You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Today the most beautiful thing I saw were the decorations at the mall on my walk. They did a really nice job with some drop lights and these hairy wreath stars. I’m not a big Christmas person but the decorations were quite nice an I got some nice images for my Instagram page.
What did I learn today?
As with most days, it’s not so much something brand new that I learned, but something that I was reminded of applied to a new situation or in a new way. Today I was reminded just how bad leadership is at most institutions and how important it is that there are good people in key positions that make institution works. A really talented administrator that I know was up for a position they had been an interim in for a year and a half. From all reports they did a magnificent job and the campus thought they were a shoe-in for the permanent position. Of course, they didn’t, it seems that the president was intimidated by their success. The good thing for my friend, they had anticipated this outcome and have concurrently been offered a job at another institution.
What made me happy today?
I made a great hire two years ago, a really excellent faculty member. They are also incredibly nice, someone, were they not someone I supervise, I would absolutely spend time with and likely be good friends with. Today they dropped a lovely Christmas present for me in the office, that gift included a six pack of Coke, and if you know me, you know I’m a bit of a Coke junky so that six pack made me smile.
Me and my niece back in our crime fighting days. Picture purposely blurry to protect our identities, 🙂
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. ~ Oscar Wilde
The Three Questions – December 3, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Today the most beautiful thing I saw was an image on Threads. It was an amazing shot of a ponderosa pine rising out of a dead forest through the fog. While it was a color photo, the fog was offset by the stark black of the dead trees. Really amazing shot.
What did I learn today?
What I learned today, a reminder of something I already knew, which it so often is, is that we often worry far to much about situations. Today was one of those days at work where I had three things on my schedule that all seemed like they would be horrible. I had a fair amount of trepidation and stress anticipating all three. However, as is often the case, the actual encounters all ended up being fine. I expected and angry student, but they understood. I fully expected a meeting I was not looking forward to, to be stressful and contentious and it ended up going quite smoothly. Finally, I had to deal with a personnel problem of a serious nature by having a conversation that I really expected to go potentially horribly, but it went really well. We all spend far too much time dreading things that often don’t happen, or don’t happen the way we expect. It’s hard, but we need to stop over thinking what might happen and just see what does happen.
What made me happy today?
What made me happy today was a text message and conversation with my twelve year-old niece. She texted me a funny Elf on the Shelf image and that led to a quick check in and chat. Her and I have a great connection, that was really solidified ten years ago when I was rehabbing my knee injury from my Appalachian Trail hike and stayed with them for a time. Since the rest of her family had busy schedules and she was a munchkin who needed to eat dinner earlier than the rest, we would dine together each night. Each night she would regale me with stories of her busy day. While it may seem that a day at day care is not that exciting, her imagination beefed up the excitement. She would tell me all about the adventures that her and her imaginary Woowoo got up to every day. They thwarted criminals, did business transactions and often took their day care provider’s boat out on the river for adventures. These were some of the happiest and most interesting dinners I’ve ever had, chatting with her tonight brought back those memories.
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Three Questions – December 2, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
A friend sent me a photo of their office area today and I saw the most beautiful painting hanging above the desk. I mentioned how much I liked it. Then they told me that in fact, it had been painted by their nine year-old son. I was totally blown away, this kid has a future in art.
What did I learn today?
I learned today that karma can be interconnected with friendship. I did something really nice for someone today and then later in the day it literally came back to me twenty-five times. The form it returned in was a reminder that often, time and distance are far less relevant than connection and friendship. What matters is that we care and take care of each other.
What made me happy today?
I was out for my daily walk today and saw the most amazing moment. There’s a kiddy swim place near me, with a great name Le Petite Baleen (the tiny whale). So a little guy, two or three years-old wearing a huge backpack and looking adorable was waiting outside with what looked like his mom and grandpa. He was waiting anxiously to go in and his mom was giving him mom side-eye to hold his position. Then, finally she said to him, “ok, let’s go in.” He was so excited, that instead of running straight in, he busted out a giant smile, and ran in a full little circle before motoring inside. The absolute pure joy on his face was so contagious that I and everyone else around him also burst into a smile. A pure moment of joy and happiness for all of us.
