Changes

Here's the thing about change: if you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done. And it's not too late.

There’s another road we can still go down, if we can continue to listen and learn, we can still have a future, different from what we’re stuck in right now.

As adults, we often get to a point in our careers and lives where we stop pushing ourselves. We plateau and settle for less, incorrectly believing our time for growth has passed and that it's too late.

That's bullshit. Every day is an opportunity to learn, to grow, to succeed.

Leo Tolstoy said "True life is lived when tiny changes occur." Zig Ziglar expanded on that with "There are three Cs in life: choice, chance, change. You must make a choice to take a chance, or your life will never change."

Change requires a degree of focus and intentionality. Clarity is key when you're seeking a true transformation. When you know what you want, you'll be better prepared to map out a plan to get it. And when you can articulate it, you can enlist the help of others to achieve it.

Just don't forget to appreciate all the good things in your life. Feelings of bittersweet nostalgia, accepting sadness, and even hope.

True fulfillment is found in accepting the reality of life's transience and futility. Regardless of our fears and uncertainties, it is compassion, forgiveness and an appreciation for the supposedly insignificant things that provide meaning when your time is being spent with people who love you and accept you as you are.

Essentially be in the moment, as in that moment that's all that matters, that you are happy with what you are doing and with whom. I refuse the sweat the small stuff anymore...our time is too short for that. Be good people. Be good to one another.

This isn’t the end — it is only another new beginning. Use this wonderful gift of life to live like you really want to. You are a good person, never forget that. Remember, it starts with a choice; choose wisely and change for the better.

Choices

I like to think I stay positive most of the time. If not entirely positive, then realistic based on the situation. I still expect every day to be good, for people to perform at their full potential, for things to go well. And every day I am disappointed when it doesn't turn out that way, but I start the next day the same way.

Some may say I can't learn from the past so I am condemned to repeat it. I'm not sure I look at it that way, as I can't imagine waking up and expecting it's going to be a bad day. Some would say I am unrealistically optimistic. At another time in my life I would have spurned being referred to as acting pollyanna-ish, showing an overly optimistic and benevolently cheerful state of mind. Now I rephrase it as a positivity bias, where I am  more likely to expect positive results than negative and notice positive information more than negative information.

Research suggests that focusing on the positive is more productive and leads to happiness.
It's not like I can just ignore the negative and make it go away. While a positive focus makes us feel better in the present, recognizing and helping solve a problem or injustice can make more people happier in the long-term.

Truth is, it isn't easy and it hasn't been easy. I struggle with depression. My life is far from perfect. But I now realize all the pain and struggles I have experienced has prepared me to understand myself better, to realize my potential, to be able to survive falling farther than I ever believed possible.

I have decided to be happy, to embrace my gifts, to live a life of purpose. It wasn't easy to focus on the good instead of what was right in front of me. I felt broken, tired of feeling sad, hiding my true feelings from even myself. I never wanted to feel that way, the way I had been feeling for years. It was then I decided to try my best to never return to a place of chronic distress and misery. I would do everything in my power to heal and be happy.
I was going to love without abandon and with no expectations. I was going to see the best in myself and others. I was going to hold myself accountable for my actions and do excellent work. I wanted to feel free and happy.

I took a shotgun approach, which is completely unlike my scientific method perspective to everything, making one change and waiting to see what happens. I changed my meds, went to counseling, tried being mindful, controlled my breathing, and told people about my struggles. Ultimately, it all rests on my shoulders.

Some days I fail, but I like to think I have have more wins than losses. I have grown more than I thought possible. My life is filled with beautiful feelings, sad moments, and everything in-between. That's when I realize I have no choice but to be grateful for all of it, no matter how hard it has been. I try to be mindful of my mistakes and learn from them.

I share this not for pity or praise, not for understanding or compliments, not for empathy or approval. My words, my tale, my story, is testimony for anyone who struggles with depression.

Pollyanna wasn’t expecting money or prizes. She was looking for strength, growth, and resilience. She sought out the benefits that challenging situations can eventually lead to. Happiness, love and success are all choices. Our entire life is one huge choice. Staying in one place, being complacent and thinking it isn't so bad is easy. Choosing to be happy and positive is not simple, but it's worth it. It's all about making choices.

 

Chances

Mental health issues are difficult to understand, even for those of us who suffer from them. The capacity for joy, knowing how much we are loved, is intertwined with the immensity of the illness; the sadness, being forsaken, feeling forlorn.

Depression can be all consuming or intermittent; regardless, it hurts for the rest of a person's life. It shapes us, is part of our lives, makes us seem strange and  misunderstood.

There are moments in life that break our hearts into a million pieces, tear our souls out from within, stop us in our tracks mentally/emotionally, leave us longing. I miss my childhood, when life seemed so simple. I miss my parents, especially on a warm summer night, which reminds me of camping, our choice of summer vacation. So many people, so many places, remembering the unconditional love and never worrying about the future.

I have found that reliving the original trauma or incident that caused it will ease the pain. It is not a simple thing to do or everyone would do it. This is not something I would wish on anyone.

There is pain and grief in those tears, but mainly there is wonder, beauty, empathy, hope, and happiness. While onlookers or companions or family cannot take the pain away, sharing the pain of those who remain can show they are not alone.

We may never be able to take away the depression of a loved one, but we can still give them a good day. And it's that what we strive for, to make others happy, to make life worth living, to have others smile.

