Phil RedBeard

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!

The Hustle

I’ve got me a week and a half of working from home, and generally relaxed time. My boss is out of town, I having dropped him off at the airport for a work trip, and there being no reason for me to be at the office as a result. I’ll have work to do, for sure, but it will be intermittent at best, and here and there. Check an email, write an email, do-a-thing kind of shuffle.

Perfect time for me to hustle and get things accomplished. I wrote about all I want to do in the post previous to this one. I even bought me two new books yesterday that arrived today, in case I really get ambitious with the reading. Both have been on my list for a long time: The Soul of an Octopus and The Odyssey of Star Wars. More on them later if I get around to reading them. I’ve come to understand that I am not piling books up for no reason, I am, in fact, building a library, a trust, for the future. I can look into the collection of words on a whim whenever I want to. Hard to do if you don’t have the collection to begin with.

I’ve made right by already re-arranging the living room, and am considering decor for the recently excavated fireplace and mantle. The mantle still has a few things I set there when we moved in, and I want to make sure that’s what I want to live there more or less permanently. Speaking of permanence, I can’t wait for the holidays and decorating this year! I didn’t have the opportunity last year on account of my wife and me moving and not being somewhere, well, permanent, but that shouldn’t be the case this year. This year it is going to be autumn, and then Yuletide, decorations for quite a while.

Anyway, between then and now, we’ve got summer and it’s the perfect time to explore what can be.

Into the plans the monkey wrench has been thrown, and in addition to all else, I am thinking about starting a morning routine for before my morning routine. I explain thusly: I have been waking up earlier than I plan to lately, and generally spend time scrolling on my phone. It ain’t exactly a good habit, and I’ve been considering replacing it with some healthy habits. What habits? Perhaps a meditation practice, writing, reading: being mindful. I usually have about an hour, and I think that would be perfect for a few minutes meditating, twenty minutes reading, and twenty minutes writing. It don’t sound like much, but it would be a start. Timers would help, but it is quiet while my wife and dogs sleep in, with generally just the bird song out the window and the gentle whirring of the ceiling fan o’erhead. I wouldn’t constrain myself to needing to do this every morning, at least to start, but only those days when I wake up early.

I’ve been thinking again about a podcast. Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to podcasts again as I build and sort LEGO, but I am continually drawn to the art form. I tried producing a podcast back in the good old pandemic days, but it never got off the runway. I think what I need is a partner-in-mics, someone to talk to, rather than me rambling away like so much chattering. I want to explore themes of family, memory, and life in many facets, and that is best done with someone else. Hard to be introspective when I’ve thought all these thoughts before, without the welcome intrusion of another’s ideas and perspectives. I even have a few co-hosts in mind that I may approach, but for now it’s all “mums-the-word” and working on building it out before I put it out there for consideration.

In all, the summer is going well. I’m positive, despite the utter horror show that is *gestures at everything*, and that’s not nothing. I still can spiral down into the darkness below, but that isn’t forever, and is becoming less and less intense. I pull out of the tailspin almost as quickly as I dip into it, and that is a major win for my psyche. I’ve long wrestled with depression and anxiety, and it feels great to be be-boppin’ along for the most part. I raise a glass of sugar-free soda to the summer ahead, and look forward to what comes next.

In the Queue

My summer goes by slowly.

Ever since the semester ended at the university, I haven’t had much work-for-pay. One job I hold there is writing consultant, meaning I assist students with their writing assignments (if they ask for help). The other job I hold is administrative assistant to one of the department heads, meaning I do anything he needs me to do in order to assist him with his duties.

The first job has mostly evaporated (temporarily) due to there being few students taking classes over the summer. The second job is hit or miss lately, with me working only when my boss has tasks for me to complete. I’m squeaking by in the pay aspect, with just enough work to keep bills paid until the fall semester will start. This is one aspect of scholastic work that I don’t particularly enjoy, at least at this university: the lack of a consistent paycheck all year ‘round.

However, with unexpected, though unpredictable, time on my hands, I have a few projects that I could work on when I don’t have much else to do.

Scanning

My mother is a shutterbug, and something of a photo collector. In the age before this one, when photography was analog, she amassed quite of lot of photographs. Now that we are living in a digital world, she would like these photos available to her on the iPad and in the cloud. That means scanning. She has procured a scanner (albeit a finicky one) that works well enough and quickly enough to scan in many photos in a session. I have already scanned a few albums worth, but have many more to scan. I think this will end up being more than a summer project, but it is in the queue.

