my careless contagion

I wrote this post to myself. It wasn't intended to help anyone other than me, but if it helps someone else, then okay. I've gone through life trying to avoid being triggered by bad memories. As I sit here, I can cough up quite a few, but those are merely at the surface. I can recall the time my dad and I built a crude birdfeeder, which I hung pretty low (so I could fill it) on my favorite ponderosa tree. My brother later told me he would take the BB gun and go up to birds feeding on it and blow them away at point-blank range. I stopped refilling it. My dad probably thought it was a waste of time to help me build it. Then there's the time I was playfully snatching popcorn from the giant bowl my ex sat down with next to me. There was literally popcorn for ages, but she got upset and threw the whole damn bowl on me because it was her popcorn . And, of course, there are other and numerous romantic heartbreaks, which seem to be the gift that keeps on giving.  All of t...

We all have those make-it-or-break-it-moments in life. For most of us, they pass without noticing because we did what we had to do. We made it. We did the right thing. Some of us can't seem to get it right, though. This is about those people. This is about me.  Some of us come pre-loaded with difficulties we have to unravel throughout our lives and make sense of. We're already two strikes down when we get up to bat. I consider this keeping things fair. There's something special about those of us who come from behind and (hopefully) win. It's the classic underdog theme. Underdogs make for happy endings. Life doesn't always give us happy endings, though. This is about those other endings. I'm one of those guys who came pre-loaded with trouble. When I think about my life, it's amazing that ANYTHING WENT RIGHT, as there were so many strikes against me. It's no wonder I've had so many dismal failures. The cards were stacked against me. It wasn...