Phil RedBeard

Limited Edition

As I write, 2026 is a little more than 24 hours away, at least in my locale. I can’t wait to put 2025 behind me. As I wrote earlier this month, there were a few good things things I acquired or encountered this past year, but on the whole with everything everywhere out there it has been a fairly difficult year to manage, and, well, 2026 is looking to be no kinder.

I don’t know where to begin to end the year, and I have no wish to rehash what has happened in the world. If you don’t know about that you haven’t been paying attention. But for me, personally, 2025 started on a high note. I got together with a bunch of old friends, and had an amazing time talking through trauma and shared experiences both old and new. But then, I came down hard. The spring was rather difficult to adjust to. Summer came, and it has been long and hot and exhausting, physically. There was a pretty great week spent in Boston that was exceptional, but I spent most of the summer waiting for cooler weather. This autumn I continued to struggle until I was able to adjust some of my medications, and that has been better. The weather continues to annoy me, because it hasn’t cooled down and stayed there. Even this first week of 2026 will have higher temps than it should.

The holiday break, which for me started a week early, has been equal parts fun and tiring. My eldest niece came out for a week from Arizona to visit, and that was a lot of doing things. The week after was Yuletide, and all that goes with it. I feel like just now I have gotten a chance to relax and rest, and at the end of this week, the vacation will be over. I am not ready to return to work, but I’ve little choice.

I am once again battery-depleted, with lots piling up on the horizon. My brother is struggling with burn out, and having been there once before as I finished university, I don’t want to return to ashes. But I am feeling close. I admit I don’t know what to do. My wife and I cannot survive on one income, and thus I feel forced to keep to the grindstone, as unpleasant and un-helpful as that is.

So with 2026 rapidly filling the windscreen, I need help, and soon. I may have to talk to my boss about strategizing how to handle workload and time off. It occurs to me that through whatever twist of fate, I have a bunch of sick time I could utilize, and while I can’t just take a month off completely, I might be able to take off every Friday for awhile. That might be something that could forestall an engine flame-out. A three-day weekend would give me time to rest, and still have two days to actually notice that I am off work, instead of one day rest and one day to try to get everything done I don’t get to during the week. That might a possibility.

Another thing, and this I’ve done poorly through break, is manage my sugar intake. That is a key part of how much energy I feel I have, or don’t have, and the better job I do of regulating carbs the better I can sustain activity throughout the day, and not feel as tired. I am, after all, diabetic and that has real consequences that I need to pay attention to if I don’t do things right. Holidays and all extenuating circumstances acknowledged, I’ve noticed how much the extra sugar messes me up.

Expectations need to be tempered as well. I have a tendency to get down on myself for not getting into my hobbies, or doing things, and that isn’t helpful. The symptoms of burnout include not having the drive to do, and my mental struggles also manifest in that way. Taking the pressure off myself to do may help me avoid feeling the lack of fueling desire. Perhaps a schedule, or a simple plan of what I can reasonably attain throughout the week would be good. A few years ago, when I was really struggling through depression, I created a mood painting in which I painted a different color for each day’s major activity. This helped me in a visual way to see that I hadn’t succumbed to the blue (for depression) as often as I thought. Some similar way of tracking progress would be a boon to this situation. I wish I had a few $$$, I would buy Simone Yetch’s calendar made for precisely this purpose. Any way I do it though, I need to remind myself that slow is better than much, in this case.

Rather than publish goals, and make resolutions, and psyche myself up for failure, I think I need to realize limits and set boundaries. Allow for spontaneity and all that, and during higher energy times I can do more, but I need to be more intentional about managing myself. I’ve flown by instinct for far too long, and it may be a good thing to pay attention to instrumentation and fuel gauges. I am going to turn thirty-nine in 2026 as well, and I need to incorporate some of this experience I have gained along my life-journey. Part of this breakneck, reckless pacing and mentality has been because each day was a day I never figured I would live. Ever since I was seventeen, I never expected to live beyond twenty-five. I figured I would die by suicide or some other less direct happenstance, but I never once dreamed I would reach my upper thirties at all. I literally never planned for this day or eventuality. My black days have passed and I don’t think that way anymore, but if I will have a future, I probably need to start being intentional about it.

In coming back around the roundabout, I need to put 2025 behind me, and embrace 2026 as a year in which I can figure out who I am and what I am about. Not going up in smoke, or down in flames, but maybe just in crackling along gently, dancing softly into each night. Er something. I need to fuel the rest periods in my life as much as the work and play, and make sure I can keep going. As I’ve mentioned, the how is still a bit fuzzy, but that’s ok. No one ever has it all worked out for all time, and all I really need to know is the next step to take. It is a journey, not a destination, after all.

Favorite Things: 2025

At year’s end, I like to take a moment and reflect back on my favorite things that I’ve encountered throughout the year. Last year, my wife and I had just moved into our new home, and my favorite thing was all the people who helped us out along the way.

Hemlock Hall

This year, my top favorite thing is our new house. We have been living here almost a year (we moved in after Christmas, but we signed the papers on December 20) and I’ve just now begun to feel like this is where I live, and will live, for a while. I am starting to put down roots, I guess. It is weird to me: a home. Whenever I dream of home, it is always my childhood house from before we left Virginia (when I was sixteen). I’ve been on the move constantly since then, and the longest I lived in any one place was my wife and I’s previous home in Texas, where I lived about five years. But that never felt like a home to me. I tried, but I always felt uncomfortable there. Now, a year into living here, I have started to settle in. I feel comfortable here. At the close of 2025, I’ve been living in Texas over ten years, and while I don’t love this state, it is where I am now, and I’m not going anywhere for a while (I mean, as far as I know).

