Dan the man

Breakfast Lunch and Dinner!! All kidding aside in my house nearly every meal is memorable, my wife is from Thailand and they do not use different foods for separate meals, for instance she will make breakfast with five soup with crispy pork and canned mackerel. She’ll cook and serve bacon like it’s a pork loin, omelette with mussels is a favorite and of course papaya salad as hot and spicy as you can handle with barbecue chicken or pork. Thai people have an amazing relationship with their food, and to be part of that is a privilege I take seriously.

Kindness, but typically that is the last impression I give. All my life I’ve been misread pretty much my entire life, I am a bigger guy having spent the majority of my life in the gym and I imagine the intensity of my workouts reflected on my face so people would avoid me and I was good with that, I figured the people who understood me would be okay with it. During the dating phase of life most women would shy away the ones that didn’t were very surprised at my demeanor. All these years later I still try to emote kindness, it’s in my heart, but now I keep it closer to the vest to keep it safe.

My true self! I would say most of my life I had been lost, completely lost. As a child I did whatever my parents wanted me to do and I think they couldn’t differentiate between protecting your children and controlling them. I didn’t get the chance to fail at something until I was well into my adult life, but if our passion didn’t align with my parents they would crush it telling me I was crazy, there was no money in it, you’ll never succeed. So I did what they wanted me to do, I worked for my dad for over 16 years, and lived in one of his many apartment buildings for nearly nothing, I just had to take care of the regular maintenance, cutting the grass taking out the trash, keeping it clean. He was able to keep a handle on my life that way. I don’t think any of their behavior was intentional they were just over protective even though we lived in the lily white suburbs filled with all white middle class families. When I did move out they gave me an apartment to live in. I think from the outside it appeared to be an awesome life, but inside it sucked big time. I spent most days silently going through the motions all the while I was screaming inside crawling out of my skin, wondering how I can escape this nightmare of a life. Turned out to be pretty simple, just become a drunken drug addict who threw away his wife and kids and spent the next couple of years in and out of jail. After all that my parents were more than happy to let me leave, they gave me parting gifts, a bunch of money and said goodbye. I ended up in Florida and was free, finally free. It was so liberating I wept for days for all the years I stayed there and for all the years ahead of me.

A pair of Ray Ban sunglasses. They were great, I would even go so far to say one of the best pair of sunglasses I ever had, until I turned my head doing 60 mph on my Harley and just like that they were gone. I had to get replacements quickly so I got off the next exit stopped at a gas station and bought a pair of $10.00 sunglasses that did more than suffice, they were better than the Ray Bans. Over the years I’ve bought hundreds of sunglasses, I keep a couple of pairs in my truck in my wife’s car and in my saddlebags on my bike. Needless to say there may be a problem here. As I get older my sight is changing and I don’t need glasses just yet, but in the next couple of years I will definitely need them. I am already shopping around so I can scale down my “collection “ to just a few.

I think it depends on the situation I’m in or the people involved. I’m typically an introvert so it’s a far stretch for me to step into the leadership role, but that doesn’t mean I follow whoever has, if I don’t agree with them I will say my peace and go my own way, I have tried the leadership role in a management position and hated it. There I realized it’s human nature to buck the establishment, not follow rules beat the man etc… I didn’t like that level of stress. I was also at that point I discovered I am the only one responsible for my well being, being a manager you have to assign tasks to people who do not want to do them and basically half ass the job and I found myself doing the job for them and lying to my boss. It was a futile attempt to keep harmony. These days I manage my life very well, no stress, I also help my wife who is a large part of my life together we are a dream team something I never experienced before and something I had to learn to be part of. I love learning I believe it keeps me sharp, but I am in no hurry to lead others.

