Writin' Forty

I think we all deserve happiness. Meaningful, genuine happiness. It just takes time. Last weekend, I may have seen an example of two people getting exactly what they deserved. I’ve known Doug for well over 10 years. While I know I’d seen him before I remember, distinctly, our first interaction: I’d noticed…hmm, how do I say this? I noticed an emotional tell of Doug’s and I let him know about it. What can I say, I’m very good at observing when I choose to be. This surprised Doug, I think. No, I know. You know how I know? Doug is about one of the most straightforward guys that you’ll ever meet. He’s also one of the smartest. What you see is very much what you get and what you get from Doug as a peer and friend is a loyal person with a good heart. Sooner after my observation we became friends. I could argue that we became near best friends because we hung out quite a dang bit over the next year and half. Doug got to meet my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife (and ...

I just had a breakthrough of sorts at work. I’m at the same job still. We’ve had several members of our team leave due to some level of discontent and I understand fully the reasons why they have left. Basically, the direction of the team from up top is lacking. Not gonna go into it too much because who knows who reads this dang thing, but suffice it to say if you’re ever on a team and you see senior level people up and leaving the team it is a loudly clanging klaxon, to be alliterative about it. Anyways: the breakthrough: Sister Hazel. I’m not gonna look up the date but the music group Sister Hazel came out with a song called “Change Your Mind” about 15 years ago or so. A key lyric from the song: “If you want to be somebody else? Change your mind!” The point being that you can be anything you want to be if you change your mindset to be that thing you want to be. Right now, work is a raging dumpster fire and I haven’t gotten satisfaction from work. But guess what? I...

There’s a phrase that I think Bill Parcells said about his team at the time: “You are what your record says you are.” In my head and heart I feel like I’m a good leader. I feel that any opportunity I’ve had to be placed in charge of people and run a team that I took care of each of my people as best as I could, the team advanced its goals, and at the end of my time in charge I left things better than I found them. I feel like I’m a good leader. I’m not sure if my record reflects that, though. This is the conflict I go through a decent amount of the time. Objectively speaking, I think a lot of people wouldn’t mind being in the position that I am in life. I personally feel like I haven’t come close to living up to the potential I have or once had. I feel like if I were a good leader, someone in the Air Force would have seen that at some point and would have fought for me to advance further in my career. I wouldn’t have had to exit at 15 years.  My record, apparently, say...

I wrote a piece, kind of like an audition, for a jiu-jitsu brand who is looking for a writer. This is what I submitted: Sunday rolls hav e become a tradition in  Denver, North Carolina.  Y es, I assure you it exists. It was started by a blue belt named Jeff Boone (of the BJJ Campaign Podcast) as an opportunity to train an extra day. It’s become a training ground mostly for the junior belts of the Fight to  Win   (run by Steve Hall)  schools and Jeff, being a social person, uses his network to bring a few more people to the fold. It’s become an important part of my development. This Sunday I finished my rolls with a white belt named Skip. I’m a  240lb blue bel t. Skip  a 150lb white belt about a month in . I let him work his offense,  I didn’t go overly aggressive, and I told  him to breathe towards the end as he  almost tapped  due to not being able to catch his breath.  Afterward, h e sounded a little defeated ...

For Miranda and me, Tuesdays have become Trivia night at Picasso’s!  Every superhero story needs an origin story, just ask the Marvel Comics Movie Universe! Zing! Here we go: I have a long and storied history with trivia. I participated in quiz bowl or academic bowl, from 6 th  grade until when I graduated high school. Usually, these competitions involve four kids on each side of a room, all holding buzzers and  trying their best to answer questions being read by a proctor. I’ve always been a brainy kid who kept all sorts of random information; a lot of it just simply doesn’t fall out of my head. Academic bowl suited me. Up until the 8 th  grade I was a part of a magnet school where I was matched with “talented and gifted” kids of the Birmingham (Alabama) public school system. I put “talented and gifted” in quotes not to make fun of Birmingham (though that would be a funny joke) but to just mention all children have talents and gifts; I guess the kids in tha...

The first city I lived in after I left the Air Force was Victoria, TX. Victoria is located in a part of Texas, southeast or so, that is called “The Crossroads”. While I personally think that’s a cool name the practical reason for the name is the city and area is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Victoria is located 2 hours away from Houston, 2 hours away from Austin, 2 hours away from San Antonio, and 1.5 hours away from Corpus Christi. Those are at least 4 Texas cities anyone has heard of all surrounding a city no one has heard of.  Ok, maybe you’ve heard of it if you’ve watched professional wrestling. That isn’t a typo. Stone Cold Steve Austin, if you’ve ever listened to his introduction beyond the glass shattering, is announced as being from Victoria, TX. Here’s the punchline: Stone Cold is NOT from Victoria, TX. He’s from nearby Edna, TX, a shotgun town that is much, much smaller  than the 70,000 or so in Victoria . Edna is so small  of a town  that Stone Co...

There are times where if you see or hear someone react a certain way, you can figure out a lot of what they might or might not know. A common refrain that I’ve heard is that (in general terms) government is too big/powerful/cumbersome,  etc  and that government (in general terms) needs to be smaller.  From someone who thinks this, I infer a few things: 1.  There are two powerful entities the US has: government and corporations. If you want one to shrink, government, you are essentially saying that you want corporations to be more powerful. 2.  By corporations I only mean the biggest of businesses; if you own a small business you most likely wouldn’t be getting more power with smaller government. 3.  The individual has even less of a say if government gets smaller. At least in theory, anyone can run for government and change with they don’t like. For corporations if you’re not on the board of shareholders you’re not going anywhere, or at least the a...