Captain’s Log – a simple man

The Occasional Downgrade

I am an Apple user, and a long-time techie. I have rarely been able to afford cutting edge technology, but I remember a time when what I have now was still futuristic: a computer on your wrist, anyone? a million songs in your pocket? world-wide connectivity on your desk? whodathunkit??

These days I can generally afford the tech that I want, so it is less about making do and more about finding what works. My constant companions are my Apple Watch Series 8, and my iPhone 16 Pro. I’ve also been using a MacBook Air M4, and an iPad Pro 11″ 3rd generation with a Smart Keyboard. Each device has its slot in my life and workflow, but recently I realized I had an occasion to downgrade and keep the productivity that I desire.

Where I have redundancy I want to reduce, and if I don’t actually need it, I generally won’t have it. Therefore I was considering the iPad Pro and the MacBook Air. The M4 Air is a 13″ screen and the iPad is an 11″ screen. Both have keyboards (courtesy of my iPad Smart Keyboard). Both are fast enough and have the processing power I need for what I do. I was using my Air for work, and my iPad at home.

Lately though, I have been looking into doing more with my photos, more with video editing, and some other creative projects that will require more than the iPad can do. I also had a mental block against using my Air at home: I am using it for my work computer. And every time I thought about using my laptop, I thought about work. Boot it up? See my work email. Open my browser? See my work bookmarks. My laptop said work, not fun. And my iPad was slightly lacking, despite all it can do, but I don’t want to give up the portability.

Sometimes, there are tasks I don’t want to do on a small screen, a la my iPhone, and don’t want to take out my laptop for: reading (for one), light browsing for another, or just playing Scrabble. So what to do? I think I found a solution, and it involves downgrading. I am going to keep the Air (after all, I do use it for work), but I am going to replace the iPad Pro with an iPad mini.

To get around the work/play conflict, I realized a feature of MacOS that I wasn’t using could help me: user accounts. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before, but I realized I could keep my current user account for work (to avoid having to set up again all the Microsoft products my employer insists on using) and I could add a second user account for after work life. Or, as I like to call it: life. Then I could have wacky wallpaper, advanced features, and quirky setups. For work I need things a little more straightforward and less imaginative. Having set that up, I feel like I now have two computers, work and play, in one!

But, if I am using the MacBook Air for most things at home, not only is the iPad redundant, but it is extra. I don’t need a tablet and a keyboard, though I still want something for the aforementioned activities for which a tablet is well suited. Enter mini, stage right. I found a good deal on an iPad mini, current generation, and can trade in my iPad Pro (plus probably sell my Smart Keyboard). Thus the mini has a minimal cost, and I still get the functionality I need from a small tablet. For everything else: the MacBook Air. For walking around I have my iPhone in my pocket and my Apple Watch at hand. Everything with a place and a use.

The only piece of Apple tech I would love to own would be a Vision Pro. Being able to watch movies, or baseball, or other media on that thing would be awesome. It would be absolutely killer on an airplane. But, it is way too expensive to find a home in my tech life. I either need a huge upgrade in work, or an affordable version of the Vision in Apple’s ecosystem. But that is small complaint, really. I have what I need, or will once the iPad mini shows up tomorrow. I love new tech, but even more, I love having just the right tool for the job.

The Way It Should Be

I’m settling in to watch the Boston Red Sox take on the Cincinnati Reds for Opening Day baseball (so far, no score). I am tuning in to the Boston video feed, and watching in 4K. This is how baseball should be.

This is possible through the magic that is MLB.TV. The streaming service costs $150 for all but T-Mobile customers (who if they sign up in time will get it for free). For that cost, MLB.TV subscribers have the opportunity to watch any* game, any feed, live or on demand after the game is over. Subscribers also get radio feeds, home or away, for every game.

For someone who loves the game of baseball, this is fantastic. My favorite team is the Cleveland Guardians, and I can watch them wherever* they roam across the country, and occasionally into Canada. I also like to watch the Red Sox, the Phillies, the Giants, and a bunch of other teams. While watching, I can choose who I want to listen to call the game, either the home team (usually) or the away team (if I am watching Cleveland as I just don’t like their TV announcers). I could also, if I choose, watch a feed and listen to the radio at the same time, synced up with the action. The choice is all mine.

