Reflection, as per the norm, I guess

Happy New Year.

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This is the part where I look back on 2013 and marvel at how far I've come in only a year. Arguably, I have vastly more reason to do this in regards to 2013 than I have in many years prior. I became a father. I've moved from one massive-yet-isolated state to another massive-if-slightly-less-isolated state. I stepped down from a full-time position in Phoenix to a less-paying, less benefitted Ready Reserve position in Denver just so I could be with my family. I've actually applied for a second job here at the airport to ensure we're making enough to get by.

I could marvel, for sure, at the choices I've made and the consequences thereof, but since when has hindsight ever brought us anything but regret or nostalgia? I know what I did wrong this past year. I know what I've done right. I intend to continue with the right-doing.

***********

One thing I will not do is make a stupid New Year's Resolution.

I do not mean to say that New Year's Resolutions are, inherently, stupid. They can be useful, I think; they often, I also think, are not.

So, in accordance with this, I do NOT resolve the following:

1. To update this blog with any regularity. It simply isn't going to happen. I have no time. Ever. I'm gonna be working almost exclusively in the coming months, and when I'm not, I'll be a father and a husband. Or sleeping.
2. To "be a better" anything. No amount of sentiment will ever make this happen. And what does "better" mean here anyway? Better person? Better parent? Better card player? Either I'm a good person or I'm not. I refuse to guilt myself into thinking I'm not worthy of myself as I am.

What I DO resolve is this:
1. To be happy with who I am. There is nothing wrong with me.
2. To be happy with where I am. This is considerably harder. I know having kids is expensive, but I never expected it to hit us quite as hard as it has. I really love Colorado, but I did not want to move here, at least not like this. I will strive to be happy with my current situation, because it will not be like this forever. And in accordance with that...
3. To be back to financial stability/independence by the end of the summer. Preferably sooner. Some things need to go our way for that to happen, but I know we can get there.

***********

All things considered, I expect great things in 2014. My son will walk in the next few months. He'll start talking. He's already crawling everywhere and babbling up a storm. He's eating baby food now and seems to have figured out that non-milk foodstuffs can be kinda yummy.

This year should be a good one. Last year was wonderful and awful all at the same time, a bipolar year if ever there was one. I expect a much more chemically balanced year in 2014, if not an easy one.

So here's to the New Year. I expect a good one. How 'bout you?

- jdb

Commitment

I want everything to fit.

This might be the single hardest part of life for me. I need for everything to fit. Square pegs in triangular holes bug the crap out of me. Life should be like a cascade of harmonic cadences, not necessarily a perfectly arranged set of dominoes, but at least an artfully crafted Rube Goldberg machine.

So when you have a series of square pegs attempting to slide into holes whose shapes range from circles to stars to the outline of Nebraska, I get a little... nervous.

Right now, the holes are still square-shaped... but it's a decidedly tight fit.  I'm currently on my way riding standby flights from Denver to Phoenix, where I will have to work at two in the afternoon Arizona Time.

Meanwhile, Angela, Felix, the puppies, and most everything we own save a few bare necessities remain here in Denver.  Waiting for me to catch up.

I've been reluctant to mention much about this... but this is where we are right now.  Ang and I will be living apart for a little while, she with her parents and I with my thoughts.  The reason for this is two-fold: money (or lack thereof) and the need for extra help with Felix. I'll be living in a studio apartment for the next few months, significantly cheaper than we'd been paying, while attempting to work extra hours at the airport as much as possible.

Rest assured of two things: first, Ang and I are in a wonderful place in our relationship, so there's no reason to be concerned about how this will affect us there.  This is a mutual decision; we're going into this together, if physically apart.

And second, this is by no means intended to be a prolonged arrangement.  I've been told that a position should be opening up in the Denver airport for Delta Airlines on the ramp within the next month.  At that time, I'll put in for it, and once we go through the process, I'll be moving up to Denver as well.  It shouldn't be longer than a couple months' time.

One silver lining: I work in the airline industry. Therefore, so long as there are flights available, I can fly up to visit on my days off.

(Oh. Wonderful. Because of the snow, we've been delayed an hour for deicing. An hour.  Because of snow. On October 4th. Definitely missing my second flight.)

Well, anyway. I guess that's all for now. I reiterate: it's going to be a very hard couple of months. But it should only be a couple months. We will get through this okay.

Square pegs can be carved in the shape of Nebraska, I believe.

