Childhood Dreams

I am almost 40 years old. Time for a midlife crisis.

Actually I have been having a midlife crisis for the last 10 years or more. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be going away.

I made plans for what I wanted to do in my life when I was 18. I even set dates for certain accomplishments. One for when I was 25. One for when I was 30. And One for when I was 32. These were not necessarily good plans, mind you. I was 18 and not a very good thinker. But I had a great passion for my goals.

I stayed "on track" until I was 21. At 21 I hit a road block. I could have gone around it. I could have taken a different route so to speak.

Instead I just stopped. To my shame, I just stopped. Looking back, it is obvious that the road block didn't have to stop me. It wasn't even very big. But I never even tried to continue on.

Well, thats not quite true. I did make one abortive attempt to go on years later. But by then it was no longer the moral choice.

I didn't get into the specifics because this is all just background info for what I wanted to write about.

I don't understand why I can't let this stuff go. It is all old news. All childhood dreams. I have been on a different path for many years now and all I can think about is how I screwed up my life because I didn't stay on that first path. And it isn't even a BETTER path. Not really. Not when I really think about it fairly. It's all just a grass is greener thing.

But it doesn't matter how much I think about it, and try to accept it. It builds up inside of me until I can't take it anymore. I just lose it emotionally. I know I have the rest of my life ahead of me. But I don't know how to reconcile the past. Or let it go.

Welcome Starhawk

A grand welcome to the second visitor to my blog. I enjoy your comments on Fiery's blog and thought you might enjoy my meager attempt at a blog.

I am keeping this invite only until my confidence and ability to maintain a blog increases. The long term goal is to eventually turn this blog out to everyone.

I value your opinions and input so feel free to comment on everything and anything. Or just read. Its up to you.

Thanks for climbing aboard.

Crazyman

Hello Fiery!

Welcome to my blog!

I know it's you reading this because right now it is invite only, and I have only invited you! :-)

A little intro:

I am currently posting whatever I have done when I start a post and then continuing to edit later. So the posts are not really done when they first appear. I will not continue this practice when I open up the blog to everyone later, it is just something I wanted to do now.

And I wanted you to be able to read them, even if they are not done!

Happy Reading!

Crazyman

The Doctor

A couple of Fridays ago I had to leave work suddenly in an ambulance to go to the emergency room. Everyone thought I was having a heart attack. I was just confused at the time.

Don't get me wrong; I didn't know I wasn't having a heart attack. I just knew something was wrong but didn't know what.

I was sitting in my office doing my work as always. The night was going well actually.

Then suddenly I was losing concentration. Every thing seemed more dreamlike and unreal. I could feel my heart pounding away and something about it seemed off but I wasn't sure what.

So I called in a co-worker. Let's just call him Dan. "Dan, could you come in here for a moment?"

He came into my office and looked at me questioningly. "Dan, you were an EMT right? Could you check my pulse? Is it going as fast as it seems it is or am I imagining it?"

"Sure." Dan tips his head down and checks my wrist for a while. Then he straightens up and grabs the phone and immediately dials 911.

I start to protest but Dan just reassures me that everything will be ok and to just sit back and relax. Don't move too much. I didn't want to go to the hospital but I listen and sit back.

The Fire Dept. shows up first. Then the ambulance. They hook up the sensors to my chest. Then seem to really panic but try not to show it. They roll me out to the ambulance and take me to the ER, setting up IVs and spraying under my tongue with nitro and giving me chew able aspirin on the way. The aspirin was a tasty orange i remember. The nitro tasted bad.

They got me to the ER and rolled me in.

I don't remember much about the next couple hours. It was basically a blur. I just remember shorts bits.

Like everyone around the bed looking at the heart readout and being confused. Then I remember them telling me they were going to inject me with something that will briefly slow down my heart.

Oh and you might feel something. Feel something. Might. Well, I sure did feel something. I felt a huge pain in my chest and I thought I was going to die for the first time that night! I felt like they must have screwed up cause this was it! The end. Then in another second or so, it passed and I felt better. I tugged weakly on a nearby nurses sleeve. "Can we please not do that again?" I asked weakly. She assured me that they wouldn't but that it was a good good thing they did. And that they had learned a lot. I felt better then. I don't know who she was, but I thank her for the moment of reassurance.

I was then told that I was not having a heart attack. (Later I was told again that according to their tests I had never had a heart attack. I have no idea how they can tell that but it was nice to hear!) I had an... elevated heart rate. Which sounded like no big deal until they told me I had a resting heart rate of 168. Holy crap! My heart monitor would go ballistic if I got even close to that when I exercise!

They were able to bring the heart rate down with drugs. Then they slowly (it took about 2 hours) eased off the drugs and my heart stayed normal. And is still normal to this day.

So gold stars all around to the EMT's and the entire ER staff that night. Thank you very much!

