Right now I am trying to be in a place of calm, a place where I can chill out and then handle the chaos of life better. You don’t just get it overnight; you have to work at it. It’s a daily struggle. ~ Jackee Harry

Chasing Happiness in 2025

What a fucking year!

So tonight I’ll reveal some personal things that have been going on as well as things you already know about, but what a year. So, initially I was going to retire in February, but my October cardiac assessment showed I was likely going to need heart surgery this year. As you are all aware and if you’re a new reader go to the category link and click on the Rev Kane’s Wild Ride category, my most recent post was about my 90 days post surgery, I ended up scheduling my open heart surgery for August. Then some complications made me reconsider that date. First, the federal government was being completely unpredictable and honestly, I worried that the CEO of Kaiser could anger the president and it could impact their funding which could impact services. Secondly, my boss at the time obviously hated me and was actively trying to cause me problems. So, lack of stability in a lot of ways made me decide to move the date up to May. My surgery in May happily went well and my recovery, I’m a little over five months out now, is going well.

One of the things I haven’t talked about a lot was the mental toll the surgery took on me. It was of course stressful, amazingly stressful. In fact, for me, the mental part of it was far harder than the physical process. This was NOT a surprise to me, it’s something I’ve learned doing long distance hikes, it’s always the mental part that’s actually harder than the physical challenge. And the mental part this time involved a really deep fear of dying. I’m a trained scientist and a logical son of a bitch, so I deal with fear with measurement and data. And even the data at times terrified me, being tachycardic for a few weeks after surgery terrified me, it’s potentially a symptom of atrial fibrillation, which is a big risk after heart surgery and can kill you. I had a lot of instances of nearly fainting because we were, and still to some degree are dealing with issues of low blood pressure. Not a bad thing, it’s a huge improvement form the high blood pressure issues I had pre-surgery, but almost passing out kind of sucks and can be terrifying in it’s own right. Like I said, still dealing with this and trying to get my meds appropriately dialed in, almost fainted driving home one night last week, took my BP right after it was 95/60. Again, easily dealable but in the moment pretty scary. I also had one night with some crazy physical symptoms that forced me to call 911, they found no reason for what happened, which in itself is also a bit scary. But the symptoms have happily not returned. My head is getting back to normal around my health, especially now that I’m back to fully working out.

Returning to work has sucked! I have a new boss who I like a lot, but the job still sucks for all the reasons it sucked pre-surgery. So I’m in a job hunt, and lucky me, I’m looking for a job in one of the worst times to look for a job in education in ages. I’m also complicating it, were I looking for another dean’s gig in the California Community College System, I’d be fine, but I don’t want to be a dean anymore, I have no desire to manage faculty. Twenty plus years of that stress is enough. Don’t get me wrong, I always have had and currently do have some amazing faculty that I get to work with, folks who truly care about students. But unfortunately the pleasure of working with them doesn’t outweigh the bullshit you deal with generated from bad, uncaring faculty and just people who are assholes. Our system has a lot of faculty job protections and limited accountability, things that should exist to a degree to protect important ideas like academic freedom. However it also provides protections for people to be nightmares, cause chaos for everyone and still retain their jobs.

So I’m looking for a lower level position, something closer to working with students. This means that I’m moving from a much higher position, moving across the country, taking a massive pay cut, I’m older and this allows for a lot of potential red flags. I’ve run literally hundreds of hiring committees and there always seem to be one person who flags people for things they “believe” about candidates. A good chair points out that most of these concerns aren’t valid, things like “they don’t really want this job”, “they won’t stay in the position”, “I don’t know why they’re applying” when in fact the job of the first level committee review is only about whether or not the candidate is qualified and to move on those most qualified who are also a best fit for the requirements. I’m also applying for some positions that are more student service oriented and while I do student service functions nearly every day, the position titles I have in student services were earlier in my career. And yes, I explain most of this in my cover letter.

Additionally, colleges nationally are being hammered on grant funds, federal support programs etc… and worse there is no predictability around these funds, so many colleges have slowed their hiring to be able to deal with internal openings caused by sudden changes in their funding. So things have been moving slowly, or at least more slowly than I would like and this has taken a toll on me as well.

All of the above and me feeling like my life is utterly and completely in limbo has really hammered my mental state. Honestly, I’ve been about as deep in the well as I have been in fifteen years. I’m ok, and that’s completely down to what I’ve been doing with this blog for the last fifteen years. Fifteen years ago, this level of depressive pressures would have me completely paralyzed and a total mess, I know, I’ve been there. Instead now it presents more like languishing, and a flatness to everything I experience and feel.

Things have recently ramped up on the family front. I had a few years of quiet, enjoyed it, and knew it wouldn’t last and it hasn’t. Something I haven’t talked about online, because she didn’t want me to, has been my mother’s health issues. But, I’m going to piss her off because I am now. My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer a few years ago. She went through radiation treatment and it held the cancer at bay. About a year or so ago it returned, and much more aggressively. She did a round of chemotherapy that they told her would slow but not stop it. Of course they didn’t take into account she’s half hillbilly and hillbilly blood is some miraculous shit. Seriously, those appalachian hillbillies are nearly impossible to kill. I think it comes from generations of selective pressures, basically if you survived past the age of five you were tough as hell. Generations of that selection pressure has made those people damn near invincible. And as a half-hillbilly, her cancer has basically again, stopped progressing for the last year or so. Well, until now. When I was home recently for an interview, I noticed some memory issues she was having, others had mentioned them as well. This week, my sister brought her to the ER regarding some dizziness and headaches and what we found out a couple of days ago is that she has a mass on her brain. She’s in the hospital and it’s been rough and I’ll leave it at that and we still don’t have all the details of what it will mean for her.

This has all been especially hard on my sister, because she’s also the primary caretaker for my father. And he has his own issues that have led to him recently taking a couple of falls, one that resulted in a broken hip and leg, the other a cracked open skull. He’s had two stints in nursing home rehabs and my sister has been supporting all of that as well.

All of this adds another layer of chaos and decisions that need to be made and even have me possibly reconsidering what my current next steps should be, limbo, giant fucking limbo!

So I’m walking the walk and doing the things I’ve talked about so many times before, and no, I won’t go back over them tonight. But one of the big things you need to do is find calm and recharge, find things that you can fall into, loose time and just step out of the world. Things that you enjoy doing and the two big ones for me are hiking and cooking. But by hiking I mean hiking off the beaten path, long distance walking and in the bay area that’s just not an option. There are plenty of great trails, unfortunately you can’t go ten minutes without seeing other hikers and far too often hikers who are trail tourists and annoy the hell out of me. So tonight, after a little urban hiking and the no kings protest in San Francisco, and of course some pizza I came home to cook. Tonight it was all about making bone broth and then a huge pot of chicken and tortellini soup. And man, it may be the best pot I’ve ever made.

So this post is only about two things, the first incredibly selfish. The main ways I process are to talk and write. I have few people anymore to talk to, so I write and tonight this is me processing. The second thing is to remind you all to find those things you can fall into and get lost in, to find those ways to recharge. The world is crazy right now, we all need to find ways to escape and recharge and I hope you’re finding ways to do that, it leads to happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane