Author: Rob Says

A man who loves and likes women.

Time

Rob Says4 Comments

shallow focus of clear hourglass

Time. It’s the one commodity that you can never get back. I’ve said it before elsewhere, you can always make more money, you can always get another job or start another business, or get into another career. You can even start new relationships, whatever flavor they may be, whether they are platonic or romantic.

What you can’t do, is get back your time, or get more time. That’s the rub, in a nutshell. You don’t know how much time you have, but I promise you, it’s less than you think. Yet time is the one commodity that we are willing to toss around and throw away as if we are going to live forever and that we have all the time in the world.

The reason that I bring up time has to do with this last week and weekend. The Village By The Lake was a smashing success, at least to me. I got to see my Brother’s Vince and TJ, and I got to meet some new, and some returning, great guys. Bacon, Nick, Amos, David West, Skelton, Joe, and even Chest Rockwell showed up. It was glorious.

It was glorious even during this period of uncertainty and having to “wear a mask.” Social distancing and the fact that many activities were either limited or outright not available didn’t slow us down. In many ways, there was too many things to see and to do, and not enough time to do all of them. So I had to prioritize. I had to choose what meant the most to me and to those with me. I had to choose what I was going to spend my time on.

While there wasn’t a lot of exercise and seeing a bunch of different things, there was enough. Most of my time was spent on engaging in enlightening conversation and getting to know my new and returning friends. That’s what I consider all of them, they are now my friends. It was well worth my time. I could have told all of them, “No, I have to work.” And I wouldn’t have had the experiences that I had. All because I would have chosen to chase the dollar. I didn’t do that because there will be plenty of opportunities for me to make more money.

I would rather hear Chesty talk about the “Sad Handy on I-80” and watch Nick trying to contact the International Space Station on his HAM radio than go and empty yet another bin of paper and shred it, only to rinse and repeat and do it again.

I would rather talk to Skelton about his journey through his life so far and the things that he has learned about himself and where he wants to go and what he wants to end up doing.

I would rather listen to Joe talk about how women will only walk alone on certain streets in Tennessee compared to women that walk pretty much everywhere alone in Salt Lake City and how you can pick out the natives vs the transplants.

I would rather understand the pros and the cons of joining a podcasting network that Amos mentioned and about how a lot of them as part of their contract will want to own the name to your podcast. Talk about a theft!

I would rather talk about family life and about how David built his own shelves for his awesome library that is in his house and how the weight of his books actually bent the hitch on the trailer that he used when he was transporting his books.

And yes, I would rather watch Bacon make a “grand entrance” and have to tell the guy that his volume is at an 11 when it needs to be down to a 5. For a younger man, he has definitely had a full life so far and has seen and done some things that even I haven’t seen or done in my 48 years of being on this planet. There’s a lot of experience and wisdom in a guy that is practically half my age. It was even fun joking/not joking with him about “my restaurant.”

Hanging out physically yet again with Vince and TJ was what all of this was ultimately about for me and like the last time when we first met at the Village By The Sea in Atlantic City, I was not disappointed. The food we prepared and ate, the cigars we smoked, the drinks we drank, the jokes we cracked and the stories we told each other will be etched in my memory forever. Even the morning coffee shits and the cat allergies couldn’t slow us down.

You can’t buy those kinds of memories and experiences. It was worth the time.

That being said, I want to bring this back to you, Gentle (or Not So Gentle) Reader. What are you spending your time on? What are you willing to do or want to do, knowing that whatever amount of time you throw at it, you’ll never get that time back and you’ll ultimately never get more time in the long run?

Where are you getting the most pleasure and what are you doing that is giving you the most pleasure for your time?

Work and “grinding it out” can be a necessary evil and I totally understand that, but what are you spending your time on ultimately? Is that what you want to be spending your time on? Is that what you want to do? Or do you want to be doing something else?

Who are you spending your time with? Is that someone that you want to be spending your time with? Are you deriving maximum pleasure from being with them and around them? If not, why are you spending time with them? What ways can you minimize that time if necessary?

Like I said at the beginning, time is the one commodity that you can’t get more of, and you can’t get back the time that is gone.

