by Jamesscotthenson | Nov 15, 2016 | Blog
I don’t really remember my first crush.
I know I had some crushes in High School, but I also
remember feeling a little off because I never felt them as intensely as other
kids did. One girlfriend broke up with me because I “wasn’t really there” and
years later another girl dumped me because I was “this little ball of nothing”.
I was quite the ladies’ man. This goes back into the whole idea of me being a
little broken for most of my life. Maybe weird is a better word.
Whichever.
I do know one thing.
The first time I experienced that overwhelming “being in
love” feeling where all I could think about was that one person and everything
in my world began and ended with them, was Barbara.
I know, I’m so sweet!
Keep reading…
It was pretty cool, except that grad school faded into the
background and was almost forgotten and I was slacking off on everything I
should have been doing.
And, I was dating someone else at the time. And, they were
one of my oldest friends and they hadn’t done anything wrong to me. They had
only been really cool and great to date and were flying into Lubbock every few
weekends to see me.
I know, I really suck!
Told you to keep reading.
It is one of the few things I really regret, and that is
saying something with some of the shit I’ve pulled. For the record, B didn’t
know. Not because I didn’t mention it on purpose, but because it honestly
slipped my mind in the chemical bath of infatuation and being in love.
Here’s the complicated part: I really regret how I handled
it, but, seeing as how we’ve been together for 10 years now and Max is sitting
next to me quoting Zootopia, I cannot say I would change it. I would change how
I let them know (or, I would let them know before they found out on Myspace). I
would have shown them more respect and I would have addressed it directly.
I can honestly say I did not avoid it intentionally, I was
just so caught up in the rush of being in love, that it fell by the wayside, as
terrible as that is to say. This is not a reflection on that other person, but
on my own immaturity and self-absorption.
Yep, do the math – I was still “that guy” at the age of 28.
I just made a note to do a blog on chronic emotional immaturity.
Anyway, I wish it had been different.
Anytime we aren’t behaving mindfully and thinking of others,
people get hurt.
This friendship has never been repaired, and probably never
will. I did apologize, but one of the sad facts about this real world that
Hollywood and Nicholas Sparks miss is that apologies don’t always fix things.
Just because you are sorry doesn’t mean you didn’t do what
you did.
This is why a mindful intention about what we do and don’t
do is so important. Because of pride, it took me a long time to become a person
who apologizes for any of the things they do, now my job is to become someone
who doesn’t have to apologize as often.
I’m working on it.
by Jamesscotthenson | Nov 14, 2016 | Blog
Man, thank you for the questions and ideas! I knew y’all
were all smarter and more creative than me.
This one makes me nervous and icky, I don’t feel like I have
any business offering an opinion on it, and I hope no one really cares what I
think. Let’s get it out of the way. Smashing together multiple questions might
sound like this:
“Knowing your politics over the years, I am surprised you
are not more bothered by Trump winning. What gives?”
This is a valid question. (criticism?)
This is also where my detached perspective either helps me
or damages my integrity, depending on which side of the political spectrum you
are on.
I am troubled by Trump, but I was troubled by Clinton, and I
was troubled by this election in general. It made me sad to see how both sides
absolutely ridiculed the other for being so utterly stupid as to support their
candidate, but I think Trump supporters took the brunt of this from the media,
social media and pundits.
Trump’s rise has been compared to Hitler’s, but we have
invoked this name so often over the past 16 years that it doesn’t mean anything
anymore. Also, he seems closer to Mussolini to me.
The thing is, Hitler and Mussolini and Trump and Obama were
all reactions to different things, just like so many other world leaders.
When we are doing things in reaction instead of with
intention, things go wrong.
Our outrage culture (which is a characteristic of both sides
of the political spectrum and covers all ages, not just the left or
millennials) has led to this. Everything is a crisis, everything is offensive,
everything is an outrage, so of course we have candidates that reflect that.
Trump is the end result of a smugly condescending Left that believes that
anyone who doesn’t automatically buy into what it wants them to buy into is a
homophobic, Islamaphobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, privileged,
ignorant, Bible-toting and gun-clinging CIS shitlord.
