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I’ve been thinking a lot about Bullying lately. Not sure why.. maybe I’m feeling like a bully. I don’t know. The major problem I see in all of the discussion is that apparently bullying stops when you graduate high school. Look at Federal anti-bullying campaign, it discusses bullying quite well and has links to help different groups identify and cope with bullying. The problem? It’s all about bullying with respect to kids. I just don’t get it. Adults can be bullied too.

If you look a little deeper, you can find adult bullying discussions. The “focus” of bullying changes, but the feelings and effects of that bullying are the same as they were when we were kids. Some bullying is overt. People actively picking on others or degrading them. People intentionally posting passive aggressive nonsense that is clearly directed at certain people. (thank you social networks) Even something as simple as posting online about some “truism” you believe that passively degrades other people. Things like “Why on earth would anyone think blah blah blah is something anyone wants to [hear|see|think]” constitute some of this passive aggressive crap.

Hell, people need to be mindful that bullying can be directed at anyone. Your spouse or significant other, your friends, your kids, your pets. It’s a pretty insidious event in our world. Bullying comes far too easily to most people and calling someone out on their bully results in? More bullying.

What is the point of all of this? I’m hopeful people are more mindful of how their words and thoughts affect other people. I’m hopeful that people learn to self-identify bullying habits or are willing to hear criticism from others that their words or actions are classic indicators of bullying.

A year or so ago, I decided I was going to be less snarky and sarcastic. That hasn’t worked out so well. What I have done, or tried to do, is to try to be less biting and mean in my sarcasm. There is a very broadly identifiable line in any friendship or relationship that can be seen and denotes when your jokes are mean-spirited or nasty. I’ve tried to learn to see that line more often than not. If you think I’ve crossed that line, let me know. I’m grown up enough to hear it.

Edit:
After I wrote this, I found a really nice website from PBS about Adult Bullying. Good stuff to read through: Adult Bullying

This is not a commentary on the person from whom I copied this.. it’s a commentary on how I view the world. I vehemently disagree with everything this picture represents.  Waking up one day to find yourself in a relationship or situation that is untenable is a fact of life. It will happen to you at some point. You will have no control over whether or not this will happen. It simply is a condition of being.

The picture seems to suggest that heartache could be avoided simply by making better or more informed decisions. What if your decision was valid and your partner changed? What if you did everything in your power to foster and nurture the souring situation, but there was no hope to save things? People and things grow apart.

Personally, I’m done living with regret. I’m done worrying about whether my marriages failed because I was a failure. I’ve learned from them. I’ve moved on. I know who I am and where I need and want to be. I’ve grown as a human. I wake up every day and choose to be who I want to be. (the Iron Giant was right)

I guess at the end of the day, I don’t let thoughts like the one captured above dwell in my mind. They’re a breeding ground for self-doubt, self-loathing, and frustration. My life doesn’t suck because I lost two months of pay a few years ago when my employer ran out of money. My life doesn’t suck because I’ve had two failed marriages. My life doesn’t suck because I don’t have a collection of friends as large as I may think I want. My life doesn’t suck. I’m not about to wake up tomorrow and let myself start doubting or second guessing the events that have shaped my life and led me to the moment where I’m writing this post. I am happy to just be.

I’m getting older. It’s not profound. At the end of the day, it’s probably better that I keep getting older. I figure if I stop doing that, I’d have to start commenting on how well I’m being dead. I’m thinking more about getting older as my birthday approaches. This year I’ve been thinking way too much about it. I’m turning 37. I know, some of you that are reading this figure that’s young and that may be. That doesn’t make my thoughts less valid, so go be logical somewhere else.

Being older than I was a day ago isn’t really the point. I’m fine with being older. I guess I’m thinking about my place in life. I have a great family. A great job. I’m back in school and doing well with that, finally. I couldn’t be happier with being who I am as a human. I like me and I like where I am, fundamentally, in life. From the outside looking in, my life is probably enviable. Probably isn’t too far fetched, I’ve been told as much in the past. I can’t complain about the places I have been, am going, or plan to go. I’d be jealous of me.

