davetriesballet:

This picture of Dawid Trzensimiech and Xander Parish sums up just how badass male dancers are. I can’t wait to see Trzensimiech as James in La Sylphide on Saturday - in my eyes he’s one of the most exciting male dancers at the Royal Ballet.
[photo by Andre Uspenski]

This is a second version of my niece as the Snow Queen.  The sound is a little better. She also did Sugar Plum, Arabian and lead Flower in her Nutcracker performances this year. I’ll see if I can do a better job trying to get some video from Cinderella this weekend.

Video of my niece performing in The Nutcracker. It didn’t turn out as well as I wanted. Was trying to video and take still photos at the same time from the back row. And I had tears while I watched her. So most of the video has no sound because of way I was holding the little camera.  Live and learn.

     By most objective standards I’ve had a reasonably successful life.  I put myself through a top ten university, followed by law school.  I had a coveted legal position after law school for three years and have spent an additional twenty years in a law practice with a good reputation.  I’ve traveled throughout the world on four continents.  I’ve been able to indulge in my hobbies of soccer, photography and now ballet.

    But I feel like I haven’t really accomplished anything.  I don’t believe I have much to offer anyone.  I’m quick to believe the negative things people say about me and discount anything positive that is said.

    I mainly keep to myself.  Twitter has allowed me, in a sense, to find a voice.  And I’m very grateful for my Twitter friends.  I share in their accomplishments and cry about their set backs.  I say a prayer every night for two incredible young women who have been through so much with remarkable grace.

    I opened up to someone this year, more than I ever have in my life.  She is intelligent, kind, compassionate.  The type of person who seems too good to be true and much too good to have anything to do with me.  But we were exchanging messages and texts and phone calls.  It was really hard to believe.

    Unfortunately I couldn’t accept the budding friendship at face value.  Why would someone like her want to have anything to do with me?  It lasted about six weeks.  I could see I was being self destructive but I couldn’t stop it.  I accept the blame for the schism.  I was told it was ok to be honest and open up but in the end it wasn’t.  I did open up and was found lacking and completely rejected.  That was devastating enough but I was also told I was mean and manipulative and basically a worthless person.  And I believed it.

    Normally I would have completely shut down.  I would have quit Twitter and withdrawn.  And I did cut back on my tweeting.  But I’ve been helped tremendously by a few friends on Twitter. Truly nice and kind people who gave me a lifeline.  I will be eternally grateful to them for that.

    I value myself so little that I always feel I have to give nice gifts to keep a friend.  And I did that with this person.  She never asked for anything and it was all freely given.

    Although I was deeply hurt, I’ve tried not to be bitter about all of this.  I’ve wished her the best and still try to send positive thoughts her way.  The idea that she thinks so poorly of me burns away at me but I finally realized that I will never be able to change her mind. 

    In a sense, having to go through the hurt feelings made me question whether I’m really as worthless as she and I both think.  Perhaps I’m not.

    People with low self esteem act out in different ways.  Mine is to be quiet and to stay out of the spotlight.  Tweeting about this puts me in the spotlight with my Twitter friends, but it is a step in trying to feel better about myself.

    I wish I had more confidence.  I always thought I was a nice person and maybe I’m not.  But I’ve often wondered if I was confident whether I’d still be a nice person.  I’d like to think so.  Strange how I’ve worried about that.

    One of my young friends told me it is important to share so that others who might be experiencing the same thing know that they aren’t alone.  So to anyone else who feels like I do, you are not alone.  And I’ll always be willing to talk with you because that can only help all of us.

Today is my 20th anniversary at the law firm.  Unlike some jobs there is no recognition of this day.  No one probably even knows.  Before this I spent two years in a law office during law school, two years as an attorney at a different firm and three years working in the Federal court system.  Over half of my life has been spent in the law and I never aspired to be an attorney.

When I was in elementary school I wanted to be an oceanographer.  My father discouraged that saying there was no money in it.  Whether I had an interest in the field was of no matter.  I continue to have an interest in the ocean but I never pursued anything.  We have one of the world’s leading oceanographic institutes in San Diego and I used to go there frequently.  But I did as I was told.

In high school I wanted to be an architect.  But I really didn’t have the creativity for it.  I can think of lots of ideas but I don’t have the ability to put it down on paper. 

