Lately I've been spending an exuberant amount of time on my work, and as I've mentioned in earlier posts, more or less ignoring everyone I know in the process.
Now what do I mean by exuberant amount of time? Obviously I mean the bare minimum amount of time I can put into something while taking an online Philosophy class and working part (full) time at a hotel as a front desk agent and bartender.
In other words, I've gotten soft and lazy over a good-ish paycheck while trying to write the end of my book. (Also, I'm pretty much done with that now, and I'll be editing it in August- which is a weird thought.)
But by now you're probably wondering, why is this titled "Starting Before You're Ready"? Isn't that a kind of ridiculous name for some kind of open letter?
Yes, yes it is.
So, here goes.
Yesterday I submitted my work to a writing competition for the first time. Not much is at stake here, and I don't think I'll win by a long shot considering what I'm up against.
But for me this is a huge milestone.
It's putting my work out there to be scrutinized not by well meaning individuals, but by those willing to pay for my work. In other words, it is stepping out and into the real world of writing before I am even ready to be out there.
And you could say, "wait a tec, Alexander, You've been working on this book of yours for almost a year now (if you include the three months I had to shelve it to get through my last semester at school, when I didn't write at all), and you started writing almost two years ago, by now you should be ready to actually submit work for your livelihood, no?"
No, you are exactly incorrect. When I started writing, I had no clue what I was doing, and sure I wrote a very long story with hopes of connecting the very separate (but always lumped together) science fiction and fantasy worlds, I was chewing on a seven-book project from hell that was doomed to begin with.
I had no idea what a story was, and no real ability to learn it.
So I started before I was ready and learned so much that I violently scrapped the project and never looked at it again.
And now I'm caught in my current work, a space odyssey that is well over five hundred pages long and not getting any shorter, at least until I tear it apart and make it read-worthy.
But does that make me ready to submit my work to the public for monetary feedback? Hell no. In fact, I am not at all skilled enough a writer to submit to competitions. So why would I even try? Because of a principle that got me almost everything I have in life:
Starting before you're ready.
Was I ready to speak Chinese at work with customers and coworkers to accomplish all the goals of hospitality and the service industry? Absolutely not, and my awful excuse for a standard working fluency in Chinese has never been better.
Was I ready for my advanced Japanese class, where I would have to formulate ideas in complex sentences and give opinions in near- fluency level detail after only a year and a half of studying Japanese? No, not in the slightest, but my B in the class is a tribute to the work I put into it with significant help from my tutors and professor, and my essays for that class are some of the best writings I've ever created.
And so I've decided to do the same thing with my work, and will regularly submit my writing until it is good enough to make money, until it does what I want it to do.
You see, I want to make people think, and feel. I want people to laugh from words on paper that I wrote, to tear up and vomit profusely at the situations I put their innocent fictional friends in. I want to write from the heart and be able to touch the hearts of those who see my work. And I want to write so much that my work pervades the air.
Hopefully, with the help of my readers who care so much about their own lives and work so hard to attain the betterment of our world, I can achieve such things, but to do that I have to do things before I'm ready.
Of course I will be uploading all of the submitted stories rejected and accepted to abkshorts for you all to enjoy or hate, whichever is preferable.
On another note, I would like to bring up my translation portfolio blog. The few people who have seen it may be wondering- what the hell Zander, you promised weekly posts and even a whole novel translation! Are you seriously that lazy?
Secondly, as far as legality goes, I would rather either translate my own work, or better yet, submit original work there. After much thought I came to a decision. On that blog you will soon find my ramblings in Chinese and Japanese and eventually whatever other languages I decide to study. My translation of that novel will be removed and probably completed in private.
Everything I post will be my own work and translated into English so that it can be scrutinized by my readers. It's updates will be posted to websites that are accessible to speakers of the various languages I'm learning.
I beg an hope for violent merciless feedback so that I can edit my own work and make it perfect.
That means that everything I post there, so long as people point out my mistakes, will actually improve over time, and so a post I wrote five years ago might be a completely different post today! I think it's a great way to learn a language, especially in our modern world, and I love being wrong as often as possible so that I can be right later on down the road. So my Japanese and Chinese speaking friends, please tear my work apart so that I can talk with you more easily.
On that note, I love you all. Have a fantastic day!
My little sister sent me a message recently saying that she hasn't seen or heard from me in months and asking if I was okay.
