Category: General

Driving home from work

General

Hey dad, want me to pick anything up for you on the way home?

Yes a pack of cigs

Just one?

Yeah I've got to go to savmor for meds tomorrow and I'll stock up

KK
Can do

I pulled out onto NE Fremont to make my way home. I knew the route. I’ve driven it daily, Monday through Friday, for several months now. My tiny piece of shit Accord wasn’t tall enough to see over the SUVs parked on the side of the road so I tried my best to see through their greenhouses, and took my best guess at an opening. Fremont is narrow here, lined with bars, shops, and coffee shops, and pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks. It was a cool, cloudy, warm summer day, the kind native Portlanders think of as normal warm weather.

Not for us, blue skies and hot temperatures. And I mean that we don’t like those days. Too hot. It needs to be a bit cooler so we can be active. Portlanders, by and large, are active. We run, we bike, we walk, and the rule of thumb I’ve learned is to dress for about 20 degrees warmer than it is, if you’re going to be active. 70-ish degrees is good. 50-ish degrees is better.

My car’s air conditioning has been broken all summer so I rolled the two front windows down, and cracked the back two, to get some air flowing past me. My phone played podcasts for me as I zoned out and drove automagically. David Chen, Jessie Earl, and Kim Renfro were discussing the House of the Dragons show, largely positively.

My senses perked up at the possible smell of burning oil. I should check the oil level soon, top it up if I need to. I wondered if my car would pass the DEQ test this year; I’d never had trouble before but the car is getting older and slowly falling apart slightly faster.

The drive home was mindless. I don’t remember any details specific to the drive, just the random images from every time I’ve ever driven this route. There’s the bar that looks like a great place for happy hour; laughing people with beers sitting on picnic tables outside. There’s the cheap gas station that always seemed busy. I passed the old empty sheriff’s building, surrounded by temporary chain-link fencing as it has been for months. What do they plan to do with that place, I wondered?

The organic produce market advertised Oregon strawberries but not marionberries. Marionberrys are, to me, the royalty of berries. Dark, tart, sweet, all in equal measure. They were developed at University of Oregon, and named for Marion County, a rural place far from the big small town of Portland. When I try to type “marionberries” on my phone, the autocorrect tries to make it Marion Berry, the former mayor of Washington D.C. who was caught in an FBI sting, I think. I should look that up at some point. Hey, I’m rambling here, don’t take this for fact.

I’m reasonably sure about the marionberries, though. I’m, like, 83% sure.

I pull into the Plaid Pantry parking lot, and wander the convenient aisles. OK, I’ll get some chocolate. Dad likes chocolate with almonds so I get a giant bar so I can split it with him. I wonder what the cashier thinks of an old white guy buying a pack of Marlboro Gold 100s and a giant chocolate bar. He seems friendly enough, though.

It’s another few blocks up the avenue until I can turn onto my street, then turn again into the parking lot. I slow down and take the transition into the lot at an angle to avoid scraping the bottom of my car on the hump. I back into my parking spot as I always do, for no particular reason, collect my things (laptop bag, cigs, candy bar), apply the Club to the steering wheel, take the faceplate off my head unit, unplug my phone and pull it out of the holder, and heave myself out of the car. My short legs, heavy weight, and armload of stuff make it a chore.

Front screen door was locked. I’d locked it this morning. Had dad not left the apartment all day? He does go outside to smoke but normally on the back porch so he could chat with Glasses, my next door neighbor, if she’s out there.

Home again, home again. Higgedy jig.

Unvaccinated, caffeinated

General

Dad was standing by the Starbucks counter. A tan Venti iced soy chai stood there; dad had the impatient look of someone waiting for their dose of caffeine. I walked up and picked up my soy chai.

“So… they don’t have any vaccines for us.” I nodded over my right shoulder toward the CVS counter. We were inside a Target store and in late early 21st Century America, brands exist inside other brands. It’s a nesting doll of brands, or layers of an onion. This Target is supporting a symbiotic CVS and a symbiotic Starbucks. I’m unsure if there were other brands dotted around the floor.

