The World is a Vampire

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Michael 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.

CURRENT MOOD

Bullet With Butterfly Wings ~ Smashing Pumpkins

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

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Welcome to Getting Older

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Michael 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

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

A Lovely Day in San Francisco

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Michael 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

Posted in personal happiness, Pizza Places | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Been a Hell of a Week!

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Michael 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

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Take a Deep Breath This Week

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Michael Kane

We are living in very challenging times. Pressured in the workplace and stressed out at home, people are trying to make sense of their lives. ~ Les Brown

Take a Deep Breath This Week

This is going to be a hell of a week. For all of us in general and for me in specific. I’m not someone who really lives with a lot of anxiety but this week is likely to be a bit different.

So let’s take a look at what’s coming.

The 2024 President Election

This in so many ways is an historic election cycle. First, a black woman is running for president. If she wins she’ll be the first woman elected President of the United States. It is also the most contentious election in my lifetime and maybe ever, although I’m not election historian. We all feel it, the anger and mistrust on both sides of the political aisle are at levels I’ve never experienced before. And with 24 hour cable TV coverage, the lead on the local news, EVERY SINGLE SOCIAL MEDIA SITE, and of course every single water cooler conversation it’s damn near impossible to escape it. Great week for a hike if you can find the time. This has absolutely bled into my work, our college is even running an election fatigue event to help students deal with the stress around the election. Now if they’d just run one for the staff and faculty!

Career Technical Education Day

This week my area hosts it’s largest event of the year, CTE day where we bring a few hundred high school students on campus to introduced them to the career and workforce training options that we provide. It’s an important day for us, a great event and complete chaos. Happily I have a couple of really high quality and very competent faculty who are running the show. But of course, with that many high school students on campus there’s always the chance of madness.

My Cardiologist Consultation

Recently I had my annual cardiac assessment, as I believe I’ve mentioned on the blog before, I have two heart conditions. I have a congenital defect, a bifurcated aortic valve as well as an ascending aortic aneurysm. Each year I have either an echocardiagram or CT scan on my heart. Having had the valve issue my whole life I don’t focus on it very much, I’ve always known at some point it would be need to replaced. The aortic aneurysm is the one that has always scared me. I found out about it seven years ago and it’s something that if I exert myself too much, or get struck in the right part of my stomach, it could rupture and that would be bad, very bad.

Well this past week I got the results of my assessment and it turns out it’s my valve that has gotten significantly worse. So this week I find out if, (I likely am), and then when I’ll be having open heart surgery. So the idea of both answers, surgery or no surgery are terrifying. Surgery is the better option to get this dealt with but entails having my heart stopped for a few hours, not excited about that. It will also delay my retirement likely a year and of course blow up my plans to hike the Appalachian Trail again. Recovery from the surgery is an initial three month process with full recovery at six months. Assuming it goes well, it would be a really good thing to do, but that doesn’t make it any less fear inducing.

The other option, no surgery, is a far more terrifying option. It will mean my life is effectively on hold while I wait for my valve to deteriorate even farther, making little things like a heart attack more likely. And putting me at the mercy or whatever periodic check-in evaluations my HMO schedules. So while surgery and recovery are scary, they do provide certainty and a clear path ahead.

So yeah, I’m anxiety boy right now as many of us are. So I hit my default when I’m at this point this weekend and just kind of shutdown. I ate some good food, I got plenty of sleep, I binge watched the Lioness on Paramount+ a show I’ve resisted but is really good. Didn’t realize it was written by Taylor Sheridan, maybe the best TV writer in Hollywood these days. I also got a lot of sleep, cleaned up the tiny patio garden and just tried to relax. Also, knowing this was all coming at that it all hits in the earlier part of the week, I’ve taken a few days off starting Thursday.