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart. ~ Helen Keller
The Three Questions – Day 1
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I saw (encountered) today?
I’m lucky today to actually have a picture of the most beautiful thing I saw today.
I love hummingbirds! I have a feeder on my deck that sits right in front of where I’m typing this right now. They are both beautiful and amazing creatures, I love the way they zip around and often, when I’m on my deck, they’ll come and hover right in front of me. The most beautiful thing I encountered today was this hummingbird, floating in a pack of purple flowers getting a meal. It was so focused on the bounty in front of it that I was able to make several attempts and finally get a nice little picture of it feeding.
What did I learn today?
What I learned today, was a reminder. As I’m starting this project and getting back into my good daily habits, I’ve seen an immediate positive bump in my mood. What I was reminded of was that have a goal to focus on is something I need to have to be at my best.
What made me happy today?
Again today is an auspicious day as I have a picture of what made me happy today.
I am a gardener, I moved apartments a year ago partly so that I would have a patio/balcony where I could have a small garden. The beauty of living in Northern California, was that this year I planted my tomato plants in March, started harvesting in May and today, December 1st was able to make what will likely be my last Caprese salad with tomatoes from my garden. What made me so happy, was not just still eating tomatoes from my garden in December but that these tomatoes were the absolute tastiest tomatoes that came out of the garden this year.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~ Confucius
Three Questions, 365 Days
I created the three questions approach while attempting to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail in 2014. The three questions are:
What was the most beautiful thing I saw (encountered) today?
What did I learn today?
What made me happy today?
These questions were created for a couple of purposes. First, I have always been frustrated by the fact that when I travel I fall behind in my journaling, then end up trying to catch up and often end up missing days during the trip. I wanted a way to capture each day in a way that I would even be willing to complete at the end of long days when I was tired, and a method that I could use to easily catch up if I missed a day.
In preparing for the Appalachian Trail, I did the physical training, I bought all the right gear, set up food drops and bought the best map/guide for the trail, AWOL’s guide to the Appalachian Trail. I also read a lot of books about hiking the trail. The one thing that hit me that I wasn’t prepared for, was the mental aspect of the trail. How would I keep my positivity when things got really hard? The three questions fit my journaling criteria but also served an additional purpose, by recording these positive thoughts at the end of the day they acted as a reminder, even on the really hard days that good things were happening every day. And because I knew I would be answering these questions at the end of the day, it made me think more about and focus on the beautiful, happy things that I encountered throughout the day. I changed the first question from the original beautiful thing I saw each day, to the most beautiful thing I encountered. Sometimes the most beautiful thing was a sound, a smell or an act of kindness.
This approach was incredibly helpful on the trail when things got hard, and they did, right out of the gate. As I talk about in my book Appalachian Trail Happiness, it rained, sleeted and snowed for 17 of the first 21 days on the trail and I nearly quit. Keeping my positivity in any little way, helped make my trip more enjoyable and even possible. I wrote about this in a post after I came off of the trail.
As I’ve written about lately I’ve been going through a tough time, honestly I pretty much shutdown over the last three weeks. I haven’t been very happy, and that’s not acceptable to me, especially as the Minister of Happiness. Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten away from all of the things I know I have to do to maintain my happiness. I haven’t been eating right, exercising consistently enough, my sleep has been off and I just generally have not been very productive, nor motivated in any way to be productive.
So over the Thanksgiving holiday I’ve started working back to what I need to do as I prepare to meet for a surgical consult later this week. Over the holiday I made really good food. I love Thanksgiving, love cooking and eating and did a whole lot of both over the last four days. Including harvesting what are likely my last garden tomatoes of the year and with basil I grow, turning them into a lovely Caprese salad. These tomatoes may have actually been the tastiest all year so I was really happy about the salad.
This weekend I’ve made progress on everything I know I’m supposed to do, getting back into my routines and getting back on track. I also made a decision to write my next book. I’ve been toying with various book ideas related to the MOH blog and none of them really resonated well with me. Hell I even wrote a full first draft of one and scrapped it. This weekend I decided to return to the three questions idea. Right now I really need that daily reminder and boost and it provides some really great material to write around. I’ll also try to kick them up to the blog regularly as well.