Dad gave me the grumpy side-eye that means he’s annoyed; not with me, with living in a world of corporate brands. “What?”

“Apparently there’s a newer Covid vaccine coming in September, so they don’t have any of the current vaccine.”

“Then why the fuck did they let us make an appointment?” The barista had placed dad’s dark iced mocha with whipped cream in front of him. He picked it up and fished a straw down the straw-hole.

“Yeah. That’s my question, too.” Next weekend I’m playing D&D with my friends in-person after two years of playing online through Discord, and the weekend after that I’m a volunteer at an art-tech festival called XOXO. I intended to get vaccinated because I don’t want to give, or get, the incredibly contagious disease that we’ve all decided is as normal as the weather.

Dad wandered over to a table. “Let’s grab a table for these.”

This was actually the second appointment I’d made, for me and dad, today. The earlier one, at a different CVS invasively inside a different Target, had been canceled almost as soon as I’d made it because, and I swear I am not making this up, the pharmacist said they had contracted Covid so were barred from giving vaccinations for Covid, or, really, anything, probably.

“He said it was a ‘bug in the system,” I said, laughing. “Except it’s not a bug in the system, it’s a human error. The computers don’t consult with the people.”

“They have to know if they have the shots in stock,” dad grumbled.

“Right!? They clearly have the ability to cancel an appointment. The other pharmacist did it.” I sipped my chai. “So annoying.”

Dad smiled. “I’d asked for an extra shot, and I overheard them mention an extra shot of chocolate syrup…”

His right hand twitched slightly on the table.

“Oh did you get the wrong order?”

“No, that’s what I’m saying. I got more chocolate.” His hand pointed at my drink. “Is that what you wanted?”

“Yup!” I sipped again.

Dad’s hand moved toward my drink. “You mind if I have a taste?”

I pushed it across the table at him. “Nope!”

His hand twitched again. I gently reached out and put my hand on top of his. His skin was papery, dry, warm. Dad looked puzzled at my hand, then at me.

“Do you notice that? I see your hand twitch sometimes.”

“Oh, no, sometimes.”

I felt empathy bloom inside me. I kept my face as neutral as I could but my heart ached to see his body, once strong, now failing, slowly, with age.

In the background, one of the baristas, short with blonde and black hair, was going on break. The other one, tall with black and blonde hair, was telling the first one to get something to eat.

Dad smiled after the sip, nodded. “That’s good!”

“It’s kind of sweet. Sometimes I add a shot of espresso, cuts the sweetness a bit. But it’s a good drink.”

I slurpped up the bottom of the cup with the straw. “Mom always hated that sound, but…”

“But how else are you going to get every last drop!” dad, laughing, finished my thought.

98 years since

General

Today was my mom’s birthday, although she isn’t around anymore to celebrate. She passed away in June of 2001 from lung cancer. Today marks the 98th year since her birth, an immeasurably long time. The years since she passed are also long but in a different way. My memories of her are fragmented. I see her in flashes, from many different situations.

The first memory that flashes up are of the most recent time I spoke to her. She was in her bed, and we were watching TV. I don’t remember what was playing. I just sat there on the bed next to her, holding her hand. I’d come over straight after work. The urge to spend as much time as possible with her was so strong, I felt guilty for going home that evening, and going to work.

Mom was still lucid. This was a few days before the hospice nurse had started upping her dose of morphine. Understandably mom was coughing, a lot. She was always thin and frail; we would tease her about her bird legs (it seems mean now but that’s how our family talked; just stating facts.) But with the cancerous cells choking off her ability to breath, replacing her good cells, she had shrunken even more.

