The Great Divide

I’m a mama’s boy. Always have been, always will be.

Don’t get me wrong…it’s not like my mom hand-feeds me chicken or anything. We just share a special bond, and no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I know that we are connected.

We used to talk on the phone every morning during my 30 minute commute, but then she saw another segment on Oprah or Good Morning America reiterating how unsafe it was to use your cell while you’re driving – hands-free device or not – and that was the end of that.

(By some miracle, my mother always seems to be tuned to whatever show is running a story about how damaging cell phones are, how harmful sitting closer than six feet from the TV can be, and how scientists have now discovered that every piece of food I’ve ever eaten is completely void of any nutritional value. Really, it’s like her remote control can sense when one of these pieces is going to air.)

Ever since, our daily communication has come via instant messaging. This is no small feat, mind you, given my mom’s lack of technological savvy. She’s not the most patient person when it comes to the computer, and it’s not uncommon to get called in from another room because the machine “isn’t working,” only to find out that she simply hasn’t given it enough time to load, and there are now nine Internet Explorer windows open.

To my surprise, though, she’s been able to IM without many issues, and we’ve gotten into a nice routine. We catch up while she checks her email, and she doesn’t have to worry about me veering off into a tree. So far, it’s worked out well.

But a few weeks ago, our session ended on a troubling note, even if she didn’t know it. We’d been chatting for about 20 minutes, and everything was going along fine. But as we were about to sign off, she typed three words that really caught me off guard:

We miss you.

This threw me for a loop, not because I couldn’t grasp the concept of my parents missing me, but because it touched something inside of me, something I suspect that had been bubbling for a while, and it took reading my mom’s words to bring it to the surface.

See, when I graduated college, I wanted to get as far away from my hometown of Houston as possible. To that end, I spent the subsequent years pin-balling around the country, trying to find my own little place in this world. I’d load up my car and drive off into the sunset, hopeful that this time I’d get it right.

Inevitably, though, I’d end up back on my parents’ door step, bruised and battered, wondering if things would ever work out for me. Each failure felt like a false start, pushing me back further and further, and thus being in Houston grew to be synonymous with my lack of progress and achievement.

So a few years ago, when the opportunity to move to Washington, D.C. presented itself, I jumped on it. Rationally, I recognized that this would be a major shift in my life. I knew that I was going to be in a different time zone from my family, and that I would no longer be able to have a standing lunch date with my father or eat Friday night dinner with my parents while watching Chris Hansen bust unsuspecting pedophiles.

But honestly, as cold as this sounds, I wasn’t really thinking about any of that. At the time, I’d been in Houston for four consecutive years, working an unfulfilling job, and I felt trapped and restless, and this was my way out. My focus was on me, on my life, and I had to do this for myself.

And in a lot of ways, my relocation has worked out well. I met a great girl within the first two months of getting here who I am still with today. I’ve had a number of wonderful roommates. I’ve successfully used public transportation (a completely foreign concept in Texas). I even got to spend four hours at the Maryland DMV trying to get my new driver’s license.

Plus, just being in the nation’s capital has been a cool experience. For the first time, I live somewhere that my friends want to visit. There’s an energy, a juice to the city that you only find in towns like New York and L.A. and Chicago. You can turn on the TV or a movie and recognize places where you had lunch or where you sat in traffic for an hour-and-a-half. You can go downtown and watch tourists walk around with their maps and fanny packs. And obviously, there’s history everywhere you turn. Just on my drive to and from work everyday, I can see the Capitol building, National Cathedral, the Pentagon, the Washington Monument, the Kennedy Center, Watergate, and the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. That never gets old.

But while people may pay a lot of money to come from all over and experience all of this, I’m beginning to wonder if I am not somehow paying an even higher price.

After all, my family has now become just an entry in my email inbox and a voice on the other end of the phone. Before I moved, I probably took the time I spent with them for granted. It was just so common, a part of my normal routine. We were close-knit, and it was what we did, and I never had to think about.

Now, if I want to see them, it’s so premeditated, so planned out. I can’t just get in my car and go if I get the urge. Airfare is outrageous, and I typically have to take a day or two off from work. And to get the most bang for my bucks, I have to strategically pick the weekends when everyone is around, while also trying to calculate what big occasions are coming up, so that my trips end up being evenly staggered throughout the year.

