What Happened?

"At 36, the world is our oyster.  By 44, we’re trapped inside the oyster, gasping for air." - Jacquelyn James

How did I get here?

I think my memory after the age of around 13 is reasonably good.  My preteen memory is a disaster, consisting of a scattered group of semi-organized snapshots and movie shorts.  I remember the sand box in the back yard, I remember finding flash bulbs at the base of the Mexican pyramids, I remember walking with the old lady who always walked her dogs by our house - first Tosse, then Erie (or maybe it was the other way around).  I even have one very early memory, from before I was two years old, of eating in our kitchen while my younger sister was being born.  I probably remember the more tragic events better, or at least more vividly.
After about the age of 13, my memory comes close to approaching a more linear narrative.  But I'm sure there are some very serious flaws.  I recognize that the same events visualized by different people, especially siblings, will be remembered differently.  Both memories will be both wrong and right.
So if memories can be imprecise, is it also possible to have them be completely fabricated?  Almost certainly.

I often wonder how memory works.  How in the organic chemical goo between my ears are memories stored.  Anytime I try to read what is known about this, I get technical answers that, even as a chemist, I don't understand and I think the authors don't either, or I get rehashed:  Short term memory is stored in the frontal lobe, long term memory in the hippocampus.  I guess I really do not like biochemistry now any better than I did in college.

Buy the Ticket and Take the Ride
Jerry: "What did you wanna be?" (when you grew up)
Elaine: "I don't remember , but it certainly wasn't this."

What happens to life goals as we get older?  Our youngest life goals are ludicrous, but the most aspirational.  Becoming a superhero or a princess isn't going to happen, but those are some of the loftiest goals that anyone will ever have.
Things change as we get a little older to something slightly more realistic - cowboy (whatever that is and probably still unrealistic), fireman, principal, race car driver.  If we could all just stick to those goals, there would be a lot less paper pushing bureaucrats and middle managers.  Still, there is a phenomenal amount of us who end up as faceless people doing jobs that, frankly, blend into obscurity.
All this makes this commercial from monster.com appear very funny, when in reality it is scary and absolutely tragic.

As years go by faster, the older I get, the goals change too.  Adolescent goals of "being the boss" or "become and astronaut" seem to evolve into "getting a job in the pharmaceutical industry" or "working in a technology job."  The reality is more likely "working in an office" - a nameless, faceless office where Friday afternoon is anticipated by noon on Monday.
Maybe the problem of demoralized expectations littering the floor lies in their origin in employment.  Little kids get asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  We don't ask them, "Who do you want to be when you grow up?"  That may be because it can be too painful of a question to ask internally.  A waiter at a chain restaurant can always aspire to start his own business.  A person who is financially successful, but is really an asshole, will probably always be an asshole.
And time does seem to pass that much quicker with each year - something I've only recently begun to understand.  At the age of eight, one year is 12% of life, and summer seems to stretch on endlessly.  At 44, one year is just over 2% of life so far; that year goes by much quicker than the eight-year-old's summer.  At 15 years of age, almost everything is new.  Every year older makes it harder to experience anything novel.

Life IS good.  But I'm not sure this is the ride I paid the price of the ticket for...

Thoughts for the Next Year
Tim Kreider wrote something recently in the way that only Tim Kreider can.  There is a small quote in this that resonates deeply:
"...the life I ended up with, much as I complain about it, was pretty much the one I chose."
This might be tough to stomach, but is probably true.  I'm here (we're all here) because of every decision that has been made, both the good and bad.  Some of this is out of personal control, but much of it isn't.  It is a pretty good place, but it is hard not to compare it to some mythical idealized state.  Sitzfleisch.

David Brooks talks about this but not loudly.  He whispers it.  Instead of worrying about whether a tin pot shines or is dented and faded, what is the interesting story, that ends up with a dented and faded tin pot?

As another year has gone by, my hope is that I define myself less and less by what my employment happens to be.
What is important should be what I've done, even things which might seem trivial.

So what will I be when I grow up?  I don't know.

But...
I am a person who loves travel, prefers the company of dogs, loves being outside and living in a rural area, enjoys riding bikes and long contemplative dog walks as well as learning through reading and writing...

