What I'm Thankful For!

As my favorite holiday approaches, and in light of recent personal events, I want to take a moment to compile a list of the things for which I'm eternally thankful. These are listed in no particular order.

1. That I grew up in the 1970's and 1980's. I'm so glad that I was a child before this age of cell phones and tablets and virtual reality. I'll take the actual reality, thank you very much.

2. That, when I watched television, there were only three channels from which to choose. It taught me to appreciate the simple fact that I had a TV to watch at all. I learned to patiently wait for whatever program I wanted to see to actually be on, and I learned to stick with something until it was finished instead of needing to flip ceaselessly through hundreds of channels trying to find something to watch while avoiding commercials.

3. That I developed a love of reading at an early age and continued to nurture it as I grew. Nothing satisfies the way a good book does. I'm never bored. I always have a great companion with me no matter where I go, and I've never stopped learning and expanding my horizons.

4. That I had, and still have, parents who instilled in me that right is right and wrong is wrong. Parents who simply expect their kids to do the right thing because it's the right thing no matter if it's what the kid wants to do are almost non-existent anymore it seems. I'm slowly -- oh, so slowly -- seeing a return to that way of thinking, but it's been a long time coming. If I had thrown myself on the ground and had a temper tantrum just because something didn't go my way at home or in public, my parents would have let me know, in no uncertain terms, that that wasn't acceptable. Now, the parents just cave to whatever idiotic demand their "precious" little baby wants because they seem to fear those tantrums more than the consequences of letting their baby grow into an adult who believes the world revolves around him. The "entitlement" craze has reached new levels of outlandishness, and I'm so damn tired of it.

5. That I grew up respecting my elders. Even though I'm pretty solidly one of those elders now, there are still a number of adults who are older than I am, and I extend to them the respect that is befitting of their experience and wisdom. Way too often now I witness young people sassing their elders, making fun of them, and simply ignoring them because, often to young people, the old people are seen as useless and even stupid because they are "out-of'the-loop." Any moment of disrespect to one of your elders is one moment too many in my opinion.

6. That I grew up appreciating the sacrifices of our military. My father served 20 years in the Air Force, so it was just a part of life for me to believe that the military was an important part of my world, but any American with even an ounce of common sense should be able to see that. I'm beyond tired of the people kneeling during the anthem, burning flags. protesting at the funerals of fallen servicemen and women, protesting about how they are mistreated, etc. We wouldn't have this country if people hadn't fought for it, we wouldn't have kept our freedom if people weren't willing to keep fighting for it, and a whole lot of other cultures owe a debt of gratitude to our military forces for stepping in when nobody else would. Are there flaws in our country and in our military even? Hell yes; because nobody and nothing is perfect. Deal with it. Put your damn hand over your damn heart, stand up, shut up, and show some respect. Consider yourself really fucking lucky to live in this country.

7. That I've learned and mastered a second language. Being able to converse and read and understand Spanish has opened parts of the world to me that otherwise would have been shut. I've gained the very best friend in the whole wide world, and if I hadn't learned Spanish and then taught it, I never would have met her at all . I can't even imagine my life without her in it, and I can't imagine a boring mono-lingual life either. I wish I knew more languages actually, so even more experiences would be open to me. Thankfully, I still have the capacity to learn more if I want, or should I say, when I can find the time to work that in. I do know a little Italian, and I would like to master that language next because Italy is such a fascinating country, and I want to have an extended stay there someday.

8. That I learned to ride a motorcycle at a young age. I've been able to take up riding in my middle age because I never forgot how to ride even though I was without a motorcycle for over twenty years. My Harley has taken me places I couldn't have imagined, and it led me to a great guy who also has a passion for riding motorcycles.

9. That I have two great kids. I never thought I'd be a good mom, but I know I am, and I've raised two fine kids. One is a role model for young people, and he's showing them to work hard for what they want instead of just sitting back waiting for it to be handed to you. The other is an aspiring scientist who is good to animals, the creatures who often need our help the most.

10. That I'm self-motivated. You don't have to coerce me into doing my work by promising me things. I'm never bored because I can always find something productive or meaningful to do -- remember that I always have a book on me or a word puzzle I can solve if I'm caught with idle time. I've written a novel that I self-published, and I've written a couple others that will be out in the near future, and I'm working on others. I convinced an editor to let me write a bi-monthly column. I turn lesson plans in on time every week. I clean my house even though I hate doing housework. I create flag routines, direct plays, find scripts for speech students, start and finish cross-stitch pieces, write blog posts that few people read simply because I'm motivated to write something every day, read numerous books throughout the year, paint rooms in my house, do yoga every morning, and many other things for the sake of self-improvement. I've always been that way -- well, perhaps my mom had to yell at me a little to get me to clean my room, but she never had to yell at me to do my homework, to study for tests, to go to work, to finish what I started, etc. If only more young people today were self-motivated the world would be a better place.