The part that really unsettles me is that I don't think I would have gone in at all on my own. I really don't like hospitals. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't gone in. Maybe it would have self-corrected after a while. ... Maybe not.

So what it really boils down to is, I am pretty sure Dan saved my life that night. He didn't ask, he just picked up the phone and did the right thing.

Thank you Dan.

Dilbert

Or maybe I should have named this post my obvious post.

I am a huge Dilbert fan. His comics are consistently funny and amazingly accurate about life at work. The pointy headed boss is my favorite.

Where I work the passwords on all the computers are the same. Thats right, the same. Once you know the password you can get on any computer including the owners. So why have a password? Work here long enough and you learn not to ask why.

So then Scott Adams has this great cartoon. He just nails it! All I had to do is change the "123" on the copy taped to my monitor to the password at work and viola!

Our local paper (even though it is a Pulitzer prize winning paper) isn't worth the paper its printed on. It is delivered to where I work every morning though. So I just pick it up, read the new Dilbert, and go on with my day smiling.

Thank you Scott Adams! Keep up the good work!

1408

It all started at work.

Co-workers coming up to me and saying "Have you seen 1408?" "No." "But its awesome. You have to see it!" "I'm not interested." "But its so good! Here I will loan you my dvd!" "I don't want to watch it!" and on and on.

Finally, I admit it, I caved. "All right, I'll watch the damn movie." "Oh it's going to be great. You'll love it." "Right. Now let me get back to work."

I don't like to give into peer pressure as a rule. And yet here I am, first post on my blog, caving to peer pressure.

But frankly, I started to get curious. What the hell was it about this movie that got them so worked up! Plus I tend to like John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. So fine, I will go home and watch this thing.

So, thats what I did.

Now before I give my review, so to speak, let me give you a little context. I don't believe in the supernatural. At all. No gods, devils, angels, demons, ghosts, spirits, gremlins, no life after death, etc, etc, etc. There is the natural world. That's it. Also, I don't really like horror movies in general.

So no, this isn't really a good choice of movie for me. But the thing of it is, my coworkers know this about me. Which made me curious as to what it is about this movie that made them think I would like it? Or maybe they just want to hear about my reaction to it. I will find out tomorrow.

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

Actually, I don't think there really will be any spoilers but that seems to be what you do in reviews so I thought I would throw that in here. On the other hand, if you don't want to read a negative review about a movie you are looking forward to see, you might want to stop now and move on.

What did I think of it? Not much on any level. Oh the startling type of surprises worked on me. They always do. Having a guy jump out suddenly and start swinging will get me every time. But so what? That is startling, not scary.

The best thing I can say is that John Cusack did a great job with what he was given to do. He did a great job acting. I mean the kind of acting that makes you forget you are watching an actor. He truly is very good.

He just wasn't in a very good script. I didn't find the plot very thrilling. I found the movie predictable. Not moment to moment, but in broad strokes there were no surprises. I haven't watched horror movies for years and yet this one had every trick I can remember predictably thrown in.

But more to the point, I don't think that supernatural thrillers can work very well unless the person watching has at least a smidgen of belief in the supernatural. If you don't, it makes it like watching a movie about a math teacher that is teaching students with all his heart and soul but the math is all 2+2=5 and 6x7=8. You just don't buy it. Every time the movie starts to pull you in, the ridiculousness of the math breaks you out of it and you just sit there thinking "what the hell?"

Now I have enjoyed all sorts of fantasy movies and shows like Heroes and fantastical sci-fi. I even like playing wizards in D&D. But there is a difference. In all those others, I could except the premise of the situation and just go with it, because there were heroes and good guys to root for. Plus the writing was better. (yes, even in the D&D games, the writing was better)

In this movie, while you are obviously supposed to pull for the Cusack character, I just couldn't get into it. They put in a back story that the room could use against him to continue to show how evil this room was. But it seems like thats all it was for. Put there so the room could use it.

I thought Cusack did the character about as good as anyone could. I just couldn't relate to the character as written. An actor can only rise so far above the script.

They set up the main character this way. He never before has seen evidence for the supernatural. You know he is going to in this room, thats the point of the movie. So all that is left is waiting to see what actually happens. And because they wanted to do so much in the room, they can only build it up so much.

They did spend a fair amount of time before he enters the room. But they state boldly that no one lasts longer than an hour in there. So that leaves out any real suspense in the room. Shit has to go down and soon once he gets inside. So instead of suspense horror, it is action horror I guess. Based on this movie, action horror doesn't work for me.

I find this a challenge to write about because it would be easy to just say it is ridiculous nonsense and leave it at that. Plus, left to my own I would never have seen it to begin with. But I did want to try to make a post out of the experience. So I thought I should say more than: "1408 It's about supernatural shit. Avoid it. "