Paying Tribute to the People I’ve Lost

As a retrospective, the unexamined life is not worth living Socrates.

How do you pay tribute to the people you’ve lost?

While starting with my birth parents, I try to live a worthwhile life every day that I think that they would have intended for me to live or would be proud of me for living, that their sacrifice was worth it on many different levels. I suppose.

Mainly being giving up a child and the sacrifice that went along with that before they were presumably killed. For not aborting me which could have very well been an option too.

For my adoptive mother, I tend to go to antique places and just remember her it’s not necessarily paying tribute, but I used to send her pictures from a local antique mall and she would comment on them of things that we used to have or I thought we used to have.

So when I visit antique malls that I see those similar things I take a minute to remember my mother.

And as for my late sister, I just saw the more reason not to end up in the addiction spiral which means I don’t drink and I don’t smoke that way it can never really happen.

What movie have I watched again and again and why.

So we talked about these in a separate entry Transformers The Movie, Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan. The themes of sacrifice and heroism are important to me.

I have watched those movies for probably over 40 years, and I can watch them over and over and over again.

Because they’re timeless. They never get old.

And I think particularly with Star Trek II, I see it from different perspectives all throughout my life as I get older.

As I was younger, I appreciated the sacrifice in Mr. Spock.

As I got older and head towards 50, the film was also about Captain Kirk hitting midlife and I think I get those themes.

What personal ritual has stuck with you your whole life and why is it significant?

Nearly my whole life goes back to the Christmas cruise which I talked about earlier.

Just driving on Christmas Eve just I feel drawn and compelled there’s no other way that I can describe that.

Yeah, and that’s been my whole normal life anyway.

I can’t think of any ritual from age zero. But that happened around 16 or 17.

So if money were no object, describe something I would have done or tried in my life that I didn’t and explain why I chose that something.

I think if money were no object, I would be traveling around a lot more.

I travel as much as I can.

I enjoy seeing new things.

I think it does go back to those words that were spoken to me boldly go where I haven’t gone before.

And I think anytime I travel I try to go in some aspect to someplace I haven’t gone before.

And I’ve been to Columbus, Ohio many times, try and go different parts of it.

I’ve been to Atlanta several times. I try and go to different parts of it.

I think there’s something to be said for exploring.

The top people that I like to think definitely Mark and Diane, Pastor Ron Lewis, Pastor Will Smith, Kristen Hill, Zoey McDow my adopted mother who’s gone, my birth parents, and Betty Tisdale, so we’ll keep it at eight.

Betty was the one that airlifted me out of Saigon.

Describe the most difficult thing you’ve had to do, either physically or mentally. And did I do it alone or did I have support?

I think the most difficult thing I had to do, I can tackle this two different ways.

As a youngster growing up it was the mile run in phys ed class because I was always the kid that came in next to last. That was the hardest thing I had to do.

And I did that with the kid that came in last.

I was terribly out of shape.

There was a time in my life long afterwards where I did three miles every day in about 45 minutes or so.

But yeah, the mile run for PE class.

And then the hardest thing both physically and mentally as an adult was being effectively homeless.

That’s when I lived in the Motel Six when my home wasn’t ready and I was pushed out my rental home in Madison.

That was difficult and I largely went that alone because nobody understood or people were lecturing how I should be grateful to be in the Motel Six.

But in the meantime, I’m practically losing my mind.

What quality is your Achilles heel? I’ve tried to change it was just who I am has it hindered my life and or relationships?

I don’t view it as a weakness.

I understand the meaning of Achilles heel as far as the phrase goes.

But I would say not being as social as everybody else means I miss out on some opportunities.

But I don’t see it as a weakness.

I’m socially selective so I see it as a strength meaning that I’m able to guard and protect my resources a little bit better than most.

I’m able to dedicate more energy to a smaller number of things.

Extroverts tend to have to spread a lot of energy over a lot of things.

I can spread the same energy over a smaller amount of things more effectively, instead of a larger amount of things less effectively.

If I could do one thing without any legal or physical consequences, what would it be?

I would have a cat farm.

I would have a whole farm full of rescued cats a lot more than what I have now.

Unfortunately, there are laws against that it’s called hoarding.

And there are consequences physical consequences like all the litter boxes you have to clean and all the mess they make and every time they throw up.

I cannot do hundreds of cats like on a cat island but I think it would be great.

Choose one person from my entire life and write that person a letter to clear up something he or she never really got about you.

I have a blog entry for that.

So that’s already been done.

I will need to attach that as things that you never knew about me.

So I’m not going to go back down that road again.

If I had one true love for my life, who would that be?

It can be a person, vocation, or place whatever comes to mind first.

It’s definitely the years that I did the movie company with the community outreach in the church.

That will never come again.

That was probably one period of time where everything fired on all four cylinders.

And I felt I truly was who I was created to be.

Describe a moment of selfishness go into as much detail as you can.

Most of my selfishness is probably having my home be the cat home.

While I care about cats that have been abandoned and dumped, I know that I am choosing this life for myself and for my cats as opposed to countless other possibilities that would come without having a home full of cats.

Without having a home full of cats I could dedicate my life to somebody else, lay down my life for somebody else, make that sacrifice so somebody else could be all that God created them to be.

It may be rather selfish at the end of the day to take care of these cats but that’s what I’m doing.

And I’ll probably die doing it.