It was one of the most beautiful messages I have ever received. It is sad, but I'll admit to preferring the sound of "Where have you been?" to "Why are you still here?" In the days of constant internet access and instant feedback it has become abnormal for people to simply fall off the face of the Earth.
Falling off the face of the Earth, mind you, is my specialty.
So what have I been doing? Writing, writing nonstop except to work, eat, sleep, shower, and read. In fact I've taken on a third job as a front desk agent in the hotel which my bar is located, it is about this that I figure it's time I shared some thoughts.
So let me tell you a few things.
My first weekend as a front desk agent was a swift kick in the groin. To me, customer service is not some complicated ritual that only some people can do, but a learned skill that is basic human nature, until you actually get down and dirty with the problem clients, like the person who felt the need to spell out a four letter word while slamming their hand on the table because it was pronounced by another person in a different accent, or the client who gets exactly what they want but screams and yells because they didn't get it exactly the way they wanted.
Yes, that is customer service.
When a person goes on vacation, or to a McDonalds for that matter, they suddenly forget that other people exist. This is in effect the real reason people find they cannot provide excellent customer service, or even handle these kinds of jobs at all. Too many people simply want the product without taking an honest look at the work it takes to get that product, and in a hotel- the chances of an employee to receive such a customer go up by an alarming rate. The reason, I suppose, is due to fatigue. Most complaining customers later explain that they are tired, or came from a great distance. They suddenly become not customers of various enterprises but victims of companies that view them not as people but as consumers.
See what I did there? I just flipped the whole thing over on its head- the consumers are treated like bags of money and the employees are treated like bags of products. It's a nice cycle that everyone cries victim of. I've known this ever since that scar in my resume called two-ish years of Wal-Mart. And I try my best to think of that every time I get a new customer through my doors.
But why should working at a front desk be any different? Well, it's not- in fact it's pretty easy on the surface, you stand there, look happy try not to die inside (die inside anyway) and provide the service you are hired to provide. But when you go deep enough and actually attempt it, you'll find that a front desk agent not only has to memorize a ridiculous series of unrelated but completely intertwining rules, regulations, and procedures that ultimately are completely useless except in the most extreme circumstances where their absence or mishandling ends in a really bad law-suit. Never in my life have I frozen up and made mistakes that could have cost me the job more than my first few weeks at the front desk because of exactly these procedures.
What do you mean, you ask?
Say I put a customer that has booked through third party in to my system. Their account requires me to take down their credit card information because the card on file isn't real. But I put it through anyway because I'm lazy, now the hotel is out a couple hundred dollars (This is impossible with my system, but gives you an idea).
Or say a customer brings pets to the hotel, so we have them fill out a pet registration form, but the pets are service animals, so now we just violated policy by asking them to fill out a form, they sue the company for breaking the law.
All of this boils down to the quick five minute conversation between the desk agent trying desperately to be left alone and the customer trying desperately to not get ripped off while being left alone from the annoying fake small talk the representative is required to regurgitate. If that five minutes goes bad, money is lost by often hundreds of dollars.
So no pressure or anything.
When all that is down and there is no longer any way the front desk agent could get those interactions wrong, suddenly they can be thrown into a situation so absurd that they have to use a novel technology that most humans don't have access to- problem solving skills.
Instant and immediate problem solving is accomplished in several different ways:
There's the yes man:
Customer- Hey I'd like my room for half the regular rate, and I want to check out four hours late since you said you're sold out tomorrow, can you do that?
Yes man- Sure thing!
The Idunno:
Customer- how do I get to my room?
Idunno- Idunno.
The helpful but useless:
Customer- Can you explain to me exactly how it is that we can look at rocks and tell how old they are?
The helpful but useless- Oh jeese let me ask my manager, Bob, BOB, can you- oh he's at a meeting with the hotel owner right now can you just wait there, oh wait no I'm sorry he went home for the day, Hah! where's my head at. Sorry I can't help you, feel free to ask my boss when he gets in next time around the time he's scheduled.
All of these techniques provide excellent strategies for getting the customer as far away as possible as soon as possible with only a minimal amount of loud vituperation.
Of course I'm kidding, but you'd be surprised how not cut-and- dry this job really is. It is a job so easy that it's not, so hard that it's not and yet still has you going home exhausted and crying.
