Category: Life

Modernity and the Open Road

I’ve been thinking a lot about travel in recent months. I always thought is was passing strange that so many retirees took to the road in their golden years, as if they couldn’t wait to put home and croft in the rear view mirror and motor around the country in their dotage. As the years roll by, however, I understand it more and more. It’s like an itch to explore the life that has always eluded me; it’s not a matter of regret, necessarily – though I suppose that’s in the mix – but of recognizing that the years slide by somewhat faster as we age, and that the waiting for new experiences to just fall into your lap is a young person’s game after all.

Of course, there’s no denying that I’ve harbored a desire to see more of the world for many years. But the ultimate arbiter of windshield time in the midst of middle class poverty is not time, but money. My wife and I have been together for nearly 20 years, and in that time we’ve taken only one real vacation. We’ve never been on a plane together and barely crossed state lines, but for the effort of relocation between Kansas and Colorado a time or two.

The one time we had the resources to take off for a couple weeks, we made the most of it. We drove to Colorado to see my mom, then made a two-day journey to Portland to spend a week with my brother. We visited beautiful locations around the Colombia River Gorge and visited the Japanese Gardens. We ran out to Seaside and checked out Cannon Beach, where the scene in The Goonies with the very cool rock formation was shot, then drove up into Astoria where much of the movie was filmed.

We did the food thing. We had amazing seafood in Seaside and shopped at a very cool jerky store and a place that sells tons of salt water taffy. We found some lovely eateries in Portland and visited an upscale tea shop. And we always looked for mom-and-pop places to dine while on the road.

We hit Yellowstone on the way back, which was itself an amazing adventure. And we grabbed the occasional souvenir.

The point of all this is that it was so remarkable an experience at least in part because we never go anywhere. And we talk about going places all the time! We’re even working on getting our passports this year because Jonikka has a friend who lives in New Zealand and we are determined to try and visit. One of these days.

But when your financial hurdles aren’t how-to-save so much as how-to-pay-the-bills, seeing anything beyond your own front yard feels like an insurmountable challenge.

To be fair, all of this is really just to vent my frustration over not having the money to see the new Wicked movie in the theater this weekend. And honestly, though I would love them for it from the bottom of my musical-obsessed heart, if my friends started offering me the cash to go, I would still be riddled with concerns over spending money on a movie when the utility bills are piling up.

Hey. Maybe there are cheaper ways to travel…

A Shadow in the Mind

“May you live a thousand years…”

A blessing, not a curse. I remember having to look that up. Like… the sentiment seems generous on the surface, but you hardly have to spelunk very far to find potential subtext. Despite the superficial well-wishing generally borrowed by the phrase, precious few of us see even a century of life, and far too few of us even half that.

Thus, it seems imperative that I find a way to contextualize the first half-century of my life. My 50th birthday approaches in something like 11 days, and while I frequently watch my birthdays pass with little more than a friendly nod on the way by and seldom any significant fanfare, it seems incumbent upon me that this particular milestone be recognized.

I have surprisingly few regrets attached to this period of my life. My achievements include a fair number of things that bring me joy: loving wife and children, quality friends, artistic accomplishments, self-respect. Even a legacy of sorts in my hometown. Lots of good memories. I’ve managed to learn from most of my failures and avoided doing folks wrong wherever possible. I’ve taken care of others because it’s the right thing to do, and I’ve made an effort to love freely and without reservation.

I’ve come up short here and there. I’ve shifted careers three or four times and never reached high enough to satisfy the specter of my father’s perceived expectations (not a real thing, I know). I’ve remonstrated with myself over the education of my children. Like many people my age, I’ve breezed through a few relationships that I could have handled better. I’ve leaned heavily on my collaborators to try to more powerfully ignore my own shortcomings.

And if you’re my age, you know… the years just fly by. Fifty years really is a long damn time. It doesn’t feel like it nowadays, but it is. That’s the reason we all say that we’re getting old, or commiserate over feeling older, because it’s kind of a surprise if you’re not paying attention.

Tempus fugit. Time flies.

So how should I celebrate? Because I really think I should. Celebrate, that is. Not just give it the usual companionable nod, but somehow grab it’s sleeve and share a quick drink, at the very least. Many of my friends have already crossed this threshold, and maybe you had similar notions… or maybe you just beheld the befuddled grace of its tactless aerial display as it flew by. No judgment here, right? One thing we know by now… we’re all in this together. And none of us get out alive.

Heh. That’s trite, but still satisfying at some level.

How about… tempus est umbra in mente. Roughly, “time is a shadow in the mind.” Ran across that in a Stephen King novel recently. Stuck with me.

