Search Results for: My Bullied History, Part

Who Am I?

Family, Fatherhood, Gardening, Life

Yesterday, the rain held off.  It was the perfect time to catch up on some yard work that needed to be done.  I mowed the lawn, put down some grass seed (our lawn still hasn’t recovered from the burst water pipe last year), trimmed some hedges, and potted some plants we had purchased the previous day.

While I was doing this, the boys were inside with B.  They could have come out, but they don’t like the noise that the lawn mower puts out.  JSL, who came out for a little bit, freaked out that every small flying bug was a bee coming after him.  Besides, I had set up NHL on my computer and he was having a blast playing Angry Birds, Gravity Duck and other games online.

So I had the time to myself.  It was nice.  I had peace and quiet and could think while I lugged heavy bags of dirt or pushed our mower up and down the yard.  I began to enjoy my “Dad’s Day Out” until it hit me.  This *was* the closest thing to a dad’s day out that I’ve had in awhile and I was doing yard work.  Some day out.

I began to think about how I’d rather spend a day out by myself.  Suppose B came up to me and told me that, this coming Sunday, she would take the boys and I could do whatever I wanted.  What would I do?

I don’t have any family or friends here and it often feels like I switch between “Worker Mode” (where I’m in an office all day with little to no social interaction beyond “we need you to do this for us”) straight to “Dad Mode” (where I try to cook meals, take care of my wife and kids, clean up, etc).  If I’m not in “Worker Mode” or “Dad Mode”, who am I?  Who is TechyDad when he’s not coding web sites or being a dad?  I’m not sure I have an answer for that question and it scares me.  I love being a web developer and I love being a dad, I don’t think it is too much to ask to be able to be “just me” from time to time. 

The dream I had last night isn’t helping my mood, either.  I was with B and my parents visiting my grandparents’ grave site.  Only, I didn’t know exactly where it was.  Somehow, I got separated from everyone.  As I tried to find them and the gravesite, they visited the grave and then prepared to leave.  I tried to explain to them (via cell phone) that I still needed to visit the grave, but they told me they’d leave without me if I didn’t get to the car.  Then, B came by to bring me back to the car over my objections.  I was almost in tears over being denied the opportunity to visit my grandparents’ grave when I woke up.

I’m not sure if the dream is somehow related to the “Who am I” feelings from the previous day, but this wouldn’t be the first time that I dreamt about something bothering me.  Between yesterday’s identity crisis and this morning’s bad dream, you’ll excuse me if I’m feeling emotionally on edge today.

Aloha Friday: Bullying, Reactions and Friendship

Aloha Friday, Bullies, Friendship, NHL, School

I’ve been itching to write about this for awhile, but wanted to wait while we assessed our options.  (Besides, B already wrote about this last week, so I figured it was high time I address it.)  On Thursday, April 28th, NHL was punched in the stomach by another student in his 2nd grade class.  NHL was sent to the nurse with bruises on his stomach/ribs.

One interesting wrinkle to this story was NHL’s reaction.  While in the nurse’s office, he was crying, sad that he had upset the child and had hurt his feelings.  NHL blamed himself for the bullying incident even though he had done nothing that warranted a punch in the ribs.  He even, over that weekend, listed the child as his friend.  Yes, the kid that punched him in the ribs was still a friend to NHL.

As you may recall, I was bullied a lot when I was growing up.  One incident in particular happened in middle school  At the risk of retelling a story I’ve blogged about before, I only had one person that I considered my friend at the time.  That was RH.

The only problem with RH being my friend was that he would stab me in the back.  Literally.  With a pen.  He would bully me for awhile and then would play the victim, claiming that he had heard from a third person that I had said something bad about him.  Then we would be friends again until he decided to bully me again.

Why did I keep taking him back as a friend when he kept bullying me?  Simple.  I felt like I had no other friends.  If I admitted to myself that RH wasn’t my friend, I was left friendless.  At the time, a horrible friend seemed better than no friend at all.  It scared me to see this scenario playing out again in NHL’s school.