Middle-Earth

One of the first things that I bought for my new house I bought in 2024. I didn’t know where it would go in the new house, but I wanted it there: a map of Middle-Earth. Actually, I ended up with three maps. I have one of the Lonely Mountain from the Hobbit, one of the Shire from the Lord of the Rings, and one of the whole of Middle-Earth. They aren’t large, but they are prop replicas of maps as seen in the films by Peter Jackson. The map of the Lonely Mountain hangs over the fireplace in the living room, and the other two form a diptych in the craft room. I enjoy them immensely, and given my abiding affection for all things Tolkien, this is no surprise.

I Am Groot

I bought a life-size Baby Groot in 2024 from the second Guardians of the Galaxy film, and it stands about a foot tall. It is a lovely action figure/prop replica, and I have photographed it several times. It perfectly fills the spot in my heart for whimsy and wonder and fun. Groot didn’t make it to my list last year, but I include him this year because he is so cool.

Maker of Things

I follow the footsteps of Adam Savage, maker extraordinaire, and this spot I reserve for tools and tool-related items. I bought two terrific work benches, one for LEGO and one for everything else, and they have been absolutely worth the investment. The primary work bench is on casters, and that has been invaluable for the several times I have rearranged the craft room already. The other is on rubber feet, so it barely moves if bumped against, and this is perfect for my LEGO storage to not get jostled.

On Adam’s recommendation, I purchased two sets of WiHa hex keys, one in metric, the other standard. Both have been fantastic for assembling all the furniture that we have bought for our new house, which mostly always comes flat-packed and in need of assembling. Rather than use the small hex keys that come with the furniture, having a well-crafted and comfortable-to-use key has been great. I also bought, because Adam showcased one, a TOYO Y-350 tool box in red. I lined it with foamcore, and it houses my frequently used tools (such as the hex keys, a hammer, nails, screwdriver, and utility knife). This small tool box has been a life-saver around the house for when I need to get a small job done. I don’t have to pull out my large rolling toolbox from the closet, I only need to grab my small one and go!

Audiophile

My last object is my Apple AirPods Max, which is perhaps the most indulgent purchase I’ve made recently. I love over-the-ear headphones for flying, and for watching movies, and the noise isolation for the first scenario is amazing, and the comfort level for the second scenario is second-to-none. I’ve had other “cans”, and these are by far the most comfortable for long-term wearing. They also have the ability to connect instantly to any Apple device I happen to be using, be it iPhone, iPad, or AppleTV, and that convenience is well appreciated. My only complaint is not having an updated or more affordable option for this style of headphone from Apple since the Max was released.

Family

Wrapping up my favorite things, I end where I began last year, with people, and two groups in particular: my blood and my chosen families. My chosen family are my friends from high school that I have known for over twenty years now, and though we don’t get together often, the love we share is real. Some of us met for our 20th reunion in February in Americus, Georgia, and it was the most meaningful time I have had recently. All we really did is hang out and talk, but it enriched my soul and touched my heart. So many people I have genuine affection for that are scattered around the globe, and to see even some filled me with warmth.

My parents and older brother, my wife, and I flew to Boston this summer. We have been threatening to go for a while, and my Dad has always wanted to visit Boston, and in particular, Fenway Park home of the Red Sox. We were able to see two baseball games there, and visit many other places in Boston during our week there, including my grandfather’s NAVY submarine, the USS Nautilus which is moored not far away in New London, Connecticut. It was such a fun vacation, and relaxing time spent exploring a new location.

Wrap-Up

2025 has been a great year, from many perspectives for me personally, despite world-wide suffering and tragedy and rising fascism in the States. I have been hugely conflicted this year, because of personal highs and shared lows. At times I haven’t known how to feel. Over all, though, I try to remain thankful and put things in perspective, which is what my favorite things is all about. I highlight experiences, objects, and people because all have enriched my life in one way or another, and make life worth living despite the real heartbreak I see all around me. As I tread into 2026, I hope for better at home and abroad, and look forward to what the new year will bring.

Leaf-Mould

I just wrote a haiku moments ago, though to be honest I’ve been pondering it awhile and it just now coalesced:

autumn day driving
leaves littered on the long lane
whipped by my passage

And that is how much of my writing comes to be. My process is to absorb feelings, thoughts, and images. I then think about them, marinate them mentally, and wait for something to emerge from the blender of my mind.

Even while studying at university, I would wait until the last minute to write my papers, but along the way I’d have been listening in class, reading assigned material, and thinking while gazing out my dorm room window. Eventually I would just know what I was supposed to write and it would emerge on the laptop screen. Of course revising and editing would then happen, but most of the skeleton, bones, and sinew would already be laid on the table about to be animated.

It’s been the same with my poetry. I’ll have a bit of verse appear in my mind, or an entire poem (less usual), and I’ll tease it out, either on paper or in my head. Eventually I will write it down in more or less its final form. Poetry revision comes much later, usually after the poem has sat in a dusty corner and existed for a while. I will find it again, in digital file folder or physical compendium of hand-written scraps, and re-jigger and re-work, and eventually with a bit of pencil and polish, a more mature form will be set down in ink.

Maturity and time are great prisms through which to view old works. A few years ago, when I finalized a book of poetry, I found many works that were hastily returned to the cobwebbed drawers they had long lain in, but some that were worth the harsh light of cross-examination before the gentle rays of day.

I recently held a Write Night at the university where I now work. Context: I am the sole writing consultant and only card-carrying member of the Writing Center on campus. It is my job to be a resource for the student body when a piece of written material needs a second pair of eyes. It’s a great gig for 10 hours a week, and I get to interact with all sorts of interesting students and fascinating academic papers.