We still had conversations, though. I did not, and do not, believe that any part of us survives death, so when death is on the line I know I need to be present. And, reader, death is nearly always on the line. I would ask mom about her favorite movies, or favorite songs. I’d ask her where she learned to cook. I’d ask about her dreams, and her regrets.

With hindsight it is easy to see that mom was almost certainly neurotypical, since my dad, my sister, and I am. At the time, however, I just knew that her personality had a mixture of crankyness and silliness in almost a two-to-one mixture. The crankiness never bothered me much; I tuned it out. It was just mom. It was never biting, not when she turned it toward me. But the silliness was special. She’d make an odd joke. Suddenly break into a huge grin. It was like being dazzled by an oncoming headlight after driving on a dark highway.

I can’t keep one image in mind; I see her as she was throughout my life. She’s young, dressed up in her best, and we’re going over to Aunt Phyllis’ house for the Hayner Family Christmas. All the cousins my age would hang out and find some side room to conspire, gossip, and play; the adults would wander around, or sit in the living room, and talk and laugh. My mom was one of 13 children, giving me plenty of uncles and aunts and cousins, so the house would be full of people, spilling out into the yard, the driveway, the backyard. Mom was the second-oldest and she wore her Oldest Sister role well, praising her siblings’ new jobs, or the food they’d brought to the potluck. I can see her sitting on the couch, cigarette held like a magic wand, wreathed in nicotine smoke.

I swear, these are the good memories. Maybe I’m not explaining myself well?

I wanted this post to be full of stories but this draft appears to just be me reminiscing. I do miss mom. I wonder how she’d react to things today. Happy birthday, mom. The world is lesser without you in it.

A stream-of-consciousness prayer

General

Getting started is almost always the hardest part. I am certain I’ve said that on this blog before. I’ve said it before because it’s true, at least for me and the way my brain works. Once I get going in earnest on a task, distractions fade away. Honestly I only get distracted when I don’t have an interesting or urgent project I am working on. My attention span is all or nothing, it seems.

If I am distracted, in a distractable state, I bounce between sources of that sweet sweet dopamine; music, games, social media, around and around I go. If there’s something I should be working on that does not immediately fit into the categories of interesting or urgent, and I’m able to muster a shred of duty, engaging my executive function feels like I am dragging a recalcitrant dog on a leash toward home.

Right now, as I write this, I’m having to pull that pup hard. On one screen I have this app into which I am tapping out words. On the left screen I have a video going, just to have another human voice as background. The video is of Jawoodle, a YouTuber, playing my current obsession, 7 Days to Die, the zombie horror survival multiplayer online crafting game. Did I squeeze in anough descriptors to that?

I really enjoy that game. Jawoodle is Australian and his boisterous and friendly voice is fun to listen to. And I don’t need to pay close attention. He can ramble as he wanders the wasteland and if something amazing happens I can turn away from my writing, and rewind to watch.

Something amazing might be a close call with zombies, some choice piece of loot, or an interesting new place to raid. I need to write but my eyes and attention wander over to the left to stop and watch the moving pictures. Come on, pup, we need to get back to the task at hand. I know you don’t want to, but we have to. As much as I’d love to let you have a free run, I have a streak to keep going. Gotta keep writing.

Nope, lost focus briefly. Jawoodle found a bunch of legendary parts in a clothing store; I zoned out to his count and joy. This dog (my brain) wants to hunt (do nothing at all). I am burning all my attention fuel trying to keep writing this post. I think I was going somewhere with all this but the light at the end of the tunnel is fading. I’m writing but I feel lost in the darkness. My feet feel the train tracks but my eyes are useless in this pitch black.

The ending is coming up soon. Is my stream of consciousness writing lately at all of interest? As I’ve said before, I’m just putting in the time, building the habit, so that when inspiration and the muse find me again, I am ready to receive the blessings. My writing these days is more like a prayer. A hope for a better day when I am able to turn my interior feelings into words that can transmit those feelings to another person. That’s you, the reader. Hope you stay tuned.

Write and see

General

Even though I’ve been posting daily, my normal at-least-500-words post, I haven’t been writing daily. Not for the whole weekend. I posted stories I had already written for other things. Which is fine, the idea is to steadily increase my posting streak. But my other commitment, that I must write daily, has become a little rusty. So here I go, showing up again, trying to write and get back into the habit.

Two days might not seem long enough to fall out of a habit but I can feel the resistance to writing building up even in that short of a time. The main reason I stopped writing is because of the complaint I always start out with: “I don’t have anything to write about.” Look back over this blog, over the recent long streak, or even farther back, and you will see me write over and over again, I don’t know what to write about, nearly always in the first paragraph of a post longer than the 500 word goal.

And sometimes those posts are about something real. If I just sit down and start writing, I can pull out the most amazing interior feelings and turn them into a story or a thoughtful ramble with a point to make. The complaint shouldn’t be “I don’t have anything to write about”, it should be “I don’t want to start writing.” Because just the act of starting will almost alwasy transition into real writing. I just have to begin and the charge, the flow, the creativity, will flow from whereever it exists in my body and mind and animate my fingers into touch-typing out and filling my screen with an interesting post.

Interesting to me, anyway. I am as much a witness and reader of this blog as I am a writer and creator. I don’t always know where an idea will go if I just sit back, open the tap, and follow the path that opens up before me.

I’m still going but this doesn’t feel like one of those posts. Not yet. I’m three-fifths of the way to my goal and it doesn’t feel profound. That’s fine, that’s okay. I just have to show up. There are several posts on this blog about that, too. Showing up is the most important part. I need to write even when I think I have nothing to say. I need to write just to see. I need to demonstrate to myself that I don’t have to censor myself. I can draft, I can free-form. It’s all good and valid.

Maybe this isn’t the best for SEO or traffic. I don’t really care about that. I can tell that about 80-100 of you stop by every week to see what’s here. I can tell you read the most recent posts but you also poke around in the backlog. I don’t see a lot of search engine traffic so I can only assume you’re here because you like what I write, or you like me. We have a connection, reader, you and I. And I appreciate that so much. More than I can express. Thank you.

The pause is over, back to writing regularly.

The only last day of July 2024 I’ll get

General

Content warning: philosophical thoughts about the end of life

It is the last day in July as I write this. The sun is sinking in the sky, and it looks like there’s some color to the sunset; the tree tops I can see from my office window are the bright green of summer but tinged with orange. If I were more concerned with beauty and aesthetics I’d get up, go outside, and watch the sunset. Who knows when the next one will be? We are never promised more than this moment, no matter how much we wish for more tomorrows. This could be the final moment, the last sunset, the final day.

Intellectually I understand that. Though like many people, most people I think, I have to redirect my attention to the idea that my end will happen, ain’t no two ways about it. My brain doesn’t like to think about it; it requires effort to bring it to mind. I have to push the idea into frame. OK, sorry, I know these metaphors are all over the place; this is a first draft. I would shape these metaphors and images better if I allowed myself a second draft.

Funny how I tried to write about being in the moment and facing death and somehow, my brain slid the idea of second chances into the conversation. Hey, my mind says to me, as if it were a separate person, what about trying again? Taking a mulligan, starting over? Re-writing what was already written, polishing it, making it shine. Cutting out the boring bits, adding new exciting bits. Tightening up the flow of ideas. Making the whole into a cohesive story. Beginning, middle, end, amen.

I would say to my mind, ain’t no such thing as second chances when it comes to life. I get this moment, and this next one, and the next one, until I get no more moments at all. I can’t go back and do one over again. I can worry about past moments, and future moments, but all the worry in the world won’t change what happened and won’t make something new happen. Once we’ve acted, the results stand; and only actions can change the outcome of the arrow of time.

