becoming more... general

My very first job was at Hollywood Video.  Did you know that?

Mom was kinda-sorta (re: not at all) pressuring me to get a job as I approached 16, and I was dead set on getting one at the video store.  Most of my friends who already had jobs were working at McDonalds or something similar, and though @caitcd was working at a movie theater, she and I weren't exactly friends yet so I didn't think of it.  I never wanted to be in the food industry so I felt that the video store, something we had frequented every Friday night for as far back as I can remember, was right up my alley.  It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone reading this, because I'm still quite the movie fanatic and can more than hold my own in any sort of trivia game.

Hollywood Video on Memorial.
It was in the process of being converted to a thrift store in this picture.

Unfortunately on the day I turned 16, I went in to apply and was told corporate had changed the age requirement from 16 to 17.  Well... fuck.  I wasn't really driving a car very much on my own at that point, so it wasn't really a big deal that I wouldn't have a paycheck coming in.  I still got an allowance for doing chores around the house (taking the garbage out, mowing the lawn twice a week in the summer, etc).  So a year later I went back in to apply.  The employees all knew who I was, they knew who my mom was, so it was just this little joke of "come on in when you're old enough and we'll be good to go."  So I did.  And I got hired.

After doing my orientation (sexual harassment video, loss prevention video, blah blah blah) in Green Bay, I then went on to work for Hollywood Video on Memorial for $5.20 an hour.  The job was pretty simple, we mostly had VHS movies still so there was a lot of rewinding and the alphabetizing.  After the company went under, one of the many casualties that came with Netflix, that location became a thrift store.  But it'll always be my first job, and it was a good one.  A few months after getting it, I also started working at Regal Cinemas and I kept up both jobs for about a year and a half making, wait for it... $5.35 an hour!  Stop the press!  Gotta say, I loved it.  Free movies to rent and see in the theater, free drinks and food at the theater (I was overweight so free nachos was a good thing I guess), but on top of it I knew they liked me.

I was honest and dependable, always the dutiful employee that went above and beyond what I was supposed to be doing because I just felt it wasn't an option.  You're working... so do the job you were hired for.  Even if you're getting paid peanuts, do the job.  Someone will notice.

This is actually good advice that I grasped from an early age.  Put your head down, do your work, be polite, maybe suck up a little, and someone will notice.  Eventually.

When high school ended, so did those two jobs.  I suppose I was ready to move on to something more "adult," which is stupid because that meant leaving what were actually very easy jobs and getting into the world of clothing retail, a very different animal.  I spent the summer working for American Eagle as a sales associate, never leaving the fitting rooms once.  No cashier training, just folding clothes and straightening at night and feeling like I was cool.  I found out a few months later that I was considered just summer help, which in hindsight is ridiculous and something I probably could have fought.  In reality, I did call in sick a few times a month because I was 18 and excited to be "out" and everything that came with it.  This pushed me to go and apply for a new job at Express.  Which I got.

Now you should know, I ended up staying with Express for 8 years, or just a couple months shy of 8 years, actually.  There were a couple additional and/or different jobs peppered in there, including a brief stint at a call center and then Aldo for five months with a horrendous company.  I started as a sales associate on the sales floor, really not that special in my role but dependable.  Made my way to being the Stockroom Manager after a year, did that for another year, then stepped up to an Assistant Brand Manager and eventually a Brand Co-Manager, which meant I was in charge of visuals and floorsets for the store.  I loved the visual aspect of retail; changing out displays, setting the windows, dressing the mannequins, etc.  It gave me the opportunity to be creative, albeit with several constraints set by corporate, but regardless.

Express was a company that I had several highs and lows with.  I'd have a great year, then a rough year, wondering constantly if what I was doing was even what I wanted to be doing.  Some of that would have to deal with what was going on my my personal life of course.  It wasn't until Steve came along as my store manager in year 5 or 6, and that's when I started to become more than just an associate with keys and actually became a manager.  Steve taught me how to coach and develop a staff, to hold people accountable, and to ultimately rise above the crowd as a bonafide leader.  When I was promoted into my final position (Brand Co (basically second in command)) I had to leave Steve and my team in Appleton behind to work in Green Bay.  It was something I'd never wanted to do but I accepted because of the promotion and needed to get my leg up.

I understand why the powers that be moved me, though I still think the excuse was kind of bullshit.  Green Bay already had a manager in that role, and they wanted her in the Appleton store because it was a higher volume and felt she earned the opportunity/challenge.  However neither of us wanted to leave our respective stores, and it ultimately meant we would both quit the company within weeks of each other a year later.  Sometimes that's how it goes though and hindsight is always 20/20.

So long, suckas.

That final year with Express was a steady spiral downward through 2011 and into 2012.  I was newly single, questioning my life and my choices, working somewhere I didn't want to work and living with my parents again.  The store wasn't performing, we were always getting yelled at, and I was making absolutely dick for money.  Sorry for the ugly word, but really.  When my birthday came along at the end of the year, it brought with it the idea behind "26 Golden Things" and the seed was planted that I would look for a new job.  The thought alone of leaving Express (and everything I knew so well) was terrifying, and it was something I felt the least likely to come true in my list of things I wanted to accomplish.  I never even applied for a new job, I lucked out with one.  Mid April rolled in and I got a phone call from Courtney at Pottery Barn.  Just over a month later and I was trottin' out of Express at Bay Park with a bowl of Pigs-in-a-blanket and a few balloons, never to look back again.

I started with Pottery Barn in June of 2012, coming aboard as the Associate Store Manager (ACM) which, like at Express, was the second in command.  I was so scared and totally overdressed (wearing a 3-piece suit, what an asshole) and feeling like I was in way over my head.  The initial fear of working there was gone within a week though.  The pay was amazing compared to Express, the benefits were better by far, I was back in Appleton and was doing something I'd always wanted to do.  Not selling furniture, mind you; I was that annoying kid growing up who rearranged his room every few weeks.  I've always loved decorating and making a space my own, getting creative with the things I have and repurposing them sometimes to make something new.  I was content in my role again because not only did I take everything with me that I had learned with Express (which was a considerable amount because the training we went through was pretty consistent and intense), but I was being pushed again.

