Sometimes I Feel Like a Blockhead

This will be one of those blog posts that I hope no one reads, but most people I know will. Usually how it happens when I talk about something that is hard for me to put into words.

No matter how I state it, it will sound as if I’m ungrateful or whining, which really it isn’t meant to be, but I can totally understand that thought process.

I’m jealous of the friendships people have, and wish that I had those kinds of relationships with my friends.

Growing up, my family moved around a lot. I would make friends, and then within a year or two, we’d move and I’d have to do it all over again. When my father died, and my mother told me we were moving back to Missouri, it broke my heart.

You see, we were living in Visalia, California, and had been for 4 whole years. It was by far the longest we had lived anywhere by 2 full years. I had two really great friends. John and Nate. I even remember giving John a present after 3 years, and telling his mom it was to celebrate how long we had been friends. It was a cool Michigan Wolverines hat that I had gotten from the gas station down the street from my house. Didn’t follow the school but the hat was really cool. He didn’t understand it, but I didn’t care.

So when we moved back to Missouri, I knew I’d start the whole cycle over again. This time though, wasn’t until High School that I found friends that I clicked with. Unfortunately, they were all a year or two older, and by the time I had graduated, they were off to college, or starting families and moving on.

I have couple really awesome people in my life that I consider my best friends, and amazing people. They have meant a lot to me in my life and have done things for me and my family that I’d never forget or be able to repay. So that’s why writing this seems unfair to them. But, at the same time it’s not about them or the relationships I have with them.

I watch people I know who have had the same friends since elementary school and who have shared full life experiences with. Everyone I’ve ever friended has been in spurts and small chunks of time. People who are so close that all of their interests are the same and they can talk to each other about ANYTHING.

My family watches a couple guys on YouTube named Rhett and Link (Hello fellow Mythical Beasts!). These are two longtime friends who looked at each other and said.. “HEY! LET’S MAKE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND JUST HAVE FUN!” I envy that. I feel like there is no one in my life I can just call and say something like that to, and they’d just be down to just kick back and do something that we are BOTH really in to

.

I know a lot of this is a product of growing up, and having families. Planning things, and fitting shit into nice organizational schedules. And I know this all sounds like a, “grow up and stop complaining about what you don’t have and appreciate what you do” thing, and you’re right. But it doesn’t change the fact that deep inside, it’s one of those things I’ll always want, and never have.

Mine.

It’s been 13 years since our first date. We called it our “practice date” for the real thing on the following night. But who am I kidding, it was real. Monica and I had talked for years online via chat rooms and instant messaging. I finally flew out to see here in February of 2003. Thirteen years later we go on another date, this time to a movie and lunch. She picked. We saw Deadpool, and went to Five Guys Burgers. Have I ever mentioned that I love my wife?

It’s been a long 15+ year relationship for Monica and I. There have been highs and lows like all couples face. But, a large majority of our lows were a product of trying to have a relationship with several thousand miles between us. Since living under the same roof, I can’t probably count on 1 hand the serious fights, and problems we’ve had to deal with relationship wise. Maybe a couple fingers on that second hand might be needed, but not many.

We’ve been blessed to see each other at our absolute highest of points in our lives. We’ve also been near each other’s sides for our lowest of lows. I don’t mean to brag, but I feel like at times I am in the most perfect relationship any one person can hope to have. She is, without a doubt, my perfect match. I’d like to hope I’m the same for her, but I won’t put words in her mouth. But anyone who has known us as a couple long enough, knows how she feels about me.

Honestly it’s quiet scary. I know she gushes over me. I feel her stare at me, lost in her daydreams. I can’t feel it exactly, but I know she’s constantly watching everything I do, and worried about every step, and scrutinizing every expression on my face. She’s worried about me. She always has been. She knows more about me than any one person. It’s hard to explain why it’s scary to be loved that ferociously, but.. it’s a good thing.

In two months, we’ll have been married 10 years. Oh my God. It doesn’t feel a day over 3 or 4. Yet…. So much has happened to us. So much has shaped us into the people we are now. Two growing, amazing, smart, handsome young boys have given our lives so much meaning. We’d be nothing without them. Every good time is a joy, and every bad time is… is… God, so infuriating on multiple levels. Don’t know how I ever lived a day without it in my life.

As hard as it’s been, and through everything we’ve gone through, I can say I love my life. Mostly because of her. Mostly because of Monica. The woman who saved me. The woman who holds me up on s pedestal that I don’t deserve. The woman who thankfully, raises our two great kids into the amazing men that I know they will be. My wife is complete because she’s in it.

I love you Monica.

Don't Mind the Mess

My projects for 2016 are looking fun and fruitful. Last year’s Royals Twitter Family Kickball Game was a huge success and we raised a lot of money for a great cause. We’ve already started preliminary talks for the second one later this summer/fall, and have a lot of great ideas in the pipeline. I’m really looking forward to everyone seeing what we roll out, the closer we get to the event.

I also have two other charity projects I’m trying to get a handle on. One involves helping with someone else’s event, and one is an event I’m trying to cultivate all on my own. When the time comes to get this info out, I’m hoping they do a lot of great things for people who need the help.

Because of these thing, my current site here at www.BNichols.me is going to be changing, and for the good. The first change is one I’ve been trying to do and keep procrastinating about, and that’s using this site as an online portfolio to promote the stuff I create. This way I can bring more people in to not only acquire some freelance work, but to get help for the aforementioned projects later this year.

The other biggest change that will effect anyone reading this, is that the blog part will be moving to another location. Links to the blog will be permanently located in several places on this site, but the content will be transferred over to my old Blogger/Blogspot site that has sat abandoned and full of dust for the last couple years. The posts will still cross post to my Twitter and Facebook, so if that’s the main way you reach this spot, you won’t really miss anything.

I’ve also been trying to nail down a site that I can devote to talking about the things I love most, outside of my family. Gaming, Comics, Movies, TV, and other geek centric stuff.

My main page www.PSAInc.me will be turned into a hub for all the site’s and projects I work on. Quick links for the following sites will appear, with more to be added later:

-Royals Twitter Family
-BNichols.me
-My Currently Unnamed Geek site.

The RTF Kickball site will slowly turned into a hub site for Royals fans on Twitter, and will continue to be used to promote the Kickball Game as well as other Charity events. My long term goal is to make the site functional for The members of the site to update, and other than my involvement with the Kickball game, my only responsibility being backend support.

Thanks to anyone and everyone who reads my blog here. If you do continue to check out this version of my blog, it will mainly be talking about personal projects and highlighting exactly what it is that I do for a living. Images of work I do and blogs discussing what goes into them will be the frequent menu.

Hope everyone enjoys 2016

1 Fish, 2 Fish: My Saturday Night FIght

It’s 3 AM, and I will openly apologize to anyone who reads this, as it will be unedited. My posts are usually filtered through my wife where she tells me where I’ve been an idiot. Not this one. Proceed with caution.

The biggest misconception about depression, is that it means someone is just sad. I only wish that was the case. For some of us, it’s a stupid pet Gold Fish that you’ve had for a half a day, dying, and then your brain adding it to the list of things I’ve done in life that have failed my family, and how, yet again, I’m totally not worth their love or even being a part of their lives. Makes sense, right? Right.

It’s 9 PM, and the kids are in bed. Monica is doing her workout and watching Netflix, and I’m playing the new Assassin’s Creed on the PS4. Out of nowhere, I hear Monica say, something to the effect of, “Oh, no!” I look up to see her staring at the fish tank that my mother-in-law got the boys. Spike, our new Calico Fantail Goldfish is listing. One, emergency trip to Walmart and 4 and a half hours later, our second Goldfish in less than a week is sent off to the wild blue yonder. All pipes lead to the sea. And now I’m sitting here having an internal fight with my self-conscious and telling my depression to go fuck itself. Because of a fish.

See, Zoomer, our first fish, lasted 3 hours. He was a plain ole, run of the mil Goldfish. We blamed his death on the fact that he was looking really ragged, and the guy I think just wanted to give the kids a fish that didn’t have long anyways. He was in his little tank and having issues within an hour of being here. I had no love loss for Z. But, to avoid mistakes on our end, we took precautions and prepped for another round later. The kids were very meh, about it as well.

Spike, on the other hand, was different. I wanted to find a good picture on Google but none of them look as cool as Spike did, so I won’t post it. Do a search, you’ll get the Jest. On top of looking cool, he was feisty in the tank, and our Youngest actually picked him out. They seemed to have similar personalities. The longer he went in the tank at home, being happy and swimming around, the happier my kids got. Especially the one who picked him. I was enjoying this new found joy in my kids lives. My kids smiling, is my happy place.

So when the fish number two started doing this side float thing, yet still breathing, I actually got worried. Internet searches and tank modifications were not helping. I said fuck it, the cheap little tank we had with no REAL filter but some stupid water exchange system bullshit, was not going to kill this fish. We moved Spike to a bowl with some fresh water, and I ran to Walmart at 11 PM and got a new, bigger tank, with a filter and BUBBLES! Monica kept home slice moving around and breathing. By 12:30 he seemed to be breathing better and moving his tail around more, but within an hour, he was gone.

I’m now sitting at my desk, next to a new tank flowing with bubbles, but no fish. I know that in the morning, both of the boys are going to rush over and see the new tank and get all excited but then see no fish, and all hell will break lose. Somehow this is my fault. I strive for nothing more in my life but to give them what they need out of life, and one of those things is happiness, and I couldn’t save this fish, and I am destroying their childhood, and in 20 years they won’t come to me for advice, because what the fuck does he know or care about, he couldn’t provide for us growing up, hell he let our Fish die.

This is my brain on a daily basis. This situation is a little more complex, but it’s how my day goes with everything that takes place. It gets worse when I’m in bed at night and can’t sleep and it all piles on. Telling it to turn off doesn’t work. I’ve tried just about everything. Luckily for me, after fighting this for over 20 years, I’ve gotten to where I know and understand what’s happening and can try and push it away and look for the better side of all things. It scares me though, because there are people in this world if fight this same fight, but can’t see it, and can’t control the demons in their head, and take the only way out that they can think of and justify. Striving to make my family happy keeps me from falling into that deep of a pit, as does knowing that it’s there. But knowing it’s there is all I need to be utterly scared.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check online for a new Calico Fantail Goldfish.

Moving On: My Christmas Tradition

I remember when Christmas changed for me. It was 1992 while living in Visalia, California. My parents had been separated off and on through the year, and I had my first interaction with death, as both of my father’s parents had died, Pa in February, and Granny in mid-December. The latter, as would be expected, would start the chain reaction that would eventually lead me to today.

My father would die of lung cancer almost ten days shy of one year since his mother’s death, in December of 1993. I would spend that Christmas in Kansas City, surrounded by people I wasn’t that familiar with. I spent most of the time reading an R.L. Stein book (no, not Goosebumps), and ignoring everyone around me. Apart from visiting once, in the late 80’s, it was only the second time I had partaken in the yearly Christmas Party at my Grandmother’s house (My Mom’s side of the family).

We moved back to KC later in the spring of 1994. I was then thrust head on into the yearly get together at Christmas, and after about two years or so, Christmas was starting to feel somewhat enjoyable again. The drive to my Grandma’s house every Christmas Eve, the singing of Christmas Carol’s, the Santa Clause that the family hired to hand out gifts that were stored by the parents in a bag in the basement, and the subsequential destruction of the exchanged gifts in the living room, gathered around the tree.

While the distractions of a Christmas Eve Tradition were always welcomed, my mental state as I grew older, and the seasons grew colder, would always deteriorate at a rapid pace. This was due in large part to a volatile relationship with my mother, and years of trying to cope with having my childhood turned upside down at the age of 11.

Things would eventually get worse before they ever got better, but eventually they did. When the woman who is now my wife moved to Missouri to be with me, she brought with her a love for the holidays and was always doing her best to make me see this light at the end of the tunnel. It had worked. By our third Christmas together, I was fully embracing the holiday. Unfortunately the following year would rip down the hard work she had put in.

2006 was one of the happiest, yet saddest years of my life. It was the year that I married my wife, and the year that my Grandmother passed away. As in 1992, it would forever change Christmas for me. Her house was sold, and the annual party was moved between the homes of my mother and her seven local siblings. Santa was no longer hired, the Party was moved from Christmas Eve to whenever people could find time, and there was a yearly argument over who would host the Party.

I would spend the following years trying to salvage the torn relationship that I had with my mother. A lot of high, but too many lows. Christmas was about the only time of the year where we wouldn’t fight. We would sit down and spend time with each other and laugh, and be what it used to be, all those years ago. We started a tradition of spending Christmas Eve at her house, and then coming home and spending it as a family on Christmas day. What helped in the process was the birth of my two sons, Austin and Logan. She adored them. Giving her Grandbabies presents on Christmas was one of the things that made her smile the most. I wish she had gotten more time with them, but that’s another blog post, and another set of demons.

When she died of Cancer in 2013, it was like the final thread had been snapped for me with the family Christmas tradition. My family attended the Family Christmas Dinner a week later because it would have been what she wanted. It hurt, but it had to be done. Last year was much of the same. But it was filled with a lot more pain than before. Several conversations with my own family members showed just how disconnected I was with them, and them with me. It left me feeling empty inside.

This year, with work being so hectic, and both of my sons growing at such a rapid pace, trying to plan out our entire Holiday schedule was a chore. We had booked every day and night leading up to and past Christmas. So when my Aunt let me know of this year’s party, and seeing that not only did it fall on a day we had planned things to do, it wasn’t even being held at anyone’s house, but at a rented space, I knew it was time for a change. I texted her back informing her we had plans and probably wouldn’t attend. She was not happy about this. But after a year of limited contact with the family (by both them and I) and the death of one of the few people I had a strong connection with in my uncle, I had decided to move forward.

My kids are growing up so fast that it scares me. My oldest is reaching the age I was when all of this started for me, and I feel my own mortality slipping away. It’s the start of new traditions for us. Things that they will hopefully pass on to their kids, and so on. The decision to not attend the upcoming party is not easy, and it hurts. But the important decisions we make in life aren’t the easy ones, it’s the ones that leave us awake for hours at night. Maybe next year or the year after that, we can stop by on Christmas for the yearly, “Hi!”’s, the “How are you?!”’s and “Oh My God, You’ve gotten so big!”’s. And in between then, maybe we can all find a little more time to see eachother, other than big events. But right now, in this moment, I’m looking forward to making a Gingerbread House with my kids this weekend, and finishing up some last minute prep for what will hopefully be the start of some great, HAPPY, Christmas traditions.

So I wait and I try; I confess all my crimes

Busy, busy, busy. This has been my life for the last 3 months. Between work, home, and personal projects, I’m wearing thin. The bad part is that the second I start removing things from my plate, my mind starts to wonder and then it’s just better to over-occupy myself.

Personal Life

Not sure if I’ve said it on the blog yet or not, but it needs to be repeated even if I have. People? Get a will! Several things have taken place since my mother died, that would have been easily handled had she just made a damn will. Alas she didn’t, and the personal front is overly frustrating. Mostly money wise. By the way, if anyone knows where one can get a Medallion Signature, hit me up in the comments. The dream of owning a home seems to slip further away every day. Money that was ear marked for a home has quickly become money used just to pay bills.

Other than that, getting to spend every day of my life with my best friends and two amazing little boys, is about the only thing that allows me to get up every morning and go to work. Currently prepping for my youngest to turn 3 tomorrow, and while we admittedly are scraping by to give him a great birthday, it’s the less rushed feeling Birthday party I feel we’ve had. It’s an odd feeling. But that’s me, I’m sure Monica is freaking out as always. Our newly minted 3^rd grader is growing up so fast, and while I feel we all play tug of war too much, he has been an amazing help with his brother.

