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.

Opening Day

It is opening day at my new job, and so far so good. I had lunch on Friday with HR, my old boss, and while I guess you could not say we buried the hatchet, it went as well and any such thing could ever be expected to go, and I am proud of how it went and of how I chose to handle it.
Working up the courage to walk away from my engagement with HR had not been easy, but more important is how exactly I approached it. I felt that I handled it in a very mature way and in fact HR himself was left with nothing else to say other than "I don't blame you" when I dropped the bomb.

An Examined Life Worth Living

Tonight I examined the jewellery of my grandfather, which inexplicably ended up in my hands, by way of my mother, who despite being the oldest, was nonetheless one of only two girls among eight then seven children.

I do not not know my mother's father very well. I am impressed by how completely unlike my father he appears to have been. My grandfather, for whom I was named, left me an impressive collection of items, mostly tie clips and pins. A "Past President" tie clip from a valuable and forgotten group. A Legion of Honor pin for 50 Years of service to an organisation called AIME- The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers. Dog tags for his service in the armed forces. A beautiful and poetic reminder token from the First Presbyterian Church:

 Featuring perhaps a local Cathedral and a New Testament superfecta, the medallion

engraved in his name (and mine!) on the back side (not shown). 

I am humbled by the accomplishments of my mother's father, as evidenced by his modest jewellery collection.

One only need imagine a comparison with a typical and contemporary man's jewellery (and vanity) to recognise a discouraging contrast.

On again, Off Again

In the past, either to myself or in conversation with any of the various therapists or coaches I have worked with, I have often mentioned that my capacity to act as "me", the me I want to be, is a binary thing, distinctly tied to and essentially a manifestation of my mood, which is itself also a binary thing - essentially I am either on, or I am off, and that makes all the difference.

This summer I was off. The whole summer, unfortunately. It started in May, and ran until two weeks ago. I can even put my finger on it. I have struggled to put my finger on it in the past, but this time I can pinpoint it, the exact moment when it rolled over, like an automobile odometer going from 99,999 to 1,000,000 - all the columns in sync. Two weeks ago, on a Tuesday, after I met with a woman from the tax agency, it just turned around. Or I just turned around.

When I am off, I am off. I do not want to talk about it, I do not want to blog about it, I do not want to share it with my therapist, I do not want to share it with anyone or anything.

Ausweitung der Kampfzone

This morning I had an appointment with my therapist W. As is often the case, as I went in I found myself reflecting that I did not have a very clear idea what we were going to talk about, but as is always the case, we found plenty to fill the hour. My appreciation for the time I spend with him has not diminished even slightly from the first times, when I was in so much pain compared to now, to the later times when I was ebullient and felt as if I were walking on air, to the recent times when I am neither manic nor miserable but a steady somewhere in between.

I told him the story of going to the cottage with my father this past weekend and mentioned how I feel quite disconnected from him when I see him, and how I see him so infrequently as a result. I told him how lost he seems and how I felt frustrated and powerless to help him. Rather than dwell on that, instead he asked me to tell him about moments in which we had connected. I thought about it and told him the story of working on the cryptic crossword puzzle together and how we connected over the hour or two when we worked on that. He smiled as I related it to him and I am getting to know him well enough now that I am able to put words in his mouth almost - I illustrated for him for me with my hands the two verticals representing me and him and how I nonetheless stayed upright. He was effective at convincing me to look on the bright side as it were, and focus on the moments of connection. And I realised that the lesson for me was that I could safely attempt to extend the boundary a little bit the next time we are together, and see if I can carve out a little bit more connection at a time.

What makes it so hard to believe?

One of the ironies of the validation trap (and what makes it a trap essentially) is that the hungrier one is for validation, the more starved one feels for it (and vice versa). I feel this way recently, despite the fact that by all accounts it has been all around me. Today was more than a perfect example, yet somehow the inadequacy somehow shines through and I feel like an imposter.

