Deviant Rambling

It’s nearing the end of July and as is tradition in our little corner of the Midwest, things outside are getting particularly sticky and gross. Walk outside for more than a few minutes and you are sweating and hating your life.

It is at times like these I remember how lucky I am and express my gratitude to the universe for not having to live without air conditioning. There are a great many things I take for granted but this isn’t one of them. Life would be fucking terrible if we had to put up with this heat with no mitigation.

I recall a time in a not-so-distant past-life when I had to work in this nonsense and I will never go back to that. I respect the people out there getting it done and hope they can make it unscathed. Hats off to you, but never again for this wilted flower.

Inspiration is a tricky thing to navigate.

It would be handy to be able to summon it at will to do my bidding so I could function more effectively as a creative, but that’s not the reality we live in. Inspiration comes and goes as it pleases, and for that reason, I respect it. Every time I manage to wrangle away just a moment of this essential essence, I can feel the fundamental stuff of the universe.

I’m aware how fleeting it is to be in the grip of this force, so I try and make sure I’m always available to receive the call. This can make for nonstop anticipation without any sort of payoff, but that is the trade. For glimpses of the infinite, we must trade some of the finite time we get. I continue to consider myself incredibly fortunate to be able to live a life where I am available to take this call.

I feel inspiration in the air today and I intend to put it to good use.

The concept of imbalance is one I’ve grown familiar with over the past few years as I watched my dad give his life to his work believing it was the right thing to do only to be killed for his effort. I knew that he had an unhealthy relationship with work; the kind of one-sided, unhealthy relationship that could only end in heartache. There was no convincing him to stop until it was too late.

So I’ve found myself having to check this thinking any time it arises in me. I will not work myself to death, and it is one of the ways I am glad to be nothing like my father. I admired this trait when I was younger and saw some nobility in a man who was willing to break himself for his family’s benefit. As I have gotten older, though, I have started to see how self-destructive this is. The world rewards this kind of insanity, and it’s seen as a net positive.

There is some trite saying about the nobility of sacrifice but I don’t buy it. Any life sacrificed on the altar of hard work was a waste because it was a life completely out of balance. I’m not saying hard work is without merit, but I am saying if it doesn’t serve you, why give your life to it?

This runs counter to the entire culture I find myself living in. Hustle and grind, no matter the results, just for the sake of it. Because it’s how you get ahead.

…Says who? You could break your back for 40 years, have it take a toll enough to be fatal, and the end result is the same. You’re dead; the work was meaningless. So wouldn’t you rather find meaning in what you’re doing instead of working just to work? If we’re all just gonna die in the end, anyway, why not make your life worth living?

I’m not devoting my life to work. I have evidence to support my decision, and I get to think about him all of the time. I choose to remember him in total, though. Idols have flaws, but there is enough good about them to make them memorable for life.

I live realizing the irony that no matter how much I choose to work, and at what, I won’t make it out alive either. I’m not saying my way will be any better, I’m just saying it has to be different. Dad always said do what makes you happy and it was definitely said as a “Do as I say, not as I do” piece of advice. I intend to do what makes me happy and observe my results to make sure it isn’t killing me.

On this occasion I consider how things were and how tragic a death is in the name of labor. Such a waste.

After months of arguably pointless deliberations, the supreme court struck down student loan forgiveness with the least surprising vote, 6-3. It is a decision that felt preordained from the moment forgiveness was announced by the current administration. The rational among us saw the plan as a political gambit with just about zero chance of holding up to the rigors of scrutiny.

Today was just the punctuation to close out an exhausting run-on sentence.

There will be protests in Washington for the rest of the weekend but the voices will fall on deaf ears. America’s most ridiculous celebration of self-aggrandizing is next week and all of the puppets will take the week off to celebrate how great of a job they’ve done to us.

I have exactly zero stake in this, but people very near and dear to me have once again been promised something by one part of their government only for another part of the same government to say “Not really, though.”. It’s the perpetual joke that we are always the subject of.

I remain outside the whole thing and I’m better off for it, but it does affect me through others. That will never sit right with me.

The promise we were sold as young men and women was that the path forward was clear. Education is the path to a good life, so you can rest assured that debt incurred in the name of education is the good kind. Just one problem though…

THERE IS NO GOOD DEBT.

I hope the education was worth the 30 or 40 years of your lives that you’ll have to devote to working so the government doesn’t take everything you own to pay the tab. These debts follow you to the grave and if you have anything when you die, they’ll get out the shovel.

