trust your training. Trust that the Jumpmaster lets your Stick(that's the line of soldiers on one side of the plane that run out the door when told to like camouflaged lemmings)jump out over the Drop zone rather than in the trees. Trust the guy in front of you not to get hung up. Trust yourself. When the time came for us to go out the door that was now open. The wind and the sound of the planes engines roared, even through the earplugs we all had in. I followed all of the instructions, repeated them loudly in unison with the entire Stick so every soldier could hear what was going on. I could see nothing but the parachute on the back of the soldier in front of me. I stood there with my tether line in hand. We had hooked all of our tether lines to the cable running lengthwise of the airplane. The tether line would stay connected to the line and would pull the parachute out as gravity took you down. 3 bad things could happen as you fell out of the plane: You could fail to hand the line over correctly to the Jumpmaster and your arm could become entangled in the line and it would rip your bicep down to your forearm making you look like Popeye(Google him if you are under 30 years old). Hope your parachute opens after that because, I'm pretty sure you instantly go into shock as you fall. Or the line could get caught up and you could be dragged behind the plane. At this point the Jumpmaster will try to dislodge you and hopefully the chute pulls out. Failing that, they will cut you loose and you are on your own to pull your emergency chute, which has it's own inherent set of dangers. The last really bad thing that could happen is your chute fails completely and you plummet with only a low 1500 feet between you and the ground to deploy your emergency parachute. Fear at this moment in my life may have been running quite high. The green light came on and we were issued the command of "Green Light Go!". The line of soldiers shuffled forward each handing their lines carefully and quickly to the jumpmaster and then exiting the plane in short swift steps and placing their hands on the exterior of the door then jumping out. I kept my eyes forward looked the instructor in the eye and handed him the tether. Took the steps like I was trained, turned my body, placed my hands outside the edge of the door and looked out. Fear. I froze there in a haze of adrenaline. I had locked up. All the preparation all of the talking myself through it. And then I felt it. The swift kick of freedom, or at least of my Jumpmaster's boot. That son of a bitch had just kicked me! Out I fell. I'm pretty sure a choice swear word escaped my lips as I felt the jolt around my shoulders as my parachute deployed. I opened my eyes. There we all hung in the air drifting slowly to the ground, as safely as a spores blown free from a dandelion. It was amazing! Adrenaline like I had never felt in my life. When we all got our parachutes wrapped up and hauled back, our Jumpmaster walked up with his own chute. He eventually walked up to me and told me he wouldn't let me fail. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about.
The lesson to be taken is that we can focus through all of our fears and come out the other side. Sometimes when it grips us so badly we need help from other people that care about us to make it through. Last, sometimes when we see that fear has gripped people we care about so much it freezes them, a well intentioned kick in the ass can help them move forward when they least expect it. Except for spiders and clowns, it's best just to shoot them and explain your irrational fear of spiders and clowns. Most people understand that.

In all my glory prior to one of my last jumps......

(Unfortunately Spiders and Clowns were not harmed in the making of this Blog. Ranked in order of which famous clown or famous spider you should kill first if attacked: IT(Because IT is an alien space clown spider), Shelob, The Clown from Poltergeist, The arachnophobia spider, and Bozo).

Happy Father's Day to all friends, family and aquaintances! Happy Father's Day to people I don't even know, that may have stumbled across this blog on accident. In the past it seems I am always working on this day, rather then relaxing. Years in the restaurant business taught me one thing: We're going to be busy so put your own plans on hold. Not this year. A career change has suddenly given me these weekends off. So, this year I spent most of my day reflecting on many wasted Father's Days, and how it came to be that I could even consider my parenting skills worthy of such a day.
Through time I have learned a lot of methods of being a parent while watching different people with their own kids. While growing up, I learned parenting from some of my friends' Dads. Most every Dad I know, I have stolen some of their techniques and ways of handling things. When your own dad had maybe 5 or 6 rules for you, it always stuck out more when other parents would put additional rules on your friends. Come home at midnight? What's that all about?
Even my own Dad with some of his worst moments of parenting, I at least gathered some sort of "What to do..." or "What not to do..." for every situation. His anti-drug talk always stuck with me the most. "If I ever catch you doing drugs I'll break both your arms". Be very clear here, my father had no capability to break any arms, he was 5'3" and 140 lbs after eating and still wearing boots. To be fair with all the posturing and veiled threats my Dad had made over the years. I don't think he ever even cuffed me in the back of the head, when I did something that truly deserved it. These messages however stuck with me. Dad evidently felt strongly enough about drugs he would wish bodily harm upon his kids rather than see them fall into that abyss. Not, a bad thought actually if you see the destructive nature of so many narcotics. It's not an approach I take, but I know it's important to let your kids know there might be consequences. This would be one of his rules for me. The rest of the rules Dad deemed important entailed don't break any laws, and don't get anyone pregnant. That's pretty much all he asked for and I pretty much tried not to break most laws(there have been instances), and nobody got pregnant before they were supposed to(there were no instances). So, in a way his style of parenting was a success with me.
I have watched all of my friends and brothers raise their kids and have marveled at the job they do. I look at their kids and I hear their dad's in their voices and see the mannerisms they have emulated. I try to integrate what I think works, and I ask questions.
Mostly, I learned about being a Dad from two brothers who had done their own fair share of helping raise me when no one else was bothering with the idea of it. I learned a lot of what not to do from their advice when I was 8, after all they were both only 11 and 14 at that time. They had some pretty bad advice. Mostly I have learned a lot from them over the past decades as they have raised their own crews of incredible kids, who are now going on to make families of their own. Those are the two guys I admire the most.
Personally. I try to keep my own opinions on raising kids to myself unless someone asks. I have learned one thing in this life about parents. When you give unasked for advice about raising kids to other parents: They don't like it. So I keep it to myself and observe, every once in a while I ask a question or just talk about how I handle some things with my own kids. If someone wants to know something I usually answer.
Some might think my parenting skills as....well.....less. So, not a lot of people probably hold me up as a "This is how you should parent guy". I enjoy the free-range parenting more than most. It's how I grew up, I just like to add a few more rules, but probably not as many as I should. I want them to learn on their own too, develop their own way of solving problems and interacting with society. So, far my children have amazed me every step of the way. I hope they get jobs soon, we had our own paper routes by 7. Graham's almost 8, he's falling behind. I guess that's the difference between then and now. Mostly, nobody reads the paper anymore. I also used to light fireworks off when I was 4, I now hand the kids their sparklers. Wheee! Probably a  good thing since I remember looking down the barrel of my lit Roman candle to see what was taking so long when I was 6. Luckily, my Mom moved my hand causing the candle to be aimed in the sky just in time before I would have gotten the nickname of  Cyclops. Good times! So there's some parenting advice right there: Never look down the wrong end of a lit Roman candle. See, we can help each other.
Everyday of parenting is a growth process and I try to be a little better than the day before. I wouldn't be the Dad I am without all the other Fathers out there. Being a Dad takes a lot of doing things on the fly. We are supposed to fix things, bikes, footballs, homework, hearts and minds. It's a tall order. We all do our best, and sometimes we don't lean on each other like we should, it wouldn't be as macho if we asked another dad for advice. Sometimes we come through with an 'S' on our chest, other times we just fall short. We were supposed to know all this stuff by the time we had kids right? Yeah, right.