We all know this will be a tense week, so do the things you normally do to decompress, maybe minimize your social media time, and incorporate your favorite form of self-care into this week’s routine whether that’s yoga, meditation, a massage or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s (NY Super Fudge Chunk is a personal favorite). Also this week maybe give some extra grace to people, and that includes yourself, you are people. Hopefully doing this will help you have some happier days in a stressful week. Oh and go vote, if you don’t vote, you really don’t have a right to complain my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Deeper and Slower is Better

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Michael Kane
sunset selfie

Everyone you meet always asks if you have a career, are married, or own a house as if life was some kind of grocery list. But no one ever asks you if you are happy. – Heath Ledger

Deeper and Slower is Better

I love this quote from the late Heath Ledger, he was a really talented and fascinating human. The quote touches on something really important in our society, the way we connect with each other. When we see each other we say hello, often it comes in the form of, hey, how are you? Of course we don’t actually mean that, it’s really just a greeting like good morning. If you want to prove this to yourself, the next time someone says hello, how are you, settle and start telling them how you really are. You’ll see their eyes and body language tell you exactly what they were really asking. Don’t get me wrong, some people do mean it, but most do not. The majority of our human interactions and connections are, and are intended to be, superficial and unfortunately judgemental.

The first part of the Ledger quote gets to that, people, when they meet you, want to know what you do, if you’re married, your politics or religion. Because knowing these things allows them to put you in a neat little box, and once you’re in that box, they know how to think about you because they have pre-judged everyone who fits in that box. It feels like efficiency, it makes it easier for people to move on with their busy lives. But it’s an unfortunately shallow level of interaction and connection. It also means all of us are constantly feeling judged, and often, looked down upon.

Part of the issue is that since we’re all leading busy lives, we are often in a hurry to move through the current moment and on to the next. The problem with this is that it means we have fewer deep and significant interactions and connections with people. Speed is the enemy, we really need to slow our lives down, honestly what are we rushing to? It’s a thought I always have when it’s Wednesday and people say I can’t wait for this week to be over. Our lives are shorter than we ever want to think about, rushing through time just brings us to the end of our lives sooner and nobody really wants that.

As I’ve mentioned here on the blog before, over the last twenty years I’ve typically worked for two to three years and then took a year off to travel. Often during this time I was hiking or backpacking overseas. One of the biggest things I noticed during these times was how much time slowed down. When I no longer was moving from meeting to meeting, living my life by appointments on a daily calendar time really slowed down. Days seemed longer, which bleeds into the sense of time for weeks and months. My one year off always felt like the same amount of time as the three years working.

Lately I’ve started seeing more people talk about slow travel. Our work life is hectic and unfortunately as Americans our vacations are often equally as hectic. We have a seven day vacation, so we fly out on Friday night or Saturday morning, we have planned activities every day, visit three different cities, then we fly back on Sunday and go to work on Monday. We end up returning from vacation more stressed out and tired than when we left. People often joke that they need a vacation from their vacation, and they really do.

Slow travel is the opposite of this, it’s the idea that you go to one place for a week, two weeks or a month. Instead of planned itineraries and running from town to town, you stay in one place the whole time. You have coffee and eat in the neighborhood, you get to be like a local for a time and truly get to know the place you’re in and hopefully some of the people. Most importantly, you really get to relax and come home from vacation rested and with more of a sense of the place you visited and likely with a couple of new deep connections.

The more you extend this philosophy to your whole life, the deeper the connections you’ll have and I’ll bet the less rushed and harried you’ll begin to feel. I know this, because as a really strong introvert I actively avoid the shallow connections and small-talk opportunities. I crave the slower, deeper interactions and connections. Sure, it means I have far fewer of them, but the ones I do have are deeper and in my opinion better. For me, where interaction is concerned, it’s always quality over quantity, so I’ll always think deeper and slower is better and I believe it will help you have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Why I need to hike the Appalachian Trail again

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Michael Kane

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. ~ Gandhi

Appalachian trail, happiness, hiking
Me and my friend Jim on my first day on the Appalachian Trail

Why I need to hike the Appalachian Trail again

So as I’ve mentioned here on the blog, I’m planning in late March or early April to start my second Appalachian Trail thru-hike attempt. My first attempt went for a thousand miles, seven-hundred and fifty before I destroyed my knee and then the rest in rehab and during my post rehab. In total I spent one hundred nights on the trail and it was an incredibly difficult and amazing experience.