Then, in a display of good timing, I saw a tweet from @sociallysmart (aka Corinne Gregory) about the covering up of bullying incidents.  To summarize the article (which is a must read for all parents), school administrators across the country are turning a blind eye to bullying because it makes them look bad if they admit there is a problem.  Of course, this is a case of short term gain-long term loss.  What the school administrators gain in the short term (saving face and avoiding bad PR), the kids lose in the long term (higher incidence of bullying with little to no consequences).

The only solution is for parents to know their (and their children’s) rights and stand up for them.  It might be tough to do at times, but it is essential for our children’s well being.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you or your child ever been bullied by someone you/they considered a friend?  How did you/they react?

Also, don’t forget to enter my Aerobie Sprint Flying Ring giveaway.  It’s ending in four days and has a very low amount of entries (as I write this).

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #87

Aloha Friday: How do you handle stress?

Aloha Friday, Stress

As B has mentioned in a couple of posts, the past week has been a stressful one.  We have some big decisions to make and they aren’t easy ones.  There is no perfect choice ahead of us.  (Life rarely offers such choices up.)  Instead, we’re presented with a short list of options, none of which feel like the right one (each for different reasons).  So you can understand why stress levels have been rising.

Now, different people react to stress in different ways.  Some people drink, some eat, some yell and scream.  I don’t do any of that.  (Ok, sometimes I eat.)  I’ve written before about how I handle stress.  Lately, my stress reaction has been two-fold.  Step one is avoidance.  I think about television, blog posts, music, anything that isn’t the subject that is causing me stress.  To some degree this is healthy: After all, it isn’t good to dwell on your stress subjects too much.  However, there is a temptation to avoid the stress subject entirely and that isn’t healthy.  Without addressing it in some manner, the situation will grow worse and the stress will increase.

When I can’t ignore the stress, I internalize it.  I might be fuming on the outside and wanting to scream so loud that people a mile away could hear me, but I actually get very quiet.  I try to conduct my life as normally as possible without showing my stress.  In some respects, this is a tactic I learned from my history of being bullied.  Back then, showing any reaction to the bullies (anger, sadness, stress, etc) just led to additional bullying because of my reactions.  So I learned to hide all of my emotions.  To the world at large, I was calm and serene while inside I was crumbling.  I know this isn’t the most healthy response and I’ve since learned to open up more.  Still, it is how I instinctively react.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What do you do when you are stressed?  How do you handle it?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #81

Aloha Friday: Dreams Both Good And Bad

Dreams

While I was sitting on the couch, trying to figure out a topic to write about for Aloha Friday, I heard crying coming from the boys’ room.  We rushed in to see NHL sitting up and asking to go home.  That cry is the sign that he’s been having a bad dream.  We reassured him that it was a nightmare.  I sat by his bed hugging him while he fell back to sleep.

As I sat there, I began thinking about dreams.  I’ve had my share of good and bad dreams.  Back in high school, I had a recurring dream where my eyes were closed.  I could hear people talking in the distance and wanted to join them.  To do that, I needed to open my eyes.  No matter how hard I tried, though, my eyes wouldn’t open.  (I wrote about this before in my My Bullied History series.)

Another dream I’ve had semi-regularly is one in which I discover that I can defy gravity.  I simply decide to move off the ground and suddenly I’m floating.  I can move effortlessly across the landscape at speeds that I couldn’t ever hope to achieve by walking or running.  Floating/flying seems so natural that I begin to wonder why I didn’t realize that I could do this before.  Of course, then I wake up and find myself still bound by the laws of gravity.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you ever had a recurring bad (or good) dream?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #76

A Look Back on 2010

Blogging

Two Thousand and Ten or Twenty Ten, whichever way you pronounced it, it was a big year.

