Posts tagged with "Pat"

The Inconclusive End

Over break­fast, a gen­er­ous gorg­ing of sausage links, over easy, and hashed browns, the real­iza­tion dawns on me that out of the eight peo­ple seat­ed, four of us have worked in the same office.

In fact, three of us had the same job; while Aaron was work­ing as a devel­op­er, Pat was brought in to replace Jacques, and I was hired when Pat left. What a small world. That’s how Pat and I met Aaron, how Aaron met Jacques, and it was only on that day, four years lat­er, that Pat was intro­duced to Jacques.

Now we can sit around a break­fast table, fill­ing our­selves with greasy food and caf­feine in prepa­ra­tion for a week­end of gam­ing.

How long ago those days seem, work­ing in an unmo­ti­vat­ed gov­ern­ment office, dat­ing some­one I thought I want­ed to make my wife. I remarked to Pat how fun­ny it was to believe back then that I knew what I want­ed in life, and with a smirk, he asked me, “You think you know what you want now?”.

The ques­tion was rhetor­i­cal, of course. Sometimes Pat knows me bet­ter than I know myself. In his way, he was remind­ing me that even now, after all my con­tem­pla­tion and all my con­clu­sions, I still may not have fig­ured that out yet.

Do I real­ly know what I want?

Not real­ly. In my career, my rela­tion­ships, my short-term life I can say that there’s a path I’m mov­ing towards, but I also know that this will most like­ly change. As I learn and grow, as new goals are met and made, what I want changes too.

And per­haps being sure of this is what I real­ly want.

Oh, The Humanity

Although not in any nar­ra­tive Herbert Morrison sense.

I had a dif­fer­ent entry half-writ­ten, but the dark­ness was debil­i­tat­ing. All I want­ed was a sec­ond sun; it felt like a case of SAD because the night was mak­ing me both anx­ious and uneasy. It’s noth­ing close to a pan­ic attack, but it was bad enough that I felt com­pelled to called Pat to help talk me out of it. He’s one of the only peo­ple I can count on 24/7, and just talk­ing to him for an hour helps me fig­ure out more about the world than three months of writ­ing here. I know my eye­s’ll feel like lead weights tomor­row for stay­ing up this late, but I need to get this entry down before I lose it. Hopefully, know­ing that it’s Friday will be enough to keep me alive through the day.

Self-improve­ment has dri­ven me for most of my life, a nev­er-end­ing goal that’s guid­ed me through my actions and beliefs. This is usu­al­ly based on com­par­i­son, since improve­ment is always rel­a­tive. Those who can accom­plish what I have dif­fi­cul­ty doing always have my respect, and give me some­thing to work towards.

Before I com­plain about get­ting six hours of sleep the pre­vi­ous night, I think of Navy SEALs who get four hours total dur­ing Hell Week, a five day under­wa­ter train­ing exer­cise dur­ing the first phase of the BUD/S. That’s when I real­ize that I should be able to sur­vive an extra hour of work with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. When I feel like throw­ing my hands in the air after work­ing on an ad for four hours, blind­ed by the depth with which I’ve star­ing at the mate­r­i­al, I think of my boss who can work through count­less inter­rup­tions and dis­trac­tions. That’s when I real­ize that I should keep at my work, because per­se­ver­ance will almost always yield results.

If I can sur­vive it, any­thing can make me stronger.

But as I dis­cov­ered tonight, every­one has their weak­ness­es. Even Pat. He’s always seemed as sol­id as a rock, com­plete­ly unfal­ter­ing, but he admit­ted that there are also moments of weak­ness, how­ev­er brief. Times when he can’t get any work done because some­thing is both­er­ing him that he can’t let go. Times when he just does­n’t feel like going out or social­iz­ing. To find this out about Pat, was to dis­cov­er that the most cheer­ful, friend­ly, con­fi­dent, and men­tal­ly strong per­son I know has his off days. Even the hard­est work­ing, most pro­duc­tive per­son I know occa­sion­al­ly falls vic­tim to a case of the Mondays or the 9–5 grind. There must be some sem­blance of bal­ance, in how much to push one­self, and how much to accept.

To strive for per­fec­tion is fine, but to lose sleep over imper­fec­tion is fool­ish.

Being a dom­i­nant, respon­si­ble for anoth­er per­son, means that one should be sol­id as often as pos­si­ble, but even this extreme case should allow for some lee­way. This does­n’t mean that I won’t try as hard in my attempt at dom­i­nance, but know­ing this cer­tain­ly makes the approach, and even self-improve­ment in gen­er­al, much eas­i­er.

Some may say that it’s a fal­la­cy to com­pare one­self to oth­er peo­ple. After all, every­one has dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties and tol­er­ance lev­els, and it’s no fault to born bet­ter at some things than oth­ers.

But even then, every­body’s human.

