Category: Personal Thoughts

Puking Blood and Doing Social Media The Right Way

Yeah, you didn’t read that wrong. A couple of days ago after a few weeks of pain in my stomach I puked a bit of blood. Nothing big, but a good friend of mine made it perfectly clear to me that I should go see a doctor because she is super nosey! Anyways, while I sat down and checked to see when I could make my appointment online I decided to check on Facebook. I hadn’t been on there in months to look at anything and I was a little curious. I noticed right away that it was all the same. Just a sea of things I was following or things people commented on or shared from other pages. Everything I have started to dislike about social media.

I stayed on Instagram because it is more personal with people posting about family or friends. It is very to the point and yeah, sure, people like to post political, religious or the awesome inspirational update, but not as toxic as Facebook. I want to change that even if it is just for myself. I decided to delete every single thing that I followed. You won’t find any likes of my music, movies or hobbies that I enjoy. I know, you must be scared now. How the hell are you going to be able to tell what kind of person I am if you can’t browse through the endless amount of garbage that a person likes. I guess you might just have to ask, maybe?

Social media isn’t evil. TV isn’t evil. Money isn’t evil. Things…aren’t evil. It is the way we as humans use them and this isn’t a generation thing at all. I don’t care what year you were born you probably use social media the same way your kids do. Being anonymous and not standing in front of the person brings out the worst in people sometimes. However, the past four months I have done a lot of, um, well, soul searching I guess you could say. Being disconnected from electronics and trying to be more with myself and with my kids helped me find someone that has been buried in a sludge of crap for a long time.

I’m going to start oil painting. I picked up my guitar again. I’ve taken my health serious with what I eat and working out….I know, the blood thing brings a question to that, right? However, when I’m not full time being a dad or working I’m honestly completely alone. Friends and family aren’t really around me and let’s just say human contact in a romantic way isn’t happening. Yeah, my wife left me, but I’m still in love with her and don’t want to cross that bridge for years.

I guess I kind of need social media in a way. Friends and family that I love are all across the United States and a lot are even further than that. Calling randomly isn’t always best and honestly social media like Facebook is convenient when they aren’t trying to shove ads in your face. I decided to give it another shot, but I removed everything that would annoy me with all the distractions outside that I have no real control over.

WIll this work? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll update what happens in the next couple days, weeks, months or maybe never. Who knows. We will see.

Getting My Confidence Back

I went shopping the other day with my boys and a woman came up to tell me how cute they all were. She said they must have gotten their cuteness from me. When she said that I was taken back a bit by it because this wasn’t the first time I was complimented this year. In fact, the past few months I’ve been feeling good about myself and it is possible people have noticed. It is shocking because for years I had slowly become so hollow as a person I can see why no one wanted to actually compliment me. There was nothing of me to be proud of and I could see it from my family and friends.

The start of the year I remember someone telling me frequently how pathetic I was. The first few months I could probably agree with that to a point. I was falling apart and I had no one to be with me besides my kids and they were gone half the time. I had a lot of time to self-reflect on what I wanted and who I wanted to be in my life. When I figured it out I changed myself so much that even my own family members didn’t recognize me. It was a good feeling. That confidence that was beaten out of me was now back.

I’m constantly told how much my ex doesn’t love me anymore. How I need to just find someone that does love me and feel good about myself. I’m still in love with her, so that isn’t much of an option. I’m not looking for a rebound or someone to make me forget her. I’d rather just let time help me to move on, but it has been nice these past few months being hit on. Granted they have been somewhat awkward and one of them was married who even knew my ex and myself, but I want to just be happy with who I am as a person.

Oddly enough I am happy. There is a lot of crap happening that I wish I could control or fix, but even with all of these issues I’m happy. I know I can’t have everything I want in my life and there are things I’ll just have to push through, but so far I know I’m heading down the right path. The path I know that will make me a happier and a healthy person.

I Made A Compliment Basket

When the year first started I wanted to change how my sons and I talked to each other. We all like to say we would never talk down or say something mean to family members, but that is a load of crap. I love my kids and I know they love me, but sometimes we like to say hurtful things to each other. I came up with the mean jar to put money in every time we did that and we would go get ice cream with it later on. I later realized that wasn’t the best idea since we were treating ourselves from our misdeeds.

I had heard about compliment jars and decided to make my own. I thought of a few phrases I would like my kids to say to each other or to me when things hit the fan. However, I realized the only jar I had for this was too big for their hands too small for mine. I looked around my house and found a small basket we could throw everything in. My next step was coming up with some compliments.

Now, at this point I have to admit something to all of you…or the one person reading this. I am in no way what you would call a “crafty” person. My ex-wife was good at all of this, so even coming up with the idea of doing something like this is what many people would call a miracle. Strangely enough I hated this stuff and now I like doing it. I’m even coming up with newer ideas, so I’m either gay, which one of my friends pointed out, or maybe I want to improve myself along with my surroundings. Who knows, right?

My kids though, they got on it super quick. I didn’t think they would have jumped on board with it as fast as they did. I remember my youngest accidentally kicking me in the face and I said, “You little shit” because it hurt like hell. My middle child ran into the other room and grabbed the basket right away and told me to pick something to say to him. I loved it. They have been better with their words in just a matter of days and always ask me what certain ones mean if they aren’t really grasping the gesture.

I think I want to start a series on here on the boys and I. The things we will be doing together and the fun will be having. There is a lot I want to do with them and I can see us having a blast doing it.

I Have A Secret

We all have our little secrets. They can be big or they can be small, but we all have them whether we like to believe it or not. We keep secrets from friends and even our family members. We will hide it because we are afraid of what others think, maybe it is embarrassing or maybe we are just angry. It can comfort us, it can hurt us or depending on the nature it can keep us safe.

