"People pay to see others believe in themselves".
Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth

“Why don’t you believe, believe in your own god?
Why don’t you believe, believe in your own god?”
DIG,Believe

//

Is it really this simple. Can we believe our way to most anything we want to do in this life?

Part of me wants to immediately say yes, but then I pump the brakes. I really want to believe I will win the lottery or that my next music release will turn me into an overnight rock sensation.

I am without a doubt almost certainly pretty sure that there’s a good chance that neither of those things are going to happen.

Yet still, I believe.

//

Maybe the game is really picking something that may just be a bit of a stretch to achieve. Something a little less impossible.

Then I think again. There’s countless stories of people who couldn't walk from their bedroom to the kitchen due to health issues and such who then go on to complete Ironmans and what not. Those things had to seem impossible to them when they started. Belief that they could had to be built over time. Small successes building day by day. Each success a little drip of belief.

//

I turn this over and over in my brains and it feels a little chicken/egg-ish. I land on this.

We have to do the work to achieve. Believing that we will makes this work feel like it’s paying off. Each little milestone adding to the next via the work.

//

If I were a math guy, I'd probably turn this into some sort of provable equation. Since I’m a history guy, any attempt at this comes out super simple and allows you, the reader, to say “No shit Sherlock.” or “No duh!”. I am okay with that.

Here’s the equation.

W * B = S

W= Work
B= Belief
S= Success!!

Even though I am not a math guy, I realize immediately there’s no way numbers work in this equation as what’s the scale for work? For belief? If I decide that work=watts or something and that belief is a 0-100 percentage scale, and that I produce 400 watts for one hour of work on my goal, and I have 70% belief, I come up with 280 success.

This is problematic at best and meaningless.

Belief shall not be quantified or equationed.

Belief is the art of it all.

It’s squishy.

//

I still know belief matters. It’s a confidence thing. Each little bit knocking down the doubts and the worry.

Each dusting a step forward.

People who believe, do.

Each doing propping up the need to believe and vice versa.

Confidence becomes the foundation to try after failing.

The foundation to knowing you can.

#hugs&highfives

I love the feeling of matte plastic. I mean, I don’t seek it out, but when I feel it, I feel a sensory lilt, if there is such a thing. The keys on my laptop and a new set of wired Apple headphones both have it and I noticed. I’m a noticer. I notice weird things. It’s my special talent.

Things, if we allow, are naturally a blur. We go from Monday to Sunday or Wednesday to Tuesday, depending on how you track your weeks and your level of psychosis, and we just keep turning things over. Trips to the grocery, meals, work, exercise, hobbies; whatever it is that you do. We rinse. We repeat. We look up and it’s fucking September when we feel like it’s January, but know it somehow feels like both. An air of “where did the time go” settles down like morning dew and your time is up.

What ever did I do with it?

//

It’s the noticing though, and how, even if you consider yourself a pro level noticer, you’re level of attention to the little mundanities in life easily disappear. Like any talent you need to nurture it, to practice it sometimes, you must force your appreciation of something, somewhere, at sometime.

They say that eyewitness accounts of anything are the absolute least reliable. I 100% believe this. My wife and I went out to eat last night and if I force myself, I can conjure up one couple (that apparently had kids at our school), the back of the head of one of a trio of ladies that were sitting at the bar directly across from our table, that our waitress had a lot of earrings with light chains connecting some to others, and that's it. The rest is a blur and we were there for 90 minutes or so.

This morning I easily remember two people who were behind the counter at the coffee shop that I go to 3-5 days a week. If I press inward though, I can see a girl walking in, white running shorts, a light blue tank top. Another woman in blue scrubs. It’s there. I saw it. I just have to really try to recall it.

I stop and wonder if girl “A” had thrown hot coffee into woman “B’s” face if I’d then recall their facial features a bit more. Or their height. I decide the traumatic event would etch more detail, but I don’t know that. I once spent ten hours at a sound stage during a catastrophic flood organizing and triaging displaced people. I can’t remember one single face other than the other people I knew who were there working with me.

Traumatic etching-debunked.

//

It’s the last day of August, which is to me, the most obscure of months. It’s summer in its most brutal, but it’s also the January of the school year (think about it, it makes sense). As I don’t really have kids living at home anymore, it just feels nondescript. A formless blob of hot and humid days leading up to the real start of the year. September. This probably sounds as clear as mud, but for me, is real.

Really, any month can be the start of something good, just as you can track your weeks from Wednesday to Tuesday if you want.

This beginning of a false year for me will be marked with more noticing, but with a catch.

How can I be aware of all my senses. Can I notice and remember smells, tactile things, sights and tastes. Gut feelings? Could I take the time to look at the people I encounter and then be able to conjure their image for a police sketch just in case they do crimes while I’m in their presence? Can I remember what t-shirt that were wearing. Can I do all this while not coming across like a creeper?

Too soon to tell.

#hugs&highfives

I walked out into the heat of a 2:OO p.m. CST, August in Louisiana day. It’s weird here. At 5:00 a.m. the humidity is 100% so it sometimes feels worse running then than at 12:00 noon. Two to five p.m. is prime time for the heat, and it feels like walking into a furnace, the light wind blowing hot air and not cooling at all. The humidity is still 55%, which a perfunctory search of Boulder, CO, Atlanta, GA, and Los Angeles, CA, shows that its 15-25% higher here than there at the same times. I can only assume that’s a lot of percents. I think visitors from those places would walk out at 2:00 and feel 95°F and 55% humidity, have a stroke and concur.

The morning had been busy and productive but as things go, I hadn’t eaten anything all day, a poor habit that goes back to 25 years in the restaurant business where you went to work, ate at 3:00, and started drinking at 4:00 pm. I was heading to grab lunch after a lunch workout.

I jumped in my car, hit the button and was greeted the almost familiar click of a dead battery and began the process of switching it out.

The nuts that held the terminals in place were, of course, metric. The world standard everywhere but here. 20 mins a wet t-shirt (not the good kind) later and I was back on the road. At the light I switched the time on the clock and ran the rest of the days errands. For whatever reason I put it on 24 time (this is completely unimportant) and didn’t bother changing out of the metric system (slightly more important).

It was 41°c out.

Having come from outside just 3 minutes earlier, I confirmed this was hot. But realized I had no point of reference. Was 41°c, 90°F? Why is the “c” in celsius feel like it should be lower case and the “F” in Fahrenheit capital? Could I ever make this switch to just saying “Oh it’s going to be 33° today and have any inclination of what that means. I decide that 33°c is 85°F (and am wrong).

Could this newfound temperature measuring system trick me into believing it’s better outside here than it really is?

//

This morning I awoke late to go meet our Thursday run group and on the way looked up and saw it was 27°c…at 5:13 a.m. This seemed too cold to run. I did my guessing and figured it may be a cold spell and that it was probably 72°F (wrong).

I joined the group and suffered through five miles of what felt like running while breathing with a wet sock in my mouth. Was this what 27°c was supposed to feel like? If I was in say Spain, is this 27°c cooler? I decide yes and recommit to adopting celsius as my way forward.

I drove home at 6:37 a.m. It was 31°c.

//

This may seem like a lot of nothing talk to you but I realized today that thinking 27°c wasn’t really as hot as it is was a pretty good mind trick for exactly 800m of running, at which point, the running started to feel like it always does during the summer. Fucking rough.

Each August, whether tricked by the metric system or not, I come to believe that I have lung cancer…again. Then I remember it’s August, and that I seem to always get lung cancer running in August and that it mysteriously gets straightened out in October when the temps drop a little. This realization never makes the runs any easier than saying it’s “Only 27° out.”

//

Having not found a way to really wrap this up, I'll end with this.

If you hit SHIFT+OPTION+8 you get the degree sign when you type. I did this 17 times in this post.

Also, (°C × 9/5) + 32= °F (maybe the “c” is supposed to be capitalized after all) if you need to get out your pencil and convert on your own. Good luck working fractions, nerd.

This seemed important to share.

