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Showing posts from 2015

I made it

I made it to the opening day of the new Star Wars movie.  I didn't think that would happen. I didn't think I'd have the fortune to see what happens next.  I leave for the theater in thirty minutes. I'm going by myself. I have no shame or sadness in that. I've chosen now to embrace this part of my story, the one where I'm working hard to provide for my children.  And I made it.  No need to say much except I'm excited.  I'll let MC Chris take it from here. 

Things I've been meaning to tell you, Dec 2015 edition

So, really, things are great.  Even when they're not great, my day-to-day life is calm, relaxing and filled with purpose.  But I'm right back to where I was, exercise and health-wise, seven years ago when my marriage ended.  I weighed 198 pounds when I stepped on the scale today. When I began exercising to kill the pain, the anguish was my fuel. I pushed myself and pushed and pushed myself. I dropped down to 165, developed myself in a way I didn't think was possible and gained so much more confidence than I've ever had. Now the pain is gone and my life is running pretty well. My work is meaningful to me, my children are a part of my life and I've learned to enjoy solitude and a peaceful life without a partner.  But things are wrong. I'm eating too much. Drinking too much. And I'm getting unhealthy.  That's going to change. I have plans and I have goals and I will document them here. Being physically active is something I miss an

Trying

I can sense that the season is seeking to strip me of my sensibilities. The lack of light has left me loose and disconnected. The doubts within me are harmonizing, preparing for a suite of dirges that will call me into the darkness. I am trying my best to not let that happen.  I'm not exercising. I seem to instead be working as much as possible. I seem to not have leisure time at the moment. Everything feels like a job, but knowing that, I'm kind of relaxed about it. I'm doing good work, even if I sometimes begin to lose faith in myself and the quality of what I do.  I'm more cautious than I've ever been in my life. I don't take risks anymore, not the way I would have in the past. I don't ask anyone out. I don't go anywhere spontaneously. I don't look for other jobs. I don't look to have adventures. I know what I have to do, and what I do is work.  Well, work and play Minecraft.  I need to be doing something purposeful at e

Secret music

I wonder if anyone will ever listen to the music I've made over the past six years. They're improvisational journeys that capture specific moments in time while reflecting on all the other moments in time I've had in my 42 years.  Technically it's not all there, but I record myself as a way of speaking to the universe that I know, which includes myself. I'm sometimes able to project things that really capture how I'm feeling about a particular issue. I'm able to release myself and just communicate with myself in a way that words don't do as much as they used to.  Words alone aren't enough for me. For the past eight and a half years, I've been employed as a writer who just writes text. I've enjoyed being on the radio at WTJU as part of Soundboard, but it's going away at the beginning of the year. I miss making audio of any kind. I learned how to produce public radio pieces because it continued a tradition of making audio that

A Halloween confession

Here's something. I don't really like Halloween. It makes me feel really, really inadequate. I am not the kind of person who likes to dress up in outlandish costumes. I also have a hard time relaxing these days around other people. I feel like I'm always wearing masks anyway, never really unable to tell most of the people I come into contact what I feel about anything. In order to do my job right, I have to check so much of myself and put it away.  But it's more than that, too. I can't imagine spending time to get a costume together. The idea of it all makes me anxious. My life is one where relaxation takes the form of hanging out by myself without a deadline. I feel anxious when I let my guard down, nervous that maybe I said the wrong thing. I'm happy for others who like the holiday and don't at all want to have people think I want others to not enjoy themselves. I just get a weird, sad melancholy when Halloween comes around and I'm no

Satisfaction

I had a great day today. I turned in two stories and worked on a third that's going to be an absolute blockbuster. More on that another time, though I really don't want to talk about my work that much here.  I thought I was supposed to work at Court Square, but when I realized I did not have to do, I felt like I could devote some time to myself. I went to Tin Whistle to finish work and met up with my work colleague Tim Shea who is leaving the organization soon. Speaking with Tim and his girlfriend made me happy, as did talking to several other friends I saw there.  So I decided to come home and try to make music. Astute readers will know this is a pastime of mine and has been for many years. Singing my own songs makes me feel alive, but I don't seem to be able t write them. I have to improvise them. I love seeing what I can come up with in the moment.  I also have a hard time sharing any of it because none of it is perfect.  I have dozens and dozens of hou

