No Proofreads. No Edits.

That’s right, I am quoting Lena Dunham’s Girls Season 1. I started watching this show in law school as I won the argument with my roommate that we needed HBO over NBA-TV. Money was tight and our entertainment had a budget. As much as I wanted to watch Kobe a few times a year I really wanted to watch Game of Thrones. He went online, jokingly, to blast me for watching magic shows and got virtually zero support for what turned out to be the most watched show of all time. RIP Kobe though.

I made it through a season or two of Girls before giving it up. 22 year old me couldn’t relate. Jewish girls, trying to make it in the city, talking about their sex lives. I wasn’t Jewish, Atlanta isn’t NY, and I had no sex life. It was hard to care. However, I fell in love with Adam Driver’s acting. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was so inspiring.

Here I am, 14 years later, and I started the show again for the second time. I have forgotten 99% of the plot but I am here a little more mature, a little more life lived, and a greater appreciation for the art within. I still cannot relate to the story at all, but I find myself clinging to the entire show just to see Adam Driver act.

I don’t really follow Star Wars but I cannot imagine I’d feel the same with him being Darth Vader. Maybe I would. Also, I cannot in good conscience recommend the show to anyone as it’s not exactly edifying or challenging to the mind. But damn, I got a crush on that dude.

I relate to Adam, the character (Adam Driver the actor plays a character of the same name- Adam – in the show Girls. Confusingly simple.). The character is man who wants to be wholly himself and wholly loved. A man who is not nearly as misunderstood as his brain allows him to say that he is. A man who goes all in to his detriment even when the situation doesn’t require.

We continue to think of the future and realize we are casting lots on our future emotions. We are weighing what is easier, to love and lose OR protect and recover. You only get one opportunity to play these next several years. That’s right, years. Every day we look over our shoulder wondering who is going to email or call. Will those turn into knocks on the door? Are we leasing to own or is the repo man coming? This doesn’t stop.

How you parent in this situation comes down to how you think you can recover when it all goes to shit. You don’t fucking know. When that bell tolls how do you want to be caught? Frankly, we are all going to be caught with our pants down, dick in hand, wandering aimlessly through a desert trying to explain to our kids that bad shit happens.

I guess we will grow from it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Tell that to Mitch McConnell- that old turtle isn’t getting flipped back over.

Maybe the reaper never comes. Maybe this is your garden and these are your plants and this is your fruit. You won’t get that answer any more unexpectedly than the other.

There is an adage in business- “A manager asked the owner, ‘What if we train these associates up to be the best employees of all time and then they leave?’….the owner responds, ‘What if we don’t and they stay?”

Cool story. Tell the manager to ask the owner “What if you love the employees with everything you have and then one day you drop them off to school and they don’t come back and there is not a got damn thing you can do about it?” Do you taper your love? Let it out slowly? Tend to the fields but never talk to the flowers? Do nothing until the deed is signed and officially handed over to you?

The Gaffer and I have picked our lanes on how we are strapping in for this marathon. They are lanes that we have to travel ourselves as the unknown will find us later, but the lanes were formed by our own genetics, trauma, faith, and survival. The Gaff can start her own blog to explain hers. But I don’t have a choice but to go all in now and take whatever hurt comes later. I told you, once I commit to something, I really fucking commit.