#hugsandhi5s

It started annoyingly, “fucked” consistently autocorrected to “ducked” on my phone. Me saying a variation of one of those words multiple times a day and the other, never times a day. It was simple, but by and large, most of the times, SKYNET got it right and my texting was forever improved. I didn’t know it, but this was the kiss it all started out with.

//

I was thinking of this just the other day. I bought a new computer and was dedicated to not turning it into the inside of my brain, an amalgamation of items saved on my desktop and in dropbox and in iCloud and in whatever bullshit Microsoft autosaved in, my organization system looking like the bottom of a foot covered in glue that walked across a field of freshly cut grass. Chaos. I vowed I would not use the desktop email program on it until I deleted most of everything, or at the least figured out how to not have 20,000+ emails automatically download to my hard drive. So I did what any neanderthal would do and I started going to the website to check my Gmail.

On the first day I felt a little tickle. I was being prompted nonstop to hit the tab button and let the machine complete my sentence. It was again annoying, but this time it felt different. Instead of the little kiss, I was starting to feel like I was being groped.

Day after day, the prompts kept coming. Unwanted advances to make my writing “more concise”. Entire swaths of sentences underlined in pink (or purple) that became harder and harder to ignore. A hand on my leg, moving to the button on my jeans. Just let me do the work, Sultry Skynet says…

This is AI. This is what they keep talking about all day everyday.

//

I get it, there are AI tools that can do amazing things but something about it, even at an autocorrect level feels rapey. Like I’ll eventually succumb because everyone’s doing it (probably should have written this from the “gateway drugs” pov). It’s making your life easier. I can’t help but think there’s going to be a cause.

If we’ve learned nothing from social media it’s that it’s making us more dumberer all the time. Fewer people read, people can’t write, and we constantly hit the little button for another lil pebble of food to come out. A rat race built in the real life lab.

This is the danger of the “just press tab”, it’s no big deal. First you’re sending “I’M DUCKED” texts and the next thing you know you’re naked in a tub with one kidney and pretty sure you cheated on your wife. AKA “actually fucked”.

//

So yeah, if you couldn’t tell. I am not a fan of AI.

I also understand how unstable these lines in the sand are. Who doesn't want to eliminate the time spent emailing?

But that's the thing. First they came for my texts, then my emails, then all my writing.

Perhaps now is when I turn completely into an old person.

Me with my pencils and paper, shaking my fist at the (i)clouds.

#hugsandhi5s

He ran 12 feet back of the group, committing to keeping an easy pace and not letting the gentle surge of the group act upon him. The speed indicative of nothing more than getting warmed up. Old sinew loosening and elongating, pressing the pace downward but not forcefully. No one was trying to go fast. He was just committed to not speeding up.

This left him alone for three and a half of the five miles he planned to run, the social aspect of the only workout he did with people removed, per the usual. He wondered if it was his doing, or just coincidence. Another real life example of him slowly disappearing.

“The internet did this to me”, he thought. An early adopter of oversharing and visibility, little chunks of his double helix coaxed and supported and encouraged by the instant gratification of the internet economy. Likes and comments and kudos and emojis filling in the little bays and spaces where the dopamine was supposed to go. Clicking in nice and tight, like they were built for it.

He always thought of dopamine receptors akin to the parking spaces of a Trader Joe’s. Barely big enough space to park, little room between rows, and filled most of the time with carts and compact cars. The dopamine an F-250 trying to back in like some sort of church psycho on a Sunday morning, too big to fit easily. Ready to evacuate at a moments notice.

//

He felt like he had been disappearing for a while now. The remnants of a once very out loud personality caving in from all sides. Becoming less. Feeling like less.

He originally thought it was fine, a life pendulum swinging back from it’s high visibility zenith. It was okay if it went towards the black side. Pendulums swing, it would probably swing back.

He found it was less swingy than burying itself. The blackness gripping and giving no relief. His brain chimed in to reinforce. That doesn’t matter, say less, be known for action.

Action. Living. Example. That’s how he had always thought he had lived, and so that’s what he thought he kept doing. But alone.

Silently.

That was the difference.

//

He could go whole days around people and never say a word. Inside his head there was constant chatter. CON.STANT. So to him, it never felt quiet. Then his wife, or his kids, or his friends would say “Is something wrong, you haven’t spoken today.”

Most times there was nothing wrong. It was just him disappearing.

Actively, inactively. He walked through life these days measured.

Due to the inside chatter, it mostly came as a surprise to him that no one had heard him all day.

Mostly.

//

He vowed to go back to who he was.

A little louder, but maybe not as loud?

Opinionated but with respect for other opinions (except when it came to music he couldn’t stand. Well and food he didn’t like.)

He wondered if he could be visible again.

He wasn’t sure that he was ready to be fully visible, perhaps a little translucent, sometimes in full color.

Mostly the ghost of who he once was.

Talking to himself like he was still out there.

Wisps and chatter.

#hugsandhi5s

My family has inhabited Erieau, Ontario in some shape of form since the late 1800’s. We still spend time each summer there. The history of mine and most families that live there weave in an out with relationships and connections and a shared history.
There’s also an undercurrent of health issues. I wrote most of this up there while I was visiting and it initially brought forth the urge to catalog and tell the stories of this place from the perspective of those who still visit year after year. It became immediately an massive project in my mind and I closed the tab and went on with my day.
I am pretty sure this will be the first in many stories from this little village on Lake Erie.

//

07.20.2026

The water was unseasonably warm. Hot almost. At least for here. The weeds that were nearly non-existent in the 1980’s were now ubiquitous. Tendrils that grew up from the bottom of the sandy floor that gripped at his arms as he swam. They reached up towards the sun, grasping for the sunlight that fed them.

The sun, while a primary source of growth was nothing as compared to the chemicals that fed them, thirty five years or so of powerful fertilizers from two of the surrounding three shores ran off and into the bay every time it rained, a rocket fuel for the vegetation, and for a little more, if the some of the villagers to the south were correct in their suspicions.

//

The village was small. Three hundred and sixty-three year round residents that lived in one hundred and eighty-seven of the three hundred plus cottages, homes and trailers that existed on the peninsula. That number was two hundred seventy or so back in the late 80’s and 90’s. I know because it said so right on the sign as you drove in. The same one wishing you fair seas and strong tailwinds.

The village had been there in some shape or form since the late 1800’s. An outcropping into Lake Erie that warranted a channel deep enough for coal boats and fishing vessels complete with a lighthouse.

My great grandfather (or maybe great, great grandfather, I always get it mixed up) was the lighthouse keeper there on the eastern side of the channel. Having been here in February I can imagine the long cold winters here. I immediately wonder if the channel closed when it froze over or if the boats were big and strong enough to break through the ice when it came. This seems unlikely.

There was, until the late 1960’s or so, one set of railroad tracks that ran in and out of town, the line headed east to west turning up at the edge of the marsh and going north towards Chatham and Shrewsbury and Blenheim and points beyond. I imagine the coal and fish that left out of the marina, fueled and kept whole, most of the area between Windsor and London, Ontario through these brutal winters.

A lot of this is my speculation. My retelling of the things that were told me. The most unreliable of stories from the most unreliable of tellers. The embellishers of a better time. The old.

Memory, he was learning, serves at the behest of the lady’s love, ergo, is erratic at best and downright inaccurate most of the time. We create the best versions of the past and push them forward as truth so as not to blemish our best experience. Our best versions.

To that end, we brush most of the nastiness under the rug, or just accept it as rote.

//

For a village so small, there lingers what seems like more than a fair share of ugliness. Strange deaths, rampant alcoholism, and cancer.

A whole lot of cancer.

A walk down the boulevard house by house reveals that almost every home here has had some sort of cancer. Some houses, multiple cases. This may not seem like much except for the fact that most of the places are occupied from the end of June through Labor Day weekend. It’s not just the year rounders who are affected. It’s the ones that are in and out over a lifetime of summers. A week here, six weeks there. The cancers sinking in it’s black tendrils and taking hold. Doing what cancer does, sometimes slowly, sometimes alarmingly fast.

