Since being let go on Tuesday I’ve been surprisingly busy. I scraped the ceiling in my guest room and removed the ugly popcorn that was linking my house to the 80′s. I’ve worked out and I’ve talked to a myriad of friends and I’ve got some great job opportunities already.

I think that for a while I am going to try to work for myself. I am going to launch www.eddierenz.com with a new look and a list of services that will be marketed to small businesses and small churches in the DFW area. I am going to continue to DJ and I am going to try to do some Social Media consulting work for a large corporation – maybe – hopefully!

So God has really wowed me through all of this. I haven’t had a computer since Tuesday but I’ve already been contacted by individuals for web design projects and DJ gigs. It’s strange since normally I would have sent out a flurry of information, a media blitz if you will, of my resume and my availability. With no computer that hasn’t been an option.

I borrowed a laptop from my parents on Wednesday night and after updating this site and Facebook the computer crashed. I went out and bought a new hard drive for it, but it wouldn’t work. It was so bizarre that I took it as a sign because in all my years of fixing PC’s I have never seen a laptop do what this one was doing. It was like God was telling me, “Be Patient”.

I’m at an internet cafe this morning and I am about to go and buy a computer at Best Buy. I wanted a Mac, but I think I might just buy an inexpensive Dell for now because I own Photoshop CS3 and Dreamweaver for Windows and to purchase them for Mac would be another $1000 dollars.

Please continue to keep me in your prayers. I need guidance and direction and although working for myself seems like it could rock, I sort of already miss my coworkers. I think it would be awesome to work in the computer department at a church, doing web design, graphics, brochures, PowerPoints, etc. But who knows, I might just find that I like working for myself and eventually I can hire myself some employees!

Thanks again for all the love and support. I’ll keep you posted.

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“Each of us must face adversity at different times in our lives and we must deal with it in our own way…” Wilbur Smith’s character Centaine De Thiry in his book, Power of the Sword.

Lay-offs are necessary. When a ship is sinking  sometimes you have to throw a few people overboard in order to save the majority of the crew. I get it, I just don’t like being the one “Jonah’d” – I’d prefer to stay out of the ocean or the belly of a whale.

Yes, I got the axe. I was one of the 1600 people that got let go from TI on Tuesday. I loved my boss and my teammates, and TI is one of the best places to work, but I wasn’t happy there – I was comfortable.

It was sort of surreal yesterday being caught up in something that I had just seen the night before on the news. On Monday my boss got let go and I was devastated. I couldn’t believe it, if she could get cut, then I had a feeling I might get cut too.

Tuesday morning I showed up to work to a hallway filled with security and a cube farm full of whispers. I sat at my computer with a pounding heart and I opened up my email.  The first message read, “Dick  just got let go…”  Dick was one of my newest team mates.  We were all like prairie dogs poking our heads out listening, expectant, hopeful… scared.

“Eddie, can I talk to you?” Robin materialized in my cube like an apparition. Her face was ghostly pale . I pictured her as a much more attractive grim reaper – except her blade wasn’t a long scythe or sickle, but a warm smile that cut deep, slicing me slowly, but still leaving me scarred.

I chuckled.  It was more a gasp from my lungs that had just been punctured, but at the last minute I decided to literally, for once in my life, laugh in the face of adversity.

As I walked down the hall it seemed that I was being marched to an execution chamber. People I’d worked with for almost 7 years looked away and wouldn’t meet my eyes. The eyes I did see were pooled with tears and sorrow.

“This has to be hard for you…” I said to Robin as she walked me to her office.

“You know, it is surprising” Robin said, her voice barely a whisper,  ”how people that show compassion during hard times.” 

We made it to her office. The door was closed behind me. We talked about severance packages and expectations and an hour later I was in my Honda Pilot with all my office belongings securely stowed away in the back.

As I drove away the wintry gray day mirrored the gloomy pall that seemed to linger in the halls of TI.

I felt a bit of mania at the thought of “What now?” I was delirious. Like a long-time prisoner I was happy to be free from my chains and at the same time terrified of my freedom. 