Now you’ll have to excuse me, there’s a young woman that I would like to spend some of my time with.

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Marriage

Rob Says8 Comments
couple engagement hands human
It’s a nice thought.

Let’s talk about marriage…

Before I get into the “meat of the matter,” let me start off with a couple of things:

I’m not against marriage as a whole.

I have been married and I was the one who initiated the divorce when it was time for that to happen.

My ex-wife did not take me to the cleaners in the divorce. If anything, I came out of it in a pretty good position. I wasn’t set back financially for decades because of the divorce.

We did not have children.

Now that I’ve put those things out there, let us continue…

I’ve seen a lot of guys, especially young guys, on Twitter in the recent past talking about wanting to get married. All I can think when I see their talks, yearnings, and longings, is:

Why? Why would you WANT to get married?

Why would you want to get married in today’s day and age? Do you not understand that when you get a state sanctioned license to get married, you are not only married to the person that you wanted to get married to, but you are also now married to the State? Ask me how I know.

You may be the “bread winner.” You may be the “head of the household.” You may be the “man in charge.” You may be the “patriarch.” You may be whatever you think you are, until you are not.

In today’s world of no-fault divorce, either party can end the marriage for any reason, or for no reason whatsoever. When that happens, you are done. I don’t care that you think you are the bread winner, the man, the patriarch, or whatever you think you are. You are none of those things if and when she decides to end the marriage.

Enter the State.

The true Patriarch of the household in the West is also the One True God, and that is the State. We as a society have deemed this so. Which also means that the State is the one that we have allowed to use force to enforce agreements, contracts, and disputes. You either file or she files for divorce, the State now gets involved. Especially if you have children. Even if you don’t get married, but you have children together, and one or both of you decide to split up, the State gets involved on behalf of your children.

Any religion that is a part of the West bends the knee to the State. If a particular denomination of a particular flavor of faith tries to intervene in a legal proceeding, which a divorce is, that church, ward, denomination, etc. can lose their tax exempt status because it was the State that granted them that status to begin with. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. No religion, at least in the West, is going to jeapordize that. So religion isn’t going to “save your marriage.”

Many years ago, there was a stigma for having children out of wedlock. The children were referred to as “bastards.” That stigma is all but gone in today’s modern world. Marriage used to mean that a man had some type of authority, at least in his own home. Today men have no authority, only responsibility. Again, I ask:

Why would you want to get married?

If women are the gatekeepers to sex and men are the gatekeepers to commitment, why do you (I’m assuming that you are a man reading this) want to rush into commitment and potentially ruin yourselves financially, emotionally, mentally, etc. when you can have everything that a marriage offers, without having to actually get married? Why do you want to give up the only real authority and agency that you have?

You want to live together? You can do that without getting married. You want to offer insurance and other types of benefits to her? You can do that now without getting married. You want to have children? You can do that without getting married. The only thing that you can’t have without a marriage is a divorce.

The only “positive” that I can think of that you can only get from being married is certain tax breaks. Even those don’t add up to a lot. Not in the long run at least.

When I got married, the marriage license cost me $50.00 We had a simple ceremony in my house where we only invited close family and friends. I don’t remember what I paid for the justice of the peace to come out and preside over the ceremony, but it wasn’t more than a hundred bucks at the most.

When I filed for divorce, that filing alone cost me almost $400.00 Getting married is cheap and easy, getting divorce takes time and is expensive.

Like I said at the very beginning of this article, I’m not against the institution of marriage itself, but I am against it in its current incarnation.

You want to “make marriage great again?” You need to start at the State level and with the laws. If men are expected to be the providers of food, a house, safety, and security, what are the women supposed to bring to the table? Let’s make whatever that is legally enforceable.

I was 37 years old when I got married. I have no regrets about my marriage and I certainly have no regrets about my divorce. I was also in no hurry to get married. Young men, especially one’s in their twenties need to slow down and take your time to figure out who you are and what you want out of life before considering getting married, especially in today’s day and age. The risks are too high in many cases and the cost usually isn’t worth the price that you could end up paying.

