a simple man

Derailed

Life. Look, I don’t swear much when I write, mostly because my mom sometimes reads these, but life is sometimes fucked up and exhausting. I was about to say especially these days with covid but I am not sure that is true. Sure, a global pandemic that is still raging after two brutal years is unprecedented, but I am not certain that life hasn’t always been difficult for one reason or another. Maybe these days we all finally share an affliction, along with everything else. Maybe now with social media and the firehose of information that most of us have access to it is more immediate and raw. In the elder days, we didn’t always know what was happening across the world or in other communities. But now? In. Your. FACE. ALL the TIME.

And I have had, since summer, a bunch of little things all the time that are hammering away at me. I’ve talked about some of them here, others on Twitter, but they are here and not leaving. And really, I am worn down. I can’t care about most of them most of the time anymore. I simply don’t have the emotional capacity. I would love to be concerned about all the troubles of the world, but that simply isn’t possible for a fully functioning adult, and let’s face it, I am not one of those. On good days, I can barely make it, but on most days? Forget anything other than surviving.

I’m being real because life is real. I suffer from depression and social anxiety and other mental health afflictions that make it difficult for me to cope most days. But none of that is really what I want to talk about right now.

I am feeling particularly down because I have made commitments that I am not currently able to follow through on. I was taught to always make good my obligations, to honor what I said, and to let my “yes be yes” as the “Good Book” says. On the surface, as an adult, you should generally be reliable and dependable. I find that a challenge.

Example: my wife wrote more than half a book on writing. She began by asking me to look over a few chapters and to give her some feedback and help edit. It grew and developed into a project that I was helping to write by punching up the prose. I gave myself the deadline of October to get it done. It’s October now. How much have I done? None of it since summer. I feel terrible. My wife is depending on me to finish the book and deliver on my promise. But the last few months? I haven’t had the mental energy. I haven’t had the emotional reserves to pour into a large project. I completely missed the deadline. She asked me about it today, and I admitted that I hadn’t worked on it. I felt horrible to have to say that, because I know it is something she worked hard on, and not only do I want to honor her hard work, but I want to honor my commitment to do my part of the work.

I will get it done, eventually. I know that isn’t what my wife wanted to hear this morning, but I wasn’t about to lie. I wasn’t about to sugarcoat, or tiptoe. I have always tried to own up to my shortcomings. I don’t always do the work or follow through, and I fail, and that is my own particular road to hell. I could cheat, I could shortcut, but that proves nothing except that I know how to fake it. And I am not about fake things. Where does that leave me? With a half completed manuscript and a broken promise. I am struggling to work on my book of poetry. I have started a GoFundMe for my podcast that I want to start. Progress on those projects? I have my poems collected and that is all. I have no donations and no way to start on my podcast. I feel like I’ve walked down a single road and found multiple dead ends.

I have this maddening inability to exercise my full self. I really want to work on these projects and more. I want to create a work of poetry. I want to start a podcast. I want to finish the book my wife and I are writing. Some days I can work on some project or other. Most I can’t. I know that I have written about this before. Perhaps it is my lot in life. I seem made to suffer, as my internal Threepio would say. I have tried medications and therapy and they have moved me to a place where I can half function half of the time. But that far, and no further, it seems.

I wish I had a happy ending, a positive note, or a way to see the sunshine through the clouds. I’ve got nothing. Not now. Not here. I am exactly what I appear to be, a simple man, trying desperately to make my own way in the universe. Sometimes I end up among the stars, flying high, but most of the time, I end up at the bitter end of a bar sipping a galling drink, ruminating on the broken road that led me to where I am. I’ll finish my libation, head to bed, and hope for a better tomorrow. That is all anyone can do.

The RedBeard Podcast

I have talked before about my desire to start a podcast. You can read about that here and here.

I am eager to begin, and the first step is acquiring the equipment that I need so that I can set it up and get practicing to work out the kinks and find a good workflow.

Unfortunately, my family has been hit with a ton of unexpected and expected expenses as of late, from car to pet to medical to pet medical. I simply don’t have any extra. So I got the idea to start a GoFundMe to cover the cost of the microphone, boom arm, shock mount, pop filters, and anything else I need to get up and running. Fortunately, I can use my existing Mac Mini and GarageBand for the actual recording and editing of the podcast, but the equipment is where I need to outlay funds.