Being pushed is a key thing here, folks.  I think we get bored when we know what to expect.  Where's the excitement in the same day to day trials and tribulations?  It's nowhere, that's where.  Here was a place where I had an enormous amount of new product to learn about, and what was more, the product had stories behind it!  Like that Toscana dining table?  It was inspired by a 19th-century Northern Italian work table with an X-shaped base and keyed through tenons.  Like those acorn vase fillers?  The acorns themselves may be fake but the caps are real!

I'm a guy who finds joy in the details (you may not know this, but I have a book series loaded with details) so to work for a place full of these little factoids, count me right in.  When it came to being creative?  You had even MORE say with the floorsets because they needed to be adapted to your store.  There was so much more thought and creativity and excitement that went into it, changing the entire look of the store every three months with entirely new product and not just shuffling around mostly the same stuff with a few new shirts and washes of denim thrown in.  That was amazing to me, and it still is.  There's an energy through the store when one season ends and another begins, and I'm so happy it hasn't gone away.

I also had a great team of people to work with, chief among them being Courtney.  If Steve started me on the path to how to lead, Courtney put the polishing touches on it.  She taught me calm under pressure, how to diffuse situations, and how to just be so annoyingly nice that it enables you to get away with everything.  Usually.  We're a customer service based company, and she showed me what great customer service looks like from beginning to end.  I'll never lose that.

Sitting on another conference call with Courtney, secretly taping.
Upset about the itchy mosquito bite on my cheek.

A couple years in Courtney had a baby and I was made the Acting General Manager for the first time, filling the role for a little over three months before she came back to work.  I got a taste for running the ship myself through the holiday season, and to be perfectly honest, I hated it.  Everything that could go wrong (I thought) went absolutely and unequivocally wrong.  Disastrous.  Our numbers were "fine," but I wasn't, having gotten sick in early December and staying sick through January.  By the time she came back at the very end of February, I was more than happy to chuck the keys back at her and slide into the ACM role I had become so comfortable in.

Six months later I moved to Texas.

Now, the move was supposed to result in me transferring to west elm, a sister store under the Williams-Sonoma umbrella.  I'd be taking a step down in the corporate ladder, becoming the Sales and Service Assistant (ASM), but my pay would stay the same so I didn't really care.  I was going to a store that was almost quadruple the volume and I was going to get to add that to my resume.  Only it didn't shake out quite that way, and two weeks before moving the job fell through.  The replacement?  I would be the ACM for PBKids because they were going through a weird transition.  Now, I've written about that particular misery before so I won't get too into it, but suffice to say I became the Acting GM again after a couple weeks, for my second consecutive holiday season, and ran the ship again.

Mid November, about a week before I absolutely lost my shit, threw my hands up and threatened to leave.

If I thought things had gone awry in Appleton, they sure as shit detonated at PBKids.  Here was a store that broke me down, made me hate myself, my relationship, the city of Austin, made me gain weight, and ultimately put me in a depression I was not able to recover from for a year.  And I'm not being melodramatic, because that's how it went.  It wasn't the company, mind you, but that particular location and all of the crap that went with it.  My first Acting GM gig was full of things going wrong... my second gig was full of everything else that could go wrong.

But I couldn't quit.

I still had that mentality from when I first started working at 17, do you remember what it was?  You're here to do a job.  You've got to suck it up, you've got to show up, and you've got to sometimes just keep your fucking head down and do what needs to be done.  Yes it was exhausting.  Yes it was awful, and depressing, and annoying, and infuriating.  Sometimes it was just an absolute gut punch that no matter what I did, no matter how nice I was or how empathetic or understanding I tried to be, most of that staff hated me.  I don't say this for many things in my life, but if I had the choice to go back in time, I would not do it all over again.  I'd have found another job pronto and let that be it, because this one destroyed me.  But dear reader, y'know what?  Things would have ended differently then.  And for as much as I wouldn't want to do it all over again... I'm not so sure I would have wanted it to end differently.

I did the gig for four months before mercifully being able to go to west elm in the role I was supposed to have from the beginning.  They sort of... nursed me back to life, I suppose.  My wonderful boss Jesse gave me a week off between jobs, and when I finally did come on board I was greeted with open arms.  "What do you need from us?  What can we do for you?  What would make you feel successful in your role?  What ideas do you have to increase productivity?  What has worked for you in the past?  What takeaways do you have from your other jobs?"  He got me to think about the how's and why's behind my job, how to push the envelope and create my own business.  We live in a world where brick and mortar stores are in danger of being shuttered by the likes of online retail, and he showed me how to drive that traffic into the store.

I bitch a lot about Austin and what the experience was, but it really wasn't that bad.  Hindsight shows me I didn't give it as much of a chance as I should have, but as with other things in my life before it, it was circumstantial.  While west elm ultimately was not the best fit for me, it reinvigorated me in my job and helped me to uncover what I loved about it in the first place.  I was able to see things from a different perspective and I was able to appreciate them so much more because of it.  That is not something I would undo.  And when it comes to the friends I made at west elm?  I still talk to many of them and I still miss them so very much.  They made things bearable and work fun again, and I'll forever be appreciative of that.

At west elm, and starting to feel like myself again.

That May I had a mental breakdown, quite literally, and decided I needed to move back to the north.  I wanted to be back in a cold climate, at a brand I loved, near my family, and just... away.  Away from Austin.  Not the people, but the place.  I needed to surround myself with familiarity again and hardest of all, I needed to give up on my dream that Austin was the place to be and that ultimately, it really wasn't.  And that's okay.

After speaking several times with the new District Manager, Damien, I moved to Minneapolis and started back at Pottery Barn as the ACM once more.  This of course coming with the intent of being the Acting GM for a third consecutive holiday season to cover another maternity leave.  I think my mindset going into it this time was, in a word, different.  I was calm and cool and collected, much like Courtney had taught me and that Jesse had strengthened.  People kept trying to spook me about what was to come and what could possibly happen, but when it came down to it, I knew I could do it again with no sweat.

That's the funny thing about experiencing awful things; they prepare you for the future.

We know by now I'm a big fan of learning lessons, and that I'll search for meaning in anything I do with this being no exception.  Visual Manager quits on you a week before physical inventory?  Plan for it!  Associates quit on you in the middle of holiday?  Be ready to hire more!  Don't freak out, don't get down on yourself, drink lots of water, and try to disconnect when you can.  Reach out to your peers, vent to your peers, and don't be afraid to ask for help.  It's okay to fail, it's okay to slip, it's okay to make a mistake.  It's okay to not be perfect.

