Remember Valentine’s day 2004, when San Francisco county started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples?
Thousands of couples showed up. Some from the other side of the planet, some from the other side of town. The County Clerk was overwhelmed and there weren’t nearly enough wedding officiants to keep up. So they put out a call for volunteers to be deputized by the Clerk as county marriage commissioners. I volunteered and officiated at dozens of ceremonies at city hall.
Still have my official commission hanging on my wall.
I let a homeless guy know he dropped a nickel.
Brushing my teeth. I’ve been through progressive hard depression from an early age. Yeah. It’s not much
Small improvements are still improvements, my friend - good on ya!
Any self improvement, as small as it may seam, creates a momentum to change other things.
Celebrate that change and use it to make other positive changes.
You’re wrong friend.
Even for people that are not depressed, brushing their teeth is almost a chore.
You brushing your teeth, not only shows great resilience, but also improvement
Going to talk therapy. Getting married and having kids really pushed me and helps me keep going on the hardest days. I cannot have mental illness affect their lives like it did mine growing up.
I have three kids. I was present for the birth of the youngest two. But I adopted my oldest. She was 12 so she had to tell the judge she was OK with it. I told her it came with two conditions: Nothing between us needed to change and she didn’t have to call me “Dad”. She calls me by first name to my face but she calls me “dad” behind my back. I’ll take it.
Just cleaned up my whole apartment. I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere where the whole place is this clean. I normally deep clean one area then stop and by the time i clean the next area the first ones dirty again. Everything is sorted nicely, got stuff hung up that I’ve been putting off, vacuumed in every corner, the whole works. I’m exhausted but super proud
Clean begets clean I find. It’s so much easier to tidy up than have to do a big cleaning. You’ve already done the hard part.
It just so happens I’m proud of something I did two hours ago as I write this sentence. A friend of mine said they needed a constant companion for the time being, and another friend said they needed a certain demographic to be friends with, and after realizing the first friend fell under that demographic, I thought “wait, do these two people know each other”. Three hours ago as I write this sentence, I introduced them, and they really hit it off. I just made three people very happy.
In 2007, I, a non-white non-Korean, took a job in South Korea. Then, I took another. Then, at the third job, I was hired, but the owner’s brother was amenable to some of the more racist thoughts that guided the approach to business in SK. He thought I would hurt the business. He resisted hiring another non-white, non-Korean.
The owner asked me to write a letter. Instead of saying, “that’s not my job”, I wrote the letter. I made the case. They hired another non-white, non-Korean after me.
I’m still pretty proud of that letter.
They made a rule against using bird houses in a demolition contest because of me. It’s not my fault they asked for the most effective way of getting through a steel plate instead of the most precise.
I would love more details.
So there I was with something of an informal competition in front of me to make the “best” shaped charge to blow throw about a two inch steel plate. It was really just something like practicing skills and maybe showing off creativity.
Most people took “best” to mean most efficient, precise, or cleanly shaped hole in the metal. I took a different meaning. A Mongo minded meaning.
People showed up with their creations and proceeded to pack them with explosives. Most were C4 filled and under half a pound, many of them much less. Shaped charges made of coins, wine bottles, whatever else.
I brought a bird house similar to:
Removed the copper roof, put it in a 5 gallon bucket and proceeded to fill the bucket with as much C4 as it could hold. I don’t know how much. It was a lot. More explode means more good.
My charge had to go last for fear of disrupting everything else. I put a dachshund sized hole in the steel plate along with a massive crack. Penetrated the dirt a few feet down. Somebody even recovered the copper penetrator and turned it into a keychain.
After that they put a size limit on how much explosives you could use. Really not my fault there wasn’t a limit in the first place.
Please tell us more…
When I was still in a band we played the same venue that I saw one of my favorite bands play at once. That was really cool, even though it was on a Monday and we just played to other bands.
I took up an instrument for the first time in my late 30s and have gotten okay at it. If I was 8 years old people would nod politely to my parents after my recital.
what instrument? what songs are you playing, or are you originating music??
Mandolin. Playing Bach, American folk standards and children’s songs. Started la vie en rose tonight. No original material but it’s been fun to do something I, for a reason I no longer remember, thought was beyond me. My wife loves it. My kids are annoyed that I follow them around like a restaurant mariachi playing the same songs over and over lol.
Sounds fun. Don’t forget about Losing My Religion! I play guitar and drums. When I first started with guitar, I only played covers as if the only thing that mattered was my technical capacity. Once I learned a scale out if curiosity, I discovered a wholeeeee new world. I no longer bother with covers. I hope you find some courage to engage in creating something new, and if you do, please share it with me if you feel comfortable 🙂
Thanks for the tip about scales. Music theory has been on my mind as something to learn after I get technically good but maybe I should move it up in the batting order.
Over the past year my AVG daily step count is over 15k.
Went back to school in my mid-30s, just for my AA. But it got my foot in the door to a great field and now the upwards momentum is almost limitless.
I’m not really looking to be some big shot, as I prefer work balanced, but I love that I’m not stuck where I was before.
Stuff keeps breaking in my house. I hate fixing the stuff, but I always feel super proud when it’s done.
In the last month I replaced an electrical outlet that released its magic smoke when the electric griddle cord short circuited. I replaced the igniter in our gas oven. And just today I replaced the insinkerator garbage disposal that started leaking water under the sink.
my mom started teaching deaf kids at a school in my hometown. this school is mostly attended by kids from poor families and some from nearby villages. the funding of this school is very small, and not much is provided to help prepare classes. note that my mom never knew how to speak sign language but she was very determined to learn to to.
my mom also wasn’t pc-literate and was previously not keen on learning to use it but in order to excel (pun not intended) at her position she was required to learn to use word and other teaching tools on the computer.
so i helped her get started and showed her how to prepare her classes using images and she was quite a fast learner and resources online to learn sign language, but i was especially happy to find some amazing tools that had kid friendly animations which helped her teach them to write and speak sign language
something that really touched me is that one day, her work computer was malfunctioning so i had to visit her and fix it for her. when i walked in, her students didn’t recognize me so they asked her who i was, and when she told them i was her son who got her those learning tools they became ecstatic and signed how grateful they were to be able to meet me in real life
they’re mostly 8-14yo and were marginalized especially since the class they attended was previously discontinued and they had no other way to become literate and integrate a bit more into society. ive sat through some of her sessions and ill never forget the look in their eyes and how happy and excited to learn they all were
they went on to get their 6th grade diploma and some of them even continued their studies beyond that, im also proud of my mom who helped save them and at least be more literate, even though its not much to a full education but its about as good as it gets given the circumstances
Sometimes I proud of myself of just solving problems that haven’t settled in days, which makes me a bit of achievement.