In all it has helped me improve my writing, especially dialogue, as I have personally found it easier to write the awkward conversational scenes in my as yet unfinished novel Adebayo's End.
HOLD ON ALEXANDER, you scream, YOU SAID IT WOULD BE DONE BY LIKE FOREVER AGO!
Yeah... yeah I did. But when I got to forever ago I found that I had at least twenty thousand more words to go, and that was twenty-four thousand words ago...
The book has become roughly five hundred some odd pages over the past month in its first draft, which I expect to cut down in half during editing- and with work and a summer course coming up I'm going to be slightly distracted, especially when it comes to responding to messages and phone calls.
If it is any consolation- I can see the ending and it's really a matter of just filling those spaces, and I must say that is a liberating place to be. I expect to publish before 2019, so I'm still on schedule, just behind by a few months.
When I started this blog I thought that I wanted to share little details of my life with my family- who I knew had their own lives to live and their own paths to follow, far from where I happened to be. I really wanted to connect in an unabashed and honest medium- to show everyone I love a side of me I normally reserve for the closest people.
My last post, was unarguably the hardest thing I have ever made public. So difficult in fact that I felt I needed yet another hiatus from blogging- from writing, to be frank.
So as I'm sure you can guess, in that time a lot has happened.
Since writing that post I have left a job or two behind and rethought my future, I have finished my bachelors (a story in itself I might add), met a Moose, and begun that long awaited trek into THE REAL WORLD.
I also decided it was time to FINALLY finish something,
drum roll please!
I'm writing a novel.
...Everyone pretty much knows this by now...
I'm Finishing my novel.
There, take that!
It's not the first one, heavens no- more like the third... or was it the tenth? In any case, I've thrown away a lot of (LONG, like 200 pages long..) stories before I came to this one...
I started Adebayo's End around August 2017, and put it on hold during the semester (putting a book on hold means averaging a thousand words per month..) And have finally gotten back into full force averaging around 10,000 words a week.
I have to say, writing a book is literally one of the biggest adventures I've ever undertaken. I wish I could talk about the story, and its themes, but a serious book is something that cannot be known by anyone except the author until the first draft has been torn to shreds in the editing process and several gnomes are ritualistically slaughtered.
...
I expect to publish before I leave Binghamton for work (and forever) this Summer. And I really hope you'll enjoy it, whoever reads it that is.
That said, I'm looking for people I know, good ol' honest folk who are willing to say to me:
"This story is great, when compared to the flatulence of the arse of my Aunt Wiggly's pig GarfelSnout the Third."
Or
"Hey, How about you take a look at page 65. What you're character is doing here doesn't really seem like her, but more like something out of a damn Twilight book."
(If you're wondering I'd prefer that last one)
(Also, if you have an Aunt Wiggly I would like to meet her and her pig)
(Also Also if any sections of my work remind you of that abomination of a vampire series I will personally burn the page it was written on and start over from scratch)
I desperately need people who are willing to do this for me, people who would really enjoy being a part of my work, and if it's crap- I'd like to know now so I can take more writing lessons!
So if you are one of those people, and you are interested in being involved in my writing process before I get it professionally edited, I would appreciate your help. Please contact me via email.
But wait, there's more!
Truth is (The Updatening):
The reason for the rush is that I figured I'd rather finish my book first so that I can get up one day with passive income and be financially stable enough to you know, not say to myself:
"Well, I guess I can't go doodily-squacking until my paycheck comes, but then if I go doodily-squacking after my paycheck comes then I won't be able to eat squiggily snoops next Thursday.... and I really love squiggily snoops..."
Let's just say that I'm caught in that rest-of-your life situation where any thing I do actually will have lasting effects. And frankly I also just want to finish my damn book..
That does not change my financial situation, I am in need of a job. So as a result the next few months will be spent building a portfolio of translation projects and writing while I job search for a full time job (and write my book..)
(good time to say, if you're hiring, let me knowww!)
So that is my way of hinting that there will be a lot more content uploaded to my websites between now and May.
Once my first draft is completed and the second draft is edited I will be sending copies out to those who were interested in giving me suggestions on my work.
During that time (March or April) I will be uploading short stories to a new site, and throughout I will be uploading translations to the books I am reading here and for progress updates on my work you can follow my personal facebook page here.
For Haimumhaidad updates you can follow Haimumhaidad on Facebook and Instagram, for my photography portfolio you can look here and you can find me on Linkedin as well (I only connect with people I know). I am always available for emails too.
