Hillbillies in SPAAAAAAAAACE.....

No, we aren't sending hillbillies into space.  

*pause*

Then again, this could be the next great Netflix show.  Start off with a group of hillbillies on vacation to Cape Canaveral sometime in the not too distant future, one thing leads to another, and they mistakenly end up on a rocket headed to Mars instead of the real crew.  The only exception is the straight-laced military commander who is leading the mission.  The show revolves around them learning to work together to survive in space.  

I think this could work...  

*blinks*

Oh, sorry, I got distracted...

I'm fascinated when seemingly disparate things connect.  Unlike Ghostbusters philosophy, where you should never cross the streams (unless being attacked by a giant marshmallow man), universal truths should cross boundaries and connect across various areas of policy, science, and even human interactions. That's how you know something is big "R"-right.  The underlying premise works regardless of context.

One of those curious moments happened this past week.  I had caught up on SyFy’s (spelling still annoys me) The Expanse and then finished the audiobook Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.  Completely separate topics as one is a futuristic story in space and the other a memoir of growing up in a Appalachian hillbilly family.  Both deal with socio-political issues at the surface, but there's another underlying truth - the importance of diversity and risks associated with artificial systems.

Again, if you haven't caught up on The Expanse and/or haven’t read Hillbilly Elegy, you may or may not want to continue.  Thar be spoiler dragons below…

In season two of The Expanse, the Rossi heads to the decimated Ganymede station.  Ganymede was a horticultural station built with bio-domes, those domes were damaged or destroyed by a satellite crash (there's more to it, but that's enough to get the point).  

Not long after they arrive, Dr Meng (whose daughter they are trying to help find) realizes the station plants are dying.  Those plants were placed throughout the domes to generate oxygen for the inhabitants of Ganymede.  Meng goes on to explain that in a bio-diverse system, if something changes, the system can typically recover as adjustments occur within the system to compensate.  On a space station, the plants are living in an artificial system with little bio-diversity.  Once the plants die, there’s nothing to compensate.  Unfortunately for the station, the damage was already too great - the station was headed for another disaster. As you can imagine, panic ensues in the next episode.

Moving back to earth, Hillbilly Elegy gives a history lesson (through the eyes of Vance) on the migration of eastern Kentuckians to manufacturing towns to pursue better lives.  Those new "homes" seemed completely dependent upon those manufacturing facilities (essentially, an artificial economic system without much diversity).

Once manufacturing shifted internationally, and facilities either shut down or scaled back, towns were devastated economically. Those manufacturing regions did not have enough economic diversity to compensate for such an important part of its system shutting down.  People took their base economy for granted, even when it couldn't sustain them.

Makes sense - artificial economies built on one or two large employers (or industries) seem like a huge risk in the long term as much as an artificial ecology does.  Should we take a lesson from Mather Nature when discussing economic policy here in the Bluegrass and focus on more economic diversity?

Instead of courting large businesses with tax breaks, land grants, and the like, should we be focused on bringing in smaller (not necessarily "small") businesses with varying backgrounds?  

If we offer more incentives to bring in businesses that hire and train employees with skills that be easily transferred elsewhere, will it be easier to adapt to economic fluctuations?  

If those skills are transferrable, doesn't that lead to higher competition between businesses, which lead to better salaries and wages, which lead to better employees?  

If employees have higher salaries and wages, doesn't that lead to a broader/higher tax base which then go into better schools, infrastructure, and supporting businesses (hospitality, retail, etc)?

Sure, the down side might be more inflation/higher cost of living, but would it meet/match west and east coast levels?

Now, I’m not saying making deals with large employers like Ford, Toyota are bad, they just carry a larger inherent risk.  They foster artificial economies with little diversity.   Again, they are a good source for large numbers of jobs.  But, how transferrable are those job skills if the facilities are shut down?  Are there enough open jobs to absorb those skills?  Is our dependence upon them leverage to force incentives that lower funding for needs to support the additional infrastructure (roads, connectivity, education)?

Why not focus on building stronger medium and smaller businesses across varying industries as much (or more) as courting larger ones?  With today’s connectivity and logistic infrastructures (USPS, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, Etsy, etc) smaller businesses can be very profitable.  They employ more people nationally already, larger numbers of smaller businesses (ie not large enterprise) provide economic diversity which provides a level of protection if one business goes under.

Why not focus on "naturally occurring" industries?  Eco-tourism, hemp production, liquor, horses, art and music are naturally occurring business ventures.  Each comes with (or could come with) good margins, spin-offs, employee training and be less stressful on our state's ecological environment.

Look at Rochester, NY.  When Kodak died, the city didn't dry up and float away.  Seeing trouble ahead, leaders made it a point to start the diversification process through initiatives and policy changes focusing on "intellectual capital" they already had, education, and entrepreneurship.  Pittsburgh took a similar route focusing on diversification and technology upgrades to repurpose existing abandoned facilities.

Want to keep Kentucky towns from dying?  Look to "natural" and diverse economic strategies.

We need better planning to cover the risks of the short term "job" gains that our politicians tout every time a large company decides to move their facilities to the state.  Don't get me wrong, those jobs are great in the near term, but at what cost of the future?  We can play games with tariffs and trade agreements on imported goods from other countries to keep these types of jobs here, but are we just making everything more complicated?  Why not shift our work force towards new jobs that these other low cost manufacturers can't do?  Shift towards skill sets that are more fluid or natural to our regions?

Let's stop forcing things that aren't a natural fit.  Let's not put our eggs in a few baskets.  Let's diversify.

We don't want to be stuck on a space station without oxygen.

Now I'm off to right the next TV phenomenon.

The Big Little Lies

***Spoiler Alert*** This week is referring to the book “Big Little Lies” by Liane Moriarty and hits a little on the HBO series based on the book.

Please do not read if you haven’t read, and plan on reading, this book or watch the show.  If you have read, or do not have plans to, then feel free to continue.

I was reviewing my monthly budget a few weeks ago and realized that I had not ever, once, finished an audiobook I had purchased through my Audible account.  I looked into canceling my account and I found out that I’d lose the monthly credits I had built up if I did.  Bummer.

So, as to not “lose” money, I went on a quest to find audio books that I actually thought I might listen to.  I’m more of an “eye” person when it comes to books and my ears typically preferred music, so wasn’t having much luck.  Then, I saw Big Little Lies.

I had seen the ads for the HBO show.  I remember Shailene Woodley running down a beach, Reese Witherspoon with the guy from Parks and Rec (not Chris Pratt, Rob Lowe, or Ron Swanson - it’s the other guy), and Nicole Kidman.  Nicole Kidman!

Aside: I’m not a big fan of Shailene Woodley.  She probably is a wonderful person, but ever since an article on her where she described re-usable feminine hygiene products, I’ve been creeped out and don’t go out of my way to watch her movies.

The TV show has Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon.  It has to be classy, right?  So, I purchased the BLL Audiobook, along with a couple others from different authors. *BOOM* Credits used, time to cancel the account.

I downloaded the audio, and started on my journey to a Sydney suburb with lots of rich white people.  I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it, but I found myself not able to stop listening.  I’d listen while in the shower, in the car, at work (which led to some very bad spelling and poor spreadsheet execution, but I digress).  I even started watching the show before I had finished the book.  

Another side note:  the book is better than the show, unless you want to see Kidman’s boobs, the book doesn’t have those. I believe they may have gotten their own credit at the end of the show.

So what is so compelling about the lives of three suburban Australian mothers?  The story itself was well crafted.  You don’t know who the victim is until the end.  You see the juxtaposition between what actually happened and the recounting of events through the eyes of those around them (throughout the book and show, the story is interrupted by interviews with witnesses).

*Spoilers incoming*

What really got to me was something on a much deeper psychological level.  Each of the three main protagonists were abused in some sort of way and each were in different phases of recovery.  Madeline was the furthest along, Jane’s in the middle, and Celeste really hasn’t started yet.  Their stories, when told together, mainly get to the crux of recovery from abuse.  It also delves into the internal conflict that happens when women are abused.  Some of it, to be honest, was a little scary to me.

Madeline’s husband left her right after their child was born.  He just told her “I can’t do this” and walked out.  She was left to fend for herself and her child.  She put her head down, got a job, raised her daughter.  She eventually met Ed, married and had two more kids.  Her marriage with Ed seems pretty stable (in the book, the show handles her marriage a bit differently).  She still harbors resentment for her ex, who now lives in the neighborhood, is remarried, and is back in his daughter’s life.  Madeline is struggling with the “injustice” of it all.  He’s married, has a beautiful wife, is a doting dad for his new daughter, and his older daughter eventually moves in with him, leaving Madeline behind.

