Welp. I'm in the hospital for a week or so. My transplanted kidney is experiencing some antibody mediated rejection. It's got some permanent damage, but with treatment and increased immune suppression, I should get a few more years of use out of it. Grateful for everyday since 2009. Grateful for my donor, and his family. Grateful for good healthcare. Grateful for my kiddos. Grateful for all the people who have supported me since my kidneys failed in 2007.

That's a buddy of mine, couple weeks ago. I've known him since I was three. He's center left. I'm center right. This was my seventh birthday.

He was my main rival through elementary school; the other smart kid. We were the twin towers of nerd-dom. Only he got distracted by other stuff and basically flaked out on school; I think he literally got perfect SAT scores but his academics blew. He now thinks it was the paint chips he ate as a baby because apparently he's got other hallmarks of lead exposure. Me? I started hanging out with the overpass kids and noped the fuck out of academics pretty hard so by the time anyone gave a fuck about achievement we were both too cynical to care.

The out of pocket cost for these treatments will be approximately $5000. Worth it, but extremely difficult to cover, especially given the amount of unpaid leave from work he has had to take (2 weeks so far, plus at least another 10 days in the next two months for chemo). He's a good, hard-working man who hasn't been able to catch a break when it comes to his health.

We have lunch when I can find time; it's always striking to me because I show up wearing WTFever and he shows up in coveralls with his name on them. perfect SAT score. My life was no bed of roses but fuckin'A.

He's gonna die.

He's three months to the day younger than I am and he's gonna die. He's got two kids; one just graduated high school, I think, and the other is three or four years out. His wife got him all the way through recovery and then decided that she didn't want to be anyone's wife anymore. And his commute is miserable and he's gotta deal with shit like dialysis AGAIN.

I've done well in Ethereum. It's play money, too. And my instinct is to frickin' pay off his gofundme. I mean, there's a girl on the roster there a thousand miles away whose existence I'd forgotten until yesterday and she put $250 towards this guy she prolly hasn't seen in more than 20 years. I've had lunch with him like twice this year and I haven't been here for half of it. Maybe that'll buy him another couple years. But then I put my name on it and it hangs over both of us. Maybe I don't put my name on it and then it hangs over me. I don't know.

His parents are government employees with rippin' pensions but he doesn't talk to them anymore of course and besides, he's a grown-ass man. A grown-ass man whose sister is begging on the Internet to pay his medical expenses because we live in the most advanced Western democracy in the world with the best healthcare in the world and the best doctors in the world and we're crowdfunding someone's renal failure.

I make reality television for a living and my daughter's inhaler costs me $5. Her epipen costs me $5. Her ER visits? A whopping $70 ZOMG. I get hot towels when I fly and he finishes out the day with Gojo and growing up, his was the house the nicest one I'd been in and his mom was on the city council and their cars were always new and I hunted mice so I could sleep and here we are and I don't understand how we've created a society where a million little choices by a million little kids lead us to this place where I keep my bike tools in a Harry Winston bag and he's begging the Internet for another couple years on this earth, please.

So I'm home, and I slept in my own bed, and I started a class in taking apart watches and I've got a feature and a short to mix and what really fucks me up - and has been fucking me up - is my buddy.

I sent him a text saying we were setting up a standing lunch date, my treat, he picks the day of the week and the place. I haven't heard back.

America.

Birth center is donezo.

I mean, there's a couple little things. Gotta put up some blinds. Need to replace a doorknob. One counter still needs a backsplash. But we spent $1500 on catering for 50 people at the open house Saturday and after three hours we had eight rolls of mortadella, a couple polenta cakes and about a melon's worth of honeydew.

Also got my call for work this summer, so our financial future is secure while we wait for, oh, $1500 worth of catering to come back to us as goodwill and consumer interest.

