Philosophizing » One Off

It was almost worth being sick

Being Existential, Gratitude, Health, Philosophizing View Comments

Jul 192010

So, apparently, I haven’t been "sick." I’ve been "allergic." At least that’s what my very nice new family practice doctor believes.

Today, I had an experience that I haven’t experienced for well over 7 years: I was able to use health insurance provided by my workplace to pay for my medical expenses. I had to make a $20 co-pay for my office visit and a $10 co-pay for each of my two prescriptions. All told, I walked out of my Doctor’s appointment today spending $40.

If I had gone to the Doctor’s office three weeks ago, I would have had to pay $125 for the doctor’s visit ($265 without the discount for being uninsured), an extra $40 for the strep test they ran, $78 dollars for one prescription, and $93 for the other. Coming to a grand total of $336.

And moreover, when the doctor suggested that I go get properly tested for allergies, I didn’t brush him off automatically, like I normally would. You see, my insurance will cover the cost…except for $20. And if I out that I’m actually allergic to something (other than exercise and eating healthily) then my insurance will cover that too!

And, for the first time since I was 17 years old, I actually have a family doctor! I didn’t have to go to some emergency walk-in clinic or urgent care!

See, I had insurance before I started this job. I was paying $150 a month for the insurance…and I got, essentially, nothing for it. I had to spend $1850 out of pocket before my insurance would kick in. Do you kn ow how many times over the last seven years I should have gone to the doctor but didn’t because I couldn’t afford it? I haven’t been to the dentist in three years because I didn’t have $3,500 of available credit on my credit card to pay for whatever was wrong this time around.

Look, I don’t argue that the problems with the health care system go far above and beyond the cost and availability of health insurance. And I know that health insurance and health care aren’t necessarily the same thing. But do you know grateful I was that I could go to the doctor today, get two prescriptions, and come home to get healthy? I have spent so many nights of my life lying awake, coughing so hard I was certain I was going to die, and absolutely unwilling to go to the doctor because it was either get antibiotics or pay my rent.

In an "enlightened" society, that should NEVER have to be a choice that anyone should ever have to make. People should not have to choose between shelter and health care. I’m just extremely blessed that I have been a mostly-healthy person over the last decade of my life. I can’t imagine what would have become of me if I had developed a serious illness.

I hope that, eventually, we as a country, and as a world, will be able to figure out a way to provide the same kind of worry-free health care to all people, not just the ones who are either rich enough to buy it or lucky enough to have jobs that provide it. Until that day, I’m so grateful that I am one of the lucky ones.

Make it Right

Philosophizing, Ramblings, Television View Comments

Apr 192010

If you turn on the TV in my house, chances are that you’re going to find that the last time it was turned on, it was on one of two channels: Food Network or HGTV. Of the two, I used to be a big fan of Food Network, until the network decided that it was more interested in food entertainment than it was in food instruction. The whole reason I used to watch the network is so that I could learn to cook from classically trained, highly respected chefs with impeccable understanding of the science and technique of cooking. (Good Eats, Sarah’s Secrets, Molto Mario, etc.) I mean, I learned how to cook by watching these shows.

Now, instead of having informational and instructional television, they fill it up with Unwrapped, Iron Chef, Chopped, Dinner:Impossible, Throwdown, Food Network Challenge, The Next Food Network Star, and Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Instead of teaching us how to cook, they teach us that a headband and a snooty British accent means that you have what it takes to judge a cake building competition. Instead of the Sarah Moltens and Mario Batalis, we have the Neeleys, Brian Boitano, and Sandra Lee–people who may have a personality, but can’t really teach you much about the technique of cooking because they think it’s okay to make mixed drinks out of crushed kiwi, vodka, melon liqueur, and juice from a jar of jalapeno peppers.

Side Note: If you’ve ever seen Semi-Insane: With Sandra Lee, I’d suggest you read this hysterical article. Best Line–in reference to Sandra’s Kwanzaa Cake: "It’s like being sodomized by the sugar plum fairy."

So, instead of watching Food Network twenty four-seven liked I used to, I am now a fan of HGTV (motto: Why make our own TV Shows when we can just buy them from Canada?) All of the American-produced HGTV shows are stupid competition shows or shows like Selling New York, which just follows around a bunch of agents selling ludicrously over-priced property to excruciatingly wealthy jackasses with gigantic egos. (Which isn’t surprising, since HGTV is owned by the same parent company as Food Network. Apparently, Scripps is more interested in making the food and real estate equivalents of Flavor of Love than in programming content that is actually watchable)

However, more than half of HGTV’s premiere programming is purchased from Canadian production companies. Apparently, Canadians don’t have enough to do during their frigid winters, so when they’re bored, they remodel their homes. And they’re good enough at it that they can actually teach others how to do it. Divine Design, Sarah’s House, The Unsellables, Property Virgins, and Income Property all grace major spots in the network’s prime time lineup. But the Canadian-produced show that stands head and shoulders above them all is Holmes on Homes.

In HoH, Mike Holmes is a contractor who goes into situations where contractors have given their customers the royal screw job, completely undoes the damage caused by these yahoos, and then fixes it. He helps them oot. (Get it? Oot? ‘Cause he’s Canadian? Oh, never mind.) (Seriously. Where’s your sense of humor?)

Mike’s Motto is "Make It Right." His whole message centers around the fact that, if you spend the time and money to do it right the first time, then you won’t have to go back and fix it up later. It’s always cheaper and easier in the long run to just do what it takes to make it right than it is to bandage it.

I started watching this show about three weeks ago because nothing was on and instantly I was hooked. I grew up around construction. My dad was a construction manager for most of my formative years, and I used to go to his office with him, or occasionally tour his job sites as they were in progress. For 7 1/2 of the 8 years we spent in our house in Albion, it was under renovation. So watching shows like this make me nostalgic in a way. I still watch This Old House or Hometime whenever I come across them (although I miss Joanne Liebeler).

There’s something very different about this show, though. Mike is a gruff, brash guy who can come off as pretty intimidating. But you can tell by watching him that he loves what he does, and he demands excellence from both himself and his crew. He never takes the easy way out and he never does the job half-way. Everything that he does on the show proves that he takes a great deal of pride in the work that he does. It’s inspiring to see someone care so much about the quality of their work. Inspiring and increasingly rare.

Among craftsmen, there seems to be a theme of taking pride in your work. My father, who now builds multi-million dollar buildings for a living does it. My brother-in-law, a project manager for a large construction company does it. My uncle, who also builds buildings and, in his spare time, is an excellent wood worker, takes pride in his work. My grandfather, an architect, does it. My great uncle the plastic surgeon took pride in his work. Even the cleaning woman who comes to my apartment once a week cares deeply about her work and wants to make sure that she’s done the best she can do.

This concept, however, seems to be slipping away outside of the skilled trades. For those of us who work in an office, doing the same thing day in and day out, it’s hard to take pride in your work when there’s nothing tangible to show for it. In my job, for instance, I have become a digital janitor. Among my assigned responsibilities, I’ve been tasked with cleaning up incorrectly entered data. I write my SQL queries, develop my processes, send out my weekly and monthly reports, but no matter what I do, tomorrow I’m going to walk into the office and there will be new messes for me to clean up. I’m never "done." I never have a product that I can look back on with pride and say, "I did that. And I did it right."

In the absence of a tangible, visible result of your efforts, it’s extremely difficult to take pride in your work. It’s hard to take a step back and say, "I’m proud of what I’ve contributed." And that difficulty shows regularly in the modern workplace. People try to get away with doing the absolute minimum possible. They take as many sick days as they can. Rather than doing any work and taking ownership of the problems, they delegate all responsibility.

