Time to do a quick update, here at the end of week 7.
I’m not doing that well on my two big goals — better engagement with Jacob and random acts of romance. While I’ve made some progress on both, I haven’t yet rolled over the tipping point to make it 3-4 times per week, which was the goal.
On the social side, I’ve continued to reach out to my siblings, and to my male friends for the “mid-month meat madness for men” i.e. wing night. Tonight is my second outing for the wings, and since my brother Mike is coming along, I’ll double-count that as a win. On the sibling front, I think it will be a difficult time for one sibling + sibling-in-law over the coming few months, and while I certainly don’t want to get actively involved in their reconfiguration of their life, I also want them to know that they have my relatively-unconditional support and empathy for the journey.
My plans for my big social campaign are progressing slower than I would like, and I’m considering forming an advisory panel to give me advice on a few things. Of course, I’d have to swear them to secrecy on pain of wet willies, because I don’t want the campaign leaking before the launch, so I have to figure out how to get them to swear to not tell anyone before I tell them what it is. Trusting little sort, aren’t I?
AstroPontiac has been relatively silent for me, although Stephan is working away at it with encouraging results. I’m optimistic it might bear some fruit before the summer is out.
I moved away from the charity focus, but I didn’t really plan to do much on that before April / May or so, so not too worried. Equally, not surprisingly, I haven’t thought at all about the summer Corn Roast plans.
Overall, as with the mind, I’d have to rate my progress at a very weak yellow, bordering on red.
Time to do a quick update, here at the end of week 7.
For my astronomy, considering that I haven’t actually dug the telescope out and got it set up yet, mostly because I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that I’m a fair-weather (i.e. warm-weather) astronomer only, I’m doing okay. I’ve played around with a few things, even managed to get a photo of the Mars / Venus / Moon conjunction on the weekend. While I had hoped to be doing something astronomy-related at least once a week, I’m at a combined total of 3 so far.
For the kitchen reno, we got going a few weeks ago with our first meeting with the designer, but haven’t heard anything in the last two weeks (contractor needs to come talk to us about moving a wall, see what the options are). I’m going to follow up this week and see about booking them for a specific 2 weeks in the summer.
I managed to sort some of my photos a few weeks back, but then stalled, which is same for my backup schedule. I’ve taken a couple of photos and managed to get a bunch of work done on a photobook, but nothing in the last couple of weeks. I also started on the origami in mid-January, although I originally planned that for later in the year.
Other than that, it’s been a pretty light 7 weeks on blue — nothing on my active use of the tracker, “honey do” list, scanning, ripping, knitting, learning to juggle, or planning for a meteor shower.
Overall, I’d have to rate my progress at a very weak yellow, bordering on red.
Without naming names, someone read my post about controlling my temper, and said, “Okay so what else did you get from your tadpole years?” Which is a pretty good question, so I’ll see if I can elaborate a little.
First, as I said, my tadpole years were triggered by a realization that I had almost no idea what I wanted in a partner, and to be blunt with myself, no real clue what I was doing when it came to dating, etc. I was just “drifting”. Which is fine if you’re relatively mentally healthy, not so good if you aren’t, yet still care about your impact on others.
Which means I started to figure out the kind of woman I wanted to be with. Up until that point, I did have an occasional “damsel in distress syndrome” going on. Some call it “DIDS”, others call it the “wounded bird” approach. Which means that sometimes I was attracted to wounded birds who needed help mending their wings. This often shows up more often in women, according to the literature at least, that a woman is going to “fix that broken man”, but often that goes further to looking at more extreme forms that include abuse. This wasn’t about being so wanting to help that I would put up with abuse, but I did feel protective sometimes to a point that looked and felt like romantic interest. A bit messed up, even though lots of people have it and think it’s a strength, not a weakness. For me it was a weakness — I had to be with a woman for the right reasons, not the wrong ones, and being with someone so I could “help” them was not a reason to date them. Friends, yes, dating, no.