The Write Night I held was a first-ever Creative Write Night, during which we focused not on the academia that so largely occupies our lives, but on our innate creative selves. It was my aim to latch on to and tractor out dormant creativity in the students that showed up, and foster an atmosphere that would allow them to incorporate creativity into, shall we say, drier academic works. My success is largely unknown, but we had fun with a variety of prompts I gleaned from my undergraduate studies and re-worked for use during the Creative Write Night.

Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, who gained some measure of fame from his hobbit novels, leant a bit of assistance from the great beyond. Writing in his Tolkien: A Biography Humphrey Carpenter quotes Tolkien on the creative process:

one writes such a story not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps (131)

This is what I have tried to express about my own process. Tolkien uses the metaphor of botanical processes, of loam and dirt and detritus becoming a fertile soil from which a seed germinates into a tree with many leaves. It isn’t the leaves that make the story come to life, rather it is that nutrient-rich mud that gestates the seed. And it is that nutritious silt that is best cultivated by constantly “seeing…thinking…or reading” as Tolkien would say.

Sadly, my process of reading is in shambles. I see much and think much but of late have read almost not at all. I fear my dirt is becoming dry and desiccated and doesn’t have much to offer a seed at this point. Still, I persist. This flowering post is evidence of that. Started in the weeks preceding the Creative Write Night, continuing a few weeks ago when I shared what Tolkien had to say, and culminating tonight on this blog.

I have so much from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth studies I want to excavate, and many other works that I wish to analyze and interact with, that I feel overwhelmed. But mostly I need to get reading again. My psyche assumes it cannot, my mind sometimes will not, but my soul is yearning for more material for my “leaf-mould”. I think I simply need to give myself permission to crack spines and use my pick-axe eyes to mine the riches in pages. I have many, many volumes of deep material and only need to blast my way in. I have a feeling that once I am within word repositories, I won’t come back out except to polish what treasures I find before planting them to see what will grow.

I think now of Bilbo Baggins, a timid, shy, and frightened hobbit, sitting in his hobbit-hole being confronted by the wizard Gandalf. In the film adaptation, he is overwhelmed by the enormity of the quest the dwarves wish to undertake, and he faints. When we come back to him, he is sitting with a cup of tea in his arm chair, speaking to Gandalf:

“I just need to sit quietly for a moment.”

Gandalf retorts:

“You’ve been sitting quietly for far too long…I remember a young hobbit who was always running off in search of elves in the woods, who would stay out late and come home after dark trailing mud and twigs and fireflies…”

Bilbo is eventually convinced to run after the dwarves and find out “what is beyond the borders of the Shire” and I feel I must do the same. I must go on an adventure, and I don’t mean to come back again. I’ve been sitting quietly for far too long myself. I may not come back, and if I do, I won’t be the same RedBeard that I am now. That frightens me, but I know, too, that is for my better; my soul needs the enrichment.

I cannot stay timid and shy and afraid. I must learn and grow and explore.

Point of View

with apologies and thanks to Adam Savage

After drilling another hole in his chair, he stopped and asked himself “why?” It was at once the most important and the most insignificant question to ask. The answer is old as time, young as baby laughter, broad as the universe, and constrained as a grain of sand: because it needed to exist. For the man drilling holes, it was a culmination, of sorts, of a life journey. It was aesthetically pleasing, artistically fulfilling, manually rewarding and many, many other things all at once. It was this man’s point of view on what that chair should be made extant in the world.

Often what the rest of the world may call “creativity”, this man, Adam Savage, calls “point of view”. Creativity is contradictorily too small and too broad. Too inexact and too confining. Traditionally meaning a spark that makes something, or as Webster might say, “the ability to bring into existence” what is currently meant by creativity is better summed up in what Savage says is point of view: taking the sum of you and putting it into something because it needs to exist.

Poetry, love, dress-making, cooking, coding, carpentry, masonry, singing – the list extends as far as human nature itself – all are valid ways to express one’s point of view. That is the distillation of the why. I paint using black pigment because, for me, something needs to exist blackly. This isn’t about right or wrong, or correct or incorrect. This is about need. Mozart wrote his music because he needed that music to exist in the world. Ditto every creative act that has burst out of someone into existence: that person needed that thing to exist.

Otherwise, “creating” would be a pointless endeavor, better left abandoned to the Void. Feeding, clothing, sheltering, and surviving take enough time, energy, and thought as it is, why take that valuable temporal resource and squander it drilling holes in a chair?

Maslow, the psychologist, posited a hierarchy of needs. First is survival, last is self-actualization. Can’t have the last without the first being served, and everything else in between. While true enough on a basic level, on the quantum aspect it isn’t quite so clear cut. Yes, if you are starving, you do everything you can for food. But a starving artist will still exercise their point of view to splash color on a canvas to sell in exchange for the currency necessary to purchase bread.

How is this need manifested? For most, it is unconscious and automatic. For some it is yanked down out of the aether, for others it hits in a flash of genius, and yet it happens every single day. How much salt do you sprinkle in the frying pan? Which note follows the one just written? Which word is most fitting? How much pressure does that brick need when pressed into the mortar? All of that, and more, is part of the point of view people express every day in the mundane and the magical. An engineer uses her point of view to curve a windscreen for a new vehicle design. A mother uses point of view to soothe an upset baby. A father uses point of view to guide a child into adulthood. Yes, an artist uses their point of view to craft their art: a clay vessel, a musical opus, a novel, or a sculpture. Whether you walk quickly down the street, or saunter across the crosswalk, every decision can be seen as a microcosm of point of view expressed.

The counterpoint in skepticism says that not everything is an art, or is creative, but that is a failure to see the beauty in the humane. It is the blind man missing the sunset in his visual darkness. The sum of every step you make before the next dictates how you place your foot, how you push off the ground, whether you slide, glide, pounce, pirouette, or simply plod along the sidewalk. That could be an unconscious point of view, or for the dancer, conscious as they flutter across a garden. All of humanity is creating, exercising our own point of view, all the time.