The timelines, to be fair, don’t matter. It’s the end result.

//

What makes it mostly odd is that no one is from here. Technically one could argue that the village is a cross section of the population at large and as such it represents the amount of cancer you’d find in any population.

This is the convenient explanation.

What remains are the numbers and statistics, but no one here has really spent any time compiling them. If we are being true and honest, it could simply be an anomaly. We could have all gotten cancer from the other places we lived, from the other choices we made.

My smoking. Drinking. Living in a city with some of the worst air quality in the nation. Spending hours in said air exercising. Opening my lungs and becoming an efficient filter for the chemicals in a place nicknamed “The Chemical City”.

This is why it’s hard.

This is why no one counts.

This is why it just goes on and on.

//

When I was 18, I had just started playing music. One night, me and four friends set up in his downstairs bedroom and played music until 4 in the morning. We went up to the roof at sunrise and watched it come up. We had taped that night on a four track. Bad recordings of songs we knew only chunks of. Songs we spent 10 minutes learning and the next hour, playing through and recording.

It was August of 1989 and I had spent the summer between my graduation doing the following.

Working 14 days in a shrimp processing plant working 12-15 hour days shoveling ice and shrimp at the docks after opening weekend of shrimp season.

A week in Meridian, MS for a high school fraternity convention.

Spending 28 days in the Soviet Union the summer before the fall of communism. That’s not a typo.

Spending 10 days at our cottage at our cottage in Canada.

I tell you all this because I titled that tape we made REDS-Stalingrad Does Exist. An overwrought, over-earnest, over serious title. Me, deciding to align things with some version of the USSR. Not based on politics of course, it was more about the intense experience and impact that trip had on me.

I went to college, depressed, and down, thinking that “none of this bullshit matters”. It didn’t. This would be come a trend.

Recently I found a notebook where 18 year old me had written down plenty more over wrought thoughts, song ideas, and general earnest things (DARE TO DREAM!!…barf).

On one of those pages was written REDS, 1000 CURES FOR CANCER.

I assume this would be that cobbled together band’s first album. That or some other soon to be formed band.

1000.
CURES.
FOR.
CANCER.

//

There aren’t one thousand cures, but I thought of that album title during the first part of this diatribe. Just as there may be one thousand cures for cancer, there are just as likely multiple thousands of causes for it.

The thought of one place causing cancer in hundreds of people at once seems real and at the same time, a simple convenience. I can’t separate my seven years of smoking, genetics, the American Diet, living where the actual air is trying to kill me, and sundry other environmental factors.

Industrial fertilizers in a bay that I grew up swimming in is just another one of them.

//

This, also, is much easier for me, as my little bout with cancer seems to be sort of behind me, though, as anyone who gets even the “good kind” of cancer will tell you. You become pretty sure there’s going to be a next time. Like your cells were prepared for planting and no amount of strip farming will make the soil of your body reset.

I didn’t lose my life this time around, as many people I knew growing up did. My dad, included.

Without time, money, a dedicated scientific study and the like, there won’t be any cause effect relationship tied to this little slice of heaven on Lake Erie. To be fair, even if you could somehow have charted every single day of every single person who summered and lived here for the last hundred years, there’d be no definitive.

There are not a thousand cures for cancer.

There for sure are a thousand causes.

For as so called scattered or ADD as he was, the clutter gave him fits, it made his skin crawl. He created it for sure. A collection of papers, stacked. Notebooks with one page written in them, guitar picks, a disposable camera with a broken flash, four pencils, $40, a hat, a banana, headphones, a knife, an inhaler, keys, his wallet. All of it within 19 inches from where his hands hovered and flicked and pressed and created the words that you’re seeing now.

This was the entry level clutter. As you moved up and out there was more. Each counter and space filled with detritus. Each artifact filling a little notch in his mind. Taking up much needed space. Like a laptop running out of memory. MEMORY AT CRITICAL STATE or something like that. That’s what the laptop told him so that’s what he told himself.

He was super capable of cleaning up and tidying, but it usually required a clean sweep. That’s what he was calling it this morning.

OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP.

In his version, or in any good version (he thought), you ended up just throwing away a lot of stuff that your brain fought you to keep. Out of not wanting to waste or out of a nagging “you never know when you might need that” feeling that never went away.

He knew the truth.

You never “might needed it”. You always ended up forgetting you had whatever it was and either bought another “it” when the opportunity arose, or just carried on without “it”.

Such was reality.

When you accepted this reality, waste and adding to the landfill felt a little less dirty.

Sometimes you might vow to consume a little less.

Vows were like promises. When applied to clutter though, they had little teeth.

So you “clean sweeped” (or is it swept?) and received a couple little notches of memory back. Or space for calm, if you could figure out how to convert memory notches for calm notches.

Sometimes you could, sometimes you couldn’t.

//

It was the closed doors of cupboards and the overflowing drawers that reminded him of his level of OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP success.
Usually, if 100% was a perfect CLEAN SWEEP, he had a “C” average. Some days you got in the 90’s but the reality was somewhere in the high 60’s to low 80’s.

Every kitchen has a junk drawer. So does every desk. There were three kitchens, and an office, and a home office. All full of junk (drawers).

He’d think he’d gone to far this time. Had finally thrown out that hex wrench used to assemble some sort of Chinese furniture concoction that always left him wanting to purchase vintage Danish Mid-century furniture that would last the rest of his lifetime. These ill fitting fiberboard panels with locking screws and pre-drilled holes giving way one to seven years later. The drawers usually installed incorrectly the first time, filled with the spoils of OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP. A ziplock of pens and sharpies, random coins, tacks, post it notes and the other detritus of this modern life. (that’s two detrituses if you’re scoring at home)

Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner and Børge Morgensen peering down from architecture heaven with scorn and furrowed Danish brows. (At least he finally got to type one of those ø’s)

It’s a judgement he already feels as he applies it to himself freely. Because he can’t deal with the clutter, and because of other things.

Other things he puts into the cabinet, and closes the door.

Among my biggest wonders is the near constant thought that I am just getting started. That I am always just about to be doing the things I think I should.

Make no mistake, this doesn’t mean I don’t think that what I am doing is good enough, it’s that there’s something else that I haven’t done that I should be.

It’s a feeling of agelessness. It’s a feeling like the best is still out there.

It’s mostly positive.

Mostly.

The obvious downside of it is that it’s a distraction and keeps me from putting in my best efforts on my current commitments. It also begs a giant question.

If not this, then what?

If not. This. Then. What?

//

Many years ago I read some sort of self helpy book that offered a simple exercise.

Take a blank piece of paper and write down one (seemingly) simple question.

What do you want?

The goal was to write down whatever your little heart desired, no matter how out there it was. I’ve done this exercise no less than a hundred times and still don’t have a definitive answer.

I don’t know if that’s a me thing or just how everyone is, but it is a constant pulling towards something.

I think when I was younger it may or may not have been “thing” based. These days it’s all about less. More quiet. More calm. I know I must create.

I also know this tendency for less and more quiet can collapse me inward towards solitude. That’s not great for anyone involved.

//

I know that this constant pull also keeps me from my current best efforts as I am always semi distracted and looking out towards some non-descript “better”.

Why isn’t this good enough?

//

After consideration, I do think this is a good thing. (this feeling, this tendency?)

It’s the core of my belief that almost anything is possible.

It’s a belief that my age doesn’t really matter.

It’s an openness.

It’s a refusal to decide that I can’t ahead of time.

//

Just as I say all of the above, I am reminded that I used to be “more”. I was louder and more interactive with the world.

I would just act on things that others would think were brash and out there. A little show-offy, but really, I just had this willingness to say yes to most things.

I still think my inside voice wants to. My outside voice seems to have been quieted.

If I could think of one way to be different it would be to act on more things that I think I want.

A perfect example of this is the following. I go to a Starbucks in Baton Rouge. One day while I was waiting for my coffee in a packed house, I had a super distinct thought.