Overall, and in no particular order, I wanted a woman who was relatively independent. Both smart and bright (i.e. intelligent and quick). Highly functional. Stable, no love for drama for drama’s sake. Worldly, or at least, not simply limiting herself to a provincial / small town view of the world, or simply curious about the world. Patient. Funny in her own right, not just simply laughing at other’s jokes. Not someone who loves cocktail parties and galas, but more board games, reading, a few friends, barbeques. Was I looking for all those things in one person? Not really, but in some ways they were flags for me that would likely lead to an unsustainable relationship due to the way my mind/world works on my side.
For me, aggressively warm, fuzzy, over-the-top social, clingy, etc. — all of these would suck energy out of me way too fast. It would be like a vampire feeding on a corpse. I just don`t have the energy reserves to do that for longer than a day. And I`d quickly resent having to do it, even if they were to “tone it down” as part of the compromise. Similarly, I have no interest in cocktail parties and galas. I remember a conversation with an old boss whose view was that every man should own a tuxedo, because if you have one, you find occasions to wear it. For me, that would be the exact reason NOT to own one, because I wouldn’t want to go to the events where I would wear it. I’m glad others enjoy it, I do. And I see their photos and things, and I’m even a bit envious. But I consider it a good month if I can get away with not wearing a suit or tie at any point during the month. I like getting dressed up occasionally, but I’d rather be at home than somewhere that requires the monkey suit.
In terms of interests or knowledge, I wanted someone with an outward perspective because it would challenge me, it would bring more to the relationship. I don’t mean a globetrotter who’s never around, or doing a long-distance thing, but I also have a tendency to overexplain things, to put my stamp on things, to express my views unsolicited (i.e. I talk a lot), and I didn’t want someone who would just listen and not push back. I’ve dated people who said they liked listening because I explained things sometimes so well, it was great. But not something I want to do every day.
Yet at the same time, I don’t want someone who pushes back just for the sake of drama…some people like it, it adds spice to life, and I admire passion, but it is a bad combination for me as per my previous article about my temper. My temper is vicious when unleashed, and not only do people not deserve it, I don’t want to be the person who says or does things because my temper gets the best of me or because someone is pushing buttons just to watch me blow. Instead, I committed to not being with people who trigger it regularly (certain family members, some girlfriend types), and when I do feel it potentially being triggered or at risk, I remove myself from the situation. Those are the two most effective anger management techniques I can employ. Which doesn’t mean I don’t get angry or irritated, or more accurately, highly frustrated at times, but rather that when I do, I remain in control. Which isn’t always apparent to others who may still find me explosive, particularly when it’s a home-repair project that isn’t going well.
And much of the rest was simple compatibility — I like to joke, laugh, be entertained by stories told in funny styles, do informal things, play board games, read, share books, have barbeques.
As I said, that was one of the main triggers — couplehood.
But it also expanded in other directions. For example, a better knowledge of my interests, personality, strengths, weaknesses. I’m good at explaining things, as I said above, but that isn’t exactly right — my real skill is in explaining things in ways that others grasp the fundamentals, and to see a different way of looking at things. Which some friends have used from time to time to help them understand why person X did something they didn’t understand. When I was at university out west, I got a nickname from the one guy who thought I was partially psychic. Except, like The Mentalist, I was just good at extrapolating from people’s behaviour back to the likely cause and motivation. I’ve lost a lot of that ability over the years, I don’t practice as much as I did then, but it’s still a skill I use from time to time.
I also thought a long time about my career. I “came into my own” at DFAIT, and yet I also never wanted to be like the stereotypical DFAITer. I did a MPA degree but didn’t care what was going on in Parliament, didn’t need to be “seen”, didn’t want to compete with colleagues, network with power players, etc. I like my work, I like my job, I like corporate work. But it is not who I am. And I won’t “play the game” to be a more powerful player in the playground. I didn’t have the words to describe it at the time, but the short version is that regardless of the ocean I’m swimming in, I would rather be a dolphin than a shark. I also realized I’m pretty good at the corporate files, although I only partly realized it during my tadpole years. It was later that I fully embraced it, but the starting point was realizing that I didn’t have to be the shark or top dog or leader of the pack, whatever metaphor floats your boat, I just want to be useful. Maybe that’s just in a supporting capacity.
