Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

The Time Travelling Amnesiac’s Confidence

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have a recur­ring day­dream about time travel.  It is noth­ing so exotic as trav­el­ing one hun­dred mil­lion years into the past, or some­thing so noble as trav­el­ing 70 years to right the wrongs of his­tory.  My time travel day dream involves my own lifes­pan and my own small life.

“What if,” I ask myself, “I woke up one day and I was 16 again, but I remem­bered every­thing that will and has hap­pened.  Imagine reliv­ing my life with that foresight.”

There’s a sim­ple joy to this notion, but the under­ly­ing thing that seems so small but is felt so large is that you know with­out a doubt that things are going to turn out okay (except for that weird time machine acci­dent that sent you back in the first place).  You could have this under­ly­ing con­fi­dence in your actions. 

I think that’s what is most appeal­ing about it.  It’s not about a chance to get to do things dif­fer­ently so much as it is a chance to do many things over again and instead of being con­sumed with doubt and fear,  you get to have con­fi­dence in your­self and your suc­cess.  Or in an out­come of some sort anyway.

The time trav­eler knows what’s going to hap­pen.  Knows she’s going to be okay.  The time trav­eler can then live in the moment and just enjoy it.  Like reread­ing a book you loved as a child, one you’ve reread so often that the sharp cor­ners of ten­sion have smoothed away by the waves of familiarity. 

We all look for ways to live deeper, richer lives.  To feel more keenly.  To make sharper obser­va­tions.  The time trav­eler has the men­tal pro­cess­ing time to do this, pro­vided they keep course to what they know.

What if you woke up one day and you’re 33 years old? When you went to sleep the night before, you were sixty five.  Only something’s gone wrong in the time travel process, and you’ve lost your mem­o­ries of the future, lost  every­thing except for that con­fi­dence.  You are left with the unde­ni­able feel­ing that things will work out.  The rock-​​solid cer­tainty that you will make it through what­ever chal­lenges present them­selves.  This time, you really get to pay attention.

That didn’t hap­pen to me.

But I’m going to pre­tend it did. 

The Father’s Ashes

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

While I was vis­it­ing fam­ily over Christmas, the sub­ject of my father’s ashes came up with my step­mother.  We had orig­i­nally intended to spread his ashes the sum­mer after his death on the lake, but I don’t think any of us were ready to let go in that way yet, so we put if off.

It’s been five years and my step­mom has started to see another guy.  I’m happy for her, and I think she’s start­ing to think about mov­ing past Dad, think­ing about his things, and par­tic­u­larly his ashes.  She brought it up at din­ner, and we dis­cussing mak­ing more con­crete plans to do some­thing with them next summer.

As we were leav­ing, she made a joke about how in the sum­mer, she moves them down to the base­ment for tor­nado sea­son, that she wouldn’t want my father’s remains blow­ing away in a huge storm.  We turned at looked at each other and laughed then, because, actu­ally, my dad would have loved the idea that his ashes were spread by a tornado.

I’m pretty sure it’d be ille­gal, but I almost want to con­tact some storm chasers and see if they could spill his ashes in the path of the big Kansas twister.  My love for where I grew up comes a lot from my Dad, and the idea of him being dif­fused over all of it, mak­ing the entire north­east cor­ner of the state is rest­ing place, has an amaz­ing poetry to it in my mind.  I’m not entirely sure I wouldn’t want the same thing done to me if I man­age to fail at achiev­ing immor­tal­ity and pass away.

There could be worse fates for his ashes.  We’ll be think­ing between now and sum­mer if there are bet­ter ones.

2010 Year in Review

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

You knew it was com­ing, although you prob­a­bly didn’t sus­pect I would be so bloody late about it.  In this post, I will break down my suc­cesses, my fail­ures, my hopes, and my regrets, for the pre­vi­ous year, and the year now bar­rel­ing down upon us.  This is going to get long, so here’s a cut to make life eas­ier for ya if you want to skip it.

Continue read­ing ›

Things You Must Remember from 2010

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

5 min­utes. Imagine you will com­pletely lose your mem­ory of 2010 in five min­utes. Set an alarm for five min­utes and cap­ture the things you most want to remem­ber about 2010.

