I hate social media…

 I know the headline to this blog entry is ironic considering that the only way people will read this is by accessing it through social media, but bear with me.

Since the dawn of the social media age, first through.com, message boards and progressing onto MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, everybody now has a free message in order to comment on the events of the day good or bad.

We can debate whether these are “free-speech platforms” on another blog entry. That is topical especially when it comes to Twitter but that’s another entry for another time.

I write this because peoples interpretations of big events are often skewed on platforms like this. In fact, I have said more than once that I am very glad that the big events of my young life, such as the Reagan assassination attempt, the explosion of the space shuttle challenger, and to a lesser extent, 9/11 did not have a social media message board upon which people could express their thoughts and opinions…or at least one that was not easily and as readily accessible as Facebook and Twitter and others.

The big event that everybody’s talking about now (on 31 January 2023), is the brutal beating of Tyre Nichol earlier in January by five police officers that resulted in Mr. Nichols death.  The comments on social media about this horrific act are nothing short of disgraceful.

On the one hand, people are wondering…DEMANDING…that people who support law-enforcement say something about the incident. They see things like “where are all the back the blue people“ or “funny how I don’t see people who bootlick law-enforcement, saying anything about this tragedy“.

Conversely, the other side of the coin are posting leading comments of their own like “where are the riots“ or “I don’t see any burning buildings when people are protesting Nichols death“.

Having moderated message boards in my time, albeit sports type message boards, one of the things that the person who “hired“ me for that moderator position told me is that an argument… Particularly a good one… Generates clicks, and it drives traffic to the site

If you have ads on your site from a revenue standpoint, I get it…that makes sense. However, a good moderator steps in and blows the whistle when things get too crazy. Or least they did back whenever I was moderating a page with a message board.

That’s not done now. Not at all.

These days it seems like moderators just step back and let the inmates run the asylum, meaning that they do nothing until something really major happens. If that.

The unintended consequence of all of this arguing is that nothing really gets accomplished. Everyone’s worried about the win or the gotcha instead of actually making some kind of headway and some kind of sense about a particular event.

And it further divides us. Someone said in hushed tones, not long ago that it’s going to take something universally tragic like another 9/11 to bring the country back to Center to where we are all united.

Just don’t expect it to happen through Twitter, Facebook, or TikTok

This one is always difficult…

 I came to a realization the other day.

The one thing that I’ve been thinking about all week has been what a person I have been to my friends and family in my life, particularly in my later life as an adult when it really matters.

When character really matters.

And after a lot of self examination, and looking at myself in the mirror, I’ve come up in the character department.

Painfully short.

Hilariously short.

I have very good friends who support me, have been there for me, and really came through when I was at my lowest point in life.  That’s all well and good, but I haven’t been able to return the favor.  I could sit here and tell you a myriad of excuses, but at the end of the day I’ve really failed them, and in doing so failed myself.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom here, but it’s something that’s been on my mind for a while now and it’s all connified itself in this week, which has been an extremely tough one for me and is leading into a tough one next week  

I’m 54 years old. There’s a lot of things that should’ve happened with me that did not and probably will not.

That realization, along with a glimpse of my mortality, vicariously through a friend of mine, who passed away, this week has really made me think about what my legacy will be when it’s my time to leave.

I’ve joked about how I perceive that to happen, but in reading, my friend’s obituary and the tributes that are coming in, including my own, I hope that the prevailing attitude among those left behind is not something along the lines of “well he’s dead, he was a dick“.

Unfortunately, as of this moment, I think that’s exactly what people are going to say about me. I guess it’s a good thing that I won’t be around to hear it.  If movies and television are to be believed, though, more than likely, I’ll be able to hear and understand every single word. 

At this hour, I have no idea how I can make things right with some of my friends. What gets to me is the fact that, even though I realize this the prevailing attitude will be “no Rich, you’re a great person. You’ve been a great friend to me, quit talking like that.”.

But that’s human nature. You have those friends in life who will take a swing at you with the gloves off and admittedly, I wish people were more like that. I have a friend that’s exactly like that and he’s one of the people that I feel the worst about not being a great friend to, especially in my later adult years.

