I'm a 59 year old American man. I'm divorced with 4 kids and 3 grandkids. I'm a retired elementary school teacher from California. I like playing games on the computer, listening to classic rock music, and thinking. I'm an atheist and liberal.
I should at least respond to the daily prompts. Just to write something. To exercise those writing muscles. I don’t really want to. I do it out of guilt.
One hour a day. Why can’t I spend just one hour a day writing? Because I’d have to force myself to. So I don’t for days. I consider it, but I’m having too much fun doing other things.
I’m retired. I don’t have to do anything. For some people that would mean they can finally focus their time on the things they want to do, but couldn’t because of work commitments. For me retirement has been about answering the question, “What DO I really want to do?”
I don’t have a way to judge the weight of what I want to do with what I should do. If I can do what I want. If I don’t have to compromise. Why should I force myself to do something I don’t want to do, but should do, instead of what I want.
I know it sounds like the dilemma of a spoiled, petulant teenager. That’s the way it usually feels like too. But the sad part is, it can be paralyzing at times.
Deep down I know it doesn’t matter. I climbed out on an existential ledge and I can’t get back. Once you begin to understand just how vast, ancient, and ambivalent the Universe is, and human tragedy is objectively insignificant. Famines, plagues, wars, and other mass human casualties are just part of the process of an evolving universe. A comet wiped out most life on earth at one time. Some day, inevitably, not only each of our individual lives, but all life will end. So if I don’t write a blog entry, it’s not that big of a deal.
So why do I feel guilty when I don’t write? Because I made a promise to someone. Our family motto is Remember Your Promises. It is so hard. But I’m trying sweetheart. I’m trying.
For a person who likes to think a lot, I hate thinking about the details of life. I have a hard time making myself do what I need to do. What I should do. Because what I usually end up doing, regardless of my first intentions, is the easy thing.
As someone diagnosed with OCPD, I know that I am prone to obsessing over lists. I’ve found through self-examination that those lists don’t have to be written down. If I have it in my head that A must come before B, then I won’t even really think about B until I finish A. Let me see if I can give you an example.
I have been in this apartment now for a year. When I first signed the lease, my intentions were to live in this cheap apartment while I paid off my credit card. Well, here I am a year later and my credit card balance hasn’t changed. I’ve used as much as I paid. I did pay off some other debt, but for the most part the last year has been a wash financially.
During that year I did not keep that original intent in mind. That has been a constant issue in my life. Here I’ve been around since the 60s and I still don’t really feel in control of my life. Oh sure I’ve got freedom and liberty out the wazoo. But when it comes time to making an actual choice, ease all of a sudden becomes a primary attribute. Instead of keeping in mind my original intention of saving money, I order DoorDash because I have money in the bank and I don’t feel like cooking. There I said it. I got it off my chest. I’m lazy and will never have nice things.
I just got back with the last load of items I had in storage. This is an A before B thing. I’ve had what little earthly possessions in storage 1,000 miles away during this year. It was mostly old books I’ve already read or will never get around to reading. There was a TV stand I’ll put to use. Some knick-knacks I forgot I still had. A propane/gas powered generator. That was really the only thing of value. It cost over $1,000 for gas and hotels. Was it worth a year’s worth of storage and the time and cost of retrieving them?
When I got back I started unloading them. Then I started classifying the books and making stacks. I love making stacks. I had a couple of bookshelves in storage, but they were too big so I just broke them down and disposed of them. So now I have rows of books on the floor waiting for shelves. I’ve got stacks of clothes waiting for a dresser. I’ve got stacks of plastic boxes full of computer equipment in the front room waiting for a place to put them.
When I got back I felt like I was coming home. Not just my apartment, but my home. Unloading the books and knick-knacks have really helped me feel like this is my home. So yeah, it was worth it. Too me.
