Category: general

I reject monopolistic modern shopping/consumption experience and the cost of new goods and services. Our priority will be be to simply not buy, but when we must to buy used or use available public services. If I can learn a skill and do service work (home and auto maintenance, mostly) myself, I will do that as opposed to hiring out.

I reject the accumulation of stuff. Our priority will be to possess only what we need, and sell things when we no longer need them. If we need something temporarily, we will focus on borrowing or renting instead.

I reject the modern big-tech hegemony and commodification of our identities. Our priority will be to remove our family from the privacy-invading digital-economy/public-cloud ecosystem, self-hosting our own services and retaining sole ownership of our data whenever possible.

I reject smartphone dependence and digital dopamine addiction. Our priority will be responsible use of technology with a preference for face-to-face human interaction over digital entertainment and communication.

I reject ostentatious wealth and materialism. Our priority will be to measure success by relationships, personal growth, and contribution to community rather than by possessions or status symbols. We will avoid lifestyle inflation, conspicuous consumption, and the pressure to signal prosperity through purchases.

I reject performative religion and its use as a tool of social control. Our priority will be loving all people, actively engaging in and contributing to our community, and disengaging from religion as identity.

Probably should be more and better expressed, but I’m out of gas. No, I’m not gonna Unabomb anyone or anything… I’ve just been feeling these things more strongly and wanted to capture them for posterity.

Hugs.

Know what sucks? When your parents are gone and you want to know something about the family history that is has also gone with them. If you don’t know it, you won’t know it. If you don’t know it reliably, you’ll never get any more certainty.

One of the more interesting life-facts I learned about my father before he passed was his employment history/chronology. For whatever reason, being able to imagine him doing work-X at age-Y really helped me get some perspective on his years/experience before I came around. This weekend I got the idea to document my own, I guess because I so valued getting to know my dad’s.

In 1993, I got my very first “job,” if you can call it that, working over the Spring Break week at Sea World. It was some kind of work-experience partnership program with local highschools where you’d learn to make a resume, do a (perfunctory, I’m sure) job “interview,” and then get some experience. They bussed us early each morning from the school and back in the evening after our shifts. Everyone pretty much ended up in vending or food-service, and my lot was to cut whole roasted turkeys for turkey sandwiches. I had a little warming oven under my counter which was full with maybe six or eight whole roasted birds – they’d bring me new ones on rolling carts and re-stock me so I really only did three things all day lone: pull a bird, cut the breast meat, lay a portion on bread, and push it down the assembly line. It was so monotonous, and I saw my hands cutting turkeys each night when I drifted off to sleep.

After Sea World, and also in 1993, I got my very fist “longer term” gig working at Subway making sandwiches (seems I had found my passion). In 1994 I did a short stint at Arbys, satisfying the teenage fast-food work requirement we all have. From there I ended up getting a job in a small local accounting firm as a “go-for,” where I did everything from taking out trash to filing papers to washing the coffee pot. That job I sat down at, and was easier.

After leaving the accounting firm (perhaps a story for another time), I worked like two weeks at a local grocery store as a bagboy, but pulling in carts in the Florida heat was not for me, and I very quickly landed one of my favorite jobs ever to replace it: working in a record store at the mall. I would work at that record store, loving almost every minute of it, from 1995 to 1997, when I had to leave as I was shipping-off to university. One more brief summer internship in 1999 at Raytheon would be my last “pre-career” job before I’d land in Silicon Valley from 2000-2018. 2018 we tuned-in, turned-on, and dropped-out for a year, and in 2019 I started the “pre-retirement” SMB CTO role I’m still at today.

So, there ya go kids, you can read that and get a little better idea of what I was doing and when.

This country is so divided and, I think, for “feelers,” that general sense of discord and conflict just sort of… pollutes the emotional air. Even me, I feel it; sort of like a persistent cloud casting a shadow on the day-to-day. Pondering it a little this morning I realized that I’ve turned to an odd and eclectic set of things to sort of “brighten up” that dimness.

• Volunteering locally each week, serving meals and socializing with those in need
• A disciplined opt-out from participation in the discretionary economy
• Dipping my toes in some light activism by attending protests
• Extricating our family from big-tech (what I call “digital autonomy”)

A mishmash to be sure, but devoting some time and energy to these things yielded not only personal satisfaction but also more than a little “brightness.” And it’s not small amount of time and energy… been three months and counting on the digital autonomy efforts, which I’ve got planned as another separate entry.

Love and hugs.

I have a pillbox. The kind old folks have; the kind I have.

It’s not one of those stereotypical ones, though; not the long translucent rectangular one with the days of the week printed atop each of the seven square compartments. It’s a much less conspicuous version, but it serves the same purpose – holding seven days of pills that I take on the regular. I guess I could go on a tangent here and talk about how much I dislike the fact that I take pills on the regular… how that makes me feel old and distinctly like the typical over-prescribed American… but that’s not what this entry is about.

This entry is about how I use my pillbox, and how that makes me feel.

I load that thing up; put two weeks of pills in there (they fit because I don’t take all that much, and half of what I take is by choice like vitamins or allergy pills during Spring). With two dosages in each day’s compartment, it’s a super dense load, and, if I’m being honest, not that convenient because it’s really cumbersome to pull out the right stuff from the big jumble of each day. But, it works for me.

The thing is, I sort of measure the passage of time by this pillbox. Every time I get to the last dose in the last little compartment I find myself wondering, “Man, two weeks already? Feels like I just filled this thing.” Every time.

So I bring it into the bathroom and refill it from the various Rx bottles I keep in the drawer or under the sink. I then take it back to my bedside table, where it will live for another two weeks until I once again wonder “didn’t I just do this?”

Two weeks at a time, dosing myself to the grave.

A place where you are comfortable naked is a special place.

It’s not everywhere one feels comfortable being naked. Naked is a personal thing, a vulnerable thing. A place has to offer something, it can’t just be anyplace.

Work? Probably not super comfortable.

A stall in the airport bathroom? Not very good.

The doctor’s office? A hotel? I mean, honestly, kind of OK?

Your own home? Fantastic; lordly.

Your bedroom with the door closed? Absolutely perfect.

My backyard is, surprisingly, a pretty comfortable spot for me to be naked. I take the position that, should a neighbor happen to see me skinny-dipping or showering in the outdoor shower or maybe just passing-by sans vestments, it’s on them. Likewise, the choice to either look away or continue to gaze upon my hairy lumpy form – also on them. Maybe there’s a law or something that conflicts with that “stance?”

it’s 1030 but it’s not raining.

The they said it was going to rain. An all night rain. That was about six hours ago. I mean, six hours ago when they said it. That it was going to rain.

To be so near a train that you can hear its metal wheels on metal tracks, feel its improbable approach in the very earth which supports you against gravity. To be that near and then call it a cat.

Just so very incorrect.

Watching baseball the other night, I told Sharaun how I tend to view the “third out” as the inning already being over, and how pleasantly surprised I always am when a team is able to produce in the situation. I mean, it makes perfect sense, the third out, in almost all ways, is no different than the first. But, to my chronic-planner/readiness-fanatic mind, by the third out it’s pretty much too late to do anything anymore, other than a totally-up-to-chance hail-Mary.

And, friends, that’s when I decided that’s a shit point of view; a shit way to live a life.

I always want to be ready; ahead of the game; able to spend my third out swinging wildly anything I damn feel like because my lead is secured and that third out doesn’t matter. That third out is my well-earned rest from my over-investment in the first two, of course. An unhealthy fixation with being able to walk the last lap in life, looking around and taking everything in and enjoying it as opposed to running while watching the clock.

On the one hand this approach to life may sound good and fine, and I suppose it has indeed served me/us well at times. But on the other hand it seems a terrible waste of my total available time. Why not work hard over the duration, all the while striking a balance between “work” and that slow purposeful presence and attentiveness? This is my realization from my third-out musing. Not a new realization for me.

Off to rally. Love y’all.