Thoughts on the future, the past, the gift of the now

I'm rewatching Back to the Future 2 for the second time in 24 hours. I'm looking forward to Saturday's Doctor Who. The concept of time travel appeals to me because I so often wonder what would have happened if I had made different decisions at key points. Both the trilogy and my favorite television show employ a narrative device that simply doesn't exist. But yet I often imagine how I might go back and fix mistakes. I am a time traveler. I've committed my life as a writer to understanding how people make decisions. I've learned so much about how the community in which I live came to be. I have spent the last eight years writing about decisions made. I am gifted with the ability to write these things down. I am also blessed with the ability to be able to write and sing my life in my personal journals, and I often write about time travel and patterns that I see in my life, personally and professionally. Sometimes I think I am trying to create a bootstrap p

Two months into 42

This is the first day in seven that I'm going to go to the gym. I feel weird about this because I would love to go. But I'm working on a story and I have to go to work shortly. I don't much want to go to work, but I'm facing up to my responsibilities. I'll also work tomorrow, finishing up this story as well as doing a catering shift. This isn't where I wanted to be, financially, at 42. But, it's what I have to do. Becoming suddenly single so suddenly after purchasing a house almost seven years had an effect that will last well into my fifties. Now that I can see my fifties approaching, at least on a spreadsheet, I no longer feel young, mentally. I feel my options are pretty limited, so I'm trying to be the best at the things Physically, though, I feel fantastic because I know I'm on the right track. I've not had a soda in almost two months and I've given up coffee. I've also given up hope in other arenas, but I won't go into

More tweet experimenting

This one is another experiment. I can't tell you what it's for, because I'm not sure what it's for. But, I often say things on Twitter in the moment, and I want to be able to get more people to read them.  So here is my journalistic work-day digested via tweets.  Two meetings today. Interesting things on agenda for the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority http://t.co/3iu0d9pM5e — seantubbs (@seantubbs) September 8, 2015 But the big meeting tonight is the #cville City Council meeting. Here's the agenda: http://t.co/NnDofU9sKV What are you interested in? — seantubbs (@seantubbs) September 8, 2015 Now sitting in Council Chambers for econ dev authority meeting. I'm here to cover parking study, but not clear how much info I'll get — seantubbs (@seantubbs) September 8, 2015 These meetings don't get a lot of press attention & there are 2 of us here. Board members waiting for quorum @RachelMenitoff — seantubbs (@sea

Recapping a meeting in tweets

This one's experimental. Heck, they all are, really. If you go back into the deep archives of this blog, you'll see that I often used it ten years ago to try things out and to say where I was with my experimenting with podcasting and the Internet. This was before Facebook and Twitter, and in general I was probably a bit more candid than I am on those platforms. Even this blog, until my 42nd birthday, was not very active anymore because I was afraid I would say something I didn't want everyone in my community to know.  Community.  I define that broadly, and I think most people do now. I think that Facebook in particular has given us all the chance to explore our own reality through the all of the previous communities we have been in. My friends on Facebook come from growing up in Lynchburg to my time in New Hampshire to my family across the world, but I'm mostly connected to the people I know in Charlottesville.  Twitter, though, I use to be a journalist, m

September!

The summer is over. Long live the summer, as we've got it for another month or so, along with the hint of fall. I can feel the potential for joy as the leaves fall from the trees and survival instincts kick in. How shall we survive the winter? Have we collected enough? Have we stored enough fat?  I am not sure. I just know I'm working furiously to prepare, to fix myself, and now that summer is over I can work without thinking I need to go on vacation, I can just get on with it, and I can take joy in anything. There is nothing that can stop me now but my own falling leaves, my own decay.  Music from the past can help. I'm reading Kim Gordon's memoir, Girl in a Band , at the moment, and I began my work day by listening to an album I'd not ever heard before by the Raincoats, a British all-woman band from the 1980's and I'm tempted to just listen to the whole thing again a second time.  Seems appropriate to hear as I begin the last four months

A depression day

No need to panic. No need to cry. No need to worry, either. But today is a depression day. Actually, this whole week has been like that.  I didn't want to get out of bed today. I woke up at 6:00 and my fantasy is that I can somehow become a morning person. But, I never want to leave my dreams. I fell back to sleep and woke up again at 8:00, but still couldn't get out of bed. I'd spent the night before writing about guns and rage and anger on Facebook, trying to get conversations going where people can at least acknowledge there is a problem. It seems that's a role I can play, or want to play. But then I wake up, and I don't believe in myself. I dread that I said awful things and that I'm going to be punished for voicing an opinion. I stay in bed and don't want my day to begin because I dread bad news and notifications of needs for corrections and other things that bring me a great deal of stress. I'm in a cycle, I know this. If I ha