Depression is an illness that sometimes is deadly, but we don't treat it like that. Nobody would call a person selfish or cruel who died because of cancer. Suicide because of depression isn't a choice. It's the last symptom of an illness. It isn't selfish when it is something one needs to do for oneself. It isn't selfish to end unbearable agony.

From my vantage point, I understand how people get to that point. I'm not there, and I'm not a threat to myself. I just understand. I have a family to support that can't live without my income, a wife who needs my love and a daughter that needs me to be the best father I can be. I also have a very large ego that keep me thinking I'd disappoint a bunch of people, and that goes directly against my need to make people happy.

Every one has free will, but not every one uses it. As much as you might care and want to avoid the bad outcomes, it sometimes happens despite all you can do. We have some control and some influence but many events are beyond our control. Sometimes we just believe we sleep with the certain knowledge of those we wish to be at peace are, and that they wish us to be as well.

Life just disappears, everything you are, everything we were, gone in a moment, like breath on a mirror. We must take all our chances while we can, as we never know when they'll pass us by. Life is too short not to make others happy, even if we can't always be happy ourselves.

Running Up That Hill

Was Sisyphus the archetypal absurd hero, one who sees life as a constant struggle, without hope? Or in those moments when the boulder rolls away and Sisyphus descends the mountain free from his burden, has he accepted his fate and finally found the only genuine happiness?

The legend of Sisyphus is well known. He defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no humans would die. When Death was eventually freed and the time for Sisyphus himself to die occurred, he again cheated Death and escaped from the underworld. After finally capturing Sisyphus, the gods decided that his punishment would last for all eternity. He would have to push a rock up a mountain; upon reaching the top, the rock would roll down again, leaving Sisyphus to start over.

Albert Camus was a French philosopher and author. He began work on The Myth of Sisyphus in 1940, during the fall of France, when millions of refugees fled from advancing German armies. Camus said this helped him understand the absurd.

Camus depicted Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death, and is condemned to a meaningless task. For Camus, the ceaseless and pointless toil was a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices. We build our lives on the hope for tomorrow, yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; we live our lives as if they would not end.

At some point in our lives we feel like we are struggling, whether it be with the bully down the street, the unfulfilling job, worrying about retirement, or just not having enough fun. When we let external conditions control our destiny, we surrender power and authority. Facing life head on, going through transitions and becoming stronger, all while enjoying our life, is preferable. After all, what we perceive to be real is ultimately real for us. If we perceive a life of struggle, then our experience is a life of struggle. Look at it this way. Two people are in the same situation; one feels blessed and therefore have a measure of peace, while the other feels cursed, alone and abandoned. The external variables are the same, only the perception is different.

Life isn't so much about what you have or can get. If you are focused on who has what, life is always going to seem hard; someone always has more. Life is more about what you do. There is only so much you can do, such a short time here on this planet to get things done.

Camus argues the absurd hero sees life as a constant struggle, without hope, living
with full awareness of the absurdity of their position. Sisyphus pushes his rock up the mountain, filled with toil and struggle, and upon reaching the top, the rock rolls down to the bottom again. In those moments where Sisyphus descends the mountain free from his burden, Camus states, he is aware. Sisyphus knows that he will struggle forever and he knows that this struggle will get him nowhere. This awareness is precisely the same awareness that an absurd man has in this life. So long as Sisyphus is aware, his fate is no different and no worse than our lot in life. Our fate only seems horrible when we place it in contrast with something that would seem preferable. If we accept that there is no preferable alternative, then we can accept our fate without horror. Only then, Camus suggests, can we fully appreciate life, because we are accepting it without reservations.

We get stuck in a life of struggle because we aren't focused on the steps along the way as we set our own path. We need to pay attention to where we are going, or how we are getting there. If we face our struggles, embrace them with open heart and mind, we can overcome them. If we stop fighting against the currents of life and instead move skillfully among them instead, we struggle less.

People who appear to be so blessed to have everything they want in life don’t necessarily have everything they want. They just enjoy more fully everything they have. To be happy is to be comfortable with yourself, with who you are, with all your limitations. If you have good health and enough money, you are fortunate. If you have people you love and who love you back, you are indeed blessed.

More Than This

It as been said that if you look at someone long enough, the truth comes out, you discover their humanity. That goes for looking at yourself as well.

I had been coasting, waiting for a shoe to drop, for the next tear to fall, for something to happen that required me to change.

I had felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, everything that was real and imagined, everything owned and unowned, until I hit the breaking point and mentally broke down.

Every day does not look upbeat and happy. I am still piecing together the broken shards of my life, wondering when (not if) it will shatter again, knowing the process is a cycle of up and down, good and bad, ruin and rejuvenation.

I always felt like I was showing up for others. I was the one who was supposed to have my act together all the time, never needing to disclose the painful parts of life.

Many people spend a lot of time ruminating, thinking about the past or the future. Do it consistently and making a habit of it creates a loop, preventing you from living in the moment. The more you ruminate, the more your imagination drifts to the negative outcomes. "
Catastrophizing," believing that something is far worse than it actually is, inevitably leads to missing out on what is happening around you. It is a trap that many fall into, consumed by what might have been or what could possibly go wrong.

I try not to ask too much of myself, or neglect my own needs. I try to focus more on the happy moments than on the painful or stressful ones.

Staying present can be a battle, making it incredibly difficult to enjoy the time you have with your loved ones, close friends and people you care about. Worrying about the future hinders our ability to live fully in the present, which is all we really have, this fleeting moment, the right now.