I did not intend this extemporaneous blog to be a confessional, I’m not even Catholic. And I don’t know if anyone will read this if something ever happens to me, but for those people that this blog was intended for I do hope that on this day, 28 January 2023, that, this person, your friend Rich, realized that he wasn’t the best friend to you, when you were the best friend that you could be to him/me.

*** Please be in mind when you read this, I am not having self-destructive thoughts. Nor am I having thoughts of hurting myself either. I’m just getting older, and I realize the value of being a better person as I start to see the sun starting to go down in life —RL

Milestones…

On 30 December 2022, I completed my first year of being completely alone in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

My parents are both gone, my sister lives in another state, and my son… The only remaining Lohman besides me… Moved away to Dallas Texas.

It sounds cliched, but it has been a very strange journey this past year.

I’m not sure that I could categorize my feelings this past year as being those of depression, because I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist.  I have considered therapy in the past for other reasons, but barked at the idea because I had such a solid support structure around me

Events in life, especially in the last six months of 2022 have led me to understand that maybe that might be a good idea for me. I’m still thinking on that idea, and I have to keep it “on deck” with other events, presenting themselves in the true life fashion.

The long and short of that meaning that probably sometime this year I’m going to ask my doctor for a psychological referral. I’ll be officially in my mid 50s this year and may be a cleansing of the mind is a good idea moving forward.

Just wanted to put that out there

15 years on…ampuversary.

 Last Tuesday was the 15th year elapsed since my right foot was removed due to an infection.

I almost missed it. I know for a fact that I missed it last year because of other things medically related that I was dealing with.  

I guess it’s the march of time that it’s telling me that I have indeed moved forward from that fateful day. The infection that I had contracted could’ve killed me, but it didn’t. Luck tends to favor the foolish as they say, and this fool was particularly lucky.

As time has moved forward, my medical adventure now includes a cardiac condition, and the removal of auto off of my good foot.  I don’t know what the next year is going to bring, in my health or well-being department, but I just gotta take it as it comes, I suppose.

Christmas 2022 blog…

 So here it is, Christmas morning 2022.

I sit on my bed between my two loyal pets, Jake & Elwood.  I don’t have a Christmas tree, and all the presents I have are gift cards from work in my wallet and a leather Pittsburgh Steelers jacket hanging in my closet that was given to my by one of my best friends a few days ago.

Other than my fan running on a nightstand in my room, it’s very quiet.  My mind wanders back to my younger years, when my sister and I would charge headlong into the front living room of the house I grew up in not a mile away from where I live now, and tear into the presents we received.  

Dinner would follow a few hours later, and we’d enjoy family time.

It was a scene repeated throughout the 70s, 80s and into the 90s when she and I were married and brought our spouses into that house where not only did we open presents there but we would repeat that at the houses of the parents of our spouses, and invariably have two dinners.

All that is ancient history now, unfortunately.

I’m 54 now, and an adult.  The only immediate family I have is scattered between here and Texas, and only one part of that family speaks to me.  I no longer live in the house I grew up in, having resigned to living in an apartment.  

In the past four years life & I took a few wrong turns and I am left on an island wondering what the hell happened.  My dad always preached to us how important family was, and now that he and mom are in the afterlife (if there is such a thing) his words are either forgotten or ignored.

At the end of the day that’s all you really have left: family.  I was lucky to have strong parents who raised me right.  Despite my underachieving nature they never gave up on my, though I have them plenty reason to at times.  They gave me all the room to succeed in life and more importantly, they also gave me room to fail.

Probably too much room, when it’s all said and done.

Finally, this holiday is one where I was hoping that I might get a little reconciliation with my sister. Things ended badly after my mother passed between the two of us. It was ugly, and it was mean on both sides.

When I say reconciliation, I’m not so arrogant or narcissistic to say that I’m looking for hat in hand apologies nor am I wanting that. I just want to have a relationship with my family moving forward, with acknowledgment that we made mistakes but that we can look past that and move on.

It’s unlikely, but I do have hope.  What’s really scary is that what happened to us was very similar to the falling out that my dad had with his brothers upon the death of our grandmother, in nearly a year after her passing, he himself died, and my dad‘s estranged brothers or left to make awkward, apologies to my mother, sister and I.

