Making Changes

Okay, I’m going to just strip away the safety net and see what falls out with this one. This is one of those times where I’m going a little bit more ‘stream of consciousness’ and then coming back around and cleaning up the mess into something that makes at least a little bit of sense…hopefully. I don’t know where exactly it’s going to end up going, and it’s probably going to jump around a bit. It’s like old school Cliff blogging, only with actual editing. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into just a huge mess. And on that optimistic note, let’s begin!

I’ve talked here before about changes that I’ve made in my life. The past year in particular has been huge. I look at a lot of things differently from how I did before, deal with things differently and react to things differently. And what I’ve learned beyond anything else is that the more things change, the more I want them to continue to change. Since it’s making me happy, let’s keep it rolling forward.

But the thing with making changes and trying to find new opportunities to adapt how I’m doing things is that I need to find new sources for that change. It’s like working out. As I find new people to follow who know what the fuck they’re talking about (And for Chrissakes people, MAKE SURE they know what they’re talking about unless you want to totally screw yourself up), I’m constantly exposed to new ideas and exercises and ways to move. I’ll try things out, some of which make the cut, and some of which don’t end up being something that I personally find interesting, but all of them are at least worth a try. 

So, I have this great basis for always changing and tweaking what I’m doing in terms of workout routines. But trying to find those new ideas elsewhere is still pretty new to me. I have that same ravenous appetite for more, but I don’t have my shit nearly as figured out in terms of finding the next challenge. That means seeking out new sources for ideas and changes to possibly take on, and I’m largely flying blind here.

On a somewhat related note, I’ve decided that this year is going to see me return to the world of books. I used to be a voracious reader, but I’d gotten away from it to the point that 2016 was an absolute fucking travesty. I was really disappointed by my pitiful output and wanted to get back to reading more, so I’m going to put in a real effort this year (So far, not bad. Do board game rulebooks count? If so, I’m kicking ass). And since I already had the goal to pound through some books in 2017…

Well, that’s nice. More books. With bright covers, and lengthy descriptions and…hold the phone. Are those…

Are those self help books?!

Yes they are. Oh, but that doesn’t even cover the basics of how far down this particular rabbit hole I’ve gone (…phrasing…). At the time that I’m writing this intro, the book on the right is the only one that I’ve actually read part way through (New entry to confuse the timeline! I’ve now read two of the three!). All of those chunks of paper stuffed in there are to mark pages where something really clicked for me. I fully expect all three of these to look like a similarly chaotic mess towards the end. And that’s kind of what this post is going to be all about. Those passages, and how they relate to things I’m switching up or have already altered in some way.

Believe me, I’m also a little weirded out by all of this. Even reading stuff like this represents one drastic fucking change for me. Hell, I used to mock the shit out of this sort of thing. Then again, that mockery was largely me just trying to cover up a lot of insecurities, so let’s perhaps keep walking by those utterances of the past. It helped that the first two such books I’ve read were filled with jokes and a lot of F bombs, keeping them somewhat relatable.

Buckle up, folks. This is going to be an interesting ride through the land of honesty. It’s like the Land of Dairy Queen, just with reality in place of chocolate rivers. So…okay, yeah, it kind of sucks.

The thing with these books is that I didn’t necessarily learn anything new from them. I just learned different ways to look at things and my life and where I want to be. Or read parts that related to changes I’ve already made, but where the author worded things much more clearly than whatever mealy-mouthed explanation that I would have stammered out.

I’m pretty sure that I know the first thing that pops into your head when anyone says ‘self help’ because it’s probably the same thing that popped into mine. It’s a horrible visage of some smarmy self proclaimed guru endlessly rambling on and on about always being positive while blinding the audience with the overly polished white teeth peeking out of his artificial smile. He’s a completely insufferable ass bag and he’s intolerable.

First of all, fuck you for thinking that a cynical bastard such as myself would ever possibly start getting into that nonsense. Positivity is fantastic…when it’s authentic. Anyone playing pretend that they’re happy and that things are great all the time is a liar. They’re lying to anyone around them, and worst of all they’re lying to themselves.