We all have high and low points in our lives. Anyone who appears to have it all figured out is presenting what they want you to see. There are always things that rain on their parade. Some of us are just better at hiding it, or completely suppressing it, not wanting to show the scars we hide, keeping things to ourselves until we no longer can manage to maintain the facade.

Whatever you are going through you are not alone. We are all putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward and backward, taking things day by day. One step at a time, one bite of the elephant at a time, one thing at a time.

Rollercoaster

Your boss is impressed with you, and you're happy. The next day they find what you did disappointing, and your heart sinks.

You meet someone, things click, and you want to spend time together. When you make yourself available, they aren't. It’s complicated. You understand and retreat and they are back, persistent, filled with regret. You make yourself available and then they are gone.

Welcome to the roller coaster of life.

One day you are up, the next day you are down. Surely the way to fix this is to do it right. If you get it perfect, this thing that feels special may stand a chance. But we can’t control the ups and downs of life, we can't make it go higher instead of lower, we can't stop the times where your world is upside down and nothing makes sense.

Ups and downs come at various times and different lengths throughout our lives. We really never know what to expect. The lows in life make me feel like there is no hope or end in sight. The highs make me feel like life is perfect and will always be that way.

What we can do is decide how we will feel about the ride. We can scream and hate it, or we can throw our hands up in the air with a big smile on our face and yell out joyfully at the thrill of the ride. Life is a blend of joy and sorrow in unknown proportions. We need to taste the bitterness of pain and sweetness of joys without hesitation; we don't know when the next time we will experience them.

When you are happy or in a positive place, you remember the bad times, reflect on when the situation was difficult, when you were crying and thinking life would never get better. When you extremely sad or in a negative place, you miss the time you were happy, when things were easier and when life looked like it was perfect.

You can't have one without the other. We need to enjoy the life we were given and embrace it every day. We need to have the same attitude and positivity towards life when we experience these down turns.

The essential realization of your boss being impressed or disappointed has nothing to do with you. The only way off the roller coaster is to not let their disapproval or approval affect you. The interest and lack of interest from the new person in your life has nothing to do with you. They are going through whatever and while it may be justified and understandable, the one on the roller coaster is you and you need to disengage.

Reaching perfection in the eyes of others is impossible yet we strive for each and every day. We want people to like us, to see us how we see ourselves, to understand things how we understand them.

And that's the issue. We can't expect others to see things exactly like we do, to share our feelings completely, to agree with what we say is right. We all love approval, but ultimately the measure of our work, our worth, our love, is ourselves.

Whatever It Takes

We all have people we turn to when we need advice, want to have important discussions, seek wise counsel. Some are family, some are friends, some we've never met but their lives, their writings, their sense of being inspire us. These people know what we should do or say or how to traverse relationships much more efficiently that many of us.

In addition to knowledge and good judgement, what really makes someone wise is a deep feeling for the fears, hopes, passions of others. While we can be blind to our biases, the wise know our own perception of the world is not always accurate or objective and will help us see that.

Being the wisest person in the room means to discipline ourselves to not to rush to judgment. We stop the world when we stop our thoughts, and experience peace and mental clarity.

What happens when that person becomes us, when we become the mantle of responsibility for the family? The reality of the situation moves from one set of shoulders to another, time passes, and we assume responsibility for the the families that we are a part of. Even knowing that will happen it is still a surprise when the realization occurs that it has happened.

It's always been there; I was raised that way, learning the expectations of a leader of the family. When my grandfather died, my grandmother became the matriarch of the family. When she passed, my father became the patriarch. When he died, the torch was passed once again.

I’ve had a number of opportunities to doubt my prowess as patriarch, as I've been figuratively broken for a long time. The bad part about being the patriarch is that people expect you to have the answers. There’s no mentor for me to ask my own questions. How am I supposed to provide guidance when I can't even guide myself?

I'll never ask for the torch, but sometimes the role chooses you. If the role is to be the family truth teller, I can do that. I'll tell my story, and that story becomes our story, and all its embellishments and omissions becomes the story of our lives. If I have any doubts, I will try not to show them. I will not rush to judge, do my best to experience peace and mental clarity, and tell these stories again and again. Because, in the end, we're all stories.

Breathe Me

We can't change the past, but we think about it, wishing we had done something differently.
It's not inherently negative to think over different scenarios and how they could have played out. How we choose to frame it in our minds, and what we do about it, is vital to our well being.

The bitter tears of self-reproach tend to involve distorted thinking. It's easy to label yourself as a "loser" when you fail to achieve at work, a relationship falls apart and ends, finding yourself emotionally broken because things went awry.

Detachment, anxiety and depression can be the outcome of failing to reconcile thoughts that result in feelings of shame, guilt or regret. Those emotional bruises are self-inflicted and are among the hardest to recover from. No one knows you better than yourself, so you deserve to feel that way.

It is the judgment of our self or how we think others perceive us that causes us to feel flawed and unworthy. Perfectionism is known to be a manifestation of fear of failing, disapproval or letting others down. You get into the cycle of needing things to be perfect, to repeating things over in the same way because they worked before, paralyzed from considering alternatives or taking any risk because it may not be good enough.

We often cannot recognize when our responsibility ends, where our personal ownership lies, where we can't take on everything that goes awry. It is not always clear how much of what went wrong is ours to own. Once we understand what is our responsibility, we need to own it, acknowledge our part in what is wrong, what we created through action or inaction.