Numb

I'm numb. Because this keeps happening. We go to Bridgewater Plaza several times a year. It's a place my children love. Two people I didn't know were murdered there in cold blood, doing the same job that so many of my friends do. All because some asshole couldn't get a handle on his anger and he had access to a tool that allowed him to impose his hatred onto the world. And it'll happen again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. That's why I'm numb. This one's weird because I've spent so much time in the exact spot where they were murdered. I've watched my nieces and nephews grow up there, and my own children delight in going to the arcade. My own sense of place was shattered in exactly the same way that it was when the massacre at Virginia Tech happened and exactly the same way it was when my friend's cousin was murdered by an angry man with a gun when I was in high school. How much longer u

The end of romantic foibles

After at least three dozen uncomfortable and awkward dates, a couple of really good first dates that didn't lead anywhere and one broken heart I've still not recovered from, I have decided to pull the plug on my online dating account after nearly seven years. I am not going back. With that action, I confirm that I have officially given up on dating for the near future with an option to give up on romance the rest of my life.  I can't write publicly all of the romantic foibles I've had. At this point, I can't imagine anyone wanting to be with me for more than a few minutes. This might be due to reading profile after profile of people who want someone to go exploring with. Usually these people don't have children, and still have the option to have lives of leisure. I don't have that option. I'm a walking red flag, so I'm waving a white one I surrender to being alone. But I am not surrendering to loneliness. I plan on working seven days a week s

Notes That Were Episode #6

So, I'm going through all of the audio in my archive in the hopes of sorting it out somehow. And I came across this episode of The Notes That Were, a podcast I did from 2005 to 2007 but never published because the content is likely not palatable to most people.  One of my formative influences is Negativland, and I wish they were a household name because it would make explaining myself so much easier. But they are not, so you'll have to look it up yourself. This is me chopping up all kinds of comments when I was an evangelist for podcasts in 2005 and 2006. I really wanted to make podcasts and I still do. Making audio is when I feel happiest. I think I'm going to go ahead and just do that and see what happens. Here it that episode. I'll explain if I have to, but just listen and see what you think. 

Time travel back to 2005

I don't think I can listen to this , but maybe I should.  In November 2005, I was part of a panel discussion sponsored by the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council on blogs, podcasting and RSS. I may have even written about it in the past on this blog, but I'm not sure.  That was a different era. But maybe it's the same era.  I don't know.  All I know is this is the second day in a row I'm experimenting with things, organizing things, and trying to figure out how to get back into the podcasting game. I'm not making a quick move towards that, but I feel I've lost touch. I must get back to it. I'm experimenting with different services. I'm working with some friends to produce a podcast they want to do. Moderately intelligent sports talk is what you'll hear on the Cool Stove . I'm using a service called Podomatic on this one to test out what one of these podcasting sites offer. I can easily embed each episode here. I'm c

The power of making music

When I am in my most stressful moments, snippets of lyrics I've sang in the past generally save me.  I don't share all of music with the world, because I don't have the time to perfect it. I do it for me, because I need something to save me at times of severe stress. I'm in times of severe stress frequently. My beard is going grayer much sooner than I thought it would. Every single day brings with it some crisis that has to be solved. And they're almost always solved.  Since 2009, I've made at least fifty hours of songs, all improvised as I play my guitar and try to let myself go as much I can. I become this weird version of myself when I sing, and I love being able to have the luxury to spend some of my humanity to capture this stranger who lives inside of me. That stranger saves me all the time. I can't explain it, but I want to. I'm one human being among way over seven billion now. So many people, so many potential points of vi

Malcolm Tucker and the Doctor

I was just getting used to finally accepting Peter Capaldi as the Doctor when someone at Buzzfeed decided to point out 21 ways in which we can swear like Malcolm Tucker .  If you click, it's decidedly not for people who can't handle profanity, obscenity, abuse, or any of the other lovely things I came to appreciate watching The Thick of It . For me, I was very skeptical of Peter Capaldi being named as the Doctor. To me, his face was so associated with the amazing spectacle of Malcolm Tucker, the spin doctor for an unnamed party in British politics in that fictional show. I first watched it on a trip to England in 2012 and fell in love based on Capaldi's ability to so easily display concentrated hatred that could be used for political ends. So, when he was announced two years ago as the replacement for Matt Smith, I was completely flummoxed. I watched the presentation on a live stream from the BBC with my children present. I didn't know what to expect, but when hi

It worked again

I felt grumpy all day. Nothing felt right. I had a 9:00 meeting so I didn't get to run. I opted instead to spend about half an hour cleaning before I went out to meet my friend at Brazos.  I also had to cover a meeting at which I didn't get to say anything. I was a ghost in the room taking notes and attending to my work correspondence.  I started several blog posts but they were very depressing and that's not the side of me I want to present to the world. I'm tired of being grumpy. Then I had to cover another meeting that I didn't know about, which meant I had to change my evening plans. Those plans were to go the gym and do something to keep building a new habit. I need that new habit so much. I weigh almost 200 pounds, the result of totally giving up on exercise this summer. I'm not going to chastise myself for letting myself go. I had reasons, and I've taken steps to get back on track. I got home from the meeting and my mind real