When I do actually get there, my visits go by so quickly. There are just barely enough hours in the weekend to see my extended family, hang out a little with my friends and eat at my must-eat barbecue restaurant. Before I know it, I’m back at the airport, hugging my parents while holding up traffic, as we try to figure out the next time we’re going to see each other.

I treasure these quick, don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it reunions, but they are equal parts bitter and sweet. And it usually takes until I arrive at work the next day for all of the bitterness to fully subside.

Of course, I might need to toughen up a bit, because my mom recently told me she’s over my departure in about 15 minutes.

When you’re a little kid, life feels like it’s out “there,” like it’s all in front of you, and it seems as if what you’re going through and experiencing in the present tense almost doesn’t count, like it’s some sort of prelude or warm-up for the real thing.

But I’m 33 now, and life doesn’t always feel that way anymore. There are moments when I’m hit with that cold reality that my story is being written, that the scoreboard is on, and that time is continually dripping away whether I choose to acknowledge it or not.

And it’s in those moments when my mind can’t help drifting to my parents and the rest of my family. Sure, everyone is healthy and fit and active, but the adult in me now realizes that none of us will be here forever.

There’s an old saying that talks about living every day as if it’s your last. And in a world that demands that you have money and groceries and a plan for tomorrow, that’s as big of a challenge as there is.

When I do envision my final hours on earth, though, I picture doing certain things exclusively for myself, like playing a round of golf, preparing a list of who-killed-Kennedy questions for when I get to heaven, and backing up a juicy steak with a yellow cupcake covered in chocolate icing.

But I also see myself surrounded by everyone who is important to me, laughing and reminiscing and coming up with ways for my spirit to positively affect Texas Longhorn football games after I’m gone.

Given all of that, it would be nice if I could strike that balance before my time is almost up. It would be nice to have the perfect job in the perfect city with the people I love close by, but unfortunately, that’s not the case for me. The state of my union just isn’t aligned that way right now, and it leaves me torn and wrestling with what to do next. Do I stay? Do I go? I honestly don’t know, and I could really use some comfort and guidance.

For my sake, let’s hope my mom can get her computer turned on tomorrow morning.

Confessions of a Fan(atic)

My name is Brent, and I am a fanatic.

A Texas Longhorn sports fanatic, that is. During my one and only visit to Jerusalem, I slipped a note in the Wailing Wall asking for a Longhorn football national championship. That revelation probably just made my brother – who’s a rabbi – cringe, but UT did win it all just two seasons later, so it was well worth any after-life penance I could be facing.

As described here, this devotion was ingrained on my DNA at birth, and it has been a part of who I am my entire life. When the Horns are playing, I’m locked in my own personal torture chamber of stress and anxiety, living and dying with each play, knowing that a loss will bring a swift kick to the stomach and the endless wondering of what might have been.

Needless to say, it’s been a rough 24 hours since Texas’ season-ending, gut-wrenching, Misery-hobbling-scene excruciating, 70-69 defeat in the NCCA tournament last night. I went to bed without eating, and I woke up to a concerned voicemail from my father, checking in on me to see if I was okay. Every national columnist is mocking the team as underachievers, and I can’t listen to talk radio without hearing the words “Texas” and “choke.”

The game itself was a rollercoaster ride, with the Longhorns jumping out early, then falling behind, then grinding back into the lead, only to lose it again in the very end.

I could go on and on about the turnovers and lackadaisical play that led to the first half deficit. I could complain about how the refs swallowed their whistles on the Horns’ game-ending possession. And I could scream and yell about the absolute screw job of a call that changed the course of the crucial final seconds (the picture doesn’t lie…even my two-year-old niece can count to five).

But I’m not going to do that. I’m here, covered in burnt orange blood, my metaphorical wounds still raw, hoping that talking openly about my obsession will help ease the pain.

To be a fan is to be a masochist, a glutton for punishment. We’re hopeless romantics, convinced that this next game, this next season will bring us what we’ve always wanted. We’re full of hope and anticipation at the start, but unlike dating, where everyone can fall in love, only one fan base can actually celebrate a championship each year.

The rest of us are left on the wrong end of the scoreboard, suffering through the agony of defeat.

