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I woke up this morning and made myself a bagel. The family was still asleep after being up late last night watching the light show the monsoon put on, so I decided to peruse the interwebs and catch up on some news. I started out reading an article on Yahoo about the new technology in cars, and how they are vastly different from cars just 10 years ago, when I ran across the line "inching us ever closer to the self-driving car that many of us clamor for." Who are these people clamoring for self driving cars? Driving is an experience. I don't care if you like street racing, autocross, rally racing, rock crawling, trail running...it's all an orchestra of man and machine coming together for a moment and conquering a landscape. It's stress relief. It's so many things, but it should not be an autonomous experience. If you want "autodrive" ride a bus or train. Cars are meant to have a personal relationship with their driver, not be a transportation butler. This may be your cup of tea, but the whole automation of everything to me is a bit scary. With the NSA issues that have happened since Edward Snowden blew the whistle, we should be more afraid than ever to connect everything we own online and yet more and more things are being connected. I for one will still take a manual transmission and a carburator, you can have your auto butler, and I'll enjoy my ride.

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I can't believe it has been as long as it has been since I last posted anything. Life has been moving by fast. I was contacted unexpectedly last week about the possibility of some major life changes. I don't want to delve into what those are at the moment, but I'm very excited and should know more soon. I find it somewhat ironic that this "thing" is happening at this time. I look at my post title and realize my year long self-discovery mission is dwindling down. There is less than a month until the year mark, and then it's done. I am not sure what I will do after that. I don't want to say I'll abandon this blog, but I think I want to stick to my goal and leave it as a year mission. I'll probably pick up a new one, just so I can keep spreading my thoughts that are deeper than 140 characters out into the universe. So while it might be somewhat cheesy, I think my theme song for today is Bowie's "Changes." Lots of them are happening and the bulk of them are good. My year long storm isn't over yet, but the clouds are definitely breaking up and the sun is shining through. The bulk of negativity and despair that I've been harboring, not only for the past year, but for the past few years seems to be in the rear view mirror. I'm looking forward to what the future holds and leaving what the past had behind.

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For me personally, I've always lived a life that felt equal parts tradition and modern. I spent many a summer in small town America wasting away the days of my youth on baseball and county fairs. I also spent a majority of my life growing up in a melting pot of one of America's largest metropolitan areas. I've seen the benefits of living in a place where everybody knows everybody and time stands still. I've also experienced the wonders of 24/7 life lived in relative anonymity. One of the things I've come to realize as the good ol' US of A enters into year 238 is that the America I live in now is no longer the same America I remember growing up, and yet it still is. Just this past month I've grown to embrace "the beautiful game" of soccer, and quite honestly it has taken baseball's place for me. American football will always be my #1 sport of choice, followed by basketball, but I long ago lost my love of baseball. For one, I think the sport is too watered down and contrition should be considered. Secondly, it is no longer the sport I remember as a child. It's too commercial, to corporate. Not that other sports aren't, but to me it has changed the simplicity I loved about the game as a kid. I also think it has a lot to do with the way America has changed. The Hispanic population is far greater than it was when I was a child and the immigration of it's people have brought about it's culture, one aspect being futbol. I listen to a lot of sports talk and one local host tried to compare the 1980 US Men's National Hockey team to the current US Men's National Soccer team. His point was that while we are currently riding a wave of patriotism associated with the World Cup, the movement would die down once the world's biggest sporting event came to an end. I have to politely disagree. The cultural background of America has changed in the past 34 years for one. Secondly, kids watching soccer today are going to have far greater access to the sport than kids that watched hockey in 1980. I say this because the financial investment to begin with is far less. To play soccer, you merely need a ball. To play hockey there is a pretty substantial initial investment. You have to have a rather large list of equipment to play, and you are going to have to pay for rink time unless it's the middle of the winter in the far norther parts of the country. Soccer you merely go outside and play. It's a lot like baseball was when I was a kid. You only needed a glove and a ball, and the neighborhood could share a bat. I'm excited for the opportunity for soccer to take hold. While it is a relatively modern concept in the US, it is a very traditional game the rest of the world over. Even on a deeper level, I'm excited that the US can still absorb traditions from other parts of the world and meld it into her fabric, which is what we've done best for 238 years. It comforting for me to know that I can still have a balance between tradition and modern.