While I was coming back, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I live my life. How auto-pilot I’ve lived for decades. I let my wife handle all of the details of life. She paid the bills. She did the shopping. She brought home clothes and I wore them. She picked out the food and I ate it. She planned our vacations and I went there. The divorce has been final for years, but I’m still drifting.
I’ve kept a host of plates spinning in my head of “things I’d like to do someday”. Writing. Streaming. Video Production. Guitar Playing. Camping. Chess. And because they’re always spinning I can go from one to another depending on my mood. But I never get around to actually doing them. I just keep the idea spinning in my head.
How can I live the life that I intend? It seems to come natural to the winners in the world. Elon Musk is notorious for sleeping onsite at Tesla or SpaceX until problems were solved. There are some things I need to practice in order to develop fluency. Things I need to learn before I can pull of the advanced ideas I have. So I know what I need to do. I need to make a list.
The longer I stay in Wyoming, the more I find to love. I came to Wyoming last year looking for a place to live. Cheaply. There’s more than one reason Wyoming is the least populous state. But those reasons have resulted in some cheap rent, and I’m happy for that. But that’s not the only reason I’m here.
My great-grandfather was adopted by a man of Irish heritage named McLaughlin. Growing up I was proud of my Irish heritage. I loudly celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, cheered for Notre Dame, and made sure when giving my name it was, “Capital m, small c, capital L…” My mom had t-shirts made with the Mclaughlin family crest. Why?? We weren’t Irish!
Supposedly the child that was adopted Mr. McLaughlin was a Native American kid adopted from the Wind River reservation. So that made us part Shoshone! My grandad had very bushy eyebrows. That was supposedly because of his native heritage. My grandparents lived out there retirement years in Arizona. They adopted Native dress and jewelry. As if they were elder indians living on the reservation. We’d call that cultural appropriation today. I guess they thought it was just easier to pretend they were what they looked like, rather than be what they were. It sort of makes sense for my grandad, after all he was supposedly secretly native. But my Grammy?
I got a DNA test done. 0.0% Native American. There’s some hint of Irishness, but mostly my ancestry comes from England and Northern Europe with a trace of African ancestry. My suspicion is my biological great-grandfather was of mixed-race African ancestry and his dark complexion was attributed to Native instead of African for acceptability reasons in 1890s Wyoming.
The puzzle-solver in me wants to find out where my great-grandfather came from. But now I have to try and find the birth, baptism, or adoption records from 1890s Wyoming. It was just barely a state! I think he came from either Wind River or one of the Catholic missions/schools of the area. I don’t know if I have enough interest to maintain an investigation.
Especially when there’s so much to look at! If you like looking at geologic strata tilted at angles when you’re driving, Wyoming is the place for you! Just don’t bring a light trailer as it is likely to get blown over in the near-persistent 50mph winds the state is know for! But my goodness the views you’ll see out your window as you drive across the beautiful state!
Ok, just one example of how awesome this place is that I just discovered. In northern Wyoming there’s a beautiful majestic whit mountain called Heart Mountain. It’s like a huge white rock plunked down on a base of lesser rock. It turns out unlike most of the rest of the world, the older rock is ON TOP of the younger rock. Rocks are supposed to get older the deeper you dig. How’d this huge big old rock end up on top of the younger base? Millions of years ago a 40,000 square mile section of a mountain broke free and slid at about 50 mph for over 30 miles. Heart Mountain is just the tiny remainder of the result of the world’s greatest landslide!
Hi. It’s been way too long. I’ve been recuperating. I’ve been obsessing. Every once in a while, I’ll check online compulsively. Hey, I’m neurodivergent in so many ways, you’d think I shoulda been committed. I wonder about how much the few people I’m close to put up with me more than they accept me. I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t hang out with me if I was someone else. But I’m stuck with me, so I’ve learned to accept that I am going to put a severe strain on any close relationship.
That’s a lot of Is. Not is. The plural of I, however that is written. I guess I really do like talking about myself more than anything. Look, more Is. This is getting ridiculous!
