On Interns And The Future

 This past week I was asked to speak to the Summer Interns.

I was a bit of a last minute substitution:  the original speaker (a member of the Site Leadership Team, or LT) had something come up at the last minute and they needed a substitute.  One of my coworkers with whom I am friends (and manages the program) asked if I would be willing to speak.

Of course I said yes.  After all, I like my friend. Also, there was free lunch.

---

The format was similar to "Meet the X" in years past when I was a student:  I sat in front of around 30 interns at a U shaped table, uncomfortably the focus of their attention.  Each of them went around and introduced themselves:  Name, major, college, year in school ("X" year student is now the norm, not "junior", "senior", etc.).  Then of course it was my turn:  name, rank, brief job history.

And then, open question time.

The questions were likely the sorts of ones you would expect to hear in these sorts of things:

- "What was one of your greatest challenges in your job?"

- "How did you get into the industry"

- "What do you recommend to help you succeed?" (No surprise here:  I recommended "Be nice" and "Be kind".)

- "What do you look for in a resume?"

- "Do you have any books you would recommend?" (Again, likely no surprises to readers here:  The Enchiridion (The Handbook) by the Stoic philosopher Epitctetus and Go Rin No Sho (A Book of Five Rings) by Miyamoto Musashi. I think at least one of the interns wrote the titles down.)

We also had a fascinating discussion about Iaijutsu.  I do not think I am actually supposed to use the term "Blood Throw" (Chibori) in a professional setting, but there you go.

I will say they were all very polite, well-mannered, and seemed to pay attention (very minimal phone checking that I could see).  

---

Later in the week, they did their poster displays (to show what they had been working on in their time there).  Typically I do not go to these, but felt obligated as I had spoken to them.

Every one of the posters was great. There are a lot of smart young people out there ready to take on the world.  Lots of great and applicable projects to the work we are doing at our site (as an interesting side note, lots of use of Artificial Intelligence).  

The biggest thing that surprised a number of them that they did not expect to learn during these projects?  How important communication was and how many different stakeholders there were.

---

I left both happy and sad.

I left happy because - contrary to what one may see on social media (I say that; I largely avoid the news now), not all young people are hating on the world and society.  Some really are trying to do good and useful things - and they seem like are ready to take on the world (as we all were, once upon a time).

I left sad because of the same future.

In Spring 2025, it is estimated that 1,028, 185 students graduated with a B.A. or B.S. Of those, STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) as well as business are among the top majors.  And while STEM jobs are growing in need (and apparently we are woefully behind in graduating them), we are also dealing in world where multiple countries are graduating STEM graduates (China, for 2025, produced 3.57 million STEM Graduates).  Add to that the burgeoning use of Artificial Intelligence which will automate a great many things, and I think it is going to be a tough job market in the future.

---

I am grateful I had the opportunity to speak to them and see the work that they are doing.  It did fill me with a bit more confidence about the future and about the younger generation.  

Hopefully they, in turn, walked away with a little more appreciation that there is a world outside of a career and the things you have to take to get a degree.  

After all, no-one dies wishing they had just one more day at their job.

A Visit To A Former Boss

This past weekend I went to visit my former boss who retired earlier this year.

The drive was approximately 2 hours North/Northwest of New Home 2.0, over the major river in this area, past a port or two, and into a lovely green part of the world largely forgotten by almost everyone but its inhabitants and logging companies.  It was not "remote" in the sense that it is far away, but it is in a valley isolated from freeways, towns, and tourist destinations. Likely no-one goes there except for a purpose - I, myself, would not have found the place without a last minute text letting me know to go beyond where The Computer In My Pocket's instructions ended.

It was not quite the end of the world, but I think you can see the end from there.

---

I have, on the whole, been blessed with a series of excellent bosses.

I use the word "boss" by choice, both because that is the word I started with all those years ago with my first job in high school and partially because it covers any range of titles (from supervisor up to VP or Head) that had authority over me.  "Manager" truly is a job title, not a necessarily a role, and the more modern phrase of "People Leader" seems precisely wrong: not all people are leaders, and not all people leaders lead their people, or at least, lead their people well.

My bosses have indeed been excellent bosses overall, full of knowledge and insight and understanding - and where they were not excellent bosses (or even good ones), they were generally good human beings outside of their role as my boss, which helped ease the strain a bit when friction arrived; if nothing else, you can find some humanizing element to center on in difficult conversations.  From all of them I have learned - mostly good things both in terms of knowledge and wisdom, from others simply how not to be that kind of boss.  Most of them lightened the load where they could, taught me things that only experience can teach one in an industry where the practice is as much an art as a science, and most importantly taught me in turn how to (hopefully) be a good boss as well.

Much like any teacher in school, in some way they live on through me (although, to my knowledge, all of my current industry bosses are still with us).

---

We had the most of splendid of visits.  She showed me her property with its various outbuildings and places she practices her various arts (now much more full time), and her extensive garden (the picture above is what she sent me home with, which represents. 0.00000001% of her output:  cabbage, three kinds of onions, three kinds of garlic, shallots, and jams and salsas). 

We chatted about work, both over the lunch that she just "whipped up" of onion soup made with fresh onions and shallots from the garden and homemade bread and later after the tour.  She offered some wisdom, gave some suggestions, listened to me kvetch  about the current state of work affairs - which has not really changed since she left (of course they have not) - and gave me insight into thinking more about what my own next few years might look like  - if there is an advertisement for "retire as soon as feasibly possible", she and her husband are prime examples.

I am grateful, of course.  Grateful for the conversation, grateful for the gifts (sauerkraut is now in the crock and cabbage soup has been made and I now have garlic to plant for Winter) - but mostly thankful for her kindness and guidance and, by extension, the kindness of all the bosses I have had.

You really never know how each and every relationship will influence those on the other side of it, even years later.

The Places We Love Most

 

(Source)

There is a place in the far Northwest of California the runs along the coast where at one time, military bunkers were installed.  I cannot completely tell you the place now and the pictures and names I look at do not look familiar to me, but I would know it in an instant if I were to see it again.

That spot was the last time I took a trip with three of my college friends.

Two were my roommates from college, one a young lady that we had all more or less taken up as one of our own.  We hiked in along the coast, spent the night, then hiked out the next day.  I say hiked; these days likely I would have called it a day trip.

But there was a moment here, a moment of passing that was not reflected in any of the other activities of graduation or moving or traveling on would reflect in the weeks ahead. 

It was not that this was home.  But it set with me that for all the change that was coming forward that we had enjoyed two wonderful years living together (at least the three guys as college roommates).  It was a marker, a place to both say goodbye to and go out from.

---

There are places that figure in my life because of my memories and associations there:  my house growing up, my grandparent's house in town, The Ranch, even my hometown.  Those hold a lot of joy and memories for me as the represent the people that were there as much as any other thing about it.

But there are other places as well, places that were not necessarily "people" based but I can see and feel them even how, places that somehow grounded me at points in my life.

The woods behind my best friend's house during middle school where we ran amuck as young boys should, tearing through the forest, building forts, camping out.  The Director's House in high school, where I spent many a day (and night) in harmless shenanigans and planning as the world was our oyster at the time.  The track around my hometown high school, where Usidean Ruadh and I would walk for hours and hours, talking about everything and anything under the sun.

Sometimes it was - or is - the streets around the places I lived, where I could walk and think and allow my emotions to work themselves out.  A Rabbit Shelter, where I felt useful every Sunday no matter what the week was like.

Places that gave me some sense of belonging to someone or something, places to turn where the universe felt cold and uncaring.

---

Not every place is like that of course; there are a score of work locales that have merely been places that I exchanged time for labour, churches where the relationships were deep but I moved on due to a change in location, the "favourite" restaurant that - for various reasons - was not longer visited.  There are memories there too of course, often good ones.

But never the sort that reminded me of the rather important point that somehow I was grounded, that I belonged.  

That, as the quote says, I was never as lost as I believed.

Having A Plan

The whole thing started in late May when I broke a tooth.

I am a stress consumer of snacks and - conveniently - at work there is a large container of mint Life Savers.  I was stressed and not thinking and bit down; off came a part of a molar on the right side of my mouth.  I did not crack the tooth (fortunately), but there was a new set of sharp edges in my mouth which created problems for my tongue.  I tried to manage it for a day, then made an emergency appointment at the dentist.  She ground it off and reminded me that I needed to not do that (also, that my enamel was pretty much gone there and any future repairs would be less "delightful".

I resolved this was not going to happen again.

To help manage this process, I did two things.  The first was to reload the food tracking app on my phone and make myself use it to keep track of everything I ate (and hopefully shame me into not gulping Life Savers like candy).  This also drove to the fact that with a hike coming up in the near future, I needed to carry less of "me" around. (Which seems to be working:  I have completely stopped consuming Life Savers, reduced my overall snacking, and am down almost 10 lbs.).

The second - tracking my food as I was - is that it re-ignited more fully using my bullet journal to track my overall activities.

---

I have used a bullet journal - or dot journal, or (I am sure) a host of other names - off and on for six years.  In short, there are a multitude of ways to use it (which really appeals to my "Let me keep trying things until something sticks" nature); the core is using a series of "bullets" or check marks to track activities that need to be done, are not done, or need to be moved.  There are as many ways to do them as there are personalities and plenty of resources to do it (Dot Journaling:  A Practical Guide).  

The other great thing about them is that one keeps a table of contents up front and then enters information as it happens - no matter what; thus it becomes less of a daily planner and almost more of a journal or information source.  In mine, I have weekly plans, conversations with my career coach, items from a book, plans for things - all there in sequence and a table of contents entry, ready to be recalled.

A challenge of learning to use it for planning has been "what" to include in a weekly plan.  Over time, I have learned that activities that I will always do as a routine need not be there - reading the Bible in the morning for example, or studying Old English.  Other things - things that I might let slip or find a reason not to do - benefit greatly from being an item to check off.

It really is true:  there is something indefinable about checking something off that actually creates more of an incentive to complete things.

---

The system of writing things down and getting them done was working - in fits and starts to be sure, but working (one of the great challenges for me in this system is to accept that everything does not get done and sometimes an arrow pushing something to next week is okay).  I felt like the needle was starting to move in parts of my life.

And then, last weekend, I took an outing.

The outing was not the issue.  The fact that I spent money on the outing was not the issue (this was known up front).  What was the issue was the fact that I had not planned out how much I intended to spend.

No, it was not astronomical and no banks were broken.  No gambling was involved and no large sums of money were lost.  But it forced me to recognize there was a gap in the system.  

Planning was not just for the things I wanted to accomplish.  Planning was for those things that were fun as well, if for no other reason than insuring I left with the same sense of fun I had planned for.

---

It was a good lesson for me - especially after the relative success I feel I have been enjoying with the system I have cobbled together.  It is really good practice for whatever not doing my main line of work will look like, whenever that day comes (I keep hoping more quickly, but we will have to see).

It is good to have some level of spontaneity.  It is a better to have spontaneity with a plan.

On A PR And Showing Up

This Saturday past, I hit a Personal Record weightlifting.

Personal Records (PR) is a measurement tool used in probably every sport.  It is simply a measure of something achieved:  a weight, a distance, a height, something to mark progress. They are intensely personal in that we are all different and start at different points; my personal record may be someone else's starting point.

But they are markers, markers of progress made.

---

My weightlifting journey, begun at least 10 years ago, has had a tough go over the last three years.

Part of that was due to the combination of layoffs in 2023; gym membership was one of the first things to go as cut.  I did have access to the gym at the community center for my HOA, but it just was not quite as good.  Then the move of course, and the use of my apartment gym, which had the basics and allowed me to maintain at some level, but not really progress.

I finally rejoined a gym last year (one of the big corporate ones, subsidized to some extent by my work).  It is less than a mile from work and thus convenient in the sense that if I go after work, I will get a workout.  Of course, going after work also means going at the most crowded time of the day, which pushes the workout longer.

My overall progress has been less than desirable.  I am, if nothing else, inherently lazy, and always looking for a reason to put off the workout until another day.

---

My PR on Saturday was for a deadlift, lifting a barbell with plates from the ground to one's hips.  One of the main Olympic lifts, it is a great overall lift as it engages almost every leg muscle, the back muscles, and the grip.  It is also one that has the greatest risk of injury if not done correctly (important safety tip:  Flat back).

The PR was for 5 lbs/2 kg for four reps, 4 x 265 lbs/120 kg. 5 lbs may not sound like much of an increase - but this is at the end of an increasingly heavy series of lifts (for me, 45 lbs., 135 lbs., 185 lbs., 205 lbs., 225 lbs., 245 lbs., and then 265 lbs.).  I suppose one could go directly to the end weight, but warming up and repetitions matter as much as the final weight one lifts.

After confirming the PR, I checked my notes. I had been chasing this particular weight for 5 years.

(By comparison, the current record for raw deadlift (no suit or straps) is held by Benedikt Magnusson at 460.4 kg/1,105 lbs.)

---

I - all of us - are in a race against time where in the end, we lose.  And having more than fully entered my late 50's (almost to the point I can no longer claim them), I am starting to come to grips with the fact that certain physical things are either gone or disappearing.  The fact that I can actually increase my ability to lift a weight was unexpected.

It is also hopeful.

It is a good reminder to me that time is not just a one way thing, that time - plus effort - can yield results that I would not have anticipated.  It is just a matter of showing up every time and doing the work, no matter how boring it is or the length of time between available equipment.

How utterly encouraging to find there are still records to be set.

Take Up Space

 

(Source)

About a month ago, someone approached me after watching me speak for a bit.  

"You shrink in when you speak"  they noted.  "Not your voice so much - you are loud enough - nor your gestures - you keep the audience's attention.  But you kind of shrink into yourself as you speak, as if you do not really feel like you belong there.  Own your space."

I thanked the individual profusely.  It was not something I was aware of.

---

One of the concepts from the sword art I practice, loosely translated, is the idea of "Projecting Bigness".

The idea is not simply that of standing taller or pushing one's arms and elbows and chest out.  It is just as much about an attitude of occupying the space you are in, of being a presence as you walk or move in training.  It should not matter whether or not you have a weapon; the very fact of who you are as a martial artist should be enough.

After nearly 17 years of training, I still struggle to do this at times.

---

If the world wishes anything for us, it wishes that we would not take up space.

Oh, it quite loves it if we take up space as part of a crowd, another of a long line of grey drones that march in lockstep, singing from the same songbook.  There is no risk in this.  In fact, it loves the fact that we are take up space - safe space, space that does not challenge but rather accepts.

But that is not our calling.

Do not shrink into yourself, I have to remind myself every day.  Own your space.  Project bigness.  Be colourful, not muted.

Take up space.

The Golden Little Things

(Source)

 This past Friday at The Allotment, I drove bamboo stakes into the ground.

Part of these were to shore up my tomato plants (11 of 12 of which are still alive); the remaining staves were driven by the black beans to give them something to climb up. Tying the tomatoes up was itself an adventure, as the attachment material I had was sufficient but cutting the lengths turned out to be a bit of an adventure.

It was only me in the garden that evening, pushing and cutting and tying (and occasionally muttering to myself, cutting a new length, and trying again) followed by watering.  The evening was coolish and crisp, the noise low as - due to the holiday - people were out doing other things rather than driving through local neighborhoods on their way to something else.

Blessedly mosquito freely, I stood in the falling darkness with the hiss of water through the hose my only companion.

---

More and more, I find that such moments and such things are ones that I have to make and preserve for myself.

The world, with its news, social media, entertainment - none of this provide this anymore. And once upon time, at least for me, I could find such moments there.  But not any longer:  without a great management of what one sees and what one follows, elements of what has become a social "free-for-all" in all the worst ways is constantly before one.  

More than ever, it is left up to us to provide ourselves with this moments - these Golden Little Things - to preserve the light for ourselves.  And I confess, I find myself in need of them more than ever.

---

And so I have become a collector of The Golden Little Things: a rabbit tearing back and forth in the early morning in my living room, a cat sleeping on the top of a couch in the sun, (or on me, weighting me down), a video clip of a garden railroad or rabbits on social media, doing Iai in the failing evening light, the sight of plants popping through the soil that I had sown there.  

I find them too in the things that I have now:  the book that I unexpectedly remember (or "mysteriously" comes in the mail), the shirt or vest I love to wear, boots in general, the ability to sit on a balcony with a glass of wine and a book, moments of God I did not expect to have but appear none the less.

I put them away in soul and memory, guarding against the encroaching darkness of a world where - from almost every side - I no longer fit in nor am worth trying to fit in, more and more a monolith of another time fading into the evening as I watch the world hurtle by while I seem frozen in time.

 

Memories And Data

 This past week, with the purchase of a tripod for to use with my Computer In My Pocket for remote iaijutsu class (we do not always have access to our facility), I seemed to acquire yet another cord for yet another small device to be charged.  I went to put in the basket I had allocated for such things - and now found it full not just with other random cords, but with a pile of thumb drives.

Memories and data, frozen in time.

---

I remember when all you could save on personal computers was what your hard drive allowed you to and what you could fit on a floppy disc.

Oh, the hard decisions - What do I keep, what do I dispose of?  Do I really need this program or this file?  Can I do without?

And then - wonder of wonders - came the Read/Write CD, and then the Zip Drive, and then (or maybe simultaneously) the USB Drive (or Thumb Drives or Memory Stick, or whatever one likes to call it).  Suddenly, everything could be saved.  Memory was nothing we paid attention to at all:  Make a thing?  Save it.  Make ten versions?  Save those too.

Until the technology moved on.

First, floppy drives moved from internal drives to external drives and then disappeared.  Next was the Zip Drive (probably because it was a single use item instead of Read/Write CD/DVD drive).  The CD/DVD drives became external and then disappeared.

Only the Thumb Drives remained - likely because the port was useful for other things as well.

Suddenly, memories and data were frozen in time.

---

Over the years my data storage has migrated: the Zip drives were copied to CDs when the Zip Drive itself was no longer manufactured and obsolete, the CD files migrated to USB Drives when CD/DVD drives were no longer standard fare in computers. 

The Zip Drives are long gone into a shred bin; the CDs are still on a shelf as I cannot bring myself (yet) to get rid of them (in the event I failed to copy something over).  The USB drives now sit in my validated storage device, there if I need to find a file from years ago.

(Validated Storage Device)

---

I do not know why I am particularly nostalgic about data and data storage devices, other than as passing student of history, I am aware of how much effort has been expended up through the latter half of the 19th Century to the preservation of data.

We have lost whole slews of works from the Classical World - books that are referenced by authors but not now in existence or authors we only know from references because nothing of them survived.  Knowledge used to be painstakingly copied into books or imprinted upon memories.  

Now, we just through everything out to the wilds of the InterWeb and assume that it will always be there when we need it.

I admit I am a curmudgeon and Luddite, but even to me that seems like a highly risky decision.

On Blackberries And Memories

 

I know, another picture of and post about blackberries.  I can imagine what you are thinking:  "TB, have you ever seen a blackberry bush before?"

Oddly enough, I have.  For most of my life.

---

Blackberries were a common enough occurrence in Old Home growing up (as it turns out, they are common in a lot of places).  They grew along creeks that I remember from then; the creek by our house (gloriously named a "ravine") had them on either side.  They were something to avoid at best as we waded, building dams and looking for crawdads.

But I have other, deeper memories of blackberries as well.

Growing up - probably until I was 10 or so - we would go in Summer up past The Ranch to a piece of property that had been homesteaded by my Maternal Great-Grandfather.  Everything on the property had burned in the late 1950's, but the property remained in the family and was overgrown with blackberries.  We would go as a family along with my maternal grandmother and grandfather and pick blackberries in season - to be fair, more the adults than my sister and I, who would pick, wander off, play in the drainage ditch, and then return. The blackberries would come with us, where they would be washed and made into blackberry jam - which we would eat for the rest of the year.

We ate it enough that blackberry jam has become something I do not seek out.

---

Blackberries at The Ranch in TB The Elder's time were mostly a nuisance.

They popped up along the seasonal creeks in the Meadows such that they had to be cut back every year and, at the southwestern end of The Lower Meadow, they formed a practical barrier along the property line that could not be penetrated.

They were also helpful spread by our bear population, who scooped them up in season and then took the liberty of spreading them around through their "deposits".  And the blackberries happily responded - by the time we made the decision to sell The Ranch, they had started to overtake the road that was the deeded access to the property.

Someone else's challenge now, that.

---

The blackberries you see above are along a trail behind the housing neighborhood in which we live.

They are maintained some extent - in that the trail they are next to is cleared - but not much more than that.  They fascinate me, the pink flowers that come to enclose a green globe that will turn black with the season.

I confess that I track them now and, when the season comes, will start to pick them on my walk; being a public area, there seem to be no sorts of rules about such things other than not over-taking the bounty.

What a pleasant surprise to find a part of my history in a place I never expected to find it.

A Loss Of Caring

 There comes a point at which one begins to not care about things.

This sort of thinking must be - especially to the young and fired up - something that confuses and angers them.  Certainly, when you are young - when I was young - there was a certain sense of "not caring", of being a rebel in small ways that were meant to signal that you were in some way "against" the system (whatever the system was).  But the big things, the titanic things - these we must care about.

I liken it, after thinking on it a bit, to a failing relationship.

In some form or fashion, we have all been through a failing or failed relationship.  Sometimes we are the ones starting to move away, sometimes the other is the one moving away, or sometimes things are just simply dissolving. But the symptoms are all there:  we talk less, we interact less, we follow up less, we eventually just exist in the same space.  Sometimes are there things after that - active anger, hatred, court cases - but just as often (for our pedestrian relationships anyway), we simply exist in the same space. We may care in the big sense of "I hope nothing untoward happens", but things seem to end there.

I find this is becoming more true in my own life.  Simply put, I have little if any caring for almost any large issue of the day.

"But you have to live in the world."  I know.  

"But these are important things."  I have lived my life through "important" things, most of which were not really that important.

"But if you do not care, you are on "their" side (whomever's side that may be)."  Who are "them"?  Generally if you look a little deeper, there are few true virtuous individuals or organizations.  Flaws in people and individuals I can accept; being told I must not ask questions and accept things as they stand, I struggle with.  And, of course, the question "Are you on my side?" often goes nowhere.

One could call it not caring.  One could also call it peace, or at least the peace of worrying about what one can influence, of giving attention to the things that are important to one's self (even if not terribly important to the world), of perhaps beginning to see truly what matters.

Are there important things? There are.  But more and more, the world's and my definitions of those diverge.

On Patience And Funks

 

(Source)

I have found myself in a funk over the past week or so.

It is not really fair to say it is "the world"; if anything, I have less idea than ever about what is going on "out there".  Which is likely for the best, I suppose. And if The Ravishing Mrs. TB and Nighean Dhonn were not in The Far Abroad right now, likely I would not see Social Media at all other than my morning grab of encouragement to send on to folks.

So it is definitely something else.

There is a weight, a heaviness to everything that is my life right now, that long sense of a road that has no landmarks, no road signs, and no end.

Is exhaustion a factor?  It probably is; with the advent of Nighean Dhonn's cat visiting us for the Summer and the fact that she and A The Cat have a slightly love/highly annoying relationship, her cat has been sleeping in the bedroom with me.  And waking me up at least 3-4 times a night to sit on my chest and tell me how grateful she is.

Week-end catchup naps have become a thing.

But I suspect that is not everything.

Work has entered that state that almost every job seems to at some point, where any glamour and excitement is gone and it is simply a grind.  Different day, same tasks, sample people, same issues, same arguments, same stresses, same last minute change of plans.  If I got two years of not feeling that way at work, that is a pretty amazing thing.

My energy level - maybe because of the two items above? - is low.  I cannot really muster up the enthusiasm to do much of anything beyond the chores that I have set for myself (In this sense, the garden has been a blessing of sorts.  And the cats and the rabbits ensure that I regularly have some recurring daily tasks.

But I really feel low right now - low energy, low enthusiasm, low confidence.

---

Is it - as the above graphic suggests - merely a case of needing patience?

In certain ways, absolutely yes.  I am someone that tends to want results now and if results do not come now, I tend to to lose interest. Or revisit a thing some months or years later only to find that not making progress in the meantime means you made no progress at all.

Part of it, I see as well, is not so much patience as it is self confidence.  This is a thing I am digging into more deeply, but I seem to genuinely feel that - outside of minor tasks and interests - I cannot really be successful at a great many things.  Which leads to not doing much at all - after all, if you think you cannot do a thing, you often do not try at all.

A lack of self confidence seems to easily lead to a lack of enthusiasm - or maybe they reinforce each other.  Everything that is not something I have to do seems a chore now, even writing.

---

Will I pull out of this?  Likely - I certainly have before.  What is of especial interest to me in this particular instance is that I do not see what would happen to make that so.

Simply put, there are no more big changes I see on the horizon.  Na Clann are effectively launched into the world.  My work schedule is largely set, which then sets everything else.  And "not working at what I am not passionate about" (Retirement I guess?) seems farther away than ever.

I feel off.  And I do not like it.  

And patience sure feels like a big ask at the moment

Play Hard, Work Hard

Part of a philosophy that my company has - similar to many companies - is the idea of "Work Hard, Play Hard".  The idea behind it is that we as workers give our all to work, and then we give our all to "play" (whatever that happens to mean).

It struck me this weekend - at an event, ironically, that was supposed to celebrate the "play hard" aspect - what a ridiculous phrase that is.

On any given week, I work in the realm of 40-50 hours, not counting occasional check-ins for individual items. That does not include my to and from work commute (thankfully, a scant 10 minutes now).  

Imagine then, in this context, if we "played" at work as hard as we worked:  40-50 hours a week. Or, I suppose, we could divide it equitably and say 20 hours of work and 20 hours of play.

Any employee actually making this suggestion would initially be humored.  If they pressed forward long enough, they would likely be quietly shuttled to a non-visible job, or simply dismissed.

The concept, more accurately phrased, is "Work hard and long,  Play hard for short periods of time".  Certainly it does not roll off the tongue quite as easily nor, I suspect, would it be the sort of thing that would encourage people to apply.  It would, however, have the benefit of being an honest assessment.

Do I think this sort of radical honesty will come to the fore?  Not really.  Nor do I expect that companies will stop using the phrase:  it sounds so good, so "right".  "I work hard, so I should play hard" we say at the end of a long shift with the energy of a snail and the reality of all the "work" we have to do to run the rest of our lives.

I wonder - if just for fun - if I started reversing the phrase to "Play Hard, Work Hard", how that would go over?

Ode To A Cigarette Butt

 You met my eye in early morning,

forlorn on the sidewalk:

white paper, scorched paper,

lipstick stained filter.

A sentinel from a late night

or an early morning?

I used to see your kind in flocks

once upon a time,

clusters of used fire-sticks 

by diners and coffee shops, in rest stops, 

along trails.

Wherever people gathered,

there you were.

Now I hardly see you at all:

times have changed, you have changed:

once a cherished rite of passage and rebellion

you are now a harbinger of death,

a reminder of a long ago.

What stories would you tell of your brief life,

smoke wafting, fire slowly creeping up your steam,

held in the hands and pink lips of the one 

who cast you aside?

I do not miss you as such,

but you do remind me 

of a not so distant past.

Travel In The Near Abroad: A Visit To New Home

 

Last week, as may have been readily apparent from my horribly formatted post yesterday (and for which I do apologize; the bug is apparently deeper than I could fix on my phone or my computer upon my return), I was traveling in the Near Abroad - in this case, to New Home.

The visit itself had been planned for some months, a two day seminar followed by a quick visit to Old Home.  But fate - in the form of a typhoon - intervened:  my Headmaster and my Sensei were unable to leave Japan.

I thought about canceling the trip but this development happened on Tuesday and I was scheduled to leave Wednesday.  Making a change in the program seemed like too much effort at that point.

All is well in New Home.

The house is pretty much as I remember it.  Poppy the Brave (seen above) was very happy to see me and we took several walks around our old neighborhood.  The weather there has been much wetter and cooler than average, which made walking almost pleasant.

I did end up going to a class at my old dojo.  It was nice to see my former fellow students and train under my former Sensei.  They are in a new facility now.  It was odd to realize this was the first location that I had never trained in since the dojo started.

I also had the opportunity to go by the rabbit shelter I had volunteered at for so long.  They are always happy to see me, and it is good to see how the shelter is doing.  It did make me miss volunteering there; I have not connected in the same way with the rabbit shelters locally.

The shelter, it seems, has yet to find a new TB, general handyman and changer of air filters extraordinaire.

Friday, I had the pleasure and luxury of actually playing tourist in a place I lived for many years

The day started with a lovely breakfast with Nighean Dhonn (Lemon Poppy-seed French toast, seen above).  We then picked up The Fiancé and headed into town, where we went to two museums, one which I had visited many years ago which The Fiancé had never visited and one which all three of us had never visited.  The weather was overcast and a bit muggy, but walkable.  We greatly enjoyed out time there.

We had an early dinner - BBQ (pictured below).  It has been a good long while - since the move, really - since I have had actual BBQ.  

I was up and out early Saturday morning.

The oddest feeling I felt over the course of my three days there was a profound sense of homesickness.

This might surprise my long time readers, seeing as how I often found myself at odds with some things (largely, the weather of course). And yet, I left with a feeling both that I missed large aspects of being there and yes, there is a world in which I could see us retiring back there.

Part of that is driven by the fact that I easily fit back into the people and activities I had done before, if only briefly.  Part of that is driven by the fact that likely that will be where Nighean Dhonn and The Fiancé make their long term home (and quite likely, the most likely to have grandchildren).  Part of it is, financially, it would make a lot of sense to be there with a paid off home and much lower taxes.  

But I wonder if part of it is the sale of The Ranch.

I think it is reasonable to say that I had fixated on being in a single place - The Ranch - so long that it had come to crowd out any other possibilities.  Now that the possibility is gone beyond reach, other possibilities present themselves.

The fact that I felt homesick a bit surprised me; if you remember from this past Christmas, I very much felt like a stranger in a house that was formerly mine (well, technically still is). What changed?  If nothing else, the fact that one door closed - for good.

It does leave the future open for some possibilities I had not anticipated.  It is good to know that one can still be pleasantly surprised, even in the midst of life transitions.

Not Knowing Everything

 

(Source)

One of the attractive things about a blog is that one shares what information one wants to.

For some, that is a daily sort of communication - perhaps about things that are going on but just as possibly about things in general.  For others, this can be a more periodic discussion of things as they occur.  For some, it is about events far and wide.  For others, it is about things that are going on closer to home.

But in almost every case, it is a limited flow of information, discussion by choice.  Likely it does not include everything that is going on in their lives, just a small subsection of it.

Compare this with our Media/Social Media world.

For some, everything becomes a thing which must be revealed to the world.  Day by day, occasionally hour by hour - as soon as something happens and sometimes as much as something happens, it gets dropped out into the Media-sphere for consumption.

In a way, this seems to reflect how many have become:  needing to know everything at all times, they take to constantly being "jacked in" (to steal a phrase from William Gibson), earbuds in the ear and cell phone in hand, watching and listening to the latest update from people all over the world.

Like a blog, however, I remember a different time.

I think it is fair to say - at least for me - that prior to the InterWeb, I did not know what was going on with everyone. Personal sorts of news were limited to conversations in person or by phone or to letters.  Scenes of meals or sights far aboard were transmitted via physical pictures or by those now oddest of things, slides.

We did not know everything about everyone.  In fact, I suspect that at that time the idea of knowing so much would have shocked us: Why do we need to know this?  Why am I so consumed about the lives and issues of others?

Now, of course, the question would be "Why are you not consumed about the lives and issues of others?"

I have not been able to completely abandon social media - my family uses it as a communication tool - but my visits to everything except Insta-Pic have rapidly dwindled.  In a way, it can be a bit of shock when I go to The Book of Face and read about things that have occurred in people's lives, sometimes sad or tragic things.  There is no other way now, it seems, to communicate about such things.

Do I miss being this much out of the know?  Not really; I can barely keep track of the friends I do have in real physical life and the few that are far away, let alone people that are far and away that I have never met.

It does make me question though:  if we suddenly all just started having to mind our own business and not know everything that is going on everywhere with everyone, would that be such a bad thing?

Be The Silly You Wish To See In The World

 

(Source)

I freely admit that I am a silly person.

I break into song frequently.  I make puns at work frequently, to the point that people clearly know what is coming at the end of our morning meeting on Friday.  My collection of rabbit shirts continues to grow to the point I could wear a new one every Friday (which is Rabbit Shirt Day) for four months and not repeat myself.

Partially of course, it is simply in my nature.  But partially, it is also a thumb in the eye of the system.

The world - if you let it - will make you serious.  It will make you consumed with rage and the need to react to anything - everything.  It will teach you that everything is an emergency, that fun is something confined to the edges and corners of our lives rather than a central part.    Let it go long enough and it will convince you that silliness is the hallmark of fools and the unserious, not "people making their way in the world".

I have experienced that - I have been those things at one time.  What it did give me was seriousness.  It also gave me a lot of issues I have spent years working my through.

Fight the system.  Be silly.

On An Anniversary

 Today, as it turns out, is our wedding anniversary.  We are now firmly into the mid-30's.

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Wedding anniversaries are interesting things.

If you were to consult your local InterWeb search page, you would find that 58% of couples that were married in the 1990's are still married (42% divorce rate), so already the odds are not great to make it this far.  This is reflected in my own circle of acquaintances:  many of my friends, including some of my most significant (The Director, La Contessa, Uisdean Ruadh) divorced from their first marriage. It is not that any of them were at fault; it is just the way that it happened.

(Interestingly, the same statistics claim that people married in the 2000's and beyond are more likely to be married. One wonders if that is due to the fact that they simply have not racked up enough years yet).

I suppose if you were to interview those marriages that ended, the stories run the gamut:  people changed, a bad match to start out with which did not improve, really bad things (fortunately I know directly of none of those stories in my group), people were bored, they needed to find themselves, etc.  In that sense to me it is an odd thing:  of all the human endeavors that we enter into, marriage is almost universally the one that everyone assumes starting out they will be successful in.  No-one gets married to have a marriage end, let alone badly.

Yet, they often do.

---

At this point, I suspect the typical written work would have a part about "How your marriage has survived the years" with "10 top tips" or some such thing. If I think about it, I do not know I have that kind of list at my disposal.

Marriage is hard.  It is lucky for most of us we do not realize how hard it is starting out, as I suspect many would simply give up at the beginning.  Love - or at least the love that seems to start most marriages - will almost inevitably cool.  At that point commitment to one another has to take over at some level.  Without commitment to the other and to the marriage vows, those things we promised, the rest - shared interests, shared stuff, shared pets, shared children, shared life - is likely not enough.

Does God help this mix?  I am a Christian and of course I believe "Yes", but the reality is that there are deeply committed marriages (some that put Christian marriages to shame) that are agnostic in nature.  Certainly the model God gives us in His relationship with the Church models the sort of love and commitment (And forgiveness.  Lots and lots of forgiveness.) that the marriage relationship needs.  And, from my point of view, without God involved I doubt I would have made it this far.

And, of course, a sense of learning what truly matters and what does not, what is worth standing one's ground on and what is not, what is simply the quirks of the person that we married that we chose not see at the time but were always there (I have many of these).

---

The day itself will be pretty unremarkable. I have work as I always do these days; The Ravishing Mrs. TB  will take care of some things around the apartment.  In the late afternoon we will go out for a "fancy" dinner at a restaurant recommended by coworker.  All things being equal, we will probably be home by 1900.  

We have forgone the "expensive and expansive" gifts (Thankfully; apparently we are in the "gems" category of traditional gift giving, so this represents a real savings).  Likely we will find something we can do together to celebrate.

Which is fine, of course.  If anything, anniversaries are sign of quiet commitment that lasts, not the flashy commitment that does not.

On Blogging (And Its Demise Or Renaissance)

Patrice Lewis over at Rural Revolution wrote a rather thought provoking article last week entitled "The dying art of writing".  In the article, she reflects on the fact that with the rise of AI, the human art of writing is at a series of interesting points.  

The first point is simply that AI cannot always determine what is human generated and what is AI generated and thus may label human generated comment as AI.  The second point is that - from an article entitled "The Rise Of AI Writing, and The Decline Of the Human Voice" - that language is becoming both increasingly the same in writing (as AI standardizes a voice) and at the same time, less impactful:  "polished, formulaic speech", as the article states.  

The final point is that as AI continues to be brought into the common societal stream, it simply will become more common, if for convenience and cost if nothing else.  At the same time, Lewis laments the fact that as her (and my) generation passes, the coming generations will simply not have the ability to differentiate AI generated writing from human generated writing.

At the end of the article she notes "I don't know how long I will be able to cling to a career as a writer, but I will enjoy it while I can."

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It is a fair statement to say that writing is at a crossroads.

If you are someone that writes or keeps an online presence, likely you have noticed a decrease in the overall "real" traffic to the site - I say real because while I, for example, have tens of thousands of "views" a day (per Google), my individual posts are much, much less than that.  It is not just my imagine: content creators of all varieties have noted that with a change in search engines (Google the primary one), traffic is simply much less because is both much more selective and uses AI to create summaries:  no need to click through if the summary at the top tells you everything.

For folks that make a living from a site, that can be a hard thing:  the rise of SubStack, for example, is one method for creating written content that will somehow fund itself.  Even that is a bit of chancy business I suppose, dependent on the ability of the writer and the audience - although many content creators are directly marketing through social media rather than the traditional "Search Engine" route.

But there are tens of people including myself that keep a blog or site simply because we enjoy writing and indirectly enjoy interacting with people who read our writing.  They are written in the old, painful sense, keystroke by keystroke (if not starting in pen and then transferring to the keyboard).  

AI changes all that of course:  within seconds or minutes it can generate text or a story which may or may not be good - but as Lewis notes above, people may not care about the quality of it as a work of communication or human lived experience.  They care if it has the information or content or entertainment they want.

If blogs or sites create communities strung out like towns a day's travel apart in the Old West, the change in the InterWeb and AI are the equivalent of the railroad coming to town. Some are picked, by chance or choice, and continue on. Others are not chosen and, more often than not, may fade away.

---

Where does this all lead?

Some weeks ago, I read an article (I cannot remember where it was) from a blog author who decided he was given up.  He may have been one who wrote and made something of a living at it (as I recall), but now the effort was simply not worth it to him.  He had considered a "pay as you go" experience like SubStack, but also decided that was not worth it.  He was punching out.

Generally speaking, that likely reflects a strong current of what will eventually happen.  It is hard to blame anyone really:  for myself, a blog post can take anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes to write and edit.  Over the course of a week, that can be up to seven hours (or more).  To pump those out regularly only to see your numbers continue to drift downward can be depressing.  Add to that I suspect the blog and website crowd is likely in the 40's or more, and the medium will likely decline more based on demographics as well.

On the one hand, that saddens me.  As I noted above, blogs (and sites) can become their own sort of community and the loss of every one means one more voice gone.

On the other hand, it is likely not as bad as I might think.

Even within our own modern world, there is a segment of the population that prefers things that are handcrafted or handmade above the commercially generated.  And in a sense, AI could eventually make itself irrelevant in the sense that if all AI sounds the same, it will become bland and boring.

That is where the artisanal blog comes in:  It is different.  It is personal.  It is unique in that every writer has their own unique voice.

Will there be money to be made?  Probably not, although a few hardy souls will figure out a way.  But it will be genuine and honest and real in a way that AI could never be.

Besides, the phrase "This post was hand crafted by a human artisanal writer" has a certain ring to it.

On What Matters

 This past Wednesday night, I was confronted with two very different emotional states.

The first was one that was leftover from work, a continuation (effectively) of a battle that was going on before I left, the remnants of a conversation that stirred up a cloud of unresolved issues.  This has become more common for me of late, the ghosts of work that hang around my head as I climb the stairs and enter my refuge.

The thought would not let go as I continued to try to work through it, arguments and counterarguments (sometimes very unworthy of someone who calls himself a Christian) echoing through my brain.  I had ten counterarguments, was ready to directly charge the breastworks alone.

And then I read an e-mail.

It was an e-mail from a friend.  A significant medical procedure he had been waiting on for sometime was suddenly happening tomorrow.  Would, he asked, I be willing to pray for him?

---

It is funny how our minds works (or perhaps, it is confined only to mine).

On the one hand, I can let things that truly matter not at all (if I thought logically about them) consume my mind long after the event has ended.  They follow me, like the spirits of the departed, throughout the rest of my day or evening, living (as the saying goes) "rent free" in my head.  I form arguments and counter arguments, giving rise to withering repartee and smug satisfactions of a victory earned.

In those moments, I forget the things that truly do matter.

As I often counsel the Younglings at work (at my job, almost everyone is younger than I), most of what we do at work does not matter in the long run.  Most of it will never see the market, will never make it to patients, will die the quiet death of the failed project in darkness, with only banker's boxes of documents or hard drives as reminders, to be slowly destroyed or deleted over the years.

---

My friend texted me the day of his operation; all was well and the initial surgery had gone well.   The other part - the ghost battles built in my mind, the great arguments I was going to make - completely made irrelevant by discussions that happened during the day: the "Great Event" turned out to be nothing more than another ordinary meeting.

Thankfully I had something to remind me what mattered.  Would that I remembered this more.

On A Ballot

 This week I filled out my ballot.

When I arrived here in New Home 2.0, I did something I had never done in my life: I registered as "not declaring a party".  This was a conscious choice on my part; after a life time of belonging to one party or the other and being satisfied with neither, I thought I would take a break for partisan politics, at least for the primary elections.

Turns out that if you do not have a party affiliation, your ballot is pretty empty.

There were a slate of local judges with no opponents.  There were two or three local people (e.g., county commissioners or local bodies).  A single proposition.  

Even with reading the ballot, it took less than 30 minutes total.

The local positions were the most interesting to read.  Each had four to five folks running for each position, the current incumbent and the challengers.  The incumbents were easy to identify - not just because of the fact it listed their current position, but all of the organizations that were at the bottom of their statement in support of them.  It was nice to see a healthy challenger pool, even as I suspect that the incumbent will win again, because that is how it works.

(As a side note, the incumbent positions were a marvel of somehow listing everything that they had done along with the fact that there was still so much that was unsatisfactory, yet somehow they are not to blame.)

The proposition was, of course, a tax increase - a fuel tax in this case.  I have reached the point in my life where I vote these down every time.

Do I regret not "picking a side"?  Not really, to be honest.  It certainly simplified my primary season.  Arguably voting for my most local of officials is the most impactful thing I can do (my state and federal officials are likely far less determined by my vote).  

The anger, the rage, the "the other side is Satan incarnate" will come soon enough.  For now, finding my peace unruffled and my mailbox delightfully free of campaign ads is the sort of thing I would like to see more of.