Dis-honesty, selfishness, if I cannot believe you or see you lack compassion or integrity I simply walk away. In my life I have had relationships just like that, it’s why I have zero tolerance for people like that today. Perfect example is the family that owes a restaurant my wife worked at for 8 years she recently found out the father was taking money out of the drawer after it was counted for the next day, their policy is it’s the servers responsibility to make sure there is 1 hundred dollars at the beginning of the day, if not the servers had to pay the difference. It wasn’t a lot of money 5 sometimes 10 dollars and the servers were making so much money they didn’t really think about it. My wife found out about it and immediately put in her 2 week notice, these people were like family, we socialized together all the time, after her discovery they just turned the other cheek and tried to remain the same, but my wife told them she and I were heartbroken over this turns out it was a blessing for us and karma is working its magic. There have been so many people that tell me one thing and do another, I use to accept it mostly because I never had a lot of friends, but as I grew older and much much wiser I realized it’s the quality of person not the quantity. And I am completely content with myself and my wife. We both share that mindset so it didn’t hurt that much to walk away for people who said they loved us and we were family, but showed us we were anything but. I have run into quite a few exes either girlfriend or just friends and really worked and succeeded in keeping my cool, so I believe it’s an opportunity to develop life skills and improve personal growth.

When I look t my life, from where I am to where I was or have been, all the awful decisions and mistakes that at the time I believed they were going to define me as the person I am. It was only when I took complete control over my life that it started to change, I no longer allowed friends or family to impact my life like I did in the past. I no longer cared about what they or anyone else thought about me or what I was doing. It wasn’t easy at all there was so much push back it nearly broke me, I found it impossible to deflect all the bad mouthing degrading comments and un-accepting behavior, but through practice and determination I found the person I was meant to be…me. I lost friendships that have lasted 20 plus years, I’ve lost relationships with family members that will never be repaired. Mom, Dad, a couple of brothers a few nieces and nephews 2 sons they refused to accept the fact that I made it on my own. I will never allow myself to live with someone else’s conditions, or let my mother or father guilt me into doing something I don’t like. I am grateful for the life I have, I have a beautiful amazing wife we do what we like with no regrets, I never in a million years believed life could be this great. A shed tears of joy tears of sorrow tears of sadness, tears of happiness, because I learned the value of controlling myself, my life, and loving people on just who they are.

My wife and I just celebrated our 8th anniversary this past Wednesday. Historically I have an awful track record when it comes to relationships, my first one was my first marriage which lasted 10 years after that I had a 1 year relationship after that was a 9 year relationship. I called it quits after that and just dedicated my time to myself, I came to the realization that I would be alone for the rest of my life and I was good with that. That was the time of self improvement I learned how to let the past go, control what I can and live in my own skin. That lasted a good 6-7 years then I met my current wife. Everything about her and us feels right, all our choices and decisions are made with confidence from both of us and we have succeeded most of the time and when we don’t it’s okay. We’re on the same page without have to talk about getting on the same page. We live an amazing life one I’m very proud of.

Any Tom Cruise movie, he hasn’t made a bad one, the first Terminator, the first three Star Wars, all of the Quentin Tarantino movies, the three Lethal weapon movies, Close encounters of the third kind,any Clint Eastwood movies all the westerns and Dirty Harry movies even the Any which way you can movies. The Jaws trilogy, the God father movies, there are so many movies I can have about, these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Contentment. Ninety percent of the time I am just content with who I am, where I am, what I have and comfortable in my own skin. Let me preface this with the fact that it has taken nearly my entire adult life to get here, even though the mentors in my life have been telling me for years this is all that really matters in our lives it still took me forever to get here. I have spent many hours and years with my children on the importance of self happiness how we are the only ones who can impact our feelings and our lives. We all know how difficult it is when we have to deal with the pressure of the world, especially those teenage years when peer pressure is raging through the schools, the malls and even our neighborhood. I can speak from experience when I say nothing anybody says to us can alter our own way of thinking or how we feel, the key is training our mind to be stronger, greater than anyone and anything. Our minds tell our bodies what to do, controls every aspect of our being. Control your mind you control your world.