Here’s a good example of my biggest problem lately. It’s a form of procrastination. It’s being paralyzed into doing nothing because the choices of what I could do/ should do overwhelm me. I started writing this because I was overjoyed to see my old friend had liked something I wrote a year ago. I wanted to write directly to let them know I saw the like, but knew that would probably break the fragile thread of connection. So then I had to decide what should I write to let them know that I saw the connection and wanted to respond.
My first impulse is almost always a bad one. I don’t trust myself to do the right thing, because I’ve failed at it so many times in the past. First I was going to like something back. I read some of what they’d been writing and was in the process of clicking like, when I saw the list of others who had liked it. Yep, there was The Other. Ok, glad I didn’t do that.
So my next thought was to write something over there. But The Other would just see that and cut the thread. So here I am. Writing to hopefully maintain the connection without bringing attention and eventual breaking of said connection.
The title is a little misleading. The fog hasn’t cleared. It’s still swirling around keeping me from seeing any path forward. Just glimpses of possible future intersections of fate. I can’t keep the fog from obscuring my long term sight. It hems me in with whisps of ideas that coalesce and then disperse, never to be seen again.
My attempts at self-regulation are pathetic. As soon as I try to organize around a concept, I skip to another and lose my focus. Why haven’t I written? I can’t keep focused on an idea. I could write my memoir. I could write a sci-fi story about the collapse of our satellite infrastructure. I could write opinion pieces on politics, religion, and society. Every day ideas for these topics come and go in this decomposing brain.
It limps along trying to keep me solvent, healthy, and fed. It has to fight itself though for any gains. The constant complainer-in-chief, the self-assessing eye that never sleeps and never misses a mistake. The choir of ghosts in my head that watch what I do and mumble about what the others must think. And their gasps when I trip. It’s weird to be me. It must be even weirder to know me.
Thank you my friend. I’ve missed you. I’ll try, really I will, to write so you have something to read that you didn’t expect. You didn’t look for it. But it was there anyway. Waiting
The realization I’m seeing and hearing on the left is, stunned shock. They voted him in anyway?
Sure the ultra-MAGA are embarrassing to everyone else but themselves , but it wasn’t them who put Trump back in power. It was a two-parter.
First it was all of the “mainstream” conservatives who heard what crimes Trump had been convicted of and accused of (now never to be adjudicated and tried for) but were ok with it. They were ok with his friendship and fawning of other autocrats.
In fact with the US Supreme Court being a “Conservative” lock for the next 30+ years, and their past decision that a president can’t be held criminally liable for “official” acts, he will almost certainly commit atrocities. He will push his authority bigly. He will provoke confrontation.
He’s said he will pardon the convicted and sentenced J6th Insurrectionists. Bannon, Proud Boys, and the like are gearing up and preparing. Protests. Like you’ve never seen.
While Trump got a majority of the popular VOTE, he doesn’t have above 50% approval ratings. He doesn’t have the support of the majority of Americans. So there is a large group of left-leaning voters who are looking at their fellow citizens in disbelief.
First they look at their friends and family on the right and can’t believe they voted for him knowing what he is going to do. And they’re ok with it!
Second they look at the millions of people who voted for Biden, but couldn’t muster the urgency to get up and do it again for Harris. Knowing what Trump’s going to do!
I thought I’d be mad. Maybe later. Now I’m mostly sad that my fellow Americans have gotten it so wrong. Surely they’re somehow uninformed of what a monster he is. They couldn’t be ok with that too? Or do they really want a king?
Because that’s what they’re going to get. We’ve made the biggest mistake (hopefully) of our lifetime. I’ll be hear to say I Told You So!
Trump loves to tell the story of The Woman and The Snake. Look him up on YouTube. He LOVES to tell that story. Why? The punchline, “You knew I was a snake when you took me in!” His eyes shine with delight as he gets to it. He is the snake. He’s back!