Poetry

It is now two and a half years since I completed my first compendium of poetry, a book that has sold about four copies worldwide. And while I have barely written any poetry since, I am thinking about what my next poetic project could be, and I have an idea: a chapbook. My book of poems comprises several sections, and I thought it might be cool to create chapbooks of each section, and sell them individually as art projects containing both word and visual. I have saved in a wishlist online some appropriate paper, and a heavy-duty stapler that could aid me in creating these chapbooks, and all it takes is putting some together. My wife maintains an area on consignment in a local craft shop, and perhaps I could add a few of these chapbooks to that area and see if they sell. I don’t know that they would, but it is an idea in the queue.

Reading

I start to sound like a broken record in this regard, but I find it difficult to read these days. I wish I could read, but every time I think about opening a book, it seems an insurmountable task. But, I have a book that I bought a while back, Patrick Stewart’s Making It So. I would like to read that book this summer. It used to be I could read twelve books every couple of weeks, but maybe I can manage one book by September. I don’t know if that is achievable, but that book is in the queue.

Photography

Lately I acquired some scenery material: driftwood, sand, rocks, etc. and I aspire to use this to craft photo worthy scenes. While I’ve yet to use it as such, the ideas are percolating in my head of photos I could take. I have a few difficulties to iron out, such as a lack of room, not wanting to build permanent dioramas for the photos, and what to do with the scenery media when I am done with it, but I can’t shake the images I see when I close my eyes and dream of what could be. The pictures shimmer in the queue.

Organization

My wife and I moved into this house just after Christmas Day in 2024, which means we’ve been here almost six months now. The house is just now starting to feel like a home, and as such, it needs a few things internally, that thankfully aren’t plumbing or maintenance related. No, I am speaking of decorating and organizing. I have made great strides in the craft room (what was supposed to be the master bedroom) in terms of both decor and optimizing storage, layout, and usability. But the living room, the kitchen, and even perhaps the bedroom could use some help.

The kitchen in particular has very little decor, and still bears the marks of being moved into hastily, with little organization, optimization, and isn’t terribly user friendly. It does the job, but it needs TLC. The bedroom we are only in for sleep and whatnot, so that is low on the priority list, but the living room is the third most used common area (after kitchen and craft room). It, too, needs a little thought and love. Decorating and organizing thoughts drift through the queue.

Clearly, I have plenty to do. It has helped to streamline my priorities just in writing them down. Before I had vague ideas, but now I have action points and even some hazy plans. Yeesh, that sounded too much like a few of the committees I was on for work this past year. Shudder. If I could accomplish even half of these queued tasks, though, I would feel like I had a great summer, and my environment would benefit, as would my creative expression which needs, um, expressing.

And also in the queue? R&R. I can report that I have been already availing myself of some of that, and with a trip to Boston planned for the end of July, I can even take some time to see another part of the world. Won’t that be fun?

A Dash of Magic

I can’t be the only one.

Since 2020, the pandemic year, I feel as if I have lost something. Something that hasn’t come back to me.

During that time, I’ve gotten married, inherited two wonderful dogs, sold a home, got out of much of my debt, and bought another home that suits better, all with my wife-partner’s help.

I have many wonderful things around me: tools to create, entertainment to enjoy, and the aforementioned wife and dogs that add so much. But.

But: something is missing. Could it be the magic of the world has started to vanish? Before the pandemic, I would visit the movie theater and enjoy a film. Restauranting to savor a good meal was a particular pleasure. Taking a trip and experiencing a new part of the world was fun and wonderful. But now? I can count on less than one hand the movies I have seen in the theater. I go out to eat but it seems routine. I am and am not excited about going to Boston this summer.

Since I contracted Covid-19 and almost died, and emerged with long-term health issues to compound my mental health struggles that were already extant…

I haven’t been the same me.

Add to that the hell show that is America’s political theater, the wars and rumors of wars, genocides, plagues, economical disasters…

It is a lot. I acknowledge here my privilege to only be obliquely touched by most of the above, and my fortunate recovery from the plague a few years ago, yet I can’t quite recapture what I once felt.