And dealing with that aftermath is awful. It’s like going through a breakup, when you’ve got nothing but time to worry and wallow. Any mention of the loss makes you feel as if you’re experiencing it all over again. Scrolling the websites and logging onto message boards is like listening to those special songs or looking through old pictures – it’s a detour from having to face reality. You don’t want to let go, so you do anything you can to keep the dream alive, even though it’s already gone.

You analyze everything from every angle, trying to make sense of why it happened. Why did the coach do this? Why did the players do that? Why did the referee bend us over like the Gimp in Pulp Fiction?

But no matter what answers you come up with, and no matter how you cast the blame, in the end, you’re still left with nothing but regret and an offseason full of what-ifs.

Throughout all of these stages, I personally can’t help judging my feelings, questioning why I’m so worked up over something so meaningless. I mean, as sportscaster Jim Rome put it, sports are the world’s toy department, and it’s ridiculous that, armed with my 33 years of wisdom, that I’m unable to keep a better perspective. It’s not war or nuclear disaster…it’s a bunch of kids playing a kid’s game. The health of the planet isn’t in jeopardy, and lives aren’t at stake. It’s the furthest thing from being life or death.

But for some strange, unexplainable reason, it still kind of feels that way.

I guess that’s just part of being deeply invested in something. Because the truth is, regardless of how unimportant they may seem to others, Texas athletics are important to me. And when you devote as much of yourself as I do, you’re bound to get hurt when things don’t go well.

It’s going to take a little time for me to get over what happened in Tulsa. While the loss was devastating in its own right, the collateral damage of it is that I don’t get another week of following my favorite team – of reading articles, of dreaming of the possibilities, of experiencing that sweet pain of watching the Horns in action. And the knife is only going to twist deeper when I see Arizona line up against Duke in a game that Texas woulda/coulda/shoulda been playing.

But that will be a big step in the healing process. Sure, I’ll carry the scars of this loss with me, but I’ll steadily turn the page, and before I know it, I’ll be back in touch with that hope that somehow, someway, someday, the Horns are going to eventually come out on top.

After all, there’s always next year.

Help Me Help You

During my senior year of high school, I got a job at the neighborhood Blockbuster Video in hopes of earning some spending cash. Considering all of the places I could’ve worked, I’m not really sure what led me there, though. The pay was minimum, the hours were not, and at least once a week, I was on the clock until 3am, cleaning up the disaster zone that was the store on a Friday or Saturday night.

Fortunately, it wasn’t all negative. I did get free rentals, and because there was a McDonald’s right across the street, I had an excuse to eat chicken nuggets for dinner far more often than my mother would’ve liked. Plus, I was also given one of those cool titles that make you sound much more important than you actually are:

Customer Service Representative.

While I’d had a couple of jobs before, this was my first experience in the “front of the house,” out amongst the people. My thought was that it would be a nice change of pace from the quiet monotony of the golf course cart barns where I’d previously worked.

Boy, was I wrong.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that dealing with customers was about as much fun as turning and coughing for my doctor. Everybody was unhappy – about everything. Late fees, lack of inventory, overpriced rentals, the annoying overhead movie clips that played repeatedly (okay, that was my complaint)…the whining never stopped. It got to the point where I couldn’t wait to do my closing duties – which included the tedious task of making sure that each and every box cover was perfectly centered in front of the tapes behind them – because it meant that all of the insanity was on the other side of the store’s locked doors.

And it was in those moments, crawling from shelf to shelf on my hands and knees, with the clock ticking towards an ungodly hour of night, when I came to the following realization:

I hated people.

Not my friends and family…I still liked them. It was the paying public I couldn’t stand – the people who yelled at me for not renting to them because they had no ID; the people who talked down to me like I was a child; the people who walked into the store three minutes before we were about to close; the people who would just drop a movie they didn’t want in any random spot, knowing that somebody else (me) would clean up after them. These people were rude and thoughtless and unreasonable, and putting up with them, even on a part-time basis, turned my view of my fellow man decidedly cynical.

That’s what can happen when you work in customer service. Built on the foundation that the “customer is always right,” the customer-employee relationship is one of the most unequal, lopsided dynamics around, right alongside wife-husband, Viagra-ED and Chris Hansen-potential pedophile. The normal laws of human interaction don’t apply. Because the customer is so valued, they have, in the words of George Costanza, “hand,” meaning they can do and say pretty much whatever they want.

