IPOH Chapter 2

The schedule that consumes my days is like many of yours, ALWAYS FULL. But upon reflection there are a few things that bring me profound happiness.

1. My children
2. My family and friends
3. My career
4. Working out and taking care of my health
5. Being in the outdoors
6. Advancing my education and training

The things I really want in this life are:

1. To have my children with me full time -Love
2. A log cabin high in a mountain - Freedom
3. To get into the best physical, mental and spiritual shape of my life. - Power
4. To start a training and consulting business and travel worldwide. - Power
5. To have a farm raising organic vegetables and free range cattle along with a few horses and allot of dogs. - Freedom
6. Meet a beautiful, talented and independently successful woman. - Love

Something I could add to my life would be downtime. I work two jobs, go to school, am a dad, a boyfriend, a son and a brother. I have found that I take little time for me although all the things I have listed here are included in my wants. I do need to add time time for fun. Time to find freedom and be carefree.

By adding this time back into my life I would meet my needs for love, power and freedom as I would have the time to re-discover who I am and perhaps exercise the power to once again have fun.

Target Practice

Well perhaps not so much on target as I was led to believe I had already hit the mark 3 out of 3 times. But better later than never. Here it is.

I got what I wanted today when:

1. I was on leave from work and drove home this afternoon after a weekend in the mountains of Virginia with the windows of my truck rolled down, great music playing, the sun shining in not one thought of work of any kind on my mind. I stopped and smelled the roses a bit and thumbed my nose at work and schedules and deadlines. The deep growl of my truck as I passed all the gas sipping tin cans left me smiling. Yes I found power in not having a care in the world. And well yes I feel a bit empowered by the HEMI. Well until I had to fuel up. But I found a moment of love as well, stopping to snap pictures of the beauty of the mountains and to breath it all in. Yes I left the past few weeks behind this weekend and it was FUN.

2. I purchased a new printer today after losing my souped up do it all Dell Superfaxprintcopy XLT 294 to the strategically placed poker chip of my son. No my son isn't a Texas Hold em champ, well at least not yet. My son Noah is Autistic and the moment I found the chip in the paper feed of the old printer I felt warm all over. Not from anger, from pure joy and love. My son had done what any other self respecting boy would have done. I smiled a mile wide and laughed until my sides hurt. My purchase tonight of a new HP Quadruple Triple Lindy Printafaxacopyalot gave me power over the solitude of being a single dad of a wonderful boy who just happens to be Autistic. I felt joy as I paid the lady at the French computer store known as Target and at the same time love of being a father.

3. Well right now I am feeling a little powerful and rebellious submitting this rant at the wee hour of 0100. My joy I am sure will be short lived but I am happy to be writing here as it gives me a creative outlet to do something I do so enjoy. Writing. It's like coloring outside the lines despite directions not to do so. I can feel the freedom of wordsmithing and abusing grammatical law. However I know that I soon will not feel the love of the Prof. Well rebellion does have a price.

I Didn't Get What I Wanted Today when:

1. I had to leave the tranquility of my mountain hide out to re-enter the powerless, joyless, freedom less, loveless state of reality. Once again I must be shackled by a chain of command, beaten down by duty, repressed by commitment. Well at least it was pay day.

2. The lottery ticket I purchased in an old mom and pop grocery store in the hills wasn't a winner. So yet again I must put on the uniform, no shorts, tank top and Tevas, and march solemnly in to work. No fun, no love, devoid of power, NADA freedom.

3. I found out that although Blackboard shows I completed this assignment, I in my usual state of stressed out manic confusion did not complete this segment. Oh and I found this out at 0059 hours and some odd cents. So now I have no love as my head is not nestled in my pillow, I will have no joy at my preset 0430 revile, I am powerless to go back in time or to fool the Prof. For some reason the excuse of my "dog ate my computer" isn't going to work this time. I find no fun in this hour as there is no music, no rattle of beer bottles, no interesting ladies. Only me, my laptop and my new printer which has faded off to sleep mode. The only freedom I feel right now is to hit spell check then publish post and wish for the best.

Well maybe .........

