On Being Happy

I have a few choices as for today’s comments. On Being Happy or maybe being adrift... A friend I’d met through e-harmony asked yesterday whether I was happy with things after I told her that I was communicating with a former love again. It was more than a bit of a straw man discussion, given my admitted frustrations. And as much as she said she was just asking because of her concern as a friend, our prior association compelled me to temper her comments as being slightly less than objective. Funny thing was, because of her intensity and line of questioning, I felt that I then knew how the former love must feel when I ask my “pointed” questions. Truth is that the need to keep things in a more “friends” mode with my former love tends to deaden the emotional connection, and I’m sorely aware that that isn’t good for me and my need for a meaningful connection.

So, on the one hand my friend has no idea of what I’ve been through and how hard I’ve tried to rise above my own limitations. But then that kind’a proves her point that I deserve more. Ha! My first thought is that we all deserve more. And right now I’m just trying to see my former love through the next step in her journey. I have no assurances and I’m just trying to do the right thing. So, am I happy? No, but it’d be a bit stupid to expect to be happy with my best-friend going through a painful divorce. I’m hopeful that things will be better for her as she gets more and more control of her own life. Do I expect to be there? I can’t answer that because there’s no saying what will happen in the next few weeks or months.

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Sleeping on the Couch

Usually that means that “someone” screwed up. Well, the jury’s still out, but my most recent experience couch riding for a night was because I was slumming with my cadre X friends at Pepperdine’s Malibu campus. I got amazingly very little sleep considering that it’s only been probably less than a year since I’ve been sleeping on a bed with a real box mattress (prior to that I’d recycled the mattress from my long departed futon… loved that futon, but that’s another story…). A friend noted that the lack of sleep was probably also because it was like being at summer camp. True.

Actually, that’s especially true for me, in that I’m no longer an official part of Cadre X. I mean, while my former cadre-mates were ramping up for the work needed during this last Face-to-Face meeting, I was looking for a new Pepperdine sticker to put on my new macbookpro and price 1GB RAM chips to update the little beasty. Well, I had loads of fun hanging out with Holly, catching up on the latest …. er, stuff (we generally take turns as to who has the more “complicated” social life… it’s good to have a friend with an equally “interesting” life…. smiles), then doing dinner and post-meeting drinks with Ali, Abir, Ron, Holly, Tom & Sam. They were so silly after a day of travel and meeting that Ali starting singing the “Doe, Ray, Mi” song from sound of music and they started adding our names to the silly lyric. Ron came up with the best lines. Yikes. JBB

The Danger of Learning Life Lessons from TV or “Where’s My Help-Mate?”

There’s a real danger when one too closely relates to the fictional lives depicted on TV or the movies. More than once I mercilessly teased a friend for feeling that his then love triangle resembled the one depicted in the Brad Pitt vehicle “Legends of the Fall.” Of course, he felt that he was the tragic/hero that said Mr. Pitt portrayed. “Yeah, right, you’re just like Brad Pitt.” I guess I couldn’t quite jump the gap between our relatively “common” life and the vistas and sweeping drama portrayed on the big screen. I believe Kierkegaard commented a century ago in Either/Or that our culture’s folly is revealed when we look for messages and “meaning” in our entertainment (in his day, theater) but go to church to be entertained. So when I watch something and it gets past my “light entertainment” escapist filter and gets down to the “meaning” level, I’m left to wonder at my own folly.

Thus, I had one of those “huh” moments when i was blissfully enjoying the season two DVDs of the sc-fi series “The 4400.” I’d heard about the series from my brother and immediately got sucked in. Alas, during season two life got in the way and I missed several episodes. One of the episodes I missed was the one where Tom gets a love interest. There was a very similar episode in StarTrek:TNG in which Picard wakes up to find himself in another person’s life with a wife and best-friend and community. As with the ST:TNG episode, the struggle for the main character to come to grips with this new life and the bonding that happens between the mates is endearing and a wonderful slice of what it means to be human. In the ST:TNG episode the past was reaching out to the future demanding to be remembered. In the 4400 the future was reaching into the past in an effort to help this person, Tom, survive what was going to come. I was amazed that in this fictional world the powers-that-be determined to help their hero by providing for him a beautiful mate with whom he could turn to in his coming time of trouble. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, I was left to wonder “where’s my help-mate?”

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Another Friday Night

Taco Beach, Long Beach. There’s an old Cat Stevens’ song about it being another Friday night alone… There’s a line that boasts “I could get ‘em if I could meet ‘em…” I guess I shouldn’t assume that it’s a boast, but that does sound like the typical line from every single dude alone on a Friday night. My only compensation at the moment is the bartender, Aimee’s great big… smile and hospitality. Just wish that there was someone at home who gave a shit. JBB

p.s., ack… shit… the song was “Another Saturday Night,” I can’t win for losing!!!

