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.

Do the Funky Chicken

We added to our flock of chickens this spring with three chicks; one White Barred Plymouth Rock and two Ameraucanas, the breed that was derived from the blue egg laying Araucanas. They spent the spring and early summer in our garage with the normal chick accoutrements: a heat lamp, a thermometer to make sure they stayed at the right temperature, food to scatter all over the cage and water to scatter the food in.

The three progressed nicely, with the White Barred Plymouth Rock leading the pack in height and overall size. We thought she may have been a day or two older than the Ameraucanas, one of which was now distinctly more brown while the other was more black in color.

The chickens eventually moved from the small cage in the garage to the new hen house and run built just for them. Once fully mature, they could be integrated into the existing flock, but until they sized up it was to their benefit to keep them separated from the older girls.

We tossed around names and finally settled on MacHenna (the mostly brown Ameraucana), Beatrix Clucker (the mostly black Ameraucana) and Gertrude (the White Barred Plymouth Rock). Gertrude continued to be the big chicken on campus, but since the White Barred Plymouth Rock is a popular dual-purpose chicken (laying or meat) with a long, broad body and a moderately deep breast, the fact that she towered over her bunk-mates didn't worry us...much.

The chicks, purchased at a local store, were all supposed to be all hens. Chicken sexing is an art, and people who do this as a profession can command up to several thousand dollars per day. Some breeds are easy to sex: males hatch out a different color than females. For most breeds, sexers look at the size and shape of their wing feathers or peek inside their "vent" to see barely visible tell-tale signs. Maybe TMI, but that's how it works.

Despite collecting big bucks for their work, these professionals are not 100% accurate; as they say in the chick sexing business, "roosters happen." What sounded like a few small crows erupted from Gertrude, but still we pressed on, waiting to see what happened. When we actually witnessed a crow from her, I mean his lips, I mean beak, well, that settled that. Gertrude became Gordon and we worked on finding him a new home.

I started with Craigslist and a typical (for me, anyway) posting, which was flagged for removal. Of course, no one could tell me exactly why it was flagged, so I was left to reach out to the forums for guidance. One responder told me I should have posted in a different category, while another told me that yet a different category was the right one. Still another said I needed to decide if Gordon was a pet or available for eating, as it would make a difference on what category to use. I explained we had a "don't ask, don't tell" re-homing policy, as who am I to tell someone what they can or can't do with a chicken? This is America, for crying out loud.

Another said my ad was too long while yet another indicated that discussing the local municipal code that says it is unlawful to keep or maintain a rooster in the city limits was inappropriate. I brought up the municipal code to bring context to needing a new home for Gordon before the neighbors began to complain or "the man" came to get him. And how can a mere 370 words of an entertaining chicken story be too long?

Should I have flagged the garage sale add that included "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" because it didn't indicate that was copyrighted material? What about the ads that spell pallet incorrectly? Or the guy giving away bees that took up residence in his patio...can you give away something you don't own?

Cindy contacted the original source of the chicks and they were happy to take Gordon to their ranch where he can presumably live out his life having a great time with lots of hens, so that part of the story has ended. Being flagged on Craigslist...that's gonna take a while to get over.

Overpowered by Funk

Santa Barbarians have watched the evolution of the Funk Zone from the low rent warehouse district to a hip neighborhood gathering spot for locals and visitors alike. The area covers about 10 square blocks, stretching form the Pacific Ocean to Highway 101, bounded on one end by State Street and Garden Street on the other.

An industrial and light-manufacturing area in the years after World War II, it was bypassed by development since the 1960s and became a collection of neglected commercial buildings. An arts culture grew in the area over the last thirty years, similar to Georgetown in Seattle or the Alberta district in Portland. Powered by multiple wine and beer tasting rooms, restaurants, a distillery, shops, galleries and within walking distance to the Harbor, Stearn’s Wharf and the State Street retail shops, more than 80% of all Santa Barbara visitors pass through the Funk Zone.