Sometimes things suck. Sometimes I’m pissed off, depressed, frustrated or disappointed, and that’s all fine. I’ll own up to all of it, I just haven’t always been all that open about it when talking to anybody else (Instead falling back on the “It’s all good” crutch when it’s far from it). Actually, this is part of a bigger issue with me in terms of how I talk about myself (or don’t, in this case).

I’ve never been someone who trumpets about me. Anyone who has found themselves forced to ask me direct questions in order to even know what I’m up to can certainly relate to this fact. I tend to let myself disappear a little bit, particularly in large groups. I’m more of a background extra than a member of the main cast. I’ll just sit back there and drink things in and occasionally pop up with a witty comment and make people laugh, then I slip back into the shadows. It’s like being a ninja, only nobody really thinks you’re that awesome. And you don’t get a cowl or throwing stars. Sometimes it’s the fact that I’m not the most socially confident animal in the zoo (Something I’m working on), but a lot of the time this happens even when I’m in a big group of people who I know well. I too often find myself trying to follow ALL of the conversations going on within the group, which results in my engaging in absolutely none of them. It’s kind of ridiculous.

And I’ve never been someone who celebrates their accomplishments. To a certain extent, that’s because I spent a fair amount of time looking upon anything that I’ve achieved as being so far behind what so many of those of you around me have done. So I just didn’t talk about it at all. I’ve been far too guilty of judging myself uber-harshly against what other people have done or are doing. And all of that just ends up with a mute Cliff who may as well be a mime. And nobody likes mimes. Seriously. You’re basically just silent clowns. All of the greasepaint and creepiness with none of the mildly amusing parlor tricks.

And then, along comes the self deprecation to join the saddest party of all time. I actually think it’s a mark of confidence when someone is able to poke a little fun at themselves. It’s when that ‘little fun’ becomes ‘constantly beating the living piss out of oneself’ that things take a turn for the bad. I’ve gotten better about this the past couple of years, but I spent many moons running myself down on a constant basis. And when I finally wised up to the fact that I was using self deprecating jokes as a way to pummel myself in a way that maybe people wouldn’t pick up on, I stopped. Trouble was, that was the way that I tended to start up any interaction with people. Time to re-learn how to chat with real live human beings all over again in my 30’s! What fun! Not so much, no.

I’ve finally started pushing myself to exalt a little bit when I feel like I’ve accomplished something. For example, today (Well, the today when I initially wrote this. Oooo…more time traveling words!) I talked about managing a set of 9 chin-ups. That was a new personal mark. I worked my ass off to reach that. This time last year, my record would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 4. So I chirped a bit about it. And yet, I still find myself worrying that whenever I ‘big up’ myself with things like this that it just comes off as gloating. I know (hope) that anyone who actually knows me would realize that that isn’t the case, but since talking myself up at all is still fairly new for me, that worry does still poke into my brain.

Well, fuck worrying about that. People who know me understand who I am and where I’m coming from. And if someone else who comes across something I’ve boasted about wants to see it as just mindless chest thumping, that’s their problem. There isn’t really anything that I can do to avoid them having that perception of me anyway, so why worry about it? Expect me to continue talking up the things I accomplish, because why the fuck wouldn’t I? And also because it turns out that I am a little bit of a show pony. Deal with it. Or don’t. Or whatever. Pudding?

I’ve talked many times before about spending years wallowing around in a pit of misery. I dug the hole, filled it with my own mistakes, then I tossed myself in and sank. It was completely and utterly stupid and it took me nowhere good. So why did I go there at all? It’s not exactly a vacation hotspot. Come check out unrelenting human misery! Enjoy swimming in a lake of your own errors with no way out! Uh…it’s cheaper than Hawaii?

I’ve finally realized that once I find a problem with the way I’m going about things, I tend to grossly overcompensate as a response. Thus, after spending many years ignoring the shitty decisions that led me to where I found myself, I decided that the best response was to rub my nose in it until I figured out that shitting where you eat is not a spectacular idea. And man alive does it turn out that I’m incredibly talented in the art of self flagellation (…phrasing…). I succeeded completely and utterly at not letting myself off the hook for mistakes made. And do you know where that ends up? With an incredibly unhappy person who is left completely terrified of making any decision ever.