I also developed a strong dislike for kowtowing to people because of their level. It is too much like schmoozing to me, it seems fake and artificial. So I will talk to an ADM the same way I’ll talk to a colleague on the floor. Informal, open, honest, and probably a bit more irreverent than most.
On finances, I am doing okay now, and that is partly out of the tadpole years. I realized that my income was going to go up, I was going to move up. But just because I did, my lifestyle didn’t have to keep up. Sure, it helps to have a working spouse that has a decent income too, and while we don’t live super extravagantly, we also don’t live frugally either. We spend what we want to spend, and we’re a little more money conscious these days with lots of significant pressures all hitting with a three-year timeframe, but ultimately, we’re in a happy medium-space. We could get by with less, we could spend more, we’re fine where we are. And that’s a pretty good place to be. If I was still single, it would be about the same.
On the extended family front, I also set limits on my role in the family. When my father died, I tried to do everything for my mother. Helped with all the finances, did the eulogy, etc. I remember six months into the year, it was time to do the taxes, I was stressed about the process, and I remember getting frustrated that I couldn’t get my mother to just go to the local store and fax me copies of the receipts or photocopy them and mail them to me. Never mind the fact that I had two brothers and a sister living in the city who could have helped just as easily, I was doing it to help but also because I liked feeling needed. While others were often in conflict, I was the peacemaker in the family. The one who got along with all five of my siblings, and didn’t have any of the five of them actively hating me. But it was killing me. I wasn’t being myself, I was playing a game, following a script. And I said, “Game over.” I stopped being the facilitator. I stopped being the peacemaker. If people pushed, I pushed back. When my mother wanted to stir the pot to create some conflict, I’d let her stir and then just ignore it completely. I wasn’t going to play that game. And I didn’t. When my mom died, she wanted me to play that game again, to find a way to make all the siblings get along. I refused. I did the co-executor thing when I wanted nothing to do with any of it, but when it was done, so was I. I am friends with my siblings who act like they want to be friends. But if they want to create drama or play games? Totally not interested. I have five direct siblings, and if either of two of them died tomorrow, I likely wouldn’t go to the funeral (well, to be completely candid, I wouldn’t be welcome at one of them anyway). Family was family until they made me make a choice, and I chose me. The real me, not the peacemaker role. To them it probably looks like I became a bit of a jerk; for me, it means I found my spine.
The second-to-final piece I got out of it was a more defined interest in other parts of my life. The most visible form of that is writing. An extended friend once referred me to the “guy who blogged before there were blogs” because in the mid-90s, I had an email newsletter that I did for friends that often combined humour with some of my own commentary, and the odd trivia question. I liked doing it. I liked interacting with people. I used to run an email trivia game, pre-website, where I had 75 people from around the world playing my game. Two of those people are on my FaceBook friends list still, 15-20 years later. And I was starting to think about becoming a writer, maybe even a mystery novelist. I’ve gone in different directions since then, but the interest in writing is still very much there.
Finally, I thought a lot about the nature of friendship, relationships, love itself. Emotions. The expression of that emotion. The nature of love in a relationship. And I realized something simple yet profound. In its simplest form, we often go through life feeling things we don’t mention, sometimes for fear of embarrassment or lack of reciprocity. But I hated that idea. So, just as I had started expressing my love for my father, I made the commitment to myself that if I felt love, I would express it. Not in a creepy way, just that if I was in a relationship with someone, and I felt it, I would say it. I wouldn’t wait for the right time, I wouldn’t hold back for fear of embarrassment. I would say it because I felt it, not because I wanted to hear it back.