The Human Capacity to Love ‘Bots

Jim Louderback, on his What’s New Now podcast, recently interviewed Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, following the Future in Review conference where Angle had made a powerful presentation. iRobot is the company that produces the disk-shaped vacuuming consumer robot the Roomba and PackBot robots used by government and the military. One of the more interesting things that came from the conversation was Angle’s reference to the relationships that seem to develop between these little devices and their owners. Especially poignant was the relationships that soldiers seem to develop with the military bots.

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First 5K Race Addendum

I think I spoke a bit too soon… or Brightroom sent out their email before they’d actually posted pictures on their website. Oops. 32:40… JBB

Technorati Tags: fitness, friends

“Loneliness” (Another JBB Journal Classic)

I spent some more time perusing the JBB Journal archives and found this gem from the last year of my marriage, just a few months before the shit hit the fan…

Loneliness

1:46 A.M. Much on my mind.

I feel lonely. An odd feeling. Or perhaps a feeling that I haven’t paid much attention to in the past. My wife sleeps in the next room and I am lonely. I remember Sting once saying that he felt lonely, that there was no bridging the gap–even when he made love to his wife (ex-wife). This sense of isolation is my humanness, my refusing to let go of something, of breaking down the barrier, of opening myself up to my other, my wife or perhaps my God. Is this the point where I wandered off the path, the Way? Refusing to let go.
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First Run of the 5K Season

Memorial Day was the first “run” of the 5K Season… well, at least for me. I really need to remember to turn my camera on the crowd before the beginning of the race. I think I recorded a short movie of one race in Orange County last season, the energy at the beginning of a race can be pretty amazing. Since I began running a couple years ago I’ve always ran with my iPod blasting the tunes, but toward the end of last season, particularly the Susan Komen 5K for Breast Cancer last year, I’ve decided to tap into the energy of the crowd instead of depending on my iPod. That was an amazing race. Then after that I ran with my friend Colleen and that really helped keep me going. Alas, at the Saddleback Memorial Half-Marathon/5K there was no running buddy for JBB and no waiting entourage either (no surprise there). There was the Orange County Sheriff’s Academy of Cadets running in formation, staying ahead and then running alongside that group during mile two was quite the incentive. Alas, I probably didn’t last much more than a 1/2 mile at their pace. They had advertised a more “runner friendly” 5K course this year… I think the new course meant taking the four hills and changing it so that there was one short hill and one long hill (that was almost a mile on its own!). I felt pretty good about my time: 32:40. When I checked with last year’s records they were all about the same pace (somehow I forgot to record my time with Colleen… gee, must’a been distracted). Time to sign up for the next few races (now that I’ve taken this whole week off… oops). JBB

p.s., I just got an email from Brightroom, the folks who take pictures of runners at these events. Guess how many pictures they got of me this time? Yeah, that’s right: zero. Run one time with a pretty lady and get three pictures, run with your own ugly self and they decide against the risk of breaking their cameras. Thanks guys. JBB

Technorati Tags: friends, fitness

My Online Dating “Adventure”: Sampling some e-Harmony Q & As (part 1)

Morning reflection time… i.e., Thursday morning staff meeting. Things have been slowing down over on the e-harmony side of things for the past two months. When I signed up in mid-Jan I was overwhelmed by the level and continuous stream of questions, so much so that I began to save my responses. I did this partly to keep from having to “reinvent the wheel” each time I was asked the same question. The other reason was that I was hoping to be at least a little consistent with my responses.

Basically I’d get the profile of several “matches” E-Harmony created based on comparing our answers to the initial survey. Then whoever initiated the communication would ask the other person five questions (mostly drawn from a list of about thirty possible questions.. I think, it’s been awhile since I began a “match”). The respondent would answer with a short one sentence answer and then offer up five of his/her own questions. If that stage went well then the matches would exchange a list of ten “must haves” and ten “can’t stands” (more about that later). Then if that went well then each respondent would ask (and answer) three questions, this time the answers could be a bit longer (up to a short paragraph). It was a lot of work. My running buddy Colleen gave up at this stage, in part, because she got tired of getting messages from matches complaining that she wasn’t responding quickly enough. Too bad for them (I kind’a of know the feel… ugh).

Anyway, just the idea of having a real choice in dating was difficult to fathom. But I dutifully answered the escalating queries and ventured to hope that there might be someone out there who might appreciate what I have to offer and might meet my desires and needs. The following are some of my response to those queries, first a series of short Q&As and then some longer Q&As:

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