So here’s to a little bit of a new start, and my project to answer the three questions every day for the next year and hopefully during a whole lot of happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. ~ Isaac Newton
Ok, let’s go from the mayhem to consistency to gratitude tonight.
Mayhem
Last week I wrote a long post about my heart issues and the potential decision paths that lay ahead of me. I also talked about the decision I had made, but I’m apparently living in the Twilight Zone. The CT scan to confirm my echo cardiogram results did not do what we expected and now I’ve been referred to a surgical consult on December 6th. The upside is that after looking up the doctor I’m meeting with I’m super happy with his experience and credentials. And after speaking with his staff I’m even more impressed, so all of my plans are once again, completely up in the air. And here’s a little musical interlude that seems so unbelievably relevant these days, Twilight Zone by Golden Earring.
Consistency
Consistency is an overlooked quality in life. We are programmed to always search for excitement, the big show, the grand gesture. We often overlook the consistent performers in our lives. While it’s always nice to have the grand gesture, the thing that I’ve come to value more and more in life is consistency. While you riding into my life on a white horse in my hour of crisis is a wonderful gesture, the people I truly value are the ones who showed up on the random Thursday for no damn reason, and regularly at random times again, for no reason other than that you care. Don’t get me wrong, everyone has busy lives, a million commitments and lots going on, that’s why I value that consistency so much.
Gratitude
I have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. I don’t think I can quite say my health (gotta laugh or you cry) but I can. I’m not dying of cancer, I’m mobile and basically I’m physically able to do everything I want to do in life, with some minor don’t pop your aneurysm limitations. I’m thankful for the consistent ones in my life, you know who you are. I’m thankful to be where I am in life, for what I’ve achieved and what being in this spot allows me to do for the people I care about.
I’m thankful for the amazing life I’ve lived, for all that I’ve done and what I still plan on doing in the time I have left. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I’m excited to cook this year, to eat and just to relax. I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage. ~ Smashing Pumpkins
The World is a Vampire
A non-typical Ministry of Happiness post, on a non-typical posting night. Maybe the deepest and most personal post I’ve written for this blog. It will almost certainly be a bit intense, deep and likely bordering on stream of consciousness. Not for the feint of heart, or easily disturbed, you’ve been warned. Appropriately the picture above is me riding through San Francisco in a driverless robot death taxi.
The world is a vampire, sent to drain Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames And what do I get, for my pain? Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
Even though I know – I suppose I’ll show All my cool and cold – like old Job
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
What a fucking couple of weeks. Seriously, this has been as mentally as anguishing a period of time as I can remember for a very, very long time.
The source of it all is expectations. I’m a planner, although most people looking at my life from the outside think I’m a crazy risk taker I’m really not. I certainly push the envelope and get outside of my comfort zone, but my comfort zone, because of that, is a bit wider than most people’s. And yes, I do take risks but they’re calculated risks. What people don’t see is all of the often months of planning and preparation that go into the things I do. What they see are the photos on Instagram or Facebook and think, that dude is crazy. A great example of this is a post I once did, The World’s Dangerous Reverend, it’s a post featuring selfies I have with a polar bear in Canada and a king cobra in Africa.
So a couple of weeks ago I went for my annual cardiac assessment. I have two heart conditions an ascending aortic aneurysm and a bifurcated aortic valve. One if untreated kills me slow, one if untreated kills me fast, I’ve lived with that reality now for about eight years. And it’s why of course I have my annual assessments. It is a certainty at some point that they will crack me open like a lobster and do open heart surgery on me. So when I went in for my annual assessment I expected one of two likely outcomes, things progressing slowly worse, or oh shit, time to crack you open. Well, after my test, but before my consultation the results showed that the aortic stenosis caused by my valve defect had shifted into the moderate/severe range and that coupled with a cryptic message from my cardiologist largely convinced me it was lobster cracking time. But like I said, that was a result I was prepared for, but that was not what I got. Instead, I got an option I hadn’t considered, the old, let’s wait, check and see.