This secret involves my password protected post right below this one. The secret answer can be right in front of you sometimes.

https://goodasdad.blog/2017/09/27/hey-person/

I Hate Being Asked If I’m Okay

I’ve been getting that more and more lately. I have a few friends that I can only talk to online and I get a call from one of them asking if something bad had happened to me. It was just a busy week and I’ve slowly been walking away from electronics as the year goes on. They thought something terrible had happened to me or I did something terrible to myself. My year hasn’t always been on the up, so I guess I could understand it. However, people have been asking it more lately.

It might be because I’m not wallowing in my depression anymore, but instead I’m actually happy. Yes, there is still a great deal of sadness that I carry, but it isn’t hurting me as much anymore. I’m happy with myself, I love being with my kids and yes I enjoy my own company being by myself. People are scared for me and I get that. They care and that is nice. It can get annoying though always being asked if I’m going to “make it.”

The divorce is the hardest part of all of this. I’m still very much in love with my ex and us having three kids makes it really tough. I still imagine her lying next to me, I remember the touch of her lips, the way she smells, and I’m actually annoyed she is putting on more makeup because I can’t see her freckles when I see her. I really liked them. Being in love with this person and her not feeling the same way is a bummer. I wanted to try the “friend” thing, but I can’t do it. I honestly hope her or anyone else never feels this way with another person. I’d honestly rather rip my shoulder apart again.

Yes, I’m sad that I don’t get to see my kids all the time, be with the woman I love and my grandfather could pass away any day due to cancer. Weirdly enough I’m still happy though. But what is really strange is just this time last year I was miserable and I had everything I could have ever hoped for in my life now. This is a lesson for me in life to not take things for granted and when something good is with me I should try to have it with me as long as I can and value it.

Here’s a bonus for you all

Letters From The Dead

The past few weeks a lot has happened to me and I honestly couldn’t explain half of it. The one thing I have taken from it is that we will all die one day. Yeah, I know I’m not speaking any new knowledge here, but we are all going to die. However, with the recent health of my grandfather and knowing that with my family and friends I may never get a real chance to say goodbye to them I felt something needed to be done. The thought is scary not because I’ll die, but they won’t know my true feelings for them.

I’m currently in the process of writing a letter to everyone that has held a place in my heart. When I first sat down to write everything I needed to make the list of people I wanted to send this to. At first I thought the list would be short and I was a little taken back on how many people I wanted to write this for. Did they feel the same way about me? Would they even care that I did this with them on my mind? The weird thing is I’ll never really know.

The first three letters were of course for my children. When I started to write them out I made it seem I was talking to them like it was an everyday thing, but I realized later that when they read this I won’t be there. It won’t be like every day. It will be one of the worst days of their lives. I don’t want to seem all doom and gloom, but at the same I need to make sure that every word I put down is valuable to them.

The next were for my parents. I know that if they had to read this it would break their hearts because what parent would ever want to read the last thoughts their child had? I could never even fathom it, but it needs to be said. We like to think the bad things that happen to us when we were younger were our parents fault, but when you become a parent you realize more every day that life sometimes gives you a crappy hand.

After that I knew I needed to say something to my ex-wife and her mother. Spending twelve years together and going through such a terrible divorce really turned my life upside down with both of them. I still loved them so much and still to this day I don’t want to get the divorce, but I know it is going to happen no matter what. It is possible they won’t care what I have to say, but what I put down brought me some ease.

After family came friends and I still have so much more to do. I think I’ll be writing at least fifteen of these this month and updating them as I go on. It is nice to see how I feel about a person. Each one has given me ups and downs. They have molded the person that I am and I have to be grateful for that because I like the person that I am.

My First Time Back In Church

I haven’t been in church for myself in quite some time and today is somewhat of a test for me. I got some new clothes and as I walked to church I felt pretty good about myself. This is big for me because it has been something I’ve been wanting to do, but pushing off for some reason. Yeah, I work the graveyard and it can be hard to get up on time, but those are just excuses. Today, I told myself you have to do it, you need to do it for yourself and no one else.

I only stayed for an hour and my anxiety kicked in pretty bad. I haven’t felt that in over five months, so it shocked me a little bit. I had to sit there and slowly do my breathing exercises to calm me down. People were talking, babies were crying and I was by myself, so the first ten minutes were hard to control. It finally calmed down during the praying and listening to those speak.

The first was an older man. I’ve noticed the older generations seem to put the fear in God on everyone. We should do this, we need to do that or else we are all going to regret it. I’ve never understood that on any topic. Why? Why put fear into something if it is supposed to inspire us or something to help us feel good. Is it because they are afraid as they grow older?

I say this because the second speaker was a young man. He might have been younger than me, but not by much. His talk was on the love of God and it was something that really helped me to think on my situation. Saying that no matter what even if we are believers or not that we should always be helping each other. That made my anxiety go down quite a lot. His words spoke the truth to me.

Now that I think of it I can’t put this down to the age of the person. I also liked my soon to be ex-wife’s grandmother a lot. Even though I never told her she is one of the sweetest women I have ever met. A truly good person. I could always see why people admired her. I never told her this because I had so many deep issues and the sad thing is I may never be able to now. Maybe one day I would meet her again, but the chances aren’t likely. However, it just made me realize that we are who we are by our experiences.

Even though I hit a few walls today I felt it was pretty good. I promised my bishop I was going to go more and try to make it through the whole thing. I thought about my wife a lot and wondered how it would have been if she was there. She wouldn’t come with me now, but this is something she had wanted for years and now I’m here. When I thought about it I laughed a little bit and a man and his little girl stared at me funny when I did. This year has been nothing but weird for me, but something that had to be done.