I have a hard time with that last statement, and it's something I'm still working toward... perfecting?  I don't like to fail.  I hate to fail, actually.  Not because I'm overly competitive and not because I don't want to be embarrassed, but because I don't want to be disappointed.  I like to only take calculated risks, I don't like to get my hopes up, and again, I don't like to be disappointed in myself.  But it happens and that's part of my development.

So ANYWAY, I made it through the third Acting GM gig with flying colors.  FLYING colors!  And I came out the other side of the holiday season bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to take on the damn world!  I relinquished the Acting GM title very briefly in April for three weeks, and then took it on again at the end of the month.  Now I'm not gonna lie here... the ensuing few months weren't great.

May was a horrible month, and I'm still trying to bounce back from it (on a work level). My job itself was kind of in a weird limbo and could go away at any moment, dropping me back into the ACM role.

But, y'know... head down, keep working.

June was better.  June was actually really good, and I started feeling better about my performance despite still wondering about my job.

Head down, keep working.

And then Derek did what he did.  My personal life, still somewhat fragile and not what it used to be, took a lovely nosedive right into the porcelain peehole.  It's hard for me to exaggerate, willingly or not, but that was about as bad as it could have been.  And it sucked.  It sucked, and it hurt, and it still hurts and it still sucks.

But again, because it's what I know how to do... head down, keep working.

A couple days ago I got a phone call from Damien.  I was sitting on the gift wrap station in the stockroom at Pottery Barn, and I immediately started to cry after he said it.  Because I needed a win.  After everything, work and personal, I needed something that would make it all feel like it hadn't just been a waste of time.  A waste of life.

"You're the General Manager of Arbor Lakes now."

Just like that.

Quite suddenly every negative thought... every sour image... every doubt... it washes away.  Suddenly you realize it was all worth it.  The hours that followed proved this true, as my frustrations and angers that had to do with work turned into the writing on a dry-erase board, vanishing beneath the felt eraser.  It's my store now... it's my store.  There is no contract saying I have to give it back again; there is no waiting for it to be over, to lose the pay and step back down to ACM.  It's mine.  Officially.  Unequivocally.  Irrefutably.  Mine.

I look back on the last 14 years of jobs and see how far I've come.  That kid in the denim button-down shirt at Hollywood Video afraid of telling people they had late fee's on their accounts for past due movies.  That kid at Regal Cinemas in the maroon polo shirt, afraid to tell people to stop talking during the movie.  The uncomfortable 18 year old sucking his gut in to the point that it hurt, not eating anything for a day or two at a time because he was so desperate to lose weight and fit in at American Eagle.  I look back on the experiences and the lessons; why you don't date someone you work with and why you don't give your boss the finger when they can very easily turn around and catch you doing it.  I see why you always tell the truth at work, even if it sucks.  Why you stand up for yourself.  Why you don't back down to a bully (nasty-evil-bitch-troll-from-hell) store manager who you will eventually get fired if you just persevere and beat her at her own game.

When I posted this last year, Tina said she felt like it was a hero suiting up.

I even look back five years to my first day at Pottery Barn, being filled with excitement and anticipation over what a career with the company will bring.  A People First company, that does what it can for the people it employs.  I realize here at the end that I feel like I did at the beginning, and when I say the end, I don't mean with the company.  I mean the end of my "training" in a word.  My training to be the captain of the ship.  To be a store manager, nay, a General Manager.  Of course I still have buckets to learn, but now I've achieved something that has inadvertently been my goal for the last decade.

When posed with the question "Where do you see yourself in five years?" I have never been the kind of person to exclaim "RUNNING THE COMPANY AS THE CEO!"  I've always been a realist, choosing instead to only focus on the next level.  As an associate it was to become a manager, then to become the Co-Manager.  As the ACM, it was to be the GM.  Now?  I don't really know.  Maybe after I wear the hat for a few months... or not the hat, but maybe a peacoat, as my head is too big for a hat... but after that maybe I'll know what I want to do next.  For the time being I'm just going to enjoy it.

Because I've worked really hard.  I've struggled, I've fallen, I've messed up, and ultimately I've succeeded.  I don't accept this responsibility lightly.  I am grateful and overjoyed and ecstatic to be able to prove myself now more than ever before.  Because I earned it.  I deserve it.  And I'm gonna own it.

Like Muse says: "When hope and love has been lost, and you fall to the ground... you must find a way.  When the darkness descends, and you're told it's the end, you must find a way.  Dig down."

I know I'm not done digging, but at least I'm starting to see some reward for the effort.  Ciao for now (c; 

when a heart breaks

January 2015

You start with something good.

Pure.

You move through the minutes, the hours, the days, weeks, months, years... for the most part happiness abounds.

Then the doubts form.  Curiosities race in to cross the game board of your life, and then in a single moment of poor judgement... it's done.

Finished.

I've been here before, you know.  Maybe not all of you know that, but most of you do.  Granted this time is quite different, being just one infidelity and not a series of them laced with emotions that denoted cheating on more than just one level ("one level" being a physical one).  In the end it's apples to apples with a result still reaching the same conclusion; I'm alone again.  Can I tell you something weird though?  Something that surprises no one more than it surprises me?

I'm not even that mad anymore.

Don't get me wrong... I'm feeling every emotion about this, mostly sadness and confusion, but that bigger piece of anger is just sitting at the peripheral.  Those of you that have been around for a while know all about how I handled my breakup with Ken.  I had a tank of napalm at my disposal, furiously kicked it over and spread it across everything I possibly could, and then lit it up in a fit of rage so I could watch him and everything we had built burn to the ground.  You wanna wrong me? I thought, then I'll get you back by airing all of our dirty laundry right on Facebook.  That'll make you sorry.

Only it didn't make Ken sorry... and it didn't make me feel any better.  There was nothing cleansing about that experience.  Now, six years later, when I re-read some of the things I wrote I can't help but cover my eyes and shake my head in embarrassment at how petty it all was.  Not that certain things weren't justified, because I really went through the ringer on that one, but still.

