Second Chances Or Third Time Is The Trick

The strangest thing about being back in Texas isn’t that I am back here but the feeling that I never left when I know damn well I did.

Packed up my place and made it back to LA in only two days the week of Halloween 2013.

While it is true I have been back three or four times since then it wasn’t until the last of week of August that I could officially say Texas is where I live full time.

Yet if you asked me how long it has been since I lived here I would swear I was only gone for a month or two.

Don’t know if it means my sanity is questionable or if it is a sign of how comfortable I am here.

Instead of trying to figure it out I choose to just accept and run with it because I have way too much that I have to get done.

Peer inside my head and you’ll see that someone has thrown a yoke around my neck and I am pulling a giant plow behind me.

What you won’t see or hear is me reminding myself the hardest part of pulling the plow is now because I am fighting inertia.

Once I get that sucker moving it will get a lot easier and the more trips I make back and forth across the field the faster they’ll become because I’ll have an easier path to traverse and momentum to help me.

Got David Cassidy and the Partridge Family singing I Think I Love You in my ears.

They are following Three Dog Night’s Mama Told Me Not To Come on a CD I have owned for years now.

Billboard Rock and Roll Hits, 1970 I think is the title.

The music has me thinking about my childhood.

Got a parade of images of family road trips across California and assorted other places far and near.

Somewhere out there in the ether I have a teenage son who disagrees with me on some points and who doesn’t have the benefit of the life experience I have.

He can’t see my past and how intersects with my present and understand how I can rely upon those things to make decisions or to weigh expectations.

Part of me wants to tell him to go stare up at the sky and show me the planet he is using to make decisions so that I can point to Mars and say that is my planet.

I’ll use it as a teaching moment and ask him if he knows Mars Is The Bringer Of War and explain I am prepared to go the distance on a few things.

And then I’ll ask him to tell me how many fights I had with my father when I was a teenager.

My best guess is he’ll make some comment about how he knows grandpa and I used to fight and he has heard the stories about how many times I was sent from the dinner table.

I’ll tell him I love him and explain that when it comes to situations I will not relent or release my grip.

Instead I will focus my energy and resources upon coming up with good solutions and we’ll go from there.

The point isn’t to demonstrate bravado or how tough I can be but to reiterate my willingness to help my children find their way.

This parenting thing isn’t for the faint of heart and if you ask me, the days when they were infants and toddlers were far easier than now.

But there is nothing better than being dad and I’ll gladly go through it all.

Second Chances Or Third Time Is The Trick

I didn’t take the picture of the antelope running so I can’t tell you if the dude is late for a meeting at the waterhole or trying to stay three steps ahead of Leo the lion.

But if I had to make a guess I’d like to say he has had a couple of close experiences and is using those to make good choices.

I’d like to say he is running because it is fun and because he knows that jamming across open spaces is the safest way to move from point A to point B.

Opportunity is a funny thing and the boys and I have debated and discussed how much influence we really have upon generating it.

It feels good to think that we have a ton but I am not convinced that we have as much as we might like to say or think.

So I tell my children to work hard to generate good opportunities for themselves and remind them to keep their eyes open so when it shows up they are prepared to move on it.

That is really how I ended up back in Texas.

It was a combination of busting my behind to make things happen and then my willingness to jump off of the carousel horse and try to grab that damn ring.

This time I think I managed to do more than knock it off. This time I think I found a way to stick it in my pocket.