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First a little site update. If you are reading this through Blogger and not Google+, over to the right there I added an about me page. It's just a little quip about what makes me me. I'm sure that there is a butt ton of information missing, but I'm only an amateur writer so forgive me. This past weekend I (finally) deactivated my Facebook account. I got tired of Pinterest reposts, news stories that were days old, and everybody blaming/attributing everything to my lawn guy, Jesus. But seriously, I found myself wasting so much time looking into other peoples lives that I was neglecting my own to an extent. If nothing else, by not going all voyeuristic on everyone else's life, I have a lot more battery left on my phone when I get home than I used to. I really liked Facebook at first. I liked MySpace too. I love social networking. I think it's great to stay connected but at the same time I think we spend far too much time looking at other people's lives and ignoring our own. Blame reality tv, everybody wants to be a star. I suppose that is what things like Facebook and MySpace were for, you post stuff so people look at you, and it was a great way to reconnect with lost friends, or stay close with family across the globe, but it turned into a popularity contest and got stale. And while I can't totally take myself away from social networking, and I'll admit I was twitchy for a while after deactivating my account, I'm still around. Life is still going on. I can still text, email, call even...if I need to be in contact with somebody. I've also found I've been posting to Twitter a bit more. Maybe I just needed a vice to fill in the lost Facebook time. Whatever the reason, I do it. So with all that being said, if anybody feels like they need to stay connected with me, circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter @mdittemore or Instagram @medittemore. Maybe those outlets are just easier to broadcast on without seeing mundane bullshit. I don't know. Quite honestly I've lost my train of though since I was just sent a text to make dinner. So I will leave you with this: I'm making chicken parm tonight, deuces.

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"Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later [makes squish gesture]get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do "yes" or karate do "no." You karate do "guess so,"[makes squish gesture]just like grape. Understand?" Mr Miyagi, Karate Kid This scene from Karate Kid has been playing in my mind over and over the past few days. I'm pretty sure it has to do with our actions in Iraq over the past decade plus. Now, I'm not claiming to have the answers, but I think we "karate guess so'd" over there and we are about to get squished. Our actions, however you want to view them, were not complete or whole. We intervened in a situation without doing so completely. We patchworked together a country with loose stitching, that was clearly not taking the whole population's greater good into consideration, and expected it to hold. We built Frankenstein's monster, gave it life, and now have to play the God role to determine if that creation is worthy to remain. We wasted thousands of lives, and millions of dreams, to essentially return to a point far more dire than the one we began with. Now we are once again faced with the proverbial "shit or get off the pot" scenario. From the limited information that I have been afforded on the situation, inaction will lead to far greater action by those that view us as their enemy, but swift and decisive action will enrage them even more, not to mention start a shit storm among our more liberal members of society. These are the days where I am glad our collective action as a country is not my decision to make. The evangelical democracy we shove down the throat of the rest of the world is coming back to haunt us. We take it upon ourselves to make decisions for other instead of simply lending a hand when asked. We have lead with our ego and not our intellect and now have to deal with the repercussions of doing so. Hopefully smarter men than I can make better decisions so that we no longer have to take steps backwards.

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As much as I don't want to, I think it's time I look at going back on zoloft, at least for a little while. I really don't like being on zoloft. A complete lack of feeling is an odd feeling. That being said, I think at this point I might need to do so though to prevent a downward spiral. There have been a lot of things that have happened to me in the past month or so, and surprisingly I don't attribute any of that to my current mind state. I know that there is a chemical imbalance in my head that prevents me from being the best person I can be. I've gone through this before, and given family history, I'm sure I'll go through it again. The hardest part for me was admitting I needed help. Once you get past that point, things really are easier. I get to be a nasty son of a bitch when I'm on a down cycle, and that isn't fair to anybody. Not me, or the people around me. If taking a pill once a day can prevent me from being a bigger ass than my normal, charming self, then the least I can do is take one. I've seen what my sickness can do to others, and it isn't fair to them, just as it isn't fair that I have it to begin with. I haven't committed to the process yet, as it really is a horrible feeling. I'm still trying to do some homeopathic stuff, and some meditation to see if that will help, but I'm just about convinced that pharmaceuticals are the route I need to take, not because of a buzz or anything, but because they work. I know the side effects are sometimes just as bad as they symptoms, but that is something I know I have to deal with. Plus, the first day is really cool, like being on some really killer weed for a full 24. The second day, well that sucks. That's like tweeking and I hate that feeling. The insomnia sucks too, but by the end of the first week, week and half, everything seems to be ok. Sometimes just typing out the process helps. So while I contemplate what's best for me, let me say thanks for being a soundboard, whether you respond or not, just getting things out really helps, and that was one of the whole reasons for this blog.

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As I begin my 38th lap around the sun, I want to first thank everybody for their well wishes. I tried to acknowledge as many Happy Birthdays as I could when they were sent, but I know I missed some. It isn't because you mean less to me than any other, I was simply overrun with them yesterday. I really hope this next lap is better than the past few have been. I've done things to set myself back from where I wanted to be, but I am working on regaining my position this go 'round. I'm pretty self-deprecating in my humor, and I fear I've begun to believe some of my own press. That is my fault, and I'm correcting that. Truth be told, I've always tended to be more motivated when I lacked support, and unfortunately right now I have many people being supportive. It's an odd conundrum. Many of the best things I've ever done were simply to piss people off. Perhaps I'm just waiting for a new muse, but part of me thinks I need a better motivating tactic. I've done a lot of reflecting the past few days as I've added another number to my age, and while I'm not "rah rah" about things, I'm cautiously optimistic. Here's hoping the lap we're all on finds us all moving forward together, that we all find our muse and break free from any binding ties (unless, you know, you're into that stuff, in which case message me), and that we find optimism defeating pessimism.