I'm thankful I'm me and not a bratty little kid who screams and carries on because he didn't get his way. I'm thankful I'm me and not a starving or homeless person living on the streets or in a war-torn and ravaged country. I'm thankful I'm me now and not me a few years ago when I was still married to a very horrible person. I'm thankful I'm me and not a person who cannot or who will not learn and read everyday. I'm thankful I'm me with a good family to support me and not a person who doesn't have a family at all. I'm thankful I'm me and not a person who refuses to open her mind to learning and using a second language. I'm thankful I'm me living in the heartland and not a person living in the inner-city amid gang fights and the like. I could go on and on because there is just so much to be thankful for. One final thing is that I'm thankful I get to spend another Thanksgiving with the people I love, and I only wish that a few more could join us.

To those who won't stop and consider all they have because they are too fixated upon what they don't have, I say "Shtick this!"

Why I Stopped Doing Stand-Up

For a number of years, I tried my hand at stand-up comedy. I appeared on stages in Lincoln, Columbus, Fremont, Neligh, Norfolk and Omaha, mostly as an unpaid amateur learning the ropes. 

I loved doing stand-up, especially when I got to be the emcee or hostess for a show as well. It was both the most terrifying and the most exhilarating thing I'd ever done. I had plans to continue learning the business in the hopes of taking it on the road someday.

Then things changed. I changed. My life changed. And I haven't done a minute of stand-up since.

People who know I once did stand-up will sometimes ask me if I'm ever going to do it again. I may, but I doubt it. If I do, it will be firmly in the realm of amateur with no aspirations to rise above that. Perhaps someday I'll stumble across a local watering hole holding an open mic night, and I'll hop on stage for old time's sake, or maybe I'll get an opportunity to host some event and throw some humor into the mix. Who knows? For now, though, I'm not planning on doing any stand-up.

When those who have seen me do comedy before ask me why I haven't done it for a while, I usually just shrug and say something about how I lack the time for it or that I don't feel like driving hours just to go on stage for five minutes or other such excuses. Until recently I didn't really understand why I'd suddenly lost the drive to do comedy, and then one day it hit me like a load of bricks.

    I'm not married anymore.

That's the real reason. Because I'm not married, I'm no longer angry and looking for outlets where I can express that anger in socially accepted and psychologically beneficial ways. I no longer need to tell others, in only slightly veiled and humorously twisted ways, about the misery of marriage. O.K., the misery of MY marriage.

At the time, though, you wouldn't have been able to convince me that anyone could be both happy and married. You wouldn't have been able to make me believe that love wasn't the gateway to eternal misery.

Instead, I spent numerous evenings with other bitter and angry people who used comedy also as an outlet to vent their frustrations about society, politics, sports, relationships, etc. upon often raucously drunken crowds of people who would laugh at about anything short of an actual punch in the face. While there are many happy-go-lucky people who do stand-up, most harbor some level of cynicism about something, and those are the things they choose to poke fun at.

I made fun of teaching because I am a teacher, so making jokes about it was a way to deal with my daily frustrations in that field. I made fun of parenting because I am a mother, but most of what I said concerning that topic dealt with amusing things my kids did -- no cynicism or anger involved there.

I made fun of marriage because I was married, and I hated it. Mostly, I hated the person I had married and the person I'd become as a result of our bad marriage.

I recall doing stand-up in a bar one night on my birthday and telling the crowd that it was my birthday and that my gift to myself was being there doing stand-up for them. A few people after the show approached me to ask me if it really was my birthday, and they couldn't believe that I'd rather be there with them, a bunch of strangers, than home with my own husband. In retrospect, it really was a horrible birthday gift to myself, but at the time, it was one of my best birthdays because I was away from the one who made me miserable.

Four years ago, though, I filed for divorce, and he moved out, and in a matter of seconds (I am not exaggerating in the least here), my life of complete and total cynicism melted away. Oh, I'm still a cynic about many things, but not to the level I had been. I was wallowing and drowning in cynicism, unable to see how life could ever be worth smiling about, so I'd put myself on a stage and get people to laugh with me and at me in a feeble attempt to put some humor in my life.

You could say that for a while stand-up was like a drug for me. It gave me a temporary high in a life full of low points. Don't be mistaken -- my kids brought me joy; without them, my life would have been completely hopeless. However, it was also because of them that I stayed with a man I hated for far too long in the misguided hope that somehow things would get better someday.

They did get better, but only when I removed him from my life. And it was an instantaneous improvement to my psyche and to every single aspect of my life.

I think initially I told myself that I was refraining from stand-up because it took too much work, and I was focused on the divorce, and then when that was finally over after more than a year, I told myself that I'd been away too long. I just kept finding excuses for not going back on stage until one day the truth of the matter hit me. I didn't need stand-up anymore.

I'd rather write, anyway. Things like my blogs, where I can interject humor amidst more serious subjects.

However, I have found myself thinking about stand-up again. Not because I want to bash love and marriage. No, I want to bash the sad state of our society and the jokes for candidates running for President and the violence that seems to be out of control everywhere. Those currently are the topics about which my inner cynic is most disgruntled, but I think there are enough stand-up comics tackling those very issues right now.

I'll wait a bit. The itch is there, but for now it's just an itch. Maybe I'll scratch it again someday, and maybe I won't. Whatever I do, though, I won't be making fun of divorce because it's the best damn decision I ever made, and these four years away from my shitty marriage have brought me nothing but joy.