i feel like i've lost the point of my life, if it has ever had one, and i just want it to be over. i'm tired of longing.

Today's word

soi disant /swah-dee-ZAHNG/ -  self-proclaimed, so-called

A rare completely new word from the WOTD column. I'll take it. I'll likely never use it, but I'll probably recognize it should I ever encounter it in the wild.

this isn't your fault, dear reader

Unrelated:
This is going to be really challenging to apply. I have "one-downed" myself my. entire. life. We do the same thing when we describe what we have survived. As a survivor of an alcoholic home, my father's suicide,  and repeated childhood sexual abuse: my childhood really was that bad, and overcoming it (through therapy) really is an achievement.

i am so tired of being so tired

Today's pageview zip code

I haven't done one of these in a long time, again due to the combination of not seeing the count every time I'm in here and, when I do, them either not being a valid zip code or not representing someplace I've been. Today's is both, though:

West Branch, IA 52358 - We pass through this zip code when we visit our dear friends in the Omaha area. It's about two-thirds of the way along the drive there.

Today's word

There haven't been many new words for me of late in the words of the day. Fortunately there's the occasional new one in the dictionary devil puzzle:

bathymetery /bə-ˈthi-mə-trē/ - the measurement of water depth at various places in a body of water; also :  the information derived from such measurements

I saw this at work on our recent trip to Tennessee for the eclipse, as our host was able to let us know the current depth of the water wherever we were on the Clinch river. 

The Shack

 As beautiful as all this is, it's nothing compared with how we see you.

Idiocy makes me a little (more) crazy

On a sponsored post detailing outrageous laws in various places, one of the items begins with a warning for visitors to the Acropolis or Colosseum. It goes on to cite a ban on wearing high heels in ancient Greek sites.

Last I checked, the Colosseum was in Rome and, also the last I checked, that isn't Greece.

That was way fun

Very nice gig last night at the UD president's residence. I had a flutist working with me, no vocals. The play list was pretty diverse:

Pachelbel Canon
Let it Be
Canticle of the Turning
Ode to Joy
If
Simple Gifts
Greensleeves
The Rainbow Connection
Good Good Father
The Pink Panther

And about twice as many more in the same vein.

Way fun!

So excited about this gig

I am really looking forward to a couple hours of performance tonight! Lots of a nice variety of music selected.

Killing the truth

Are you able to acknowledge truth, even when you can't live up to it? Even if we cannot do something good, even if we willfully and sinfully choose to do something that is wrong, we should still try to acknowledge what is good and true, rather than justify our behavior. - Matthew Kelly, Resisting Happiness

At least I've done one thing pretty much right my whole life, apparently.

This is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We try to "know" for ourselves what is true, what is right and wrong. But we always interpret it so as to justify ourselves.

One Friday afternoon they nailed truth to a tree.
But on Sunday morning, truth rose from the dead.
You cannot kill truth.
You can put it in a tomb, but you cannot keep it there. - ibid.

Oh, but how we try!

Now I understand

why people become eclipse chasers. The difference between totality and almost totality (even 99+%) was stunning! This is pretty high on my list of life experiences now. I'm so glad that my bride was willing to go on this mini adventure with me, and that we were able to share it together.

Nice weekend

Lots of nice time on the Clinch River, nice fellowship with our hosts, fun making music together. Ready for the eclipse today, then head home this evening.

One very helpful weapon . . .

. . . in my battle is my awareness of the roots of my impure thoughts. Remembering that without dwelling on the actual events helps me realize how destructive those actions committed against me were. In turn, that makes me determined to limit their destructiveness rather than  further perpetuate it in any way.

It also helps that the population to whom I am otherwise attracted doesn't overlap the population I tend to obsess over.

Pray for me

The trick, between now and whenever we manage to get my next Unbound prayer session scheduled, is to not go any further down the rabbit hole. Pretty sure there's no coming back if I do. I mean, Grace will always be greater than sin, but the level of consequences from more than interior sin is a higher order exponential function. Interesting that taking a positive step, as I did last night in requesting a prayer session, also ratchets up the thought pattern. Still, I'm not taking external action.