Start thinking in terms of point of view and it changes how you see things. No longer is the creative act reserved for a few gifted individuals: now it is something everyone can access and enjoy. Evaluations are, ultimately, insignificant. I can’t write music the way Mozart did, but then, I don’t have his point of view on melody and rhythm and harmony and the aural world. What I can do, that Mozart couldn’t, is write the way I do. He didn’t possess my point of view on the written word. He didn’t craft food like any chef you might name. He didn’t play sports like any athlete. But oh! could he write music! And if you do write music, only the sum of your psyche and experience can create the music you can, that, again, Mozart never could. Mozart never rapped, or scored a film that would make an audience weep. But you can exercise your point of view to make whatever-it-is-you-make.

Adam Savage’s holy chair is full of holes, not quite how he envisioned it at first, but how it needed to be made in the end. Only he could have drilled all the holes, or polished them, or painted them, or sanded them, and crafted them just so. Only a madman would have undertaken the monumental task to take a perfectly serviceable chair and fill it full of holes. Point of view isn’t about that at all. Only a sane man like Adam Savage could take that chair and make it what it is today.

And so you.

Take your point of view and apply it to what you do, and put it into the world. Only you are able. And you need to do it, whether you realize it or not, to be completely you. And the world needs your particular flavor to be the best damn world it can be, hurtling through space and time. You never know whose life you may impact just by being you.

Adam Savage’s Holy Chair (screenshot from Tested’s YouTube video)

World on Fire

My eyes twinkle in the dim light of a fake fall tree, the only illumination besides my iPad screen. It’s early morning, and I can’t sleep anymore, the result of three dreams interwoven throughout my night. All were what I call “stress dreams”, meaning they weren’t the sweet dreams wished for at end of day. These were dreams that brought distress and un-quiet sleep.

It’s the real world that distresses me more upon waking: genocide in the Middle-East, fascism rising in the midst of my home country, war in Ukraine that won’t end, and a hate-filled talk show host being glorified as a martyr for a holy man he didn’t know that well. And it goes on and on.

I grew up into this modern world as a child communicating with other children in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and around the States through the early internet. It was a fun time of global connection over shared interests. That innocence quickly grew into something else, and I believe all of us were unprepared for the overwhelming burden of knowing exactly where and how the world is on fire at any given moment of any given day.

I am reminded of the Tom Hanks’ film News of the World in which Hanks plays a character in the late 1800’s America traveling from town to town reading exotic news from Paris, London, Berlin, and other cities around the world. People once paid for the novel news of far away places. Now? It is beneath our fingers for the endless scrolling. I don’t think I was prepared for that to happen so fast in the almost-40 years I’ve been alive. In my teens it was a trickle. Now it’s the proverbial fire hose of information.

It is incredible to remember that humanity existed in many tiny enclaves, practically isolated from one another across this wide world, which has been shrinking for hundreds of years. Still, the Information Age so greatly accelerated that shrinkage that I believe nobody was prepared for the results we are seeing now. In many ways our new small world is a good thing; in many ways our new small world is a nightmare.

I am not here to decry modern connective technology. Like a flint arrowhead or the wheel, it is simply a tool to be used. It is our human proclivity to turn anything into a weapon, even information, that is our undoing. A very different film reminds me that “human ingenuity goes hand in hand with human cruelty”. (Actually, that slight misquote comes from two different Planet of the Apes films.) There is nothing we can’t imagine for good yet twist into an evil. The challenge is found in the pages of a holy book that urges “beating swords into plowshares”; that is, taking our weapons of war and returning them to tools that work towards the common good.

I can do very little against the onslaught of evil that has seemingly gripped our little world in the now times. Too often I remain silent, keeping my head down and merely attempting to survive from one day to the next. I have trouble enough here in my house, trying to keep the structure from falling down around me, or my car running, or me reliably going to work five times a week to earn the pittance I crave to fund this day-to-day survival. Occasionally, like today, I can poke my head out and call to the world to please amplify kindness, empathy, and respect for the preciousness that is human life that is so casually thrown aside.

The talk show host who was murdered should be alive today, as vile as he was. The children and fathers and mothers of Gaza should be alive today. The young black men who were lynched in Mississippi and found hanging from trees should be alive today. The little girls’ innocence that Epstein and Trump and his cronies are trying to erase should have true justice and restoration. We should be making this world better: preserving our forests and oceans, not strip mining and reducing to rubble for others to gain more power and more obscene wealth. That these things are controversial at all shows how deep in the shit we all are.

Perhaps this is the greatest human failing: sin, human nature, evil: call it whatever you will, that is the constant cancer we must all seek to conquer. Maybe that is what our fighting spirit is for, not to wage war against each other, but to battle ourselves for the dominance of good and the subjugation of evil. All too frequently, we fail to master our own hearts before we wake. Then we take the trauma of the darkness within and visit it on our family, neighbors, and “the least of these” in an effort to avoid the inner conflict altogether.

I turn again to Dr. Martin Luther King who begged us, before he was murdered, to not use hate to drive out hate, but to use love instead. Or the holy writ that urges us all to “do justly and love mercy” and Jesus who said to “love one another as we love ourselves”, though more often than not, that kind of sentiment will get you crucified and make people angry because most of us cannot bear to look within and master our own failings.

I grew up, and remain, a fan of science fiction, in particular Star Trek. Trek, at its best, is this great utopic look at the future. I still dream of visiting the stars, and encountering “strange new worlds” teeming with “new life and new civilizations” but humanity isn’t ready for that. In our current mood, we would wipe out any such new life in seconds. Maybe that’s why none of that new-to-us life has visited here yet, either. As the philosopher Calvin once said, “the surest sign [of] intelligent life…is that none of it has tried to contact us”.

