Author: OldSchoolMLNL

writing my character into existence
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Trouble Parking

Dating in your 30’s?

Any single, 30-somethings out there struggling in the relationship game? Raise your hand if you’re having fun. If you’re like me, you might find yourself looking back from time to time thinking – WTF happened?

For me, it all started according to ‘the plan’ – college degree, salaried job, met a beautiful girl, got married, had kids and bought our first home. Hoyle was proud.

But as it turns out, following ‘the plan’ isn’t enough – you gotta own it too. Bottom line – living someone else’s life won’t work, at least not well or for long.

Going deeper into my story you’ll find a mixture of tragedy and self induced hardship ultimately leading to ‘the plan’ falling to pieces, just not all at once. It was more like that rich guy that went bankrupt – it happened very slow, and then very fast. That was 4 years ago.

Fast forward thru a couple years of Family Court, on-and-off battles with depression, nearly 3 years of social hibernation and $10,000 in therapy before even the desire for a relationship re-emerged. And now, after nearly a year of trying, the stark reality is, I’m out of practice and out of touch in the wake of a decade-long marriage which saw the advent of digital dating. Joining my local monastery has started to become an increasingly appealing option.

But here I am, at one of Tulsa’s trendy new restaurants – alone – after waiting an hour to finally get the confirmation text that it wasn’t going to happen tonight:

‘I’m stressed out about parking and just downtown in general and super nervous. I’m not going to come there 😕’

It appears I’m not the only one out there with dating hangups – anyone who has ever been downtown Tulsa knows that parking is not the problem – the text was a cover story. Neither uncommon nor pleasant to be stood up, but on a positive note the tenderloin was superb.

I could be going about it wrong and I’m aware I have my fair share of baggage – but aren’t most single, 30-somethings in a similar position? Maybe it’s just me, but even my most promising relationship since the divorce went south after only six weeks.

That said, I’m not playing victim here – I’m just struggling with the question: ‘where do I go from here?’ I have three kids, good health and a promising career – maybe that’s enough.

For those of you out there who can feel my pain, let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Perhaps we can help prevent one another from spending the rest of our lives like this guy:

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Expectations & Resentment

Ever found yourself expecting the impossible; perhaps frustrated, angry or even hurt when it failed to materialize?

Sounds foolish when said out loud, but too often I find myself succumbing to this brand of fantastical thinking. When I don’t get what I’m after, I can get angry and make the situation worse.

Essentially, it’s like Sisyphus blaming gravity for his burden. Can you relate?

Let me bring this closer to home with an example. 

I am a middle manager in an industrial manufacturing operation. I’m no Elon Musk, but I love what I do and the people I work with. 

If asked, others would say I lead with my gut, often causing me to ignore obvious roadblocks or to prioritize action over fact finding. They would also say that, at the end of the day, I am open to feedback and am committed to correcting mistakes. At a 50,000’ level, you might say I have a ‘forgiveness is better than permission’ flavor to my leadership.

Although I have demonstrable success with this approach over multiple years and in various capacities, I work inside a process driven organization with a strong preference for permission seekers. Rather than adjust, I keep driving to change the mindset of my leadership, if not the entire 10,000+ employee culture.

In a recent bought of misguided ‘heroics’ I escalated to the brink of unemployment. Peak fantastical thinking.

The interesting question now becomes – what next?

Perhaps the answer is as simple as dropping the expectation that my track record of strong results justifies special handling? Perhaps I should pursue a new opportunity where coloring outside the lines is more highly valued?

Am I standing on principle or am I just addicted to the conflict? My therapist points out I have a tendency to extremes and reminds me to pace myself and seek out my emotional center.

For now at least the move is to keep my head down as I continue to reflect, here’s what I konw for sure:

Unrealistic Expectations = Premeditated Resentments

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Intimately Distinct

I’m going back in after 4 years on the bench and an 8 year marriage.

Equal parts excitement and uncertainty, my heart swells with longing one moment and recoils in fear the next. Night sweats and ecstasy have replaced sleep.

Exotic, vibrant, impassioned, unexpected – and yet familiar, like a deja vu + destiny cocktail.

Even the timing feels right as this season in my life has been marked by both renewal and promise.

She is smart, driven, caring, rational and stunning.  She doesn’t need me, she chooses me.  Disagreements become opportunities to discover one another. I wouldn’t change anything about her yet she seeks feedback.

I took the opportunity to introduce her to my brother and his wife over the Christmas holiday to rave reviews. My close friend KT is supportive, and she never holds back 😉

So what am I afraid of?