After some research and help from my brother who has podcasted before, I think I am going to purchase a Blue Yeti microphone. I might even get ambitious and make a little booth out of foam and whatnot to deaden sound, but that will come after I’ve recorded a few practice episodes to check sound and background noise.

I already have a few topics selected, a few guests I want to ask to be a part of future episodes, and a few ideas for the year ahead. I am planning, if funded, to release 12 episodes in 2022, one per month. Should I be able to do that, I will then see about 2023 and beyond.

If you want to hear my podcast, and have a hand in helping me get started, I will thank all of my donors in the podcast in a “brought to you by” segment.

I am excited to get started podcasting. Won’t you help me?

Autos I Have Known

I had my newest vehicle in the shop this morning for servicing. It has some problem which has been causing an O2 sensor to continually fail. Don’t know what that problem is, exactly. I get the feeling the technicians didn’t look too hard, but they also seemed to think they knew what the problem was, so they probably didn’t feel the need to spend hours diagnosing a failure which may not be there to diagnose. At any rate, after a new O2 sensor and an unrelated alignment, my car is now at peak performance. Well, it still needs two new tires and front brakes replaced, but one thing at a time. My car budget isn’t inexhaustible.

All this talk about cars prompted me to drive down memory lane. If I am counting correctly, I have personally owned 8 cars since 2009. First was a 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee, then a 2006 Toyota Corolla, a 2003 Toyota Corolla, a 2010 Toyota Corolla, a 2005 Toyota Corolla (noticing a pattern?), a 2003 Buick Century, a 2001 Honda CR-V, and finally a 2006 Toyota RAV 4. It is the RAV 4 that currently has the replaced but often faulty O2 sensor. We will see how long this new one lasts. Hopefully, if the technician is correct, a good long time.

I really loved my ‘95 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was a V6, 4 wheel drive, do anything-go anywhere vehicle. It was already 14 years old when I bought it, with what I was told was a rebuilt engine. I never had any problems with it until the end of my ownership three years later when the radiator developed a persistent leak. Then, instead of spending a few hundred dollars to replace the radiator, I sold the Jeep. I still sort of regret that decision, but given the age of it, I wasn’t sure how much longer it would run without needing expensive repairs. Who knows, maybe I avoided a whole run of woe by saying goodbye when I did.

Speaking of woe, what follows next are a few tales of wrecked cars. I haven’t always been the most careful driver, and have had a bit of bad luck I’m afraid. The 2006 Toyota Corolla replaced a 2002 Toyota Camry that my former wife owned, and which had a catastrophic and freak mechanical breakdown one day while she was driving it. Fortunately, the failure happened at a red light and she suffered no injury. But the Camry was toast. Anyway, the ‘06 Corolla ended up partially bisected just before Thanksgiving Day in 2013. I was driving a bit too fast down a snow slushed hill with a turn at the bottom when I sailed off the road and into a light pole. It was a brutal crash, but I walked away with just a few bruised knees from where they hit the underside of the dashboard. That car was replaced by an ‘03 Corolla. My former wife bought the ‘06, so this ‘03 was only the second car that I actually purchased.

My 2003 Corolla was black, and quite a great find. I bought it on Black Friday from a local dealership for just under what my insurance payout was from the 2006. I drove that vehicle from Wisconsin to Texas a few times, most recently in 2015 when I relocated from the frozen north to the melted south. It served me very well, and I would probably still have it except that someone backed into it with a much larger SUV and caved in the side panel behind the driver side rear door. The insurance company deemed it too expensive to fix, so they wrote off the car.

After that, I again went to the dealerships in search of a new car. I ended up looking at, and purchasing, a beautiful blue 2010 Corolla, which was the newest car I’ve ever owned. Tragically, it was not to be, and this is painful to admit, but I only owned that car for a few minutes. After signing the paperwork, and taking delivery out front of the dealer, I rear-ended a car on the service road on my way home to show off my new-to-me car to my dad. Minutes from elation to despair. Again, I was ok apart from some bruised knees, and the woman I hit I think was ok. She went to the hospital out of caution, but I never heard that she was injured after that. Again, I found I needed a vehicle.

A great man by the name of Dick Bergman sold me my next car. It was a red 2005 Toyota Corolla I nicknamed “Red 5” because it was the fifth car I owned and because Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing starfighter was Red 5. That was a great car that I should have kept much longer than I did, but I sold it to save on the car payments I was making. I was starting to be in a financial decline that took me years to recover from, partly from bad luck and partly from bad choices, but I spent just $200 on the next vehicle, the ‘03 Buick Century. That was more boat than car, but it got me around until I lost it in a financial scam of sorts. Then I was car-less for a while.

Eventually I went back to Mr. Bergman, and bought a 2001 Honda CR-V. After all the Corollas, and one Buick, I wanted an SUV again and that was what he had available. Unfortunately, the CR-V had a host of problems from Day 1. I don’t fault Mr. Bergman for that, as he hadn’t ever actually taken ownership of the CR-V. He facilitated the purchase from another customer to me. Dick Bergman owned a small car dealership and specialized in helping low income families find great cars they could afford. Sadly he passed away from Covid in 2020.

I owned the Honda until this year, 2021, when it finally had a mechanical failure too costly to repair and I sold it for scrap. After that, my wife and I scraped together all we could, and with the help of friends, family, and the bank, I purchased my current 2006 RAV 4. It is a great vehicle, but has suffered from bad luck ever since I’ve owned it. It has that niggling problem with the O2 sensor, it needed a new windshield shortly after purchasing, a new key, and now it needs tires and brakes. At least the last two are standard maintenance issues that all car owners have to deal with. But the RAV 4 does seem to have had a hard time settling into my driveway without costing a fair amount of money right after costing a fair amount of money.

I do, however, hope to own this RAV 4 for quite some time. It is in excellent condition with low mileage, other than the issues named. I really dig it. But with cars, I am finding out, one never really knows what will happen. Accidents, mechanical failures, and old age eventually catch them all. And now I have owned 8 cars in 12 years which comes out to about a car every 1 and a half years, I guess. Though that calculation is skewed by a few cars I didn’t have but for minutes. Ah, poor 2010 Corolla!

What a journey car ownership has been for me! I’d actually use public transportation if I could, but nowhere I have lived has had reliable, or even extensive, public transportation. Busses haven’t had very wide routes, and I’ve never lived in a subway city. If I ever live somewhere that doesn’t require a car, I am not sure I will even own one. But that remains to be seen. For the most part, America is a country that built the automobile to what it is, and was built by it. Our love affair with cars isn’t going anywhere soon. For now, I will be careful when I drive, and try to hang on to a car for longer than just a few years. Speaking of which, I need to go get some gas.

Sacking the Sandman

I’ve stopped sleeping. Not entirely, you understand, just during the morning hours when I was wont to take a one or two hour nap. Napping has been killing my productivity, my energy, and my ability to Get Shit Done. The thing was, I felt exhausted in the morning, sometimes depressed or bored. So I’d lay down around 0930 or so and sleep until 1130 or so. It became a strong daily habit and has persisted for a year or more.

Before I had a chance to see my doctor, I talked to the other person in my life whose medical advice I trust. My mother recommended that I quit napping pretty much cold turkey, and try to power through. She also suggested a few lifestyle changes, such as trading my traditional bran flake breakfast for eggs and a bagel, and trying to get a little exercise when I felt fatigued. You know, to get the blood flowing?

My doctor then confirmed that my mother’s advice was solid, and also suggested I check in with a sleep doctor to ensure that nothing else is going on. I haven’t yet had a chance to see the slumber doc, but my mom’s advice is working like gangbusters. It has been four days, and I haven’t taken a single two hour nap like I used to. I did have a half hour snooze on Saturday, but in my defense, it was a lazy Saturday morning.

I started my new routine with the help of my wife who was kind enough to make a scrambled egg breakfast on Friday and Saturday, and I did feel like I had more energy the rest of the mornings. I have already completed a few items that have been on my To-Do list for a very long time. Today, Sunday, I have felt pretty great all day.

It is amazing to me, but I never tried to sack the Sandman before. Learned helplessness is, simply put, a real condition in which someone doesn’t believe that they can, so they don’t even attempt. I don’t know if what I have been experiencing with this sleep-full-ness thing is learned helplessness as clinically diagnosed, but it sure fits the circumstances of my experience. I’ve had a variety of theories as to why I’ve been constantly exhausted, and needing to sleep, and it frustrated me greatly, but I never even tried to do anything about it. I didn’t try to not sleep, and until now, I never tried to get help.