A Question of duty.....

Like many of you I have been glued to my television watching the circus of reporters as they risk life and limb to compete in the Loser Olympics as they show the world how horrific the land fall of Hurricane Ike really was. Somehow their sideshow antics are akin to sport as all of us watching secretly hope to watch the poor bastard get blown down the street, slam dunked into a tree or impalled by a flying lamp post. All the while wearing our weather channel jerseys, sipping a cold frothy pint and giving high fives to all of our guest in a drunken orgy of exhilaration albeit the "new" superbowl of hurricane parties.



But just as we think we have achieved the moral stature reserved for a WWF event there comes a level of stupidity unparalleled by even a reporter with an "L" on his forehead. That is the rare breed of idiot compelled by guts, glory, chemically induced bravery or any number of motivating factors to ride out a monstrous storm the likes of hurricane Ike. No these folks did not live in a fortress built into the side of a mountain replete with blast doors and secured ventilation systems. No, they instead chose to wind surf their beach front castles on 100 mph gusts and wave ride 18 foot storm surge despite mandatory evacuation orders from local, state and federal authorities. And I must ask....for what?



Rescue teams now must risk life and limb, scarce resources must be re-deployed and battle plans altered to accommodate these dumbstruck individuals. Many that adhered to the warnings and still found themselves in harms way could very well have to wait for assistance for the wanton disregard of a segment of people who could care less about their decision's impact upon the welfare of others. And we think of Cuba as "third world"?



The very Constitutional rights that I enjoy and so proudly serve also allows selfish individuals place their individual concerns over the good of all. I would surmise that if we as a nation fetched a hefty fee for this kind of ignorance, lets say both monetarily and legally that the few, the proud, the ignorant would take it upon themselves to listen and adhere. It only takes a few hard licks to turn the bull through the gate and when done the rest of the herd surely follows.

The question I leave you with is this. Do we as the future emergency managers of such disasters have a moral obligation to triage resources and if so do people who ignore mandatory evacuation orders fall somewhere in the delayed category? If so, does this leave us ethically and morally liable in the courts of this land and of the free press?

In the Pursuit of Happiness

I must admit that after having just finished reading the introduction and Chapter 1 of E. Perry Good's " In the Pursuit of Happiness" I feel as though I must rush out and find a pair of Birkenstocks, grow my hair, rebel against "the man" and buy a VW microbus slathered with the symbols of Love, Power, Fun and Freedom. BAH!!! HUMBUG!!!!! I said.........

Well that was until this past Monday, Labor Day of all days and I was working my part time job. I was running late after a shift in Norfolk and did not feel quite up to par. After three hours of suffering through sub sternal chest discomfort, a pounding headache and numbness and tingling in my left arm I finally acquiesced to the fact that I was in denial and quite possibly having a heart attack. After two days in the hospital on a telemetry leash and a gerbil like stress test complete with echo cardiogram I am pleases to admit that I was given a clean cardiac bill of health, albeit with a side of hypertension for which I am now NFPA 1582 compliantly medicated. I am having no fun, I can't feel the love, I was completely powerless and due to the modern marvels of portable telemetry I had lost my freedom.

Perhaps there is something to all this hyperbole after all. I have come to realize that I need a change in my life. After having a wonderful weekend with my children this fact was cemented. I must take power in my life and find what makes me happy, without the guilt of putting myself first for a moment. In the past 5 years I have been buffeted by loss only to put my head down and bull through it by working harder and pouring myself into what I did and not who I was.

So now I will exercise my Constitutional right to pursue happiness and to choose to find time to have fun, love more often and revel in the freedom to feel good about it all. The negative signals of my diminished health due to stress and overwork have me focused now to try and find the positive signals of life and be thankful for them. There will be time in my day for reflection and prayer. For strenuous exercise to bust stress and defeat laziness. More time spent chasing my children and reveling in their love. More time finding happiness in this walk called life by finding out what my signals are and how to use them to get what I want. Oh and not feeling guilty about it.

So its true...old dogs can learn new tricks

So it is true that an "old dog" can learn a new trick every now and then.........."woof".......lol