365 # 60: Shayne B.

In the pages of this blog, you have heretofore been referenced as "Hip-hop Show Buddy", though it should be noted that such events are hardly the only time we ever hang out. Still, we've managed to catch a few good ones together, you bald freak, you. You're the only friend I have with whom I can have an extensive conversation that we both punctuate with copious hip-hop references, and be certain that you'll/I'll catch the majority of it. And that, my man, is an awesome thing to have in one's life.

You're yet another one of those people that I'm happy to no longer be the boss of. It's kind of weird now that I ever was in a position to tell you what to do, especially since you A) are several years older than me, and B) take work a lot more seriously than I do, both facts that I give you endless shit over. We've been friends now for a good 8 years and some change, had a hell of a lot of fun, bitched endlessly about work, and talked each other through various relationship issues we've had along the way. There was usually beer involved.

I remember this one party that The Ash and I hosted at our old house in our pre-kid days. You and your wife were in attendance. About 2 in the morning, you and I decided that the absolute most perfect thing in the world would be to hear "99 Problems" at full fucking volume. We managed to piss off both our ladies at the same time. But really, if you can't play "99 Problems" at full blast in the middle of the night, is that really a world worth living in? I ask you.

365 # 59: Danzig

You were not a fan of the music of Glenn Danzig, nor were you Glenn Danzig himself. But you had a pretty heavy metal look about you, and the nickname stuck. You were, In fact, a music major whose primary instrument was the guitar, which meant that every time you were among the hanger-outers in my room, I got to watch you play my guitar in ways it had never even dreamed of being played. I rarely bothered picking it up when you were around for fear of making an idiot of myself.

365 # 58: Clint L.

Okay, now technically, I didn't steal your girlfriend. I didn't even know that the two of you had ever dated, much less that you hadn't actually completely broken up when she and I started getting friendly. In fact, it came as a total surprise when she sprang that bit of news on me. "You were/are dating WHO?" I wonder if that should have been a sign. It's not that you were particularly huge or strong or anything. It's just that you were kind of crazy. And it's just not wise to go head to head with crazy. That's how people get cut.

I knew I would have to face you the next morning since you sat in front of me in Mr. Pecoraro's chemistry class. You sauntered in several minutes late, eyeballing me the whole time, which only added to my tension. After you sat down at your desk, you turned around and said something to the effect of, "So, you wanna talk about this or settle it some other way?" My first thought was "card game?"

In spite of all that fantastically teenage drama, we never ended up talking or doing anything about it, which worked out well for me since otherwise, my ass would have been grass. Glad we could work that out.

365 # 57: Zeb

I suspect that the name you went by was probably short for something else, though I never knew what. I knew that you were from Kenya, and that you were the janitor at the small private school I attended from Kindergarten up through sixth grade. You were probably the friendliest guy in the whole building. I know you and I spoke many times, but I remember one conversation in particular when you told me that you were going to night school at the University of Houston. It wasn't until years later that I had an inkling of an understanding what that meant, that you were trying to make a better life here in a new country. I hope you made it.

Four years

So it's true: I did not post yesterday. No recollections, fond or otherwise, of some old friend, ancient enemy, impossible crush, wise elder, or anybody else for your perusal. But that, my friends, is because yesterday was the 4th anniversary of the day that my Ash and I swore up and down in front of God and everybody that we would be husband and wife. I had thought I would toss something up here yesterday about it, but you know what I did instead? You know what I did, huh, huh? You'll never guess. I went ahead and used yesterday's free time to actually enjoy celebrating with my wife instead of blogging about the thing I was gonna be celebrating. And I wrote words that were just for her, not for the internets. I still haven't figured out how to do a thing and blog about it at the same time and give both equal attention, though I think it's less my shortcoming and more the lack of available liveblogging direct-from-the-brainwaves dictation technology. Which kinda sucks because my posts always sound better in my head.

