My 2018 Adventure: Vegas Baby!

Posted on July 9, 2018 by Michael Kane

My 2018 Adventure: Vegas Baby!

las vegas, happiness, travel

Vegas Baby!

Jobs fill your pockets, adventures fill your soul. ~ Jaime Lyn

So it’s finally here, I’m once again unemployed and onto my next adventure.  My last day of work started unfortunately early at 7:45AM with a potluck, but did at least involve a fabulous cake.

cake, happiness, travelMy next destination was a quick trip to Vegas to see some family and visit with friends who live in the area.  I had a great trip, and it got me reminiscing about my earliest trips to Vegas and how much the place has changed over the years.  I go to Vegas for set of really specific things.  First to see some friends, I have a number of friends in Las Vegas, some from my childhood, some I’ve made along the way and it’s great to catch up and hang out with them.  It was certainly hot and my stop in Baker shows you exactly how hot.

baker, vegas, travel, heatThe second reason is food, particularly given where I’ve been living over the last couple of years there isn’t exactly a great selection of food here, and most importantly an utter lack of good pizza. So I go to Vegas to eat across the spectrum, from really nice restaurant meals to hot dogs, pizzas, milk shakes and cupcakes.  All of my normal food rules go out the windows for a few days.

pizza, New York, food

A nice slice of NY style pizza

I also like to gamble.  I play craps and video poker and honestly this trip for the most part that didn’t go real well.  I didn’t win on the video poker machines and although I had two really fun sessions on the craps table at the Casino Royale, I only won about $100 in one of the sessions, $10 in the other, but had several losing sessions as well.

A lot of people ask me why do you go to Las Vegas?  Well as I mentioned above, friends, good food, fun, gambling and I do a lot of walking and people watching while I’m there.  I usually also have a specific little thing that I’m doing while I’m there.  It may be a specific show or an event with friends.  Although it wasn’t the focus, this trip I spent a really great and mellow day hanging out at a friend’s house for the Fourth of July.  But my little project for this run was to create a specific photo to say thank you and do some urban walking and break in my new hiking shoes in preparation for the street/road miles on the Camino Primitivo I’ll be walking in September in Spain.

The thank you was for my brother and his family, they had sent me a present, a t-shirt with an image of Hunter S. Thompson.  If you don’t know him, he was a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, an eccentric drug fueled madman and wrote the funniest book I’ve ever read, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  In that book, Hunter takes a particularly funny drug induced venture through the Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas, so the photos below were taken as my way to say thank you and celebrate Hunter’s memory.

hunter s thompson, fear and loathing, las vegasvegas, circus, clownsThe marquee for Circus Circus is sort of whimsical and terrifying, and what is holding up that lollipop?

Hunter’s book also included events around the fabulous Mint 400 road race, on the way home I stopped in Jean, NV to get breakfast and coincidentally found this poster.

mint 400, hunter s thompson

Found this beauty on display there as well.

batman, bat mobile, I'm batmanThis particular trip included a really wonderful day.  It started out with breakfast with my cousins and their two little boys, including a post-breakfast walk through M&M world with a 3 year-old, he lost his bloody mind in there.  From there I took care of some work on my car and while waiting had a really nice burrito bowl for lunch.  After getting back into town, I took a lovely little nap in my hotel room and afterword did a little walk.  After walking for a couple of hours I ended up at a place I’d found online that had inexpensive meals and actually settled in for an early dinner of surf and turf of a really nice steak and small lobster tail.  I strolled back along the strip and did a bit of gambling, I was pretty much breaking even all day, including a nice 90 minute session on the craps tables at the Casino Royale, I ended up winning a whopping $10 but had a really good time playing.  I had a nice slice of pizza and a coke before taking a walk and finally, I floated over to the avenue between the Linq and the Flamingo and hit a cupcake place where I got a really delicious yellow cupcake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles before finishing the day with a another nice walk.

vegas, travel, adventure

Faux desert villa in Vegas mall

Nice thing about walking in Las Vegas, you can walk all the way to Egypt.

egypt, luxor, las vegasIt wasn’t a spectacular day, nothing super exciting happened but it was absolutely a day I needed.  I accomplished the one little errand I needed to get done, hung out with my cool little cousins, I ate really good food, had a cupcake, had fun gambling and got a good nights sleep.  A nice mellow and really happy day to kick off my next adventure, hope you’re having happy days as well my friends.  ~ Rev Kane

 

 

Posted in Happiness is Adventure, personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Happiness is being a good person

Posted on June 29, 2018 by Michael Kane

Happiness is being a good person

happiness

A good person can make another person good; it means that goodness will elicit goodness in the society; other persons will also be good. ~ Bhumibol Adulyadej

I really struggled with whether or not to use this title, I try to avoid being too judgmental in my Ministry of Happiness posts. However, I decided to go with the title because I think you’ll see, the things I’m talking about are not really up for debate. What I want to talk about tonight are not the big things like being honest or kind but more of the little things. I think all too often when we think of goals or positive things to do in life we have a tendency to be a bit grandiose. Then, because grandiose things are very hard to accomplish, we end up either not completing our goals or worse, not even starting because of the scale of the job ahead of us.

