Long Beach studio circa 1999 - image by joe bustillos

So I packed books and everything in the bedroom and started taking apart my home office, disconnecting all the monitors (three) and gadgets. I decide to set up a temporary office on the dining table in the front room with one external monitor, keyboard and mouse. When I went to bed that first night in the office-less bedroom I was really surprised at how dark that room was. I had to turn on a nightstand light to safely navigate the room. Next surprise was how soundly I seemed to sleep that night. Duh.

This isn’t rocket science, I’d been sleeping in rooms bathed in the continual glow of blue, red and green LEDs, and four monitors showing an earth in space screen saver for as long as I could remember. Of course once I took my glasses off it was all an undefinable glow, but I guess the glow was enough for my brain to not fully “shut off” when I slept. The difference in my sleep before and after removing the office was remarkable. It was remarkable enough that I decided that I was going to forego the bedroom TV or other technology when I move to the townhouse.

I know for many this a “duh” thing, but for me this really is a change in thinking. For years I’ve maintained no difference between my working life writing on the computer while watching some TV and pushing up to and past the point of exhaustion and then just staggering to bed my head still very full of the things I’d been working on. Now I am going to have to be much more deliberate and intentional as I get up from my office chair and walk down the hall to go to sleep. Hell, maybe I’ll develop the habit of doing some reading or talking to late night friends before drifting off to slumberland. A technology-free zone was not something I would have guessed would have come out of this move. Wow.

What would you do if (name-redacted) sent you a friend request on FB? Would you confirm or ignore . . . I still regularly think about (different name-redacted) – almost daily. I’m worried I can never get past her. And yes, I just got a friend request from her.

image by clipart.com

I’d been letting my “being-too-busy” dictate my social life (or the lack thereof) lately… okay, for the past year. But this dilemma required a response, so I sent the following back to my buddy:

Good question. First I’d be totally shocked because (name-redacted) isn’t an Internet “social networking” person. Second, I would be suspicious of her motives. All that said, I’d probably confirm. It’d be fun for a few days and them I’d remember that it didn’t work face-to-face, there’s even less for me via FB. Then I’d move on, per se, as one can move on from someone who’d previously defined ones life and crushed ones heart.

I have been over a year now without affection and intimacy in my life and that’s because of her. I think about her pretty much every day too, but I think of her as the one who had the chance to have everything I could give and rejected that so completely that I had to move to the opposite end of the continent, away from everything I knew and loved, so that I might start a new life and find someone to love me. I wish her well but in my mind I can’t get past the fact that she chose to not be in my life when I offered it. Now, it does help that I’ve benefited in every way imaginable by this rejection beginning with my job, to my friends here, to the new place I’ll be moving into in about two-weeks. But I think of her as the “oh well” in my life. I know Holly would ask, but if she said that she’s got it all figured out and she wants me back, what would I do?

There’s a danger being overly definitive about previous relationships, but my ability to trust her on any meaningful level has been permanently damaged. There’s no way in hell that I’d leave what I have going for myself in Orlando “to be with her.” If she said she’d come out here I wouldn’t believe it or trust her. The latter would be very destabilizing if it were to really happen (awkward!). Nope, I left everything I had to give. That well is complete dry. I gave up over a tenth of my life to her, almost to my own ruin. She’s not entitled to any more of me. I have to integrate all of that back into my life and be present in the good that is a part of my life now. Like i said, she’s the “oh well” of the past six years of my life.

And you, my friend, have got to do the same with your former flame. As (name-redacted)‘s psychologist once described me (not knowing that we were still seeing each other): “he was a wonderful memory which will give you warm feelings later in life, but nothing in the here and now.” amen, end of chapter. Hope this helps. Much love, jbb

New to Florida

it’s been an amazing year. A year ago February I decided to accept the challenge of moving across country to step from the safety a public school teaching job to try something new: teaching a masters level course at a new online program in Florida. I looked at my life in Southern California, having no permanent ties, save my siblings and nephews and nieces, and decided that I needed to make this change, to take my gifts and skills to the next level. It was a logical choice. But it also meant that I was permanently closing the door on a relationship that I’d been unsuccessfully pursuing over the past five years. I could either take this job or I could stay in California, woeking as a largely thankless classroom grunt waiting for a relationship that might never become what I wanted it to become. The choice was pretty logical. But I was also walking away from something that I had defined myself by. I’d poured everything I could into this. This was who I was. This was who I wanted to be with. I felt connected in a way that I couldn’t explain, yet it had somehow completely failed when it came to what she needed at the time. So I left and shut the door to that part of myself.

