The Other Mes

When I was young, I read a series of books which consisted of adventure stories wherein the reader would periodically arrive at a literary crossroads - the situation is described and the reader is presented with options and directed to proceed to different pages depending on his or her choice.

These childhood stories seemed to me at the time to have endless, complicated branches, but in reality they were small books, maybe 100 or 150 pages, with only a handful of possible outcomes, arrayed along a spectrum stretching from positive to negative.

I remember that as I proceeded through the twists and turns, I would use as many fingers as I could manage to mark the prior turning points - in case I was dissatisfied with my chosen path, I could simply pop back to the preceding (or pre-preceding, pre-pre-preceding...) fork in the road and try out the other path. I was generally quite successful on these literary adventures: a clever and precocious young reader, blessed with enough fingers to steer my fictional avatar to one of the favourable endings.

But this type of indecisiveness is paralyzing in the real world: turning back the clock is never as simple as turning back a few pages. If we are lucky, we will get away with a few mulligans along the way, but you cannot make it a significant part of your game plan, a key element of your strategy.

As I look in the mirror today, and look to the future, I wonder how much am I still hedging my bets, scrambling to jam my fingers in all the other pages, thinking of all the other mes that I could be when I inevitably reject the one I chose?

Always in my Mind

As I have described previously, in March I came away from a conference excited and energetic about working with a friend of mine on political software, and enthusiastically volunteered to work on the mayoral campaign in my city, for a moderate candidate. Voting day was in late October, and I was confident in my ability and enthusiasm to come through for my friend and my candidate. It turned out to be a difficult summer for me emotionally and politically however, and in ways which deserve detailed description, I consistently failed to deliver.

Nonetheless, I never did completely drop the ball, and fortunately neither did my faithful friend who, to my surprise, ended up calling on me in the final week, and I was able to deliver some results in time to be of use during the campaign.

And following that, I was able to finally deliver some items which I had originally promised - eight months later, but done, and extremely satisfying. I was very grateful for the continued confidence of my friend M., as my self esteem had been crippled by my own inability to get on the ball, but guess what? It was all in my mind! It always is folks.