It's been a while, a long while, especially since my last post concerned a bachelor party and was loaded with hints about this very post here. While I'd like to say nice things, while I'd like to have kept my chin up, that last post left off before I found myself busier than ever with school and work, at two jobs and four hours of homework per class per day. So I apologize for the hiatus, needless to say I didn't really want to take one.
Now, this post isn't directed toward my parents, but to everyone who reads my series of brain farts I call a blog. Firstly, thank you, your support does keep me going and if this blog is the only excuse I have to continue writing, then so be it I'll keep writing.
Now, the title may be slightly controversial, so I may have to explain myself. About two years ago I had my last great depression. I drank alcohol excessively and felt as though I was dying inside every day. I sat in a tear-filled brooding mess kicking and screaming about how every problem I've ever had was someone else's fault.
Eventually I sought help and after a short run with some antidepressants I began to turn my life around. But along the way came something quite dear to me. I felt, with no small semblance of doubt that there was two personalities living inside of my body. One who was weak-minded, angry, vindictive, victimized, unproductive, and useless, and another who was in every way the exact foil of this personality. I called this new, cleaner personality Alexander Kodama, and throughout the next year fought tooth and nail to kill Alex Harder, the child who refused to move on.
Over time I gained more and more control over myself, I found myself able to do next to anything I set my mind to, I became stronger, smarter, more adaptable, and significantly more productive. And the metaphor of these two personalities manifested itself in the form of a complete rejection of Alex Harder and everything he was.
Those of you who know Alex Harder know that he intended to become an Astrophysicist. He spent countless hours staring at the stars and pouring over textbooks. But suddenly all of that began to change. Now, even after nearly seven years, when I look up at a clear sky I relive what happened to me, and Alex Harder relived those moments every day as he struggled to force himself to still love Astronomy.
Alex ruined his relationships one at a time. He sought out depressed and victimized friends, He began to hate the normality some people could comfortably breathe in. He hated family members, blamed them, refused to see what it was that they did for him. He hurt those he loved or smothered them into hating him.
He was depressed for seven straight years, suicidal for many of them and had no reason to pursue a future that had abandoned him.
I know it may sound strange for me to speak of myself in the third person. But rape, no matter what form it takes, severely alters the state of a person's mind. Victims of statutory rape are particularly vulnerable, with male victims being among the most likely to commit the act in adulthood, and it is true without a doubt that most pedophiles are victims of sexual assault themselves. But I HAVE to refer to myself this way, because just yesterday, I buried Alex Harder, what small amount of him that was left.
I am sorry to say it, but I am not Alex for a reason. And, though many of you are family, I will heatedly say that you are referring to the dead when you call me Alex. And so all of his memories, to me, are that of another person. I motivate myself by saying "you are not Alex Harder", I get up in the morning knowing that Alexander Kodama will do great things in his life, and now that Alex is gone, I can finally find the strength to move forward proud of who I am and who I will become.
Eventually it was time for me to move on, and a year ago I simply took it.
But just before I felt complete enough to take my new name I got a phone call, one that threatened to risk everything. The man who sexually assaulted me when I was a young teenager, who taught me to use drugs to escape from my problems, was suing my sister for custody of my two nieces.
This, I saw, was my chance to finally lay Alex Harder to rest. and during that phone call I admitted what had happened to my sister, a woman who helped raise me, for the first time. Blurting it out that I was raped and repeatedly molested. Forcing facts on a person who knew nothing, and hearing nothing but tears in reply. Telling her repeatedly how much I loved her; I fought on and explained everything I could. Explaining that it was not her fault and that there is nothing that we can do about it now. It was a long drive home that day and one of the best things I may have ever done, no matter how painful it was to do.
But I learned a lot in these years, both before and while I was on the stand.
Firstly, the system is inherently against the rape victim, especially for a male. For starters, the sheriff who filed my report ignored or completely misrepresented some of the information given. There was no comfort in that meeting, and to be frank, him being male and of the same body type as the man who assaulted me, my testimony was less than cooperative. The lawyers assume you are lying right off the bat, due to the fact that rapes generally take years for the victim to process and something everyone calls "courage" to admit. To this day many of my friends and family have no idea what had happened. And though I'm willing to change that now, it has created many rifts, many painful memories, many failed relationships.