What has got me thinking this year is that I login far too often to social networks. I see pictures of people I follow at meet ups having fun. I see Facebook friends at Halloween parties. I see people getting together to watch a game or tailgate. I see people doing things with people. Not with the people that live in their house. They are out with friends. Doing friendly things. I don’t. I haven’t really since I lived in Hawaii nearly 20 years ago. It’s been that long since I had a group of friends that I saw all the time and went out with. My adult experience has been that friends are no longer people you hang out with. They’re people you see at holidays, your kids birthday’s, or the rare movie. I am jealous of all of the people online who have friendships that exist outside email and instant messaging. I joke with a friend of mine that we have to schedule a quarterly event just to see each other. It honestly works out that way.

This isn’t a slight against the people I call friends. This isn’t about you. It’s about me. I am a loner and have been for a long time. I don’t want to be, but life gets in the way and having friends hasn’t been a priority for me. Friends are something I’d love to have, but I don’t work too hard at it. Partly, it’s a time issue. Mostly, it is a fear of rejection. Why would I want to invest time or energy meeting new people if they’re going to disappear from my life anyway? It seems like a losing proposition to me. I would rather spend my time with my family or a video game. They’re probably not going anywhere. Probably.

Our experiences make us who we are. Mine have made me weary of personal relationships. My parents are divorced. My dad has been divorced twice. Each time, I met a new family. Had new siblings. I know without a doubt he’s where he needs to be now and I don’t have to meet anyone new. I’ve been divorced twice. Uprooted after each. New town, new house. New state in some cases. I haven’t had many actual relationships because I don’t like investing time or energy in things that I don’t see having value.

I’ve mentioned it before, I was a Navy kid and moved constantly as a kid. Before turning 17, I lived in 7 different places. That stunts the fostering of friendships.  I know precisely one person from my life before I turned 12. I “talk” to a few from my teenage years. I barely interact with anyone I met in my 20s. I suspect I’ll say the same things about my 30s when I’m 45. By then, I hope I’ve broken my cycle of mistrust and unhealthy relationships, but I have no experience to suggest otherwise.

I’m not asking to be fixed. I’m not asking for sympathy. I’m just using my blog as a place to get a thought out of my head. Trying to wrap my mind around how I’ve ended up here and maybe find a way to be a different human in the future. Some of you reading this are good people. Some of you I probably miss daily. Some of you I wish I knew better. (I actually wish I knew everyone I knew better)

I’ve been a tech geek since before I can remember being anything else. We had a computer in my house when I was 6. It was a Vic-20. Nothing to write home about. It got the job done, but it wasn’t special. When I got a chance to use an Apple II at school, that changed. There was something elegant about the way it did the same things my Vic-20 did. The first macs? Felt the same way. They were so different and so refreshing compared to the IBM PCs I had around the house. So much more functional without all of the tinkering.

As a teenager and young adult, tinkering was cool. I wanted to build my own PCs. I wanted to manage all of my own dip switches and memory banks. I wanted to know the refresh rate of everything and troubleshoot the problem of every strange noise and whir my computer made.

Until I bought my first real mac. Bought during the dark times of Steve Jobs exile to NeXt. The power mac 6116.  It was a great little machine. Fast. Intuitive. Everything my IBM workstation wasn’t. It was far from my last mac. I went on to own a few older 68K macs, a Powermac 8500 (which is in my basement), a Cube, a powerbook 5300, and just about every Apple laptop since. I was in attendance the day they announced the Titanium PowerBook G4 and bought one that morning. I am officially an Apple fan boy.

What did I learn from all those machines? They were tools. Elegant tools, but tools.  They allowed me to get my job done without having to worry or tinker over every little things on my machine. When Steve returned to Apple, his mission in life was to change how we used computers and more broadly how we integrated technology into our lives. He brought the NeXT OS, NeXTStep, with him to Apple and birthed Mac OS X. The iMac, iBook, iPod. iPad. iPhone. Macbook. MacPro. iTunes, iWork, iLife. MobileMe (and mac.com before it) and the various iterations of iOS that have been released into the world. Each and every one building from the success of its predecessor. Each one innovating the field again. All of them refining what a computer could be in our lives.

