Friday, October 17, 2008

My Boots Are Dying

I have another post planned that was going to appear here. It is written in a notebook, after the one I posted and before the other one in the notebook. Those two will have to wait. Why? The easy answer is, because it is my blog. The slightly deeper answer is that it is because my boots are dying.

To be completely accurate, I should address the fact that some of you might immediately react to the above statement with the obvious. My boots are inanimate objects, thus have never been alive, thus cannot be dying. You couldn't be further from the truth.

These boots were not purchased by me. In fact, in my lifetime, I have only purchased one pair of external footware. A pair of boots I still own, that must be in storage somewhere. I put them aside the day I bought them, in favor of these boots I now where.

Why the lack of footware purchase? Simple formula. I had my parents buying my clothes and shoes and etc... all through school. This continued right into high school and the immediate following period. Fairly shortly out of high school, I went into the service. Three sets of footwear bought for me by your tax dollars. (Come to think of it, I bought a pair of boots then too, so two total. Those boots were rendered unserviceable years ago.) My combat boots stayed as my mainstay from the point my jump boots lost their soles (the other pair I bought) a couple of years out of the service, until four or five years ago. While at work I tore open the sole of one of them and had to replace them in the middle of the work day. I bought a pair of cheap boots, which I hated, that day. That evening, MC and Jamesomeone came to visit with me and when I told them what happened, and how much I hated those boots, Jamesomeone gave me a pair he had from when he was a volunteer fireman. He said he had no use for them.

I have worn those boots ever since. They used to have zippers on the side, but both broke, leaving me having to tie and untie them like a normal boot. But now, one of the boots is separating on the back. There already exists about a four inch separation from the sole. They are unserviceable and promising to get worse in a hurry.

Why so huge? Well, for those of you who are new to the blog, or don't remember the connection, I lost Jamesomeon over a year ago. These boots I wear daily are my last direct connection with him. I mean, I have a pair of dress shoes that were also his, but how often does one wear those? This daily connection is gone, and nothing I will can restore this. This is bad enough on its own, if not presented with the additional problem. The same problem that existed at the time. Decent boots are expensive. I haven't got the money to replace them. Just like then. Not just the cost to replace them exactly, but even comparably. Payless doesn't believe in boots that reach above an inch or so beyond a high top sneaker.

On top of the comfort level I have known for over a decade, is the connection. I don't know how to handle boots that just serve a purpose. Even the boots I wore in the service held a purpose in the service. My combat boots spoke of something. These boots a friend gave spoke of that friendship. With his loss, they spoke of the only connection I had left with him.

Now I will have no boots. I will have no connection. I will undoubtedly begin wearing a pair of shoes, gotten from a donation from a church via my mother-in-law, much as I get most of my clothes. They will not be what I need. They will serve no purpose, and have no connection to anything important to me, other than not being barefoot. They will be nothing.

I assume to all of you this means nothing. But I have lost my boots. To me, that is life, or something close to it.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Thoughts During My Sabbatical

I took some time off and reflected on the most recent arguments I got into on this blog. On why I became angry about the issue. I came to the realization (not without the help of my friends) that this ties directly to another issue that has been known to arouse such anger in me in the past. An issue that on the surface appears to be completely different.

I have to force myself to reign in my temper at work sometimes when I am trying to go above and beyond to help somebody out, and they are fighting me and thus preventing the assistance I am trying to provide. Or when people call in screaming and yelling because they expect to get a hassle from you, and when they don't, they feel the need to keep going until their arsenal is exhausted any way. In both of these cases, people form opinions about what is going on in the conversation, and where it will go, and they act according to these opinions rather than to the results of the conversation.

This does tie in with what happened here, and has happened here in the past. I originally assumed insult with the scenario, because I did not consider the fact that this was a decision being made by a group of individuals, not a single entity. The fault in this lies with me, and I have already admitted that.

The response, however, is where the anger seeded and matured. Those who responded all took a common approach. They assumed they knew me, and my motives for reacting as I did. They then crafted their responses based on this assumption.

Those familiar with the scientific method know that you can't form a conclusion first and then make the test results fit this conclusion. Detectives know you can't make the facts fit the case, but must, rather, do it the other way around.

At the core of this is the reason for why I became so angry. Angrier than seemed warranted, even to me. It is a primal issue, and the inherent cause for virtually all of the ills of the world. The formation of reasoning based on belief, rather than belief based on reason.

The fact that people chose to form beliefs about me, and then deduce my motivations based on this connected to this more primal issue at the core of numerous other problems that are more serious in the world today. Rather than take the time to try to determine why I was offended, people decided that they knew, and that I was wrong. The former was false, even if the latter was not.

This issue, anonymous, is why you got such a hostile response from me in that earlier conversation. I requested to specifically avoid this scenario in that conversation and was ignored.

So while some of you hover over the keyboard with the response I expect at least one of you to respond with anyway, I will try to clarify once more. I am aware of the fact that I made some assumptions about the motives of others in the synchroblog thing. I have already apologized for this, having realized my error. (An error that I only realized because I continued to try to understand the motives of others, rather than rest on the initial assumption.) So I know at least one of you will point out this error of mine and I will simply copy this paragraph and point out additionally that I asked all along for the error in my way of thinking to be pointed out to me, and wasn't taken up on it. Well, since that is now part of this paragraph, I can just copy it.

Just some explanations of some of the emotional issues re: life, or something close to it.

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Sabbatical

I have been away (as I am sure you noticed) reevaluating myself, my life, and my spiritual leanings as a result of the blowup here and elsewhere regarding the synchroblog issue. A lot of time has been spent considering what MC told me offline in conjunction with summing up why I reacted the way I did. Sorry for the setup, but I am not sharing that at this point.

As a result, I missed the note about the new synchroblog in question. If any of you noticed I didn't participate, I wasn't boycotting. I simply had no idea it was going on.

I will look over what was posted in the next few days, as well as hopefully addressing some of the conclusions I came to in my absence.

For now, it is the time for sleep in my life, or something close to it.

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