As I’ve watched Mike Holmes and his crew looking over a complete abortion of remodeling job, nearly overwhelmed by the sheer stupidity, laziness, incompetence, and fraudulence of the previous contractors, I see them survey the situation, evaluate their options, make a plan of action, roll up their sleeves, and get to work. They don’t whine about how hard it is. They don’t attempt to cover up the mistakes and polish a turd. They make it right.

(I realize that this is a television show, and for all I know, they really could be doing a crappy job, but it’s the concept I’m going after here, so just go with me here.)

Our inability to take pride in our work shows, in my opinion, a greater shortcoming in our cultural aptitude overall. As a culture, we are increasingly unable to stick with something when it gets hard. How many people get divorced because one spouse or another just gave up instead of trying to make it work? How many people start suing anyone with a wallet when something in their life goes wrong rather than pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and making it right? How many people play the lottery hoping that they’ll hit it big instead of working hard and saving? How many people wallow in situations that they can’t stand rather than getting to work to do something about it?

As a culture, I feel as though we’ve forgotten what it means to take pride in our work. Back in the day, when you were the only carpenter or blacksmith or baker around, you lived with and relied on your customers, just as they lived with and relied on you. If you did a crappy job, word got around, and you lost your livelihood. Your value in the community dropped, and your ability to support yourself and your family suffered as a result.

Take, for example, the US auto industry. This American Life recently chronicled an auto manufacturing plant in California called Nuumi. (This was one of the most engaging hours of radio to which I have ever listened. I’d suggest you listen if you get a chance.) The Nuumi plant was widely acknowledged as one of the worst plants in all of GM’s manufacturing lines. It was inefficient, mismanaged, and full of illegal activity. Workers would drink on the job, have sex in the break rooms, and often, just not show up for work at all. Many times, the management of the plant would go to the bar across the street to find enough (drunk) people to fill in just so they could keep the line operating.

The number one rule of the factory was "never stop the line." People got injured, you never stopped the line. Engines got installed backward, you never stopped the line. Workers would watch minor mistakes go by on the line, but you never stopped the line. As a result, car after car would roll off the assembly line full of defects and mistakes. Rather than fixing the mistakes on the line or developing ways to improve performances, the workforce simply settled into an operational rut and did the same brainless action over and over again.

Unsurprisingly, most of the cars that rolled off the line at the plant were full of defects. Many of them were so screwed up, they’d have to be towed off the line and out into the holding lot for repairs. Then, they would be taken apart and fixed…often by people who didn’t actually know how to fix the problems. As a result, the quality of the cars put out at the plant was abysmal. It was the direct result of people, from the person tightening the bolts on the wheels to the head of the plant not caring about the quality of the work that they did. Thirty years later, we look at what once was the largest and most successful automobile company in the world, and they’re barely struggling to survive. What a surprise.

In the modern world of cubicles and email, we are so divorced from our customers that it is almost as if we’ve forgotten how important it is to do our job and do it splendidly. More importantly, we’ve forgotten how good it can feel when we do our job to the best of our ability. Pride in your work, once part of your "benefits package" doesn’t count for anything anymore. Our tasks have become so much less vital to our daily survival that the importance factor has ratcheted down significantly. When you’re living in Washington state, and your customer is a 14 year old boy in Switzerland who wants to download the movie Booty Call in German, it’s hard to want to put in the extra effort to do it the right way the first time. And when you live in a world where it becomes more important to report on what you’re doing than it is to actually do it, it’s hard even to find the time to do the job the right way.

As I’ve contemplated this pattern in our modern society, I’ve tried to watch those people who take pride in their work and determine how they’re doing it. I’m not talking about the people who politic their way up the corporate ladder or play all the right games to get the big salary and the corner office. I’m talking about the people who come into the office every day with, pardon the pun, workman-like regularity. The ones who do their jobs every day, and who make sure that they’ve left their work world a little better off after they were done.

I know I do my work responsibility well. But I’ve not really figured out how to do a better job of taking pride in the work that I do. What I do isn’t world-changing. I never get to interact with my customers and see how my actions affect them directly. The nature of the work I do means that, even if I’ve fixed all the problems today, tomorrow when I go to work the same challenges and frustrations will exist. I will never have some multi-million dollar building to point out as I’m driving along the freeway as being the direct result of my labors. I can’t bring someone to my office to to show them what I do. So I need to find other ways to take pride in my work.

I’m proud of the fact that, in six months, I’ve only missed 1/2 a day of work due to illness. I take pride in the fact that, if someone asks me to do something, I do it, and on time. I take pride in the fact that I show up to work on time, show up to my meetings on time, and get my job done. I take pride in the fact that I continue to learn and expand my knowledge, and that I’ve found ways to apply that knowledge which will affect the way my team does its job long after I’m gone. I take pride in the fact that I have a deep understanding of the way our systems work, and others call on me regularly to help explain functionality and test issues.

I may not be building a hospital, or bringing a family back into their home after months and years of construction nightmares. I may not have anything tangible to show for my work. But I want to make sure that, no matter what I do, I want to make it right.

Anything You Want to Be

Money, Philosophizing, Ramblings View Comments

Apr 032010

I have struggled to manage my personal finances for the last decade…and mighty has been the struggle thereof. Education was not the problem. I knew I shouldn't be charging up the credit cards. I knew I should be saving and investing my money. No, education wasn't the problem. Self-control was the problem. I knew what I should and shouldn't be doing, but I also knew that, really, I deserved the things I was buying. Or, more accurately, I completely convinced myself that, not only did I deserve them, but I needed them.

As part of my continuing path toward developing better financial self control, I listen to podcasts about money issues. In one recent episode, I heard an interview between two columnists from financial publications talking about the state of the financial system. Over the last several months, the economy has begun to pick up again, after two and a half years of a very bad recession–the kind of recession that has the power to change people's financial behavior. These two columnists, who were supposed to be in a point-counterpoint type of argument, were discussing what changes we could expect to see from the general public following this recession. They both agreed that there really aren't going to be any lasting changes in behavior as a result of one of the worst financial meltdowns in American history. The savings rate went up for a little while, but it was always one of the lowest in the world, and it's already started back down again. Wall Street has already started recklessly throwing their money around again–doing risky things with it and pissing it away on massive salaries and bonuses. People who call into the show are already starting to ask about whether it would be a good idea to take out a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) to buy something they don't need. Credit card spending was down, but it's starting to rise again. And all of this despite a nationwide unemployment rate of well over 9%.

I've thought a lot about this financial crisis over the last few years. I actually predicted the burst of the housing bubble in this post about four months before it happened. It has been interesting to watch, both from the point of view of an MBA student learning about the financial system, but also as a person who has a good job, lives in a nice location largely unaffected by the recession, and who was entirely unscathed by the financial system. I didn't have anything invested at the time of the market collapse, so really, I've benefitted quite a bit. I was able to invest money when the market was at the bottom. I bought low. So, my perspective of the financial crisis is different from someone who was affected directly. And I've been thinking a lot about the causes–not the economic causes, because those are fairly well understood. Rather, I'm more interested in the social causes. What made the culture buy the houses they couldn't afford? What made the culture spend insane amounts of money in credit card debt that they couldn't repay? What caused the Wall Street culture to gamble so flagrantly with other people's money?

Over the last 100 years, the nature of being a working man has changed significantly. For much of history, a person's career path was determined by the career path of their parents. So much so that family names were often determined by what a person's family did (e.g., Smith, Cooper). And that was only for those fortunate enough to have a family career path. Many had to resort to simply picking up whatever day labor they could or, in extreme cases, selling themselves on the street. Many of the people who came to this country in the early stages of its development came as indentured servants or, far worse, slaves.

In an environment such as this, work had a very different meaning than it does today. Much like those whose marriages are arranged and never have the opportunity to choose their spouses, many men and women in history never got the choice to be what they wanted to be. Their path was established for them before they were born, and there was precious little opportunity to diverge from that path. It is likely that, in most cases, the simple fact that choices for alternatives didn't exist actually helped people to enjoy their work–they knew that they would continue to do the work they knew, and they found ways to adapt. Or, they simply lived in ignorance that something "better" was out there. And in the case of the workman of the past, it's quite possible that ignorance really was bliss.

But something began to happen in the workforce around the time of the industrial revolution, and exploded after the conclusion of World War II. The working economy changed, and education became so readily available that people began to see other alternatives than the life established by their parents. People began to expand and move past the well-established family farms and businesses. The rise of the office worker and the death of the agrarian and manufacturing economy in the United States helped to expedite the departure from ancestral employment.

Along with, or perhaps as a result of, the increase in employment flexibility and education over the last century, a great change has taken place in the way we talk about work with our children. No longer do we assume that a child is born into a line of work or a station in life. Instead, there is constant reassurance that "you can be anything you want to be." That message is everywhere. It's repeated like a mantra in children's programming. It's preached from the pulpit of the public schools. It's built into the fairy-tale endings of nearly every form of popular media. It's even preached (far more insidiously) in the realm of higher education. I can vividly recall my professors in college telling me, "It doesn't really matter what you study. What's important is that you get a college degree." The message of "you can be anything you want to be" has become thoroughly and completely ingrained into our societal subconscious.

There's only one problem with that. It's not really true.

'Come along, Chadwick,' said Father, pulling the boy roughly by the hand. 'But Papa!' came the plaintive wail--'the cows, the cows, the cows, the cows!'
Comic courtesy of Wondermark by David Malki

The consistent repetition of the mantra "You can be whatever you want to be" is, in many ways, a great disservice to the youth of the world. What the Sesame Streets and Musical Theatre professors of the world never tell you is that, chances are, it doesn't matter how hard you work or how hard you study–you probably won't be able to be anything you want to be. Most people go through lives doing work that they don't particularly enjoy or care about. Precious few find the jobs that help them to feel as though they fulfilled their calling, or that they have achieved some greater status. The majority of people won't be rich, they won't be wildly successful, they won't be the top of their field. They will just be normal, regular people. They work to live, not live to work. Some people despise every second of their working lives and can't wait for the instant they can retire. But the collective "they" never tell you that. The heads of youth are filled with dreams of grandeur and great possibility, and, far more dangerously, an undeserved and unearned sense of entitlement.

I have witnessed the result of this shortcoming both in myself and in others over the last 16 years of my working life. People walk into jobs with a sense of entitlement: they will get promoted quickly or will get large raises–not because they've earned the right, but because "I can be whatever I want to be." I have had jobs in the past where I felt as though I was being treated like cattle heading toward the slaughter or, especially in the theater, a human set piece. And it infuriated me. I had gone to college. I had studied my craft. I had worked hard. And I knew that I deserved better. I had jobs where I started my first day feeling as though, because I had "put in my dues" and worked hard, that I deserved respect, despite the fact that I had never done anything to earn that respect. Workers who don't come to work, do illegal things at work, or fail to perform even the basic functions of their jobs, then scream "foul" when they are called out.

Aside from an deserved sense of entitlement, we as a society fail to explain to our youth that the natural functions of life also block off opportunity. Ugly Betty tells us that if we just put in our dues, we'll go from being a frumpy nobody to a glamorous, beautiful, and successful person. The Biggest Loser tells us that if we can go to "The Ranch" and get screamed at by a couple of pretty trainers for four months, we'll lose 150 pounds and win $250,000. Well, my physical appearance means that, no matter how hard I work, I'll never look like a "leading man." My lack of coordination means that I will never make millions playing basketball for the NBA. The gap in my front teeth means that I'll never be asked to be a model for a toothpaste commercial. My eyesight means that I'll never be allowed to fly an experimental jet plane for the military. No amount of hard work, study, practice, training, or stick-to-itiveness (thanks for the word, Principle Skinner) will undo these physical obstacles.

"They" also neglect to explain the consequence of choices. I'm not talking about the good vs. bad choices taught in Sunday School. I'm talking about the directional choices. The choices, not of right and wrong, but of option. Every choice you make opens up hundreds of new avenues. But at the same time, it also closes off millions of other avenues. My dogged insistence on studying musical theater and my decision to pursue it for several years, meant that for the rest of my life, my work history and resume has an anomaly that I have to either minimize, rationalize, or lie about in order to make it make disappear. It meant that, in order to become credentialed to be taken seriously for the types of jobs I wanted to have after I retired from performing, I would have to spend two years and tens of thousands of dollars getting an advanced degree. As a result, I will be paying for my five years of musical theater for the next twenty five. And that limits a lot of my choices.

If the point of the educational system is to prepare the youth of today to become the adults of tomorrow, I think it's time we as a culture re-evaluate the messages we are sending our children. While I think it's a good thing to inspire the young to experiment and try new things, that experimentation needs to be coupled with blunt honesty. People need to be told that sometimes, they're just not good enough–that they've got the wrong aptitude for what they're trying to do. It will either spur them to improve or redirect them into more suitable paths. Instead, we've developed a wishy-washy educational culture where there are no winners or losers, and where everyone gets an award just for showing up and participating. A culture where you're good enough just the way you are, or where you are so sheltered from the consequences of making mistakes, you never really get an opportunity to learn and grow from those mistakes.

The reality of the world, particularly the working world, is that sometimes, even if you work hard, your efforts will go unnoticed or unappreciated. Sometimes, you won't get what you think you deserve. Sometimes, nobody needs or even wants your opinion. And sometimes they do. Rather than teaching our culture that hard work is the avenue by which you can accomplish great things and become exactly the person you want to become, maybe we should instead teach the culture that hard work is, in and of itself, the true goal. That building a life of peace is more important that building another giant McMansion that will end up in foreclosure the next time the stock market crashes. That sometimes, what you have (and nothing more) is exactly the right amount.

And most of all, that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, maybe all your wildest dreams won't come true. And that's okay.

Health Care: A Few Random Thoughts

Philosophizing, Rants View Comments

Mar 222010

So, surprise of all surprises, congress actually managed to get something accomplished. As usual, they piddled around for half the time, lost focus so often that the entire organization could be test subjects for Ritalin, and managed to get their ethics and morals dictated to them by corporate America once again proving that most legislators care more about getting re-elected than they do for enacting what they honestly feel is best for the American people. The healthcare bill is a giant mess…but at least congress managed to pass something. A ringing endorsement if ever I heard it.

Unlike most Americans, I don’t any strong feelings about health care reform one way or the other. I believe, for many reasons, that we desperately need some health care reform in this country. I also believe that forcing people to get insurance that they may not be able to afford (and penalizing them for not getting it) is ludicrous. Throughout this whole process, I’ve stayed uninvolved, because I’m not entirely sure how I feel about what’s going on or where I stand. It’s not that I don’t care about the outcome, I just haven’t figured out how I feel about the various methods proposed to get us to the various outcomes. I do have, nonetheless, some random thoughts about the whole thing.

I want to preface my random thoughts with an anecdote: I have a beautiful little niece who has some special needs. She is the sweetest, most loving little girl in the world, and I love her to death. But mere months after her birth, Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Utah cancelled this beautiful child’s health insurance policy for a ludicrous (and in my opinion, fraudulent, reason). They left a young couple, with one parent still in school, with tens of thousands of dollars in debt because, essentially, Blue Cross saw the bills start to pile up with no diagnosis. They found some way to simply cancel the insurance that her parents were paying for because they realized they were never going to make any money from a kid with health issue. (And according to my nieces pediatricians, Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield did this exact same offensive behavior with alarming regularity.) They left her parents with no recourse, no money, no way to care for one of the most wonderful children you would ever meet. And worst of all, they left the burden for caring for this child with an undiagnosed pre-existing condition on the state. When they cancelled her insurance, they basically ensured that my niece would never again be able to get insurance for the rest of her life, despite the fact that neither she nor her parents had done anything wrong. This, obviously, shapes my opinion on the state of health care a great deal.

Now, my random thoughts.

Random Thought #1 – None of this hoopla about rules and regulations, new laws, and death panels would be necessary if the insurance companies, malpractice lawyers, and health care providers of this country were a little less interested in lining their wallets and a little more interested in helping people. I’m not saying that companies and people shouldn’t be adequately compensated, but when you’re more concerned about improving profits over last quarter in order to keep your stock price high for your shareholders than you are about covering a 6-month-old baby with unknown developmental disabilities, then we have a problem. SHAME ON YOU Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield. FOR SHAME.

Random Thought #2 – When it was announced that health care legislation was passed, Twitter and Facebook lit up with indignation like I’ve never seen before. I don’t mind people having strong opinions…even strong opinions that disagree with my own. I don’t need to live my life in a world where everyone agrees with me. But I can’t help but wonder how many of those people who bemoaned the fact that this law passed ever bothered to research the bill beyond what they heard on Fox News or NPR. How many of them wrote an email or a letter to their congressman or senator? How many of them marched in a rally or attended a town hall meeting? If you hate the law so much, then why didn’t you try to do anything to stop it? If you didn’t try, then you need to shut up about it. You had your chance to make your voice heard.

For instance, I find the anti-gay marriage laws (like prop 8) to be absolutely infuriating, discriminatory, and offensive. And, for understandable reasons, these feelings are deeply held. But I didn’t write any law-makers. I didn’t march in any parades. So until I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is and make my voice heard, then I have no room to speak. Even though the US is a Republic (i.e., we elect people to represent us), we are a republic founded upon democratic ideals. If you don’t like something, make your voice heard to the people who represent you. It’s your responsibility as a citizen. If you don’t make your voice heard, then you have no right to complain when laws get passed that you don’t like. If you did make your voice heard, good for you…even if we disagree on the outcome. YOU can keep complaining.

Random Thought #3 – While I believe that reforming health care is important, I’m not a fan of any legislation that "forces" people to get health care that they may not be able to afford. The problem is that you can’t apply a specific formula to all people. Can I afford to spend 10% of my income on health care? Yeah…it would be tight, but I could do it. Could I spent 15%? Barely. How about 20%? Not a chance. But I’m a single man with no children in good health. I make pretty good money. I’m already paying about 5% of my income for health insurance and you know what I get from that? I get a policy that has a $1,850 deductible, and after that, I still have to pay 20% co-pay on most of my doctor’s visits. I do not have dental insurance. I don’t have vision insurance. If I get sick, I generally don’t go to the doctor, because I really don’t have an extra $2,000 a year to spend on top of the 5% of my income that I’m already spending. If I were to spent 10%, I’d get a policy with a $1250 deductible and 15% co-pay. In all honesty, I’d be better off with nothing but catastrophic coverage and just paying for it out of pocket. I basically have to pay all my medical care out of pocket anyway since I never reach my deductible. The 5% I’m paying now isn’t even worth it. I might as well be paying nothing and saving that extra 5%.

Moreover, I’m just not a fan of the Government telling me what to do. I pay my taxes. I don’t break the laws. I don’t want to be forced to spend money I don’t have on insurance I can’t afford in order to have a piece of paper that says I’m covered when, in reality, I’m only covered if I’m sick or injured enough that I’m probably going to die anyway.

Random Thought #4 – I saw a tweet earlier today that summed up my feelings pretty well. It needed to be translated because it was written in text speak, but the gist of the quote was, "If we are forced to pay for health care reform, the beneficiaries should be forced to face drug tests, and penalties should be applied to those unwilling to quit cigarettes, drugs, or drinking." As a 31-year-old man who is only VERY slightly overweight, walks at least two miles every single day, eats relatively healthily, has never smokes, drinks, or does drugs, how can I ensure that my money isn’t going to subsidize those people who make stupid decisions. If my insurance rates are going to go up (and I’m not saying that they are…I don’t know) I want to make sure that the money I’m paying in that isn’t going to help me is at least going to help those like my little niece, not some dumbass drunk driver who gets in an accident or some life-long chain smoker who gets lung cancer. Where’s the stupid tax in this system?

Random Thought #5 – The death of centrism in politics is one of the most tragic things that can be evidenced in this whole process. Once again, government proved that they can’t get past party lines to compromise. It’s not the fault of the Democrats or Republicans, it’s the fault of the system. Those in seats of power have proven once again that they are only interested in doing what’s going to keep them in office…and unfortunately, what keeps people in office is extremism. Despite our constant cries for bipartisanship, the American people haven’t proven with their votes that they value people who can compromise in order to accomplish something. As long as politicians think that the only way to get elected is to pander to those on the extremes of the political spectrum, we’ll never be able to pass the kinds of laws we really should pass.

Random Thought #6 – I’m appalled at the number of people who make up their mind on important issues based on what they hear in a YouTube video, on a 60-second commercials during the morning news, or on a 2-minute segment on NPR. Nobody does any research on their own. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I make it a habit not to establish my political views based on Tweets and Facebook status updates. The days of participative governance are apparently over, and that’s sad. When a talking head on Fox News can tell you what to believe, and you believe them without doing any research on your own, shame on YOU.

Random Thought #7 – Many of the people who complain about how expensive this health care bill is going to be are the same people who doggedly support our involvement in the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last nine years. If you’re so worried about cost, maybe we should stop sacrificing our citizens’ lives and throwing money away in the desert, and start using some of those hundreds of billions of dollars we’re throwing into a war against an ideal that we will never be able to win and instead refocus those countless billions into reforming the world at home. (Wow, that’s quite the run-on sentence).

Random Thought #8 – No matter how bleak things seem, the fact of the matter is that the world will not come to an end because Health Care Reform was signed into law. Nor will the second coming of Christ be ushered in on the wings on Health Care Reform. Chances are that this law will make next to no impact in the lives of pretty much everyone. There are literally thousands of bad laws on the books now–some enforced, some not. Some businesses will fail, others will succeed. Insurance companies will still find ways to screw the little guy, lawyers will still find ways to line their pockets by suing anything that moves, and people will still get by with our without insurance. The world will still go on turning. Children will still starve to death every day in the third world. People will still meet, fall in love, and get married. And who knows, maybe ten or fifteen years down the road, we will have worked out the kinks in this new system that NOBODY truly understands, and we’ll find that this was a good thing in the long run. We may find out that it was one of the biggest blunders in all of political history. But I think we’ll find out that, like most things, this law had some good and some bad and probably didn’t make much difference one way or the other. Because, in the end, it all balances out.

Boots Made for Walking

Philosophizing, Pictures View Comments

Mar 212010

Thursday, I purchased the first piece of equipment that I’m going to need for my big Wyoming backpacking trip this summer…perhaps the most important piece of equipment: my boots. I did a lot of research, asked my father, and settled on getting a pair of Hi-Tec Altitude IV boots. (I almost didn’t buy them because part of me can’t abide a company that spells its name "Hi-Tec" but I figured that a 50-60 mile hike at 10,000 feet is not really a time to be sitting on my high horse about spelling and grammar.

I want to break them in a little bit, so this weekend, I did a fair bit of walking. Saturday, I drove about 2 hours, and also spent about an hour walking around taking pictures. (See yesterday’s post.) Today, I woke up and took the dog for a 3-mile walk. Then I got home, climbed back into bed, and was just about to drift off to sleep when I got a call from my friend Bill, reminding me that we had planned on going on a hike to Cougar mountain in Bellevue. So, I got up, strapped my boots back on, and we went for a, shall we say, invigorating six mile hike through the forest taking pictures. Afterward, we decided to head over to Bellevue Botanical Gardens and, you guessed it, take some pictures, so we walked around for another mile or so.

Suffice it to say, my feet are a little sore. It’s been a long time (i.e. never) since I’ve walked 10 miles in a single day. I’m exhausted.

But, I was able to snap a few pictures that I didn’t hate. About 3/4 of the way through our hike out in the middle of the woods, we came across the corpse of an old car. I have absolutely no idea how this car got there, because there is nothing resembling a road anywhere near here. Most of the time, the path was only a 2-3 feet across. The only way I could think that the car might have made it there was if it had been dropped by plane from the sky or something. In any case, it was a pretty cool little chunk of metal in the middle of a very ferny and mossy forest, so, of course, we took lots of pictures.

One of the things that my hiking companions mentioned was the color of the green in the forest. For those who aren’t familiar with Seattle’s greenery, it’s a different shade of green than almost anywhere else I’ve ever lived. It’s almost electric. And moss grows on EVERYTHING. (I didn’t adjust the color on the photo below at all…this is exactly how it looks.) Even in Michigan, I never saw green like this. I guess they call it the Emerald City for a reason.

When I go hiking, I have a tendency to notice very small things on the ground since I’m watching where I’m going in order to prevent eating it in a giant mud puddle. One of the more interesting finds (besides a boatload of snails and slugs) was this fungus. I’d tell you to taste the rainbow, but something about this tells me that the rainbow might just kill you.

This is the time of year in Seattle where EVERYTHING is in bloom. A couple of weeks ago it was just starting, but now it’s really starting to go haywire. The Camellia, Rhododendron, Tulips, Daffodils, Jonquils, Hyacinth, Cherry Trees, Magnolias, Dogwoods–they’re all in full splendor right now. If you can combine those flowers with a sunny day and a blue sky, the flowers just sparkle.

So, all in all, I liked the way these photos came out far more than the ones from yesterday. Just goes to show, I guess, that even when you have a bad day, you just keep on keeping on, and eventually you begin to find what you’re looking for. Or something like that. I don’t want to start crafting life-lessons from a simple hike through the woods. If I start doing that now, imagine what a tome I’ll have to write when I get home from my Wyoming Trip in August. And I don’t have time to write a tome.

Picture This...

Philosophizing, Pictures, Ramblings View Comments

Mar 202010

When I was about 16 years old, my father let me use (and eventually gave me) an old Minolta X500 SLR camera and a few lenses. It was completely manual…manual focus, manual aperture, shutter speed. I loved using that thing. I would trek it over to the Albion nature center or schlep it along on some drives through the back roads around Michigan. While my classmates were taking disposable cameras with them on school trips to Toronto or Band Festivals, I was lugging around this heavy SLR, a 28mm, a 50mm, and a 135mm lens. I was buying (and occasionally stealing…since I was a klepto back in those days) all KINDS of film, both color and black and white. I spent tons of money on getting my film developed. I just loved taking pictures.

Part of the problem, however, is that I just wasn’t very good at it. I read books, and practiced, but I never seemed to be able to get the hang of lighting and composition. As with many things that I have tried to do in my lifetime, I understand the technical aspect of what it is I was trying to do, but I never managed to grasp the artistry.

My love of photography has never really abated. I got my first modern SLR camera as a sophomore in college (Canon Rebel 2000). As a senior, I got my first digital camera (Minolta DIMAGE 7HI). My first Digital SLR came less than a year later when I got my Canon Digital Rebel. A year and a half ago, I got the Canon Rebel XTi. Then, just before Christmas, I traded up to what I hope will be the last digital camera I buy for a good long while: The Canon 7D. The 7D is a fantastic camera that does 18 Megapixel images, and 1080p Hi-Def video.

I also, over the last several years, have managed to cobble together a few fairly decent lenses…which supposedly are the main different in the quality of the photos. My favorite lenses are my 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 wide angle lens, my 50mm f/1.8 lens, and my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. (Sorry for the geek speak for those who don’t know or care what those numbers mean.) (And, as another parenthetical, when I type the word lens, my fingers want to type it in as "lense." Not sure why.)

All in all, I’ve managed to cobble together a pretty good little set of gear for an amateur. I did some actor’s headshots and a few portrait sessions when I was in college and afterwards, some of which I’m pretty proud of.

But I’ve never seemed to be able to move my photography past the point of "workmanlike" to "artistic," and I’ve been struggling to figure out why that is. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I believe I’ve developed some insight:

1. I think that, overall, my frustration stems from the fact that I seem to be unable to capture the scene in front of me as I’m seeing it through my own eyes. I see things around me all the time that look absolutely beautiful to me. However, the instant I start trying to see it through the lens of my camera, I lose that vision. I don’t know whether it’s the fact that I’ve not yet mastered the technical aspects of my photography, and so I can’t translate what I see in my mind onto what I’m looking at on film, or whether I simply haven’t learned that translation layer yet. The camera can’t see things the same way that I can, and I’ve not been able to see things in the way that the camera does.

2. I think that, overall, I just struggle when it comes to visual creativity. (In reality, I feel like I struggle with creativity in general.) I’m really good a copying people or stealing ideas, but sometimes I have a hard time coming up with material on my own. For instance, I was looking through the Flickr stream of my friend Jamelah, and came across this photo and this photo. Jamelah does this "365 days" project where she takes a self portrait every day, and posts it online. And a lot of them are really, really good. They’re just so creative. And so well executed. I saw her photos and instead of using that as a springboard, all I could thing of were ways that I could copy or tweak her idea. I just struggle coming up with original ideas.

3. I rarely go off the beaten trail…both literally and figuratively. My drive for photography, like so much of what I do in my day-to-day life seems to come from proving that I can make a pictures that is just as beautiful or just as ______________ as someone else’s. I want to take portraits like Rachel Thurston. I want to take nature photography like Scott Bourne. I want to take landscapes like Chris Gin. I haven’t figured out what kind of photographer I want to be or what kind of photographs I want to take. So, as a result, I skim across the surface of several types of photography, never really getting good at any of them. I also don’t leave my comfortable world that often. So, it’s hard for me to find those sweeping panoramas or glorious vistas or unusual animals because if it’s not within a 10-minute drive of my house, I haven’t been there. So, I drive along the well-worn highways, take pictures of the same waterfalls, the same rusty old tractors, the same ferry boat ride panoramas that everyone else has photographed. As a result, much of my photography feels like snapshots instead of photos.

4. The digital toolbox. I may know my way around F-stops and shutter speeds, but when it comes to what to do with the final product, everything I’ve ever learned has been experimental. Some things I’ve gotten pretty good at (like retouching headshots) while other things (color correction, for instance) are troublesome for me. Plus, I’ve tended to use Photoshop to hack my way through fixing mistakes that never should have been made in the first place.

5. Some of it just my old self-doubt. I’ve always been one of those people who feels like, if his creativity isn’t the best and greatest, there’s no value in it. Why continue to create mediocre "art" when there are those out there who can do it so much better than you can. As I’ve started taking more photos again, I haven’t just enjoyed the process. The whole point of the process for me is to get a quality final product. And I think it’s that focus on the final product that prevents me from really learning and experimenting and creating in a way that I haven’t done before.