There’s a good reason to wait, I agree with my doctor and understand the reasoning. The younger you are when you get a valve replacement, the shorter the time it typically lasts, so instead of the 10 – 15 years you see listed, it’s typically 7-10, closer to 7 often. That means surgery now means surgery again at 67ish, and then my doctor said something that may have been the most surreal thing ever said to me. That typically they don’t do a third replacement, and after some research the literature says things about a third replacement like, poor mortality and increased morbidity. So effectively what my doctor said, and she wasn’t subtle about it, replacement now, another at 67 then we let you die at 74. This friends, will throw you into an immediate existential crisis. And while that was a pretty good slap to the head, it was in fact not what truly threw me for a loop.
You see I was prepared for surgery, had thought through what it meant for my impending retirement, it would have delayed it a year, I’d be off for three months recovering. I had even thought through all of the plans related to the recovery. Like I said above, I’m a planner and definitely an over thinker, but I have a brain that operates really quickly and so I work through all the options, every time. The other option I wasn’t just prepared for, but excited for. My plan was to retire, hike the Appalachian Trail for six months then work at a much less stressful job until I hit medicare age at sixty-five.
What I really hadn’t considered, a potential pathway I really missed is where I’m at, in limbo. No surgery, so that pathway is out. Can’t retire and hike the trail because now not knowing how fast my valve is degrading, we only have one data point, I can’t get caught on substandard insurance. If I were to hike the trail I’d be on the ACA and while that’s an amazing and wonderful thing that I’ve utilized several times, I want to be on the best insurance possible when having open heart surgery. You know, since they are going to stop my heart for a few hours, I want good surgeons and not to have to pay tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket. Welcome to the rat cage of health care in America.
Limbo means uncertainty and not to mix Christian afterlives, limbo for me is hell. I don’t like uncertainty at large levels. Hiking into town and not knowing if you’ll sleep in town or head back to the trail uncertainty, fine. Head to the French Quarter with no idea where we’re going to eat, fun time adventure. Not having any bloody idea what the plan is for my life over the next five years, absolute hell.
But I’m a planner and a problem solver so I’m all the way deep into what’s next. There are three main pathways facing me right now.
Pathway 1. Stay in my current job through to my assessment next October, then if things haven’t progressed retire from my current gig and make a move to a less stressful job back east. Of course that means staying in my current job for another year. And honestly, I have no idea if from a mental health perspective I can survive that. I work in a job where, like a lot of us face, there is raging incompetence. Of course we all deal with that in people we work for, people we work with and for those of us who manage people, in the people who work for us. There’s a term that is employed legitimately and far too often in my job, weaponized incompetence. This is where people claim to be unable to do something, or purposefully do it poorly so that someone will just come in and do it for you, so you don’t have to do it yourself. If you’re a parent you are very familiar with this concept, if a kid poorly does the dishes, or half-asses mopping the floor you might get frustrated and jump in and do it. I employed this as a kid and can here my mom saying, “oh jesus just let me do it”, as she leapt in and let me off the hook. Now it might be annoying but understandable in a kid, or a student. And maybe forgivable to a degree with an employee in a first job. But nearly every single person I work with has a graduate or multiple graduate degrees. It’s maddening, unforgivable and quite honestly just shitty behavior on their behalf. As a friend says quite frequently when we talk about work, these are unserious people. So I don’t think the one-year option is a great choice. But there’s always another side and in this case it’s my instinct to be a money grubbing whore. I make a lot of money, far more money than I ever thought I would make. One more year in this job would mean a significant bump in my retirement savings as well as a bump in my monthly retirement check. So mental health and stress versus money. I also am the financial fall back for a couple of family members which also factors into this as well.
Pathway 2. Take a less stressful job in the current system I’m in somewhere in California. This has the advantage of bumping my pension as much as $25,000 a year if I work another three years, while allowing me to put some additional money back in terms of retirement savings. Of course, this means derailing my plans to move east for another three to five years but it has the advantage of staying in my current retirement and healthcare systems. And the universe just dropped a really great job opening in my lap that I would have an excellent shot at and would be a lower stress and interesting job that would no longer involve managing faculty. Of course it’s a $120,000 a year pay cut.