You might be asking why I'm writing this now... if I speak so highly of learning from airing the past in such a negative light.  Fair enough.  I find that I'm writing now because I haven't written for months, simply clamming up and holding it all in instead.  The last few years I've largely shut myself away, and not for self-preservation or anything weird, I just had nothing to say.  I shared it all with Derek, and when you have that, you stop sharing with everyone else because there's no need to.  I used to be quite open in these things and writing it out now is a weird sort of purge for me.  Collect the thoughts, put them down, rearrange them in a manner that makes sense, and then find calm in it.  That's the truth.

There might be a couple of you that know what went down between Derek and I, and you might feel I should do the same here as I did back then.  You might feel I'm letting him off easy, and that's fair.  But it's also not for you to decide.  It's for me to decide.

There are several factors that go into my judgement process this time around, at 31 rather than 25.  It was always easy for me to shout out "if I ever get cheated on again, I'm out the fuckin' door with no thoughts of a second glance back!" The reality is different.  The reality is that 921 days ago when I first said "I love you," we didn't spend a night apart afterward unless one of us was out of town.  In the beginning when we'd go to bed, one of us would say "ask me something," and the other would come up with a random question that would usually get a long and thoughtful answer.  Eventually this stopped, I'm not sure why... maybe because I just took it all for granted.  Maybe I still do.  I think the real reason was that it was because I felt I knew him well enough and that there was nothing else to discover.

I remember standing in the shower with Derek at the end of the day on Christmas.  We had a couple candles lit and the lights out, so it was just a comfy, safe space.  He was talking about his father because it was his first Christmas without him, and he started crying.  I started crying too, because here was this person... this man... that had come into my life so unexpectedly and immediately made a huge mark on me.  After having my shield up for so long against being hurt by any prospective partner, I was suddenly defenseless against him.  That night he was feeling what he needed to feel, and I was lucky enough to share it with him.  It drew us together so quickly, with me being the emotional vampire that latches on to people's feelings and how they convey them.  And I suppose him, looking for someone that would just listen with no ulterior motive.

And that was us.

Some people feel they know me well enough to know what I want and need, and they have been quick to jump in with "you need to kick him out, he has to go.  You won't be able to move on if you don't do that," and it's just not that simple.  I wish it was so simple... that I could turn it off and say "see ya later."  I think that people are weak, inherently.  I know I am, and I of course only can speak for myself, but it is my opinion.  We all have weaknesses, we all make mistakes.  Hell, I make mistakes all the time, I just cover it up well enough so that it looks intentional.  But I've made serious mistakes in my life.  I cheated on Ken when we were together, and that's a mistake I'll always hate myself for.  I don't believe in the "once a cheater always a cheater" thing, because I know first hand it isn't true, but I can never label myself otherwise.  That's my fault.  But one mistake does not define me, and it won't define Derek.  Sadly it may end up being what defines "us" and that's a really shit thing, because there was so much good that came before it.

I'm not religious.  I never have been, I don't ever intend to be.  I feel I operate more on a spiritual, maybe "energy" based belief system, but I do think there are some things in the Christian Bible that carry a lot of weight.  I Googled this passage and found it incredibly accurate:

"Then they reminded Jesus that adultery was punishable by stoning under Mosaic law and challenged him to judge the woman so that they might then accuse him of disobeying the law.  Jesus thought for a moment and then replied, 'He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.'"

What Derek did... he did to me.  Not to any of you.  I know it might feel like he did it to you too, and while you may feel very strongly on my behalf (as you are of course entitled to feel), please don't pursue anger toward him.  Like I said, people make mistakes in life.  Some of them are much bigger than others.  It's not really any of our jobs to judge, it's our job, if we're able, to help people through these situations.  No one died here, no one got permanently sick here.  Trust was broken right along with a heart, and it ended up causing the demise of something that was once pretty great.

I'm the one that has to live with the broken pieces of my heart.

At the end, I'm reminded of the beginning.
   Him: "Did you order a Peppermint Mocha?"
       Me: "Yes...?"
   Him: "Found it!"
Our first date on a Tuesday night in November, sitting in the back room of Fox River House under fluorescent lights and chatting idly over a cider for me and a beer for him.  The night ending in our first kiss, in my car in his mom's driveway.  Watching our first movie together in his living room, Silver Lining's Playbook.  Seeing the Hunger Games in the theater a few days later.  Decorating a Christmas tree together.  Creating inside jokes, chuckling at the idiosyncrasies we each had.  Dinners out, awkward waiters, scowling waitresses.  A move across the country.  A second move across the country.  Tears of happiness and sadness, broken barriers and open discussions.  Disagreements that led to accepting differences.  Never having a single fight.  Never raising voices to each other.  Cooking dinners at home, cooking for friends at home.  Being a united front that at least from the outside, looked perfect.  Because that's what picture's do... they don't show the growing doubt.  They don't show the fear that it's going to end badly, the concern that maybe this isn't the one.  The hope that he is the one.

They show touched up faces, the best selection out of ten photos where both of you have normal looking smiles.  Pictures hide a multitude of thoughts and are taken at face value.

March 2016

I was a voice of reason for Derek.  I was the one to say hang on a second when he got too ahead of himself, the one who would tell him to cool it when I was telling him a story and he'd jump ahead with his assumption.  Unfortunately, he didn't reach out for my voice when he made the ultimate decision.

I could hate him if I wanted to.  Easily.  Curse his name, throw him to the wolves... both literal and figurative.  But I'm not that 25 year old anymore, looking for retribution at the expense of someone else.  I've grown and learned and changed... and right now I'm heartbroken.  It continues to come and go, the realization that it's really over and what that means today, tomorrow, and the day after.  I have a persistent ache in my chest that rages with an intensity I'd forgotten could exist.  I still love him, and I will always love him.  He will always be one of my best friends, because I just don't have it in me right now for him not to be.  Like I said, one act does not define a person, and he isn't a bad person.  He's a lovely person, who is both extraordinarily caring and unfailingly kind.  A person who would drop anything he was doing at any given time to honor a request for me.  I could wake him up at 3am and say I've got a migraine, and he'd go out for painkillers without a single complaint or question asked.  That's how it was from the beginning, right up to the end.  None of that is to excuse what happened... for some things in life there is no excuse.  But in regards to discussing the merit of a person, the proof is in the pudding.

We both lose here.  We both lose a walk down the aisle, the friends on either side of that aisle... we both lose the families we were supposed to share.  We lose parts of the past, the moments of the present, and ultimately a future together.  And that's sad.  It keeps my brain spinning and whirring and trying to find meaning in all of this.