Phase Two

So, today is our final day of clearing and cleaning at the old house. Unsurprisingly, Niera and Jason have been a HUGE help, and we are on target for a fairly easy day today. I am SO ready to be done. There’s a lot left to be managed, what with our new place stacked with boxes and so many items that need a new home, but there’s much less of a deadline on that part. Meanwhile, we’ve settled in with some degree of success, and everyone is adjusting.

I am hoping to find much of the living room here this afternoon so that I can run a game for the house this evening. I miss gaming in person, and my convention appearances have shown me that I’ve grown rusty at some of the skills that are particular to the idiom. Tomorrow will likely be a day of unpacking and sorting, which has in one way or another been much of our life of late, and then Saturday I hope to be running our regular afternoon game. On Sunday, Niera and I are driving down to Dodge City to get Niera’s very first tattoo and lay down some drum tracks for the new album at my brother’s place.

So while things aren’t going to feel “normal” around here for a while, and money is unconscionably tight with the massive change in circumstances (but yay for not supporting two houses for another month!), we fully intend to celebrate life and living and family and art with the fullness of our collective heart as we move forth on the next phase of our grand adventure.

*deep breath*

Let us begin.

Not with a Bang…

I’ve been thinking about this moment for a while. Ever since we learned that my friend Julie was declining and would be leaving us sooner rather than later.

Julie and I had a strained relationship when we were younger, and it was often hard to juxtapose that with the supportive role I wanted to play in my friend Jason’s life. The two of them had been destined to be together, pulled back into each other’s orbit time and again no matter how real life and other relationships kept beating down the proverbial door. And I know that I was one of those roadblocks on more than one occasion.

That being said, Jason is my brother and I would do anything within my power to see him happy. When he and his erstwhile family fell on hard times, my wife and I took them in. Three times, over the years. And my wife never batted an eyebrow nor hesitated even a heartbeat to commit to that support. And over time, as sometimes happens, she and Julie got close. And eventually, after she’d started facing the prospect of her limited mortality, Julie made an effort to repair her relationship with me. It was a friendship hard-won, but all the better for it.

Julie passed away yesterday, surrounded by her loved ones. She had battled the disease that took her life for more than a decade, hanging on with every fiber of her being, and in the end I was a little surprised that she slipped away so quietly. I don’t know why; I didn’t expect her leap from the hospital bed and spit into the face of the inevitable or anything, but I also would have been only marginally surprised if she had tried.

The last few months have been challenging for our family, and we have a lot to take care of in the aftermath. But despite a certain quiet that seems to embrace the whole affair, I didn’t want her passing to go unremarked. At her core, she was a vibrant and intelligent woman, sometimes passionate, sometimes cold. Always complex. She made an inspiring effort to face her mortality with grace and good humour, and at times was even successful. I’ll choose to remember her that way, and ultimately be grateful she was in our lives.

(Oh! And then there was that time I got to marry them!)

Telling Stories About Nothing

I recently watched a video from music and production guru Rick Beato where he discusses the strange course of his life over 62 years and how much it changed in the later years of his life and career. Here’s the video if you’re interested:

One of the more interesting takeaways is the idea that one of his most valuable skill sets at this point in his career is probably his ability to tell stories. He does it a lot. Stories of his life and career and collaborators… he talks about songs and musical constructs like they’re friends or old business partners.

I pondered this for a bit, and I realized that it really is central to his appeal. I enjoy his channel and return and again and again; even when I’m only tangentially interested in the content of a video, I’ll tune in.

Now I’ve long understood how personality drives entertainment. My first career was in radio, and the bulk of it involved putting people on the air and providing them the tools and support they needed for success. In that environment it’s impossible to miss the fact that the only real difference between one radio show or another, most of the time, was in the personalit(ies) that drove the program. As a podcaster over the years I’ve relied on the same mechanism – I’m not saying a whole of things that listeners can’t find elsewhere, but I say it in my own way.

I tell stories.

As the years have slipped by, however, I’ve become more and more disillusioned with the stories I tell. As an interviewer, I always prided myself on being able to find “true” moments in a conversation, particularly by disrupting a person’s ability to rely on rehearsed and regurgitated answers. Not excessively, of course; you’re not going to get a lot of interviews if you routinely make people uncomfortable. But now I find that so many of my stories are the same. They’re starting to feel rehearsed and uninspired.

Is that because I’m not creating new experiences worth talking about? Is it because my perspective on life and my hobbies and interests no longer evolves with enough grit to create new context?

Does getting older mean having less to say?

How often have you visited with an elder just to hear them share the same story you’ve heard before. I think we often dismiss this as their inability to remember that you’ve already heard it. But what if it’s just that we have a habit of telling ourselves and the people around us stories all our lives, and that as we get older the stories become more inflexible? We literally have less to say?

