Building my life - general stupidity I get into

So ...am I looking at the preparations for your spring time project on the deck/outdoor fireplace ala  Keith T? 

Was the mini ex rental expensive?

In reply to CarKid1989 :

$1000 for a week with taxes and delivery/pickup.  

So I see a ditch .....am I close?

You see a footing trench dug for a couple new rooms so my kids don't have to sleep in bunk beds in a 10x11 room with 2 dressers

never rent a concrete buggy with tires it berkeleying sucked

I know i'm scarce around here right now but i have some major changes happening in my life.  We can visit all that when i feel like sitting down to write a novel since this is the building my life thread.  Nothing bad.  But for now here's where we are right now

Family first ......all good. What is the sq/ft on this addition? 

In reply to 759NRNG (Forum Partidario) :

About 540usable square feet taking wall thickness into account

cliff note version: patrick mentally hit rock bottom, had a horrible depressed anxiety riddled 12 months, and learned how to drive away the anger and negativity, embrace feelings and other things, open up about who he really is on the inside, and rekindle the lust for life that was missing for so long.  

In reply to Patrick (Forum Supporter) :

Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to 759NRNG (Forum Partidario) :

About 540usable square feet taking wall thickness into account

 

cliff note version: patrick mentally hit rock bottom, had a horrible depressed anxiety riddled 12 months, and learned how to drive away the anger and negativity, embrace feelings and other things, open up about who he really is on the inside, and rekindle the lust for life that was missing for so long.  

Cool, after you figure out how to put into words, it sounds like something worth reading.

We're here, Patrick. In real life and on the internet whenever you need us.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

There are some nsfw parts

edit: actually in the last couple weeks it's mostly nsfw

So I see an attic in this exercise .......storage or a nerf gun shooting gallery.....wink

In for the build thread on "how to drive away the anger and negativity" from 2020.  I need that pretty badly. 

OHSCrifle said:

In for the build thread on "how to drive away the anger and negativity" from 2020.  I need that pretty badly. 

Trying to muster up the ability and time because i gather some of it will help others.  I'll try harder.  I gather i could start it in my notepad app and just do bits at a time, but i'm super stream of consciousness with writing so once i am going it just flows.

in other news, driver weight reduction mod is sitting at 16# lost since before thanksgiving with being slightly careful about what i eat and doing 30 minutes of cardio daily, driver strength mod is improving with weight training every day.  
 

house is progressing

Also one of the lights on our "back porch" fried so i busted out these guys, that I've been waiting to use for a very long time

You're pulling as much weight out of the driver as I am out of the car. Impressive.

What are your plans for finishing out around the chimney?

Ok that's weird.  I can't get to page 30 on chrome but logged in on safari and here i am.  
 

so 2 years ago(December 2018) the small company Carli worked for that was 2 group homes for people with disabilities was bought out by the largest provider agency in Cuyahoga county(cleveland).  She started at the new place and now instead of being at the top directly reporting to ownership, she now has a director of quality improvement above her - she was basically demoted.  But anyway, director is about 8 years younger than me, very immature, very competitive, and is just kind enigmatic as he loves to berkeley with people's heads.  That he berkeleys with my wife's head bothers me, so that she would come home from the office talking about interactions with him positive or negative also bothered me.  
 

After 9 months of hearing (boss name) this and (boss name) that every day, my brain which is prone to extreme depression, anxiety, and suicidal rabbit holes, convinced me that she talked about him because she was looking at him as a replacement for me and not because their little 4 person quality department is isolated from the rest of the company on purpose to keep them unbiased so she really doesn't have many people to interact with on a daily basis.  The latter is the case, but my head was telling me otherwise.  
 

At that point, around September 2019 i began to emotionally withdraw.  We're both very empathic and feel other people's emotions so when she sensed me pull back she did as well, and we went down this path of driving each other away.  We never stopped going through the motions, but the connection that has been so strong since we met was being weakened and tested.  I did a lot of hiding from my family building the new shop, then I did a lot of hiding alone in my room with my very dark thoughts.  At that point I questioned everything.  Do I want to be married?  Do I really want to be a dad?  What am I doing with my life?  Is my wife going to leave me for this shiny happy person?  I was dying inside, in a very dark place ruled by negativity and having suicidal desires on a daily basis.
 

At the same point I was going through this driving her away, she was feeling unloved and began to have confusing thoughts about her boss because I wasn't giving her any attention.  Thankfully, she was able to talk to her mom about things and realize that looking elsewhere for her emotional needs isn't what really needs to happen.  Her mom told her that when I was ready to fix myself we could begin to fix us, and to give things time.

