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