After watching The Hateful Eight on New Year day, I decided to catch up with his films on Netflix. Django Unchained is brutal but breathtaking. Inglourious Basterds is insane but ingenious. Death Proof is scary but sexy. I even rewatched Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino has quite a violent, disturbing, and artful taste.
I began 2016 with Quentin Tarantino’s latest work of art and blood. The Hateful Eight is indeed a mind-blowing (brain spattering literally) entertainment. It’s a much needed three-hour getaway from the kids during the holiday break.
2015 had been eventful. Between the kids, full-time job, school, and teaching, I am not even sure how I did it, but I am proud of some of the accomplishments:
2015 had been way too hectic. Juggling between work, school, teaching, and the boys had been challenging, stressful, but rewarding. In 2016, I reduced my activities as much as I can. I am now done with school. As much as I would like to teach, I took a leave. I had no client work and won’t in the future. I spent less time on social media. I uninstalled Twitter off my phone. I deactivated Facebook yesterday. In a way, 2016 will be a new beginning for me. I don’t have any plan other than focusing on what matters most to me. My goal is to become a better father, husband, son, and individual.
I ended the year with the final episode of Mad Men. I spent the last few weeks not only watching it, but also drinking with it and fantasizing it. Besides the drinking and the sleeping around, I enjoyed the art of advertising, which also related to design. The cast is superb and the writing is exceptional. Mad Men is the first American TV show that I had watched in its entirety. It was such a guilty pleasure wasting almost 100 hours on my iPhone and sleepless nights. Now I need to get to back to reality, which means stop drinking as well.
I feel horrible that my niece’s and nephew’s holiday break with us turned into a terror. I was planning on taking them around DC this week to visit the museums after the crazy holiday weekend, but they decided to leave early. They were terribly irritated and annoyed by their cousins who are my kids.
What hurts me the most is that these two little kids really love their older cousins. They always excited to see them and wanted to play with them. Đán was thrilled to come with me to pick up their cousins when he heard they were coming.
I did not expect my niece and nephew to babysit my kids. My wife and I did our best to feed them and take them out, but none of that mattered. I understand that my kids are not in their best behavior, but they are kids. I know that Đán makes up some of the craziest things at times, but he is just four years old.
I am disappointed with what they had done, but I am glad that my nephew expresses his frustration. Now I know how he feels about the kids that look up to him and want to spend time with him. I was thinking of visiting them this weekend for New Year, but I don’t want to be a pain in the ass.
There’s a scene in Mad Men where Don Draper talked on the phone with his ex-wife Betty about their daughter Sally who got into some trouble. Betty said to Don, “She’s from a broken home.”
As a parent, this is something that I am concern the most about divorce. It has a huge impact on the kids. It is so much easier to move on when no kids are involved. Then again, is it worth sacrificing your own happiness if you are miserable in your relationship for the sake of the kids?
I like to think so, but what the hell do I know?
There’s a scene in Mad Men where Don Draper and his ex-wife Betty reconnected at their son’s camp. After they made love, Betty said to Don about his current wife: “She doesn’t know that loving you is the worst way to get to you.”
What a great line. It does feel like the more you love someone the further you are from that person. When you are not so madly in love, you are more likely to be closer to that person. Loving someone else is hard when you don’t—or you think you don’t—get the same love back.
Love is such a fragile thing. One moment you could be madly in love, but the next moment you could just fall completely out of it. When love dies, it just disappears. We just keep moving on to the next things risking everything we have built together. It’s sad.
There’s a scene in Mad Men where Pete Campbell tried to make love to his wife, but she refused. With humiliation and embarrassment, he said something along this line: “You want to throw away the one thing that matters the most in this relationship?”
Glad to hear I am not the only one thinking this way. Love, kids, money, companionship, and everything else matter in a relationship, but that also is a major part of the package. I am not saying Pete should have done that with another married woman in his neighborhood, but I understand why he did it.
Within just a week at home, the boys drove everyone around them insane. My niece and nephew cut their staying with us short because they could not tolerate the boys, particularly the four years old.
They are not the most respectful kids. They don’t listen more than half of the time. They break down quite easily. They don’t like to share. They have tons of energy.
Most (if not all) of their misbehaves are my fault and responsibility. I fail to discipline my kids properly. I fail to control my emotions when they push my button. Đạo drives me to the wall every time he doesn’t get what wanted, and yet he is such a sweet boy.
Being a father, I want to give my kids the good times and childhood memories, something I never had with my dad. But each day I feel like a failure and with many regrets. At the end of the day, I tell myself to try again the next day. Tomorrow will be a better day. The only failure I am not making is stop trying. I get a third shot at this parenthood thing when the new boy is born.
After writing about the fiasco yesterday, I went to bed. I thought about it today and realized that I was overreacting. I apologized for my behavior.
I am not going to delete that post because I don’t want to sensor myself. What makes blogging so great is that there’s no gatekeeper. I blog whatever I feel at that particular moment, but it doesn’t mean that I always hold on that view. I am always changing and the thoughts on this blog should reflect that. I want to express the vulnerable side of me and how I am continuing to grow.
What I write today doesn’t mean that’s how I feel tomorrow. As a personal journal, I should not have to be restricted. So what you are reading on here is my raw opinion and opinion changes constantly.