Work

At a breaking point. I’ll leave it at that. There is a huge cliff in front of me, and I am not 100% sure if I’ll jump or end up pushing someone off.

Personal Projects.

I’m starting up a new blog for Monica. Bringing back Pizza and Cookies. She’s going to use the space to post recipes she’s working on and crafts for the kids. PLUS just talk about being a parent. I’ll hop on from time to time to get the other side of things, but it’ll be her baby.

Also starting a blog that focuses on Gaming and all the geek stuff I’m into.  Tapping a couple people who want to write with me on it, but for them most part it will be an outlet for my gaming opinions and insights. Tentative name is My Geeky Site.

Twitter is a big part of my life. I’ve met a lot of awesome people. A large portion of them are fellow Kansas City Royals fans. I’ve been helping them plan a charity kickball game. I’ll also be helping them start a website devoted to Networking for events like watch parties, meet ups, and other charity functions.

Time for dinner, and then a store run to get everything that’s needed for LG’s party tomorrow. Hope everyone enjoys the 3 day weekend. Hug the people you love, and never let them go. <3

B

Living With The Loss

I’ve lost a lot of people in my life to death. As you can imagine, the ones that were the hardest were my parents. I lost one when I was too young to fully understand, and one when I was old enough to grasp the full ramifications. I can tell you that in the end, there is no real difference. Sure the relationships developed with each one might have been different, but whether you do it fast or slow, pulling off a bandage still leaves the same unpleasant sensation on your skin. So when the pain is more than skin deep, the sensation is 100 times worse.

I attended a funeral a couple months ago for a man whom I considered a friend. One of the gentlemen tasked with talking about this man, brought up a topic that hit hard with me. It’s one that I have struggled with since my father’s death, and one that has intensified 10 fold since my mothers. He was talking to the man’s children about all the times they will encounter over the next few days, months, and in some cases years where the thoughts of things that could have been, and the arguments over what they personally could have done different. What they would or wouldn’t need to do to honor their father’s legacy. The inner voices, or as he put it, Demons, that will try and dissuade you from your current path in life. Thay will try and tear you done by thinking of all the bad things, and removing the good things from your thoughts.

Whether you are a person to qualify these types of things as Demons, or a form of a subconscious, physiological breakdown, the fact still remains; the biggest enemy one has when dealing with the loss of someone so close, is ourselves. If you get lonely, you can call your friends/family over and talk. When your start missing their voice or face, you can cue up some old photos/videos. But when you start wishing the last thing you said to them wasn’t something stupid, instead of “I Love You!”, it gets harder. When it had been a couple weeks since you last talked because you were aggravated at something they said, and now that opportunity is gone, it’s unexplainable.

My mother died the morning of December 14th, 2013. I had received a call around 10:00 pm the night before from Hospice and was informed that she was fading. December 13th is my wife’s birthday. I had been spending it with my wife and two of our best friends. I made the decision to leave and go to hospice. I sat there, awake, all night with two of my mom’s sisters. I was able to stay awake until 5 am where I fell sleep in a chair. I woke 2 hours later… kissed my mom bye, and told her I’d be back. Took my family to get laundry done, eat and then was home to take a shower and go back to Hospice. My mom died before I was done with my shower.

I tell this story, because every decision I made from the moment I left my house that night has haunted me since the day she died. Until a few months ago, the decision to leave and go home that morning is something that I had mentally and emotionally punished myself for every day. I can’t put into words, why I was able to get past this, but I did. It is possible. It gives me hope for all the other demons I battle, including the vault full I accumulated in the 10+ years following my fathers death. The point though, is that the demons, your own subconscious,,,whatever it is, can be beaten. Unfortunately I, and many others, have a long way to go in situations like this. I am just merely using it as an example of the things that someone can destroy themselves with after they lose someone.

When I meet someone dealing with loss, I tell them simple things. Rely on the ones you love the most. Don’t be afraid to talk about it. Even friends you may not be that good of friends with, can be great listeners. Keeping yourself active helps but only goes so far. Having said that, reintroducing yourself to an old hobby or something you haven’t had the time for can also help. Lastly, don’t be afraid to cry.