50 years in the making……

When one door closes another one opens?  Why is it that I hate losing more than I enjoy winning?  What have I learned from recent events?  Why have I had strong emotional reactions over the past month to William & Kate’s Royal Wedding, Princess Diana documentaries, Mother’s Day and Urban Cowboy?  A collection of events that on face value have no correlation outside of maybe the Royal Wedding & Princess Diana documentaries.  Why do I collect romantic comedies? What is the correlation between my hatred or fear of losing and my interest in romantic comedies/tragedies?

What does this all mean? What have I learned?  Is it that art imitates life or is it life imitates art?  Is life just a big revolving cycle that repeats itself?  Does that mean that with us living longer we will see more repetitions of cycles?

I thought I had nothing to write about recently and then it hit me.  As I sat down last night at the Tipsy Pig (a place I keep calling the Thirsty Turtle), I spoke to someone for hours and my recent Netflix selection came into play.  These recent movies have been Princess Diana’s documentaries.  I was asked why them and what I thought.  As I listened to the flow of consciousness coming out of my mouth I realized things coming together.  I spoke about how I was doing my research following the Royal Wedding with the documentaries.  The Royal Wedding put things into perspective for part of my childhood.  Watching the Royal Wedding and hearing about the sham of Princess Di’s wedding.  I did what I naturally do which is internalize and analyze.  What was there to analyze?  Plenty actually, just look at this 1,700 word stream of unconsciousness you are in the middle of….

Princess Di was in an arranged marriage that needed to be pure according to the standards set by the Royal Family.  She was married at 19 making her both innocent and naive.  She became a mother early and was driven to be a protector and teacher to her children.  She had a thirst to help others, but an extreme insecurity about herself internally.  She died at 36 in August of 1997, at the same time I left home for college.  She would of been 50 this year, same as my mother.

That little piece of information is the underlining theme which is the correlation in this entire story.  I combined the knowledge I took from a few hours of non-stop coverage of the Royal Wedding along with the awareness that my Mom took off that day from work to watch all of the coverage, to seed my internalization.  As I began to plunge into the coverage and follow up articles and videos I began to remember parts of my childhood.  I began to overlay the timeline of Princess Di’s life and my Mother’s.  This is what started to tease out this epiphany I felt coming on.  I began to see how my Mother always had an affinity for Princess Di.  It was like her appeal of Pretty Woman that also rubbed off on me.  My Mom like me saw ourselves corresponding leading character in movies we watch.  She wanted to be swept off her feet by a Prince like Charles as a 19 year old but also tried to balance the hardship reality of the dark-side of relationships like in Urban Cowboy.  The issue with the downtrodden life in Urban Cowboy was through the extreme pain they still managed to have a happy ending.  My Mother even today said she still cries during this movie.  I could see how this baseline effect that occurred with this 1980’s movie repeated its behavior for my mother in 1990 with Pretty Woman.  This time it had a lasting effect on me.  It appeared to me that my Mother had once again identified with a strong woman (Julia Roberts) who struggled with men similar to Princess Di and Sissy from Urban Cowboy.  Now that Prince was Richard Geer a successful Investment Banker in Mergers & Acquisitions. Has anything really changed for her in this affiliation? No, but it has for me.  What had really changed was the effect on me.  The is reason that I at the age of 10 was impressionable sitting on the heels of my Mother watching intently.  I saw the glow in my Mom’s eyes and didn’t realize at this time that I was destine to follow in her footsteps.  I wanted for years to be an Investment Banker that was afraid of heights but still stay in the Penthouse because “It is the Best”.    It took me years to realize that I wanted this because of Pretty Woman.  More specifically for my Mom, because I felt being that person would provide the financial security, flexibility and, freedom to support my family and my mother in a way a Hollywood writer has shown me is important.

Is this really the person that I have been chasing?  A fictional character who has been drafted perfectly by professional writers with their cyclical research of decades of relationships from as early as Romeo and Juliet.  Do I really think that you need to hit complete rock bottom before you can be ultimately happy in a relationship?  Am I forever flawed by my eternal search for an ending only Hollywood could write?  This is not something I can answer nor am I attempting to answer today, but I dont know that Hollywood has profited off this characteristic of mine for years.  Just look at my movie collection or Netflix reviews.

I do know that May 2011 was an interesting point in my evolving script.  It was the month that annual houses Mother’s Day and this year it included my Mom’s 50th.  Like my blogged called “Power of Online…” which held similar themes referencing romantic tragedies and social networking.  The irony of my deep engagement in technology, social media and, family was that at 2am the morning of Mother’s Day I couldn’t post a photo of my Mothers since I didn’t have any digital copies.  I had a box of photo albums, a few frames and tons of loose pictures but not a single digital image.  How could I keep up with the momentum of goodwill being created by facebook without a photo of my mother this Mother’s day to keep pace?  How could I have lost track over the years of not taking a digital photo of my mother? Have we really grown that far apart? I quickly had an idea of photos my Aunt had compiled for a video montage for my 30th birthday.  One particular photo which reduced me to tears when I saw it came to mind.  It was a photo I had to capture and post.