- jdb

Uncertainty

I'm 28.

The significance of this is mostly irrelevant.  On the one hand, if I died today, I could no longer qualify for the legendary "27 Club."  On the other hand, that's a list of people like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and (inexplicably) Amy Winehouse.  Also, I'm not too keen on dying young anyway, so this qualifies more for "dodged that bullet" status than "missed opportunity."

What's most significant is the same thing that every passing birthday signifies for me these days: I'm getting older.

Normally this isn't that big a deal. I'm actually extremely happy to not be a kid anymore, as kids have to attend school, and I have never not hated school, ever.  (My gleeful double-negative usage can attest to that. Take that, Grammar!)

Today, however... being older is kind of a downer.

In one sense, this is literal.  You're not going to believe this, you guys, but Joel the B. might actually be slowing down metabolism-wise. I know, right? Crazy!  Jury's still out, as I'm still only 130 lbs. soaking wet, but the amount of fatigue I experience these days makes me wonder if it's in play.

Of course, the lack of fatigue can be attributed to a more obvious culprit, or rather two collaborators in crime: my job and my firstborn.

I've worked the night shift at the airport now for a year and a half. I've grown accustomed to the sleep schedule for the most part... you just have to sleep in a little more to make it through the day without being completely dead through the morning.

Enter one Felix Blackburn into the mix.  Sleeping a little more... silly Joel.  Sleep is for the childless!

*sigh* I knew it would be coming. The one piece of pre-parental advice I got before Felix's birth that was well-nigh universally given was, "Get your sleep now, because you won't be getting any when the baby comes." I knew it before they told me, really.  What I didn't expect was that he wouldn't be sleeping for longer than 3 hour intervals, and usually just 2 hour intervals four months in.  You know how much fun it is to go through an entire night without getting longer than an hour and a half of sleep straight for any given period, even if accumulatively you still got about six hours of sleep? NOT VERY FUN, I AM AFRAID.

Everyone also told me how much my life would change after Felix was born.  You really can't expect these things to go as you planned.

*************

I really don't know how we got here, exactly.  We had the whole thing figured from the start.  Angela was going to have a home birth, a water birth to be exact.  We hired a midwife and a doula.  Angela had what I can honestly say probably ranks as one of the top 100 pregnancies of all time, minimal to virtually no morning sickness, hardly any real fatigue until the end, basically went about life as she always had merely adding a few things here and there to ensure the baby would be optimally cared for prenatally.

Then came the Birth Day.

It started much like the rest of pregnancy: remarkably smoothly. I was at work when I got the call around 11 that it was time, and I raced home to Angela in a state of almost delirious euphoria.  We didn't get any sleep overnight, as Angela went straight into harder labor almost immediately.  But we figured out a good system, and with me, the doula, and the midwife and her trainee at her side, she labored at home wonderfully, a centimeter per hour, and was fully dilated by 10 in the morning when she got in the tub.

And then...

It was like everything just... paused.  Contractions continued, but no urge to push was forthcoming.  Ang started moving around the apartment out of the water in hopes of moving things along... nothing. Eventually the midwife broke the water... and the we saw meconium.

Red flag.  Meconium in the water means something might be wrong.  Ang got back in the tub, but all attempts at pushing felt forced, and Ang felt freaked out by it... and that's about when the baby's heartbeat became irregular.

Red flag two.  After some emergency attempts to push the baby on the birthing stool, to no further progress, the midwife called it.

"I think we should transfer."

I won't go into much further detail, but the following two or three hours were a well-nigh unbearable mix of fear, anger, determination, panic, focus, excitement, and overwhelming joy.  The ambulance ride... the remarkably understanding staff at the hospital... holding Angela's hand and assuring her that she was close...

The moment when Felix let out his first cry...

*************

My two main memories of Felix's Birth Day are, graciously, positive ones: holding my son for the first time while he looked up at me through the widest eyes I've ever seen... and watching my wife hold him for the first time, untainted by drugs, weakened but not debilitated, unable to say anything but, repeatedly, "Ohhh... ohhh... ohhh..."

I have never been more proud of her.

*************

The days hence have been exponentially more trying.  We do not get adequate sleep of any kind probably 5 to 6 nights out of any given week.  It makes it hard to muster one's strength to tend to a cranky baby.  And oh... he's a cranky one.