I can only point to my last post (read it here) and the feeling I had when I was writing it that I wanted to change. That feeling was so strong, that it must have triggered something dormant. Whatever it was, it gave me the gumption to try something new. I am shocked at how quickly the change has occurred, and how differently I already feel. I am excited for the week ahead and what it will bring if I am able to continue my new direction.

I am so glad that I did pursue getting help and reaching out. Sometimes all it takes is making that first step. After that, the next few steps are even easier. And then you are off and running. I may stumble once or twice, but that’s ok. It is about the onward trajectory. Like Samwise Gamgee told Frodo Baggins in Return of the King, when they stood upon the precipice of Mordor with the Plains of Gorgoroth between them and Mount Doom: “Let’s just make it down the hill, for starters.” Sage words from a brave little hobbit. Hobbits have always been known for their (so-called) simple wisdom, and I am taking this bit to heart. It is more profound than I first imagined.

Sorry, Sandman, but this denizen of dreams is packing up for more wakeful pastures. Overall, I think I will be healthier, more productive (something I have wanted for a long time), and better off all ‘round. Sure, the odd nap may be necessary here and there, but I am ready to swear off consistent daytime sleeping for good!

Check Up: 2021

I’ve been real on this blog before. Just search for “depression” and you will find a bunch of posts by me talking about my long-term association with the range of depressive expressions in life. I struggle with feeling anxiety, “classic” blues depression, and lethargy. I often sleep a lot; I can’t find the motivation to do what I want to do; and I find it difficult to engage in my hobbies and artistic endeavors. It is extremely frustrating. For instance: today I took a shower and changed my watch band, and that is the sum total of my productive energy thus far. As it goes, that is a win.

But I am increasingly dissatisfied with how my life is right now. I want to do and be more. I want to reach beyond. I want to own my depression instead of having it own me. I don’t even know if that is possible, but that is my new goal here heading into the end of 2021. Already we are eight months into the year, and I feel I haven’t really done anything.

I have a book that I am working on with my wife that I haven’t worked on in a long time. I have a book of poetry that I am trying to compile that I haven’t touched since vacation a few weeks ago. I have a podcast I want to launch in 2022. And I want to get back into building a little bit with LEGO, photographing my Star Wars Black Series action figures, LEGO minifigures, and other toys. I have dreams and aspirations. I just can’t, quite, reach them all right now.

To be fair, though, in this year thus far I have beaten Covid-19, re-launched my blog, took on a second part-time job, and had a week of vacation. So objectively I am not doing so bad from a “macro” point of view. From the microcosm of everyday life, however, I am still coming up very short. Most days I do nothing, or very little. My forays into the arts come in large segments in short amounts of time. I blog irregularly, albeit a lot more than I used to (thank you, Bluetooth keyboard!). So again, I am not doing that poorly. But I want more. So how do I get there?

I think a good first step is to check in with my doctor. Maybe there is a medication adjustment I can make. With the sleeping, perhaps I should have another sleep study done or see if my CPAP needs tweaking. I want to make sure I am solid from a medical point of view. Psychologically, I feel, even with my frustrations and inability to act, I am doing well. I don’t have the huge swings of emotion that I used to have. I don’t have a lack of direction, and I don’t have a morosity or deep blue sea of overwhelming downness. What I do have, simply, is an inability to act, to get started, and to do. And I sleep a lot. (Damn! but that is frustrating.)

The good news is I have an appointment with my doctor on Thursday. I have another side issue that has crept up that needs to be discussed, and while I am there I want to ask her about these other things, the sleepiness and the lethargy. Maybe together we can get a handle on this particular dragon and see about looting the hoard it is currently, ahem, sleeping on. I hope. The next step will come after that.

All I know is I have been beaten down and motionless for far too long. I want to get going. Hopefully with a little help, determination, and hard work (because I just know that that is going to be a part of it) I can get where I want to be. I am no stranger to hard work. Done it before; don’t enjoy it – but I can do it. If that is what it ultimately takes, I am down for it. All I really need to know is what direction to go in. Even if the going gets tough, as the old saying goes, I am tough enough to get going. (Hoo rah!) But seriously. I really want my life to change and the only way it will is to make the effort to change it.

