Are Our Fixations Blinding Us?

Sadly, our entire media landscape is completely fixated on Trump right now.  Every news report seems to have to do with him.  Nearly every tweet he sends makes headlines around the country.  Hardly a word comes out of his mouth that the media doesn’t feel the need to dissect.  Yes, we have great reason to be concerned (see my previous post for more on this), but is it worth such a blinding focus?

I’m not sure it is.

What A Trump Presidency Means

The unthinkable has happened.  Donald J. Trump has been elected our 45^th president.  Like most, I shudder at what this means for the future of our country, our world, and our species.  I have, on MANY occasions, stated exactly what I thought of this man, but I don’t want to just write another essay or post dedicated to bashing him.  There’s been too much of that already.  Instead, I want to address those who voted for him.

I understand why so many of you voted for Trump, believe it or not.  You see, as I do, that Clinton is an evil, heartless woman who isn’t any more fit to be president than Trump.  I get that, and, unlike many, I won’t bash you for it.  Frankly, I voted Clinton for the same reason that you voted Trump.  But I want you to understand what you have done by giving this man the most powerful office in our country.  I want you to understand the danger you have placed our country in.

Trump's Real Problem Isn't Stupidity or Bigotry. It's Fallibility.

With just weeks to go before Election Day, this election has quickly devolved into one of the nastiest and most brutal in decades.  Both sides are hurling insults all over the place, and, even more disturbing, most of them are fairly accurate.  Clinton and her supporters claim that Trump is a racist, sexist, xenophobic buffoon who cannot be trusted to be president; at least three of those claims are proven true by his own rhetoric.  Trump responds by blasting Clinton for being untrustworthy and for being mired in numerous scandals throughout her career, some of them illegal.  Again, these claims are largely true.  But, beyond all the rhetoric and insults and childish behavior, there lurks something far more insidious, something that makes Trump far more dangerous than Hillary ever could be.

One of the common themes present in this election is that Trump often seems to live in his own world.  Most rich people and politicians are guilty of this, but Trump has taken this to an extreme.  The bigger problem is that the rules in his perverted form of reality are the inverse of those in the real world, particularly when it comes to responsibility and accountability.  These are things that just don’t seem to apply to him, things that are to be avoided like the plague.  Most people, even most politicians, no matter how hard they fight against these things, will eventually give in.  Not Trump.  He fights it tooth and nail, outright attacking anyone who points out his failures or says something that paints in even the slightest amount of negative light.

Take, for example, the way he performed in the first debate against Clinton.  The overwhelming consensus is that he clearly lost.  It isn’t that Clinton necessarily outperformed him, but that he stood there acting like a petulant child for 90 minutes, which, in these scenarios, is akin to shooting yourself in the foot multiple times.  But instead of accepting that he screwed up, he began making excuses about defective equipment (one of his microphones did turn out to be defective, but it was the one that broadcast within the hall; the one that broadcast to the television audience was perfectly fine) and attacking the debate moderator for “treating him unfairly.”  He even went so far as to deny reality by insisting that the constant sniffling that everyone noticed never happened, despite the fact that tens of millions of people saw him do it for 90 straight minutes (Note: I don’t actually care much about his sniffling as it is probably just seasonal allergies, but the fact that he would deny what we have clear video evidence of is just bizarre.  What is the logic in denying that you have a case of the sniffles anyway?)  This was hardly new behavior, as Trump has spent most of his campaign claiming that the entire election is rigged against him, from the news media to the actual voting.  While there is certainly evidence of tampering with some elections, there is no evidence to support his specific claims.  Nonetheless, he has continued echoing these claims for months.  The question is why?

The answer, really, is quite simple.  Throughout his entire life, Trump has been a man incapable of accepting or admitting failure.  Every time he failed, he blamed it on someone else and found a way to weasel out of it.  This is no doubt largely from being the son of an extremely wealthy man; statistics and studies going back decades very clearly show that people raised by very affluent families are more likely to exhibit such behavior (some, such as the infamous Affluenza kid, have even used this as a legal defense).  But being raised in such an environment doesn’t guarantee such behavior; countless people were raised in environments very similar to Trump’s, and they have no problem admitting and accepting failure.  As such, this is in no way, shape, or form an excuse for Trump’s behavior.  The problem is that he has continued this behavior for decades, both personally and professionally.

A quick look at his business career shows dozens of failures, including at least six bankruptcies.  The only reason he was able to continue his business ventures is because his father bailed him out numerous times by giving him loans amounting to tens of millions of dollars.  In almost all of his failures, he blamed other people or economic problems.  Regardless of the circumstances or veracity of his claims, the theme was always the same: it wasn’t his fault.  He worked tirelessly to distance himself from every failure because he didn’t want it to taint him.

This refusal to accept responsibility for failure extended to his personal life as well.  The best example is the disintegration of his first marriage to Ivanka Trump.  The marriage largely fell apart due to his affair with Marla Maples, who he later married after divorcing Ivanka.  But he never accepted any responsibility for what he did (especially prudent is the fact that the reason cited for their divorce was his “cruel and inhumane treatment”, which he refused to ever speak of, and certainly does not seem to have ever even apologized for).  Moreover, when Ivanka published a book about their marriage, he successfully sued her for violating a gag order in their divorce agreement.  The fact that he would even have such a clause in a divorce agreement is already proof positive that he is far too thin-skinned to be president, but that he would use it to sue the woman he cheated on is simply vile.

The fact that he glories in successes (even when they aren’t his) and refuses to accept responsibility for failure makes him dangerous, but there’s another facet to this.  Many of his supporters actually buy his rampant rationalizations.  They have concluded that the establishment is so corrupted that everything is rigged against him.  As such, any time someone says something against him or brings up evidence of his multitudinous flaws, they are attacked with claims that they are simply trying to discredit him.  Every time he screws up, they refuse to blame him, instead following his logic of blaming everyone and everything else.

To illustrate this, let’s look at his performance in the first debate again.  Both Trump and his supporters claim that Hillary won the debate for a myriad of reasons, none of which are Trump’s fault.  The most commonly repeated claim is that Lester Holt, the moderator, was simply treating him unfairly by interrupting him over 40 times and attempting to fact check things on the fly.  I would argue that it is the moderator’s job to try to ensure that candidates are being truthful, or, at the very least clear, especially when discussing points that others have spent a great deal of time researching and fact-checking.  On the surface, it might seem rude that Holt so frequently interrupted Trump, but isn’t it possible that he only did so because more of Trump’s statements and claims were in some way wrong than Hillary’s were?  A quick look at any reputable, objective fact-checking site shows this to be the truth.  Most of what Trump said that night was not only false, but had been disproven multiple times before he stepped onto the stage.  That isn’t to say that Hillary didn’t lie, but, again, the statistics are in her favor on this one because most of her statements were rated as being fairly accurate.  But his supporters insist that Holt’s interruptions are evidence of some kind of bias against him, despite the fact that he interrupted Hillary more than Holt interrupted him (a total of 51 times, as opposed to her mere 17).  Moreover, most of his interruptions were to insist that Hillary was wrong about him, despite the fact that, again, fact-checking shows most of her claims about Trump and his policies (or lack thereof) to be, on the balance, correct.

While the above claims of bias are already disturbing in what they show of Trump and his supporters, they really are only the tip of the iceberg.  A particularly bizarre example of this lies in a conspiracy theory that started spreading only hours after the debate.  Using clips from the debate, several of his supporters have suggested that Hillary was signaling Holt by scratching her nose so that she could get a barb in.  Is it possible?  Theoretically, yes, but their argument falls apart due to the fact that the shortest time between a scratch and her speaking is nearly a minute.  That doesn’t disprove their theory, but there is also no evidence to substantiate it.  Regardless of the lack of anything even resembling evidence, this too caught on amongst Trump’s supporters.

This kind of behavior should scare anyone, regardless of their political affiliation or beliefs, because it shows such blatant disregard for personal responsibility.  It’s even more dangerous because it has spread beyond Trump into his supporters.  Instead of accepting that he could have screwed up a debate, they started searching for wild conspiracy theories to explain it away.  Instead of accepting his fallibility, both he and his supporters cling to the belief that the entire election is rigged against him.  I do grant that the major news media is on a pretty blatant and shameless crusade against him, but that doesn’t inherently mean the election is rigged.  The news media in this country is controlled by the two big political parties, meaning they only have as much influence over elections as the parties want them to have.  This is why we haven’t seen a third party candidate in a debate in over twenty years; they use their influence to quash competition.  I do find it a bit suspicious that so many media outlets have outright endorsed Clinton, but that still doesn’t prove a rigged election.

Ahem.  I’m getting off-topic here.  Back to the discussion at hand.

There is a rather sordid kind of irony in all this, and that is that most of Trump’s supporters are opposed to Hillary because they see in her the exact same problems that I see in Trump.  They seem someone who eschews accountability like the plague, a person who has spent her career weaseling her way out of sticky spots.  But that is true of nearly any politician, especially a career one.  The key difference between Hillary and Trump is that she has been willing in at least a few instances to say “You know what?  I screwed up, and I take full responsibility.”  Trump has never uttered those words with any degree of sincerity because he doesn’t believe he’s capable of screwing up.  Sadly, many of his followers seem to have bought this.

I know that most of Trump’s followers are good, intelligent people (despite the horrid comment Clinton made about them), and that most of them really only support him because they detest Clinton.  As I also detest her, I certainly understand their logic.  But they are making all the same mistakes that Clinton and her supporters do.  They are never even willing to entertain the idea that Trump could have screwed up or lost legitimately because they have become convinced that everything is rigged against him (yet they frequently opine that Hillary’s supporters do the exact same thing; regardless of the truth in this, it is the definition of hypocrisy).  But even if that is true, it isn’t an excuse.  It doesn’t mean that he is infallible.  All it means is that he must work harder to win.

Trump has certainly been treated unfairly by the media in some instances, as well as by politicians on both sides of the aisle.  But this is irrelevant because most of the claims made about him are completely true.  The real problem is that he truly believes himself to be infallible.  He honestly does not believe that he is even capable of making a mistake.  That is the real danger of Donald Trump.  How can a man that is egotistical and narcissistic to the point of being blind to his own fallibility possibly lead this country?