Pathway 3. Start the job search back east, not jumping into any job that works but a job I think I’ll really enjoy, at a four-year school in an area that I want to live. It’s the least financial beneficial option but not a bad one, as it was essentially the original plan, minus the absolute regenerative joy of hiking the Appalachian Trail. But it does get me into what I fully want the rest of my life to look like.
So these are the pathway choices out in front of me and honestly, I could choose any of them. I’ve lived with each in my head for a few days each. I’ve run some really wild scenarios, fleeing to Portugal or Mexico. Hell there have been moments when I have seriously considered just fucking disappearing.
I want to make sure I say this in this post. I’m still a lucky man, while I may not have a lot of time ahead of me in life, although I hope I have more than I expect. I also have options and none of my options are particularly bad. At my age people in my life have things happen to them constantly that remind me of this, I have parents in their 80’s with their own issues. The week I was getting my news a friend randomly had one of her lungs collapse and this week a friend told me their spouse has been diagnosed with a degenerative disease that often means less than ten years of life left. I’m nowhere near being in that level of hell. I’m writing about my situation not for sympathy, but because writing is how I deal with things in my life and process options. And, because this blog is focused on happiness and there’s a lesson in this for all of us.
That lesson is happiness is the decision. What I’ve come back to is the most basic concept of the Ministry of Happiness, that happiness in life is something I value and of primary importance. I’ve worked in one form or another since I was a little kid. In elementary school I would mow lawns, rake leaves and shovel snow for money. To no one’s surprise I folded pizza boxes for slices and as a bit of a juvenile delinquent even did a little stealing. In high school all of these side gigs, minus the crime, continued at higher levels. When I went to college I always had side gigs, including an illegal one for a time. I worked part-time on campus and off campus jobs, I worked as a resident assistant to get a discount and better housing. Even in graduate school, in addition to teaching for my assistantship, I taught extra classes and for two years even worked as a personal shopper for Talbots working the 10PM to 6AM shift in an international call center. Since leaving graduate school I’ve worked continually for the last 25 years and all during that time had side gigs and/or extra teaching assignments.
Throughout my career, while I had the privilege of working in a field that by it’s very nature is giving back by helping others meet their educational and career goals, I have rarely been in a job I really enjoyed. Honestly, the last full-time gig I had that I really loved was being a MESA Director at Hartnell College. But the job was financially untenable for me, led to me working two and for a brief time, three full-time positions for the college at 80 hours a week, for less money than most dean’s positions paid. So I made the move into being a dean and have done this for the last twenty-two years, happily with some great travel breaks every three to four years. It’s been a good career, it’s noble work and I know that I’ve had a positive impact on literally hundreds, maybe thousands of students, staff and faculty over my career. I’ve had some really special moments of turning people’s career paths around and helping others clear a hurdle they never believed they could that allowed them to change their lives. There were people along the way who did this for me, I’m just happy to have been able to pay that forward on the other side.
I’ve always looked to this point in life to be able to be able to finally do what I want to do, both work-wise and also in my personal life. I want more time with my nieces and nephews, I want the opportunity to do all the things I do love, hiking, foraging, photography, writing, astronomy, gardening and even getting back to doing some aquatic science purely for fun. I want to create a sustainable property and it’s a very old dream and I named this future property long ago, Invisible Sun Farm. The name comes from an old Police song that I first heard as a video on either Friday night videos or the Midnight Special back in the early 80’s. The song hit me like a ton of brick, the video is amazing. Ghost in the Machine has always been one of my absolute favorite albums.
You see, while I’ve had a good life while working, I’ve not been doing what makes me happy. So as I looked these pathways and have been agonizing over the decision. In the end, the difference in how close I can get to a place of happiness both literally and emotionally has got to be the deciding factor, after all, I’m the bloody Minister of Happiness. So today, literally today I came to a decision about what path I’ll follow.
It has to be number three, now I’m also overly practical and a planner as I’ve mentioned. So I’ll apply for some in-state jobs in case that has to be the option for some unforeseen reason. But I’ll start looking for gigs in the east, there’s no extreme hurry and lord knows if I miss one more winter that won’t break my heart at all. But it’s the combination of the right job in the right place I’ll be pursuing. I just honestly can’t stay in my current job much longer, the money is fantastic, but the incompetence that leads to so much frustration and stress is untenable. So it’s a new day, a good day because I’m out of limbo, out of the uncertainty I hate. A good omen about the decision, my renewed passport arrived today and a nomad is never happy without a valid passport in their possession.
One of the last parts of the decision is a bold statement I’ve made recently. I’ve spent my entire life effectively alone, I’m no longer interested in that being my reality. And honestly, staying where I am, knowing I’m heading east at some point is not conducive to changing my reality. So the move also increases that chance of creating new community and making that happen. Please do not take that as me being open to blind dates, but absolutely open to new possibilities.
Life is hard and life is short. We only do this once, it’s important to make an impact, to do good things and take care of people you care about. But it’s also imperative that you find a way to be happy. The biggest lesson I ever learned in this comes from the example of the life of the person I was named for, my Uncle Mikey. He was a great guy with a larger than life personality. I was named after the right person, he told great stories, loved kids, and was a great cook. When I was growing up he owned a cabin with a big above ground pool. It literally became the summer center or our entire extended families’ life. Without that pool and that cabin, I likely wouldn’t have known half of my cousins and their families, wouldn’t have had so many fun days in my childhood as a kid. Nor would I have spent so much time with his dad, my great, great Uncle Rocco who on quiet weekday mornings I would play bocce with and listen to stories in Italian. Uncle Mikey took care of his parents his whole adult life, took care of everyone he could, never married, never had kids of his own, yes it seems I was named after the right guy. But later in life, when his parents passed I saw him get taken advantage of by younger women who played on his loneliness. In the end I don’t think he was very happy. So while I’ve followed his life’s examples in many ways, I plan on doing my final chapter differently and that played heavily in this decision as well.
So there’s a whole lot of heavy for you tonight my friends, likely far more than you ever wanted to know about me and my life. A lot of writing to say a simple thing, happiness is important and we have to do what needs to done to make sure we live a happy life and have lots of happy days my friends., thanks for reading ~ Rev Kane
I actually think there’s an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis
Welcome to Getting Older
Welcome to getting older, it’s happening to each of us every minute. It sneaks up on you, and the cliche is really true it all goes by fast. Suddenly your sixty, or at least that’s where I’m at. So what inspired this post tonight was the Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul boxing match that recently happened.
First some background. I’m a huge boxing fan, I love the sport and have been watching it steadily since I was a kid watching Muhammad Ali. My mom was a big Ali fan, personally I preferred Joe Frazier, but as a kid in the 70’s I got to watch a lot of classic heavy weight boxing matches. Then in the 80’s I got to watch the golden age of the welterweight division with fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard, and two of my favorites Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran. Then when I was in high school in the nearby town of Catskill a kid named Mike Tyson started training with Cus D’Amato. I got to meet Mike a few times, back then he was quiet, intense and honestly scary as hell. I even got to see a couple of his early fights, although they didn’t last past the first round.
I saw all of Mike’s heavyweight championship fights, made a little money off a local rumor that he would lose to Buster Douglas, a story only told over a drink or a slice of pizza. And even knowing who Mike was, watched in horror as he chomped down on Evander Holyfield’s ear. So it was with a bit of nostalgia that I sat down to watch the Tyson/Paul fight.
There was also something else at work and it relates to getting older. In thinking about the Tyson fight, I think every former athlete from any level was kind of pulling for him. We all want to believe that hey, although we haven’t played a sport seriously in decades, sometimes many decades, we all still believe we’ve got another game, another at bat, another round still in us at a decent level. We know that we’re likely deluding ourselves but it’s a thought you hang on to, it’s probably a guy thing, a piece of our ego we cling on to and probably should never act on.
I remember my father’s moment. I was about nineteen, I’d played baseball throughout high school and in college, even got paid to play for half a summer after I failed out of college, oh and I did that while I was a drunk. So I was a pretty good ball player. I’m at home and my father calls, some group he was affiliated with had a softball team and were short some players and had called him and asked him to play and he included me. So we show up and granted, I was overweight and never really looked like an athlete and so we get there and they put my forty something year-old dad in the lineup and me on the bench. I was pretty annoyed at the whole situation and looking around at who was in the lineup knew I was clearly a better player than at least half the team. So I sit on the bench as the team is in the field, they get through the first inning, come to bat, go back into the field and in the second inning my dad comes up to bat. He hits the ball out of the infield goes running down the first base line and immediately pulls a hamstring and hits the ground. I absolutely had a bit of schadenfreude at that moment and for an instant thought, cool, maybe I’ll get into the game now. Should have known better, my dad immediately says take me home, but I could see that moment of, shit I’m too old to be doing this in his eyes, along with the dirt all over his clothes.
My moment came about two years ago. I’ve stayed pretty active my adult life and even during the pandemic started running for the first time. But all of that is not playing a sport. So I was running at the track on campus where I work and sometimes the baseball team hits home runs in practice that land down on the track area. Eventually a player or two will come down and collect the balls. After my run one day I was walking back up from the track to my office and there was a ball that they had missed. I had played third base and right field when I played baseball. I didn’t have a cannon, but I had a pretty good arm, so throwing a baseball across the diamond or from deep right field to second base, a pretty good distance, was a pretty routine thing for me. So here was this ball, I picked it up and although practice was over I decided I would throw it over the bullpen onto the outfield so they’d get the ball the next day at practice. Basically about two-thirds of the distance from third base to first base. So I grabbed the ball, stepped forward and threw it, the ball dropped barely into the bullpen. In that moment I was beyond thrilled there were no witnesses, it was a tragic hammer to my manhood and my ego.
I saw the look that I know I had on my face in that moment on Mike Tyson’s face in the ring at the end of each round as he slowly walked back to the corner. He looked like a fifty-eight year old man, a grandpa in boxing shorts. Now a couple of things, first, good on him for taking that chance. Second, he also got paid about twenty million dollars to do that fight. But it just shows that we all get old, even the baddest man on Earth.
And you know what, it’s ok, it’s life, we’re all going through it and at times it certainly isn’t easy. This is really relevant to me right now having to really face my mortality after my recent discussions with my cardiologist. The trick is friends and I’ve tried like hell to do this, is to make the time you have worth something. Take some chances in life and get out of your comfort zone, make a positive impact on others, change somebody’s life for the good. Make strides in your life, overcome as many obstacles as you can that come up in front of you, take pride in doing that. As you age, take some of the wisdom you’ve gathered from overcoming those obstacles and sharing to help some other people overcome theirs. Make some people happy and most of all make sure you take time to make yourself happy and enjoy your life. And as best you can, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Pizza makes me thing that anything is possible. ~ Henry Rollins
A Lovely Day in San Francisco
As I mentioned in my last post, last week was a rough week and anticipating it I took a few days off. So today was the last day of my vacation and I decided to take a walk around the city and use a gift certificate I had for pizza.
First the pizza!
On the Pizza Page, I only review pizza places that serve slices. As such I did a review of Tony’s Slice House and wasn’t very impressed. I did mention in that review that I thought doing a sit down at Tony’s Pizza Napoletana would likely be a better experience. Well, at the Pizza and Bagel festival this summer the VIP gift bag included a $25 gift certificate to Tony’s so today I decided to check it out. The service was a bit slow but once they got to me the server was very pleasant and attentive. As I always do when I’m reviewing a pizza place I go pretty basic, so I got a classic American thin crust pepperoni pizza.
The pizza was solid, personally a bit too much pepperoni for me but the pepperoni itself was beyond good, super tasty, nice and oily and great cupping. The crust was perfect, light and crunchy and the cheese on point. The sauce was a bit sweet for my taste but this was a really good pie. Tony Gemignani is one of the most well-known and respected pizza makers in America and he’s won a whole lot of awards for his work, so Tony’s is kind of gotta do in terms of San Francisco pizza and I’m glad I finally got here and I highly recommend it.
It was a lovely sunny fall day in San Francisco, absolutely perfect weather. So I took BART into the city, jumped off at Civic Center and donated a couple of books to the San Francisco Public Library. I then walked up Stockton past Union Square and all the Christmas decorations then strolled through a very busy Chinatown. From there I walked into Little Italy and over to Tony’s.