I should walk in the door with my guitar and play The Beatles, A Day in the Life in here. Maybe stand on a chair. Maybe not.

It was terrifying. I didn’t even know the song. I am not a huge Beatles fan. It just seemed like something I was compelled to do.

It still nags at me. I still may do it.

It seems like something “old me” would have done.

Current me seems too focussed on what could go wrong, how bad I’d botch it, etc.

Current me also knows that it’s still possible.

//

I see pictures and know I am not ageless. I see these gray hairs and this sagging face and know that what’s happening outside in the physical world is different than what seems to be playing on the inside.

I also know that some drastic new me probably isn’t coming along. I am not going to be completely changing directions and so my task becomes mitigating the constant pull.

Mitigating it as a distraction, but not shutting it down.

I know this wonder and belief in what’s possible is probably my greatest strength.

It just needs focus.

Quiet and calm.

Less.

This is the what.

#hugsandhi5s

It was going pretty well really. 3 days in a row writing and putting it out. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do this “optimally”. No “post every Tuesday at 5:27 am as that yields maximum readership and such.

I’d switched it up and bit and was taking some time after lunch each day to tidy up a post and schedule it for 12:13 a.m. This bizarre time a perfect indicator of me.

I’d decided on the first day to start numbering the posts as some sort of streak inducing reminder to keep going, to put it out daily even if, IN SPITE OF IF, it was too much for the reader. My long established habit of creating goals out of the arbitrary to create some meaning.

//

Last Wednesday was a touch of a whirlwind. I’d spent the day working some, and running around to cover the last in person bases needed to leave town for a couple weeks. I was leaving the next morning at 5:00 a.m. I knew scheduling time would be hard but I still managed to sit down around 8 to write and schedule a post for the next day.

Then I got a text that a good friend had died.

The “meaning” of it all the stupid shit melted away.

//

Regardless of the loss, I still landed on a fail. Three days does not a streak make.

I got up and l started driving to Canada.

//

I always think a long drive is mind clearing but really it just makes you tired. You always tell yourself you’ll stop and see the largest ball of string on the way and then you put on loud music and power through and then youre in bum fuck Kentucky, reminded how bad the food is everywhere else but in Louisiana.

We kept it up and drove straight through Ohio withouts suffering any more dietary offenses and got to Canada unscathed.

//

When I got here I did something I don’t normally do.

I gave myself a smidge of grace and said fuck it. None of these random things I hold myself to are anything beyond what I’ve decided in my mind. Ultimately, it’s meaningless.

I mean it matters to be consistent and to set up guard rails that help you do the things you’ve decided you want to do but life is messy and unpredictable.

Letting yourself be. Matters.

And so I did.

I may continue with numbers but if I don’t, I know it doesn’t diminish what I do when I can.

I hope you realize that too.

#hugsandhi5s

Lamar county in Missisippi is pine laden.
The black creek runs downhill.
04.26.2026

These were the things I saw and thought as we bounced down HWY 59 just passed Meridian, MS. A pass through that I take much more frequently than I used to. A diagonal line starting just past Slidell and running across the fat part of the state. Pine forests and little creeks and rivers. I always wait anticipatory to cross the Chunky River and vow to see why it’s called that. Brown, shallow and silty like most Mississippi rivers (except the big one), it crosses the interstate 13 miles South of Meridian. There may also be a town of Chunky, MS, but I can’t recall. Today may be the day I check (I did, population, 272).

These criss crosses always remind me of growing up in Mississippi some 200 miles south. I am of this place but not from it. A mishmash of influence, but little connection. Truly, The Coast, vastly is the same, extremely different from the rest of the state. There’s a feeling of transience down there, likely the effect of military bases and weekend homes. People in and out from New Orleans on the western edge where Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian. The smattering of locals waking up Mondays to less population, and the gentle hum of the Mississippi Sound edging back up to the forefront after the bustle of another weekend.

Related, this is possibly the third time I’ve written about Meridian, MS, a place I have spent exactly one night in since 1989.

I am drawn to Mississippi.

I am of it, but not from it.

When I am there, a quiet falls over me.

//

I am drawn to Mississippi.

I am of it, but not from it. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I can’t ever really claim to be from there in some sort of born and raised way. I have no real cultural connection to it. I, a Yankee interloper in one of THE most Southern of places. Maybe the absolute most Southern.

When I am there, a quiet falls over me. It’s equal parts nostalgia for my youth, but I think there’s something related to the sparseness of population. There’s space. Not wide open, but space nonetheless. It’s like I can take deeper breaths, no matter how sticky the air is. That feels calming. Like humid goodness.

Make no mistake though. The “not belonging” hangs equally thick. A solid feeling of “this place knows I’m not of it. This place knows I am a Mississippi Fraud.” This also feels calming.

This push an pull of self not unlike the push and pull that lives inside my brain.

//

I came back to this because, honestly, I love those first two lines I wrote. They are, like most things I write, nearly nonsensical, or at the least, pseudosensical. That’s not a word, but damn if it shouldn’t be.

I mean they are both sort of matter of fact, but they are just statements I uttered in my head on the way to Eutaw, AL. Lamar County Mississppi is pine laden. It’s in lumber country and pines are like cash there. I know nothing about it other than I can see them as far as my eyes can focus. No mind that when I jotted that down, I had long passed through Lamar county and was squarely in Newton County, some 70 miles northeast.

I don’t even remember where the Black Creek was, except that we crossed over it somewhere on I-59. I assume it runs south, which from up here in Newton County has to be a direction downhill.

//

Pseudosensical, I put down the pencil and watch and breathe slow as the pines whir by.

Of, not from.

#hugsandhi5s

I think about things a lot. Everything is a big ordeal in my brain. The smallest things play out into elaborate definitions of who we are and who we think we are supposed to be and on and on.

This morning I was knocking loose the brains a little bit, and I fell on a prompt from an email list I subscribed to, but per the usual, mostly quit opening. I don’t know if it still get’s sent out, but I searched the emails and opened the first one I found.

This was the prompt:

Articulate its nuances

Hey friends! Welcome back to this wild reservoir of writing exercises. Monday’s exercise follows:

What’s your favorite color? Write a piece that gushes about the color, studies it, mourns with it (á la Maggie Nelson’s Bluets). Try to articulate its nuances, different objects and people you’ve encountered wearing it, who you’ve become because of your relationship with it.

Note from Essence: Want a challenge today? Instead of focusing on a color you love, write about a color you dislike.

I came back and typed “What’s your favorite color?” Naturally the first thing this brought out of me was:

Remember when you were a kid and your whole persona was wrapped around your favorite things? Color, bands, sports and sports teams, foods. That’s what defined you.

Naturally, I thought next: What if you did this at 54? Changed your whole LinkedIn profile to depict a life dedicated to the San Francisco 49ers, or the color green, or pizza or U2? People would think you were bonkers (<great word).

Naturally, I’ve decided to do it.

//

Let me start by saying I have zero love for LinkedIn. I read somewhere, sometime that it is baseball cards for people you’d never want the baseball cards for and that is really a perfect description. It’s filled with corporate speak and self congratulatory glad handing that I am more than capable of achieving here or on any other social medias without feigning some sort of professional prowess. I just opened it for the sake of this exercise and while looking around saw a friend request or craigslist missed connections from a stranger who described themselves as a “Partnership-Focused Diversity Pipeline Assistant”.

What the actual fuck is that?

//

I am quite sure that this will also land poorly with the “you’re an adult, grow up.” crowd who will see it as another bit of nonsense and to them I say, Lighten up Francis. None of this stuff matters and the fact that it bothers you means you need this rebrand just as much as I.

Finally, this will add to the long list of reasons why I will forever be deemed unfit for public office by many, while simultaneously becoming the only choice for public office for the others. I don’t think there’s anything to be worried about here, so again. Lighten up.

//

As I embarked I was amazed to reach inside and realize I still had many favorite things. I just really quit declaring them all the time. 4th grade me would be ashamed.

I started with the first one that prompted this.