So, I'll end it like I started it. Happy Father's Day to all the family, friends, and even the guy in Walmart losing it a little bit in the toy section. Thanks for all the coaching you didn't know you were giving me over the years! I sorely needed it.

Find your passion. Three words that somehow evoke fear, panic, doubt, even denial. The passions have always been there in my head. Everything I've wanted to do, every little thing I've wanted to achieve. But the programs of your hardwiring in your brain can kick in pretty fast "Can't make any money at that?" "What will people think of that?" "What if it fails right away?" or worse "WHAT IF IT SUCCEEDS RIGHT AWAY?" These are just a few roadblocks running through at any given moment. I'm not looking for just success. I think just about anybody can do that. I am looking for individual success in something I am passionate about, not what you or anyone else is passionate about.
 The old saying goes, find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life. I've worked a lot of days, then, I think everyone has. There are those and you see them and read about them, that truly have no idea what year it is. They are having so much fun fulfilling their lives in a manner that they have a passion about. Just, think if the whole world was doing something they were truly passionate about. Wouldn't the world be something truly great? I hate to go to far into alternate realities, but how much less hate in the world there would be had Hitler truly pursued a career as an artist and kept working at it? Would there even be an atomic bomb? Could the greatest scientists ever assembled have come up with something far more useful to the benefit of mankind than the ability to dispose of it? The butterfly effect is crazy in that one specific scenario. Now, I'll get back on task.
Pursuit of a passion is a pursuit of happiness. The journey is the goal. Every single one of us goes through it. The hardest part of every journey towards any goal or dream is the people that surround you. Some are good, some are bad. For sure I have rested squarely on the "bad" at more times than not, for some people. More than likely if there was a story about my influence it would be more like the grasshopper than the ant (no literary or cartoon reference left unturned). It's hard to keep everything upbeat and moving forward, it's hard to turn that around. Eventually, you can look around and you have attracted what you are going to attract for like-minded people. Some you keep, and some you don't. When you do turn it around(a little)you find the people that were like you, become fingernails on the chalkboard. Just listening to them agitates you and drives you back to where you don't want to be anymore.
There is a story I have heard on several occasions, it only made true sense to me a few months ago when told from a perspective I was ready to accept. Most people know it as the crab mentality. If there is a single crab in a bucket, it will surely escape. If there are several crabs in the bucket, every time one crab tries to escape the other crabs in the bucket pull it down in the bucket with them. If they are left to their own devices all of the crabs would die(well except maybe the last one)as they prevent each other from achieving a goal in leaving the bucket.
In my head I was always the crab trying to escape and reach the goal. As it turned out, I was the crab trying to make sure no one else was getting ahead, because life in the bucket was supposed to be hard. That's what I had told myself, and that is what everyone had told me. Luckily someone talked me into trying to turn that around. She pulled me out of the bucket with her. I am very thankful for that(love you honey!). Seeing the world with a different perspective is a lot more fun than it used to be.
Yes, the crabs in the bucket are still there and some of them will always be there. I am doing my best to pull them up and out. I'm not perfect. I slip, I question, I peek back in the buckets and see what is going on. I get angry with the crabs in the bucket. I get angry with the crabs outside of the bucket. All of the above. No one said it was going to be easy. It takes leaps of faith in people, to know when they are done with just "making it through the day." I try to help those crabs when I can, in turn I hope it helps me. If none of that makes sense, then just think that nobody likes crabs, of any sort.
 Every day begins with the potential to be as great as the effort I put into it. If I pull a few people up and out with me in that effort, not such a bad thing.

(No crabs were hurt in the writing of this blog. As far as I know they will all be released eventually and free to live out their lives as they deem fit. If you weren't thinking of crustacean crabs while reading this blog please get your heads out of the gutter. I am in no way, shape, or form a licensed therapist or even a reasonable person at most times. Taking any advice from me can be enlightening yet somewhat disturbing to some who viewed me as the guy in the back of the class just trying to make it through.......)