Basically what this means is that during the MLB regular season, I can watch anyone* at anytime, East coast, West coast, or any city in between. I love the wealth of choice and the embarrassment of riches.

*What I don’t get is local teams. They are blacked out. For me, this means the entirety of the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros games are unavailable live. I can watch them 90 minutes after the game is over, if I wished, but live I will miss at least 12 games against Cleveland, as the Guardians will visit each city once during the season, and the Astros and Rangers will visit Cleveland once during the season, usually for a 3-game series each time. This is indeed frustrating, and is more so for my mom, who would prefer to watch the hometown Rangers. My dad is a Red Sox fan, so he doesn’t mind as much.

*I also can’t watch the Sunday evening game (ESPN), the early game on Sunday (Peacock), or a few other games (Netflix/various). I can watch the occasional Friday night game as they are on AppleTV, but that is only because I also subscribe to AppleTV. Baseball has badly fractured the viewing schedule in recent years, as everyone wants a piece of the MLB broadcast money.

But this is what watching baseball needs to be. Free, open, and choice. If MLB really wants to grow the game, they should give fans the choice of who to watch whenever they want, but with no blackouts. I understand (though don’t endorse) capitalism, so charge for the service if they must, but let us watch baseball. Let us be fans of the game, whoever we cheer for, wherever we live. Celebrate every out, every home run, every strike, every double, every double play. For me: there is nothing better.

Caveats aside, this post is about celebrating what is available to baseball fans out-of-market: the ability to follow a team and watch (almost) all 162 games of the regular season for a single team (more, if you follow more teams). When I was growing up, broadcast TV aired the All·Star Game, the World Series, and the Saturday Baseball Game of the Week, with the odd game during the week (such as Cal Ripken Jr.’s record breaking game and other historic milestones). It was torture waiting for Saturday to arrive! (And that was only if I had my chores done by 1:30pm, when the game aired!)

I celebrate what I have now, while wishing for what could be, for the love of the game. Play ball!

Hitting the Paywall

The 2026 Major League Baseball season starts tonight, with a classic matchup between the New York Yankees and the San Fransisco Giants. In yesteryear, this would have been a cross-town battle between the boroughs of the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. Today it is a transcontinental meeting.

Regardless, I won’t be watching, though I would love to take in the game. I have woken up at 3am to watch past Opening Days from Tokyo, Japan and Sydney, Australia, but here when the game is in my home country? I can’t watch. That is because the game is on Netflix and I don’t happen to have a Netflix subscription.

Baseball, according to the official line, wants to expand the sport and make it appeal to a global audience. Why, then, for the love of baseball, do they fracture the viewing experience? Why are games on Peacock, AppleTV, Netflix, traditional cable channels, or on a plethora of local affiliates, all of which cost a separate subscription fee to watch?

I know that American capitalism needs to make their dirty money, but that is diametrically opposed to this “global audience” and “wide appeal” message that corporate baseball is talking so much about. I doubt anyone can afford all these separate subscriptions these days just to watch baseball. And don’t get me started on that fact that the local team is also behind a paywall on their own little network. What happened to over-the-air and free?

Everyone wants their share of the pie, and I know this is so much screaming into the void, but c’mon, please, Major League Baseball, stop making it so hard to watch Major League Baseball! Really, the only way I am able to watch much baseball at all is through MLB.TV, which itself is over $100 per season for all out-of-market watching, but I have a hard time justifying that. I have MLB.TV because my mobile carrier, T-Mobile, is a huge sponsor of the sport and comps the subscription for its members. Thus, I get it through my existing mobile service, but if I didn’t, it is a high cost to pay. I would justify it, because I love baseball, but it is still a lot of money, especially if I were to add it to the over $100 to watch the local Texas Rangers. As it is, I miss about twelve games a season when watching my favorite Cleveland Guardians because even the Houston Astros are blacked out on MLB.TV in my area, despite the fact that Houston is four hours away from Dallas. (Cleveland plays both the Rangers and the Astros for at least six games each during the regular season.)