FAVORITE COLOR:
For the last 25 years this has been orange and blue. When I was a kid it was green. I have owned an orange Jeep and have had 80’s orange telephones in my restaurants. It used to drive my LSU friends crazy as they couldn’t understand wanting to build brand stories around such nonsense. Yet I was stalwart. Over time I adopted and orange, yellow, red, striped pallet that reeked of 1987 Op T-shirts. I still stand by it as near perfection. Related, there is not a more foul color combination than purple and yellow, except maybe maroon and anything.

I also just realized that I haven’t purchased anything orange in awhile and my lust for the color seems to have diminished. Maybe I am proving my point. I need to go back and embrace my favorites.

Current favorite: Black/gray. Maybe I should go back to green.

FAVORITE ANIMAL:
Technically I think this has to be a dog, but this is due to domesticity laws and such. When I was a kid I was fascinated by whales, dolphins and sharks. Perhaps this was growing up by the Gulf and or because of a water connection via 15+ years of competitive swimming. True story, I once wrote a 22 page research paper on whales in the six grade (NERD ASS NERD!). I probably lifted it all from the World Book Encyclopedia verbatim but whatever, I was committed.

I’ll stick with sharks. They rule.

Real favorite. Dog.

FAVORITE FOOD:
MEXICAN. The best food there is. Fight me.

Tacos, burritos, fajitas, salsas, guac, queso, nachos. You want me to keep going? I can. Flautas, tostados, enchiladas, frijoles, mole…

When I was a kid though it was mashed potatoes. Still a top tier foodstuff.

So mashed potatoes and tacos. Not together, but maybe together…

FAVORITE BAND:
This is where things get dicey. I try and adjust the parameters of this to represent reality. My favorite artist of all time is probably Butch Walker, but my favorite bands have ebbed and flowed and hold different places. From 85-89 it was U2. That’s why I started playing the guitar. Overlapping and running through say 1993 or so it was REM, The Connells, Drivin N Cryin, Uncle Tupelo, Better than Ezra.
Over the last 20 years I tend to latch onto something and beat it completely to death.
If forced to choose one now I think I’d land back on Butch Walker or REM w/ honorable mention from Mrs. Taylor Kelce.

FAVORITE SPORTS TEAM/ATHLETE:
I am the fairest of fair weather fans. So fair that my skin is nearly transparent, milky white with blue veins. I also have never really defined myself much by what someone else is doing so favorite sports team or player is something I don’t think of much.

I always want LSU to win but when they don’t, I don’t care. I’ll jump on any of their teams doing well after not paying attention to the whole season. I also like it when LSU or any team really shit’s the sheets sending their fans into a tizzy and I enjoy piling it on. Is it kind? No. Do I love it? Yes.

I don’t watch pro anything really, but again I like when Detroit is good at football, which is convenient as it’s mostly never. I used to love watching the Red Wings but haven’t watched a hockey game in a decade. Not even either of USA’s gold medal games in the most recent Olympics.

In the 80’s I had a weird infatuation with Dave Winfield, an outfielder for the New York Yankees, and Michael Cooper, from the Los Angeles Lakers (he of the high socks). I played tennis and somehow my favorite player was Ivan Lendl, the player whose personality made a sucking sound when he entered the room and the life was removed from it. Later I liked McEnroe which was a slap in the face to young me as that’s like a Yankees fan becoming a Boston Red Sox fan. Whatever. I’ll do what I want.

My livelihood is running and triathlon but watching that is like watching paint dry (except track).

Somewhere around 2000 I became more interested in competing in sports than having favorites or watching them.

So I guess, LSU with whatever athlete catches my attention.

FAVORITE THING TO DO:
Run, swim. Maybe bike. As much as I dislike the weather in this godforsaken state, I still like doing outside things.

I love playing the guitar and writing/performing live. Probably that.

//

What favorite thing would you read in my LinkedIn profile and think, “I need to hire this mofo NOW!”?

Put it in the comments and I’ll add it to mine on Friday 7/10!!

Leave a comment

I don’t know what happened, maybe it’s my smeller, but the Mississippi Coast’s smell had disappeared.

I drove east to west for 20 miles with the windows down, the remnants of a late June day should have been heavy in my face. A subtle mix of stifling humidity, tinged with a light saltiness that said this water would take you to the sea at some point if you just kept going South. The Mississippi Sound, a barrier of brackish water betwixt, with less salinity and more, earthiness, an effect of the intermixing of the runoff from the state and states North followed by the Gulf of Mexico, then the Caribbean Sea.

The thickness, no longer smelled thick, and that was alarming.

When I was a kid the prevalent smell was heat and pine trees. Sappy and sticky in my nasal canals. The woods a 200 yard squared barrier between my house and the Sound proper. Beyond the trees, four lanes of concrete, a hundred feet of sand and then brown shallow water for as far as you could see. Well, until it was broken by the stalky pines poking up on the tip of Cat Island, 9 miles out.

When I was a kid and we sailed to Cat Island, that pine smell from the shore would waft towards you from the island shore, odd and out of place surrounded by wind and water.

But tonight, there was no smell.

Tonight, it was like the personality of this place had dried up. No more reminders of my youth. Just nondescript warm air. No nostalgia scent present.

One can take a place for granted. One can assume that it will always be the way it was when you were last here, but this is as untrue a sentence as there is. Nothing remains the same. Not a place, nor the person experiencing it, no matter how much you want it to smell like 1987.

//

I wanted it to be like 1987 for a lot of reasons, but mostly because that felt like a time I smiled a little more. That I took the world a little lighter. This could be me misremembering. Maybe it was 1983. Probably not though. Possibly it was any of the summers from 1987-1991. I’m good at taking them all and smashing them together into some entity I refer to as “the eighties”. Kinder. Gentler.Less rules. Duran Duran playing on repeat in the background. No cameras or social medias or any of these things we thought we couldn’t live without until they became all that we lived. Technology, undefeated in fucking all the good shit up.

Today I want those days more than anything. Or at the least, the way those days made me feel, so I grasp for them. Towards a long lost time when things were more simple.

While they may have been more simple, they probably weren’t that markedly better. We just make them out to be that way. That’s what nostalgia is, right? A fabricated decision to describe the best of a certain time frame. It’s always only a conglomeration of the good things. We slough off the mundane and the negative and combine all the sounds, and smells and tastes, and feelings and make that the core of the memory. Wholesome and good.

//

The Coast can do that for me if I let it. I slow roll the miles over and over. Past the houses and streets of old friends. Past the beaches and bayous of my youth, breathing in deep to catch the scent that stops time and spreads calm memory throughout these old bones.

Salt and pine.
Sticky and pining.

#hugsandhighfives

Today is June 24th, 2026 and I am about 17 pounds lighter than I was on May 23rd. A course correction overdue. While I understand no one wants to hear about a mostly fit person gaining and losing 20 pounds, hear about it ye shall, you can decide at the end if it holds any value.

Like it or not we are a body image driven society. If the GLP-1 boon has taught us anything it’s that we were faking it all along as we shouted from the rooftops that “every body is beautiful” and “size doesn’t matter”. It mattered, and the pockets of Eli Lilly reinforce the story.

Let me be clear. I don’t care if you take it. It’s a great intervention that is helping a lot of people get genuinely healthy, spring boarding new habits, and making peoples lives better. In the world of medicine this seems like the ultimate goal. Sure, you may have to take it forever, but maybe not. It’s too soon, and I can’t comment one way or the other. There’s also evidence that says there are multiple other benefits that no one seemed to know about. WIN WIN.

I mention this because I realized how important looking and being fit mattered to my overall well being.

I spent the last month trying to regain that and it started with my weight.

//
I won’t bemoan you with a recap of the last three years other than to say that I leaned into the “fuck it” of it all. It’s somehow been a time of even more questioning who the fuck I was and what all this was even for. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to continue working in a field that I got into because I loved training and pushing my self physically and I fell into a laziness and heath related self doubt that was pervasive. I denied myself nothing. Luckily, I don’t really like much so I wasn’t eating apple fritters every day, but let’s just say that a delicious IPA hated to see me coming.