All of these things came out of my tadpole years. There are others, but those are the main ones. Any one of them could be a separate post probably, but this is the gist of my distilled PolyWogg version. So when people ask me what else came of my tadpole years, my answer is simple.
I confess, as excited as I am by my year-long quest, I lost faith this weekend. I did, I completely and utterly lost faith. The cause? I got sick.
I’ve been fighting a bit of residual congestion from a cold a few weeks ago, and since meds that I’m on prevent me from taking anything resembling a decent decongestant, I’ve always had trouble clearing congestion anyway, and it lingers. Annoying, energy-sucking, etc, but manageable. Which doesn’t mean I don’t probably whine about it more than I realize. But just annoying.
Saturday was different. Got up, felt relatively okay, climbed in the car and off I went to the Nissan dealership for service. It’s been on the list for a few weeks, but wasn’t urgent. Small rotational noise in the rear passenger tire area, but not affecting driving or anything, just a noise. Turned out to be bent dust plate, nothing of consequence, easily fixed, no charge, probably bent when I had the winter tires put on. I was thinking about getting the car washed, but I was starting to feel a little queasy, so headed back home instead. Went to the washroom, felt really unsteady about 30 minutes later, had to lie down.
That’s when the fever and chills hit. Temp went up, I went down, and I was out for a few hours. Got up, thought I’d have a shower to clear my head, still congested and cold. So I had a really hot shower. Steam bath time practically. Which knocked me on my butt, almost literally. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like I just wasn’t getting enough air. Of course, man of my age and weight, with a family history of heart disease, doesn’t take the Amazing Kreskin to figure out where my mind was going. Immediately started looking for other signs. Anxiety? Well, I was feeling it now! (Just kidding) Pain? No. None. Nausea? None. Dizziness? Not really. Cough? Not really either. Weakness? Yes, but the shortness of breath was causing that. Anyway, lots going through my head, and I had Andrea come and guide me to the bedroom. As soon as I left the hot steamy shower, I almost instantly started feeling better. I could breathe again, and the fever was still present (39.4) but I just wanted to sleep. Which I did, and woke up feeling hungry. Since I had basically skipped lunch, not surprising, but was still pretty weak sitting up in the chair so had to ask Andrea to make me some soup.
Back to sleeping. I basically slept almost 30 of 48 hours. By Sunday morning, feeling pretty good. Head and chest had cleared, mostly felt ridiculous that the cause of my freak-out was basically a hot steam room. Which isn’t uncommon, I have the same problem at places like Le Nordik. I can’t breathe in them, my lungs really don’t like it for extended periods of time, and I’d just had a long hot shower.
But the faith part goes to the time when I was awake. When I’m sick, or really tired, I find it really hard to keep squirrels at bay. And they are doubting squirrels. Squirrels that sit on my shoulders and mock me. “Really? PolyWogg 4.0? You can’t even perform at 1.0 right now. Look at you…you’re asking your wife to make you soup, go to the basement and get you stuff from the freezer. Hell, why don’t you turn into a complete Neanderthal and tell her to get you a beer or something.” I hate having to depend on others but, more importantly, I really hate having to impose on someone else and ask them to do something that I can’t. I don’t care about simple things like if you’re going upstairs, can you bring me down a sweater. I mean like asking Andrea to go get something from the basement because I’m feeling too weak to try the stairs by myself. Yet I’m also not stupid enough to do it myself just to be stubborn.
At any rate, I lost faith. I started questioning a bunch of things, not so much the writing goal as I’m doing okay on that one but just about everything else that I’ve committed to. Particularly red goals which are more physical since it was the physical that was kicking my butt. Of course, I completely discounted the fact Andrea had it before me and I should have been potentially expecting it. Some of my lost faith was that I just completely lost two whole days more or less. Certainly wasn’t progressing on much on my list while I was sick.
