the tangent of my tangent, say wha?

I have been contemplating on whether or not I should write a sort of Christmas Letter blog post or not and how or what themes I should be making this blog as a whole. I had mentioned before that it all started as a way to explain and let my family and friends experience my life as a working archaeologist. However, I am not a working archaeologist anymore, and haven’t been for almost two years now. That part of my life seems to be over now. So the blog seems to be more of a general, “this is my life now” sort of deal. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with that. But I wonder if it is interesting anymore for the few readers I have, and for myself. I feel a sense of obligation to keep writing. I’ve talked with my dad about this often when he says, “I wonder about starting my own blog”. I have plenty to say. Blog ideas pop into my head all the time, I just don’t write them all down. Writing is tedious. There is a reason why I have never written a novel. I have an entire bookshelf of my own work in my head. And it will most likely remain there. I can’t seem to take the time to write it all out. It is all so visual in my head, that taking the time to write out in text what I see visually is just not appealing.

Random tangent there, if there ever was one. I am also thinking about when I should start up the webpage, blog, twitter, facebook, social media spew for my shop. Part of my marketing will rely heavily on social media. I was planning on starting a blog for the shop. Starting with the acquisition of the loans and investments, and all the preparations. Giving people “the story” as it happens. The highs and lows, struggles and victories up to the opening. The adventures we are going to have in retrofitting, remodeling, finding the perfect gems of fixtures and equipment. And then continuing on with the adventures of recipe building and the day to day running of a quirky little shop. All through the eyes of the fictional Jack, of Jack Diddly Squat.

Once that happens, will I still find the time to write here? I don’t know. It’s not like I have 100’s or 1000’s of readers. I have maybe 30 on a good post. Leaving this blog behind will not be devastating on anyone. The world will not end because of it. I don’t have that kind of power.

Everyone seems to reflect this time of year, myself included, obviously. This certainly isn’t how I saw my life turning out way back when I thought about what I wanted to do/be growing up. I never thought I’d become an archaeologist. And I certainly never thought I’d become an entrepreneur... in progress. I never thought I’d have an advanced degree, or that it would take 9 years of college education to get it. I never thought I would live here in Gilroy... and like it. I never thought I’d live with my parents as long as I did or that living with my sister would be an option.

I always thought I’d be married by now. I can’t remember now if I wanted kids when I dreamed about my future as a child. I don’t want them now. A partner - yes, kids - no. Could someone change my mind - possibly, but highly doubtful. I have no desire whatsoever to experience pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, or the responsibilities of parenthood. I don’t feel the need to “carry on my line”, my siblings have done that for me. Would it be fun to have a little “mini me” running around? Sure, but that is also one of the scariest things, ever! I have nephews. That is enough for me. I just have to hope now, that when I become old and certifiably crazy, that one of them will take me in. There are four of you, you can draw straws.

Yet another crazy tangent. This entire post is a tangent of a tangent. Ponder that for a while.

ah, high school, how I loathe you

As promised, my one regret about High School. I played sports all four years of high school. As a freshman, it was just soccer. As a sophomore it was soccer and swimming, junior year it was softball and soccer, and senior year, just soccer. As you can see, I liked soccer. I started playing soccer when I was probably 6 or 7 years old. My best friends dad was her soccer coach and I wanted in. I played on some sort of team from that age till my senior year of high school.

Now I know I was not the fasted, or had the best tricks, or the strongest kicks. I knew that. I was never the star player, nor was I the worst. I was kind of right in the middle. And because I knew that, I wasn’t a ball hog, or tried to be a superstar. I was one of those team players. I had my moments of brilliance, but most of the time I was passing to someone who was open or had a better advantage.

By the time I got into high school, I was comfortable as a mid fielder. Not a striker in the front or a defender in the back. In the middle. Mid fielders are to run back and help out the defenders and run forward to help out the strikers in the front. Hence there is a lot of running involved. Part of being a mid fielder is endurance. That I had. One particular coach I had saw that in me. He saw where best I would fit within his team and knew how to exploit my skills on the field.

All that to say, on the high school team, my skill set was not desired. I got to play quite a bit as a freshman. There was no jr. varsity team at the time and we were in a division that had very poor teams. The next year, my school was moved into a tough division, and the school allowed us to have a jr. varsity team. I was put on that team as a sophomore and as a junior. I didn’t mind to much, because I got to play in every game.