Next, being male there is a serious perceived weakness in being victimized in such a way, and a whole world of ignorance. Misunderstandings of this have completely and irreparably destroyed relationships in my life. Most notably being that with my father, with whom I have only recently worked to repair. But this dynamic of weakness leads to aggressive tendencies, feelings and thoughts that are immoral in every respect appear seemingly out of thin air simply because you want a release from a perceived femininity.
Lastly, I have never in my life felt more vulnerable, more in pain, more barely able to hold myself together, than when I admitted in front of people I know and don't know, people I love and hate, that a man had forced himself on me and that I was powerless to stop him. Never have I needed more support than yesterday, or the day I had to talk to my father about it, or the day I panicked and admitted to my mother only to get responses from them, which I will not elaborate on here, that broke my heart in every possible way.
But saying it in front of Mr. Robert's English class, while pissed at a good friend, was cathartic. There is no vulnerability when you use it as a weapon. And I hope I never do such a thing again.
I've spent years struggling with the fact that I never joined a group that fights sexual assault. I spent years worrying about the fate of my nieces, I spent years in constant disappointment in myself for not being stronger sooner.
And so when October 2016 came around, effectively saying to my sister that I will fight tooth and nail and that I am no longer interested in protecting myself, I knew that I could finally start doing the right thing. And so on top of my schoolwork I worked with lawyers to, most uncomfortably, complete a ten page affidavit detailing the events as they occurred. Making draft after draft, I could barely breathe.
On top of that having to be front of a group of lawyers attending a deposition in my lawyer's office, doing everything I could not to break down as the opposition lawyer skirted around discussing the rape and the molestation I endured for years.
And finally getting called to testify. And being in that room, with the judge to my right, a man who ruined my life directly in front of me, and my sister crying in her chair, I spoke in detail about how I was repeatedly drugged, how one night a man bent me over on the concrete in a barn, and forced his seed into me. I sat there and explained how the sky that night was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I explained how the man would drink daily, how he regularly suggested I drink, how he offered what I consider no different from child pornography as a more suitable stimulant for someone my age than to view a nineteen year old. I expressed how he ruined my life, my sex life, my love life, every aspect of who I was for almost an entire decade.
I forced myself to speak, and choked back tears. I fought eye contact with a man I had avoided for seven years with every fiber of my being. Yet I watched as he took notes with no expression of guilt, shame, or disgust. A blank face sat directly opposite me and soaked in every word I said, wrote it all down as if it was the most normal thing he had ever heard. I can't even begin to describe how I held back anger. How much I wanted to scream and yell. I questioned myself how it could be that such a person could exist, how while being accused of atrocity a person could shamelessly treat it as a nonissue.
And when it was all said and done, I left the room, sat in a waiting room, and cried more than I had cried in years. Real tears, tears that reminded me that it was over. But I was not crying because of the pain, or the stress, no I cried because I was saying goodbye to the boy that was victimized. I cried to let him go free and to no longer live a life considering who has control over my actions, because from now and until forever it will always be me and not him.
My father once told me that some days you are the pigeon and some days you are the statue. But he failed to mention that at the end of the day, the pigeon still flies and the statue still stands. I've skipped classes for this, chosen not to do homework, chosen not to go to work. But that has to be acceptable, and I have to say that nothing I've ever toiled with was so difficult or completely irreversible an issue, nothing is the end of everything. Life on this world has fought mass extinction and every time it fights back.
We are life. We must fight to survive and find who we are, and we cannot let anyone else tell us we're someone else.
If I may make a request, I want you all to stand up to yourself now and forever. The world needs your ambition, not your Netflix binges.
Fight temptations that serve you no benefit.
Stand up to your demons and make a name for yourself.
Be courageous and take a day off when you need it, knowing that you don't want to.
And never, ever think that because you are the victim of any abuse you get to live a life on a bed eating chips and suffer in luxury.
No; it is the victims, the hurt people, the ones who struggle to find something better who stand out in eternity as immortals.
Build yourself, be yourself, fight for your life.
You have no reason to pursue happiness, but every reason to peruse a better self-image.
And if you think you're satisfied never taking that trip to Europe, never writing that book, or living in a world of "I could have been ___"
Then watch me and people like me overtake you, and prove to me that your life was better lived.
First I'd like to say thank you, dad for the awesome t-shirt!