So I made none. Shit, many of you were around for the epic days of ‘Cliff goes through 6 jobs a week’. Some of that was borne of myself being an idiot, but a lot of it stemmed from a fear of making the wrong call. After all, making the wrong call was going to mean another round of abusing myself in order to ‘learn a lesson’. So I bounced around with no continuity whatsoever while rewarding myself for never actually making a choice. Not exactly a master plan. This is like something out of the Skeletor playbook of ‘Never ever seizing Castle Greyskull’.

Turns out that a life without any stability whatsoever is kinda shitty. And, long story short, it eventually led to me walking away from the endless parade of jobs, writing for a living, losing a bunch of weight, and finally starting to figure myself out. Eventually, I got a little bit lonely and wanted to step out and finally work with some of those ‘people’ again. Working at home by yourself sounds awesome until you realize that you only have yourself for company. I felt weirdly disconnected from the world.

So here I am now in the same job that I’ve had for 3 years. And I’ve been there for 3 years largely for two reasons :

1. Most of the people who I directly work with are awesome.

2. To prove to myself that I’m actually capable of stability.

But even as I was proving this positive lesson to myself, I was growing tired of the constant churn of jobs on the freelance writing side. Which means I’ve pretty much ditched it, leaving me a bit financially lean for the moment. So I’m looking for something else that puts me in a cash position to let me be where I want to be. And holy mother of fuck is it frustrating that I’m not there yet. Looking for a job sucks. Which somewhat relates to…


At the same time that I was busy being scared shitless of making a decision one way or another, I was also spending far too much time living in the past. That isn’t a good way to be because no matter how long you spend lurking there, you can never alter what’s already happened. But yet again, I massively overcompensated for that and started spending all of my time in the land of tomorrow (Personal tomorrow, not some similarly named 50’s theme park that imagined us all living on the moon with dogs made of lasers in the then distant future of 1988). This future focus also came about because when you’re freelancing full time, you always have to be looking ten steps (or several weeks, anyway) down the road. Got a job? Great. Start looking for the next one. It was a necessity for the work that I was doing at the time, but I made the error of making it the way that I was living across the board.

Thinking down the road is, of course, not a bad thing. But spending too much time there just leaves you aggravated at not actually BEING there yet. And you’re not happy. Holy shit are you not happy.

Last year was personally a bit rough. Towards the end of summer/start of Fall I spent a week out in BC. And I spent every single morning that I was out there hiking and just sitting in nature. And I figured a lot of things out. But the biggest thing that I finally figured out again wasn’t even in that post anywhere. Well, actually, it was all over the post, just not in so many words. How delightfully totally non-confusing!

Maybe I could try living…you know…now?

And will you look at that, I find myself actually happy! This is also part of the reason that I’m actually talking about things that I accomplish these days (Remember me making that point somewhere way back there?). The present is where things are actually happening now. Spend all of your time in the past or the future and you’re not taking any time at all to enjoy what you’re doing right now. And the present is pretty awesome. That’s where I’m actually going out and gaming with new people, and attending war gaming conventions, and going to concerts, and trying out fucking Muay Thai kickboxing when the opportunity presents itself. Am I anxious and scared about a lot of that? Yep. But I’m still doing it, because I want to face that down and come out the other side a better person. It’s like I’m Van Damme and fear is some nameless stooge I’m about to beat up. Only I’m not weirdly naked in the scene so that I can show off my ass to the audience. You’re welcome. Living now and forcing myself to push out into new things has largely been pretty rewarding, and it’s something I’m going to continue to do.