Today's word

oppugn /uh-PYOON/ - 1. to fight against  2. to call in question

No one familiar with the related impugn should be surprised by the meaning of this word. I'd never heard it, but it made perfect sense. 

So exhausted

Perfectly fine stuff I should avoid

David Copperfield. (The novel, not the illusionist.) This is not the issue for me today that it was when I first read it, three decades ago, though.

NPR's current series on high school. "I want to tell them that it gets better," said a guy for whom high school was just awful, 25 years ago, in today's story (link not yet available at time of publication). I understand where he's coming from with that, and it really is an important message for the current generation of high schoolers to hear. But it "getting better" depends an awful lot on the sort of mistakes you subsequently make.

Is God pleased . . .

. . . when we resist a temptation? Even "just" a temptation of the mind, that we would not act upon? Even if it might turn out to have only been a temporary resistance, a matter of a day or a week?

Today's word

lamster /LAM-ster/ - a fugitive especially from the law

One of those words that the brain recognizes even if it's brand new, or mine did, at least. I'll spare the reader the too obvious poetic couplet. (Besides, I only had a gerbil; can't remember that rodent's name for the life of me.)

It occurs to me . . .

. . . that most people's brains don't work like mine. My friends, at least, don't seem to struggle as I do to keep their thoughts pure. I'm glad they don't. 

I'm really growing increasingly ready to be done with it. Ultimately, I fear this will be my anti-reason.

Is "how I think" the real me? Or is my identity more defined by the actions that I choose, particularly when they are contrary to my thought processes?

I think you'd have been considerably less anxious . . .

. . . if you had read my Hangouts messages. 

But I understand why you hadn't, and didn't take it personally.

Today's word

thalassic /thə-ˈla-sik/ - of, relating to, or situated or developed about inland seas

I didn't realize it immediately

But it didn't take very long for me to recognize how I'd put my foot in it. My friend was feeling terrible already, with so much going on in her life right now. I so much wanted to shift her attention, as her train of thought seemed to be spiraling in a way that I couldn't seem to help her out of. I just couldn't figure out how to do it. In the end, I ended up minimizing her feelings and making her feel even more isolated.

Fortunately I was blessed with sufficient wisdom to offer a heartfelt apology for my gaffe and to give her space to deal with it as she needed to. I am grateful for her quick forgiveness. Our friendship is a wonderful gift.

An even more positive development

Those of you who've been particularly close to me for a long time will rejoice with us over this one. Regarding this post about yesterday, there was a time, not very long ago, when I'd have been desperate to find a friend with whom I could unpack this more. But the only person with whom I even slightly wanted to share these details was my bride of 37 years. We had a very nice sharing about it this morning.

As she said, we have come so far!

That was a really tough revelation (updated)

Long overdue tears flowed like a river last night.

Now that a situation about which I'd been concerned has been resolved, I was able to look more closely at the question that my friend posed at the beginning of our chat yesterday, in a little different context than she posed it. It wasn't so much a question of why I took her non-responsiveness personally, as much as why it was so important to me to be sure I understood the reason for it.

Even though an earlier version of this post "promised" more detail, I'm still going to be vague. But when I was about 11 or 12 years old, and maybe as young as 10, I experienced a deeply scarring emotional trauma. My closest friends will have an idea of its nature; it was neither the first nor the last time I experienced this form of hurt, though it is the first one that I remember (my mother told me of the other one when I was about 36 years old and in therapy for the first time). There are several things that made this incident different from all those that came later, including my age and my lack of understanding. But the thing that is most pertinent to my recent emotional dynamic is that it was prompted in response to something I'd said, and connected with something else the previous day that I've since realized I should have done - someone I should have protected, but was too young to understand and therefore didn't, of which I have remained deeply ashamed. And being in situations in which I am certain that I must have made a mistake and not being able to nail down what it was, brought back the emotional dynamic of being scarred because of a shameful mistake that I had made. I wasn't able to evaluate what I had done to determine if I deserved the judgment I feared, and wracking my mind for anything that I might have done wrong along the way was wrapping me tighter and tighter around this situation.