Hello, me.  Very sorry about that lost mem­ory.  You see, there were things you were not meant to know, so Certain People had to take action.  No! Do not appear alarmed at this.  We must not arouse sus­pi­cion.  I under­stand how dis­con­cert­ing it must be to receive a note from one­self that one does not recall writ­ing, but if we are to sur­vive these next few months, you must remain calm.  All out­ward appear­ances must. be. maintained.

Now.  What fol­lows is a list of cru­cial infor­ma­tion we could not let them take away from us.  Memorize this list of facts and delete the list.  In the com­ing  days, your knowl­edge of each one of these items will be tested, and should you fail…  the results will be unpleas­ant for us and for the secu­rity of the very world.  Now, the list.

  1. There are oth­ers.  They will reveal them­selves to you with code words like “frell,” “frack”, and “42.”  They will have a vari­ety of cover posi­tions from doc­tor to com­puter pro­gram­mer, but all will be a mem­ber of the SF resis­tance. Do not be alarmed by their strange ways.
  2. The resis­tance is inside of you.  It always has been.  You are your great­est enemy, and also your great­est ally.  This is true for every­one.  Be pre­pared for anything.
  3. You now like the taste of aspara­gus.  Yes, I know, quite dif­fi­cult to swal­low, but any­thing is edi­ble wrapped in prosciutto.
  4. The north­ern loop of Yellowstone is prime wildlife view­ing ter­ri­tory, and often devoid of annoy­ing herds of elderly tourists.
  5. The strange slate of glass and brushed metal you will find next to you is called an “iPad.”  It is your most prized tech­no­log­i­cal pos­ses­sion.  Take it with you every­where.  If at any time there is some infor­ma­tion you require, this device can pro­vide it.  If you wish to read for leisure, it does that too.  If you wish to smash annoy­ing lit­tle green pigs with angry red birds, this device can do that as well.  It is mirac­u­lous tech­nol­ogy. Do not let it fall into the wrong hands.  The smudges are hard to clean
  6. Check your wal­let for a slip of paper.  You will find your address.  Your cur­rently live at REDACTED FOR YOUR SAFETY.  This loca­tion has con­sid­er­ably more space than your last rental, although it’s loca­tion is less con­ve­nient.  The price is only mildly higher for an extra two rooms.  Do not let your sus­pi­cion of this show.
  7. Walk for 30 min­utes every morn­ing in the park. This activ­ity will put your mind into a recep­tive state through which your sub­con­scious will deliver you vital mes­sages which should sub­se­quently be encoded into fic­tional works, edited, and then pub­lished, to dis­sem­i­nate them to fel­low agents fight­ing against the resistance.
  8. Do not use the phase “yes, I sup­pose those pants do make you look a bit rounder” in the pres­ence of your wife.  Above all else, remem­ber this for our per­sonal safety.  These words are a psy­chic trig­ger that will acti­vate her embed­ded assas­sin mode.

There is more, but time has run out, and they come for me now with their probes and sur­gi­cal tools.  I have time for one last thing, one last word before they break down the door.  REMEMBER THIS.  REMEMBER–

Action!

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Action. When it comes to aspi­ra­tions, its not about ideas. It’s about mak­ing ideas hap­pen. What’s your next step?

Writing

I’m writ­ing a novel out­line as we speak.  If my pay­ing work can keep from blow­ing up, I’ll be able to set writ­ing goals weekly to get the novel writ­ten in six months or less.   

Web Design

My busi­ness needs to con­tinue to grow of course, so I’m going to take the dis­taste­ful step of cold-​​emailing peo­ple who might be able to use my ser­vices.  I really hate “sell­ing” but if I’m going to keep things run­ning smoothly, I think I need to get over this and be will­ing to put my ser­vices out there more.  The trick is to not be spammy or a jerk about it.  Suggestions?  Let me know in the comments. 

I am also ded­i­cat­ing a small por­tion of my time each week to exper­i­men­ta­tion and devel­op­ing new tech­niques, as well as read­ing one tech­ni­cal book per month.

Photography

I hope to get at least one trip in in the spring to some place amaz­ing and beau­ti­ful with the express goal of mak­ing beau­ti­ful pho­tos.  It’s hard to take action here with as busy as every­thing else has got­ten this year, but it is impor­tant to me that I con­tinue to grow as a pho­tog­ra­pher even if it’s a low priority.