The answer is that he can’t.  His supporters must open their eyes to this fact because they otherwise risk becoming exactly what they hate.  If this country is ever to recover and be the land of freedom and opportunity it was supposed to be, we need a leader who doesn’t just make excuses for himself because that shows the people that such behavior is acceptable when it isn’t.  In a prime example of irony, most of Trump’s supporters are the same people who voice legitimate concern over the fact that younger generations aren’t being allowed to fail, instead being shielded and coddled.  I agree with this assessment because I have always considered failure to be one of the most powerful teachers we can have.  Failure teaches us how to pick ourselves up and keep going.  It teaches us how to avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over.  Most importantly, it teaches us about responsibility and accountability; if we can’t admit we screwed up, we can’t prevent it from happening again.  Trump, being human, is flawed.  He fails and makes mistakes just as much as anyone else.  But the difference is that he runs from his failures instead of learning from them.  He avoids accountability like the plague.  This is exactly what his supporters fear will happen to our children because we refuse to let them fail, yet they seem to be blind to it in their chosen candidate, choosing instead to make excuses for him.

Simply put, if Trump cannot accept his own fallibility, he is not capable of leading this country.  I’m not saying we should all just vote for Hillary (frankly, I can’t stand her either, and, as of this writing, am officially undecided on how I am voting), but we must see candidates for any office for exactly who they are.  Just as Trump is a xenophobic, misogynistic, egomaniac that believes himself infallible, Hillary is cold-hearted, power-hungry, and has the blood of countless innocent people on her hands.  Trump supporters frequently complain that Hillary supporters don’t see her for who she is, yet they make excuses for Trump every time he fails and every time a new allegation surfaces.  As the adage goes, the sword cuts both ways; Hillary supporters may indeed try to explain away her scandals, but Trump supporters are guilty of the same charge.

Christ once said “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Trump and his supporters have no right to cast a stone when they do everything possible but accept that he could have screwed up.

How the Hell Did Trump Get the Nomination?

So it’s official.  The Republican Party has nominated Donald Trump for president.  A man who thinks women exist only for a man’s pleasure.  A man who regularly mocks and insults women and the disabled.  A man who uses offensive stereotypes and inflammatory language to describe minorities.  A man whose xenophobia is second only to his extreme narcissism.  A man who changes his position on issues faster than an Olympic sprinter.  A man who is nothing more than a glorified con artist.  A man who made his entire fortune by stealing it from others.  A man who has no idea how to actually run a country, as he has made clear by offering almost no actual policies.

I could go on and on, but I do believe my point is made (and besides, most of his supporters won’t listen to the facts anyway).  There is no longer a point to arguing about him because he is running whether we like it or not.  But I think a look at just how the hell we got here is warranted so that perhaps we can prevent someone like him from getting nominated again.

So how did we get here?  Who is to blame?  Well, it’s not who you think.  I put the blame squarely on Liberals (my own people!) and Democrats.

I’ll pause here for a moment for the inevitable screaming from the Bernie Bros and trolls who just love making noise . . .

*hums and twiddles thumbs*

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let me explain why I blame Liberals and Democrats for the rise of Trump.  The problem is that we live in an age defined by polarization, especially when it comes to politics.  Our political landscape is so divisively charged that the only thing that seems to matter is making sure you don’t agree with the guy on the other side of the aisle.  More to the point, this has created a world where we bask in the afterglow of taking pot shots at our opponents.  But this has had an unintended side effect, one that people don’t seem to have realized.

There is an ancient proverb that states, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  The phrase was coined as a way of seeking allies to help fight against a common enemy.  But while this seems like a sound idea, it can also be very dangerous.  Yes, it can help bring people together, but it can also serve as a wedge, depending on how you interpret it.  Most people interpret the phrase correctly, inferring that defeating an opponent can be easier if you ally yourself with someone who shares your opposition.  This logic has been used to win numerous wars for millennia.  Unfortunately, we too often subvert this logic, inferring the wrong meaning from it by following a purely literal interpretation of it; instead of finding someone who shares your opposition, you find someone that your opponent hates.

Some would say that this doesn’t really sound any different, that it just comes to the same conclusion.  But the difference is actually very simple, and that’s why it is so easily missed.  Instead of uniting with someone to defeat a common opponent, you intentionally find someone you know that your opponent hates in order to defeat him.  I’ll give an example to properly illustrate this.  Say that you and several other people are trying to win a contest, and that you decide to team up with somebody to increase your chances of winning.  The logical choice would be to find somebody that wants to play the way you do.  But what if you really hated one of the competitors, to the point that all you wanted to do was beat him, even if you didn’t win?  You would likely team up with someone who feels the same way, even if they don’t play the way you’d like them to.  In short, your desire to make the other competitor look bad blinds you.

That is what has happened in this election.  That is why Trump has been allowed to seize what little remained of the once great Republican Party.  We have allowed ourselves to become so politically polarized that we are willing to align ourselves with someone simply because our opponents dislike them.  I believe that to be the reason that Republicans nominated Trump for the presidency; they saw the vitriolic fervor erupting from Liberals and Democrats, and subconsciously decided that if we hated him that much, he must be on to something.  For the last eight years, we’ve seen the inverse of this as well, with Republicans slamming Obama for every syllable he utters simply because they dislike him.  This is the most literal interpretation of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” that is possible, and it is by far the most dangerous.

Now, to be fair, Democrats and Liberals are every bit as guilty of this as Republicans and Conservatives.  We have all decided that those who disagree with us must be an enemy.  Democrats used this logic to nominate Hillary Clinton, a chronic liar and lackey to Wall Street (to say nothing of major scandals such as her email).  She stood up and said things that Republicans oppose and gained political points because of it.  But that is exactly the problem.  Both sides have nominated an absolutely terrible candidate (I consider Trump to be worse, but that is neither here nor there) because all that matters anymore is beating the other side.

