Disappointed

Well,

Last night kind of sucked. It sucked a lot, actually. I decided to go to the doctor's office because I've been getting head aches an awful lot at work lately. I was on medicine for high blood pressure for a few years in college and they brought me off of it a few months ago because it seemed like I was doing pretty well. I guess not.

I still have high blood pressure. It wasn't good either. 136/98 (close enough), and that's really bad. When I was in college, I'd get anxiety spurts a lot; especially when I went to the doctor to have my blood pressure checked. This time around, I wasn't nervous at all. In fact, I was pretty confident it would be fine. Boy, was it a shock to see it high again. My heart sank in my chest when they read the numbers to me - mainly because it makes me sad knowing that I have this problem and I'm only 23 and I'm not overweight. I don't eat like a health freak, but I don't eat horribly either. It just seems like this is who I was born to be.

The main thing that scares me about the high blood pressure is the fact that it is so dangerous and that I've got Shannon, Jayden and soon-to-be Jaxson in my life now. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be nearly as upset about it. Luckily, it can be easily controlled with medicine - but I'm only 23, so what if it gets worse? My biggest fear, probably in the entire world, is leaving my sons behind and not being able to be a good dad for them. Ever since I was a little kid without my dad around, I made a promise to myself that I'd be the best dad in the entire world for my kids. I get scared when I think about something possibly happening to me. It's also gut-wrenching to think that, although Jayden plays with me every day and he smiles and laughs when I wrestle him around or tackle him like we're playing football, he won't remember any of it. So if something happened while he or his soon-to-be little brother were young, they'd never even know who their dad was. That scares me a lot.

But, one thing I need to realize is that God is up there and whatever his plans for me are - those are his plans. There's no sense worrying about anything - heck, that causes high blood pressure to begin with, hah! All I can do is my part - exercising, eating right, etc. It sucks some times because with work and the family, I don't always have a lot of time to get involved in my hobbies. I shouldn't complain though, because Shannon has a lot less time than me, and she probably complains half as much as I do :). I really was blessed with an amazing wife. Speaking of which, I felt really good today because I was able to put away some laundry and do some dishes before Shan got home from work because I took a sick day.

Work has been extremely stressful lately - probably a main reason why my BP is so high. The economy is really bad right now; it's very scary. About a quarter of my company got laid off about a week and a half ago. I'm an account manager and we have about 158 or so accounts at my company. On top of that, each account has anywhere from 5 to 950 or so locations that we have to manage. At any given time, one of those stores could lose their internet connectivity and along with it the ability to process credit cards (at which point they call me and I pull some strings and get things fixed). It's really hectic right now because we only have two account managers left including me and my boss Andreas who doesn't really know how to do everyday account management stuff because he was our boss before the lay offs, and it was our job to do the grunt work. Now we've got the 158 or so accounts split between three people. It's a nightmare.

Last night when I found out that my blood pressure was high again, it sapped a lot out of me emotionally, so I decided to call Andreas and ask him for a sick day today. I have like 60 hours of PTO because I never really take time off, and he was understanding so I stayed home. I didn't do much - just playing the newest fad LittleBigPlanet. It's a really awesome game - lots of fun. Last night my friend from high school, Deric, came over and we worked on a level we've been creating based on our inside jokes from high school. Every few months Deric throws a gaming tournament that is aptly named, "The Tournament of Gaming". We usually set up several games in a bracket-style tournament and include a scoring system that goes with each game to determine the overall winner. Each game is split into a category that tests abilities that we believe the "ultimate" gamer must possess, i.e., Hand-eye coordination, Reflexes, Logic, etc. It's a lot of fun and I look forward to it every time we do it. I finished second last year behind Deric, but I'm pretty sure that happened because we played several games I'd never played before that he owned. I remember I took 1st in a few games, including a lot of the retros from my Ballinger Home days with my friends Joel, Hong and Jordan: Mario Kart 64 and Goldeneye 64.

So anyhow, I pretty much just worked on our level for TOG2 all day. I made some decent progress, but I've kind of hit a "creator's block" of sorts and can't figure out where to go with it next. We'll see.
When I finished doing that I downloaded some Final Fantasy 7 mp3s to get the nostalgic emotions going on my PS3 while I folded laundry.

Sure enough, while I was doing that, Shannon got home from work with my little J-man! It always makes me so happy when I see him and that cute little smile he always gets when he sees me. It makes me melt every single time. I wrestled with him a bunch today - I love spinning him around and listening to him laugh. He gets his pay back though - man does my son love to hit his dad. He seems like during every given moment he's got something in his hand and he's smacking me in the face with it hahaha!! I try to tell him no, but sometimes I can't help but laugh because he thinks it is so funny when he hits me and I say "ow!" Man, he is so cute and he's growing up so fast. He's getting so incredibly smart. I'm so proud of him - I love my little dude!

Speaking of which, I should probably go to bed. It's getting late and the little munchkin could wake up at any moment - and I've got J-duty. AAAAHHHH!!

Tomorrow's a big day! I'm excited to see Jaxson in 3D - but I really don't know what to expect. I don't think it's really sunk in that I'm going to be a dad again in a little over two months - HOLY CRAP!

Here we go!!

Well,

It will be interesting to see how this thing works out. Usually, I'm not very good at keeping up with journals or that sort of thing, but this time around I really feel motivated to. I'm not really sure why a big part of me wants to start a blog, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I don't really know a lot about my dad's childhood or anything that made him who he became. The other huge part of it is actually really simple: I LOVED my childhood and I want to relive it every day of my life.

With that being said, I'm not really sure how this will develop, and to be honest, I really don't care how it develops. I think I tend to spend too much time evaluating things instead of just doing them, so I want to let this flow and materialize as it moves along, much like life does. One thing I absolutely KNOW will be in this blog is memories from my past - mainly because I am always thinking about my past memories. I am a very, very, very (did I mention very?) nostalgic person. I love daydreaming about the past when I'm bored or have down time; mainly because I cherish my memories so very much. It's probably a good thing that I start this and keep up with it, because who knows what might happen in the future - Alzheimer's runs on my mom's side of the family. Heck, if I'm going to be old and senile, at least I'll have my life written down on paper.

Another reason I think this will be cool (and maybe I'm ignorant/self absorbed to think they'll care enough to read into this in the future), is that my wife Shannon and I are having our second baby boy (Jayden Ezra is almost 1 year, 2 months old) this April - Jaxson Robert. I think it would be awesome down the road if my kids are ever curious about things they may have inherited from their dad, that they can just look at my journal/blog and pick out little details about me that may remind them of themselves when they grow up. I know that I love seeing parts of my family members materialize in my personality as I've grown older throughout the years.

So...I'm not going to do a daily entry or anything. In fact, I'm just going to post when I feel like it. Maybe several times a day, maybe once a week - we'll see how it works out. I'm not going to sweat the stupid details much like grammar or spelling. Who cares about that crap, anyhow? I'd much rather focus on the bigger picture: my feelings, my emotions and my experiences in this 1-in-7 billion chance life that is mine.

Here's to an exciting journey. I don't really care if anyone reads this - it's mainly for me anyways. But if you want to tag along and delve a little deeper into what makes me me, you're welcome to join me!

Happy hunting!