It makes me desperately look at the past and try to discover how I did this before.  How I moved on when I felt like I couldn't, how I kept breathing when I felt like I would suffocate.  But I didn't leave notes for myself, as it were.  I didn't leave a trail of breadcrumbs showing "here you were, Sean, and this is exactly how you got through it."  The healing came in the pain, and eventually the time as well.

Living in a world where you want everything right now, that doesn't help.  When waiting 3 seconds for a webpage to load seems forever so you just click on something else, learning to live without an extension of yourself seems impossible.  I know it's not... I don't need to be told it's not.  I just need to feel this and learn from this, and try to make sense of it in any way I can.  You all know I love learning a lesson, and there is one here waiting to be uncovered.  That's okay.  I have patience.

Because I know the lesson will not be a negative one, and even if it was, I'd do my best to spin it in another direction.  I'd do my best to turn it into something remarkable.

Something good.

Pure.

a new resolution part vi

It was the year that never wanted to end.  The year that saw me through three different positions in as many brands, two different cities to call home, two different states to call home, one cross country move, a shitty election, a lot of tears spread over 365 days, and one absolute meltdown in the middle of it all.  Leading me to label 2016 as "Sean's Year for an Existential Crisis."

For those of you who have heard the term and never knew what it meant, allow me to illuminate the subject:

Existential Crisis; a moment at which an individual questions the very foundations of their life; whether this life has any meaning, purpose or value.

That was me in May, when I had my meltdown at a Starbucks in Austin and rushed to buy a $600 plane ticket home so I could see my family and friends and chill the fuck out (read about it here).  Was it a rash decision?  Sure it was.  Did it help me in the long run?  Indeed it did!  It's a tough pill to swallow when you have the best year of your life (2012 at 26 years old), and then realize four years later you have no idea how you did it.  How did you get happy, how did you make your choices, how How HOW?  I kept wondering how I was going to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time, never realizing that to do so was impossible.  That instead of bending my life around circumstances and trying to figure it out in the process, I needed to break it.

I left the job I'd been planning on for years, left the city I'd been planning on moving to for years, threw caution to the wind and took a chance.  When things get as bad as they were, and without wanting to go on medication to make myself feel better, I figured it couldn't get any worse.  And y'know what, for trusting my gut, I was right.  Because it didn't get any worse, and it in fact got a whole lot better.

I went into this year all wrong, planning originally on filming the whole thing (thank god I gave up on that one almost immediately!) in order to make myself feel something again.  It's interesting in that I look at the pictures my friends from West Elm post on Facebook and Instagram and I feel a strange nostalgia for the city.  Perhaps I really didn't give it enough of a shot.  Not that I'd ever move back, because I won't, and go ahead and punch me right in the nose if I ever forget how much I hated the humidity and always feeling sticky.  But my friends down there do still enjoy it, and they thrive in it, and it makes me so happy to see that.  It's what prompted me to develop my resolution for this year, one that I can hopefully stick to but one that doesn't necessarily come with the physical gratification of those in the past (documenting a year of my life, moving out on my own, yadda yadda).

My 2017 New Years Resolution bucks the trend, and because of it I am going to label 2017 as my year of "Turning Around".  What does that mean?  Well I'm glad you asked!  Step into my office that kinda smells like a dirty cat litter box (guess it's time to change the litter (I'm being serious)) and I shall show you!

I spent too long trying to bend my life around the events I felt I couldn't control.  Asshole employees ruining your first attempt at being a General Manager?  Might as well ignore them and hope they stop.  Not making enough money?  Better start spending less to compensate.  Hate where you live?  Just wait until the next season of weather, it'll get better.  Hating where you thought you wanted to work?  Well, you wanted it, so suck it up and ride it out.

These things thrust themselves into my life and I've become so used to just dealing with them.  Spinning them in positive directions, acting like I am my own PR agent and trying to prove to everyone that "hey, this is just as good as I said it'd be!  Not HOW I said it would be, but just as good!"

So screw it.

If wisdom comes with age and I'm now another year older and maybe another year wiser, it's time to stop tolerating the things that don't make me happy.  It's time to stop shoveling shit and hoping for the best.  It's time to take the reins and start turning it all around.

It's time to work hard and prove my worth.  It's time to laugh in the face of horrible ailments in people I love, to coach and develop my team into what I need rather than what keeps the drama quiet.  To not just skip over the things that make me angry but to push back when I'm getting shoved.  I've built a career around being the nice guy that apologizes when I've done nothing wrong, sometimes to the point that it's simply embarrassing.  And this resolution is not to say "Watch out, bitch breath is coming!" and it's not to say "I'm a millennial, 'bout time I started acting like one!"

This resolution is to say if I don't like something, it's perfectly acceptable to change it.  If it makes me sad, laugh at it.  If it makes me angry, work through it.  I need to start speaking my mind, to stop fearing the consequences of the thoughts I have running through me all the time, and to just enjoy things.  To enjoy the people and places and things that I surround myself with and that I want to be a part of.  Feeling unhealthy?  Get fit.  Feeling fat?  Workout.  Life is too short to not make myself happy with sometimes the simplest things that can do so.

For 2017, instead of saying I'll lose weight or record the year or move yet again or any number of things, I'm going to say I am just going to be happy, and work at being happy, and strive to be happy.  And y'know what?  Maybe in 365 I'll have a whole new story to tell.

Until then, toodles gang (c;

 

some holiday cheer

Winter in the midwest is one of those weird scenarios where you almost need snow and greenery (either fake or real, your choice) to be able to know it's the season.  Because lemme tell ya, as stands, I look out my office window and it sure as shit doesn't look like winter.  Green grass, cloudy sky, and lots of dead trees.  But the trees across the street, while dead and bare, are covered in little red berries that have endured the recent wind storms so that's a nice little pop of color to have in the day.  Aside from sight, I do know it's winter on account of my fingers and how cold they are as I write this.

Today we were supposed to have these guys out that were going to brace the basement walls, further compounding the notion that our landlord will probably be moving home next summer and Derek and I will be out of a home.  To buy or not to buy, that is the question!  The guys were supposed to be here at 9:30 to start work; drilling through the basement walls and attaching these big metal plates to them, then connecting poles to plates they are burying in the back yard.  What a headache.  Not just the chore for them, but because they didn't get here until noon and I have been a prisoner in the house all day.  So what better time than to write a blog and commit myself to producing fresh material for you all to read?

