Examining My Motivation

This question was asked during church this week… “What motivates you?” I was able to sit through about 10 minutes of discussion before JR started fussing. He was loud enough that I needed to leave so that he didn’t bother the rest of the class. So I sat with him in the hall and thought about that singular question… what is my motivation?

Searching for Motivation

The first answer that came to mind to me is “I have no motivation.” I didn’t share this with the class, but kept it to myself. I do find it very hard much of the time to find motivation to do anything. I’m in a depressed mood much of the time.

Even when I have the desire to get up and do something, quite often the chronic pain is there to change my mind. I want to get up and be outside doing things, but knowing they are going to hurt while doing them AND continue hurting long after I’ve stopped makes it extremely difficult to do much at all.

Fear of pain

But that means that I am motivated to stay docile because of fear of pain. Having many times experienced headaches so bad that they leave me vomiting or blacked out, I find pain avoidance to be highly motivating.

Now, because I know that continuing to gain weight will also cause more pain, I do find motivation to do what I can. Even 8 years after being medically discharged I am still trying to find the threshold between activity and pain. The same fear of pain that sucks motivation from me, also makes me want to get up and do what I can so that I don’t get worse. It is a balancing act that I often feel I am failing at.

Love of family

Love for my family is the one thing that consistently overcome my fear of pain. I will do what NEEDS to be done for them even if I know it will be painful. Right now this is happening with getting my parents house cleaned out. We NEED a permanent place to live. Every day I wake up stiff, sore, and nauseated from pain. But the clock is ticking toward start of the next school year, so I get up and get moving.

Before this though there were many days when I probably would have stayed in bed all day. Or if I did get up, I wouldn’t go anywhere as I hate being in public. If it weren’t that Julie hates this and it makes her feel bad, then I’d never leave the house.

But making Julie happy and wanting to see the kids is enough to get me out of bed and dressed. It’s really been the only thing getting me to church for years. Don’t misunderstand, I love my church. I have a deep and abiding faith in Christ. But the pain and PTSD would be enough to keep me from attending except that Julie wants me there with the family. So I go, for love of the family.

Other motivation?

I don’t know if I can come up with another one. I don’t do much pleasure seeking, I don’t care about money, I’d rather not be famous. While at Fort Huachuca I lost the will to live, and am only still here today because of my love for Julie and the kids. There are occasionally things I would like to do, but they all largely go unfulfilled for reasons previously discussed. And even when I do something that I “want to do” it is largely unsatisfying.

I have good moments of laughter and love, but am largely unmotivated toward anything in particular. My decision making paradigm can basically be boiled down to pain avoidance and love of family.

I’d love to hear… what motivates you?

Andrew with his puppy — Andrew circa 2015 with our Great Pyrenees puppy ‘Chief’

4 June 2017

Book Review: Mafia to Mormon

Mafia to Mormon: My Conversion Story by Mario Facione

We had the flu at our house last week and I read Mafia to Mormon while I was down for my 24 hours. Often times, non-fiction books can be heavy and laborious to read. But not this one. And let me assure you, you don’t have to be a Mormon to enjoy and learn from this book.

True Story

Let me begin with a very brief overview. Mario Facione was a member of the Italian Mafia in Detriot back in the 60’s and 70’s. But all of that began to change when he was flew into Salt Lake City, Utah, looking for his next big scam. We got our copy from Jax’s grandmother’s estate so there was a little something extra tucked in the front cover. Grandma Petersen had clipped a newspaper article from the Deseret Morning News on Dec. 6, 2005. Entitled “Utah scam led to LDS faith and a new life for Mafioso,” by Doug Robinson, the article added to the intrigue of the book.

“As the title suggests, Facione joined the LDS Church and gave up his life of crime. After doing a fireside a few years later, he was approached by a woman about doing a book. Facione declined.

“‘I was scared,’ he says. ‘ I told her when I get through talking you won’t want to do this. When this gets on the street, you’ll evaporate with your family.’

“She persisted. He finally relented. He talked, she wrote (she still does not want her name published). Facione put the project off for two more years because ‘I had to wait for two guys to leave the scene,’ he says, meaning they had to die. He also did a thorough check of the statute of limitations. The book took 18 years to complete.”

Content

The book encompasses how Mario got involved with the Mafia and his subsequent role as their “cash cow.” But when two Mormon missionaries, who he mistakes for Feds, show up at his door, he finds his convictions changing rapidly. His religious conversion is accompanied by loss of fortune and family, and his struggle to transition between two lifestyles, resulting in his potentially lethal request to get out of the mafia.

The book might be described as Mario’s realization of what is meant by the saying ” you cannot serve two masters.” While discussing the many deals made in his life where a man’s word is his bond, Mario states, “Everything still comes down to a deal in my life, only this time the deal is between me and the Lord.”