Before it was funky, it was home to many business. Oreana Winery is in the old Bob Woolever’s Tire Shop building. The Lark sits on the site of the historic Santa Barbara Fish Market building, once housing Castagnola Brothers, a fish-processing warehouse built in the 1920s. The rustic sign from the non-existent Divers Den hangs at the refurbished Municipal Winemakers, a reminder of the past where many, my sister among them,  took swimming lessons. I went with my grandfther to Roesers Feed & Mill to get feed for the chickens before it became The Feed Store restaurant, memorialized by the tall building at the ocean end of Gray Avenue, which now houses a gym and fitness center.

Everything changes. It's inevitable, as change is the only constant in the universe. Buildings go up, buildings come down. In between, they house different people, different business, different ideas. Moving forward, never back, waiting for the next iteration. Some day the Funk Zone will become something different, and another group of people will provide an altered perspective on the past and the present, remembering what used to be.

Wondrous Stories

I've written about radio shows now and again. Some have been there for years and we expect they always will remain. They become intertwined in the fabric of our reality. Like a companion, these familar voices on the radio, tell stories, keep me updated on their lives, their doings, their musings.

Then, one day, they are gone. The show is cancelled, the host retires, they pass away. In the words of Stuart McLean, we find ourselves "standing in the kitchen of our life, surrounded by the ones we love, and feeling empty, and alone, and sad, and lost for words, because one of our loved ones, who should be there, is missing."

Stuart passed away this week. A consumiate storyteller, beloved by Canadians and those of us who became Canadians when we listened to him, we hung on to his famaliar voice as it flowed effortlessly while the story was told, with pauses and inflections we came to expect and love. As the audience, we sat by, thoroughly involved in the telling. In the best radio tradition, a listener's imagination fills in all the blanks. Prose and masterful narration help us develop those spaces in between. 

I was one of the millions of listeners who tuned in weekly for whatever awaited us: eclectic music (much of which now fills my music library), The Story Exchange, the trials and tribulations of Dave (the owner of the world’s smallest record store…where the motto is “We May Not be Big But We are Small”), his wife Morley and his children Stephanie and Sam. I count myself fortunate to be among the thousands that saw The Vinyl Cafe live on stage, bringing all the radio magic to small venues.

Many of the stories were hilarous tellings of Dave’s antics, such as finding himself trapped in the sewers, riding a bicycle on top of a moving car, cooking a Christmas turkey or being mistaken for a patient when visiting a friend in the hospital. An equal amount were stories about memories and traditions, such as Dave remembering his father and passing that memory on to Sam, or Dave and Morley’s ninety-year old neighbour Eugene wanting to taste rosemary honey again, a flavor from his youth in Italy, or about the death of the family dog. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "Morte d'Arthur," but I do know I cry every time. I already know how it ends, but much like "Charlotte's Web" it still pulls at the heart each and every time. They are always good, healthy tears and I finish more happy then when I started.

Like many, when I read Stuart's words it is his voice I hear in my head. Some of my best writing also plays in my imagination with Stuart's voice, as I like to think it worthy of his reading it out loud.

"Dave...knew he had told them before. He knew what he was doing. You have to tell stories over and over. It is the creation of myth. The only road to immortality."

And so, we tell these stories again and again. Because, in the end, we're all stories.

I Will Not Take These Things For Granted

Flowers in the garden
The cool side of the pillow
Laughter in the hall
Hugs
Opposable thumbs
Children in the park
Having a good hair day
Music in the bedroom
Waking up before the alarm clock
Singing by the fire
Parents
Books
Running through the forest
The feeling of new socks
Standing in the wind
Making someone smile
Religious liberty
Free speech
Freedom
The first thing each of my ancestors saw when they came to the United States

Call Me

I found a cell phone while geocaching last week. Grass was growing up and around it, so the phone had been in place for at least a few days. Wet and non-responsive, I didn't try to charge it, knowing that water and electricity don't mix well. The next logical choice was to post to the lost and found section on Craiglist.