Louise

People sometimes talk about their "first car" - it is for example often one of the choices for identity verification on online banking sites and the like. I don't actually have an answer for that question, since I have yet to own a car, per se. My first "car" was a Ford Econoline E150 whom I christened Louise. I bought Louise for $600 from a friend of my father's about six months after I bought my first (and so far only) house.
Louise was quite a sight - she had originally been equipped as a camper but had had the appliance and furnishings ripped out and had subsequently served to haul equipment for a vintner supplier. My father's friend installed and maintained communications towers, and he used her to carry all the heavy cables and wires and whatnot which went along with that work.
I bought Louise to be pack mule for the extensive work I was doing on my house. It was a fixer-upper to be sure, and looking back it is hard to imagine how I could have done what I did over the ensuing three years without such a truck. Or how I got through six months of it without a motor vehicle. And also how I, and she, survived as long as we did. But I am getting ahead of the story. Hang on.
When I bought my house I was an obstinate cyclist, with the accompanying sanctimonious self-absorption that I now so easily recognize in others, who never tired of smugly arriving on two wheels at the remotest of places in the most oppressive of climates and righteously proclaiming his heroism thus.
So Louise afforded me a better-than-just-hairsplitting rationalization for becoming a vehicle owner: she really was too clunky and awkward to serve as personal transportation in all but the most desperate of circumstances. And when she did, she could, and did, accommodate an entire family and their bicycles. So I tiptoed quietly backwards into the realm of vehicle ownership without doing any lasting damage to my self-image as a warrior for - for what?
Thus equipped, I soldiered on in my holy war, my trusty steed serving me well both to haul the debris from a hundred year old house to the transfer station and to deliver their modern replacements from the lumber yards and the big box home renovation stores.
She was a good girl Louise, and she served me well for three plus years, the really backbreaking years of that renovation.
There are far too many Louise stories to tell them all in this post but perhaps I will return to it one day and add them in. There was the time I got pulled over because the back door was swinging open and I was spilling shingle debris on the road. There was the trip to the ferry with my mortified girlfriend and her young children, not just without seatbelts, but without seats. There was the time I got stuck in the snow at the neighbour of my stepfather's farm. There was the times I loaned her out to people who were moving: to L., to P., to C. who left her in a midtown grocery store parking lot with a flat tire, to MF who left her on the side of the road 40 miles north of the city with a burned out clutch, to S. who drove her around the block and just dropped her back off and rented a truck. L. actually borrowed her to go to a job interview by the airport, and she got the job! I did the same thing once, near the end, and was offered the job but turned it down in fact, on the basis that I could not imagine driving that beast to the airport every day, and I had yet to get my head around the idea of  another vehicle, of life beyond Louise.
The end of the road came when the frame actually snapped, and a quadrant of the truck collapsed, complete with a big honking spring poking several inches through the floor. Or you would think that would be the end, but in fact I drove her sporadically for several months beyond that. Sporadically because in fact one consequence of the collapse was the severing of the hydraulic lines for the brakes, rendering them all but useless at any reasonable speed. You would think that would stop you from driving, and in hindsight it really ought to have. But with a determination and a focus I could only describe as misguided, I hung on to Louise and continued to drive her, albeit only occasionally.
One of those occasions was when I was scheduled for a workshop in a neighbouring city and I had to get out there and back, during rush hour both ways, for several days in a row. The public transportation option would have been several hours over multiple means each way, and cycling was similarly impractical. So I busted out Louise, and we made that improbable trip, and back. At that point you could pour a quart of brake fluid in her, and that would buy you maybe a couple of taps on the pedal, or if you were lucky one good slam - but you could not count on it. I could picture the fluid pouring onto the road - easily, because I had examined it and watched it when the truck was at a standstill. So you saved that as a last resort - once you used it, you had nothing else other than the parking brake and downshifting. And the parking brake was on the floor beside the clutch pedal, so coming to a stop involved some clever shuffling with your left foot. I found out later during an incautious service attempt which almost resulted in the revocation of her roadworthiness permit, that the parking brake only worked on one of the rear wheels, the other side was disengaged.
I remember the incredible focus it took to manoeuvre her down a crowded suburban six-lane thoroughfare, through dozens of intersections with sophisticated traffic signals, having to simultaneously focus on the immediate surroundings but everything ahead as well. That was the last lengthy trip I took her on, and after a couple of brief local trips to the transfer station or the beer store, I retired her, selling her to a Russian tow truck driver named Vladimir with the limpest handshake I have ever experienced for a hundred bucks. I was not crazy enough to repeat the experiment of commuting to the suburbs in rush hour with no brakes, but I will never forget the intensity of the focus that such a ludicrous task took.

Forgetting to order the gravel

During our conversation on Thursday, my therapist WC introduced me to yet another particularly poignant illustration, this one about the fragility of carefully and artfully rectified mental stability: you have to remember to order in the gravel.
If one pictures thoughts as being like currents of water coursing through the brain, then thought patterns are like river valleys, their streams carving themselves ever more profoundly decade upon decade.
As comfortable as the water becomes, following its familiar course, as do one's thoughts - happy to pursue the precise and comfortable path which has been laid out for them. The subsequent liquid is increasingly more and more likely to follow the path laid out by the preceding flow. The greatest river valleys all started out one day as small streams, grown with the passage of time and with the predictable assurance of the path of least resistance.
The point he makes is clear: the temptation in such a project is to focus on the obvious work: digging the new chanel and diverting the flow. The durability of the job however depends on the backfilling: you must remember to order in the gravel, and fill all those low-lying areas whither the stream is so eager to flow.
I forgot to order in the gravel, and found my mental flow straying from the newly-constructed chanel and eating away at the banks of the old, familiar stream. It was time to backfill that valley, and to remember to monitor it for future erosion.