We live in a world in which we’re constantly inundated with nothing but the absolute best and absolute worst that humanity has to offer. And that can all lead to feeling a bit lost when you’re stuck in Average Ville, even though the population of that particular metropolis is about 99% of the population on the entire planet. I spent a lot of years somehow not content with what was around me even when what’s around me is actually pretty great. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve spent too much of my past being incredibly envious of what the people around me had instead of getting my own shit together so that maybe I could get my own piece of the pie. Nobody owes me, or you, or anyone else a damn thing. And nobody is responsible for your happiness (or lack thereof) except for you. I finally figured that out again. And sure, I could castigate myself for taking so long to reach this particular station on the trip, but at least I found my way. Also, doing so would be going back and creating an infinity loop of absolutely moronic decisions. And that just sounds dumb.

And now I’m actually enjoying everything that I do have. Of course I want more, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy with what’s here now. And I’m thankful that a lot of you motherfuckers have been patient and understanding enough to wait for me to finally catch up to the rest of the class. Those of you who are spammers will soon leave comments explaining how I too can enjoy making $5,321 from home in just a few hours each day. So that’s great, too…?

It is of course a little bit more involved than that. I’ve built up some habits over the years, a lot of them as defense mechanisms against the outside world. And you don’t knock down walls like that overnight. You need to lay siege and wait out the inhabitants and spend some time identifying weaknesses. So I’ve done just that, really putting those habits under the microscope and figuring out how I tick and why. I’m not going to share those specifics for two reasons :

1. It would involve a lot of transcription. Seriously, there are pages and pages of this stuff scribbled down in my manifesto that I do not have the time, energy or interest in typing out here.

2. It turns out that there are limits to what I’m willing to share. Even if you wear your heart on your sleeve, there are still pieces of yourself that you tuck away out of sight. I’m not too embarrassed to admit that this is the kind of introspection that legitimately leads to some pain, but that’s going to happen when you’re realizing that behaviors that you’ve spent decades fomenting were wrong.

Man, I really like listing things, don’t I? You have no idea. There are lists EVERYWHERE. It’s like a really weird hobby. Shit, that’ll bring in the ladies! “Long term bachelor with scarcely any idea how to function in a relationship seeks a really, REALLY understanding woman with the patience of a saint and a love for listing things. All the things.”

Part of actually trying to move on is realizing that I don’t have all the answers and I never will. As insane as it sounds, that entire concept knocked several metric fuck-tons of self-imposed weight off of my shoulders. I don’t need to know everything. I don’t need to plan everything. I don’t need to be everything. And I don’t need to walk around pretending to be bulletproof, either. Admitting to limitations and weakness is actually not the weakness, pretending that you don’t ever get hurt is. I knew this once. And now I know it again.

I spent a lot of time just cocooning myself away from anything that might end badly. That also led to the constant swinging from job to job (These segues to paragraphs past are really something, eh? Apologies for the whiplash), as well as a lot of loneliness. Nobody hurts you like other people can, so best to just shield myself off from meeting any of them who aren’t already part of the cabal. I’m finally starting to break out of that particular fortress of solitude, painful as it can be. And I’m starting to realize that people actually do want to spend time around me, so I can’t be all bad, right? RIGHT? PLEASE ANSWER ME!!!! 

Everything worthwhile involves work, and a lot of that work usually fucking sucks. But without that work, you don’t get to the things that you really want. That’s something I finally carried over from working out a couple of years ago. I’ve never had a problem being my own drill sergeant when it comes to pushing myself to get that one last rep done. I just needed to take that mindset and spread it all over everything else like a layer of delicious peanut butter. That…that got weird. I’m not sure quite what happened there. Of course, this makes for a perfect segue…

Of course I’m going to screw up. Everybody does. It’s how I respond to fuckups that matters. For instance, I’m apparently going to respond to writing that weird peanut butter analogy a moment ago by just taking another swig of beer and leaving it there and moving on. And sometimes the best course is to just realize that something was a one off, what’s done is done, and keep sailing forward. Other times, you need to deal with shit.

