Category: General

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.

Weekend Wrapup

General

Winding down for the evening. Don’t have any one thing in particular to write about. Just a handful of topics, things on my mind, tasks I completed and tasks I’ll complete in the coming weeks.

My Kona Smoke 2-9 bike is 16 years old this weekend. I’ve had it a long time and I have put many miles on it. Not so much lately; no, now it sits in my computer room, propped up against a table, its tires flat and its cables and gears loose and unmaintained. I bought it and rode it in the World Naked Bike Ride in 2008, and several years after that. Is that still a thing? For almost two weeks I rode it 26 miles round trip to and from my apartment in Sellwood to my call center job in Fairview, in the middle of the summer, until I was able to buy a cheap car from my cousin. And there were many many pleasant rides up and down the Springwater Corridor Trail, spring, summer, and winter.

It’s a good bike. I should definitely get back on it. They say you never forget how to ride one. That’s what they say.

This weekend I spent mostly doing chores like grocery shopping and laundry, and many hours in The Long Dark. I’m trying to get the final achievement (for me) in the game: suriving 500 days in-game on one save. I’ve done all the story bits one can do, the DLC stuff, I’ve already been to every map, so now I have to make my own goals to keep going. My plan is to stock up regional bases all over the island. That should eat up some time.

Every base will have 100 pounds of meat; 5-10 gallons of water; basic first aid – bandages, antibiotics, disinfectant; one of every kind of tool – knife, hacksaw, hatchet, prybar; matches; some crafting materials for repairs; at least one cooking pot; and some source of Vitamin C to prevent or cure scurvy. Plus whatever else I think of. I can come up with a more detailed list but that’s the basics. I’m doing this all on Voyageur because I am not a masochist. I like the chill vibes of the standard level of difficulty.

I’ve set up a base in Forsaken Airfield at the Hangar, another one at the Train Depot in the Transfer Pass; and one at the Maintenance Shed in Broken Railroad. I’m currently at the Camp Office in Mystery Lake. It’s about day 330? Future bases will be in Milton, Pleasant Valley, Timberwolf Mountain, and Coastal Highway. I’m being sadly efficient and might have to come up with another goal after I’ve done this one because it’s going faster than I expected.

Other fun stuff I did this weekend included plotting for my D&D game. I have a good plan for how to handle the next session but I have no idea where the story is going to go after that. That’s how I like it, though. I don’t plan out long arcs, I just take what the players want to do and set goals and obstacles in front of them. Works well for me.

That’s a good weekend, right? That’s enough? I sure hope so.

Iced Coffee Kick-In

General

Such weird dreams last night again. Must be the heat that’s making them so vivid. I’ve got a window-mounted air conditioner in my bedroom. It’s the good kind, which is the kind that hangs on the windowsill and has part of it outside; here, let Technology Connections explain it for you, they’re great at that and you should watch them.

Anyway, even with the AC running in my bedroom, it doesn’t get much cooler than 75°F in there. When I woke up this morning, it was 64°F outside, a full 10 degrees cooler. I’d complain, but when the heat of the day rolls around, I’m happy it isn’t 100 freaking degrees in my bedroom because that would be unlivably hot.

My dreams were centered around Star Wars tattoos (not mine), work, bad authoritarianism, the ignorance of crowds, and petty theft. Also friendship? Lots of weird themes in there. I’m not going to relate the events of the dreams because on waking, they don’t really flow together well. In the dreams, of course, since it’s all a stew of feelings and impressions, it felt like it was one continous story.

Even though the themes I mentioned feel heavy, for the most part I was not anxious, I was happy and felt connected to those closest to me in the dream. It only got scary and tense during the theft part, but since it felt like my own fault for tempting danger I couldn’t be too hard on myself. But up to that point I was the one who was righteous and I knew what I was doing. I was encouraging the community to be better, which is a personal goal in real life, too. Well, once I’ve built community, I mean. After I have a community, after I have connected with my neighbors, I will encourage them to be better as much as I can.

Now I’m sitting at my computer tapping on my keyboard trying to come up with something interesting to say for 500 words or so. I have some great stories from yesterday evening but I’m saving those for when I have more time to put into them. Don’t want to rush through those.

Because of the heat I have made cold brewed coffee instead of hot brewed coffee this morning. It’s a nice treat and the flavor turned out mild and rich. Waiting for the coffee to kick in. Any second now, coffee. I need your brain-rejuvenating power today. It’s not kicking in yet. I hope it’s just a bit slow today.

I’ve been trying to include pictures with as many of my posts as I can, either something I personally took or a good royalty-free stock photo. Can’t really tell if the posts with pictures do “better” in terms of page views than ones without. Even if there’s a difference, my page views are low enough that the difference would be single digits, and who can tell if that’s significant or random noise? Not I. I may favor the scientific method but I am no statistician.