We've been trying for the past four months to get something resolved with the hospital bill we never expected to have. Thankfully my Delta insurance covered something like 85% of it, but we're still on the hook for about $2500 roughly, which is about what we paid for the homebirth we didn't fully get.  Finally, it looks like we might be getting something accomplished on that front, after getting the full run-around treatment from the various Arizona medical and financial assistance institutions we've had the great honor of dealing with.

But most pertinently... Angela's not going back to work.  This is particularly important.  It was our plan all along for her to go back to work after about a month or two, start pumping milk regularly, and have me watch Felix during the day while she took him in the evening.  She's made it clear that she doesn't want to do that.  And this is not something I can just tell her she "has" to do.

So... everything will change.  Again.

*sigh* The next several months are going to be very hard.  I don't mind at all being the primary breadwinner, but it means I have to find a second job, because my current income alone sure can't support a modern family of three with two dogs.  I don't even know how easily a second job will be to get...

I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore.  I'm 28.  I'm older than Kurt Cobain.  I'm a grown man, a husband and father.

And I feel like I don't have time to so much as think anymore...

*sigh* To everyone who left me birthday wishes... thank you.  It means a great deal to me.  I wish you all the best of health.  And coherence.  May you all have a wonderfully coherent weekend.

- jdb

So hey. Check it out.

I just created a second Blogger blog. It's called Falkner On Film. The idea here is to give me an outlet to review all the movies that I've seen over the years, which I have a tendency of doing anyways. So yes. I'll be doing that from time to time. Hopefully more often than not.

In other news, Angela and I bought a queen size mattress and box-spring the other day which we'll be picking up in about ten minutes. This we purchased for a total of $60, USD. The current owner of the bed is moving to India (back there, actually), and needed to get rid of pretty much everything by tomorrow. Since we've currently been dealing with a mere full size bed for the first two years of our marriage, Ang and I were pretty psyched at the idea of upgrading to the bigger sized bed. We won't have the bed frame just yet, but we figure we can sleep on a mattress on the floor for a while.

And come on, $60? Couldn't freakin' pass that up!

Okay, gotta go now. Tee tee eff en.

So... Primerica.

First of all, my Physical Aptitude Test for Delta went pretty well. It consisted of a hearing test (press a button when you hear a beep), a step test (step up, step down, step up, step down, repeat for three minutes), and a lifting test (put 75 lbs. in this box and lift it from this level to this level, while maintaining good posture). *shrugs* Piece o' cake.

After that, Ang and I met with the Primerica cult. Er, I mean, financial service. Sorry, Freudian slip, there.

Yeah, lemme see if I can accurately describe Primerica to those not in the know. Ang found out about this company from one of the customers at Denny's (it wasn't even her customer, actually). The woman said she thought Ang was a very positive and outgoing person and she felt those would be excellent qualities for the kind of work she was in, so she gave Ang her card and invited her to go to a meeting about the job that Tuesday evening. She even invited me along, the more the merrier. So, we figured, eh, if Ang could pick up a second job relatively part-time, why not? We're hardly hurting for cash right now, but we could always use the money.

So, not really knowing anything about the job other than the fact that it involved "financial services," we headed on down to Mesa, a good 20 minute drive from here, to see what all Primerica was about. We were greeted very kindly by the woman who first invited Ang in the first place, and she led us into the office complex where Primerica was meeting. A greeter at the door welcomed us inside and invited us to sign in, since it was our first time there. From there, a another man who presumably worked there ushered us in to the main area in the office space, which was set up like your average small church, about six rows of four chairs on either side of a middle aisle, with an overhead projector shining toward a white screen at the front.

Eyebrows raised yet? Greeters? Ushers? Guestbook? Overhead projector? Sure sounds like a church to me.

And the resemblance hardly ended there. The entire meeting was basically a little pep rally for the job itself, with multiple speakers talking about what the job consisted of (without actually explaining what the job consisted of), and all of them talking up how wonderful the company was, how much better a model it was than other similar companies, and how much money you could conceivably make doing this job. There were actually posters on the walls advertising "the $100,000 club," which celebrated "your first $100,000" with a sort of Superbowl Ring decked out in diamonds and stuff.

One of the speakers in particular, a guy from Hawaii who apparently had flown in special for this meeting, acted as a pseudo-pastor for the evening, encouraging the audience to be winners, "not losers," as he specifically put it. It was incredible. He'd pose a question, such as, "Boy, times are tough, huh? Anyone out there think times are tough right now?" And to this, the audience would respond with empassioned "Yeah's" and "Mmhmm's" and "Oh yes's," bearing not just a passing resemblance to your average Full Gospel Baptist Church. I've never been able to stomach the blind agreement with a pastor of any kind, regardless of how much truth (or Truth) he's preaching, I'm going to actually think about what he's saying before agreeing with it automatically, so I sure wasn't going to be feeding fire into this guy's kindling.

