Moving Forward

Yesterday, I said goodbye to my job of over 6 years. It has been a weird sort of two weeks since I gave my notice. I've felt a bit like a lame duck going around work, troubleshooting issues here and there, but unable to make any strategic changes, since I will not be there to see them through, and my successor has yet to be named. My famous or maybe infamous flash drive gave birth to a few new ones for the various people that will be assuming my functions. I guess that kind of speaks to how much of a remit I had. Not as easy, is transferring the information in my head, including but not limited to, how to use the various tools on those flash drives.

Yesterday was about trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible, in the Personnel world, in the Front-End world and around the club. I hope I set people up for success without me. I was very glad to hear that the previous Saturday's VIP event and tax-free weekend were very successful, even without me present (it was my birthday). Flashing back to the previous August VIP where I came in on my vacation to coordinate both the Front-End and Technology execution of the event. It gives me confidence that business continues without me and pride that I have done something right in helping build a new crop of leaders.

Yesterday was also a day of goodbyes, a day where I got my traditional 'good bye' custom cake. The choice they made for me was, not surprisingly a cat, which somewhat fittingly bore some resemblance to Oscar the Grouch according to some. It also included the phrase "we'll meow-iss you" and had my customary laugh as 'ha-ha' around parts of the cake on sugar paper.

Saying bye is hard, but unlike my job before Sam's, I leave this job with my head held high, and able to say some proper goodbyes. I leave a different person than when I came in, and much better for the time I spend and the people I met. It has been the support of my 'Sam's Club family' that has allowed me to begin the process of healing myself and exploring who I am, including doing this project. While I do have some friends and people I keep in touch with from my previous employment, I feel that Sam's Club is different, it will always be special, and it is something I don't expect to happen again.

In my email to the associates I am leaving, I likened my departure to a kid leaving for college, and I think that is an apt metaphor because I feel that while I have 'left the house' I will never really leave the family, even if I don't see them nearly as frequently. I will not name anyone here because there's so many people that have made a huge difference for me, but you all know who you are.

I would be remiss if I didn't say something about the company itself. Sam's Club, as many of you know, is a division of Walmart. Walmart, especially the Walmart US division, gets a lot of media flack and bad publicity. I want to say that I was always treated fairly and well at Sam's Club. While I don't always agree with every policy of the company, no one I know agrees with their employer 100% of the time. The important thing however was that the company and management always acted ethically and the company both followed the law and went beyond to ensure employees are protected. The company took a risk on hiring me when  no one else would and always followed its core belief of respect for the individual. The company has always shown respect for my uniqueness, including working though my Asperger's traits and embracing my mental talents while not holding my lack of physical talents against me. There will always be, in a chain as large as Walmart/Sam's Club, store management or market management that do not do the right thing, but the company doesn't deserve the negative reputation that it gets.

I had a great six year run with too many amazing people to count, and I feel like I'm leaving at the right time. I will leave you all with a quote from Malcolm Tucker of The Thick of It (played by the always awesome Peter Capaldi), it does include expletives.

Malcolm Tucker: It is possible to have a good resignation, you know?!

Hugh: A good resignation? Well, I'm looking forward to how you're gonna sell this to me!

Malcolm: Look, people really like it when you go just a bit early! You know; steely jawed, faraway look in your eyes! Before you get to the point when they're sitting round in the pub saying "Oh, that fucker's got to go!", you surprise them! "Blimey, he's gone! I didn't expect that! Resigned? You don't see that much anymore! Old school! Respect! I rather liked the guy! He was hounded out by the fucking press!" How about that, eh? What a way to go!

Thank you everyone and we will see each other again...

My-Bi-Oh-My

Warning, this blog post contains frank discussion of sexuality and may potentially be somewhat graphic. If you are afraid that Jesus will drop a bomb on you because of the discussion of sexuality or same-sex relationships, stop reading here.

Since I started puberty I've been interested in girls/women. I would say maybe 5th or 6th grade. A girl's breasts were particularly a fixation of mine. There's a common expression, are you an "ass or tits guy" and I was definitely the latter. Though I have come to appreciate a fine behind.