Found Samsung Phone

You…	I…
lost a Samsumg phone	found a Samsumg phone
want it back	want to give it to you
want to know if it still works	don't know; it is fully discharged and may be wet inside
need to identify it	want to make sure it belongs to you
must tell me the color of the case	know the color of the case
must tell me the carrier	know the carrier, since it is on the back of the phone
must tell me approximately where I found it	know where I found it
must have a good story as to how it was left where I found it	enjoy a good story
must tell me the story	will listen intently
must tell me the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow	know these things, you know.

You weren't expecting anything different from me, were you?

One person lost their phone at Wilmington Ave and 111th Street, at the crossroads of Watts and Imperial Gardens, which is in Los Angeles, a scant 105 miles from where I found ths phone. They were desperate (and admitted it), but it wasn't their phone.

Another told me she was a good wife and chauffeured her husband and three of his friends from bar to bar to celebrate one of their birthdays. Intoxication kicked in during the multiple stops at some local watering holes and her spouse lost his phone. She was able to provide information about swallows, including that "a 5 ounce bird cannot carry a one pound coconut." While I gave her exra points for complete answers, it wasn't her husband's phone.

A third explained he had lost his phone at the beach during a crazy surf trip led by his novice surfer girlfriend, her longtime friend visiting from out of town, his roommate and her boyfriend. In summary, a dog was rescued from the surf, a large set wave broke outside of the three surfing ladies and one was struck in the eye by her board requiring a hurried trip to the emergency room for five stitches to the brow, leaving our protagonist to clean up the beach, which is when the phone was misplaced. He wanted more specifics on the origin of the swallow ("would this be one of the many local North American swallows or one of the more exotic Eurasian or African varieties?) understanding the importance of the question. Unfortunately I didn't have his phone either.

After poking at the phone enough I realized it had a removable back cover, giving me access to a micro SD card that contained pictures, including one of a driver's license. I plan on taking the phone to the address on the license this weekend and hopefully complete its journey.

Who Wears These Shoes?

During my most recent trip to the Pacific Northwest I spent some time in Fred Meyer, because that's what PNW ex-pats do. Where else can you buy a loaf of fresh baked bread, a pair of jeans and parts to fix your toilet at 10:00 pm on any given night of the week. Freddy's is just that kind of store.

As I browsed the aisles I came upon the shoe department, and there they were: the plain black shoes I wore for years while living in the PWN. Not stylish, not fashionable and certainly not trendy, there were workhorse shoes that lasted a long time and took the abuse of walking indoors and out, in good weather and bad, all while still looking like they did when they came out of the box.

My best friend in Medford called them bus driver shoes, as they were what the school bus driver wore when we were kids. She wore them as well, another aspect of our shared history, sense of humor and fashion sense.

I picked up a box of the appropriate sized shoes and sat down to try them on. The fit like a glove, and I let out a small exclaim of happiness, finding a long lost friend and ensuring I would not need to shop elsewhere for shoes that might be trendy or fashionable. After all, us bus driver shoe wearers need to stick together.

Summer Wine

Let me tell you a story.

A story of friends, through thick and thin, through decades and distance, through love and life. We started together, added and subtracted from our number, and moved apart with the ebb and flow of careers, celebrations and circumstances.

A story of coming together more often than drifting apart. A story of parades and floats, of wine and festivals, of the elastic bond that keeps us together.

A story of tears and laughter.  A story of our personal time machines, where memories take us backward in time and dreams propel us forward.

This year, two events collide on one day. During the Soltice Parade, look for the TARDIS, complete with The Doctor atop the structure. If you have an extra bottle of water, find the small slit in the side about eye level and press the bottle through, and clap when it goes by.

