So...today I screwed up another ukulele that I've been building...I have never made one start to finish without screwing something up badly...Other builders are very kind and say great things like 'really good craftsmen fix their screw ups so no one can tell the difference' inferring that I am a good craftsman because I can do this...It's bullshit! Really good craftsmen learn their craft and after doing it for 10 years, yes 10 years, are able to practice their craft with relatively few screw ups let alone every time they build something...the truth is that I am a really good leather craftsman. I did that discipline for 25 years and when I stopped doing it I was a master leather craftsman. At this point I am sure without a doubt that I will never be a good luthier.
I like doing lutherie. I find all the details of it a lot of fun. I had intended to make a living off of it when I started doing it semi full time a few years ago but after 2 years without selling any instruments I decided that there was just no way for me to make it work. So I decided that I would just do it for fun after I finished up all the half built ukes lying around the shop. I'm still in the process of doing that. I am gonna fix the latest screw up and finish that uke and the other one on my bench at the moment...after that I'm not sure what I'll do...maybe some leather work.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
It would be great if I could draw this afternoon or do something artistic but tha's not a possibility so I'm gonna blog a little. I tried to get Google Sketchup to load onto this computer but it wouldn't do it...it's just as well because everytime I try to use Sketchup I end up pulling out what little hair I have left. My regular computer is going to the shop today...it's gotten the virus that 2 of our other computers have already gotten...this is the only one that has resisted so far. But that one is the one that already has Sketchup downloaded onto it.
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o o
C ll D This is not Sketchup!
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U
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o o
C ll D This is not Sketchup!
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U
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Apparently I was wrong...this blog is still viewable by all...I'm not sure how to stop that or if I want to so I'm leaving it as it is...the only people who ever read it are Brianna who of course gave me shit about it and Dawn who didn't like something I wrote about...oh well...it's my blog...
Tommorow is my anniversary in AA...23 years...I'll be sharing and of course I will cry...what is it with that anyway? Any glimpse of kindness that I notice makes me cry...not big wrenching sobs (as if) just tearing up and sounding funny...I will do that tommorow evening there is no doubt and I won't like it...People tend to laugh when I share...sometimes I'm actually funny and sometimes I think they don't know what to do so they laugh...
My life is really great except for the undercurrent of anger that lives with me...it's a force and it has a lot of influence on me...a lot of it is attached to a specific event in my life and some of it comes from childhood like most emotional maladys do...I have fought it,prayed about it, gone to therapy to "work" on it...I've chastised, vilified and imaginized about it but it won't go away...a friend suggested that I try to just accept it...not to think it wrong but to realize that it is part of me...that's good advise and I'm working on it...I am...
Tommorrow I'll tell a very small part of my drinking and drugging story and I'll try to give most of the meeting time over to the group to share in...I'll ask that people refrain from telling me I'm a great guy and that they talk about the topic I've suggested...what's the topic? The face of God...I hope that it doesn't put new people off because it's purpose is to help them find and recognize a higher power of their own...we'll see...
Tommorow is my anniversary in AA...23 years...I'll be sharing and of course I will cry...what is it with that anyway? Any glimpse of kindness that I notice makes me cry...not big wrenching sobs (as if) just tearing up and sounding funny...I will do that tommorow evening there is no doubt and I won't like it...People tend to laugh when I share...sometimes I'm actually funny and sometimes I think they don't know what to do so they laugh...
My life is really great except for the undercurrent of anger that lives with me...it's a force and it has a lot of influence on me...a lot of it is attached to a specific event in my life and some of it comes from childhood like most emotional maladys do...I have fought it,prayed about it, gone to therapy to "work" on it...I've chastised, vilified and imaginized about it but it won't go away...a friend suggested that I try to just accept it...not to think it wrong but to realize that it is part of me...that's good advise and I'm working on it...I am...
Tommorrow I'll tell a very small part of my drinking and drugging story and I'll try to give most of the meeting time over to the group to share in...I'll ask that people refrain from telling me I'm a great guy and that they talk about the topic I've suggested...what's the topic? The face of God...I hope that it doesn't put new people off because it's purpose is to help them find and recognize a higher power of their own...we'll see...
Anniversary
Now that I no longer have a public blog it hasn't been fun to write in it. What's the point if only I will read it? Mental masturbation...keyboard masterbation...what ever. Tommorow is my 23rd anniversary...I'll be sharing at the Happy Hour Group...my home group. I cry a lot these days. Never an all out crying jag I just tear up and my throat constricts and I sound funny. It sucks. I know that will happen tommorow.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
So...ten years + later...
So ten years and some months after I discovered my "wife's" infidelitys I am still haunted by the trauma. I'm pretty sure some people get over these things and move on. In many ways I have but deep down in my marrow I still feel the betrayal as though it were yesterday. Dawn doesn't understand it. She's never been through anything like my experience so she honestly can't get it. Unless I were to catalog every single loving thing, laugh enjoyed, promise made, secret shared, illness nursed, pets loved and buried, life experienced and cherished and expectations for our future together that I had with Betsy in our 14 (?) 12 (?) years together and then show the way the betrayals manifested and were discovered, assumed, conjectured, proved beyond question, or questionably proved, I don't think anyone could actually "get" it. (that sentence is long enough to be Russian) I've thought about doing just that many times and have always been overwhelmed at the effort it would require. I could put it down on paper and still never come close to emparting to someone else the sense of safety and integrity I felt with her as my partner.