How can someone who was such a complete dick, end up getting the perfect life?  How does that even happen?  Aren’t people supposed to reap what they sow?  How long do we harbor anger? How can someone who wrongs you so completely not have any lasting effects?  Her story focuses on her anger, and the struggle to let it go.

Jane’s pregnancy was the result of a one night stand that morphed into sexual and emotional assault.  The father of her child turned out to be a callous, horrific, mean person.  I won’t go into details of the assault, but he broke her down as emotionally as he did physically.  Jane left law school to have her child, and spent the first few years of his life making ends meet as a bookkeeper, silently worried about whether her son would be genetically predisposed to violence and cruelty.  A running storyline is that her son was accused of choking a girl in class and subsequently bullying her.  She defended him as any mother would, but was also afraid he might have done it.

How do we pick up the emotional pieces once the physical ones are healed?  How long do we let that power linger over us? How long do we harbor fear? How many of us hold on to fears as if they are real tangible things?  Like a poisonous snake we are holding by the head and we’ll get bit if we let go?  Her story is about fear, and the struggle to let it go.

Celeste.  Poor Celeste.  This is the real gut wrench of the book as you slowly come to realize that her perfect marriage is a sham.  He beats her and sometimes she fights back.  She loves him, she feels he loves her.  She thinks about leaving, but realizes she could never love anyone else.  She keeps this to herself, never telling anyone about the abuse.  He never hits her in places where it is obvious, so no one suspects.  Plus, who'd expect such a beautiful couple to have such an ugly secret?  The abuse continues to escalate to a point where she is in bed for several days “sick”.  She then finds out, through one of her twin sons, that her other twin son is the one abusing the little girl at school and not Jane’s son.  She also finds out he has been bullying another girl as well.  All that time, she didn’t think her boys had seen what their father did to her.  She finally realizes that her boys are as affected as she is.

How do you come to grips with reality?  How long to you harbor the lie?  How long do you convince yourself that it’s ok, or will be ok?  How long do we stay in situations that aren’t healthy?  The scariest parts of this book, to me, are the rationalizations Celeste uses to stay.  You don’t get the internal dialogue in the show as you do in the book.  As you read (or listen to it), it makes perfect sense:

• “I escalated it”
• “I should have just walked away”
• “I shouldn’t have said it”
• “I shouldn’t have asked him to do <X>”
• "I have so many things that others don't, I have no right to complain". 

How many times do we say these very same things to ourselves?  Her story focuses on the lie she’s been living, and the struggle to let it go.

I won’t ruin the murder mystery and plot twists only to say that while the story focuses on the lives of Celeste, Jane and Madeline, the other mothers have their own stories.  We get flashes of those stories in how they each react to the events surrounding the murder.  You understand more of their motivations and their own lies that they’ve been living - e.g. Tough Renata’s marriage has its own issues and mellow-tree-hugging Bonnie is fighting her own demons.

This was such a good book. Frightening, but good.  If you don't plan on reading it, please reconsider.  If nothing else, maybe you can learn the spot the big little lies your loved ones might be telling you (or you might be telling yourself).

Streaming ruined (the memory of) my childhood

What kid growing up in the 80’s didn’t love cartoons?  Every Saturday morning and right after school, I’d watch all of them (GI Joe, Thundercats, My Little Pony, She-Ra/He-Man, etc).

Fast forward a few…. Uhh.. years…. and I’m a happy Amazon Prime and Netflix customer.  I happen to notice that the Thundercats were just picked up on Prime.  Awesome!  I can relive part of my childhood, right?  One Saturday, I go buy a box of Fruity Pebbles and some unsweetened almond milk.  Why?  Fruity Pebbles are the BEST CEREAL EVER and Almond milk because my ability to handle whey protein disappeared along with my youth.

I make my cereal, load up Prime and start listening to one of the best cartoon theme songs ever (at least from the 80’s.. and maybe only bested by DuckTales). I actually sung along with it, as was the norm as a kid.

