No End In Sight

Think you could run a race that had no finish line? Or how about starting a jigsaw puzzle that had an unlimited number of pieces? That’s the way life feels to me. I never seem to finish anything that I start. I know we joke about it on The SmokeScreen Podcast but it’s a real issue, one that I have spent so much of my life thinking about. To a normal person, I’m sure this seems like a problem with a simple solution. You just set small, achievable goals, finish them and then gradually set larger ones. But I’m not a normal person. That has become quite evident. Somewhere along the way, my brain just got wired differently. I blame my childhood.

I’m the product of a 15-year old mother and a 16-year old father. Just stop for a second and really take that in. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce how bleak my chances of having a normal upbringing must’ve looked in 1973. I can probably guess what you’re thinking. This isn’t all that uncommon and the grandparents just needed to step up. They did. As much as they could. Both of my parents were the youngest children born into families that couldn’t really afford another mouth to feed already. Why am I telling you this? To set up the fact that from the beginning, I bounced around…a lot.

“It doesn’t take a genius to deduce how bleak my chances of having a normal upbringing must’ve looked in 1973.“

By the time I started kindergarten, my mom and dad had separated and I stayed with my mom. My memory is pretty clear when it comes to how many different schools I attended each year but sometimes I bounced back and forth a few times during the year, so I don’t remember exactly how many times I switched schools, just the number of schools for each grade. Here is a breakdown of how many different schools I attended each year. Kindergarten-2, 1st Grade-4, 2nd Grade-1, 3rd Grade-4, 4th Grade-1, 5th Grade-1, 6th Grade-3. I went to two different Junior High’s and two different Senior High’s.

When you move that often, you never really feel like you have roots. No matter how excited you get when you see your new house, neighborhood and school; it always feels temporary. We hardly ever moved in an attempt to better our circumstance, most always we were evicted. I remember losing all of my belongings more than once because a landlord refused to let us back in to retrieve them. I was no different than any other kid back then. I had toys and things that I played with or collected. One of my most heart-breaking memories is when we were kicked out of a mobile home we lived in when I was about 6 or 7 years old. My mom and I went back over to see if we could get in and the landlord had screwed a hasp on the front door and installed a padlock. That ruined the idea of trying to get in through a window and opening the front door. So my mom removed the screens to check for a window that was unlocked and there was only one…my bedroom. It was high enough off the ground that my mom couldn’t lift herself up and shimmy through it, so she picked me up and helped me through. My stomach scraped on the aluminum windowsill as she pushed me through, headfirst. When I stood up and looked around, all of my things were just as I had left them. My 15″ Chewbacca figure stood next to my neatly sorted stack of comic

books. I must’ve had over 50 of them. I clearly remember that I had put together a decent run of “The Defenders” and was starting on one of “Conan the Barbarian.” On the shelf above the built-in chest o’ drawers was the piggy bank I have discussed recently on the podcast. It was a big-eyed, pointy-eared creature, clad only in a loin cloth, perched atop some rocks and holding a fish. The base of the piggy bank had a word on it…Gollum. I had no idea what that word meant. It wasn’t until the “Lord of the Rings” movies came out that Gollum gained a meaning. I later found out that the piggy bank and other toys were sold after the animated LOTR movie was released. I leaned out the window and asked my mom if I could start handing her my stuff and she told me to leave everything there. We had walked there, so we didn’t have a vehicle to load anything into. She told me that we would come back for all of it when one of her friends who had a car could bring us. Right now, my mission was to go into her bedroom closet and retrieve the brown metal lockbox that she kept important documents in. That was it. Just a bunch of birth certificates, immunization records, pictures and schoolwork she had saved. I cried and pleaded with her to let me get something. I left empty handed and we never returned.

Now, if you look back at my breakdown of schools I attended and then consider that I probably went through something similar each time, it’s pretty easy to understand why I have been known for being a pack rat or hoarder in my adult years. It’s a real issue. I can attach sentiment to almost anything. Not only do I collect and hold onto things, I reuse, or should I say, PLAN to reuse so many things. I have storage totes full of magazines and newspapers, cabinets filled with Cool-Whip and French Onion Dip containers, closets filled with clothes that don’t fit or I never wear and shelves full of cassettes and CD’s. Don’t get me started on my book collection. I don’t collect books that a normal person would collect. My bookshelves are full of reference books. There are mainly books filled with sports statistics and records but also music and movie data. I have the classics, a few biographies and some history books too. I’d say 99% of the contents of these books can be found on the internet but my brain tells me that if the internet ever goes down, I can go back to being the guy people get to solve their arguments. I really do miss those days. Back when people weren’t afraid to admit they don’t know everything. Let me get back to my point…