Recommendation

I give Mafia to Mormon 12 out of 12 dozen rolls. This book had me laughing, crying, and gasping in unbelief as I root for a member of the mafia. And no, you don’t have to be a Mormon to enjoy it.

3 June 20174 June 2017

A Very Angry Running Log

As documented, I’ve been keeping track of the running exercises that the family has been doing. Everybody is doing fantastic and getting better. They all especially enjoyed the “mini-marathon” that the Central Elementary put on as a fund raiser.

This is were I start getting angry!

We were hoping to also let them run in the Pleasant Grove Strawberry Days 5K this summer. Julie did some checking into the registration and we will no longer be participating. Apparently the ba***rds involved think that it costs them $20 per participant to run along their city streets!?!

How the hell am I supposed to be able to afford $100 to let five family members run? $100 to use your public streets for 45 minutes?!? What are those costs covering?? Running requires no actual costs in equipment, nor any specialized skills. There are no hard costs involved since your roads being used are already paid for through the taxes you take. Can any reason justify $20 PER PERSON to participate in an event with no inherent costs?

Almost every city runs some kind of ‘town days’ event in order to bring out their citizens and provide them with some activities to enjoy together. Strawberry Days is one of those events, and is one of the longest running ‘town days’ in Utah. It is meant for community involvement! It isn’t a business endeavor or private event. Yet I’ve seen private for-profit running events, at much nicer venues, that cost less!

We know there are many events that are costly to put on that we can’t take advantage of. But running? We should be able to afford that!! Are you intentionally trying to keep the poorer members of the community out? You have priced out any struggling members of this community! Or is this also a fundraising event instead of one intended to increase community involvement?

‘Running’ a Scam!

So I’m a bit angry. The historical purpose for these town days events has apparently been abandoned. It is no longer about bringing people together in mutual activity. Or at least those activities are only made available to those with better financial fortunes than the Jensens have.

I know this is a minor ‘first-world-problem’ thing, and that many people with financial problems have it much worse than I do. But I’m mad on their behalf too. How many people would like to participate in this type of should-be-affordable community event, but can’t because the “community” has priced them out of it? There are so few entertainments that poor people get to do or participate in. Running should be within their financial reach!

Maybe I need to retake an anger management course, but I can’t tell you how utterly ridiculous I find this pricing. I’ve fluctuated between smolderingly mad and blinding rage.

Your streets are not that great PG, it is not some great prestigious event to run on them. No fame comes to the winner and no glory is bestowed by the heavens. How about next year you keep your community events at a price point that doesn’t cut out your community?

Deep breaths Jax, keep taking deep breaths and relax.

23 May 201721 May 2017

Kids Earning Money

Caitlin and Joshua are earning money beginning a summer campaign to raise some dough. If you haven’t heard about it, please check out the link!

Good for them!

The kids, with a bit of encouragement, have decided to start earning their own money for the summer. They are only 14 (Caitlin) and 12 (Joshua) but have a pretty good understanding of where things come from. They realize we can’t just go into a store and get things without offering up something of value in return (money). And because Julie and I have never operated on debt, the kids know that they need to have that money in advance.

They know that if they want go to movies, buy games, etc, that it takes money, and that that money must be earned in some way; either by themselves or somebody else on their behalf. They don’t think that money magically appears or that the world owes them anything.

Thankfully they are willing to get out, do some work, and provide services of value in order to earn the money they want to spend. I think they are admirable.

Kicking them out of the nest?

At some point in time every parent must decide when their kids must start earning money for themselves, instead of that parent continuing to earn money on the child’s behalf. We are not at that point yet. I know that my parents took care of me long past the ages of Caitlin and Joshua. Julie and I will keep doing the same for ours.

We are still providing for all of their necessities. We buy them school clothes, food, and other necessities. They haven’t been cut off financially. But due to our recent losses we aren’t in a position to provide many perks. They are at an age where those perks seem like necessities and they would like more than just enough to keep them alive. So they have chosen to earn more.

Now there are obviously things that they can’t afford in advance that we are willing help them with. For example, we signed up all of the kids for swimming lessons this summer. We also bought a full season pass for the pool. For a family of our size you might imagine those cost a fair amount of money.

Caitlin and Josh both agreed they wanted to do those things and they were willing to pay their share of the cost. Rather than make them miss some of the summer trying to earn the money first, we covered the cost, they will pay us back, and they will get to enjoy the full summer’s worth of activities.

Drawbacks

I hope that none manifest themselves, but I have some concerns about kids earning money.

