Diary of Some Solo Dude (vol. 1.12)
Compliments, Outdoor Runs, Storage Wars
Sunday, December 12, 2021
Today was a great day.
It started off like yesterday — coffee in the living with my mom and Peter, her 75+ year old boyfriend. He is really nice and I’m glad they’ve found each other, it’s just weird using the term boyfriend/girlfriend for people in their 60s and 70s.
Worth mentioning — it’s nice to have coffee with people. For so long I’ve been associating coffee with working or writing. Being productive. Although I have conversations at coffee shops, I can’t think of the last time I just had coffee with someone.
I had the rest of the day mapped out early, and it looked like this:
- Coffee at home
- Out for breakfast
- Run at the park
- Home to change
- Storage unit with mom
- Home for dinner
Let’s get started.
Smiles Go Miles
We head out to breakfast somewhere in Simsbury. First off, I recognize someone immediately that I played baseball with but I didn’t say anything because it was over 15 years since we’d spoken. We weren’t on bad terms, but 15 years is too long ago to approach a random family at a table on a Sunday morning.
How does it work out that whenever I go anywhere in CT, I ALWAYS run into someone I know?
So we get to this cafe for breakfast around 11 am and it’s pretty crowded. We stand in the little lobby for about 10 mins staring into a window of baked goods.
This place was seriously understaffed. The woman working there was cashing out the guests, serving the baked goods for to-go orders, taking phone calls, seating guests, and wiping down the tables.
“You’re doing a great job.” I said.
“Oh thank you for saying that.” she replied back.
She appreciated it. Like a lot. I could tell because after our meal was finished and we left, she wished us a happy holidays and said, “Thank you again for your kind words earlier.”
Now, this is not totally uncommon for me. I try to sprinkle in a little compliment or crafty joke here and there, especially in a situation when there is tension or if someone is clearly being overworked — especially if they are working through it with a positive attitude.
Compliments can go a long way.
From my own experience, there’s been several times if I’m struggling and someone says just one thing to me — that’s enough to completely transfer the energy of my day. It happened all the time when I drove Lyft in LA — I went from being grumpy underpaid Lyft driver, instantly charmed into the best version of myself just by a simple conversation from all kinds of great people.
Sometimes just a simple conversation, a single interaction, a well timed smile, can go a lot further for someone than you’d ever imagine.
As I walked out, it felt good that she really appreciated the compliment. More than I had even intended. And of course my mom, who was very proud of me like I was 5 years old and I just colored a picture between the lines.
“You must have been raised well,” she said. I was about to say that I didn’t get it from dads side… and then stopped myself.
“Actually, maybe I did get it from dad…”
My father was basically me but a whole lot less open minded, which I blame the baby boomer in him. He would flip out in traffic worse than I ever would have, although I did have spend years of reading books to regulate that reaction within myself.
But for someone who could explode from tense situations, my dad could also brighten someones day out of nowhere. He had this gift to disarm these situations with a way of soothing things over when you’d least expect it. Stepping up when nobody else could.
When I was in college, working these garbage temp agency jobs over the summer, one of which I worked at a food processing plant in Suffield. I got in at 8 am and literally spent 9 straight hours tucking broccoli into vegetable party trays.
“Make sure you tuck em in so the leafy part is facing the plastic window” these fucking people would tell me. “That way it looks fuller and it’s more likely to get bought.”
I didn’t even know when my shift was supposed to end. It was just endless broccoli tucking forever. I walked out after my first and only day at 5 pm, called my dad in tears and couldn’t stop yelling at him, like it was his fault leafy broccoli looked more appealing to the average consumer.
He came to pick me up right away, then listened to me vent about my ex-con filled warehouse and cold vegetable experience in that car ride back. He just had a way of absorbing the pain and teenage angst like nobody else could in my life at that time. And quite frankly, that quality is something I wish more people had. It was special, and something I really miss about him.
I try to reflect that trait in myself, maybe subconsciously because my father had it. It wasn’t something I was aware of until today, but now I’m realizing just how valuable it was for me, and other people too.
Why can’t we all get better at putting our lives on hold for a sec to support each other when we’re under some kind of stress? Maybe if we take things a little less seriously, if we stop focusing on taking all the damn time, we might be able to uplift someone by giving them a compliment that pulls them right out of tough times.
West Hartford Run Club
After breakfast, I change quickly and venture out 30 freakin mins to meet my brother and run at some reservoir in West Hartford. It was beautiful today — like you could actually run outside without any December side effects like burning lungs.
Similar to having coffee with others, running with someone else is nice too. Of course, I run with my friends on Thursday morning in OB for run club. But it’s more like a few spoken words, some encouragement or witty jokes, then on to catch up with the next person.
More people, more conversations, less depth. Or 1 person, 1 conversation, more depth.
My brother and I basically recounted all of the Patriots magic from early 2000s until current. It was an advanced conversation that only Patriots obsessive people could take part in. Soon enough, 3.5 miles down already.
It goes quick when you’re distracted. I noticed that I talk a lot while running now. I talk more while running than I talk when I’m not running. I was never like this before.
But now, somehow running generates my best thinking, problem solving, and memory. Something about the oxygen intake and blood flow, I guess. It’s when I come up with old memories of past Patriots seasons, when I come up with ideas on what to do with my life, and when I come up with my best jokes to tell the girls during run club.
Storage Wars
When my mom moved out of our childhood house a few years back, there was obviously a ton of sentimental shit that she had to downsize. Since I didn’t live here, I had to quickly decide which of my stuff to keep and get rid of during a family trip years ago. I remember selectively putting a few valuable items into some rubbermaid bins and then stored them away until today.
“You have 6 boxes!” my mom would always say.
I told her I’ll finally go through them tonight and consolidate. And I did. And 6 boxes was an exaggeration. About 3 of them were shit like baby clothes, or old school projects like my seed report in 5th grade — where I collected different types of seeds, and glued them into a notebook. It was quite impressive, but I did not select that as a keeper.
I condensed my things into 2 boxes:
Box 1: Yearbooks, my HS letterman jacket, photos, notes from girls, and stuffed animals.
Box 2: Video game systems. Most notably a Dreamcast, N64, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo and a Gamecube.
Hella score. Good job, Self from 2016. Downsizing and keeping mostly important stuff that’s still relevant today.
It was more enjoyable for me than my mom. It was a tough task for her, going through these old things like it was from a past life. There were still several boxes of my dads things, some old birthday cards, and stuff from mine and my bro’s childhood.
“I can’t bring myself to throw out pictures of my sons.” She says, as she holds a blurry closeup photo of my fat 5th grade face at summer camp. It’s even hard to get rid of that, apparently.
I do appreciate looking back on things like high school football, and day camp when I was a teenager. I used to be really loved by many people. My entire life really. For that, very grateful. I even won camper of the year. Like I used to be really cool. Now I feel like it’s a struggle to find someone to hang out with me. It’s not as easy as it used to be, and I don’t want to hear about the “we’re getting older” card. I think that is irrelevant, and more about the quality of the person than age — if you want to see someone, you’ll always make the time.
When looking back on these things, it’s important to find some separation. I kept a lot of the awards and I also took photos of them. They are conversation pieces, stories to tell people in my life now that may explain who I was before this. Things I would have never even thought of.
It’s always helped me move on simply by being physically away from where I grew up. And now, as I’m away from my “new” life, it helps me stay grounded knowing where I came from. I can separate from some of the things I identify with now when I’m living my daily life in California. Most things in immediate life are not as valuable as they seem. It’s just that we’re surrounded by it all the time, so the actual value of these things get inflated. That’s why traveling, or revisiting childhood is so important — it helps you step back from whatever you’re currently doing and provides a fresh perspective on what’s really important vs. what’s not.
Things themselves are not important, but the people who experience those things are. It’s about finding a way to remember those things so we can draw from them in the future, to remember how we got where we are now.
Take Care,
Cuzzzz