I want to tell you something I know, but after I start I just want to tell you what I hope you want to hear. Maintaining the look in your eyes when you like what I’m saying becomes more important than anything else.
I want to say whatever comes to mind as we cross the country one county at a time. I want to make you laugh and make you think. I want to hear you gasp as we crest a hill and see an unimagined vista emerge.
I want to ask you why. Why? I want to ask Why not? But those are worthless questions with meaningless answers. We can never know the “Why?”s Not even our own. Most of us can’t even agree on the What Happened. Much less Why.
I mostly just want to say I love you. Over and over. Maybe if I say it enough, you’ll hear it on the breeze or feel it in a dream.
I never expected to be able to talk to you or see you when I did, so there’s no point in worrying about the next time. It’ll happen when I don’t expect it. But it will never be soon enough.
I did something sort of spontaneous today. I drove for 7 hours to see my Alma mater play a football game.
At first I was going to drive here Friday for Saturday’s game. Since I couldn’t drag myself away from my computer last night, I left my apartment this morning with just enough time to get to the kick-off. I was going to drive straight (7 hours) to the game.
After an uneventful, long and boring drive, I got off the highway and headed towards the stadium. When I saw the logjam that was the line to get into the parking lot, I drove to the hotel instead.
It’s about 1.5 miles away. I hate having to deal with parking lot traffic, so I gave up seeing the beginning of the game and got my room squared away and walked to the game. I just followed the PA voice and crowd noises!
I’d already paid $50 online for a ticket, so there was no way I was missing this game! I’d done that already the previous year. I’d driven all the way to a stadium, but didn’t bother going into the game because of parking hassles and no ticket. This time I made sure I was going!
I get into the game, find my seat and enjoy the view. It was a windy evening. As the sun set behind the tower of high dollar luxury boxes, it illuminated the clouds with a brilliant golden red hue.
I decided to get up and see what sort of refreshments they served here. Beer! 🍺 Suds. My favorite thing to quench a thirst at a game. Only (gulp) $13 a can! It’s a scam sure, but they have the advantage. What can I do? Beer please.
As I stood at the top of the grassy berm taking in the half-time show, the man next to me starts a conversation.
“Isn’t it beautiful? Look at everyone here enjoying themselves and having a good time. I didn’t appreciate this when I was young. “
I don’t know how many strangers have come up to you and just started talking to you, but it happens to me frequently. More than I’m comfortable with, to be honest.
But sometimes you can tell they HAVE to say whatever is on their mind(s). Robert was not to be denied. He was going to buy me a beer and we were going to talk.
I could tell this was going to be a conversation worth having. Not for the substance of the discussion, but for the camaraderie. We were close enough in age, that we could talk as two men in their 60s. We could nod, high-five, toast, and look sincerely at each other while I answered the same questions repeatedly. That’s what you do with a drunk friend at a football game.
Bob is a retired (30 year) postal worker. He’s of Navajo ancestry. He was one of the friendliest humans I’ve ever run across. He bought a round, then I bought one. We talked about everything and nothing. If you’d have seen us, you’d have thought we were old friends reuniting.
He talked of his 50 year high school reunion. He spoke of a lifetime of frustration trying to help people, but they didn’t seem to get better. They just stayed where they were.
I think if I had just hung around with Bob, (I declined his offer of another round) I might’ve woken up tomorrow at his ranch. I’m not that adventurous, but he seemed that generous.
It’s a good thing Bob wasn’t an attractive woman or I might’ve gotten myself into some real trouble! Am I too gullible? Maybe he was crazy and not drunk. I don’t know. He went looking for his brother and I went down to my seat. Navajo Bob, may you live a long healthy life!
I did have a great time, at least from what I remember. I watched the last of third and most of the 4th. Everyone around was enjoying the game. It wasn’t a blow-out, but my team, the visitors, definitely seemed to have it well in hand. I didn’t want to be around if it got ugly for any reason and left early.
