Rick Beeman

I apologize for not keeping regularly updated accounts on my blog. But since I had so precious little time to spend with my boys, I wanted to focus it all on them. I went out and played basketball with my boys and then played catch with the football with Spencer. Stuff I love to do and something a dad should do with his boys. I love my kids so much. I hate being away from them. They always throw it in my face that I chose to live in Bahrain (something X drills into them). Yes that is true. But I was thinking about this earlier. It seems that there is the most conflict with X whenever I am coming back into town, or whenever I have a potential love interest. The conflict seems to ratcheted up a few levels on that end. Plus we have this whole “drama addiction” which X denies that plays out every 3-4 weeks. If I lived closer the kids would be more directly caught in the crossfire. Since I live so far away the kids are only indirectly affected. So in a sense, I think this is t...

What a nice day I had with the boys. I won’t be able to see my daughter again, but at least I get my boys Im happy about that. The boys have to re-acclimate to me. They’ve warmed up now, and it is absolutely wonderful. Im not going to write a lot the rest of the week as Im going to focus on the precious few hours that I have with them. Instead, Im going to copy and paste an email I got today from new hubby. I think he reveals plenty of his character through this. New hubby and X can justify their actions and twist their words with the best of them. I realize by posting and even responding to their shenanigans is simply adding fuel to their smoldering fire. I can’t defend myself directly to them. That last 10 times Ive communicated verbally to them over the phone has ended with a barrage of cursing and them hanging up on me. Which my daughter is now doing as they have modeled for her. I realize Im taking the bait and feeding into the drama addiction that they need. This add...

Its an interesting quandary Im in. To blog or not to blog. Im sure this will create quite a firestorm. We did have a very nice Thanksgiving. My middle son, and my parents and I all went out to a fabulous and trendy restaurant in downtown Houston. The food was absolutely fabulous. But there was a heaviness at the meal. My youngest and oldest both decided to skip Thanksgiving meal and have it with X and new hubby’s family. Everyone is adamant on that side that it was the children’s choice. I think what we have here is yet another example of parental alienation. I have a feeling im being vilified in that house in a very subtle manner. The subtly is one of the main factors in Parental Alienation. I don’t think the children should have a choice in where they spend the holidays especially since X is so adamant about going by the decree. According to the decree its my year. Its peculiar, when the kids were younger, I would often ask them where they wanted to go eat, Burger Kin...

I’m going through a lot of strange emotions right now. I haven’t posted in the blog in a couple of days, because I’ve been on vacation, its nice to take a break. But if you read between the lines the blog still has been generating a lot of activity via all the comments. I think it would be a lot easier if X and new hubby just stopped reading the blog. I just don’t see why they do write this. Its not as if any of their new friends read this. And for the most part very few people know who they actually are. Its seems like they would have more important things to do with their time rather than seek outlets to express bitterness, rage, sarcasm and hate. Life is too short for that. Im not writing this for them or any specific person in particular (although it does save me several phone calls and guilt trips from my mother as she keeps tabs on me this way.) This an introspective look at one man as he traverses the emotional pitfalls of divorce, recovery and rebirth. There aren’t...

I had such a great weekend with my boys. Its just strange though. Everytime I visit with them there is a re-acclimation period that takes place. Usually its about 24 hours sometimes it’s a little longer. Im not sure if I should consider it a de-programming and re-programming situation or not. I know from the hints that I hear there is a lot propaganda thrown against me in that house. If there is something wrong its usually daddy’s fault because he moved to Bahrain. I pick this up in both words and actions. But I don’t want to defend myself as that would be putting them in the middle. I do find myself having to bite my tongue more than a few times as I don’t want to say anything bad about X in front of them. What is also an adjustment period for me is their age. They are getting older and they want to be treated like adults. Now the boys are still 14 and 11, and I understand part of that. It’s a maturation process that Im not privy to for an extended period because of the g...

I had such a great weekend with my boys. Its just strange though. Everytime I visit with them there is a re-acclimation period that takes place. Usually its about 24 hours sometimes it’s a little longer. Im not sure if I should consider it a de-programming and re-programming situation or not. I know from the hints that I hear there is a lot propaganda thrown against me in that house. If there is something wrong its usually daddy’s fault because he moved to Bahrain. I pick this up in both words and actions. But I don’t want to defend myself as that would be putting them in the middle. I do find myself having to bite my tongue more than a few times as I don’t want to say anything bad about X in front of them. What is also an adjustment period for me is their age. They are getting older and they want to be treated like adults. Now the boys are still 14 and 11, and I understand part of that. It’s a maturation process that Im not privy to for an extended period because of the g...