Later that afternoon, we'll be enjoying the peacful surrounds of the Museum of Natural History, complete with wine and food. We will regale each other with stories of our lives since we last saw each other, catch up with our rapidly moving present and plan for the future that awaits us.

Once again I am fortunate to be one with the group: meeting at the appointed side street for final assembly, eventually making our way up State Street with the parade, then heading for Mission Canyon and an afternoon of more fun and companionship. As with last year, I can tell my compatriots in crime, my longest lasting friends, my past and future companions, that I love each and every one of them myself. 

Let me tell you a story. Because, in the end, we're all stories. And we are making it a good one.

Infinite Potential

The story of this house begins like most. At one point it was an empty piece of land at the edge of a rise. Above the reaches of a lagoon that filled with a combination of high tides and rain, it was a logical place to put a street, safe from the ravages of water. Eventually a house was built upon it the lot, but was lost to time, possibly a fire. It then became a large garden, providing an immigrant family with fresh vegetables.

Eventually another house rose on the site of the original, crafted by my grandfather and father. The first renters were family friends. When they moved out, my parents, with my sister and me in tow, moved in. We would walk to the market down the street for bread and submarine sandwiches and to the one around the corner for candy and ice cream during the summer. I see my grandfather's handiwork in things like a pocket door between two rooms where a conventional door would have always been in the way. I see the improvements my father made, such as removing a wall to make a more open kitchen.

Over the years it was a home full of stories, of joy and sadness, of history. Small in stature, it is bigger on the inside, holding memories enough for many lifetimes. It contains futures that were never lived, days that should have been that never were, an infinity of unlived days for every day we lived.

Much like where it started, the house is again a rental. We welcome a new family into our corner of the world, and hope they will be as happy there as my family had been.

The Door Into Summer

Summer Solstice is upon us again. While I miss the over 17 hours of daylight the longest day of the year afforded to us in Bellingham, I don't miss the lack of light at the conversely short Winter Solstice. Both in Santa Barbara, as Goldilocks would say, are just right.

Known by many names, such as Midsummer, St. John’s Eve and Litha, what matters most is the sun is at its full strength, which is traditionally a day to make wishes and then let them go. As I've said before, the parade is just that: a wish made on a summer day, visualized in may colors and dimensions, arising from the heart and soul.

The Summer Solstice parade in Santa Barbara is, on one hand, the most artistically creative event during the year. On the other, it is the most outrageous one as well. Every June, you you are invited to check your adulthood at the door and celebrate summer.

The heart of downtown Santa Barbara is transformed from the Spanish-style business district into an explosion of color and music filled with illusions and imagery, creativity on steroids, beating back the "June Gloom" that can envelope the area.

This year, look for a shuttle craft from Star Trek TOS complete with Spock atop the structure. If you have an extra bottle of water, find the small slit in the side about eye level and press the bottle through, and clap when it goes by.

Once again I am fortunate to be one with the float, meeting at the appointed side street and eventually making our way up State Street. As with last year, I can tell my compatriots in crime that love each and every one of them myself. 

Today, as with many days, we will go with the flow and let life take us where it chooses...

I Can See For Miles

The sunrise lit the sky on fire, shades of orange, red and crimson playing upon the blue of the sky and the white of the wispy clouds. It was a perfect backdrop for a Sunday morning of geocaching and I ascended into the mountains behind Santa Barbara in search of hidden treasures.

As it sometimes happens with geocaching, everything I tried to find was elusive, hiding itself from my peering eyes, coming up empty time and time again.  I continued to search, but to no avail.  I looked around to get my bearings and that's when I saw the directional sign for La Cumbre Peak.

As a teenager, La Cumbre Peak was a common destination. Sometimes we would drive the winding road in the darkness to beat the sunrise and watch it come over the mountains; in winter it was typically the closest snow to Santa Barbara, and while there wasn't much it served the purpose for snowballs and the occasional snow person.  Other times it was an escape from the June gloom, rising up and breaking through the fog, looking out onto an ocean of puffy white.