If you are wondering: yes, I fully realize I’m a ginormous nerd. I also judge people on how they know Nathan Fillion, and still get angry every time I think about the Superman trailer where music from LoTR was re-used. #1 Superman desires original music and #2 don’t defile Gandalf’s death by reusing scene music. *deep cleansing breath*

Anyways, back to the point.  I load up the first episode, munch my cereal, and start to relive a good memory from my childhood.  Unfortunately, the more I watched, the more of my adult brain  became completely and utterly repulsed at the lack of logic these characters showed.  I always thought I was a smart savvy kid.  Watching, I realized I was wrong.  So.  Very.  Wrong.

Within the first 2-3 episodes, I just couldn’t take the poor logic and plot holes anymore.  Hey, the prince wants to wander around in a forest of an unknown planet alone?  Sure, sounds like a great idea! (Said no one ever, except in cartoons).  Stasis pods where only one person ages and he looks like the cartoon anthropomorphic lion equivalent of The Rock?  Sure, makes perfect sense.

So, I gave up on Thundercats, and moved on to something else.  Hrmm.. My Little Pony the Movie.  Another bad move.  I don’t want to remember. Please make it stop.

But, it can’t all be bad?  I rewatched episodes of He-Man, She-Ra, Jem, GI Joe.  Ugh.  My memories of my childhood have been tainted.  As I looked online to figure out if I’m just taking things too personally, this did help. “Hefner’s pet rat”.  Classic.

I ran across a Youtube video (which I apparently can no longer find), in which a cartoonist explains why these old cartoons are the way they are.  Small bits plot for kids who naturally can’t handle big complex ideas.  Makes sense.  Makes sense until I watched some newer cartoons.  The reboots of MLP and Voltron seem pretty solid.  Actually, the New Voltron is pretty funny.  I saw Warner Bros put out a reboot of Thundercats in 2011 (haven’t watched it, as it isn’t gratis).  

Are kids just more savvy these days?  Or, are production companies using today’s parents’ affinity for cartoons in sync with their children to create marketing opportunities?  Blending better storylines to make the shows more palatable to parents, therefore making them more likely to buy toys for their kids?

Regardless, my childhood is ruined, but at least I have some awesome reboots to console me.

Weed, Not Jesus, Would Have Saved Us From Trump

Sorry, Jesus, but the real savior we needed in 2016 was marijuana.

*await smiting for 1 minute*

*nothing happens*

*opens one eye*

*opens other eye*

Ok, maybe I’m safe.  Or, maybe Jesus agrees that America needs help to chill out.  Let’s face it, too much wine only leads to cat fights, and that’s pretty much what we’ve had for the past year.

About a week ago, Bloomberg posted a article about “Deaths of Despair”.  Apparently, the majority of opioid overdoses are surging amongst the white working class.  All other demographics aren’t going in this direction.

Taking a step further, opioids are a gateway to harder drugs, like heroin.  The growth in opioid use is leading to a rise in heroin.

So, opioids lead to heroin, heroin and opioids both lead to overdoses in working class white people.  And what did these people do?  They voted for Trump, according to a Penn State election study:  “Trump over-performed the most in counties with the highest drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates.”

So what does this have to do with Mary-Jane?  Another study found lowered opioid use in states that have legalized marijuana.

So, legal weed leads to less opioid use which leads to less Heroin which leads to less voting for megalomaniacs who likes to make jokes about sexually assault women. (Yeah, I know… correlation doesn’t imply causality, but work with me here.)

We should have legalized weed a long time ago.  We’d be much more chill, much less dependent upon opioids and possibly have a better president.  Maybe we should work towards legalizing it to keep this from happening 2020+?

I must admit, the immature part of me just wants to see the Weed 2020 political slogans...

"There’s Hope in Hash"

"Let them eat Space Cake"

"Welcome to the Bong Show"

"High Times"

"Sorry, too busy blazin' to start wars"

"We are going to light up this joint!"

What would be your slogan?

If it’s broke, don’t fix it.

Nope, not a typo.  Some things were meant to not work, and we should stop busting on ourselves for not being able to fix them.  

I was debating what to write about this week (with last week being off due to a long weekend), and on the way back from my trip, an idea started to form - the idea of brokenness and it’s effects on us as people.  Then, this came across my twitter feed from Fr Sichko (@JimSichko) yesterday:

Giving up doesn't always mean you're weak. Sometimes it means you are strong and smart enough to let go and move on.