At any rate, I renew my commitment to everyone to be the best person I can be. I vow to, as much as I am able, master my own shadows so that I can emerge into a shared light to love and care for as many as I can. That’s the best any of us can and should strive to do. Please join me? The world is dying and needs the collective us to save it.

Summer Gone

It is Labor Day (thanks, unions!) in the States, so I’ve got this Monday off of work. Unofficially, it is also the end of summer and the beginning of the next season. That is true enough perhaps in other climates, but here in Texas…it’s still hot and humid. A glance at my weather app, though, shows that better temperatures are trying to once again assert themselves. I hope more temperate days do arrive soon.

I went ahead and decorated the house for autumn/harvest/Hallowe’en, mostly because I wanted to even if where I live doesn’t reflect it yet. Also, last year at this season, my wife and I were living in the spare ‘oom of my sister’s house (thank you, sis!) as we were in between living arrangements at the time and couldn’t decorate. For both reasons, my soul was ready for pumpkins, fall leaves (even fake), and other associated seasonal icons.

Now that summer is “over”, I’ve also had a look back over my summer wish-list of things to accomplish, and I must admit I was half-way successful. I tend towards a pessimistic, all-or-nothing mentality, and while failure is always an option (thank you, Mythbusters!) I want to be careful to not ascribe things to myself that simply aren’t true. For a while I was doing great. I read books, refrained from doomscrolling, write haiku in the evening, and did a ton of organization in the house.

Then Boston happened.

Vacationing to Boston this summer was a fantastic idea, and I’m thrilled to have done it. But I am unused to such disruptions to my routine, and thus, upon my return, I haven’t been the same. I haven’t yet returned to all the things I was doing so well before I left, and I can tell the difference in my mental health, energy, and even physical health.

What this really means is that I need to step back, breathe deep, reset, and then reengage. Doing so should allow me to get back to better habits. I acknowledge that life is a continuum, not a destination, and that habits are hard-won. But I can do hard things (thanks again, sis!). I really want to be consistent, and all that means is starting again.

Anyone who knows me knows I like baseball. Baseball is all about streaks: consecutive games with a hit, innings pitched without allowing a hit or walk, home runs hit in a row, games played, etc. Records are make to be broken, and streaks always end. The good news? There’s always the next game to start the next streak or to build towards the next record. Emulating my favorite sport, then, I just need to wipe the slate clean from my last game, lace up my cleats, and trot back out onto the field.

So while Texas leaves stubbornly cling to their branches and the heat radiates down from the burning sun, I will turn the calendar page and continue once more the tasks I have set myself. My summer to-do list will become my autumn to-do list. As a reminder, I want to read more, doomscroll less, write more, and work on a few specific projects: to whit, finish scanning photos for my mother, create some poetry chapbooks, take some toy photos, and finish sorting some LEGO.

I can’t wait to continue crossing things off my list and curating a healthier mental and physical existence. I can do difficult things!

A Dog’s Life

I’m a dog guy. It’s no secret. I’ve had seven dogs as a part of my family, and I love my parent’s dog like he is mine, though he loves them probably more than he loves me. He’s a rascal, but I’d take him in a heartbeat.

The thing is, however, I’ve never been around for any of those dog’s end of life. The first dog was a collie when I was very young that I barely remember, and who we didn’t have long.

Then there was Buck, my beloved black lab when I was a kid. Buck was a great dog who was discontent in our small yard. He used to climb the backyard chain link fence to play with Chief, the dog in the yard adjacent to ours. My parents feared he would climb a different fence and get hit by a car or run away, so we surrendered him to a family that lived a ways away on a large plot of land. We visited Buck a few times after that, until one day he went hunting and never came back. Either he got snake bit or was picked up by another person, but we never saw him again.

Following Buck, our family got Lad, a neurotic sheltie who was a good dog, but he wasn’t great with kids. We surrendered him when our family moved out of state, which was good for Lad, but sad for us. In between we tried to adopt a lab puppy, but I don’t remember him lasting too long before we gave him back.

There was a few years where I didn’t have a dog around, and then I was studying at university, but as soon as I could, I adopted a little papillon who was so sassy I named her Cordy after the Buffy the Vampire Slayer character Cordelia Chase. If you know, you know. Anyway, only a few years after adopting Cordy, I had to re-home her as I moved to Texas and wouldn’t be able to have her with me where I was living. This is when I really bonded with my parent’s little shitzu-mutt Rufus. He and I are great friends.

When I married a few years later, my wife came with two dogs: Duncan and Cassie. Duncan is a super dumb beagle mix, who nonetheless is sweet and gentle. Cassie is a spitfire of a miniature poodle with a gimpy leg. She is super cute, and knows it. Recently we took Duncan and Cassie to the vet for their annual check up.

Both dogs passed their routine checks with flying colors until the vet listened to Cassie’s heart. The vet came into the exam room with Cassie and asked us if we noticed any change in her behavior. We hadn’t seen anything alarming, but that’s when the vet said she had heard a little heart murmur during the examination. Without more advanced tests, it is hard to know exactly what it going on. The diagnosis is that Cassie has a deformed, or deforming, heart valve. The end result of that will be congestive heart failure. Apparently it is a common development for small dogs, but it hit my wife and I pretty hard. Duncan and Cassie are both senior dogs at this point, but they aren’t nearly where they are as lived as they can be, and we certainly aren’t ready for either of them to leave us just yet.

There are a few things we can do for Cassie. The first step would be some imaging, either an X-ray (not very effective) or an echocardiogram (best). Both options are pricey. Then, there is medication which will delay the inevitable and help Cassie’s be more comfortable as the degradation progresses. Medication is also expensive. For a human, we could do heart surgery and replace the defective valves or address the underlying trouble, but we aren’t there with dogs, and the cost wouldn’t be approachable.