The area around Tony’s has a lot of quintessential San Francisco landmarks. Besides Chinatown, Union Square and Little Italy there is the Transamerica Tower, the old clubs around Little Italy and of course City Lights Bookstore. It’s been awhile since I wandered in City Lights, so I popped in and found a book that I wanted to buy. Honestly as a pizza lover and book nerd, hitting Tony’s and City Lights in the same day makes for an amazing afternoon. Finally I headed back to BART down Columbus and over Sansome, a nice little walk that allowed me to finally get a nice shot of the Transamerica Tower. So here are a few photos of the day. I hope your day was equally as pleasant my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Some days are just bad days, that’s all. You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that’s just the way it is! ~ Dita Von Teese
Been a Hell of a Week!
First off, so excited to use a Dita Von Teese quote, she’s truly a fascinating and amazing woman, if you don’t know who she is look her up. She is a true burlesque artist and a force in the fashion world.
What a week, this week we had our largest annual event at work and happily it went very well. We bring several hundred high school students to campus to make them familiar with career technical education programs at our college and let them experience college for a day. It’s a huge event made possible by some really great faculty and student assistants that we have.
Of course the election happened this week. I keep politics off this site so I’ll suffice it to say that the results of this election have hit many people really hard. Regardless of what side of the political aisle that you are on, when people you care about are hurting, it impacts you.
I also had my cardiology consultation this week and the decision not to move forward with my open heart surgery I do believe is the correct medical decision, however it absolutely flips my world upside down, cancels my impending retirement, cancels my Appalachian Trail hike and has left me in a serious quandary with a lot of decisions to make.
A person I really care about had some shoulder pain the other night when they went to bed. At midnight the pain got unbearable and they went to the ER. Turns out, for no apparent reason what so ever, their left lung collapsed and they spent the day in the hospital.
Likely as a result of much of this, my back, which is always a bit of tight muscle ball of a mess, got super tight and painful.
So it’s been a hell of a week but I kind of saw it coming. The election date is not a mystery, the date of my cardiologist consultation was also set some time ago, and so I knew this week had the possibility to be pretty heavy. So what do we do when we see a heavy day or week coming?
We’ve talked many, many times on this blog about self-care and by now, hopefully you have all identified ways in which you can soothe yourself and make yourself feel better. So it’s always a good idea to have those things prepped so that you can jump into your best self-care option when things go south for you. So if your go to is Ben & Jerry’s, keep that favorite flavor in the freezer, if it’s a type of really specific chocolate have a little stash you can access. If it’s a spa day, maybe have a gift certificate on hand so you don’t have to worry about having the cash on hand when you need that spa day.
For me, it’s a range of things. As you all know and could easily predict, there was pizza. I also had pre-planned by taking a few days off at the end of last week and the beginning of this week. So I had a good pizza, I spent some time looking at waves at the beach, I got a massage and have done a whole lot of writing. I also, as I do when things get particular hard, had some conversations with folks I trust. I also spent time working on the remnants of the tiny patio garden, I’ve still got a dozen full-sized tomatoes ripening on the vine, as well as a couple of ripe ones in the kitchen, this makes me very happy. I also decided to make some small changes in my apartment, moved around some furniture, changed my set up and I’m really happy with the new arrangement. And basically I took a couple of days to sulk.
I gave myself permission to do that, when you have something happen that you takes your mood down, you need to process it. Basically, swim in the bad mood, grief or whatever emotion you are going through and process it. It’s ok to do that for a reasonable amount of time. But then, as I’ll start in the morning, you need to get your shit together and start moving forward again. So tomorrow I’ll be updating my resume, making plans for my next steps, setting timelines and some goals. I always work best when I have specific goals in mind and a plan to get there and that’s what I’ll be preparing tomorrow. Then on my last day off from work, I plan to go check out a museum I’ve been wanting to get to and burn a gift certificate at a pizza place in the city.
So my friends, I hope you had a better week than I did last week, but if not, take the time needed to process, practice some self-care and then get moving again, you’ve got this and have a happy day my friends.~ Rev Kane
The Ministry of Happiness 