Another week and another week under the weather. Another week and another week without anything physical. Another week and another week without exertion. Another week and another week bedridden.
I don’t know why my immune system has been so weak this year. I just don’t understand why. This is the worst year health wise, easily getting sniffly and mucussy. Not cool.
But hopefully it will get better. Hopefully I’ll just man up and head to the doctors for a overdue checkup and let her know that I’m having some issues and she’ll prescribe me something that will take care of it forever and ever….well at least until I get better.
I think it is just a matter that I’m getting old and that I need my precious sleep. I can’t just stay up late on a whim and not feel the effects of it a few days down the line. General body fatigue, a slow mind, scratchy throat, sniffles, and mucus. Just a general blah of icky sickness. Icky sickness.
* * *
I laugh at the Delicate Flower as she is done with me.
* * *
Strangely, but surely it happened. Sometime yesterday, whether it was at work, or not, but an overwhelming calm in my heart happened. It slowed its beat, steadying itself to the natural rhythms of ok-ness and just continued to beat without any strings, pressure, and yearning. It just beat along to its own tune.
There is a strange calm Zen that is just flowing through me. No more. No mas. Just a whateverness that flows through my veins as I just sit here and type my diddly.
There isn’t that questioning and doubting of whether I made the best decision or not. There’s just an overwhelming calm that whatever decision I made, good or bad, is the right one and that things will turn out in the end, whatever they may be.
I will be okay. I am okay. It isn’t the be all end all that I usually make things out to be.
I am screwed. Yes, I am, but it is a okay screwdness that I am use to and know how to let go; given time of course.
There is that optimism again. There is that overall things will be okay jolly feeling that comes out of nowhere. It is the thing that I need to just calm down and face the day without the obsession that I’m known to do.
Just let it be. Just let it be.
* * *
Following up on Selena Kyle on the posts of faces and it seems that she’s doing okay, moving on. It seems that she’s just having fun and I’m so happy for that. She’s moving on, doing whatever she needs to do. I’m happy for that.
Good for her.
I do genuinely hope that she’s doing okay.
* * *
Old, but full of energy. Burning off their morning doses of caffeine, they sit and argue every weekend morning about whatever they are arguing about in their own foreign tongue. They sit there, all five of them, just talking, not caring about anything that is happening around them. This is their bond, their group of friends that share the same morning routine every day.
Coming here for coffee from the golden arches, which is pretty darn good, and just sit and talk.
Maybe they are talking about politics, world affairs, the motherland… The list goes on and on, as they sit intently listening to each other laying out their opinions, their thoughts and waiting for others to respond, hopefully igniting a full on debate of clashing thoughts, boiling the blood, bringing them to life.
To sit here and just sit here with old friends, brothers, family and just discuss and talk. Things that excite me, that make me think, push my envelope and my way of thinking. Things that I love.
I wonder what will happen when I get to their age, if I get to their age. What will happen?
Will I have that? Will I be with my cousins in the morning and just actually talk about shit?
* * *
Talking.
I was up in the northwest recently, Portland, OR for work. Work was work, quick and easy; overall a free vacation; a free visit to family.
I spent a day with my cousin’s wife, my cousin, and their two kids. It was nice. I loved it, just being with the kids and just catching up.
I know I love kids, and I know I want kids. After Ashlyn in Reno, I kid that I don’t want any kids, because she’s just a wild animal who is much much smarter than I am. I only kid, if only I’m fortunate enough to have a smart kid like Ashlyn.
But just being with my cousins’ kids, I just realize that yes, I do want kids. I do want to hold them and have them hug me back so tightly like Mason does.
To just have them smile at me, knowing that I will keep them safe and I will play with them and protect them.
It was just a good time with family overall. I loved it and it will forever be in my beloved memories.
It kind of brought back flashbacks of me babysitting for Emerson while he was younger when Julie and Phinney came down for a company thing a few years back. The horror. The horror and pain of Emerson crying as he wakes up in a hotel room with a stranger. But eventually he warmed up to me and his mac & cheese.
But, no, it was just great spending a quiet day with Julie and the kids at the park. And all we did was just talk. All we did was just catch up and talk about family, how we’re doing, what’s going on, such and such.
That’s the thing with my family. We just don’t talk. Well, the Ho’s in our family to be exact. We just don’t talk about anything with substance, not our feelings, what happened in our lives, etc. etc. etc.
I know it is a family thing, and a cultural thing of saving face and what not; not wanting other people to know about our shit.
That is one of Julie’s biggest gripes about the family, we just don’t talk. We never did, and hopefully that will change.
People know me. I have no secrets, a open book, that is more than willing to talk about anything and discuss everything, whether personal or not. I’m just a open guy that loves to talk if it is of anything that has substance. But I’m not the type that pushes it on others and family if they aren’t willing to. Therefore, I don’t. Not unless they bring it up or I bring it up and they latch onto it and lets the boulder roll. That rarely happens.
What surprised me was a conversation I had during dinner with Phinney and Julie. I brought up to Julie earlier in the day that whenever I went up for Christmas, Faith would invite Hien and me to go to church with her family. She would precursor this invite with a note stating that Matt wanted us to go, but was too embarrassed to ask.
I don’t know the veracity of it, but it is sweet. I love to know that they both care about the two of us, me to want me to find salvation. I don’t find it offensive that they want me to go with them. It is thoughtful. I know my thoughts on religion, and they know my thoughts on religion and the church. I don’t look down on them for believing what they do and hopefully they don’t do the same to me; and I know I don’t feel that way. They respect my choice of believing in whatever faith I have.
I don’t know if anyone else in the family got the friendly invite to attend church. I don’t know. But Phinney thinks that Faith wanted to ask me because they are worried about me and maybe Hien also.
He believes that they worry about me because I did make the choice of moving down here to be on my own away from family. That because I’m down here alone with no one to look after me. Also, maybe because I’m so vocal about being away, and so opinionated, so sensitive, that they just worry about me. It’s sweet, but I don’t know why, it just gets me to hear that family sees me that way. To actually see me for whom I am, the opinionated and sensitive guy that makes his own choices to do what he needs to do.
Then he talked about my family blog that I wrote back in November. He read it and just went on discussing the part about my uncle.
Again, I told him I never heard about that story before until just recently. Julie chipped in saying that it is because we just don’t talk. Our family’s fatal flaw. But it was just great knowing that he actually read it and that he’s actually willing to talk about it. Maybe he just knows that I’m desperately in a way searching for my roots, wanting to know about my family, everyone and where we came from. That I’m looking for my sense of history, so I can place who I am and where I came from.
We just went on discussing that uncle and him saying that pretty much I got it down right and that my Great Uncle has every right to be pissed. But like me, what he then said is absolutely right, it happened so long ago. Let bygones be bygones. There’s just nothing we can do.
He sees a change in this uncle, coming to family events and just trying to reconnect and seeing that a daughter of his is making an effort to acknowledge our side of the family.
Just funny looking back at family and seeing how certain family connected better than others. Others are off living their separate lives whereas my family and this uncle’s family always got together and hung out. I grew up hanging out with this cousin and his siblings. His father was my favorite uncle because I would always go to their house on the weekends and just hang out and play. We were a close knit bunch.
We never really connected with the other families. Some because they lived so far away, but others that lived locally, we just never connected with them. We grew up apart, not knowing each other. There were some that I haven’t seen for 10-15 years at a time. Others that are just so weird, more hermit than myself that we just never found common ground.
Family. Just baffling how different many of us are even though we share the same blood.
Thinking ahead, it just seems sad in a way how things are going to change. Most of the culture and traditions will be gone because as the older generation slowly disappears we will pick up our own Americanized Traditions. Family is just drifting apart because we are all growing up and becoming more and more focused on our shit than family shit.
It was great to hear a little about family history and a little bit about my dad especially from a cousin that is within my generation. He’s like an older brother to me, and that’s how we address each other as brothers, not as cousins. He would tell me how things were at the farm back in Vietnam and how my dad taught him and his brothers how to shoot a bow and arrow, slingshots, and the such.
It just brings tears to my eyes to know that my dad did that.
It also touched my heart to hear from Julie that Phinney is sad that his dad and my dad aren’t here to see his kids. It just breaks my heart. It is true, it is heart breaking, and my heart is breaking now as I fight back tears in this public place trying to get this down.
It just makes me think of when I do have children. My favorite uncle won’t be here to see them and my dad won’t be here to coddle and spoil them. He isn’t here to teach them things that he taught me. My children won’t be able to see how loving their grandfather can be.
My heart breaks as I fight back tears. Breaking…broken.
Family.
But we all have to grow up and focus on our own shit, not worrying about anyone else because each of us is all grown up doing their own thing.
I do see how even our close knit family is slowly drifting apart because we are all growing up. Many of us are starting our own families, starting out in life, living our own life, that we just don’t have time to focus and worry about anyone else. We just hope that one day we can get together and just talk and open up.