Ah well, coffee-kick-in or not, time to go to work. Have a great day, readers. I treasure every one of you. Thank you for stopping by.

Heated dreams

General

As I write this, it’s 6:17 AM on Tuesday, and my apartment is warmer inside (about 81°F) than the air temperature outside (65°F). My little window air conditioner unit started out OK but has been struggling to keep up with the sustained 90°F and up days. I’ve got my windows open and fans blowing air outside to try to move some of the heat out. That’s how it works, right? If nothing else, the cooler air from outside feels nice for now.

Woke up in a sweat about an hour ago, which is about 45 minutes before my alarm would go off. My dreams were about group activities; sports, for one thing, specifically, football. And it was some odd mixture of American football and what Americans call soccer; sometimes the ball was an egg-shape and sometimes it was a sphere. And nobody on the field had protective gear, just loose clothing, because it was a casual game for fun, not a professional game for money.

The funny bit was, I kept having the most incredible luck. I’d just be walking across the field and the ball would bounce off me, blocking a goal. Or I’d find myself near the ball, in position to kick it away and toward someone else on my team. I wasn’t planning any of this. There was no mastery of the applied physics and geometry that someone who is good at sports would have; just me, wandering around like a chubby old guy, getting in the way in exactly the right time and place to make something good happen.

If dreams are metaphors, what is my brain telling me? My dreams, my most vivid ones, are soaked in emotion. For a long time the emotions I felt the most when I was unconscious were anxiety, fear, doubt. This dream was much lighter in tone. I was surprised and delighted whenever I managed to complete or assist with a play or a goal. I was a little nervous when the opposing team targeted me, but I was able to win them over with a joke.

I do remember a little tension around what I should have been doing. Maybe I wandered into this game to avoid something else? Yeah, OK, that tracks. But am I creating a new plot line now, or am I honestly remembering a plot line from my subconscious mind an hour or more ago? Hard to say.

I am feeling anxiety now that I’m awake, though. I worry that today is the day the 100°F weather is going to make my apartment too hot for my dad. I have to go to work, where the office has air conditioning, but dad has to stay here, with my meagre mitigations for the oncoming Fire Season. But the forecast shows that cooling temperatures are on the way. This doesn’t appear to be a Heat Dome situation, or maybe it is but it’s reaching its end. One can only hope.

There’s a small bit of anxiety about work, too. I worry that I can do this job. It’s a good job, great team of people, doing good things for the community. I couldn’t ask for much more. My self-doubt, though, might trip me up. Don’t want to get in my own way, y’know?

Personal Finance (is a pain in the ass)

General

I try to keep track of my money, and make sure that income equals or exceeds spending. I know that sounds like a basic adulting skill, but I have to tell you, the way my brain works, if I don’t track these things regularly and in as much detail as possible, I quickly get underwater and in dire trouble. There are surely as many ways of managing money as there are people on the planet. But I have to make, update, and adjust a list that shows what I’ve got now, what bills are upcoming and what income I can plan on, and a rolling prediction of how much money I’ll have left over.

Close up of a spiral-bound paper notebook. The pages are covered in a square grid of lines. A crumpled up page sits on top of the open notebook, and a pencil, its eraser worn and the end covered in bite marks, rest on the page.
I used to budget the old-fashioned way, on paper with a pencil.

Right now I keep a Google spreadsheet. It has one tab per calendar year, with seven columns, left to right: Date (of transaction); Income; Due; Current; Payee; Paid; and Notes. Every month I paste in that month’s bills and expected income; and I drag down the formula that takes the balance, adds the income for that date, subtracts the bill for that date, and shows what I have left over for that date.

I’ve tried other budgeting software. To me, most of them are focused on the past and the current. They don’t let me look foward. So I developed this approach. I was actually re-creating a web app known as Quicken Online. In 2007, it was great because it could pull in bank information so the users didn’t have to manually enter everything. We could add in ongoing and future payments. I loved it. Then it merged with Mint.com (not the current cell phone company, a budgeting web app) and all the features I loved went away. It was a sad day.

Having a web app was great because I could log in anywhere that had an internet connection and see the same data. You think that’s boring, but it was not a standard feature in 2006, let me tell you. And when I got an iPhone in 2007, I could carry that information around in my pocket. Transformative, for me, at least. So that’s why I love my Google spreadsheet; it’s available whereever I have an internet connection, which is 98% of my life.