Later that day I got a few emails that were work related on my BlackBerry, “Eddie, I can’t make the 2:00 meeting, but I’ll have my data for you on the server.” It was R.S. and he was talking about the RCA project. What a snore fest I thought and felt relived that I no longer had to be burdened with that problem. I looked at my calendar and cancelled all the rest of my meetings. I sent out a farewell email to my friends and then I posted an update of my status on Facebook: I got laid off today, but don’t worry your pretty heads, God is in control.

After that, I got a near record number of comments, emails, and phone calls of support. It was awesome.

Day 2 of being jobless I had friends telling me of job openings at their work. Friends told me I could come to their houses for free meals and of course my parents said that I could always come back home.

Last night I went to bed not with a heavy heart filled with anxiety and dread, but with a contentment of knowing that my friends and family love me no matter what and I will never be hungry or homeless.

This lay off might be the best thing that has ever happened to me. If TI hadn’t laid me off I might have woken up 10 years from now still sitting in my drab cubicle, bored out of my mind, and regretting not taking a chance to do something better with my life.

So to everyone that has been supportive of me, I want to say thanks. Keep me in your prayers and check back in to Posted Note  as I give daily updates on my progress.

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On Showtime there was this show about 3 guys who were running non-stop across the Saraha Desert. In 111 Days they ran a total of about 170 marathons and over 2,000 miles.  I can barely run a mile right now and I was inspired by these guys. They had to deal with crossing borders and keeping up their food supply and food intake, but they did it. I was so inspired I thought it would be cool to start running again. I don’t know if my body can handle it, but I see these people who triumph over adversity and I want to be one of those people. If someone can run a marathon with a missing leg or a huge blister, then maybe I can get out and run a couple of miles a day?

What I also loved about the show was that it showed the land, how people live in Africa, the need for wells and water and what we can do to help. It’s easy to sit in our comfy living rooms sometimes and not think about those people in 3rd world countries whose very existence is threatened daily because they don’t have basic necessities. The three guys that ran this incredible journey started a website called h20Africa.org and you can find out more about the run on www.runningthesahara.com

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“Do you always tell the truth?”

“Yes”

“What is that called again?”

“Radical Honesty.”

I was watching “Lie to Me” and one of the actors on there always tells the truth no matter what. I wonder what would happen in our culture if we always told the truth? What if when someone asked you a question, no matter how hard, you had to tell them the exact truth?

I think on some levels it would be frightening, but on another, it could be quite freeing. The Bible does say, “The truth will set you free…”

By the way, the new show “Lie to Me” is excellent. I recommend adding it to your DVR/Tivo queue. It comes on Wednesday nights.

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Weight Watchers seems to be working – slowly but surely. My goal this month was just to lose 8-10 pounds. If I can do that consistently for 12 months then I will be able to lose around 100 pounds and reach my goal weight of 265 by the end of the year.

The hardest part is keeping up with all the food I eat. A banana here and apple there a container of pudding every now and then followed by a piece of string cheese. Every single item counts, every delicious calorie, every teaspoon of olive oil – it all adds up.

The best thing about Weight Watchers is that I haven’t been all that great at staying within my point limits. On occasion I go over or there are days when I blow it altogether, but I think my diet is more balanced now and I eat a more fruit and vegetables than I ever have. I also love that I don’t have to deny myself food at a party or an event. Instead, I plan for that birthday bash by using my bonus points on those days and instead of having three pieces of cake I just have 1 and a half!

I’d like to lose 3 more pounds by January 31… but if I don’t I still feel pretty successful and this is new for me since my whole life I’ve measured my weightloss success by dropping huge amounts of weight in an unrealistic amount of time. If you’ve tried every diet on the planet, I encourage you to try this one. It might change your life.

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I just watched an episode of this animated feature that was recently featured on iTunes. It is called 12 oz. mouse, thus my ingenius title. I know, I know, you want to know how I became so witty. Mostly, it was my parents and the 40 plus people we had living with us over the years, but that you will have to read about in my memoirs.

How would I describe this hot mess? I’ve never tripped on acid, but when I imagine a really bad acid trip, while also wiggin out on shrooms, and having horrific hallucinations after some bad X all while having the DT’s after coming down from a bad cocaine addiction – well, that is how I would describe this waste of money and time.