And yet... as the night drew on, I found myself wanting to participate. I found myself actually wanting to speak up when the moment seemed appropriate, go along with the service, give in to the business revival being preached. It was unsettling.

Anyway, we left the meeting feeling odd, but hesitantly optimistic about the prospect of the job. Ang moreso than me, but it was more a nagging uncertainty than an actual pessimism at that point.

That night, I had a dream that basically directly pointed to Primerica being an unstable investment. Nagging uncertainty turned pretty quickly into boldfaced skepticism.

The following day was the day of the test for Delta and our second meeting with Primerca. After I got home from the Delta test, we quickly ate some lunch and then drove out to where they'd told us to go. And we drove... and drove... and drove a little more. Come to find out this place was all the way out on the border of Queen Creek, almost a good hour away from us here. Did not realize that one when they were telling us where to go.

But find it we did, and once we got there, we quickly got into discussing the real, honest work that the job would entail. And to be entirely fair, it does seem for all intents and purposes to be very honest work. Primerica is kind of an amalgamation of any kind of financial service you can think of. They're part bank, part insurance company, part investment firm... and all love. Well, at least they seem to be. Their biggest selling point is their Financial Needs Analysis, or FNA, which basically maps out all of your current finances, be it income, debts, or expenditures, and gives you a bit of a tool to use to help you get out of debt. This isn't the loan part; all they really do is show you what you're doing with your money right now and steering you toward a possible better plan for how to manage your money, be it making bigger payments on specific loans or investing more in life insurance, or a 401k. That's the biggest thing.

It's even free of charge. You don't have to pay them a dime if you don't want to. Pretty good, honest work, right?

Well, far as I can tell, yes... it's the actual job that's the shady part.

Remember, this is a company built like a Full Gospel Baptist Church. In addition to that mentality, it's also something of a multi-level management scheme, or pyramid scheme. The actual way we'd make money doing this is, essentially by recruiting other people to do the job. You can make money by never accomplishing this, but it won't ever amount to much. This I think is how Primerica has been allowed to exist for the past 30-some years, because while it's clearly a pyramid scheme (which is actually illegal in this country), it isn't merely dependent upon the recruitment part. For every loan or insurance policy or investment you do get someone to take through Primerica, you get a cut (be it $100 bucks or $50 or whatever). So that part is merely like your average commission-based sales job.

So... it's like the shady part of the job is shady on whether or not it's actually shady. Pretty clever, if you ask me.

However, whenever you do recruit someone into Primerica and are able to yourself personally train them in the job, you'll automatically be given a cut of whatever that person makes. You don't take money away from them, however; as a more senior member of the company, you're now due more cash per every transaction, and whenever your recruit makes a sale, you basically make the difference of what you would make if you'd done it yourself and what they actually do make. Like... if you're now owed $400, and they make a sale for $100, you'd make $300, just because they're your personal recruit.

What I don't get is... where's all this money coming from? Supposedly you're owed, like, $100 bucks for every life insurance policy you get signed. However, life insurance only costs, like, $40 bucks a month on the high end for most people. Where'd the extra $60 come from, and why are you making so much as the lowest level employee?

So, um. Yeah. After some careful thought and discussing it with some outside opinions, we decided not to give Primerica the go-ahead. We think it was probably in our best interest.

On the bright side, on the drive over to Queen Creek, we found a real live Anthropologie store that Angela just had to go in. She's been in love with this retailer ever since she learned it existed online, but we'd never found an actual store apart from the online store. I'm thinking it's probably because everything in Anthropologie costs about $150 bucks a piece, and we don't usually find ourselves in neighborhoods where such places would be abundant. Ang actually ended up finding a pair of pants in her size that was marked down from $158 to $19.95. Insanity. She's awaiting her mother to hem the legs (they were clearly designed with a supermodel's stilt-legs in mind), at which point I'm sure she'll be wearing them incessantly. Perhaps we'll get a picture of them up sometime.

Okay, this ended up being really, really long, as I figured it would be, and I've just wasted an hour. Commence vegging!

Song stuck in my head: True Affection - The Blow