So, Trump makes sense, and that is really sad to me.
I am bothered by Trump. I have friends and family and
neighbors and clients in all the categories of people he has maligned or
straight up threatened. I work with populations that may legitimately have
something to fear from him. The wife I talk so much about is Mexican, my son
who I would do anything for is half. I believe in free speech above all else,
and there is nothing I fear more than theocracy in any form. If I am honest, my
greatest fear in this is Trump being impeached or assassinated, leaving us with
Pence in charge.
All that being said, this is what we get when we think
everyone who believes differently than us is a moron.
This is what we get when we live in the echo chamber of the
internet and are able to cultivate our environment to only support our
perspectives. I know some very smart, civically minded, compassionate people
who voted for Trump, and I know some very smart, civically minded,
compassionate people who voted for Clinton. I know some less-intelligent,
insulated, fearful, xenophobic, fragile people who voted for Trump, and I know
some less-intelligent, insulated, fearful, xenophobic, fragile people who voted
for Clinton. I can understand where each side is coming from, even if I don’t
agree.
So, I have fears about Trump, but I see no reason to paint
everyone who voted for him as the enemy.
If I am honest, there were a few areas that Clinton scared
me just as much, but I see no reason to paint her supporters as the enemy. What
both sides want and voted for makes sense to them, they are rational actors and
it is not my place to assess or malign their entire character over it. I am
hoping for the best, but this is a very wary hope.
The fact that I am not coming down squarely on one side or
the other will make some people think I am foolish or soft or a racist or a
“cuck”, and this, in my mind, is a central part of the problem. I do not mind
taking a stand on things, this election did not provide me a clear place to
stand.
In the end, one stand I very willing to take is to say that
I will not let the election of anyone force me into a place of hating other
humans.
I would have said the same if Clinton or Sanders or Johnson
or Harambe had won. Nothing has changed as far as how I feel about individual
people.
I love you all, and who you voted for and why you voted for
them or what you think of me not loving or hating either candidate cannot
change that.
I support your right to believe in things I hate, and your
right to try to make those things a reality. I support my right to fight you on
them, but I also support my right to love you while we disagree. I will say the
same in 4, 8, 12 and 16 years if we make that far.
by Jamesscotthenson | Nov 13, 2016 | Blog
“Because my life is dope and I do dope shit.”
Kanye West, as quoted by Dave Chapelle.
That is honestly one of my favorite quotes ever. Look up the
video to see why Jimmy Fallon is one of my least favorite people ever. So fake.
Another question, we are coming up on the end of them. Last
one about how awesome life is for a while, I promise.
Why do you choose to keep living and breathing every day?
Funny story: Years back, I would spend every New Year’s Eve
alone, deciding if it was worth it live another year, sort of deciding if I had
earned it. Every year I found reasons. Things I had accomplished, things I was
hoping to accomplish, the fact that Tyler actually seemed to need me and liked
having me around. At some point I let go of this practice, and simply accepted
I would live through the next year unless something else killed me. It just
wouldn’t be me.
I switched this out with the idea that one day I would kill
myself after I had outlived everyone I loved and cared about. With some
of the choices I make from time to time I have no idea why I assumed I
would outlive anyone, but I figured I would and then I would kill myself.
All of this is way behind me now. I have no intention of
ever killing myself, under any circumstances. Life is too cool.
That is really the only way I have to answer the question of
why I choose to keep living and breathing every day. Life is cool.
I would live forever if it was offered to me, and I do not
think I would ever get bored.
Every day is something new, a new opportunity to learn, a
new chance to meet people, nothing has ever been repeated, ever. It’s all
original. We make the mistake of thinking we do the same things, but we don’t.
It’s all brand new.
I think it is a tragedy every time a life ends. A window on
a thoroughly unique, unrepeatable experience closes forever, and it takes so
much with it. Even the worst people on the planet have an inner world that
matters to them, and if we lived in it with them we would understand why they
are terrible. The loss of life has begun bothering me enough I find myself
consciously avoiding clicking on certain articles and even avoiding some topics
entirely.