So tonight just a small reminder of all of the small things we can do to be better people. What inspired this post was something I witnessed in a Chinese restaurant the other day. While eating my lunch a gentleman came in to pick up his takeout order. While picking through the basket of condiments to take home he noticed a packet of sauce at his feet. I did not see if he dropped it there or if someone else had, but his solution upon noticing it was to kick it out of the way.

Now, if he didn’t drop it, it’s not his responsibility to pick it up, I can envision that comment coming from a lot of you. However that is exactly the point of my post tonight, if we want to be a good person, not just an average, but an above average good person, sometimes we’ll need to take on things that are not our responsibility, things that we make our responsibility just so we can make this a better world. Now that last bit sounds grandiose but grandiose things can be built by many, many people adding just one brick to the structure. So here are some suggestions of how you can go right out, right now and make this a better world and by doing so, be a better, and yes, a happier person.

Pick up a piece of litter.

Hold the door open for someone, or say thank you to someone who holds it for you.

Smile at everyone you see today, sure, some people may scowl but you just might make someone’s day

Tell the cashier when he or she gives you the incorrect change, it will make the end of their day much better.

Pay for the toll of the car behind you or the next person’s coffee.

Give 5 hugs today.

The next time you see someone short on cash in a line, pay for the item(s) they’re short on.

Clean out the lint trap on the dryer or empty the dishwasher.

Let someone go in front of you in line.

Bring donuts into the office for no special reason or bake someone a cake.

Let someone who has done something stupid off the hook, instead of getting mad at them.

Conduct a random act of kindness.

Give a waiter or waitress a huge tip.

Tell someone if they’ve done a really good job, or make a point to give 5 sincere compliments today

These are just a few ideas, hopefully you get my point. If people were all just a little bit kinder to each other, a little bit more patient we’d all have happier days my friends          ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Can being rejected make you happier?

Posted on June 27, 2018 by Michael Kane

Can being rejected make you happier?

2

We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don’t. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success. ~ Henry Rollins

I listened today to an utterly fascinating story on the radio show Invisibilia. It was about how a man overcame his fear of rejection, by practicing being rejected, something he calls rejection therapy. The real beauty was that as he went out each day with the goal of being rejected, getting rejected became a positive thing. By completely flipping the script on his fear, his fear suddenly had less power over him. A really fascinating idea, what I really liked was how enthusiastically he thanked people for rejecting him. He asked for all sorts of things, for people to do his laundry, give him rides, for a bite of their food etc…
Give the story a listen on Invisibilia it’s linked at the bottom of the piece 5 things I learned about fear on NPR’s podcast Invisibilia and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Adventure and Travel Make You Happy

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Michael Kane

Adventure and Travel Make You Happy

photography, travel, adventure

Aurora while photographing Polar Bears in the Arctic

The world is a book and  those who do not travel have only read a single page ~ Saint Augustine

So it’s a bit of a lazy Sunday night for me tonight, work last week was an absolute bare.  I was productive this weekend but tonight I’m just a bit worn out.  So I thought I would cheat a little bit tonight and write about my favorite subjects, travel and adventure.   Okay,  maybe not so much write about them as lay down some links to my previous writings.  Travel is something  I encourage everyone to do, the trip doesn’t have to be long or expensive.  You don’t have to travel far, as long as you are going someplace new you’re on an adventure and adventure pushes you out of your comfort zone.  It is once you’re out of your comfort zone that change really happens in your life and if you’re not as happy as you’d like to be, you need to change.  If you change you can be happier my friends.  So here are some posts from my past adventures, I hope you enjoy them. ~ Rev Kane

Rev Kane in Wadi Rum in Jordan

The Ancient City of Petra

My Polar Bear Adventure

Swimming with Whale Sharks

My Himalaya Adventure

Hiking Havasupai Falls

Precious Moments on the Appalachian Trail

Happiness and the three questions

My book on hiking the Appalachian Trail

 

 

 

Posted in Happiness is Adventure, personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Happy Summer Solstice!!!

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Michael Kane

Happy Summer Solstice!!!

happiness solstice

 

 

 

 

Happy Solstice my friends, today a happy day as we get more light than any other day of the year.  So here’s a really beautiful poem for you to read and reflect on the longest day and the beauty of love and nature.  Give it a read and have a happy Summer Solstice my friends ~ Rev Kane

Summer Solstice

by Stacie Cassarino

I wanted to see where beauty comes from

without you in the world, hauling my heart

across sixty acres of northeast meadow,

my pockets filling with flowers.

Then I remembered,

it’s you I miss in the brightness

and body of every living name:

rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.

You are the green wonder of June,

root and quasar, the thirst for salt.

When I finally understand that people fail

at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,

the paper wings of the dragonfly

aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?

If I get the story right, desire is continuous,

equatorial. There is still so much

I want to know: what you believe

can never be removed from us,

what you dreamed on Walnut Street

in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,

learning pleasure on your own.

Tell me our story: are we impetuous,

are we kind to each other, do we surrender

to what the mind cannot think past?

Where is the evidence I will learn

to be good at loving?

The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond

for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.

There are violet hills,

there is the covenant of duskbirds.

The moon comes over the mountain

like a big peach, and I want to tell you

what I couldn’t say the night we rushed

North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers

and the way you go into yourself,

calling my half-name like a secret.

I stand between taproot and treespire.

Here is the compass rose

to help me live through this.

Here are twelve ways of knowing

what blooms even in the blindness

of such longing. Yellow oxeye,

viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms

pleading do not forget me.

We hunger for eloquence.

We measure the isopleths.

I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.

The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.

Fireflies turn on their electric wills:

an effulgence. Let me come back

whole, let me remember how to touch you

before it is too late.

Posted in Happiness is Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Reflecting on the Year So Far

Posted on June 18, 2018 by Michael Kane

Reflecting on the Year So Far

happiness, quote

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First by reflection which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience which is the bitterest. ~ Confucius

So for my Sunday night post this week I decided to sit back and reflect on the first six months of this year. In beginning each year, I don’t necessarily do resolutions but I do try to set some goals.  For this year the focus was on my upcoming adventure, originally that was to try to do 7 hikes on 7 continents and I was hoping to get up to 10,000 social media followers and then do a crowd source funding campaign to fund the adventure.  Well something I learned a long time ago was that I can make plans, but the only thing I am really deciding is a general direction that has once again proven to be true.

The Best Laid Plans

fear happiness

Fear is killing your happiness

The first revision to my plans this year was that the 7 hikes plan wasn’t going to work.  Unfortunately, partially due to my fear that I couldn’t make the crowd funding work and wouldn’t have the funding to do the whole plan.  So I began to adjust things and decided initially to change my plans and start by moving to Oaxaca City, Mexico, do two months there then head to Machu Picchu and a month in Peru.

My Broken Heart

broken heart, happiness

So I had the plans in place for my trip and was trying to get some medical procedures taken care of before I go off work-based great insurance and go on to disaster control insurance.  So I had a wisdom tooth pulled and I scheduled a surgery to remove a lump from my back.  My blood pressure medication was no longer being effective so on the day of my surgery it spiked and I got cancelled out and needed to get cleared for the surgery by a cardiologist.  Well he heard a heart murmur and that started a medical roller-coaster that has lasted the last two months diagnosed me with a broken-heart and ended with my finally getting my surgery accomplished.

surgery, happiness

Little lump, giant bandage

So with my diagnosis of an aortic aneurysm doing time hiking at high altitude didn’t seem like the best idea so it was time to juggle my plans once again.

On the Road Again

travel, happinessSo just because I have a newly diagnosed heart condition, doesn’t mean I’m not going on an adventure, life is not about existing but about actually living.  That is one idea that I truly hope that I have gotten across to you in writing this blog, it is without a doubt my deepest core value.  So I set about planning once again.

I will still be wrapping my job up at the end of June and hitting the road in early July.  I’m planning a few days in Las Vegas to celebrate the fourth of July.

las vegas, happiness, travel

Vegas Baby!

