Genetics — June 17, 2022 - Johnny Boy Marketing

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
My Boys 👨‍👦‍👦
Work Drinking🥃
Feeling Good 😎

I’ve understood since seventh-grade science class how a child is a somewhat random and yet somewhat traceable mish-mash of his parents and their parents and their parents ad infinitum. It’s so cool to see that play out with my own boys.

Boy The Elder is very much his mother’s child. Wifey Poo was a serious and dedicated academic and is extremely analytical and very process-driven. BTE is maniacally focused on his studies and always has been. He’s a junior-to-be food science major at Mizzou who’s interning at a flavor creation company, doing research and development in a lab putting all sorts of chemicals together for clients who want their products to taste good. He is single-handedly keeping the note card industry afloat with the bajillion flash cards he makes to help him study for each test.

Yet when it comes to music, he’s all mine. BTE feels music. We’re constantly tossing our latest finds in musicians and bands back and forth via text. Today he texted me from his morning workout to tell me to listen to the new Logic album start to finish. He understands that this is the way to listen to music, not as one-off track selections, and he thought I’d dig Logic’s Vinyl Days because it harkens back to some post-Licensed to Ill Beastie Boys. And he’s right. I do like it and it does sound like some Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head.

Boy The Younger? He’s so much me it’s scary. Put him in a baseball uniform and run him out there to the pitcher’s mound, and it’s like I’m looking at myself. In life, he’s a goofball who sees his academics as an interlude between being able to do the fun things he really wants to do, and he and focus have a bad relationship with each other. That was and, to a large extent, is me.

He’s a feeler in every sense of the word. He cannot abide hearing anything about the mistreatment of animals, he’s extremely self-critical and caustically aware of his mistakes. He has a huge heart and instinctively knows what someone is “not right.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been silently screaming as I’ve battled my demons and he is the one who wordlessly comes over to give me a hug. He knows, and I love that about him.

Yet he’s got this side of him that comes out that is intensely organized and structured and methodical. BTY loves processes and structure. He wants steps and lists and detailed instructions. When he was a toddler, he’d line up his monster truck toys in a precise line, all facing the same way. If I turned one around while he wasn’t looking, he’d eventually turn back and immediately notice something was amiss and fix it.

That’s all Wifey Poo.

Whereas BTY’s brother helps feed my need for deep, philosophical discussions — which we’ve been having since BTE was, like, 4 — BTY is too carefree to worry about much of anything and would rather be grounded for a month than have a deep discussion.

Very unlike his brother (and me) and very much like his mother, he gets over slights and disappointments extremely fast. When BTE’s baseball teams would lose, he’d agonize over it with great regret for weeks. BTY? His teams lose 28-3 and he’s 100% fine by the time we’re pulling out of the parking lot to head home. It’s not that he doesn’t care; the kid has the same level of insane hustle I had. It’s just that, when it’s done, whatever the outcome, he’s onto the next thing.

BTY (and Wifey Poo) is very much The Lego Movie; Everything is awesome, and he’s gonna sing about it. And sing he does. He and Wifey Poo are random when-no-one-else-is-looking singers. BTY used to go to the bathroom during the middle of dinner, pee, and then have to be loudly called back to the table because he was giving a concert because “I like how my voice sounds in there.”

I say all of this as a way to reflect upon the fact that I’m pretty damn lucky. I have a 20-year-old son who loves his dad and wants to hang out with him. He’s already told me (kinda sorta) what my Father’s Day gift is. He and I (and his amazeballs girlfriend) are going to the Marcus King Band concert.

And I have an almost 13-year-old son who gets me probably better than just about anyone else in the world. They are fabulous kids.

Life isn’t all sunshine and Christmas cookies. But it’s good.

It’s currently noon on Friday, and today is my last day of work at my soon-to-be old job. I am currently at LIT Cigar Lounge alternately savoring a great cigar and a double Angle’s Envy on the rocks. I wish things would have turned out differently at The Best Damn Real Estate Team on Either Side of the Mississippi, but they didn’t, and when the phone rang, I answered it. It’s hard to turn down a 60% raise, especially when you’re seeing massive cracks in the foundation of your currently employer’s business structure.

So I didn’t.

I now have next week to decompress and enjoy life to the fullest before I start my new gig June 27. Part of that enjoyment is a solo escape to the Ozarks in Northern Arkansas. I’ve rented a cabin out in the boonies and plan to do a lot of writing and relaxing.

I think I’ve earned it.

Regular readers of this space (hello to the three of you! I’m lookin’ at you, Read Between The Lyme!) might have noticed that this space is now being taken up with writing of a different tone of late. Looking back at what my writing has been like over the past few years, there are so many indications of the soul-deep struggle I’ve had with simply existing. One of the main purposes of this site has been to give me a forum to work through my shit, to get all these feelings out (see above about BTY) and to hopefully help others who are going through their own shit.

And folks, a lot of that writing has been about the ugly side of life.

I hesitate to talk about what’s changed because I’ve learned first-hand how vile and hypocritical people can be when it comes to those who openly share their struggles with brain illness. I may or may not have signed a document that may or may not exist with a company that most certainly does exist because of this kind of crap that may or may not have paid me to not pursue any possible or not possible future litigation. Yet any sort of vindication I felt in that is tarnished by the fact that those who may or may not have been responsible for the discrimination still enjoy gainful employment in that very real company and that it social media trumpets its support of mental health awareness.

That said, where I am today is because of a decision I made in August 2021 to wade into the deep water with a new therapist and confront the things I’d never dealt with before. I say that I made the decision, and that’s true, but what’s more true is that I just sorta one day found myself in the deep water with no real option other than to keep swimming (or drown).

The work has been hard. My therapist is a dude in a different part of the lovely state of Missourah whom I talk with via telehealth and who doesn’t take my bullshit. He calls me on my cop-outs and is great at holding me accountable to truth. Patiently, lovingly, professionally, he’s guided me through some nasty stuff. In a roundabout way, he helped me find a somewhat experimental treatment I’ve been in for the past month, and the differences in my heart and head are profound.

I’m not at the point of feeling comfortable talking about this treatment in this space, but I will talk about them with anyone who emails me (well, just about anyone). johnagliata@gmail.com. I’m not saying what I’ve found will work for everyone. It won’t. Brains are fantastically complicated and individual things. I’m not even saying that what I’ve found will work for me in the long term. What I do know is that it’s working for me right now and that I haven’t felt this centered and sound since, well, ever. The differences this is making in my personal and professional lives is beyond belief, and each new morning that I greet feeling regulated and good gives me hope that what I’ve found is going to stick.

It also leads to impromptu concerts in my car in which I’m belting out this song as I cruise down the highway with the windows open.

These are my words
That I’ve never said before
I think I’m doing okay
And this is the smile
That I’ve never shown before

Somebody shake me ’cause I
I must be sleeping

It’s a (Dysfunctional) Family Matter

Top 3 questions to ask yourself before going into business with relatives. My wife, Carla, is an amazing woman. She is exceedingly brilliant, the owner of a whole lot more A’s in school growing up than her future husband had. We’ve known each other for nearly three decades now, the past 25 as spouses. And…

Genetics — June 17, 2022

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