New Neva Video: Things I’ll Never Be

Except for my Twitter feed, I haven’t been posting on my blog hardly at all over the past couple months because I’ve been moving and crazy busy at work. And I am way behind posting photos to my flickr account because I haven’t had the time to edit the shuttle launch clips. Ack. I was able to launch a demo version of a website/blog for my friend Neva. As I was updating her gig calendar I saw that she had a new YouTube video… I miss having the chance to stroll down the street and catch this girls shows. Damn. Enjoy.

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Unexpected Restfulness in Moving

I’ve lived a great stretch of my adult life in one room studio apartments, so when I stepped up last year and moved to a one-bedroom apartment I didn’t think twice about putting my home office in my bedroom. The novelty was having the option to have a front room for entertaining. Of course I then discovered that I needed to buy a second TV for the bedroom because I like working with the TV going. No surprise there. So I just assumed that I was now going to have to buy a third TV as i tried to visualize how things were going to be when I moved to the two-bedroom townhouse. But as I prepped for the move I discovered something unexpected that made me change my mind about TV #3.

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Dealing w/ Past Voices

Last night I got the following email from a dear friend:

What would you do if (name-redacted) sent you a friend request on FB? Would you confirm or ignore . . . I still regularly think about (different name-redacted) – almost daily. I’m worried I can never get past her. And yes, I just got a friend request from her.

I’d been letting my “being-too-busy” dictate my social life (or the lack thereof) lately… okay, for the past year. But this dilemma required a response, so I sent the following back to my buddy:

Good question. First I’d be totally shocked because (name-redacted) isn’t an Internet “social networking” person. Second, I would be suspicious of her motives. All that said, I’d probably confirm. It’d be fun for a few days and them I’d remember that it didn’t work face-to-face, there’s even less for me via FB. Then I’d move on, per se, as one can move on from someone who’d previously defined ones life and crushed ones heart.

I have been over a year now without affection and intimacy in my life and that’s because of her. I think about her pretty much every day too, but I think of her as the one who had the chance to have everything I could give and rejected that so completely that I had to move to the opposite end of the continent, away from everything I knew and loved, so that I might start a new life and find someone to love me. I wish her well but in my mind I can’t get past the fact that she chose to not be in my life when I offered it. Now, it does help that I’ve benefited in every way imaginable by this rejection beginning with my job, to my friends here, to the new place I’ll be moving into in about two-weeks. But I think of her as the “oh well” in my life. I know Holly would ask, but if she said that she’s got it all figured out and she wants me back, what would I do?

There’s a danger being overly definitive about previous relationships, but my ability to trust her on any meaningful level has been permanently damaged. There’s no way in hell that I’d leave what I have going for myself in Orlando “to be with her.” If she said she’d come out here I wouldn’t believe it or trust her. The latter would be very destabilizing if it were to really happen (awkward!). Nope, I left everything I had to give. That well is complete dry. I gave up over a tenth of my life to her, almost to my own ruin. She’s not entitled to any more of me. I have to integrate all of that back into my life and be present in the good that is a part of my life now. Like i said, she’s the “oh well” of the past six years of my life.

And you, my friend, have got to do the same with your former flame. As (name-redacted)’s psychologist once described me (not knowing that we were still seeing each other): “he was a wonderful memory which will give you warm feelings later in life, but nothing in the here and now.” amen, end of chapter. Hope this helps. Much love, jbb

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The Postcard that Started it All

Got this postcard and mostly ignored it until I talked to my account. He said that it was time to buy. That got me started looking. Alas, when I went to the development advertised in the postcard there was the model building and then one small group of homes on the opposite end of the development with a giant section in the middle with paved streets and graded lots but no homes. This appeared to be a clear sign that this development began before the economy stalled and then ran out of money. There was a huge difference between what they were describing on the website and what I found at the development. I drove on without talking to anyone. Oh yeah, all the creases and folds in the postcard come for the weeks that it was in my pocket. Ack.

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Sound of Doors Closing

it’s been an amazing year. A year ago February I decided to accept the challenge of moving across country to step from the safety a public school teaching job to try something new: teaching a masters level course at a new online program in Florida. I looked at my life in Southern California, having no permanent ties, save my siblings and nephews and nieces, and decided that I needed to make this change, to take my gifts and skills to the next level. It was a logical choice. But it also meant that I was permanently closing the door on a relationship that I’d been unsuccessfully pursuing over the past five years. I could either take this job or I could stay in California, woeking as a largely thankless classroom grunt waiting for a relationship that might never become what I wanted it to become. The choice was pretty logical. But I was also walking away from something that I had defined myself by. I’d poured everything I could into this. This was who I was. This was who I wanted to be with. I felt connected in a way that I couldn’t explain, yet it had somehow completely failed when it came to what she needed at the time. So I left and shut the door to that part of myself.

