I haven’t written in awhile and there has been a lot going on that needs to be written. So.. where to start?
Most pressing on my mind is around the “moral compass”, so I’m going to start there. In 2001 I started writing a book where I discuss going through work & life changes and how to detect, define and then make changes based on what is happening around you. I picked the book back up this week to review it, make adds and overall get a feel of if I had said enough. Well. I have not said enough, there are more chapters to write and I noticed how a lot of blogs could integrate nicely into the book. so.. why does this all matter? in the book I started one of the chapters like this..
“A major form of motivation for this book is that I believe that in all people there is an inner will to be better, to drive to more successes and that sometimes the right tools and people are not available to make this happen. ”
I still agree with this statement and I do believe in all humans there is an inner will to be better. however, I will say that sometimes the lens has been so skewed that doing the right thing or focusing on doing better is not what is focused on. I have found myself a few times over the last week asking myself what is my moral compass? how should I react to a given situation, what should I focus on, how can I not make others upset by speaking the truth, how can I not get thrashed on while preserving my compass. Well, as you can imagine it was like 3 highways in so-cal merging into a one way downtown road.. a frickin chaotic explosion of noise & ugh. While I was out enjoying some good parenting time with my son in so-cal I was faced with three “moral compass” challenges with folks not on the trip. I know my reactions matter, how I handle things matter and also being a good role model for my son is very important to me. As the situations emerged I had to check myself before any reaction, I had to think thru it and sometimes that meant me saying “I need a minute to process” and think through all the different data points. To me this is like applying every life filter, experience, moral compass, financial impact, etc.. This was not easy in the midst of trying to enjoy the vacation and I had to employ my mindfulness (meditation) activities real time throughout the trip. I found my quiet times were focused on breathing, getting centered and letting go of the swell of emotions that were brought up. Let’s be clear, when i say emotions I’m not talking about “oh I miss that person”.. nope it was all the feelings of what had happened and all the scars were ripped off again kinda of emotions.. (cool visual huh)..
so.. how did it go? well I had pushed to the point where I had to react and be very direct, holding others accountable for their actions. I focus my life on being positive, so for me to get this point of having to hold others accountable for bad behavior was no small feat. I did realize that my tolerance has decreased over the years of bad behavior and my words are getting more succinct than ever (bonus). Nonetheless I held one person accountable and that was met with such a jaded response I had to take a moment to reflect on what happened.. While I won’t get into the details, because only a few should know the inside scoop, the situation helped me understand that for some folks you have to hold them accountable and then let them go learn on their own.. Let them fall, let them learn however that will happen.. It’s not my responsibility to help them thru.. it’s my responsibility to be honest & true to myself. Hold my moral compass up and be able to look myself in the mirror every day… not somebody else.. This was a good learning, however I do have remorse for the level of accountability I had to discuss with that individual.. it sucks.. that sucked… etc… okay.. so.. Net Net: (here comes the cliché comment).. “You know your own truth” nobody can tell you it.. so own it..
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Let’s keep going on this quest.. shall we? I have spent two weeks on vacation so far (50% done) and the first week was all about getting my house (physical house) in order. My focus was to make it a home for my kids and I. Making it a place of peace, love & kindness. Establishing new norms, purging out old stuff not needed and overall I pushed really hard to make it happen in a week (insert the “oh tenderfoot”), and as you can imagine it’s not a one week process.. it’s a journey in of itself. Now that I’m on week #2 things are shaping good, it will just take time to make it a home. Whether it’s the new kitchen table that is absent right now to the garage being 100% organized, to all the walls being decorated as we’d like, etc.. Time will make it a home and also the great experiences that will happen there/here. Week #2 was all about getting out of the house, from camping at the coast, to a trip to so-cal to being gone from the home. It was amazing and I’ll discuss more in a minute, but for now it was a great reset when I came back..