Then as I began to build my life here in Florida I grappled with how I would express my relationship to God, The problem was that this was something that I had re-discovered in my life because of the power of the relationship I’d just left. It was something we shared. It was something that seemed real because of the power of the love I felt for her. But given the ease with which all of that just went away without a single tear shed, I was left to think that that relationship had been largely in my own head, and this led me to question what else might have largely just been in my head.

It’s not so much that because I didn’t get what I wanted, I was just going to stop believing. But given how much I had opened my heart to the possibilities, only to be set aside and rewarded with the sound of silence and a completely affection-less life, I lost my certainty and thus another way that I had defined myself by slipped away. Another door closed in my life.

So this brings me to this past week. i had just returned from a great trip to Washington DC.

Brad, Jenith & I at the Newseum porch overlooking the Capitol

I was just getting to the point where I felt comfortable with my new cadremates, after having been away from the doctorate program for three years. Then when I got back from DC I received the letter from Pepperdine telling me that the Educational Technology Doctoral (EDET) Program committee had met and decided that my time at Pepperdine was done. In a nutshell, I’d requested for an incomplete for a research course so that I could get further along with my research and have something to write for my chapter 2 and chapter 3 of what would become my dissertation. The course professor felt that I didn’t deserve an incomplete and that I should just retake the whole course when it was next being given. Alas, this meant getting an “F” for the course which would mathematically drop me below the required B+ GPA to stay in the doctorate program. The committee agreed with the professor and now I’m no longer connected with Pepperdine. I knew for some time that this was going to happen, but getting the “disenrollment” letter very much left me with an unsure sense of self. More than just another door closing, having suffered the loss of these defining aspects in my life over the past year, I was losing track of who I was.

Dr. Spark & I at the Feinstein Breakfast in the Hart Building

The irony of this was that my last conversation with my good friend Dr. Sparks in DC was about me having greater vision for myself beyond being the guy building PCs, blogs and websites for others and taking my own vision for myself to the next level. Other cadremates in DC were meeting with their senators and representatives and agencies and national policy makers while i was struggling to maintain some sense of self. Dr. Sparks had no way of knowing that the hammer was about to fall on my career at Pepperdine. Also a bit upsetting was that I knew how other doctoral students in my program had spectacularly failed (for example, showing up for the end of program oral comprehensive exams unprepared and rip-roaring drunk… twice), I knew that a different choice could have been made. But my path was apparently meant to take me in a different direction. Things could have been different, but I alone was responsible for things not turning out as hoped for.

As the days have passed I wish that I could confidently agree with my friends and advocates that this change is for the good, that something better is going to come from this. But the sound of so many doors closing tends to undermine any sense of confidence or promise. I just know that it’s a waste for me to remain a candle hidden under a bushel basket. It’s not much to go on, but it’s better than assuming that I am now whatever I was meant to be or that the best days are in the past. I refuse to believe that. jbb

Click here for my flickr set from my trip to DC.

Music/podcast: MacOsKen Day6, episode 37 (9/6/08)

The following link was given to me by Full Sail coworker, Linda, who was impressed with Rick Warren‘s ability to present his belief system without sounding “religious.” I appreciated that Warren seemed to respect the venue he was speaking at and addressed his thoughts as not addressing religious issues, but as human issues. Warren came off as firm but nurturing, understanding but uncompromising and very matter of fact, all hallmarks of a somewhat laid back “Seeker Sensitive” California attitude. Enjoy.