Today, I woke up early, threw the dog in the car, and drove down highway 202, east out of Redmond. I’ve never been that way, so I just drove to see where I’d end up. I ended up in a little tiny town called Fall City (population: 5000) not to far from the Snoqualmie water fall. I walked around, took a ton of photographs, and spent about two hours just meandering around the area. When I got home, I popped my memory card into the computer, and I was just disappointed with the results. I want to take that one picture, that one shot that just screams "AMAZING!" The one that you would want to use for your computer desktop, or even print up and hang on the wall. But out of the thousands of pictures that I’ve taken over the last couple of years, I can’t think of a single picture that I would want to hang on my wall. In fact, with all the photos that I’ve taken, the only thing of mine hanging up right now is 5 4×6 photos of tulips in a frame…and none of those are particularly good pictures on their own. They just happen to match my shower curtain.

It’s become painfully obvious to me that I’m not going to be one of those people who picks up a camera and starts making beautiful, amazing, life-altering photographs right away. I mean, come on, I’ve been taking photos on and off for over 15 years now. If I haven’t turned into the next Ansel Adams by now, I’m not going to. So, I think the real challenge for me to learn how to enjoy the process of photography, not fixating on the end result. The fact of the matter is that, I’ll probably continue to take pictures for the rest of my life because it’s one of the only ways that I’ve found to be even remotely creative in a visual space. And I have enjoyed it in the past, even when my photos were never that good.

I also need to really work on finding my way off the well-worn paths. I need to get out of my car and walk through the mud a little more. I need to experience things from a vantage point of someone other than a tourist. I need to be a little braver in asking people if I can photograph them or their pets or their flowers.

And I just need to keep taking pictures. Because, while my photos aren’t great, taking pictures is sure a whole lot cheaper than buying more equipment to take pictures that still aren’t great.

The Road Not Travelled

Philosophizing, Ramblings View Comments

Feb 212010

Warning: this will be one of those self-reflective, contemplative, and a little depressed posts that crop up every now and again. If this doesn’t interest you, move along. Nothing to see here.

I had been looking forward to this weekend a great deal. Work for the last several weeks has been very demanding. I’ve been spending my time putting out fires, trying to fix problems, and dealing with the standard intra-office politics that plagues every single organization ever created by mankind. My weekends have been refuges for me. I’ve been able to relax, get away, do fun things, spend money, and generally enjoy myself thoroughly. So, after a particularly stressful week, I walked out of work on Friday ready for the weekend.

It was, to be blunt, disappointing.

The thing is that there is no reason it should have been. My weekend was spent much the same way as past weekends have been for months and months. I watched TV, played video games, went grocery shopping, grabbed some fast food, worked in the studio on some music, worked on an audiobook, surfed the web, and played with/walked the dog. I got a new bed delivered. I made rice pudding for the first time ever. (But without raisins, so it was actually good.)

But it’s 10:30 on a Sunday night, and I’m low.

When you’re young, you chart your life by the things that haven’t happened to you yet; by the things that you still have coming up. You look forward to starting school, going to Jr. High, going to your first dance (at the age of 14, if your Mormon), going to high school, going on your first day (at 16), graduating high school, going to college, graduating from college, getting a job. But I feel like that’s where it ends for me. (And let’s be honest…I didn’t even get half of the things I just listed off.) Most people get married, have kids, and then get to look forward to their kids’ milestones as much as their own, plus the additional milestone of being able to have the kids fly the nest and re-explore life as a single person. I, on the other hand, look at the remainder of my life and realize that my next milestone is retirement…which means that I’ve got 40 years of working jobs I don’t particularly care for in order to retire with enough money to live. Assuming that I don’t die of a heart attack in the 40s because of all the junk food I eat. Or get sick or injured. And heaven forbid that I spend the next 40 years working and retire only to find out that a) I’m too old to actually do anything I want to do or b) I don’t have anyone to do it with.

I spent this weekend doing the things that I wanted to do…and I largely enjoyed them. But I don’t feel like I’m working toward anything anymore. Even my resolutions seem forced…something to be working on for the sake of working on something…not because I really want to, or because I’m working toward something that’s really important to me.

For most of my life, there was always a path laid out before me. Granted, it was a path that I could not have followed, but at least there were milestones along the way. Once I finally started trying to chart my own future, I’ve come to realize that I don’t know where to go. I can’t be the good little Mormon boy with the wife and three adorable children, serving in Boy Scouts and teaching the Deacon’s Quorum. I can’t be the raging queen, out dancing at the clubs every night and hooking up with every ‘mo who crosses my path. I’m just stuck in between. And the thing about the middle ground? It’s in the middle. It’s bland, mediocre, unremarkable. It’s the Land of "Meh." It’s like a saw a fork in the road, and instead of taking the one "less travelled by," I just set up camp in the fork and watch people taking one road or the other while I sit there and try to learn the guitar or record an audiobook.

I’m not sure what the answer is…or if there even is an answer. And I feel rather disingenuous whining about feeling rudderless when I have friends and family who are struggling with real problems. I just wish I had something in my life that was driving me toward some greater end. A purpose, a milestone.

Or, maybe I should just start picking out retirement homes now…

The non-broken broken ankle

Gratitude, Health, Philosophizing, Whine View Comments

Feb 152010

So, yesterday, it was raining, as it is wont to do here in the Seattle area. One of the worst things about the rain here, other than the overtly oppressive suicidal tendencies that it brings out in even the cheeriest among us, is that rain + eyeglasses = not fun. Have you ever tried to get water spots off of glasses? You might as well try to find a nice girlfriend for Liberace.

I mean, really? What girl wouldn’t be all over that? (BTW, I just interrupted the writing of this blog post for 15 minutes watching Liberace videos on YouTube. He was quite the fruitcake (hold the nuts) but man, could he play the piano.)

Anyway, last night, it was raining. And I was running across a parking lot to get back to my car. I also wear glasses, since I have an active, passionate loathing of contacts and sticking things in my eyes (but that’s another blog post.) In order to prevent my glasses from getting all spotted up, I tucked my head, and ran toward the car. Along the way, I happened to trip over one of these stupid things.

Or, more accurately, the tip of my shoe landed on the edge of one of those stupid things, and in the process, my foot got folded back so far my toes were nearly touching my shin.

I won’t tell you the words that came out of my mouth, but it was something along the lines of "Dang it. Poo. That smarts!" Or something. My memory of that night is a little hazy.

It did, in fact, hurt, as would be expected in any such situation. But I was able to drive home, and spent the next four hours playing video games and simply enjoying the last few fleeting moments of my freedom before I had to ~~prostitute myself again~~ go back to work. While the ankle was certainly tender, I was able to walk on it–even taking Luke out for his evening constitutional (is that what they call it these days?) before bed. I went to bed at midnight.

At about 1AM, I awoke in excruciating pain. Epic, miserable pain. My ankle hurt so badly I found myself whimpering involuntarily. It hurt to leave it still, it hurt to move it. And worst of all, I could feel myself going into a mild shock. I started shivering and trembling. (Luke was laying on the bed and it freaked him right the hell out. He started trying to calm me down by licking my hair. It was gross, but also very sweet.) I was so cold, and I couldn’t get warm.

My ankle wasn’t bruised, and had very little swelling, but it was very hot to the touch. I had pain radiating half-way up my shin, and over the top of my foot down around the ankle to my heel. I could feel it just throb with pain…a sensation I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced before.

I pulled back the covers and went to go get a couple of extra blankets, and the instant my injured ankle hit the ground, I collapsed in a heap with another mild exclamation ("Fudgesicles," I think I said.) I couldn’t put any weight on my injured ankle at all. I hopped to the bathroom, got a couple of blankets and about 800mg of Ibuprofen, and went back to bed, where I spent the next two hours shivering, in a significant amount of pain, and wondering if I needed to go to the hospital.

Here’s the problem, though: I drive a stick shift. It’s REALLY hard to drive a stick with one functional foot. And by hard, I mean impossible. And I wasn’t about to start calling up people at 2:30AM to take me to the hospital over a mangled ankle. So, I posted an update on Facebook just to take my mind off of how miserable I was, and eventually I went back to sleep.

This morning when I woke up, I was fully prepared to call someone and ask for a ride to the doctor’s office. I even called my parents and asked them if a broken bone is something you can go to a doctor’s office for, or if you need to go to a hospital. (My last broken bone was 26 years ago…I don’t remember it so well.) After I got off the phone, I got out of bed, and I was able to put weight on my leg again. The ankle was still very tender, but I was okay.

I ended up going to work, and hobbling around most of the day. As the day progressed, the muscles relaxed a bit, and I am now back to about 1/2 speed on my walking. I can even rotate my ankle slightly without discomfort. I can tell that the muscles are still very tight, and that, if I were to pivot on that ankle, it would hurt like a mother, but I’m taking it slow.

The whole experience freaked me out a little. When it comes to little hurts and scrapes, I tend to be fairly stoic about the pain. After I had my (less than successful) hair transplant surgeries, I didn’t even use my painkillers. (Well, I used them, but not for the pain associated with the surgery. Demerol or Vicodin knock the socks off of a Tylenol PM in the sleep aid department.) I mean, don’t get me wrong, I complain about pain a lot (like after a workout, when I want to look all impressive), but I know that I’m being a drama queen and just playing it for all it’s worth. I totally get that. But this time, it was different. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt that kind of physical pain in my life before. I was mentally trying to figure out how I was going to manage to pay for the X-Rays and hospital visit because my crappy insurance wouldn’t cover it until I had blown through my $2,000 deductible.

I’m glad that everything appears to have worked out fairly well. At the rate I’m going, I figure I’ll be back to normal on my ankle by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. This was a learning experience for me. In review:

It’s always better to just take off your glasses if you have to go out in the rain.
Look where you’re going
Once again, I have proof that those 5 years of dance classes in college were a complete waste of money.
I should have gotten the automatic transmission instead of trying to save $1,000 by getting a stick shift. I knew I hated driving a stick.
Dogs are the best when you’re feeling vulnerable, scared, or in pain
Miracles sometimes even happen to the heathen among us
If you’re limping, just be prepared to be asked about 5,839 times a day why you are limping
Companies that don’t provide their employees (who have been working there for 2 1/2 years…I’m just sayin’) with decent medical insurance should be ashamed of themselves–it’s called loyalty.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to wrap up my ankle and go to bed…and hopefully this time, I won’t wake up whimpering in agony.

Insanity, thy name is Matt

Family, Oh. My. Hecks., Philosophizing, Ramblings, Vacations and Road Trips View Comments

Dec 302009

I've often wondered how people manage to interact with me on a daily basis. Because it has become blatantly obviously that I'm completely and totally insane. What with the level of sheer crazy that I've managed to obtain over the last couple of weeks, I'm honestly surprised people have started talking to me in condescending child voices or surreptitiously avoiding my gaze (or presence) like you would a raving lunatic on the subway who is recruiting passengers for his long space journey to join the God Lukamis who lives on the planet Zimath. I, of course, didn't always consider myself to be completely mental. It's a condition that snuck up on me gradually. But here I am. Just recently, I found myself at a bit of a crossroads: I could either fight to maintain what little sanity I still possessed, or I could embrace my inherent mental unhinging with wild abandon.

I chose the latter.

And what, you may ask, is the thing that pushed over the edge from (relatively) sane, (barely) normal, suburban corporate life into my Tom Cruise-level of crazy? I can promise you, you're not going to see this coming. Are you ready?

…

Here it comes…

…

In August, I'm going on a 5-day backpacking trip through the Wind River Valley in Wyoming.

Serious. I'm going on a 50+ mile hike through the Wyoming high country. You can see several photos and a narrative at this website (which is also the source of the above photo).

On the surface, this may not seem like the standard definition of insanity, but let me explain why it is:

I haven't been camping since I was 15 years old
I didn't particularly enjoy it then
My idea of roughing it is spending a night in a Motel 6
There will be no electricity
Ergo, there will be no computers, cell phones, televisions, etc.
I have absolutely no experience on this kind of trip
I own no appropriate camping/hiking gear
It will be an elevations between 10,000 and 13,000 feet
I'm a lazy, lazy man
This will require pooping in a hole in the middle of nowhere outside in the open

One guess as to which one of those concerns me the most. (Hint: #10)

So, what happened what this: They say insanity runs in the genes. I'm not sure exactly who "they" is, but "they" say that. If "they" is correct, then I got my particular brand of insanity from my father. Last summer, my dad, his Twin Brother™ and two other men went on a rather dangerous and difficult 8 day (I think), 85 mile backpacking trip along the Highline Trail in the Uinta Mountains of Utah. He did this despite the fact that he is old enough to join AARP. When dad got back from his trip, I spent a lot of time on the phone with him as he related his experience. And my father is, if nothing else, a master storyteller. He painted a picture for me that stirred my blood with excitement. The trip was extremely difficult, but according to him, was a life-changing experience. He described the nights with the skies so clear you could see the milky way stretch from one horizon to the other; of locations so remote, places so isolated that it was easy to forget that you weren't the last man alive. He made me jealous. I have never experienced anything like that. The closest I get to experiences like that is when I take Luke to the dog park early enough in the morning that nobody else is out yet.

Also, this year, my little sister did something that was (to me) equally as impressive. She hiked from one rim of the grand canyon to the other rim in a single day, a total of some ridiculous sum like 23 miles. Her blog post about the experience got me going too. She managed to do something that was so difficult, but so completely rewarding. It's almost like the two things go hand in hand. Who knew?

So, when I went home for Christmas, dad showed me the pictures of his trip…and they were absolutely gorgeous. And again I was jealous. And then he did what he does every year: invite me to come along on the next trip. I believe that he was fully expecting that, like every year since I was 14, I would make some smart-ass comment about staying in a Motel 6, and that would be that. But his stories of the trail stirred something primal inside of me that has long been dormant/dead, and I got to thinking–"a dangerous pastime, I know". I'm fairly certain that I took him off guard when I said that I wanted to go.

I think it's fairly unlikly that I will ever be one of those avid backpackers/hikers/outdoorsman. Most of the time, I'd rather spend my weekend in my pajamas, sitting in front of my HDTV, and playing video games. Or shopping. Or going out to eat. Or giving myself an appendectomy with a garden scythe. But while doing those things (except for the appendectomy) are enjoyable, I feel like continuing to choose them over more participative activities is tantamount to throwing my life down the garbage disposal and flipping on the switch. I'm young(ish), relatively healthy, and I want to experience life. I have always assumed that I don't like backpacking, but I've never done it. And maybe I'd really, really enjoy it. Maybe I'll despise every second of it, and by the end of the trip, my dad will want to go all Abraham and Isaac on me up in the mountains because of my incessant complaining. But I won't know until I've tried it. There are enough things in life that I won't get to do because of time, money, fear, etc. I don't want to give up what could be a life-changing experience (or a great new hobby) without trying it.

Plus, I just spent a butt-load of money on a new camera. This seems like a truly excellent opportunity to do the kind of photography that most people don't even dream about. I mean, really, how often does someone (who isn't a photographer for National Geographic) get to carry a professional camera into the vast wilds for five days and snap photos like crazy?

So, I have agreed to go on a massive (for me) backpacking trip in August. I get out of breath going up three flights of stairs. My idea of exertion is making my bed. This means that training started on Monday and will continue through August. Training consists of:

Losing 20 Pounds (See Resolution #3)
Geting into Shape (See Resolution #6)
- Cardio (Running, doing stairs)
- Weights (Shoulders, Back, and Abs, especially…so I can carry a 45# pack)
- Start eating real, natural food to fuel the process
Begging, borrowing, or stealing as much equipment as necessary. I don't want to start spending hundreds of dollars on equipment until I know for sure this is going to be a long-term hobby for me. I don't need another money sink hole in my life, thank you very much
Practicing hiking. Start doing some day hikes on the weekends around the area. Bring dog for company.