If you are struggling, it is ok to ask for help. Help is how anyone gets anywhere. Sometimes it comes from a source you do not expect, or a direction in which you are not looking. But accept it when it arrives. Use it to launch yourself forward. Along the way, acknowledge what you are already achieving. Give yourself the credit you deserve. Just today, one of my heroes, Adam Savage, reminded me that it is a demonstrable fact that humanity minimizes success and overemphasizes failure. I have done it just here in this post. Look at how much I have actually achieved versus how much I talk about what I haven’t. So don’t do that, RedBeard, or anyone else who is listening. You are doing great! And can do better!

I head into the rest of my day with a renewed sense of purpose and a new determination. I can do this. I will check back in and let you know how I am doing, but for now, I am optimistic. I know the next step to take, so I am taking it and trusting that the rest of the steps ahead will reveal themselves. They have so far, so there is no reason to expect that they won’t in the future. As the late, great Stan Lee used to always say: “Excelsior!”

Vagaries of Perception

I remember back in 1999, when The Internet was still a new-ish, shiny thing. Before Twitter, Facebook, and much of what it is now, when the interwebs was a wild, amazing place, you could find almost anything. That year, an incredible blockbuster movie, The Matrix, was set to be released. A friend showed me a Zip disk, and this particular Zip disk contained, allegedly, a downloaded bootleg trailer for The Matrix. I never found out exactly because my computer didn’t have a Zip drive, so I couldn’t borrow the disk and watch the trailer. But it wasn’t too much after that that The Matrix was released and blew us all away. Again, allegedly. I didn’t see it then because it was rated R and I was 12, but hoo boy did it blow my mind when I did see it.

I recently saw an advert for a new special release of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? on Blu-Ray. It will be 4K resolution and have all the bells, whistles, and extras, but I admit that my first thought was “Really? Physical media? In this day and age?” Now, I am sure that all the digital media storehouses on today’s World Wide Web that have Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in their library will also offer the 4K release for streaming and download. However, I suppose there are plenty of people in the world that use physical media. I am just not one of them.

But the juxtaposition of a movie trailer in 1999 contained on a Zip disk, which was able to hold about 250 megabytes worth of information my hasty scouring of Wikipedia tells me, and a 4K release of a film, which may be about 33 gigabytes, is incredible. Oh the strides entertainment technology has made in the last twenty-two years!

I never really owned many DVDs. I had about twenty-five I think at the height of my ownership. Never mind paying for them, which I didn’t obviously because I never had much money, but playing them and storing them quickly became the bigger challenge. I have used Apple devices exclusively since early 2004, and it wasn’t long before Apple started to remove the CD/DVD drives from their computers. Besides that (as even today you can still get a USB DVD drive for your computer) I wanted more movies available to watch than I wanted to actually move around. It became trivial (relatively) to download movies (ahem: illegally) and store them on a hard drive. So I did.

At the height of my digital piracy, I had over 400 movies stored on an external hard drive. Most I, erm, stole from Netflix, which back at that time sent you DVDs in the mail. (Crazy, right?) I would borrow the movies on disc, rip them to my computer, store the digital files, and send the DVDs back and get new ones. Rinse and repeat. But then this digital pirate had a change of heart. And an income. Both happened about the same time, and as luck would have it, Apple also started selling movies via iTunes then, too. I started to purchase films, download them, and replace the pirated copies that I had stored. Which, by the way, I no longer have. That hard drive? It bit the dust long, long ago with no backup and I lost most of the 400 some-odd films I had. C’est la vie!

Today I have a new library of about 200 films purchased legally from Apple over the years between then and now. But mostly I do what a lot of people do in 2021: I stream movies from Disney+, Netflix (which no longer offers DVDs as far as I know), Apple TV+, and a variety of other streaming platforms. This is why I was surprised to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? available soon in a new Blu-Ray format. We have all but left physical media behind and are firmly in the streaming wars now.

Who will emerge victorious? Hard to say. But back in the day you had many different physical media, even before Blu-Ray won out, or DVDs replaced VHS. It will be the same with streaming because who can afford all the various subscriptions to each platform? You have unique content being made now for the world of streaming, but people will want to watch their content without having to subscribe to all of the different company’s offerings. I know I do and don’t. I sign up for Paramount+ to binge new Star Trek shows, then cancel my subscription. I do that, too, for other things. I only pay consistently for Disney+ at the moment. (I piggy-back my sister’s Netflix account, and currently have a free subscription to Apple TV+). I am happy to wait for the mega, or the comprehensive, streaming platform to emerge, and then pay for that. It may be more than any one individual platform, but as long as it’s less than them all, I will be happy. Especially if it delivers the content I want. Which, by the by, is why I love Disney+. It has Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel! Almost everything I love under one roof.