I do not want my Cassie to suffer, neither do I have the funding to pay for expensive studies and medications. To be clear, she has plenty of energy at the moment, and whatever is going on with her little heart is in the very early stages at this point. But it won’t stay there. So what to do? There is the thought that Cassie is just a dog, and as much as we anthropomorphize her, she isn’t human, but that doesn’t quite match how my wife and I feel about her, and how much a part of our family she truly is. But, we can’t really do much for her. Certainly, when her condition advances enough that she is in pain we won’t let her live that way, but what do we do in the interstitial time?

I don’t have answers to these questions. Right now I am trying to process my early grief and face the reality that however much time Cassie has left, it isn’t going to be that long compared to my lifespan. I will have to say goodbye to her, either sooner or later. None of us, canis or sapiens, are guaranteed the next day, and it is tragic that we are with dogs (usually) during their whole lives but that is such a short chapter in our stories.

I hope when the time comes, whenever that is, I will know what path to take and how best to care for her. However, for now, our vet told us that we don’t have to take immediate action, and that we are to monitor Cassie’s symptoms and energy level. In the next few months we will determine whether or not to get the echo, and what to do about meds. Whatever happens, we will face it as a family.

I love my Cassie girl. I don’t want to say good-bye to her.

Boston

My dad came out as a huge Boston Red Sox fan a few years ago. You see, he was born in New London, Connecticut, and despite being a NAVY brat that traveled the US before settling in Virginia Beach, Virginia, he considers the north east United States to be his “home” territory. The baseball team of note in that part of the country is the Red Sox. As such, it has been his dream to visit Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. This year my family decided to take him there.

We purchased airfare in March for late July, and began planning activities in and around the ballpark for a week in Boston. During the spring, it rained a lot there, and the fear was that we might have baseball games rained out, or general bad weather for the week. We simply had to wait and see. Shortly after deciding on the trip, my elder brother from Arizona agreed to fly to meet us, and with my wife and parents, the trip turned out to be a family affair. My sister couldn’t come, but she already was planning a trip with her daughters to our home territory in Virginia during the same week.

Along with Boston, we decided to take a day and travel to Groton, Connecticut, home of a submarine museum and the resting place of the USN 751 Nautilus, my grandfather’s first naval posting. We would be able to tour the submarine itself, and see where grandpa spent so much time at sea in the early days of his military career.

Finally the time came, and we prepared for the trip. Weather was still a bit uncertain, but we had tickets for two Red Sox games, and a few other things planned, and were determined to make the best of it. That we did!

One of the particulars of Boston is that it is a proper city, old and close quarters. That means there is a minimum of parking space, and a reliance on public transportation: buses, metro, trains, etc. Everyone walks, and it is a busy city at all times. This is something our family is not particularly used to, having grown up in a large metroplex in Virginia, and currently living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas. It was a bit of a learning curve to figure out the stops (and direction!) of the metro and bus schedules. Which arriving train did we need to get on? The green line or the blue line? Which side of the platform? I am sure the locals were a bit amused at us clear outsiders being confused, though no one actively pointed or laughed. However, on one occasion, when taking the train to see my friend Zach who lives an hour north of Boston, I was trying to ask if this was, in fact, the train to “Haverhill” only to have a conductor look at me in obstinate confusion. Eventually his partner responded that I was mispronouncing it, and that this was the train to “‘Aver’ill”. Yes, it was the train. No, I didn’t say it right. Thus assured, we boarded the train, and made it to see my friend and his family for the day. (Actually the story works better as an oral anecdote when I can affect the pronunciations. Oh well. You probably get the idea.)

Having (mostly) figured out the public transportation, I proceeded to rent a car. Actually, my wife and I were traveling next to the western-most side of Massachusetts to visit her aunt and cousin. We had a lovely drive through the countryside at the comfortable pace of 55 mph. This, too, was a bit of culture shock from Texas (my sister confirmed the same thing about Virginia while she was there): Texas speed limits on the highway are set to 70 mph, but everyone drives about 80 mph. In Massachusetts the speed limit is 55 mph, and everyone drives, well, about 55 mph. Actually the slower pace meant a slower heart rate and a relaxing (if longer) trip out west. After all, we arrived. And had a great time talking to and relaxing with my wife’s family.

Saturday was our first baseball game at Fenway, and another bit of transport “fun”. We rode the metro to the ballpark, the only sensible way to get there, but at each stop, we were squeezed tighter and tighter as more and more people packed into the train car to get to the game. A few uncomfortable minutes later, and we were there. The weather was beautiful, our seats were fantastic, and the ballpark was magical.

Fenway is the oldest operating Major League Baseball stadium, having been built in 1912! It feels properly aged in all the best ways. We sat that night on original wooden benches, and took in baseball the way it was meant to be seen: without many modern distractions. It was an emotional time to finally be in the place we had dreamed of visiting for so long. Fenway was everything I wanted it to be. And what’s more, the Red Sox handily beat the visiting Houston Astros, our Texas cross-state rivals that we never like to see win.

Speaking of emotions, they were heightened once again on Monday when we finally drove to Connecticut to visit the Nautilus. It was surreal to climb (literally) through hatches and over bulkheads and see the tiny spaces that my grandfather once inhabited. The galley, the kitchen, the stacked bunks, and the overall lack of space aboard the United States NAVY’s first nuclear submarine was an eye opening experience. My father said he had vague memories of being aboard when he was a youngster, though the sub understandably felt bigger then (though I imagine not by much). I wished the entire day that my grandfather was still alive to be able to accompany us to the submarine and tell us once more of his time beneath the waves. I longed to hear his voice telling us stories of “cat-and-mouse” games with the Soviet NAVY.

We finished the week with an early morning tour of Fenway Park, visiting, among other stops, the field and the Green Monster (a 37-foot tall left field wall with seats atop). We had an excellent tour guide, and it was well worth the extra cost to have a private tour, just us four (my wife declining the tour) and our guide. We learned so much history and heard many amusing stories along the way. That evening we watched a second game, and enjoyed another Red Sox win.

We had gorgeous weather all week (despite one night of rain while walking back from the metro station to our AirBnB), and it was disheartening to arrive back in Dallas to 90sF and high humidity after enjoying temps in the 70sF and beautiful breezes. Particularly pleasant was Sunday evening when we took a Boston harbor cruise. Seeing the skyline from the water was fun, and I was able to take plenty of great pictures (as I did throughout our time).

In all, the trip to Boston was everything I needed it to be: historical (both for the family and generally), relaxing, fun, and a little exasperating (oh! the metro!). I thoroughly enjoyed seeing my brother, spending quality time with my wife, and relaxing with my parents in a new city and making lifetime memories. I plan to put together a photo book of the pictures we took, which will be a great way to relive our time there and cherish the feelings.

Dog Days

Heat. It saps my energy and my will to continue. Yesterday I was out in the heat for a bit and that must have done me in because all I’ve done today is sleep and rest. I am dreading this evening because I need to go back out in the heat and cut grass and weed-eat around my property. Ugh.

In the mean time, I thought this might be a good time to check in with how the summer is going as regards my goals. All-in-all, it is going rather well. I am reading through Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher (while in the bathroom; hey, it’s something) and have completed the Phantom of Menace and The Clone Army Attacketh and am starting The Tragedy of the Sith’s Revenge. To go from almost no books read, to two down and more to go feels like a real accomplishment. I think after Revenge I will take a break from pseudo-Shakespeare and tackle something different altogether.

My doomscrolling has gone way down, though the app limits, which I did implement, started to annoy me. Either it isn’t enough time or it is too easy to circumvent, but either way I’ve turned it back off for now. I tend to have reached a balance with app limits off that keep me from doomscrolling for too long. Maybe I’ve learned a little discipline? Time will tell.

I’ve made huge process, too, on other tasks, primarily on the LEGO sorting. Working through the backlog of LEGO sets I bought primarily for the pieces (and not for display) has taken less time than I feared and I am already formulating plans to build, with eBay having furnished me some baseplates on which to construct. I can’t wait until they arrive so I can actually start. I still need to finish phase one of scanning in photos for my mother, and a few other things I planned to do have gone undone as of yet, but there is time still. My productivity has been up, and that is what I wanted.

Oh! I almost forgot: haiku! I’ve been writing them. I am a member of the social media platform Mastodon, and there is an account I follow that posts haiku prompts each week for each day. In the evening, I have been writing a few haiku just for fun. Maybe someday I will choose the best and refine them for some project, but right now it is about writing and enjoying the form. Here’s one I wrote recently:

After full summers

Winter ballparks lay fallow.

Hush! Legends need rest.

It needs a bit more tweaking, as do most of them, but it’s a start and a fun exercise before sleep.

I’ve even done some movie watching this summer, and in the theater, no less! My parents and I went to see F1 starring Brad Pitt, and just yesterday my sister, her beaux Will, and my parents, and I went to see the newest Superman.

Pitt’s action vehicle F1 was pretty much by-the-numbers about an aging former star returning to a thing to help an up-and-coming phenom, and both learn a grudging respect while winning the day. The cinematography was amazing, and put the viewer in the driver’s seat in a way I haven’t seen since Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick. I enjoyed the spectacle, and the story made me care about Formula 1 racing in the same way that Legend of Bagger Vance made me care about golf. That is to say, I don’t, but both stories were strong enough to pull me in and feel like I cared about the sport for a few hours.

On the other hand, Superman was a bit of a shouty, if colorful, mess. Eschewing the origin story, for better or for worse, it throws the audience into the story of Clark Kent and runs from there. Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor was over the top, and not in a good way, and everything felt a little hurried. I did absolutely love the scene-stealing Krypto the Super-Dog, and always love Nathan Fillion in a role, especially the douchebag Green Lantern Guy Gardner (who proves that a Green Lantern -can- work on screen!) which truly made me laugh. There were a few, brief, heartfelt moments in the movie, and I did appreciate that the score incorporated John William’s original theme for Superman. But other than that, it didn’t make me want to revisit the movie again, despite being curious what the rest of the Justice League will look like in this new universe that James Gunn, director of Superman and DC’s new direction, is building. I’ll have to wait and watch.

By the way, if you loved F1 and Superman, that is terrific! They weren’t precisely my cup of tea, and that is ok. We all love different things in different ways and for different reasons and that is what makes us colorful, wonderful, humans.

Finally, I knocked a few items off my list by completely re-organizing the kitchen and the laundry room. I did it entirely over one evening, and it felt really good to get done. I basically went through every single cabinet, pulling everything out, and deciding what I needed, what I didn’t, and how to organize most efficiently as I put what I needed back into the cabinets. For the moment they are staying organized and the kitchen remains tidy, and that makes me smile and less stressed every time I go in there. Fantastic win.

And, with me completing a blog post just now, I feel I was able to do -something- ahead of cutting the grass this evening. I know that I will be happy to have the outdoor chore done, I just dread doing it each time I must. I’m not sure why I hate it so. Perhaps it is my reluctance to sweat, and I don’t enjoy mindless exercise, but it needs to be done, and just before sunset is the time to do it, therefore do it I shall and then it will be done (for another week or so).

