Did Congress Sell Our Privacy?

Tuesday March 28^th, 2017, you and I were sold out by the United States House of Representatives. They passed legislation rolling back rules set in 2015 by the Federal Communications Commission that prevented internet service providers from selling your personal information. The Senate had already passed their version on March 23^rd.

What this means is your internet service provider can continue to sell your private information. What information are they selling to third parties?

·         Web Browsing History

·         Which apps you use – including frequency, length of time per use, etc.

·         Location information

·         And more that the ISP’s won’t tell us and congress didn’t bother to find out. (Can you believe that?)

The most egregious part of this is the internet service providers don’t have to ask our permission to collect and sell our information. We have to ask them not to!

I wanted to be fare about this issue and find out the reasoning of those who voted for this rule change. I found one reason. The argument goes:

Google, Facebook, YouTube, and others are already collecting and selling your information and congress is just leveling the playing field for internet service providers.

This is a completely dishonest argument. If you are not using Google to search, Google is not collecting your information. When you leave Facebook or YouTube, they are not tracking you and collecting all the data. You can choose to not use a specific application. You can choose to not visit a specific website. What is nearly impossible to do is choose to not use an internet service provider.

If there is only one reason being spouted by the politicians, industry representatives, and pundits and that reason is shown to be false, than what other reason could our representatives and senators have for giant corporations to be allowed to sell our private information without our consent?

Theverge.com has one idea. If you would like to know how much money your Representative or Senator was given by the telecommunications industry (for their election campaigns, of course, nothing more. You believe that, don’t you?), than you can find out here.

There are still many unanswered questions regarding this piece of legislation.

Priority

What process did the Republican leadership use to determine the priority of this legislation? The Senate has so much going on, right now. We are facing the Judge Neil Gorsuch appointment for Supreme Court Justice that is turning into a partisan battle between the parties. In late April they will have to decide whether or not to raise our national debt ceiling again. They are neck deep in the investigations into the Russians influencing our national elections last year. They have the investigation into President Trump’s accusations of the Obama administration illegally surveilling the Trump Presidential Campaign. We still don’t have a Secretary of Agriculture or a Secretary of Labor. Add to all of this, nearly one hundred federal judgeships to fill. And the President also wants them to begin the process for tax reform.

The House Intelligence Committee is also very busy with its Keystone Cops version of the Russian Election Influencing investigation. The entire House of Representatives is busy as well with very important measures to label North Korea a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” (again), and Condemning North Korea for developing multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles and “other purposes.” Don’t forget tax reform.

The point is, in the first one hundred days of a new administration (always a hectic and chaotic time), why was this particular piece of legislation pushed to the front of the line?

Are the internet service providers about to have a mass layoff if they don’t get an infusion of cash? Are they in some sort of financial trouble because the industry’s business model is unprofitable? Are they unable to be profitable unless they are allowed to sell our private information?

In 2016 AT&T’s revenues were up more than 22%. $40.5 billion.

Comcast had a Gross Profit of $51.96 billion in 2015. (2016 figures are not yet available)

Verizon says its total revenue for 2016 was $126 billion! This is down from the year before, but their profits went up!

Time Warner’s total revenue was more than $29 billion dollars. That is up more than $1 billion dollars over 2015's total revenues.

Obviously, the ISP’s are not in financial trouble and are not in need of a “leveled playing field.”

Next, we will look at top receivers of campaign funding from the telecom industry and which committees each of these top “earners” are members of. 

A Twenty-first Birthday

Yesterday was my daughter’s twenty-first birthday. She is my middle child. This is not new territory for me. So, I was surprised when I woke with every memory of her life rocketing Matrix-like through my brain all at once.

There was the night her mother and I made her. (That was fun.)

The night she was born. (Exhausting.)

The night she woke me screaming because all the stuffed animals in her room came alive in the middle of the night and wouldn’t let her out.

The time her baby brother threw up in her hair.

The day we had to explain to her we were holding her back in first grade.

The day I realized she was having so many problems with the other girls at school because she was the only one in her class who no longer had the same body shape as the boys.

The struggling to understand her during her teenage years.

The day she came out to me at Chic-fil-a (hilarious) during pride week.

The look on her face when I told her I’d already known for two years and I loved her.

And dozens of others.

For a moment I thought, “Wait, am I dying? And, if I am, why is my daughter’s life flashing before me? Shouldn’t it be my own?”

OK, that last part didn’t actually happen, but it illustrates my point. My daughter’s life is not mine. The entire point for the last twenty-five years has been to prepare her and her brothers to be able to live independently of me – or anyone else for that matter. And yet, our lives are so intertwined, in a small but significant way, her life is mine.

I’ve spent the bulk of my adult life focusing on helping my kids become healthy, fulfilled adults. So much so, that when I look back on my life it is filled with them. My kids are definitely not my entire life, but they are the most important part of my life’s work. For someone who set out in life to never have kids, I’m a little taken aback by this outcome.

And I wouldn’t change it for anything.

What about changing it to do it better? 

That question assumes I could.

Don’t take that answer the wrong way. Everyone who knows me knows I have to work hard to let go of the guilt I feel over the many ways I’ve failed my children through the years.

I’ve learned that from my mother – and, I’ve gotten pretty damn good at it.

I know better than anyone I’ve been nowhere near the perfect father.

At the same time, with the mind, character, and personality I have, as well as, the upbringing, the time I had to devote to raising them, along with the amount of time it took for me to grasp reality and learn how to ask better questions, I’m not convinced I could have done any better.

I have three great kids. None show any signs of becoming icons of our culture. In fact, I tried to raise them to be exactly the opposite. All three are flawed human beings. All three strive to be good at what they do and to be even better people.

They are starting life in a far better position than I did. They will be far better spouses and parents than I’ve been – if they choose that route.

I have a musical body of work I can be proud of. I have a growing written body of work I will be able to be proud of someday.

I have a family body of work I can be even more proud of.

I am a blessed man. 

Remodel

Over spring break I remodeled my music studio. This is the place I’ve written my last four CD’s and recorded the last two. In here, over the past eleven years, I’ve taught hundreds of students to make music. It has looked the same the entire time. I decided a face lift was in order.

Before:

When I was working for other people, I’d heard that a simple paint job or changing light fixtures was all it took to reinvigorate employees with lagging motivation. I thought it was hogs wallow until, while working for a Fortune 100 company that paid its employees next to nothing, I watched it happen.

I was amazed. None of us got a raise. They moved us from a number of smaller offices into a bullpen full of cubicles. We all got “new” desks and chairs. They were new to us, anyway. This was not a better work environment by any means. More distractions, more oversite, less privacy. Yet, we were all excited and productivity rose for a few months after we moved across the hall. It was impressive. I’m not even sure the higher ups at the company were aiming for the bump in productivity. It was just that the company was growing so fast. We needed the extra space for all the new employees.

Remodeling my studio was difficult work because I don’t really know what I’m doing. But, it was a nice change of pace. It reminded me of why I am so happy teaching music. Years of construction work was not only unfulfilling, but incredibly hard on my body. My favorite thing about the drywall business is that I am no longer involved in it!

Although, I still remember driving my oldest son around Omaha and pointing out buildings and homes I’d helped to build. I did feel a strong sense of pride in the work I’d done.

Other Remodels

When I was twenty-four, I was involved in a multilevel marketing company. My up line (the couple who recruited my wife and I into the business) decided to get a large office just inside the 610 loop west in Houston. I helped paint the new office. I didn’t feel the excitement or any extra ownership in that office. Probably because I didn’t really work there. I’d show up for the Tuesday night recruiting meetings and the Saturday morning trainings, but I was rarely in the office. I was always out and about in Houston, meeting new people, delivering product, coaching my downline and my customers on how to get better results. That’s where I was happy, excited, and engaged. Ultimately, it didn’t work out, but I had a good time while I was working the business sixteen hours a day.

At thirty-two, my last year in construction, I helped my church remodel a new space they’d rented. It was an old building in Council Bluffs, IA. At one point, we knocked out a wall to make the sanctuary space bigger. The pastor had located the breaker box and turned off the power to all the outlets. I was tearing out the wall. When I got to the wiring for the outlets, I asked if he was sure the power was off. He assured me it was. I tentatively tore out the wiring for the first outlet. All good. I began to work more quickly. When I got to the third outlet, I grabbed the wiring and pulled hard enough that my hand slipped to the end where the wires were exposed. I large spark and a shooting pain emanated from the contact point. I’d burned the pinky on my fretting hand pretty badly.

It turned out, the previous tenants had used the third outlet for the copy machine and, instead of using a forty watt breaker they used two twenties. You live. You get burned. You learn. I finished the remodel with a badly burned hand. I didn’t even attend the first service. I never felt any extra motivation or ownership there, either.

Back to the Studio

After: 

The space looks completely different. More vibrant. Larger. I am looking forward to teaching here. I am looking forward to creating new music here. I am interested to find out if the color I chose for the walls really does improve the concentration of my students. That’s what the research I found says the effect is supposed to be.

I am more motivated by the facelift, but I did all the work and made all the decisions. One would expect me to be excited. I am interested to learn whether any of my students become more motivated by the new look of their learning space. 

My Epiphany

Yesterday, I sat down to write today’s article. This is the week I scheduled to lay out President Trump’s plan to punish the poor. There is more than enough material to prove this is the administration’s and Republican congress’s plan. As I sat down to write, I felt an overwhelming urge to walk away. Go work in the garden or play guitar or piano.

That’s when I had my latest epiphany. All this political stuff is important and it’s depressing as hell.

I’ve decided, for my own health and well-being, I need to stick to my own wheelhouse. My purpose in life is two-fold:

        Create as much beauty as I possibly can in this world.

1. Draw the attention of others to all the beauty and bliss I find already existing in this world.

Someone else is going to have to fight these political fights.

I’m out.

Here is the first piece my self-redirectioning has produced:

Safe

I sit peacefully on the front porch

Safe from the early March rain

Gentle and cold

It washes the pine pollen from

                the trees

                the air

Causing it to gather like greenish-yellow dirt

                in the cracks in the sidewalks

                in the gutters along the street sides

The wind picks up

Waving the pine boughs

I imagine they are palms branches

I am Egyptian royalty

Safe and wealthy on my front porch

A solitary dove calls from a neighbor’s tree

As I am about to answer,

                preparing to blow the avian call

                through my hands

Another of its own kind responds

                from the southwest

The wind calms

The thunder fades to the southeast

The rain persists

It sounds like bacon lightly frying

As it collides with the earth

Each miniature impact

Reminds me of my safety

I linger 

What is the Earth's Intrinsic Value? or Exploit the Entropic Environment

Last week’s article, Bully the Bad Guys, began a four part series on President Trump’s unfolding agenda. If you haven’t already, you might to read it before moving on to this week’s article.

In the Trump administration’s first week they put a gag order on all employees of the EPA and the Department of Agriculture. This order prohibits all employees from communicating with the press or public, including the use of social media. This includes all research scientists. As of February 26, 2017 this order has not been lifted.

President Trump also signed executive orders authorizing the immediate restarting of construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone Pipeline. Both of these pipelines had been reluctantly stopped by President Obama after unrelenting public pressure. President Trump obviously felt none of that pressure.  

The administration nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. What are Mr. Pruitt’s qualifications to run the Environmental Protection Agency? He sued the agency fourteen times in his tenure as Oklahoma’s AG. Thirteen of these fourteen lawsuits were with oil and gas companies as co-parties. These same co-parties also happened to be large scale contributors to his election campaigns. A reported $300,000 in total.

His confirmation was pushed through the senate last week so he could be confirmed before thousands of emails from his time as Oklahoma Attorney General were released. This was done in spite of requests of democrat senators to wait for the emails so a more informed decision could be made. These emails subsequently revealed an extraordinarily close relationship with oil and gas companies. He even copied and pasted an email from Devon Energy onto his own letterhead and sent it as a complaint to the EPA he is now tasked to head.

He was found to again be copying and pasting language from emails from lobby group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers in a complaint he filed with the EPA about ozone limits.

Mr. Pruitt is on public record denying the science that mercury “poses public health hazards.” It should be noted that while he was Attorney General of Oklahoma the number of lakes in the state listed for mercury contamination went from fourteen to forty. His contention during his confirmation hearing that states should be setting and enforcing environmental protection laws also needs to be pointed out.

Is it Mr. Pruitt’s intent that the EPA allow states to deny environmental science and allow their jurisdictions to become continually more toxic?

I am sure we won’t have to wait long to find out.

According to Myron Ebell, who ran the EPA transition for the new administration, the Trump administration is planning a one billion dollar budget cut in the first physical year. The 2017 FY budget is $8.27 billion. Down from $10.3 billion in 2010.