And now we come full circle, as a new trailer for the fourth Matrix film, Matrix: Resurrections, is about to be available and I will definitely see that movie in theaters as soon as the film is released. (For one thing, I’m old enough to see R rated films on my own now). I may even pay for the 4K, albeit digital, version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, too, when it comes out. What can I say? I like that wacky old film!

A postscript: I am absolutely certain that this post will be an anachronism itself very soon. All this talk about physical media versus digital media will be passé when they beam entertainment directly to our brains or however it will be available in the not so near future. Then it will be neuronic media or whatever they will call it. The visual quality is constantly increasing, and the storytelling is always exciting. When I remember how bad the VHS I grew up on was, and how good 4K is today, with 8K around the corner, I can’t imagine what it will be in another twenty-two years. Maybe we will interact with our media a la the holodeck from Star Trek. However it happens, I hope to be there for it. No matter what, I am excited for the future of visual storytelling.

(Just not for The Matrix: Who Framed Mr. Anderson? mashup sequel which I hope never gets made.)

Mind the Gap

Life. It’s full of what we don’t expect and can’t predict.

Lately I’ve been fighting a few things in my life. Some of the them are life circumstances that have arisen. For example: after returning home from a nice week long vacation, I had to re-adjust to normal life and work. I started a second job. Then my dog needed some dental work. I knew she needed a cleaning, but a routine cleaning turned into a mass evacuation of her teeth on the left side of her mouth. (Poor pup now only has her canines and a few teeth on the right side.)

Then there are world things: the ongoing ongoing ongoing Covid pandemic, the situation in Afghanistan, half of a dozen political and social things I should care about in the United States, and, well, it goes on. Like so many other people around the globe, I am exhausted from living in a heightened state of emergency since late 2019. And today I found out my 11 year old nephew has tested positive for the Covid-19 infection. Too young for the vaccine as of yet, he is still old enough to be infected and, well, I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. Obviously. But it is the not knowing, and fearing, and wondering that I’ve been doing lately about everything that is getting to me.

And that brings me to the emotional wilderness I’ve been traversing lately. I’ve been depressed and sleeping, or laying around trying to sleep, a lot lately. I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been creating. I haven’t been….anything. I’ve just been existing. Outside of work, I haven’t done anything. I haven’t even managed to get to the grocery store and restock groceries. And there is a widening gap in my life, a gap needing to be filled with expression and joy and good things. But all I have are bad things and an empty gap.

I need to get all of this out of my head and put it out there into the world. I need the catharsis of writing it down and sending it to whomever will listen. (Thanks for listening.) I also wanted to let anybody else out there struggling to know that they are not alone. I am sending this signal up the proverbial tower and broadcasting it into the ether in the hopes that someone will pick it up and be encouraged. As much as I crave encouragement myself, I know there are others who need it, too.

Realize that you do not struggle without hope, without companionship, and without an end. Someday, this pandemic will recede. My pup will learn how to chew without all her teeth. The rest of it will work itself out. Life will continue. It will get better. It may of course get worse first, but that is life. Like Bilbo Baggins says of adventures, life is full of “nasty, uncomfortable things that make you late for dinner” but sometimes that is just what makes up the everyday-ness of life. It can’t all be roses and butterflies. Sometimes it is rain showers and frozen mud. The Doctor once said that life is “a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”

While this blog may linger, and I may not do anything creative for a while, and there may grow a gap, know that I am still living life. I am waking up, cuddling my tooth-deficient dog, being the best husband I know how to be, and going to bed to try again but better on the morrow.

Every single day I have been alive, the sun has risen again. My life is trending towards its betterment. I have endured some tragic, terrible, wonderful, euphoric things. I will again, until it all ends. I am invested in living life with all it brings.

Remember that everyone struggles; freely give grace and love, especially to yourself. Sometimes adventures grow you into a person you never thought you could be. Sometimes life’s pile of good and bad things make for a much greater existence than you ever thought possible. Where I am, the sun is setting. May it ever rise again. As you take your next steps: mind the gap.