Rick Warren @ TED: Living a Life of Purpose

Dan Dennett @ TED (Feb 2006) – The Biological Evolution of Religion

Interestingly for me both of these speakers represent a bifurcating pull in my own thinking between this “matter of fact” Christianity and a more scientific, cultural-anthropology view of things…

Music: “First Prayer” by Randy Stonehill

This shouldn’t be too surprising, given that after getting my B.A. in Biblical Studies at Biola University and several quarters at Fuller Seminary as a Masters of Theology student, I enrolled at Cal State Fullerton as an Anthropology major (which I switched to Communications New/Editorial after a couple semesters). I mean, I completely concur with Warren’s sentiment that there has to be more to this life than the day to day grind. That awareness in me has always led me to pursue an intimate connection with God, whether we’re talking about the musings of a Catholic teenager trying to read the New Testament for the first time or a 40-something playing his guitar and singing with everything he has as part of the Evangelical Sunday worship service. At the same time, I’ve crossed the cultural and religious boundaries so many times in my life that, as big a picture as any belief system tries to establish, I know that it is all more bigger still.

Back five years ago after I’d been calling myself an agnostic for 15-years ago, a good friend and fellow Biola graduate said flatly that she wouldn’t accept this, that I couldn’t deny that all I’d experienced wasn’t true. And she was right. And thus I gradually entered into a second period of spiritual intimacy and learning. But at the same time I could never shake this feeling that the whole practice was just something that we all do to satiate our need to be connected to something bigger than ourselves. Of late, this “maybe I didn’t quite get this right” sense of doubt has pushed me more toward my former skeptical position. Like Morpheus at the end of the second Matrix movie, things didn’t turn out the way I thought the Oracle had pronounced them and this is forcing me to reevaluate everything. Mind you, things are incredibly good with opportunities opening for me, some might say “miraculously,” at just the right time such that some might see this turn of fortunes as a definite sign of God’s favor in my life. And quite frankly I might have agreed with that assessment except that the one person who helped set me back on the path of Faith, the one person I wanted to share this spiritually intimacy with, is most decidedly not a part of my life. And my fortunate move to Florida has ended any possibility of ever seeing the vision of love that I had with her come to fruition. Had it been otherwise and she were with me, I might very well have spent the past six weeks looking for a new church home. So, it’s very personal but it’s not about me. It’s about this emotional connection and contrary recognition that I cannot close my eyes to a bigger picture than my former Bible-quoting self could even begin to understand. I want to understand and right now I seem to have all the “opportunity” in the world to explore what these contradictory pulls mean in my life. Onward and upward. jbb

Music/podcast: popSiren Bite – Save on Text-Messaging with Teleflip from the album “popSiren (Large Quicktime)” by Revision3

Technorati Tags: florida, hardware, moving, orlando, techtoys, tv

Music/Podcasts: Buzz Out Loud 744: A date with Firefox from the album “Buzz Out Loud from CNET” by CNET.com

Technorati Tags: california, florida, iPhone, longbeach, moving

• filled out “leave of absence” form, Acrobat being slow and a pain in the a#$, adding to the anxiety. Ain’t life grand. # 2008-03-03
• “request for leave of absence” form turned in. Now I have to find a way to concentrate so that I can get all the things in front of me done # 2008-03-03
• I have three computers that won’t let students login; i don’ t have time for this crap # 2008-03-04
• correction: i have 7 computers down, three have been down since dec., the other 4 went down while I was gone. ack. this i will not miss # 2008-03-04
• Monday AM I was filling out a leave of absence form, yesterday help tkts for 7 ill computers, today sub plans ’cause I have a cold. Ugh # 2008-03-05
• and now my Internet connection seems to be down. Argh! # 2008-03-05
• @girlgeek77 ILC? Zero play as far as I can see. But then right now I’m standing in front of border ’cause my DSL is down. Going back 2 sleep # 2008-03-05
• this sucks. Fell asleep early last nite sniffles & runny nose. Woke up early 2 post sub plans. DSL down. How am I supposed finish my grades? # 2008-03-05
• DSL back up. What the hell was that? Still sniffly, but at least I can now do grades w/o endangering the public @ Border’s. Yea! [sniffle] # 2008-03-05
• man, 2day’s staff meeting was u-g-l-y, district needs 2 layoff 10% or 470 teachers but they’re holding off, choicing 2 cut other services # 2008-03-06
• @akamrt a few of us joked l8r that it’s more like the radio is out, air-conditioner just died & 1 of the front tires is making a funny noise # 2008-03-07
• highlight of the day: one of my students gave me a peep. Pure sugar delight. It was all downhill from there (except seeing iPhone sdk video) # 2008-03-07

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Music/Podcast: CNET Live: March 6, 2008 from the album “CNET Live from CNET TV” by CNET.com