The two stood at the edge staring down. In the 10 foot diameter circle of lacquered wood sat the object of their attention a pond of infinity. It swirled in the cosmic dust of purple, gold, silver, and blue in all different hues surrounded by a shroud of black, speckled with pinpoints of brightest whites. It was a tapestry of the universe built into a basement floor. How difficult is it to explain what would be considered a horizontal gateway into space that looked like an outer space rabbit hole. Well.......
"Holy fuck." said the visitor.
"That's an understatement." replied the other.
A moment ago the two had pushed the large bookcase out of the way revealing the hole and the flight of stairs leading down. The owner of the home flipped a makeshift light he had set up. Not too, bright, he had done that on purpose. When they got down to the bottom, he clapped. The lights, flipped off.
The visitor raised an eyebrow, he was about to make a joke, then it caught in his throat and the swearing came out instead.
He had tried to prepare his visiting guest with anecdotes and innuendo. How did one prepare another when showing him the cosmos locked in his basement? Cosmos for Dummies was sold out. He had tried to find some such book at Barnes and Noble. Closest he came to it was something called Dr. Strange graphic novels, books by a few theorists of incredible intelligence with convoluted ways of explaining the fabric of the continuum, and horror stories by Lovecraft. He tried to read them all. He actually enjoyed the Lovecraft. The homeowner hoped a many tendrilled things was not going to reach through the infinite and tear reality asunder. So far the whole thing had just sat there mesmerizing, like a lava lamp. It was intense, yet relaxing. He could stare at it all night, perched in the great black leather furniture he had found around it. Neither Science nor Science fiction was ever his thing...until of course, it now was.
It all started when he had purchased the property a year ago. It had been a fairly easy purchase of a rather ancient property, locally speaking. The previous owner, a college professor from the area, had simply disappeared. No family, no heirs. An investigation by local authorities turned up nothing.The house came up on auction. It needed some fixing, which of course, the new owner was somewhat good at. He had purchased it for way below it's value.
It was a great house. Three stories and a finished basement. It was Victorian or Gothic, or a combination of both, the owner always told people. Sometimes he'd just scratch his head, shrugging his shoulders and answer "Dunno, it's a house." Either way the square footage to dollar ratio made it a no brainer for him. It was only crazy in the sense that he really didn't need a house. He was past owning a house for living out his days. He had explained to the visitor upon it's purchase that it was a hobby to occupy his time and purely an investment to flip. Just to take his mind off of things. The visitor had been over a few times, dropping by with his daughter, who loved running through and getting lost.
"How have you kept this a secret?" questioned the visitor.
"I dunno," shrugged the owner,"I just have."
"There are a million questions here. What have you done so far to investigate this thing?" he tipped a beer up and swallowed the bitter fluid from the bottle. It was at that warm stage, where you knew it was kind of gross but he drank it anyway. He waited for an answer.
"Nothing. What could I do? I have no idea what I have here."
"Well....was it here right away when you purchased it? How was it missed pre-auction."
The owner, tipped his own beer, then scratched beneath the foam and mesh hat that spoke about a preference for fishing over everything else. Then he unfolded his tale of unlocking the secrets of the house he had built. Measurement-wise the home never meshed. The exterior versus the usable rooms and where plumbing and electricity should have matched up, never quite did.  It was a head scratcher and most people would have let it lie, just chalking it up to the overall size and twists and turns within the home. He would not. He had desperate need to know how things ticked, how things were put together. Take things apart and put them back together. Years of working at the local plant in the maintenance department had made him that way. Eventually, from city hall floor plans and careful measuring he took a 10 pound sledgehammer to the wall behind the built in shelving in the 2nd living room. It took him about a morning but it revealed the hollow and the stairway down to the center basement that had escaped so much notice in all the years the house had existed. So, with the largest flashlight he had he began a trek down a set of stairs that had been built to head into the dark heart of his home. Like Batman or Van Helsing maybe? He didn't know it was going to be more like Scooby Doo and Shaggy. Eventually.
What was revealed the first night by a flashlight was a very nice space framed with dark hardwood trim and matching flooring. Great pieces of leather furniture stood sprawled around the center. The walls lacked decoration, but clearly were built for great portraits with the eyes cut out behind them for watchers in secret passages to spy upon poor souls that entered the space. In the center of the room with high ceilings was a large circular frame surrounding what the new owner had thought was some sort of LED display. Maybe the original owner had worked for the local display sign manufacturer. If so he had done a bang up job, it was all so real. The floor mounted screen had amazing depth. The display played a single picture of what space looked like in outer space. The true outerspace without the glare of the city streetlights and neon. The kind of pictures you see while laying on the hood of a car out in the dark of a midnight gravel road. He approached the screen carefully, but in the darkness he missed a small step up and he tripped forward, falling on the hardwood. Pain shot up his knees and hands as he caught himself. When he opened his eyes in a grimace, he saw the flashlight sitting on top of the screen, then it simply fell through the screen with a small popping sound. He stared in wonder and fear as the flashlight slowly turned in the space the light revolving and then winked out. He knew it wasn't a screen and thanked nobody in particular for falling forward at the right time. He had felt humming vibrations through his palms at that time. He also smelled the hot electricity in the air. The portal was powered somehow.
 He had spent many nights just staring at the portal to everywhere. Eventually he had to show someone.This brings him back to now. They had moved closer to the portal, the owner kept a respectable distance and urged the visitor to do the same.
"Wow." Breathed the visitor. he had polished his beer off, leaving nothing but the empty amber glass clutched in his left hand. He paused and looked at it. He was more than a little tipsy at the moment. They had split a twelvie before coming down the steps. His life and everybody else's lives in the whole existence of whatever he was looking at played in his mind. The bottle flew from his hands without consequence.
"NO!" Cried the owner. Not sure why he yelled. He had seen the results with the flashlight. Yet, somehow he felt they shouldn't push their luck. Welp, they were in it now!
The bottle landed on the cosmos' contact lense. The owner hoped the giant eye wouldn't blink. The bottle sat there, on it's side. Serenely afloat on what would be considered the Holy Grail of Stephen Hawking. A small ship bottle, without the ship, waiting to see the infinite. Then it did. It sunk slowly as if pushing through a thick gelatin. Then POP! It was on the other side. It fell. They both stared in amazement as it floated away from them. It kept falling away towards the colors of the cosmos. It was the most beautiful moment of galactic littering ever seen. Then the owner of the house emptied his beer bottle and threw it at the surface of the portal as well. It repeated the same process. They stared.
The rest of the evening they repeated the process with all sorts of objects: full bottles, full soda cans, sticks, light bulbs, milk jugs, batteries, turned at flashlights that twirled with the lights of the gods. They laughed with each success or each failure of creating beer and Mountain Dew asteroids. Could there really be a failure? It wasn't their experiment. They had happened upon it, to them it was fully functional entertainment. Eventually the visitor had to leave., it was late. He promised to not speak a word of what they had done until they decided what to do with it. He stumbled out into the night. He prayed a sigh of relief when he got home safe. His wife rolled over an arm flung across him as he nodded off, the moon and the stars laughing at their own show as they peered through the half turned blinds of the slumbering homes across the night.

A month passed by and just about every night the two conspired around the cosmic hole in the ground. It was an endless source of fascination and entertainment. The two bonded over the whole thing and came out the other side closer than they had ever been. It was....fun! Lots of fun!

Most of the time the owner of the house thought of the visitor and the great times they had while hovering around the hole. This was not one of those times. he sat in the doctors office. He knew what was going to happen. He knew the man in the white jacket was not going to walk through those doors with amazing news. There were consequences to a way a man lived his life. He knew that. He knew it all along. He began to sob quietly to himself. He closed his eyes as tears, long held back, now flowed. The door opened and the doctor stepped through the man ignored him and continued to cry. Nothing would happen to change the results he already knew. Nothing could happen.

One day the owner of the cosmic portal showed up at the door of his visitor from so many nights. He walked in the door. It was pre-planned a birthday for the daughter of the visitor. The mother of the birthday girl was so excited and hugged her husband's guest.  The two exchanged pleasantries, as they always had in the past. Eventually the other kids showed up and the celebration began. They ran around all over, there was shouting, screaming, cake and ice cream. It was standard party fare. The birthday girl hugged everyone when the goodbyes came, especially the friend of her father. She knew he was special, even at 2.
Eventually the party dropped off. The two men met in front of the house. The owner stood short in the front of the small ranch home of his usual guest, the snaps of his plaid patterned shirt twitched as he dug in his breast pocket for his cigarettes. He pulled one out and balanced it in his lips. He lit it quickly from years of practice, his hand still shook though.
"I have a plan." He puffed looking down at the hard cement walk.
"A plan?" answered the other man.
"Yep. I have a plan. I found it this morning." again a volume of smoke escaped his lips as he exhaled. "I'll get a hold of you later this week. Should arrive by then."
"Ok." the other man acquiesced. He was tired from managing the events of the Birthday party. What was the point of discussing it any ways? They parted. The owner of the universe walking away with out a care in the world puffing on the cigarette. The visitor smiled as he watched the old man strut down the sidewalk, he would show up and see what the plan entailed.

Later that week the visitor received a call and showed up at the residence of the owner of the cosmos. The visitor pulled up to the 3 story house, he had received a call to drop by and let himself in. The house was teal. The trim was a burgundy, and there was white in other places. It was truly an idyllic home. He would have liked to grow there he thought, seemed like a kid could have gotten himself into a lot of trouble with that much space to explore and make stories up about. Such stupid facts he hadn't really noticed until this moment. The visitor swallowed hard, and with trepidation, stepped towards the home. He visualized one lonely man and what appeared to be the entire cosmos in a static wormhole of some sort located in the found basement of this house. It sounded official to the visitor's ears. He wasn't a scientist, so what the hell, let's call it that.
He walked through the house. It had pictures of them both on the wall. Both in younger states. He loved looking at those pictures, always had. It was time caught in the proverbial bottle. They had arms around each other, or had conquered something that seemed unconquerable. Here they stood again on the edge of the unconquerable.
He walked through this room and that and came to the knocked down brick wall in the second living room. Sidestepping, he angled through the sledgehammered entrance and made his way down the makeshift stairs the previous owner had made to his altar to the heavens.
The owner stood there at the bottom. Looking up at him. Only difference was he was looking through a domed face shield of a helmet. He wore an astronaut's suit. A space suit! The whole scene was so surreal, the visitor lost his footing, slipping down several steps and then catching himself.
"This is your plan?" He cried. He didn't know whether to laugh or throw up!
"Yep."
"Ridiculous you can't do this!" The visitor spoke in hard assertive tones.
"Oh..I think it's happening." the owner had the face-shield flipped up. He was smoking. It was that look. A mixture of alcohol and determination. The visitor knew this was not going his way.
"Where the hell did you get this thing?" the visitor stalled for time.
"Ebay."
Ebay! Of course he bought it on Ebay! Who knew the owner of the house even knew how to use the internet. That alone was sci-fi enough for the visitor, and the books he had noticed scattered around the old house as of late.
"Is there an MTV Flag with it?" The joke would have been old for most, the owner of the house would not have gotten it. The owner had never understood his generation, or music for that matter. The visitor kept throwing out questions and statements in hope of talking the homeowner out of his plan.
"You can't leave us now! There is too much left to do for us here!"
The owner smiled and pointed his silver white astronaut glove at the cigarette in his other hand.
"I think the risk has already taken care of me." His grimace spoke volumes about his health. His eyes were old, older than ever.
As usual his explanations for everything had fallen short. The two looked at each other. Finally, the visitor looked away. The owner smiled and turned towards the cosmic oblivion at his feet. He slammed the shield shut, the cigarette inside the helmet with him.
"Dad. I don't think I can do this without you.", whispered the visitor. He had always felt like a visitor in his Dad's home.
The man in the suit smiled, not daring to look back. It would have changed his mind.
"Of course you can. You have been for years." The voice was muffled through the shield of the facemask and the words floated around his back to the man. Yet, the son heard it clear as a bell. It tolled.
With the last of his words the father stepped forward. His body began to sink through the thin veneer of all time and space and with a pop he was on the other side. His son watched him fall away, the silver of the suit reflecting the lights of the cosmos. A peaceful swirling of the universe around a man as he contemplated his final place within. He waved to his son as he somersaulted towards nebulas far and away. The son stared over the cosmic pond, his tears landing on the surface,then popping through to the other side instantly transformed to ice. It was weird that his tears would carry enough weight to sink, but they did. They glittered as snowflakes blowing in the imagined solar winds. He watched until he could no longer tell his father from the picture of the universe. The son turned and trudged up the stairs. Tomorrow he would brick up the wall and sell the house. He walked outside and looked up at the sky, blinking back more tears coupled with a brief smile, he shuffled off into the night, heading home. The moon and the stars enjoying their cosmic show as he walked.

(Happy Birthday Dad! There isn't a day that goes by.......)

An open letter to Northern State University, the City of Aberdeen, the SDWCA and the South Dakota Wrestling Community

There are no selection show Sundays. There are no office pools on Cody Pack's chances at the Championships. Wrestling is difficult arduous sport from the time you pick up a headgear to the day you hang it up. There is little glory. Stands are usually empty with just the cheering of families and a few friends. Lessons are learned with your face in the mat or counting the lights. I often found the center of the mat was the greatest solitude I could find. The quiet muffle of the crowd making it through my headgear to my ears. A zen quality of thinking of your next two or three moves and the simultaneous reaction of the body putting those into action while processing what an opponent is currently doing. The delirious feeling of giving it your all, and sometimes your arm not being raised despite all your effort. It is living in the moment while thinking of the future and forgetting the past.

In recent years, the sport has taken a bashing, sometimes even by me. It has gotten better in aspects that shouldn't be part of the sport but have been integral to it's past and the old school ways of thinking concerning nutrition. It has fought it's way back from extinction from an Olympic Committee that would rather put more obscure sports in action than a rich history of tradition.
In our own microcosm of the world the wrestling community has been setback by the recent decision of Northern State University to halt the program for "study". I don't believe anyone is buying that. However, the quick reaction for consideration of the SDWCA is to cancel the State Youth Tournament in Aberdeen, SD next year. The tournament was a request by the NSU wrestling to have as a fundraiser for it's scholarships. Think about that! A university reached out to a youth program in order to save it's program. Smartly(can't remember if that's a word, but I wrestled.), the SDWCA agreed to do that in order to protect the sport it nurtures in youth across our State. What a great idea! Unfortunately the unfortunate happened, the NSU program was put on the chopping block. At least it got a courtesy excuse, unlike University of Nebraska-Omaha which was just summarily executed alongside it's football program. UNO had a very successful program, so the NSU excuse of 2 bad years doesn't hold much weight with me either.

Now, I have laid the ground work of the problem. I can see why the SDWCA is thinking about the decision to remove the tournament from Aberdeen. On the surface this looks like a reasonable request. However, wrestlers and their communities are tougher than that. We can not simply take our headgears and go home when things get tough. If the University is serious about a "courtesy study" then a committee of concerned wrestling parties should be formed. Frame the beliefs that wrestling deserves to be part of the University still. A solution should be found. If this wrestling team is that important then we should be looking to help still run this tournament in Aberdeen and as a complete community raise funds to help with scholarships to maintain the continuation of the program. Not just NSU, but all the colleges in the state maintain a program. I do not know where all the funds go for all the clubs, but combined we should be able to create some sort of scholarships for our South Dakota Wrestlers to attend university in pursuit of knowledge and to compete. This could help us retain the best of our wrestling talent instead of them leaving the state to represent other colleges. Should the tournament be held in Aberdeen and NSU fails to reinstate the program then funds raised should be disseminated in a fashion that benefits the sport as a whole in the state.

