McGuffin Online

The Great American Novel

That dream is still there and it is alive, but maybe instead of a novel, what I have really needed to do was to write a self help book of some sort. I have read a tremendous amount of them over the last 1.5 years since Jocelyn basically walked out on me. I find a lot of them to be rather enriching, but they are not telling me anything “new” all of these books basically say things that we are told from our parents, or are social norms just exemplified in a more direct manner.

Who would read a book from a college dropout whose life is not in order as it is? I absolutely LOVE Carnegie’s How to win friends and Influence people, I think that book really got me going on this betterment process. Looking at myself today versus 1.5 years ago, I think I have turned dark into light, water into wine, lead into gold. The person sitting here typing away at this is a much better person than the person that had his wife leave him.
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Tags: divorce, failure, marriage, novel, relationships, self help, writing

Things are not as they seem

I wake up every day happy, I go to bed every night anxious. There are so many things going on in my life that I cannot keep things pinned down like I use to. Life use to be very simple, you got up, you focused on things you needed to do and you continued forward, you fell asleep at a designated time, you basically had a schedule. Then something out of the blue you did not expect, a good thing mind you, comes in and tosses your schedule around, it makes you wonder if you should just stop and go back tot he misery that was, or if you should grind on into the darkness towards the bright light that you see. Knowing full well between you and that light you are wandering towards are LEGO pieces on the floor and you are not wearing any socks.
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Tags: confusion, depression, head reeling, life, native american, not all there, otter, spirit animal

Protected: I find myself spinning in happiness and confusion

working in PHP

Ok, i suffered through 60 some odd lessons of crap that I already understand and am at the php start, I know a good deal of this stuff, but there is a bunch of crap that I have yet to actually did into. Hopefully by the end of this week I will be able to do some things that I have wanted to do for a long time and actually have a good understanding of it. Gotta get out of this front end development world and start testing the waters of the backend world.

Things I want my daughter to know before it is too late

My daughter started 6th grade (middle school in this day and age) this last week. Middle school for me really built (or tore down) my confidence going into High School. Here are some things I hope she takes into consideration as she moves forward in her life. (more…)

Things that need to be fixed

Everyone can agree the tax code needs to be fixed, our health care system needs to get fixed, a good amount of laws need to get fixed, but one thing that needs to be addressed is the amount of ass banging a man takes in a divorce.

Look, I am not perfect, there are reasons that a divorce happens, and every divorce is different as to why things happen and the like. It is part of life, but this is a grey area debate that needs to be addressed. It may not even need to have a judge and divorce attorney’s running around making blood money off of the wreckage of two (possibly more) people’s lives.

A simple arbiter should be able to sit down and hear how the marriage went, then everything that occurred after the decision to divorce was made and all information up to the day the couple go in for a divorce. Ones actions should dictate the outcome. If you pulled some seriously fucked up shit, then you should not get certain benefits. Should one have to pay alimony to support a person that was morally bankrupt during the marriage? Or at the very least the alimony should at the very least be reduced to an amount that reflects that the person getting it did in fact do something that changed the nature of the marriage leading one down the road to divorce.
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Tags: alimony, arbiter, child support, common sense, divorce, morality

Astounded

I know that I am jaded by going through a divorce, but people need to start really paying attention to their relationships. I made mistakes, I will more than happily point them out to people in a discussion. I am not perfect. Hell, if I were, I would not be getting a divorce.

I was not honest in my relationship, neither was my spouse, it was years and years of both of us hurting each other. No matter how I want to justify certain actions and say that some actions weigh less than others, the fact remains that actions hurt people, no matter how small or large they are. One may think a little white lie carries less weight than someone cheating on you (not saying this is what occurred, it is an analogy), the fact is that the little white lie may not carry a whole lot of weight for the person telling it, it carries much more weight with the person it is being told to.

In the future, my relationships will have to be more truthful, they need to be. That means not pulling shady crap, that means just doing what is right and honestly, I hope to find a relationship like that one day.

50 more weeks

LA Marathon 2013 I believe is going to fall on March 17 of 2013, which is one day before I turn 41. So in affect, I will be running two marathons while I am 40.