I don't want to make it sound like our relationship was without it's problems, ups and downs, anger and resentment. We both had all of those wrapped up in the fabric of a lifetime shared. However I felt safe in certain assumptions and I believe she did too. So...where do I go from here? There's no doubt that I have PTSD in some form or another from the experience. I believe that a great deal of my physical pain is based in this. It goes almost without saying that the depth of my depression is increased by these memories. I am very aware that there are a lot of people suffering from much worse mental pain and emotional scars than mine. Hundreds of thousands on this benighted planet I'm sure are so acute in their anguish as to make mine seem very minor by comparison. And yet that doesn't relieve me. I don't feel better because others have it worse.
I live so well it's ridiculous. My home, my partner, my "job", my everything is wonderful. I'm never hungry, never cold, never lonely, never without health care or a vehicle or a bed to lie down on. I have a life that is the envy of 90% of the population of this planet. I am aware of that fact almost all the time. I live in concious gratitude for my blessings most always. So why am I still so angry? I don't know. I can't think my way out of it. I can't pray my way out of it. I can't act as if my way out of it. I've tried all of that. Really tried. Worked it. The pain hasn't lifted.
I don't want to make it sound like our relationship was without it's problems, ups and downs, anger and resentment. We both had all of those wrapped up in the fabric of a lifetime shared. However I felt safe in certain assumptions and I believe she did too. So...where do I go from here? There's no doubt that I have PTSD in some form or another from the experience. I believe that a great deal of my physical pain is based in this. It goes almost without saying that the depth of my depression is increased by these memories. I am very aware that there are a lot of people suffering from much worse mental pain and emotional scars than mine. Hundreds of thousands on this benighted planet I'm sure are so acute in their anguish as to make mine seem very minor by comparison. And yet that doesn't relieve me. I don't feel better because others have it worse.
I live so well it's ridiculous. My home, my partner, my "job", my everything is wonderful. I'm never hungry, never cold, never lonely, never without health care or a vehicle or a bed to lie down on. I have a life that is the envy of 90% of the population of this planet. I am aware of that fact almost all the time. I live in concious gratitude for my blessings most always. So why am I still so angry? I don't know. I can't think my way out of it. I can't pray my way out of it. I can't act as if my way out of it. I've tried all of that. Really tried. Worked it. The pain hasn't lifted.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
A row of trucks
On my way to the store today I passed the college ball fields and saw 3 Ryder trucks parked in a line. I guess they're there with stuff for setting up the 2009 graduation ceremonies. My heart started to race a little and an old excitement began running through my brain. I could hear loud live music and smell campfires and weed...I was ready to hit the road take some acid and get the job done. It took me a couple of seconds to recognize what this Pavlovian response was about.
When I was 15 I had the opportunity to work with a crew of people that subcontracted as a labor pool to the purveyors of Midwest summer music festivals. At the time I didn't know how it all worked I just knew that I'd get the call at my Mom's house that a bunch of hands were needed to work and I'd start calling my friends and family members. We'd all hook up at the little white house on "Gasoline Alley" and jump in the vans and cars and head on down to Madison where we'd pick up other folks.
At that point my "position" as fixer was passed on to someone older and presumably more experienced. I was there because I had the only stable phone number and I could find everybody else. I couldn't drive, I weighed about 95 lbs soaking wet and really I was just a kid. So I rolled the joints and the 18 and olders took the reins. I was along for the ride and the cool tee shirts. I did get to work on the crew and I always came home a week or so later with some money.
From Madison we'd go to Chicago to meet with the Guy. He also had a bunch of bodies and a line of Ryder trucks with the necessary implements in them. Leaving from there to points west we would eventually end up somewhere in a cornfield on an abandoned farm that had been leased for the occasion. There were always problems with mud, fencing, sanitation, food services, decking, sound towers, stages etc. that our crew could be turned loose on. Semi able hands in the right places at the time they were needed. There is much more to this memory and I may write it down some other time but this morning, when I saw the Ryder trucks lined up in a row I was 15 again for just a few seconds.
When I was 15 I had the opportunity to work with a crew of people that subcontracted as a labor pool to the purveyors of Midwest summer music festivals. At the time I didn't know how it all worked I just knew that I'd get the call at my Mom's house that a bunch of hands were needed to work and I'd start calling my friends and family members. We'd all hook up at the little white house on "Gasoline Alley" and jump in the vans and cars and head on down to Madison where we'd pick up other folks.
At that point my "position" as fixer was passed on to someone older and presumably more experienced. I was there because I had the only stable phone number and I could find everybody else. I couldn't drive, I weighed about 95 lbs soaking wet and really I was just a kid. So I rolled the joints and the 18 and olders took the reins. I was along for the ride and the cool tee shirts. I did get to work on the crew and I always came home a week or so later with some money.
From Madison we'd go to Chicago to meet with the Guy. He also had a bunch of bodies and a line of Ryder trucks with the necessary implements in them. Leaving from there to points west we would eventually end up somewhere in a cornfield on an abandoned farm that had been leased for the occasion. There were always problems with mud, fencing, sanitation, food services, decking, sound towers, stages etc. that our crew could be turned loose on. Semi able hands in the right places at the time they were needed. There is much more to this memory and I may write it down some other time but this morning, when I saw the Ryder trucks lined up in a row I was 15 again for just a few seconds.
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