By May of this year I had landed at 193 pounds, the heaviest I had been in 25 years. I was mailing in “working out” with 30 min jogs and not a whole lot more. I was also maneuvering post prostatectomy side effects, both mental and physical, and there were serious discussions with myself where I just resolved to not do shit about it.

You may not know this about me, but that flies in the face of everything I have lived and proclaimed to be about.

//

I quit coming here to talk to you about how depressed I was. It got old. The talking about it…well the actual being depressed as well, but I decided to write a bunch of shit and never let it see the light of day. I can tell you that didn’t help work through anything.

I read somewhere on the internet of things that writing (and by extension, publishing) is equal to actual in person therapy, if you can figure it out. I imagine journalling works the same, and honestly, these posts sometimes blur those lines.

All of this to say is that just when I think I have faced an extremely bad patch and that it can’t get any worse. It does. In fact, get worse. Not coming here and whining about it seems to pile on to that.

I need this to stave off that.

//

I have spent an exhaustingly large amount of time considering just who the fuck I am anymore. Seems odd, as you can see me standing there, great hair, tightening skinny jeans and a smirk and think. “That guy knows who he is.” I mean I know some of who I am, there just seemed to be a hole.

That hole was my fitness and my health. So, I decided to do something about it.

//

I am no stranger to extremes and am the king of broad proclamations regarding what I am going to do next. I have also long advocated for periods of rigidity that people scoff at and say “I mean you can just eat a little better and maybe drink less.” I cannot.

Black. White. There’s not much gray.

With that in mind, I circled Memorial Day as a starting point and weighed myself.

192.1

I decided I would do the Tim Ferris Slow Carb diet. I had done Whole 30 a couple of times, but I thought that I could maybe benefit from the weekly cheat days built into the Ferris diet. The rest of it was pretty simple. Protein, veggies, and beans. No grain, dairy, sugar, processed foods. Seems simple…

Back in maybe 2012 I did this diet but with a caveat. I was training for Ironman at the time, and there is a variation that allows carbs before, during and after training sessions. I had forgotten I had done that last time, but after doing my first run on the carbless option, I remembered. Oh yes, I remembered. While you’d like to think that you could just start burning the fat instead, the truth in that you have to go very slow and you still never feel like you have any energy. As I had already started, I just dug in and decided that I would let the performance of my workouts go. I committed to a strict 30 days.

I won’t bore you with elaborate descriptions of what I ate. Mostly eggs (140), meat (many pounds), veggies, and beans. Like 24 cans.

As of yesterday, the results were in.

//

Each week I added some sort of physical increase. I began swimming three times a week. I added in PT work 3 days a week. I added kettlebell work between each PT set. I bought an entry level gravel bike and began tooling around town. I added in press outs to every swim. I added core work. Each thing, smallish, but cumulatively helping. I didn’t hem and haw. I just decided that this was what I was going to do and then I did.

This morning I’d say that I am proud but reserved. I understand this is my expectation. I also understand how I let that expectation go and paid for it. Physically, mentally, everythingy.

//

Things I learned and thought and realized.

1. We, as a culture do very little to be uncomfortable. The number of people who told me, “that’s dumb” or “that’s too hard” or “you don’t have to do that you know” was astounding.

2. There is almost no way to eat healthy at a restaurant. Healthier, maybe, but never really healthy. Add in a super stringent diet and you’re cooking every meal. I can see how this would be hard for someone who didn’t have my restaurant background. When you start eating the way I did you walk around a grocery store and are reminded how 85% of the food there is garbage.

3. I spent a lot of years being the guy who’d always have a beer with you. Any day, anytime. I don’t know that I’ll ever be that guy again. Instead of a guy who mostly drinks, I am pretty sure I’ll be the guy who mostly doesn’t. Too soon to tell.

4. Nearly every single social construct in Louisiana is built around food and alcohol. If you are trying to do a rigid diet, know that being social will be hard.

5. My kids started calling me the hollow gaunt man. I guess that’s a win?

6. I was amazed at how little energy I had training. Actual running, pedaling and swimming turnover (how fast your legs/arms are spinning) decreased to the point that I felt like I had to force more than just picking them up and putting them down. I felt fatigue after a minute or two of any exercise.

7. A lot of people asked me if I feel better or different. I did not. There was no mental clarity (in fact the opposite). No increased energy, nothing. I felt agitated mostly.

8. I wouldn’t do this diet again and try and increase training volume. I decided to stick to it because I started it and I am stubborn. One could argue that I probably could have lost more weight with a balance of carbs that allowed me to train harder ergo burning more calories.

9. I will go to my grave saying that people (me, I am people) need rigidity and are unwilling to be uncomfortable. This month proved that I can still do that and that I missed it.

10. Somewhere around day 4 I started waking up at 4:20 everyday. This is when I wake up every day now. Overall my sleep didn’t really get any better. My Garmin sleep analysis had 4 days out of the last 30 that were Good. The rest have been poor or fair. That was surprising.

I know this was a ton, so if you got this far, congrats, or, sorry. Whichever is more accurate.

I am hopeful this will be the start of me getting back to more writing here.

And hopefully figuring out who the fuck I am again.

#hugsandhi5s

In 11 days I will be turning 55. This seems completely impossible, yet here we are. I was 28 like 3 weeks ago. I was living with my now wife and I was working at a giant bar restaurant at the gates of LSU. I was still pursuing a life as a musician and was finishing up my band RiTTNER’s album, Persona Non Grata.

To be fair, at this moment in time, I can’t recall when exactly we finished it. Closest I can recall is 1999. I can tell you things finished unravelling in the spring of 2000, but if I am honest, they had been coming undone for awhile.

(Here’s where I say something cliche-y about the 90’s).

//

This revisiting of RiTTNER has little to do with my birthday other than the fact that in 2023 I sent the 2 in reel to reel tapes that the album was recorded on and had the tracks digitized, allowing us to put these tracks into new digital audio workspaces and mix them like it was just recorded. This is pretty exciting stuff.

After receiving them, our original engineer and friend Wendell Tilley put a little shine on them and sent them to us. They were essentially pretty close to the final versions on the album except for one song that seemed to be incomplete. Regardless, it was a cool project and was pretty much the end of it.

//

Fast forward to last fall. My new band Other Desert Cities has been slowly recording a five song EP. I won’t bore you with the process, but besides taking a long time, recording the songs is just a piece of the process. Mixing them down and getting them ready for release can be equally as time consuming and I began looking around for options. Somehow I stumbled upon Joel Willis from North Carolina. As I am apt to do, I reached across the internet of things and began a conversation with him. He’s a good dude, does good work and is generous with his time. I told him about the project and we agreed to continue to have conversations.

//

This spring, I was speaking with my brother Lindsay. He’s been in the music business since the 80’s and continues to do music supervision. He mentioned in passing a project he was working on that was looking for 90’s music. My ears piqued. I sent him some of the original RiTTNER recordings and he asked if they were on Spotify (they weren’t) and if I had the masters etc. As a matter of fact I did.

I reached out to Joel and told him a little bit about the project and sent on the files to get the shined up and brought into the 2000’s.

On my birthday, RiTTNER, dormant since a one off show in 2004 will be back on the air or streams or whatever with a new mix of Seen It All, the fourth song off Persona Non Grata.

Current options are Spotify, but I am working through getting on everything else.

1999 me thanks you for giving it a listen.

PRESAVE SEEN IT ALL HERE!

FOLLOW RiTTNER ON IG

“PAY HARDER BITCH!” she yelled in our general direction. A Taco Bell cup and a hub cap clutched close, a strong smell of living outside emanating in all directions from her. The remnants of a humid Atlanta September burning off the remains of the day.

It wasn’t all she said and I won’t beleaguer you with the rest, but it was equally unhinged and directed at us with a venom you wouldn’t think a stranger could own. The woman clearly suffering from some or many forms of disordered mental capacity. Our occupancy of this corner of Hank Aaron Blvd. for work a clear affront and disturbance to here fragile well being, to all that was good and right in her addled mind.