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Last night I had an excellent deep tissue massage from Heather at Massage Envy. As I was lying on the table I realized how much I needed this massage. It wasn’t just the fact that Heather had hands of an angel, it was just the human contact that I needed. For some reason yesterday I could have used a good long hug, or maybe a series of hugs from people I love, but they weren’t readily available and so Heather filled that need. There is a therapy that has to do with human touch and how sometimes just holding someone’s hand can make you feel better. Since I didn’t have a hand to hold I went for a massage and it did the trick… I lika dat.

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Today I went to the doctor because of this pain I have in my right side. It hurtslike a small tumor is trying to grow there in my side where my appendix is. I did some blood work and my white blood cells are fine and so they thought, “Hey, maybe it’s a hernia so let’s make him drop his pants.” Down my pants go and the Doc has my right testicle in his hand and he is pressing up behind it really hard and he says, “Now grunt like you have to go to the bathroom and cough at the same time.” All the while the attractive female doctor in the room is looking out the window – awkward!

No luck on the genitalia even though I was poked as if the area around my tally whacker was the pillsbury dough boy’s stomach. Let me tell you it did not tickle and there wasn’t any spontaneous laughter.

After I grunted with my pants around my ankles the doctor decided to make me lie on the table with my pants down while he poked around on my stomach. It was humiliating and after everything he said I still needed to go for an ultrasound.

I just want my side to stop hurting and I don’t want to have to take my pants off in order to make it happen, is that too much to ask? I bet if I went to the doctor with a headache he would probably say, “Well, let’s start by getting those pants off…”

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“Nice Mullet!” It was a phrase I would hear often throughout the night and I was starting to feel like I did indeed look good in my 1980′s style mullet. When I look at the pictures I do not look good, not hardly. I look like an oversized brown man wearing a wig that sort of resembles a chickens ass. Yep, that’s it, I look like I have set a chicken on my head – backwards.

We started our evening at Babe’s Chicken Shack in Frisco and then we headed over to this 80′s party where we happened to be the youngest people their by at least a decade or two. A few of the ladies were so old that they looked like old versions of Joan Collins or Phyllis Diller.

My friends and I stayed on the dance floor pretty much the entire night and I was surprised that this was supposed to be a “Singles” group. What it should have been called was “Midlife Crisis” group. I don’t mean to hate but once you have already had kids, they have gone to college and you suddenly find yourself out on the curb because you were part of a singles group and your wife found out, well, then, maybe you shouldn’t be going to 80′s dances. I mean, your hip might fall out or you might have a heart attack and then where will you be? Divorced and disabled you won’t have a chance at restoring your relationship with your frigid ex nor forming “everlasting” love with a new P.Y.T.

After the dance that ended at a jr. high 10pm there was an after party at some Irish pub. We popped by for a few minutes and found the music miserable and the crowd about as pleasing as flat beer and a bowl of picked over pretzels.

As we were leaving this attractive lady stopped us and said, “Where are you guys going?” We were like, “OMG, that party was like totally, last week, and like, you know, like, we had to just get out of there.” Okay, we didn’t talk like Valley girls, but we should have. The lady said, “Well, I’m a little older than ya’ll so I’ll just mosey on in there and see if it will be fun.” We told her that was a good idea because secretly we knew that she was in little danger of being pawed at or picked up because for most of these guys it was way past their bedtime.

When the night was over I realized that I did have a great time. It was like being a kid again and your parents are having a big adult party and you get to sort of hang with the grown ups. Everyone is mature and civilized and you don’t have to worry about things getting out of hand.

Dance · Eighties · Octegenarians

I’ve been doing Weight Watchers all week. I went to my first meeting last night and weighed in at 365 pounds. That’s a lot for anyone and about 35 pounds heavier than I’ve been for the last 4-5 years. I wanted to get some help and so I decided Weight Watchers is the route I’d like to take.

I also started attending a new church and I’ve been trying out some of their resources: online devotionals, group classes, etc. I don’t feel like I fit in… yet… but where do I fit in these days?