And yet you know what inspired me? Parts of the Super Bowl. I could say it was Chris Matthews, who was picked up by the Seahawks while working at a Foot Locker, who caught his first professional receiving catch on Sunday as practice for his second one which was for a TD in the Super Bowl. He was over 100 yards receiving, might even have been leading receiver for Seahawks for most of the game. Or the rookie Malcolm Butler, who blocked the pass that Krause eventually cradled anyway, and then redeemed himself by stepping in front of Krause to grab the interception that finished the game.
But it wasn’t either of those people. It was Pete Carroll. All over the internet, the blogosphere, the videos, the football pundits, the live game announcers — everyone was calling him an idiot for passing with 1 yard to go rather than having Marshawn Lynch try to punch it in. And yet it was a great call, I don’t care what the Monday morning quarterbacks are saying from their recliners.
He explained it right after the game, exactly as I was expecting him to do. NE Pats were expecting them to run it in, so they sent in their maximum running defence. Carroll had 30 seconds to play with and he called the pass with an expectation that if it didn’t work, he still had a play to run with Marshawn, and the defenders would be one play more tired while Marshawn rested, plus the Pats weren’t set up to defend a pass. Add to that the fact that the short distance decreases the likelihood of an actual interception — maybe a batted down ball, but not an interception, and you have a pretty good chance at two plays, either of which might get you the win. If that pass had landed, Pete Carroll would be the king of the internet today, blogged about all over the place, didn’t take the safe play, gutsy, visionary, whatever. Celebrated. And if it was not caught, he still had Marshawn, who if successful, would have been pointed to as having been fresher, a good strategic rest before plowing into the endzone.
But what happened? The rookie from a school that nobody at the Super Bowl had ever heard of before (Hinds Community College, via West Alabama), Malcolm Butler, saw the play, abandoned his actual receiver, took a huge risk that an experienced veteran probably wouldn’t have but instead would have trusted in the protection routes they were running, and stepped forward, literally knocking the receiver out of the way of the ball and catching it himself. Make no mistake — that was a game-winning TD that was a split-second from making Pete Carroll that guru of football strategists, and Butler jumped in front of that game-winning train and brought it to a grinding, almost bone-crushing stop. If he had merely knocked it down, or just caused the receiver to drop it, the story would be a minor footnote to the next play when Marshawn would have had his shot at greatness.
But Carroll made the call he did based on what he saw before him. Lots of people are ripping him apart in the media world today and will do so for a long time to come. Diehard Seahawk fans are going to want to crucify him perhaps. But what did Carroll do, minutes after the game? He gave an interview where he said almost exactly what I laid out above — he didn’t like the matchup, tried the pass, figured if it failed he would still have 2 more plays with Marshawn to punch it in, let’s go for the win. And then he did the act that restored my faith in my quest.
He displayed 100% integrity and accountability. He said initially “We made the call” to go with the pass, but when he finished, he said, “The decision to go that way was me, it’s all on me.” He took full responsibility and accountability for the loss. Never mind the idiot Bennett working on his defensive line who not only gave Tom Brady a free first down by jumping offside on a 3rd down situation but who also gave up any hope of a touchback at the goal line by giving them another free five yards, after a season where he got dinged 14 times (second only to Browner on NE who had 15 infractions). His teammate was even trying to hold him back from jumping offside on the second-last play of the game, and he STILL went offside. Blown plays, missed opportunities, a whole season coming down to it, and Pete Carroll says, “It’s all on me.”
That’s the kind of faith I can get behind. Because whatever weaknesses I have in my personal arsenal to transform myself, the end result is the same. It’s all on me.
Let the quest continue. I’m not 100% ready to win yet, but I’m ready to keep fighting.
When I started writing my goals down for this year, the writing target of 500,000 words was a relatively early one. Not the quantity, but that I would set a word target. I have lots of things that I want to write about, even more than I think, “Hmm, I might have something worth saying about that”, and others that are more, “Well, it might be useful or interesting.”. But there is a small subset where I ask a different question, “Am I ready to write that post? Is my writing ability up to the challenge?” This is one of those posts.