It would be easy to try and explain my fear as something related to inadequacy, but that’s not it – for the first time in my life I can honestly say I understand my own value.  I’m not in it out of desperation, loneliness, or any other form of dysfunction that I am aware of.

I think I’m fearful of two things: my past and my future.

My past because, despite ongoing therapeutic progress, I still occasionally allow historical traumas to dictate present behavior.  Being a psychiatrist she is understanding of my struggle but everyone has their limits, and rightly so.

My future because, now more than ever, I can see my full potential and the path towards it.  No more excuses; no more settling.  It’s scary to have something to lose.

In previous relationships this dichotomy would have been too much, I would have ran, but not this time.

This time I’m staying put – I’m going to see this through.

After all, the solution seems obvious enough – when the past is dead and the future unknown, one should focus on the present; right?

Just two individuals connected in the moment.

Intimately Distinct.

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Lifted up and uplifted

The title of the track is ‘Lift Yourself’ by @Kanye and, in a sense, is an appropriate theme for my 2018 Summer.  In another sense, I was lifted by others in what was the richest season in recent memory for me.

Whatever the case, the song is inspirational to me as was the depth and breadth of my experiences over the last 4 months.

To the family and friends that pitched in to laugh, cry, drive, fly, work, play, grow and learn with me – here’s to you even if you didn’t make the slideshow, you know who you are.

I am more alive than I was 4 months ago – I am grateful beyond words.

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Be the leader you’re looking for

I grew up like most kids, looking for a role model to help me make sense of a large and mysterious world all around me.

As I aged, I adopted a buffet style approach to character building. I took what I wanted from the available offerings, all the while trying to build a complete plate that would nourish me into maturity, purpose and happiness.

This approach had its pros and cons but led to the following two definitive conclusions:

  1. Virtue cannot be worshiped, only internalized
  2. No one can lead you where you won’t go

I never found a person who lived up to my conception of a complete role model, and eventually I stopped looking when politicians, professionals and parents all fell short.

Back then my youthful longing for a role model had re-emerged, but at that point the journey was no longer external, it was a homecoming.

I was learning that I was the only leader I’d ever follow.

Here’s the general process that led to this conclusion:

  1. Care for yourself – this strengthens your foundation; nurture physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health
  2. Practice taking small risks – this is how you both build up and out from the foundation
  3. Take a big risk – learn what works and get rid of the rest
  4. Repeat 1-3 until the mirror smiles back at you – what’s left is what works; define it, commit to it
  5. Be the leader you’re looking for – no one else can fill that void for you
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Consequences Create Culture

Stefan Molyneux, in a recent international speaking tour with Lauren Southern in Australia and New Zealand, was de-platformed in NZ and has since decided to offer the content free of charge at the link below:

“The Banned New Zealand Speech They Didn’t Want You to Hear!” Stefan Molyneux, http://www.freedomainradio.com, 8/10/2018

In the talk, Stefan makes a case as for why the speech was banned as well as why the ideas are so threatening to the current ruling class.

He argues that freedom requires equality under the law –  no matter the race/identity/class – and is synonymous with consequences (ie: to be free to win means to be free to loose). Consequences are the incentives which reinforce common morality.  A common morality forms the building blocks for a healthy culture. Healthy culture delivers peace, prosperity and increased freedom.

In contrast, he claims, the US and other western societies have created policies which remove consequences for certain groups based on race/gender/class, thereby inverting incentives/morality, destroying culture and limiting freedom for all.  The end game of this dangerous government experiment is national decay and ruin.

An example of government removing consequences would be that every man/woman/child on earth is financed to the tune of $30,000 – meaning I haven’t had to face the consequences of at least $30,000 worth of mistakes. Think no-fault divorce, health care policies which don’t screen for pre-existing conditions, quantitative easing, etc.

I’ll leave the rest for you to ponder, worth a listen or two – almost guarantee a perspective you’ve yet to hear.

Is it possible for government to remove negative consequences from everyday life?  Many modern political systems have been working towards this goal for decades with mixed results.
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Millennial Identity

This period in US history will be seen as a coming of age from a national adolescence into into a (hopefully) more mature civilization.

The transition will not be easy and the future is not certain. We as a nation are tasked with bringing only the best forward, shedding the rest and building a better future for our children.

As millennials who have been told what and how to think by government schools and PC dogma, who have been sold the empty hedonism of post-modernism, who have seen their prosperity squandered and culture dismantled, who’s families are broken and institutions are crumbling – we are the ones this country will turn to for its salvation.

It will be upon our virtue, our values, our vision and our resolve that all will depend.

