Archive for the 'Being a Man' Category

Top Ten of Boston List

Published at March 4, 2010 in Personal Update, Manny Stuff, Marriage, Being a Man, Fun and Family. 3 Comments

Brooklynne & I are making preparations for her impending graduation in May. Anyone who has done this before knows that it can be a difficult process. However, it has given us the opportunity to see Boston again with fresh eyes. We have been upset by the cost of living, job market, relative unfriendliness of the citizens, living with no car, the healthcare system as a whole, & innumerable other little things. It was easy for us to be bogged down by all that negative energy for a year or so. Now that the end is in sight, we find ourselves making it a point to focus on the good things about Boston & resolving to take those memories with us when we go. So here is my top ten list, in no particular order, of things I will miss about Boston.

1. Our house church-

Love, love, love these people & they have made the last year much more bearable than the first one was.

2. The historical places you pass almost every other second-

You simply can’t walk 150 yards in Boston without passing another place of historical significance.

3. The skyline-

In my opinion, one of the best ever.

4. My current job-

Hands down, the most fun & emotionally & spiritually rewarding job I’ve ever had.

5. Darion & Jenny-

We met them when we were both young struggling couples in the North End. Our dogs are best friends, & they are just excellent, fun, giving, & lovely people.

6. The crazy people you encounter daily on the subway-

I think that the MBTA has an “at least one wild person per car” rule that seems to be strictly enforced. As an avid people watcher, I appreciate this policy.

7. The snow-

I know my wife won’t like this one, but I, for one, have enjoyed having a proper winter for at least a couple of years.

8. Walking with my wife through the city-

This is a good thing that has come from us not having cars for the past two years. We have to walk together a lot more & there’s no radio to get in the way of good old fashioned conversation.

9. The community of East Boston-

This is an amazing neighborhood, & if you’re moving up to Boston I’d highly recommend it to you. They are very well connected with one another & they step up to meet one another’s needs.

10. All the bad things I mentioned earlier-

Yeah, I know, they really are bad things. I guess it’s not so much the things themselves that I like. It’s the results of these things on our marriage. I can honestly say now that my wife & I have gone through Hell & high water this past couple of years. The result has been a daily confirmation that I married the most amazing woman in the world. No matter what kind of poo-poo we have or might encounter, my confidence in our relationship & love will not be shaken.

Tiger Woods

Published at February 19, 2010 in Woods, Tiger Woods, Tiger, Current Events, Being a Man and Uncategorized. 2 Comments


So, I watched Tiger Woods’ statement earlier today. I will give you my thoughts although (I must be honest here) they do not matter in the slightest.

I thought that it was obvious that he had put a good deal of thought into his statement. He struck me as sincere, but in control of his emotions. I dunno if that’s a good thing or not. People, in general, are slow to forgive. They are especially slow to forgive when an apology isn’t perceived as heartfelt. One indicator of heartfeltedness (I made that word up just now, by the way. I know, I’m intelligent & creative like that.) is the degree of emotion or passion with which the apology is made. I imagine that he wasn’t weepy & shaky enough for some. However, let’s think about this for a sec.

He became an international superstar by being the absolute, hands down, best golfer in the world. He accomplished this by being in almost complete control of his body & mind. Part of that is controlling your emotions. Note that I’m not saying that you don’t have emotions, merely that you don’t let them get out of control. Any good golfer will tell you that you can’t start getting emotionally out of control during a tournament. If you play that way, you usually make a lot more mistakes. So Tiger Woods has gotten where he is because he has spent his entire life, quite literally, turning himself into a golf machine. When you train & work as intensely & frequently as he has for the vast majority of his life, you don’t simply “turn it off” whenever you want.

When he makes a mistake on the golf course, he gets frustrated initially & then gets it back under control. He then assesses the situation, inputs the known & unknown data into his golf machine brain, & chooses the most likely path to success. He has worked insanely hard to make this process automatic. So, when he made a mistake in his personal life, he did the same thing. He got frustrated & withdrew for a few months & now he has made a move to get back on the road to success. Knowing this about him makes me believe he showed a great deal more emotion & passion in his statement than I was expecting & certainly more than he was comfortable with.

So I watch Tiger Woods’ statement & I see a man making a sincere, well thought out, & yes, a heartfelt apology. I also see a man who has an almost inhuman ability to control his emotions tearing up & speaking with a bit more passion than he ever has before. If you watch it again, you’ll notice that he still maintains almost complete control over his voice & body, but he tears up. All of this leads me to believe that he meant it & he meant it with all of his heart. But then again, I’m an insanely optimistic person.

Did you watch it? Do you even care? What do you think?

The Future

Published at November 27, 2009 in Personal Update, Church, Marriage, Being a Man, Family, Holidays and Spirituality. 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking & praying a great deal about it lately.  For the first time, it’s been so hard to see.  I’ve always known the next step, but that’s been easy. It’s only ever affected me.  Now I am part of a “we,” & “we” have to make a decision based on what’s the best thing for us.  Brooklynne is done with graduate school in May, & it is time to start figuring out where to go from there.  It’s easy to say that we should make this decision based on the most important things for us. Where can we find a community of believers to plug into that we can “jive” with?  Where can we begin putting down roots to build a family?  These & other things are our top priorities, but when we try to lay out possibilities to meet those questions, they are endless.  It’s hard to narrow down from endless possibilities.  I hate to make a life decision based on career opportunities, but what else is there to do when that is the only variable that can be known?  I hate being in places like this, where the questions are far more numerous than the answers.  Any advice from those further along the path of life is very welcome right now. 