I had such a great weekend with my boys. Its just strange though. Everytime I visit with them there is a re-acclimation period that takes place. Usually its about 24 hours sometimes it’s a little longer. Im not sure if I should consider it a de-programming and re-programming situation or not. I know from the hints that I hear there is a lot propaganda thrown against me in that house. If there is something wrong its usually daddy’s fault because he moved to Bahrain. I pick this up in both words and actions. But I don’t want to defend myself as that would be putting them in the middle. I do find myself having to bite my tongue more than a few times as I don’t want to say anything bad about X in front of them. What is also an adjustment period for me is their age. They are getting older and they want to be treated like adults. Now the boys are still 14 and 11, and I understand part of that. It’s a maturation process that Im not privy to for an extended period because of the g...

I had a wonderful day with my boys, but I don't want to write too much about it now. I'll have some more time to write tomorrow.

Im somewhere over Copenhagen now. The flight from Dubai to Houston kind of curves north, whereas the flight from Dubai to San Francisco goes directly over the North Pole. So no spotting Santa on this trip. What is strange that the flight from Dubai to either San Francisco or Houston is the same length at 17 hours. That is really weird for me to comprehend. Im so excited to get to see my boys. I was looking through some old pictures of when they were younger. I try not to do that too much as it just makes me melancholy, but seeing them tomorrow/today makes the anticipation build. I would have loved to have seen them a little longer, but X refused to grant me additional time. She really is locked into that decree. That is the only measure where she still can control me or try to control. My flight left Bahrain at 3:50 AM, my friend Moody was kind of to drive me to the airport at 2:00 AM. Another nice thing about Bahrain, even on an international flight, it takes you all of 20 ...

You know what…this really shouldn’t have been a great day. It should have been one of the worst…but it wound up being a great great day. I was determined to get stressed about potentially losing my phone. But the tests just kept on coming. I made my reservation to fly home two months ago. So I booked them to fly out on the 19th. There is only one flight out at that is 3:50 am. So all this time Im thinking I fly out on Thur. Night/Fri Morning…when in actuality it was Wed. Night/Thur morning. So I woke up this morning…with kind of a sick feeling. I checked my ticket and sure enough. I missed my flight. Boy did I feel foolish. I hopped in the car and headed to the ticketing agent. The traffic was horrible…the longest it had ever taken me to drive that section. But I was determined to stay calm and not get upset over the situation. I got to the ticket agent and was able to rebook my ticket for only the cancellation fee of $75 and the difference in ticket cost which was $125....

What a busy day today. I have a lot of work I need to do before I leave. I have to re-edit a project before I leave tomorrow (Project #1) and I have to make sure that everything is taken care of for project #3 is re-edited by someone by the time I’m gone. This is not the 12th edit and they are wanting it redone to help celebrate national day…which is very similar to our 4th of July. National Day is usually around December 20th so they decorate everything in red and white so it looks a little bit like Christmas. I had to head over the Bahrain TV today. I met with the top person there. This was a courtesy visit on his part. We are doing a project for a sister governmental organization and they are helping us out. So they wanted to get together on a social setting which was very nice. Everyone knew I was coming and everyone knew my name. We were in the paper today…so that helped too. One of the benefits I have is that everyone knows Khalifa Shaheen here. I mentioned this in p...

I was having such a problem getting motivated at work. Then blamo…everything hit at once. Now Im incredibly busy. Project #3 which already had 10 edits and has been duplicated with 1000 dvd’s is now being redone. The revised script makes it almost like an entirely new project. The good thing is that we get to charge for the re-edit so its almost like a new client. We’ll make changes all day long as long as the client pays for it. But the final product has very little resemblance to the original. The original was so nice and poetic, yet this thing has been so chopped up by the political powers that be, its quite homogenous now. At least I have the director’s cut. William Goldman, the famous American Screenwriter, once said if you can keep 50% of your original draft by the time you hit the screen…consider yourself a huge success. Well…I’ve kept about 20% of the original draft. I’ll post it on youtube after the event. Now the tricky part for me is that they want all these cha...

It was a really nice day. The closer I get to Thursday night the more excited I get. I can’t wait to see my kids. Hopefully they’ll want to see me. We had such a wonderful positive living group tonight. There were six of us. I always provide dinner for the group. Its my thing as I try to be a servant…or a blessing. This time I went to the same place that my Muslim friend took me on Saturday. I was running a little bit late, so I had to hurry. This was downtown where there are a lot of cars parked every which way and traffic is going in all directions. Where I live in Juffair, near the navy base, it doesn’t feel like the Middle East. This downtown restaurant…certainly felt like the Middle East. There was no parking, so I drove my mini-suv up on the curb. Apparently that’s quite acceptable here. So I dodged traffic crossing the street and got Lamb Tikka, and Chicken Tikka, a Bahraini specialty. The little stands resemble the stands of a Taco stand, only its indoors. The...

Im pretty tired tonight so I don’t know how much long I’ll be typing. Its so hard for me to mentally undertake a project knowing I’ll be gone in four days. I don’t want to get started and then have to have it wait for the 11 days which I’ll be gone. There is a pretty tragic story going around that is affecting a lot of people close to home. In this area of Bahrain there are a lot of mixed marriages. Many of my friends are half Bahraini…half another culture. That is just common as Bahrain is a melting pot of cultures/races. But what has recently happened is the stuff of Hollywood and its going on right now. I talk about all the great things about Bahrain there are some negative aspects to Arabic culture as well. There is a child by the name of Adam. He is a young kid about 11 years old and goes to St. Christopher’s School, the school where we once held our acting classes and currently our church meets there. Adam had a mother from the UK and her father was from Qatar. Well A...

What a nice weekend it was for me. I had pretty much the perfect mix of socialization and alone time. I got up to watch the world cup qualifying match between Bahrain and New Zealand. The kiwis won, 1-0 or 1-nil, and Bahrain won’t go to the World cup now. Everyone here is pretty disappointed. Bahrain is such a small country, that going to a prominent global event is a big deal. Honestly you people outside of Bahrain, how many of you heard about it before I came here? I didn’t know it was a country either til I moved to Saudi Arabia. Its pretty small and obscure. I was talking with a friend about it, life here is still really surreal. I’ll be moving to Amwaj Island in January. My friend that married the Romanian wants me to live in his villa. The cool thing is the villa back up to a canal that leads to the gulf. So in my backyard I have a beautiful gulf view and the water is very calm. So I get to dock my kayak in my backyard, How cool is that. My friend Ms. Florida sai...

What a very nice day it has been. I woke up to find a nasty comment posted by X on the blog. I generally don’t delete comments unless they involve references to my children. But I read this and the only motivation I could find was X to be vindictive and hurtful. What struck me the most was really sadness…almost pity that so much hate can come from one person. Not in words but in actions. I had a talk with Ms. Florida about it. There is a part of me that will always love X because she is the mother of my children. I still care for her very much and wish we could communicate more about the children. But there is just so much animosity from her that it just makes communication impossible. This backwards way of through the blog her reading and responding is the only way we can communicate. That is really sad, especially since she was my best friend for so many years. I hope with time, someday we will be able to talk again. That is my prayer anyway. So I called Ms. Florida and ...

It is very hard to get motivated at work. Im being halfway efficient, just not 100% efficient like I was a few weeks ago. I had to stay so focused and work on so many projects. Perhaps I just need a vacation and am checking out early til I leave next week. Im really looking forward to that trip to see my kids. Its hard to undertake any large projects knowing Im going to be gone for 10 days. So Im just trying to wrap up the remnants of the little things I still have to do. I got some more discouraging news, our sales/marketing manager is resigning after two months. So all that work, effort and training is down the drain. That sales position is like the Drummer from Spinal tap. I just can’t keep them around. No one here gets that humor. Maybe people will get that Sales position is like Kenny from South Park. I will now have to be hiring my sixth sales manager. Im hoping Nader finds and hires this one, because apparently Im not a good judge of human resource talent in the sal...

Another very good day. Its amazing that six weeks of tough times was exactly the six weeks like God had specifically indicated to me. Ever since I’ve made it out of that period things have just been a lot lighter. I really think it was a period of testing for me. It also encourages me that if God is accurate when he tells me that times will be tough, that means he’ll be accurate when things are good as well. I think December is going to be an amazing month for me. I’ve kind of felt it coming on for some time now. My dear friend Reji also prophesied that over me as well. So Im really looking forward to that month. Even the rest of November is shaping up to be fantastic. I have one week to go before I fly back to the U.S. Im so looking forward to seeing my children. I hope I can see my daughter…its been so long. I really do miss her. Please pray for the restoration of that relationship. We had a pretty important meeting today. How this meeting came about was pretty interes...