There’s a song from the 80s by Mike and the Mechanics that has a line that goes: “it’s too late when we die to admit we don’t see eye to eye”.  The song refers to a son’s relationship with his father that was somewhat tumultuous, it can apply to siblings as well.

I only bring that up because in the last two years I’ve had a couple of serious health scares and it confirmed the fact that even I will reach my eventual expiration date, and I don’t want to pass from this life with things between my family & I left undone.

I admit that I burned a few bridges when my mother died with my sister, but I don’t believe that they’re completely ashes at this point. If there’s anything I wanted for Christmas this year, it was to at least have a conversation with my sister and build a path to reconciliation.

There’s still time for that to happen. It won’t be easy given that she and I are totally different people in terms of the way that we are personality, wise, but I think it can be done.  

This particular entry took a very dark path and for that I apologize on this wonderful day. But I woke up with these thoughts on my mind, and I really had to get them out somewhere.

I hope everyone reads this and reads this blog have a very happy holiday season, and a great start to the year.

I want to cancel Christmas 2022.

Today is December 23, 2022.

It’s two days before Christmas.

Any other year of my life would be filled with great anticipation, I would be surrounded by family and be in a happy place in life.

Not so this year

This year, I am truly alone.

I have no family in the state of Oklahoma anymore, my son moved with his mother to another state last year, and I have family in that same state that for four years, almost 5 now, hasn’t spoken to me.

And, of course, both of my parents are dead.

All I have really are two cats, that’s it.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this lonely in my entire life. It came close in 1999 when my marriage was pulling apart, but even then I still have family around me and a support structure that I could lean on.

This year: nothing. I have nobody.

What’s worse is this is starting to affect my mental health. I’m not having thoughts of harming myself or anything like that which is fairly typical around the holidays.But my worry is that it might progressed at that point.

I do know, however, that it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And it wouldn’t solve anything, there is suicide in my family, but it occurred a long time before I was born.And it was a situation that was not spoken of until the main actors in that situation were long gone.

But as I said, I’m not to that point.  I do feel that I need some help though,  I have a lot of worry in life right now, as things change so radically in 2022. I’m struggling to catch up. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it.

I guess I can just hope to get through the next four days with my sanity intact then go from there.

Family Matters IV: What about my Son?

 I had to get this off my chest.

I’ve been divorced for officially 20 years as of October 28 of this year. At the time of our divorce in 2002, my son was just two years old and we didn’t know what the future held for him.

Three years later, we would get the diagnosis that he was on the autism spectrum and despite that, he did have a relatively normal childhood.

Now he’s in his 20s, and he’s a grown man.  Albeit a grown man who has the mind of an 8 year old, if that.

His mother is now remarried, and will be remarried for a total of five years this February coming up. 

They don’t live in Tulsa anymore, and as of this writing, my son has no job and there are no plans currently for him to enter a program that might give him job and life skills he will need moving forward beyond the lives of myself, and his mother and stepfather.

This troubles me. It troubles me on a level that has been very hard for me to put into words.

If you know me in the real world, you know that I work with people like my son, who are on varying areas of the autism spectrum.  My job includes giving my clients vital job and vital life skills training.

My son was in the program that I work for in his junior and senior year in high school. And he loved it.  I had attempted to get him back into our program, and that was interrupted by inaction and debt brought on by his mother, and their departure from Tulsa last year.

Time after Time I have tried to convince his mother that it was time for us to think about his future and every time I have it seems as if she either doesn’t want to do it or she refuses to discuss it with me. 

It continues a pattern that has been going on for most of the time that he’s been alive. She considers him to be a trophy of our failed marriage, and she just doesn’t seem to have any clue as to what to do with regard to his future. 

At this point, if something catastrophic happens with me and his mother and his stepfather, he will literally be left to his own devices and that is just unacceptable. It scares me to death to think that he would be left all alone in that circumstance.

I’ve made the offer to my workplace to somehow work out a way to pay off the debt by payroll assignment and it might actually work.  Problem is, they are pretty well entrenched in Texas at the moment, and the arrangement for his living situation is precarious at best.  I seriously fear for the future for my son.