It's day four of the new routine, and I've already lost four pounds. I've been running twice, except I can only run about a mile and a half, and now I have shin splints. But I must persevere. Because I'll be damned if I get out on the trail in August and I get my rear end handed to me by a couple of men old enough to get the senior citizen discount at Denny's. I may be inexperienced, but I'm going to make sure that by the time August rolls around, I'll be ready. Or I will have quit. But either way, we'll know.

I'm really, really excited for this trip. It hasn't even been fully planned yet, but I'm looking forward to it. As I was telling my (insane) father, I'm scared to death of it, because it's so new, but it's also exciting. I expect that it will be one of the more physically demanding things I've ever done in my life–going through puberty notwithstanding–but I feel like I really need to exert myself in a portion of my life. I need something that will roust me from my ever-deepening rut and give me the motivation to get my act in gear. I figure that there are few motivators more potent than the looming threat 50+ mile hike through the Wyoming high country with a heavy backpack and a couple of trash-talking geriatrics to get me headed down the right path.

And if I survive, I'll have a few amazing blog posts and (hopefully) thousands of pictures to share.

If I survive.

Most Wonderful Time

Family, Holidays, Philosophizing, Ramblings View Comments

Dec 242009

The freeway was empty at 4:30 in the morning. At least, that’s the way it seemed. The shimmer of headlights from a far-distant automobile reminded me that I wasn't entirely alone as I made my way toward the airport the in pre-dawn darkness. But other than the telltale pinpricks of light miles behind me, I felt completely isolated.

It was also the kind of quiet that you can only get while driving alone in the darkness. The hum of the car had faded into the background as I watched the white dotted lines race past me. My decision not to turn on the radio was an unusual for me: I tend wither and die without a daily dose of NPR news coverage. Despite the absence of Karl Kassel’s dulcet tones, however, things were very peaceful. The clack of my tires rolling over the regularly-spaced expansion joints created a subtle double-time metronome, the perfect percussion for an a capella version of Silent Night, which sprang forth almost involuntarily.

It was a simple, perfect moment. I would not generally describe a freeway trip at 4:30AM on the way to the airport as a perfect moment. But this time—it was just perfect. I was going home for Christmas.

I don't really care about or for most holidays. I hate Halloween. I vilify Valentine's Day. In my world, a holiday's value is directly proportional to how many days of work I get to miss as a result. I don't decorate, I think celebrating holidays in the workplace is silly, and I don't go to the holiday parties. I don't give gifts, dress up, or bring holiday themed snacks to work. By all standard definitions of the word, I'm a holiday curmudgeon.

For every single holiday except Christmas. There's something special about Christmas that touches me in a way that no other holiday can. I decorate two months early. I spend Halloween night walking down the aisles of the stores looking at Christmas decorations. I listen to the music in July. I send out cards and letters. I go insane with the gifts for my family. And, of course, I always go out of my way to be “home” for the holiday. (Home being wherever my parents live.)

As I was driving along I-405 so early in the morning, I tried to reflect on why it is that adore Christmas so readily and completely while other holidays leave me somewhere on the spectrum between cold and rage-filled. I came to the conclusion that it’s because Christmas provides me with a single thing so often missing in my life: Peace.

The modern world is rarely a fertile ground for peace. Work, bills, responsibilities, money, e-mail, cell phones…they are all things that distract and excite. In my life, there’s no time to simply sit back, relax, and embrace the calm. I'm swamped with work, worrying about getting laid off, trying to figure out how I'm going to pay my bills, taking care of the dog, running errands, and generally filling my life with all sorts of cosmically unimportant problems, dramas, and issues. I’m checking e-mail, surfing the web, checking my investments, working on my business, talking on the phone, playing video games, watching TV, playing with my toys. Nothing I do in my life brings or provides peace. Except for those few days a year where I can set all that aside and just be with the ones I love.

At Christmastime, it's okay for a Curmudgeon to cast off his war-hardened demeanor and become like a child again. One of the most beloved Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol, is about just that. My never-ceasing bah humbugs of life can be set aside for a few days. I leave my world behind, shut down my email, refuse to answer phone calls from anyone but my family, and I just enjoy the company. No schedules, no requirements, no demands.

At Christmas, it's okay for a 31-year-old single man to smile at a little child standing in line to see Santa Claus and not feel as though people will think he’s a pedophillic pervert. It’s okay to sing songs and play games, to buy presents and give them with no expectation or requirement for reciprocation. It’s okay to tell tales of elves, reindeer, and Santa—to play along in a world of excitement and anticipation and childlike enthusiasm which simply doesn’t fit in the day-to-day adult world. It may seem simplistic, but that’s the beauty of the holiday. It is, at its root, simple. We adults manage to complicate and make frantic the holidays, but Christmas can and should be simple. And those things we feel we have to do for the holidays become all the more enjoyable because we get to do them for the ones we love.

When I was a young child, we often used to drive from our home in Southern Michigan to visit the grandparents in Northwest Ohio. We always did Christmas Day at our own home, we would regularly have our Christmas Eve in Ohio with the grandparents, then drive home late on Christmas eve to be at home for Santa's delivery. Most of the time on road trips, my siblings and I usually fought like cats and dogs. At the best of times, we all had our headphones on, and listened to our own respective Walkman for the whole trip doing our darnedest not to talk to one another. I remember the Christmas Eve drives being far more peace, even magical. We would sing Christmas Carols often. My infatuation with the song Silver Bells comes from singing the song as we drove through the Main Streets of small cities in Ohio bedecked with Christmas lights and decorations. We would retell the Christmas stories and legends about Santa, the Elves, Rudolph, and of course, about the Birth of Jesus.

And we talked: The kids would ask dad questions about how Santa did his thing, and my father, who was always lightning fast with improvisation, developed a mythology around Santa of which the Greeks could be envious. On more than one occasion, Dad would get us overly excited about the presents we were going to get tomorrow—his favorite line of all time being “you're going to like it SO MUUUUCH!” As it would get dark outside and my brother, sister, and mom would all fall asleep in the car, while I would stay awake with dad and we'd talk in low voices. I always stayed awake on road trips because I didn't feel like it was fair that dad was the only one who had to stay awake, and I wanted to keep him company. Those talks with dad made me feel special: like an adult whose opinions and thoughts really mattered. And one time, staring up at the sky, I was convinced that I actually saw Rudolph's red nose zooming past in the sky over the highway.

As I was driving in the dark to the airport at such an ungodly hour, I was powerfully reminded of those trips back from Ohio where we celebrated Christmas. Dad wasn't there to talk to, Jake and Megan not there asleep on the pillow on my lap, I wasn’t driving through small Ohio towns, and there weren’t even many Christmas decorations. But I was going home for Christmas.

That’s why I listen to Christmas music in July. That’s why the Christmas decorations go up well before Thanksgiving. I simply can’t wait to recapture the sheer peace and happiness of those times when my life was so much simpler. I was extremely blessed that my holidays were always filled with love, excitement, peace, and joy—I know many were not that fortunate—and I can’t wait to get back to it again.

So I will continue to drive to the airport at 4:30 in the morning, stand in a long security line, sit on a cramped, smelly airplane, and pay for the right to do so year after year. I will continue to put up my decorations after Halloween, and listen to Christmas music whenever the mood strikes…even if it's July. I'll still keep singing Silent Night or Silver Bells to myself in the car at night time. And I still check the sky every Christmas Eve night to see if I can spot Rudolph's glowing red nose way up above me.

Because Christmas truly is The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

Merry Christmas!

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