At the end of college I did an internship on the news assignment desk of a local television station.  My main tasks were to call various health and safety agencies to see if they had anything newsworthy to report, field calls from people who thought they had something newsworthy and to prepare the roll for the teleprompter.  But my favorite thing was to go out on stories to assist the photographers. I was on track for a camera job but got sidetracked by the 1981 air traffic controllers strike which got me stuck in Paris and I missed out on a job offer.

My dream jobs would have been working as a photographer for National Geographic or Sports Illustrated.  I have taken thousands of photos.  Some are actually decent.  I remember playing with my mother’s old Rolleiflex style camera.  But I really didn’t start taking photos until I got a Kodak Instamatic with flash cubes when I was 10.  A very simple point and shoot camera.  I bought my first 35mm camera when I was in high school.  I still use it, a Minolta SRT 202. 

I’m sure that no teacher or classmate of mine could ever imagine that I’m an attorney.  After the sixth grade I rarely spoke up in class.  Somehow I’ve managed to do an oral argument before the California Supreme Court and multiple arguments in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Hollywood has left many people with a certain image of attorneys and many are like that in real life.  But in real life the law is usually very tedious and boring.  When I speak with students interested in law school I always tell them that the law can be applied to virtually anything they have an interest in.  Not everyone has to be a litigator or go to court.  So there was a place for me, as shy and quiet as I am.

Our society has created certain milestones where we reflect on our life and think about the future.  When we turn 21, 30, 50, etc.  Or spend 20 years in a job.

I’ve traveled a lot and done a lot of things, but I really haven’t accomplished much. I don’t know if I ever thought I’d spend 20 years in the same job.  I’ve never really had a plan for my life.  The only thing I wanted to accomplish, sailing to Sweden by the time I was 30, didn’t happen.

I used to sail regularly when I was younger.  I still follow the Volvo Ocean Race when it happens every 3-4 years.  There are a lot of things I’m interested in but I guess when it comes right down to it I’m just lazy.

I’ve spent half my life in the legal field because it was easy.  I hope I can start working harder like some of my twitter friends.  I don’t know how they fit it all in.  I hope some of that dedication, focus, hard work and determination will rub off on me. 

I received a text from my 18 year old niece on Sunday.  She had just finished her first week at college where she has a soccer scholarship.  Classes hadn’t even started yet.  She was on campus early for soccer training. She said that going to the school was probably the biggest mistake she’s made.  She’d been crying every day and “it’s just not fun.”  She doesn’t want to play soccer. “It’s not fun” for her.  She wanted to come home because she doesn’t feel like she fits in.

She reiterated that “it’s just not fun….”  She’s been trying to get to know people but all the athletes want to do is go get drunk every night.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fun person.  And having fun is not a priority for me.  So the lack of fun argument does not go very far with me.

I don’t want to see her miserable, but I’m not sure if she can truly know she made a mistake after one week and before classes had even started.

She had a bad knee injury her junior year in high school and she was only cleared to play soccer again in January.  And I don’t think she did much rehab and she hasn’t played much since she got cleared so I suspect that she found training harder than she expected.  Although I tried to warn her that it would be very intense and she should spend her summer getting in shape.  She had gained a lot of weight after her surgery and she is still carrying most of it.

But it seems to me that our society is very obsessed with the idea of having fun.  The coach of my soccer team frequently asks me if I had fun playing and I invariably say no.  I can feel a sense of accomplishment playing.  But it isn’t fun. 

What is fun?  Enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure is one definition.  I suppose by that definition since I enjoy playing soccer it is fun.  But I’ve always seen fun as being something different from that.  Something more care free, without purpose other than simple pleasure.

I read for fun.  I learn things for fun.  But I don’t have much time for either these days. 

I recently met someone online and the whole point was to have fun chatting.  And I was unable to do that and it ended badly.

Far too often it seems that these days people look to others to provide fun for them.  I know now that you can have fun in the most dark and dire situations if you want to, if you have it within yourself to look at things a certain way.

I have the pleasure of knowing Melinda Marchiano, a beautiful young woman and the author of the award winning book Grace.  It is her story of dealing with Hodgkin lymphoma; the diagnosis at thirteen and subsequent treatment.  Although Melinda endured terrible pain and hardship and I have shed many tears reading about what she went through, it is an uplifting book.  I don’t think anyone would describe chemo and radiation as fun, but somehow Melinda and her mother managed to laugh and smile and made the best of a bad situation.  They were able to share enjoyment of new friends, amusement over Melinda’s balding head and pleasure over seemingly small accomplishments.