Senior year. Seniors aren’t allowed to play on jr. varsity. The coach was sympathetic to the few of us seniors that were on the team since our freshman days and gave us spots on the varsity team. She sat us down at the end of try-outs and said she would give us spots, but that we were going to be bench warmers. This was the first time I should have said thanks but no thanks and walked away.

That year was spent watching from the bench, maybe playing the last 5 minutes of a game we were either loosing horribly or winning greatly. The bench warmer seniors were looked at by the rest of the team with either distain (seeing that we replaced younger, better players) or sympathy in a bad way (as in, look how sad). I felt it, and I’m sure the others did too. There was one particular game I remember. I don’t remember who we were playing, but all the seniors got to start the game, as per tradition. Our coach would then slowly pull out the senior bench warmers one by one and replace us with her starters. We were loosing the game pretty bad, so our coach started putting us bench warmers back in to let us play. One of our players who was in the sweeper position behind the defenders was getting pissed off that us bench warmers were back in the game. She yelled something to the effect of, “why are you putting these stupid people in the game, they suck”. I happen to have been standing right next to her when she said it. She looked at me and said, “well not you, you’re okay”. The coach kept us in the game but moved her to the front to keep her away from us.

That was the moment I wish I could have changed. I wish that I had had the balls to yell back at her something, instead of taking it. And I wish I would have walked off the field, handed my jersey to my coach, and walked away from that season and that team. But I didn’t. I stayed. I finished the season, and put up with being dissatisfied.

I haven’t played ever since. There was one other time that year when a lot of the players, one in particular voiced their displeasure of me being on the team, and that was when the yearbooks came out. I got pictured in the yearbook. I overheard this one particular person get all in a hissy that someone like me got featured and not her who was a star player. I shrugged it off at the time, but it hurt. It's the picture at the top of this post.

So there it is. I wish I had not played on the team my senior year. I enjoyed playing the first three years. I liked my coach... I didn’t like the assistant coach. He may have been another reason why I didn’t get a chance to play much. He had his favorites. His players from his league team. The high school team was made up of so called stars. Mostly they were ball hogging, glory seeking, whiney bitches. And I didn’t fit that mold. So glad I didn’t fit that mold.

Running in Silence

Since my debacle with itunes and ipod revolts back in September, I have been going on my runs without music. I had thought that I somehow wouldn’t be able to run without music. I use it for inspiration and motivation. How can I run without that? Well, I did. For a little over 2 months I ran in silence. All I heard was my own breathing and footsteps. And of course the voice in my head yelling motivational speeches to keep me going. Yep, that’s right folks. I yelled at myself. Thankfully not out loud. And I will admit that punctuating swear words in there helped. Somehow it is more stimulating when I say, “You can climb that fucking mountain” as opposed to “keep going”.

I have had my new ipod nano for over a month now, but I hadn’t fixed my music problem. For some reason I was taking my sweet ass time doing it. I realized several times that I was missing listening to my music. I wanted to put the earbuds in and zone out. For some reason that didn’t motivate me to fix the problem. Anyway, I think I have finally fixed said problem. I have been listening to music on the new nano and on the laptop and haven’t yet heard the old problem rear its ugly head.

So I have now begun rebuilding my playlists and making new ones. First one I rebuilt was the one I used for running. The past week and this current week I have been listening on the runs. It’s nice. That voice in my head is much quieter now. She was getting annoying and quite the potty mouth! Someone should wash her mouth out with soap or something.

I have also been frustrated in that I have most likely plateaued because I have been loosing and gaining the same 1 pound for months! So I decided last week that I would extend the run to about 3 miles. I was doing 2.4 on a regular basis, and it wasn’t a big challenge. So, on the first day of the extended route... I should have kept it short. During the run I had almost burped up my breakfast of cherrios twice. Then when it was time to make the new turn to extend the run I had the feeling that I was going to need a bathroom soon. At the .4 mile to go, I REALLY needed to go... like NOW. My lungs were burning and I was squeezing those cheeks so hard it hurt. I ran all the way home, untied the house key from my shorts, up to the front door, and made it to the toilet just in time. Oh my, that was close. I was shaking.

So after vacating my bowels, I sat there for awhile on the toilet, drenched in sweat and beet red and realized I had just run 3 miles, and survived. I hadn’t done that before... ever. I was quite proud. Yes, I was sitting on a toilet being proud of myself! I’ll take whatever moment there is, no matter how embarrassing.

I’ll leave you with that image. And this will tie into the next post about my one regret about High School. (running, not vacating my bowels!) You’re disgusting!