//

“BELIEVE HARDER” was what I was thinking about this morning and it immediately brought the above memory to the forefront. A notion that if I just put enough faith in something, in anything, in everything, that the results would be unassailable. That my powers to do whatever it was I wanted to do would become super in nature and all would become possible.

I nod in the dark to the dog and know this is the secret sauce.

BELIEVE.

//

“I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract, explain the change the difference between. What you want and what you need.”

REM- I Believe

I don’t need a song to reinforce my thought, but once I started click click clacking on the keyboard, the random thoughts follow one after another and I follow each until it fizzles. Sure that if I do so, I’ll be rewarded. Maybe with reassurance, maybe with a moment of clarity.

//

“GET CLEAR!” all the self helpy videos and men of the disreputable internet yell in my general direction. “Once you have clarity everything falls into place.”

The volume of charlatans and self helpers thick like humidity. Their messages shrill and nagging like the buzz of one mosquito trapped in the house, drawn like a magnet to the blood of your eardrums.

A high pitched whine. A swing and miss. The whinge returns.

A $49 manual to brush away the fog.

I wonder if they believe?

I am not hopeful.

//

The waters of my brain are decidedly murky. Silt and mud, gauze and blindfold. If these eyes were the road to belief I’d be doomed.

So instead, I close them and center. I pull all the detritus to the forefront of my mind and start hacking away. I slough away the email and the mundane and challenge myself to simplify.

I push aside that which seems to lend no purpose and I slide forward ever so slightly. I am comforted knowing it’s there.

It’s always up ahead. It’s always possible.

I reassure myself that from this self belief, flows everything for me. For you. For everyone.

I remind myself that you can’t and won’t believe unless I do.

I know this belief is contagious and so I lean in a little harder.

What do you believe?

What should you believe?

How can you believe?

The words echo across the blackness of the room.

The non sequitur repeating and droning. Reassuring me that I’m on the right track.

If I just commit and pay.

“PAY HARDER BITCH!”

“PAY HARDER BITCH!”

“PAY HARDER BITCH!”

The simplicity and nonsense of it, a new mantra to right my ship.

#hugsandhi5s

There are no red wing black birds in Louisiana. Well, maybe there are, I just haven’t seen any lately. Nor have I been looking, but this all feels semantic or semiotic or whatever the right word is. The point is that I’m in Canada and they’re everywhere. The red and yellow wings pop out against the jet black bodies and my first thought is “those colors are pretty badass.” I’d say I’d heard them “cuh caw” or something but I haven’t. Maybe they peep or sing? I am listening to MUSE, Hysteria, on 100, a perfectly unrelaxing song to be inadvertently birdwatching to.

There’s a lot of birds here. Ontario is to birds as Louisiana is to snakes, perhaps the most perfect metaphor to describe the differences between these two places. I mean I realize that John James Audubon practically invented bird watching and painting and ornithologing some 50 miles from my house in Louisiana, but I’ve seen nary a snake in Canada, so they get the birds. I just work here.

The other first thought I had was Randall’s voice saying “WHOA! WATCH OUT SAYS THAT BIRD!” a seminal line from the 2011 Youtube hit The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger.

The robins here look rough. Like they forgot to migrate to somewhere last winter and every winter. Ragged. Their orange chests a bit dirty. They look skinny from hunger and I can’t tell if they make sound either, Smashing Pumpkins, Rocket,filling the space where MUSE just left.

//

I walk down and sit on a bench on McGeachy’s Pond, a low marsh between the Lake and Erieau Rd., the one way boulevard in and out of the small village someone in my family has been inhabiting since the late 1800’s. One of my great great greats grandfather’s was a lighthouse keeper here, cementing the great Fellows’ pastime of solitude and quiet as a character trait.

The pond was the signal that I’d arrived at my Grandmother’s when I was little. That we’d made it. A vivid memory of cattails and a lone swan. The cattails perhaps are out of season or have been taken over by some sort of marsh bamboo/wheat thingy that’s growing everywhere.

No sooner do I sit than two swans and seven signets swim up to me, ten feet away; oblivious to me as I write. I decide this is the only way to bird watch, this “zero effort,high return” method. It immediately spoils me and I know I’ll never again be pleased with working very hard to gain so little and will never be an actual bird watcher.

I assume these swans are from the same line of 1970’s swan I saw as a kid, because, duh. I watch as the two parents guide them around the pond. One of them keeps the signets close and the other goes aggressively towards a couple of geese. I’m definitely pro-swan and mumble “Fuck them geese.” to the geese, the ragged robins and whatever other birds are near.

//

Sitting by this marsh is quiet except for the birdsongs and slow pink noise of the waves on the shore of Lake Erie behind me. If I’m in the same area in Louisiana I’d be on alert for alligators and water moccasins. Also, if I was home, I’d be a quart low on blood from the mosquitos. There are bugs a plenty but so far they don’t seem to want to kill me.

I head back the way I came, some little yellow shits skittering back and forth. Without bothering to confirm I decide it’s a yellow finch. Combine that with the robins, swans, geese, red wing black birds, a blackbird of some sort and a haggard looking grey thing and I have seven birds in my bird watching memory bank. Oh, look a seagull, the dirtiest and most disgusting of birds. Count it. Eight.

PRO LEVEL BIRDWATCHER BADGE EARNED!

//

At the end of the trail going back in town is a watchtower. It’s been here since at the least, the winter of 1991 when my dad and I came up to visit my grandmother. I remember this date because I was taking photography at LSU and had brought my camera. I bundled up and come down to it in a winter storm; the wind and snow blowing 30 mph into my face, me standing atop looking down at the violence of the lake acting like some sort of action Ansel Adams. I have some pictures from this somewhere. Not here in Canada, but in my attic in a plastic tote melted together. Unrelated. Why do people (me) put shit in their attics? Why don’t we just throw it all away, or in the case of things we really want to keep, put them somewhere that actually preserves them?

I climb up again as I am here and think maybe I’ll see some other bird to add to growing count. I’m rewarded, but not with any more birds.

I’m reminded to “Live everyday Like it’s Taco Tuesday”. Strong advice.

Then I look up and out.

All I see is rocks and sand and lake.
All I feel is clean crisp wind.
All I see is crystal blue sky and a lighthouse in the distance.

Just not the one my great great great grandfather kept.

I restart the music (playlist below) and walk home.

I see a dandelion and take this pic, which I particularly like.

#hugsandhi5s

I don’t know why I went back. To gawk I imagine. To remind myself that despite where I am, despite where we are, that I(we) are pretty good at this. “This” being a placeholder for that thing you love to do, to consider, to practice.

Maybe it’s a skill, a sport. Maybe it’s something you do alone and maybe with others. Regardless. It’s important to you.

Sometimes, every once in a while you consider it from the outside and you think to yourself. “I’m pretty good at this.”

//

I was gawking at something I wrote a bit ago and I landed on a line. I mean, I was looking out for it. I remembered it was there somewhere in one of these musings and I somehow fell upon it on the first one I opened.

“I breathe deep and pull in patience from the darkness around me.”

Like a lot of things I think and sometimes write, it’s borderline overwrought. Dramatic where drama need not be. But I immediately felt what I was feeling in the predawn hours of January 21st. I immediately felt the weight of my life in that moment...in most of the moments of every day really.

I felt it and I read it again. And again. And again. And I thought.

“You know, that’s pretty good.”

//

That patience I breathed in that morning dissipated like patience does. Without fanfare. Without lasting impact.

But I wrote it down and now I can go back and grab it. I can reread these thoughts at my leisure and I can pull warmth from these words and if I can pull back and look down at me reading and distance myself from my sense of self I can say.

“You know, that’s pretty good.”

//

Pulling up and back and out. Focusing from above and behind me, I see me, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, thumbing and sliding and tapping. I see the grey head of hair and the readers and the dog on the rug to my right. I see me reading these words that came from inside my head on a Wednesday in January and even though I can’t see my face, I can imagine the light smirk I get when a stranger’s compliment lands just right. When they unknowingly recognize something and say the thing they say that lets me know that the things I say and do have mattered to them, and ergo, full circle, to me.

