yes, this one is for you.

Call who calls you. 

Love who loves you. 

Support who supports you. 

Ignore who ignores you. 

Never chase people who are comfortable losing you. 

Your life, mine, are not random. Our story was written before we were born.

not for everyone

I tend to react to news, good or bad almost immediately. Not because it serves me well, but because that is how I am wired. I would not recommend this method to others if they can avoid it.

It does not always put me in the best position for personal peace. But it is real, it is me, and it is not designed for an outcome. It simply feels better mentally to release whatever pressure the news builds inside me.

I do not have much of an outlet for expression anymore, other than my audience of one, myself.

I feel something, I write it out, and my audience of one appreciates rather than judges, takes my words as they are, and doesn't try to interpret. 

However my writing is perceived by those who may accidentally run across it, I would simply say this: my style can be heavy, brutally honest, and unfiltered. My writing may not be for you, and be assured it was not designed with you in mind.

Given that, if anything I do or say makes you feel uncomfortable, I would strogly suggest you find another source of reading that better fits your journey to find peace.

A letter to my son.

 This blog began as a documentary of sorts and then just a letter to my son Jason Michael Zukerman, and not Jason Harvey Zukerman. The latter, I don't even know who that is. 

I never really knew my own father, and after he died, it became almost impossible to learn who he had been. What he felt was important, his health history, his sense of humor, and his favorite jokes, and what he felt were the important things in life. I never knew any of those things, and I never will. 

Only now, after learning of his passing some 20-30 years ago in 1980 and much too late, did it become important enough to me to search for anything I could find about the other half of me. I did not want my son to face that same silence if he should ever come to that place where I am today where it begins to matter. 

 These pages here are meant to leave behind a firsthand account to fill the void if one is ever felt and my son has questions about what his father was about. Who I was, how I lived, what mattered to me, the good, the bad, and the uncomfortable, in my own words. Something I wish my father had thought to leave for me. 

Although the words contained in my posts are often heavy, they are a true and honest account of a man who had a son while still a kid himself, who never really got to know him. I came into this world under difficult circumstances. I often felt what I could only express in words on a page and not in person. So I wrote in my own voice and tone, not as some cry for sympathy or approval, but just a raw account in case the day ever comes that my son might want to know.

 

old photos

The older I get, the quieter I become.

No longer chasing friendships. I stopped reaching out to people who stopped reaching back many years ago. Validation isn't important to me. I already know who I am, and I no longer have the time or workspace in my head to waste being concerned about what others think of me.

There are fewer people and much less emotional noise from the outside making it inside.

Self-reflection has replaced mindless regret. Solitude has become my peace.

Family has become an old photo and a distant memory. Old photos from a life that slipped away many years ago are scattered around in my mind while the link to my past continues to fade. 

Time is more precious than anything I thought mattered before I understood how little of it I have left. Take care of your health while you still have some left. Trust me on that one.