We are the Champions

It is with delight that I report here the Cinderella story that was my ice hockey team's victory last evening in the one-game final match of the summer season. It was my fortune as well to play a key role in salvaging a victory from what in the waning seconds of the match seemed like certain defeat for our force.
It is easy sometimes to dismiss the results of this or that match, or season, as the accident of the moment. Perhaps more so when the result does not go ones way. It is perhaps equally tempting to ascribe fortuitous results such as that which we experienced last evening as being the product of some larger approbation, particularly given the circumstance in which our unlikely victory took place, i.e. in the face of an intimidatingly superior opponent.
In any case to the victors go the smiles, and when the dust settled we had pulled off an incredible come-from-behind victory. Down 3-1 with three minutes left, we fought back to score first one, and then the equalizer, with 1.3 seconds left on the clock, to send us to overtime. We fought through an overtime in which our opponents prematurely celebrated upon striking the crossbar with the puck and then buried them in a shootout.

The cards we are dealt

One of the largest changes I have seen in myself as I struggle to complete the transformation from being focussed on myself to conducting myself as a class act is my ability to tolerate and forgive others for their self-indulgence.
A frequent, convenient and effective apology mantra I find myself citing is that we all (struggle to) play with the cards we are dealt.
Some of us start out with a full house - productive societies, functional and loving parents, cohesive  communities, forward-thinking role models. These are treasures whose value is both immense and difficult to measure.
Others are not so fortunate, and as they struggle to cobble together the kind of stable base that the fortunate among us were blessed to begin with, they make painful and sometimes repetitive mistakes.
The road to functionality is through a minefield, and it is tempting to deride those who resort to the more basic coping mechanisms, who have failed like so many before them and beyond them who failed despite all efforts to adopt more advanced techniques.
But no one, not even the most seemingly despicable person, is deserving of derision. They deserve respect. They are playing with the cards they were dealt, just like oneself. It is easier to build a robust structure when your footing is a solid foundation. And those who start with such head starts are demonstrably more inclined to success. But the others are not to be dismissed, derided or disrespected. No matter how despicable their behaviour appears upon manifestation, it is easily ascribed to the paucity of the cards in their hand. Contempt for the outcome of their actions is best directed at their origin.
And if you, like so many among us, are one of those who are struggling with a dubious hand, take heart: no one is beyond salvation. It takes a focussed and determined effort, but anyone - and everyone - is capable of finding their way out of the corner into which they have painted themselves and doing the difficult work of shoring up their base and building up to the sky.

Expanding Horizons

A few weeks ago a friend of mine with whom I play pickup ice hockey with once a week invited me to participate with his Saturday team in a hockey tournament. I have played pickup with him for a few years and we have some common hockey friends but off the ice we have had little opportunity to connect over the years. He is a goaltender, and his team was going to be short a few defencemen, so he asked me to come along. I have always enjoyed playing in front of him - I have even said that he is likely the best goalie I have played with - so I was pleased to infer that he had similar appreciation for my abilities.
The theme of the tournament, and the participants, was sort of artsy, and the majority of the teams came from the artsy city in which I live, but that is not to discount the many teams who came from much less urban and urbane environs, and from much further afield - all the way from the east coast in fact.
It spanned the Easter weekend, and one of the highlights of the tournament was the talent contest, which was held as usual at a popular divey bar in the edgy part of downtown.
As if to take the irreverence to another level, my adopted squad had teamed up with a co-ed team and as part of the entertainment portion for the Saturday night, were doing a performance piece wherein the players dressed as either choristers or sisters and went on stage to belt out a number of erstwhile reverent, but mostly irreverent, numbers along a vaguely religious theme. It was hugely entertaining, and a good time was had by all.
I played well and even notched a couple of key goals. And best of all, despite all expectations, my adopted team fought its way through to the Sunday morning finals, which ironically enough were scheduled not in the godless suburban rink in which the rest of the entire tournament had been held, but downtown at the gorgeous wooden-raftered and 60s-era home rink of one of the two biggest Catholic schools in the city, the proving ground of so many hometown heroes over the years.
It was a glorious place to play and an unforgettable Easter Sunday, winning the championship with my adopted friends. I am not sure if anyone else saw the irony.

Conference Contrast

I attended a conference this weekend for front-end developers. It  would be difficult to overstate how dissimilar the audience, not to mention the material, was from the political conferences I attended two weeks ago.
Nonetheless I enjoyed it and was once again inspired. It may be difficult for many contemporaries to imagine that anyone's calling could come somewhere between conservative politics and front-end development, but that is the course I have charted.