For instance, I’ve recently found myself looking back a bit. Not staring forever and a day into the rearview mirror until I crash into something (Okay, a paragraph ago it was a sailing analogy, and now I have a rearview mirror. What in the fuck sort of vehicle am I in?!), but taking stock of more recent choices and whether or not they were correct. Less spending time bathing in nostalgia and more looking for anywhere I might want to apply a bit of a course correction. An example from the recent past : not expecting people to be different from who they are. In particular, not getting frustrated when somebody doesn’t act how I want them to. That’s just Grade A asshole material. And since I spend time with people who I enjoy being around, expecting a magical and bizarre sea change into a completely different person is just stupid. Everyone plays a role and everyone is more/less useful under different circumstances. Instead of trying to make everyone be a jackknife, maybe I can just let people be the tools that they are (actually not intended to be insulting, it just comes off that way) in the right situation.

Returning to the now (This post is rapidly becoming a bad and confusing time/dimensional travel movie. Inception II : Personal Bullshit), I recognized that there was a situation towards the end of last year when I made the wrong call. Or at least I think that maybe I did. Perfect information is nonexistent. Yep, it sucks. I made a decision based on what I’m now realizing was incredibly distorted information. I was already in a bit of a messy mental state due to other shit that was going on. On top of that, I was viewing everything directly involved through the prism of how I thought things were, a view that I’ve since figured out was pretty blurred out and based on a reality largely of my own making.

So, what to do? Previously, I would have spent month after month beating myself bloody (…phrasing…) as admonishment for daring to err.

Or maybe I would have visited another all-too-familiar and shit-tacular way to ‘deal’  with things. Spend months, perhaps years, over-examining things and never actually coming to a decision. Then I could play games of “What if?” for years on end! Oh the frivolity! ‘What If?’ land is a horrible theme park. It’s filled with mimes trapped in imaginary boxes and bored hipsters who smoke ironically.

Neither of those ends in a very enjoyable user experience. Those would be some interesting Amazon reviews! “The product didn’t allow me to pretend that everything was okay as promised. Side effects included self loathing, subconsciously sabotaging myself, and bleeding out the ass.” No, there was no actual anal hemorrhaging as a result of these mistakes. I’m just trying to make a point about awful-ness, ya fuckers! So I guess it’s time to try some of that ‘growth’ stuff and plot a new course.

And this runs me smack dab into that longstanding fear of ending up hurt or disappointed (I have to say that I am really nailing these throwback segues! Good going, me!). Like everyone else on Earth, I hate being wrong. But I’m still going to step the fuck up, explain myself and see if taking another crack at things is possible. If yes, awesome. If no, deal with it. But I’m done with putting myself in situations where I’m going to be asking “What if?” for all fucking eternity, because nothing compares to that heap of self abusive bullshit. And I’ll do it…soon. I’m not making excuses to put things off here. At the point that I’m typing this, I’m a couple of days out from trying out a Muay Thai class at the age of 40. I’m not afraid to admit that I’m fairly freaked out, and I can only be scared shitless of so many things at once. Quick update : two classes in, I’m preparing to put down some cash on Tuesday, get my own gear and sign up ‘for real’. So…yeah. Going pretty well.


All of it really boils down to a newly renewed willingness to take chances. And when I’ve done so in the past, things turned out pretty well. Was it perfect every time? Of course not. If you keep pushing your chips into the middle of the table, you’re going to lose a few hands. But never laying down a bet just leads to you slowly being chipped away by the ante until you’re out of cash and have nothing to show for it. Probably the biggest chance that I ever took was when I decided to go all in on writing. It was a massive gamble, and it paid off. I’m done with it now, but I really proved a lot to myself by doing it for as long as I did (…phrasing…), and I’m happy that I gave myself the opportunity to stretch out a bit and see what I can do.

Not every chance is that big. But for me, just going out and gaming with new people is actually a pretty substantial achievement. Actually stepping up and trying out Muay Thai is an accomplishment. And the more chances that I take, the more that I want to take. And isn’t that really the point?

All in all, things are pretty good. I’ll never have all the answers. I’ll never be 100% happy with everything. And that’s awesome, because that’s what keeps me pushing for more. And these days, I’m doing it with a smile on my face. And this seems like as good a place to bring this to a close as any. Just remember the moral of this particular story :

I really just need to publish this damn thing now, because I’m in danger of over-thinking editing it. What can I say? I get a bit nervous about laying myself out there in posts like these. Oh well. Time to just put the fucking thing up.