Also pulled off the taxes such that we won't starve prior to work starting again, was able to pay my daughter's tuition in full, was able to pay the accountants and was able to set money aside for retirement for me and the wifey for the first time since 2005 so that's nice. I also managed, through sheer blind luck and mk's tutelage, to leverage bitcoin and Ethereum such that... well, I'm pleased with the current price and guardedly optimistic as to its trajectory. We should be starving to death right now and we're not. We might be sitting on a half million dollars' worth of leverage but apparently that's between a third and a quarter of where we'd be with a dental clinic. I might be driving a '95 Dodge, my daughter's room might be directly across the hall from mine and I might not be sure if we can afford storm windows this spring but fuckin'A I have a reasonable expectation that whatever windows we've got, I'll still own their frames next year.

My insurance is good enough that I have a nutritionist and a physical therapist, and my daughter is going to have a shitty week because she's got shots tomorrow and the dentist friday. I also have a yoga instructor. Mine is a pampered fucking lifestyle. If my biggest complaint is that I'm now eating sixteen servings of fresh vegetables a day I'm neck deep in white people problems.

I dunno. You're supposed to be thankful in November. That's always seemed weird to me because that's right about the time you're going into ridiculous debt buying shit people don't need and busily accomplishing fuckall until January. For me, it's always been getting through February.

We're cooking the second 3lb chunk of corned beef for my father-in-law's birthday tomorrow. That means i will make Irish Tacos for the second time in as many weeks because they're fucking delicious.

a year in the life.

We had our first class in there last night. Coats were hung on coat hooks I had hung five minutes previously. The person running the class had my phone number for two days to coordinate everything she might need; instead she showed up half an hour after she said she would and expected I could make it all work. And I did. But it's galling - "Yeah, I've never been here before, or met you before, and the last time my organization stopped by the sheetrock had just gone up I'm sure you can make my three hours of powerpoint and Youtube videos work just fine, especially if I give you half an hour, despite the fact that I've been forewarned the internet is spotty I'm sure you can work it out."

And then my wife showed up and then I took the kid home and then she got home at eleven. I'm on my 3rd or 4th 10-11-12 hour day on this fucker. Monday night was two hours naked knee-deep in lukewarm water scraping blue protectant off a tub. Yesterday, on the other, was easier... but I discovered that the tub they were 3 weeks late in delivering (thereby setting us back 3 weeks) is a factory 2nd with a massive chip in it that will spread if I can't get it fixed. So that made me happy.

The difficulty is the minute that class got there, it was abundantly clear that I don't belong. Nobody in the birth community says "husband" because it's offensive. We're all "partners." And we're all "supportive" and we're all expected to get out of the way so they can focus on women's mysteries. Except during the birth where the philosophy is basically "thou art thy partner's bitch who is suffering more than you can ever know to bring about the miracle of life you're lucky we let you in the room worm now help your master breathe!"

So what I'm left with is I've spent like three years building a business in an industry actively hostile to my gender, that will never have anything to do with me, and which resents my participation. I am a fish building an airplane. It's a fuckin' P-51 Mustang to be sure but I still got gills, you know? The only thing I get out of it is gratitude from my wife, and despite spending the better part of two days cleaning and tidying and polishing that place I was denied any reaction from her last night because god forbid we speak too loudly to interrupt the class.

I realized yesterday that while I've been maintaining social media channels for two years and organizing ad campaigns and infographics and all the rest, I've never once mentioned the birth center on my own Facebook page.

This is really the only place I talk about it.

That probably says something.

I was given an opportunity to start high school at thirteen, pretty uncommon in my country. Despite what my family was telling me, that I should stay where I am, I went with it. It took me almost two weeks to get all the pros and cons straight, but it was my most adult decision pretty much up to this point in life.

It was hard. To be honest, it is still hard. People often assume that such a small difference in age should not affect anyone or go to the other end of the spectrum; assume that this is just a kid who does not know any better. Despite the fact that I was lacking a lot in cynical aspects of my decision back then, I would still do it the same if I was given some time travel way to do it all again.