Facebook posts and petitions are nice, but funding is funding. Coaches in every sport and at all levels of education know this to be true. To protect this sport that so many of us grew up. Now we are passing on to our children, because we know it to be one of the purest sports out there. No ball, no pads, we all weigh the same(in theory anyways), just skill, desire, determination and work. We must truly combine the talents we all forged through wrestling and have taken into our adult lives and come up with a better solution than "let's just move the tournament". NSU may be the first shot fired, there are more Universities and more programs at stake. If we retreat in the face of this adversity, then every college knows that we are not just measuring our support with the number of facebook likes and twitter reposts. True support is measured in dollars whether through funding or butts in the seats. A hard truth, brutal but true. Wrestling is very much like life, you reap what you sow. The wrestling community cannot afford to let another program shutdown with barely a fight. Simply moving the tournament is barely a fight and will sow the thought process that this is alright. Supporting the sport needs to happen with calm, reason, and  viable solutions.

(I decided to use this blog for an editorial opinion piece, which is really not it's purpose per se. It is to work on my writing ability, so I kind of hit the objective. Also, I'm not a narcissist so I can't always write about myself. )

Life is full of coincidences. We all have them, some insignificant and some seemingly meaningful. These events are just occurrences to which we add our own stories. Still, what is life without a good story now and then? Pretty boring. We often look to our past to for signs of what we should do in the now. As long as we don't dwell on it and allow ourselves to move forward there is nothing wrong with that.
This last week my little girl turned 9 years old. It's pretty incredible to think in reality it was so long ago. Yet it seemed like yesterday. I realize this is cliché and everyone with kids says the same thing. There is a reason for that. It's true, these years fly by. The birth of any child is so embellished in your mind that it is so easy to pull up that memory because of it's intensity. So, yes, it seems like yesterday.
About 6 months prior to the birth of my daughter my dad passed away, and my grandmother passed away 3 months after him. It was a tough time to say the least. Stories are always thrown out between relatives at times like this where we remember some of the smart or dumb things the deceased did. My Dad was nowhere near immune to these types of stories. Dad had a workshop in my hometown, he was pretty good at fixing things, working on cars, etc.. It was full of part time projects he would work on after his day at the plant or on the weekends. His mechanical intuitiveness was always something I marveled at. His workshop was full of all the tools kids aren't supposed to touch today. Band saws, table saws, welding equipment, cutting tools, you name it. My brothers and I would screw around and try to play tag with welding masks on, inside this shop with all the machinery. Real safe stuff like that. Mostly, we wanted to learn how to use the equipment and maybe get to do something cool. I was 4 or 5 years old. I didn't get to do anything that required metal revolving teeth and electricity.
We also stored things inside the shop. In particular we had a bin of mostly sports equipment and some toys. It was full of bats, rackets,  and various balls. I think we kept it there so we would have some other things to do outside the shop when we were hanging out and getting under foot.
Now, as most people know Dad had a pretty good drinking problem and more than once I'm sure he drank beer(I believe it was the 70's so Olympia or PBR was the brand of choice at the time) while working at his shop. In one very good instance he was painting something yellow. Well, he either overshot his target or aimed on purpose, he was known to do stuff like that in his alcohol driven jerkiness. Long story short, he painted the bin full of our toys. The end result was a bunch of sporting equipment painted half yellow. The other half was facing down or away from the spray and retained their original colors. We held on to many of these items for years, and always produced the story when asked why our tennis racket was half yellow. We thought it was funny after a while (That's called a coping mechanism)
Now we shoot back up to nine years ago and my daughter was being born. It hurt like hell that Dad would never see his granddaughter. Despite all of our differences and arguments, I loved him very much, even in his various states of being towards the end of his life. So, even in that joyous time, there was some sadness leading up to Lilly's birth for me. I won't bore you with the details of her actual birth. A few highlights: it was a back-birth, forceps were used, at one point my wife caught me watching Seinfeld (The English Patient episode), Apollo Ohno won another gold(USA! USA! USA!)and we had one of the best old school nurses to ever walk the halls of Sioux Valley Hospital(Karen you will always be a legend and will be missed! She always remembered Lilly whenever we saw her after that!) It all ended around 3ish in the morning, and we had acquired our beautiful baby girl.

The next morning I walked down to get a coffee from the stand in the cafeteria. I ordered the usual mocha, grabbed a newspaper and handed the lady my ten and waited for my change. She handed me whatever the change was and as I was about to put it in my pocket, I glanced down in my palm. Nestled among the coins was a dime, it was half yellow  and the other side was the normal silver. I don't believe in much as far as a higher entity, but I took this as a good sign of things to come and maybe the old man had seen his grand daughter arrive in this world. Maybe....maybe not. I don't know if there is some sort of oxidization or science to explain why one half of the dime was yellow and the other was normal. I just know this is the only time I had ever seen, or have seen a dime like this. In reality as long as it means something to me, that is all that matters.I've held on to that dime for all these years. I never put it anywhere safe. It never gets spent. It has made it through 3 moves, including this last one as I'll explain in a minute. I let the dime have it's own journey just like the rest of us, and it always shows up so it won't be left behind.

Close to Now: Lilly just turned 9 last Thursday(as I have already mentioned). On Saturday I went back to Chamberlain to move some more of our stuff in a u-haul. As I was cleaning up and getting ready to leave I looked down on the floor of our bedroom and that half yellow dime was sitting there near a corner. I scooped it up and put it in my pocket. The drive from Chamberlain to Sioux Falls is a long one, if you've ever made it you know what I am talking about. It's a road that stretches as far as you allow your mind to let it, an endless landscape of snow, dirt and brown dead prairie. It was a nice time for reflecting on the coincidences of spray painted toys, the loss of my Dad, the birth of my daughter, growing up in South Dakota and the people(and things) I shared that journey with at the time and where I am going. I'd say that's worth a dime.

Writing is not hard. Not writing is hard. The past couple weeks have been doozies. It's been a mixture of moving, wrestling tournaments, getting the house ready for shows, preparing the kids, getting ready to move a business, a bout of good ole gout, changing insurance carriers twice, kids changing schools, starting a new position and just plain life. In all of that the goals have been hard to keep. Running on a gouty toe? Not fun, not even a little bit. I still did it on one occasion as I tackled what I assume is one of the steepest hills I think I have ever tried to run up in my life. I was in the army in North Carolina, so I think there have been comparable, although I was 18 and weighed 165 pounds at the time. Writing has been sporadic as well, a couple days during the weekend that a page didn't get put down as we were out of town and we were focusing on the kids having a nice time before the final move.Still in the back of my head I was composing and working some things out in between swimming pools, Discovery Centers, acute care, and wrestling matches. The Acute Care was for the toe again, everybody else in the family is fine. Nobody drowned or was hurt in a wrestling match. When you have so much going on that takes you away from your other goals it is very easy to fall back and listen to the time wasters in your head. Don't do it. Get back on those goals as soon as you can. Of course this is said by the guy who has been working on this specific blog for a couple weeks and is rewriting it in hopes of salvaging it.

Aging can be tough. It is the fighting of the midlife crises, all the goals, little to gigantic, that slipped through with the erosion of personal time and perceived responsibilities. The whole figuring out if you wasted the first 30-40 years or not(For the record, I don't think I did. i just didn't use them to maximum effect). The big deal is what do you do with the next 40? I often wonder at what point our internal mechanisms lock up the autopilot and we just say "I'm cruising for the exit signs! I can make it from here!" I was just about there in my own head, but there was a tingle in the back of it that said, "I'm not going to let you do this to us!" And there came the lack of satisfaction in the way I was handling life from family to career. Because in my head(I don't say heart, that's just an organ for pumping blood.)I knew I could do more, but at what I want to do. That's what is important.
I'm sure a lot of people don't feel they can change. That they have the weight of the world on their shoulders and there is no way out, but 65 years old and a social security check. My dad lived that way, it was a harsh self-torture of booze and hopelessness. Not recommended.

 There are a lot people who know how lucky they are living their dreams. True story: not all dreams are the same. Don't let anyone talk you out of your own. Every dream if pursued with passion, intent, and purpose can be achieved. It's as simple as that. The people that do that are the people that inspire me. Here's a tidbit, those people didn't "get lucky" they made those things happen for themselves by directing their focus and energy into making those things happen.

I recently posted a meme on my facebook wall. This should be news as I detest memes for the most part, I usually find them vague and too much fluff to hide behind. Sometimes I think people use them as shields and "cyberwalls" as we fakebook through to the next post about what we are having for a noon meal. This meme spoke to me, mostly because it was a said by one of my favorite people in the entertainment industry. The quote goes like this: "No such thing as spare time. No such thing as free time. No such thing as down time. All you got is life time. Go." The man who said this is Henry Rollins. He has been around for decades in music or spoken word. If you've ever followed his music or his poetry or his interviews, that guy believes it. Intensity doesn't even begin to cover his demeanor and go at it attitude. I hadn't thought about him in a while and when I saw that meme. It just blew me away. It's entirely true. If I truly live in the present and try to make sure I am moving forward and building the life I desire. I don't have a second to spare. If I am thinking, better be thinking about improving myself. Every second on the couch not spent with my kids is another second spent manufacturing my own Cat's in the Cradle. Every second you read this blog is another second you don't spend with your wife, your family, your friends, your goals. Tricky, for me, because of course I want you to be reading this blog. Hopefully, you are using it to help yourself, or at the very least discredit what I am doing under your breath from the personal discomfort I am causing you. The goal is to use every moment to fulfill the life you wish to create. There are no wrong answers of course, it's all individualistic. If at the end of the day I really threw 100% of myself at every situation, then I can't be unhappy with the result. I did all I could. However, if I hold back, if I tell myself "I can't" or "I didn't" or "That wouldn't work", then I've self-sabotaged my own goals. Everyone knows when they do this, admitting it is another story. If I do that, why set out to do anything at all. Use your life time wisely. Tricky thing is you spend some of that life time every second.  No refunds.

The hectic panic of trying to strive through life at a 100% is challenging to say the least. You set goals, you manage your kids, your job, your relationships. You still have to find time for your dreams in there somehow. There is interesting viewpoints on living at 100% from all facets of life. Slow down, enjoy life or life's too short, you got to keep on moving! If that is not clear enough: Part of life wants you to sit with a Corona on a beach, part of life wants you to be Bud Light and play ping pong against Arnold Schwarzenegger! The good news is either way gets you a beer in the end. Goal accomplished! Do you see where these mindsets can butt heads pretty quickly in my internal monologues? At the suggestion of one of my friends, I started reading a book to help me learn to try and not cram so much writing into one day with instant expectations that I will publish after a year, as well as it takes time to craft a book/story/manuscript. (Unless you're Stephen King. He has made some sort of deal with something Unholy and wakes up with a manuscript under his pillow every 3 months. That's strictly my opinion with no real proof of Mr. King's unholy deals.). To really slow it down, rather than just stream words onto a page and hope it sticks. The different methods various writers use to arrive at the end of their stories. All are varied as snowflakes. There is no one way to do it. I guess I kind of knew that. Internally I am taking it that the difference between a decent writer, a good writer, and a phenomenal writer is the extra time taken on working on their books. In short the book is telling me to find my own time to write and how to write. The most interesting part of the book is to do an experiment where I take an average day and put all the things into various time slots. Then see how that scheduled day fills up. This exercise would work for anybody really. If done mentally, that schedule fills up pretty fast for any of us. Work, kids, kids' activities, friends, family-time, Spouse-time(or significant other for you non-committal types), hobbies, exercise and of course personal dreams. That's a lot. It's easy to see why so many dreams or even hobbies fall to the wayside. I also see why parents try to get their kids to enjoy the same hobbies and activities. Which there is nothing wrong with that in the least. Schedule-wise if we all enjoy the same activities, it frees up a lot of other time and I think we bond better as people.

Living in the 100% doesn't mean you have to take every thing that is thrown at you and say "yes". It means accepting the things you want to do and putting all of your effort into them. If you choose to do it, do it. It's O.K. not to want to do everything. It's giving your all to the things you have CHOSEN to do. If you are going to be in a relationship with someone, be in that relationship. Schedule time for that relationship and be present in it. My wife and I figured out the other day(well, we probably always noticed it) that she'll sit in her chair and I on the couch when we have our At-Home-Date-Nights and watch our DVR'ed shows(The Blacklist, Modern Family and Parenthood should always be part of your 100%). Mostly this puts a nice side table between us that we each use for snacks and beverages. Is that 100%? How dumb is that? The whole time past the age of 12 I wished there would be a hot girl sitting next to me. Now, I have one right in the house, and we sit in two different spots because we need a place to put the cheese and crackers. Silly. The new rule is we sit next to each other, and of course the dog will not leave us alone. So, she sits with us as well, like our own chaperone, obviously she is just trying to get her paws on the snacks. There isn't anything wrong with some new rules to break up habits we fall into as people. Sometimes spontaneity needs a kick in the pants with some ground rules.

How did this come to be an issue for me? Last night we(once again "We" means my wife and I) started brainstorming all the things we wanted to do once our family relocation was complete. Eat better, drop a bunch of the processed foods, go on family walks, date nights out, etc, etc. That list can build pretty quickly. I understand we didn't need to do all those things and it was just brainstorming. In my head though, it was conflicting with the book I was reading about limiting your commitments in order to make time for writing. Not finding time, MAKING time. A big difference when you think about it. I would say I started to shut down about it after a bit. I was seeing my dream being pushed to the wayside. My internal daily planner was filling up rather quickly and I found I didn't want to suggest anything because my goal is to write, but my family, my wife all take the 100% as well, because without them what is the point anyways? This doesn't mean I don't want any part of those ideas. It just was a little overwhelming to think of all that being implemented, when I have suppressed a personal dream of my own for so long.