When you think about it, the business world is a lot like the ocean. Both are environments that are driven, in large part, by the behavior of their dominant inhabitants. In the business world, that’s the customer. In the ocean, it’s the shark. Each sits atop their respective food chains, and where they go and what they consume sets the course for everyone and everything below them.

Which means that those of us who work in customer service are the equivalent of the seal – the helpless mammal on which the sharks feed.

I’ve never been more aware of my place in this hierarchy than when I was working for one of the largest sports marketing firms in the country. The first thing my supervisors taught me was to service the client, service the client, service the client. Like location in real estate, that was what it was all about, and it was a nonstop task. Even during the summer, when our office closed a few hours early on Friday afternoons, someone had to stick around in case some sort of “marketing emergency” popped up.

(Of course, the second thing they taught me was “CYA” – Cover You’re a$$ – so if the client was not properly serviced, I would be in a good position to blame somebody else. Gotta love Corporate America!)

As an Account Coordinator (another one of those misleading titles), I was assigned to help organize and run owner-loyalty golf tournaments for a large automotive company. Basically, our client wanted to thank their best customers for buying a bunch of cars, so they would invite them out to a high-end country club for a day of free golf, food and prizes, and it was our job to make it all happen.

And that’s exactly what we did when we were told to set up a tournament for the Washington, D.C. area. After securing one of the city’s top golf courses as the host site – it was where the local PGA Tour event was played – we lined up a great menu for lunch and dinner, along with a number of gifts to be raffled off. And before too long, we reached our full capacity of RSVPs.

But on the day of the event, we had a number of no-shows. And our client wanted to know why.

What ensued was a fast-and-furious string of emails between higher-ups, as everyone tried to figure out what had gone wrong. How could this have happened? What mistakes were made? Did everyone get the memo about the TPS reports?

Operating under the notion that no idea was too foolish, the theories and suggestions got more ridiculous with each exchange. At one point, the client wondered if it’d be worthwhile for us to analyze traffic patterns to see if that had contributed to the lack of attendance.

Reading through it all, I couldn’t believe how absurd and drawn-out the situation had become. I also didn’t appreciate the implication that we somehow hadn’t done our job properly. I knew the smart move would be to just keep my mouth shut and play along, but I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.

So I jumped into the email chain and defended our work. I explained that we’d selected a top-notch venue, and we’d promoted the event well enough to fill all of the available slots. We’d been on top of communicating the details to the participants beforehand. We’d executed the logistics of everything effectively. And we’d given the golfers who did show up a great day. What more could we have done?

I concluded by saying that while it was worth evaluating our efforts when something wasn’t perfect, there’s not always a tangible, logical explanation for everything what happens. No matter how hard you try, there are some things you just can’t control. Maybe these no-shows got tied up at work or had to pick up their kids or had a last-minute change of plans. Sometimes people don’t show up, and you just have to chalk it up as “one of those things” and move on.

Not surprisingly, my rebuttal was not well received, and honestly, I’m lucky I didn’t get fired. Things got smoothed over with the client, but the manager of my account didn’t talk to me for about a week. I had crossed an un-crossable line, and I walked away from the experience with the understanding that when dealing with the customer, my opinion was to be kept to myself. It didn’t matter what I thought….all that mattered was what the customer thought, and it was up to me to cater to whatever that may be.

Ever since then, I’ve toed the company line for every company I’ve worked. I check my beliefs at the door and approach the job with the mindset of a second-class citizen. I’m here to serve.

It hasn’t always been easy, though, as there are all types of people out there with all types of personalities. I do my best to validate their feelings and assure them that their concern will be attended to and rectified, and then I hold on for dear life. I can typically suppress my thoughts enough to fake my way through – even if I think they’re an absolute whack job who needs to find something worthwhile to worry about.

But we all have a threshold.

When someone keeps pushing and poking, grinding away at something that’s already been beaten to death, I can only hang in there for so long. The what-else-do-you-want-me-to-say aggravation wells up inside, and I want to tell them exactly how I feel. I want to point out how irrational they’re being. I want to make it clear how little I care. I want to remind them how unbecoming it is to display the patience of a four-year-old. I want to urge them to go have an inappropriate relationship with themselves, and I want to let them know that I will forever hold a grudge for the 20 minutes and 40 blood pressure points that they cost me.