Writing this had made me real­ize that I’m often long on plans and ideas and short on action. What are your next steps?

Community

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

December 7 – Community.

Where have you dis­cov­ered com­mu­nity, online or oth­er­wise, in 2010? What com­mu­nity would you like to join, cre­ate or more deeply con­nect with in 2011?

(Author: Cali Harris)

I have had mixed results with com­mu­nity.  It’s some­thing I want in the­ory, but in prac­tice my intro­verted ways usu­ally sab­o­tage my inten­tion to belong.  Earlier this year, I tem­porar­ily became a mem­ber of a local cowork­ing group.  For the first time since col­lege I felt con­nected to a local com­mu­nity instead of an online one.  I’ve lived in com­mu­ni­ties in the grander sense, but rarely have felt part of them—always feel­ing dis­tinct and not like I belonged.

I felt good about the cowork­ing at first, but over time I came to find it not con­du­sive to my own work needs—I was work­ing from my lap­top and the screen real estate felt cramped, and because I was so eager to be part of a com­mu­nity, my work suf­fered.  And then there was the mock­ing that devel­oped from other mem­bers.  Nothing seri­ous, but enough that I didn’t feel like devot­ing any energy.  I’m sure it was meant in good fun, but I have a low tol­er­ance for being made fun of, due to hav­ing had to put up with nasty forms of it as a child.

I never seem to have much trou­ble find­ing com­mu­nity online.  This year, my com­mu­nity online seems to be cen­tered around Twitter.  I have some qualms about hav­ing my major sense of belong­ing tied to some­thing that is lim­ited to 130 char­ac­ters at a time, but it does work.  And when you work from home alone day in, day out, hav­ing some way of feel­ing like you’re not alone is help­ful.   Twitter fills that role for me now.  In the long run, I would like a “real world” com­mu­nity to belong to—something Rockwellian, only full of artists and cre­atives maybe.  John Joseph Adams and I have talked sev­eral times about his notion of Geektopia—a com­mu­nity pop­u­lated entirely by geeks who relo­cate to cre­ate a com­mu­nity of their own.   If such a place existed—I would seri­ously con­sider mov­ing there.  We’ve been eye­balling the parts of the coun­try where you can get free land.   Problem is, build­ing an entire town from scratch costs mil­lions.  So until we get some mil­lion­aire back­ing the idea, it will remain a pipe dream.  But it’s one that I would love to see become a real­ity.  Some day.

Until then, the inter­net is my com­mu­nity, for bet­ter and worse.

The prompt for the 8th is about what makes me beau­ti­ful and dif­fer­ent and I just don’t feel like answer­ing that one, so I’m going to skip it.  I also skipped one about “what did you cre­ate?” because it would be silly for me to list all that.

Letting Go in 2010

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

About half-​​way into 2010, I real­ized some­thing.  As much as I loved pho­tog­ra­phy, espe­cially nature pho­tog­ra­phy, it was just never going to be a sub­stan­tial por­tion of my income.  In 2009, I had made some goals of try­ing to bring in a por­tion of my income via pho­tog­ra­phy. I did a gig or two and I sold a cou­ple of prints.  In 2010, I invested in much bet­ter, larger prints and very nice fram­ing for a show­ing here in town.  I sold one photo, the small­est of the bunch, and that was great, but the rest did not.

I don’t have the energy to ded­i­cate to a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phy career as well as try­ing to grow my web design busi­ness.  They only over­lap in a few places.  And pho­tog­ra­phy, while I love it, just doesn’t have the same income potential.

That’s not to say that I’ve given up on pho­tog­ra­phy period, or that I won’t sell prints any­more.  I will.  I’ve just adjusted my expec­ta­tions and goals in light of the real­ity. I will never be on assign­ment for National Geographic.  And that’s… okay.  I can live with that.  In a way, you could say I’m let­ting go of the fact that I can’t do every sin­gle thing I want to do.  I have to pick.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to let go of any peo­ple this year.   Really, I am so, so thank­ful for that.

The Worst Mistake I Made in 2010

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m going to inter­rupt my #Reverb10 blog­ging to dis­cuss this blog post from The Simple Dollar on ana­lyz­ing your mistakes:

3. Figure out your biggest mistake.

What one ele­ment of your life is the one ele­ment you would give any­thing to fix?