My wife also went through radiation and a form of chemo. And just a week ago she and her sister were laughing and joking about some of the things that happened during the treatment.

So if these two women can still have fun under barbaric circumstances then it really comes from within and there is truly no excuse for anyone to say something is not fun and use that as a reason for quitting.  

Someone I know said that my niece needs to put her big girl panties on and grow the fuck up.  I basically gave her the same advice albeit less colorfully.

My niece is planning on staying through the semester and will make a decision at that time.  I hope she gives the school a real chance.  I understand the fitting in part.  She is at a small private school in an affluent area and she is from a working class family.  She is also close to six feet tall and put on a lot of weight so she is not exactly like many of the young women you see on college campuses today.  She is not into fashion, make up, and many of the superficial things that people use to make snap judgments about others.

But those snap judgments work both ways.  They may think certain things about her just as she thinks certain things about them, without any of them getting to really know the other.

One nice thing about twitter is that I’ve been able to make friends with people that I’d otherwise never get a chance to meet in real life.  Not only because of physical distance, but simply due to age and station in life. 

Hopefully my niece will be able to meet some new friends.  Her brother is at the same school.  He begged his mother not to make him go away to school and once he got there he loved it.  His sister was looking forward to being at the school and hates it.  As she said, they are different people.

And to be fair, the school was not her first choice.  She was recruited by many schools for soccer.  But most dropped her after the knee injury and the others still wanted her but on her own dime.  And she can’t afford college without a scholarship.

So we’ll see if she creates on own fun at school, or whether she will expect others to make it fun for her.  We all have the capacity to make our own fun.

I have had the pleasure recently of making a new friend and in the process I have been revealing a bit about myself.  I am notoriously quiet in real life.  We have been sharing things about ourselves and it is nice to have someone to talk to.

In the process I came across perhaps the only photo of myself that I actually like.

I was four or five years old.  It was before we moved from a small town in the midwest to the then sleepy Navy town of San Diego. 

It was before I knew much about pain, but I was already getting an introduction.  A few years before that my mother left the gate open leading to the basement and I fell down the cement stairs about halfway down and then fell over the side to the concrete floor below. But since it was winter I was bundled up pretty good and didn’t break anything. 

However, by this age I was already familiar with an abusive father.  My earliest memory is of my father yelling at my mother.  I was crying and he asked what I was crying about and said he would give me something to cry about.  A belt was a favorite tool.  And a thick wooden paddle.  Oh, those were the days.

Despite the smile my eyes seem to have a touch of sadness.  I can see the nervousness in my hands.

But I still like the photo.  I think I look reasonably handsome.  What ever happened to that?

Absurdity is defined as the state or quality of being absurd.  One of the definitions of absurd is “the conception of the world, especially in Existentialist thought, as neither designed nor predictable but irrational and meaningless.”

What?

Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts.

Apparently I’m an existentialist this week because this is one fucked up, irrational, hostile world we are living in.  But there is also so much beauty too if we want to see it.

One friend killed his two teen sons and himself this week.  Seemingly the epitome of evil but I always knew him as a loving and devoted father. 

Another friend had her grandfather survive, against the odds, a horrible heart attack and then die a few days later after having surgery designed to prolong his life.  She has told me beautiful stories of a wonderful, caring, great, kind and compassionate man and I can see why she is the same kind of woman.  But one minute great hope and the next utter despair.

A young woman I’ve never met is in the hospital, alone, in pain, suffering, and her mother is too involved with work to be with her.  This girl has a much bigger heart than I will ever have.  Although we will never meet I will still care about her.

Another friend thinks the world has come to an end because a guy she likes has a girlfriend so instead of accepting that she tries to get him and his roommate out to a club and when only the roommate shows up she let his roommate sleep over after having just met him.  Although “nothing happened” besides letting him watch her change into her pajamas and sleep in her bed, she wonders if she can still seduce the guy she likes and enlists me to write flirty texts for her and I’m successful.

If that isn’t absurd I don’t know what is.