Another aspect is the fact that I am pretty much financially independent and my eighteenth birthday is about two months from now. I get my scholarship, my parents still send me some money but I have never gone above my own 'earnings'. It's a bit of a buffer, but I would consider it as my failing if I were to ever use their resources. That makes my expenses very tight, but I don't mind it. I'm on my own due to two or three decisions that resulted from the first one. It's "unfair" in the way that I can count on them backing me up (and considering my expenses vs what they send me, I could probably live for next three semesters just on that), but even in such case; Some of the students I'm attending classes with call me kid despite having their parents cash in their wallets and eating food that they did not make themselves. It's hard, but I do consider my current state as both lucky and one that I can call a point of pride.

I hope that you will get kick-ass foster family soon :D. Keep your chin up and think of Hubski as… Delad glädje är dubbel glädje och delad sorg är halv sorg ;).

Self-improvement.

Tell yourself "Self, we can do better. Let's get some." No need to buy a gym membership, but it's a great time to re-evaluate what you eat and why, how you exercise and why, and what's important to you and why.

What hobbies have you let slide because she wasn't into them? Revisit those. What music haven't you been listening to because she hates it? Cue up that playlist. What places have you wanted to visit but haven't because she was lukewarm? Plan a voyage. This is a chance to revisit "you as you" instead of "you as reflected in someone else."

There are aspects of your personality and self-image that have improved because of her. Embrace those and welcome them. There may be aspects of your behavior and regard that have degraded because of her. Dismiss them. One of the golden-age movie moguls used to celebrate whenever a famous person died because that meant they could finally do a biopic; without an ending, you can't really put someone's life in perspective. Now that your relationship has an ending, you can put it in perspective - what was it good for? What was bad about it? What will you miss? What will you not miss?

There's a psychological process we must go through before we are ready to be with someone again. It's a process of recentering, re-evaluating our wants and desires and reacquainting ourselves with ourselves. The people we are after a long relationship are not the people we were before a long relationship and our two selves must meet, get to know each other and merge. This is an active process and one which we must experience largely in solitude. Not to say you need to eschew the company of others, but recognize that the void you feel inside can only be filled by you. It's a you-shaped hole and only you know what to plant in it.

Fair warning - this void you feel is visible from the outside. It can be sensed. It will be avoided by others. You will not find someone new (someone of quality, anyway) until you have filled it. Note that the more you fill it, the greater the content you add to your life, the more attractive you will be to external observers.

Don't ask us for movies and music. Ask yourself a year ago for all that stuff you didn't get a chance to check out and check it out.

Good luck. These are hard, formative experiences and no one enjoys going through them. I think we can all agree, however, that they make us what we are.

if mountains were flat, they would be easier to climb

#showerthots

Happy birthday, shoot me a PO box and I'll get you your present.

I've both been the interviewer and the one being interviewed. I can say that without a doubt the #1 thing I look for in someone is passion.

When I ask someone about their past work experiences I want to hear passion in their recollection, not regret or bitterness. When I ask them to tell me about themselves etc, I want to hear passion.

Apathy sucks. Passion is where it's at. I've never left an interview thinking "man, I think I may have come across as too passionate."

I PRESENT THE THEORETICAL AVENUES OF THE DISCUSSION YOU THINK YOU WANT TO HAVE

1. Clearly, the obvious: we all agree that doing drugs and having children in the same temporal space is inadvisable.

  1a. Partaking in both in close physical proximity at least doubly so. 

  2a. The part where we wonder, but aren't able to assess, what the parent in this video feels. 
  2b. The part where we wonder whether the parent copes with parenting via drug use. 

  3a. Where we discuss whether a video of a high parent is enough information from which to draw conclusions about parenting methods and discipline. 
       3ai. The part where we decide it's not. 
       3aii. The part where it is impossible not to form opinions/conclusions/ideas anyway. 
  3b. Where we discuss if the child's actions can be deemed appropriate and if so, quantified on a measure of "how appropriate." (A hilarious scale. I vote no on both counts.)

This is my conversation tree. These are my tree-theories. (My treeories.)