But yes, four years of marriage we've made it through. It feels like we've done so much, and yet that timespan, four years, it sounds so short. I'm lucky to have had these years with this woman, and to have the promise of more in front of me. I gots love in my life, and it's a beautiful thing. I wish the same for every one of you.

365 # 56: Travis W.

Hey man, I knew you were a little bit out there, know what I'm sayin? It didn't take a detective to figure out you'd done a drug or nine in your day. You functioned well enough in the real world...

"But what is the real world, maaaaaan?"

Hey, quit interrupting my post about you, ya fuckin hippie. As I was saying, you were functional enough, but it was clear that your head and heart were off in some other sector of reality most of the time. Interestingly enough, Boy Scout summer camp was actually a pretty good environment for you to work in. I remember one night, you and I were sitting outside of somebody's tent playing guitars, and you told me how you'd travelled through space and time to another dimension where Jimmy Page himself had taught you how to play "Stairway to Heaven." Clearly, you were out of your mind because you couldn't play that song for shit.

x365: All we ever have is now

So it would seem that this blog has been taken up almost completely by the x365 project, which I guess is what happens when you say you're going to post on a certain subject every single day, and up to that point you've been doing good to post maybe once a week. The other day, my wife asked me what the point is of this project. It's a fair question, considering that it has quite a navel-gazing quality about it, along with the fact that it means I now spend more time blogging than I was before. In truth, the whole thing started off as little more than a writing exercise, a way to force myself to write at least some tiny little bit every day. One might think of my moods as a stupidly delicate ecosystem, and in order to keep things in an optimal state, it's best if I keep proper amounts of certain things cycling through at regular intervals, one of those things being writing. I just sorta need it, even when it's not good, even when it doesn't come easy, even sometimes when I don't particularly want to. Hence my dive headfirst into the x365 project.

But beyond just writing, it seems to have taken on additional purpose. I'm 32 now. None of us are granted a damn thing in terms of life span, but assuming I am blessed enough to reach the upper ends of the average, I have maybe another 40 years to go, meaning that I'm just a little under halfway there. So being at this point and scanning backwards over the people that have come through, and in some cases gone on, I'm surprised both by how much I remember and how much I've forgotten. There are some people and events that shine so clearly in my memory, these tiny beautiful Moments that refuse to be forgotten no matter how many years have passed since they occurred. They were the kinds of things I knew I'd probably always remember as soon as they happened. Then there are the fuzzier bits, the ones I have to struggle to piece together, and I wonder if perhaps my mind is rewriting history, thus turning my past into some kind of personal legend. Then there's the stuff that's just gone. I have these faces in my mind, some of which even have an associated name, and I know that at one point, this person and I had some kind of some something or other, but I'll be damned if I can come up with a single meaningful memory to stick with them.

Through all of these though, there is one constant, although I'm not sure I'm quite wordsmith enough to explain it in a way that will make sense, but here goes anyway. In each of these times, each of these periods, I remember feeling a sort of absoluteness about where I was. The moment I was inhabiting and the things that had led up to it were all there was. The future was out there somewhere, but the period I was in and the people and things I cared about at that particular moment were what mattered while I was there, and there was no thought in my mind that I would one day forget this particular version of Now.

I don't mean this to sound like I'm freaking out about forgetting my life. I'm not all of a sudden on some mission to document every moment so that I won't ever forget it so that...well, I'm not really sure what the point of that would be exactly. It's just that, in this focus on the past, I seem to have brought myself around to my focus on the present. Today I am a husband and father in my early 30's with a toddler and a baby. In a few years, I'll hopefully still be a husband and father, but I'll be in my mid 30's with two little boys. When I get there, I'll remember some of the things that are happening right now, but some things will be gone. But just because a moment may be forgotten at some point down the road doesn't make it any less valuable, any less worth living fully and completely in, any less beautiful. In fact, its fleetingness may make it even more a thing to be cherished.

So I'm going to keep it up with the x365 project, but don't interpret that to mean that I'm somehow stuck in the past. Life outside this blog goes on.