I then plan on meeting up with some friends in Sacramento, Lake Tahoe and Reno.  From there I will head east, making a stop in Nebraska to see a friend I haven’t seen in 25 years!  From there I’ll float east to Chicago and do something off my bucket list, catch a day game at Wrigley Field.  I had initially thought to take a trip to Pittsburgh to catch a Pirate game two days later, but then I found out that Steeler Training camp is opening and so instead, one more bucket list item, a day at Steeler’s Training camp in Latrobe, PA.

steelers, pittsburgh, bucket list

Rev Kane at a Steeler Game in Pittsburgh

From Pittsburgh I’ll be heading east to NY and hopefully Boston and see some family and friends before leaving the country.  My plans are to head for Glasgow, Scotland and after a couple of days in Glasgow and a stop at one of my favorite places St. Mungo’s Museum of Religious Art. I’ll head off to hike the Western Highland and the Great Glen Way. I’ve done the Great Glen before and really looking forward to the full two-week experience.

happiness, hikingFrom there after a quick stop in Edinburgh I head for Spain and plan to hike the Camino de Santiago Primitivo, this should be another 2-3 three-week hike ending at the Spanish Coast.

happiness scotland

Rev Kane goin native in the Scottish Highlands

From Spain it will be train time, train rides down through Portugal with a couple of stops eventually heading to Gibraltar and the ferry ride to Tangier in Morocco.  A couple of weeks in Morocco and then back through Spain, and eventually Glasgow and a flight back to New York. Once in New York I’m planning on doing the 100 mile NY section of the Appalachian Trail, including the last 7 miles of Connecticut that I have left to do.  Once completed that will give 8 out of 14 states finished on the Appalachian Trail.

be happy, hiking, appalachian trail, tennessee

Rev Kane on the Appalachian Trail at the Tennessee border.

From there the plan is to head off to Oaxaca City for a few months, continue to work on my Spanish language skills and do a whole lot of writing!  As well as working on a new website that I’m working on with a friend, but more about that at a later time.

So in looking back at the last six months although a lot has changed and it’s been a wild roller-coaster I’m pretty pleased with the year so far.  I’ve been through a lot but my plans are in place and I have one heck of an adventure to look forward to in the next six months.  And on the social media front, this past weekend I did finally hit that 10,000 social media follower goal, which was a goal for the year, it’s really important to believe in yourself and so far, so good in 2018!

Hopefully in looking back at your own year you see lot’s of good and lot’s of happiness, challenges overcome and that you have some positive things to look forward to coming up, including many happy days my friends.  ~ Rev Kane

 

 

Posted in Appalachian Trail (AT) Happiness, Happiness is Adventure, personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rev Kane, Celebrating 10,000!

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Michael Kane

Rev Kane, Celebrating 10,000!

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Thank you!!!

So my goal for this year was to reach 10,000 followers across my social media accounts and I’m very excited to say that I hit the mark this past week!

rev kane, slower pace of life, can make you happy

A slower pace of life can make you happy

First off I want to say thank you to all of you who support the Ministry of Happiness in all of it’s various forms and outlets, I deeply appreciate your interest and support.  As a reminder of what all of those ways are, below is a list, just click on the links and please feel free to share with others if you like what we do here. ~ Rev Kane

To subscribe to the blog and get every post in your email:  Follow this link

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Pinterest

Links to my books, first my book about hiking the Appalachian Trail and also my first book of poetry, Otherness.

 

Posted in Random Happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Take Time to Stop and Take in the Beauty Around You

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Michael Kane

Take Time to Stop and Take in the Beauty Around You

Appalachian trail, happiness, hiking

Fall on the AT

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. ~ Dale Carnegie

We are all busy people, we have jobs and families.  We have responsibilities and commitments.  The last week and a half at work have been especially stressful.  I was out of the office for the most part for four weeks so the work has piled up and the deadlines, well the deadlines are best addressed by a better writer than me, Douglas Adams.

It’s been a hard time for another reason as well, one that  I was only aware of apparently on a subconscious level until my sister reminded me today.  It’s been two years since my granny past.  She was an incredibly important person to me and I miss her dearly.  I wrote about her before in a piece called, Happiness is Granny, and here’s a picture of her from a couple of years ago.

happiness, granny

My granny looking cool

Add to the mix people acting especially stupidly lately, things not going the way I’d like.  I’ve also been very quietly dealing with what I can only describe as some personal emotional devastation lately.  I’ve worked through most of it, in the next week it comes to ahead for me.  All of this has amped up my stress levels pretty significantly.  However, Thanksgiving is coming and it is by far my favorite holiday and I’ve got a nine-day Christmas break coming as well.  So things will get better my friends.