Because my urges and attractions were so strongly associated with females and a particular feature of female anatomy, I quickly identified as straight. It was probably sometime around the middle of high school when I started looking at guys somewhat sexually, and it was a far more gradual process. This led to a lot of confusion on my part. I've always looked at sexuality as a spectrum and do not subscribe to the idea that a lot of people hang at the radical ends of straight or gay. Rather I think most people have a little bit of attraction to the same sex, even if they are predominantly straight. I think this is how I rationalized a lot of the attractions I was feeling. For me again, it started with the chest, great pecs were my main fixation. I tended to be interested in kinda effeminate boys or at-least not rugged looking ones, again I rationalized that there was some beauty in them that was androgynous. A curious thing for me looking back was how little I actually thought about the sexual organs, I didn't think of the vagina too much really, or the penis. I knew I wanted to stick mine into a girl, and I knew the technical mechanics of where it would go, but it's not something I really fixated on. The same went for guys, I knew I had some attraction, but I did not really think of what I would do with one, later on the thought of getting oral sex from either gender had appeal, but I was more focused on the attractiveness of the body and more of the secondary sexual characteristics instead of the genitals. The one exception I had was a fascination with testicles, mine and other boys, but this fascination wasn't really sexualized until much later on.

As I got older, my sexuality, for lack of a better word, matured. I started to look at girls as a complete package, tits were still great, but I started to appreciate the ass, legs and of course the vagina. The same also happened with guys, I began to appreciate more types of guys, though still liking 'twinks', appreciating the male ass and thinking of anal sex and appreciating the penis. It is a weird sensation to see a penis and want to immediately suck it. Another recent development in the last couple of years is a change in my role. I always wanted to be the stud, poking both girls and guys. However now I have found myself more and more liking the idea of being the one penetrated, dominated to a degree and held by a stronger, more masculine man. It is again an odd sensation that I am learning to live with. 

So for me, while I have not really been open about my bi-sexuality prior to this, I really find my situation to be more fluid than that label may really allow anyway. I feel, even at age 30 that my sexuality is still evolving. I did 'hide in the closet' a bit, but to be honest, for a lot of my life, I didn't even know I was in one.

I think it's important to note, and perhaps more embarrassing than coming out as bi-sexual. That I have not had any sexual relationship with either gender. Those of you that know my struggle with social situations and my suspected Aspergers, can probably understand why to some degree. But I am hoping that being honest with who I am will leave me in both a healthier mental state to have a relationship and build my confidence with doing so.

An Analysis of James Kirk the Father - Part 2: You Klingon bastards, you've killed my son!

If you haven't seen Star Trek III, here's a spoiler, David is killed.

David is part of an expedition on the Genesis planet that is exploring the results of the project. Indeed life had flourished on Genesis, however as an unstable rate. The planet is tearing itself apart, because David had 'cheated' in the creation of Genesis. Much like his father had during the Kobayashi Maru.

Kirk meanwhile steals his ship to go to the Genesis planet in the hopes of recovering Spock. The Klingons come for Genesis and when Kirk arrives, a confrontation ensues. The Klingons take David, Saavik (also on the expedition) and a newly re-born Spock (without the consciousness or memories) hostage. David calls Genesis a failure, he quips "I don't think they'll kill for it". Has he ever met a Klingon? Kruge orders a hostage killed, David attempts to defend Saavik and Spock and is killed in the process.

Before we go into Kirk's reaction, I want to talk about Commander Kruge for a minute. Kruge is not your typical blood-thirsty Klingon. He is violent but he is calculating about it. He is smart and sees Genesis potential as a weapon. He specifically did not want the Grissom to be destroyed. This is a very calculating Klingon, not a mere brute. Kruge is also gracious in accepting Kirk's surrender. I honestly don't think that Kruge would have killed a hostage at that time had he known that Kirk had personal connections to them. I'm sure he would have if he was pushed by Kirk, but not merely from David's flippant remark.

So we have now, one of Shatner's strongest performances. Kirk, stumbles back to his seat and misses, falling to the floor muttering "You Klingon bastards, you've killed my son" Kirk is devastated, but he must recover quickly because the lives of his crew and the hostages is at-stake.

Father and son, brought together so briefly and separated so quickly and cruelly. There isn't much interaction between David and Kirk in this movie. But I think Kirk's reaction says enough. Kirk is devastated, and it follows him for the rest of the movies.

So what does this mean in relation to my father? There's a few notable parallels in the David-Kirk relationship as well as a few things that are flipped. In that sense, the movie always struck an odd cord for me. Firstly, though this is only for the last few years, there's a death, in this case it's the father, in Star Trek's case it's the son. However both were sudden and while it's not unusual for a father to die before his son, my father was not old and predeceased his own father (my grandfather). There's also the brevity of the relationship. But the hardest thing is what that relationship had that my relationship didn't. David and Kirk both see each other at some of their lowest points, their biggest failures, their hardest challenges, and both exceed the others expectations in those moments. I did not get the fortune of seeing my father at his best, as a fantastic step-dad, as completely sober, as someone that could balance business and family. Another family got to see that and got to experience that before his passing. It was only in his near death that he thought of me and my brother.

However, there is hope in Star Trek, the running thread that connects all 6 movies, and even Kirk's role in Generations, is the aging of the crew. Kirk is unhappy with his career because he's advanced too far! He's out of the captain's chair and he's unfamiliar with new technology. Kirk needs glasses to read. But more importantly, is the decisions of the past come back to haunt Kirk and crew. Khan, his relationship with the Klingons, etc. David is just one of those threads, and his death re-iterates Kirk's sacrifice of family to his life of service. But while Kirk lost both his son David and the Enterprise itself in Star Trek III, he did gain something for the effort, he re-gained Spock. And that is the ultimate lesson of Star Trek III and the movie series as a whole. family isn't always a wife or a biological child, it can be those who you've grown so close to in your life that you would die for them and they would die for you. Not just Kirk, but the whole 'bridge crew' threw their careers away, committed treason and theft, risked their lives out of loyalty to Kirk and love of Spock. Ultimately that is as close to family as anything gets. I am blessed to have my mom, my brothers, my grandma and Abbey. I am also blessed to have some amazing surrogate families in my life as well. Whether or not we are working together or not, close or miles away. Perhaps I have learned not to watch Star Trek for a father-son relationship that I can't change, but rather for the importance of my 'crew' the family that I have chosen to accept into my life and those who have accepted me.

An Analysis of James Kirk the Father - Part 1: "Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout!"

Star Trek has been a passion for me ever since I can remember. I loved outer space and Star Trek played into that, it also played into my love of order and things like ranks and command structures. Star Trek: The Next Generation was my 'contemporary' Star Trek growing up, and still my favorite. However I also grew up with the movies from the original cast. In some ways, I like the original cast's movies even more than the original show.

For those of you that know a lot about Star Trek, you know that there's a thread of continuity through the movies, even though they all tell their own story. Particularly 2nd through the 4th movie follows a particular arc. While I could talk about Star Trek all day, this blog has a point about finding myself, and it is on that point that I want to hone in on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, while also touching here and there on the others. Particularly, I want to examine the relationship between Admiral Kirk and his son David Marcus.

David was not part of the show at all, neither was his mother Dr. Carol Marcus. To introduce characters like this in a movie could seem contrived, but in this case it was very well done. Firstly it works because we know that the Kirk of the series days was a 'girl in every port' kind of guy, so it's not out of character for him to have gotten a woman pregnant on the fly. It also works because it's written very naturally and played very well by the actors involved.

When we meet David, he is following in the footsteps of his mother, a scientist, working with her on the Genesis project. It's a Star Trek movie so it doesn't take long for trouble to start. A Starfleet ship is coming to try and take Genesis, supposedly with orders from Admiral Kirk. David is outraged, he doesn't know Kirk is his father at this point, but already thinks of him as an asshole.

Carol contacts Kirk and he comes to the rescue, leading to father and son coming together for the first time. While on the surface, David is very much his mother's son. It doesn't take too long for Kirk and David to show quite a similar temperament, which leads to a lot of confrontation. The introduction of father and son comes in the form of David mistaking Kirk's intentions and attacking Kirk. While not a trained fighter, David is as quick to defend what is important to him as Kirk is. Other similarities come into play as well, including them both sharing the propensity to break the rules to achieve their desired results. ST:II and to a lesser extent III, have an under-current theme of the 'Kobayashi Maru' or the no-win scenario. Kirk wouldn't accept it in his academy test or in his career, David would not accept it in the creation of Genesis. In both cases, they eventually had to face reality that you can't always cheat your way out.

There is a great debate, especially in the genetic age we live in, of nature vs nurture. How much does someone's genetic stock matter versus the conditions they were raised in and the education they received. Star Trek presents us an interesting take that bares similarities on my own situation. Here is David, who has the scientific passions of his mother, understandable, both the nature and nurture are present for that to happen. But on the other side, a personality, a strong will, a determination and a selflessness (we'll talk about later) very much like his father. His father that he had no contact with and didn't even know was his father until well after his formative years.