As we watch the dismantling of the EPA and other agencies in the government by this administration, we need to ask ourselves some difficult questions.

1.       Does the earth from which we are formed and sustained, our only home, have any value outside of profits corporations can extract from it?

2.       How important is clean air, clean water, and clean soil to me?

3.       Am I willing to stand by and watch as corporations collude with their political caddies in Washington to take us back to the fifties, sixties, and seventies with burning rivers, toxic smog, poisoned ground water, and subdivisions built on soil so fouled it causes cancer and birth defects in the residents?

4.       At what point do we value the health and vitality of flesh and blood humans, wildlife, and the ecosystem that makes life possible over the profits of soulless and rapacious corporations?

In his inaugural speech at the Environmental Protection Agency, Mr. Pruitt called for civility. I wonder how long he expects us to remain civil while he ignores and suppresses the environmental science and insists on harming the population of the planet for the profit of his corporate donors.  

President Trump's Unfolding Agenda

We are now one month into the presidency of Donald Trump. He told us on Inauguration Day the time for talk was over and now it was time for action. He has kept that promise. He has signed a minimum of twenty-five executive orders to date. There is at least one more that is being talked about being signed today or tomorrow. It is supposed to replace the one a lower court put a stay on and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that lower court’s ruling.

One month has passed and the President’s agenda is coming into focus. So far, I can see four main parts:

1.       Reward the Rich (gutting already weak regulations designed to prevent another financial collapse like we had in 2008, Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs employee and former George Soros employee, as Secretary of Treasury, and former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State – so much for draining the swamp, eh?)

2.       Punish the Poor (repealing Obamacare, reducing block grants to states for Medicaid, and beginning calls of “From Welfare to Work” and appointing Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education)

3.       Exploit the Environment (gutting EPA regulations, appointing a man to head the EPA who is opposed to its existence, and pushing through the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines over vehement resistance)

4.       Bully the “Bad Guys”

Over the next four weeks I will tackle each of these in reverse order.

One thing before we start. I predicted four weeks ago, part of the new administration’s plan to was to overwhelm the average person by doing so much the work-a-day individual with a job, family, and other obligations couldn’t possibly keep up with it all. This is a tried and proven effective tactic used by many governments, including Clinton, Bush, and Obama. It’s not just for dictators anymore. The administration has proven me correct to this point, but I won’t be patting myself on the back anytime soon. I would have much preferred to be wrong on this point.

Bully the Bad Guys

Candidate Trump made this one crystal clear on the campaign trail. Whether he was advocating torture of prisoners of war, promoting a policy of war crimes such as, “going after the families of terrorists,” or asking military consultants, “why do we have nuclear weapons if we aren’t going to use them?”, he put us and the world on notice:

                It would be “Open Season” on bad guys in a Trump administration.

It was funny right up until the moment Hillary Clinton conceded the election to him. Now, we are getting a more precise definition of what he means by “bad guys.”

Mr. Trump’s definition of bad guys includes all the undesirables a reasonable person might expect. Terrorists, drug cartels, criminal gang syndicates, and violent criminals who are also illegal aliens. A good list, so far. It also appears bad guys include refugees from war torn regions, and any media outlet that doesn’t simply regurgitate his preferred propaganda for the day.

President Trump seems intent on pursuing a scorched earth policy with any dissenters. If you call him on clear fabrications and lies, you suddenly become the liar. He doesn’t have to offer any coherent arguments or facts proving you are the liar. He doesn’t have to present any facts proving he’s telling the truth. He simply calls you dishonest over and over again and lets his supporters do the rest.

Whether beating people at his political rallies who disagree with his proposed policies, cancelling subscriptions, or boycotting specific retailers or news organizations, the President and his supporters intend to silence through intimidation and bullying, both around the world and here at home.

This bullying can be seen in how Mr. Trump cancels meetings with heads of state who have signaled they will not be giving him what he wants, such as the President of Mexico. It can be seen in his hanging up on the Prime Minister of Australia. It can be seen in the aggressive, confrontational style of his policy advisor Stephen Miller. It can be seen in the way he constantly pulls unsuspecting individuals off balance when he shakes their hands. (Rabbit trail: for a good laugh, check out the video of his hand shake with Prime Minister Abe of Japan. The Prime Minister's response speaks volumes about how other world leaders experience President Trump.)

One person who is conspicuously not on the list of Bad Guys is a brutal dictator who murders journalists, assassinates or jails political opponents and heads of state, and is hell bent on expansion of his own empire.

You might want to think carefully, however, before questioning the President on this matter. You might find yourself on that Bad Guy list. 

The Secret Poet

No words would come this morning. It is a rare occurrence. So, here is part of a short story I am working on. I'd love to get some feedback from you.

Fidgeting, Terri sat at her desk trying to write. The sun was already up over the desert behind the little adobe house. Her desk faced out the back window. She could see the desert becoming less still. She wanted to get out there and walk through it. But, she still hadn’t written her poem for the day. No walking until the poem was on paper. That was the rule.

                Terri had lived a life of very few rules. Almost none, in fact. This was a rule she had decided was important, so she kept it as best she could. She had spent her life exploring the world. Finding what she liked. That’s how she felt about hiking in the desert. Like she was just finding what she liked.

                As she walked through the desert she could feel herself soaking up the life. Pulling it from the sun, the sage brush, the undersized mesquite trees, and the undersized deer. Even when she didn’t see them, she could feel the rattlesnakes, coyotes, and the desert hairs. She’d gorge herself on the life that flowed through them.

                In the evenings, sitting on the back porch with a cup of coffee, her guitar, and a notebook, she’d savor the desert life she’d pulled into herself on the morning hike. She imagined pulling it up to re-chew, like a cow with its cud. She’d roll the life around inside of her, sending it to her limbs and bringing it back again into her body before sending it even further. This time to her hands and feet. Pulling it back in again to stir around inside her like a cake batter, she’d send it to her fingers and toes. Finally, she’d send all that desert life to her head where it would roll around like waves in the Pacific Ocean.

                Then the ideas would come. She’d jot them down, so she could use them for the morning poem. Only after the notes were safely ensconced in her notebook would she begin to strum her steel string guitar. Singing old songs with her husky voice.

                The singing and playing were like the poems – for her. She didn’t need anyone else to hear her play and sing. She knew she was good, not great. She took pride in being able to learn a song she liked or, even better, write a song she liked.

                She felt the same about her poems. She was working to become the best poet she could be, not for others to admire, but because she enjoyed it. She also felt a responsibility to whatever it was that gave her the abilities she had and enjoyed so much. God, the universe, genes, it didn’t much matter to Terri. Her main concern was to demonstrate her gratitude by being a good steward.

                She could feel the little desert dwelling warming under the strengthening sun. Dispelling the desert night chill. She looked at her notes from the night before. Still, nothing moved inside her. Nothing bubbled forth needing to escape.

                Often the poems would spill forth, fully formed, like they’d been wombed up inside her. The words, images, and metaphors would seem to have been nourished and nurtured by the life she had soaked up the day before. Like an egg soaks up life from a sperm cell and, feeds off the mother’s increased appetite until a completely new and different life is molded within. Finally, this new life bursts into the world. And all in just twenty-four hours.

                But today, no words, no images, no metaphors reveal themselves. Terri learned long ago not to worry over these times. That lesson was learned when she was trapping for a living in Alaska when she was a much younger woman.

Terri drove into King Salomon, Alaska the first week of August. After storing her bags in her tiny cabin, she went straight to the guide service office. She and her guide left the next morning. They didn’t seem surprised at all when she showed up alone. The guide treated her like a one hundred pound, eighteen year old girl showing up to hunt caribou was nothing out of the ordinary. She liked that.

                On day three she killed her first caribou. They packed it back to the guide office. The office sent it over to the butcher. Terri asked the woman at the office to tell the butcher she wanted the hide. She and the guide went right back to the bush. It took five days this time, but she got her second caribou. They repeated the process one more time.

                Terri asked if there was a family or a tribe she could give the meat of the second to. After delivering the meat, she asked if they had someone who could make her a coat of the two caribou skins. The old woman they introduced her to made Terri a coat and a pair of gloves. They were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

                The following day she showed up back at the guide office and told them she was ready to go to work. Ove the next three seasons they trained her as a hunting and fishing guide. She worked hard and learned fast. The entire time she was learning to be a guide she was also learning how to trap for pelts. After five years of working as a guide she felt she’d learned enough and saved enough to spend the winter trapping by herself.

                She made five grand her first year.

               

At twenty-six she felt like she’d found her calling. She spent her summers guiding fishermen, August and September guiding hunts, and winters trapping for furs. Terri didn’t think there was any way she could be any happier.

                The young woman lived this way for over a decade. The season become a liturgical rhythm in her life. The Alaskan bush, her cathedral. Fish, hunt, trap, recover and make repairs. It was a sacred circle she could count on. The challenges were many, but understandable and solvable. She could see the progress of her skills, her career, and her place in the small community.  She never thought of her life as lonely. Solitary and satisfying was how she would describe it. Besides, every guide assignment she was meeting new people.

                Then the letter came from her cousin, Fernando. Her parents were both getting older and needed help. It was becoming difficult to get out to the homestead often enough to make sure they were OK. Would she be willing to come home and help?

                Of course she would. Terri didn’t even consider it a sacrifice. It was just the way life worked. They had given her life, raised her, and helped her become the woman she was. Now it was time for her to return the favor.

                It was difficult saying goodbye to her friends and way of life in Alaska. It was the first time she’d cried in five years. She’d been out on a hunt. The dirt gave way under her while she was walking a short ridgeline. She fell and rolled a hundred feet or more before being stopped by a boulder in the middle of the hill. She cut her leg badly. She had to stop to make camp, disinfect the wound, and stitch herself up before they could continue. The client had been a proper Texas gentleman and offered to go back to the office, but she refused. They lost half a day, but she made sure the client filled their tag.

                Terri sold all her traps and her snow machine. She made arrangements with the one real estate office within fifty miles to rent her place out for her. She gave her truck to a family she knew could use it and headed to Anchorage to buy a plane ticket to Phoenix. Then a bus ride to Santa Fe. Fernando picked her up.

                The heat was far worse than she remembered. She’d spent nearly the same amount of time living in the arctic cold of Alaska as she’d lived in the desert. Living in the shadow of the last ice age for half her life had disoriented her from the heat. 

Uncle Jim

My uncle Jim died last week. He was in Panama. He got the travel gene from my grandparents. He seemed a perpetual motion machine his entire life. He fell from his scooter and cut his arm. He didn’t have it looked at, apparently trusting his body to do what it always did – recover. After a few days there was obviously something wrong and a neighbor or the family he was renting from (details are a bit fuzzy) took him to the local clinic. The clinic sent him immediately to the hospital in Chiriquí, but it was already too late. He died of the infection.

One thing everyone agrees on about Uncle Jim – he lived. To learn of his life ending from a simple cut that went septic is strange. I still have not found what feel like the correct words to describe my feelings. They will come in time. I hope.

When he was a kid, he was caught raising a chicken in his bedroom when, one early morning, the chicken revealed itself to be a rooster.

As a teen, he was found to be selling golf balls for twenty-five cents apiece to golfers who had lost theirs on the course. Eventually, someone figured out he was in fact “ransoming” their own balls back to them.

He was shipped out to Viet Nam in 1967. I was born in May of 1968. The winter before I was born our grandmother asked our mother to name me after him. He hadn’t written home in many months. She was certain he wasn’t coming back at all. My mother refused. I think her superstition overcame her great desire to please her parents. She had a deep fear of naming her baby after a newly dead relative. Also, she had a deep, irrational fear that, if she named me James, her baby brother really would be dead. She just couldn’t do it.

So I was christened Dean Ronald and Uncle Jimmy came home a few months later.

We had intermittent contact through the years. When I was ten or so, he brought his speed boat to the family camping trip in Virginia. When I tried to ski behind it, he accelerated like I was one of the teenagers and not the fifty pound wisp I was. The powerful engine pulled me up out of the water and the tips of my skis under. I did a flip and landed on my back, knocking the wind out of me. My family being who we were, I wasn’t allowed out of the water. I skied behind his speed boat, but I don’t remember it.

Was I concussed?  Maybe, I doubt it. If I was, it was not my first or last concussion, so it mattered little in the grand scheme of things.

At another family camping trip at the same campground, I was probably fifteen. I demonstrated I had no concept of discretion or decorum. As he and some of the older cousins sat around the fire, I asked him if I could buy some pot from him. He was visibly shocked. After a few seconds of calculation, he recovered and demonstrated why he was everyone’s favorite uncle. He said, “I won’t sell you any, but I’ll give you some.”

He gave me a little baggie of roaches and dried leaves. One of my cousins and I smoked it all that night. I remember being really high and then going to sleep.

Over the past week I’ve been privileged to learn a few more stories from other cousins. He went home to the Lehigh Valley a few years ago and settled down in the same house he grew up in. I am a little envious of my cousins who got to spend more time with him. Their kids got to know him, as well. Lots of laughter. Plenty more craziness I hadn’t known about.

We only saw each other a couple of times in our lives after that. We were both busy running around this vast country of ours.

Uncle Jim was always thinking outside the box of normal. Even spending winters in Panama because it was warm and inexpensive.

He lived his life as a creative force.

I hope he enjoyed it.

The rest of us did. 

Daymare

It was a great weekend. I built another garden box in the backyard. We are going to be overflowing with fresh vegetables for the next seven or eight months. I was able to sit out by the fire pit three nights in a row. I wrote five new poems.

Rick Bass’ book “In a Little While” arrived in the mail on Sunday afternoon. In anticipation of the new book’s arrival, I reread “The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness.” I am always captivated by the poetry of his prose and how he is able to make the surrounding environment a participating character in the story. He may or may not be a genius, but he is brilliant and highly skilled at what he does.

I heartily recommend all his writing, but it is his fiction that is strikingly beautiful to the point it sticks with you. Like peanut butter sticks to the inside of your mouth and you can taste it long after you’ve eaten, so his words stick to the inside of your mind and heart. Often, this stickiness manifests itself in outward fashion. You may find yourself searching out solitary places in nature, or wandering outside at night just to look up and ponder the infinite beauty.

Start with “The Watch” and “The Hermit's Story.” Before you finish these two, you’ll be hooked and you’ll find yourself building your own Rick Bass library. Enjoy.

Now, onto what is going on in my eclectically jabbering brain…

I have this recurring daymare. It can’t be called a nightmare because I am fully awake when it happens. I don’t like “waking nightmare” because it is inaccurate and doesn’t convey my participation. And we do participate in our day dreams, whether or not we realize it.

I guess you could say I go into one of my creative trances and that would most definitely be true. But, daymare is the most accurate and conveys the sense of it succinctly.

As I was saying, I have this recurring daymare where the earth is a sentient being. In this scenario humans are not the pinnacle of creation, but resemble more the bacterial communities we now know are living within our own bodies. The earth is going about the living of its life. Creating, growing, and changing with age. Maturing into a personality that respects and nurtures life as best it can. It also has an evolutionary need to propagate its own species.  It seems the earth has only recently become aware of our existence in its biological systems. We have multiplied out of control to the point of becoming a sickness within the earth. Her immune system is now beginning to engage us. She is developing antibodies to defend herself and her vital organs. She sees us as an invading pathogen, like the Bubonic Plague, and is responding appropriately.

We must mutate and become beneficial bacteria if we are to survive as a species. I am not certain we can transform fast enough. I’m not even certain most of us care to. We see ourselves more like the parasite, the liver fluke. The liver fluke is a flat worm type parasite that lives in snail slime. When ants ingest the snail slime the liver fluke burrows into the ant’s brain. It then takes over the controls.

The liver fluke’s entire goal is to have the ant be its Uber driver. The ant’s sole purpose for existence is to take the liver fluke to its preferred host – one with a liver. Thus its name. This worm allows the ant to behave normally while there is no preferred host in the vicinity. But, when a preferred host is near, the liver fluke takes over the controls and directs the ant to station itself in the perfect place to be eaten by the preferred host.

In my weird daymare, I am always concerned that we are acting like the liver fluke, but the earth is far more evolved than our species. We believe the earth is here for us to subdue, exploit, and, once we have used it up, dispose of as we leap to a new host, but the earth is far more evolved than we are or can conceive of and it knows how to deal with parasites. I fear the earth is about to take a heavy dose of antibiotics genetically engineered to target Homo sapiens sapiens.

Will we mutate in time?

This is where my daymare always ends.

See you Thursday. 

The Race Against Running Out

Anyone who has read my writing for any amount of time knows I have a fascination with futurists and those at the foremost edges of our technological development. Whether it is growing new organs, creating prosthetic limbs, genetic engineering to prevent and cure disease, a transition to sustainable energy, transhumanism (humans merging with technology; as in incorporating technology into their own bodies), or a hundred other astonishing breakthroughs of science, I am easily taken in and my imagination runs away from me.

I’ve written extensively on the subject.

I’ve recently discovered there is another group of scientists, engineers, and researchers who are working to help humanity with an entirely different future. This movement’s most common name is Peak Oil.

Before you go running off, understand, I’m not talking about the folks who make the straight to Netflix documentaries telling you to stop paying your bills and find a “bugout” shelter in the wilderness because the oil is running out next month and the world will be plunged into a Mad Maxian dystopia by 2030.

I’m talking about real scientists, engineers, and researchers. Serious, sober folks.

These folks research how much oil we are using daily, how much is being discovered each year, how much is being extracted and at what cost from existing wells. Which techniques, regulations, taxes, and natural obstacles are being imposed worldwide. These folks also study which of these are being removed and for which reasons. Such as political, corporate, populace, and personal profit. There are more factors to account for than I can list or know of.

Most of these folks believe we have already passed the point of peak oil production across the globe. According to this theory, we will be producing less and dirtier oil each year until eventually it is simply too expensive to produce. Then a long regression back to a preindustrial life for humanity.

How long will this take?

Right now, authors like John Michael Greer (The LongDescent) say two to three hundred years. According to this theory, oil becomes more and more scarce, making other sources of energy less affordable. Which other sources of energy specifically? All of them. To greater or lesser extents, solar, wind, coal, geothermal, nuclear, and hydro-electric energy all require oil to create and maintain.

As we deplete the planet’s oil reserves, all these other technologies become more expensive as well.

Peak Oil theorists maintain, Futurism and the Oil Robber Barons (my term, not theirs) are in a race. The futurists are coming up with solutions as fast as they possibly can. The oil companies are pumping petroleum out of the earth as fast as their machines can bear.

And the futurists are losing.

The main reason the futurists are losing this race against running out is because of us. We are burning, using, and discarding every petroleum derived product they come up with faster than they can come up with them. We resist every regulation on how much energy an individual or population is allowed to use.

We refuse to be made uncomfortable in any way.

Price of gasoline too high? We make our politicians pay a price for it. Let the price get beyond a certain pain point and our politicians begin losing elections.

Our favorite exotic fruit is not in season? We chew on the grocery store manager’s ear so she knows to have it in stock next week. If she doesn’t, the luxury grocery store down the street will.

See or hear a Public Service Announcement advocating turning our furnace down and putting on a sweatshirt? Or, turning up the setting on our air conditioning and wearing less? Who is the government or anyone else to tell me what to do in my own home?

On and on it goes, right?

We all do it.

And that’s the problem.

None of us wants to be the first to unilaterally go without.

The peak oil theorists aren’t all that concerned about it though. They say we will all begin to get priced out of our energy in the next decade anyway. The choice to self-regulate will be taken away from us by the natural market forces of supply and demand. (You don’t really believe the government is going to allow its bomber and fighter planes, warships, tanks, rockets, etcetera to not have enough fuel so you can be comfortable, do you?)

Will the futurists win the race against us and the oil companies?

Will we plunge ourselves into a new dark age?

Will the futurists figure it out and deliver on the promise of a glorious future where humans tap into the unlimited resources of the universe and we spread out into the stars in magical journeys even Gene Roddenberry, Isaac Asimov, and George Lucas couldn’t come up with while being aided by the most powerful psychedelic substances known to man?

I have no idea.

I do know it is always prudent to pay attention and try to be prepared for as many possible outcomes as we can. 

Saucer-Shaped Moon

A saucer-shaped moon waits below
A tenuously connected
Mars and Venus
Asking to be
Filled with the heavenly nectar
As the three float horizon-ward
Disappearing while the night is
Still beginning

YOU Are the Republic

We are finally at the end of President Trump’s first week in office. It has been a hectic week to say the least. In his inaugural address, the new president said the time for talk is over and it is now “time for action.” He has been true to his word. It is difficult, not just for the average citizen, but even for the news media to keep up.

Mr. Trump’s first executive order marked the official U.S. withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement. I wrote about that briefly here.

Among the highlights of the other EO’s are reinstating the “Mexico City” abortion rule, implementing much of what he’s promised to do on border security and immigration, providing “relief” from Obamacare regulations, issuing a freeze on all regulations created by agencies of the federal government, implementing a federal hiring freeze, restarting construction of the XL pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline, expediting environmental reviews of infrastructure projects, creating a new rule requiring any pipelines built in the U.S. to be built with U.S. made steel and other metal products, and ordering a streamlining of the federal manufacturing regulations for U.S. manufacturers.

This adds up to Mr. Trump wanting to get moving quickly on infrastructure projects to get American workers back to work rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure. It won’t solve all of our earning problems, but every little bit helps.

I don’t have time to go through each one of these executive orders, nor do I have any delusions you would sit and read all of it, so I will focus on a couple and give you an overall assessment of where we are and where we are headed.

Pipelines

President Obama wanted these pipelines to be built. He did not cancel them, he delayed them so he didn’t have to deal with the political fallout. Hillary Clinton’s position was “whatever I have to tell you to get elected.” Bernie Sanders stood alone in the presidential candidate field in opposition to these pipelines. They both became a working reality the moment the polls closed on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. If you were against these pipelines, understand, no matter who won in November, you lost this battle the moment Bernie Sanders was mathematically eliminated in the Democratic Primaries. Blame the DNC and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

I’ll say this and move on. ALL pipelines leak. The Native American tribes believe their water supply will be at least tainted if we build the Dakota Access Pipeline. They deserve to be negotiated with as a sovereign nation or, at least, a state in the union. This has not happened. As usual with the U.S., the First Peoples are treated as less than second class citizens. This is how the U.S. government treats all those with less power than itself – and this behavior does not change whether Democrats, Republicans, or Whigs, or Federalists are heading up the government.

Border Security and Immigration

Easily the most impactful thing President Trump has done in his first week is the combination of two executive orders: one to build the wall along the southern border and another on far reaching immigration policies. Among bullet points in the second order are

• ·         Hiring 5,000 additional border patrol agents
• ·         10,000 new immigration officers
• ·         Creation of new detention facilities
• ·         Ending the “Catch and Release” policy and replacing it with “Catch, detain, and deport.”
• ·         Denying federal funds to sanctuary cities and “jurisdictions” (a new word we haven’t seen much of, at first blush, it appears to be a stab at denying entire states federal funds unless they cooperate with the President’s agenda)
• ·         The action also orders the Department of Homeland Security to create and maintain a list of “sanctuary jurisdictions.”
• ·         The office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to create an Office of Victims of Crimes Committed by Removable Aliens. (An ominous name, no?) This office will be compiling lists of crimes committed by immigrants. One can only assume these lists will be studied to help officials decide specific countries from which to block, reduce, or only allow super select immigrants. It also says in the order these lists are for the purpose of “better informing the public regarding safety threats associated with sanctuary jurisdictions.” (A thinly veiled threat. This list will very soon be turned into a propaganda tool to disrupt tourism and commercial investment in these “sanctuary jurisdictions.” Why would you visit or expand your business in a place that is so unsafe? The goal is obviously to force compliance by using internal “economic sanctions” against these places.  

I have to point out at this point, had the administrations of the past ten presidents or so simply enforced the immigration laws on the books, we would not be in the position of having to decipher whether this authoritarian president believes his actions are for the good of the nation or if he has more nefarious motives. In short, we did this to ourselves.

Hope

In President Obama’s first ten days he signed nine executive orders. President Trump has signed twelve. This number may actually be thirteen, but it is difficult to get clear information at this point. He was scheduled to sign an EO ordering an investigation into his fictitious voter fraud claims yesterday afternoon, but the signing was postponed.

Bottom line, President Trump is not that far ahead of where President Obama was at this point in his presidency.

Also, one of the first EO’s President Obama signed was the order to close Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba. Eight years later it is still open. The President is not a king. Just because he orders something to happen does not mean it is feasible or doable. The wall may indeed get built. If it does, it will have little effect on illegal immigration. The more stringent steps in the accompanying order will have far more effect. Building the wall will create a few decent paying jobs for a few American workers for a few years. If we decide we don’t like it, we can always take it down once the Trump Presidency is over. Creating a few more temporary jobs?

We’ve had megalomaniac authoritarian presidents before. In the sixties and early seventies we had one who was a Democrat (Johnson) and one who was a Republican (Nixon) consecutively.

And we are still here as a sovereign and a free nation.

The Republic is bigger than one man. It is definitely bigger than this one man, no matter how many times he tries to conflate himself with the nation.

Keep in mind: YOU are the Republic.

Happier Things

I said on Tuesday I’d write about happier things today, so here you go.

We have had wonderfully moderate temperatures here in Houston for the last ten days or so. We have not used the heat or the air conditioning in our home for at least that many days now. The ten day forecast calls for sunny or partly cloudy and mild temperatures through next Saturday, as well. Reminds me of living in California. A little. California has better beaches, a better ocean, and MOUNTAINS.

I’ll be on the back patio by the fire pit nearly every evening for the next ten days. Lady Dog will be with me.

I am the most content and enjoying my life more than at any other time I can remember. My life is really good, right now. I am enjoying my work. I find true fulfillment in giving people the lifelong gift of being able to make music for themselves. My kids are all in good places in their lives.

I am taking the time to revel in that goodness.

Thank you for being a part of it.

I will have a much longer piece either later today or tomorrow with my take on the President's first hectic week. Hint: He said in his inaugural address it was "time for action" and he wasn't kidding. 

See you tomorrow.   

President Trump's Combative Inaugural Weekend

I didn’t get a post out yesterday because I couldn’t decide what to focus on. This morning I realized that is exactly what I need to write about.

The reason I had so much trouble deciding what to write about yesterday is because, for three days, we were inundated with lies, half-truths, conflations, misrepresentations, and outright propaganda.

Before I go any further, I want to say:

                ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE

It is a part of governing.

                ALL POLITICIANS LIE

They cannot get elected or even inspire confidence otherwise.

The Bush and Obama administrations both employed the strategy of hiding their lies. I’ll let you decide who did the better job.

President Trump seems to be employing the strategy of the Clinton, Nixon, and Johnson administrations. This strategy is to overwhelm the public with so many lies of varying types it wears the public out. The overwhelm strategy erodes the resistance of everyday people who are working to take care of their families. This erosion happens quickly, like a mudslide in a California rain storm. Soon, the only resistors left are the most radical. Because these folks are so far outside the mainstream of the “Average American” they are easily dismissed and marginalized by the government propaganda machine and their sometimes willing, sometimes unwitting accomplices.  

I will be delighted to be proven wrong on this, but, if the first weekend is any indicator, we are in for an exhausting four to eight years.

**************************

Important Happenings

Besides the U.S. continuing its 220 year streak of peaceful transitions of power, some other significant events happened this weekend.

President Trump’s first executive order was to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement. This is exceptionally good news for the American worker. This agreement, while possibly shoring up U.S. influence in Asia, would have our workers degraded by even more competition with fifty cent per hour laborers and three hundred dollar per month knowledge based workers with no protections from our government. U.S. wages have been depressed for far too long by these types of agreements. The only people enriched by these types of agreements are large, multinational corporations.

A record number of people marched in protest on Saturday against President Trump and in favor of women’s rights. This number is nearly equal to the number of popular votes he lost by in the general election. I find that an interesting coincidence.

Finally, the U.S. military carried out drone bombings in Yemen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, as President Trump wasted no time getting to work trying to fulfill his promise to “eradicate extremist Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth.” 

I searched again this morning and could find no U.S. Congressional authorization for the U.S. military to be conducting war in Yemen. Our president, neither Obama nor Trump, have any authorization to be conducting war on Yemeni soil. Still, I see almost no news coverage of this. No outcries from the leaders of either party. No grass roots uprisings. The American people seem content to allow our presidents to illegally use our military to eliminate those they don’t like in other sovereign nations while killing more civilians than combatants - as long as they are “keeping us safe” here at home.

I’ll be back to writing about happier things on Thursday. 

Negative and Positive Liberties

I am currently reading “Escape from Freedom” by Erich Fromm. He published this book in 1941. Which means he wrote it in the years leading up to and the first horrific years of World War II. As you may have already guessed, Dr. Fromm was desperately trying to figure out how the most “civilized” place the planet had ever known (Europe) had lost its collective sanity and decided absolute destruction and the murder of tens of millions was the solution to all their problems. What made the situation even more maddening for him was the necessity of the “II” designation. This was the second time in fewer than fifty years his neighbors had chosen this “solution.”

His conclusions and arguments are compelling. I will be unpacking them more next week because they have a laser focused relevance to our circumstances today.

Fromm believed we modern humans have a habit of celebrating our negative freedoms as individuals and stopping short of their true purpose of existing: the freedom to become. 

An example of this might be free speech. The Constitution of the United States outlines our right to freedom of expression and hampers the ability of the government or other authorities to infringe upon it. We celebrate and defend our right to think, read, write, and speak what we will. Fromm argued the vast majority of the population of free societies stop there. He wanted to encourage us to go past negative liberty of freedom from regulation and embrace the positive freedom of learning how to think rigorously and independently.

He believed our lack of initiative in this area makes us easy prey for advertisers and propagandists alike.

Henry Ford is quoted as saying:

                Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

I find it interesting a man who so prided himself on his ability to think was bamboozled so easily by the anti-Semite propaganda of his day, but, on this quote, I think Erich Fromm would have agreed with him.

Fromm was concerned, as many are today, our inability to think well combined with our vast scientific knowledge brings many to despair. This despair is induced by cynicism and lack of belief in any personal significance, or meaning. This again creates a susceptibility to advertisers and propagandists.

So what was his solution?

Surprisingly, Fromm offered the same treatment as Jung:

                Acknowledge and face your fears of insignificance, separation from the whole of humanity and society, and lack of purpose and feelings of powerlessness. Once you have dealt with these insecurities you will be empowered to embrace your freedom to become.

Of course, being a psychoanalyst, Fromm, as well as Jung, wanted you to go through this process with an analyst to assist you. But, this is expensive and takes years, at best. Psychoanalysis is not an option for the average person in the United States of America. If Dr. Fromm’s solution is the correct one, and I have a hunch it is, the majority of us will have to go it alone. Which brings us right back to the heart of the problem, doesn’t it?

What do you think?

Do you agree with Erich Fromm? Does our lack of critical thinking skills make us susceptible to advertisers and propagandists to use as they will? Do you see signs of this in your community, church, government?

Do you see authoritarianism around the world or in your own country treating the masses as “prey” or a means to their own personal ends?

Tell me in the comments below.    

If you like this blog, please recommend, share, and subscribe.

Also, invite your friends.

Thanks

Sacredness of Mountain Solitude

The title poem from my upcoming collection:

There is something sacred about
    mountain solitude.
A life wholly other than
    the one we live below.

Is it the proximity to the heavens
    or the heavenly nearness of
    nature,
    or quiet,
    or a more peaceful rhythm to live by?

 The answers to these questions are beyond me.
 As beyond me as the mountains themselves.

A Carless Life?

In June of 2016 I began simplifying my life. Some would say my life was already simple and I’d agree. When compared to the typical American life of hustle and rush, scrape and scramble, my life was already simple. At the same time, I had far too much “stuff.” Junk drawers filled with scraps of this and that, “just in case” I or the kids needed it someday. An attic and a garage full of things I hadn't used in years and had no plans on using anytime soon. Cleaning, arranging, organizing, and searching through all this stuff wastes enormous amounts of time and energy. The older I get the less I have of either. I sold, gave, and threw away books, clothes, dishes, weights, tools, and much more.

I still have way too much stuff.

I am planning another purge soon. That one will be far more emotionally draining. I’ve already gotten rid of most of what I didn’t care about. What is left is different.

I’ll write about that when I go through it.

This past week I was ready to take my vehicle in for an oil change. A couple of days before I took it in the Check Engine light came on.

Uh, oh.

The local shop did the oil change and ran diagnostics. They came back with an estimate of $2300. The vehicle is a 2007 Saturn VUE. 4 cylinders. Over 230,000 miles. The Kelly Blue Book website says it will trade in for under $1000.

$2300 is far better than a new car payment for the next four to five years, but I took this as an opportunity to explore my options for an even more simplified life. Can I live a carless existence?

I am currently looking into a combination of Amazon Prime Pantry and a grocery delivery service my local grocery store is using. If I miscalculate and run out of something important before it is time for my next delivery, there is the mountain bike option. According to Google Maps the grocery store is only 1.3 miles away.

I believe, with a bit of careful planning, I can avoid needing to use the bicycle option in all but the most extreme circumstances such as, bad storms.

I currently have to drive one day per week for work. This drive is about two miles each way. I could use a soft guitar case with backpack straps to carry my guitar and papers I need as I ride the bike back and forth. I would have to come up with a different option June through September. Folks don’t want me showing up at their house to teach them music when I am all sweaty and stinky. Also, this option needs to be available to me on days like today when Houston’s skies open up and pour for hours on end. Will Uber or a taxi work?

The next hurtle is bank deposits. The majority of my students still pay tuition with checks. I can make another and regular pushes to convert folks over to PayPal or other electronic options, but, for the foreseeable future, there are going to be folks who can’t or won’t use online payment methods. I have to accommodate them. To do this I’ll be making at least two trips to the bank each month.

Finally, I need a plan for when I want to go camping and hiking and for the few times per year I need to get into Houston proper. For these times I can rent a vehicle for a reasonable rate.

There are other factors to consider, but these are the major concerns and I believe I can manage them.

The great thing about this is I can test it – even long term, if I like – with my vehicle parked in my driveway. I don’t have to commit to anything until I am absolutely sure.

By simplifying my life I am giving myself more time to consider the life I want.

The more time I give myself to think about my life, the more I become aware of my questions changing. For instance, this question changed from, “How can I maintain my highly convenient and expensive car lifestyle?” to “Which lifestyle serves me?”

As the months go by the small changes are bestowing upon me a vastly more fulfilling life.

I’ll take it. 

I want to hear from you. 

Are you currently simplifying or making other changes? If so, what prompted you to begin making those changes? Do you see anything I missed I need to consider? 

If you are enjoying this blog, please follow, comment, recommend and share it with your friends. 

See you Thursday. 

How I Could Have Saved Time and Pain

To fully understand this post, first read Learning to Do Life Well. My post from 1/9/2017. 

It turns out some accomplished philosophers and psychologists have written about what I was going through in my twenties and early thirties. First, I had to do the work of living the ancient Greek maxim:

Know Thyself

The ancient Greeks claimed they got it from the even more ancient Egyptians. Had you asked me during the nearly two decades I was trying to figure all this stuff out, I would have said it was probably Shakespeare.

As I was learning about myself, I was also engaging in what Nietzsche called “The Will to Power” and what Jung called “Individuation.” Had I been exposed to these things before or during these particular struggles, I might have been far less concerned about why I didn’t seem to fit anywhere and never being satisfied as a joiner or a follower.

The process of learning who we are is often uncomfortable. Jung encourages us to confront and acknowledge our darker sides and to neither be ashamed or afraid of them. Nietzsche admonishes us to revel in the pain of the struggle. To see it as an opportunity to show the strength of our internal metal.

All through my mid- and late-twenties I had this recurring vision in my mind. I’d be working a job I hated for three to six months, falling farther and farther behind financially the entire time. I’d be working so hard to conform to what “god,” my church leaders, and society expected of me. And I’d be growing more and more miserable.

I could see this “other” me inside myself. He was nearly naked. Long hair, dirty. Aggressive. I had him in a cell of stone and ancient iron bars. There was a single, bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that was always swinging side to side so no one could ever get a good look at his face.

I knew I had him caged, but any moment he was going to trick me into letting him out again so he could destroy the nice, sanitized, middle class life I was struggling to create. Complete with the two car garage and the white picket fence. Even though I didn’t want any of it.  

I was terrified of this other me and I knew I had no real power over him.

Had I been exposed to Nietzsche, Jung, and others, I might have learned this is normal. Instead of keeping this other me caged, I needed to learn to compromise with him and figure out how the two of us could live together in this one body and enjoy it.

It was perfectly fine that I wasn’t cut out to live the Monday through Friday life of modern Americans. Jung calls it the “average ideal.” I wasn’t designed to help fulfill the corporation’s vision, or the pastor’s vision, or anybody else’s vision. I was supposed to be finding and creating my own unique path. And I wasn’t supposed to be fighting my path, avoiding my path, or being ashamed of it.

On his debut EP, singer songwriter Joe Pug has a line I love:

I’d rather be nobody’s man than somebody’s child

This is how young Joe expressed his struggle of finding his unique path in life. I think he summed it well.

In trying desperately through my twenties and early thirties to conform to the jobholder lifestyle of the masses, I was literally harming myself and my family. It wasn’t who I was or who was designed to become. When I finally gave myself permission to accept myself as an artist I began the process of self actuation and my life began to get better. It was a painfully slow process, but it has made an enormous difference in every area of my life: mental, physical, emotional, financial, social, and career.

Life as an individual is good.