It wasn’t that Steve wanted to put a shine on an existing device. He wanted to reshape them. He removed the floppy drive. Eventually, he’s removed the DVD drive as well. He waited to add USB until it was useful/ubiquitous in favor of Firewire. He insisted that Thunderbolt be used in place of USB 3 because he saw a future in Thunderbolt and thought USB 3 was just the result of ‘me too’ design. The iMac wasn’t the first all in one in the world. It clearly wasn’t even the first all in one Apple ever produced, but it was so stylish and so easy to work with that it showed up everywhere. (ignore that stupid hockey puck mouse). The black powerbook was a trend setter in mobile devices. The current brushed aluminum look showed up on powerbooks and soon was everywhere.

It wasn’t sufficient for Steve Jobs to make things different just to say they’re different. They had to be different for a reason. A lesson I’ve since learned on my own and use that mantra in my daily life. The flurry of buttons and switches that exist on PC laptops? Nowhere to be found on a Macbook. Removable batteries? Gone because they can design larger batteries if they remove the latch mechanisms.  DVDs? Gone because they can deliver software digitally through the App store.  With every iterative change, there is a reason. Each change, leading to more and more simplicity.

Steve Jobs made me fall in love with Apple Computers when I was a kid. When I was old enough to buy them on my own, Steve had been sent off to create NeXt Cubes that I couldn’t afford. My love for Apple remained. Steve returned and made it cool to own an Apple device. Now? I wake up daily regretting the day I switched from my iPhone to an Evo.  It wasn’t about the speed or power of the devices he dreamed up with his cast of designers and engineers in tow, it was about making every thing simpler. Making our lives and jobs a little bit easier.

Every time I’m asked who my hero is or was, I’ve never had an answer. Given my reaction to hearing that Steve Jobs has passed, I never realized I actually had an answer. His influence in my life and my career was obvious but subtle to me. He’s my hero in the same way my parents are my hero. It’s easy to take that kind of influence for granted. Now he’s gone. RIP Steve Job 1955-2011

I graduated high school in 1992. I had desire, passion and a goal. I wanted to be a college professor. The only thing I considered was where I’d teach. Graduating, getting a few advanced degrees and becoming a professor were all forgone conclusions. If only life had played out as it did in my head.

The list of schools I applied to was very short. I remember getting into all of them, but that could be hindsight and hubris talking. I’m pretty sure it isn’t though. My first choice was DePaul University in Chicago. I loved their computer science program. I loved the idea of living downtown. I loved the idea of being in the city. To say I was excited would be a gross understatement of how happy I was.

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I have been eating food for 36 years.  I’ve been going to hibachi restaurants for just about the same amount of time.  I’ve been to chains and family-owned places. I’ve become an expert on how the process works. Or,  so I think.

My wife and family bought me a training session at benihana for Christmas.  It includes a private lesson where I can put 30+ years of observation to the test. In my head, I know how the process works.  I can see how everything is cut, prepared and served. We will see if my muscles have picked anything up in all my years of watching and following along.

The activity of the day will be followed on by a family meal next week. I get to cook at benihana for my family. I get to show what I learned. That should be fun.

The weird part of all of this? I can see every cut, flip and seasoning that goes into a meal. I’ve seen it so often that I feel there is muscle memory already in place.

Recently, I mentioned on Twitter that I’ve figured out what I want to be when I grow up. A few people asked for more detail about that particular tweet. One hundred forty characters isn’t nearly enough room to clarify.

For the vast majority of my life, I’ve maintained a singular goal that I want to be a college professor. I have gone back and forth on which subject I wanted to pursue. Would it be math or physics? Maybe I’d teach computer science. I’d be completely satisfied with any of those choices. I took a few years away from school to live life and pay bills. A few years ago, I went back to school online to restart my computer science degree. While going through the motions, I didn’t have a passion about the process. I was studying computer science because it relates tangentially to my profession. Beyond that, I didn’t care and I stopped taking classes.