Then as I began to build my life here in Florida I grappled with how I would express my relationship to God, The problem was that this was something that I had re-discovered in my life because of the power of the relationship I’d just left. It was something we shared. It was something that seemed real because of the power of the love I felt for her. But given the ease with which all of that just went away without a single tear shed, I was left to think that that relationship had been largely in my own head, and this led me to question what else might have largely just been in my head.

It’s not so much that because I didn’t get what I wanted, I was just going to stop believing. But given how much I had opened my heart to the possibilities, only to be set aside and rewarded with the sound of silence and a completely affection-less life, I lost my certainty and thus another way that I had defined myself by slipped away. Another door closed in my life.

So this brings me to this past week. i had just returned from a great trip to Washington DC. Read more

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Hello New Cube

Love the new digs. More space, mostly just us in this new place (so far) and even though the picture doesn’t really show it, we have windows! (out of frame to the right). Only problem that I can tell is that the space is so comfortable that productivity dropped a bit toward the end of the week. Damn. Again, I seem to work in Paradise, but one with really big and scary deadlines. jbb

Music/podcast: MacOsKen Day6, episode 37 (9/6/08)

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Good bye old cube

Found out Wednesday afternoon that our group was being relocated to different offices and that we needed to have our stuff moved by Friday. Before the end of day, Wednesday, I had everything packed and ready to go. Thank God, I’d never gotten too crazy with the books or desk/cube toys. Also, good thing I didn’t have anything to do this week. Ha! jbb

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Design by God – God by Design

One of the greatest benefits of living in this age is the possibility of going directly to the first sources when one wants to read or listen to the thoughts of any particular speaker or thinker. Back in my Fuller days in the early 80s one of my favorite professors, Colin Brown, commented that then popular Christian writer, Francis Schaeffer, got Kierkegaard all wrong, adding that Schaeffer probably never really read Kierkegaard. Without leaving my computer I can look up the works of any of these folks and directly interact with the material. One amazing venue for connecting with today’s sources is TED, which stands for “Technology, Entertainment & Design” and whose tag-line is “Ideas worth sharing.”

The following link was given to me by Full Sail coworker, Linda, who was impressed with Rick Warren’s ability to present his belief system without sounding “religious.” I appreciated that Warren seemed to respect the venue he was speaking at and addressed his thoughts as not addressing religious issues, but as human issues. Warren came off as firm but nurturing, understanding but uncompromising and very matter of fact, all hallmarks of a somewhat laid back “Seeker Sensitive” California attitude. Enjoy.

Rick Warren @ TED: Living a Life of Purpose

Dan Dennett @ TED (Feb 2006) – The Biological Evolution of Religion

Interestingly for me both of these speakers represent a bifurcating pull in my own thinking between this “matter of fact” Christianity and a more scientific, cultural-anthropology view of things…

Music: “First Prayer” by Randy Stonehill

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The Hidden Cost of Two Rooms

I’ve lived in studio apartments most of my adult life. And except for one girlfriend who equated such a small place with a “low earning potential,” my studios have served me well. I was very comfortable living in such a utilitarian manner. I’m sure there was some part of this that was a nostalgic throw-back to my college dorm room days. Yeah, I have good memory of my little apartments, but when it came to beginning a new life here in Orlando, nostalgia be damned. I decided that I needed something more professorial and less under-grad.

But after living almost 20-years in one room accommodations I quickly realized that if I had any hope at adjusting to this new environment, then I would need to have a second TV in the bedroom. Damn. I didn’t see that one coming. So, last week, after getting a great security refund check from my last apartment, I wandered down to my local Costco and came home with a 32″ Vizio LCD HD-TV to put in the bedroom (the 2nd Vizio I’ve purchased since moving to Orlando). And besides bedroom TV duty the Vizio also acts as a gigantic second monitor attached to my MacBook Pro when I work at home. I think I could get used to this. jbb

Music/podcast: popSiren Bite – Save on Text-Messaging with Teleflip from the album “popSiren (Large Quicktime)” by Revision3

Technorati Tags: florida, hardware, moving, orlando, techtoys, tv

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They’re Here….

Waiting all morning, driver pulls up at 11:50. Dominoes could learn from these guys

Music/Podcasts: Buzz Out Loud 744: A date with Firefox from the album “Buzz Out Loud from CNET” by CNET.com

Technorati Tags: california, florida, iPhone, longbeach, moving

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