Category Archives: General Posts

Sports, relationships, parenting, literature, education, and more. If it catches my interest that day, I’ll write about it.

General Posts

Late Night Ramblings

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I’ve written on here a few times about the turmoils I’ve been through, and I’ve tried to remain open and honest about my feelings.  Life has dealt me a few serious blows, and a couple of times, I’ve thought that I was down for the count.  I’m not ashamed of my status, despite being fairly poor and barely scraping by.  I work hard, my child support is paid in full every month, and my sons have insurance.  And if I have to do without a few creature comforts to continue to be a decent father, that’s fine by me.

I’ve made some terrible choices with women.  I don’t know if I’m just attracted to the wrong ones or if the wrong ones are attracted to me or if I’m just meant to live alone, but I do know for a fact that I need to break the cycle of allowing myself to get involved with women who want to play games behind my back, reward my loyalty with betrayal, and dismiss my love like yesterday’s trash.  I’m too decent of a person to continue to allow myself to be treated in those ways, and even if I have to live alone for the rest of my days, I will not settle for anything less than a positive, healthy relationship if I ever do get involved with someone again.  And I have the internal strength to live alone as a self-sufficient individual.

For the first time in two and a half years, I feel like I’m almost to my feet emotionally.  The women who have betrayed and wounded me the worst will never again control my life.  They had an opportunity to nurture my love and grow old with it for shelter and protection, but instead, they chose to turn on me and betray it.  In the long run, that’s their loss, not mine, and even if I remain alone, I am better off without their negative anchors weighing me down.  And when I lay my head on the pillow at night, my conscience is clear enough that I don’t have much trouble falling asleep.

My books may never be successful, but I do not regret the risks I took to get them on the market.  I would take that chance again every single time.  While I may not have succeeded, it wasn’t from lack of effort.  I have no regrets and will carry my head high even if I never sell another copy because I had the discipline to complete them, the courage to put them out there, and the guts to pursue it will everything I had.  I didn’t stand on the sidelines hoping for something to happen.  I put my ass in the fire and tried to make something come to life.

And I’ll take a hundred million failures over a lifetime of passivity.

www.thirdaxe.com

General Posts

Monday Morning Ramblings

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I’m trying to let go of the anger and bitterness that’s seeped into my heart for the last three years, but it’s not easy.  My friend, Dagan, knows what I mean when I say that my sense of self was taken from me, not because I necessarily did anything wrong, but because the woman I married and had children with decided that her personal needs came before the family’s.  I was a decent husband and a great father, and I worked my ass off to provide for them.  My reward for that was to be betrayed on Christmas morning.

That’s a damn hard thing to let go of.

I’m not a Christian, so the sacredness of the holiday doesn’t mean much to me, but I loved the magic and excitement of children leading up to the arrival of Santa.  That was special, and it will never again be the same for me.  That’s hard to forgive.

Until you’ve had to leave your children at someone else’s house, knowing that they were about to get in another man’s vehicle and drive 500 miles away from you, you cannot fathom that level of pain and anxiety.  Every paternal instinct in every cell of your body is screaming at you not to do it, but you have no choice or say so in the matter.  That kills a part of you that will never grow back.

Until you’ve heard the deafening silence of an empty backseat where five minutes before your children had been laughing and singing with you and then had to drive five hours with that silence pressing down on you like an Atlas stone, you can’t fathom the emptiness of being the part-time parent.

Until you’ve had your ex allow your children to use the word daddy for another man, you have not felt true hate and venom for another human being.  No role has ever suited me better than that of daddy, and that title should have never been given to anyone else.  You better believe that that wound cut deep and wide, and the well of hatred it tapped is not easily capped.

So I’m trying to let go those things, but it’s not easy.  Nothing can replace what was taken from me, those moments and experiences with my sons that I’ll never get to share.  It’s hard not to be bitter about that, but I’m trying.

General Posts

Sunday Afternoon Ramblings

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I’m taking a break from the worst of the heat, eating a bite of lunch and cooling off by my fan.  I’m nearly done with the hardest part of the job, which is clearing a pile of rubble near the old springhouse.  About thirty years ago, my great, great uncle died in a house fire on that spot.  Firefighters extracted his body, and pretty much all that was left of the home were the bricks and stones.  For some reason, my grandfather decided to have all of it pushed into a big pile and then left it there.  I was a kid at the time, so I don’t remember why he did that, but for all these years, that pile has sat there, becoming a mound for sumac and honeysuckle to thrive on.

When I first made the decision to clear the land, one of my first objectives was to clean up around the springhouse.  It’s some of the best land on all of the property and, other than the pile of rubble, was always well-kept and beautiful when I was a kid.  As I cleared away the honeysuckle and sumacs, I decided that the pile needed to go, too, so for the last week or so, I have worked steadily to remove it.  The job has been much more than I ever expected it to be.  Over the years, a lot of thick, fertile soil has built up in the pile, making it difficult to get out the chunks of brick and stone.  Because of all the large chunks of those, it’s hard to dig in it with a shovel.  Also, I’ve been trying to recover some of the bricks that are still in pretty good shape, so I’m being fairly careful as I go through it.

Yes, it would’ve been much simpler to get a Bobcat and just level it, but a big part of why I’m doing this is to lose weight and get healthier, so the exercise has been fantastic.  Also, and this is hard to explain, but there is something about doing it by hand that feels more respectful and dignified for the property.  Preston and Rico may be the only two who get that.  It’s not about speed and efficiency.  It’s about connecting with a place that my great, great grandfather worked by hand.  I may be romanticizing it too much, but that’s how I feel.

Once last thing.  I meant to announce this the other day and got too busy with school.  The Ramblings of D. A. Adams is now over one year old.  Thank you to all of you who read this blog regularly.  It means more to me than you can know.

That’s all for now.