I walked back a little paranoid, but I was not bothered by anyone. It was good to walk and clear my head a bit before arriving back at my room.
I let the universe’s teachers talk to me. It’s amazing sometimes what it comes up with when I let it.
It’s almost 3:00am locally. I could say I was staying up to watch the Polaris Dawn liftoff. At least that would be a good excuse.
But I don’t need to justify staying up late anymore! It’s such a knee-jerk thoughtless reaction to, “Why are you awake at 3:00 am?”
Because I can be!
I’ll be going to sleep in a bit. I had started a response to another prompt. Never finished it. But there were some good ideas percolating and knocking around other ideas.
Later tonight is the (first and probably only) debate between Harris and Trump 2024. My green crystal magic 8-ball says:
If she tries and fails to land a haymaker, that could cost her. She doesn’t want to overplay her hand.
If he tries and fails to belittle her or if she can make him seem old and doddering, she’s got a chance.
If Trump manages to claim with a straight face, any kind of victory, he’ll inflate it into a complete victory. The likes of which no one has ever seen.
‘I beat her in the debate. Everyone is saying it. You’re going to tell me I lost the election after I killed her in that debate? No way!
Why can’t I just report how I’m feeling right now? Why do I have to take a few moments to figure it out? Are you like that? Anyway, I’ll give it a shot.
Ok, so I sat there for a few minutes. I debated internally, what do I want to type? What do I want to do? What do I want?
Let me start with a song that’s been going through my head again. Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell:
“And I need you more than want you…And I want you for all time…”
You see, I’m lonely. I’m missing my Soulmate. I only get to see or talk to her every couple of decades. The years between can be hard to bear sometimes. Like now.
If I had any faith in God or eternity, I could rest assured that we’ll see and talk to each other again someday. I could believe in Synchronicities and destiny. I could believe in love.
I’m only human. I dwell on impossible could have been and almost was. There are no do-overs or second chances in life. If you blow it during the attempt, you may get a chance to try again. But the previous attempt(s) don’t go away. They inescapably influence any future attempts.
Since I am only human, I have to distract myself from dwelling on the past failures. And the past ecstasies. I’m going back to my computer world now. It’s interesting and challenging enough to distract me from my recurring reminiscences. Once you’ve reconnected with your soulmate, no one else will suffice. So I’ll just have to wait until the next time we meet again.
I’m getting ready for my next Road Trip! I’ve got Gypsy Rose Lei in the shop. I brought it in for a look over. I put about 3,000 miles on her driving out to California and back.
Pittman’s Garage in Abilene comes highly recommended by my brother David. He was raised here. Graduated from high school and has lived here a long time. A good and honest mechanic is a valuable resource indeed! A brother who can recommend one is priceless!
I asked them to change the oil and filters and take a look at her. I told them I was going to be putting a lot of miles on her this year and wanted to be able to trust her.
Well like any good mechanic that looks, they’ll find something. That’s where the trust comes in. So after poking around and taking the wheels off…
One front strut was leaking but might as well replace them both. They’ve got the same mileage. The previous owners probably hit a pot hole or something. Could leave it but it’s old..
Replace both!
Now the bad news sir.
Rotors and brakes all around.
Less than $3000. Almost $2500. Worth it.
Looking at a 17’ Braxton Creek Bushwacker Plus travel trailer or a similar length Clipper model. You can see them on RVtrader.com. But that’s putting the cart before the horse. Or the trailer before the hitch in this case.
She’s got no hitch!
The mechanics at Pittman’s really didn’t want anything to do with installing them. 🤷♂️ I honestly don’t know why. If you look at videos on YouTube it looks pretty easy. I just wouldn’t want to try and mess w/ lifting.
U-Haul seems to have a side hustle in hitch installations. I’d have to reserve it weeks in advance though and I don’t want to wait that long!
I guess I’m going to have to actually talk to people. Yuck! 😉
Everyone is Doing the Best They Can 