I am not sure if that moment was the tip of the iceberg (ijsberg), but it sure was a glimpse into the 90% not normally seen from the surface.  It was a moment that uncovered both joy and pain from good times and poor decisions by me and others.  It reminded me of a time that was pure and naive in my life.  A time in which my innocents drove my aspirations.  That innocents still very much does drive my lofty life goals.  A few of those goals are very much alive in this story.  I am still shooting to be a Richard Geer type and I still want to be able to provide for a Princess Di type.

I leave you with this.  As much as I fear the lose of a game or a person, I am always willing to face the challenge head on for the chance to thrive in the battle of sport of love with the risk of defeat.  I have never been a person who embraced practice, but relished in the moment of performance.  Being a person that always wants to be in the game, I find it hard to practice (Or kiss a lot of toads) when I am always focused on the end game.  Its a battle that is sometimes overwhelming for me and off-putting for others.  This is why I believe that school and early development are the best places to find a partner, a confidant or soulmate (depending on your end game).  School is a collection of similar people (within a standard deviation of each other) if you ask the admissions board.  Individuals trying to find themselves personally while all facing similar pressures at marginally close periods within their lives.  Someone once recently said to me that people change from those school days and grow apart.  As much as this is or could be true, there still is a baseline or foundation of where we all started.  It is like every romantic comedy if you have the foundation you can always with effort find a way to center yourself back to your beginning if the desire is there.

Romance is like one of the oldest sports that developed the oldest profession.  Once again life imitates art (or sport here), because romance is one of life’s oldest past times very much like baseball is one of America’s oldest past times.  Baseball is long, tiring and challenging.  Hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult things to do, because hitting a moving round object with another moving round object is sometimes impossible at least hitting it fair is.  This is the same with relationships, because as much as the multiple iterations of individual actions on a baseball field are repetitive and cyclical, baseball is still a team game the same as relationships.

Relationships always have a loser.  It is as certain as taxes.  There are only two types of endings (well for 5% of the population the combinations vary a bit, but the concept is still the same) boy loses girl or girl loses boy.  Even the great ones end like Princess Di in 1997 or Romeo & Juliet.  But as certain as taxes, death is equally as certain.  Dont let death leave you as the person toasting yourself with glass full egg nog and regret because fear overcame you.  You cannot fear death, but instead embrace the finality of time as a motivator to drive and achieve lofty goals.

New Beginnings….

It has been 12 months since my last confession………

Moving into my own space since August of 2002 has been invigorating.  It has brought me a new sense of focus and enlightenment.  I am starting to feel a void being filled, a void that I had found myself falling into deeper and deeper.  For the past twelve months I have been searching for a purpose outside of my 9-5 life.

In my first full weekend in my new space I found myself getting lost in things I have missed.  They say it takes about 21 days to learn a new habit.  Oddly enough this weekend was my 21st day in my new place.   This weekend had been building on my personal curiosity of this new city.  A curiosity paired with a laundry list of things I felt that I had lost as superficial as DVR to as personally expressive as writing.

Over the past 21 days I have been able to peel back the onion slowly but productively.  I started with a few quick successes like getting a cable package that included DVR, HD & full Sports.  This simple pleasure to me is representative of my personality of being rapid-fire without commercials, attentive to sparkling clear detail and, a Sports fanatic.  This snowball began to gain momentum with me further exploring the sports side.  When I first moved to San Francisco I thought my quick win was going to be my old romance of rugby.  A serious commitment I kept for over 7 years.  I flirted with this old fling, but felt that ship had sailed, I felt it was time to focus independently on my next phase of life especially with this recent move to freedom.

This movement of independence led to my next quick win of joining a new sports club.  It tied together my new found enthusiasm and curiosity of finding personal limits.  This club provided the slight push off this plateau that I felt stranded on.  The Club’s inaugural package of training and nutritionist sessions came right into alignment at the opportune time.  Over my first two weeks I setup appointments with both professionals in lock-step, allowing me to maximize these finite resources and harness my resurrection of personal accountability.  For what ever reason these professionals have unlocked my suppressed knowledge of best practices when it comes to physical activity and food management.  (It must be my acceptance of authority.) Needless to say the snowball is gaining mass.

This weekend I really dug my heels into this new beginning.  I managed to take a nice trail run to coincide with a 4 mile walk to the center of my new town.  (The Land of Beautiful People as my Co-Worker says.) I had fresh groceries delivered which is a major factor of the equation of the reshaping of my physical self.  Proper caloric intakes makes up 80% of battle with one’s body.  This also opens up the door to one of my next explorations of cooking.  I have always been intrigued the preparation and delivery of food.  My family has always shared food a device to reward accomplishments as well as the center piece of socialization.  To me food has the opportunity of being a mechanism of personal expression.  When you create something to be consumed by another person it is a reflection of you.  It represents your view, relationship and pallet with food.  The ability to step outside of oneself and create something that is enjoyable for someone else as much as it is you is quite challenging.  This is a challenge that I have had on my laundry list and am deeply excited to embark on soon.  Right now I am focus on  the basics fundamentals of portions, frequencies and quality of foods that I consume.  The art of food will come once this snowball becomes the base of a snowman.

