Dan the man

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.

I have such little interaction with people it’s hard to pinpoint one word and I think with all the words in the English language and all the people in America as well as the world we may never find that one overused word. Plus with the different generations we have it makes it more difficult to find that word. I do have the privilege of spending time on the English language because my wife who is from Thailand is studying English to improve her own vocabulary. It is mandatory boggling how difficult English is with many words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings or different words that mean the same thing. I have no idea how all this came about, I find the challenge of trying to explain our language crazy at best. Thankfully I rarely shy away from a challenge and in the process my wife is teaching me Thai and sad to say I butcher the crap out of it, but we are a work in progress and happy to have our time together. I will say my all time favorite word is motherfucker, it has a great strength to it and can be used quite a few different ways.

My wife will tell you I am too kind to people which to me is a mystery because by and large I don’t like people, being out in public irks the fuck out of me, but the is something in my subconscious that overrides my thoughts. One of my wife’s coworkers wanted to open a bank account but her visa expired and she doesn’t have a social security number, this came up just as a matter of fact-ish so I immediately looked for and found a bank that lets you open an account without a SSN, I told my wife the next day we were at the bank during they’re break between lunch and dinner I vouched for her and it’s been great for her for over a year now. A friend of ours needed to be picked up from the airport the time worked out good for me she I immediately said yes. Over the last 15-20 years I find myself saying yes all the time and it drives my wife crazy which is weird because I say yes to her all the time. I’m the guy that actually shows up when you want to move something and/or somewhere, it feels right to me, I don’t think I’ll ever figure out why mostly I think it’s because I wasn’t so nice in my younger years, maybe because I did so many terrible things it’s my subconscious way of making things right. I want nothing in return, well maybe a smile and a simple thank you.

So many, but it was also a different time in the world, families were much closer back then. We had friends from the neighborhood, from school and we were all very social. My parents loved Sunday dinner and we all had to be there which for me sucked big time. I have 3 brothers with wives so 3 sister in-laws who seemed to be vying for the top tier for my mother and father. None of them got along with each other or my wife, so for me it was a shit show every Sunday. I also worked for my dad with one of my brothers and that brought a lot of difficulties to the table. My parents loved Christmas and that was a mandatory be there holiday. When I moved away my dad said always be home for Christmas and I did until he was gone. When we had kids we tried to create traditions, but divorce put an end to that as well as parents who couldn’t get along at all. For me traditions keep you locked into an old behavior and belief, kind of like ground hog day. After awhile the excitement wears off and it becomes a pain in the ass chore that you only do because you’ve been doing for so long. There’s more to life than that and it’s different for everyone, the Sunday dinners ended and I don’t think anyone was heartbroken the same with Christmas, at some point you move forward on your own.

My wife and I will be traveling to Thailand later this year, my wife goes there every year to see her family I go every other year because of my work. Usually when we both go we travel from Bangkok to other countries this year it’s Vietnam for five days. When we began dating we would talk about our expectations for the future neither of us wanted children so the next best thing is traveling and over the past eight years we have been traveling all over the world, it has been the greatest experience of my life. I recommend traveling wherever you can. We travel outside the country because we love experiencing different cultures, we eat the local foods mostly walk through the cities so we can see the architecture. We don’t travel much in America mostly because we don’t feel safe like we do overseas.

Any form of exercise, no matter what I’m doing ie; running, biking,swimming, walking I am a total John Doe. I don’t bring anything other than water with me no music no phone nothing that’s how I was raised and I don’t see a reason to fix what isn’t broken. This behavior drives my wife crazy, but she doesn’t see the benefits. It’s the only time you can really listen to your body, you get to really connect to what’s happening inside you, it also allows your mind to expand to new dimensions. I grew up without all of the outside distractions so that’s what I know, I tried using a Walkman when they came out, but found it a royal pain in the ass, I was unable to listen to myself my body my spirit. Now, we have at least one generation that will never know that connection they have been bombarded with white noise and outside influences. No one knows my body better than me, I don’t rely on “doctors “ as much as myself, I found the very best medicines many years ago and they have never let me down.