We are not perfect and are not going to get it right every time. We need to recognize these truths and hold on to them. Entering into situations and relationships with that frame of mind creates an opportunity for us to evolve through introspection. Trying to be right every time means those opportunities for personal evolution never happen because we spend all our time and energy on trying to maintain the facade of perfectionism.

Self-acceptance. Sounds simple, doesn't it? All we have to do it recognize we are perfect the way we are, that we need to love ourselves for who we are, and that perfection is simply and unequivocally imperfect, a beautiful disaster, our humanity on display for all to see.

As John Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden, "And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good." We may not strive for mediocrity, but accepting that being okay, being good, being our imperfect selves, means we're okay.

Arriving at a point of self-realization where we grant ourselves the freedom to accept ourselves means our glorious imperfections are opportunities, not obstacles. We need to open our eyes, our hearts, our minds, and embrace it.

My Own Worst Enemy

In many novels, it turns out a character's greatest enemy is themselves, where their self-loathing and self-defeating feelings are their own worst obstacle. In some examples, these characters sabotage themselves, whether due to a fear of the unknown, some kind of deep psychological issue, or just run of the mill feelings of inadequacy. In other cases, the character has a flaw regarding a lack of skill, motivation, or ability, which will keep them from ever achieving true victory. Regardless of the basis, when that spark of happiness, the moment of love or the light of hope is upon them, they will ruin it and maintain themselves in a state of misery without a foreseeable ending.

Whatever the case, wherever the person finds themselves, they won't ever reach true happiness, success or whatever else they achieve until they first reconcile with their inner conflicts.

It is effortless to be your own worst enemy, often seeming like a better idea, preparing ourselves for other the ideas and opinions of others, the obvious path. What we miss when we allow this to happen is understanding our thoughts, beliefs and perceptions are creating our life, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not. I often talk about how the car seems to get me to work and back without much effort on my part. That happens with our lives as well; we are on autopilot, not realizing the point is to understand we control the accelerator, can choose to steer and take the road less traveled.

Being our own worst enemy leaves us feeling lonely, stressed and miserable, that we don't deserve success, happiness or love. We spoil our chances of achieving those things. We identify with our thoughts, feelings or the roles we play in other people's lives. Despite these all being transitory, we focus on them and disregard who we really are: the person who is experiencing all of them. We identify with our thoughts and allow ourselves to become them, which causes us to be a very specific, particular, and potentially damaging reality of who we are.

Being your own best friend is about loving yourself enough to fix your life, to take responsibility for it, to be your own caretaker, your own confidante, your own source of fulfillment. This is no easy task, and we're conditioned against it by our consumer mentality of buying or experiencing external happiness being the key to genuine fulfillment.

Accepting ourselves as we are is literally and figuratively the only way to become more of what we want. It helps us differentiate the things we truly want as opposed to the things we expect to heal us. It provides a space to allow the natural evolution of our being rather than a perpetuating cycle of attempted control and failure.

We all eventually realize that our lives aren't going the way we want and that it's up to us to change them. It's nobody's job or responsibility to love or take care of us. Relying on that thought basically guarantee that at some point someone else will deny us love, and we will be stuck on a hole.

Recognizing we can be our own worst enemy and becoming our own best friend is what we all need to do; when we choose to do so is up to each of us. The solution to a lot of problems in life is learning to be happy and content on our own. When that happens, we can actually enjoy and be content with others as well.

At Least It Was Here

There are countless stories in our human existence, and each of us lives our own. Life keeps moving, time keeps ticking, the world keeps turning. Love is born, hatred dies, humanity keeps marching on. Sometimes we have to completely stop what we are doing and focus on the beauty and tragedy, the happiness and sadness, the stories that make up our lives.

We live our lives through our own eyes, using our perspective of how we believe people feel, how things look to us, how we react to events.

There is stability in what we know, what we are familiar with, what we feel good about. What happens when we take the path less traveled? Does the sense of order we gained fall apart? Or just change?

We are humanity. Many themes, many lives crossing paths, many never meeting. The contrasts of bittersweet yet uplifting and hopeful at the same time. Life can be both happy or crushingly sad. I can feel as free as a bird while being chained to society and imprisoned within my own anxious consciousness.

We define ourselves on the expectation of a society that feeds us a lie it fell for itself. That everyone is okay, that normal is, well, normal, that everything else is not normal. Which is completely wrong, of course, but we can't see it that way.

The world is a place for the crazy, the weird, the chaotic and the broken; it's a place for all of us. It's not about changing yourself to belong, but belonging to those who take you as you are, all your flaws, all your fears, all your mistakes. We don't need to give up on our dreams to keep everything the same, our dreams need to belong to us to change as we see fit.

In "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency," Douglas Adams writes about "the interconnectedness of all things," which is how Dirk viewed his cases. "I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose..."

We look to stories for comfort and safety in this chaotic mess we call life. We look to the "interconnectedness" of it all, the strange, unpredictable nature of life itself, to embrace chaos and weirdness and change because that's what makes up our lives. Life is fun and painful and ever-changing and barely makes sense at any given moment and that scares us. We're all trying to find that path to the perfect ideal life but that path, that road, that direction isn't there because that life doesn't exist.

Everyone has their own individual life stories going on, and we share moments with each other. That feeling, that imagery, that togetherness. Sometimes we walk alone, on an empty street, only with our shadows. Sometimes we walk together, on a road filled with people, and are interconnected.

Time Has Told Me

The ups and downs of the last two years introduced many of us to self-preservation, the more intense version of self-care. Looking after our own well-being physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually has never been more important.

I was never interested in pampering myself, taking time to relax. I let work consume my time, stayed busy, pretended to be my own caretaker but in reality let things slide, buried them and moved on.

Others needed my attention, my focus, my time. I would tell them to cut themselves some slack, to give themselves time to reflect, to let me help them. I spent my time trying to make others happy, while never practicing what I preached.

I now know that, for the sake of being positive, to appear being in control, to look like things didn't bother me, I ignored, neglected and pushed away what I was really feeling. It would crack the facade occasionally, causing me to break down and fall apart, but only for small moments, replaced by a joke or a smile or me just being me.

I didn't check in with myself. I ignored my emotions, my feelings, determined they weren't valid or true or important, and moved on. I kept thinking things would work out, resolve themselves, or just go away. I was caught in an endless cycle of screw ups and hurt feelings, thinking I had learned something from the experience and was being molded into a better person, but in reality letting avoidance masquerade as the need to care for myself, making up the perfect lie that I was fine, letting hours turn into days and digging a deeper hole that I eventually found myself at the bottom of, broken, sad and making the lives of people around me miserable.

Life is intended to be filled with mistakes and miracles, used and consumed, saved and spent, felt and shared. That includes caring for ourselves in whatever fashion required, whether it is a day at a spa or a day with a therapist.

As much as we think they can, not everyone can read your mind to read your mind and act accordingly. We need to set our own limits, determine what it takes to make us happy, and to not let ourselves be spread too thin across everyone we feel needs our help.

Self-preservation is our strongest instinct; fight or flight or freeze is built into our being. We don't question the need protect ourselves physically, but not so much emotionally. What is our trigger for emotional stress, the one that tells us our emotional being needs to come first? Without it, excessive loads of stress will lead to burnout, depression, and emotional anxiety.

We are the machines that keep things moving forward; sometime we are everything to everybody, appearing to manage things flawlessly, without much effort, without complaints. Only we know the mental and emotional balancing we go through daily to maintain that appearance, keep those balls in the air, continue to look in control. Take yourself off of line for a while, tune into your self, attend to your emotional needs and start setting some healthy boundaries.

Free Bird

This was our fourth flock of chickens. The first three were all victims of needing to move, to make the yard less smelly and appealing to the next buyer of our home, to conform to what everyone expected of a house and yard in an urban setting. Each found a new home with other chickens and various farm animals.

This time we had a permanent home where first pigeons and then chickens were raised for decades, which had fallen into disuse. We took out the old house, rebuilt the fences and started looking for appropriate free items to fit into a full size Jenga game of a chicken house. First came an old work table, perfect for the base. The an armoire with drawers at the bottom, which served a dual purpose of storage and doors for the back of the hen house. Some fence boards, a free window and a few metal corrugated roof pieces later, and it was a house for the ages.

The chicks went from being fuzzy little things falling asleep in their food to scraggly looking teenagers losing their down and trying to feather out. And then it was time to meet their home. They figured it out in short order, and those soft clucking sounds were once again part of our being, providing a soothing background to time in the garden. The girls, as everyone calls their flock, would run waddle up to the fence to greet us when we went to the garden, looking for leafy greens or scraps, always ready for a handful of scratch.

The eggs were big, beautiful and tasty. You gave them food and water, cleaned out the hen house, and breakfast materialized in the nesting boxes. It was like magic.

We lost one to a predator and a couple more to whatever causes chickens to kick the bucket. We raised three more chicks, one of which turned out to be a rooster and was re-homed, and decided not to add more chicks to the flock. Some others went to poultry heaven on their own time, as chickens are apt to do.

And then there were three.

Chickens are social animals. They will flock together for protection from predators and find comfort in roosting next to each other, helping to keep the coop warm at night during cold weather. When a predator is spotted, one chicken will provide a call of warning to alert the others, and they all run for higher ground. Chickens can get lonely if they live in isolation.

We didn't want to wait until we only had two birds to find them a new home, so the decision was made. Cindy listed them on Craigslist this time, since I still have scars from my previous experience. In short order someone around the corner from us said they wanted our girls to meet their girls (and a duck who thought it was a chicken).

 

After seven years of cohabitation and interaction with Gladys and Eleanor, and about five with MacHenna, we boxed them up individually, put them on a cart and headed down the driveway. They took to their new digs and were walking among the other chickens (and duck) when we left. Despite having a much lighter load, the walk home was slow going

I cleaned out the coop yesterday, distributing pine shavings and chicken poop under the avocado tree, as I usually do. This time no chickens will scratch and help turn it into the ground from where it once originated. It was quiet in the garden and there was time to mull over the experience. People come and go in our lives, as do poultry, and we learn how to navigate the waters, plotting a course that may take us not where we wanted to go, but where we needed to go.

No Future in the Past

As William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "To thine own self be true." But which self was he referring to?

The person I was 20, 30, 40 years ago...the person for whom I planned my current life by working toward career goals, falling in love, saving money for a rainy day. I am invariably different today from the person I was then. What made the future person part of who I was then, what made them worthy of my self sacrifices and considerations, what did I teach myself?