Second-guessing skating on the canal

Following a fabulous weekend at a political conference, I met with S. on Saturday for one more, non-political, night in the nation's capital. Well, mostly anyway - there was a passionate discussion over dinner with S.'s uncle, who shares my passion for politics, but certainly not my party affiliation.
This morning, following a visit with her grandmother, we discussed stopping to skate on the canal, which had uncharacteristically been reopened after having been closed once already, but in the end we elected to skip it and packed up and headed off for the four-hour plus trip home. Once we were on the highway, however, I realized that I had left my overcoat at her aunt's.
After we turned around and retrieved it, on the way back home once again, I made a unilateral decision to not skip the canal the second time past, and I steered us into a parking garage downtown. We walked the short distance to the canal, donned our skates and went for an enjoyable trip, complete with fried pastry, on one of the most spectacular skating facilities in the world. There were no regrets.

Manning Up

This weekend I traveled to our capital city for a conservative political conference. This was my second consecutive year attending the national conference for this organization, and I was enthralled and inspired by the experience. I met many enthusiastic people from different parts of the country and was encouraged to return to my city and take up the torch.

Ice Ice Baby

My friend PL set up a rink in his back yard this winter and I went to his house on Saturday night with SR for an inaugural skating party, which he dubbed the Winter Classic. It was a mild evening, which is to say only a few degrees below freezing during what has been quite a cold spell, and we had an enjoyable and unforgettable evening. It was an introductory night for SR and PL, which is as hard to imagine as it is shameful considering how long I have known them and how much I cherish them both. It had been far too long, but as it always is with good friends, the years quickly melted away and we had a fantastic evening of skating and playing and falling down before retiring inside his impossibly tiny apartment for a taste of his finesse as a DJ. I was extremely and almost awkwardly inspired by my friends PL and SC and delighted to share the same with SR, as well as pleased at her enthusiastic response.

Duck duck goose

For many years I struggled with Christmas: when I was a cynic, I had a simple, dismissive response to it. when I was a small child, I loved it, as do all small children - do they not?

As soon as I was old enough to be cynical however, I became cynical, about Christmas among other things.

I accept it now, but I also accept so many things now which I found so difficult to accept before.

For Christmas this year, SR was rather determined to cook a goose. I was delighted to support her in such an expedition and in fact the only impediment to the entirely appropriate expression of her heritage was her grandmother who made it clear that turkey was the only dinner she would entertain on Christmas. So turkey it was, and goose.

The Ice Storm, part 2

On the Monday before Christmas, we were invited to my friend P's to join P, P, L and J to watch The Ice Storm, which was as fantastic as it was appropriate. I had such fond memories of that film from when I was so bitter and unsatisfied, and of course it is a tragic movie.

Blessed by the calendar

For me, Christmas, and its close cousin New Year's Eve, are inextricably tied, and in a good year overshadowed by, my birthday, which falls a few days before the big day, and in fact on what those of us in the Northern Hemisphere of this mortal coil would dub the shortest and darkest day of the year.
I have nevertheless been blessed in the past two years, as the calendar has favoured a celebration of my birthday: last year it was on a Friday which also coincided with a failed doomsday scenario, but which nonetheless made for a fantastic celebration.
This year was somewhat more subdued but it was still a party, and it was still an ice storm, and despite the large number of regrets, those who attended shall not forget it.

The Ice Storm

While I would not say that the ice storm of 2013 came out of nowhere, as there was plenty of warning, we were nonetheless surprised but the intensity and severity of its effects. I for one, thanks to the irrepressible tendency of  folks given the chance to skew their anticipation on the side of disaster, have grown to expect less and less of a given dire meteorological prediction. In this case I was pleasantly and not terribly inconveniently surprised. The current was interrupted at my house for 24 hours, the vast majority of which was Sunday, and the entirety of which I was absent the abode.
The main interruption for me was that the storm (and more importantly, the forecast) arrived the evening of my birthday celebration at my apartment. It promised to be a legendary event and I do not mean to take anything away from that which it was, which was memorable in any sense, but the impending storm ate significantly into the attendance list and in the end the decent crowd who did make it were compelled to amuse themselves in the absence of those who somehow thought inclement weather legitimately excuses absence.