I’d hate for the kids to view all of our/their acquaintances as potential customers. I want the kids to be kind and friendly with people because they are good people (which they are!), and not because they see them as somebody they can earn a few dollars from. Being good people needs to be first and foremost.
I don’t want them to “learn” that life is all about money. It isn’t! It never has been for Julie and I and I don’t want the kids to think so. Money is a useful tool for providing things in life, but it isn’t the goal of life. You don’t get a gold star for dying with the most money or having the most toys. I want them to do this as a means to an end, rather than seeing money as the end itself.

This was a popular bumper sticker and T-shirt in the 80’s

But this more accurately reflects the truth!

I don’t want friends/neighbors/relatives to have a bad experience. They are kids, and if they mess something up I don’t want to have any bad feelings develop amongst people we know. I don’t expect this to happen and that problem could be handled with some customer service skills.
I don’t want people to feel obligated to support them. I don’t want them to resent being asked. If you want bread, please order it. If not, please don’t do so because of guilt. They need to learn to accept rejection as well.
I don’t want them to think that Mom and I aren’t willing to take care of them. Sure, we are expecting some financial hardship, but I don’t want the kids to think that they are a burden on us, or are the cause of the issues.
I don’t want them to ruin their childhood. They only have a few short years of youth. I don’t want this to take up so much of their time that they don’t have time to play with friends, enjoy the pool, go to movies, etc. I am still willing to let them be kids.

Your experiences

What have you seen or experienced? I would love to hear some stories about when your children first started earning money. How did it go? Did it change them? For good or for ill? How could YOU have done better? How did you talk to them or teach them?

11 May 201711 May 2017

Only 8? Or am I dreaming?

I still only have 8 kids, right?

Had an incredibly vivid dream last night. The length of the time span involved seems insanely long. It began with us living in the house in Myrtle, MO. I came home from a trip to Little Rock and found all of the kids gone. When I entered the house I heard Julie screaming in fear and pain. I ran into the bedroom to find a guy on top of her, in the process of raping her.

With just a moment to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, decided I couldn’t use my sidearm with Julie there, so I jumped on the guy and a fight ensued. It wasn’t very long until I had him in a choke hold, which I held until I was sure the guy was dead.

The dream skipped the dealing with the clean up of that event; no dealing with police, hospital, etc. However, a few weeks later we found out Julie was pregnant.

Pregnancy

The pregnancy was what this dream was really about. I was dealing with my wife being pregnant from a rapist and making decision on how to deal with it. My sympathies to anyone and everyone who has had to do this in reality.

The majority of the dream was the discussion and decision making Julie and I went through. We seemed to have several discussions about giving the kids up for adoption or whether we would raise it. We didn’t discuss the idea of an abortion. They weren’t fights, with one of us wanting to get rid of it and the other wanting to keep it. They were discussions with both of us discussing things like whether we would resent the kid because of how he was conceived, how the other kids would treat him, how other family would react, and whether we thought we could love him, etc. (We knew it was a boy somehow???).

So my brain spent the majority of the night discussing with itself the merits of keeping a kid conceived by rape. I suppose the benefit of such a dream is that it makes the decision real, it adds the feeling of being an actual decision needing to be made. A theoretical discussion would cover the same topics, but without the real emotions involved.

Decision

And for what its worth, my brain decided that we’d keep such a kid. If it were reality I don’t know if we’d make that decision. Obviously Julie’s real emotions/reasoning would be different than what my dream created for her. I assume my thoughts and emotions would be the same, because I thought it was real this time. Hopefully we’ll never have to find out Julie’s real-world thoughts on it.

Would you keep a kid conceived by rape? Do you think you’d be able to ever love the kid? and not look at him with resentment or anger? In my dream I thought I could, but I don’t know if I’d really be able to. I think I’d want to keep the kid, but I think it’d be harder to KNOW that your emotions would be positive toward it.

Dream and Reality collide

I’ve said before how I can have a hard time telling the difference between the real and the imagined. In my dream we had gone through the fire and moved here to PG, just like we really did. So my dream concluded with us living here like we really are, only Julie had just had the baby.

As I woke up I reached over to find Julie and she wasn’t in bed. So I thought she must be up feeding the new and fictitious baby. I laid there for a good 30 minutes thinking about the kid and dealing with my emotions about him (I think we named him John). After at least a half an hour it started to dawn on me that it wasn’t real. That I still only had 8 kids. That those memories were of non-real events. That is hard to accept sometimes because the emotions going through me were very real.

After stretching out my back and shoulders (often required to stand up) I got up and out of bed. When I got to the staircase it fully hit me that it wasn’t real. JR was at the bottom of the stairs and seeing him confirmed it was just a dream. I remembered that just yesterday I had known that JR was the youngest.

Conclusions…

You mean other than that I’m psychotic???

Yes, I’d consciously kill a violent rapist I caught in the act.

Yes, I’d be willing to keep a kid conceived like that.

Yes, my medication should probably be working better.