Unless we continue to push ourselves to have new experiences.

The real obstacle there is that getting older invariably means having less energy to devote to the exploration. Rick mentions in the video above that he started his YouTube channel in 2016. He would have been 54 at the time, launching into a new adventure with very little idea what he was getting into. And that he’s so glad he did it then, because he doesn’t know that he’d have the energy to pull it off if he started at 62.

I turned 49 recently. Sometimes I still feel young – particularly if I’m not calling attention to aches and pains with any sort of locomotion – and sometimes quite the opposite. I still love so many of the things that I do: writing and running RPGs, writing songs, working on my next novel. You know… telling stories. It gets harder and harder. I still read a lot, absorb TV and movies, and listen to music and podcasts… to get inspiration. To learn from those stories. Trying to perfect the craft of telling a story.

But how important is the art of storytelling if you have nothing new to say?

I don’t have an answer. Yet. Here’s a picture of my cat.

Maslow’s Beard

I find myself wondering if Maslow ever grew a beard.

In 1943, noted psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote a groundbreaking paper humbly entitled A Theory of Human Motivation. (I’d link it here, but it’s not an overstatement to insinuate that the original paper could easily cure insomnia, and there are so many places online where you can review the important bits.) In this paper, Maslow explores his now infamous Hierarchy of Needs, easily graphed as a pyramid. Like so.

Essentially, Maslow postulated that a healthy human has various needs that can be arranged in a simple hierarchy, and that foundational needs must be met before a person can effectively explore items at higher levels. It’s notable, in fact, that every level of the pyramid below the top are what Maslow referred to as “deficiency needs,” indicating that meeting these needs does not in itself create a strong sense of accomplishment (arguable, obviously) but that their omission inevitably creates anxiety and distress (less arguable). Clever, right?

Over the past several years, I have noticed some unexpected trends in my life. When the Pandemic hit and many of us were forced out of the workplace, some turned isolation into opportunity: going back to school, picking up a new project or hobby, learning more about sourdough than anyone really needs to know, and so forth. I was no exception… I determined during this time that I would further my education and set out to earn a Master’s degree. That was rewarding, though by the time I was finishing up my courses I was once again struggling to balance a full-time job, school, homeschooling my youngest, and engaging with my hobbies, interests, and other business ventures.

During the Pandemic, I had time. Way too much time. And I assumed that I would parlay that into other achievements. Shadow of the Spire was published in 2018, and now six years later I still don’t have a completed draft of the sequel. I started penning songs for a new album, but lacked the momentum to get them produced. I started new podcasts and assumed I’d be crafting all sorts of cool content for my community… and I quickly started falling behind and my podcast schedule fell apart in my hands like broken pieces of pottery.

These projects and ambitions have waxed and waned over the last four years, and its easy to track that trend and put it into perspective. Because even when I have time to focus on things that presumably drive me, the energy, inspiration, and conviction just aren’t there. And that trend coincides neatly with another trackable phenomenon…

We’ve been through some difficult terrain in recent years. The Pandemic left us adrift for a while. Our savings gone, our retirement expended. Friends relying on us for any assistance we could provide. My mother passed, and we pulled up stakes a couple times trying to reorient our lives. Whenever our circumstances created undue stress on our lives – financially, socially, medically, what have you – my initiative became a casualty. It’s so clear in hindsight, but in the midst of the muck it was just impossible to see the picture very clearly. Frustration ensued.

I can see now that even partial solutions were ineffective. We could navigate a financial crisis with no realistic expectation that the same shit wasn’t just around the proverbial corner. Health issues inevitably crop up as you get older, particularly when navigating so much stress. We would make plans to orient our lives toward specific goals and repeatedly find ourselves failing at even the simplest benchmarks.

So anyway… I find it interesting that the difference between a well-groomed beard and a wild-eyed madman with a shrub on his chin is often just a couple days of not really caring very much. And as I get ready for my next job interview, the beard becomes an enormously important point of focus. I have several tools and implements at my disposal – combs, clippers, blades, salve, oil, special shampoo, et cetera – and it all explodes into action when the time is right. I’m hiding a double chin, but never hiding the real me, right? Sure, everything else needs to be in order as well, but people really do look at your face.

So many psychologists from the olden days never wore beards. I suddenly wonder if they could really be trusted to understand my problems, you know?

More Than a Metaphor

Last week my family made the fateful journey back to the Great Plains. It is difficult not to feel like we’re retreating from the mountain home we had come to love, taking a huge step backward in life to the confines of our stormy homeland. And stormy it is – in Colorado Springs, while the occasionally snowfall meanders by, we are no longer accustomed to the moody bouts of rain and stormclouds that hover above the Kansas skyline. Where we landed in Manhattan it has now been raining for nearly 48 hours. Not storming for the most part, just persistent dribbling that comes and goes and leaves everything basically damp.