After a year of negativity, withdrawl, being miserable, fueled by being out of work from the pandemic and having my life turned upside down, I found myself driving down the street flipping off every political sign that I didn't agree with.  Several weeks into that, around the end of september, I was like "what the berkeley am I being so negative for?" and made the conscious decision to begin blocking out all the dark and bad.  Part 1 was to take a 2 month break from social media.  That allowed me to go inside myself to find the light versus wallowing in the dark of the anger surrounding the pandemic and political process.

Once I found myself needing to reconnect with my friends I went back to twitter but muted literally every word (covid, pandemic, trump, biden, election, etc...) that caused me angst.  This allowed me to rebuild those connections that I use the platform for without seeing the hate spewing forth from all angles with regard to the external situations that I cannot control.   Throughout this time I started studying meditation, buddhism, living in the moment, and started yoga and daily exercising.  I felt like I was being more positive and my interactions with my family and friends were improving.  Thanksgiving was excellent, Dead_Sled and his wife allison came over for dinner and we had a great time.  
 

About a week after thanksgiving, Carli and I were laying in bed and she said she had something to talk to me about, that she had feared I would be angry over.  It was all the confused feelings that she had for her boss while I was in my dark place.  Instead of reacting angrily or feeling betrayed(whose mind doesn't wander or come up with what if scenarios sometimes?) I calmly told her that I understood her, acknowledged my role in driving her away, and told her I wanted us to be completely open about communicating everything we need to with each other knowing that we have 100% trust between us to do the right thing. 
 

Conveying this desire to communicate openly and take every step to ensure we have a healthy relationship opened the floodgates of emotion for me.  Words like that had never come from my mouth.  I surprised myself with that reaction, and that proved to me the path I began with meditating and improving myself from the inside out was taking root and healing my years of emotional wounds.  I've always been the man to "act like a man" and "suck it up" and bottle everything inside and never show emotions, talk about how I felt, and every other unhealthy stereotype of what a man should be with a heaping side order of catholic guilt and shame.  
 

From that moment, I felt in tune with the real me.  It was kinda like coming out does for people, but I was coming out as an emotional being.  I told EVERYTHING to Carli.  What was in my head now, what was, everything about my past and everything that I feel.  It was extremely liberating to be able to communicate this without fear of being judged.  I'm able to now tell my family and friends how much they mean to me without fear of being labeled soft.  I'm letting go of the last bits of catholic guilt from having it drilled into my head that XYZ are sins or bad or whatever, and accepting that if something makes me happy or brings me pleasure than what the berkeley business is it of anyone to judge me.  
 

Every facet of my life is improving, and I strive to continue to keep being better and not get complacent.  I'm not just going through the dad motions anymore, I'm enjoying my children.  I'm not just telling Carli "I love you" like a robot anymore, I've fallen hard for her all over again like I did when we went on our "just as friends" road trip in 2007 because her best friend lives not terribly far from Gimp, who has been one of if not my best friends for the better part of the last 20 years.  
 

Opening up emotionally has lead to being comfortable with who I am physically, and to stop feeling ashamed of my kinks in the bedroom.  I've always been a freak on the inside, but never wanted to open up about things for fear of being judged or looked as as (insert label here).  Being able to trust that I can bring anything up for discussion is life changing and uplifting.  
 

So that's probably the long story of the short blurb i tossed out a few weeks ago.  I'll continue sharing the things I'm doing to maybe help someone else.  I'm reading a couple different books, I just finished "Get your Sh*t together" and that helped affirm some of the things I've been doing and gave me some new tools to continue to improve myself.  
 

Right now I'm sitting in the parking lot at the christmas story house overlooking the steel mill by downtown Cleveland waiting for Carli to call and say she's done at the hospital, they're taking another concerning mole off for biopsy now.  So positive thoughts and all that.  
 

I love you guys and gals, thanks for being here for me, let's keep taking this journey of life together.

Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:

Test

 

This is only a test. 

In reply to Patrick (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks for you being you. Hope Carli’s biopsy comes back negative. I think. Negative is a good thing right?

Thanks for the update, and I hope all goes well for Carli.  

I’ve ordered the book, hopefully it helps me, too.

We're here. 

And I've been there. To the point of questioning the paternity of my daughter and trying to suck starf a 12 gauge. 

Marriage counseling made our already ok marriage great. And we still occasionally go in for a tune up. 

Lastly, the most important thing in my daily life is being able to look myself in the mirror at night and know i did the best i could fo for myself and the people that depend on me that day. And knowing that my best is good enough. The days i can't,  i inventory and find what i could have/should have done better and how to improve tomorrow. 

We love you,  man. Keep your chin up.

Yo you, Carli, the chillrenz, are im my prayers BRO.....breath deep .....SAY the LORDS' prayer every night PEACE OUT !!!!