Instead of shutting down, I should have kept going and then offered the solution I had been reading about. We should have mocked up the previously mentioned personal schedule with all the items we absolutely want/need to do. Then insert the new ideas/tasks/dreams in to the same schedule, in short find a place and time for them. I'm not usually a draw-out-a-plan-guy-for-my-personal-life, but I'm getting there(I don't think I shocked anybody with that bit of information). However, I like the idea of actually penciling in what a day looks like. It's not set in stone, but it can show us what we do or do not have time to accomplish. Maybe, list things as being part of the 100%, generally things you can not do with out: family, work, a goal. The insert the ideas we may not be sure about, but it's always something we have wanted to try. Stressing to make sure we have the tasks in our schedule that we normally do no matter what. For instance personally, I always like to have some screw around time, especially as a person who likes stories. So, yes T.V., music, and reading are important to me, as they do lend inspiration. It's also always nice to sit and think for a half hour about nothing and everything(I believe people call this meditation, but I'm not that deep). I need to put those in a timeframe and when I would normally do them. After all that is done look for actual win-win situations that actually may free up time: Go for a walk with family, maybe that could count as exercise as well for the day. Get to exercise and get to spend time with family. Win-win.  T.V. time can be part of Stay-at-Home Date-Night. It's all good. After it's all done and penciled in look at it together. Can we scale it back? Or do we see we have plenty of time on other days to accomplish/do things left on our brainstorming list?

I find that everything we really want to do can fit into a schedule with my family. As long as we talk it out and communicate and work towards our win-win solutions.  Everybody loves puzzles and making things fit.We are on the same team, working on the same schedule balancing puzzle. It's not such a bad idea to put that 100% effort into the puzzle that constitutes our daily life.

(Once again. I am not a life coach, what may work for my family may not work for some. If you feel you need a life coach please get one. I am for hire. Currently my advice is free, mostly because I haven't found anyone willing to pay me for it yet. I would also like to thank everybody that supported this blog by reading and sharing it. Between this site and the first one around 2000 people have visited it, no confirmation for sure if they actually read it. Anyways I feel that is a win-win and makes me feel pretty good about my efforts as well as gives me lots of practice writing non-fiction. I also apologize if Mr. King or Mr. Schwarzenegger are offended in any way. I would love to play ping pong with the Governator. I also would love to have as many published works and movies as Mr. King, except for Graveyard Shift. I still want my money $4 back from that awful movie. Thank you!)

Parenting 100% (You knew it had to happen)

Parenting at 100%. That is a sentence that scares the heck out of me. It is introspective, because I am constantly thinking to myself: Am I doing this as well as I can? It is external, because I am often thinking: Do people think I am parenting as well as I can? I shouldn't be worried about the external. People will never tell you that you are a bad parent, just their friends. My story is it is to hide some insecurities about their own parenting or elevate themselves. We all want to be good parents. Parenting is not a contest, though I think for many people it has become one. I see the memes on facebook all the time. If you love your kids share this meme. Problem solved. Modern society has made it so easy for us all to look like good parents. In fact(which this isn't a fact at all) I believe that someday if you don't share those memes it will be fed to some sort of Orwellian computer ran by Child Protective Services. 100% parenting is not helicopter parenting, it is about being in the present, not consistently inserting yourself into the present in order for my child to succeed at another's expense (pretty difficult to do in sports, but that is another blog for another time).

 Parenting in the present is tough, so much fights for our time and resources. When you just want to relax after work and not....do....anything. It's your time right? Oh....so.....wrong. I chose to have these children. I didn't have to. We could have skipped our way through life with not a care in the world. I chose it. My wife chose it. In fact if you are reading this rather than reading your child a book or going outside with them. I would prefer you stop reading this and go do that. You can always come back to this when you are pretending that you are working tomorrow. (That's a joke. Your boss will definitely let you go if you think reading this specific blog is more important than taking the hourly reading at the Nuclear Power Plant or watching the radar at the airport.)
I put out a lot of effort with my children, especially my 7 year old son. The effort for him is mostly all physical, and I barely can keep up with him. He volunteers me to be "All times quarterback" with him and all the neighbor kids. If you have ever worked a 10 or 12 hour day on your feet and come home to a kid happy to see you, but then wants you to do some running and throwing. It can be a monumental effort. It also should be noted, he is the only person to wish I would be his quarterback. So,I should be flattered and want to do this every time he asks. He also thinks Manning is a terrible QB and pulls up his college records as some sort of proof. I don't argue anymore, I just nod my head. He is constantly checking the interwebbery for any sort of proof to back up his teams and players as the best. I have no idea where he gets that from. OK. I have a small idea. (The key here is my son somehow sees me as better QB than Peyton Manning, and that's what is important. I have gone through painful effort to bring that to light in this blog.) If you haven't noticed he is ALL boy.

My 9 year daughter is a little more difficult. She has the creative side of my wife and I, and maybe a wee bit of stubbornness. She likes dancing, art, writing and reading. She also likes the sensory overload of television, ipads, computers and whatever else blinks. It has become something of a struggle to get her to go do something constructive. She has a great and quirky mind that is wonderful to watch when she is being creative or coming up with some of her entrepreneurial ideas. Sometimes she is very focused on her tasks and maybe directs a little too much.  She is assertive, something I think she'll need in life, as I see too many people that are not. She just need to learn a little of the cooperation and coaxing different situations into win-win. She's 9(going on 36), so that is something she will develop over time. She reads herself to sleep at night and it isn't very often we don't wake her up in the morning surrounded by dozens of book on her bed. If you haven't noticed she is ALL girl.

In order to achieve some 100% parenting with these two. We have started doing little weekly goals with them, as well as a family night where we establish the goals and play some games. Last week our family goal was just to be a little nicer to each other. This went well, and I think the kids had minimum fighting and arguing. If either of them were mean to the other they would have to buy the victim a small toy, trinket, candy or gum. I think he only owes her 3 little items.

Personal goals went well for the boy. He said he would be nice to the dog. This doesn't seem like it would be hard for most kids, but a lot of kids have littler or older brothers to practice double leg takedowns and half nelsons on. Trying to perform an inside cradle on a black lab will more than likely get you bit. He did a great job, and the dog paid more attention to him than ever, even laying with her head on him. His goal for the week is to do 12 pushups, 12 sit ups, 50 jumping jacks(down from the 100 he originally threw out there)and run a mile every day, except a couple where he would not have the time to do it. Although he offered to just run in place for 20 minutes. I agreed to do those with him.(That's why I convinced him to do 50 jumping jacks. I'm still a little too floppy to do 100 and retain my self esteem).

My daughter's goal went about nowhere last week. She wanted to make something new on the rubber band loom that she had never done before. She watched youtube videos, maybe even started a little. I admit the rubberband loom perplexes me as much as Minecraft. In the end she gave up even when I prodded her to keep trying. So, I'm not sure if she is on board with the whole goal setting yet. Though she agreed to go two nights this week without electronics of any kind. I agreed to do that with her as well. I will maintain my phone, other than that we'll be cut off from the world for a couple nights this week. I'm also hoping she will do the extra exercise with her brother and I.