This time around I know how to train for this thing and have the time to really do this right. The last time I just went to go for as much distance as I could without worrying about time nor how I got to my goal. This time around I am going strictly for time. I am basically starting from scratch again. Which means I am going to have to start building up the endurance in the right manner. This means starting off with time exercises. Starting with half hour training sessions. Walking 5 minutes, running 3 minutes, walking 2 minutes, running 3 minutes until the 30 minutes are up. This will in theory mean that I will have run 15 minutes over 30 minutes. Once I feel comfortable with that regiment I will increase it from 3 minutes to 5 minutes with 2 minute walks until finally I can go for 25 minutes. Then I go to 1 hour and then 2 hours. I feel by month 4 I will be in pretty good shape and honestly, if I can find a half marathon at that juncture, maybe it will be a good goal to shoot for.

While I am doing this for a half hour at a time, the rest of my time can be spent on doing work on core stuff, specifically mid back/abdomen which will help me sustain longer runs without that incessant back pain which has basically caused me to fail in longer run/walks.

I have to also look at my diet again. I think I am pretty damned hooked on the yogurt and bananas, but it is the other things that I eat that I really need to start identifying as being good, or bad. No cheat days, get into a pattern of sleep and that will allow me to best press forward. This next marathon is going ot be a snap, it is just a matter of getting back into the mindset of it.

LA Marathon

So, I am 40 years old now.

I decided back in December that I would train for the LA Marathon and it finally came to fruition yesterday. 4.5 months of going to the gym, walking long distances, doing short bursts of running, eating properly, making sure that I was able to do it.

The weather was supposed to be rainy and cold, out of any day for the Marathon to run I would not have expected cold and rain in Los Angeles. I drove up Saturday in possibly the worst rain I had seen in Southern California in months. I fully expected Sunday to be as bad as it was on Saturday, and if that would have been the case, I would have not ran.

The morning of the race was cold, painfully cold. I fully expected it rain. I arrived at Dodger stadium at around 430am, probably about an hour before I should have. I found some warmth in Dodger stadium along with other runners and just waited for time to pass. The energy level was high and really amazing.

Race time came and we all got situated and walked forward towards the start and slowly but surely took off down the track. The only thing i remember is that they announced that Frank McCourt was part of the celebration and everyone booed him, which I found kind of funny.

The next 14 miles were a blur. Though I do recall stopping off at my hotel to make sure that I had checked out properly and the lovely lady behind the counter I think was a little shocked that a runner had stopped off to ask a question like that. I got back into the race and got to the half way mark before I was spent. I walked the rest.

The walk down San Vicente to Ocean was possibly the worst, wind gusts of upwards of 40 MPH were hitting us all and it was really difficult to keep going. When I crossed that finish line and got the medal. I was ecstatic, i had finished my goal and that was what I was there for. Next year, sub 5 hours!

Tags: LA Marathon

What does 2012 hold?

#1 LA Marathon – This is by far my most ambitious undertaking, possibly in my entire life and I have a few obstacles in front of me that I will need help in resolving to train for this thing. I am behind, but I believe that I am starting to break the walls down, it is just a matter of time.

#2 Impending divorce – The papers need to be worked on and signed and then the 6 month process of sitting around to get it approved will happen. But by 2012, I should be a legally single man and I hope to dear god that my current wife and I are on good terms when it does. It would not help Molly in the short, nor long term, if we are at each others throats.

#3 Professionally grasping the reigns of other marketing channels and making sure that I understand them to round out my entire marketing knowledge. I think my biggest issue is broadcast, the online world I understand, but it is the offline piece that I have to get a better grasp on. So there will be times that I need to pop my head in there and muck around a little bit.

#4 Financially – I have been able to get things to a point where they are manageable, by the fist quarter of the year I should in theory have it at a point where everything is situated and taken care of. So I am excited about that. This of course will change with the impending divorce as I have no clue what is going to be dictated to me in regards to the divorce. But with everything, I will have to adapt to things and work through them.

#5 40 – yes, the big 4-0 is on the horizon and I am looking forward to it.