This is worse when you consider the Baltimore-Washington area which contends with several teams, or other metros that have more than one team (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles to name a few others) and all the “local” teams are blacked out. Then MLB.TV becomes even less of a bargain, and all the money to afford the local affiliates is even more cost prohibitive. It is just a lot, especially for a sport that used to be the great American pastime. Even to go down to the stadium in Arlington for me and my parents to take in a game costs an exorbitant amount of money once you add the cost of tickets, fees, parking, and ballpark food. We easily spend over $150 (collectively) for a game (on average about $60-75 per person, depending on how hungry we are).

Baseball ought to be something that isn’t available only to the wealthy or those that don’t mind juggling upwards of seven logins or eight subscriptions. It should be free and accessible to all. As I said, this may be so much a cry falling on deaf ears at this point. I just can’t help calling out in the hopes that someone will eventually listen.

The baseball season starts tonight, but how many will actually tune in, I wonder?

Scrabble: Luck of the Draw

Last month, I wrote about my love of the board game Scrabble. You can click this link to read all about it. I believe Scrabble to be a fun, challenging, and mentally rewarding game to play. I am endeavoring to share tips that I have learned along a 30+ year career of playing Scrabble. If you don’t play that often, I would encourage you to play, even against an AI, to keep your brain engaged, which is always a good thing.

The game of Scrabble begins with blind-drawing seven letters, usually from a bag, though some people like to lay them out face down in the box lid and choose from there. However you draw, you shouldn’t see the letters, and should draw as randomly as possible. If playing an AI, the game will draw for you. Ideally, there is nothing you should be able to do to influence the letters that you draw at the beginning or throughout the game. For me, this is part of the excitement (simultaneously also the frustration) of playing. I never know what I am going to get, and that both gives and takes away.

What makes a good set of 7 letters or a bad one? Usually a bad draw includes low point value letters, repeated letters, or letters that are difficult to utilize (“C” and “V” and “I” come to mind right away, even though “C” and “V” are worth 3 and 4 points, respectively, they don’t form two letter words and thus are slightly harder to play. More on that later). A good draw has more frequently used vowels (“A” and “E”) and a good mix of other letters, and hopefully a few higher point letters.

Fortunately, a game mechanism exists for replacing a terrible draw: the exchange. Players can, on any turn, choose letters they have previously drawn (up to the entire 7) and exchange them with blind letters from the pool of undrawn letter tiles. This allows you to, potentially, improve a hand (though plenty of times I have drawn differently yet equally frustrating letters). I have a few rules of thumb for when to exchange letters. First, I do it rarely as it costs a turn to do so; the player who exchanges letters does not get to actually play a word when they exchange. Depending on how advanced your opponents or the AI, this could result in a deficit of points that will need to be surmounted throughout the rest of the game.

Second, I usually do not exchange an “E” or an “S” tile, as these are very versatile and useful letters, but I am ruthless about the rest of the letters I exchange. Even if I have a 3-point or higher letter, if I haven’t or can’t make a word with it, it needs to go. Generally I find that the more letters I exchange at a go, the better chance I have of drawing a few useful letters that I can play on my next turn. I usually always will exchange a blank tile, even though that can be any letter, because it also doesn’t gain any points. Again, it goes back to the number of tiles I am exchanging, and as there are only two blanks, my chances of acquiring a letter tile with a point value is high. By the way, if I have multiple “E” tiles, I will only keep one, and exchange the rest.

I usually only wait through one turn of suffering with a less than ideal 7 letters before exchanging. The longer I go trying to make shorter words for (usually) less points in hopes of drawing one or two good letters, the more damaging it is to exchange letters. It compounds the problem: with terrible letters, one cannot make good, high-point words, and losing a turn to exchange letters after a few turns of no good words played usually ends in a point deficit that could have been avoided by losing a turn right away and coming back strong with better letters.