Weddings and Funerals.
It just seems that our family only comes together for those two things. If it isn’t for a wedding, then it is for a funeral. Two big events, yes they are, but nothing more. The two extremes; a addition and a loss. Hopefully one day it will change, but again it just seems life gets in the way of everything.
Life just happens and we are too wrapped up in it to just reconnect.
My cousin says one day we’ll all just sit down and just tell me what life was like back in Vietnam. He said life was just life, but it just sounds so foreign to me. I’m just so interested to hear what it was like. I would like to take him up on that offer and just sit as a group, many generations together and just talk about how life was, how life is. Just talk. Hopefully one day it can happen, so I can just sit back and recollect and put it down for posterity sake, for my sake, so I know how far I’ve come in my life, in my family’s life.
* * *
Morals. Pride. Ethics.
It just seems that I’m full of it and that for some stupid reason I have this innate urge and disposition to do what is right. I see things in the old chivalrous way that is quickly fading. I have to always do what I think is right and fair.
I don’t know why it is that way. Well, I do know why. My parents taught it to me, to do what is right. But sometimes I do think it has gotten in the way of me doing what I want to do and therefore I doubt it and just hate it when I have to do the right thing.
What has it gotten me, being this nice and proper guy? What has it gotten me?
Nothing but the respect of others.
Respect? Does it matter? It goes back to the whole face thing? I could care less about face, just a matter of just.
I see both sides of the coin. I know the pros and cons of both side, reevaluating things before I even make a move and a decision, but always always, I have to take the higher road, the fair road, the just road.
I find it irksome. I wish I can just be a dick and say fuck it and do what isn’t right even if it means hurting people. I know I say it time and time again that it is okay to hurt people, but to do it maliciously, that is something I can’t do.
That would be wrong.
Maybe it is just my naiveté or just my idealism that is getting in the way, a world where things are fair and just happens because it is the right thing. I know the world doesn’t operate in this way, me being the cynic that I am, me being the jaded soul that I am, but there is that hope, that idealism that I do hold on to.
Not long ago I made a fair, just, and honest decision. I had to, for my sake.
I had to do it because it was the right decision to make, for my sake, for my sanity, for my heart. It has to be done.
But I wonder if it was actually the right decision. I wonder do I regret making this decision, constantly playing it in my head, psyching myself out, creating doubt.
I can’t lie; there is a doubt in what I did, in the choice that I made. Regret? Maybe, maybe not.
I’m just not sure if it was a smart decision or a stupid one.
I hear from both sides. One side, I made the absolute correct, fair, and honest decision and on the other it was just plain dumb.
I’m thinking in ways that no one thinks anymore. It is just old school and I need to operate in the here and now where chivalry is changed and dead.
For the most part, I just don’t understand the game. I’m ignorant.
Should I or shouldn’t I?
Even now as I sit here, I doubt my decision, but at the same time, deep inside the calm Zen state of mind, I did make the absolute correct decision.
My coworker didn’t think so and says I should keep that in mind when I am presented with another similar choice. I fucked it up.
I should have gone on and never brought it up and just go about having fun and treating it like it was what it was.
I’m the nice guy. Even though I have been a dick and a asshole to many people, my ex for example, overall I am the nice guy. Nice guys finish last, or so it seems that way.
Because we always have to do the right thing and just let things go because it is the fair thing to do. I wonder if people still think that way or am I a dying breed.
Funny, it just seems that girls say one thing in what they want in a man. A nice decent guy, but they always end up with the asshole. Why? Because they can fix him. Because I don’t think being treated like shit is something they go searching for.
Maybe nice guys are boring. I’m boring. They’re safe, they are proper.
Ha, I don’t know. I just don’t understand.
But I just feel that I’m just this nice guy, who does the right thing because it is the right thing to do and I don’t get the thing that I want out of it.
An asshole in my situation would have gone along with it and continued to hang out and maybe make a move, showing her that he is a better option than the one she currently has and that she’ll defect to him.
I see the point. I understand the reasoning in it, but for some reason I can’t do it. For some stupid reason, it just screams WRONG.
Even Hidalgo said I should just do it.
I don’t know. I don’t know. I know for me, I will always make the stupid right decisions. That’s innate in me to make those choices. I can’t make any other choices. It always has to be the right one. There are no if and or buts about it.
This is me. I guess I should better get use to making the dumb right decisions and live with it and not obsess over it.
Like I said, I live and die by my decisions. I should practice what I preach.