Prior to that, I used a system that I had learned from a book that I read in the mid-1990s, “How to Get Out Of Debt, Stay Out Of Debt, and Live Prosperously“, a ponderous title for a self-help book. The author, Jerrold Mundis, basically applied the 12-step program to money and debt. I didn’t care for the philosophical elements but the practical elements of tracking spending worked very well for me, as long as I stuck with it. My master list of monthly expenses were kept in a notebook, and I carried a smaller notebook with me where I wrote down everything I bought, and then at the end of every day I added it all up. I began keeping receipts, shoving them in my wallet for later accounting. And I liked knowing what I had left, even if it was going to be negative.

That’s an important point: I track my spending even when I know it’s going to result in a negative balance. Sure, sometimes I get anxiety and feel like I don’t want to know. That urge to ignore it was stronger in the past than it is now. I view it as what it is: a number without any inherent meaning beyond a cash balance. It doesn’t define me as a person. It’s a resource that sometimes I have more or less of. I don’t always find it easy to do the addition and subtraction necessary to get that number, but I do it, and I do it often enough that I can use it to adjust things.

Or to ask for help if I need it. Learning that was also a hard lesson but it is habit now. My friends and family want to help if they can. Hey, maybe I did learn the philosophical parts of that book, after all?

Ain’t no sunshine

General

“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, and this house just ain’t no home, any time she’s gone away.” – Bill Withers, 1971

Been writing heavy stuff lately but that’s not sustainable. Gotta find some joy in the world, y’know? The world is beautiful. People are good. They want connection and happiness.

So where am I finding joy these days? That’s a very good question. I started this post a half hour ago, and then felt like I hit a wall. I couldn’t figure out how to continue. I texted Tracy and mentioned this to her, and she asked me, “Have you made a list of things you find happy and joyful, yet?”

I hadn’t. Something is holding me back. Maybe the blockage is the fear that I’ll look silly? So be it, let’s see what comes out of me if I allow myself to look silly.

Walking

I like walking. I like moving my body around under my own power. At one point in my life I could run, and that felt great. I was never fast enough for the Olympics, but I could move and keep moving for miles and miles. And then I hurt myself, and I couldn’t do that without pain, so I stopped. I stopped running, I stopped walking, I stopped exercising. It got to the point where if I did go for a walk, I’d be out of breath.

Then I got an Apple Watch and it helped me track my movement, and in tracking that movement, and tracking my breathing and my heart rate, it gave me a measurement. And once I had metrics for what shape I was in, I could try to improve those metrics. I could bend the curve toward more movement, with less pain and stress, over greater and greater time and distance. So that now, when I walk, I can walk slow or fast (though still a walk, not a run) and I don’t catch my breath, and my heart rate stays at a moderate level, and I don’t cause myself pain in the movement or after.

I can walk, and take joy in it. A simple feeling. I’m moving, and my body is working as it should.

Friendship

A lot of words to find some joy. Is there anything else lately? My friends and family. Tracy, for one. She has been my closest friend for decades now. She and I are no longer the people we were when we first met; we have both changed and adapted and grown, but our friendship has never faltered. We understand each other. I get her, who she is, right now, even though I remember the many different people she’s been. And I feel like she gets me, too. It’s a simple joy in being known and understood.

When something happens to me, good or bad, Tracy is the first person I think “I’ve got to tell her about that.” There are others in my life I connect with, friends and family alike. But I can single out my friendship with Tracy for being built, carefully, on years of shared experiences, years of honesty and vulnerability, and genuine curiosity and trust. It’s joyful, and it gives me the skills I need to help build stronger friendships with everyone else in my life.

One more thing

You know what? I’ll finish this woefully inadequate list with a third thing, one that I have been demonstrating to myself even as I think I can’t see anything joyful. Writing. Putting together words to express my wordless feelings is joyful. Using bits of language to describe a scene, or a person, or a feeling, this brings me joy. When I can move myself past the anxiety of “not having anything to write about” I can always, always, every fucking time, write about something. It’s not a gift, it’s a skill I’ve taught myself over the span of my nearly six decades on this fucking rock.

There aren’t many of you out there reading this, but I know that you are out there, reading it. And I’d like you to know that writing this out, writing anything out, gives me joy. Thank you for helping me express it.

That whole Monday thing

General

Monday morning. Woke up several times before my alarm went off today. Woke up at 4:30ish, 5:00ish, 5:30ish, and 5:45ish AM; alarm is set for 6:00 AM. Rolled out of bed with 6 minutes still on the clock. Not anxious, not sleepy, just ready to start the day.

Close up of the author, a bald middle aged white guy wearing black framed glasses. He's shaved today. He's holding up a BB-8 shaped coffee mug. Behind him, yellow curtains are backlit by the sunshine outside. Some framed and unframed prints hang on the wall next to the window.
Good morning, let’s get the week started.

Couldn’t tell if dad was awake downstairs or not so I creeped around quietly upstairs anyway. Weighed myseslf (about the same as always), got a shower. Had to shave and because I had let the beard grow out a bit over the course of 3-4 days, had to go carefully to avoid cutting myself, which I did, successfully. All good, all good.

Most of my work shirts were hanging up downstairs in the laundry closet, so I just put on pants and a t-shirt and went down to see if they had dried since yesterday. Dad was still asleep so I made coffee. Shirts were still damp in places, dammit all. Went back upstairs and found a slightly-snug collared shirt I could wear. It’s long sleeved, and the weather app on my wrist says it’s going to hit 80°F today, but I’ll be inside in air conditioning almost the enitre day so it should be fine. Should be fine, I say, shaking a mental fist at the weather gods.

Back downstairs wearing my work clothes. Dad was just waking up. Wished him a good morning, made small talk about the weather. He was bleary-eyed and still coming around. I grabbed a cherry turnover. I mixed up my coffee drink (2 ounces of chai concentrate, 2 ounces of half-and-half, 2 tablespoons of chocolate syrup on top of 12-15 ounces of brewed coffee) but I mispoured and got 3 ounces of chai, so I added a little more half-and-half to balance it out. The mug is stting here on my desk while I write this out, little BB-8 keeping it warm for me. I haven’t even tasted it yet. I did eat the turnover, though.

I like having these little moments in the morning. I did not always. This morning thing is new, maybe just in the last 5-10 years. Hard to believe something that happened in the last decade can be new; little 12 year old me is astonished, naieve little kid that he is. It’s OK, buddy, we’ve got a few more decades left in us yet. It’s going to be OK.

Just took a sip of the coffee and the chai is a bit overpowering in terms of flavor. It’s fine. It’s just a caffeine injection for me, to help me wake up and face the day. I have been probing myself for anxiety regarding work and I find that I’m OK with going in. Just the normal amount of anti-capitalism don’t wanna going on, not the stomach churning anxiety of fear.

Does that sound like I am damning the job with faint praise? Maybe it is but I consider it a win. I have to work if I want to keep sleeping under a roof and have access to health care but as far as jobs go, this one that I’ve found is not bad. And that’s good. I can live with it.

Half-birthdays should be A Thing™

General

Today is my half-birthday. I’ve been trying to make that A Thing™ for a long time. My friends and family haven’t taken to the idea, however. I’m sure they have their reasons, considering they haven’t celebrated my, or anyone’s, half-birthday for 5 decades, so I forgive them. I would still love to make today, the 28th of June, the day I celebrate my birth, for one major reason.

One way to celebrate a half-birthday: cupcake!

If you’ve mentally done the math you can immediately see the problem, right? Six months from today in either direction lands on the 28th of December, and having a birthday on that date just sucks. It’s smack dab in the wasteland between two major winter holidays; the hegemony ensures that everyone is aware of and probably celebrates (or at least observes) Christmas, and the calendar itself enforces New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, making them impossible to ignore. Those holidays are heavy hitters, imposing their existence on the entire population.

And my birthday just gets overwhelmed by the giants. Few people have the attention or even resources to put together a separate celebration for anyone. Look, I know I’m complaining a bit here, I accept that. It was more difficult when I was younger, much younger. Lots of kids (not all of them, of course) celebrated their birthdays during the school year or in the summer when more kids and their parents were available to put a party together. Not so in the doldrums of December. Y’all were tired.

When I got older, it became less of an issue but still an issue. Starting over 20 years ago, my family began celebrating Christmas by traveling somewhere warm and sunny. And so to be in that place on Christmas Day, but to avoid other heavy travel days, my birthday often became a traveling day. My finances haven’t been great recently, so I often stay home, house-sitting for those on vacation, or I am otherwise unable to travel. That means my recent birthdays have been either in airports, or separated from my family with only my closest friends to help me remain grateful for another year.

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve enjoyed some epic birthdays. One year me and my friends had an amazing dinner and then visited the Acropolis, a famous steak house in Portland (oh, and also it’s a strip club.) I do have pictures from that night but, respectfully, won’t be posting them. Several of my recent birthdays were celebrated in song, with karaoke. I love karaoke, even if I’m not a strong singer. A close friend once said that singing is about volume and enthusiasm, and when I want to, I’ve got plenty of both.

And I am, honestly, grateful for my life, my friends, and my family; it’s just the random circumstances of the day of my birth that I’m focusing on here, I promise. So yes I’m whining a bit but this half-birthday idea was my attempt to do something about it! What if we celebrated my one day a year (everybody gets one!) that’s all about me… in the summer? Wouldn’t that be great? Warm weather, grilled meats, no pesky overwhelming holidays encroaching… It would, it would be great. Let’s do it! If not this year, then next year!