On Poetry

I have begun work on my book of poetry, a project it turns out I have attempted at least twice before. I managed to self-publish a few copies of an early book of poems way back in the before times of 2006. Then again in 2009 I started to put together another collection that ultimately went nowhere. Twelve years later, I’m at it again.

The good news is that my collection of poetry has grown since then. I’ve had a few instances of intentional poetry writing, and mostly know where all of those poems now live. The bad news is that many of my old poems are truly terribly. They aren’t so melodramatic (some are) or over-wrought (some are) but they are so much word salad. It appears that I was being so reductionist in some of my early work that I would merely regurgitate words onto the page, arrange them so, and call it a poem. The ideas mostly come through, but the execution is execrable.

Thus begins my work. I am sorting through the really old poems in recent days. Some, I am simply deleting. Don’t worry, future archivists, nothing valuable is being lost. Trust me. Others, I am re-working. Keeping a copy of the original, I am re-writing the poem as needed to produce something that current me, and hopefully future me as well, will be happy with. If nothing else, I will have recorded a progression of the poem through time. But I truly think I have matured as a writer and have a better handle on technique and the methods of communication that are so important to good poetry writing.

While some may balk at the idea of re-painting an old piece of artwork, or scraping the canvas to start again, at least in this digital age the original can continue unharmed. Using the tools of my era, I neither have to erase or eradicate the original to create an updated poem. JRR Tolkien would frequently update manuscripts and early drafts of the Lord of the Rings and other works. His son Christopher Tolkien often spoke of how difficult it was to decipher early versions of his dad’s stories because the elder Tolkien would erase early pencil drafts or simply write over it in ink. At least for me, the digital landscape affords me a clean way to write and re-write.

Poems that don’t require revision I can organize for insertion into my collection. While there are precious few of those, at least there are some. I am also still trying to tease out any themes or commonalities in my poetry so that I can order them into groups. I have noticed quite a few nature poems, in the vein of Robert Frost (and others) that I can put together. I know I have a bunch of pop-culture poetry that will go together. The others? Well, I’ve got more work ahead of me.

In all, I am thoroughly enjoying the work, which is great for the continuation of labor. I wasn’t sure if this project would be a drudgery or a delight, but it is definitely the latter. I have given myself six months to complete this task, and have high hopes that I can meet my deadline. And here I will leave you with a little tone poem for winter, one of my pastoral poems that I re-worked yesterday. I hope you like it.

Waiting

naked trees
wave slender fingers
through frigid breezes

a grey forest lies
deep in snow
a meadow slumbers

silent sentinels
watch for warmth
under peaks of ice

30,000 Feet

From an airplane yesterday, I marveled at the modern world that we live in. The Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk in December of 1903. The first commercial flight was only 11 years later on January 1, 1914, which was 107 years ago. Since then aircraft circle the globe on regular schedules every day.

I was struck by the majesty contained in the principles of flight as the plane lifted off the ground Saturday morning. It isn’t a subject I know much about all, so I won’t try to pontificate. But it amazes me that a huge aircraft, full of people and luggage, can get off the ground, much less soar for hundreds of miles (in our case).

Humanity has dreamed of flying since before the legend of Icarus. Fortunately our metal wings didn’t melt as we approached the sun yesterday. But I did text a friend and stream a movie and play a game of Scrabble all from the comfort of my own seat 30,000 feet in the air. The thing about our modern technologically set world is that we often take for granted all the wonders that we enjoy.

Take the covid-19 vaccine, for example (and you really should take yours). It is a wonder of modern science that we can engineer a serum (which is probably the wrong word – I know less about microbiology than I do flight) that is able to protect people from a deadly virus. I don’t know how many people aboard the flight yesterday were vaccinated, but every one wore a mask, so there was some barrier against the continued spread of the disease. But I and my wife are fully vaccinated, and I was as glad for that shield as I was about the forces that kept my plane from plunging into the ground. Both protected me from death, and both are grounded in the same thing: science.

As I type on a keyboard connected to a tablet by wireless means, and then in a few minutes I will transmit my thoughts to a world that can read them, again, mostly without wires, I am impressed. Electrons, energy fields, vaccines, flight: all to a pre-modern person would seem as so much magic, but we can understand them relatively easily. Schools exist to teach science so future generations can create even more incredible technology for our entertainment, travel, and personal safety. In less than 200 years, we have flow an aircraft across a beach and a small helicopter across the surface of Mars. We have eradicated many illnesses with a simple shot. We can watch Shrek on an iPad from 30,000 feet.