I’m not talk­ing about the things you can’t fix, like incur­able dis­eases or the like. I’m talk­ing about things that, with some amount of luck or effort or inter­ven­tion of oth­ers, could see sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive change.

In my per­sonal life, this is easy.  My weight is the biggest thing I want to change, and doing so has been hard.  I have a long adult his­tory of strug­gling with my weight.  Serious “First World Problem” I know, but there it is.  Getting my weight down has been a spo­radic bat­tle of the last year, and I don’t think I did well enough.

When I went to col­lege, I weighed about 175 pounds.  By the end of my Sophomore year, I was push­ing 250.  And I stayed at this weight until about 2 years ago, flux­u­at­ing up and down 15–20 pounds depend­ing on the time of the year.

The rea­son I gained so much weight was a health prob­lem. I had acid reflux, but no means of get­ting med­ica­tion for it, so I self-​​medicated with ice milk.  Ridiculous, I know, but it was the one thing that made the heart burn go away for a while—that and stuff­ing myself as full of food as pos­si­ble.   I had no idea at the time I was get­ting fat.  That’s how unaware of my own body I was.  I expected it to work and that was that.  I was so focused on my mind that unless some part of me was sick, I was com­pletely ignor­ing the body sent in. 

Cut to 2 years ago when I strug­gled with some anx­i­ety issues after my father’s death.  A com­bi­na­tion of the issues and the med­ica­tion that solved led to me drop­ping down to 200 pounds in about 4 months.  Again, I didn’t even real­ize how much weight I was los­ing until one day, I got tired of try­ing to make my pants stay up by rolling the waist­line (I hate belts for rea­sons too silly to get into here).

Since then, I’ve bounced back up to 225.  That’s 50 pounds heav­ier than I want to be.   I go up and down fre­quently.  225 is where I am right now after a week of stay­ing pretty well on task.

How do I lose weight with­out the aid of med­ica­tion side-​​effects? Constant vig­i­lance and calo­rie count­ing is the only way I’ve found that even sort of works.   My tastes run toward the junk end of the food spec­trum, so I count calo­ries.  I use an app on my iPhone to do it some­times, but I mostly just try to eye­ball it.  And then occa­sion­ally, I expe­ri­ence an extinc­tion burst and go on a binge, eat­ing out at some huge meal or buy­ing way too much fast food.

Part of me doesn’t want to have to watch what I eat, the habits part that only cares about the plea­sure of eat­ing.  The rest of me is dead set on liv­ing as long as pos­si­ble.  So we strug­gle.  My body is a battleground. 

But I’ve been break­ing the prob­lem down into sin­gle issues.  Meal issues.  Learning again to eat only when I am hun­gry.  Not using eat­ing out as a reward for good activ­i­ties.  I need to return food into an enjoy­able food and remove junk food espe­cially from the pedestal I put it on in my child­hood.  That’s the plan now.  In another month, I’ll update you on my progress. Hold me to that too.

In 2011, I’m going to win the war, or at least a few bat­tles.  That way, when I look back on 2011 to see what my worst mis­take was, it won’t be “didn’t lose weight and get healthy again.”

2010 in a Word

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

December 1 One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choos­ing that word. Now, imag­ine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that cap­tures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

Freedom.  That’s the con­cept and the word I’ve been learn­ing this year.  The last year has taught me the value and the costs of per­sonal free­dom.  Of not hav­ing to clock in and clock out every day at the same time.  I have the free­dom to choose what work I do.  I can over­work or under­work, so long as I am pre­pared to live with the con­se­quences.  I decide.  No one else does, except in the sense that clients come to me with needs.

The flip­side of free­dom in this regard is a lack of secu­rity.  Right now at least, I’d rather be free than secure when it comes to my work life.  Initially, the lack of secu­rity was fright­en­ing, but even this can be coun­tered.  Work hard, and you can build your own secu­rity.  The secu­rity offered by a salaried job is an illu­sion as we’ve talked about here time and time again.