That’s so true.  I only wish I understood this 10+ years ago.

2016 was a sucky year for me.  One in which I had no idea where my life was headed.  I had suffered a major life adjustment at the end of ’15 and wasn’t sure how to deal with it.  I had this blank canvass in front of me with no idea where to even find paint.

At the beginning of 2015, I had my life planned.  I knew who I was, what I was doing, the whole shebang.  What I didn’t know is that I was living in an alternate reality with absolutely no concept of what was really going on.  (Ok, maybe that isn’t completely true, there were signs, I just didn’t want to see them.)

That alternate reality bubble burst by the end of the year.  All the ideas, thoughts, and plans I had dissipated like those little soapy spheres.  Reality set in.

The reality was, my life was broke. Well, not just broke, it was broked.  I had cocooned myself into a relationship that wasn’t working. I was fighting in a job that wasn’t working (and hadn’t been for a while).  I was spending the majority of my time being what I thought everyone else around me needed.  I was trying to fix everything, make everyone happy, and get the job done no matter what it took. No matter the personal toll.  

I’m a problem solver.  I fix things.  It’s what I do.  I’m the person who will continually ram into a brick wall until I get knocked out with a concussion. Again, it’s my personality. I'm a bulldog.  I’ve never learned when to walk away.  Giving up was always “loser” talk.

Once everything went south, I had a hard time adjusting at first. I remember New Year’s Day 2016 thinking, “Wow, this is the first year in a very long time that I don’t have anything planned.  I have no idea what’s going to happen.”  Well, not much did happen, other than gaining weight and spending a great deal of time trying to figure out what went wrong (again, trying to dissect and understand root cause.. aka first step to “fix things”).

It was about the end of 2016 that I finally figured it out.  I’d spent so much of my time these past few years (not just 2015), trying to fix things, trying to fix people, trying to make things work that honestly weren’t meant to work.  I wasn’t strong enough to let go.  Wasn’t wise enough to really see what the impact on my life and what it was costing me.

That little light bulb finally went off in my head at the end of last year.  I realized I’d given up something very important.  Lost something very important.  I’d lost me.  I realized I didn’t know who I was as a person anymore. I had been so focused on “taking care of business”, I wasn’t taking care of me.  My identity had morphed into a robot whose sole purpose was to keep everyone happy, and ended up making no one happy (least of all, me).  (I made some mention of this back in Identity Management)

The good news is, 2017 is turning into a much better year.  I’m taking on some new projects to rediscover the person that is me (this blog being one).  I’m learning to enjoy things again for the sole purpose of enjoyment.  Not because it makes someone else happy, but it makes me happy.  I'm also learning to not give a rats @$$ about other people's opinion of me.  Ok, I still give some level of rats @$$, but I'm much more careful about who is on the "opinions I care about list".  That list is certainly much, much shorter these days.

I’ve learned that if something isn’t working, it’s ok to let it go.  I’m not a failure if it doesn’t work.  I’m not failure if people are pissed at me.  I’m not a failure based on someone else’s life or opinion.  I'm enough. I'm ok as long as I "do me".

I’m only a failure if try to live a life that wasn’t meant for me.

Between Cephas and a Hard Place

Seems hard to be a Christian these days.  More and more, our culture looks at the majority of us as out of touch or, even worse, crazy looney birds chasing the Flying Spaghetti Monster hellbent on destroying civilization in our wake.  I’m exaggerating a bit on the second part, but not by much. 

I can’t do much other than to love, lead by example, and pray. I can also try to explain why Christians (or at least Catholics) do and say the things that seem crazy.

One big cause of friction between Catholics and culture, I’d argue, is the concept of moral culpability.  I tried explaining this concept to a few folks during the Kim Davis debacle about a year or so ago.  People were arguing that “she’s not getting married why should she care?”  I tried to describe how moral culpability may be coming in to play, but it mainly fell on deaf ears.  I just got a few eye-rolls, scoffs, and a sense that I was just placed on the idiot list.

I’d like to try discussing that topic again to help give people an idea of why Catholics take the stances that they do when it seems it's ”nun” of their business.