And then I remember my place on the food chain.

Look, I’m not saying people should never voice their displeasure. I know how frustrating it can be when you spend – or are trying to spend – your hard-earned money on something, and it ends up turning into a headache that you didn’t ask for.

Because, like Cy Sperling and the Hair Club for Men, I have not only worked in customer service, but I’ve also been a client.

I have sat in restaurants wondering if a server would ever stop at my table. I have waited nine hours for a cable guy who never showed. I have repeatedly screamed “OPERATOR” into the phone until the automated answering system finally connected me with an actual human being. I have been shorted a supersized order of McDonald’s French fries.

And I love McDonald’s fries.

But I have also recognized that simply paying for something doesn’t give you the right to treat people poorly. That money in your hand isn’t a license to be a jacka$.

In most cases, the people on the other side of the counter are trying to do their best. They’re not purposely putting you off or deliberately yanking you around, so why not give them a break? Wouldn’t you want someone to do the same for you? For your friend? For your child?

Besides, it’s entirely possible that the unsuspecting person you’re complaining to didn’t even have a hand in screwing up whatever it is that got screwed up…they’re just the unlucky one who answered the phone or drew you in line. So being rude to them only puts them on the defensive, thus making them all the less likely to go out of their way to help you.

But it’s not just about getting what you want…it’s about respect, and everyone, from the grocery bagger to the waiter to the airline rep to the DMV agent – yes, even the DMV agent – deserves to be treated in a dignified manner.

While I wish everyone would take this approach, too many still don’t. They’re too hurried or too selfish or too wrapped up in their own worlds to stop and consider the feelings for anybody but themselves.

But that needs to change, because somewhere out there is an innocent, idealistic teenager wearing a blue polo shirt and a name tag, and he hasn’t yet been jaded by the world around him.

You don’t want him to end up like me, do you?

The Social Network

I’ll admit it…I’m a fan of ABC’s reality franchise “The Bachelor.”

Maybe it’s because the show touches my hidden romantic side, or maybe it’s because I hope to one day replace the incomparable Chris “This is the final rose” Harrison as host, but there’s just something about it that keeps me tuning in.

So when the network rounded up some of the most memorable characters from seasons’ past, threw them in a California mansion, and let them compete, connive and cry their eyes out for $250,000 in the spinoff series “Bachelor Pad,” my Monday nights were immediately spoken for.

Like most reality TV, there wasn’t much depth to the show, with each episode consisting of little more than gratuitous skin shots and over-the-top, tear-filled outbursts. When the housemates weren’t hanging by the pool or making out in the hot tub, they were competing in challenges such as pie eating races and blindfolded kissing contests to determine who would get to go out on a romantic date and who would have to stay back, get drunk, and talk trash about whomever wasn’t there. After two hours of this nonsense, everyone would cast a vote “Survivor”-style for who they wanted to send packing. The last (wo)man standing won the cash.

Given the group setting, it wasn’t surprising that cliques quickly formed among the housemates, but it was interesting to see how the divisions were drawn and how this separation affected the dynamics of everything. There were two distinct factions, and the cast nicknamed each of them to make sure everyone knew the house’s pecking order…

On one side, you had the “insiders” – the athletic, cocky, good-looking types who were born with a popped collar, the d-bags who used to show up to college spring break already tanned. They were all coupled up, and when they weren’t mounting each other, they were looking down on everybody else.

On the other side were the “outsiders” – a melting pot of outcasts who had been deemed unworthy of being included in the cool crowd. You had the “nerd,” the “rebel,” the “whiner”…you even had the “cougar,” a woman who apparently was so much older than the rest of the contestants that the producers put up “??” on the screen in place of her age whenever they identified her.

But what the outsiders lacked in popularity points, they made up for in volume – they outnumbered the insiders. And in a game where elimination was determined by votes, the biggest alliance wielded the biggest stick. So if the outsiders could band together and vote as a unit, they could take out the insiders one by one and exact the ultimate Revenge of the Nerds.

And yet, they never did.

When it came down to the finale, and all of the cash was within arm’s length, there was nothing but insiders left fighting for it. Not because they were smarter or tougher or stronger competitors, and not because they won more challenges or had a better strategy. It was because they had something that the outsiders were desperate for:

Status.

