Blog
- Bubbles
- Beer
- Burros
Decision or default
I know what kind of day this is.
It’s an amazing day.
Because I’ve decided that.
Chosen that.
Opted out of guessing.
Not settling for the default setting.
That has nothing to do with the day ahead.
And has everything to do with what I bring to it.
I’ve decided what kind of day I’m going to have.
And so long as I keep deciding, I have that day.
It all floats
Helium has one job.
Just be lighter than air.
And in that there is joy.
In a floating bit of inflated rubber.
Or Mylar, if you’re fancy.
Bobbing along at the end of a string.
Feels like hope.
This easily captured thing.
Enough of it, and it could float us away.
Takes so little to lose, too.
One misstep on your day’s journey, and it’s gone.
But not forever.
Some days it’s just finding that next balloon.
Now that's weird
Weird.
Hard to define, but like Justice Stewart and pornography, we know it when we see it.
It’s a line the Democrats have latched on to with Vance and Trump, since “plan to end democracy” isn’t as catchy as just calling them weird.
And given that the GOP presidential ticket is busy comparing their wives to their Democratic opponent and laughing like they read about it in a “How To Human” manual, it’s an easy judgment to make.
Does it make me laugh?
Of course: the sheer absurdity of a party that’s latched onto the fripperies of culture war as key planks in their platform amuses me no end.
Does it bum me out that this is what The Discourse has devolved to, when neither side can articulate its plans in meaningful ways so everyone resorts to memes and name calling?
Yes, yes it does.
Still, we live in a world where people are using crucified Minions to convince others to follow Jesus so, yeah.
Sometimes people are just weird.
@kalkidanradfordtv JESUS IS LOVE 😍 #trending
♬ original sound - kalkidanradfordtv
It's just temporary
Pain is temporary, pride is forever.
Not sure where I first read that.
Probably on the wall of a locker room in a an after school special about that one kid who just didn’t fit in until he discovered football.
It’s apt, in that context, because on the other side of that pain, there’s winning.
Except.
Pain leaves behind its own legacy.
And its own bits of itself across what we are.
The person that we were then, still around, wanting that seat at the table.
Telling us that maybe this time it’s forever.
That it’s not so temporary.
Sometimes it’s just better to sit with it.
Let it have its say.
Hear it out.
Because it’s not going anywhere.
Can’t do much about that.
What we can do something about, is how loud it is. How much of it we choose to listen to.
Perspective
Perception is reality: Helen Keller would describe her driving test very differently from her instructor.
Pursuit
There’s a lake not far from where I live.
I go there when I can.
Watch the sun come up.
Something about water, as the world shakes off the night before.
Some mornings this dog chases me down the road.
Don’t think he’s angry, just bored.
Hangs out by the mailbox, head up as a car passes, deciding whether it’s worth the effort.
Might be a territorial thing.
Or he used to herd sheep, and now these metal beasts fill a spot in his life.
Wouldn’t know what to do if he caught one.
Usually when I pass him, I’m eating a donut, something I do semi-regularly, and sometimes for the same reasons.
Chasing some moment.
A brief flicker, maybe flare of joy.
Thinking that bit of fried dough will fill that void.
Other times, like today, that donut?
Is the point.
Not the fleeting satisfaction at its end.
It’s the ride, it’s the journey, it’s…the donut.
That dog?
Probably doesn’t want to catch a car.
Happy just to chase them, one at a time.
Because there’s always another.
A car.
A donut.
A moment.
Might as well enjoy this one.
I am not my feelings
One of those things I need reminded of semi-regularly, from Ram Dass by way of Pete Holmes, that the me that is me, the self, is not the feeling I’m having.
I’m not hungry, Dan has a feeling of hunger.
I’m not sad, Dan is feeling sad.
I’m not depressed, I’m experiencing depression.
Buckminster Fuller had a similar theory of humanity, separating himself as the scientist of his life, observing the person living that life.
The point of both those mental models?
Taking yourself out of the feeling, making that quiet place for the self, and knowing that it’s a temporary thing, not who you are.
JD Vance Is All Of Us
When you’re the guy trying to make Diet Mt. Dew the official drink of “Heritage, Not Hate”, you give off the kind of energy that makes people go, “Yeah, he might knows a couch or two. Biblically.”
It’s easy to make fun of JD Vance.
But he’s just like the rest of us: having to juggle time with our kids while taking calls from a guy we’re worried might be “America’s Hitler”.
It’s hard to be a good dad when you’ve got to make time for stalking presidential candidates on the tarmac and taking on Taylor Swift fans, all while talking yourself out of ducking into a Rooms-To-Go for just one quick peek at that Montecito.