I want 2011’s word to be awe­some.  In the “that’s so cool” and the “that’s awe-​​inspiring and a lit­tle scary” sense.  2011’s plans are just now com­ing together, and the year ahead holds so much poten­tial.  I hope I can live the life that earns such a gift.

So what word describes 2010 for you? I really want to know how the year went for my read­ers, even if it isn’t quite over.

The Best Worst Christmas

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The hol­i­days are upon us, and with that comes mem­o­ries of my child­hood and fam­ily.  December is a nos­tal­gic month for me, but why is not a rea­son I can pin down.  Perhaps it’s because my birth­day is in December, so I have the dou­ble whammy of it being a tra­di­tion­ally family-​​centric time along with the sen­sa­tions of grow­ing older each year.

The other day, a mem­ory began to haunt me, and I think that if I recount it here on my blog, per­haps I can exor­cise it.  Is it nor­mal to feel guilt for some­thing so minor that hap­pened over 20 years ago?  I imag­ine peo­ple have felt guilt for weirder things.

Christmas day.  I’m 10 or 11, and I’m excited as any kid is.  I wake up at 5:30 AM know­ing that Santa has already been to the house.  He always comes right after sleep.  I wake up my lit­tle brother and sis­ter and we creep down­stairs to see what bounty he’s left.

This is maybe the first or sec­ond year since my par­ents divorced.  I’m iffy on the time­line.  But I remem­ber what hap­pened next like it hap­pened last week.

We get down­stairs, and under the tree is a sin­gle gift for each one of us.  First world prob­lem, I know.  Here’s where the guilt lies.  When our par­ents had been mar­ried, Christmas has been full of presents, toys, what­not.  We were spoiled—make no mistake.

For myself, a small globe of the world.  My brother had received a small stuffed ani­mal that vaguely resem­bled a par­rot.  I can’t remem­ber what my sis­ter received, but it was sim­i­larly modest. 

To say we were upset would be under­selling it.  I think part of it was, we had no con­cept at the time that our Dad bought these things him­self.  Part of it was that we were greedy lit­tle kids, but also, I think com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, we thought that some­how Santa was pun­ish­ing us.  We really didn’t think much of the gifts.  What had we done wrong that year? 

We crawled into our dad’s bed en masse, cry­ing and wail­ing. He woke to this, his three kids clutch­ing their gifts and sob­bing.  He didn’t get angry.  He didn’t get upset.  Instead, he did some­thing that I hope I will do some day with my own kids under a sim­i­lar situation.

Instead, he showed us what we had missed about our gifts.  My globe had topo­graph­i­cal fea­tures, bumps where there were moun­tains.  I had never seen that before, and it was pretty neat.  On my brother’s gift, he showed that it actu­ally recorded what you said and par­roted it back to you with but­tons on each wing—one to record, and one to play. 

The guilt lies here.  How must our ingrat­i­tude felt to my father?  I know now, and I even knew then, that times were tough, as tough as they ever got.  He filed for bank­ruptcy after his divorce, and he worked for the city as a meter man, writ­ing park­ing tick­ets.  We were liv­ing hand to mouth, with­out a doubt.  The only way he could afford Christmas presents at all was that he had a Christmas club account with his credit union that took a tiny frac­tion of each pay­check and socked it away.

My dad kept it together and did the best he could in the sit­u­a­tion.  I’m just in awe of that.  I’m sure our tears hurt him about as much as any­thing could, but he didn’t show it.    Eventually, we were pla­cated, and we went off to play with our gifts.  I won­der what he thought about as he lay there in bed? Did the sting go away quickly?  Was he ashamed? My guilt is that in our child­ish igno­rance, we made our father ashamed of the gifts he had bought us.

That globe became one of my prized pos­ses­sions all through my child­hood.  Long after it was some­thing I really needed, I used it as a piggy bank. open­ing it up and stash­ing my cash inside of it from work­ing in fast food.  I think I threw it away after I moved to Laramie, because it was lit­er­ally falling apart, peel­ing into pieces.  I really wish I hadn’t done that.  By then, the sen­ti­ment of the object had faded.  Well, but it hadn’t faded. It was merely dor­mant.  And right now, I wish I had it sit­ting atop my book­shelf.  I wish that I still had it, to show the mem­ory of my father that I am grate­ful for the things he gave me.

Instead, this blog post will have to do that.