The Great Shark Tooth Hunt

Posted on April 6, 2026 by Michael Kane

The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. ~ Christopher McCandless

The Great Shark Tooth Hunt

First off, all apologies to HST for the title of this week’s post.

I have spent many of hundreds, maybe thousands of hours walking beaches in my life, it’s one of my favorite things to do. And while I’ve put in all of those hours and found a lot of amazing things, I’ve never found a shark’s tooth. So my friend Awesome, yes the same Awesome from my book Appalachian Trail Happiness, started spending time at Topsail Beach, NC. And, it turns out, his wife is the queen of shark tooth hunters. So I would see posts by her from the beach, showing off all of the shark teeth she had found and I was quite frankly incredibly jealous.

So, last week I needed to be back in New York to deal with some more items related to my mother’s passing and to make some more progress on my house. Thanks to my sister and her family for all of their help and assistance with that. But, since I haven’t had a real vacation since well before my open heart surgery, I decided to take a few days at the beach and to find my first shark tooth. So I booked a place for four days on Topsail Beach.

First off, Topsail Beach is awesome. The beach is absolutely beautiful, the little towns around it are great and in fact, one of the restaurants I went to turned out to be a Steeler Bar!

So this definitely convinced me that I was in the right place.

The first day of the great shark hunt started with absolute perfect weather, sunny skies, 74 degrees with a little breeze. The water was cold around 55 degrees so swimming wasn’t on the agenda. But I was able to get four long walks in on the beach, combing the sand for shark teeth. I find walking ocean beaches incredibly calming and it was a wonderful day, without a single shark tooth.

The second day was again a wonderful sunny day, much the same as the first day just a little cooler. I changed my tactics a little bit, walked a different section of the beach and had exactly the same lack of luck. I also sunburned my ankles and I was getting a bit frustrated. But walking for miles and hours in the sun will do that do a vampire white human.

On the upside, I was relaxing, watching some NCAA basketball, eating good food and started reading Project Hail Mary so absolutely no complaints.

On day three the weather turned cold and windy with some rain. So the beach combing changed a bit, no more sun burn and fewer people on the beach. And something fortuitous had happened the day before. I’d gone to buy some souvenirs for my little nieces and nephews and bought them some shark tooth necklaces. In doing so it made me realize something, my search image had been a bit off, I was searching for teeth at too large of a size. So I started looking smaller and on day three, freezing my ass off, I finally found my first tooth, not quite the prize I was hoping for, it’s point was broken off but there it was my first, millions of year old fossilized shark’s tooth. The photo at the head of the post is off the web, this below is my prize although it’s a bad picture.

None the less, I was excited to finally find one. The fourth day was a short and cold day as I was leaving and I didn’t find anything, but I’m excited to go back and try again now that I have a better understanding of what I’m looking for in terms of an appropriate search image.

One of the things that hit me on this trip was that throughout life we learn a lot of lessons. And while I don’t think we ever stop learning new ones, the pace of truly new lessons slows down dramatically. But what continues to happen is that we relearn those learned lessons, again and again. And that’s what happened on this week. It’s a lesson that took me a while to learn in life, one that I only truly learned on the Appalachian Trail, one we all know, but I think most of us don’t really believe. And that is, that the journey is more important than the destination. On this trip, finding a shark tooth was the quest, but the journey, the time alone, walking the beach in the sun, relaxing, reading and eating good food, no email, no responsibility was really what I needed. And happily, I’m in a much, much better place than I was before I went.

I hope that you all can remember this lesson, and use that perspective to have happier and more relaxing days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Beware the Ides of March!

Posted on March 16, 2026 by Michael Kane

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy. ~ William Butler Yeats

Beware the Ides of March!

Long ago it has been established that I’m not normal, I’m also not Caesar, so I actually relish the Ides of March, it’s one of the most significant days of the year for me. You see March 15th was my POW’s birthday, he was my maternal grandfather and up until his death in 1969 we were incredibly close, I am the one grandchild that actually remembers him in some detail. Here he and I are doing shots in 1966.

In an interesting twist of fate, my first cousin is also born on March 15th, I’ve written about her before on the blog, I call her the Smoochy Monster. I explain the moniker and paint a picture of her in my post, Happiness is the Smoochy Monster, happy birthday Jej. Her and I spoke today and she always makes me laugh, today the biggest joke was our joint decision to start a new company, Butt, Boobs and Beyond. I have no idea what we would sell, but of course this is par for the course when your creating businesses with your cousin who has a traumatic brain injury. Regardless of the feasibility of the business plan, we had a great laugh talking about it.

Of course the reason the day is famous is that a long time ago Julius Caesar had a really bad March 15th. And this brings me back to the play Julius Caesar which was my introduction to Shakespeare by the greatest high school teacher of all time, Frank Sullivan. I will never forget the introductory stage direction to this play, there was great thunder and lightning. He would say this out loud, flash the lights in the room and kick a desk over. Of course, the first time he did it while I was in his class he kicked a girl’s desk and her belongings exploded across the classroom and he immediately felt terrible and dropped to his knees to help her pick everything up. This man introduced an uncultured street kid to Shakespeare and poetry, Greek and Roman architecture and even Gregorian Chant. We read amazing books in his class, almost never the standard high school books. We even read the Andromeda Strain. He had an incredible impact on my life and absolutely became the model for my own teaching style.

Finally, March 15th falls two days short of the most celebrated Irish Holiday, St. Patrick’s Day. For me, this hasn’t meant drunken revelry in a really long time. Instead it’s a day to make corned beef and cabbage, as well as remember my other grandfather, Grandpa Kane. Another significant impact on my life and my life’s attitude, he had his last street fight at 80, I told the story as his eulogy at his funeral and have published it as a poem, A Eulogy to Amuse the Penguins.

happiness family

So today is significant, a day to touch base with family living and passed, a day to cook, to eat a good meal and have one of the four or five drinks I have each year, today calls for a Guinness. For me, March 15th is always a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Life When You Won’t Settle

Posted on March 15, 2026 by Michael Kane

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Life When You Won’t Settle

So, there is something about me, some people think it’s a stubborn nature, but that’s not really it. You see, I’m not willing to settle on things that matter to me. This is something that permeates my life. At work, I could skate, I could let people’s behavior’s slide, not hold people accountable for their actions or lack thereof, not care if people are working on behalf of our students. I could, when human resources or executives don’t respond to inquiries, I could just let it go. When I see processes that don’t make sense or potential issues coming, I could just keep my mouth shut instead alerting people and working to provide solutions. All of these things that I do, because my integrity matters to me, ends up causing me extra work and extra stress for of course, absolutely no extra pay. I could keep my mouth shut about expertise I have that can help the college, which would mean I don’t end up with extra work doing things like creating a teaching class for career education teachers or writing the only dean’s training manual in the history of the college. But the fact is, if I’m getting paid to do a job there is something about me that won’t let me do anything else but to do what I’m supposed to do. Not the smartest damn decision but it’s who I am.

I’m like this about everything, I’m silly enough or arrogant enough to think that I deserve to have quality in my life. And this relates to everything, friendships, romantic relationships, etc…basically anything that matters to me. It means that I’m a bit demanding on those fronts and in those relationships, but it also means I give my all to them. Which also means that I often find out that others are not as willing to go as far for me, as I am for them. It’s one of the reasons that my circle of friends is very small and why my selected family is not much larger. I don’t believe anyone is entitled to be part of your family just because they are related to you, they need to earn that privilege.

Living like this means that you’re usually swimming against the current, you can still get where you need to go, but it just takes a lot more effort. And right now I find myself in this exact position in terms of my next step in life. So tonight, let me open a window into what I’m doing and who I am. I talk a lot about my life on this blog, and while that’s a picture of who I am, it’s not always the deep dive it appears to be.

So right now, I’m absolutely ready to retire from being a dean in the California Community College system. I’m tired, I’m tired of the constant personnel management aspect of the job, the utter lack of respect and struggles of being a middle manager. Almost everyone gets into education for the same reason, because we care about, and like working with students. As an administrator, those opportunities significantly diminish and you lose the job satisfaction you originally got in the job to get. As an introvert the hardest thing for me to do is to deal with people, and being a dean this is normally about 80% of this job. However, in my current job, it’s more like 90 or 95% of the job. I leave work at the end of each day utterly and completely mentally wasted. And over time that wears on a person.

I’ve hit a point in my career where I have a decent retirement whenever I take it. Staying in this system it gets incrementally better each year, not enough to overcome the stress of staying however. And while it’s decent, and while I love the San Francisco Bay Area, my retirement will not allow me to buy property and live here in retirement. So my plan has been to move someplace closer to family, someplace I’d enjoy living where I can afford to buy property and lay down long-term roots. I have some other criteria around it, I need to work for another three years before I qualify for medicare. So I need to work in order to have insurance and I don’t want to be a dean anymore. But I also have a tendency to isolate and that’s not healthy at all. So I’m hoping to work or at least be very close to a four-year college so that I have theater, arts, speakers and sporting events. Hoping that through that connection I have both things to do as well as opportunities to build a community. I also want a position where I’m much more involved with students and a smaller locus of control so that I both have something I can enjoy working on, but also be able to walk out the door at the end of the day and not be on call or have work rattling around in my head.

So what this means is that on my current job hunt, I’m doing a number of things. First, I’m moving cross-country. Second, I’m doing something that makes no sense in our climb the ladder, always be striving for the top, put success and money over happiness society. And finally, I’m applying for early career positions as a sixty year-old late career professional and often for a massive pay cut. So, having been on many, many hiring committees over my career, I know often there’s that person on the hiring committee who is trying to divine the REAL reason each candidate is applying. And by doing the things I am, I can just hear them saying he doesn’t really want this job, why would a dean be applying for a director position, there must be a problem, etc… So I’m definitely swimming up river in my job search. I of course lay out my reasoning in my cover letter but people often only trust themselves. So my search is taking much longer than I anticipated and it was one of the things that had been dragging my mood down.

The thing is, I could take an easier way out, I could just apply for dean or VP positions. Those are the positions people expect me to be applying for and I’m very good all of the things they are looking for, for those positions. But I don’t want those jobs and being me, I’m not willing to settle. It’s just who I am. And now I’m going to cry a bit while I write because whenever I think about how I don’t settle, I come back to a memory of a dear friend. We became friends at my first college, RIT. We stayed friends after I left and always stayed in touch, visited each other, were very close. Her greatest wish in life was to be a mom and when she got married, her and her husband did a destination wedding and each invited one friend. I was her one friend, and we found a time during that week to be able to sit alone and talk. And at one point she asked my why I never had gotten married. I explained to her much of what I’ve written tonight, however a lot less eloquently but she got it and then she looked and me and said, “I get it now, you’re not willing to settle.” She got pregnant a few months later, had a really wonderful son and then horribly got breast cancer and died a couple of years later. It was a devastating loss.

So I’m caught in limbo in my life right now while I work through the job search and move. I’m fortunate to have a really good job and live in the SF Bay Area, one of the most beautiful places in the world, so I’ll abide for a time. But life is hard when you draw principled stands, and because I’m like this, my life has always been a bit harder than it likely needed to be. But that’s a choice and a stand I have to make, it’s who I am. Sometimes you have to choose principle over happiness. ~ Rev Kane

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It’s not the thought that counts

Posted on March 14, 2026 by Michael Kane

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth. ~ Voltaire

It’s not the thought that counts

What we say matters, and very often we throw around sayings that we suggest don’t mean anything, but say more about who we are, then we want to admit. There are several sayings that I hear all of the time that really illuminate this point, and quite frankly annoy the hell out of me. The first one is, wow, things have been nuts lately, Mercury must be in retrograde. The other one, in the same realm is, I’m sorry that happened, but what is meant to be, is meant to be. I have problems with all of these. But the one that really hits this point the hardest, is, it’s the thought that counts.

First let’s talk about Mercury being in retrograde, what a massive pile of hokum. People talk about astrology all of the time, and when you push them they say, no, no it’s just fun. But is that true? If you notice, people only say oh, that makes sense your a Scorpio, ONLY after they know your birth date. For me, they often get it wrong, they get my birth date and say oh, of course, you’re a Libra, I’m not, I’m a Virgo. Then they pivot, oh, so you’re a cusp person so that makes sense. It’s all bullshit, ask them before they know your birth date what sign you are, they rarely get it right. Horoscopes at newspapers are rarely written by hard researching astrologers, but by the same people that write fortune cookie fortunes, that being some corporate writer tasked with a job. And they are always Barnum statements, don’t believe me, read the wrong astrological sign description and watch how it still applies. I know, I know, you don’t believe them, they’re just for fun, what’s the big deal?

The other statement, whatever happened is supposed to happened is another one I really don’t like. This fatalism attitude is also something people don’t truly believe. My mother was always fond of this, so while I was driving on an interstate she said this once. I replied she didn’t really believe it, she insisted she did. So I said, if we’re meant to reach our destination we will, no matter what? She said yes, so I stepped on the gas, closed my eyes and took my hands off the steering wheel. She quickly started yelling what are you doing and reached for the steering wheel. Why do that, if it’s all preordained? Again, saying whatever happened is meant to be belies a deeper belief.

The believe underlying both of these ideas is that you are not responsible for the outcomes in your life. If it’s not your fault, well, you not only don’t have to do anything to change things, your efforts won’t matter if you make them. Once it’s not your fault, it has to be someone or something else’s fault. In Astrology it’s the stars, in fatalism it’s the universe or God or whatever you believe in and if not them, well, it’s a short jump to it’s my parent’s fault, the government’s fault, rich people’s fault, those other people’s fault which then easily leads to bigotry and hatred.

But most importantly, once you give up responsibility for your life, you no longer have the responsibility for change. So if you’re unhappy, well, that’s just the way it is. But we know that is not true, don’t we. We know we can lose weight, we can get more fit, we can take medications to control mental illness. We know, if we get enough sleep and eat well and exercise, we feel better than if we don’t. So I can hear you, lighten up Rev, we’re just making a joke. But how we talk, and particularly how we talk about ourselves, is incredibly important. Self-talk works on our brain and our thought patterns. Studies show that self talk has a big impact on our lives and can be controlled. So those constant jokes we make about not being in control of our lives and our happiness, can truly convince us we aren’t in control and unhappiness is inevitable, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I’m coaching and counseling folks I often talk about self talk. One simple exercise I give to people is to start the day positively. When you first get up in the morning, walk into the bathroom, look into the mirror, look right into your own eyes and talk positively to yourself. Tell yourself you’re competent, strong, resilient that you’re going to have a happy day my friends. It sounds silly but over time it can have a real positive impact on your life and your happiness.

One last phrase I want to address, is, it’s the thought that counts. What a bunch of malarkey! Look, I get the well meaning point of the saying. It’s meant to address things like fruit cake at Christmas. Yes, I think the world pretty much universally agrees, that most fruit cake is awful, too dense, too sweet, sometimes weirdly spiced, most people would rather get a piece of coal, at least you could burn that for heat. And I know, someone reading this will be like, I love fruit cake, good for you, let us know in the comments with your address and next year we’ll all send you our fruit cake gifts. But the point is of course, that irrespective of the quality of the gift, you should be thankful someone thought enough of you and enough about you, to give you a gift. And that is true, but tell that to the kid on Christmas who just got a pair of socks, or 12 year-old me who just got his third bottle of cologne. Of course, maybe I just smelled bad?!

I’m not really talking about bad gifts, but often people have taken the thought that counts a bit further. They’ve taken it to the point that they believe thinking takes the place of action. Thinking about visiting your granny is a nice thought, but it does nothing for her. What matters is taking the action of going to visit your granny. People let themselves off the hook by saying I thought about doing something that matters, and even though I didn’t do it, I’m still a good grandchild, spouse, friend and/or human because I had the thought, and the it’s the thought that counts.

This idea comes up a lot for me in life, and honestly it’s the one place where I really beat on myself. I have lots of good ideas. One that hits me that I often act on is when I’m in the cafeteria on campus I’ll often just pay for the lunch of the student in line in front of me, especially if they hesitate at all or seem like maybe they might not have enough funds. But I have lots of ideas like this, one I have in regards to the Ministry of Happiness, is to just send out random cards to people from the ministry saying, hey, you matter, you’re important, have a happy day. But I don’t, it’s a great thought, but without the action it doesn’t really matter.

So I really want to change the saying and the perspective. From now on what I’d prefer is:

It’s not the thought that counts, it’s the action that matters. ~ Rev Kane

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The Happiness of Just Being

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Michael Kane

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. ~ Desmond Tutu

The Happiness of Just Being

Today was a really wonderful day. First off, the weather was just perfect, seventy degrees, sunny, nice little breeze. My plan for the day was to go into the city and do some walking, knowing how good the weather would be.

Over the last couple of weeks I’d read some reviews on line for the play, Paranormal Activity, based of course off of the movie. I was surprised to see how positive they were and I was skeptical. So I thought to myself maybe I’d check it out if it came to town. Then I noticed, you know, because I’d read the reviews and Skynet hears all, so ofcourse an ad popped up online telling me that it was actually playing here in San Francisco. So I went online and got a cheap ticket for the furthest seat from the stage, literally back wall of the balcony. I was really happy about that seat, it actually gave me some legroom and minimized my human contact. It also gave me the benefit of getting to chat quite a bit with a really lovely young woman who was the usher. We had an amazing conversation about theater and society during the breaks.

It was a matinee and my plan was that if it wasn’t that good, I’d head off at intermission and go get a pizza down at Pier 39. What I was really interested in was how they would handle the technical aspects of the play. If you know the movie, the premise is a haunting, and it’s a fairly typical jump scare film. So blankets move, things fly off of the wall etc… It’s one thing to pull those types of things off in a movie, but so much harder on stage with people twenty feet from the action. The play itself was fine, although there was some predictable aspects to the story, there were some decent twists and connections. The technical aspects turned out to be really spectacular, one in fact was at the level of a high end magic show in Las Vegas.

It was my first time at the theater in some time, I love the theater, there’s something personal and intimate about a stage presentation and a break from the world, no phones, no screens, sitting in the dark just being in the story. After leaving, as I was walking through the city and it really hit me how amazing the weather and the day had been. It brought me back to a simple thing, the pure happiness of those moments of just being.

As a child, we do this really naturally. We sit on swings and stare at the sky, we lay in the grass and watch a lady bug, we sit and marvel at a line of ants, or just lay on our backs and watch clouds. These are the types of things that leave our lives as we get older, we seem to lose the understanding of the value in these moments. I really learned this lesson while hiking on the Appalachian Trail. When you’re doing a thru-hike, you’re out there, day after day after day walking. Time absolutely slows down and you get massive amounts of time to think and crawl into your own head. You slow down, and the longer you’re on the trail the more relaxed you get, the easier it is to grab a log and just observe nature. Stopping at a stream to pull of your shoes and soak your feet, or once it warms up, strip down and take a dip, or a bath, depending on how you look at it. It was in that mindset a month or so out on the trail that I was walking through a park in Virginia and stopped to eat at a picnic table. Like today, it was a magnificent day, temps in the sixties, blue sky and white puffy clouds, lovely sun and a nice breeze. So I ate lunch and then I decided to take a nap on the picnic table. Laying there I was so comfortable and was just staring at the sky, just watching clouds, the level of relaxation was amazing. And so I laid there for two hours just watching clouds. That ability to just be, be in the moment, be in the world and be happy, was absolutely amazing and I’ve carried that day on the trail with me ever since.

Today that day was with me again and so walking out of the theater, the sun on my face and the wind blowing that memory hit me. So I took a long walk up to Hayes Valley and Gioia Pizza for a couple of slices. Took them over to a little park and sat in the sun, ate my slices and was just being happy. While always a good thing, it was especially good today. I can honestly say I don’t remember the last time I felt like that, just happy, unbound, unobligated and easy it was absolutely wonderful and made for a very happy day my friends and one I’ve desperately needed lately. And maybe it was the situation, but honestly, these were the two best slices of pizza I’ve had in years. I hope you can find some time for yourselves to just be my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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French Toast Happiness

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Michael Kane

You don’t need a silver fork to eat a good meal. ~ Paul Prudhomme

French Toast Happiness

So if you read this blog regularly and especially if you know me in real life, you know that I’m just not normal, never have been. So while I’ve done some amazing things, hiking in Himalayas, photographing polar bears in Canada, and hugging a whale in Baja, there are some really basic, normal things that I’ve never done.

happiness, hiking, appalachian trail
My Polar Bear Selfie
happiness, everest, be happy, hiking
Rev Kane and a hiking friend
snow, winter, happiness
photography, travel, adventure
Aurora while photographing Polar Bears in the Arctic
polar bear, arctic
polar bear

Over the last year or so I’ve tried to tick off some of these things. So for instance, about a year ago I had my first macaroon, I had my first true croissant, and a big one, I made and ate some of anyway, my first bowl of Kraft Mac and Chesse, I was not a fan. And that’s not snobbery, I grew up poor, a blue-collar kid and so every once in awhile I’ll make a bowl of Spaghettios for dinner, some Top Ramen or hell even a Banquet Pot Pie.

A long standing habit from childhood has always been a big Sunday breakfast. Big of course meant we got donuts, or my favorite, crumb cake from the local bakery via the corner store when I was sent out to by the sunday papers. For me typically that means cornbeef hash with my eggs, not much but a little something extra on a Sunday morning, sometimes I get ambitious and make biscuits and gravy. It hit me last night that I was out of cornbeef hash and it was late and I was too lazy to go out and get some. Then it hit me, I had bread. As a diabetic, I usually don’t have bread in the house, so this was a bit unusual, and an idea hit me. And the idea came from all the way back in third grade.

As a child I was a really picky eater and it’s led to some weird things in my life. To this day I still hate raw onions and can’t stomach big pieces of cooked onions either. I ate my first mushroom at my sixteenth birthday dinner. My family took me out for a steak dinner, the owner heard it was my birthday and came by the table to say hello and happy birthday. He asked me where my mushrooms were and I told him I didn’t like them. He said, “I’ll make you a deal, I’ll have the chef make you some mushrooms in brown butter sauce, try it, if you don’t like them, I’ll comp your family’s dinner.” So a little while later they came out, and were amazing, to this day one of my favorite dishes to make. When the owner came over and I was eating them he smiled and said he was glad I liked them and they were his present to me. My father was pissed, he looked at me and said, “great, you’re a pain in the ass who won’t eat anything your whole life and the one-time it can save me some money you like something.” There’s a reason he and I aren’t close.

Being a picky eater, there were a lot of things I didn’t eat. I wasn’t a big fan of eggs as a kid, I ate pancakes but I didn’t like maple syrup, so I ate them with jelly. As such pancakes, waffles and french toast weren’t really on the menu for me. In fact, I still have never had a waffle. So last night I remembered third grade. In third grade, we went to another class for science lessons or some other reason to Mr. Conti and Mr. Webster’s rooms. One of the things we did one day and I have no memory of why, was that we were taught to make french toast. I was excited for the lesson and the knowledge, I was just starting to do the cooking at home many nights. After learning and telling her about it, my granny asked me to make it for her and she liked it. Of course, it was my granny, so of course she did. But it’s my sister’s favorite breakfast and I even made it at home a couple of times, but I never ate it. I seem to have an ability to make some things really well that I don’t consume. As a bartender, in a variety of situations, I’ve come to know that I make a mean bloody mary. Of course, I really don’t like tomato juice, so I’ve never actually drunk one.

So this morning, I made french toast for the first time for myself, the lovely slices pictured above. I decided to make them with vanilla and cinnamon and they were pretty good. My opinion on syrup has changed and I covered them in cinnamon and vanilla infused maple syrup. In eating them, I realized something about french toast and that for me, it’s in the same category as tortilla chips. These are not food, what these really are, are delivery systems for a topping. While my sister eats french toast with nothing but butter, most people are really just using it as an excuse to eat syrup, I sure was. Just like we only eat tortilla chips to consume guacamole and salsa. I mean come on, who eats a bag of plain tortilla chips.

So, what does all of this have to do with happiness? Not a damn thing, but my life is stuck in limbo, the world’s gone fucking crazy, the weather is insane, bombs are dropping on little girls, so today, I decided to eat something sweet and write about it. I hope you find something as equally satisfying today and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness: When Reality Meets Expectation

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Michael Kane

It’s a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations. ~ Danny Boyle

Happiness: When Reality Meets Expectation

We’ve all had the experience of being excited for something. We’ve heard everyone talk about how great the movie or book are, we’re really excited for a meal because we’ve been craving it, or you’ve met a person on a dating app and the chatting has been wonderful and your excited for that first date. Then, the movie is boring, the book is a terrible read, dude orders for you and then forgot his wallet, it just goes wrong and we feel massive disappointment because our expectations have not been met.

Today was a good day, early in the week the forecast basically said rain all weekend, but then it changed and today was not warm, but sunny and pleasant. So it meant I could do a city walk in San Francisco. And while my singular focus normally, is that my walks in one way or another end up passing one of a number of quality pizza places, today was going to be a bit different. I’ve been jonesing for Indian food for some time, more specifically I’ve been jonesing for some vindaloo. I live in the Bay Area and in my town, you can find just about every possible kind of food. I always laugh when folks come into town and say they want Asian food. While that is often few choices some places, that is not the case here. Do you want Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino and it doesn’t stop there. They often say Chinese – mainland or Taiwanese? Mainland – what city or region, Xian, Bejing, Peking Duck, Shanghai. Because you literally can almost pick the city in China as a type of food where I live. However, I’ve yet to find a really good Indian place here, there’s a pretty good Pakistani/Indian place but it’s not spectacular.

So today I made the focus of my walk today good Indian food. I did a little research online and set my sights on Trisara on Kearney near Sutton. So I made the stroll and settled in and ordered my favorite combination Chicken Vindaloo, garlic naan and a coke. They of course ask how spicy and I always say Indian medium spicy, not white people medium spicy, because friends, these are different levels of spice. This always leads to the cook, owner or waiter immediately checking in with me when I get my food, because they have great amounts of experience with white guys who want spicy hot and have no idea what that means if they really get Indian spicy hot.

I have to say today, it may partially have been that I’ve been jonesing for some time, but today really met my expectation. The vindaloo sauce was perfect, absolutely delicious and spicy enough to make me sweat but not enough to vacate my sinuses. The chicken was was fall apart tender, the potatoes firm but able to be cut with a fork. Perfectly cooked basmati rice and of course a Coke is a Coke. The biggest joy was the best garlic naan I’ve ever had. Really spectacular naan is soft and fluffy at the edges and nearly crunchy toward the middle. And a lot of places miss on the level of garlic, either barely tasteable or overpowering. This was absolutely perfect, soft and fluffy edges, crisp in the middle, you could taste the garlic but it wasn’t too much. It’s been a while since I’ve had a meal that so perfectly met my hopes and expectations, so today was a very happy day.

What this wonderful meal did today, was get me thinking about happiness and expectations. There is a meme that flies around on social media, it says something to the effect of, if you want to be happy, lose your expectations. I really hate this meme. I saw a post today where someone said there therapist said that people who are in pursuit of happiness are always less happy than those who just focus on surviving. So let’s dive into both of these.

The pursuit of happiness gets a bad rap and it’s because the idea is misunderstood. People often take this mean to chase perfect happiness, creating an expectation of bliss, where happiness floats around you like you’re walking on clouds and everything is perfect. Chasing that will tear you to shreds because the expectation is completely unrealistic and reality will never meet your expectations. One of my favorite song lyrics by Sting from Consider Me Gone is:

To search for perfection. Is all very well. But to look for heaven is to live here in hell.

A much more poetic way of relating what I just stated.

The other extreme is the idea that if you have no expectations you’ll never be disappointed. And that’s not incorrect, because as usual with fortune cookie wisdom it’s not the whole picture. The real wisdom behind that idea is that the real trick is not to have expectations, but to still have hopes. If you just never have expectations, without hope or aspirations, well then you’ll very often get the least of whatever you’re after. But having hopes means you can still aspire to having really good things but by not expecting that you’ll always get them, you can be happy with what you do have.

As with anything, nothing is an absolute. Only maybe the Buddha or some other perfectly self-actualized human is at this level. But what we can do is to strive to reduce our expectations from perfection, but not lower them so that you have to accept less than you deserve. If you can find that sweet spot, you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness is finding your way back to you!

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Michael Kane
rev kane, slower pace of life, relaxing

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity. ~ Douglas Adams

Happiness is finding your way back to you!

I love this picture of me for a lot of little reasons. I like the smile on my face, the mood that it belies, I love the spots of light caused by floating bits of ice. I love that I’m so committed to the photography that I’m doing that I’m standing in the arctic with no gloves on. This was the day after I had just had one of the most amazing nights of my life, my first time seeing the northern lights and it was an incredible show. People in Churchill said it was the best light show they had seen in fifteen years. I’m starting here tonight because the moment in that picture is someplace I’m working hard to get back to, I need to feel like that again. I’ve had that feeling many times, that day photographing a polar bear from 15 feet, the morning my brother was born, holding my niece Maddy hours after she was born, my granny’s hugs, a shot I made in a basketball league game at Eastern Kentucky University, a goal I scored in an indoor soccer league game at SUNY Plattsburgh, the night I met her, the day I hugged a 40,000 pound whale and ran my hand through it’s baleen plates, my first night on the playa, squatting behind a cobra in Jemaa el-Fnaa square in Marakesh, my first sight of the Southern Cross on a floating bar in the Amazon, sitting on a rock above the third sacred lake in the Gokyo Valley in the Himalayas, a night on the Appalachian Trail sleeping by a stream and being serenaded by Spider Chai the night before my 1000th mile on the trail and every single bite, of every single piece of Pizza Pit pizza I ever ate.

The last year has broken me, broken me more than I have been broken in decades, hell I’ve even, for the first time in years, considered drinking and using again, I won’t but it’s been tempting. So many goddamn things have piled on me that it’s like being buried at the base of an avalanche. Health, family, lost friends, shit job, relationships crashing and burning an unholy sense and realization of how alone I am and in the middle of it, no way or time to get back to the feeling in that picture. That quite simply has to change, and over the last couple of days I’ve had a bit of a realization, not quite an epiphany, I don’t want to go that far, but it’s been a start. That realization quite simply has given me hope, but I have always said, hope is a four letter word.

That realization came after my HR department completely shit on me, again, followed by the bosses shitting on me, again and one of my shit employees deciding to go to war with me. My boss then had the unfortunate luck of following that up with a call to give me just one more final bit of bad news and I was an asshole. The kind of asshole I am at my core, the kind that doesn’t take being run over and used and treated badly without speaking up with my full chest and throat. I snapped a little bit, not enough to get over the line, not enough to get me disciplined or fired, but enough to leave my boss quietly apologizing. It broke the crust of this shell of shit I’ve been surrounded by, the funk that I’ve been living under, it took the muzzle off. So today I had a meeting and it was one of those meetings, at least meeting number four over the last two years, the third starting over of the partnership where every time we tweak the goals and the plans because two new people have been thrown into the mix. I know this meeting, I’ve had this meeting dozens and dozens of times over my career and I know it will go on for another year and nothing will ever come from it. The meetings are always kicked off by people far up in the chain of command who’ve had a grand idea without knowing a bloody thing about how the operational details, the only things that truly matter, actually work. So today, I said pretty much exactly this in the meeting. I was the asshole I truly am at heart, I told the truth and everyone in the meeting was incredibly grateful. I also offered to explain the operational realities of what the project entailed to their board members and senior leadership so we could either decide to move forward or not, and stop wasting hours and hours of time for the people who have things to do, because we’re the people who actually do the things. I felt free and good, I felt like me for the first time in a year.

What I know about myself is that in order for me to get back to being who I am, to get back to being happy, I have to be that asshole. Turning fifty ten years ago was a revelation for me, it freed me to cut a lot of things loose in my life, people who were draining my happiness. It allowed me to cut loose things in my life that were bringing down my happiness. I think to get back to where I need to be, to get back to the core of me, it’s time to cut things and people loose again. I’ve been working on the big one, cutting loose this damn job and making a move which will allow me to change a lot of things in my life. I’m working on that, but in the time that I’ve been working on that, with everything else that went on I ended up in suspended animation, limbo, whatever the hell you want to call it. And I allowed myself to be muted and muffled, and the last few days have taught me that, that situation absolutely has to end and I believe that this is the beginning of that end. So here’s to me being be me, to me cutting loose and god help the poor bastards who get in my way.

So the message in a broader sense tonight my friends is to remember to not lose who you are, that when you get sideways in the world. When the world crashes down on you like a ton of bricks, make sure to remember who you are, to be who you are, and to not lose that, hang on to it no matter what. Hopefully that will help bring you happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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A Happy San Francisco Day

Posted on February 8, 2026 by Michael Kane

San Francisco is a lot like Amsterdam – free, open-minded and casual – though I expected better weather. ~ Marcel Wanders

A Happy San Francisco Day

I often walk in the city on the weekends. For a lot of reasons, a death in the family, lots of travel, a chilly winter season I haven’t been in the city much lately. For me a great walking day in the city includes a few things. First, some nice weather and of course good food. Additionally, although this has absolutely never been a problem, some interesting and/or weird things to see or experience. Yesterday was a good walking day.

Today the Superbowl is happening at the 49ers home stadium, and while technically that’s a San Francisco game, the stadium is almost an hour south of the city. However, San Francisco is officially the host city, so there were a lot of Superbowl events happening and signs everywhere including the official host site near city hall, hence the sign in the picture above.

The weather yesterday was perfect, high 60’s, lots of sun, a little breeze just really perfect walking weather. My first stop of the day was Tommy’s Joynt, an old school, long standing San Francisco restaurant. I’d known about Tommy’s for a long time but had never gotten up there before last year. Both of my heart procedures, the catheterization and my open-heart surgery happened at Kaiser near Tommy’s. Both procedures happened insanely early in the morning so I booked a hotel near the hospital in Japantown for both procedures. Before each procedure I walked down to Tommy’s Joynt for dinner the night before. It’s a perfect comfort food kind of place, their dinner plate with some roast beef, mash potatoes, salad and a roll reminds me of a really good dinner from my childhood. Topped off with a funky atmosphere inside and really great free pickles I really love this place. Having eaten there before both procedures has also given me a real emotional connection to Tommy’s and so it was my first good city food for the day.

On the way on my walk up to Tommy’s San Francisco didn’t disappoint. There was supposed to be a rally for the March for Billionaires at Civic Center, it was a bust, literally no rally. I really hope the march was a prank. But on the way up Van Ness there was an anti ICE rally that was really well attending and growing the whole time I was eating at Tommy’s and the image below really epitomizes how San Francisco makes protests their own.

After Tommy’s I needed a little dessert so I headed over to Hayes Valley and got myself a little dessert, it will not be shocking for regular readers to see what it is.

Finally, a few images of the interesting things I saw along the way including the former president enjoying a beverage in front of City Hall and a little bit of street art. Have a happy day my friends and get out in the sun and walk. ~ Rev Kane

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What’s the hardest thing you carry?

Posted on February 8, 2026 by Michael Kane

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem. ~ Douglas Adams

What’s the hardest thing you carry?

There is a really interesting classroom activity that flies around the internet every couple of years, it’s called the baggage activity. It’s a really interesting idea, the students write on index cards anonymously the hardest thing they are carrying emotionally. The thing that keeps them awake at 3AM, the thing they don’t know how to handle or just weighs them down. The cards are then read to show everyone in the class that others are dealing with big things as well and that no one is alone in having troubles. The activity is said to help build a deeper and more empathetic community within the classroom. It’s a neat idea, but in doing a little research on it for this piece I read a very interesting perspective form a long-time teacher.

She pointed out a couple of potential serious problems with the activity related to trauma informed education concepts. First, it might be possible that the reading of the cards, even though they are anonymous could trigger people, either the writer or someone who has had a trauma related to what’s being read. Second, and this one falls into a legal category, is that something on the card may cross into the territory of something that would require a teacher, as a mandated reporter, to act and that would certainly blow up everything the activity is attempting to do,

But I do think there is a good lesson in all of this and it’s about sharing our struggles. No one should carry anything alone, although we all do. Whenever possible and obviously with someone you deeply trust, you should share the thing you’re carrying, share the load if you will. The nice thing about a mental load, unlike actually physical weight, is that sharing someone else’s load doesn’t necessary add the same amount of weight to your load. In fact, the sharing can actually end up lightening both of your loads.

The thing about shouldering the load alone is that it will almost always catch up to you. I am a master at hiding what’s actually going on with me day to day. And at the lowest and worst part of my life I was still going to work every day, doing what I was supposed to do. In fact, I won manager of the year that year at my college. But one day I was walking down the hall, and a chemistry technician, an older woman that I really didn’t like, nor that I interacted with very often was walking past me in the hall. As we were about to walk past each other, out of nowhere she says, “are you ok?” It was this deep concern and she was looking me dead in the eyes. I muttered something and quickly moved on, because somehow she’d seen through all my masks and all of my defenses and saw my pain. I left campus and completely fell apart, if it was not for my good friend Kara really being there for me over the next month or so I really don’t know what would have come of me. It was sharing my burden with her that allowed me to come back to sanity, I almost typed normal, but if you know me, you know normal is never been a word anyone has used to describe me.

So my friends, take that heavy burden and share it with someone, be willing to share theirs, if you do, you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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