But I’m worried about JD.
Maybe the cognitive decline isn’t just Trump’s.
All that standing for anything so long as it means votes has taken its toll: in the last eight years, Vance has forgotten what the word “never” means.
Doesn’t help that somewhere fellow critic-turned-sycophant Niki Haley is deciding whether Trump likes that she’s Indian now, and if that’s going to be her in to take Vance’s place as “guy Trump would be OK having a crowd murder” on the 2024 ticket.
He’s got 99 problems, but a chin ain’t one.
Like I said, easy to mock.
Putting down is easy, and under Trump, it’s become the only call in the GOP playbook.
Don’t like what someone has to say about you?
They’re dumb.
Can’t figure out a policy position?
Come up with nicknames.
Questions too hard?
You’re a nasty person.
Harder to do?
Build someone up.
Find common ground.
Come together to map a way forward.
Running for president, or just running a load of laundry, we’re all on the same blue marble hurtling through the void.
Maybe if we spent less time trying to kick each other, we’d find the time to hold each other up.
Even if you do look like a sentient Don Jr. piñata.
The Reps
Hampton Morris just medaled in weightlifting, ending a 40 year drought in the event for the United States.
In Olympic weightlifting, it comes down to a few reps.
A handful of opportunities.
Bar goes up, or it doesn’t.
And that’s it.
Because we never see the thousands of times Morris picked that bar up and put it down.
And while the reps that won the medal keep us on the edge of our seats and gave him a memory for a lifetime, those other reps?
Tedious.
Irksome.
Boring, even.
There’s nothing exciting about The Work.
But without those thousands of moments, there’s no Moment.
Be bored, but be doing.
Better now
Better late than never.
I’ve told myself that a lot.
As the years ticked by.
As others did the expected.
Took the steps.
Collected the degrees, the paychecks, the accomplishments.
I’d tell you that I took my own path.
That I wandered, and returned enlightened.
Ready to shine my light into the abyss.
Fact: I just wandered.
Finding my way now.
But I’m not late.
I’m where I’m supposed to be.
And when.
Better now than never.
Stealing air
Met my doppelganger yesterday.
Maybe a year younger.
Nearly identical career paths.
At the same company.
Except.
He’s where he is.
And I’m where I’m at.
Which, is not where I thought I’d be.
Took the wind out of my sails a bit.
“A bit” falling under that broad category of “pathological understatement”.
Not his fault.
He’s just another boat, crossing through my wind.
Sailing his own path.
I made choices that got me here.
Now I’m making other ones.
Someone whose input I value deeply reminded me that “comparison is the thief of joy”.
It’s attributed to Teddy Roosevelt.
What I like about that quote is that it’s not their fault I feel inadequate.
He’s just living his life.
But I held myself up to his accomplishments, and found myself lacking.
That’s on me.
And so is choosing to look again at my own course.
Find the horizon again.
More sailing, less worrying about the other boats.
Rest area
The rest area.
Icon of the road trip.
Or at least a necessity, with the stretches of American asphalt winding for miles, hours from the nearest bit of civilization.
They’re not as useful as they once were, overtaken by “travel plazas” full of fast food and slightly cleaner restrooms.
But when you need one, you need one.
Either that, or you’re going to have to go through contortions better left to a gymnast to answer the call of nature without doing anything obscene.
I hit a rest area this morning.
A pocket of de-motivation.
I started thinking of it as stalling.
The car off the side of the road, hood popped, not sure what to do because my skills have never run toward the automotive.
But it’s a rest area.
The road’s right there.
I’m headed back out on it soon enough.
It doesn’t have to be elaborate to be a break.
A pause in the forward motion.
Take a breath, turn the key, and start again.
Just keep raking
I’ve rediscovered TikTok.
Don’t expect my influencing to bloom.
But.
Along with most of the world, I too am scrolling through videos of people feeding raccoons, politicians making points, and cats losing their minds.
And then there’s the raking guy.
I don’t think he’s a content creator.
Just some guy.
With a rake.
Facing a clogged drain.
It’s raining, he knows there’s a drain under the water somewhere.
Water that’s currently covering a sidewalk.
First few strokes, nothing happens.
Same with the following strokes.
Until finally, he clears whatever was clogging it.
Water rushes away.
Sidewalk: usable again.
When the plan isn’t going as planned, sometimes all we can do?
Is rake.
There’s a drain under there somewhere.
Manifesting
Manifest.
It’s a funny word.
Means a few different things, because language.
But thinking about it in terms of the universe.
Which, I believe is connected to every other part of the universe.
That’s science, thank you.
Quantum physics.