My thoughts too.  Allow me to pour myself a glass of wine and continue.

Derek got to endure my annoying perfectionism at its finest last weekend when we went to cut down our first Christmas tree together.  I say first, despite this being our third Christmas, because he had no part in it the first year (just came over later that day to hang out), and last year we got our tree from Home Depot.  Which means a) it wasn't a real tree because b) it just didn't count and c) that's science.  Being in the Midwest has its charms in that cut-your-own tree farms are plentiful, especially when it comes to the Fraser and Balsam Firs, respectively.  And that's what I wanted.

Now last year we paid about $85 to take a tree from a parking lot, covered by a tent and smelling like fake pine room spray and motor oil.  We could have gone to cut our own down but the variety in the area was... lacking... and I wanted what I wanted.  This shouldn't surprise anybody.  We packed into Bernice and made the drive north, only half an hour (not bad!) and it was a good day for driving because there was a ton of fog and everything looked kind of magical.

Except the tree farm.

If you've ever driven by the stockyards in California, picture that.  Driving out into a field of black mud, expansive and filled with tire tracks of pooled muddy water.  To be fair, when Derek called to make sure they were open the gentleman running the joint said yes and to come early because the ground was still frozen.  As soon as it thaws, it's a muddy mess.  So we were warned and to also be fair, we didn't end up too muddy.  The car kinda did.  So we parked and walked around and I took the above picture because at first glance, it was perfect.

But it was like a monet, where everything is lovely from a distance and then you get up close and it's a big fartin' mess.  Too thin, lopsided, full of weird pinecone things, crooked, too short, too skinny.  I can go on.  After about twenty minutes of marching around in the snow, Derek and I chose (settled on) one, I got out the saw, and cut it down.  We stuffed her in the back of Bernice and probably could have just left without paying because they had no security and no way of knowing who paid for what, but we were good souls and stopped to pay. Half the price of Austin!

I finished the bottle of wine already )c:

After getting the tree decorated and prancing around the house watching Christmas Vacation, Derek and I went to Target to buy the necessary supplies for the much anticipated (...) competition.  Ladies and germs, I give you:

The 2016

Second Annual

Gingerbread House

COMPETITION

The contest grew out of a statement Derek made last year when he told me that he could make a better gingerbread house than i could.  Me loving a challenge, we purchased identical gingerbread house kits and spent an evening putting them together, shielded by a box between us.  We posted the side-by-side picture and let all of you vote.  And I won ::tosses hair::

This year we decided to up the ante a little bit.  Still using the same house kits, as we did last year, we each had an additional $25 to buy extra food supplies to create our respective visions.  We were allowed to purchase ONE object that was not food to include if we wanted to.  A week later, we spent a quiet Sunday listening to music and constructing our creations.  The prize?  If I won, Derek had to watch the Twilight Saga without complaining.  If Derek won, I had to do any snow shoveling in the month of December by myself.

Good thing I won.

Derek was a great sport about it though and in the end, it was just a nice time to listen to Christmas music and spend the day together.  I was ailing from a quick 'bout of being sick and didn't want to do much else anyway, so spending four hours in the kitchen being creative was just what the doctor ordered.

I know the snow will come sooner rather than later, but I'm content with waiting.  Last year it was such a long drag of winter with really nothing to show for it.  We went through the motions but it just didn't feel like the yuletide joy we, or at least I, had appreciated so much before.  I'm glad I can feel it this year.  It's a simple thing, really, but one you don't think you'll miss until it's gone.

So with that being said it's just two weeks until Christmas.  Then my birthday, New Years Eve, and 2017 just hop-skip from that.  This year took a long time to wrap up, always so quickly though when it gets to be the end.  I'll see you in a couple weeks with a few more blogs!

Ciao for now (c;

back to the beginning

It's time.

It's time for a reversal of things.  To return to an order I used to know and to set things aside that never did for me what I thought they would.  To let seansparker.com fade away into obscurity, to move myself closer to my roots, and to start living a life I want to live.

It's time for a return to form that used to make me so comfortable.  To write silly little memos, to laugh not only at life but with it.  To start stirring the pot just a little bit more and to enjoy the fruits of doing so.  To take control of a life that a year ago spun wildly out of control and only recently began driving straight once more.

It's time for trips again.  For life outside of the four walls I live in.  For changes and experiences and foods and drinks and stories yet to be told.  It's time to get off my ass and get into shape, to start feeling better about how I look and not to just wait for things to go my way.

How many times can a person write about a "perfect year" before they pay attention to the words they are using?  How many times do I have to write and read and think "life is what you make of it?"  Too many times.

That's the answer.

So here we are, back at Blogger, and back to the start.  If I ever really wanted to delete it, I would have.  But part of me always knew I'd come back.  I've published two novels, I'm on the brink of publishing a third, but I'm not famous for it.  And until I am, it's more comfortable for me to put on an old hat.

Musings of a Self-Proclaimed Author is back, and it's time to drop the "Formerly" from that title.  It was a mouthful anyway.

I want you all to keep a weather eye on the horizon, and bear with me.  I feel like I maybe have a grip on this thing once again and it's about time I do.

Ciao for now (c;

sixth iteration

Once again I sit down to write a blog and find just a smidgen of time longer than anticipated has gone by.  I'm used to it at this point, so I shrug and continue onward.  I was scrolling through my Timehop this morning and realized with a startle what today is.  The time tends to fly as the years go on, and I can't believe I almost forgot about one of my favorite anniversaries.

What a silly boy I am to nearly ignore what today marks...

THE FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY FOR

MUSINGS OF A FORMERLY

SELF-PROCLAIMED AUTHOR

Now, I know you just clutched your pearls or respective jewelry at the announcement but yes indeed: my blog is now five years old.  An age that means it is ready to really start talking back to me and screaming "You're not my real dad, Jeff!" despite me not being a dad.  Or my name not being Jeff.  I digress.

Last year when I sat down to write the fifth iteration, my view was very different.  I was sitting on a dock in Austin, TX, looking out over the Colorado River and enjoying (somewhat) the 80 degree weather.  This year not so much.  Right now I am sitting at the patio table in my backyard, listening to the cool breeze blowing through the tree canopy above me.  I can hear squirrels chattering, a bird of some sort making little "beep" sounds down the block, and dried leaves blowing across the concrete.  The lawn is freshly mowed and the hostas have been cut back to nubs, signs that show winter is on the way and we'll be better for it.

I am better for it.  I'm better now than I have been in a long time, and it's amazing how much of that has to do with location.

Iteration blogs tend to become lists of things I either liked or hated in the year preceding, how they occurred or didn't, and then what I have to look forward to in a year's time.  I think I've demonstrated fairly deftly all of the things that can occur in a year, but seeing as it's my blog and not yours I get to rehash some of that right now, albeit briefly.

I'd like to think my face is thinner. It's probably just the angle /c:

You start something new in life and you want to start everything fresh too.  New city, new house, new job... new hair?  A year ago today I buzzed my hair off for the last time, ridding it of the last bits of color and dye that I had put it through over the course of two and a half years.  Doesn't get much more fresh than that!  It may have also had to do with the slow slip into madness I was enduring, a steady stream of depression flowing through me in those first four months and not really going away for another seven.  I've written about it before and still have no shame in admitting it now, because it was the road I travelled.

All I wanted from the blog this last year was to upgrade the web service I used to create it.  I said goodbye to Blogger and created seansparker.com.  In hindsight I do miss Blogger and the simplicity it offered, but in the same respect the site was a pain in the ass because it had to habit of sometimes deleting my work.  You know well enough by now that I don't write as frequently as I once did, so to write something and then have it vanish was just about the worst thing.

So I did what I set out to do and la-dee-da, here we are.  I've been admittedly lazy with this site and what it could be, but there's no point in crying about it.

I really like that quote.  It about sums up the last twelve months.  Sometimes I wish I had never moved and stayed put right where I was.  In the same respect I know that wasn't an option for me.  Have you ever had your star charts read?  I did, in Austin, a couple weeks before we moved to Minneapolis.  Some people like to make fun of others for putting faith into things as silly as the zodiac and astral readings, and I don't blame them.  It isn't for everyone.  But when you have your cards read several times over and they apply directly to your life, you do tend to believe in it.

My star chart had a little area where it showed... I don't know, let's call them "astral lines" over maps of the world.  The lines are different colors and mean different things, and there are hundreds of them.  So many that you have to select a country and then look at it with the "key" they have to identify what you're looking at.  Keeping in mind you don't put any information in about where you're from or where you're going, this logic is all based on where you were born, what day, and what time.  Then through what I'm assuming is a combination of Jesus and black magic, they show you all this stuff about your life and who you are predisposed to being as an individual.

There was a black line running directly through Austin, and I asked what it meant.  I was told by my reader "you moved here to fix something, but you're not meant to stay here."  I thought about it and felt that I had moved down to Texas to fix my relationship with my brother.  Not that it was broken, of course.  Josh and I never really had much time around each other as adults and I guess in a lot of ways I wanted to see what that relationship was like, a sentiment I later shared with him.

It was a positive relationship, as I felt it would be, but it was neat to look at it in that different light.  I was able to run my thoughts over him on that before moving away, both of us knowing it was for the best.

There was a green line going through Minneapolis, and this meant "financial prosperity," amongst other positive things.  Moving to this city would mean great things on a career level, both in making more money and ultimately approaching something akin to a dream job.  This logic was confirmed this past weekend by a friend of mine back in Wisconsin, who read the cards for me after I'd gone home and saw this same information (without me telling her so).  My dream job isn't necessarily with the company I am at right now, not to say I'm unhappy, and also not to say I even know what my dream job is.  I suppose I'll know when it hits me between the eyes?

When I asked about the brown line running through my old home in Wisconsin, I was met with her response of "moving back isn't necessary... if you go back you'll be fine, but you won't grow.  You'll be stagnant."

I know this all sounds like hocus pocus and stuff and that's fine, even Derek kinda rolled his eyes at it.  But to me it was great information.  For a person that spent the better part of a year with no direction, feeling lost and alone, wondering where the next step would lead and if the next step was even a wise one... it was golden.  It's never a bad thing to get a pat on the back if you're making the right decision, whether that pat on the back comes from clandestine events or not.  I had already announced the move to Minneapolis when I had the reading, so finding out it was one of the better choices I could make in life?  That was amazing, and so far, it has been.

So where do I want to see the blog go as we enter the sixth iteration?

I want "Musings of a Formerly Self-Proclaimed Author" to revert to what it used to be.  Let's start my losing "Formerly" because it just doesn't flow.  I started this thing before I'd ever published and a large part of me doesn't even feel like a real author anyway.  I don't say that to be a poop, it's just the truth.  Maybe when the royalty payments that get direct deposited into my bank account are in the hundreds (re: thousands), I'll change my tune.  I'd even think twice if they were in the twenties to be honest, harrumph.

In getting back to my roots I want to start writing freely again. Bring back the "Random Truths," maybe have a guest writer.  Maybe conduct some interviews with friends of mine who run their own businesses and see what I come up with?  Format isn't something I'm nailed down on and I'd be happy to continue exploring it.  Bottom line is that I need to start writing again.  I need to make it a part of my daily routine and get stuff out, exploring my thoughts like I used to and feeling a certain amount of zen in doing so.

It's like Lucius sings below: "we'll all be okay."  Ciao for now, gang.  Look for my return to form soon (c;

opening at the close

I've been tinkering and thinking about this post for a while.  Sit down to write, find something better to do, and leave it in my mind to roll around and grow maybe a little stronger.  A little bit better.  It's not an easy or necessarily fun task to wrap up what you've learned in a year's time, to discover and unfold whatever lessons may have been bestowed upon you... or to really put away anything left unsaid and undone.  I didn't know what to even title it, and then got to thinking about Harry Potter and realized how perfectly something from the end of the franchise would apply.  And thus, I moved forward.

I think it takes a little bit of time after something has ended for your mind (my mind, really) to come to terms with what happened.  A month ago today Derek and I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota.  It was an idea that came about rather quickly in May, unfurling throughout June, and then thrown into action on July 1st when we gave notice to break our newly signed lease 10 months early.  I didn't have a concrete job lined up, Derek had no job at all lined up, and we didn't have a place to live.  Everything came together in a game of chance and perseverance and we landed in a suburb called Crystal, right-side up.

Granted, we felt this way once before as well.

Because it was a year ago today that we also moved away from Wisconsin to Austin, Texas.  It's hard for me to decide if I would still have moved down, if I knew then what I know now, but I think that's the beauty of hindsight.

I find it difficult to put myself in the shoes I was in a year ago.  On the brink of some unknown adventure, with no clue what was really in store for me.  I remember the first time I moved out on my own, and how hard it was for Ken to deal with me.  That move was just across town... less than six miles.  I can't imagine how Derek dealt with me after moving 1,800 miles, but I suppose the proof's in the pudding.  No affairs and we're still together, happy as clams more or less.

If you want to read about Texas you're more than welcome to, it's all right here in a summation of things.  As for me, I'd prefer not to walk down that Lone Star road again because as one of my favorite quotes says, "don't look back, you're not going that way."

When we packed up the truck and subsequently drove away, I didn't feel a single thing other than pure elation.  No tightness in the throat about leaving, no sadness of what was shrinking in the rear-view mirror.  We make poor choices sometimes in life and this was one of mine.  For me there was no emotion over leaving this place behind, instead it's the people... that's what makes me sad.  Nothing else really.

Work life never really got my spirits up, and some of you might think that's ironic because who's ever really happy at work?  But I can be... I had been before.  You should at least enjoy going to work and doing what you do, otherwise you're in the wrong field and you should get the hell out.  I just kept waiting for it to get better at the respective jobs and it never did.  You can try as much as you want sometimes, it won't make a difference.  But what did make a difference were the people.  None of them ever hit "best friend" status, and that's okay because maybe they weren't meant to.  But they did reach a status where I looked forward to seeing them, where I laughed hysterically to the point of tears with them, and where I cared deeply for their well being.

And I do miss them very much.  I miss sharing stories with them and seeing their creative outlooks on life, because if there is one thing that was never missing it was creativity.  I worked with such a talented group of people, with such big personalities, that it truly was inspiring.  A month on now I'm happy I am still in contact with several of them, be it through Instagram or Facebook of even the occasional Skype session.  Forging these friendships kept me sane and for that I'll always be grateful.

So, moving on.

What I find interesting is how once we moved I just couldn't relax.  The house we moved into was left in a condition that wasn't very pleasant, so there was a lot of work to be done.  Patching walls, painting walls, painting trim, cleaning and cleaning and cleaning.  In my mind I felt no different here than I had in Austin, save for the fact that the weather was a little cooler and more tolerable to have the windows open.  Derek asked me if I was happier and I kind of shrugged and said "I think so," but in my head I didn't know if I believed it or not.  I didn't know if he believed me or not.

I mean... my job is better, and that's something, right?  Coming back to Pottery Barn meant coming back to a family I had been sorely missing.  After two days the stories behind furniture collections were coming back to me, the names were coming back.  Memories and facts and thoughts and ideas and everything in between.  West Elm never really caught on for me and I can't help but think it's because in my core, I just didn't want to be there.  I didn't want to learn about the collections and I didn't want to adapt to the logic behind how the company ran, because it was different from Pottery Barn and those were the ones closer to my core beliefs.  Not to say they were "wrong," they just weren't what I wanted.

Aside from my job, Derek and I weren't doing anything here in Minnesota.  We went downtown the night we got here and then didn't go again until just this weekend.  We ate out a lot because I didn't want to cook on the dirty stove or put anything in the dirty oven.  I also didn't want to actually clean it, because I had a bathroom to scour and a dining room/hallway/office/kitchen to fix, in that order.  It wasn't at the top of my list as skewed as it may have been.  Add to that a gigantic garden in the backyard, an actual yard that needed to be maintained, and sorting through the numerous boxes (some of which had never been unpacked from the original move).  There was a lot to do.  So I kept my head down and kept working.

Three weeks after getting here, when I put the last empty box out in the garage and closed the last cupboard, lighting a couple candles and looking around at the completed work, it hit me.  Keeping my head down and focused meant working on the only real negatives here, and once I finished, everything else seemed to come into focus.  This place is amazing, and while we landed on our feet as we did in Austin, there is something different this time around.  Tangible.

I finally live in a single-family home again, with a dedicated office and wall colors I got to pick.  With a great big yard in an old neighborhood that is quiet and with friendly neighbors.  We both have jobs we're happy at, we live within a fairly short drive home to Wisconsin, and we're making more money than we were down south.  The traffic isn't as bad, the heat definitely isn't as bad, and the people are just a little bit nicer.  There's less negativity from the people you encounter... less bitterness over the city or the world or the climate.  Maybe that's just a Midwest thing, maybe it's not.

Hopefully in the end what this all means is that with everything falling into place, it will allow Derek and I to work on the things in our relationship that maybe aren't the best in the world.  Not to say they're bad, because they aren't, but it can always be better.  There is a whole new world for us to explore right now and we haven't even attempted to scratch the surface of it.  In a couple weeks the colors on the trees will start changing, throwing us into my favorite season of the year, fall.  Pumpkins and spices and festivals and cool days and sweaters and coats and cloudy skies and rain and wind.

It might be a hell to some people but to me it's paradise.

In the end there is really just one thing to say about what the last year of my life taught me.  Was Austin the worst place in the world?  Not at all.  But Austin wasn't for me and that's okay to say.  Living there taught me a very important life lesson: you might not always find a better life in what you thought was the city of your dreams, but there's nothing wrong with trying and ultimately deciding against it.  It's how we grow and learn as human beings.  A year ago today I started closing up, shutting out certain people from my life and shouldering forward as strongly and sometimes stubbornly as I could.  Trying to learn lessons but mostly just being miserable and even more closed and bitter.  Now that it's over, now that the ducks are all in a row here in Minnesota, I can feel myself opening back up.

It's a wonderful and exciting thing to feel and experience, and it makes me look back somewhat fondly on my experience in Texas.  If it hadn't been for Texas, I wouldn't have lost my voice and subsequently found it once more.  I wouldn't have realized what I'd been taking for granted in Wisconsin for so long, and I wouldn't have realized how much I'd miss it when it was gone.  It took just three weeks of rumination for me to bounce back, to breathe in deeply, and to find more reasons to smile.  21 days before I wanted to start writing again, to start editing, to start working on art projects.  It makes me wonder what comes next?

Because as the solid year of life changes and monumental choices comes to an end, indeed, I've opened at the close.

Ciao for now (c: