2010 in brief review

At the beginning of 2010 I promised myself that I'd try to minimize potential regrets, and I think I achieved that goal. How? I jumped at as many things as I could: I attempted to help my friend with his website development business, while simultaneously taking a job at a gun store; I tried out lots of new guns/calibers; I joined a bike racing team; I competed in several pistol matches, some for disciplines in which I am proficient.

In short, I tried a lot of things, some of which worked and some of which didn't work, but now I know what they were.

I hope to do the same in 2011.

Delta

I sense that this year will be new. More than just resolutions, more than simply getting to 2011. I'm in pursuit--of what, I don't know, but I've decided regret will be minimized this year as much as possible.

Lone Wolf

I know myself, I know what's going on. But it doesn't make it any less uncomfortable: I've got a case of the "lonlies" again.

This weekend was great--drove down to Blacksburg, rode around the town on my bike, hung out with my friends, watched the Hokies beat the Hokies through sleepy eyes, ate too much...the works.

And now it's over. And I picked up on several subtle things this weekend--new developments in relationships, [good] sides of people I've never really seen before, and...how much I haven't changed. I'm still as immature as ever, incapable of really showing any emotion or empathy, incapable of really letting loose and having a good time. Why is that?

Fear. I fear the let-down afterward--I know that, in the morning, it's all over and I go back to being alone.

It doesn't help, either, that everything I watch, everything I listen to seems to emphasize the benefits of being with someone. Every love song, every break-up song, every movie and TV-show and book that I read--everything reminds me how alone I am. Dan's "good morning" kiss on Lindsey's sleepy lips, Utena's night with Akio, Bruce's wife's insistence on not tracking mud in the house...

And nothing left for Kent. No one to spend the night with, no one to kiss in the morning, no one to nag about tracking mud. Nothing but my guns and my bikes and my work.

I know that in a week I'll get over this, that something will happen soon that will snap me back to my happy-go-lucky self, but for now things are going to be depressing...

The Run-Around

Thursday: get to work early; get to the range early; didn't clean my guns, because I had to prep for an interview

Friday: get up early; get dressed nicely for the interview; go to work early and play off my dress-up as "I haven't done it in a while" and "I have a date with a gun show"; leave work early and make it to the interview just-in-time; do the interview (which I thought was OK, but I was unintelligible as always); go to the gun show for an hour; drive my brother back to his car; go to dinner; get home with the intention of prepping my bike (but watched Good Morning, Vietnam instead); prep my bike until 2AM

Saturday: get up at 6:30; get showered, dressed, fed, and out the door in record time; drive up to Poolesville (1-hour drive, any way you cut it); do the ride; drive home (and get stuck in accident-traffic); get out to the gun show to make my 3-day pass worth the discounted $13 I paid for it; get home with a new hard-sided equipment case and some tools; get to the soccer game two minutes before start with no time to prep or even stretch; done with the soccer game and head over to one of the players' house because it's right by my own house; get home and shower and get to sleep.

Sunday: get up early; get out to the trail to ride; get home and get dressed; get up to Potomac Falls for a friend's wedding; head back to the gun show 4 hours later and discover that the 'ears' and the gun safe I wanted are gone; go back home with more tools and another equipment hard-case; go to dinner at my parents' house; go back home to record a thing for my sister; take her back home; head home to sleep, finally.

Monday: get up early; get to work early, only to discover that I'd forgotten my key/card and have to drive all the way back to get it and be 1.5 hours later than I intended at work; stay at work while everyone else goes out to celebrate a new director's hiring (yay...pep-talk and food...and almost 1.5 hours of lost productivity and getting fat on restaurant food--no thanks); get off work nearly an hour later than I planned; get to the range with only 15 minutes to cram as much 'practice' in to make up for not getting any quality practice in over the weekend; shoot my worst score in a month (didn't even break 500); get home for dinner; clean the gun; clean the bikes for tomorrow's ride.

An active lifestyle is good and all, but sometimes there's too active, when there's hardly time for anything else (and hardly time to post this, even). I need to clean my car and change the oil (I prefer to do both by myself), but this weekend I'm going down to BBurg--there goes my bullseye and cycling training. Maybe I can find a range down there and bring my guns...and I'm definitely bringing my bike, though since it'll be more like buddy-riding than training riding, it won't really help me all that much in training for Tahoe...

If driving to and from work didn't take up so much damned time--nearly a whole hour on the drive in, and almost that on the drive out...I could have a bit more time to space things out. Right now everything's running on very tight tolerances--not much wiggle room in timing. And just one little thing (like forgetting my key/card) will blow the rest of the things out of the water...

"It's no problem, man. No problem at all." (A dream)

Those last words I said to him were out loud, in the real world, as I slipped back into consciousness.

He had collapsed and was laid up in the hospital and all of us, every one he'd met, had gathered to dance in his honor in a large, open area on campus. We had all done this once, and no one was afraid this time. We were happy, jovial. It's going to be okay. Then we got the word that he was home, and we all gathered up into an Army Deuce And A Half to make the trip out to his country home, navigating the fields and gardens.

We pulled up and we all jumped out and walked through his palatial country house, with flowers hanging in the veranda and old-style wooden doors. I pulled my shirt down over my sidearm, but we were greeted by his aunt and uncle, his uncle wearing his old flap-holster (oddly, on the same side that his arm was missing just above the elbow) from The War. We rounded a corner, and there he was, sitting near a corner of a rather large, open living room. I walked straight to him.