I feel like coming up the way I did made me the kind of person who is unable to think about long-term goals or plans. I am hyper aware that everything can go away in an instant, so I developed a blind spot when it comes to thinking about tomorrow. I spend way too much time thinking about the past, which gives me depression and too little thinking about the future, which gives me anxiety. The only time I feel truly happy and like myself is in the present. I am always afraid that a moment is going to end and can get myself worked up about it. Whenever I am having a good time, the thought of it ending enters my mind. I have just recently realized that I have been afraid of the future my entire life. That’s why I don’t like change with pretty much anything. Once I feel comfortable with something, whether it be a place, a relationship, a food, a style of clothing or apparel, type of music, you name it…I don’t like it to change. If it were up to me, I would still be using Windows XP. I loved that operating system. I saw no need to change it. I was using an iPhone 6S Plus until I was absolutely forced to upgrade. I hate when software updates are released. Instead of thinking about the bugs it might fix or cool new features it may provide, I get anxious wondering what it will change. There have been many instances where I know a route to travel between two places and someone shows me a shortcut but for the life of me, I can’t get myself to start taking it. The old way is tried and true. Why risk taking a way that hasn’t been thoroughly scouted and proven to be safe? “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”

I have just recently realized that I have been afraid of the future my entire life.

Being the way I am has kept me from fulfilling my true potential in life. I have missed out on some golden opportunities in life and have been saddened when looking back with the wisdom gained in the interim. Like I said, most times, looking backward depresses me. I have made a lot of great memories in life, and I love to mark them with photographs, gifts or mementos. I was raised dirt poor and didn’t get to play organized sports, so I always envied the kids who had shelves full of trophies. A trophy is a fascinating creation that I think people take for granted and don’t really understand what they represent. It’s a way to memorialize a competition or achievement. It represents a special place in the timeline of your life. It is a tangible memory. Think about that, you are basically competing for a future memory. I wanted to get a ribbon on Field Day so badly. I came really close in “jump the creek” one year. I never stayed in one school long enough to find my place in the pecking order and set goals to improve it. It always seemed that I was at the bottom because I was an unknown commodity. You never get picked early in kickball when the kids picking teams don’t know you or your capabilities. I grew accustomed to being at the back of the line. Having “Wright” as my last name almost ensured I was at the back, even if we got to go in alphabetical order.

Anyway, I’m drifting away from my point as I tend to do. I’m really just spitballing here anyway. It’s just my way of trying to psychoanalyze myself and figure out why I have always struggled to finish things. I believe I am onto something here and now need to figure out my strategy to beat this. With my past-present-future explanation, you can try to think about it like this. If I want to finish something, like my book, for instance. I obviously need to write when I am feeling good physically, in a good mood mentally, have the time and it crosses my mind. Usually that occurs when I am very comfortable in the moment. I could be alone or with someone…it doesn’t matter. I know that when I sit down to start typing, I will be there for a few hours. Do I want to sacrifice hours from the moment that I know I am enjoying and am content? Especially if I know I have limited time, that’s a difficult decision. It’s like I am fast-tracking myself to the next day, which could be a work day or something. I do that dance with almost everything I try to plan. Plans give me anxiety. My friends can all attest to this. It’s easier for me to up and go do something with a friend or friends if we are already together than it is to make plans for the future. It’s extremely difficult to get me to commit to something. Making plans literally gives me anxiety. It’s because I don’t know how I will feel on that day. When that day rolls around, I may not feel like doing the thing and then I would be letting someone down. I absolutely hate disappointing someone, especially if I really care about them. If I don’t commit, I don’t really feel like I let them down. On the other hand, if I do show up, it’s always a pleasant surprise. That’s the way my brain works. Here’s the issue with that and why I want to work on it. If your friend tries many times to make plans with you and you consistently decline, they will eventually stop trying. That breaks my heart.

Another thing that I can get anxious about, when it comes to my book, is the thought of dying before I complete it. I have lists of memories and things I want to include in it and if I die, those thoughts die with me. I really want to get them out of my head on onto the page for posterity’s sake. I want my kids, my family and friends to be able to take a peek into my psyche and see what makes me tick. It’s going to be a raw and unfiltered. I made a joke on the last episode of the podcast where I said that if I never finish it, it will always have the reputation of being good because of the feedback of samples I shared. Trust me, that was just a joke and I really do intend on finishing it. That’s why I am so excited to be writing on this SmokeScreen Podcast blog page. It gets the juices flowing again. That and I really enjoy journaling when I have done it in the past. That’s the way I will be treating this. Almost like it’s my journal. So, get ready to get some random thoughts from time to time. I obviously can’t tell you how often I will be posting on here because that would be a commitment and I am not quite ready for that, but I am feeling good about it. I’m not sure how this is going to look, especially the pictures I found to post in it. Hopefully I can get better with the formatting in the future.

Until next time. Nothing but love.

James