I’m not unique.  I cry for people I’ll never know. I love people I’ll never meet.  I sit in my tiny little existence wanting to do nice things and I’m too damned lazy to do anything about it.  Two remarkable teen girls have done more from their hospital beds than I will ever do.  What the fuck is wrong with me?

I’ve been rather unscathed in my life.  I’m a relatively capable person, I think.  Why aren’t I visiting the childrens’ cancer wards around me, for example?  Why am I busy writing my friend’s online dating profile and giving her dating advice and not doing something meaningful?  Apparently that might be the only thing I’m actually good at.

I have met a number of very kind and capable people on twitter.  I’ve had the privilege of meeting one person in real life and the pleasure of regularly speaking to one on the phone.  They are both incredible people.  If I was even a fraction of the capable, kind, compassionate, intelligent, lovely people they are I would be very lucky.  I don’t know if I ever will be but I certainly aspire to be better.

“Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure. “  I try my best not to make excuses.  They are the easy way out when we don’t want to face up to our own limitations.  I have plenty of limitations, plenty of flaws.  But they aren’t valid reasons for not doing what needs to be done.  

I’m a pretty good person but I could be a lot better.  How much effort does it take to do nice things?  To spare a kind word for someone who needs one.  To surprise people with a smile.  I try to be generous with my time but I have a lot more to give.

What do excuses have to do with my regrets?  I don’t know yet.  I just liked the quote. :)

Father’s Day is the annual reminder of my biggest failure and regret.   I have no children of my own.  I think I did well raising my wife’s son.  I became a dad when he was five.  I tried to give him the best life I could, took him to five soccer World Cups, put him through a good university, tried to teach him the important things in life.  But he isn’t mine.  I joke that I’m grooming one of my nieces or nephews to care for me in my old age except that it isn’t a joke.  Just because you raise a child it doesn’t mean that the child will be there for you when you get older.  I really don’t consider my father as having done anything to raise me, but he certainly influenced me and I haven’t spoken to him in 20 years.

I spent nine years coaching girls soccer and softball before I got married.  I thought I was preparing myself to have a daughter some day and it never happened.  In theory I know it could still happen.  But it is highly unlikely and I regret that very much.

So for all the father’s out there who are too tired to be involved in the lives of their children, too irresponsible to meet their obligations as parents, too self involved to ask about their child’s day.  There are no excuses for that.

Why are we drawn to some people and not others? How can we see some people daily and never really know them but feel an instant connection to someone we only know through words? What is it that causes us to care about someone we will never meet?

I used to think that even though I was alone, I wasn’t really lonely. Now I just realize I was kidding myself. There has always been an emptiness deep inside me and no one ever cared enough to help me fill it. I’ve spent my entire life learning to be alone. My mother says that when I was a baby she would just leave me in my play pen all day and I would never cry. I would entertain myself. As I got older I found solace in reading. I can still remember starting to read at age 3 or 4. I can see the words on the pages. Words that would become my escape from the desperate loniless I’ve always known. How many countless nights did I use words to escape an abusive father, a loveless youth? Many times I rang in the new year with a new book.

So I suppose it is no surprise that words have such a powerful affect on me now. I’ve read that some experts are worried that with new social media we are creating a generation that won’t know face to face relationships. We will always have those. But now people like me who are too shy in life have a chance to be heard. We are given a voice that would otherwise remain silent.

Maybe I really don’t have anything to say. I like to think that I am a thoughtful and caring person. I try to reach out when I read that someone is having a bad day. Or share in their joy with their successes.

Two weeks ago I left my comfort zone and attended @1ballerina’s dance performance. I just wanted to go and watch because Melinda is such a remarkable young woman. I love her attitude about life and I wish I could be more like her. I told her that although I’d be there I didn’t really feel comfortable meeting her. But Melinda and her mother insisted that I meet them and I did. It was incredible to see all the joy and passion Melinda put into her dancing. When the performance was over she apologized for being sweaty and gave me a big hug.

I am glad that I had the chance to meet Melinda and her family. It isn’t easy being a shy person. I have missed out on a lot of things in life. I am still trying to find my voice but it is starting to come out. I’m still amazed when I get a reply to one of my tweets. Every time.

I feel so fortunate to be meeting such beautiful people. I thank each of you for enriching my life and making me feel a part of a special group. I hope that each of you who takes the time to read this knows that I will always try my best to be helpful and if you ever need anything in real life I will be there.