The surprise for this introverted, misanthropic near hermit was how much I enjoyed the people on the hike. It was a surprise and honestly it shouldn’t have been had I thought a bit more deeply about thru-hikers, or as we affectionately refer to ourselves, hiker trash.

The people who have decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail are people who are risk takers, nature lovers and generally also are not all that thrilled with the default world. They are taking a risk in the sense that they are willing to put their entire default life on hold for six months and take on one of the hardest hiking trails in the world. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy estimates about twenty-five percent of thru-hikers actually complete the full trail in a single attempt. So each of us starting out is far more likely than not, to fail to complete the trail in a single shot. The people on the trail are nature lovers, you have to be to go out and basically live in the forest for six months. But you see it on the trail, often hikers are sitting on a ridge taking in the view, or hiking extra miles to get to a vantage point and at other times you’ll find a hiker just sitting in the forest enjoying the experience of being there.

One of my favorite days on the trail happened when I hiked into a depression on the side of a mountain and the air was kind of trapped there with no breeze. The air was also completely saturated with the smell of all of the flowers blooming in that little area. I sat down and just let it encompass me for a half of an hour. What I also noticed were that a lot of thru-hikers were not your average person. They were sometimes extraordinary, they were often people for whom day to day society really didn’t work that well for them. Many were retirees, finally free of the day to day grind of work and life. Many were recently out of high school or college, who really weren’t sure that the day to day grind of life they were expected to enter was really for them. People at the margins of society have always been my people.

appalachian trail, hiking
Awesome, Backtrack, Rev Kan, and the Kingfisher (the AARP Gang)

So spending a lot of time with these type of people makes me happy and really enhanced the experience of being on the trail. And while enhancing my happiness while adventuring is a great reason all by itself to be on the trail, that’s not the reason I need the Appalachian Trail right now. While I find myself at a nexus point in my life, with many decisions to make, I have a greater concern. First though, one of the beautiful things about long-distance hiking is the massive amounts of time that you get to just think. While I’ll certainly have some ideas about what’s next after the trail, I’ll be free for the first time in a long time in my life, to basically go in any direction I want. So all of those hours, day after to day, out in nature and in my head, will help me make the best decision possible.

The concern I really have right now is my absolutely lack of faith in humanity at any level. I think you can probably understand this, we watch every day as people act fully entitled and selfish in so many of their actions. People walk, drive and act like they are the only person alive with no consideration for how their actions impact others. I watch people in my job, a job that is supposed to be about helping students, act completely in their own self-interest at the cost of students and others. I have people daily lie to me, not do what they say they will do and then blame everything that goes wrong on everyone else.

At the larger level, we live in a country going through the most insane election of my life. I watch on social media daily as people are absolutely horrible to each other for no reason at all. Our politics have become the politics of hate and I think many of us fear for the future of our country. Add to that the global issues, the horrors in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Ukraine. Finally, watching the predictions of global warning coming to fruition on a weekly basis, it’s not hard to lose faith in humanity right now. And I’m by nature a fairly cynical guy to start with, so it’s especially hard on me.

So time to head for the trail.

In the meantime I do the things we regularly talk about on this blog. I try to extend gratitude for what I have, I try to stay physically active, eat well, get enough sleep. I try and focus on the positive aspects of things whenever possible. I look for joy in life and try and keep my internal messaging positive. I listen to and take to heart and prioritize the positive comments that are sent my way and try and de-prioritize the negativity I experience every day. Basically, I make sure to take care of myself, prioritize my well-being while also trying to help others. All of this helps me be happier but it doesn’t do much to restore my faith in humanity.