Sadly, this isn’t even the most damning part.  In trying to beat each other, both sides have nominated someone who doesn’t even stand for what they do.  The Republicans nominated Trump, who isn’t a Conservative, and whose party affiliation seems to change every few years.  He is on the record opposing nearly everything they support (although seeing as he changes his mind every five minutes, it’s hard to tell anymore), and supporting things for which they have slammed Obama, Hillary, and other Democrats.  Moreover, he has been friends with the Clintons for many years, inviting them to his last wedding and supporting Hillary financially in her last presidential run, making it all the more confounding that Conservatives and Republicans can support him at all.

Liberals and Democrats have made precisely the same mistake in nominating Hillary, and she is every bit as dangerous as Trump.  She thinks everyone but her is trash, as is evidenced by the countless statements that both her and her husband’s staff members have made over the years.  She flouts the law and gets away with it because she is powerful (her email scandal is a particularly pertinent example).  She is a chronic liar (yeah, I know, this is a trait shared by all politicians, but the Clintons took it to a new level), doing so just as much, if not more than, Trump (although Politifact gives them nearly inverse ratings; 75% of his are rated at least Mostly False, while 75% of hers are rated at least Half True.  Make of that what you will.).  She is also known to get a lot of funding from Wall Street, big banks, and other corporations, which could spell trouble for us when they start calling in favors.  Yet, despite her many flaws, certain factions of Democrats and Liberals have clung to her in the same way that certain factions of Republicans and Conservatives cling to Trump.  Hillary is good at telling people what the want to hear, and many of her supporters are concerned only with beating Trump in the election.  But isn’t that the same reason so many people support Trump?

That is the true problem here, and it is precisely what is destroying this country.  We have allowed ourselves to become so divided that we will ally ourselves with anyone with whom we seem to share a common enemy or opposition.  The old proverb I mentioned before might seem to suggest this, but that is only in a purely literal interpretation.  The true meaning of it is far more subjective than that.  Instead of joining forces with someone purely because of a shared opposition, you find someone with enough similarities that they outweigh the differences.  But this doesn’t work if the differences are as large as they are with Trump and Hillary.  The way people on both sides are blindly following them is disturbing because they are becoming exactly the thing that they hate.  Conservatives and Republicans decry corruption in politics and fight for family values and religious freedom (all very worthwhile pursuits), yet have nominated a man who is the face of corruption, brags about his marital affairs, and who isn’t even Christian (Note- I only bring up his religious views because Republicans consider religion to be important.  I personally believe a candidate’s religious beliefs are irrelevant so long as those beliefs do not preclude them from doing their job). 

On the other side of the spectrum, Democrats and Liberals fight for transparency in campaign finance, regulation of Wall Street, the banks, and corporations, and decry anyone who ignores facts.  But Clinton and her running mate are both lackeys for Wall Street, having received massive campaign contributions from them.  As such, we can’t expect that Clinton will ever fight hard for the carefully written regulations we so desperately need to prevent another recession.  Finally, it is painfully obvious that Clinton ignores actual facts and evidence because she is every bit the liar that Trump is.  But her supporters also ignore facts and evidence, yet they slam Trump’s supporters for doing exactly the same thing.

Simply put, by supporting these candidates, both sides have become exactly what they hate.  They have made fighting against the other side their only priority (in their respective last elections, both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell said that this was their top priority, regardless of the consequences; if that doesn’t send chills down your spine, I don’t know what will).  For eight years, we’ve been led by a Republican Congress that believed voting 60+ times to repeal Obamacare (and even shutting down the government for two weeks, costing the country tens of billions of dollars in the process, more than was needed to keep the government open) was more important than working together to find a way forward.  Before this, we had a Democratic Congress doing largely the same thing, abusing the filibuster to prevent anything from getting done.  Our leaders now spend more time sniping at each other on social media and in interviews than actually doing their job.  But this is no longer limited to just the government; because of the advent of social media, this toxic behavior has managed to worm its way into everything.  You can’t turn on the news or open Facebook without seeing it.  Our entire society has become polarized as a result; we’ve started adhering to the logic of “if you’re not with me, you’re against me and the country.”  But this isn’t logical at all, or even remotely rational.  The point of a democracy (yes, I know that we’re not *technically* a Democracy, but in fact are a Constitutional Republic) is that we are free to disagree with each other.  Because our divisiveness now cripples us, the simple act of disagreement has become tantamount to pointing a gun, and BOTH sides are to blame for this.

There is a way to end this, however.  The solution is simple, although getting there might not be.  In fact, the solution has been in front of us for more than 200 years, but we have chosen to ignore it.  The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution provide ideals that even today seem remarkable, yet our leaders have consistently chose to ignore them.  Our country was designed by men who saw that our humanity was what made us special, and that that was what we needed to focus on.  The revolution was won because men from all walks of life, backgrounds, and ethnicities came together and fought for a common cause.  That’s the true meaning behind the adage I mentioned earlier; you don’t ally yourself with someone because you share an opposition.  You ally yourself with someone because you focus on what you have in common, not on the differences between you.

As children, we are all taught to love each other and to respect our differences.  We are taught that it is our similarities that matter, that we are all equal, and that we must abide by the Golden Rule of treating others how we wish to be treated.  But somehow, as we grow older, we stop doing this.  We are taught on a subconscious level to hate.  We learn by example to hold grudges and look only at differences and to ignore similarities.  For the sake of our children, and for the future of our species and our world, we must stop this.  We must stop teaching the wrong lessons.  We must let people think for themselves. 