"How're you doing?" I asked as I hugged him. His hug in return felt practiced, but weak; he'd done this before.

"Ten years," he smiled as we broke apart.

"Plenty of time! Get everything done!" I exclaimed, more for myself than for him, gesturing and looking around at his house. I was trying to get used to the fact that the doctors said he only had ten years to live in a hurry. It's one thing to know you're going to die sometime; it's quite another to know how much time you've got left.

"I dunno," he said, starting to break down. "I still gotta pay this off," he indicated around to his country home, "I'm in negative money here, my brother is sick..." He was beginning to lose it, the tears plainly evident in his eyes. I looked back at him, making my decision on the spot.

"It's no problem, man. No problem at all." I meant those words, every last syllable. Even as I woke up from the dream, I realized that I was saying the words aloud to the cacophony of my two angrily-beeping alarm clocks. The words were true, and I understood them.

The "Me" in T-E-A-M

I think I've figured it out: all of my passions so far, all of my hobbies, have been solitary activities, ones where I set and meet the expectations, ones where I impress no one but myself, where failures only matter to me. I suppose that's the definition of a hobby, I guess, but they really haven't brought me happiness. Temporary, yes, until I get bored with it and move onto the next thing.

What I really seem to revel in is a team mentality, being a part of something. I feel this when I ride my bike with someone (like Team In Training or random people I meet on the trail), when I play soccer (by definition, a team sport), when I played in a band and when I auditioned for The Motive, or when I do any activity with someone else. Even if the actions and motions are inherently individual--I don't really need someone else there to 'help' me ride a bike, for instance--as long as there's someone else there doing it with me, then I'm happy.

This is perhaps the reason I don't play video games as much as I used to, the reason I haven't really gotten back into art or airplanes, the reason I was (am?) depressed after reading the "Thanks, but..." email from The Motive, the reason I scour the "Musicians Wanted" section of Craigslist: I am lacking in human company. Even if it's just to show off, I want someone there to show off to. The Internet doesn't count--put a couple of computers and The Cloud between me and my 'audience' and it takes all the fun out of it.

Now that I've identified it, what should I do about it? TNT happens every weekend, sure, and every now and then I do things with other people (i.e. going to the range, snowboarding, a buddy ride), but "every now and then" isn't often enough. I'd like for things to happen at least more than half the week, so that I can start to appreciate my "alone time" again.

Hmm, that's interesting--if I want to appreciate my individual hobbies, I need to increase my social contacts and situations. Curious.

It seems to go back to taking things for granted: back in school I was always surrounded by friends and activities, so I never really participated in any of them, and focused more on "being myself", since it felt like my social circle would be there forever, thus there'd be time enough to do things with them. Now that they're no longer there, I have plenty of time to be "me", and now I long for human contact again.

Having tasted both, it's time to strike a balance...

Leading A Life of Quiet Desperation

So. Here I am, living on my own, looking out for Numero Uno. I've taken steps to ensure that I'll be OK when I retire...but what about until then? What do I want to do with the next 40 years of my life?

I told my mom years ago that I wanted to do everything, and so far I've lived up to that. Back in elementary school I was voted "most artistic" of my class, and through high school and college I pursued my art skills to where I was actually "publishing" a web-comic once every week (for a short-lived six weeks). At the same time, I took music lessons, first learning piano and then moving on to the guitar, eventually forming an actual rock band and performing in college. At one point, I was a paper aerospace engineer. As to my active side, I started in baseball, moved onto soccer, learned how to ski and snowboard, took up ultimate frisbee, got into tennis, and finally jumping whole-heartedly into cycling. Lately I have picked up target practice. I am a computer programmer by day.

So who am I really? What is it that I really want to do? What is it that I really like? I watch TV, read the internet, and see all of these people who have specialized in one thing and been successful at it. I find myself thinking "I could do that", then I jump in and for a while (a few months, perhaps a year) I actually do that, but then something new catches my fancy and I'm off to another thing.

Maybe that's my real hobby, my real pastime--a meta-pastime, as it were: to jump into as many pastimes as possible, to take them as far as I can, plateau, and then jump into something else. Lately, it's been the stock market; I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and suddenly, in the span of about a week, I've become a gazillion times more financially literate than I was just a week ago, and odd phrases like "refinancing" and "what has your money done for you today?" take on new meaning.

But I know myself well enough now: in a year, maybe even a few months, I'll be back to searching for a new hobby, a new craving of knowledge to fill. Maybe it'll be skydiving or scuba diving or...I dunno. Who knows.

And I'm worried: will it be this way forever? Will I never find something, settle on it and say "this is it--I can do this for the rest of my days"?

I'm flailing about right now, casting around for things to do, while trying to reorganize a little bit. I've sold off a guitar and an amp and some other gear to simplify a bit, but then I've started pursuing music again. I fired up a childhood computer game (Tanarus) that used to consume, literally, half my waking hours to play (sorta like the MMORPGs, but this one is more action-oriented, driving tanks around). I've contemplated getting back into airplanes and art.

But what am I really looking for? What do I want to accomplish in the next 40 years? In the next 20? 10? 5? In the next year, where do I want to be?