In all of these goals we are trying to keep open communication with the two of them. Really get answers about their days and if anything is bothering them. The goals should take effort, but should be achievable for them. This hopefully will make them better goal setters and achievers as they progress, or they could end up hating goals. It's a fine line.

We(when I say we, I am talking about my wife and I, I am not implying the readers of this article are part of we. If you are inserting yourself as part of said "We", well then I guess my work is done here. I'm also using the term "article" pretty loosely here.) know we can't be perfect parents, but I also know we can always do more. There are plenty of times in the past I'm sure I should have went outside with the kids, versus finishing watching the last 10 minutes of a Simpsons episode I already had seen before. Now, I try to live in the present with them, which is in my goals. If I am not doing anything that is part of my other goals, I respond quickly either to help them or to give them a reason they may have to wait until one of us can help them. Parenting 100% is by no means meant for perfection, it is giving it everything I have, and knowing we did do the very best we could, rather than sharing a meme as a bleak offering to the facebook gods and soothe my own insecurities. Of course we love our kids, but what are we doing about it? Have a nice week!

(Small disclaimer: I am not a certified child development specialist, or a specialist in anything really. Most times I am glad we get up and get these kids to school on time with very little frustration. These are my own observations, tips, tricks, and goals. If you want to use them and they don't work, remember I don't have any money so don't come blaming me. (You also may notice I love parentheses, I am well aware.) If you think your child needs real help and professional therapy, please do so.)

I think I need to back pedal a little bit. Not in a bad way. I need to explain what this whole 100% thing is about. It's not about running off and having these amazing adventures that have me hang gliding off of cliffs in the Caribbean. People who do that are great, but my question is did you love your family with all your heart and action? Did you succeed in loving yourself and who you are? If not why were you doing something so stupid without accomplishing something far greater. If so great, then jump off the cliff! It's about a life of actually giving a 100% into everything I want to do, especially if those things are what I choose to do. It's about loving my wife and family 100% and not going through the motions some mornings or night or whenever. It's about being in the present with those people when I am with them. It's about not waiting until the commercials to do something for a loved one. It's about attempting to actualize my own dreams and launch a career that I want, not the one that everyone else thinks I should have. It's about the little things that can be taken care of just by getting up and doing them rather than just talking about them or complaining to the person that will listen. 100% means you are giving it all you can, it does not mean that you will be instantly successful. Not everybody's 100% is the same, I would say Warren Buffet's 100% is a  little higher in the field of economics and investment than mine. Play the game the best you can and if you look and see that you did everything you could and it didn't work out, then I don't think you can hang your head on that. It is all 100% application to get a desired result whether it's love, kids, work, or self. The point is you choose to do something you choose to do it 100%, or don't do it and explain why, or even remove yourself from that situation when neither your heart nor your head are in it. The best results are always when you have given 100% and achieved a win-win!

Dreams and thoughts happen in your head, they do not conjure themselves into the real world without a call to action by yourself. If there is no call to action then your dreams will remain in your head. Ask anyone I know what my dream used to be, it would be that I wanted a restaurant. Any day of the week I wanted a restaurant. I get to call the shots, I'd get to design it top to bottom, blah blah blah blah. Now ask me how much thought I put into action. I've spend most of my life living the boss' dream. I have no money. I didn't know anyone with money. I didn't want investors because then it wouldn't be my restaurant. All the stories I ran in order to prevent myself from buying into a conjured goal I never wanted. I chose that line of thinking. I chose not to try and fulfill what I perceived as a dream at the time. Two things good came out of the fact I don't own restaurant. The first is I don't own a restaurant and the 2nd is I don't own a restaurant. My mind turned that into a form of ambition and would be a measure of my success. Instead of really looking at it and saying "You don't even want this dream." Perhaps I did at one time, and I might again in the future. When I'm ready for that and I want to do it, I will and I will put 100% behind the action of bringing it to fruition. The worst thing about having this kind of dead-end Dream, I never moved past it to really see the Dream I wanted. I would set no other goals, because I had told everybody else this is what I wanted. In hindsight it might be actually the only time not putting 100% into something produced an inadvertent win-win. I didn't end up with a restaurant I didn't want to own, which is a win! And I didn't drag anyone else along for the ride of a dead-end Dream! A win for them, though they'll never know it!

Setting goals is probably second nature to people. I have set goals. Not often and had really no plan behind the goal, other than I am going to do it. I'm sure many people that read this might think I am just plain weird. How in all these years could I possibly never set any real goals? I really just back-burnered any goals I set for work and just took those work-oriented goals as my own. Goals you don't set for yourself are very rarely successful in my opinion. Even if they are, they don't have any real meaning. Those were someone else's goals I just succeeded at. That's pretty joyless. In order to achieve anything in this life it's imperative to set a goal that I want, and I'm pretty sure most people could agree with that line of thinking. However, if the work is your goal and you are doing the goals because of work, then that would play out in your favor.

Not giving 100% robs a lot of things from a lot of people. If I don't give your family 100% emotionally it robs them of truly getting to know someone they love and vice versa. If I don't give a 100% in taking care of my health, it robs me of the energy I need to achieve my goals! If I don't choose a career I want to give a 100% to, it robs the employer or myself, and my family of a lot. If I don't give a 100% to anything I choose to do it hurts someone or myself.
I've done all of those things. it's not something you want to stand up in a room full of people and throw out there as an ice-breaker.

Now, this might seem rather bleak than a victory after running down those paragraphs. I will turn the conversation towards good news! I have been setting goal after goal, and with great success! My wife and I have a weekly goal chat, as well as work on our relationship through a specific set of goals. I am writing 1 page(or more) a day in one shape or another. We are helping our kids set small goals and getting them started on making that a part of their lives so they can make it a habit. I am running 1 mile a day. It's not much but when you see 240 pounds thundering at you, it's truly a sight to behold! I am not stating these goals to brag. I am calling myself to action. The consequence of failing at any of these goals means I have to answer people to asking me and either answering honsestly or flat out lying. Living at 100% doesn't necessarily include lying, except for telling people that you haven't planned them a surprise party when you have. I love tips, tricks and any other little tidbits you may have personally to help me out, and in turn I agree to keep writing these blogs as payment. I choose to do this, it did not choose me. Living 100% is not easy, and I don't know if I'll ever TRULY achieve it in an existential sense, but it's good to have goals.

(Some quick housekeeping:Yes I am moving the blog from simplesite.com over to BlogSpot.com. It is an infinitely better blog site and instead of lamenting and trying to force the issue on the other site, this one has a lot more versatility. I choose to move it! I will cut and paste and move all previous blogs over to this site and let the other one go bye-bye. Moving the blogs over is one of the reason I rehashed the theory behind living 100%. Another sidenote, I infinitely love the restaurant business and everything it entails. The people are some of the best friends I will ever have. Anyone opening a restaurant has my support. I just don't want one of my own or to work directly in the managing operations of one.)