Most of Catholic theology (from a high level) comes down to the nature of 3 things: God, Humans, and Sin.

The nature of God is pretty well documented.  God is Omnipowerful, Omniscient, and Omnipresent.  God exists outside of time.  God is perfect, without sin, and doesn't err.

The nature of humans doesn’t get as much fanfare.  Humans (both male and female) were created by God, in his own image, with an intrinsic purpose.  Humans were created to be both in communion/relationship with God as much as they were made to be in communion with each other.  

Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.” 

Hebrews 10:25: “not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

There are certainly other passages, but I only included a couple to indicate that humanity’s relationship is not just a vertical one with God, but also a horizontal relationship with each other.  God encourages this worldly communion.

The nature of sin is where things get interesting.  From a Catholic perspective, sin and evil are not necessarily synonymous.  It’s more akin to the “an elm is a tree, but a tree is not necessarily an elm” analogy.  Something can be evil, but it doesn’t mean that it is sinful.  Sins are always evil.

Essentially, a sin is an act that harms one’s relationship with God and/or harms someone else’s relationship with God.  By knowingly committing an evil act against God, or another person, one commits sin.  Sin comes in two flavors, venial and mortal.  Venial sins are the smaller ones - not meaning they aren’t serious, as one’s soul can die a death from a thousand venial cuts.  Mortal sins are the ones that completely cut us off from God and hopes for an afterlife.

A mortal sin has 3 criteria:  The situation must be grave matter (something very important), the “doer” must be mentally capable and understand the evil in what’s being done (know it's wrong), and the “doer” must have free will in committing the act (do it anyway).  

When we talk about moral culpability, it comes from the idea that we aren’t just responsible for what we do as individuals.  We are also responsible for acts that enable someone to commit their own sins.  This is the friction between our faith and our culture here in the US.

Unlike Cain’s interpretation (Gen 4:9), we are called to be our “brother’s keeper” as a result of our communal relationship with God.  We are called to help not just ourselves to a better life more faithful life, but others as well.  We are called to be good stewards, to be lights, and to live the example (granted, we fail… often… I think I sinned 5 times just during writing this blog tonight).  This is the crux of moral culpability.  We carry consequences for sins we enable.

Abortion (sorry, this is just an easy example to use) is considered a very grave evil. I can’t participate materially or politically in any activities that enable abortion.  To participate (either through paying, driving someone to the clinic, performing one, etc), I’m committing a mortal sin even if I'm not the one having it.  I’ve enabled and/or encouraged someone to do something that I know is intrinsically evil.

This is usually where I get the scoffs.  And, if you are scoffing at me right now, I’d ask you to think about criminal law.  If I know someone is going to rob a bank, and they ask me for a ride there and back home, will I be charged for a crime?  Yes, I will (assuming I get caught!).  We have laws against aiding and abetting.  If I can be found liable for a criminal act, is it stretch to understand how aiding in sin can bring moral consequences as well?  It’s the same concept.

If someone you loved was an addict, would you consider it moral to help them get another hit of heroin? My guess is that you answered “no”. Same idea.

Personally, I know it’s hard to tell someone you love that “No, I’m not going to help you do that” or “No, I can’t give you my blessing on this.”  I’ve lived it.  I hate it, because I know these can (and do) lead to broken relationships.  People just want to hear that everything they are doing is ok.  And, that isn't always the case.  As a Catholic, sometimes I'm called to give tough theological love (and to receive it when I'm doing things I shouldn't).

I hope that this sheds some light on why we act the way we do.  It isn't to be mean or nasty.  We aren't here to harsh anyone's mellow on purpose.  We get stuck sometimes trying to balance our faith and our place in the world.  We realize sometimes we come off pedantic or sound like a broken record.  We get as frustrated as anyone.  We don't want to be the buzzkills, but we can't shy away from who we are (or who we ultimately belong to).  

If you run into us in one of these situations, and we seem frustrated, just try to cut us some slack.  We really are caught between a Cephas and a hard place.

The Single Disability

I had planned on writing an entirely different blog this week, but decided to change my mind after going to the movies tonight.

I’ll be straight with you, I’m a person who spends quite a bit of time alone - mostly due to my introverted nature and social awkwardness.  I’m ok with being alone for the most part.  Times that I’m not?  They usually involve storms, large spiders or lawn care.  I.  Hate.  Lawn.  Work.