I have to watch myself cautiously because I have a tendency to wallow in self pity at times when I’m alone for too long. I am a people person who constantly needs to be around people, but not necessarily involved with them. I love big parties and groups – being too intimate or too deep sometimes exhausts me. One-on-One is harder for me than I let on and after a whirlwind of events I do need my down time to recuperate.

More than anything this year I’m trying to learn how to live alone and be stable. Not to use money or food as a way of overcoming my despair or feeling bereft floating further out to sea while I watch everyone on shore moving on with their lives. I have to learn to let people live their lives without feeling like I am letting them go even though that is often times what I have to do.

What I am hoping for in 2009 is an opportunity to find my niche, to find where I belong once again. For so long I was a part of DBC, a part of a group of friends that lived in Denton and we shared a common focus. Now I’m not going to church consistently anywhere.  I’m not involved in a Bible study, I don’t have a group of male buddies that I can go and watch sports with or have over to the house for a poker night. Don’t get me wrong, I have hundreds of friends, most of them don’t live in Plano though. My best buds live in Shang Hai, Japan, Kentucky, North Carolina, Dallas and Denton.

So this post isn’t a sad post about how awful my life is, in fact, it’s just me laying out the reality of my world and how I’d like to reshape it into something better. I hope to one day look back on this time of my life not as a low point, but as a time that I built a solid foundation of trust in the lord and happy times with friends no matter how far apart we are. It takes work and time and people don’t always meet my expectations or demands, but I’m learning to deal with that too.

So that’s it for me, I hope you have some goals you’ve mapped out for the rest of your life.  And if you are ever hurting or lonely, just drop me a line.

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Our niche? Those people who don’t have to have alcohol to have a good time and who want to raise money for Christian causes. We plan to donate a portion of our proceeds to ministries both local and abroad.

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I’d been holding my hand up for so long that my arm hurt. I shook it wildly in an effort to get the obviously blind teacher’s attention. I made grunting noises and ooh ooh sounds to further encourage her that I knew the answer, but she wouldn’t call on me.

“Billy, what do you think the answer is?” She smiled sweetly and I could almost feel the sick pleasure she got in torturing me. “Does anyone else want to answer?” Each word from her lips was like a bamboo shoot under my fingernails, another volt of electricity through my brain.

“Cindy, that’s right!” She exclaimed and heaped on the praise. I continued to imagine that she was hoping for me to explode. I didn’t understand why she just wouldn’t call on ME!

I finally broke down right there in class. It was too much. I started crying. At first it was merely a trickle but then as the full reality of what was happening to me I started to guffaw and gasp with spasmodic shudders.

My feelings were like a large balloon constantly filled to the breaking point. Each time Mrs. Tatangelo called on another student it was like she was jabbing a needle into that balloon. Every poke was taken personally. Every word was scrutinized, weighed, measured, judged and the final verdict was that everyone in the class was against me and this particular day it just happened to be my birthday.

That was second grade. I was only 6. I’d started school early, skipped kindergarden and was right there smack dab in the middle of kids a year and sometimes two years older than me. If I had a superpower back then it would have been the ability to “Feel” things on an extreme level. I was constantly aware of everyone and how they treated me. I was super sensitive. I took detailed mental lists of every betrayal, every slight and I remembered it whether I wanted to or not.

This has been my blessing and my curse my whole life. My inability to shut off my feelings or being overly sensitive to things. On some levels it helps me be the kind-hearted person I am, but on another level it leaves me blubbering over the slightest inconsideration or cruelty. When people don’t show up for my events, I take it personal. When people don’t like my ideas, I can get volatile.

I’m better now that I’m older and I understand myself more, but I’m still not 100% happy with how I respond to things and people who are out of my control. With every strength there seems to be a great weakness.

It’s been 27 years since my teacher didn’t call on me in second grade but I can still remember those feelings I had as if they were this morning. If I took my heart out of my chest and examined it I am sure it would mostly be a large pile of scar tissue, but I don’t mind so much, scars are what remain after a wound heals and those scars are what make me me stronger.

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