Blogging, the new confessional

In the old days we used to seek out people to talk to about our problems, our shortcomings, our sins.  People, real flesh and blood people with faces, people.  When we could not find the strength to tell them our deepest darkest secrets, our demons, we sought out anonymous places to give an account of our failures, the confessional.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

Simple, quick, easy, anonymous.

Now, we have all those things and more right at our fingertips with the internet and the sacrament of blogging.  I can say almost anything, legal statutes aside, and no one will know, or care.  I may even be applauded for laying it all out there, or for committing the act itself, or I may even receive some sage advice that may help me in the journey that is my life.

That being said, I have a confession.

I am not a good man.  I am selfish, self-centered, self-loathing.  I have left a wake of damaged relationships throughout my life including those of my significant other and my children.  So much so that my spouse told me the other day that we are through, finished, kaput.

By no means am I blaming her, I just needed to get it off my chest.  I am losing my wife, getting divorced.

Bye bye marriage.

I don't want it, but I understand.  Neither of us can live with the shit I have dumped on this family.  It is over, she has checked out and there is absolutely nothing I can do.

We made a go of it, but after more than a decade and a half we are calling it quits.

I am having a tremendously hard time dealing with this, and really, it just does not seem real, but I figured if I could put this out there on the internet where everything is true, I just might believe it.

Now, what is my penance?.

Stabbed in the Back

Man, it has been so long since I posted anything.  Not that anyone cares what I have to say, or that you all even know who I am or could give a rip about me. 

I have been busy.  Busy being used by every person around me.  Busy being shat upon by anyone that feels I will just take it, and I will mind you.  I take it every single time.  However, believe me, I have done my fair share of shitting on those around me as well and I have come to realize one thing.

Shitting on someone is circular, it eventually comes back to you.  

Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about Karma, I am simply saying that the sweet smell of shit likes to be shared.  It wafts from person to person, relationship to relationship, until it eventually makes its way back to you.   

How wonderful.

Anyway, it has just made its way back to me.  I am enjoying the foul stench.  It is filling my nostrils and everything around me seems tainted by it.  Much like the lingering odor of a physically active middle-aged fat man who has yet to learn the joys of deodorant, the smell just won't go away.  Now mind you, I am not saying I don't deserve the wonderful gift of a big steamy pile of it, I am more just saying that it is here and I am suffering.

Now I find myself being pushed away from family, being sabotaged by those who claim to love me, being stabbed in the back, kicked while I'm down, having salt poured in the wounds.  I am feeling overall, you guessed it, shat upon.

I have two choices.  I could just go on shitting on those shitting on me, and more than likely, everyone around me (I have already started down that road, although I am not yet committed to it), or I could choose the alternative.  I could just let it slide, not pay it forward, I could just wash off the fumes and move on.

I am not sure what I will do.  My every instinct is telling me to drop trow on everyone, but there is a little voice buried deep in my head saying, STOP!!!

We will just have to wait and see.  

Will to be the better man, low.  Will to live, even lower.

Lightning Rod

Several years ago I went to this conference talking about leadership.  One of the speakers was this little Hawaiin guy named Wayne Cordeiro. Now this guy is a pastor at a big church in Oahu, and what he talked about that day back when I was young and innocent, is going to impact this blog, and my life, immensely.

Wayne was speaking about stress management and he presented this idea of seeking a lightning rod.  The concept is simple.  We all have stress and we can let that stress build so that we cannot function, or we explode, or we just up and quit, OR we can seek someone to help us reduce that stress.  Someone we can tell everything to reduce the tension.  This person, or so Wayne says, should be outside of the workplace or really outside the circle of influence and this person, this lightning rod, needs to be able to keep their mouth shut.

So I started thinking about that and this blog when it hit me.  You are my lightning rod.  You are outside of my sphere of influence because you don't even know who, where, what I am.  It doesn't matter if you keep your mouth shut, what you say cannot come back to me.  I guess its entirely possible that someone may figure out who I am, but the chances are astronomical unless I give some ridiculous hints, or flat out tell you (psst, I am not going to do that).

So lets forget about the niceties and let me vent.

Well I have this coworker.  He is a native here.  A nice enough guy, but he has some serious issues.  One, he is lazy.  You cannot make him work for shit.  He has this great tendency to start a project and NEVER finish it, but he insists on starting another one, and another one, and, well you get the idea.  Second, he is the most proud man I have ever met.  He can never admit that he does not know how to do something so he tries to do everything.  He has, in just two years, completely destroyed a roof of a large building, ruined a water pump, dismantled and completely screwed up a chainsaw, two lawnmowers, a sander, crashed and totaled a car, and wasted several thousands of dollars from the non-profit where we work. Third, he is a liar, and not a very good one.  He has tells.

If you are not offended by Southpark and would like to learn more about tells please check out this video: Pinewood Derby The lesson begins at about 2 minutes, but the entire video is worth a looksy especially for anyone who has ever been involved in scouts.

Back to the story,  yesterday, the little guy (he is little, the size of my 9 year old so lets call he Wee-Man) shows up where I was working.  He starts asking me about some material that was used.  Sounds like no big deal, but what happened is he used material that belongs to our non-profit to build some things for someone in the community in an effort to make a little money.  Well, it seems that our boss found out and is a little pissed and wants to be reimbursed for the cost of the materials.  What Wee-Man did was tell the boss that while he used a little of the material I used the bulk of it.

So Wee-Man showed up to try and "trick" me into saying that I had used the material.  Now here comes the tells.  Anytime he lies, which is a lot, he pretends to not remember anything, even stupid things like having lunch together or even what the weather was the day before, then he starts making this movements.

Anyway, he shows up and starts asking me about the material implying that I used it for some sort of personal  side project.  I walked him around our facility and showed him every place the material had been used, all here on the campus except what he stole from us.  Funny thing is he helped me with almost every single project, but when I would say, "We did that together, don' you remember?" he would look at me as if small woodland creatures were crawling out of my ass.  A sort of slack jawed, far off gaze, head tilted slight to the side, with an occasional chin rub or back of the neck rub.  No answer, just a dumb ass look from a dumb ass guy.  I just want to punch the little goober right in the face, but alas, I cannot.

Immediately after this chat I called the boss who was also lied to by this little jackass.  Thank God he knew that Wee-Man was blowing smoke up his ass too.  Actually, despite our difficulties, the boss and I almost always agree on Wee-Man.  Agree that he is an egotistical, pompous, lying, little, little, little man.  He is currently on the way out, phew.

Speaking of my boss, Elijah, he is still a douche.

This is where I can vent.  No one I work with knows anything about this site, thank God, but my partner Sommer and I both do a little writing about our everyday/professional life.  Anyway Elijah commented on something I wrote with a snarky little comment directed at something Sommer wrote, not me.  I guess his intention is that I will run home and tell Sommer about it. He probably expects that I will do something to rectify the situation as well.

What a douche.

He doesn't even have the balls to confront one of his charges himself.

Thanks for your time and for listening.  I feel so much better.