I never let being a party of one hamper my style.  I still go out to see the moving picture shows, travel, go out to dinner, shop, and do everything normal people do.  I get occasional looks, but for the most part it’s fine.  I enjoy myself, and go home to a house that is set to just the right temperature for me.

Other times, it gets awkward - mainly due to other people.  Take tonight for example - I buy two tickets to go see a new movie.  I forget to see if any friends want to go see it with me.  No problem, I’ll just go by myself and have a seat open next to me in what will more than likely be a really crowded theater.  This theater has reserved seating, so I paid for two particular seats. I’m golden.  I don’t have to worry about fighting over getting a cupholder.

Just before the movie starts, it happens.  What every person who has ever go anywhere alone absolutely LOATHES beyond all loathing… “Is anyone sitting here?” 

Mutha@#%!^

“I want to sit next to my son” this guy tells me.  The son looks to be at least in his teens or later, so it’s not like daddy needs to watch him.  Again, these are reserved seats, so they apparently bought separate seats.  Maybe his son did it on purpose and I ruined his evening of peace.  I must say, I’m kinda glad I did.  Buy tickets together next time!

Flustered (I mentioned the social awkwardness earlier, right?), I tell he guy “Well, technically, it’s mine, but go ahead and sit there.”  I’m only half an ass and I try to keep it on the inside, most times.

The guy just looks at me and says “Did someone not show up?”  Great, now Mr "I have to babysit my adult son in a rated R movie" thinks I’m some sad woman who’s been stood up.  “Can you get a refund?”  /facepalm.  “Seriously, if you don’t use it can you get a refund?” 

Can someone PLEASE stop this conversation before I stab him with my ICEE straw.  It’s a Wild Cherry ICEE, so no one would notice the blood, right?

Finally, I convince him it’s fine (btw - how did it turn into convincing him to take my damn seat?  What. The. Hell????) and he sits down and the movie starts.  I’m now sitting with people on BOTH sides of me.  And, of course, both people have very long arms with elbows flying out like albatrosses.  For you tall people reading this, I realize things aren’t easy for you.  But, just because I’m short doesn’t mean I enjoy getting elbowed CONSTANTLY (unless you happen to be cute - momma can work with that).

Luckily, it was a great movie that I enjoyed and eventually stopped stressing.  I just wish solo folks would get more consideration than we do around town.

Here are a few examples of what it's like running solo:

Seating - as described above in the movie scenario.  Also, in pew-like seats, I’ve found that if you are alone, you get squeezed more.  If you are a family with kids, people don’t sit next to you.  Oh, and some families tend to take up a lot of space in pews.  You know who you are, and now you know I see you and the fact you take up space for 8 with your party of four.  Gluttony is a sin.

Restaurants - You run into that awkward moment when you need to use the restroom and you aren't sure how your wait-person will take it.  Will they think I dined and dashed?  Will they clear my table and sit someone there while I’m gone?  It’s worse in the late spring through early fall because you don’t have a jacket to leave behind indicating you haven’t actually “left”.

Traveling - If you travel with someone, at least one of you has a window or aisle seat and you can invade or lean in to each other's space.  What I HATE is when I’m sitting next to couples or families that think they can invade my space just as much as they can invade their partner's.  Lady - back the hell up, because we are about ready to have a 2 hour delay and a visit from an air marshal.

Once you land at the airport, you have to take all your carry-on luggage with you when you go to the restroom.  If you are coming back from a long trip overseas, you have a LOT of crap to deal with..in a bathroom stall with about 30 other women trying to get in and out to catch their next flight.  And, to spice things up, everyone is MAD about something.  I won’t start on the food court situation.

Random Do-gooders - They see someone alone, and feel sorry for them, so they incessantly talk to them so they don't feel so alone. Listen, I appreciate it, but I had headphones in for a reason.  I don't have a high smalltalk skill (I typically roll a 1 when faced with this type of encounter), and it usually makes me feel even worse if no one had spoken to me for the rest of my life.

I could go on, but I’m tired of being passive aggressive about this whole seat situation.  Writing this has worked it’s magic and now I am back in my happy place.

Just do me a favor next time you see someone solo - give them some space.