Was it a mistake to try to satisfy my future self with my past choices? Daniel Gilbert suggests that, at any point along our personal timeline, we tend to believe that who we are at that precise moment is who we will always be. That we have arrived at our destination of being. Which, of course, is wrong.

"Human beings," Gilbert writes, "are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been."

We think of ourselves as static, with lives that unfurl in logical progression, like a computer program. In reality, we all change throughout our lives, become people at different times, sometimes surprising ourselves, other times being predictable. It's important to remember all the people that we used to be while at the same time acting like my future self, rather than my former self. Embrace uncertainty and change, learning and failure, honesty and humility.

We tend to place importance emphasis on our present selves, cling to our current identities and speak in well defined terms about who we are now. When we label ourselves as an introvert, extrovert or whatever else, we leave little room in our minds of change. We need to understand we change and allow ourselves to do so.

The truth is, we are not the same persons we were in the past. We don’t do things the same way we once did, or we may no longer want what we once wanted. We label ourselves and focuse on who we are today, when we should instead recognize how much we’ve grown and changed from our former selves.

We have specific ideas about who we might become in the future. There are the ideal selves we hope to become, the probable selves who we could likely become, the dark selves we are afraid of becoming.

We need understanding (some would say innerstanding) to know who we are, who were were, who we have yet to become, to comprehend our true nature.

Maria Popova writes that "history is not what happened, but what survives the shipwrecks of judgement and chance." Tracing my genealogy has taught me it is easy to mistake the records of life for history, how I imagine or label something for what it really was, chance for choice.

Life depends on change and renewal. Clarity of vision comes with age and wisdom. Or does it? Whom am I to decry what I did in the past in an attempt to satisfy my future self? Was I smarter in the past, as I tend to tell myself, or is the best yet to come?

That Was Then, This is Now

I was hemorrhaging emotions. All the optimism I had was being pumped out of my body. Positive thoughts, energy, my ability to focus, everything that made me who I am was being drained from me.

My brain didn't work. Thoughts took what seemed like years to process. I made mistakes and made mistakes correcting the mistakes. It felt like the connections in my brain that send thoughts from one place to another were offline.

I was fine until I wasn’t. It was a slow spiral. I went from fully functional to a this in a matter of weeks. I didn't see it happening.

Was I great before? Hardly. I was tired, edgy, emotional. I was getting through and thought I could handle it. The level of stress and overwork were normal. There was no signpost indicating my current path was worse than any other time.

That was then.
 

I have allowed myself time and space to process and feel the pain, sadness, grief, the uneasy emotions. I tell others to be compassionate with themselves, to give themselves a break, to learn from their past.

I am taking my own advice. I am aboard a fast moving freight train with many twists and turns in the tracks, multiple stops and starts, emotions loaded and unloaded.

There are days when I feel completely alone, and I know that's the depression talking, as I have support around me. I cry and have breakdowns of self-control. Other days I am on top of the world, positive the worst is behind me, looking at a bright future, appearing to have my shit together.

When I write procedures, I try to be thorough and explain why things need to happen in a specific way. When I write instructions for myself, I include "Trust me, I'm from the past." It's my way of reminding myself there are reasons to the order of operations, to think through the process and it will become clear, to know I did this work before and can do it again.

Life happens. One day everything is fine, the next you're flat on your back and don't want to crawl out of bed. The thing we all have to remember is we can only control what we can control. I've never been good at that, but I'm trying.

Every hardship and setback shapes you, changes you, and will someway help you be more resilient.

I am feeling uncertain, not my usual self, and frankly sometimes downright scared. Will I be better? I put my faith in the future to guide me to where it needs to. And I leave this as a note to myself, to remind me I can do it. Trust me, I'm from the past.

Rewrite

I had pretty much given up writing. It wasn’t fun, it felt contrived and I no longer cared enough about myself to exercise that part of my brain.

It was no longer joyful, effortless, fun. Trying to write, to release what was pent up inside and to try to make sense of it, defeated its own purpose. I was pushing an agenda, trying to defeat the darkness in my life. It should have been comfort, like a friend you know so well and for so long you just let them be with you. I wasn't okay with it lacking prose or meaning, to just be writing, to be the equivalent of having a bad day or just calling off and not making it in to work. It had to be more, to have depth, to be significant and consequential. When your life lacks control, you try to control your life, and I needed my writing to be perfect.

My job was grueling and the situation at home was all consuming. I gave up everything that was me during that time. All I did was work and sleep and work more from home on the weekends. When I tried to focus on what I needed, I didn’t get it right and made things worse. When I didn’t focus on what I needed I just buried everything until it erupted. That wasn’t a good choice, as it let me down a path that made me not be me.

I was fragile and acted strong, until one day my fragile strength abandoned me. I stopped writing. I stopped thinking I deserved to be happy. My deepest longings were replaced by my deepest fears.

I’m not even sure I’m me now. We all change, so who knows if I’m really still the person I think I used to be. Knowing that I am not alone gives me a level of comfort, to help with what I can only describe as a pane of glass being completely shattered. I am still trying to put myself back together.

To some extent I feel more like I think I used to in a long time, but who can really know. Is the story we are writing of our lives, filled with bittersweet, heart wrenching, beautiful, and soulful emotions and moments, really just a fantasy about how we wish our life had gone?

I wish I was smart enough to know what would be better for me. But I don’t, so I keep trying.
We must take the risks we are asked to take, we must put ourselves out there and remember not everything in this world is good or bad, it just..is. No point in crying over spilled emotions, but I still do it. I write and rewrite and start again.