The Pat Benchmark

I just played the best three hours of table ten­nis in my life. Pat and I head­ed to the games room on cam­pus, and had three match­es to the best of 19, a total of 43 games. Every sin­gle mus­cle in my body is com­plete­ly exhaust­ed. The worst are the soles of my feet, which are more sore than when I stood for five hours at the Strung Out con­cert.

We’d been plan­ning to play for more than three months now, and I haven’t been able to stop think­ing about it for a while. All week, I had been try­ing to devel­op some strat­e­gy to beat him, but could­n’t come up with a sin­gle idea since he plays with a strong back­hand with a pen-grip. I decid­ed to sim­ply play more aggres­sive­ly than him, and fig­ure out his weak­ness on the fly. In the end, I just ran him around a lot, putting the ball on alter­nat­ing cor­ners or at an angle he did­n’t expect. I can serve con­sis­tent­ly now, and have got­ten much bet­ter at con­trol­ling how long or short they are.

Almost none of his pre­vi­ous strate­gies worked on me. His quick serves to my right don’t do much any­more because I’ve been suc­cess­ful in bal­anc­ing out my posi­tion at the table. His down­spins don’t work any­more because the peo­ple at the club real­ly make me work on my chops and my push­es. His ral­ly hits to my left don’t work any­more because I’ve been improv­ing my back­hand for the last two weeks. My short game has become as good as his. The only thing he could do was serve a down­spin to my left to force a weak return, which is some­thing he fig­ured out rather quick­ly.

I end­ed up win­ning all the match­es, 10–5, 10–3, 10–5, but both of us agreed that they were the finest we’ve ever played. It was three hours of pure inten­si­ty, not only phys­i­cal­ly but men­tal­ly as well. Concentrating on the serve, the strat­e­gy, try­ing to fig­ure out a weak­ness, adapt­ing to an oppo­nents, keep­ing track of the ball, I was ready to col­lapse when I got home.

Patchwork Mindset: Part 1

I haven’t seen Pat in more than two months. We’re try­ing to sched­ule some­thing for March, and by that time it’ll be an entire quar­ter year since we’ve hung out. I’ve come a long way since I last saw him, in terms of mind­set, and he’s prob­a­bly the only one who total­ly under­stands how grave­ly impor­tant that is to me. It’s too bad that my oth­er close friends don’t com­plete­ly under­stand me, although it’s no fault of their own and I don’t hold it against them.

It takes pain to under­stand pain, and Pat is the one who’s had the most sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences. If there was one per­son in this world who has me fig­ured out, it’s him. It used to feel as though he would have to come to my lev­el to talk to me, to under­stand what I was going through, to give me guid­ance and sup­port.

Now it feels as if I’ve come to his lev­el, and I under­stand his atti­tude, moti­va­tions, and world­view much bet­ter as a result of this. He admit­ted that he always won­dered when I’d get there, and he’s curi­ous if he’ll notice a change the next time he sees me.

I see all the influ­ences that change me as adding more to my mind, anoth­er piece to the quilt.

Keeping every piece becomes as impor­tant as gain­ing more.

The One Who Can Turn You Off Food

Pat is a very easy going guy. It’s rare for him to be angry or annoyed with some­one, as aggra­vat­ing as they can be. He has his four basic rules of get­ting along with peo­ple, which are a part of his per­son­al­i­ty. To me, they per­fect­ly explain how I can’t walk ten min­utes with him on cam­pus with­out some­one walk­ing by and greet­ing him. He’s one of the most pop­u­lar, friend­ly, out­go­ing peo­ple I know.

So I was sur­prised to hear him tell me about some­one he met whom he could­n’t stand. After all, this is Patty, the guy who loves and is loved by every­one. I did­n’t believe him until he explained how this per­son stood for every­thing he was against. Pat holds respect for oth­ers as one of the most impor­tant things in life, and this per­son had none.

It was odd to think that Pat has a nat­ur­al “ene­my”, some­one who con­tra­dicts him in almost every way, until I real­ized that I have one as well. I’ve met a per­son who is every­thing I try not to be. He’s obnox­ious, untrust­wor­thy, crude, over­bear­ing, pussy-whipped, jeal­ous, and closed-mind­ed. He has a decent set of man­ners, is gen­er­al­ly friend­ly to most peo­ple, and does have a rea­son­able intel­li­gence as far as I can tell, but none of this can real­ly make up for what he’s like.

I can feel myself being slight­ly, uncon­trol­lably biased against him, which I can’t stand in myself. One of Pat’s rules is that every­one should be giv­en a fair chance, and even though I feel like I’ve giv­en more than enough time for this per­son to change my opin­ion, I’m nev­er sure if it’s enough. I hate being biased.

I gen­er­al­ly can’t stand most peo­ple, but that’s my fault because of my intol­er­ance. This per­son, how­ev­er, is one of the only peo­ple I don’t blame myself for. Perhaps I dis­like him so much because he reminds me a lot of what I used to be. Of course, Aaron thinks that this is a good thing, a reminder of how far I’ve been able to come as a per­son.

Sometimes that’s just hard to see.