Being different, thinking differently, these are not crimes.  But thinking that differences are all that matter is.

Crossroads

Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads?

Okay, stupid question.  And irritatingly rhetorical.

Anyway, the reason I ask is because the other day, I found myself at a crossroads that was both metaphorical and literal.  This certainly wasn’t the first one I’ve encountered, but it was unique in that I saw it coming a half-mile away.

Before I delve into this, let’s back up a bit.  Those who know me (or have read my previous posts on here) know that I have felt, well, stuck for a long time.  I’ve been out of college just over a year, and I’m still right where I was.  Moreover, I have been stuck since before I even went back to college.  True, I have changed, grown, and matured a great deal, but my overall situation in life is still the same.  I still live in the same damned house.  I wrote a novella-length post back in January about my goals for this year, and nearly six months into the year, I can’t say I’ve done much work approaching any of them.  Sure, I’ve started brainstorming ideas for posts for both my blogs, but aside from that, what have I done?  What have I accomplished?  Zip.  Nada.  Zilch.  Zippo.  Nil.

I wish I could explain this.  I really do.  My parents and friends ask me all the time, and I can’t even begin to offer an explanation, not even to myself.  Everything I come up with in my head just sounds like some lame excuse or rationalization.  So I just plod on the best I can.  But it’s not the best I can do, and I know it.  That’s what really bugs me.

My time in college was instrumental in showing me that I am capable of far more than I give myself credit for.  For nearly as long as I can remember, I’ve had a lot of issues with self-doubt and anxiety (it’s odd to think I’ve had so few issues with peer pressure given my generally negative self-view).  I’ve always preferred to keep a low profile, to blend in.  I don’t like attention being drawn to me.  For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I didn’t ever want to stand out, even if I deserved it, such as my natural gift for music (if you don’t believe me, then I will state for the record that even typing the phrase “my natural gift for music” made me feel uneasy, as if I was giving myself unwarranted hype).

Does this have anything to do with why I’m still stuck in the same rut I’ve been in for six long years?  Honestly, I don’t know.  But something tells me there is some kind of correlation that I either can’t see or am unwilling to see.  Something keeps holding me back.  I’ve written countless posts and journal entries (no, I won’t share those.  I write those by hand on paper for a reason.), but I never seem to be able to quite ascertain the problem.

So what does this have to do with the crossroads I approached the other day?  That afternoon, I finished reading Felicia Day’s memoir “You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost!)”.  I’ve been a fan of hers since discovering Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Video Blog and The Guild, and even had the pleasure of meeting her at a book signing for the above-mentioned memoir.  What I didn’t realize was how much her life’s story paralleled my own.  We’re both gamers, musicians, EVER so slightly opinionated, and we both have pretty serious problems with anxiety.  The way she bared all of her problems in the book was inspiring, especially when it came to the difficult ones.  Some of them I already knew bits and pieces about, such as the #GamerGate fiasco (I won’t go into detail here, suffice it to say that what started as one guy acting like an asshole due to a nasty breakup somehow devolved into an entire movement dedicated to misogyny and harassment of the worst kind, all under the guise of promoting “ethics in journalism.”  Feel free to Google for more information on the subject, but be warned: there are some truly nasty trolls involved in this particular scandal), and how she wrote a heartfelt opinion piece asking for peace, only to have her fear of retribution come true (she was doxxed, meaning she had personal information leaked on the internet for the purpose of allowing people to contact and harass her.  Ain’t the internet great?).  I have actually withheld opinions on topics out of that exact same fear.  I almost didn’t post my tirade about the NSA’s illegal spying because I feared what might happen.  But I pushed forward.

Unfortunately, as most people know, and as Felicia notes in her book, there is only so much one can do to push oneself, to keep plodding forward.  You have to find the motivation within yourself to keep going.  I was able to keep going for some time due solely to the fear that surrounded me.  In my early adulthood, I went through some very dark times, and my fear of what would happen if I strayed from the path expected of me kept me going.  Fear, while a terrible thing that often controls us, can be a powerful motivator.  But in recent years, my life has become very stable, and I’ve finally been able to bury my past.  So now I need to find a new motivation, and that’s not exactly something you can just dig up.  It can’t just be manufactured or willed into existence.  But you can find it by examining your life, by looking for patterns and correlations that don’t seem to make sense.

This is what happened to me the other day as I approached the crossroads that was both literal and metaphorical.  I had finished reading Felicia’s book an hour or so before I went out, and had been mulling over it ever sense.  I really enjoyed the book, but found a great deal of inspiration in her story, particularly in those instances where she looked inside herself to find the problem.  That’s something I’ve never tried in full to do.  Yes, I’ve written countless blog posts across three different platforms (Myspace and Livejournal make me feel OLD).  I’ve made thousands of posts on Facebook over the years.  I’ve written dozens of journal entries wherein I tried to go deeper into myself because it was a safe place to do so.  I even saw a therapist for about six months last year (which I cannot recommend enough for those having difficulties; sometimes, just having someone to talk to in a safe place can make all the difference in the world), which at least helped me start to understand a bit about myself (perhaps, had I continued, I would have been able to take this understanding further; unfortunately, as I have graduated, I can no longer use student health services, and I can’t currently afford to see anyone due to my lack of a job or health insurance).  But I refrained from delving deeper into myself to find the reason I’d been stuck and unhappy for so long.  Maybe I was afraid.  Maybe I already knew the answer and was just fighting with my subconscious about it.  I wish I could say what it was, but I still don’t know.  But the other day, I think I might have gotten a tiny glimpse.