Okay.. let’s shift to spiders, black waste tubes and crabbing.. Okay.. first let’s start with the most recent. I took my son on a trip to So-Cal to do a few things: Beach – hopefully to get into the ocean, legoland – of course (if you know me then you know this), and hit a few museums, surf locations, colleges.. Well my youngest isn’t really the beach go-er as I’m finding out. while he enjoys it, he’s not like me in regards to wanting to go tackle waves and get out there to surf. So we spent a few opportunities at the beach and it was peaceful, but I’m looking forward to surfing next time with my gear and testing my limits (dropping in on a right faced beautiful wave). In regards to Legoland it was EPIC as always, the new adds are amazing and the master builders there have upped their game on the mini land (especially star wars). Now for more epic-ness, I decided to rent a convertible vehicle, since he had never driven in one. I went after a Camaro, however upon arrival all they had was a brand new “mustang”. We both were very pleased by this, especially since my oldest loves mustangs it would be fun to try what he has owned a few of. We pulled the top down, sync’d up my phone and jammed with some “Dirty Heads – ‘All I need'” on the speakers. Dang life was good, he was smiling ear to ear and we were both present in that moment. Okay. fast forward to our last night there, Dirty heads still playing, top down, driving into the food part of the town and we both saw a spider, about a 1/2 inch wide. I thought for sure it was on the outside of the window, oh but I was W R O N G .. it was on the inside that sucker was about to have some fun with us.. I took my hat, tried to swipe it off the window, I failed.. it fell on my leg and then immediately fell to the mat and crawled under the seat. I safely pulled over, used the cell flashlight to inspect every part of the car, which was tough AF and I couldn’t find it.. At that very moment I took a deep breath and said to myself. My kid is watching how I respond to this, we have no option but to get back in and keep going.. so we did. we both were constantly looking at our legs the entire trip back to the hotel. Yah I’m not a fan of spiders.. sorry but nope.. so upon returning the car we told the rental gal that there was a big a&& spider in there.. she navigated away from the car quickly.. LOL. sorry whoever gets that next.. somebody is living in there.. Enjoy that..
let’s continue on to Black Waste Tubes.. Part of camping is about dumping your dumps at the station. This last camping trip to the coast was like a scene out of the movie RV. First, the camping trip was awesome, met some new folks and had a great time learning how to crab from the kayak (I will be doing that again). but let’s get back to the waste. So as we were leaving the camp site, we hit up the station to remove all the crap (literally) from the RV. We first went to where I normally dump, I walked up 5 cars to the station to see what was going on and check out the setup (is there a water hose, etc..), I spent a few moments laughing about getting a spreader & a splitter (RV quote) with the guys, but I quickly realized the guy dropping was his first time so I walked back to the truck, looked ahead and saw the next station had 2 cars in line.. (BINGO.. let’s go).. so we drove ahead to the next station, the guys at the last station all waved and understood. this is when it gets good… we pulled up to the line, there was now only one RV at the station.. Jackpot! I was thinking oh yah.. one and done and we are on the road home.. well. not so much.. Three folks got out of the RV and it appeared at first that they knew what to do.. oh was I wrong about that.. They pulled out some “new” “jazzy” hose/waste tube that pulls it all together in one apparatus.. they hooked up the water line to it.. then … (hold.. if your eating.. I would not read this part.. ) Okay.. so they didn’t hook up the waste line, instead they opened up the black line, then opened up the big tube and then tried to hook up the large black line (backwards). the onslaught of green, fecal matter exploded out onto the person.. unfortunately the person was wearing flip flops (sandals) and all that glorious sick water went all over that persons feet. But that’s not all. there was a few items that got caught on the big tube, so the individual used their bare hands to grab it out of the tube to fix the clog.. realize that it was just openly pouring into the waste wash and then draining into the right tube. OMG it got worse (how could it?). well they didn’t have gloves so they got plastic bags and started picking up the big pieces and putting it into the waste line. I was laughing so hard (inside of my truck cab) that I couldn’t handle it.. I knew I should have recorded it. So.. then they pulled gray water line w/o having it hooked up as well. so then that dumped out.. flip flops, gray water.. YUCK YUCK.. so then after the gray water was done, they hooked up their flush line and did that.. and what felt like an hour of watching them flushing the line all the stuff was already out of the RV (or so we thought). so they washed down part of their mess from the station and drove away.. well. they forgot to close their lines and spilt matter the entire way out of the camp ground.. YUCK YUCK YUCK.. I may be a novice RV’r, but that was an epic fail. #FAIL. So what’s the lesson on the RV trip? not sure yet. but the time spent camping was amazing! good memories had.
and how about a summary paragraph to shore this all up in a few sentences. Nope.. I’ll exit this post this way.. You know your truth, nobody else does.