That Lion

"But one thing that never changes from decade to decade, century to century, or millennium to millennium, is the struggle between human beings to convince others to follow their vision of the world." - Mark Matthews

Thanks to one human and one lion, hunting has been in the news at an unprecedented level recently.  The human's name was Walter J Palmer.  As an undomesticated animal, the lion did not recognize any name, Cecil or otherwise.  The question must be asked - What is being saved when the 'wild' that some seem so devoted to includes lions so tame that people try to name them?  Are the whitetail deer so immune to predators that they can be photographed from 10 feet away in Cade's Cove really the outdoor legacy that should be left to future generations?

Since the much publicized events, there have been many attempts to demonize and threaten Mr. Palmer.  There have been a lesser amount of attempts to justify hunting, without justifying Mr. Palmer's immediate actions.
I'm not really sure hunting needs to be justified, and it certainly doesn't need to be justified in the context of Walter Palmer any more than my donation to a charity requires justification after your armed robbery of a convenience store.  They both involve transferring of money, but the former has nothing to do with the latter.

This is not really a discussion about hunting as much as it is a discussion about being human, being civilized, and being in touch with who we are and who we might want to be.
In the dystopian future where we are all wearing the same skin-tight, v-neck jump suit and eating soylent green, hunting may leave the conversation permanently.  Until then, those wishing to demonize all hunting need to see hunting remains a necessary part of life, visceral with parts that are unpleasant, but as important to living history, to real health as calcium is for bones.

Johnny Sain writes one of the few sane articles I've seen on the subject.

Beyond that, what needs to be critically understood, is that hunting is not about killing.  If hunting were only about killing, it would be the most painfully boring pastime ever conceived.  For every 10 bears killed, hundreds of hours are spent in preparation and in search of the right bear.  For every 100 deer killed, thousands and thousands of hours are spent in a tree stand.  For every 1000 ducks shot, hundreds of thousands of hours are spent sitting in a cold duck blind.  Individuals who participate only for the trigger time are quickly disappointed, and usually quit soon after starting.
Hunting is not just one thing, yet it is meat.  It is antlers or horns.  It is watching small animals while waiting for the larger ones.  Eating meat from the hunt brings a satiation that goes beyond ending hunger.  Hunted food creates an intimate connection to survival - a recognition that in order to live, something must die.  Mementos of the experience, the entire hunting experience, may come from taxidermy.  Taxidermy is the ultimate in participatory art.
Hunting is a theology - just as veganism is among a different, but just as ardently presupposed group.
And whether that time hunting is spent alone, or as a communion of like minded people, the time is sacred.  Most of it is quiet time for reflection, a chance to take a step back and look at the world as a whole.  A chance to ponder the reason for life, from beginning, and yes, to its end.
Hunting is not a bygone relic, any more than walking or paddling is merely an ancient curiosity in the age of driving and flying.

A disservice is done when we constantly split ourselves into smaller and smaller warring factions.  There is little delusion that the vegan will sit down with the hunter as the lion has done with the biblical lamb.  But once the vegan starts hurling raw beets at the omnivore and vegetarian for their sins, a line has been crossed into fundamentalist intolerance.

It is unfortunate that this conversation must come from one publicized event.  I doubt many of those hurling threats and vulgar insults at Mr. Palmer will be doing much to really help any lions in another 6 months, let alone 18 months.  I doubt that the politically charged atmosphere and international pressure will do much to alleviate suffering in Africa - zoological or human.  I doubt justice will be served by sending Mr. Palmer to face a level of corruption, notable even in the third world.  And I doubt the media, which is good at sharing the same talking points, whether true or blatantly false, will do much to help a more honest conversation about any of this.

What I don't doubt, is that our survival as a species depends on oxygen, water, and food.  And any discussion about future civility first requires civil discussion.

Not a Drop, Day 1826

I've thought a lot about whether I should even write this and, subsequently, a lot about this disjointed, non sequitur blog in general.  I've pondered what five years means, and what five years does not mean.  I've ruminated how unscripted events could have come together to reach 1826 days after day 1 with a different outcome and the possibility I could have been in a different place.
Perhaps, I should be thinking about the future.