The crossroads I approached was a road near my house.  I had gone out with the intention of going to the GameSwap (a local game store that deals in basically every gaming console ever created, as well as games and accessories for them) to see if they had a GameShark for my Nintendo 64 (yes, I still own and play one, and, yes, I am old), followed by getting some take-out for dinner.  As I drove down the road, I was mulling over Felicia’s book, trying to figure out if and how I could apply the lessons she learned to my own life.  This thought process somehow intertwined itself with the thought process surrounding my desire to go to GameSwap, and something interesting happened.  Call it an epiphany, a realization, or anything else; it was one of those moments where vastly different thought processes align in just the right way to make you go “Huh.  I swear this occurred to me before, but somehow it actually makes sense now.”

What occurred to me as I neared the store was that video games, which have always been a love of mine, might in fact be the key I’d been looking for.  One of the things that Felicia discusses in her book is the fact that we must identify things that are a detriment to us, be they behaviors, thoughts, or objects, and we must get rid of them.  At the very least, we must modify those things so that they are no longer a detriment (there’s no universal truth on this one because it depends on the person and the impact the thing has on them).  Now, I’m not saying that video games are a total detriment to me; on the contrary, I think that they have helped me a lot.  They have offered me an escape when I needed it, much like music has for nearly as long.  But there is a fine line between helpful and detrimental, and skewing towards the latter often ends up being self-destructive.  That may seem like an odd term to use here, but I think it’s appropriate because anything can become self-destructive if you let it. 

Most people, when they think of self-destructive behavior, think of things like drugs and alcohol.  They think of things that cause both physical and mental harm, both to the person doing them and to those who care for that person.  But I say again that anything can fall into that category if you let it.  I think that I may have done that with many things, and that video games may just be the tip of the iceberg.  I don’t mean to say that I have an addiction; actually, I have my mother’s very un-addictive personality.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t take things to an unhealthy extreme.  My problem, as I see it, is that I use video games, amongst other things, as a way to hide.

I touched on this above, this tendency to hide.  Like the adage goes, it all started innocently enough.  By nature, I am very introverted, shy, and anxious; in other words, I hit the trifecta when it comes to avoidance.  I detest confrontation, and have always kept to myself.  It really wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I started to come out of my shell, and that was saying something considering the darkness and fear that I was going through.  Unfortunately, I think I’ve begun to revert in recent years.  As my fear-based motivation dried up, I found myself without focus.  Moreover, my fragile emotional state began to get the best of me.  Going back to school helped, but, in the end, I did what I do best: I hid.  And I’m still hiding now.  Sure, therapy and medication have helped me see through the window in the door, but I’m afraid to pull it open again.

It is precisely this that led me to the crossroads the other day.  As I drove towards the intersection, I found myself thinking about how much we are defined by our choices.  I have allowed myself to become defined by my own self-destructive behavior, preferring to hide from life instead of live it.  I decided that the approaching intersection was a choice beyond the simple “right or left” (well, it was a four-way intersection, so I guess it’d really be right, straight, left, or U-turn).  If I turned left, I could go and purchase the GameShark I wanted (or something else related to video games if they didn’t have one in stock).  I definitely wanted it, but it occurred to me that if I did, I would basically just be enabling my own self-destructive behavior.  On the other hand, I could just as easily turn right, go get my take-out, and head back home.

It took me only a few seconds to decide.

“Screw it,” I thought.  “I’m just gonna get food and go back home.”

Turning right was so simple, so effective.  But it was one of the few moments in my life where I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I was right.  Video games may be a wonderful thing, but I, like many others, have too often used them for the wrong reason.  A beer now and then is great, but if you start hiding in the bottle, you miss out on life.  I think I’ve been doing the same with video games; as I said, I don’t believe I have an addiction, but I do let them distract me far too often.

This, unfortunately, is but one symptom of a larger problem, and it’s one I still don’t really know how to correct.  As I’ve noted above, I’ve had glimpses of it before, such as preferring to do a lot of my creative writing by hand in order to avoid distractions on my computer (damn you, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Netflix!).  I’ve also noticed that I tend to be happier and work better when I’m not in this house, which has led me to consider starting to go to coffee shops or the library a couple of days or so a week so that I can really get things done, be it working on projects or finding a job.

What this comes down to is that I need to start identifying all the things in my life that are self-destructive, that hold me back.  I’ve already been doing that on a subconscious level by cleaning most of the garbage out of my basement (filled two large trash cans!), and by going through my own things in preparation for moving out.  This house was my family’s home for a long time, and, as such, we accrued a lot of stuff.  Most of it was already either sent with people as they left or thrown out in our purges (the first one quite literally filled a dumpster; there are no words to describe how good that felt.)  I’m the last one here, and I feel the weight of this place on my shoulders.  That’s why I need to get out.  That’s also why I’m trying to get rid of as much as possible; getting rid of things that no longer serve any purpose is an extremely cathartic experience.  By ridding myself of both destructive behaviors and objects that do nothing but give me stress, I can finally allow my psyche to begin the healing process that has eluded me for so long.  I can finally move forward with my life instead of hiding from it.