Yes, the summer is going well, despite the heat and uncomfortable humidity we have had in Texas this summer. Setting goals has been huge for keeping me on track, and writing about my goals to see the progress I’ve made has been good to help me stay positive, especially on days like today when I tend to be down on myself for not doing too much.

Here’s to the rest of the summer and my upcoming vacation to Boston, for which I am starting to get very excited! Just ten more days, and I’ll be flying away to New England. Can’t wait.

Doing the Hard Things

I mentioned last time out that I want to make some changes to my routines.

I want less phone time. I’ve noticed that large swaths of my time are taken up these days with endless, mindless viewing of my social media apps. Only one is really a net positive, where I have burgeoning relationships, and I feel it adds to my life in a meaningful way. The rest are, at best, neutral. I haven’t used Twitter/X for some time now, and while cutting that out of my life was a huge positive, I can’t bring myself to quit the others, at least, not yet. In all, I don’t think I need to, but I certainly could do with less.

Over the past couple weeks, I have been trying to be mindful of when I most often am on my phone mindlessly scrolling. Usually it comes in three places: the bathroom, during commercial breaks in a baseball game, and during the day when I don’t particularly have anything specific to do.

I think I have cracked at least one problem, leading to a solution, and I am almost to another. The third is a bit more difficult, for reasons I’ll mention when I get there.

First: the bathroom. This one seems easy to me, and I’ll implement the solution starting today. I, like almost everyone with a smartphone I assume, take my phone into the bathroom with me. Growing up, smartphones didn’t exist, so I couldn’t do that, and instead took a paperback with me or read my mother’s old Reader’s Digests. I don’t know why it took me so long to think of this, but I will simply ban my phone from the bathroom. I will leave a paperback in the bathroom (so I don’t forget, it would be so sad to be bored in there!) and this may even kickstart my reading habit again. Wouldn’t that be nice? But seriously, if I can’t survive without my phone the few minutes the few times a day I am stuck in the bathroom, I’ve got more of a problem than I imagine.

Second: baseball games. Baseball season lasts from late February through November, and that is a long stretch where I watch at least part of a game almost every day (it used to be more, but these days I can barely focus on one game a day). Anyway, I get distracted every half inning because of the commercial break. This annoying few minutes comes and goes all game, and I mute the commercials as they are repetitive and irritating. I want something to do, as staring at a silent TV of images I don’t care about is boring. I tend to grab my phone and check each app in turn, mostly not even engaging or seeing what is there. After two innings, this really gets pointless as, unless something is breaking, there aren’t updates on social media that frequently. Not only am I zombiescrolling, but I’m not even seeing anything new. What am I even doing?

My solution? Have a project to work on throughout the game. Right now it is scanning photos for my mum. She has albums and shoeboxes full of old photos, and scanning them in doesn’t take much mental energy. Therefore I can work during the commercials, and often during the innings as well until the action heats up, and put down the phone. This allows me to make positive progress on something I want to do, and take in a ballgame at the same time. Win-win.

Third: in the down times. Here is where I still don’t have a direct solution. Part of the struggle is my overall inability to focus/concentrate and my lack of pep. I have tons of things I want to do, and many projects to work on, but mostly in the mid-afternoon and mid-evening I get to a point where I am semi-tired feeling, but don’t want to or can’t sleep, but also don’t have the gumption to do anything. Doomscrolling enters stage left and takes over the hours. Literally, hours. I don’t feel better because of it, usually feeling more restless even, and again, it isn’t like I am reading something new for a few hours because there aren’t even updates that often.

I am trying to get to the heart of why I doomscroll. Part of it may be a fear of missing out, a baked-in feeling of missing things that are being posted, but I think that is more or less the algorithm messing with my mind after a decade or so of being trained by it. Breaking the habit of doomscrolling may help me to see that I can check in once or twice a day (or less) and catch up with anything I’ve genuinely missed and not have that need as much. Part of it may also be the genuine connection to the few people I interact with online, and not wanting to neglect that. Again, I don’t have to be online constantly to do that. Boredom may also be a factor here, though, as I said, it is less that than an inability to focus. Either way, I don’t like being idle, and doomscrolling has the illusion of busyness. Breaking the habit will also break the illusion, and could lead to me actually being bored enough to get inspired to do something else.

A possible solution here is limits. Allowing myself a total amount of time to be on social media, and then that’s it for the day might be a great way to set limits for myself. I think that may be possible directly from iOS. If not I might simply need to exercise some self-discipline. Either way: possible solution! I might need some medical intervention here if my inability to focus or have energy has a physical or mental solution. That might take talking to my doctor or re-engaging with a therapist, but those are steps I am willing to take. I want to be healthy, and I can see that doomscrolling is not healthy.

Lastly, there is my morning routine outside of the bathroom. For some reason lately (last couple weeks) I’ve been waking up earlier than I would prefer and don’t have anything specific to do before I actually need to get ready for the day. Again, the bright allure of my smartphone screen tends to suck me in. I also want to put it away during this time. I mentioned this before, but I think I want to start a practice of meditation/mindfulness, coupled with reading time (a different thing than my bathroom reading – less novel and more nonfiction or poetry) and writing time (less blog and more poetry or prose). Not only would I probably feel more productive, but most likely more creative, too.

If I can manage to be at all successful with all this, I think certain aspects of my mental health and overall feeling of well-being will improve. I am excited to make the experiment. I remind myself that it isn’t about being perfect, or having an unbroken streak, but it is about being consistently intentional. Looking at my phone isn’t a moral failing, or a sign of some sort of contrived addiction, merely a natural part of living in this future of the 20th century. But I have noticed, for me, that it isn’t something I want to continue, and so I am putting this out into cyberspace as a way to mark the change I want to make. This feels like a hard thing to do, but as my sister frequently tells her daughters: “we can do hard things”. I can do hard things!