It is not only comfortable, but it is just plain awesome!
And Thank you mum for helping me with my car, and for spending
some time with me while I was up
^.^
Once the car is completely fixed I'll set up a date to come up north and visit everyone, either before or after the wedding!
As you may have guessed by my short absence, I have "just" come back from a vacation. Where did I go? What did I do? Well I won't answer questions without a lawyer present.
Oh.. two lawyers were present?
Well... I guess I'll talk..
So I call it a vacation because I wasn't working or writing, but it was definitely not a vacation. You see, my brother, Lawyer Dog-er, I mean, Christopher, is getting married in two weeks. This of course means we hired all the strippers, went out in the middle of nowhere, got him extremely drunk, took some crazy illegal drugs, and then accidentally killed him.
As you can see it was funny at the time...
Okay so there were no drugs, he surprisingly didn't die, and the closest thing there was to stripping was each of us taking turns in the shower at the hotel.
Now, I'll admit, the timing for our trip was quite bad for me, as for reasons you both know, I was subpoena'd to court the day the bachelor party started. Thankfully I wasn't called to testify, so when our adventure started I merely didn't want to be there as opposed to actually being so overwhelmed that I would have had to refuse to go all together. So yes, I'll be honest, I wanted to go home when our trip started. But I needed that trip more than my fellow groomspeople know, and I really feel indebted to my brother for putting me in the bridal party, even if I'm just a flower girl.
This. Actually. Exists.
Honestly, being an unhappy turd is an awful way to support your brother, or anyone for that matter. But for reasons I will not explain here and now, I'll just have to say that me looking like this for the first half of the trip was completely justified:
I look like an old man who just got
a birthday cake right after his dog died
(Disclaimer, I did cut everyone else out of this picture
because they look better than me, what of it.)
But I did cheer up and had a lot of fun. So once again.
Let me tell you a story.
I have a brother. Okay, well I have a lot of them, but this one is my oldest.
He likes guns, and beer, and things.
This guy has helped me more than almost anyone else on the planet. He's a good brother, a good lawyer, and a good shot with a pistol:
And a shotgun:
When I was without enough money to buy food, he gave me some. When I couldn't afford rent, he let me in for over a year.
Yet I have been less than approachable towards him, and this is an unfortunate truth. Without intentionally doing so, I have been at times utterly uncomfortable in his presence. Even though I would happily visit him if invited.
Why have I been a bad brother? Because he and I are too similar? Because I feel I owe him and don't want to be reminded of my debt?
Well in actuality it has a lot to do with what I was going through before I changed myself. And since I regard nearly everything from that time period with negative emotions, he tends to get a lot of that negative energy from me.
But just as It's not time to discuss why I was subpoena'd or the reasons I have a lawyer right now, it's not time to discuss this very related issue regarding my previous depression. So Christopher, my apology will have to wait, it will come, but it will have to wait.
Now that introductions are over. Here's how it goes.
Being his bachelor party, his best person planned an awesome adventure in our home town and in the Adirondacks. So, on Thursday my brother picked me up in his car, and we took the four hour trek to the North Country.
Unless within the past week they magically
shaved an hour's worth of driving off of I-81 This trip should generally
take about four hours.
We visited his father before they took me to mum's house, where I stayed the night before heading to court the next day. -Of course this was after stopping at a local diner that has consistently made me delicious french toast for the last 15 years.
GG and Papa Joe were there,
and they even without hesitation
(or really needing to ask)
put whipped cream on my
french toast like I had ordered it since when
I was five.
and after speaking with my lawyer I spent my day sitting in the waiting room for several hours until I was let go and my brother and I finally went on our way to start the party.
BACHELOR PARTY PART 1
GUNZ
We bought beer, grabbed our guns (and watermelons), and then went to the cabin outside my brother's father's house and got drunk while we shot things. We exploded coconuts, we took cool pictures, we hit targets that were so far you had to wait for a ting to know if you made a hit. We shot at a rock face and watched bullets ricochet, we debated shooting at CO2 cannisters (SERIOUSLY DON'T EVER DO THOSE LAST TWO). Essentially we had fun.
And I may or may not have had more beer than I should have.
Pardon my language, when my brother and I are together
I swear literally 70% more than I normally would.