"It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past." - Jim Bishop

I've been reading about various individuals' experiences in quitting drinking.  These weren't the writings in some of the excellent books on the subject like Neil Steinberg's Drunkard.  These are the average Jane and Joe writing about quitting drinking or cutting back.   
I'm not sure it is healthy to perpetually (or for years) write about the topic.  If it remains something constantly at the forefront, then the "new normal" won't ever have been achieved - and I believe strongly that a new normal is required.  Years writing about one subject also seems painfully trite.  To be fair, years writing about anything and everything might seem almost manic.  If nothing else, writing about anything and everything is a good way to remain contentedly anonymous.  Anonymity is highly underrated.
I'll separate the experience from quitting from what is written as a "how-to."  The change can be difficult, so no fault for attempts to help.  But, any one way to stop will likely only work for a very small amount of people.  Lay-person or even uninformed expert advice runs the risk of being unhelpful.  Some would almost be funny if they were simultaneously so dangerous.

The 2-year milestone seems almost delusionally real.  2012 in general was an odd year.  The old house had sold the previous fall;  the new house was still new enough that it was a natural euphoria, although that exhilaration was tempering.  The four worst months of my career had been survived - "efficiency experts" are the two most terrifying words in the corporate language.
But, reaching two years felt real, maybe not as normal as I wanted it to then, but real enough.

One writer talked about a milestone I hadn't ever previously thought about.  She wrote about approaching a point where more of her life was spent not drinking, than drinking.  I'm not really sure where that mark would be for me, since I'm not really sure where to start the time zero point.  After the first time I drank, it was a looooonnnnggggg time before I could even smell booze again without getting queezy.  That evocative saccharin scent of schnapps probably remains to this day.  Some rough estimations suggest I'm probably near the half-way point as well.  It was interesting to contemplate the half life as a milestone.  It was also a little depressing, so much of that time was spent in infancy through childhood.

I didn't think much about the 3-year time point.  Year 3 was a phantasmagoria, everyone takes a twisted contorted path to where they are, but where we are is just another stop in twisted contorted path to where we will be.
The lessons from year 3 demonstrated that even though more of life was under control, much of it remained unchained.

There were several people writing about the slip-ups as much as any successes, or about xx drinks as a positive (implying less than normal).  There is empathy in reading these; because there has to be.  A few of these alternate between brief periods of well-written prose discussing the repeated early efforts of quitting, with long periods without postings.  The saddest blogs are the ones that start out sincere and intense, but are very brief.  The end writes a final assumed chapter of failure.

Reaching 4 years was as much about the break I took from the online writing for other writing I wanted to do.  This points to the ongoing normalcy of not drinking.  Which leads to this 5-year posting; very possibly my last dedicated to the subject.
The last year has become normal in a way I previously would have had a hard time imagining.

One other writer calculates the time regained by not drinking.  The amount of time was pretty fantastic in his/her case (I couldn't tell from the blog which sex the author was).  In my own case, the number may be surprising only in the aggregate of five years.  I still squander much of that time in front of the TV, but enough of it is spent doing things that are fulfilling in a very real sense.

I've been putting fingers to keyboard, thoughts to digits, over the last few weeks as I knew this 5-year milestone was imminent.  In that same time, my Father died.  This was not unexpected as he was diagnosed with what almost assuredly was a terminal illness early in the year.  But it was unexpected as the end seemed to come very quickly; maybe it always does.  I can't image going through the emotional roller coaster of my Dad's passing with the mental distention of alcohol hanging over me.
Over the last several months, I got to know my dad in way that I hadn't previously.  I believe he would have said the same about me.  I don't know if we become omniscient in death.  But if we do, then I am slightly comforted in knowing that I am more honestly the person he knew.

There are still times I miss it a little bit but in the same way as I miss lots of things that are gone forever.
"Once you experience nostalgia, the thing you are nostalgic about is long dead." - Jen
Alcohol is the great equalizer for introverts in an extroverted world.  Where the last five years has brought me to is caring much less about that extroverted world.

Quitting drinking has enabled so many of the other positive changes over the past years that any negatives seem more and more like unnecessary footnotes:
I have never, ever - even once - woken up on a Saturday morning and wished I had a hangover!  Never...
I already touched on the time I've taken back by stopping, but the positive repercussions of this shouldn't be understated.  Time is one of the few fixed commodities in life.  I don't know if I'll die tomorrow or 60 years from now, but my time on the earth is absolutely fixed.  This has become unquestionably personal recently.
Much like time, the amount of money I would have spent on various consumable bottled liquids is quite real.  On the small scale this isn't much, but aggregated over five years (and more in the future) it amounts to real money.  Add in occasional questionable purchases from Amazon or Ebay after drinking and the number gets frighteningly larger.
I'm writing more, even self-published my book.  Yeah, it was excessively simple and one chapter is even about a guy who quits drinking.  But, this is just one example (of many) of something which probably never would have happened without the changes over the last five years.
Once I unlearned some of my bad habits, my time away from work is infinitely better.  No more do I look forward to vacation as a time to cope and unwind.  Yet, I probably need vacation more now than ever; I crave it because it is now my own time.  It doesn't belong to something else altogether.

I look forward to mornings now.  I like waking early and having time, sometimes just minutes and other times hours, quiet contemplative time to stand back and look at everything with some clarity.  Early morning with a book is better than late night with a glass.

Arbitary though it may be, five years does seem like a milestone.  As a reminder of all the changes over the last five years, I got a tattoo of a broken bottle.  Unlearning the habit of booze was only one slow, deliberate life change, but it was an enabling change.  The permanence of the tattoo has significance.  There is also significance in the placement on my upper arm where few others will ever see it (you'll never see me in a wife-beater and I'm not a lay-around-the-beach kind of person).

When Steve was giving me the tattoo, we were talking about why I made the design that I did and he asked me if I had quit drinking.  After responding positively, he paused and looked up at me, "How do you sleep at night?"
"Much better ... much better."

The bottles continue breaking.

The Persistence of (Negative) Memory

The fireflies over the last few days have been really dramatic.  Letting the dogs out for the final time in the evening gives a brief glimpse into that free light show.  I get up early so they are often just finishing their lighted dance in the morning.
Like lots of other kids, I used to love to catch fireflies and keep them in a jar.  Many of them died overnight; watching them, even briefly, is a little more gratifying.

My neighbors had a party of sorts a few nights ago.  As people were showing up, one person in a Jeep showed up and parked askew on their lawn.  My mind jumped to living in the previous house several years ago, 20 feet away from 18 and 21 year old brothers.

A few years after we bought our previous house, Les moved out to move into his mother's house after partially renovating it.  He sold our neighboring house to two guys; 18 and 21 year old brothers who had recently received a sizable inheritance from their grandparents.
There were brief delusions that the two were mature; that 18 and 21 year old brothers won't act like 18 and 21 year olds.  That idea was shattered on the first weekend when the older brother (Old-T) had a party.  It went into the wee hours of the morning and was raucous enough that people down the street asked me the next day whether it was as bad as it sounded.
Hoping it was a one-time thing was misguided.  The next day Young-T was overheard on the phone calling friends for a party.  As it turned out, it was one of the quietest parties Yong-T ever had and that weekend was one of the few parties Old-T had.

Being below the legal drinking age, Young-T and his friends congregated at the house most weekends and often through the week.  Nobody ever wins neighbor wars, so I tried to be tolerant, but it was extremely difficult.  When they first moved in, Young-T had a red car with lots of cheap ground effects and a monster sub-woofer.  There is not enough insulation in the world to separate the noise it made while people were hootin' and hollerin' out in the yard.  I laughed a little as the ground effects were torn off the car in steep section of the driveway - I could only hope the sub-woofer would suffer a similar fate.
To be fair, when I would politely remind them that we lived within a few tens of feet from them, Young-T would make an attempt to quiet things down.
"You guys, we have to be as quiet as a mouse," Young-T would run around saying.
But, with copious amounts of alcohol, only so much could be done before inebriation took over.  The base was turned up, the screaming restarted, and who knows what else was going on.  The only hope was that sleep could be achieved before the cacophony really got going.

At the time and in retrospect, living next to them was pretty awful.  Old-T had a girlfriend and was almost never there, leaving the much less mature Young-T to exceed in degeneration.  The parties continued nearly year round.  Looking out the window at 2:00 AM and seeing a group of guys peeing in my back yard was never fun.  The occasional fights, junk strewn about, driving through my yard, all constant annoyance.  I think the noise actually bothered the neighbors across the street more as they called the cops often and even tried to get the township officials involved.

In time, the red car with the cheap plastic ground effects gave way to a black jeep.  Even after Young-T turned 21, the parties at home continued.  I think by this time, the juvenile behavior affected finances to the point the drinking in bars with regularity might have been prohibitive.  Degeneracy is hard to keep up as a full-time occupation.

Some time later, the Jeep was destroyed; I can only assume it was in a drunken accident.  We heard third hand that Young-T had moved back in with his parents, who had subsequently moved to Colorado - I can only assume what a life shock that must have been.  Later, I found a letter that had blown into my yard detailing the remaining (significant) cost of the Jeep that must be reimbursed to the finance company.  It was easy not to feel too bad for him; there was almost some poetic justice there.

It is approaching five years now that we've moved from that house.  Yet, when the Jeep appeared on the neighbor's lawn a few nights ago, I shuddered a bit- the persistent memory of the two boys.  After nearly five years living in this house, I knew the shudder was misplaced, but the memory is persistent.  Not only is this new house separated by orders of magnitude more space, but I've never heard a late night peep from any of the neighbors.

Some time after Young-T moved out, Old-T spent considerable effort cleaning up the house and sold it (for surprising amount more money).  Becky was a very quiet neighbor, but that is another story altogether.  The house is currently on the market again, but this time for less than the cost of Young-T's Jeep; sometimes life has sad outcomes.

The fireflies were out again last night, hopefully creating new persistent memories.  After letting the dogs out, I stood by the fence and watched the winking light all over the yard.  The broken clouds created brief glimpses of stars that mimicked the fireflies and the air was unbelievably still and calm.  Even the beagles seemed to try to be quiet.
It is likely that with more time, reflection will make living next to 18 and 21 year old brothers seem better or worse than it really was.  All memories are grossly flawed.
With the help of quiet nights and winking fireflies, the persistence can be destroyed to be replaced by a new set of memories.

The Esther Lederer Rule; Why I Can't Mind Vacuuming

Yesterday was day one of a 3-day weekend brought on by the Memorial Day Holiday.  I had originally planned to get some maintenance parts for my Honda ATV as I've owned it now for about five years and haven't done much maintenance on it.  Granted, it only gets used for snow plowing a few times each winter, brush hogging a couple times in the summer, and the rare buzzing around the back acreage.  Still, it is probably over due for some fluid changes and a good once over.

That original plan was changed when the day woke up bright with cool temperatures and low humidity.  It was time to paint the trim on the house.

The "new" house really isn't so new anymore.  At 16ish years old, it is still younger than the median age of a house in the area and definitely younger than any other house I've ever lived in.  But, the trim on the house was beginning to weather and there were several places where it had already been repainted or spot repainted.  This was done by the former owners, often somewhat carelessly or with color matches that were only close.  Thankfully, with a brick exterior and good build, the trim that needs painting is just around a few doors, and a porch area.  The horror standing on the tall ladder, repainting gutters on the old, very tall Victorian house is over.
I had scraped off a chip of paint to match and after getting several color squares of paint at Ace Hardware, we chose "Adobe Hut" or N-C3/N35.  This was the overall closest match to the variations of paint and fading on the existing trim.

Determined to do it right, my SO and I scraped all the old loose paint.  I scrubbed all areas to be painted with trisodim phosphate dissolved in warm water.  Prep work makes all the difference, I learned on the aforementioned Victorian.  The TSP nearly dissolved my washing rag which demonstrates the power of that inorganic material as a potent cleaner.  While not as ubiquitous as it once was in household products which degrease, it is still easy to buy in the hardware stores.
Just the cleaning made much of the trim look significantly better.  Once painted, the difference was nearly transformative.  Some areas previously painted white were repainted Adobe Hut, which also made the house look uniformly better.

It is amazing how much better paint has gotten even in my lifetime.  I've had good luck with Ace brand paint over the years.  Ace's branded paint is now Clark+Kensington.  While the name change is a bit of a marketing gimmick, the paint plus primer in one was fantastic and, given that we were covering over similar colors in most spots, worked exceedingly well.  Painting in my first house too many years ago was an exercise in multiple coats and lots of hope.  That may also have something to do with shopping by price alone (any man's fool).
I kept saying, "Adobe Hut" as I painted, only because it sounds better than "N-C3" and also makes it seem like I live in New Mexico, not the Midwest.

My mom had an unnatural tendency to post Ann Landers' advice columns around the house.  I'm not sure why it was always Ann Landers, and not Dear Abby, or any of the lesser-known female advice columnists.  There also seemed to be a lot of Family Circus which in retrospect is about as funny as a wet rock.
Advice columns are entertainment and I can't help but wonder if the letters coming in are real, or if both the letters and responses are made up to create an unnatural interest to questions that are answerable in a few words.  I'm not quite sure why so many advice columns are written under pseudonyms either.  This further questions the reality of them.

Real or not, the somewhat simplistic advice is often heedable.
A friend was recently complaining about the way his wife vacuumed (in deference to advice columns and to protect my innocence, the names here are pseudonyms).  Jack said June's banging the vacuum cleaner into things caused the very old appliance to break.  June's response was that it is impossible to vacuum without running into things.  Jack showed her it wasn't - which I found exceedingly condescending.  This brought to mind one of the Ann Landers' columns which espoused the view that if you don't like the way your significant other does something, then one of the few appropriate responses is to do it yourself; if Jack didn't like the way June vacuumed, he should have stepped up to take responsibility for vacuuming the house.
He didn't.  Perhaps unrelated, but Jack tried to fix the vacuum, rather than replace.  While potentially environmentally conscious, repairing would leave them with the same old vacuum, which according to Jack can be broken by running into the sofa.

My Dad once bought a vacuum from a door-to-door salesman.  It was too long ago to know the specifics, but I recall that being one source (of many) of friction in the house.

I'm not sure if purchasing vacuums falls under the Ann Landers' rule or not?

Door-to-door salesman seem to be a relic of the past as I don't remember the last time someone has rang my doorbell to sell me something.  Or, perhaps the last remaining dodos stay in the more populated areas, rather than try to ply their wares to people who live in an Adobe Hut.

It was a nearly perfect day for painting.  It got warm but not hot, and the low humidity made the paint dry quickly.
The painting of the trim on the house continued for the better part of a day.  We finished by painting together on the final garage door surround, followed by a joint reevaluation of all the painted surfaces and a few spots of minor touch-up.
Thanks Esther Lederer for the advice, real or not.  Tomorrow, I may even vacuum.

Exquisite Fats

It is Good Friday.  But then again, any Friday that I don't have to work is a good Friday.  The company I work for is dropping Good Friday (Easter) holiday next year and replacing it with an extra personal day (religious sensitivity and political correctness, I suppose).  I guess this is a good thing since this really isn't often a usable day off for me.  It would be nice if this day was always a splendidly warm and sunny spring day, but that isn't often the case; weather this time of year is quite temperamental.  Today is cool with snotty rain; 2014 was tolerably nice, but the last really good year looks like it was 2010:  dry with a high in the mid-80s.
I believe I got my motorcycle back from the dealership after killing a deer with it on Good Friday, 2001 - which was also a Friday the 13th.  Regardless of the weather, that was a good day.  In some ways, I miss my Harley Davidson days...
It would not surprise me if within a few years the company I work for takes away that additional personal day that a future lack of Good Friday holiday is providing.  The narrative will go as follows:  We lose the Good Friday holiday and get an extra personal day.  At some near-future date, the company does a comparison of the number of personal holidays granted to its serfs and decides the number of personal days is not commensurate with other peer companies - it then takes action to remove that holiday at a future date.  I suppose that sounds a bit negatively bitter, and maybe even conspiracy oriented.

At least the extra day off gives a day this year to have another lazy morning with cornbread pecan waffles.  I added real butter to the batter today, although I'm unsure why I did this.  It made the waffles taste quite rich but won't help me meet any Easter's Resolutions.
I saw an article about avocado oil recently.  I don't remember the source, but it claimed that avocado oil has nearly magical health properties, "even better than olive or coconut oil."  I do not believe this.  There is no elixir of life that will mystically bring around better health, and less weight.  The whole idea that a fat will result in weight loss is quite preposterous, unless it induces vomiting.  Still, I couldn't help but look on Amazon this morning for avocado oil.  Maybe syrup of ipecac is a more honest thing to search, although it appears that ipecac is now more in quackery camp and is no longer available commercially, perhaps one day olive and avocado oil will join it.
The cornbread pecan waffles were followed by hot chocolate since I didn't feel like over-caffeinating with more coffee.  The hot chocolate had a sell-by date of November 19, 2012.  Oh the risks I take!

(belated edit*)
My original plan for Good Friday was to complete a list of things that have needed to be done for some time, but weren't getting done.  Instead, I bought Tim Kreider's book Refuse to Drown.  I don't usually buy books, but as a self-published book through CreateSpace, this book is not available in any Ohio library (apparently, many libraries are apprehensive about holding self-published books).  I started to read it, intending to finish over the three-day weekend, but I could not put it down - it was that good.
I originally found the book after reading a different Tim Kreider's book We Learn Nothing.  It was somewhat flippant, but still thought provoking and I was curious if he had written anything else similar.  It took quite some time to ensure that the two Tim Kreiders were not the same person - the books have as much in common as oranges and Concorde Jets.  Yet, the hook to read the second Tim's book had been set.

Good Friday's morning rain let up for a while but more appears to be imminent, with no way to stop it.  The day looks to be an idle one.  Perhaps that is something to embrace.  In closing on this non sequitur of a Good Friday, I'll quote from Tim Kreider's We Learn Nothing:
Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration -- it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.
*I rarely edit these things, even to correct a flaw in the words as I see blogs as a historical record.  Do not photoshop the ex-girlfriend out of the family picture!  As I reread what I had originally wrote, I realized it sounded more mean-spirited than I had intended.  That is not me; at least I hope it is not me.

I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now

Earlier in the week, I had a bit of inexpiable panic when I realized it has been (almost) 20 years since I graduated college.  Two decades ago right now, I was furiously sending out resumes and cover letters.  I was accepting "Screw You - Don't Call Us - We'll Call You" letters.  And, I was starting to interview for jobs.  I'm not sure what the reasons were for the panic in this thought; the math is easy and I knew my 20-year anniversary with the company I work for is coming up later this year.  Maybe it was another, "Oh Shit, I'm old" moment.  Or maybe it is the continuing realization that my life really is optimistically half over.
College was a pretty big milestone, even if I didn't walk in the graduation ceremony (it costs HOW MUCH?).  I think by now I was supposed to be a combination of Tom Selleck, Eric Clapton and Clive Cussler.  Instead, I'm just ... me.

I guess I learned a lot in college, although only some of that was in classes.  I wonder what it would be like to go back to that 20-something person and reveal ten things that are impossible to know then?  I'm not sure 20-something would not have understood, or listened.
Some of these are learned earlier than others, and some are probably more important than others.  The order sort of reflects this.

1. Everyone is faking it.  It was too easy to look around at other people that have the appearance of having it all together.  The mid-90's were pretty chaotic, and it looked like many people a few years into "real life" had figured most of it out.  I've seen life crumble around too many people and seen it come close in many other situations to know that nobody has it figured out and has it all together.  Those that maintain that facade are just better at hiding it, better at temporary repairs to cracks in life's walls.  There is a lot of messy plaster there.
2. Temporary things might not be.  Whether it is the winter coat bought just because something is needed quickly, the job that wasn't supposed to be permanent, or anything else tangible or intangible, I had no idea some of the things that still exist in life now would be here.  I've seen friendships that I thought would be permanent disappear, and others that I thought would vaporize remain to this day.  I still have the cheap, crappy coffee maker I bought in the early 1990's when I moved into my first apartment.  The corollary to this is that permanent things might not be either - see #1.
3. The lack of new "firsts" becomes painful.  Early school, high school, college, post-college ... there is something new around every corner - it is mandatory without even trying.  Even if those things are unpleasant, at least they are new.  Something eventually happens though - new things become more and more rare.  And when they do come, it is almost painful to realize that I'll never be able to do xx or go to yy for the first time again.  Experiencing "firsts" only come with conscious effort; they have to be created in order to be experienced.
4. Worry about money a little bit, but not too much.  Yeah, put money away for retirement and don't spend more than you make, but aside form those two guiding principles, money is pretty boring stuff.  With more stress and time in a job, more money will come.  Study after study has shown that once the basic needs are met, more money doesn't really make individuals more happy (or at least the relationship is very non-linear).  happiness (small h intended) is fleeting, Happiness (big H, aka contentment) doesn't really take a lot of money.  See #5.
5. Time is the most precious commodity.  Ever!  I'm not sure how long I'll live, but it is finite and fixed.  This one is impossible to learn at 20-something.  I'm not even sure I've really learned this yet.  This is why vacation becomes so important.  Time spent at work is pretty meaningless, and I feel sorry for people who's lives are their work.  Those few weeks a year that are completely mine are unbelievably valuable.  No, my work computer will not be going home with me on vacation.
6. There are smart people who make me feel dumb.  So it goes (thanks, Kurt Vonnegut).  This is fine.  Learn what you can from smart people.  If they look down on others from their temporary position of superiority, remember #1.  Keep those generous really smart people in life - they are probably really interesting too.
7. There are dumb people - some of whom are (or appear to be) successful.  Things usually have a way of catching up with people who lack common sense, who are mean, or don't know what they don't know.  Get rid of these people.  Life is quirky and some idiots will be successful; life is unfair that way.  Don't dwell on it.
8. Repetition will happen.  Repetition will happen.  I think part of the reason that I had that moment of terror at realizing 20 years had gone past since college, was the drive in to work felt exactly the same as countless other drives into work.  Some days and weeks go by with unbelievable monotony.  I guess if this didn't happen, I'd be in the rubber room by now.
9. Be content.  Excitement, elation, dizzying highs, crushing lows, the creamy middles - these things all risk coming with mandatory volatility.  Contentment is a gift.  Being satiated with the good is worth a lot.  Too often I feel the urge to sell everything of value, burn everything else and start over.  Media loves to celebrate the 2% of people who have discarded the mundane of daily life and traded it in to travel the world, finding wealth hidden in plain sight.  Media isn't quite as quick to be as honest with the 98% of people who try this and end up destitute, regretting the decision to follow a crazy dream only to have the world come crashing down on the inevitable results.
10. This list will change.  If I had written this ten years ago, 10-years after college, it would have some of the same things, but it would have been vastly different.  Thank goodness for that; if I still thought the same things now that I did a decade ago, it would demonstrate an absolute lack of growth.  This list of ten things are strongly interrelated and is seen through the lens of 20-years working with one company after college.  No doubt if a butterfly had flapped its wings in Sumatra and the resulting hurricane would have made things different, the view itself would be very different.

This entire exercise is actually quite dangerous.  I can't go back and talk to that 20-something and really wouldn't want to (maybe I'd mention a few things).  Perhaps that is where the uneasiness of the last 20 years is coming from - I have no idea where the next week, let alone the next 20 years is really headed.

Life Is Not a Choose Your Own Adventure Book

On Friday, I did something that is slightly discomforting.  I went grocery shopping on Friday night.
I'm sure there have been times I've grocery shopped on a Friday night in the past, but the entirety of the situation is where the discomfort lies.

The normal Saturday routine is up early, pay bills, buy food for the week.  During the day on Friday, the weather forecast was dynamic - changing from a little snow, rain, and sleet to several inches of snow and most falling overnight but lingering through Saturday.  Weather has rarely, if ever, interrupted the contentment of the Saturday routine.

Compared to the casual Saturday morning grocery shopping, Friday night was a cacophony of people, carts, milk-buying moms (pre-storm) and beer-buying college students (also pre-storm).  It probably doesn't need to be said that it was unpleasant.

Saturday, indeed, came with several inches of snow before dawn.  The radar suggested more snow was going to continue, but the bulk of it was past.

Maybe I should embrace the decision to avoid the 25 mile round trip to grocery shop on intemperate roads since the routine can sometimes be too comforting.  Yet last weekend, I made a 700 mile round trip to Michigan, enduring a much more serious snow storm in Michigan and a smaller, but still difficult one closer to home on the return.  The fact that this is really the first significant snow storm in the immediate locale shows how mild the winter has been.

It is hard to argue that the unspoiled Saturday morning snow scene looks amazing.  But, that postcard scene is easier to enjoy on December 23 than it is when our average high should be solidly rising and in the mid-40's; winter should be slowly relenting to spring.

Two people I've worked closely with for years are retiring next week.  I can only imagine their thoughts as they look ahead to a time in the very near future where the need to get up and traverse treacherous roads is replaced by less urgency.  Their retirement is creating a reduction in workforce, without a clear reduction in work.  That is not something to be contemplated on a Saturday morning though.

The decision to grocery shop on Friday presents an interesting life dilemma.  We almost never know if a decision we made results in eliminating a catastrophe.  Life is not a Choose Your Own Adventure book where one can make a decision and then look to see what an alternative choice would have resulted in.  A bad decision that results in a car crash or permanent injury can be easy to identify in hindsight.  It is impossible to look back and say that the decision to grocery shop on Friday to avoid bad roads on Saturday prevented something terrible from happening.  Chances are high that a grocery trip on Saturday would have meant a slower than average drive and safe return home.  But, maybe, just maybe, the decision to not leave the house on a snowy Saturday morning meant that a slide off the road, into a ditch and bouncing off of a tree was avoided.  It isn't likely or even probably; it is, however, possible.

The trivial trade-off of a minor weekend disruption with eliminating the improbable accident seems to be about contextually correct.