And I can’t be the only one. If you are out there, struggling like me, please reach out.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the most recent television show that I viewed, Star Wars: Andor Season 2. The show itself was bleak, grey, and hard to watch. There was little joy, little positivity, and little hope. The show was well-written, but it was about a very dark time. It has massively good ratings, and I’ve been trying to figure that out. Sure, people love a good drama, but beyond that, I can’t help but wonder if its grey-ness is reflective of the times we live in, and that is resonating on an unconscious, or maybe even conscious, level with so many viewers.

So many of the characters in Star Wars: Andor, who are fighting tyranny and oppression for a future they never even see, lose their joy, their happiness, their positivity. There are smirks, but no smiles. There are barks of jest, but no laughter. There is the smoldering fire of rebellion, but no light in their eyes. Have I, like them, lost what makes life worth living? Do I only have the drudgery of resistance to look forward to each and every day?

I hope not. If so, better to go out in a blaze of hateful dissent and be done with it all! The world is desperately spiraling, but hasn’t it always been so? Isn’t it always just a whisper away from spinning apart? Through many dark times, beauty escapes the bleakness, and flashes with bold colours across the horizon.

I think one of the problems with Star Wars: Andor is that it did not show what the characters were fighting to preserve. They made speeches about it, referenced it, but precious little of it made it to the screen. A daughter of one of the main characters in the second season was wedded, and insisted on a traditional marriage, following the ancient customs of her people. However, the entire affair was overshadowed by the mother’s problems, cares, and desperation. This would have been a fantastic opportunity to show that even in a galaxy overwrought with an Empire, there was joy and love to be found, but the entire ceremony was bleak. The wedding toast talked more of pain than pleasure, as case in point.

Sure, show the hardness of rebellion, the persistence of purpose needed to beat a remorseless enemy capable of atrocity, but give me the hope, my only hope, that I need: that life is still possible! Let me know that what I am fighting for is worth it, that I needn’t lose who I am and wish to be.

I believe that true resistance, true rebellion, comes not from tearing down what we hate, but by building up what we love to bridge over the troubled waters. Connection, beauty, passion, vibrancy is what wins the day, not gritted teeth and grim jaws. Show me the rebels alive, and making merry for tomorrow they may die, keeping the spirit of their bodies fed as much as the fervor for which they fight the next day! Why else would they fight?

I’ve lost the ability to eat anything and everything whenever I want. For a year or more, I was restricted by masks and caution. I now face an uncertain future for years to come. But…

But how is that different than any other day, really?

I could walk across the street tomorrow and be flattened by a submarine falling from the sky. Shouldn’t I then enjoy what I have before me today?

An old friend of mine said once that “restrictions breed creativity”.

“Restrictions breed creativity” – Joel

What he meant by that is unfettered access to whatever we need or want leads to slovenly and lazy work. True genius emerges from using what is at hand, and forging out of that the spectacular. Take Jaws, for example. The animatronic shark barely worked, and wasn’t very convincing. So Steven Spielberg hid it in the shadows, in the darkness, and barely showed it on screen for most of the movie. The restriction of a malfunctioning prop forced him to compensate with a dramatic tension that makes the move ten times scarier and more menacing.

I can’t have much sugar? Be creative with what I can have, and make every bite worth it. I couldn’t go out into the world due to a raging pandemic? I wrote poetry through the looking glass of my house windows. I can’t help what my government is doing? I can live flamboyantly and be unapologetically myself.

I can create the magic I need out of the dust and ashes that I see. After all, in the trite example of geology, natural diamonds are formed through putting ordinary carbon through immense pressure. Take what is there and make it beautiful is the lesson. Love the rebel you are with, and make love last throughout the rebellion. Hope can only exist where there is joy and unfettered expression, and, after all, rebellions are built on hope.

Otherwise, why rebel? Look away from the Imperial flag and miss the blue sky. Wear black and white and grey, and miss the green and blue and red and the blazing yellow that we borrow from the life of the stars.

The lesson to myself here is to make my own magic. I think back on another aspect of Star Wars, to the magicians of Industrial Light and Magic that created the film’s special visual effects. It was hot, hard work, but through the days they made fun, had parties, and (barely, to be sure) got the film across the line. If it wasn’t so, I seriously doubt Star Wars as we know it would exist. To tell the story, they needed to live their own.

To experience magic, I need to manufacture my own.

This becomes my mandate to myself: make magic as often, and as exuberantly, as possible, out of whatever I have before me. Join me, and together we can re-make the galaxy into a place worth saving!