Beyond that, sometimes the best you can do is play the letters you have. They may not be what you want, or be the coveted high point letters, but if you can make words and keep the points accumulating, do so. Don’t exchange just hoping to find the “J”, “Q”, or “Z”, in other words. Play words as often as you have them to play, and let the luck of the draw of new letters come to you as you play through. I have found that Scrabble is a game of ups and downs, and that playing with serviceable, though perhaps less than ideal, letters is better than constantly trying to draw the perfect letters.

In summary, exchange letters rarely, and when you do, exchange as many letters as possible, keeping only a single “E” or “S” if already acquired. I’ve found that this yields the best possible replacement set of letters for getting right back into the criss-crosswords action of Scrabble.

Not Like This

I made up my mind to talk to my boss about needing extra time off in my schedule to prioritize my mental health. The conversation did not go as I planned.

Before I get into that, a brief aside: it may seem as if I am ignoring the wider societal situation in our increasingly hell-hole of a country, but I am not. I simply cannot engage in that discourse without it devolving into a rage-filled rant, and that is simply not good for anyone, my mental health included. I would love to have simply not mentioned that darkness at all, but I feel I have to say that what the current administration is doing is pure and simple evil. I only want to discuss my life and the normal amount of trouble that it is, and I am privileged to do so because, so far, I am not living in territory being occupied wrongfully by my own government’s evil police.

Where was I? Oh, yes: my boss’s office. I feel a bit of a fool because I went in there for a staff evaluation, and had made up my mind to bravely talk to him during that evaluation about being close to burnout and needing some regular time off to handle it. I talked to my boss, made my pitch for protecting my mental health, and after calmly listening, he informed me that the university for which I work was cutting my hours from 20-per-week to 15-per-week. I am losing a week’s worth of pay over the span of the month.

To recap: I will get the time off, but it will now be unpaid where before I was hoping to have the same time off, but to cover it with sick time so that I could focus on improving my mental health and not lose income. (I should mention here that in the before times this same institution laid me off two or so years ago from working in the Human Resources department, and it took all summer to pick up the job(s) I hold now with the same university.) I had that talk with my boss a few weeks ago, and I am still recovering from the news he gave me.

Not only will I be losing pay, but the family budget was already operating on a narrow margin, and now that margin is practically gone, or will be soon. To my boss’s credit, he fought with the Powers That Be to keep my hours, but they would not be moved. In fact, the PTB wanted to cut my hours a few months ago, and my boss wouldn’t let them. They wanted to cut my hours effective January 1, 2026, but my boss argued that coming off a forced two-week (unpaid) holiday for the holidays was unfair and cruel. He managed to get them to agree to give me the entire month of January at full hours. My reduction, therefore, will be effective in six days on the 1st of February.

The “stated” reason for all this? Budget cuts. I put that word in quote marks because the university is spending money in other spaces, just not for administrative assistants such as myself. In fact, a colleague of mine was put on a student scholarship and moved off of hourly pay for the same “budgetary” reasons. She is not happy about it, nor about my reduction. I, in turn, believe the Powers That Be have done her a disservice as well. The university’s direction, quite simply, makes no sense. At the very least, it is not how I would run an organization. I would prioritize my people first, and that doesn’t seem to be what they are doing.

The new schedule I have drawn up will be that I will work a normal Mon-Wed, reduced Thursday, and be off completely on Friday. I get my day off, but again, unpaid, and not quite as I had hoped. For the immediate future, I am unable to relax and focus on mental health, because I am already becoming stressed about how my family will make ends meet. I feel I am forced to begin looking for another job while working a job that, at least partly, doesn’t want me as much as it used to. It is a defeated position to be in.

The situation feels like a student’s senior-itis, forced to remain in classes when graduation is nigh. It has damped all motivation and desire to apply myself and greatly reduced my ability to remain focused on my responsibilities. I was close to burn out already, but the Powers That Be just blew out what dwindling flame I had left.

I trudge on because I must. I wish I had a happier ending, but thought I would at least follow up on one aspect of my last thoughts of 2025 with an update with what 2026 is bringing my way. I wanted time off, but not like this. Is there a word for when you get what you want, but the circumstances of receiving are so twisted that it isn’t what you wanted at all? Yeah, that.

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.

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!