We will be the first generation that gets punished for doing all of the right things at the wrong time, but we won’t be the last. Unless we refuse to accept this kind of thing lying down, check out of the system, and make a new one. The old ways are dead or dying, and I’m happy to help keep them in the ground for good.

Anarchy 2024.

There are fires that are so numerous and large burning in Canada that we are getting bombarded by the cloud of debris, haze, and smoke all the way down in the Midwest. It makes it difficult to go outside and accomplish anything, since the air is tough to breathe.

In fact, it’s so dense that you can sit and watch it crawl through like the heavy cloud that it is. This has caused me to retreat inside to do some of my work today, but I know I’ll be looking outside wishing I could be working on the motorhome.

The fact of the matter is, though, the work I get done inside in the first world comforts of a modern home, will be the work that actually pays me. Working on Dolly is satisfying but only ends up costing money, not making any. I have to be mindful of this, especially as we approach a time when we may be able to make use of the thing. Getting up and down the road takes money, so I’ll have to earn some of it.

There is still some weird aversion I feel to the very concept of money, and I will need to continue trying to reframe that or I will never find the balance of work/life I am after. If only I could just abandon my principles for the sake of the chase, I’d be a wealthy, hollow, man.

A lot of what I spend my time doing is staring broadly into space putting together sentences. It’s pulling words from thin air and arranging them to be palatable. But it probably just looks like I’m doing nothing, staring at the breeze.

I often find the words on that breeze, but sometimes they blow right by me, onto the next person searching for them. I accept the ones that land as a gift from the randomness of the universe, and I surrender that they can’t all land where I need them to.

At very least, I have the cool air of this late spring morning. At most, I have the untapped energy of the universe. Typically the words are somewhere in the middle, where everything else is.

We have acquired a 1997 Fleetwood Jamboree Searcher which we have dubbed Dolly, our soon-to-be workhorse road trip vehicle:

This is a big deal. It’s a chance to hit the road and have some comforts of home away from home. We are still in the process of learning all about this world but when we have a basic grasp we’re gonna trial run somewhere close.

Excited for more adventures.

I’m not sure if the number is accurate but I feel like I’ve tried to do and be 1,000,000 things in my life. So many that I’ve decided to commit them to their own, separate, project.

I realize the irony, of course, that this may just be another thing with zero purpose other than to explore and play. This is the direction I’ve always found the most meaning in life, though.

There will be some writing work mixed in throughout so I can actually get paid to do something I enjoy, and I can add one to the growing list.

Ran some errands the other day and saw one of my brother’s childhood friends out and about. He saw me and we did the customary exchange of pleasantries and he asked what I was doing now. I told him I was writing blog posts of different types for clients and he got a sort of glazed over look in his eyes.

I have noticed this look come across the face of a few people that I’ve told I write to make money. It is as though they can’t wrap their minds around that concept and I am watching them try to work it out in real time. I think in the future I will just tell them that it’s no different than any other kind of work you do with your hands that is creative. I’m not sure that will help, they’ll still probably see me as some asshole who makes money sitting on a couch (currently).

There is also always a little bit of astonishment to that last fact, and the fact that the person understands I could be doing this from anywhere on the planet that has the internet. It still stops old-schoolers in their tracks when you say it though, it’s the kind of thing that is the death of all forward progress in the conversation. If you want to move along with your damn day, it requires at least a little elaboration if not a full on accounting.

It’s times like those I want to just say that what I do for my dollars isn’t who I am, it’s an interesting part of me, but it’s one small facet. Unless someone steers the conversation that way I tend to avoid it because I also find it to be the least interesting part about everyone else.

Work is the only thing for some people, though, and they all have my sympathy.

I was placed on a lifting restriction of 10 pounds after surgery and it made me realize how many things I do that are relatively easy for me normally that I take for granted. This also made me realize how much my favorite humans rely on me to be strong enough to do things I consider ordinary and fairly simple.

That being said, I have taken to just saying that things weigh 10 pounds even if they are 5 times that and I’m lifting them with one arm. So far, I haven’t made any really expensive mistakes, and I do find myself stopping short of what I would have done prior to this surgery. I know I’ll get back to what was normal before May 1st so I’m not worried, in fact I’m quite optimistic about the direction of my health in general.

Tomorrow is my follow-up appointment with the surgeon for him to poke me and ask how things are going. We’ll probably discuss what I need to do to improve my overall health some more and the possibility of a surgery to correct any of the old hernias that haven’t affected me much yet.

Getting older every day, I guess that’s how it goes.