A Happy SF Slice Debate

Posted on June 6, 2026 by Michael Kane

I like coal fired. I’m definitely, generally, always a coal-fired guy. Crispy, don’t do a ton of sauce, but kind of a well-done, coal-fired pizza is my jam. ~ Dave Portnoy

A Happy SF Slice Debate

So, if you’ve read this blog at all, or know me even a little bit, you know the significant place pizza holds in my life. If you want proof, just check out the pizza page. In San Francisco, I’m always on the look out for high quality NY slices. A NY pizza slice has a very specific set of characteristics, thin crust, crispy bottom, sauce that is not sweet, good quality, full fat cheese with a bit of a fluffy crust and a burn bubble is always a beautiful bit of authenticity.

San Francisco is of course a very large city, with many, many pizza places or places that serve pizza. What I’m always looking for though, is first off slice places, if they don’t do slices it’s not part of this discussion. And of course, I’m looking for NY slices. Sure there are Sicillian Style, Detroit Style, Chicago Style and all manner of gourmet slices. A lot of these are really good food, but they’re just not part of this conversation for me, and not what I crave when I want pizza.

I’ve sampled, and reviewed, a lot of pizza places in San Francisco and have had some incredible disappointments. There are also a lot of places that have good reputations and are good, but not spectacular. In San Francisco, for me, on the NY slice front there are truly two competitors, Escape from NY and Gioia. Escape has two locations and I really need to hit the downtown location for comparison some day, but the one I frequent is in the Haight-Ashbury area of the city. And I was there today:

You can see from the picture that slices at Escape absolutely pass the eye test for a NY slice. And honestly they can hit every point. The one thing that Escape does better than anyone is to nail the crispy bottom and soft crust of a perfect NY slice. The mushroom slice in the picture was absolutely a perfect slice. Toppings good and not overwhelming, sauce and cheese on point and an absolutely perfect crispy bottom with a soft crust. However, that pepperoni slice was meh, at best. The pepperoni wasn’t great quality, the sauce wasn’t quite right and the bottom was not crispy at all. And that’s the issue with Escape for me. They do everything right, it feels like a NY pizza place, down to the completely disinterested look on the face of the guy at the counter. It’s bare bones, a few tables, good music playing and a wall full of celebrity images of people who’ve eaten their pizza.

The pictures above are just a sample of the huge number of pictures from super famous actors and bands, to local bands and regional groups and athletes. So the atmosphere is absolutely on point and like that mushroom slice they can absolutely knock it out of the park, but the problem is consistency. I mean two slices at the same time and the quality was miles apart. Still, one of the best slices in the city.

The king though for me is Gioia. The ambiance isn’t a NY pizza place, the bottom is crispy just never quite perfectly crispy. But the slices are near perfect and consistently so, to the point that in all of the times that I’ve gotten a slice, and it’s a lot, I’ve never had a substandard slice, the quality is remarkably consistent.

Two amazing slices from Gioia Pizzeria

So today, a really wonderful walking day in San Francisco did confirm one thing for me, that Gioia is still the king and good pizza slices always make for a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Posted on June 5, 2026 by Michael Kane
Remembering the Appalachian Trail
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Posted on June 3, 2026 by Michael Kane
Remember, We All Want to be Happy
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Tiny Happiness

Posted on June 3, 2026 by Michael Kane

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. ~ Golda Meir

Tiny Happiness

A small post tonight, about a very simple idea, taking pleasure and gaining happiness from the small things. This time of year I post a lot of photos of what’s pictured above, and what I call, the tiny patio garden. Other years the garden is a little more complex, in addition to tomatoes I’ve often had basil, scallions, dill and mint that I grew. But this year, as I am trying to make a move out of my current life and situation, I decided to keep the tiny patio garden even a bit smaller than normal. So this year I only bought two tomato plants. However, one of my cherry tomato plants has hung on since last summer and is still producing, I ate the first tomato off it for the year today. It’s not producing a lot, but anything is a bonus. Additionally, in another two pots I have volunteers, plants coming up either from the roots of the plants from last year or seeds from a cherry tomato that dropped into the pot. I have a feeling both volunteers are cherry tomato plants. One is tiny, the other is doing incredibly well.

So, while the tiny patio garden is extra tiny this year, looks like I’ll still have a decent flow of homegrown tomatoes. In addition to my first cherry tomato, I also had my first regular tomato of the season that I wrote about this weekend. And so yes, I’ve already sliced, salted and ate my first homegrown tomato of the season.