Runaway Train

Losing control. We say that like we really had it at one point, but in reality all we ever had was a sense we understood how things were going, where we were headed and how we could influence the outcome. But that small impact we make in life that goes on whether we are here or not is all we have, so we cling to it. We say we are in control. We say we make our own destiny.
 
Loss of control is not a trivial fear; it is human and ingrained in our being. "Nawa" ("The Rope") is a work of short fiction from surrealist author Kobo Abe. He writes that:
 
"The Rope" and "The Stick," together, are one of humankind's oldest "tools." "The Stick" is for keeping evil away; "The Rope" is for pulling good toward us; these are the first friends the human race invented. Wherever you find humans, "The Rope" and "The Stick" also exist.
 
Tools to connect and disconnect, to attract and repel. Extensions of the hand, which both grips and releases. Without both of these abilities, it is useless. As newborn infants, we grab what comes near us, holding on to what we don't yet know, trying to figure it out, to control it. Later in life we grab on to ideas, thoughts, pride, still trying to figure it out, still trying to control it. And if we are lucky we learn that holding onto something for too long means there is so much else we never held, what we left behind, what we couldn't understand. To grasp something new means to let something go, exchange some ideas for new ones, confront our own values, face the words we have said in the past.

Courage can mean holding on; it can also mean letting go. Life is a difficult balance between the two. It's not a lesson we are taught in school and often we're not prepared for it. Fortunately, we go through life learning, sometimes quietly and without even realizing it, sometimes full of grief and pain from the lesson.

Peter Pan illustrates the deep connection between holding on and letting go. As Wendy is about to leave Neverland. Peter is crying and says, “It hurts so bad…” Wendy, in her ageless wisdom replies, “It’s supposed to hurt, that’s how you know it was important.”
 
Isn't that what life is all about? To look for meaning, resolution of stressful feelings, and the eventual easing of sorrow. To come to terms with constant change and perpetual departure. To understand our deep-seated desire for certainty and control is really more about give and take, about achieving balance. To increase our mastery over the power to hold on, and to let go.

 

Heads Up For The Wrecking Ball

It was a cold, drizzly January morning when the lay-offs occurred. What would later be called the Great Recession was gaining momentum. During previous recessions, consumers didn't stop spending; this time, the consumer did the unexpected: they pulled back and held on to their money.

Rumors swirled around the company, meetings were being held, people some returning to their desks at the conclusion, others disappeared for some time and eventually returned to clear out their personal belongings.

Many people I had known and worked with for years were told their services were no longer needed. We wept openly in the hallways as we said goodbye to those who were leaving. We didn't understand what was happening or why. There was no official word until later that day on the local news, explaining that more than 100 workers, about 10 percent of the salaried and full-time employee base, were laid off.

Long before we knew the details on the news, the bell had tolled for me as well. I was rushed off to a large open office area no longer in use where HR triage was being performed. I saw someone else I recognized, sitting solemnly and signing paperwork. We nodded at each other in a sign of understanding, not able to speak and knowing we would never see each other again as fellow employees.

I was given my options, such as they were. I was a boomerang employee, having returned the previous spring after being away for five years, so my official time with the company was short. I could sign the forms, agree to no litigation and get a month's severance, or I could refuse to sign them and get paid nothing. There were three people at home dependent on my income. Was it really an option? I signed, took my paperwork, and left the area, returning to my office.

 

I spoke with my boss, who understood my need to finish what I was working on. I saw others during the afternoon who were happy to see I was still there and sad when I explained it was temporary.

I cleared out my office, filling several boxes. I removed the books from the shelves, having placed them there less than a year ago. I continued to work up to the point when my access was finally revoked on the server. It was finally time to leave.

In 1967, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe began to study medical records as a way to determine if a link existed between stressful events and illnesses. They discovered a positive correlation between the two that would culminate in what would become known as the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale. Number eight on this scale is job loss, preceded by other traumatic events such as divorce, serious illness or death in the family.

Similar stages of grieving that occur with the death of a loved one occur with job loss, including shock and denial, fear and anxiety, anger, bargaining, depression and eventually acceptance.

It was a numbness, not knowing how to interpret it; a sadness, a bewilderment and a sense of disbelief.

The previous fall our wages were frozen, the match to our 401K was suspended and bonuses were cancelled. That was enough, the company said. And that's what they said again in January, hopeful the layoffs were the necessary correction to keep moving forward. Three months later salaried employees had their wages reduced by 10 percent to 30 percent, in the best interest of both the business and the employees after disappointing holiday sales the previous year.

None of those moves were adequate to stem the bleeding. It was quite some time before I realized how lucky I was to have been in the first wave of what eventually grew to nearly 25% of the full-time workforce, including the CEO.

Being laid off from my job and under water on a mortgage during the Great Recession became the largest upheaval of my adult life to that point. I was suddenly unemployed for the first time in my career; a visit to the unemployment office was eye opening and not something I wanted to repeat. The chances of staying in Medford were slim to none. We knew leaving our home and friends behind was inevitable. The life we had made for ourselves was going to change and, if we were fortunate, it would happen sooner than later. If we were unfortunate, it would drag on for months and we would become another statistic of the economic downturn.

I focus on the uncertainty of our lives, how change comes when you least expect it, how planning is everything but how plans are nothing. Life goes on, regardless of whether or not we control which way it goes, which is precisely why planning is everything and the plan is nothing.