So this is the first 31st of July in 2024 that I’ve ever had, and it will be the last one. There are only possible, potential future 31sts of July from here on out. Where will I be, assuming I make it to those future 31sts of July? Will I be the same person? Will the world be much the same, just one year farther along? Or will it all change? I don’t know, and if someone else tells you that they know, reader, they are lying to you.

What do I want future Brian to know about this particular day? Future Brian, today was a good day at work. My coworkers are kind and thoughtful; Andy, knowing I would have to work through my lunch, offered me a granola bar from his stash so I would have a snack to tide me over. Hunter typed a message to me in Teams so sarcastic it made me laugh out loud. Jim gave me praise for how I handle tough calls at work in front of everyone else.

My dad offered me ice cream tonight; he stopped at the Dairy Queen on his walk back from the bar.

Tracy, ever present, kept me company by text, as always. A comforting electronic presence.

My friend Christi needed help, and I could help her, so of course I did. I know that if the situation were reversed, she would help me, no questions asked.

And the sunset was pretty, even the small part of it I could see.

I finished my ice cream (Cherry Bordeaux), I finished this post, and I know that I did my best today.

Overdeveloped Danger Sense

General

The only thing keeping me awake right now is the need to keep my streak of posting at least 500 words every day to my blog. I’d have to check when this particular streak started but it’s been a couple of months, if I could hazard a guess. I’m not going to stop writing to go check, though, because the main thing right now is momentum. Just gotta keep going. I’ll insert a sentence as an update at the end when this run began, and won’t count it toward my 500 words for the post.1

The reason I’m so sleepy is, and head’s up this is about body functions, my stomach has been mad at me since about 3 AM this morning. I woke up with a pain in the right side of my abdomen which immediately made me think my appendix was about to burst because my mind, like many minds, drifts toward disaster. I come from a long line of creatures who were able to survive long enough to breed by avoiding death and serious injury. I am sadly going to be the last of that line, not because I don’t avoid death and serious injury, but because despite many opportunities, I have not bred. There will be no generation after me.

I have no comment on the rightness or wrongness of that. Just a fact. I’m just stating a fact.

Unfortunately that just leaves me with avoiding danger, which is then turned into seeing danger around me at all times, which leads to lots of “That’s dangerous and you’re gonna die!” false positives. Like immediately thinking that pain in the vague area of my right side is an inflamed, infected appendix that is going to burst and kill me before I can get myself to emergency care.

I got out of bed long enough to stumble into the bathroom, where I did what ever I could think of to clear the pain from my stomach. While also googling the symptoms of appendicitis. Quite the relief to find out that appendicitis pain is lower down, more near the top of the hip. Aha, it wasn’t a killer vestigial organ, it was just, wow, a really sharp pain that makes it hard to take a deep breath. What the Hell is going on down there?

I’ve had this pain before, and in the past, after ruling out the worst case scenario of appedicitis, made me think it was that condition where a pit in the intestine becomes infected and explodes and causes the person with the condition to die. Lots of ways to die. Or maybe that’s just what my ancestors are telling me.

I took some pain meds (ibuprofren) and drank some water and went back to bed. When I woke up it was morning and a half-hour until my alarm was supposed to go off. I got up, took my temperature (no fever), got a shower, made and drank some coffee, and decided to go to work anyway. I figured it was a stomach thing not something contagious.

Work was distracting enough that I hardly noticed the pain most of the day. I even felt productive. I was honest about the way I felt to my coworkers and they were OK with me being there. I ate a salad for lunch because by that time I had decided this was a thing I could fix with fiber.

The fiber worked. By quitting time, I was about 80% better. I treated myself to a raspberry shake from Burgerville (because solid food still didn’t sound like fun) when dad wanted me to bring him a burger and fries for dinner, and now I’m ready to go to bed.