(also, the person in the back trying to photobomb is the best person
for the wedding, and with me in the video is a fellow groomsmen)
We're so cool and trendy
I'd like to take a break here and talk about guns. My uncle, a pacifist and a writer, has only shot a firearm once in his life, as he wanted to experience it for himself to accurately depict the act of firing one off in his stories. He describes it as an unnatural amount of power in the hands of an entirely fallible being. Wielding a firearm is one of the nearest things to having the power to control life and death. It is not safe, and it is for most people, terrifying.
During our excursion I personally witnessed the damage a firearm can do to objects harder than the human body. Hell I almost unintentionally cut down a tree with a shotgun, which was deeply disturbing to me on multiple levels.
Now personally, I hate guns. It is not a weapon of choice for me and like my uncle I feel that they are too powerful to be in the hands of most people.
That said, guns exist, and everyone should know both how to fire one and how to defend yourself against one. Though murders involving firearms are not the norm, they are still a threat that should not be taken lightly. They really are the worst case scenario and I feel people should know what to do in all worst case scenarios.
So if you're reading this, I ask you to think about taking gun safety courses, or heading down the street to your local gun-slinging neighbor's house and ask them if they'd like a couple packs of cold beer in exchange for some gun lessons (Try not to choose the latter option, beer and guns DO NOT *normally* mix well).
Okay, now after we killed innocent fruits and I had to prey to my soul about hurting the trees, we left the cabin and changed into our bachelor party clothes before receiving our awesome gifts from my brother (mine was a knife that I now carry all of the always).
Seriously these shirts are awesome, and before you mention it, I didn't have the time to put my shoes on before we took the shot so I'm not actually that freakishly tall I'm just standing on my tippy toes.
Also savor the moment because that is the last picture of me wearing shorts outside you might ever see.
The beer was good. The movie was good, the friendships were budding.
PART 2 MOUNTAINZ
And then after a restful four hour sleep, we got up and went on an adventure to Lake Placid. But not before grabbing some coffee (where I met Desiray, a very attractive girl that I accidentally called Jasmine... sorry Desiray... thanks for playing it off like I was just an idiot).
We drove and talked about sex offender parole, Oddly Charismatic Jerks who "do you a favor" and ask where all the high school girls hang out, and hilarious porn magazine titles before arriving at our first stop of the day, Mount Jo.
Mount Jo is a quick two hour hike that can be done before you have the rest of an entire bachelors party so our best person figured it was a great idea, she was right.
Here are some photos from the trek up and down the slope.
It was a pleasant hike and my spirits were lifted to be back in the woods again, even if it was on a trail.
But once we got up to the summit, something awesome happened. Aside from the great view and the obligatory pictures my brother asked us if we had ever seen a panorama where someone appears in the image more than once.
This was on my top ten list of the coolest things I had done all morning.
Check it out:
After about thirty minutes of goofing off and soaking in the view with beef Jerky we decided against sparking up a conversation with the attractive yet unbearably bored guide at the summit and went into town for some second breakfast.
Which we had at a brewery. This one was called the Big Slide and had some nice beer and a classy atmosphere. Of course our second breakfasts looked more like first lunches, but I can't complain, we chose lunch anyway.
The kitchen was completely visible and though it was empty when we got there, there was a full house when we got our food. The bartenders were friendly and well dressed, something I can appreciate as a bartender myself.
Now, having turned down the chance to grab poutine while I was in Potsdam, I decided to order the poutine at the brewery.
It was unique, with a rich cilantro seasoning and I believe they used beer with the broth. It had both cheese and cheese curd together. I was impressed by these honestly ballzy choices and was satisfied with the outcome.
Now by now you're probably thinking, Alexander, you climbed a mountain, and had your dinner. The day seems pretty much over, right?
Well no-
because of Sports.
Saranac Lake is well known for the Winter Olympic events and we happened to be able to visit the ski jump where we got to watch kids between the ages of six and sixteen do things we would never do even if you gave us a million spacebucks.
We took the ski lifts up and got the chance to see the view from the taller tower which was used in the 1932 Olympic Games and soaked in this incredible view.
By this time I had gotten acclimated to my company and had started to feel better about everything enough to truly get to say, "hey I'd actually rather be here than home right now."
This is when my brother's bachelor party became my vacation.
After our excursion we finally made it to the hotel and decided that it was time to put all of our things in our room and relax before the night of heavy drinking was upon us.