Again, I am fortunate. A few job offers later, I am gainfully employed by what would become my favorite employer, the one all other companies are compared to and fail to meet the standard. We downsize our belongings for the trip, move to another state further away from family, and start again. After all, what other choice is there?

Mad World

"For me, writing is a process that allows me to work through both the good and bad things in life, to find comfort and understanding in the lessons we have learned."

I wrote that sentence in 2011, during a different time, in what now seems like a different life. The largest upheaval of my adult life, being laid off and under water on a mortgage during the Great Recession, leaving our home and friends behind to move to another state further away from family, was more than two years prior. A rental with a smelly air handling system and an unreasonable property management company, along with Cindy in the hospital for too many scary days during the previous year, was starting to fade. Those storms had been weathered. Relative calm was once again upon us. New home, new city, stable work, stable health; the future looked steady and promising. I was able to process the events of the past, put them into nice and tidy little boxes, work through the positive and negative, learn my lessons, feel a relative comfort, and just be.

Change, as I have said many times, is the only constant in the universe. Two years later I was out of work again due to a plant closure. It wasn't a surprise, so there was lots of time to plan and figure out the next steps. We persevered, moved closer to family, found our place in the sun and life moved on. More little boxes, more separating out good from bad, more lessons learned.

 

My father passed away. I change jobs after a painful 16 months working for a company that wrote the book on micromanagement. We did some remodeling on my childhood home to ready it for being a rental, and for the first time in over fifty years someone who wasn’t my family moved into that house. Another round of boxes, some comfort and understanding, more lessons acknowledged.

After an eight-year relationship, Laura's boyfriend breaks up with her, eventually moving back to Wisconsin. He had been living with us the entire time, moved from Medford to Bellingham and then to Santa Barbara, so it is difficult for everyone. The evil overlord at work is removed and change is in the wind. Renovating my grandparent's house turns out to be more of a challenge than anticipated and takes forever. Once again it is boxes and lessons.

We move into my grandparent's house on the day most of the US declares COVID-19 a pandemic, turning everyone's world upside down. Some think it will be short, history says otherwise. Masks, social distancing, isolation, friends die. Our cat Maggie, the last tenuous thread to Medford, has to be put down. More little boxes, less understanding, lessons that feel more like punishment than satisfaction.

Unhappiness and frustration in my job and the inability to find new employment take their toll. Receiving an undeserved verbal written warning for something out of my control pushes me to the brink. Laura's dog has to be put down. I keep my door closed at work to avoid interaction with people. I feel alone and forlorn and as if my life is unraveling. I search for a psychiatrist and a therapist, but 18 months of the pandemic has resulted in their short supply. I think I have hit rock bottom but that was just a ledge in the hole I was in and digging deeper with every moment. Another ledge, another, and another; eventually I struck bedrock in the deepest pit of despair I had ever encountered.

No little boxes to hold anything this time, no understanding, no comfort, no lessons. All the other little boxes have fallen off the shelf, opened and emptied their contents on me. Every mistake, every bad decision, every failure in my life came back to bury me.

And with those mistakes came overwhelming feelings of guilt. Shame. Self-condemnation. Humiliation.

I punished myself for past mistakes, as if I could somehow correct all the wrong things I had done. I walked through each day chained to my past, holding on to hurts and grudges, the negative emotions gnawing away at any joy and satisfaction in life.

I know myself and I live with myself every day. I can't forgive what I've done. Pain and guilt are things we carry with us, things that make us who we are. Losing them means I lose myself. But I am already lost, so deep in the rabbit hole of everything I have done wrong and didn't learn and never will that I am drowning in feelings. I need them to stop so I can catch my breath.

The consequences of my behavior cause me angst, fear and paranoid thoughts. An ex-boss once told me I was useless, and I begin to think they were right. I have been fooling everyone for a long time. I am barely capable of doing my job or maintaining my composure. I have a crisis of confidence every time I do something. I have a trusted employee check my work for mistakes. Getting to the office is draining and overwhelming.

I'm already taking medication for my depression but it doesn't seem to even touch what I am going through. I start taking more and it numbs me to the point where I can go through the motions of life without feeling the weight of the past on my shoulders every waking moment. It is a small step but it is forward, not back.

Silence is deadly when it comes to the past. I eventually find a therapist so I can work to free myself from the bondage of holding it all in, to talk about what’s tearing me apart inside. Forgiveness starts with being honest and vulnerable about who I was, who I am.

The numbness eventually wears thin and the emotions break free again. I vacillate between feeling better and worse, between forgiving myself and punishing myself, between good days and bad days. It is a journey, and the road is long.

We live in a less than perfect world and I am an imperfect person, continuing to make mistakes in life. I have hurt and will hurt people, even if I don't mean to. I have regrets and will have more. I have faults and bad habits. The list goes on.

Imperfection is in some way essential to all that we know in life. I must accept me for who I am and move forward. The past is unchangeable; I can't fix all my mistakes. I want to feel better. I need to forgive myself for my trespasses.

I live my life overshadowed by my weaknesses and are swallowed by them. I need to learn to focus on the positive aspects of my life, my strengths, my being. I need to change my mindset and overall outlook. Thought and reflection, in a positive sense, still eludes me. Everyone has their own faults; why are mine my overall focus? I need to come to terms with both my weaknesses and strong points. To keep the see-saw even and not let it swing one way or another. To gain balance.