This morning I had an interview for a somewhat senior contract job at a major hospital in my city. I have been out of work now for several weeks (months) now and having already turned down at least one job, and having been offered another one earlier in the week, I found myself suited and tied on "casual Friday", and meeting with a likeable Irish recruiter in preparation for my time on the hot seat upstairs with the client. When the time came I found myself sitting through a committee-style interview with the department head, the team lead, and the "mobile" point-man (woman). Nonetheless I felt confident and I really knocked it out of the park, even while feeling like I had flubbed it.
This afternoon I met with a recruiter for another job, and once again I approached it with that confidence which really changes everything, and I managed to put myself out there for a job for which I might not otherwise have the qualifications.
This evening I attended an event at my club, which was sponsored for delegates to the national convention. I went with M., my friend and partner in crime, and as is our custom we made the best of the room. We ended up leaving with some other folks from the national council and stayed out for a bit at a bar around the corner from the club. I was delighted to have met a very interesting woman, C., and enjoyed the opportunity I had to connect with her.
And just when I thought the evening was over, as I drove home from downtown to my apartment in the west end, I bumped into my roommate, and between the two of us we actually managed to solve the problems of the world, in an hour, or two. In fact we shared a great deal more than that and  more than I ever imagined we would.
So why am I still so convinced that something is missing? What makes it so hard for me to believe that this is actually working, that life is good?

The greatest compliment

Last year I moved to the west end, to a neighbourhood with which I was already quite familiar. I had actually lived there once, over 20 years earlier, as a teenage high school dropout sharing a basement apartment with another misfit friend. Despite having lived mostly in the east end when I have been in the city since then, I had several strong connections to the area, including a circle of friends who had grown up and remained there, the members of my hockey team mostly drew from that area, and I had also worked at an office there for three years starting up until a couple of years previously.
The office was oddly situated: it was part of a mixed-use development of 1990s vintage which had repurposed a narrow strip of industrial land tucked up against a railway corridor as a set of subsidized-housing townhouses and the commercial building in which we worked. The surrounding neighbourhood was mostly residential, with a large scrap yard a couple of blocks away as a reminder of the area's industrial heritage.
The company had hired a woman, J., who lived in one of the run-down rental houses across the street as a sort of part-time cleaning lady who would take care of the office kitchen as well as help out whenever there was some kind of catered event,  such as little pep-rally type things they would have every quarter, or a barbequeue on the lawn in the summertime. She stood out as rather working class in contrast to what was otherwise a rather homogeneous professional culture in the office, and she mostly kept to herself as she went about her work. Nonetheless, I learned her name and would engage her when I ran into her as I would the other people whom I knew in the office, as well as when I saw her outside in front of her house with her family and elsewhere.
I enjoyed chatting with her and we would talk about our lives and relationships, or gossip about comings and goings in the office. I would help her when she had to move furniture or load cases of drinks or things like that for an event we were having. It was a pleasant and seemingly unremarkable friendship.
Fast forward to a few months ago, just before Christmas I think, and I, now living in the neighbourhood, bumped into J. at the grocery store. We had a brief but nice chat and caught up a bit, and before we parted she paid me a tremendous compliment by way of relating to me a conversation she had recently had at the office. She still worked (and still works) at the company where we had met, some three years since I had left. She had recently brought in someone, a friend or family member, to help her or fill in for her or something like that, and she had been showing the new woman around and the ropes. The woman was surprised and remarked to J. how impressed she was at how well she knew everyone and how comfortably she moved within what was for both of them a rather foreign space and culture.
Her response to her was that she had actually been very shy, uncomfortable, and intimidated in the office when she first started, but that then a certain man, and she said my name, started working there, and he, alone among the entire office, engaged her and treated her as a person worthy of attention and respect. And that consistent respect had given her the confidence to engage with others there to the point that long after I had left the company, she was comfortable there in a way she had never been before.
This is how I want to make a difference in the world.