Every week, the outsiders would consort and confer and eventually decide on an insider to send home. And every week, right before the votes were cast, one of the insiders would approach an outsider in hopes of getting that outsider to change his or her vote.

Weak-kneed and starry-eyed, the outsider would stand there in awe, gazing up at their hero, like they were offering “Mean” Joe Green a Coke. As the insider sweet-talked them, making them feel as if they could possibly be part of the inner circle if they’d just do this one favor, you could see the outsiders’ delusional thoughts dancing through their heads…

“How can someone with eyes this dreamy not be telling me the truth?”

“I know it was just a kissing contest, but this guy must have really meant it when he stuck his tongue down my throat.”

“Maybe now I’ll get to disgrace my parents by having sex on national television in the fantasy suite.”

You can guess what happened from there. The outsider would flip their vote, thus saving the targeted insider – and eliminating an unsuspecting outsider – and in the ensuing episodes, having no more use for their mark, the insiders would scheme to get rid of the very same outsider(s) who had previously helped them.

To watch this unfold over and over was maddening. It was a season-long validation of the hierarchy of high school – the cool kids bending everything their way…the losers just bending over.

But despite my urge to beat the outsiders over the head with a what-did-you-think-was-going-to-happen stick, a part of me could also identify with them.

When I was in 6th grade, I was on top of the world. I had a lunch table full of friends, I was “going with” the prettiest girl in class, and I was even voted “Best All-Around” in the yearbook.

Granted, I went to a magnet school, and my class wasn’t much bigger than the Tea Party’s Obama Fan Club, but still…that’s not something they can take away from you.

But towards the end of the spring semester, something changed. I had broken up with my girlfriend (probably because the foundation of our relationship was the occasional look from across the cafeteria and a hug at the end of the day…honestly, we never actually spoke to each other), and the rest of the girls had shifted their attention to one of the other boys. At the final dance of the year, while everyone was jamming to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” and Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality,” I was yesterday’s news, off in the corner, wasting away in irrelevance.

That’s when I decided a change of scenery could do me some good. Since I knew a bunch of people at my neighborhood school, I transferred there over the summer, hoping that this recent fall from grace had been a mere bump in the road – not a sign that I had peaked in life as a 12-year-old.

Seventh grade is a critical time for a Jewish teenager. Not only do you become an adult in the eyes of your religion, but because there is this never-ending string of Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations among your classmates, you quickly find out how popular you are. You see how many invitations show up in your mailbox. You see who talks to you at parties. You see who is willing to slow-dance (arms fully extended) with you. For the first time, you really start to get a view of the social landscape, and you see exactly where it is that you fit.

Unfortunately for me, I was more totally geek than totally chic.

While I was invited to a lot of these functions, I wasn’t really included in the festivities. Everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives, decked out in their Z Cavarricis, swaying arm in arm to “That’s What Friends Are For.” Me? I would just float through the banquet rooms, searching for a group of people to latch onto, hoping to promote the appearance that I wasn’t all alone. I blended in like I was wearing centerpiece camouflage, and I don’t think anyone would’ve noticed had I spent those Saturday nights at home watching the Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling.

It’s not that I didn’t have any friends, because I was fortunate to have some really good ones. But I just always felt like I was on the outside looking in. In the social story that was playing out all around me, I was nothing more than a fringe character – the guy who everyone said hi to (but didn’t talk to again), the guy who nobody had a problem with, but, at the end of the day, the guy who was just…there.

And so it went for me…

In high school, where glamour sports like baseball and football were king, I played golf, which did nothing to help my cause. Nobody seemed to be impressed by our matching polo shirts or logoed golf bags – especially not the popular girl who I used to stare at in English class. When I finally got the courage to ask her out, she initially answered yes, and I spent the rest of the week with my feet 10 feet off of Beale. But on the day of our date, she didn’t respond to my calls, and when I went to her house to see what the deal was, her mother told me that she was out for the night.

It was a significant moment in my dating career: the first time a girl had given me the runaround. And it was something that, looking back, I needed to get used to.

But it wasn’t exactly the “first” I’d been hoping for.

When I got to college, I joined the fraternity that my brother had pledged. It was definitely the right place for me…I made a bunch of friends – friends I’m still close with today – and I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything. But because we were viewed as the “nice guys,” and because we were at an age when girls are generally attracted to anything but, our barbecues sometimes had too many hot dogs for any of our liking.

Since graduation, I haven’t gotten any cooler, nor have I succeeded in the areas – money and power – that now determine one’s place in society. But while I’ve had the occasional date go south when it was revealed that my job description included terms like “assistant” and “entry level,” I somehow haven’t felt that many negative repercussions from my current (lack of) status. I guess I’ve just been lucky.

But I’m still scarred.

Those wounds that started accumulating way back in sixth grade haven’t just washed off like some sort of temporary tattoo. I carry all of that pain with me, and it affects how I view and interact with the world. I often feel as if I’m invisible. I lack confidence in social situations. I expect to be rejected when I put myself out there.

That’s just the way it is for me. If you get left out enough, if you get rejected enough, if you go unnoticed enough, you begin to believe that there’s something wrong with you. It gets ingrained on your DNA, and it can turn your life into an anxious and isolating existence.

Because while it’s nice to be funny or good looking or rich, few things compare to being accepted.

When you’re a part of something – a group of friends, a team, a club, the mafia – you feel validated. This person likes me, and that person likes me, so I must be okay. There’s a sense of structure, of support, like there’s a place for you.

But too often we sell out for this acceptance, doing anything and everything we can, just to try to fit in. We agree to eat at a restaurant we dislike. We let someone else pick the radio station. We don’t express an opinion. We substitute somebody else’s judgment for our own. We let our pledge masters pour Tabasco sauce down our boxer shorts.

These things may seem harmless on the surface and really, if you look at them individually, they are pretty insignificant (well, except for the last one…that one actually is harmful on the surface). But when you stack them one on top of the other, instance after instance, they take a toll, because the more you concede, and the more you conform, the more inauthentic you become.

And honestly, what good is it to be accepted for being someone you’re not?

Lord knows I fail miserably at it, but I guess the trick is to not allow your self worth to be reliant on any type of exterior approval. Like happiness, it’s an inside job, and no matter how much pressure you feel or how lonely things get, you have to figure out a way to stay true to who you really are and be okay with it – everyone else be damned.

Sure, it may cost you a rendezvous in the fantasy suite, but it might just be your best shot at $250,000.

Waiting for My Real Life to Begin

There’s an age-old belief that the truth shall set you free.

Well, I have been sitting here for over an hour, trying to figure out how to start this article, and I am failing miserably.

If this were the pre-word processor days, there would be a sea of crumpled paper all over my floor. I can’t put together a coherent thought, I’m getting taunted by the cursor and its “Any time now…” blinking, and if I engage in this staring contest with my blank screen for much longer, I might go Daniel Tosh on my monitor.

So what choice do I have but to be brutally honest, admit my struggles and pray that it gets me paroled off of Writer’s Block Row?

Needless to say, the creative process has been pretty tough on me lately. I don’t know exactly when it started, but it’s like I’m on a nauseating merry-go-round ride that won’t stop.

I’ll come up with an idea, I’ll do my brainstorming and I’ll begin to write it. Things will be going okay, and I’ll feel like I’m making some progress, but then…I hit a wall. Everything stops flowing, and the harder I try to fight through it, the faster I spin my wheels. When I step back and look at what I have done – hoping there’s something there to convince me that I’m not a completely gift-less loser – I see nothing but a rambling, disjointed mess. For sanity purposes, I put the perfectly good topic aside and start over with something else.

I understand that these uninspired spells aren’t uncommon, that everyone goes through them at one point or another. Sometimes the right side of the brain needs a vacation, and all it wants to do is sit around, eat Oreos and watch “Breakfast in Bed” on SOAPnet, and the only thing you can do is wait patiently until that last episode of Beverly Hills 90210 is over. I accept that.

What I can’t accept, though, is that this maddening, start-and-stop, getting-nowhere cycle has also become the perfect metaphor for my life in general.

It’s been 10 years since I graduated from the University of Texas, and in that time, I have lived in six different cities, held 11 different jobs, paid rent to eight different landlords, set foot in 34 states and celebrated one Longhorn football National Championship, all in hopes of making my own little place in this world. But outside of a horizontal career path and a dresser I assembled from IKEA, I’ve got little to show for my efforts.