Trail Angels

So let me tell you about something I learned about and encountered while on the Appalachian Trail, they are called Trail Angels. Trail Angels are people who for no obvious self-serving reason, other than self-satisfaction help out hikers on the trail. This comes in so many forms. It can be as small as someone giving you a ride in the back of their pickup truck as you walk into town. It’s often in the form of food, a cooler on the trail with snacks and drinks, or even a group making hot food in a parking lot. On the trail I got hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches and all manner of snacks and baked goods. On cold days there will often be people serving coffee, tea and hot chocolate, one really wonderful cold day someone was actually serving really good chili. Sometimes these angels are church groups, scouting troops, other times just a family or a kind individual.

Trail Angels often go further than just some food. There is one group that creates a Trail Angel camp every year, for a week they have snacks, drinks, hot food, beer, hammocks and picnic tables. Not only can you stop for a rest and some food, they’ll let you camp there for a couple of days. There are Trail Angels that will give rides and sometimes significant distances to town or back to the trail. The absolute most amazing thing I saw was people who offered up their homes to hikers. Sometimes it’s come camp in my yard, other times is take our spare bedroom for the night. Please understand, as a thru-hiker, we look like serial killers and often smell really bad. Even more amazing Norovirus, a highly contagious and nasty little disease often spreads on the trail. When you get noro, you spend a couple of days really sick with vomiting and diarrhea. You’re weak and not really functional, so taking care of a noro-infected hiker is often a 2-3 day commitment. And honestly not a pleasant one.

So the actions of Trail Angels start to build my faith in humanity. When I saw them taking in sick hikers it blew my mind. These were people taking in complete, scary looking and extremely sick and contagious hikers, strangers, into their homes and expecting nothing in return. That is the type of goodness that makes me believe that maybe there is some hope for humanity. It’s been ten years since my last thru-hike attempt, I’m back to having no faith left in humanity. I need to go hike the trail to get some faith in humanity back for my own mental well-being and future outlook.

Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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

Happy Fall, Happy Halloween

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Michael Kane

Halloween is not only about putting on a costume, but it’s about finding the imagination and costume within ourselves. ~ Elvis Duran

I love this time of year, I love the fall, I love Halloween, so tonight just a fun little post with some cool ideas around celebrating Halloween and I’m reaching back to some of my previous posts about Halloween movies, the history and some cool Halloween ideas.

Halloween movies 1

Halloween movies 2

Halloween movies 3

Halloween movies 4

Halloween images

Cool Halloween stuff

The History of Halloween

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

Hate won’t make you happy

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Michael Kane

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get. ~ Confucius

Hate won’t make you happy

We all live a chunk of our lives on our phones, an ever increasing amount. This also often means a significant amount of time involved with social media. One of the things we have all encountered online is the extreme amount of hate filled speech on these sites. It’s not unusual to do something as innocuous as posting about going on vacation somewhere, or to post a photo you’re really proud of only to receive abuse. I’ll never forget while I was living in the Mojave Desert, where we regularly got unbelievable sunsets, and one night I posted one really amazing photo I captured. Out of nowhere, someone who wasn’t even a follower of mine simply comments, obviously fake. There’s no reason for that response, no point in that person posting it other than just being contrary.

Part of the problem is the keyboard warrior effect. You see you can say all kind of mean, nasty stuff when you’re safe at home behind a keyboard typing anonymously with no chance of every encountering the person face to face. This anonymity allows hurt people, angry people and people who are just bad people to be able to rain hate and pain down on others with no consequences.

This of course ramps up so much higher when sensitive topics like abortion, religion or politics are involved. Especially sad for me it seems that even science has become one of these topics. The rise in conspiracy theories has made this especially bad.

This was posted in the last few days about hurricane Helene, the idea that a sitting member of congress can post something so stupid, and worse, for it to get support and traction online really makes me sad.

The hate flows in all directions, the right hurls hate and the left and the left hurls it back. Atheists hurl insults at Christians, who hurl insults at Muslims, who hurl insults at atheists and round and round we go. Honestly I’ve grown incredibly tired of it all.

When I was first on social media I made a point of being connected to people with a range of religious and political beliefs, trying to avoid the echo chamber effect where all you ever hear are things you agree and/or believe in already. I kept this policy for a long time, however I’ve changed. I’ve now become a prodigious blocker/unfriender/muter. My whole social media philosophy has changed to a focus of keeping my social media a happy and friendly place. I have a variety of levels of social media, Instagram is the least filtered for me. I’ll basically follow anyone on Instagram and allow anyone to follow me there. It’s the one site I’ve allowed my underage nieces and nephews to follow and interact with me online.

On the other end of the spectrum I hold Facebook really close to the vest. I keep my friend list around 100, I mean seriously who has 100 close acquaintances? I also routinely go through and clean it out of anyone who doesn’t at least semi-regularly interact with me on the site. Finally, I hold a firm firewall between my private Facebook page and my work life. I have a rule that no one I work with can be a friend on Facebook. But the real fertile ground of my mad blocking has been Twitter and now Threads.. Twitter (X) has faded out as the site has become such a mess that I hardly spend anytime on it. But on Threads, I’m a blocking machine. And it’s not just people who disagree with me politically. I block anyone who posts hateful rhetoric, hurtful responses, conspiracy theories or jokes of really bad taste. I essentially keep my Threads timeline focused on science, art, writing and photography and yes a bit of political echo chamber as well. I no longer want to go on social media and see posts that aggravate me.

Part of what you do have to do with all social media is to train the algorithm of the site you’re on. For instance on Instagram, I make an extreme effort to train the system to put lots of laughing babies in my feed. Basically, anytime there’s a video in my feed of a laughing baby, I stop on the post, I click on it, I make sure to like the post. The system then continues to send me more and more of these types of posts. I do the same thing for flower posts, which means that now my suggested posts have a high percentage of laughing babies and flowers which makes my experience there much happier. It’s not a perfect approach, there’s always going to be a share of paid for and promoted marketing posts, but I’ve definitely made that feed better.

The simple fact is hate will never lead to happiness. Hate is a poison that you share with the object of your hate. In an increasingly self-centered and hate filled world it’s important to limit the amount of hate you deal with and possess. In our current existence, unfortunately the very thing many people spend a tremendous amount of time on, social media, is also an overwhelming source of hate. So whether it’s online, or in person, do what you can to reduce the amount of hate in your life. Hate will never lead to happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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

Happiness and Perspective

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Michael Kane

When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective. ~ Harvey Mackay

So last week, after traveling for four out of the previous five weeks, being on planes, trains at gatherings and unmasked in more restaurants than I have in years I returned back to California surprisingly healthy. It seems I always pick up a cold while traveling and happily avoided it this time. I returned to work and at that point, five days after returning, I came down with a nasty head cold. This of course means a lot of time sleeping, acquiring a Nyquil addiction and generally just feeling crappy. It also gives you a lot of time just to lay around and think about things. Of course I was annoyed, as I always am when I’m sick because let’s face it, I’ve got shit to do.

One of the things I got to thinking about related to the way I was feeling. While it sucks to be sick I was really grateful that I hadn’t gotten sick while on my vacation. I was really fortunate to have had two really wonderfully relaxing vacations. First for a week on the West Coast and then for two weeks on the East Coast. This was not my typically adventurous vacation, both were pretty mellow, very restorative and just made time for conversation and community.

So while I lay on the couch in misery I had to be pretty happy about the timing of my illness. I also can’t remember the last time I had a bad cold. And that is the crux of the point of this post. While I wasn’t feeling well I had to be happy about my situation. It would have been easy to lay there and fall into the woe is me attitude and be really unhappy. But that’s not the choice I made. And while I’m not Pollyanna enough to think that under any circumstances you can just choose to be happy, I will say that is almost always the case. And I won’t spend anytime writing anything to try and convince you of that, because one of the greatest stories I’ve ever listened to, The Orange, does it so much better than I ever could. I captured it in a post I wrote years ago and it’s the best thing you’ll hear today, this week, this month and likely this year. And if you’ve heard it before, listen to it again, I’ve listened to it dozens of times and every time, it changes my perspective and makes me appreciate life just a little bit more, it’s called:

Remember the Sweet Things

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