You want to have an LTR? Fine, do that. You want to live together? Okay, maybe not your best option, but go for it. But get married? I would have to say don’t do it. Not unless you don’t have a problem with getting into bed with the State.

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3 Days To The Village By The Lake

Rob SaysLeave a comment

white house near sea and mountains

3 days and counting.

I’m looking forward to seeing my Brothers, Vince and TJ. I’m looking foward to the meet up that we are having on Saturday the 26th when we will be meeting some fellow Men and having some food, some drinks, and maybe even a couple of cigars with these guys. It’s going to be a good time.

In other news, I was serious when I said that I was going to limit my activity and my time on Twitter and I meant it. It’s been nice being off of Twitter. I have more time to pursue other projects and my stress levels and my blood pressure has dropped quite a bit.

It’s a good thing I’ve taken time away from Twitter, learning my new MIDI controller so that I can start creating music has been a challenge to say the least. The device itself isn’t too hard to figure out, it’s 8 pads, 8 knobs, a joystick, and 25 keys of a keyboard with other assorted buttons that do different things. Pressing keys, turning knobs, and tapping pads isn’t too difficult.

The difficult part is getting the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that I use to interface and recognize the MIDI controller. I was hoping for something that would be a “drag and drop” type of interface where I could just throw “kits” and samples into the DAW and then assign them to the MIDI controller, and then I could just start to play and record.

That’s not what has happened so far. So far, I need to tell the DAW about each and every button, pad, and knob. Thank god I don’t need to do much of that for the keys. That part seems to be fairly straight forward. It’s been a challeng to say the least, and it has taken a lot of time to get things sorted out and working. I still haven’t got it all figured out at the time that I’m writing this. One thing I know though is, once I have everything sorted out and set, I’m saving the profiles so that I can use them without issue.

I’ve also been recording some “B-Roll” video footage to use in upcoming videos. I broke down and bought a decent stand for my phone so now I can set the phone up and use it to record different scenes and footage and not worry that it is going to fall or shake or any other sort of nonsense. Stay tuned to my YouTube channel for future videos to see some of this new and somewhat interesting video footage.

I also broke down and bought a couple of video games. One of them is called “Among Us” and is something that you play online. I’ve played it enough so far to understand the general movement and mechanics of it, now I’m excited to play with some other guys from the ‘Sphere and see where it goes.

It’ll be a good way to get some additional video footage for future projects at least.

I also bought an Atari 2600 “package” that has 100 video games on it. Some of them are the actual arcade versions from back in the day, and many others are from the Atari 2600 console days. I’ve been playing Asteroids from the old console days. Talk about absolutely shitty graphics compared to games today, but man, were they fun and simple to play. No weird button combos to do special moves, no extra controllers or levers to push or manipulate to execute different actions. It’s literally up, down, left, right, and shoot.

Those are the games that I played the most when I was young and it’s what I remember the most fondly even though I had the original Nintendo, the Atari Jaguar, the Playstation, the Playstation 2, and the Wii. Not that I didn’t enjoy the games that I had on each of those particular consoles, but it was the old Atari 2600 that I played the most and had the most games for.

I’m still wondering what the State of Utah is going to do over the next few days because we have had a spike in ‘Rona cases. Apparently we have had more cases in the last few days than we did when the bug first hit Utah and peaked out in July. I know most of these new cases are because the schools are back in session, both the elementary levels as well as the college levels, and that’s where the spike in cases are coming from.

It’ll be interesting to see if Utah is going to shut the schools down again and make the “kids” do everything remotely, or if they are going to suck it up and keep going. I’m hoping for the latter. What we don’t need is another “lockdown,” though. The mandatory mask mandate is still in effect, and is supposed to go on until the end of the year from what I’ve heard, and that’s bad enough.

A lot of other people are getting sick of it as well from what I’ve been seeing and many of them are not wearing masks when they are going about their day. When I think about it and remind myself, I tell those people “thanks for not wearing a mask,” and I mean it sincerely.

I’m sure I could get a lot of grief for this view, but I don’t care. Life goes on and I want to get on with my life, and not under this “new normal” bullshit that a lot of people are calling it.

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