Dan the man

Creating, mostly drawing in pencil, pen, charcoal, putting any instrument to paper transferring the images in my hand to my hand and just letting go. I have always been my own worst enemy so I would create, admire, then question what the hell I just did and toss it away with zero thought or regret. Over the years I’ve revisited my “ talent “ with some personal success mostly not tossing it away. I loved hanging out with friends, but apparently that’s a behavior that should have been outgrown before adulthood, or so my friends wives told me. Shooting was another hobby I really enjoyed for many years until my divorce started and my ex- wife called the police and told them I had guns that were not registered and should have been so that put me in deep, deep shit. I was looking at seven years of jail time if not for my family lawyer I would have had to go to jail, but he got it dropped. Motorcycle riding was something I had been doing since I was a child and continued to do until I turned sixty three years old and believe me when I say that every wife girlfriend female friend wanted me to get rid of it instead I got rid of them, but then I was in a accident with little physical injury but for some reason I lost whatever it was that kept me on my bike. Too much traffic, too many cars, too many shitty drivers and the fact that I want to be around for a long time.

Airplanes more importantly airplanes that don’t fall out of the sky, safe air travel is key for me because I spend so much time in the air. Honestly though there have been life changing inventions it’s hard to say which ones are more important than the other ones. The computer age and internet are society changing inventions the cell phone is also big. I remember life before all of those technologies and was pretty content living as we did. We were a much better society, people were kinder we cared more for our fellow man. Those days are now long gone much like the plague or the Great Depression and man survived those just as we will survive all the madness of today. We adapt and evolve that perhaps is our greatest invention.

People, not all, but some. You know the ones that make you scratch your head and wonder how they ever got this far in life. The shitty drivers that speed up and slow down because they’re texting or eating or putting on makeup or the ones that are just oblivious to other cars. It’s the same when you’re in town they walk with their head down looking at their phones like they’re the only people outside today. Then there’s the ones that stand at the checkout counter and either complain about the price of something or can’t find their credit card or even worse the coupon they swore the put in their purse. And then there’s the parents who just let there their kids do anything they want without regard for others, kids having tantrums and the parents just stand there and wait until they’re done, they don’t remove them from the store they just look at their kid having a meltdown and do nothing. The entitled people who feel nothing applies to them they just go about their lives like no one else matters like boarding a plane and even though they’re seat is in zone 5 they’re going to the gate when zone 3 is called and then feel that their ignorance should be overlooked and they should be able to get on the plane. If you have flown one or more times then you know you have to take out your laptop and put in the bin so why would you not do that and piss off the TSA agents? The lack of respect is astounding today, I had to go to court to argue a ticket and when I got there I was the only person wearing a suit everyone else was in shorts and tee shirt and flip flops WTF? Our society is broken beyond repair.

Today this point in our lives my wife and I travel to Thailand every year to see her family. This year will be our tenth year, and we’re celebrating our anniversary as well as her sisters birthday. There is always a lot of celebrating going on there mostly because my wife’s family is big, very big, nine aunts and uncles with countless cousins big. So a lot of our time there is visiting family and they have their own traditions that we are grateful to be a part of, they’re all Buddhist and that offers a lot of tradition as well and then there’s personal celebrations with the monks that are beyond a spiritual experience. I have experienced internal peace and harmony and the most profound sense of self that I have ever felt. That’s the very best tradition I have. As a child growing up in the sixties our parents had their own traditions that they passed down to us and it was all we knew so it’s all we did and it was wonderful as a child, but as I grew into adulthood those traditions were not as magical as I remembered, but are wonderful memories just the same.

I asked many times throughout my youth why my parents gave us the names they did their answer was generic at best, but as far as I know all our names come from somewhere in the bible. And that makes perfect sense because we all lived in the catholic world. So when I looked up Daniel in the bible it was interesting to see a lot of myself in the prophet Daniel. And then my middle name is Mark the patron saint of I done care, but for my parents and that generation religion was a very big part of their lives and so that was what we grew up with until we were old enough to make our own choices, or so my parents said. The reality was they wanted us to practice catholic religion and much as they did, but of course me being me was quick to look elsewhere for holy clarity and I found it with Buddhism at around 15 years old where my name means absolutely nothing.