Millennials – we haven’t found our voice, we haven’t come of age as a generation, but the time is coming.

We have been labeled snowflakes and blamed for problems we inherited.

Will we live in to these labels or will we rise up to be more?

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Farmlands – Lauren Southern’s New Documentary on S. Africa’s Grim Prospects

Lauren Southern is an independent Canadian journalist who worked for Rebel Media until March of 2017 and who’s rapid ascent into the limelight was jump started by an altercation at the 2015 Vancouver SlutWalk.

She is Libertarian, conservative or alt-right depending on who you ask and has covered such controversial topics as the wage gap myth, immigration, internet censorship, radical feminism and, most recently the developing crisis in South Africa.

Her Farmlands documentary, released 6/25/18, tells the story of brutal farm murders fueled by growing state support and complicit media coverups in South Africa.

To make things worse the country’s economy is in shambles with food and water shortages worsening by the day.

The history is factual, the interviews are touching, the ramifications are global. I recommend watching the film from two perspectives: that of the S. African people looking for ways to reverse the rising tide of violence as well as that of a US citizen looking for cultural/political parallels here at home.

For more on Lauren see her most excellent twitter feed as website linked below:

https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern

https://laurensouthern.net/#

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The Future is Yeezy

Kanye West is the FlyBy supplement to my Trump Hangover.

Scott Adams released a vlog describing this moment in US History as the beginning of the golden age. If you prefer a written account, check out Mike Cernovich’s article. Candace Owens predicted it would be Kanye that bought us to the precipice of a cultural revolution.

And so here we are.

It started with 7 words from Yeezy, ‘I like the way Candace Owens thinks.” Then the signed Maga hat went public. Trump joined in and tweeted some Kanye love. Then there was the John Legend rebuttal from Kanye, which was epic for reasons I’ll get into later.

But it gets better, deeper.

The controversy continues to escalate as Kanye released Ye vs. The People on 4/28/2018. Check out the lyric @ 1:05:

‘See that’s the problem with this damn nation, all blacks gotta to be democrats. Man we ain’t made it off the plantation.’

All this from the guy who’s best known political commentary was his decrying of President Bush’s lack of care for black people in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

To add to last week’s first amendment drama, Diamond and Silk found themselves testifying in front of congress regarding cooked up charges of ill-gotten field consulting fees paid to them on behalf of the Trump campaign. Diamond & Silk are two vocal YouTube stars who have been advocating for blacks to abandon the democratic plantation going back several years.

So what has the public response been to strong black voices such as Candace Owens, Diamond & Silk and Kanye West speaking freely?  A combination of silence, ad hominem attacks and raised suspicions around deteriorating mental health.

The message you are supposed to take from this: empowered free thought is only tolerated if you have the right (left) ideas.

To further demonstrate this point, one only needs to contrast the press’ treatment of Joy Reid – who lives safely inside the leftist protected class – in the wake of her unsavory LGBTQ commentary on her now defunct blog. First she claimed to have been hacked – which was not provable – and then she issued a ‘genuine apology’ where she claimed to have no memory of writing such comments.

Apparently, when you’re on the left a sufficient defense is to simply state that you genuinely believe you didn’t do whatever they’re accusing you of. Essentially, Joy is enjoying immunity in the court of public opinion – must be nice.

What we’re left with is the fact that in the US today coming out conservative can cost you your friends and loved ones, career and more.  If you are influential enough you will be censored, demonetized, attacked and labeled every hateful kind of bigot imaginable. It won’t matter if you are a minority, a woman or any other protected class.

The left and their allies in the media now act as the thought police, ruthlessly suppressing ideas they don’t like with vicious attacks on those espousing them.

Ben Garrison summed it up the tension in pictures.

But here’s the thing, no matter what side you’re on, if you cheer on the censorship of people you don’t like today, rest assured the mob will be coming for you tomorrow. Inevitably, the thought police will brand everyone a Nazi worthy of being punched, and worse.

What Kanye is helping millions to understand isn’t which team to join, but rather how to think about what team you’re on, what your values are and where you want to be moving forward.

The best part is he’s doing it in an almost irresistible and loving way – reference his reply to John Legend above. Add in his massive influence and reach both in and outside of the black community, he’s too big to be ignored or taken down quietly in the night.

The conversation will happen.

This conversation represents a push to elavate the collective conscious out of the group think mindset that has dominated most of human existence and towards a more principled approach to human affairs.

Let’s join with Kanye and work together to usher in this long awaited golden age, where truth can be allowed to roam free and we the people stand together against the growing tyranny of the feels.