I’m not going to pretend that everything is rosy now, or that I’m a new man (besides, as a writer, I detest such clichés).  Change is seldom that easy.  But I think this was an important step.  The first step to fixing a problem is to admit that there IS a problem; just as an alcoholic can’t change until he admits he’s an alcoholic, I couldn’t see how much I was hiding until I admitted to myself that I’m hiding.  By realizing just how much I hide from life, I’ve taken that first step.  I don’t know when or where the next step will be taken.  I don’t know how long the path is.  But I know where I need to go, and even if this isn’t precisely the right path, I’m at least moving.  Considering that my entire adulthood has been overshadowed by fear and anxiety, that’s a hell of a first step.

There’s an old Chinese proverb that says a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  I’ve always added a second part to that that says the direction in which you step doesn’t matter; all that matters is taking the first step because you can always change direction.

No path is set in stone, so, in the end, it’s all up to you.

New Year, New Starts

What a year 2015 was!  After a decade of slogging through the quagmire that is my life, I finally finished laying the foundations for a better one.  I graduated college with two Bachelor’s Degrees: one in Electronic Media, and one in English with a focus in Creative Writing.  I started seeing a therapist again so that I could finally begin dealing with the demons that have plagued me for so long.  My painful past, which fed those demons like gasoline on a fire, was finally buried once and for all.  Medication is helping me control the anxieties that have kept me stuck for so long.

And yet . . .

I’m still stuck.  I’m still in the same position I was at this time last year.  Seven months have passed since I graduated, and I’m still unemployed (aside from doing some freelance work).  I can’t even say I’ve used the time to purse my creative interests; I’ve picked at a few projects, but I haven’t really worked on anything earnestly.  As the New Year rolled in, I found myself wondering why.  Why am I still here?  What the hell am I doing with my life?

Obviously, I am, as usual, my own biggest obstacle.  That much is painfully clear to me.  But I still can’t fully understand exactly why I continue to hold myself back.  I have all the freedom I’ve worked so long to have, and yet I’m just sitting here instead of exercising it.  My plan had been to be gainfully employed and be living in my own place (preferably outside Cincinnati) by last October, but that time has come and gone, and nothing has changed.

Now, we all know that change can’t just happen by itself.  I’m the one not doing anything, and I’m not going to attempt to rationalize my laziness.  I need to change this.  I need to start moving on with my life.  So I’m trying to understand why I’m not motivating myself, despite a wealth of ambition.  I thought about turning this post into a long-winded analyzation of my psychological problems, but somehow I don’t think that would be of interest to anyone but myself.  That being said, my frequent ruminations on this problem have consistently led me to one possible avenue to helping myself move on: setting clear, coherent, attainable goals.

Although I’ve never been the most academically-minded person, I was able to do quite well in college (at least during my second college career) because there were clear goals that needed to be met in order for me to succeed.  I’ve tried this since then with a whiteboard hung on the wall over my desk.  The board is filled with things that I need to do, yet even those still remain largely undone (although I was able to scratch one item off the list today).  I think the intent of this was good, but it didn’t work well for two reasons:

             1. The list was really more of a to-do list than a list of goals
             2. I was the only one ever seeing the list

Of the two reasons, I consider the second the easiest to remedy; hence the fact that I wrote this post.  The first is the one that really made me sit down and think.  What do I want for my life?  Where do I want to go from here?  Where do I want to be in five years?  Ten years?  And what do I need to do to get there?

To answer these questions, I’ve come up with five goals.  One could call them New Year’s resolutions, but I see them as more than that.  Most people make New Year’s resolutions just because they feel obligated to fix something about themselves.  Now, I’m obviously not saying this is a bad thing, but how many people actually follow through on their resolutions?  I need to do more than make some half-assed resolution; I need to set clear goals and do whatever is necessary to achieve them so that I can finally get the things I want out of life.  So, without further ado, I present my five goals for 2016:

1. Get a Job

This is the most important, and most obvious, of my goals.  Everything hinges on me getting a job.  Money makes the world go ‘round, and you really can’t do anything without it.  But there’s more to this than simply earning a paycheck.  Getting a job will get me out of the house and into a more social setting, thereby offsetting my hermetic lifestyle; this, in addition to being able to finally be financially independent, will be a boon to my confidence and anxiety issues.  

2. Move the HELL Out of My House

This is every bit as important as getting a job, but it can’t happen until I GET a job.  I’ve lived here almost my entire life, and I need to leave.  While my early years were fine, the thirteen years since high school have been difficult, at times just short of hellacious.  This place has been more like a prison to me than a home.  I’ve been stuck in this house alone through many of the darkest moments of my life.  As such, the more recent memories, none of which are particularly good, completely overpower the positive ones.  

Furthermore, this house is exacerbating my anxiety issues.  While back in therapy last year, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and PTSD.  Sadly, this house is a large part of the problem.  It has held me back so much for so long that my therapist likened it to being in an abusive relationship (to those who have had the misfortune to be in such a relationship, I apologize if I offend you in any way.  I am not making light of the psychological implications of such abuse; rather, I am simply agreeing with my therapist that there is an emotional and mental correlation when one considers the effects).  I have actually proved the effect this house has on me by observing how much better I feel when I am anywhere else.  Long term, I actually want to move out of Cincinnati as the entire region has become quite toxic to me (and I have observed a similar improvement in my mental and emotional states when I’m not in town, so the correlation holds).  I considered doing this right off the bat, but those who suffer from anxiety disorders know that it is generally better to take several smaller steps than one huge one, so I intend to find an apartment here while I save money and plan for the future.