I never looked at it as “playtime” it’s just a part of my life. I do enjoy living my life and consider much of it “playtime”. After many years of constant conflicts with others and myself, years of self destruction, years of zero playtime I stepped back, stepped away from everything toxic and dangerous. I went on a very personal walk about searching for the person I used to be before the horrors of life found refuge in me. I was into fitness and tried to stay with it while battling the demons in me and after many years fitness became my playtime once again. These days I spend most of them playing, enjoying, always learning about myself and self awareness, the importance of love and laughter, the joy of the simplest of things. That my friend is the best playtime.

I used to believe I was, but who am I to judge. Silly I know but looking back throughout my life I was a judging POS, so at some point in my late adult life I made a conscious decision to stop judging people. Why do we even do it? Who the fuck are we to believe we’re better than anyone? Who are we above to look down on people that often times we don’t even know or never even met? The opinion of others is still very much more important than the opinion of ourselves and that’s where the change has to be made. I used to care how people perceived me, now, I care how I see me how I feel about myself, I used to judge myself way more than now. For me it’s all about the moment, my happiness in the moment and I will tell you that I get very happy replying to these questions because they really hit home for me and I can share my thoughts, feelings and experiences here on this platform jussi as all of you do for me and all the other people here. I read the stories here and the people that write them I do not judge, but I try and put myself in their shoes because I believe that’s where the imagination kicks in and starts to run wild.

Not even close. I would also say my life has been nothing that I planned or expected. As a child I did have aspirations, but “shit happens” and you have to learn to adapt, so any dreams I had were crushed by the reality of the real world. I will say my parents supported me and my brothers, but not in a good way. My dad worked all the time and provided and good home for us, mom was a stay at home mom and made sure we had everything we needed as far as food, shelter, clothes, friends, toys and a warm and healthy environment. What they didn’t provide as we got older was the support needed to pursue our dreams. When we turned sixteen they simply said go get a job, that was their only guidance into adulthood. And we did because we wanted a car which was freedom for us and oddly it was our independence, but we needed to earn money for the things we wanted. Our parents still provided a home food clean clothes all without charging us rent so it wasn’t completely bad. The problem was it made for a very small world to live in, and that was where the tragedy was. I wanted to join the military so I can find my way and hopefully see some other countries, well that was out of the question in my house. I would say most all of my adult decisions were made by me with my parents in mind, if I wanted to travel cross country how upset or angry would they be? More so my mother more than my father there we job opportunities that did pay well but there was travel involved and maybe some risk factors so my mother would say no and just become miserable so we had to take the lesser job to please her. Of the four boys my parents had I was the only one to move away… far away in order to do that I had to destroy the life I was living and hurt people I loved and risk incarceration. I left at thirty eight years old way too old to go after my childhood dreams so I had to go after the new ones the ones I could never to in the presence of my parents. Today at sixty five years old I am living a life I never in a million years thought I would. My parents are long gone so they will never see the happiness and contentment on their son’s face, they will never hear of the adventures of traveling that my wife and I do. My life is amazing and totally without a plan, there was a ton of fear and uncertainty, a lot of risk and prayers and if anyone asks me how I got here I quickly say the truth… I have no idea.

Now I do! I would say up until my forties I ignored my gut feeling and instincts, I called them spider senses because I actually felt the tingle of a warning sign or walking into a place and immediately felt you’re in the wrong place but stayed anyway only to get the shit kicked out of me or end up somewhere even worse. My biggest problem with all this was women, I would approach them and would see the red flags flying all around her and still buy her drinks and shots whatever she wanted I just had to have her. I would say I was probably a creep back then maybe even a sexual deviant although there were many times I could have taken advantage but did the right thing. Even doing the right thing got me arrested a few times, I always blamed myself it wasn’t the woman’s fault for being hot and sending all the signals that got us in bed, it was the eighties and nineties and socializing was totally different than today, but the instincts were the same I just needed find my way back to myself once I did life became much easier to live.