Mind. Blown.

I actually meant to write this from my airplane seat, but the mundanity of the modern world prevented me. I was a little tired, the plane engines were loud and distracting, and I mostly relaxed by listening to music. But even doing that much is still amazing. I think many things have prevented people from feeling safe about the certainty that is the covid-19 vaccine. I am sure in 1914 that many people were reluctant to board an airplane as well. Music lovers sitting in concert halls listening to live music in the before times were unable to imagine listening to recorded music, much less on devices such as iPads and Bluetooth headphones. But humanity progresses. Without that, we would die of stagnation.

Think about that next time you fire up some music, go out in public without worrying about smallpox, or board an aircraft for your next vacation. Science has built the world we live in, and will build the future. And it is fantastic. I grew up without polio, the internet, or self-driving cars. I wonder what will happen next!

Of Voice and Verse

I recently wrote about my venture into podcasts. Along the way I ruminated on the possibility of starting my own podcast. That is very much a project I would like to start.

What would I podcast about? At the moment I am considering making my podcast an extension of my blog: a simple man, talking about what interests him. If you have any thoughts about particular topics to podcast about, please do contact me. I am intrigued about the idea of booking guests to discuss specific ideas. I think Zoom and some other conferencing software can record audio reasonably well, so that may make remote podcasting possible, a necessary requirement.

Speaking of technology, I need to research proper equipment. I have headphones, but I need a quality noise cancelling microphone to capture my audio, at least, right? Do I need a physical mixer? Do I need a pop filter? Should I do video? If so, I need a camera, or could I use my iPhone? All these questions need answering. If anyone has recommendations for tech, send those along. I can use all the help I can get.

The above picture is my podcast cover art, at least for now. The equipment shown is from when I tried to podcast before. I no longer have that microphone or pop filter, unfortunately. Podcasting remains a project in active pre-production.

While I prepare the podcast, another creative project that I have thought about for a long time is being moved up into active production: a book of poetry. I have many poems sitting around waiting for an audience. I thought I would give them one.

I’ve been writing poetry since I was a teenager, and while some of those poems survive, they aren’t my best work. I started writing in earnest when I reached university and studied English literature and composition. Since then I have intentionally written many poems on a variety of themes. I have played with structure and form. I think I have enough poems for a collection.

I have a week of vacation coming up, and I’ve been thinking of beginning work on this literary project while I rest from my day job and other regular activities. I need to start by collecting all my poems under one roof. Some of them are on my iCloud Drive in a folder. Some are in the Notes app. Others exist only on this blog. Still more are scattered in a few notebooks that I have, somewhere. That will be a job in and of itself.

Next, I need to group the poems by subject. Given what I know I have, that makes most sense right now. Then I would spend time to figure out a theme and structure to the overall collection. Finally, the task would be format. I would like to include a little bit about the writing of several poems, similar to what I did with a recent one here on my blog. Doing that would result in a mix of poesy and prose, which is fine. Clearly there are many decisions to make.

Finally, I want to design the book and release it on Apple Books and in Kindle format, so I could place it on both Amazon and Apple. If I could figure out a print-on-demand service, that would be fantastic! I’d love for readers to have the choice to order physical copies as well as download digital versions. Again, I ask for help. If you’ve done any of this, and have tips or advice, I’d be grateful for any suggestions.

It looks as if the rest of my summer and my autumn will be busy. Not only will I be working on my book of poetry (due in December), researching my burgeoning podcast (launching in January?), but I am also helping my wife write a book (due in October) and working two part time jobs. But it is good to have things to do, especially for me. I struggle with knowing what to work on sometimes, and projects with deadlines help focus my energy.

I’ve often wondered what I have “accomplished” with my life, and lately two thoughts have emerged in my mind. First, life isn’t about accomplishments. It’s about enjoying the journey and making the world the best you can while you are at it. Second, people “accomplish” things at all ages and stages of life. My thirties are simply where I start in earnest. With that in mind, consider this my launch event.

As Of Yet Untitled: A Collection of Poetry: Coming Winter 2021!

The RedBeard Podcast: Coming 2022!