I took the road less traveled and headed up the winding road, remembering some of the curves like I had driven them yesterday.  The road to the peak itself was closed, so I walked the last quarter of a mile, heading to the top.  Not another person or vehicle in sight, I wandered along the potholed road among the pines, maples, manzanita and chaparral. I sat near the inactive fire lookout tower, closed since the early 1980s, void of windows and personnel.  I looked as far as the my eyes could take me; the view of the Channel Islands, Santa Barbara and Goleta, the Santa Ynez Mountains and Gibraltar Reservoir are breathtaking.

Aristotle said that memory is neither perception nor conception, but a state or affection of one of these, conditioned by lapse of time. Today, like all those years ago, I was as far away from home as I could be and yet still see the city of my birth, alone in the present, connected to the past and wondering what the future would bring.

Father And Son

It has been said that an era is truly known only when it is over.  The life of any individual, marked by its distinctive characters and events, may not make the history books, but it was significant nevertheless for those of us who lived it.

My father passed away the other day.  He is no longer burdened by his physical body and the limitations of age, having been freed from that vessel to be one with the universe.  A good friend of mine said he remembered my Dad as kind, warm and genuine; truer words were never said about him.

For my Dad, the act of living was about being the best person that he could be, having friends that loved and appreciated him, and loving his family more than anything that life had to offer him.

He taught me to fish, to select quality tools, and to just be thankful.

He always listened to people, never left anyone out and had a real passion for serving his community. This 
translated into years of volunteer service.  He was well known and respected in the local community, serving his employer, his heritage and his faith. 

He was a very caring and compassionate person, putting the needs of others before his own.  My father fulfilled obligations willingly; his word was his bond, and everyone knew it.

He was self-made and self-reliant. His skill with tools that could fashion wood, brick, tile, stone or cement allowed him to engage the world as a man who would mold these resources rather than be molded by them.

He has always been a constant in my life, giving me advice and encouraging me to be my best.  For that, and for more than I can ever remember and record, I will be eternally thankful.

As we pack up our emotions and memories, take another road to another place and write that next chapter, this finale is symbolic of how things change and evolve, how life goes on despite leaving things on the side of the road, how the future is now.

Today we celebrate the sacrifices he made to his commitment to making the world a better place.  Dad, you did good; you did real good.

Jim Tabacchi, December 16, 1937 - September 28, 2014

Summer Breeze

Daniel Defoe, in his 1726 book The Political History of the Devil, penned that the only constants in life are death and taxes. Some 2200 years before Defoe, Heraclitus of Ephesus, a Greek philosopher, was known for his doctrine of change being a constant in the universe.

The Earth is thought to have been formed about 4.6 billion years ago by collisions in the giant disc-shaped cloud of material that also formed the Sun. The solstices have been constants for this solar system longer than anything we can even imagine, the grand reminder that we are but travelers on this pale blue dot that circles the sun.
 
Astronomically, the summer solstice, more commonly known as the first day of summer, arrived today at 03:51 a.m. EDT, precisely what the Earth's axial tilt is most inclined toward the sun, at the degree of 23° 26', its most extreme.

Summer solstice is here. Once again, the heart of downtown Santa Barbara is transformed from the Spanish-style business district into an explosion of color and music filled with illusions and imagery, creativity on steroids, beating back the "June Gloom" that can envelope the area.

This year, look for a Monopoly hotel complete with Rich "Uncle" Pennybags atop the chimney. If you have an extra bottle of water, find the small slit in the side about eye level and press the bottle through, and clap when it goes by.

By the fates I have returned to the float fold, meeting at the appointed side street to assemble our entry and eventually make our way up State Street. This time, I can tell my compatriots in crime that love each and every one of them myself.  

Today, as with many days, my past meets my future, and I, much like the parade, will go with the flow.

My friends, we've come home.