In the middle of all of this the other day I walked out of my office in a pretty high level of frustration and looked out at the mountains west of campus.

happiness, photography

The view from outside my office

I was instantly reminded of my favorite teacher in high school, Mr. Sullivan, the first person to truly teach me the lesson that we have to appreciate the beauty all around us.  You see our classroom faced the Catskill Mountains and there were many beautiful views like the one above.  He would on those days suddenly stop class, turn to us, command us in his best Shakespearean voice, “to the windows children, to the windows, look at the beauty, look at the beauty.”  He was a magnificent human and an even better teacher.

As a traveler an adventurer and a photographer I often put myself in magnificent places where there is beauty all around.  It’s how I get great photos, it’s not much talent, just me being smart enough to put myself in really great places like the Himalayas, Ireland, Havasupai Falls or even Burning Man. You can see over 1200 of my images on my Instagram account @ReverendMichaelKane.

happiness, burning man

One of my favorite photos from Burning Man this year

It’s easy to stop and appreciate the beauty when you’re at an event with thousands of pieces of art, or in the highest mountains on earth.  The real trick, the truly important trick, is to remember to do this in everyday life.

happiness, flowers, photography

A picture I stopped and took while driving between meetings this spring

We have to look at beauty everyday.  While we’re in the middle of driving kids to soccer practice, when we’re walking to our cars from our office or taking out the garbage.  Those are the moments it’s truly important to stop and drink in the beauty that is all around us.  Doing this will bring you happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Some Other Posts You Might Enjoy!

My Polar Bear Adventure

My Himalayan Trek

Burning Man

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Happiness Resources: Making Change Happen

Posted on June 9, 2018 by Michael Kane

Happiness Resources: Making Change Happen

happiness humor change

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself ~ Leo Tolstoy

Tonight a couple of quick resources related to making and keeping positive change in your life.  I especially like the first piece it has a lot of great advice, so give it a read and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

 

First a great piece on the Anatomy of Change

Personal Growth: Four Obstacles to Personal Change

Five Steps to Positive Life Change, this one is a little more theoretical and wordy

 

Posted in happiness resources | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Goodbye Anthony Bourdain

Posted on June 8, 2018 by Michael Kane

Goodbye Anthony Bourdain

anthony bourdain, suicide, travel, adventureI woke up this morning to the news that Anthony Bourdain had died, or more accurately had committed suicide.  It made me incredibly sad, if you read this blog and follow my travels it will come as no surprise that I saw Anthony Bourdain as both a kindred spirit and someone who I looked up to.  His life, being paid to travel, explore and tell stories would be my dream life.  So many people like and looked up to him, his popularity spread across a lot of age groups.  In the last five years I’ve twice been given what I consider to be an amazing compliment.  Both times, by younger women, I was told you kind of remind me of Anthony Bourdain, one even added, you know the attractive older guy thing.  I’ll take that compliment and comparison every single time.

One of my friends on Facebook this morning captured it very well when she wrote he was one of us.  I really got what she meant, he might have been this mainstream CNN chef guy, but in fact he just felt like he was one of us.  What do I mean by one of us, well, complicated, a bit of a square peg, not quite normal.  I tend to drift towards the people who don’t quite fit, who are a little off, people who are more than they seem and often yes, this also means they are at least a bit damaged.  Anthony Bourdain, although I never met him, very much felt like one of us.

Suicide has been very much in the news with the death of Kate Spade earlier in the week and a report that suicide rates in the United States have been climbing over the last ten years, alarming so in some places.  The message about suicide and mental health gets hammered home when it’s someone famous, someone who seems to have everything the rest of us dream about.  Recently, I posted what Will Wheaton wrote about his own mental health, depression and anxiety it’s a really amazing read.

I’ve written in the past about my own depression, my own brush with suicide, the fact that thankfully when I had the gun in my mouth I was too much of a coward to pull the trigger.  I know that I’ll never commit suicide after that moment, after years of working on my own issues, but I’d be a liar if I said that I no longer understood that feeling.  That I still don’t have those momentary thoughts where I think it’s all pointless, those moments where the mouth of the well of despair isn’t wide open and inviting me to jump back in.  So I understand how someone who seems to have everything can end up back in that well. I’m sorry Anthony Bourdain found his way back there.

In my biography I call myself a sampler of life, I love life in all of its myriad of differences, love exploring every bit of it, finding new things, new kindred spirits and experiences.  Life is so short and tenuous, but such an amazing adventure.  It is always my hope that those who struggle can get a glimpse of that, can find a way to reach out to the people who care about them in the hard moments, although it often doesn’t seem like it, please know they are out there.  What I want for everyone today is a long comforting hug from someone who cares.

Goodbye Anthony Bourdain

anthony bourdain, suicide, travel, adventureAs you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.  ~ Anthony Bourdain

 

 

 

 

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments