Tag Looking Back

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Michael Leave a comment

You’d think after running into somebody five hundred times you’d probably know him pretty well. If you’ve read every post I’ve uploaded you would have gotten 500 pieces of my mind, and as I look back at some of them, there isn’t that much there to really let you know who I am. Before I go on, let me say that if you’ve read every post I’ve ever uploaded you might be that person out there who actually has more time on his or her hands than I do. We may have to talk about that.

Five hundred. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Certainly it’s not in the same league as 19 trillion as in the U. S. National Debt, 9 billion as in Apple’s 2016 fourth quarter net income, or even 32 million as in Hillary’s net worth. Still, if somebody offered me 500 – as in dollars – I’d be considering just what unnatural act I’d be willing to consider for such a payoff. But the five hundred I’m talking about isn’t any form of currency. No, it’s more like those 500 meetings from the first paragraph. It’s the 500 posts that I’ve uploaded to the Real Reality Show Blog since its debut on November 7, 2011.

Wait a minute. I see you. You’re number crunching. Five hundred posts in a five years and two months. Plus a few days. That’s not so many. Some people post something every day. Some people post more than one something every day. I might have that kind of time but I’m not that kind of ambitious. I figured when I started this that a couple of times a week would be plenty for anybody to hear from me. After all, the intent of this was to demonstrate to the world what reality really looks like to normal people. And back then I was leading a fairly normal life.

So twice a week seemed to be plenty. Yet somehow, even posting twice a week for over five years I can honestly say that if I didn’t know who I was before I read any of these ramblings I wouldn’t know that much about me after. Yeah, I like pizza, hockey, and maple syrup. I hate fine print on TV ads, people who insist on bringing their three-suiter suitcase and then continue to insist that it will fit in the overhead compartment, and waiting in line to be seated at restaurants. But who am I? You know I’m male, I live somewhere north of the Mason Dixon line, I’m past middle age unless I get to one hundred (I’m holding out for that), and I had a happy life and enjoyed poking fun at it up to about three years ago when life poked back and hit me with a still ongoing frenzy of medical issues. But outside of that, who am I?chefman

I’m probably you. You see, although this never intended to be an anonymous blog it sort of ended up that way. At least sort of. But that was ok. I wanted it to be a reflection of what everybody is. Whether man or woman, boy or girl, young or old, or whatever you want yourself to be of any of the above.  Whether American, Canadian, British, German, Australian, Indian, Italian, Vietnamese, Brazilian, or from anywhere else readers have found their way from, this was supposed to be so you could see yourself in that post. I might have put the idea out there but they all have been pretty universal ideas. Everything from the spirit of sportsmanship in the Olympics to using time travel to eliminate crowding leftovers in your refrigerator.

Every other milestone I’ve hit I’ve spent the entire post assembling links to my favorite posts of that particular achievement. I looked back over the most recent 100 posts and found that I kind of like them all. They’ve all come at a pretty stressful but still very gratifying time of my life. They might be a little more revealing than the 400 that came before them but they still can be seen through anybody’s eyes. Maybe even yours. So instead of me telling you which are my favorites, I invite you to keep scrolling through to find and read, or hopefully to re-read, your favorites. If I did it right, each time I posted my thoughts there was enough universality in them to stimulate some of yours too.

Will I get around to writing another 500 posts? As long as someone keeps reading them I suppose I’ll keep posting them. And since I insist on reading each one each time after it’s posted I guess I’m stuck with it. If you’d like to continue along with me, feel free. It would be really nice of you. I’m glad we met.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Looking Back

Michael Leave a comment

Sometime toward the end of last year I mentioned the Real Reality Show Blog turned five years old. That happened on November 7 but I didn’t get around to mentioning it until much later that month. Shortly after that it became December and life got turned upside down for me. Again. I ended 2016 two days shy of actually being home from three separate hospital stays during the last month of last year. Hanging around for so many days in a hospital bed leaves one with only so many things to do. Read. Watch TV. Work a crossword puzzle or two. Roll over on top of the nurse call button. Think about life.

I hate thinking about life. Here’s why. Why is because thinking about life interferes with life. While I was lying about wondering “what had I done to deserve this” I got to thinking of life and the life I specifically had last year.

It started celebrating the end of the holiday season in a strange place. For the first time in 29 years I wasn’t in my old, wonderful house with a Christmas tree in every room highlighted by the 12 foot job under the cathedral ceiling of the natural wood finished sun room. And worst of all, I didn’t have all 37 of my nativities displayed. That’s because for the first Christmas after 29 years I was celebrating it in a miniscule one bedroom apartment so I could move about and function better in my new “challenged,” – screw that, make it disabled! – state. But then but the end of the year I got used to those not that miniscule quarters, I got used to working around the complex, I got used to hanging out at the pool, I got used to my new neighbors, and I missed those, that, and them when I wasn’t there in December.

In April I turned 60. I didn’t think anything of it. But for some reason my sisters thought I should have a party to celebrate that milestone. I look at milestones for birthdays years like 16, 21, 30, maybe 50, definitely 75, and by all means every year from 80 on. But I figured, why not. At least I knew I’d get a more extravagant meal than I was planning for myself and maybe even cake. Now, it happened that the last party I had thrown for me to celebrate a birthday was indeed at 30. (Hold that thought.) The selected venue for last year’s event had a guest limit of 25.I got to thinking how I was going to limit a guest list to 25. I pulled out my address book and mentally started drafting explanations to those who wouldn’t make the cut. After much serious review, and even more serious reflection, I handed my sister a list of 22 names. Thirty years previous there were three times that many people on hand to commemorate my becoming a thirtysomething. Had I or anyone got around to hosting a 50 year party I could imagine at least one guest for each lived year. Now, I couldn’t scrape up two dozen friends to watch me move another year closer to Medicare. And then the day came and those few all showed up and I realized these were mostly the same people who were around to see me turn 16 and a few years later, 21, and would have been among the crowd at 50. Friends. Old friends, close friends, real friends. Friends who saw me move not only from year to year but from trials to successes to failures to challenges to successes to every high, low, dull, and exciting phase of life. My life. And I hope they’ll all be there for 75, 80, and every one from then on.

Sometime in August I was at a routine doctor appointment. One of those that you get ready for a week before by going from lab to x-ray to CT to have as much of your insides available for the doctor to review as your outsides when you get there. She looked at the numbers and then at me and then back at the numbers and declared that I had a year, maybe, before my kidneys would go the way of so much else in my insides and I’d need the use of a dialysis machine to do what comes naturally to most others after a couple of cups of coffee. She was off by just a little. About 8 months. It was, in fact, while I was thinking all this in the hospital sometime in early December after I had been transported back to my hospital room from the dialysis unit after the second or maybe third of what would become a new thrice weekly event for me. But it wasn’t that much later that I reminded myself that the reason any doctors were even looking at lab and x-ray and CT scan results for the state my kidneys was that 15 years ago I was diagnosed with a pretty rare, chronic condition that feeds of internal organs like kidneys and if they found just the right treatment for me I had a 37% chance of living longer than three years. Somehow they hit it right and I was one of the lucky ones who got at least 12 more years so I could have a birthday party in a non-milestone year and all I had to do now was give up a dozen hours a week that I wasn’t doing anything with anyway and maybe make it to 75, 80, and a few more after that.

See, those are just a few reasons why I hate all this “looking back.” It just ends up finding the silver lining instead of dwelling on the uncontrollable like human beings are supposed to do. And it means I spent the entire 500th post of the RRSB talking about me. Instead of talking about the me you got to see in the past 500 posts. I guess I’ll do that next time.

Hmm. Five hundred. Not as compelling as 75, or 80, or all the numbers that come after that. But I bet somewhere there’s a word for that.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?