Out My Window

Having a son of my own, I've come to recognize how much I appreciate children. They make me feel younger than my 32 years, in the sense that I have more energy and humor when I'm around young kids. As you can probably imagine, working at a university doesn't afford me many opportunities to see really young children around. There are, of course, various students who have children and people who work here sometimes bring their children in, but, by and large, kids aren't a fixture around these parts.

So it surprised me a little to look out my office window and see a young boy playing. He was probably about 7 years old, and he was with what looked to be an older brother. I didn't see any adults around, so he was probably coming to the campus to meet his parents. What really struck me when I saw him however, was that he was mooning me (actually, I don't know that the gesture was intended for me, but he was mooning in my general direction). Very quickly, I had to make a decision about whether or not to be mad. I could have rushed out and given the boy a "talking to," but I decided I wasn't ready to be that mature. He seemed to be doing it for his brother's amusement. I decided not to be mad. Yelling at the kid for doing something like that seems pretty extreme...I don't want to be that guy. That's a slippery slope, and before long, you find yourself yelling at kids in the neighborhood for walking on your grass, and that just leads to your house being egged on Halloween.

I'm just not ready to become that bitter.

A Girl On The Bus

For the majority of the time I have spent in the UK, I have ridden the bus to work. This is a 35 minute commute, during which time I normally read a news magazine or academic papers. During the time that I've been taking the bus, I've gotten to "know" some of my fellow passengers. I don't have conversations with them or anything like that, rather, I mean that I've come to recognize the regular riders of the bus.

There is one girl who gets on to the bus about halfway through my ride. As I exit the bus before she does, I'm not quite sure where she is going. She does, however, usually have art materials, which makes me believe that she is in some sort of higher education program. This doesn't narrow it down much, except I can say that she doesn't attend the university at which I work.

This girl is probably about 20, maybe a bit younger, and has a distinctive goth/metal look to her. She is well groomed, but she tends to wear the same clothes each day (or atleast extremely similar versions of clothes). These clothes consist of black boots, dark baggy cargo pants, some version of a band's t-shirt, and a black leather jacket. Of course, being slightly goth/metal, she accessorizes with metal studded belts, chains, fingerless gloves, very little makeup and other items. She has long black hair that is always clean and combed, but never made up. She's not beautiful, but she's cute in an odd way. She doesn't smile often and usually listens to her iPod so that anyone sitting near her can hear the pounding drums and guitar music that she listens to. In all the time that I've shared a bus with her, I don't think I've ever heard her voice.

The point of describing this girl is to explain the kind of unknowing impression that I had created without really knowing this girl. She seemed friendly, and if the need or opportunity had arisen, I would have talked with her quite easily (I think). I don't think that I'd given any thought to really determine what my impression of her was before today, but with some hindsight, I would think that she was the traditional cutout goth art student...maybe a little aloof, detached, disinterested and distrusting, but friendly if she knew you.

This morning she got on to the bus with a boy about the same age...perhaps they're a couple...perhaps they're friends...perhaps they're related...I'm not quite sure, but it was obvious that they knew each other and were friendly. They talked freely during the time we shared the bus, and she acted positively giddily in her interactions with him. It was a bit of a shock to hear her describing movies and music with glee and happiness, especially since the movies were the type of b-grade slasher films (for example, the remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) that one would assume she would be interested in.

There are no big lessons to be learned here, just an interesting anecdote that made me think about how I perceive and interact with the people who surround me on a daily basis.

2005

I had a wonderful holiday break, and I hope you did as well. Didn't really do much other than sleep in, when I could, lay around and play with my son. We did manage a trip to York, but that was a daytrip, so for the most part, my holiday was spent in housepants and a t-shirt.

I was asked if I have any resolutions for the new year, and here is my succinct response: No.

Here's a longer response: I don't really believe that any one day is better than any other day to set arbitrary goals for myself. I don't want to set myself up for feeling bad about doing or not doing something because I had told myself that it was going to be different. I'm pretty proud of my accomplishments so far, but I'm also well aware that there are things about myself that need to be improved. The fact that December 31st turned into January 1st shouldn't be the catalyst for this thought any more than your birthday should make you feel older than you did the day before.

I've also been pretty good about making improvements to myself when I was ready to make those improvements. For example, I bit my fingernails for as long as I could remember. Actually, this was more than the ordinary fingernail biting, I tended to chew on the ends of my fingers all the way up to the first knuckle. This was the kind of thing that was embarrassing firstly because it was unsightly...my hands looked beat down, and secondly, and more importantly, because it was a constant reminder that I couldn't control my own impulses. It was as obvious as the back of my hand (quite literally) that I couldn't stop. Possibly the worst thing about this was that I never really knew how to stop...I didn't have a starting point. Was it better to try to go cold turkey or slowly wean myself? I didn't know, and I used this as an excuse to not improve the situation.

I guess I could have done a lot of introspection and navel gazing to figure out what the nail biting was a symptom of (after all, I'm a pretty firm believer that most compulsive behaviors are manifestations of other problems), but I never really thought about it. It was comfortable, kinda like a security blanket. It didn't matter that I was embarrassed by my hands, I didn't have a reason to stop. Of course, this line of thinking always lead me to a pretty obvious conclusion...namely, as soon as I have a reason to stop, I would...after all, I was in control, right (at least, I kept telling myself that, I can delude myself as well as anyone can). After a while, it dawned on my that this line of thinking was always going to put the doing of the thing off in favor of the contemplation of the thing.

That realization set me free, because, I was able to realize that stopping my bad habits was my own responsibility. I had to do it for myself, which meant that I had to stop feeling comfortable about it. As soon as I was able to do this, the change was amazingly easy to make. I just had to recognize the impact that my actions had on my well-being (mentally and physically). I can sit here, comfortable in front of my computer, and say that I did it because I didn't want my son to see that behaviour and think it was okay, or I could say that I was sick of my wife pointing out my shortcoming to me in her misguided but well-meaning efforts to get me to stop. I could come up with any number of other reasons that I stopped, confident in the knowledge that none of them are real...although they're all very nice ancillary benefits. But when it comes right down to it, I stopped because I was ready to stop. The fact that I was successful proves (to me, at least) that I'm actually in control of my life...I'm capable of making decisions to better myself.

That being said, I'm very confident that I can do anything that I feel necessary to improve myself in the future...if that means running a marathon, then so be it. I don't need December 31st to give me the impetus to make that decision...