That all released emotionally last night, so I hope I will be more prepared to avoid this type of thinking in the future, in other circumstances. After all, I learn from my mistakes, and shouldn't encounter the same circumstance again.

Thank you, loving Father.

A dream beyond our wildest dreams

Once you understand that God has an incredible dream for you, once you grasp that He wants you to become the best version of yourself and help others to do the same, once you start to listen to the prayers of the Mass with all this in mind, you very quickly discover that there is genius in Catholicism. - Matthew Kelly, Resisting Happiness

But we should not presume to "help" others in ways that they don't desire, by God's grace, for themselves.

I figured out, this morning, . . .

. . . that this persistent . . . incompleteness? lack of robustness? . . . of my faith is also God's gift to me. If I were too certain of what comes next, I might not be sufficiently committed to the rest of my life here.

Sigh

I will never be an ironman.

Dammit.

It's going to be a slow process, I expect, but the truth is that I'm dying, in a way that doing what I wish I could would greatly accelerate.

Thanks a lot, Kelly

The fear of loneliness is the father of many relationships that never should have been. When we choose to be with someone because we are afraid of being alone, we dishonor ourselves and the other person. - Matthew Kelly, Resisting Happiness

And yet God can take that relationship and turn it into so. very. much. more. than it could have otherwise been.

Two months, plus

That's how long it took me to say, "Thank you, dear Lord, for this dear friend. Her friendship has been a great gift to me. If it's Your will for her life and mine, I trust she'll be back."

This point of view feels so much better.

Today's words

From the Dictionary Devil puzzle:

lacuna /lə-ˈkü-nə, -ˈkyü-/ (plural: lacunae or lacunas) - 1. a blank space or a missing part :  gap; also : deficiency  2.  a small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical structure

anthemion /an-ˈthē-mē-ən/ (plural: anthemia) - a flat ornament of floral form (as in relief sculpture or in painting)

The combination

of never getting enough sleep and this other thing is really taking its toll on my psyche.

My fear

And great was the fall of it.  Mt 7: 27b
The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire. Mt 13: 49b-50a
Mt 18:6. I cannot type the words.

As suggested by Matthew Kelly in Resisting Happiness, I read St. Matthew's gospel this morning. I find that it accuses me with my past, especially in one sitting. I fear that the evil in my life will place me among the weeds, or the goats.

I must remember two things: that Satan tried to tempt Jesus with scripture, too, so that puts me in pretty good company in this regard (though it is unspeakably presumptuous to say so). Also, the great sorting doesn't happen until the end, and I must simply continue to make good choices along the way and participate with God's grace as He finishes transforming me.

Remembering where this tendency comes from . . .

. . . helps me to stop glamorizing it in my mind, which I tend to do even though its roots are awful, and also even though I'm never going to act on it. And both those things - remembering those roots and not glamorizing my tendency - help me to make better choices with my thoughts.

I just need to get more consistent with that last part.

Weird adoptive ancestor death facts

I've written a few times about my adoptive father; this one might be the most significant of these posts; look under the Adoptive father label for more.

When trying to research his birth and death dates, I noticed something which I found odd that I've kept forgetting to post about. His father, whom I never met that I'm aware of, outlived him by almost eight months. His paternal grandfather, whom I also never met, preceded him in death by only five months.

I find it odd that these men from three successive generations died within 13 months of each other.