  1. My Day One post that started my current streak was posted on 2 April 2024, 113 days ago. ↩︎

Mercury has Astroglide

General

Yesterday I was anxious, cranky, brittle. I had an idea why, and I did my best to not let it affect me or the people around me, although I may have telegraphed that and might have come close to the line or crossed it one or two times, and I did apologize to them for that. But it was a knot in my chest, a scribbled black cloud in my brain. I couldn’t escape it. I could only acknowledge it and move on.

This morning, I woke up and… that chaos had shifted. I was still janky, I was still anxious. My nerves were dancing like beads of water on a hot skillet. But it was… laughing. The negative scratches in my head had flipped and become positive giggles. What had changed overnight? There’s no way to tell. A manic, must-take-action devil had perched itself on my shoulder, urging me to action.

I channeled that feeling into Doing Projects™.

Before dad moved in my Kona Smoke 2-9 lived downstairs, leaned against the wall in the pathway from living room to kitchen/back door. It was in plain sight but out of the way, unless I needed to put something in the closet it blocked, which was rare. I put nothing important in that closet because it was blocked. QED.

When dad moved in, though, because of his mobility issues, I moved the bike upstairs to my computer room, my office. There wasn’t a good spot for it, so it leaned against my second desk, making that desk essentially useless. I used that desk for drawing and other projects; my computer desk is smaller and only big enough for my computer and the monitors. As long as I can get to the compute desk, things are OK.

Today, the gremlin inside me seized on getting that desk clear and finding a good spot for the bike, one that would be out of the way but still visible, so I don’t forget about it and maybe am encouraged to ride it again. Probably when the summer heat goes away, aye? Also, clearing that desk means when I start working from home I’ll be able to put my work computer there instead of working downstairs on the dining room table, or perched awkwardly on my computer desk.

A hook. I needed a hook, from which to hang the bike. There were a few good locations, a couple in the computer room, one or two downstairs, that would be perfect. Except I needed to make sure any hook I put up would be going into a stud.

My dad has always been handy; men of his generation nearly always were. So I asked him for advice. He suggested that a stud-finder is the best way to do that. So I went to the hardware store with my dad on a Sunday, which is a whole thing. At the store, we bought: the hook, the stud-finder, a replacement three-way LED light bulb for the downstairs lamp, a magnetic knife rack so I can finally get my knives out of the silverware drawer, and a whetstone for the knives.

The project list was a short one but I did every one. The manic pixie dream devil on my shoulder was appeased. Still don’t know where the energy had come from. Mercury must have Astroglide or somethin’.

Showing up

General

Here are some words so I can meet my daily goal of one post of at least 500 words. I’ve got a lot of feelings in my head and heart tonight but I am not in the mood to share so let’s see what else I can find to ramble about.

Kinda tired of the heat but as we all know, every summer is going to be hotter than the previous summer until the elites decide to stop killing the rest of us with their excess and hoarding. Or until we force them to pay attention. We do have the numbers, and they can’t actually get and stay rich if we were all united, I’m just sayin’. A little organization among us would go a long way toward making the world a better place.

I did manage to go out for a walk before the hot hot heat kicked in. I haven’t been closing my rings as much lately, pretty much exactly because of the heat and also my awesome new job which takes up a lot of my time and attention. Now that it’s the weekend, I just want to play my silly video games, work on my D&D game a bit, and not think about the world falling apart. Clearly I’m failing at that last goal. What can you do, aye?

As mentioned in my last post I do want to get a pet, a cat most likely. I think things are going to be stable enough that I can worry about someone not myself for a bit, and a cat would present just the right mixture of needs-attention and can-take-care-of-itself-sometimes, unlike, say, a dog, which to me feels a bit more dependent on direct attention. Dogs require excercise and walks and cleaning up their poop, where cats have the instincts to poop in one place, making cleanup a bit easier.

I have been drinking plenty of water, so that’s good. My calorie intake has been a bit high, and I’m not getting nearly enough fiber and protein, so I could be doing better in that regard. I will work on that one.

