Steve’s Midlife Crisis

Steve’s Midlife Crisis has been online for a little more than five years.  Blogging about midlife and all sorts of other topics has been a lot of fun.  I have learned a lot and met some great people.  However, in recent months, I haven’t been updating this site nearly as much as I’d like to and that is due to time constraints.

Therefore, I am going to take a break from updating this blog for an indefinite time.  I might resume posting here at some point; I don’t really know what I will do.

In any event, I appreciate all the people who have read my blog over the years and posted comments.  I have been blessed to have this interaction.  I intend to keep the site online, though as I said, I am not sure when I will be updating it.

In the meantime, I invite you to visit my other blog and update your links and RSS/Atom aggregators to that site:

http://www.lawyerboxer.com

Thanks and best wishes,

Steve

http://news.aol.com/article/worlds-ugliest-dog-dies-of-cancer/243459

Actually, I have been back for a while, just not blogging.  My move is done and I am pretty much settled in at my new home.  I’ve been a bit behind on some work projects, so I’ve had to spend the time there.  Let’s see what I can do to change that.

Also, thanks to Geoff and everyone who wished me success with the move.  Your wishes have come true!

All of us have a bundle of suffering that we carry with us every day. One of the larger items in my own bundle is a condition called Asperger’s syndrome (AS). I don’t know all the nuances of this condition, but as I understand it, Asperger’s syndrome results from a person’s brain being “wired” neurologically differently than the brains of most people. AS is pretty rare: one source says that it occurs in 0.024% to 0.36% of the population.

Without getting into all the details, a significant effect of AS is that I will very frequently misread nonverbal communication–those subtle, unspoken cues that can add so much information and context to the words a person uses. This effect has proved very difficult in my relationships with women.

I often misread women’s interest in me. I have tried to initiate relationships with various women, in a polite and friendly way, but long after my male friends assured me those women were not interested in me.

At other times, I have been utterly clueless about women who were very interested in me. One woman I used to work with was extremely interested in having a relationship with me, but she was also rather shy. After several actions on this woman’s part, two of my closest friends at work told me how interested she was in me, but I just couldn’t see it. Duh!

In 1992, I broke off the longest and most serious relationship I ever had with a woman. We had been talking about getting engaged to be married. My girlfriend was devastated when I said I needed to end our relationship. At the time, I was experiencing spontaneous memories of the childhood sexual abuse I had suffered at the hands of people outside my family. I was overwhelmed and having panic attacks regularly, so I could not stay in the relationship. After my girlfriend and I broke up, she became suicidal and received psychiatric treatment and a prescription of Prozac for 6 months. To this day, I can’t really understand why it was such a big deal for her. I knew she was fond of me, but I never picked up any clues that would indicate the intensity of her feelings for me.

The lyrics to this song from 1972 express pretty well my sentiments about this situation.

____________________

It’s hard to make a disclosure like this. I thought about it a lot before writing this blog post. Ultimately, I have decided to share this part of my life because perhaps it will help someone else. I hope it does.

Nice win.  QB Kyle Orton looked in the Bears’ 29-13 win over the Indianapolis Colts.  Of course, as my good friend, Unimike, pointed out, it is only week 1, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.  Even so, it’s a good way to begin a season.

Over the weekend, the CTA’s Red Line trains were again rerouted over the elevated tracks (as opposed to running in the subway).  If you’re coming to Chicago anytime soon, watch out for this weekend ritual, but be careful: it doesn’t happen every weekend.  You need to observe the signs and pay attention to the announcements on the trains.

For the most part, it’s pretty straightforward.  Of course, I live here and have been riding these trains regularly since I was a boy, so familiarity probably contributes to my comfort level.  However, if you pay watch the signs and follow the announcements, it should be fairly easy.  Even so, be careful at stops like “Lake” and “Jackson” where six different train lines stop.

I currently use the Blue Line a lot, but after my move, my main train will be the Red Line.  Here’s a map of the various lines.  Getting to the Chicago Wolves games will be a bit more involved, but the trips will be worthwhile.  I’m already talking to some of the guys about attending the Wolves’ first home game of the 2008-09 season versus the Peoria Rivermen.  (Note to self: where the hell did summer go?)

