the laanba blog

Politics

Today is the 50th anniversary of human space flight.  I'm a human space flight fan.  I have a stack of books on the Mercury and Apollo program.  Human space flight touches my soul and brings tears to my eyes on a regular basis.  

Today is the 30th anniversary of the first flight of the space shuttle.  My mom has a photograph framed and signed by the first two astronauts to fly on the space shuttle.  I'm proud to live in Space City USA and I was devastated at the loss of Challenger and Columbia.  

Today NASA awarded space shuttles to Washington DC, LA, New York and KSC.  Houston, home of Mission Control will not be receiving a shuttle.  I have no quibbles with Washington DC and KSC.  I am a realist and know that Houston isn't a tourist city and I know that Space Center Houston isn't the greatest showcase for JSC.  I know that there were perfectly legitimate reasons to not award the shuttle to Houston, but it makes me sad and a little bitter that there is a very real possibility that politics played a part.

I really hate politics.  I hate when people can't make fair decisions based on facts and evidence and instead base them on political gain.  On who you know and what have you done for me lately and the old boy network. I don't play politics at work.  I'm sure many people would say that is stupid, but I'm just not cut out for the game. Why is it so hard for people to leave politics out of it and just do their job in an honest and forthright way?

I know this is the equivalent of a little kid stomping their foot and saying life isn't fair.  Naive I know. Life isn't fair and we will go on, but it will always hurt me a little bit to think of the shuttles not being here.

Time's Up

[Delete Delete Delete Delete]

I was upset this evening and I wrote a blog post.  I needed to vent and get my feelings out.  Some of you may still be able to see it in the RSS reader.  The short version is that it is frustrating to save and scrimp to be able to take a short trip when others in my same financial situation or worse just seem to have the same or better things handed to them.

I decided to go for a bike ride to try to work out some of these feelings.  I knew on the way there that the blog post wasn't quite right.  I had not put my finger on the real problem.  I rode around, sometimes pedaling faster than I've ever gone before, trying to escape these demons and the answer started to become clear.  I'm not happy with my life and I don't know if I know how to fix it.  I'm starting to feel like it is already too late.

I really have worked the last year or so to try to focus on the things that are going well in my life and try not to compare myself to others.  I hate the jealous, petty side of me that appears when I feel like my life is lacking.   It doesn't happen all the time, but the monster does rear its head when I see others with money, lots of friends, and a love of their life.  I know that to achieve true happiness I need to be content with what I have and who I am.  But I don't know if I know how to do that.  I've been trying and I feel that all I'm doing is treading water, barely keeping my head above the surface.  And I'm running out of time.

For some reason I feel like there is this happiness clock and it is ticking away.  Now the psychologists in the audience would say that it is my biological clock and maybe that is true, but I don't think so.  I've never been overly enamored with babies, but I can't help looking around at people my age and how settled their lives are.  Married 10 or 12 years with their 2.5 kids.  Soon I will be at an age where none of that is possible.  I feel like the happiness clock is running out and there will come a point where I'll just have to accept being a boring, frumpy school teacher with scant friends, living on the crappy side of town and no love interest.  People change their lives, but I just don't know how anymore.  And the clock is running out.  And my deepest fear is that it isn't the happiness clock that is running out, but the hope clock.  And once my hope is gone it is all over.  That is the only thing I cling to and it is getting smaller and smaller.