While Kansas boasts some lovely vistas and incredibly beautiful sunsets – and a night of rolling thunder across the prairie can be a comfort and sometimes electrifying (pun intended) – this gloom in particular seems to punctuate our move with an almost sinister intent. The drizzle coalescing on the window pane seems hell bent on sapping our will. And while the morrow may bring some modicum of sunlight, I know that we shall not see it this day.

We are moved. At this moment, my desk is one of the few places in the house that isn’t crowded by boxes waiting for their turn in The Unpackening. I have never loved moving – beyond the occasional bit of excitement in the adventure of landing in a new house and figuring out how to arrange your day-to-day life inside its rigid confines – and as I get older it becomes more and more challenging. We had to hire help this time to load and unload the truck, and the unload only managed about 75% of the inventory before I simply ran out of money. They did that much in 2 hours; it took us around 24 hours to vacate the remainder.

It’s sobering, to say the least.

But we are moved, our belongings safely ensconced at our new residence. We’ve set up shop a stone’s throw (well, if you’re a hill giant, at least) from our dear friends (read as “chosen family”) Jason and Julie, so at least we’ve had a safe haven amidst the madness. (Though they have a 9-week-old Pyrenees puppy, so safe may be a bit of an exaggeration…) And we know that the gloom will pass.

After all, this is Kansas; don’t like the weather? Just wait a minute.

Echoes

One month ago today, I heaved a big sigh of relief. After a difficult season of somewhat abbreviated paychecks, family health issues, a great time at the Wichita convention that cost us a chunk out of pocket to attend… our finances were finally moving the right direction. While we were heading into the holidays with a very limited budget, bills were being paid and we had a little breathing room. When Christmas weekend rolled around, my wife Jonikka and made the trek back to Kansas to spend the holiday with friends and family. We lingered for a time, ringing in the new year with camaraderie and a sense of relative contentment.

When we were on our way home on January 4th, we received the call. My wife’s contract with her employer – which should have given us another six months of rebuilding and finally being able to put money away – had been terminated. We were officially adrift, fluid enough to make it through the end of the month.

As often happens in our lives – so much so that it’s virtually a meme in our family – disaster accompanied opportunity. Just a few hours before receiving the call, a close friend had heard us waxing on about how much further my wife’s salary would stretch if we moved back to Kansas, and my sister-in-law had proposed that a new medication on the market might very well be the solution to Jonikka’s lower-altitude health concerns. Said friend offered to procure us a home, paying a rent that is only a fraction of our current commitment in Colorado Springs.

So with hearts a bit heavy, we prepare to bid farewell to our mountain home, with every intention of returning some day soon. The boxes are already starting to pile up around me as a write this, capturing the contents of our apartment with efficient cardboard sterility. We have two weeks to pack and clean, load our belongings into our cars and a massive uHaul, and make the voyage back to Kansas. Our coffers are dwindling. The cost of the move is staggering. Jonikka continues to look for work as I do my best to bring in a comparatively paltry sum. Our debts, while not insurmountable, are burdensome, and supporting a family of four beyond the next few weeks with our current resources is, in a word, unrealistic.

Invariably, things will work out. We have a seriously uncanny way of emerging from hardship with surprisingly few scars. That doesn’t make the interim any easier, of course, and while I want to be hopeful… well, it bleeds the energy right out of you.

A month ago, when I was heaving that sigh, I was staring at the arbitrary start of the new year with aspiration and a bit of hope. 2024 would be the year I finished the next book. I had plans for my podcasts and my Patreon supporters, and I was thinking about heading to Kickstarter with another gaming project. I was lining out ways to address the damage to our credit in the wake of the Pandemic, and we were starting to talk about buying a car and working toward a house.

That phone call was a serious kick in the teeth.

But we have each other. We have amazing friends and family that have helped where they can. We have games that bring us joy, and my projects – while on a temporary hold – continue to tantalize me with their possibilities. I am optimistic about the next adventure, no matter the hardship, because perseverance is inevitably the greatest tool in our collective utility belt.

And there’s one other thing I want to acknowledge. Over the years, my wife and I have striven to be the kind of friends who help anyone we can. We’ve opened our home and our pantry, our wallets when we could – sometimes even when we couldn’t – and the karmic elevation of that devotion to showing love and respect to those around us is paying off in dividends. It’s not a reward for good behavior – the reward, conspicuously enough, was caring for others – but rather a reminder that your kindness and compassion has a way of being revisited upon you when the need is there.

Good morrow, friends. Wherever you are, we’ll see you soon.