A week and a half ago, I was talking with Marie when Imentioned in passing that I should study sociology. I was being flippant. Who on Earth wants to spend their days teaching in the Liberal Arts wing of a university and how silly would it be for someone that professes a general loathing for people to study sociology? We had a good giggle and carried on about our day.

Turns out that the idea has stuck with me. I’ve been thinking about it constantly. I think I now know what I want to do when I grow up and actually start living life. My attitude about people in general is less about them and more about my social anxieties. I really enjoy thinking about why people do things. In my corporate life, I’ve always been more interested in the dynamics of a meeting more than the outcome of the meeting. The more I think about this life path, the more I like the idea.

Incidentally, it also means I can go back to DePaul and finish the degree I started 20 years ago. I love the idea of coming full circle and finishing what I started. As I go through the process, I’ll make sure to write about the journey here. In a few years, I’ll be able to write the blog entry announcing I am graduating. I look forward to that.

The ABC’s of Me (My second try, first was a copy/paste fail!)

A) Age: 36

(B) Bed Size: California King

(C) Chore You Hate: Yes

(D) Dogs? Jack – Border Collie

(E) Essential Start Your Day Item: waking up (i have no ritual)

(F) Favorite Color: Red

(G) Gold or Silver? ugh.. Gold. (my wedding band is titanium)

(H) Height: 5’8”

(I) Instruments You Play: I can play Guitar Hero, not well.. but I can.

(J) Job Title: Mentoring Consulting Engineer

(K) Kids: 3ish – 16 yr old niece that lives with us, 5 year old step daughter, 9 month old daughter.

(L) Live: Oswego, IL

(M) Mom’s Name: Kathie

(N) Nicknames: Sam, Hey Guy, Hey You

(O) Overnight Hospital Stays? Tonsilectomy when I was 8 or 9

℗ Pet Peeve: There aren’t enough words.. so I’ll go with chewing with your mouth open.

(Q) Quote from a Movie: “I don’t know what your situation is but I wanted you to know what mine is not just to explain some rude behavior, but because we’re on a little boat for a while and… I’m soul sick. And you’re going to see that.” ~ Joe Versus The Volcano

(R) Right or Left Handed? Right.

(S) Siblings: 1 Older sister.

(T) Time You Wake Up? Depends on the day and the gig. Between 6 and 830am.

(U) Underwear: Boxers

(V) Vegetable You Dislike: Asparagus

(W) What Makes You Run Late: My eternal desire to procrastinate

(X) X-Rays You’ve Had Done: My wrists have been x-ray’ed more times than I can remember

(Y) Yummy Food You Make: A stuffed pork loin.

(Z) Zoo, Favorite Animal: Meerkat

In the past 48 hours, I’ve started quite a few blog posts. Most of them ended up being rambling messes. Some shifted focus pretty severely. None of them felt like the should be posted anywhere. I have a million thoughts in my head. No matter how many times I edit the entries, I’m still critical of them.

Of course, I could just post the pile of mostly edited unfinished blog entries.

Woke up this morning in a funk. Slept a bit later than I have been recently. Wandered down to my office and said good morning to the kids on the way.  Thought I had a mid-morning call which would leave me plenty of time to finish a document I had been working on. Turns out, the call was scheduled for 10 minutes after I woke up.

2 hours later, I emerged from my office. Definitely in a funk.

I’ve spent quite a number of days at home over the past few weeks. Between a local engagement and weather problems causing me to avoid Dallas last week, I’ve been enjoying being a stay-at-home dad. Waking up in the morning when the wife heads off to work to snuggle with the baby. Being home at night to give the baby her bottle while she passes out. Being able to play Wii with the 5 year old from time to time. All of the creature comforts of my office.

Today? I go back to the reality of my job. The car service picks me up in an hour. I’ll spend the afternoon and evening travelling to Austin, TX. (Which according to American Airlines wasn’t part of the U.S. this morning.) Three nights in a hotel before flying home Thursday evening. My job affords me wonderful flexibility, great opportunities to travel and the cash doesn’t hurt bad. Some days, I’d rather stay home and see my little ones learn something new.