I have this right now, and that is enough for me. I love it.
Life is dope. Do dope shit.
by Jamesscotthenson | Nov 12, 2016 | Blog
This was originally meant for yesterday, but the election
cancelled it out. There are some similarities. Sorry not sorry.
Why do you choose to look at the positive?
This is another one of the questions I’ve referenced in the
last few days, but it is also one I get a lot. I’ve had people accuse me of
ignoring reality, of being oblivious, and of having a life that must be too
easy because that’s the only way someone could have such a “dumbass attitude”
about things.
Maybe these are all true.
As far as my conscious reasons for it, I look at the
positive because I lived in the negative for many years and it got me nowhere.
I saw the bad in everything and everyone, including myself,
and it made the world seem very dark and hopeless. I got what I expected.
Every. Single. Day.
So, I look at the positive because whatever we dedicate our
attention to is what we get.
Here’s the important thing: I didn’t start looking at the
positive once my life turned around, my life turned around because I focused my
attention on the positive.
I don’t care if you want to call it The Law of Attraction or
The Secret or P.M.A. or Naming and Claiming or you want to go the logical route
and call it Common Sense, but wherever your attention rests most often is what
is going to dominate your thinking. What dominates our thinking becomes our
life.
I look at the positive because my work pulls me in the other
direction, and people need me to be clear and coherent and to offer an
alternative to the narrative they are living in. My work would probably drag me
down pretty quickly without it.
More than anything though, I focus on the positive because
it is most closely aligned with reality.
As I’ve blogged about an a few occasions, when we count
everything that goes right each day, we quickly see that it far outweighs the
wrong. It goes beyond this too: a vast, vast majority of everything that
happens, happens without any conscious input or action from us, and everything
is still going well. Birds fly and the sun rises and it rains and air is
breathable and the planets stay where they are supposed to and the sun makes
plants grow and the earth spins the way it is supposed to and gravity works and
all of that stuff. And none of us have a single thing to do with it. That’s
kind of cool.
So, I focus on the positive because it is beneficial and
because it is real.
We have a cognitive bias toward the negative or harmful, and
I choose to remain aware that this is a bias and little more.
It works for me.
by Jamesscotthenson | Nov 11, 2016 | Blog
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about
life: it goes on.”
Robert Frost
I actually pre-wrote my blog for the first time yesterday so
I could avoid the inevitable dumpster fire of the internet and Facebook as much
as possible today, but with some online responses I have seen and a few texts
I’ve gotten, I figured I would go ahead and wade in.
The sad part, to me, is that I probably would have been
writing this no matter who won, just for a different audience.
The sun will rise today, from the same direction.
It will warm the earth and make plants grow and make us
healthy in the same way it always has.
Gravity will keep us firmly on the ground, and I will be
surprised if even a single person is flung off into space. If this happens, it
may at least provide us a distraction from what is sure to be incessant news
coverage and analysis and blaming.
The mountains will still be where they have been for
millennia, the ocean will still make waves and give fish a place to live, and
the moon will still be above us.
Jupiter will still be out there blocking space debris, and
plants will still be here making oxygen for us.
Your family is still your family; your life is still your
life.
If you let this election divide you from your friends, this
is a great chance to try and make that right.
I’m not blind, and as hard as I try not to be, I am fairly
up to date on current events. I read a lot of history and I try to be somewhat
well informed in this respect, so I see the scary implications that this
carries. I get the fear and the heartbreak and the mistrust this all engenders,
but if you look outside your window, the trees are still there and the sky is
still blue, even if only up above the clouds where you can’t see it.
Decisions made from fear don’t get us anywhere, and only
bring more trouble.
Believing the narrative of division we’ve been soaked in for
so long now only makes it real, and helps it grow.
Love your family, love your friends and go out of your way
to take care of people you don’t know, especially if they look or believe
differently from you.
Don’t give in to hate and fear and isolation and all the
things that got us to this exact moment in time.
The grass will still grow, snow will still fall, just
breathe. Make a decision from there.
We can get caught up in how bad things are, or we can try to
make them better.
Not both.
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