While it’s not very big, or all that impressive, I take great joy and happiness from my tiny patio garden. It’s very soothing and a bit zen to be out on the deck and trimming the plants, pulling weeds and even watering them. Of course, there’s great joy in eating the tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes taste so much better than store bought tomatoes.

While I’m certainly all about big swings at happiness and adventure, we can’t do those things all the time. There need to be consistent and small bits of happiness that we wrap into our lives to make this existence as good as it can be, my tiny patio garden is certainly that for me. As they are annoyingly saying on social media these days, tiny patio garden tax below. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness: First Tomato of 2026

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Michael Kane

When I think of summertime as a kid, I think of my Grampy’s gardens full of tomatoes, buckets heaping with blackberries, and countertops lined with an assortment of Ball jars, ready to can the flavor of summer. ~ Damaris Phillips

Happiness: First Tomato of 2026

I have a tradition, taken from my grandfather, Grandpa Kane as we called him. He’s the main influence in my life in terms of my love gardening. He also taught me to grow roses by brilliantly tricking a little six year-old guy by explaining the first step was to go fishing and I loved to fish. We would catch bluegills and then put them in the hole where we planted the rose bushes to serve as fertilizer.

The tradition is a simple one, the first tomato of the year is to be celebrated and to quote him, “eaten like an apple with salt and a bottle of beer.” I rarely drink but tradition is tradition so I’ll be buying a bottle of beer tonight to enjoy my first tomato.

grandpa, memorial day

This was Grandpa Kane in front of some of his flowers, he also did the gardening at the convent where my aunt is a nun and the nuns knew him well. He was a fascinating old dude, WWII veteran, landed on D-Day in France, a few weeks later became a POW in a German camp, escaped, re-captured and lived til 90. When he died I did his funeral and a couple of years before, yes, in his 80s, he got into a street fight. It was that story that I told as his eulogy and has become the favorite poem I’ve ever written, enjoy and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

A Eulogy to amuse the penguins                     2006

People don’t want the truth
particularly not when death is at hand
they don’t want to know a life
can’t stand to see the warts
they want disneyanna
where at the end of the day we gather
and have a parade down main street America

My grandfather was a man
a hard man
a cold man
but he mellowed with age
hard jagged lines on his face
fading soft with his laughter
eyes lit as he talked about back in the day

He died in 2000 and I was asked to do the eulogy
wanting to speak his life warts and all
but my sister ratted me out
ratted me out to my aunt the nun
I suffered through the speeches
sister, aunt, father oh my
to my shame I acquiesced

But I was on the hook my friends
had to stand up in front
relatives, family, friends, nuns
So I chose to pick a slice
grab a day in the life
and this is the one I chose

My grandfather loved tomatoes and roses
and in the neighborhood was a challenged boy
a boy of 32 with a dad in his 50’s
the boy had trampled grandpa’s plants and he was pissed
he had the opportunity to see the boy’s father
never given to silence, he spoke
of course grandpa spoke with his fists
like an 87 yr old warrior from the WWF
he came off the top step with a right cross
Grandpa went to scrappin in the street
he lost, hitting his head on the curb

I found my way to the hospital the next day
and asked him what happened
he said that guy had a roll of nickels in his hand
yeah grandpa, he was waitin for you
then he grew stone faced and paused
looking at me seriously, he said
I hit that guy in the gut with everything I had
and he didn’t go down, I might be getting old
and I laughed at the coolest thing I’ve ever heard
that day,
my 87 year old grandfather
just started to consider that he might be getting old.

People in the church smiled,
but the penguins rolled in the aisles,
because they knew him best

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Happiness: The Next Phase

Posted on May 24, 2026 by Michael Kane
Hiker standing on mountain trail below rocky summit with race finish banner
AI generated image

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road. ~ Dag Hammarskjold

Happiness: The Next Phase

Life happens in phases or chapters. For me, the first chapter, like it is for all of us was obviously childhood. My childhood was a mix of an absolute shitshow and supportive bliss. My parent’s marriage was a mess, they were married for seven years, divorced for seven years, then married again for seven years and divorced, in between dad was married and divorced. The marriages were constant storms and chaos, anger, fights, passive aggressive madness. lies and disappointment. Growing up mostly with a single mom we didn’t live in the best part of town and that meant crime and violence and being tied up with really shitty people. My grandfather who I was incredibly close to died when I was five. I have no memory of it, my granny said I was absolutely inconsolable, but I still had my granny. She was an absolutely unending source of positivity, love and support. Any confidence I have, any bit of positive self image came from her, honestly, without her influence, I shudder to think what kind of monster I might have become. Childhood ended when I left for college, and like on any trip you take your baggage comes with you.

The second phase, my college years, lasted for another twenty-ish years. The baggage I brought with me led to addiction, alcoholism, crime and failure. But there was a lot of learning, not just from school, but in life and mostly about myself. There was a lot of growth, but like any progress there were lots of one step forward, two-step back moments. My twenties and thirties were really hard periods for me. But then I graduated from this phase into the good years.

Turning forty really signaled the beginning of a new phase for me. For a lot of people turning forty is a hard time, it often signals a transition to aging that people perceive as going downhill. For me it was quite the opposite, I felt like I was peaking. During this phase I started my phased retirement where every few years I would embark on a huge adventure. It was the time when I really started to get deeper into hiking and writing. It was during this time that the Ministry of Happiness was born, when I walked across Scotland, biked around Ireland and went to the Himalayas and Mt. Everest. Turning fifty, again a time for most people to feel things slowing down just felt like another hill I was climbing. During my early fifties I hiked the Appalachian Trail, swam with whale sharks, traveled to Petra and the Dead Sea and hugged a forty thousand pound whale in Baja. During this period I also wrote and published three books (all available on Amazon and linked below):

Appalachian Trail Happiness about my time on the Appalachian Trail

Otherness, a book of poetry about feeling like and outsider

Athena’s Addict, a book of poetry, every poem inspired by one woman.

Then COVID hit and life really took a turn. So this phase that was so positive really slid downhill. Over the last five years since COVID my job has sucked, my social life has completely tanked. I really lost focus, lost purpose and over the last few years have really languished. This last year especially has been hard, heart surgery, my mom’s death, family issues, personal relationships crashing and burning and a delayed retirement transition that has not worked out the way I hoped. This led to a real hit to my mental health and honestly a really hard year and an incredible feeling of loneliness and my real life being on hold.

Recently I’ve been able to make a turn mentally, I’ve worked through a lot of the obligations and issues that needed to be dealt with in my life and there are a couple of big decisions I’ve made recently. All of them are connected to the transition to the next phase of my life. The first is of course to start living again, this on hold bullshit has to end.

I’ve already started that with going to NC and finding my first shark tooth, a small adventure, but a start. This decision means that the planning has to restart for my last two continents, Antarctica and Australia. My job search will pivot, I need out of my current existence and so I’ll be pretty radically changing my job search to move things forward. And finally, as regularly readers know I’m a story teller, and people often say to me, you have to write a book. I’ve always said that I would, but only after my mother was gone. Not because I have anything bad to say about her, but the stories, the details, things I have to say about others might have hurt her and I never wanted to do that. So I have my next writing project, my memoir, working title, What The Actual Fuck, A Life. The first draft of the outline is done, many of the stories have been previously written, so I’m working on putting that together and will actually see if I can find a commercial publisher for this one. The final plan for this phase is to find a property, to create some roots and community. Because the reality is, this chapter might be my last, so I plan on making it a hell of a good one with many happy days my friends, and I hope you have the same. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness is Graduation Season

Posted on May 19, 2026 by Michael Kane
Graduates in black gowns throwing graduation caps in the air outdoors
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I believe that every day is a celebration and every day I’m born anew and genuinely try to live every day differently. ~ Rekha

Happiness is Graduation Season

You work in education for one reason, or you should, to help students succeed and achieve their dreams. And this time of year is the time of year where you get to see a lot of that come to fruition, the culmination in one sense is graduation and all of the graduation ceremonies that happen this time of year. Today I participated in the fourth one in the last week. It’s always a really great feeling to see students hit this milestone in their life. It’s great for the young students, but it’s incredibly special for the older students, the ones who came to this process with the most doubts and the greatest amount of fear. They are so incredibly proud of their accomplishment as they should be.

For community college students, and truly a lot of students these days, they are not just in school. They work part or even full-time, they have spouses and children, family obligations, debt. Getting a degree or certificate is a huge commitment and a huge accomplishment. Often they are first generation students, often immigrants and the joy they and their family are experiencing is wonderful to watch. It almost makes up for all of the daily bullshit the rest of the year.

Today is a really fun day for me, three of the programs I oversee are the barbering, cosmetology and esthetics programs. Their final project is what we call showcase, which is, what it sounds like, they set up and showcase their skills and accomplishments, get to show off for the college, family and potential employers. I walk showcase each year, congratulate each of them personally and ask them what’s next? I try and build up their confidence for the license exam and wish them well. Often while I’m doing this I get to meet the families of some of the students I’ve gotten to know and it’s fun to watch their families realize their student knows the dean.

What also happens at showcase is old students come back, so today I got to see a handful of students who I got to know, who are now in the real world trying to make it all workout. Now generally, not always, but generally, the students I get to know are the ones who have had a hard time, either with other students or faculty or just in getting their shit together. So when these students, who we are concerned for, come back and tell us how well they are doing, it’s a true joy. Had a couple of those happen today. Finally today we had an industry advisory board meeting for these programs and an employer was raving about how wonderful one of our former students was, how much success they were having and how much they were impressing people. It was one of the students who I knew very well, a student who had incredible struggles and one I really wasn’t convinced would be successful. To hear how incredibly successful she has been absolutely made not just my day, but my whole semester.

My job often sucks, but it’s days like today when we really get to see why we do this. Hope you have had something equally as rewarding happen recently and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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It’s been a helluva year!

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Michael Kane

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. ~ Fredrick Douglass

It’s been a helluva year!

One year ago, May 7, 2025, I got up insanely early in the morning, was driven to the hospital by my assistant and walked in to the scariest morning of my life. They put me to sleep at about 7 AM, about 10 seconds later from my perspective, I was listening to a really wonderful nurse tell me I was still alive on the same day of my surgery and that I’d soon be getting the giant tube out of my throat.

I was fortunate, I had an incredible surgeon and team, my nurses were spectacular, I got fantastic care from Kaiser. I got spectacular aftercare from my team, the home nurses and the warfarin pharmacists were fantastic. I was incredibly blessed to have lots of help after I came home and fortunate to have been in good shape pre-surgery and smart enough to follow the recommendations. My recovery went really well, with only a couple of minor glitches, only one 911 call that ended up being a mystery but happily never re-occurred. My three month post surgery imaging showed everything good and my cardiologist told me to go away for three years.

That was the start of the last year, the crazy thing about open-heart surgery is that they have to cut your breast bone in half and that is actually the hardest part of recovery and also thoroughly terrifying. It means for six months you cannot lift anything heavy, that starts at 5 pounds and gets up to 20 pounds. During the whole time, you can’t bend over and pick up anything off the floor, your breast bone has been wired together with a steel wire and it pops and clicks and every time you think it’s slipped, which of course would mean more surgery.

The whole process has actually physically changed my body. Some good things, my blood pressure is way better, I’m on one quarter of the medicine I was pre-surgery. But there’s other changes, I still click and pop, it still scares the hell out of me. At night in bed, when I take a deep breath I can damn near feel my heart beating in my chest, it used to terrify me, I’ve gotten used to it.

And if last April you had said that heart surgery wouldn’t have been the hardest part of the year I would have laughed in your face, but that’s often when the universe is at it’s most ridiculous.

The last year has been a circus, my mom’s lung cancer paused, kicked back into high gear, went to her brain and after several hospital visits turned into a long-term rehab stay that turned into hospice and the end of her life. So, all that comes with losing a parent happens, grief, madness, dumbass relatives who haven’t been around and make an appearance. Relatives who offer no support or caring but are happy to criticize and bitch. Lots of details, lots of details, and as the executor of her estate even more details. Happily my sister has been a great help in cleaning out the house and being my local director of operations, we’re still working on getting things done over five months later, but as we finish the last bits at least it’s now on the market. Still putting things together to spread her ashes per her wishes hopefully in July.

Coming back to work was exactly what I expected coming back to work to be for me. It was a giant, stressful pain in the ass. Happily, I came back to a new boss who is better than my previous bosses so that has helped. But my people saved all the hard shit for when I came back and so I have been eternally behind the entire year. I’ve been applying for jobs and that has been wholly unsuccessful. First, I had a couple of interviews and then final interviews and then have been completely ghosted. It’s an unfortunate reality of how organizations work these days but it’s rude and unprofessional. I’m also doing something unique, as usual, I’m going cross-country, going down the career ladder and I’m doing it at over 60 years of age. This makes my application look weird and I’m getting a lot of rejections for jobs I am over qualified for and I’m sure there’s also a bit of ageism involved. My most recent rejection was for a dean’s position at a community college, something I’ve done successfully for over twenty-years, so the idea that I’m not qualified enough, or that there were 5-7 people more qualified is insanely unlikely. However, I also had an interview this past week and should find out Monday or Tuesday if I have a second level interview.

This year has also seen a number of my personal relationships change and/or go up in flames. And I’m not talking about casual friends or social acquaintances but 20+ year relationships, it’s been hard. Throw in everything you learn about the people you’re connected to going through a life threatening surgery and the death of your parent and I ended up in the deepest depression I’ve been in over the last twenty years.

The good news is, over twenty of years of work on my mental health, over fifteen years writing the Ministry of Happiness and I have a lot of skills that I’ve developed over the years. So I’ve been able to climb my way out of the hole. I’m actually in a really good place, but also in a really weird place.

At this point I’m at a weird crossroads, my original plan seems to be falling apart, the back up plan sucks and so soon, I’ll need to take a few days, get real quiet and make some big decisions, but that’s for another day. This weekend I took some serious down time, made some good food, said to hell with my diet and just celebrated being alive.

We all go through these times, and they are really hard, you might be in one right now. The thing is, we are all masters of disguise at these times. Most people have had no idea how bad this year has been for me and people will often fool others, you, will fool others. So the point tonight is a simple one, take care of yourself. If you’re struggling, do the things you have to do to get better. If you need help, get the help you know you need. We all want you to have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Music, Memories and Happiness

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Michael Kane

Without music, life would be a mistake. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Music, Memories and Happiness

Music is incredibly important to me, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t have music around me. I play it when I drive, I play it when I work, when I write, when I exercise and when I’m hiking/camping I usually play it before I sleep. While weight is absolutely critical when hiking the Appalachian Trail, not carrying music was never an option.

Tonight, a small little post that hit me the other day while I was driving and Steppin Out came on the radio and with that song I’m always immediately swept back to an exact time and place, my first dorm room at RIT in the fall of 1982. When that song comes on I can see, feel and smell that room, the cinder block walls, the cold floor that absolute feeling of foreignness, possibility and absolute fear. God I miss that feeling.

The image at the top is from Pink Floyd’s, The Wall. The whole damn album is loaded with memories for me and the one I’ll relate tonight is the first time I ever heard the album, which was when I first saw the movie. This was back when I was first loaded, and a couple of my fraternity brothers got me thoroughly and completely baked and took me to the movie on campus. The album/movie starts with some really soft and sweet music and I settled in, the drugs giving me some intense focus and then intense and extremely loud bass notes drop in and I leapt about six inches out of my bloody seat and that began a love affair with that album that continues 44 years later.

There was a summer in my life that I refer to as the summer of the Cathies. I was dating three at the same time, (yes they all knew about each other), and I would often come home from work to see a note on the counter, Cathy called. One of them I met at a polka hop, yes, a polka hop. I was loaded, at night, wearing sunglasses and watching fireworks and I saw her walking by. A friend said she was the most beautiful woman at his college, don’t even try, so of course I did. She gave me her number, she would later admit that she did it because she thought I was too loaded to every remember it, I did. We would date each summer of the next two summers while at home from college. She was tall, brilliant and gorgeous and a lot of fun and for some reason, Don Henley’s – Boys of Summer always makes me think of her and wonder where she is today.

I have an absolutely amazing friend, Kara, she was there for me at one of the absolute lowest points of my life. About that time Jack Johnson’s first album came out and there’s a song on it called Bubble Toes and it always brings me right to her and at a time when my world was absolutely upside down and she helped get me through.

My mother had an old stereo console and loved her vinyl albums, Johnny Mathis, Carol King and when she was doing spring cleaning, all the windows open, smell of bleach and massive volume with Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water. The very first chords and I’m right back on State Street, smelling bleach, 1970’s puke green carpet and all.

Now that I’m wrapping this up I’m realizing there’s a lot of focus on my drunk years and I guess that makes sense given those several years were some of the most intense of my life. And the final song I want to mention ties back to one of my only good Christmas memories tied to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. My first real girlfriend was a woman named Kari and our very first kiss, after some copious quantities of peppermint schnapps, was while watching that movie in my friend Andrea’s room. And there was a song that Kari loved, mostly because of the singing kids at the end of the song, It’s Raining Again by Supertramp will forever take me back to her, to RIT and to that peppermint kiss.

So listen to some music, enjoy a lovely memory and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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To be happy, you don’t have to get ahead

Posted on May 3, 2026 by Michael Kane
rev kane, slower pace of life, can make you happy
A slower pace of life can make you happy

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. ~ Henry David Thoreau

To be happy, you don’t have to get ahead

Welcome to America and American values and expectations in life. We all know what the American script is, graduate high school, go to college, get a career, take a two week vacation every year, get married, buy a house, have two kids, climb the career ladder, send your kids to college, get some grandkids, retire and die. I’ve always had a problem this script, it has never quite made sense to me. The first is, that in this script, there is no space for non-conformity, creativity, joy or happiness.

In America we all know, hell, we are told from birth, that the goal is to climb the career ladder, get the next big job, the next raise, the big promotion, work your way up to the corner office. This pretty much all comes down to money and capitalism. What passes for success in America, is how big is your home, how big is your car, where did you take your vacation this year? Did you go to Myrtle Beach, go skiing in Vail or Aspen? It all ends up being about status and appearance, the question is how much do you impress others? The question never is what makes you happy?

I hope that I had something to do with this as he was growing up, but I’ve always admired my brother for taking a giant left turn off of the script. At eighteen he didn’t go to college, he pursued a career in music, moved to Orlando, took his shot, had some success and eventually came around to the idea that a college education would be beneficial. Not because it was part of the script or what’s next, but because it fed and enhanced his interests in life. He was perfectly exhibiting the idea of higher education that Robert M Pirsig laid out in his book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A book that he famously rights is not at all about Zen, and has very little to do with motorcycle maintenance and a book I credit with saving my life.

In this book he suggests that education should work this way. Someone is interested in fast cars, so they train and learn how to become a mechanic so they can make a living and make their car faster. After a time, they get really good at it but they hit a wall, a point where tweaking the existing engine can’t make the car go any faster. At this point, the only way to make the car faster is to re-engineer the engine, so at this point this person starts to study engineering to become an engineer who redesigns engines. It’s the idea that education should be driven by interest, desire and need, not by what’s next on a checklist in life or what pays the most.

I’m bumping up against this idea of always climbing higher right now in my job search. I’m in a somewhat unique position. My career has allowed me to be in a place where I can currently retire with a decent retirement. Not live in San Francisco level retirement, but live comfortably in most of America level retirement. I also have a dream about my life, about the type of property I want to live on, the type of life I want to live. In general, I want things to get smaller, simpler and more real. I want some property where I can be in nature, do significant gardening, wild crafting and not have neighbors on top of me. I want to build community around this idea. I need to work for another few years before Medicare due to the ridiculous way health insurance works in America and I no longer want to be in charge of everything and everyone every day. I really no longer want to manage a hundred employees and all of the constant personnel issues that come with that level of faculty and staff. Then tack on a few thousand students taking classes and their issues and it’s all too much at this point. I want a smaller, simpler locus of control, the opportunity to do good work and then go home and forget about it at the end of the day. Of course while applying for jobs, and I’ve been on enough hiring committees to know this happens, there is always someone who questions anyone doing anything atypical. In my case I can hear it, “why would a dean be applying for a director position, what’s wrong with him?” I’m used to this in my life, I don’t do things the way everyone else does and there are always people who assume different is weird or wrong. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this question, “so you’ve never been married, what’s wrong with you?” I have female childless friends who have similar been asked why they don’t have children, in a America, different is considered wrong and weird.

But I’m here tonight friends to tell you it’s ok. I’m not going to tell you that it’s an easier path but I will tell you that it’s almost always more rewarding in the end. You have to be true to yourself, it’s the best path to happiness. And often this means that you don’t have to follow the script. If not going to college is the best path for your life and happiness, great. If not having children is the right choice for you, great. If becoming a teacher or a professor but never becoming a principal or dean, great. If the choices that you make are informed, well thought out and best for you, your family and happiness, then they are the right choices regardless of what others think, with only one caveat, that those choices don’t hurt anyone else.

So be bold my friends, take the chances, make the choices that will make you and your life better and happier. To hell what other people think, it’s your one life to live, make it the best that you can and be the happiest you can be and always have happier days. ~ Rev Kane

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