I see that soon to be 55 year old adolescent reading and thinking and giving himself a small win.

Not because of any patience he carried forward from that January morning, but maybe in spite of it.

I slide back behind my eyes.

A light smirk.

“You know, you’re pretty good at this.”

If he didn't grab it before the day started moving it was unequivocally gone. The time sliding away towards the daily mundane of emails and such. Today he gave pause and forced his hand, the unseasonable 55 degrees pulling him towards the door to go run.

It felt like there was always something invisibly pulling him towards. Towards what import, he couldn't decide. It was just the next movement. To move meant to do and to do meant to be living. This seemed to be both idiotic and one hundred percent true. This constant rushing towards the next thing. Get to the office, get to the house for lunch, get back to the office because you're wasting time at lunch. Mostly accomplishing minimal gains with menial actions. The collective whole, a stutter step forward.

This, apparently, is his life.

//

Some days I throwup these dramatic interludes and look through this lens and wonder. I wonder if it's the same for everyone. I wonder how and why someone who can feel so creative can sometimes fall into these ruts of constant over analyzation and seemingly be unable to say anything else.

I commit to just writing whatever comes out and am greeted by a daily barrage of some sort of regurgitative "therapy" that fails to move me forward. I resolve to try again the next day and start again.

This is to say, I am trying.
This is to say, I don't like this any more than you.
This is me checking in and sending anyway.

I may withhold the full send, but really, sharing any of this is sending enough.

//

TOWARDS, I mutter.

TOWARDS.

This recurring theme of pushing out of the past into my present and being there, even for a moment, before I press forward again, unable to "be" there because I have to get on to the next thing.

That's the trap, right?

That's the thing the defies "living in the moment." and "Being present." We(I) can't sit there long enough to soak anything in.

Really though, the present represents a moving millisecond of time that keeps going. To be present feels like being immediately in the past. It's gone with it's realization.

So the question becomes, "Do I spend that millisecond lamenting what I should have just done, or do I consider what I should do next?"

Somewhere, Jack Handy and his deep thoughts are laughing.

//

He scans back up over the previous 403 words and thinks for this millisecond that "This will do." This is better than the last three weeks of writing.

At least he is making himself consider.

At least he has something else to dwell on today.

Am I in the past?
Am I in the future?
Am I present?
Am I absent?

It's impossible to truly pause.

But maybe, if he clears out some of the bullshit, he can string together multiple moments and not lament about what he didn't do. Maybe he can let whatever is next stay there, just out of reach.

The present = N + 1.

Where N = this very moment.

#hugsandhi5s

This first appeared on patrickfellows.com 10.28.22

//
My friend Chris, when referring to music, used to say something to the effect of “there’s only 12 chords, everything is stolen.” What he meant was that of course things sounded alike. It’s hard to be truly creative. This was 30 years ago. I imagine with time, distance and seemingly infinitely more songs written, that this is now more so the case. Sometimes though, we don’t even bother to change the progression.

The other day I was listening to a story and the writer was lamenting the distance that had grown between she and her father. She lived in upstate New York, he in Southern California. Then he died from COVID and was just gone. She said something to the effect of, when he was in California and she hadn’t seen him for 20 years, he still occupied some sort of space, that “far away was still somewhere.” I damn near pulled over to write this down. Really I just texted it to myself. I’m stealing that, I thought.

There was something about it that resonated; that pulled the emotion from my chest. Like alternate lyrics from Journey’s 1983 blockbuster hit, Faithfully were just discovered. Instead of “I’m forever yours, faithfully,” we can just insert “Far away, but somewhere.” For those of you of a certain age and familiarity, I am happy to have just made you stretch out “awayyyyayay” so you could sing along. I know that you did.

//

What we wouldn’t give to have those that we’ve lost far away but somewhere. Able to send a text or to call. To bounce an idea. To tell them that we love them. The internet of things has essentially shrunk the world. If we position it correctly, most times for the better. We take it for granted and don’t send the text. We don’t make the calls. We are busy. Things are happening.

My thoughts today are to stop and do that. To call. To text. To send a letter, whatever it takes. It matters. We always feel better when we connect. The person we connect to feels thought about and considered. Maybe even loved.

Really. Is there anything better?

I’ll answer for you.

There is not.

This morning. As you’re scrambling to get out the door or yelling at your kids to get moving, I challenge you.

Who are you missing that’s far away?

Carve out the time to let them know you’re thinking of them.

That yes.
They are far away.
But somewhere is better than nowhere.

#hugsandhi5s

“Every single time we share,someone wins.“
Me

“Or something like that.”
Also, Me.

“The simplest of stories, repeated, make the most impact.”
Me

I start here as it’s as good as anywhere to start. Prompted by my friend Micah yesterday I vowed to share something. I mean I didn’t yesterday, but on this clear cool morning I vowed to try.

Stories are hard for me. While there are some decent ones told, like the time I was running in my neighborhood and had to duck into a construction portalet and avoid colonic catastrophe, only to exit shirtless and drenched in sweat, face to face with an 8 year old Hispanic kid who looked up at me wordless and stuck his finger in my belly button and ran away. I wouldn’t have been more surprised if he’d pantsed me. Like most people, these instances are few and far between.

Related, I have never been one to conjure up fictional plot lines and character arcs and bring to life new and exciting worlds and instances. Nay, I end up observing what I can, and overthinking on the rest. Stephen King, I shall never be.

Don’t get me wrong. I wish I could. And, to be fair, maybe if I woke up every day and smashed my face against the keyboard trying over and over, I could come up with something compelling. I just don’t find that...well, compelling.

Instead I return to flagellate myself relentlessly and hope to brush away the lack. I send it out into the world and hope someone somewhere says “Yeah, I can see that” and returns to read again and again.

Aim low, win a lot.

//

For a very long time I thought I had to have new and compelling experiences day after day to record and share with the world. Most of the time, at least in Baton Rouge, LA, we are lucky to have one or two really good one stories to share, and most of the time, it’s okay to repeat those things as with the power of Ye Olde World Wide Webs, there’s a nearly infinite amount of people who can discover you for the first time.

To that end, we need to keep reminding people of who we are, lest we disappear (dramatic much?).

Seriously though, someone somewhere could hear the Safety Dance by Men without Hats for the first time this morning. Certainly, the strangers of the internet haven’t heard about that time I swam 34 miles in the Gulf of Mexico (SICK BRAG!!) or about the Hispanic Boy Belly Button Portalet Situation.

//

“Regular person origin stories make the regular person bigger than they are.”
Me

Man, I am full of the quotes this morning, but really it’s true. If you’ve ever met someone pseudo or genuinely famous, the first thing you’ll probably notice is how absolutely and boringly normal they are. Their stories and amplification of said stories have just been told over and over, each telling, puffing them up into something larger.

You can get puffy too if you want. You just have to tell people about you.

Famous people have to get up and step on a lego just like the rest of us and while Tom Cruise may do his own stunts, I am willing to bet all the money I have that he’s never stepped out of a portalet shirtless and been violated by an 8 year old boy. (Related, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes resided about one mile from the location of said portalet violation while filming something or another in Baton Rouge.)

I only know about Tom Cruise’s stunts because someone has repeated this story enough times that I can’t forget it.

What things about yourself do you want the world to know?

You have a Hispanic Boy Belly Button Portalet Situation, maybe you should tell more people about it.

//

“Sometimes little things are all you need to brighten your day.”
Me

Things wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t poor mouth what I just spent thirty minutes writing. I mostly never know what I’m going to barf out onto the page, but know that most times, someone somewhere will let the corner of the mouth turn up and allow a smile to spread across their morning coffee.

Maybe they’ll even chuckle or tear up or exit without getting to the end.

Maybe go be open to living a good story to tell.

#hugs+hi5s

*CHUCKLE is a ridiculous and good word.