I began the year on a quest to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks.  I’m proud to report that I was successful.  I’m not so proud to report that, in the remaining 32 weeks, I’ve gained those 20 pounds back.  I’m even less proud to report that those returning 20 pounds brought some buddies along.  Looks like I’ll be beginning 2011 with the goal of losing 25 – 30 pounds.

2010 marked the first time we attended blogging/social media conferences.  The first conference was Disney Social Media Moms 2010.  Actually, B attended this one.  I hung out with the kids and rode on rides.  To be completely honest, I think I got the better deal.  No offense to those of you who were chatting with B and enjoying the conference, but NHL, JSL and I got to go on Disney World’s rides!  It’s really hard to beat that.  Despite some injuries, problems and some face-remembering fears, we all had a great time.  Even better, we’ll be attending DisneySMMoms 2011.  And by “we”, I mean B again while the boys and I ride more rides.  Small World, here we come!  (By the way, if I don’t remember meeting you from last year, please don’t be offended.)

The Disney trip forced me to reexamine some of my long-held religious practices.  I think I’m much happier with my modified practices than I was previously.  I know that B’s much happier, though she likely misses getting total remote control custody from sundown Friday to an hour past sundown Saturday.

The high of the Disney World trip was followed with a low of constant nosebleeds.  First, I got them once a week.  Then, they got more and more frequent until I had to have my nose electrically cauterized.  That’s as fun as it sounds (unless you think it sounds like a blast in which case you have issues).  Sadly this only worked for awhile and then I had to get my nose chemically cauterized.  This procedure hurt less and wasn’t as intense afterwards, but still is something I’d rather not go through again.

Towards the end of March, it became apparent that my grandmother wasn’t going to be alive much longer.  She passed away in mid-April.  I had previously taken custody of her photo collection with the goal of scanning them all and distributing DVDs of the photos to everyone.  This scanning project uncovered some incredible photos.  I only wish my grandmother was alive to tell me the stories behind them.  The scanning project also turned into a genealogy project using various tools.

April also saw the launch of Dad Revolution: a joint blog hosted by about 10 dads.  (The actual number fluctuates.)  It’s been a bit of a rocky go at times, but I’m proud to have my posts alongside the rest of these dads!

Towards the end of May, I realized my blogging limitations.  Determined to break them, I did an Eden Fantasy review, attended an Eden Fantasy party at BlogHer 2010 (NSFW) and even had a “Frisky Vacuuming” guest post on Blogging Dangerously.

In May, I began a project near and dear to me: My Bullied History.  Here, I detailed how I had been bullied from elementary school through high school.  I even showcased a piece of writing I had unearthed from my freshman year of college when the bullying was fresh in my mind.

In August, just before BlogHer 2010, we got a diagnosis for some of the behaviors we were seeing in NHL.  The doctor said that, since I shared some of these same behaviors, I likely had this condition as well.  This led me to question how much of me was from my experiences as a child versus the “condition.”  In the end, it was a moot point as further testing showed he didn’t have this condition at all.  A rollercoaster of emotion, to be sure.

Speaking of BlogHer 2010, we attended that conference in New York City and had a blast.  I’m intentionally not going to say much about it because I know that if I try I’ll go on for about a dozen paragraphs.  Suffice it to say that we highly enjoyed the panels, meeting with fellow bloggers and meeting with company representatives.

BlogHer 2010 was also where I cheated on my long-term relationship.  And by that, I mean I used someone’s DSLR camera instead of my trusty point and shoot camera.  We tried to repair relations, but after its flash broke, I got my own DSLR.  My point and shoot will be given to NHL to use in photographic excursions with me.

Of course, 2010 also saw a lot of cooking (including duplicating a chickpea recipe I’ve been wanting to make for years), video game playing, math learning with NHL, milestones with JSL and more.

What will 2011 bring?  I’m not sure, but if 2010 is any indication, it’s sure to be a wild ride.

1 2 3 4 5