What can I say, I watch Marvel movies.
Growing up I believed in a few other things.
Manifest destiny was one of them.
I still believe in manifestation.
With a difference: I don’t think that’s up to Someone Else.
Not that I don’t believe in a Higher Power.
Because Something or Someone clearly had Ideas.
What I don’t believe in is waiting for Them to show me Their Plan.
Because They’re pretty fickle.
Petty, even.
Like all the rest of us sentient beings.
Instead?
Putting my energy into manifesting the life I deserve.
I cannot tell you how hard it was to finish that sentence as a child of religious trauma raised to believe that what I deserve is death because Adam and Eve got the munchies.
But as a child of a Universe that wants to see me realize my potential?
That’s a Universe I’d very much like to manifest.
Give the suck a hug
Embrace the suck.
It’s a military phrase, origin unknown.
Slightly more polite, unlike the NSFW “FUBAR” and “SNAFU”.
My personal favorite in that genre has long been “BUFF,” an Air Force-ism describing the B-52 Stratofortress.
Halfway through a round of burpees, I wasn’t thinking about airplanes or the acronyms service members have used to describe ineffective leadership.
I was just wanting to get done.
So I slowed down.
Didn’t squat as deep.
Raised my arms a little less.
Took a little more time to get down in the pushup position.
The coach running the session, I’ll call him Satan’s Stepbrother, saw me.
Made eye contact on the next round of my trying to remember what lungs do.
“Don’t cheat yourself!”
Asshole.
Wasn’t wrong.
Most of us, when it sucks, just want to get to the other side.
Seeing only the destination.
And ignoring what we’re learning on the journey.
By doing that, we cheat ourselves.
Instead, we need to embrace the suck.
Find out what the pain has to teach us.
The ride is the education, not the end.
Same pack, different mountain
I like kettlebells.
Have since the lockdown.
Let me rephrase that.
I hate kettlebells.
I like what they can do for me.
And no this isn’t a link to my YouTube or TikTok or course how you too can get shredded in just 270 minutes a day using my 32 point easy to follow likely to cripple you program.
This is about mountains.
And packs.
The things we carry.
Today’s workout was a bigger mountain.
Took more effort than normal.
20 rounds instead of the usual 5.
The kettlebells?
Weigh the same.
I’m just moving them more.
It’s not the mountain that’s the problem.
We climb each one the same way.
One step at a time.
It’s about how we packed for the trip.
It’s the same bag.
Just a different mountain.
So take that rest.
Small mountain.
Big mountain.
You’ve still got baggage.
It’s ok to put that down once in a while.
Momentum
I keep wanting to not do this.
Because I have this vision of myself.
That version of me?
Quits things.
Mainly because he gets scared.
Worried that it’s not going to go as planned.
So he stops.
Midway through starting.
But something about this little blog-a-day habit is chipping away at that.
I’ve set daily word goals for this.
They’re supposed to be like 500 now.
Yeah, that’s not happened.
Probably won’t.
And I’m OK with that.
Because this is for me, not you.
Or it is for you, reader.
Both of us.
Because if I keep building this, I maintain momentum into things less navel-gazey.
Wedding bells & burros
Went to a wedding this weekend.
The usual things were in play:
OK, that last part was something new.
Neville the Burro was part of the reception festitivities.
A very chill little guy with beer coolers strapped across his back.
At one point during the ceremony he tried to object.
Or maybe he was talking to the other donkey who lived across the fence.
Either way, they were kind of a fun band.
The world is full of wonders.
Learning to like me
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Since most of us hate ourselves, that’s working out fine, Jesus.
Not sure the Son of God was advocating hate.
Probably not, because of the love thing.
It’s the second half of the sentence that’s the hard part.
Love myself?
Most days I don’t even like me.
Seeing myself through the wrong lenses.
Like money made.
Degrees earned.
Accomplishments achieved.
Stuff accumulated.
Hard to change that perspective.
Find a new narrative.
To see me as someone likable.
At least some of the time.
Stand and deliver
I’ve been shopping for a standing desk.
We’ve been told that sitting is the new smoking.
The solution?
Stand while you work.
You know who’s not shopping for standing desks?
Construction workers.
Electricians.
Firefighters.
Doctors.
Nurses.
Teachers.
The sitting?
Not the problem.
The standing desk answers the question, “How can I be better at staying at my desk?”
Or: “How do I make abject misery less so?”
Instead: “Why am I spending so much time at my desk?” The answer is going to be something about your job. What role you play at work. How your cog fits into the machine that helps you keep the lights on.
Our need for a standing desk is a direct correlation to how useful we are, whether to a society, or a system.