(Sorry forgot to post this last night) What a difference a week makes. We delivered all three projects and now there is just a sense of calm in the office. For the past three months I’ve been totally focused on writing and producing and haven’t had much of a chance to do all the other things in the company. Now I find myself being incredibly unproductive. It seems the busier I am the more efficient I am. When I have tons to do, I am completely focused and don’t waste much time. Meanwhile the opposite is also true, when I have very little to do, I hardly get anything done. I wish I could find a happy medium. Now I have to get motivated and get kicking on the next major project. I keep getting an abundance of inquiries for the acting class. There is a great demand for that, so Im thinking of starting that up again. Nader and I have an important meeting tomorrow at the largest company in Bahrain. The job is potentially massive. Now the question is, is it too big for us? I ab...

It was a great day today. I felt like I had all my peace and joy back. What that brought with it was an abundance of hope. Did anything happen to give me that hope? Not really…Its just faith that God will do what he promised that he’d do. My life at this point can go in a number of different directions. Im totally at peace with every direction that it can go. Im not saying that my time in Bahrain is coming to an end just yet, but to reiterate that my life is totally up to Christ. I put the sail up, and he’s going to take me wherever His wind might blow. It was rather relaxing at the office today. I got all my projects completed, with nothing else to do on them. It was a great sigh of relief. It was actually pretty ironic. These two major projects we were trying to complete by the opening ceremony for this gigantic shipping port. Everything made it before the deadline, so we did our part. So all was set, except the King’s uncle died this morning. Everything got postponed...

Well I had a very good day today. Most of the last minute preparations are done for the big project on the 11th so a lot of the pressure is off. But it is a bit frustrating at work still. As GM Im responsible for everything so if something is not up to par…or the perceived par in some cases, I take the fall. I just want to say…I wrote-produced-directed (co-edited) three shows in three months…there is only so much one person can do. Im the only producer on staff so a lot of it does fall into my hands. Now part of the challenge Im facing is learning how to do business in this culture. I think I finally got it. Whew. Im pretty good at learning from our mistakes. Oh, I also got some news. The ministry is having our documentary on the Making of the Shipping Port broadcast on Bahrain TV. So they must have a certain measure of pride in it for a national broadcast. That made me feel pretty good. We had a great meeting with one of the largest companies in Bahrain today. They want...

What an up and down day. I slept in because I was talking to Ms. Florida til late. I woke up to play Russ at racquetball on the base. I think its becoming our Saturday routine. I enjoy playing racquetball but it sure messes up my squash game. Its two completely different games though they look similar. I think I enjoy squash more. But my squash partner Darren is on a missions trip in India for three weeks. I haven’t exercised other than kayaking for two weeks. So when I played Russ today I became really winded. It was a great workout. While I was at lunch I came into a firestorm. Client #2 waited til the last minute to make changes and the premiere of the big project is only four days away. So there was a lot of scrambling. But I think we’re going to get it done. This is quite a prestigious opportunity for us. I think I finally figured out how to do business with Arabs. It’s a totally different mentality than the west. I wasn’t prepared for it, and a lot of our client...

What a nice day it has been. It has been totally relaxing, just what a weekend day should be. After going out last night, I wound up chatting with Ms. Florida til real late. So I got into bed way late too. I had to get up for church. Im glad I went. I saw the two new basketball coaches there. After church we all went out. It was nice to have a meal with two passionate followers of Christ. My friend Wayne said it best…Show me who your friends are, and I’ll show you what your destiny is. So I try to surround myself with stronger people. Im also trying to surround myself with my comedians, but for some reason, Im just not getting any funnier. So I got all excited and rushed home so looking forward to my Friday afternoon nap. I had been looking forward to this nap all week. So I threw myself on the couch and was out for all of 30 minutes. 30 minutes? It seemed like I was gypped. But no matter it just gave me more time out on the kayak. The water is getting colder now, but...

I am so glad it the weekend for me. It was a very stress filled week. There is just a different dynamic in the office with all the financial pressure we are going through. But even with all the pressure I still have an amazing peace. That is really empowering. Everything is coming to a head with the opening ceremony of the Shipping port next week. Because the King is coming there are a lot of detailed preparations to be done. I thought I was done with the deadlines, but no. There are still changes to be made. These people are sure waiting to the last minute to be giving me more changes. I think come next week, I’ll be able to breathe a big sigh of relief when it is all finally over and done with. It was my son’s birthday yesterday. I tried calling 4 or 5 times but couldn’t get through. Its very frustrating. Since his birthday fell on our improv night, I had my crew improvise a scene about preparing for Max’s birthday. They I had them lead the crowd in a song of Happy Bi...