Becoming an Adult: Routines of Love

This is a meandering entry into my journal. I do not set out to capture any thought or inspiration. Mostly, I feel good and I am due to admit it.

Today is my immediate sister’s birthday.

It is also my college best friend’s birthday. I just realized something. I genuinely like my best friends to be people I look up to, literally. This college best friend is called Joe. He is like 6’6? He lives in Tennessee. The first and last time I was in Tennessee. He came all the way out to spend time with me on my birthday in a cabin. My ex fiance then invited him; I think if my memory serves. My ex fiancé’s best friend (one of many) share the same birthday as me!

So it’s all mumbled together because I am in Atlanta for about 10 days. I arrive on his birthday. I’m contemplating driving out to go see him. Doing something for once not for myself but just to be a friend. It’s still mostly foreign to me. The concept of truly inconvenient acts of service with no ROI.

Let me come back to that thought!

Pinned: inconvenient acts of service for someone you care about just because.

So I am revisiting memories and that smoky mountain vacation on my birthday comes to mind. In my 12 years as a working adult. I have taken maybe 3 vacations of more than 5 days without working and this was one of them. I’m not even so sure that it was truly 5 full days but I know I didn’t Take my laptop.

I felt celebrated. Worse than taking vacations, I generally don’t celebrate my birthday. I don’t see the point. I remember she forced me to. It was her way of showing love. Acts of service.

I do remember then thinking, uggghhh… this isn’t showing love! She is showing me what I must do for her own birthday!

Uggghhhhh… and maybe it’s true. It’s actually true. And maybe that is why I say acts of service with no ROI consideration.

Driving to Tennessee unannounced to see my buddy Joe would be a sacrifice of great proportions for me. I hate driving. The longest I have ever driven is 4 hours.

It just so happens that it was the drive from the Tennessee airport to the smoky mountain. It was such a weird experience.

Here I am my girlfriend at the time has planned this awesome get away. I was just supposed to show up and enjoy her itinerary of exceptional experience.

As soon as I landed in the middle of the night, I think it was like 10:30pm that I landed. I was told, hey we gotta drive to this location. I punch it in and it’s 3.5 hours away.

Before that drive, my longest ever drive was an hour and a half and that was with traffic on a route I knew well.

I’m doing what?

What was I supposed to do? Tell her that I am a chicken and I can’t drive? Make her drive us? Or wait the next day and go in the morning.

In pitch black darkness, cold with a car I had never driven with a car stocked up with supplies for a get away and a woman I loved on the passenger sit. I can feel my nerves trembling even now.

I got into the driver’s seat and off we went. This was a sandwich made up of facing 3 fears in one — fear of death, fear of heights, fear of something else, I don’t Remember now — and becoming a man.

I knew what my dad would do. I knew who the man I wanted to be would do.

I had to face myself. I knew I needed to take a step towards becoming the man that I wanted to be even if I felt like I was far from him in the moment.

I did the drive; I have about 2 moments in the 4 hours where I legit had my tummy seize up with fear. One of such moments I remember vividly. We were on the freeway going up a winding path; and it was so pitch black, I couldn’t see beyond 12 feet. The whole freeway felt like it shrunk on me and I couldn’t stop, only could go forward and keep up with the speed that didn’t make it obvious that I was allowing my fear grip the steering.

I remember looking over a few times and she had this puzzled look on her face like why are you going 45mph in the middle of the night on the freeway with no one else around. And I had the equivalent look like why don’t you mind your business and enjoy the ride. Neither of us said anything. She only said:

Are you alright ?

And of course what will a man like the one I wanna be say? Duh! I’m just enjoying the pitch black view!

When I say inconvenient acts of service with no ROI. This is kinda what I mean.

She could’ve driven.

She loves driving and I think she had done that drive before.

She was just tired and glad her man was around.

The only reason to drive was simply because she would’ve preferred that I drive.

I wasn’t gonna get sex because I drove.

I wasn’t gonna be loved anymore because I drove mostly because to her, me driving is not some act of love. It would have been something she would gladly do without thought.

I wasn’t earning any browny point.

I was simply doing something because she would prefer not to.

Whereas on my end, I might as well had been choosing to jump off a plane just because I was tired of living. It felt like I was about to face one of the biggest practical fears in my life.

So maybe there was ROI. Maybe the return on investment was not for her but it was for me?

Inconvenient Acts of Service

I don’t mind taking the garbage out on my way out of the house. I hate getting up from watching my soccer team play just to take out the garbage because the woman that I love wants it done then.

I don’t mind cooking when I am in the mood and feel like expressing myself. I hate cooking because it’s my turn to even if I have to cancel playing basketball just to ensure the food is ready on time.

I don’t mind talking on the phone. I hate receiving a call when I am in no mood to talk to anyone but it’s the end of day and we promised to talk daily and we are yet to.

The act is not the issue. If it were up to me,

I can give you my life, jump in front of a hungry lion to save you. As long as that one act will fill your acts of service needs for the rest of our lives.

