Hall Of Fame

When a professional sports player retires and if he or she is of significant caliber, there is always discussion amongst those that follow sports on if the player should be inducted into their chosen sports Hall of Fame. Players at the upper echelon in their sport, your Michael Jordans, Emmitt Smiths, and Joe Montanas are no-brainers. They are going in first ballot, no questions asked. But when you have someone who may have good stats, but not great stats, the discussion intensifies.

The one really good rule of thumb I’ve heard over the years was “If you have to think about it, he doesn’t go in.” There may be debates back and forth on it but when two parties can’t decide, it’s clear that there’s too many questions on that players eligibility and until those are settled, generally by length of time since retirement, that player is out.

I bring this up because recently a good friend said that they had a friend who was also divorced and wondered if I would be interested in having a blind date. They even provided a picture so it wasn’t even a true blind date. With this information this really should have been a simple yes or no, but I stopped to think about it. Was I interested?

Then I thought about a question put forth to me by another good friend who I had the pleasure of having dinner with the other evening. I was talking about my limited adventures in online dating. Mainly just swapping emails with a scammer in Nigeria who tried to get money out of me and “window shopping” to see who was out there (see Scam and Eggs ). At one point she asked me, “Are you ready to date? I mean, do you want to?” I didn’t have an answer and I wondered about it over the next couple days. If I wasn’t ready to date, why did I have online profiles and checked the emails that were sent with various winks, flirts, and “scientific” matches?

Now I had the opportunity to go on a date with someone who wasn’t from an online gallery. A real person known by someone I knew. The opportunity I was actually hoping would happen one day…only maybe not today. Or should it be today? Should I take to this like ripping a Band-Aid off all at once or be concerned that perhaps the wound underneath wasn’t completely healed?

And if I went on this date, what kind of date would I be? The dinner I had the other night with the aforementioned friend was mainly a reuniting with someone I hadn’t seen in over 15 years but she was someone I used to have feelings for, so there was still a real date aspect to it (for me, at least). The next morning, however, I was in a bit of a funk because all I could think about was my recently failed marriage. It struck me that going on a date (or the prospect of going on a date) emphasizes, at least right now, more on what I lost and not on what I could potentially gain from a date. The scales are tipped too far over on that lost side for me to feel comfortable with myself and if I’m not comfortable with myself, we go back to the question that opened up this paragraph: What kind of date would I be? I would surmise a terrible one and let’s forget about me for a second, is that fair to the person I’m going on a date with? Doubtful.

At the end of all this, I looked back on the Hall of Fame question: If you have to think about it, he probably shouldn’t go in. To put it in my situation, if I have to think about it, I probably shouldn’t date. Continuing the comparison, the player who may not be first ballot Hall of Fame generally gets in somewhere in the future so I apply the same to myself and dating, but the question is: when? Is it something I will just know or will have to have at least one date to know for sure? I think about the lyrics the great Don Henley sang in the song, “New York Minute:”

     What the head makes cloudy
     The heart makes very clear
     The days were so much brighter
     In the time when she was here
     But I know there's somebody somewhere
     Make these dark clouds disappear
     Until that day, I have to believe
     I believe, I believe

     In a New York minute
     Everything can change

So I assume my feelings on dating could change at any minute and I’m good with that. For now, though, when faced with a dating possibility, if I spend a fair amount of time thinking about it, I probably should let the opportunity pass and hope that I will get put on the ballot sometime in the future. 

 

Paths

I’ve always believed that you should never have any regrets in life.  Where you are right now was from the path you walked on to get there.  There are times when we want to say I wish I never did this or didn’t do that, but that’s wasted energy.   You can’t help where you are now but you can, to a certain extent, control where you are going.

Another aspect to this is the belief (or disbelief) that your destiny is predetermined either by God or the Universe or a giant cat that lives in the mountains somewhere.  I’m not entirely sure if I believe this but there is some amount of comfort in thinking it’s true.  Why?  I think it comes out of moments of despair or when life takes you down a road of broken glass and rotting vegetables.  You think, “Why did this happen to me?” and you are told “It’s God’s plan” or “Life is like that” or the ever popular “Shit happens.” 

Shit does happen but we can sit there and smell it or we can move on.  I think it’s entirely too easy to give up or get depressed about your current state of life but the truth is if whatever problems you faced left you alive, then you’re probably going to be okay.  If you stop and dwell on what happened, you’ll get stuck like tires spinning in the mud.  Put that thing in four wheel drive and move out of the muck, man.  There’s a lot more road ahead.

Why am I starting my new blog with this?  Mainly because as of right now, 2012 will go down as probably the worst year in my life.  There are still two and half months to make up for the previous nine and half but I doubt a total comeback is possible.  I’m down 48 to 10 in my game with 2012 and I need more than a few Hail Mary’s to even the score. 

It’s funny because when things were better, I used to comment about some of the turns I took while growing up and what would have happened if I took a left instead of a right.  What if I had stayed in Arizona instead of moving to Texas in the mid 80’s?  What if instead I stayed in California instead of moving BACK to Texas when I did that in the late 80’s?  What if I had more confidence when I was younger when dating and pursued harder the woman who was then the woman of my dreams?  What if I never grew that porn-star moustache I had for most of the 90’s?  What if I never married my first wife? 

These questions were all put aside by simply saying, “Well if I had done that, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”   Those decisions led me to where I was as if it was all planned out.  When life is good, that’s a great feeling to have but when life is less than good, you tend to go back and wonder if you made the right choices. 

And therein lies the problem.  You can’t go back.  You can’t undo the decisions you made so no need to start wondering what would have happened if you made different ones.  Life is life and whether our ultimate destination is known or unknown, it really doesn’t matter because YOU don’t know what is going to happen.  Instead waiting for the sign to change from “Don’t Walk” to “Walk,” just go ahead and walk.

God, the Universe nor that giant cat up in the mountains won’t care if you’re jaywalking.