 

On a side note, Thanksgiving has been wonderful.  I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am to have amazing in-laws that I truly feel like family around.  It has been a very welcomed break from all the pressures of Boston.  I am so thankful for a job that I love going to every single day.  I can’t wait to get back to see my little buddy.  I am unbelievably blessed to have such an amazing, beautiful, & gifted wife.  I love being here to spend time with her while she doesn’t have 20 thousand things on her schedule.  So anyway, please let me know if you have any wisdom to impart upon our decision making process for the future.

Full Circle

Published at November 22, 2009 in Personal Update, Being a Man and Spirituality. 2 Comments

Something really remarkable has transpired this weekend. I received a Facebook message from someone with a subject line that read “A long overdue apology.” The subject line is intriguing enough, but try to think of it from my perspective on top of that. Due to my uncanny ability to offend people, in any given situation, I am almost always the one who needs to apologize. I haven’t been on the receiving end of an apology for quite some time. That made this message even more intriguing for me specifically. 

         I must give a little bit of a back-story for this to make sense. If you’ve been following me since my days on Xanga, a blogging host, then you may remember this incident. For those who haven’t, I would like to say that the BigSam82 that you know from this site is a very different man than the one who used to post on Xanga. When I began posting on Xanga, I was in a very angry & disenchanted place spiritually. I would post things for the specific purpose of making people angry & to stir the pot. Not good things. I regret that & I want to apologize to anyone who was hurt by anything that I said on that site. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. My pot-stirring, judgmental, & arrogant attitude (& also my weight) was then used as ammunition for someone who created a fake Xanga where they posted hurtful things. At that time I had tracking software installed on my blog, which I used to identify the culprit as a guy named Brent. I then made a post on my blog calling him out publicly. You can view that post & the ensuing storm of comments here. I never admitted it at the time, but the things that were said on that site hurt me a little. To sum it all up, I was being a jerk & lashing out on my site, I didn’t like it when someone did the same thing to me, & I exposed it on my site hoping to embarrass the guilty party in retaliation. 

         Back to the present. The message on Facebook was from, none other than, Brent. The same Brent that I had called out in my post almost 4 years ago. I had honestly forgotten about the whole ordeal until I got this message. It was a small thing that happened 4 years ago, & it wasn’t like it was the first time that I had been called out for being overweight or a jerk. However, in his message Brent wrote me a heartfelt apology admitting his hand in the whole thing & asked for my forgiveness. I really couldn’t believe it. Of course, I forgave him with no qualms & asked for forgiveness in return for my part in the whole ordeal.

         I post all of this to say that it is now time for this all to come full circle. 4 years ago I made a post calling Brent out as a coward that was attempting to hide behind the anonymity of the web. Now I want to make a post calling Brent out for being a man of courage & integrity. It takes bravery to step up & apologize for anything right away, but it takes some serious stones to apologize for something that small 4 years in the past. If we would all be so courageous & humble, I think we’d be very surprised at the healing & growth that can take place as a result. I have been very inspired by Brent’s actions, & I want to make it a point to have that kind of courageous humility in the future. Thank you, Brent & God bless you.

The Hard Way

Published at October 3, 2009 in Personal Update, Marriage, Being a Man, Family and Spirituality. 0 Comments

I’ve always been the type of person that has been able to learn things vicariously. I’m not sure why this is. I guess I’m just made that way. If I see or hear about someone making a big mistake in some way or another, I’m usually pretty good about recognizing where the breakdown occurred & avoiding it myself. However, in a break from what has been the norm in my life, I’ve been having to learn things the hard way over the past year or so. I really don’t like it at all, & I certainly don’t recommend it to anyone. It’s called “the hard way” for a very good reason. So, I’m hoping that with this post I can help someone out there to avoid learning the hard way & learn these things vicariously. Here are a few lessons, in no particular order, that I have learned over the past year or so the hard way;

1. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch-

In other words, don’t move to an apartment that costs $1700 dollars a month until you have secured a job that pays high enough to support that rent. No matter how much you may believe that you are warm poop, & can find a job whenever you want it, you may not be as valuable as you think.

2. When Mamma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy-

Don’t just tell your wife how amazing she is, show her. Treat her well no matter what. Don’t let stress, or a bad day, or a difficult situation, or anything else stop you. The minute you start thinking about your own issues & problems, start feeling sorry for yourself, & neglect to nurture her, that is the minute when you have made a grave mistake. If you thought things were tough before, you just try to make it through the same things without that amazing woman’s love & admiration, & you’ll see how bad things can really get. So, first & foremost, love & serve your wife. I’ve learned that if Brooklynne is sad, I feel it with her. Not because she is mean or angry at me, she is way too amazing for that, but because my happiness & success are completely interwoven with hers. It is impossible for me to be happy if she is not.

3. He that has will be given more-

Be grateful for all the things that you have that are good. When you focus on negatives & problems, you get down, & when you get down, you don’t do as well at the things you try to do, & when you don’t do well at the things you try to do, you will run into only more negatives & problems. Both failure & success are cycles that either begin or end based on where your focus is. Yes, crap happens. Sometimes HUGE crap happens, & that HUGE crap may very well be your fault, & it may be a very big deal. I’m not saying that you should ignore problems in your life. You can either learn from it or lose from it, & that decision is entirely up to you. The people that are truly successful & happy in life are the people that focus on what they have instead of what they don’t have. No matter what your situation is, make sure you spend more time giving God thanks & praise than you do asking for stuff. If you do, I think you’ll find that there’s not that much more that you really need.

That’s all for today class. Your assignment is to comment with either a lesson that you have had to learn the hard way or something that you have taken for granted that you commit to being thankful for in the future. Ready, go!