While dad was out on his dinner date, I went downstairs, took out the trash and the recycling, and mopped the kitchen floor. It was getting a little sticky, but it’s not anymore. Did you know that you can just use white vinegar to mop linoleum or whatever cheap apartments have for kitchen flooring? I added one cup of white vinegar to two gallons of hot water, and it worked like a charm. Once it dried you can’t even smell the vinegar, not that there was a lot to begin with.

Just need another fifty words. Good thing I allow myself to write out my thoughts. The whole point is to reach the goal, not make every post godsdamned poetic and perfect. These are the first drafts. I’m practicing showing up, not allowing my perfectionism to trip me up, y’know? I’m doing the best I can here.

Dreaming big

General

Bought a lottery ticket tonight. My usual, an Oregon Megabucks Quick-Pick, plus Kicker, for two dollars. I don’t have specific numbers I play, I just let the random machine pick the numbers for me, just like the random machine is going to pick the winning numbers. Adding the Kicker for a dollar more means that the ticket will win on 3 or more matching numbers, and if I get 4 or 5 winning numbers, the prize amount is more.

Screenshot of that annoying guy in Fallout New Vegas that yells about winning the lottery. Dark hair, glasses, punchable face, tattered clothing. The caption reads "Yeah! Who won the lottery? I did!" but the caption does not do justice to just how annoying this guy sounds yelling it, especially because it's outside Nipton which is on fire and devastated by Caesar's Legion. Everyone hates this guy.
Don’t be this guy. No one likes this guy.

I’ve written about buying lottery tickets before. If you do a search in the search thingy over to the left, you’ll find a lot of posts with the word “lottery” in them, and many of them are about buying a ticket. I almost never win, and by “almost never” I mean I’ve won a small amount (under a couple of hundred dollars) maybe 4 or 5 times in the decades I’ve been buying tickets. But I still play, because the idea of winning is enjoyable all by itself.

I buy the tickets and then I don’t check them, because I have a story that I play out in my head. The story goes, I forget about the ticket for weeks, and build up a stack of them, and then decide to work through the stack and see if any have won. And in the story, one of them does come back as a big winner. The whole enchilada. Millions of dollars with very little effort. And in the story, my delight at knowing that this battered piece of paper, that’s been sitting on my desk or in my glove compartment or tucked into my wallet, has been worth so much money this whole time.

I know it’s a strange story but somehow, the idea that I could have ignored it for a long time until the ticket expires and it’s no longer redeemable, but that I didn’t, I didn’t forget about it, is delicious to me. That imaginary satisfaction feels greater than the idea of actually having millions of dollars without having to trade thousands of hours of labor for it.

If I won

But then the next stage of the story kicks in. What would I do with that money? What do I really really want, if money was no object? Friends, lean in close, because when I dream, I dream big.

I want a roof over my head, a comfy bed to sleep in. I want to be warm in the winter, and cool in the summer. I want healthcare whenever I need it, without having to worry about how I will pay for it, without worrying about the United State’s innovation known as “medical bankruptcy.” I want clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and delicious food that won’t kill me faster than the healthy rate of dying. That’s it. That’s what I want.

Once I have that, I want to make sure that my family and close friends have all that, too, if I have any money left over.

If I have any money left over after that, I want to put that money into steering society in the direction of everyone having all those things. If I have to do it the hard way, one person at a time, that will have to do, but depending on how much money I have left over, I’d like to put systems in place to do that on as big a scale as possible. Neighborhood, city, state, nation. I would at least have time and energy to make a plan and work towards it, maybe get others to work with me. Assuming I had left over money.

If I’m doing that, and there’s any money left over at all, I want to see as much of this beautiful world as I can before my life comes to it’s end, but mostly I want to see a baseball game in every major league park. I want to drive on Blue Highways, listening to pleasant music, and at the end of my drive I want to eat local food, talk to local people, and listen to local bands. But that’s a lower priority.

What would you do if you won the jackpot? I’d love to hear it.