I’ll be posting more about the upcoming move soon.  One great thing is that I’ll be living just two blocks from the beach.  Yeah, I’m psyched.

Throughout school, I was a routine daydreamer. My earliest memory of daydreaming a lot was in the second grade. The teacher pointed it out and said she was going to talk with my parents about it.

Rather than worrying about the incident, I thought, “Hey, that’s great! The teacher wants to talk to Dad and Mom. My parents will be proud of me for getting special attention!” Yes, I was clueless about the context and the social implications of that request. Nevertheless, I just went back to daydreaming.

During those days, my daydreaming was rather obsessed about constructing the “perfect” house where my family and I could live. Nearly every day in class, I would escape to my private inner world of planning how all the rooms would look, how they would connect to one another, and all the other details.

My daydreaming continued through elementary and high school, then on into college and law school. My mind would just wander to faraway places, relive the past, or fantasize about the future. Even as an adult, when I attend classes, I tend to daydream no matter how interesting the subject matter is.

Here’s the weird part. Despite all my daydreaming, I always got very good grades in school. Even with my chronic distraction, I somehow managed to have the correct answers whenever a teacher called on me.

It seems strange. Now that I am learning about Asperger’s syndrome, I am developing a paradigm in which to understand these experiences a little better, but the phenomenon still confuses me. It strikes me as especially odd because I need a very quiet environment if I am to study something by reading. I am not one of the people who can “multitask”: I can’t listen to someone talk while I read or write about something different simultaneously. My mind basically shuts down when I try to do that.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it here yet (and I’m too lazy to look it up now), but I’ll be moving my home by the end of September.  That’s just two months away.  The circumstances are a bit unusual.  I don’t want to be mysterious about it, but I also don’t want to get into the details now.  It’s too complicated and involves some unpleasant experiences with extended family, so I’ll keep the lid on all that stuff at least for now.

Here are a few power thoughts I’ve been using to help me stay calm, grounded, and sane during the craziness.

“I am finding the perfect new home for me.”

“Dad, Mom, and Sebastian are finding the perfect new home for them.”

“My move is going easily and enjoyably.”

“Dad, Mom, and Sebastian are moving easily and enjoyably.”

Sebastian is my parents’ miniature schnauzer.  Due to a number of coincidences, my parents and Sebastian will also be moving during the next two months.  I’m helping them to find a new home.

Recently, I also accompanied my good friend Mark as he relocated from the South Side to Edgewater.  I helped him with the move.  Well, that might be an overstatement.  At one point, Mark invited me to “come over, drink beer, and watch him pack up stuff.”  I did a little more than that, adding some muscle to the operation, but Mark and his dad (who flew here from Phoenix to help) did most of the work.  In any event, the move went smoothly and the celebratory cold beers and dinner afterward were very nice indeed.

By the time October rolls around, I’ll be long overdue for a vacation.  We’ll see what I can afford after of this moving is done.

Yes, I have a power thought for that, too:

“I am enjoying a great, affordable post-move vacation.”

Stay strong!

At The Lost City in the Endless Universe, Unimike has an informative and thoughtful blog post about the mimumum wage and the people who are paid it.

This evening, I had dinner with my good friend Mark and his dad who is visiting from Phoenix, AZ.  At one point during the conversation, I told Mark’s dad about the ongoing drama we have with our public transportation here in Chicago.   I mentioned the notorious “Doomsday” threats we endured at the start of this year, along with the ongoing funding crises that threaten to shut the CTA (or at least most of it) down every few years.  I spared the man the details about the fare increases and service cuts.

When I got home, I saw this article in the Tribune.

It just never stops, does it?

It would be easy to blame Governor Blagojevich’s free rides for senior citizens for these latest dire warnings from the RTA (Regional Transportation Authority).  To do that would be to overlook the most serious problem with funding for public transportation in Chicago.  The system does not receive adequate funding from the state.  Until the Illinois General Assembly develops a comprehensive and long-term funding mechanism, these crises will continue to arise.