To echo the sentiments of Elaine Benes, I never wanted to grow up to be this.

As a kid, I was always a dreamer. My parents taught my brother and me to follow our hearts, and that’s exactly what I was determined to do. I spent every waking moment thinking about and imagining and planning for all of the great adventures I wanted to experience.

Unfortunately, those fantasies had to be frozen and saved for later – not unlike Ted Williams’ head – because there were other responsibilities I was required to tend to. I had to do chores. I had to go to school. I had to do homework. I had to study for tests.

None of this stuff was fun, and at the time, I didn’t see the point of any of it. I didn’t like being told that I had to do something, and I resented being forced to dedicate so much energy to tasks for which I had no interest.

If the saying, “Everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten” were true, then why did I need to take Pre-Calculus?

Honestly, I didn’t even really care about going to college. Sure, I figured it’d be smart to get a degree, but I didn’t have this insatiable thirst for education that could only be quenched at an institution of higher learning. I wasn’t looking to immerse myself in academia or broaden my intellectual horizons.

I went because it’s what I was expected to do.

Of course, it didn’t take long for me to realize the greatness that is the college lifestyle. I lived in a beautiful city stocked full of beautiful girls, my entire group of friends was within a five block radius of me, my Saturday three-step was noon wakeup-football game-party, and a “busy” day meant that I was in class from 11am – 3:30pm.

Still, I never fully stopped feeling stuck and restrained, like I was just mindlessly following the crowd, carrying out someone else’s wishes. The lectures were boring, the assignments were tedious, and besides learning that Acapulco was a more desirable spring break destination than Cancun – through field research, of course – I wasn’t really expanding my knowledge base.

So as great as my setup was, and as much as I enjoyed the Austin way of life, there was a part of me that longed for the day when I would get to devote my time to things that I wanted to do, to things that were important to me.

But as the second semester of my senior year was winding down, and I began to look towards the next step in my life, it suddenly hit me: for the first time in my 22 years, my path was not predetermined.

This was frightening new territory. Outside of which girl to ask out or which beer to drink, I hadn’t ever made a big decision…everything had always been decided for me. I never had to think about anything. I never had to worry about anything. I just had to do what I was told, and if things didn’t work out, I could deflect the blame towards anybody but me.

Now, that wasn't going to be the case anymore. While I had always dreamed of this autonomy, the reality of it was terrifying, and trying to convince myself otherwise was futile. The panic came at me in waves.

Did I take the right job? Was it truly what I wanted to do? Was I going to be happy? What if I screw up? Will I like living in that part of the country? Why was I dumb enough to graduate in four years?

Not surprisingly, the moment that tassel switched from the right side of my graduation cap to the left, my struggles began, and I haven’t gotten untangled yet. Walking the wire without a net, I have been a basket case of nerves, hesitation and self-doubt, and the state of my union unfortunately reflects that. I’ve tried everything and achieved nothing.

It’s easy to play the comparison game, and I indulge as much as anyone. I see my friends who have found success. I see those who are on the right path and climbing towards their goals. I see people my age on TV who are living out their dreams.

And I see that I don’t measure up.

But more importantly, independent of what anyone else is doing, I see myself going nowhere quickly. I’m past the point of daydreaming, of waiting for “someday”…this is the time when I’m supposed to be writing my story, when I’m supposed to be making everything happen.

What do I want to be when I grow up? Well, I am grown up. My life is right now, and I am tired of it looking like this.

Whenever I sit down to write, and the ideas are incoherently swirling through my head, I am inevitably overwhelmed by the fact that there are a million different ways to say what I want to say. How to frame it, how to word it, how to make it all flow together…the possibilities are endless, and I’m constantly fearful of not picking the “best” option. For me, it is the scariest thing about writing.

But it’s also the greatest.

Because as intimidating as that blank page can be, it is also full of hope. It’s the canvas for you to create whatever you choose. Like a little boy’s imagination, there are no limits, and there are no restrictions, and the path you take is solely up to you.

Life works in the same manner. Each day is a clean slate, with no memory of what’s happened in the past. No matter where you’ve been, no matter what you’ve done, and no matter how many times you’ve gone around in circles, it’s never too late to turn it all around.

And luckily, for a lost soul like me, recognizing that simple truth could be all it takes to finally set me free.