I personally had little connection to my own father growing up, even when he was still living with us, he was sort of there only physically. But I do remember enjoying spending time at his shop when he owned his own business and like him I liked to tinker with mechanical things. I found out after his death that we both concurrently developed a love of technology and doing things like building our own computers, even though at that time we had no contact with each other.

By the end of Star Trek II, Kirk has gained a son but has lost a brother. His first no-win situation. This allows David to see Kirk's humanity and for them to develop a respect for each other. This was always something that struck me and stayed with me because, in this situation that paralleled a lot of my own relationship with my father, this is the conclusion that I never got. He never showed any care for me from the day he stopped showing up to see me (unlike Carol Marcus, my mom actually encouraged him to see us) until about a month before his passing, when he wanted to finally see me. I can see him intellectually as the very intelligent man that I knew he was, putting everything into his work (another similarity we share). I can remember some good times we had camping, miniature golfing,  But for me, I can never get the image out of my mind of him coming home and sitting in front of the TV with a beer, completely dis-interested. That beer was the symbol of him. Maybe I've overblown that one aspect in him, much like David saw Kirk as a warmonger of a militant Starfleet. But David got to see much more of his father at his best that I ever will.

This story isn't over yet though! We will explore ST:III next time!

Asperger's Speaks...

I didn't become aware that Dan Aykroyd had Aspergers until a couple of years ago. Around the time I was really exploring the idea that I may be someone that possesses those traits.

I just saw online that he was asked about it, and while he describes his case as mild and that he considers himself lucky to have been able to really channel it creatively, you could still see the emotion on his face and the holding back of tears.

It was particularly moving to me because Dan Aykroyd played a big role in my childhood, my taste in film and my sense of humor. I can't count how many times I've seen both Ghostbusters movies, Dragnet, Blues Brothers, etc.

I am reminded of when, in Ghostbusters II, after the slime comes out of the bathtub, he exclaims "That's Great!" thinking of the scientific implications, and then catches himself "I mean, that's terrible!". That is a frequent challenge of mine as well, and I suspect if was a case of the actor informing the character, especially since Aykroyd helped write the script. It is not that he didn't care about Dana and Oscar, but it wasn't what his first reaction was to, since they were obviously safe, but in the world of the neuro-typical, his first exclamation was a social faux pas and seems cold and heartless. Yet those would be a few of the last adjectives I would use to describe the character.

I don't have an official diagnosis of Aspergers or ASD, but it is something that my therapist and I are exploring and something I have suspected for for a few years. I identify with a lot of the traits, especially as a child. This is something that, like Depression, I find is a topic that is difficult to discuss, with people seeming to often downplay it. I hope Dan opens up more publicly about this topic, I think it would be a big help to a lot of people.

When Taking Pills Is A Big Accomplishment

As I wake up this morning, I feel as I often do, like I'd rather have not woken up. By this I don't mean sleep in, I mean that I would have been fine with not waking up at all.

My morning routine, without work as a factor, is a lot more lax. This morning my new configuration of medication consists of 7 pills I must take. I eat some breakfast and postpone taking them.

Taking the pills requires a mental effort that I am having difficulty mustering, they are literally at my bedside to make it easy. Yet turning over that way and opening each bottle, even reading the label seems like lifting 100 pounds.

Abbey rubs her nose and chin on my face, encouraging me, showing me that I have at-least one reason to be here.

I'm itchy and I can feel the need to take my allergy pills, but it's so hard.

Why is it hard? obviously it's not physically hard. Is it that I don't want to face the reality that at age 30 I'm on as many pills as my mom and grandma? Does that really even matter? Is it because two of those pills are for diabetes, a disease that took my great uncle and god-father, a man loved by the local community, a disease for which my cousin is now looking for a kidney? and a disease that my lack of recent discipline and lack of self worth has allowed to somewhat slip from my control?

Or maybe it's because three of those pills are for my mental health, and depression still carries a stigma, even maybe with myself and anxiety is hard to reconcile with the 'master of the universe' that I like to see myself as, especially in my professional life. Maybe I know I have these afflictions intellectually, but I haven't really truly absorbed it.

As I take the pills I feel a relief of something difficult achieved, like I just checked off a major project on the to-do list. I don't understand why it was so hard.