Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What do you think is unfair about your life?

This should be an interesting one, because I feel like I’m basically going to be whining and complaining here.

The dream is dead

One thing that I think is unfair about my life, and this is something that a lot of people will probably answer, that I feel like I work too hard and I never get ahead.

I’m teaching American literature right now to my 10th graders. We’re in the post Civil War / Reconstruction period, and gradually transitioning into the age of realism. It’s interesting to talk to the students about this whole concept of “the American dream“ and talking about the time when writers started writing about the fact that it’s just that – a dream. The truth is, hard work alone does not guarantee financial success in life.

I wrote about this recently here, but I don’t know that I’ve really wanted to be extremely wealthy in my life. All I’ve ever wanted was enough money to just be comfortable. Just enough to let on that living from paycheck to paycheck. Like I said before, I’m sure that this is a shared by MANY people in this country.

Regrets, I’ve had a few

Maybe, “regrets“ isn’t the best term to use here, because I would never wish anything that would change either of my boys. But sometimes I wish I didn’t spend as much time as I did with either X one or X2. I know that I did everything I could and stayed with him as long as I could in order to try and make things work. And I know that it’s in my very nature that I have to exhaust all options so that I’m able to lay my head down at night peacefully and sleep. But when I added up, I did spend a significant chunk of my life in two failed relationships.

If I could start again

People always talk about whether or not they would do things differently if they could. I’m not sure that I would if I had the opportunity. But at my age, there are things that I look back upon in my life in wonder how things would have turned out if I had made some different choices.

A Different World

Back when he ran for president in 1982, one of the things Bill Clinton said over and over again on his campaign stops was:” we were on the verge of the first generation of Americans, who will not be better off than their parents were.“

Granted, Clinton was talking about the economy and the quality of life for people in my country. But the truth is, I can’t help but think about the fact that I am not the same father to my kids, nor could I ever be, the kind of father that my dad was for me. I hate the fact that I don’t see my boys every single day. I hate the fact that they don’t live with me. And this happened twice in my life now. I think about what must go through kid one kid’s head some days. I would freak out if my parents were divorced and I only got to see my dad four times a month, if that.

And I get it. There are probably millions of real “deadbeat dads” out there. Hell, kid one himself has told me that “I’ll see you more than a lot of my friends see their dads”. I understand that I’m doing the absolute best I can under the circumstances, but I can’t help but make those comparisons to The Old Man. 

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts

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The article “Get a Helmet!” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.