Conflicting Emotions — March 17, 2025 – John Agliata

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
HappySad🎭
Symptom🎶
Searching🔭

THE DAILY UPDATE

The weekend was all about conflicting emotions. It’s hard to fathom feeling such opposing forces and not being tossed a bit off course, I imagine.

There was the joy of getting together with the Fab Five plus my mother-in-law to go to lunch and then come back to our place for a few hours of board games. Wifey Poo and I made a pretty horrible Sequence team, but the entire afternoon was fun.

Then, there was the happiness of seeing an eclectic bunch of people from different walks of my life gather for a fantasy baseball draft. I am the de facto sports-league guy in my family. I run a fantasy baseball league, fantasy football league, college football bowl pick’em pool, March Madness bracket, and various other things in the sports arena, not so much for the competition itself but simply to bring people together. I get great joy out of hearing the good-natured smacktalk that happens in these leagues.

Then, on the flip side, there was the in-the-same moment joy and anguish of hearing something my daughter-in-law said.

Her hubby, Boy The Elder, has some amazing friends he’s known since high school when they all worked at Chick-Fil-A. Those friends, whom I’ve affectionately dubbed The Goon Squad, have adopted DIL as their own friend. And with her birthday coming up Saturday, they are planning a surprise for her. Apparently, it’s something big. DIL knows they are planning something for her. She doesn’t know what it is.

During a break in board games, she said, “I feel so lucky that they have, like, adopted me as their own friend.” And that made me so happy for her. DIL has one really great friend in life whom she has been close with for years, but outside of that, she has struggled to make other friends.

I can relate.

So to see The Goon Squad adopt her as one of their own is incredibly wonderful. I’m happy for her. Extremely happy.

And I’m also extremely sad for myself.

Yes, this falls under self-pity, to a degree, but I sat there feeling the joy for DIL and the sadness for myself, thinking, “I would love for someone or someones to adopt me as part of their crew, to remember without prompting that my birthday was coming up or some other important marker was nearing and to take the time and make the effort to plan something important, something kind, something good.

I do my best and shake off the sadness and sit in the happiness I have for DIL. That’s what it means to be a parent, I think, and DIL is my daughter that I had to wait 22 years to have. Parents shake off their struggles and hurts and pains and do what they can to be in the good place with those they love.

But then night falls and alone time comes and sometimes it’s hard to keep the sadness away, to not say, “What about me? Where’s my Goon Squad? Where have all my former Goon Squad people gone? Why am I so goddamn alone?”

During the draft, Wifey Poo’s phone rang with a call from her cousin in Colorado. They hardly ever talk on the phone, and Wifey Poo was in the midst of picking players, so she let it go to voice mail. About 10 minutes later, she saw a call from her aunt, another person who rarely calls. Two calls from the same side of the family in unusually close succession from two people who rarely call is not a good sign.

After the draft ended, Wifey Poo called her aunt back. Wifey Poo’s uncle had died a few hours before, shockingly and suddenly of a heart attack. He was a good, good man. Kind. Loving. And he reminded me so much of my father-in-law in his voice and mannerisms that I would just sit there sometimes and close my eyes and listen to him talk and feel like FIL was still with us.

We are at that stage of life where a lot of people have been passing away. Wifey Poo’s dad died in 2021. My aunt died last year. Now, it’s her uncle. Others have gone. Others will go. It’s the way life works Here.

Sunday, Wifey Poo and I went on a date. Coffee. Furniture shopping. New couches are coming Thursday to replace the ones we’ve had for about 14 years. It’s time. New rocking chairs sit on our front porch, a promised anniversary present from about eight years ago that Wifey Poo gave me but that we never really had the disposable income to indulge ourselves with before now. My work bonus arrived in our bank account Friday morning. After a lot of years of struggling, we are finally doing OK financially. That path we got on and stuck to and held onto with all our might is finally clearing up a bit. It’s nice to have breathing room.

But the sadnesses that come alongside the joy … well, I guess that’s part of life. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t struggled, who hasn’t had sadness. I guess if I’m looking for a silver lining, it’s that I’m well acquainted with sadness … that I am, if nothing else, resilient as fuck.

So I feel that joy. I feel the sadness. In addition to being resilient as fuck, I’m sensitive as fuck (if you’re out there … ). Everything I feel, I feel strongly. To have such tremendous joy for the Fab Five being together, for doing the things that makes my MIL happy, for bringing people together for sports fun, to shopping for new stuff … that’s all good, and I feel it in abundance. But the sadness, the loneliness, the grief of losing a great man who loved Wifey Poo deeply … that’s sad, and I feel that, too, in abundance.

Life. I guess that’s what it is. Life. Living. Being human.

Something I’m grateful for today: I have a much-needed massage later today.

Something I’ve (ghost)written: In Search Of …

Song of the Day: Symptom of Being Human, by Shinedown

Meaningful lyric from the S.O.T.D.:

Sometimes I’m in a room where I don’t belong
And the house is on fire and there’s no alarm
And the walls are melting too
How about you?

Something good from today/yesterday: Having zero meetings on my work schedule.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: The last week of the March sumo tournament.

Fat-Ass Update:

Starting weight: 230.6 on 2/12/25
Goal weight (for now): 199.9
Today’s weight 222.0 (-7.4)
Fat-ass burn-off remaining: 22.1 fat-ass pounds

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Conflicting Emotions — March 17, 2025

THE DAILY UPDATE

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