Away from the fitness

I saved my life by devoting myself to exercise. Maybe I can do so again.  There was a time when I had nothing else to do but run. I dropped 30 pounds in four or five months as I ran and ran and ran.  It's all back. And I'm not sure I have the willpower to make it go away.  But, I'm trying to fight whatever demon in my mind wants me to stay away from the endorphins and the feeling of satisfaction that comes with being fit. Last week I bought new shoes for the first time in two years. And today I fought off a potential wave of sadness by signing up for a gym membership and promptly went for a three mile run.  The strategy worked. It's wearing off now, for reasons I can't say, but I so hope I can remember this tomorrow and get some miles in. I don't quite know when I stopped practicing the power of exercise, but I did. Maybe there's part of me that just doesn't care anymore. I hope that part goes away and that I can make intentiona

Sense of perspective

Aside from various projects here and there, Roanoke looks pretty much like it was when I left there thirteen years ago to move to Charlottesville. Of course, my American children and I only spent about six hours there today but my cursory observation is that the place has the same charm and somewhat latent energy it has when I left to come here. We all have question points in our lives where things could have turned one way or the other. For me, taking an official job in the public radio system was one where perhaps I should have paused a bit. I can certainly imagine the world with me becoming a public citizen in Roanoke the same way I seem to have done that here in Charlottesville.  The danger of having become a writer and a journalist is that I tend to be able to pick up everything, including my own life. I've written hundreds of thousands of words now, mostly for myself, but I have a body of work covering local politics in my community. What does "politics&quo

42

I didn't expect to get this far. I'm not sure sometimes that I did. I've written many times about feeling like a ghost, but today I actually relaxed and allowed myself to feel corporeal.  It was nice. 42, of course, is the answer to life, the universe and everything. The question is all wrong, yes, yes, we know that.  I thought I would have answers but I don't have any. I don't have any questions, either. Nor do I have any statements. Now I am here and it's time to see what that's going to look like. I have my thoughts, but I don't know for sure how long they will last before they collapse on themselves. That tends to happen.  In the past several days I've had many things to think about, but at the moment I only have this, and it is ephemeral. Yet I shall let it go anyway. I was going to write something about my music and what it means to me, but the more I get older the more I realize it's best to keep the things truly

Using Twitter

I use Twitter frequently to archive the research I am doing. I also want to share what I learn with the public. I imagine that people are interested in the things that I am interested in. Today the topic was the new streetscape for West Main Street, something I have written about for many years. The Planning Commission took up the streetscape six months after Mayor Huja blasted it and said he wouldn't support it.  This is my blog, so I can limit the backstory. But, I can also refer people to tweets I make throughout the day when I'm researching something.   I'll be spending most of today brushing up on West Main Street for a story I'm writing this evening. Interested to know your thoughts — seantubbs (@seantubbs) July 28, 2015 I don't like that the default embed here doesn't add a timestamp. I'll have to try to fix that at some point. I want to begin to use this space to experiment again, or maybe I need to find a new space at some point to b

Inability

There's something I want to say, but I cannot.  There's an impulse in my mind that I must short-circuit. I gave up the freedom to say what I think in order to become a journalist.  And it's sad, because I don't really have opinions about outcomes. My opinions are mostly about the process and about attitudes.  There are days when the negativity depresses me. These days are common.  I can never go into details. Who would care what I think anyway?  I will only say that I wish humans didn't have this innate instinct to piss over other humans all the time. 

Reviewing the night and the Tavern

I smell like the tavern. It wasn't a busy night. I cooked nine meals and worked about six hours or so. I met a new surgeon at the University of Virginia who had a bratwurst. I cooked a rueben for a guy who works at the Inn at Court Square. I made two chicken sandwiches, a shepherd's pie and a bratwurst for a table of four. I made an Italian sub for a woman and a portabello stuffed mushroom for her boyfriend. I made a taco salad for my friend Sidney who was there to see the woman and her boyfriend. I think that adds up. I don't know when I'll be back there again. Likely not for a few months. At the end of the night I feel much better about having been there all night.  I figured out how to move the satellite radio receiver in such a way that it won't overheat and thus stop the music.  In other words, a good night of being a caretaker.  Another night in my life. A happy one because I made some extra money I didn't have before.  I would have liked