Oh is that the rut? That’s been going on too, but I’ve started getting better at saying no. I’ve had relatives that I don’t see and they just randomly started calling me the past 2 weeks, I thought it was because of my birthday and they remembered. I was wrong, they asked for money around my birthday and asking me to come to the south and help them move. I’ve helped these folks out in the past but it’s been so long ago and they never paid me back or they just disappeared. When I’ve gave them advice they just seemed to do the opposite of what I told them and so I just don’t feel that bad about their situation. Only one I feel bad about and it’s my cousin that my parents raised. She single has a baby now and it breaks my heart on what’s happening but I tried to guide her and helped her financially but she just won’t do anything I’ve told her to do. I offered to pay for a bus or train ticket to help her and the baby move to Dallas and I haven’t heard anything since that conversation. I’m worried that if I go down there to move her, she’s going to put me in a situation where I’m guilt into moving them up here with me and I don’t want that to happen.
So to help me feel better, I am trying my best to make sure I raise my daughters to never get in those situations and hope I can teach them how to survive on their own in this world.
As for helping others, I’ve started being selective on who I help. I try not to let the bad experiences ruin my character as a helping person.
That's part of the rut Cody, but only partly. Dealing with side work and telling people no is becoming easier. I no longer feel as though I have to justify or explain why I can't get to it "right now". I make it clear that IF I have time, I'll gladly take on their job, but only IF I have time and right now our stuff is taking a priority so I simply don't have time for a bit. I have had a couple people say they are in no hurry so I've added them to my list with no guarantee of "when" I will get to them.
Funny, I remember being in awe of my two mentors early on when I began my career with how they had so much knowledge and were so good at what they did that people would come out of the woodwork to have them work on their stuff. It didn't matter what it was, people wanted them to wrench on their stuff so they knew it would be done correctly. I admired that so much and hoped that if I applied myself and held my standards to a certain level that someday I would be "that good", to have people want my opinion on things and actually to work on their vehicles. Thinking about it, I think I may be to that point now in my life and it matters less to me now than it did back then.
I'm flattered when people want me to work on their stuff, but I don't think it directs me or has nearly as much influence in the way I do things as it once did. I think I made my mind up so long ago on what I wanted my standard work to be that it has now become part of my DNA. My wife and I talked about this recently that I used to maintain our stuff so that it would get noticed and people would see my quality of work and want me to work on their stuff. The exact opposite of the old saying that "you can spot a good mechanic because his stuff is always having issues because he's in demand working on everyone else's vehicles", or something along those lines. However, I never liked that phrase. I became a mechanic because I wanted nice things and I could only afford the older stuff and I wanted my older vehicles to be kept in pristine condition, period. My philosophy was like my mentor's, keep your stuff in tip top condition and others will notice and want you to do the same for them, but these days I don't think I do things for anyone else but me. I perform tasks the way I do for nothing other than my own sanity. I mow my lawn a certain way, I maintain our assets a certain way and everything else only because I can't do things half-assed and live with them. I'm the one who has to look at the lines in the lawn going the wrong direction, or the wiring in one of our vehicles looking a mess, no one else. I want to be able to pull in the driveway, pop the hood of the Jeep or truck or the wife's car, or pull the coach into a campground and have everything just so for no one other than me. It's taken me a while to feel that way as I have always felt like I have had to justify me career choice or the way I do things and I no longer feel like any explanation is required. It's just the way I'm wired I guess and I am ok with that.
The bigger part of the "rut" is lately the wife and I have been feeling very irrelevant and have just decided to step away from a lot of the BS or noise that there has been in our lives for so long it has started to become "normal". I've come to terms with the fact that no one wants our advice nor cares to hear it, although that's been hard for the wife to accept here lately. I've told the wife that you are not going to prevent someone from making poor choices, they aren't listening so just stand back and let them go about their lives because they will despise you more for trying to help, they already know everything and you are not going to tell them anything useful, just let them be the victim that they want to be. You can show them how we've gotten through life, give them specific examples even, but they don't care nor will they think it can apply to their life because their life is "hard" and we know nothing about that, so it just isn't worth trying to intervene. I think part of it is that whenever the wife and I have dealt with something in our life, and there's been plenty, we haven't made it public to our entire families, we've just handled it silently and dealt with the issue that is right in front of us. That is not the norm with my family and certainly not the wife's family. EVERYTHING is out in the open and shared amongst the families and then the sympathy starts and it plays into the victim mentality, which I have to exclude myself from or I'll say something wrong. I already know I'm not very well liked and I've lived with being ignored most of my life (unless people need something) so to me it's no big deal, but the wife is struggling with family issues right now. There have been some things transpire over the past several months that have confirmed her feelings and so we've stepped back from a lot of interactions and groups that we've been engaged with. Started with the wife's family reunion a couple months back, then an annual trip we go on where people invited themselves and began to dictate our schedule (on OUR vacation) until about day 3 when I kind of went off we just did our own thing the remainder of the week. Doubtful we'll ever see those people again, but I got my point across and we enjoyed the remainder of our vacation, whereas in the past we would bend and turn ourselves inside out to please the others and then feel like we wasted our vacation. Probably why we don't host rallies or gatherings any longer.
Then lastly my family reunion this past weekend where we just sat and observed rather than engaged and it was kind of a surreal feeling.
We've taken a step away from many things over the past several weeks to really try and clear our heads and focus on the path ahead of us and what we want that to look like as our lives come to a close. It has been quite eye opening when one steps back and just observes rather than participates in things. When you focus on watching people rather than engaging in conversations you really see that people's actions often do not align with their words. People claim to be one way and will do everything in their power to "tell" you what they want you to hear, however, when sitting back and observing you see that most of their words are empty and the actions are what really demonstrate a person's core values, morales and character. Actions speak louder than words.
I have usually been the one at my family reunions that talked a lot about our dad and how impactful he was even though he's been gone 25 years now. His actions spoke louder than words and I learned so much from that man, but it has been obvious over the past several years that my dad (our dad) had a larger impact on me than I think he did any of my siblings. Not sure if that's just because I overanalyze everything and think things to death until I can't think any more or what, but I look at my dad and my wife's grandfather and how much influence they really had to my character and therefore my life. I have tried to model various aspects of my life in their image as well as the couple of mentors whom I have been fortunate to have in my life and it doesn't seem like people are sitting back and really even acknowledging anyone before them in their own lives. They are so self-centered and think they are the only ones on the face of the earth and everything they did was solely their doing. Granted the wife and I feel self-made in terms of where we are at in life because of our humble and poor beginnings, but those behaviors and traits that allowed us to be successful came from somewhere and I believe in giving credit where credit is due. The Lord has blessed me and my family with so much that it is immeasurable, up to and including placing those strong male figures whom I have looked up to and admired in my life so I could learn from how they conducted themselves and studied them to the point of figuring out which aspects I could adopt into my life. That was no accident they were in my life at the time I needed guidance and direction.
It hit my wife and I a few weeks ago how irrelevant we really are, that generally speaking we are one or maybe two generations from being totally erased from this earth, that was a sobering reality. My dad who was such a great man and so impactful to my life, but he passed when I was 34-years old and my son only knew his grandfather for 10-years is all. My dad died when I was my son's age now so my grandson never knew him and my grandchildren's children will more than likely never know me. A harder lesson came from me realizing that I am only a small chapter in my son's life, but he has been the entire book in my life, and it will more than likely be the same with his children. Kids are our entire reason for existing for so many years and then one day, in the blink of an eye it seems, that they have their own families and their kids are the entire book in their lives. That is the way it is supposed to be, but sometimes hard to accept. I look at the father that my son is to his son and daughter and I am so proud because I feel like maybe, just maybe, I had something to do with that. But at the same time I no longer have that relationship with my son that he has with his children because they are his entire book and I am merely a small chapter. That's just the way life works and is by design, but hard to wrap one's head around sometimes.
Our children's main focus should be on their children, that is the way I think life was designed. However, when I see the games my FIL plays with my wife and her siblings and how counterproductive that is to a having a healthy relationship, I get angry because of the missed opportunities that will never come around again. I would give anything to have one more conversation with my dad. To really LISTEN to what he has to say and be able to introduce him to his great-grandchildren, his great-DIL and show how him how awesome his grandson has turned out, but I will never get that opportunity. I remember sitting and listening to my wife's grandfather telling stories about his time in WWII and I was enthralled by the words and the weight they carried. He only started speaking about that chapter of his life in his later years, but I think my wife and I were the only ones listening as none of her siblings know anything about these stories when we bring them up, they were too busy telling everyone about what they were doing. My wife's siblings have that opportunity right now to have real conversations about real things and are ******* it away. They are so emotionally immature in their pining for their dad's attention, which he gives conditionally and only when he feels like it, that no one is really listening to one another nor engaging in any kind of meaningful conversations or dialogue. It is just noise whenever more than one of them is in the room because they talk over one another one-upping each other trying to sound "cool" all while trying to gain a foothold for their dad's attention span. Get the whole family together and my head feels like it's going to explode because of the immaturity being displayed. I see what it does to their behaviors and in many instances, the poor life decisions they have made and continue to make, and we want nothing to do with it. We try to visit him when we know no one else is there just so the wife can check on him and see if we can do anything, but if someone else walks in, it's game time and we leave.
In some ways the last several months have been good for the wife and I because it has revealed a lot about our life, what we want for our future, what we want for our grandchildren and how we want to be remembered. It has also allowed the wife and I to be more vulnerable with each other than I think we've ever been in terms of emotion and directness. Taking a step back from the noise of life has been good for us.
Sorry for the long diatribe. Long answer to a short question I guess.