BUT WAIT THERE WAS MORE MOUNTAIN TO BE CLIMBED
We literally just checked into the hotel and basically floored it to Whiteface Mountain.
Now Whiteface is one of the taller mountains and the hike is apparently like ten hours or something ridiculous like that. But luckily for us, they literally put a road that leads to a castle on the mountain where you can just climb a very rocky set of "stairs" to the peak.
#Merica
I'd tell a story but I'm going to let the mountain speak for itself. (but I will say that I was so eager to get to the top I actually ditched everyone and scaled the thing and ended up waiting about half an hour or so before they all made it to me.)
It was an absolutely beautiful view. I kept posting about it on social media and just all around soaked everything in.
But eventually we had to leave, and leave we did, by going THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN
Because somewhere along the history of humanity someone said "Let's put an elevator IN A MOUNTAIN"
And everyone who heard that was like "DUDE, YES"
And so without further ado:
And then those GENIUSES who put an elevator IN A MOUNTAIN said, "Wait, it'd be even cooler if this elevator just leads to a tunnel that, like, instead of taking you to a building, it like, takes you to THE MIDDLE OF A ROAD"
And so that is what they built.
That is seriously just genius.
Our adventure wasn't over however.
On our way back to the showers we desperately needed we got more or less trapped at the North Pole.
And before you think I'm crazy, our car literally did have serious brake issues due to the slope.
Oh, and the only place we could stop was literally the North Pole.
Because not only is Santa American,
He Roughs it out like Teddy Roosevelt in
the Adirondacks. _ _ _
UNLESS
(〇o〇；)
I KNEW IT!!
So once we survived possible break failure we decided against taking showers and went and had literally the best ice cream I've ever had, but couldn't enjoy because of lactose intolerance.
Thanks, dad! >:p
But no I actually did enjoy that ice cream and though I had to throw some away to keep from getting sick it was certainly worth it.
When we finally made it to the hotel I was dying for a shower and so took the longest and coldest shower Saranac Lake had to offer (15 minutes in case you're wondering).
It was fantastic.
We then went to a brewery that had absolutely fantastic food that I would post here but it was so good I used expletives to express its goodness so you'll just have to take my word for it.
And as I was sitting there enjoying my fantastic and expertly made meal I looked up and there, to my surprise, was a good friend that I hadn't seen in years. And as it turns out she was a bartender at the brewery!
It was great to see her and to catch up before I went and joined my brother for a game of HOLY CRAP I JUST REALIZED I FORGOT TO TEXT HER
*Gabbs, if you are reading this, I am extremely sorry for being an awful friend and not texting you. I'm writing this portion at midnight, which I'm sure since we're both bartenders is pretty much midday for you but I'm going to wait until tomorrow. It was awesome seeing you and I wish you all the best in love, life, and freakishly cute puppies.*
ANYWAY WE PLAYED CORNHOLE AND I WAS AWFUL AT IT.
While we were playing we saw another bachelor party leaving the bar and instead of t-shirts they gave the groom a bowling ball and then CHAINED IT TO HIS LEG
Oh and these images marked the end of the night for us:
Needless to say we slept quite well, drunk on good beer and well wishes for my brother.
The next day I had some of the most delicious french toast ever and we took one last photo before saying goodbye to one of the groomsmen and heading back to Malone.
I swear that shirt was big on me when my
aunt and uncle sent it to me...
After we got there my brother and his best person enjoyed a long kayaking trip (where they got kind of lost) while I sat on a corgi and did some administrative things.
Snapchat is funchat
Now, this was my first ever bachelor party and it turned out to be a ton of fun for everyone. Before we went on our adventure I thought of bachelor parties as something you're supposed to do for the groom, to celebrate his past and send him off with well wishes for the future. I can understand why this leads to strippers, affairs, and heavy drinking. But now I know that a bachelor party is a chance for the groomsmen to connect with the bachelor and not only guide him in the right direction, but to let him guide them.
I may or may not ever get married, and I'm not too keen on the idea after my last attempt, but there is something to be said about Marriage. It truly binds more than two people, and more than two families. Marriage is a long process that takes planning and initiative that is missing from many people's lives. These crazy rituals are another one of way for us to share our lives with our friends, and that is beautiful to me, because life is all about who we are, and who we share ourselves with.
So, Christopher and Mandy, good luck these next couple weeks. You'll be wedded before you know it, and I'm filled with pride to be one of your groomsmen.
