Futbol

I met my team five minutes before the game started. I knew a few of them, but for the most part, we were still trying to figure out each others' names when we got onto the field. Names and faces were extra important to me since we were the green team and the opposing team was red (and I'm partially red/green color blind)

Slight color blind genetics was probably the least of my worries since I had a host of other problems. For one, I lacked any real soccer experience. I haven't played soccer since middle school. At the time I remember making the soccer team... and promptly quitting since the video game 'Crash Bandicoot 2' was just released on the Playstation. You shouldn't ask a nerdy student whether he preferred running laps or helping a bandicoot save the world from Doctor Nitrus Brio!!! So I didn't quite remember the rules, no big deal.

We warmed up by kicking the ball on the field for a couple of minutes. I immediately felt out of breath and tired. I mentioned it and I think people thought I was joking. Ok, maybe I'm a little out of shape, no big deal.

I was still optimistic. I saw some elderly ladies in the parking lot, maybe they were the red team. The reality of the situation dawned on me as some of the red team appeared onto the field. One person was wearing a San Diego State soccer jersey and another had on a US Marine Corps soccer shirt (and that's just what some of the girls were wearing). The guys had custom names and numbers. Thinking it was a 'beginner / intermediate league', I was almost ready to show up in my sandals. I didn't even know that shinguards were required until an hour before the game.

I can describe in detail how the red team kicked our ass, but I'm sure no one wants to hear about that! We ended up losing 15-3 (the scoreboard stopped keeping track after they hit 15 before half time). Apparently they were in the league's final match last year.

In the end, what really mattered was that it was really fun. It was neat meeting new people and jumping back into something active. I also realized that all the stuff that I've normally been doing hasn't even been remotely competitive; yoga, rock climbing, running, slacklining, surfing, and hiking. All of that has been very mellow and relaxed. I guess its good to change things up a bit.

Hard to believe

After all this time, I still have trouble believing that I have expendable income. I'm not under the delusion that money can buy happiness, but I do know money can buy 'freedom'.

Time to move on

All of my friends told me not to do it, but I still did. Like most good advice, I ignored it.

Everyone told me not to contact her again and to move on. I disagreed and thought that maybe there was a chance left to fix our relationship. If there was, I knew I wanted to take that leap of faith. Even after everything that's gone on in the last couple months, I still loved her.

So I contacted her, told her how much I still loved her, apologized for the mistakes I've made, and asked if she wanted to give us another chance. Initially she didn't want to talk; she needed her space. I understood and said I would wait however long she needed. After a couple weeks of waiting, I got the call yesterday.

At this point in time, I can only say what I feel now. I might look back on this months or years later and just simply think what an idiot I was. To make this short, we talked and I told her that I knew things could work out with us. I knew that I loved her and that in the end, nothing else would matter as long as she loved me too.

But she didn't. She said doesn't love me. She then told me how she didn't love me even a month before I broke up (the same time I said I would stop paying rent for the both of us, etc.) She said she was just too afraid to tell me.

Before the call, I thought I was ready for it and had all my scenarios planned out. If she doesn't love me still, that's fine. She's moved on already and just gets over relationships quicker than I do. If she does still love me, we could try making it work. I thought I had it all planned out. I really didn't expect her to say that she stopped loving me even when we were still together.

A lot of things were running through my mind. I couldn't believe that she had me 'figure it out for myself' that she wasn't in love with me or that there was a problem even. Instead of communicating anything to me, she knew that I would someday finally get mad enough at her passive aggressiveness and be the one to 'break up'. I wondered, how long would she have lived rent free before she told me anything?

Despite everything that was in my thoughts, I only said two things. I asked if there was anything that I could possibly do to make our relationship work. She said no. I then said that I loved her still and wished her the best in life, even though she's not with me. Now I can finally move on.

Almost there...

I have enough to pay off all of my student loans right now! That means I won't have any credit card or student loan debt anymore. The weird thing is that I don't get paid that much; I think the main reason I'm able to save is because the feeling of having money still seems foreign to me. When I look at my bank account, I'm still trying to get used to the numbers being in the three digits and now its five! Maybe I'm just slow...

The problem with paying off student loans is that I'll be broke after and I won't have any traveling money. What to do?

For now

Everything is only for now. Pain and happiness is only for now. Listening to Avenue Q; I love this Broadway.

LOL Committees

At first I thought corporations had a lot of meetings. I figured it was because management needed to keep track of a lot of staff. After I joined a small non-profit, I thought we would have fewer meetings since we have fewer staff. I was very wrong.

Instead, we have more meetings. I think half my days are spent in meetings. We then have meetings about our meetings (pre-meeting meeting). Just when I thought it couldn't get anymore ridiculous, I find a new king of "plan a lot, very little to show" behavior.

Apparently I was not properly introduced to the big leagues of inefficiency, the 'committee'. They're like meetings except its the exact same people dragging out the exact same topic ad infinitum, usually without any actual work (other than delegation).

I can just imagine that aspiring young manager moments before inventing the first committee, "Man, I love talking in meetings, but every week I need to come up with a new agenda and do the work of typing it up. How can I avoid that? What if I form a reoccurring meeting with the same group of people to discuss a much bigger issue? That way I can recycle the agenda for months and possibly years!"

Anyways, I digress with my rants so I'll continue with my story. Today was my first day participating in one of the committee meetings. We're a sub-committee of a larger committee that's meant to address data quality concerns in our database. What were some of the topics that we discussed? The first topic addressed - there was a rumor that another committee exists and is doing the exact same thing as our current committee.

We ask around the room to see if anyone's heard of this mysterious twin committee. We promptly see half the room raise their hands. Not only has half the room heard of our long lost twin committee, half of our current committee are part of the other committee (who we think are addressing the exact issues that we're addressing in our current group). Confusion spreads around the room; some people are on both committees without even realizing it. (Oh you meant that meeting? That was one of our committee meetings?) The issue of merging committees will be discussed on the next meeting.

For two hours we talk about what needs to be addressed to present statistically reliable information about homelessness to our community. Our solution after hours of discussion? Our current committee (remember that we're a sub-committee) has decided to form a new sub-committee to tackle the issues at hand...

I'm now part of a sub-committee's sub-committee that will focus on the rules of database merging and report writing. After today's meeting, I now know what a committee truly is. A committee is simply a group meeting where the work is repeatedly passed down to smaller groups until you actually have the people who will get shit done. That said, I wonder if we still have enough people to form one more sub-committee... The only difference is that I hope I'm not picked this time.

Cold...

It's a Tuesday... and the Executive Director of my non-profit was let go today. It was also coincidentally his birthday. This was a surprise to all of us. He took the day off so he could celebrate his birthday, but had to come in for a 'quick meeting' that couldn't be rescheduled with some of the board members. The surprise meeting was his termination.

Let me give some background information; I work at a non-profit for the homeless, not a corporation. We're not even that big of a non-profit; I work with about 7 other staff. Despite this, we don't even have the decency to let him have his day off or to wait until a Friday.

That's cold. I called him up after to let him know that the rest of the staff didn't know about the decision and that we'd like to buy him a beer or ten.

I know there was a lot of disagreement and even open hostility between the board and our Executive Director. I know some could justify it even fiscally to fire someone at an opportune fiscal date so that it makes bookkeeping easier. In the end though, I think it's just people so blinded by emotions (or lack thereof) that they forget how to be a decent human being to one another.