In A Nutshell

I was born August 16, 1973. According to certain beliefs, this makes me a Leo. The place of the first moment where I drew air into my tiny lungs was some hospital in LaFayette, Louisiana. Of course, this is what I was told as I have no memory of this event. I apparently lived in Houma, Louisiana for the first six moths or so of my life. I have ONE memory that I will write about on some other occasion. However, my parents changed location taking everyone along to New Orleans where we all lived until I was six years old. Then we moved to some small town outside of Bloomington, Indiana for a few months before moving to Lexington, Kentucky for a couple years. A final move to Louisville, Kentucky when I was approaching my 9th birthday finally gave me enough stability to make some permanent friends. I stayed there until I went off to college at the University of Kentucky at 18. After graduating, I hopped between Louisville and Lexington a few times depending on some choices I made in that chapter of my life. A short stint in Winchester, Kentucky paired me with my future wife who I married shortly after moving to Morehead, Kentucky to be with her. I was 28 at the time. She was not alone as she had a 6 year old son from a previous relationship where she never married. We quickly made another son of our own within a year. (NOT a shotgun wedding, I assure you!) Just after the baby was born, we moved to Louisville because it had better job opportunities than Morehead. That worked well for a few years until I took a risk on an offer from a dear friend to work for him. That was a *FANTASTIC* time for our family until the work dried up six months later through no fault of my friend. So now aged 33, I scramble for some work and wind up working in and around Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio. Three years of that, and I longed for the greener grass of Louisville again. We moved back and that is where we are as of this writing.

So now that you know *WHERE* I have been, I will now intentionally over-generalize what went on in those places. In those early years, I had the bliss of being a loved young child without any responsibility in the world beyond doing whatever my parents told me to do. After the move to Indiana, though, my life was filled with bullies and loneliness as I struggled to make and keep friends while my parents worked long hours to meet the family's needs. This state of being continued through the Lexington years. This is not to say that I did not have good times as well, but when weighed opposite each other, the scale leans heavily towards the negative. It is during these years that my heart grew hard as a rock and cold as dry-ice. But it was also in Lexington that I saw Disney's TRON in the movie theaters when I was eight. That was the exact moment when I fully realized myself as being a geek. (Though the term would not become en-vogue for several years.)

On moving to Louisville, I bonded with another of "my kind" that was in my 4th grade class. He is my longest lasting friendship that endures to this day. We were not popular, and as fate would have it, we went to separate middle schools where the 80's culture mistreated geeks like us. More bullies. More loneliness. More depression. My emotional skin thickened. I coped by immersing myself into religion. Christianity, to be specific. You can read about my thoughts on that in the Philosophy section. However, it was a positive experience for me and I made it through the awkward years without committing suicide while gaining a few friends along the way. Do not misunderstand me: my heart was still hard and cold. Due to my experiences, I had become a creature relying 99% on logic as a survival mechanic. Star Trek's Spock was my role-model. While on the surface, I was cordial with everyone, I did not make friends easily or lightly. This is still true today. At least the teachings of that particular congregation I attended helped set my moral compass to a path of good instead of evil, right?

High school was wonderful. I attended DuPont Manual from 1987 to 1991. It truly is the promised land for freaks and geeks to be themselves. I thrived. I loosened up... a bit. 90 : 10 >logic : emotion ratio by the time I graduated. Then came "The Awakening". I mean college. I went to the University of Kentucky and experienced culture shock like I had never imagined. Sure, I initially flocked with the birds of my feather, as it were, but over time, I learned to know and accept others not like me for who they were. Just like I wanted to be accepted all those years growing up. The problem, though, is that many of those I saw and tried to understand did not reciprocate the effort to know me. The great raw, smelly fish called "Reality" slapped me in the face a few times. My friends at the time helped me understand it all. There was nothing I could really do about how things were. My shelter was gone. I grew as a person beyond myself. I opened up wide. My ratio adjusted to 50:50. I wanted to experience all life had to offer!

So just after graduation, I tried to live my own life. I was on my own. Nobody was telling me what to do! I was bad at it. One bad decision after another led to more drama than I cared to handle. It ruined my credit. It tainted my relationships with my family and friends. It worked me to the bone physically and drained me emotionally. But through it all, I never gave up. I had several offers from several sources to just walk away from the mess I was making and get back on with what society believes to be "The Right Way" of doing things. I turned them all down because, at the core of my very being, I accepted the responsibility of my actions, decisions, and the corresponding results. It is not my nature to impose upon others to clean up after me. That would not be fair. Eventually, I resolved all those issues to my satisfaction and learned from my mistakes. But in doing so, I had hardened up again. (85:15)

About a year of peace and quiet passed while I healed and regrouped between those dark times and when I got married. That is not to say I do not enjoy marriage. That *IS* to say that it is not always peaceful or, even more rarely, quiet. But married life suits me. It has given me someplace safe where I can always retreat to eventually if the day is kicking my ass. Though I have moved my family around, and the family itself has dealt with its own internal struggles over the years, it is my safe haven and I will do nothing to jeopardize it. This is where my mind rests now. My current role in life is husband - father - provider to my family. My ratio is stable where I think it works to my best interests: 75 logic : 25 emotion. I believe that one should recognize and listen to their emotions, but let reason make the decisions and guide one's life.

And there I am...

-5/14/13-

(Paraphrased from one of my Facebook Posts)

The big news is that I am divorced now. I'm not looking for sympathy. It was a mutual decision and agreement. Everything is civil and drama free. However, the prevailing advice is to "lawyer up, hit the gym, and delete Facebook". Well, I don't ever foresee a need for a lawyer if we both stay civil, I have found time to exercise more even if it's at home and not at a public gym, and as for Facebook... she's one of the "family" members that I no longer care to see online. She moved out in March of 2014 and the divorce finalized in November 2015 a few days before what would have been our 14th anniversary. I'm doing well and have long since moved on with my life.

So my focus in life now is getting my career in education going. I'm done with my MAT courses (online in the evenings) and am now in the Student Teaching phase of getting my degree. So far, I'm making straight A's! I'm in a good place. Be happy for me. I feel like I'm doing all right at the moment.

-1/6/16-

Man, it's been a long while since I've updated this site. It's now been moved from the old Google Sites to the new Google Sites. I also renamed it from Meatsack's Workshop to Joshua Pickard's Workshop. The name Meatsack has been consistently criticized as a online persona if I intended to be taken seriously. I guess I'm finally listening to that advice and growing up a bit more.

To catch up from my last entry, I am remarried. She is a lovely woman that is the emotional support partner I've been needing for most of my life. Yes, that sounds schmarmy, but it's how I feel over the past couple of years. My logic to emotions ratio is back to being close to a healthy 50 : 50. I'm more confident and willing to take risks.

I've also recently turned 48. I'm starting to feel the mid-life crisis creep up on me. That's a significant reason why I made my way pack to this page, to make another effort to live the life I want to live rather than having to live the life dictated to me by the demands of the world and those in it. I mean to pursue the life of creativity once again and desperately hope that I am able to make something of it and stick with it this time. I keep seeing motivational posts on social media that it's never too late to make something of yourself. "You are on your own timeline." Things like that. I sure hope so.

-9/2/21-