Today's words

A couple definitions from the Dictionary Devil puzzle:

bateau /ba-ˈtō/ or less commonly batteau; plural bateaux, batteaux - any of various small craft; especially :  a flat-bottomed boat with raked bow and stern and flaring sides

ephemeral - /i-ˈfem-rəl, -ˈfēm-; -ˈfe-mə-, -ˈfē-/ - something that lasts for a very short time : something ephemeral; specifically :  a plant that grows, flowers, and dies in a few days

I was quite familiar with the adjectival form, though not with its aspect of lasting only a day. I was not familiar with the noun, nor its specific botanical meaning. Also, I had no idea that the preferred pronunciation has only three syllables; I'll never pronounce it that way.

Like Darko, two ways

ESPN has a great feature on one of the biggest "busts" in NBA history, and I can't help but hear echoes of my own life in his story. I don't really consider my life a failure, and Darko doesn't either, though he acknowledges that his basketball career isn't anything to be proud of. But there are two specific things from this article that resonate with me.

At one point, Darko spoke of how he considers his old self - or at least the basketball version of himself - as being dead now. And I think of the younger me - the one who aspired to a meaningful career and a very different life in many ways, including emotionally and relationally - as having died, too. An important part of my group therapy program was how they taught us to live with ourselves by insisting us that the person who had done the terrible things we'd all done was gone now, replaced with someone better, healthier. But that means that the not-so-despicable parts of the "old me," with all his dreams, idealism, and aspirations, must be gone with him. Still, I don't at all feel like some sort of triumphant phoenix who is now living a victorious life.

Secondly, the author spoke of how Darko's whole basketball career, and how he thought about it, was built around the concept of "supposed to." He was supposed to play basketball, and he didn't hate it (at first), so he played, and made millions, and grew to feel trapped by it. Now, I don't have any world class physical gifts, but still, "supposed to" feels like how I've lived my whole life - or at least the non-despicable parts of it.

It's how I'll continue to live, too. I don't think I can respect myself any other way. But I think it's also because, in my case, my "supposed to" is also the best version of myself.

And sometimes I'm talking to an alien

When the partner of your life begins a sentence with, "If she'd have just lied . . . "

Yes, sometimes life is momentarily easier when we do the wrong thing. Even significantly so.

As any father would

Headline in my e-mail: "White House says Trump weighed in on son’s Russia meeting statement ‘as any father would’"

And still they don't understand the problem with nepotism.

In the ordinary

Matthew Kelly has challenged me this morning to find God in at least three ways through the course of the day, but I've already found him in two. Some would argue that finding Him in my relationship with two different friends is really the same thing, but I think you'll see why I count them differently.

One friend is present a lot lately, and I love this. I love being able to touch base and know that someone is there, listening to what is on my mind and responding, making sure that I don't feel alone. It is the gift of presence and closeness.

The other friend suddenly distanced herself from me a couple months ago, and I don't understand why. It feels lonely. She assured me, not long before that, that she was always with me, even when she didn't respond to me. But now I can't know whether she meant that would always be true, or only in the particularly scary circumstance that she was helping me through in the moment. I wonder how much longer it will be this way, whether the next thing will be more closeness or more distance, and even if she still cares. I wonder if she would understand how my not knowing where I stand with her makes her absence hurt so much more than if I knew she would be back in contact with me soon. The somewhat remote glimpses she has left me into her life feel a bit like reading a passage from a Gospel; they reveal a little of her to me but don't always make me feel like I'm still part of her life. I wonder whether I matter.

God can be a lot like both of these dear friends for us, sometimes even at the same time.

I realize, as I finish with this entry, that God is also revealed in my relationship with my bride, which sometimes feels like both of the above simultaneously. She is always there, and I love that and rely on it, and I'm also almost always longing for it to be more or different, striving for growth and a closer union.

"Brutal breakup"

I was reading last night about the "brutal" final breakup with the runner-up in the current season of The Bachelorette, and how it left both the bachelorette and the runner-up emotionally distraught.

Well, what do you expect when you make relationships into a competition conducted for people's entertainment? When you share your life experiences and joys, hopes and deepest hurts with someone, you inevitably build closeness with them, and when they reject that closeness - as will happen for the majority of contestants - it is going to hurt both of you, if you have been at all emotionally sincere.