A few people have said they would like to know more about my tadpole years, the five years that I was intentionally single where I played “deconstructing Paul’s brain” and then put it back together like Dr. Frankenstein’s creation and hoped for the best. Mostly they want to know why I think the types of questions or process I used was different from someone else’s “coming of age” experience. And they want examples.
Let me start by pointing out that much of the five years was boring. There were few “epiphanies”, few “eureka” moments where the universe suddenly opened its arms and embraced me in revealed wisdom. It was slow. It was methodical. It was boring. But progress, when it happened, was often driven by fear and my reaction to it more than by courage.
Take my temper, for instance. I have a temper. Not like other people say, “Oh, his temper got the best of him.” More like, “he lost his temper with his brother/father, said something awful/unforgivable, and they’ve never spoken since”. I’m not violent, but I am potentially ruthless. Utterly, unforgivingly, mercilessly ruthless. It takes a lot for me to lose my temper…I don’t mean be irritated or impatient or speak a harsh word, I mean actually lose my sh** to the point where I go on the offensive.
Cognitive socio-psychopathy. Psychopath, meaning low impulse control and violent outbursts. Sociopath, meaning someone who knows right and wrong but manipulates around it. And cognitive, meaning it is an on-off switch that the person controls themself.
Am I a psychopath? No, of course not. Am I a sociopath? No, not that one either.
But if you attack me, push my buttons, hem me in until I pop, I will verbally go for the jugular. Let me give you an example. Back in high school, I had a best friend named Paul, nicknamed Ruf (like Rufus). Think Leonard and Sheldon, the younger years. He was dating this girl from another high school, never even mentioned her to me for about six months they’re dating. Very man-like conversations apparently. Anyway, they start having problems, she calls me one night at home and says, “Is there anything going on with him at school? Home? What burr is up his butt?”. I didn’t know, but she was pretty upset, needed someone to talk to, and I was it. No biggie, happy to listen/help. Except he was the paranoid type, and apparently he was worried that if we ever met, she’d leave him for me or something. I don’t get it, but whatever. Anyway she decided she didn’t want to tell him we’d talked. I didn’t care, really, so whatever. Flash forward a few days, she’s admitted we talked, and he gets really upset with me. Rags on me at school, goes in for all this stupid drama about how I’ve betrayed him, blah blah blah. I got pissed, and left. He called me later, went on and on, basically making me feel “trapped”, dumping on me continuously, and I lost my temper.
Now, for most people that would mean a shouting match. Yelling. Maybe just arguing back. Not me. I lose my temper, I go cold inside, and I find the worst possible thing to say to hurt you. In his case, there he was, looking for me to say basically “Sorry” and that “I care that he’s hurt”, etc. He wanted me to validate his feelings, to use the vernacular. And this is my best friend, one of only a few friends I have in total. The guy I hang out with EVERY. SINGLE. DAY at school. And I know what he wants, and I also know that he’s afraid that I don’t care. That I’m not sorry. That he feels betrayed and that he has no control. My best friend dumped it all at my feet, laid his heart upon his sleeve and said, “So what do you have to say?”.
I knew what he wanted, and I refused to do it. I went for the jugular. He wanted me to say something? I said, “Whoopee f***.” Now that may not sound like much. But it crushed him totally, as I knew it would. I invalidated everything he had said, everything he thought he knew about me, every aspect of our friendship that he relied upon. I was HIS best friend too. And here I was, blowing him off when he was at his most vulnerable. For me, it was the equivalent of the memes on FB that says “Share if you agree, only 1% of my friends will do it and I know which ones care”. A passive aggressive, let’s play my game approach to social interactions, and I don’t play that game on a good day, and that wasn’t a good day to test me. Did I feel bad about it? Nope. Did I feel guilty? Nope. It was strategic, not retaliatory. It pushed him away from me as if I’d smacked him with a baseball bat.
We “patched” things up a week or so later, more out of social need than compassion, but our relationship never really recovered from that point on either – the comment was too insidious for him to ever totally trust me again, or even himself in some ways. Am I overstating? A few months later, he was over at the house, and another friend and he were talking, with the subject coming around to me and my “cold heartless ways”, so to speak. They both said, quite openly, they had never ever seen anyone close a door mentally and emotionally as fast as I had with them in the past. One minute? Best friends. Next minute? I wouldn’t scrape you off my shoe.
Fast forward to 1998, and I had seen enough appearances of my evil side over the years that I wasn’t totally comfortable with it being part of me. It is a source of strength, it even has a name to me. Shiva, the Destroyer. It’s the core rock at the centre of my being, what’s left when I stripped everything else away. Except there was little I could do with that piece. Too hard to chip away at alone, and I had no professional therapist to hand me a pickaxe. And it protects me. It’s there if I ever need it. But like the “carry concealed” laws for guns, it is highly dangerous. I never ever want to use it against those I love. So I spent a LOT of time figuring out the triggers.
Since a lot of these defense mechanisms are learned, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what had been happening at the times I resorted to the mechanism.
First, I had resorted to it if I felt relatively attacked. It’s a defense mechanism, it’s triggered when I’m under attack. I don’t mean physically, I mean someone is coming at me generally head on.
Second, I had definitely resorted to it if I had no other option i.e. if I felt trapped, claustrophobic. So, for example, being around my family, with alcohol involved, and no way to just leave. Lack of a car, remote location, etc. Trap me? I bite.
Third, emotional drama. This isn’t quite the same as being attacked. If it is a highly emotional scene, maybe confrontational, maybe not, the energy charge in the situation is enough to heighten my sensitivity. If the other person is a drama queen? Really good chance of ticking me off to the point where I want to verbally hit back. Case in point. Argument with a girlfriend, I’m trying to defuse the situation, she’s just ramping up and up and up, she says something vicious and childish, and leaves. But as she goes, she slams the door. I lost my temper. I stormed out after her ready to tell her in no certain terms the wherefore and howto of certain physically impossible acts. But she saw my face, ready to tell her off and totally temper-fueled, and she thought I was going to kill her. I opened my mouth, and the look on her face made me stop and look behind me to see what was scaring her. I thought the hounds of hell were unleashed. Nothing there. The look on my face as I was about to tell her off was enough to scare the daylights out of her. Would I hurt her physically? Nope. But she di dn’t know that, and had a history that heightened her own fears. In the two years that followed, I made sure to always end the conversation before any drama could escalate to the point where my face alone would scare her, let alone what damage my words might do.
My temper, when released, doesn’t want to make a snide comment. It isn’t after a witty bon mot. It wants to devastate you from top to bottom. God forbid I know a fear you have. That’s what I’ll go for, every time. The type of comment that will stay with you in your psyche forever. Let me give you a simple, easy to understand example. I’ll attack myself. First though, some additional context.
During that same tadpole time, one thing that was haunting me was the question of whether or not I wanted kids. Lots of people think, “How stupid a question is that? Yes or no? Not that hard.” If so, I think you’re an idiot. Having kids isn’t like picking up a new handbag. You not only should know if you want them in general, but also if you want them if you had to do it alone, if you’ll be good at it, can you do it WELL, not just “muddle through” and count it as a win if they don’t end up in jail?
I had a close friend who decided that if she was single and of a certain age, she’d probably adopt on her own. That’s not that unusual in theory, but it isn’t a common situation in practice, truth be told. The numbers are quite low. It falls even farther down the probability scale when it is a potential single father rather than a potential single mother thinking about it. Very few males run off and adopt on their own. Societal bias, personal choice, stereotypes, whatever, it’s pretty rare. Less rare now, but pretty uncommon for 1998. So since I’m male, and I was single at the time, it was simple to say, “I don’t know”, since I didn’t have the option to either do it myself and I wasn’t with someone right then. But that wasn’t determinative.
I could have adopted. By myself. Not easily, but not impossibly either. So I poked my psyche to say, “Do you WANT kids bad enough that you would do it on your own?”. And I don’t mean brushing your teeth, daydreaming, thinking, “What if???”. I mean, deep in the night, lying awake, staring at the ceiling, deconstructing what it would mean, both for me and for the child. Could I handle it on my own? Would I be any good at it? Was I mentally, emotionally, physically capable of raising a child successfully, relatively on my own?
So, I asked myself, “Are you capable of being a good parent?”. Again, I don’t mean gently thinking about it. I mean grilling myself like a fish. What a friend called self-mutilation as I broke down different aspects of my self into things that would work or not as a parent. And here’s the conclusion.
I wouldn’t likely make a good single parent. Let’s look at the criteria related to triggering my temper. Attacked? Kids do like to push buttons. Trapped? Single parent, and lots of people have felt like their life is on a one-way street to nowhere for 18 years. Usually not those who made a choice or who have my level of income, both of which mitigate some of the trapped feeling, but not entirely. Emotional drama? Kids never do that, do they?
So what is my coping mechanism? Escape usually. I step back. I avoid situations where I am trapped, attacked or facing unbridled drama. Those three things do not happen with my wife. Not overtly usually, and never together. She’s the opposite of a drama queen. With Jacob, and her too, sometimes I need to withdraw. Not necessarily physically, I just need to take a small mental siesta to disengage. To focus on the process, not the outcome. Some of that is just living in the moment for some people, but it’s not really that for me — it’s almost, and this sounds terrible, like I decide for 2 or 3 minutes to just not care. I turn off my empathy, my caring, my feeling side. Cognitive control. I mastered the technique during my tadpole years, as I layered my new self back over the core rock that was Shiva.
But I came to the conclusion that while I wanted kids, I was not likely a good candidate to do it “alone”. Combine the fact that I’m an introverted analytical type, reserved in emotion, and that I have a temper, and even on my best days, I’m not a warm fuzzy Father of the Year type. Check out my goals for the year — I have actual goals about “doing more”, being “more” than I am currently. When Andrea and I decided to have kids, I had to confess up front that I was unlikely to ever be a 50/50 co-parent when it came to the basic routine, diaper changes, feedings, snuggling, etc. She would bear more of the load than I would if we had kids. I’m better than my Dad was, perhaps, I’m emotionally aware, I’m present, I’m trying, but I am NOT a natural at this stuff. I’ll likely do better when he’s older and wants to talk about stuff, or when he’s learning bigger things, not unlike “mentoring” experiences now (lots of people have suggested I should become a professor or something and teach because I’m good at explaining things in different ways, albeit it with too many words). But until then, I have to commit to the quest.
So, if I pissed myself off, that would be the area I would go to in attacking me. I would start with basic premise of loving my son, and drive the knife in that I’m not doing everything I can for him, so how can I say I truly love him? Do I even know what love is? It’s not like I had a father who was expressing it regularly. Blah blah blah. But if that’s the area, the attack vector has to be far more oblique. Like asking myself how I’m doing on my goals and bringing the conversation around to goals with Jacob and Andrea. Talking about them doubtfully, like it makes no sense to have “green goals”, and implying that it’s laughable how badly informed I am in that area. Not direct, subtle. Go for my worries, my doubts, and twist the knife so that I keep twisting it long after the conversation is over. THAT’S what my temper would do if I was ticked at myself.
And that’s the kind of issue I worked on during my tadpole years. Some would call it “managing my temper”, others would say “anger management”. But that isn’t what I did. I stripped everything away, and then locked my temper in a steel cage with myself having the only key. Others could get to it by blasting, but long before they could reach it, I will have already exited stage left. Remove the impetus, remove the threat. I can’t get rid of it, not even sure I would if I could. It’s part of who I am, a source of strength. But I don’t want to ever use it. It’s not who I became. It wasn’t an active part of PolyWogg 3.0.