What sucks is when acts of service is the language of love that requires tending daily; weekly; monthly.

This is why I love physical touch. It’s never inconvenient. Unless I am mad and not in the mood. But that wouldn’t be an issue if inconvenience; that would be because in that moment my love tank is empty and I feel a need to give you out of it.

Words of affirmation can be lazy but it can’t be inconvenient.

Is it ever inconvenient to say the magic phrase: I love you!

I don’t think so. Like sure it could be “inconvenient” to say I love you to your wife while your girlfriend is in the crowd. But I don’t Think inconvenience is the word then.

Inconvenience has more to do with difficulty or causing discomfort and less to do with timing. Yes, timing can cause discomfort which is why it’s wholly appropriate to use it but you get what I mean!

Tennessee is calling

I am writing all of this just because I want to understand why I won’t just rent a car and go see my friend.

I am writing this because it’s becoming more obvious to me that even though I am 33. I am not yet an adult.

I have money because I work.

I have natured reproductive organs because I have aged.

I have beards because of time.

I have responsibilities.

But neither of these things make me an adult.

Both of these definitions are perfect.

Fully developed.

My body is the body of an adult but my mind isn’t.

A characteristics of an adult captured in the second sentence is being responsible to accomplish mundane but necessary tasks.

I’m an adult at work because I need to be paid to survive. The tasks that I accomplish at work are obviously necessary but I don’t find them mundane. Everyday, I have a full plate most of which changes by the hour. I might use the same consistent skills throughout the day but what I use them for changes.

I did an internship in college that informed my decision to never end up having to do manual labor.

I clocked in at 6 am, we got freshly melted metal then then into a particular shape that the oil industry around us needed. Then I got the raw formed and shaped part and used a machine to chisel it to specs. It was the same process, generally the same parts everyday.

I loved getting paid but I hated my life.

Doing that for the rest of my life would have been the definition of being an adult.

Mundane

Accomplished

Necessary

Tasks

The test of adulthood to me is “getting it done” “consistently” “routinely” “because it must get done”

Friendships

Every area fly life where I need to do things consistently just because they must be done. Okay I should say most, I fail at it.

Unless I see the ROI of doing the task.

The first 5–7 years of my adult life, I would talk to my dad maybe once every 3 months. It was a painful conversation everytime. I didn’t care for it but I knew it needed to be done.

One day after 5 years of either being in the US or working in the US. I saw my dad’s picture. And it shook me to my core. This man was not aging, he had aged so much already. And I was missing precious time assuming he was gonna be around forever. So I made it a point to call him once a week at least. I have slotted him into my schedule and now I go maybe 50/52 weeks out of the year ensuring we have a conversation on Sunday.

This is another example of me exuding adulthood. But in this case the ROI for me is clear because I ddon’t want to go through life and regret that whatever I spent my time on was not worth the previous moments of bonding that my dad would have gladly giving to me and I to him.

Friendships are different. I feel like I have time. I feel like whatever I am missing, I can always make up, and I feel like it’s loss that is the right opportunity cost.

I’ll be at your wedding at all cost. I’ll be at the big moments. I’ll fill out cup of love with big acts of service. But the mundane adult checkins:

Save that for the birds!

Acts of Inconvenient Service of Romance

Because I am not *fully* responsible. I am finding out that love is gonna be very difficult for me.

I want someone to serve me Inconveniently as long as they let me love them with physical touch and words of affirmation.

But this doesn’t work.

And unfortunately, I have 15 years of reinforcing my world view that I don’t need to serve if it’s inconvenient. I have e gotten away with it in all my relationship and friendships.

My mom doesn’t make me call her often. She still loves me even if I ddon’t call her as long as she can reach me when she wants to.

I have three best friends over the course of my life. I have never been good at fostering the relationships. But we have shared deep bonds of love anyway. When I see them or when we talk, we have our big acts if convenient service. Talk for a while knowing the conversation might be our last or the next one might not be for a while.

Every woman that I have desired, the moment they need me to become an adult, I find reasons to check out. My longest relationships are long distance.

Wow! That just hit me like a ton of bricks.

So now, I gotta face it.

You know what makes it worse?

They see how consistent I am with my business, with my job. They see how intentional I am with my routine. How it’s fully given to ensure that these things very important to me get the best of me.

These important things to me have an ROI that I have defined.

So how do you attach an ROI to a romantic relationship? To love?

Should you? Doesn’t that kill the relationship to measure its worth?

Isn’t good love by its very nature an unconditional affair? Isn’t it supposed to be less about returns and more about expression ?

I think I’m in love but I want to run away because I must die. I must murder the part of me that hates being inconvenienced. I must foster a fresh skill to fall in love with being an adult.

I think I’m in love. I think I need to revamp my routine again but this time:

With the lens to make time to live.

I’ve been really good at earning, building, doing, achieving; it’s strange becoming

Especially becoming an adult.