3. Get Published

This one actually has two sub-points: Get a Story Published, and Get My Project Schedule Back On Track.  The first is the one that has most irritated me, being that I have just earned an English degree.  I have a wealth of stories I’ve written for various classes, and I also have a novel I’ve been working on for about ten years.  Yet, in all this time, I’ve only sent one short story out for publication.  Unfortunately, it was rejected, but I haven’t sent anything since, mostly due to the fact that I have nothing that is ready for submission.  But I need to get on the ball and start both revising and writing again.  One thing I’d particularly like to do is start going to a writer’s group again; I was a member of one a few years ago, and I found it both enjoyable and instructive (if anyone knows of any good writer’s groups, let me know).

The second sub-point will be more complicated because there’s no clear way to do it.  I have numerous projects I’ve been working on that are at various stages of completion, and I need to start finishing them.  So I’m going to prioritize the important ones, and start setting time aside to work on them.  Of all the projects I have simmering, I want to get the web design-related ones done first; one of them is a paid freelance project I’ve been working on, and the other two have to do with my websites.  One of these is media portfolio, which is an important aspect in getting a job.  Though I have an online portfolio, it’s very outdated, and the design simply isn’t very aesthetically pleasing.  I’ve got a new version nearly completed, and I need to finish it so I have a better chance of getting a job.  Once this is done, I also intend to build a new site for my creative projects as the current one is quite old and boring.  After that, the next priority is media projects, such as a web series I am currently developing.  There are numerous other projects as well, but I won’t bother continuing to categorize them.  Regardless, I need to start working on all of them on a regular basis so that I can actually finish them; heck, being unemployed gives me plenty of time to do just that, so there’s really no excuse.

4. Get Both Blogs Back to a Monthly Update Schedule

I considered putting this under Get Published, but I decided not to because my blogs are a separate project from everything else.  I’ve been pretty bad about posting here, and I’ve not been much better about updating my genealogy blog Looking For Your Roots.  But I’ve really enjoyed writing essays for both blogs, and I want to get back into that.  Moreover, writing on all the subjects I write on helps keep my mind off my anxieties, especially when I get involved in discussion or research, meaning it’s actually quite therapeutic in a way.  The great thing about this goal is that I can achieve it right off the bat because I have a trove of half-written essays and pages of ideas for both blogs, so I’ve already done half the work.  I’m still working out the schedule for this blog (I want to post at least a couple of times a month as I want to run this a bit more like a newspaper column, discussing both current events and my own issues), but I plan to update my genealogy blog on the 15th of every month.

5. Get Back In Shape

Okay, I admit that just about everyone makes this resolution.  But for me, it goes far beyond simply wanting to have a nicer body.  The longest period of my life in which I felt good about myself was when I rode my bike everywhere.  I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 21, and I lived alone for the most part, so if I need to go anywhere, I had to get on my bike and go.  I biked to work at McDonald’s at 4:30 in the morning.  I biked to the grocery store and filled my backpack with groceries (occasionally even strapping things to the cargo rack on the back of my bike).  I biked to friend’s houses to hang out.  For longer distances, such as going to school, I biked to the nearest bus stop (generally a couple of miles down the road due to the time I went to school), put my bike on the front of the bus, and went.  

Having to bike everywhere meant that I was in fantastic shape even though I tended to eat a lot of junk (that habit needs to change as well).  I was never muscular or toned, but I felt physically good because I was getting so much exercise.  This, in turn, helped me feel better about myself because I didn’t feel limited by my physique the way I had as a kid and teenager.  Additionally, I had a lot of fun biking (at least when the weather cooperated, anyway) everywhere and anywhere.  I still try to get on my bike from time to time because it’s still enjoyable to me.  It’s something I want to as frequently as possible now because I miss the fun.  I miss being in good shape.  I miss the mental boost that comes with it.

There is also a sub-goal on this one, and that has to do with my dental work.  My teeth are pretty heinously crooked, and I’ve always been very self-conscious about them.  On top of that, due to my mental issues, I have not taken particularly good care of them.  Over the past couple of years, I’ve had a great deal of work done on them, but I haven’t seen it through.  I have a bit of general dental work to finish, and then I need to start with braces.  Now, obviously braces will take more than a year to straighten out my teeth (last time I met with the orthodontist, he estimate about 18 months), but there’s no reason I can’t get started on them this year.  I need to get my teeth clean and straight so that I’m not so self-conscious about them anymore.  Additionally, having better-looking teeth can only be a benefit, especially when it comes to job hunting and dating (even if my love life is nonexistent).


All the above goals might seem like simple New Year’s resolutions, but they aren’t.  I chose these specific goals because they are what I need to do to get myself moving again.  They will help my mental and physical health.  That boost to my health will in turn help me in working through my anxiety and PTSD.  Those disorders are the other reason I chose these specific goals; these are goals that I know beyond any shadow of a doubt I can attain, and I know the steps necessary to achieve them are well within my abilities.

I know that some people will think I’m greatly over-analyzing all of this, and I probably am.  But I do so only because it’s of the most effective ways I have found to work past my mental illness.  I have to plan things out, analyze them, and take small steps in order to get anywhere.  However crazy this might seem, it does work.  Ambition is a wonderful thing, something that I am full of, but I can’t simply take huge steps.  My illness prevents me from being able to take the giant leaps that others take.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t get everything I want out of life.  I just have find the path that’s best for me.