Draniki

Our middle son turns 12 today! His request for a special breakfast: draniki. Dra-what? He's taken quite an interest in geography, and recently has researched Belarus. Draniki is a Belarussian potato pancake. The recipe he presented me was simple: grated potatoes and onions, with salt, pan-fried. Okay.
Now, my normal recipe for potato latkes is includes eggs and flour, without draining the potatoes. This time, I drained the potatoes, then poured off the liquid, and mixed the thick potato starch that sunk to the bottom as a thickener. The idea was not my own, but indicated in the recipe as an option. I love learning new things in the kitchen.
I've been cooking since my first cooking class (given by a friend of my mom's) some 40-ish years ago. Try it, grate potatoes, drain the liquid, then see the off-white substance at the bottom of the bowl or glass. The consistency is that of corn starch and water. The draniki were a bit gummier/chewier than my usual potato pancakes but still crisp and delicious, served with sour cream per Belarussian tradition (and apple sauce, per family tradition).
Finding my happiness certainly involves cooking.

Follow

I've never felt much like a follower. But then, I used feel like a success. When my R&D firm dissipated, and after spending more than a year seeking gainful employment, a few cross-country interviews that didn't amount to offers, then an opportunity in my current career, I claimed the motto: "Robert Frost be damned; I'll follow the path well-trodden". I guess that's the over compensation of an entrepreneurial endeavor that ended: retrace your steps and try the other route. Three years and counting, I'm still waiting for it to feel like my own.

Predated post from November 9, 2016

I like who I used to be.

So much passion, so many teeming ideas, endlessly creative, driven, curious, interested, alive.

Now, I feel only half here. Getting through life, making a living. Not really disliking what I do. Just no longer involved, passionate, creative, curious, interested.

I feel so much less an inspiration, pedestrian. I spend my time watching TV, or staying busy with work, in part just to keep myself occupied.

I find I have so little energy. It's a vicious cycle, no energy to think, no thinking saps my energy.

It's like I'm one of Ivan Klíma's characters: intellectuals, professors, doctors, engineers, creators, sweeping up the streets, because I've been banned from my true vocation for being an “enemy of the state”. Of course, his characters were modeled on their real-world counterparts. Only, I've no shackles imposed on me, except perhaps the drive to shore up our finances, to make a living, pay the bills, get us to the next step.

So much of my world is started but not ended. I've sometimes thought that were better, pitying those who had already realized their rewards, their accolades, their Nobels or Pulitzers, their stage fame, wondering what's next? I reveled in potential.

But sometimes, I've felt that very same potential, that striving, was a hollow husk, never quite solid, never filled out, never realized. And now I find myself between, feeling useful often enough, but longing for what I feel I've lost, wondering: okay, so now I'm useful; is this all there is?

Partly, working for a company, I'm limited in my expression, fearing if I let myself free, I may be cut down, for violating corporate policy, or stepping over some arbitrary legal team's line of appropriate conduct.

But fearing if I step out of the sheltered protection my job offers me, we won't make enough money to support the lifestyle we want. Funny that, I feel dissatisfied with the life I have, yet I hold on to the ability to maintain it. Perhaps, I fear letting go again, I may fall too far, and that life would be worse.

Partly, I'm motivated to get us that base, that financial foundation from which I can feel secure, free to take risks again. We're just not there yet. But I fear, such thinking is a slippery slope: when is enough enough? How will I know?

Take the Babble

I came down into the dungeon to write. The dungeon is our family computer room, in the basement of our rental house. Five desktops with seven full-sized monitors, a couple printers, a laptop fill the space. The boys spend hours a day here: Minecraft, Youtube, Duolingo, Coursera... At present, two of the boys are upstairs watching one of the Ice Age movies. The middle son, I, as is his habit, watches a Minecraft video on one screen, while working in one of his worlds on the other. No amount of explanations and articles and evidence that multi-tasking is a myth will deter his practice.

And he talks... and talks. When he's standing up, he can't stand still, endlessly pacing about. I used to describe the ceaseless need for distraction as relating to "the MTV generation", which for some reason I considered myself beyond, as if MTV had not first come to the fore as my puberty was in full swing.

I find myself often distracted and uninterested in his babble. But a part of me knows or believes that it is more. There is interaction there, relationship building, that I wish so much to learn to harness. I admire my wife, R, her ability to seem more interested than I feel, more interested than I believe she feels. So, I smile, and nod, laugh, and emit appreciative sounds: huh, wow, interesting, yeah, I see what you mean.

Fake it 'til you make it. How much of my life is faking it? There's the dilemma! Part of me, the adult let's say, the practical realist, has made conscious choices, discerning or deciding the best available choice (BAC) at each turn. See, a few years ago, I had my ideal career: I was an entrepreneur, sole owner, president, chief scientist of my small but growing R&D concern. I was the boss and the inspiration, the lead and the visionary.

I had felt important, appreciated, and on the path to realizing some of that potential I had always relied on. But then... it fell apart. My startup became a shutdown. I pared down to nothing from the 5 full time and 3 part time employees we had, until all that remained was to collect a few residual payments, continue to seek opportunities. Eventually, that became a full-on job search.

In the end, I chose the best available choice. And three years into a new career, here I remain, up and down. And that state of affairs has led me here, seeking happy once again.

Starting once again

A new blog, a new face, a new time, a new career, new expectations. I find myself, middle-aged, married, father of three. I used to have aspirations, dreams, hopes. Somewhere along the way of living, I began to just get by. I love my wife; I love my boys. I just want to find the way back to happy.