I leave you with this.   Relish new beginnings and restarts, because rarely do they come around and sometimes they are attached to a terrible ending.  This new beginning has allowed me a baptism like cleansing to start fresh, and by starting fresh I am able to reprogram my routines.  While I am in this honeymoon of chaos, I was able to reinsert a commitment to basics.  Basics like sports, food, accountability and creativity.  All of which I feel are a central part of who I am.  This revelation of awareness was sparked on my 21st day of my new space when I looked up taking in the moment and said wow I think I have come a long way from the last time I did this in 2002.  It was at that point I also put fingers to keyboard and I began to write expressively for the first time in 12 months.  In this moment it feels like my new found freedom is more than just about a superficial vaulted space but is also about once again releasing creative autonomy.

I find it oddly fitting the last time I wrote was on the birthday of my Grandfather who was a very inspirational man in my life.  Then I break twelve months of silence on the birthday of his daughter and my Aunt, who is a very inspirational woman in my life.

Happy Birthday William E. Ryan Sr….

I wanted to write something today like I did last year, but I couldn’t put anything into words.  That was until I recieved and email from my dad this evening.  I feel that my response became very reflective and fluid of what I wanted to write today.  With that said, instead of creating something entirely new I will just paste my email to my dad with no other explanation, commentary or conclusion just pure free form….

That is the beauty of BDays they allow for a reoccurring annual memory of the celebration of that person’s life.  I was torn today of what to do.  I kind of wanted to go out and celebrate and drink away the night, but its hard to go out and share stories of person’s life while you are drinking alone.  I decide to order Chinese and watch the knicks play terrible here in Oakland.  Tomorrow I will continue to make steps towards preparing for my race and progress though my life’s story development.  I will most like do it at a steep pace and bare no limits, but that is the person I am.  I have parts of my life that I operate under caution and security but then I have other parts of my life that have no bounds, safe guards or fears.  Mostly that is my challenges and athletics for others it is different.  I keep my Monday thru Friday very stable and secure to allow my freedom to be felt on Saturday and Sunday.

I still think about the lunches and dinners during his wake where we left a chair open for him as we shared the memory and presents of his life.  I guess unconsciously I decided to eat the Chinese portions for two by myself as an expression of sharing and experience.  I mean I spent most of my childhood over eating and watch bad TV with him on Friday nights.

It was not until this reply that I got overly emotional today.  It just proves that even as the years pass the loss can still be felt.  That to me is the measure of a person and their affect on others.  I still think about the volumes of people that came from all distances to pay their respects those few days.

I know everyone has their ways of remembering and experiencing a person. I would say that the way I choose to solicit and retain friends is the way I live my daily life.  I have my group that have full access and no bounds with but then I have my weekly groups that I am cautious and guard with.

I have always been a networker and a builder of relationships, mostly for my personal benefit but also for others.  Prior to moving to SF I was thinking I was ready to live alone.  When I had the choice to do that in SF, I once again choose a roommate.  Even with a body in the house it doesn’t mean that you are not alone.  It all goes back to having the ability to share and experience things.  I am enjoying my time in SF not because of the people I meet but more because of the person I am finding myself to be.

I have spent the last 3 mornings getting up at 5am to hit the gym at 6am before work.  It was something I hated to do, not that I like it now but has been something I wanted to do.  I like my athletics.  I like my challenges.  I need to be pushed.  Coddling is not a successful way to bond or motivate with me. I resist it and rebel from it.  I am finding my more of my independence here in SF but I am also finding more distinct likes and dislikes.

I read a great line from The Great Gatsby this week. “I’m thirty.  I am five years too old to lie to myself and call that honor.” Maybe it was the age it stated or the coincidence of they changes and things I am feeling since my move.  Either way I liked it and I hope it is reflective of who I am.  That is another motivating factor for me to be in bed by 10pm Su-thurs so I can hit the gym.  I am not sure if I will stick it out because today for example I was asleep at 5pm for an hour when I got home.  It makes me feel better overall when I hit the gym which is good but I begin to resent patterns and repetitions in my personal life.  This goes back to my need to be split between work and play. Remember fighting with me to go to Tae Kwon Do, but when we finished I was happy? See nothing has changed even since I was 5 years old I have always been the same.  I still hate going to the gym but feel great after.  I just can’t bottle that feeling prior to walking in those double doors.  I feel the reason is that I am too consistent at work for me to be the same at home.

Oh well I started this as a short paragraph reply but I clearly unravelled in the process and rambled on.  I am glad you reached out and shared your story with me about Aunt Eileen and Uncle Tony’s site visit to Grandpa today.

Love Billy