The Ministry of Happiness

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 2024 presidential election, anxiety, be happy, happiness, health, heart condition, life, open heart surgery, stress, surgery | 2 Comments

Deeper and Slower is Better

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Michael Kane

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 be happy, deep connection, happiness, happy, life, lifestyle, mindfulness, positivity, slow travel, slow-living, travel | 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 adventure, appalachian trail, be happy, faith in humanity, happiness, happy, hiker trash, hiking, life, nature, outdoors, trail angel, travel | 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.

The History of Halloween

Posted in Holiday Happiness | Tagged be happy, halloween, happiness, happy, holiday, horror movies, life, scary movies | 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 be happy, blog, facebook, happiness, happy, hate, life, politics, positivity, social media, twitter | 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 auschwitz, be happy, blog, blogging, happiness, happy, holocaust, life, motivation, perspective, positivity, sick, vacation | Leave a comment

A Happy Announcement

Posted on September 25, 2024 by Michael Kane

Rev Kane on his arrival at Amicalola Falls State Park (2014)

I slow down when hiking. The rhythm of nature is more leisurely. The sun comes up, it moves across the sky, and you begin to synchronize to that rhythm. ~ John Mackey

A Happy Little Announcement

While I have mentioned it in other posts, including my recent post on turning 60. So I won’t leave anyone in suspense, I’m planning my second attempt at thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail (AT) in late March or early April of 2025. This is partially a celebration of my semi-retirement and also a way to “walk-off” the stress of the ridiculous job I’ve been working for the last six years. This is going back to a long tradition related to the very beginnings of thru-hiking the AT. You see, back when the AT was first put together, a lot of soldiers returning from World War II used the trail to “walk-off” the war.

When I did my first attempt on the trail ten years ago, I met and hiked with a number of guys who were walking off their experiences in Afghanistan. Even though you fall into groups on the AT, you can spend a lot of hours walking alone in the forest, as well as long nights in your tent or hammock. This is a lot of time to get into your own head, have a million conversations with yourself and come to terms with things that are deep and complex. There are rarely opportunities for this level of introspection in life and it’s one of the huge benefits of the trail.

As I’ve been talking with people about my plans I often get the same question, if you’ve already done half the trail (1000 miles), why would you re-hike the entire trail? The funny thing is, when I was on the trail I often wanted to ask the same question of people in that exact situation. What I discovered and the answer to the question is that it’s all about community. While I’m an introvert, and wasn’t really looking for a group to hike with, you just kind of fall in with people on the trail. The thing is, people on the trail, are a lot like me. Everyone out there is at least a little bit adventurous, willing to take risks and often a lot more comfortable in wilderness than they are in society. Everyone attempting a thru-hike has put there life on hold for six months. They’ve planned for drop boxes across the trail, given up their housing, jobs and other commitments, or at least put them on hold. These are my people.

I’m a slow hiker, and I may in fact jump around a bit instead of doing a straight thru-hike. So I likely won’t be hiking with a single group throughout the trail. If I just jump in and hit the sections I haven’t done, I’ll not know any of the hikers I encounter and that means an entire hike of making new connections and that’s not the most comfortable or enjoyable reality on the trail for me. By starting out in Georgia and being in the bubble for a time, when I do jump around, I’ll almost certainly be running into hikers I know at least part of the time. This will make the hike a lot more enjoyable. I’m also hoping to have friends and some AT alumni join me on sections of the trail. The thing that breaks most folks on the trail is not the physical aspect. Make no mistake, this is one of the most physically challenging endeavor most folks ever do in their lives. But it’s actually the mental challenge that causes people to quit the trail.

People leave the trail often because they miss aspects of their default life. Sometimes it’s a spouse or partner and at times it’s often their pets or some other aspect of their life. Sometimes it’s the mental aspects of the trail itself. The trail at times can get monotonous, but even more so, being tired, sore and wet for days and even weeks at a time can really wear you down. That’s what almost broke me the first time, just two weeks into the hike. What kept me going? Well for that you’ll have to read my book, Appalachian Trail Happiness, available on Amazon or as a signed copy direct from me, you can email me at happinesskane@aol.com.

On the trail I’ll be reporting out as often as possible, daily photos on Instagram, posts on Threads if I can get a signal and a blog post once or twice a week. Last time I did most of my posting out on Twitter but this time I’ll be utilizing Instagram and Threads as well as the blog, and so if you want to follow along on the daily journey, or if you know friends who might enjoy virtually hiking with me, send them to @michael_rev_kane on both sites.

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

Below are a few posts from my last hike to give you a taste for what’s to come, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

My Favorite 2015 AT Photos

On Burning Man and the Appalachian Trail

Remembering the Appalachian Trail

Appalachian Trail: Acceptance is the Way

Happiness, the Minimalist Mind and Hiking the Appalachian Trail

Posted in Appalachian Trail (AT) Happiness, personal happiness | Tagged adventure, appalachian trail, backpacking, happiness, hiking, life, nature, travel | Leave a comment

A Happy Little Vacation

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Michael Kane

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking. ~ Earl Wilson

A Happy Little Vacation

So for the last couple of weeks I’ve been off the map and on vacation. This was the second half of my 60th birthday celebration. The East Coast celebration, it was as an opportunity to catch up with as many family and friends as a I could on the East Coast. So I had lunch with my parents, dinner with my sister’s family, visited my aunt, spent some time in Brooklyn with my brother’s family and caught up with a couple of friends along the way. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip and so I also included three days back where my family used to vacation when I was younger up on Cape Cod. The drawing above came courtesy of my five year-old niece. I love the drawing, the detail is awesome, my little beard, my first initial and of course, my psycho bunny hat.

My sister’s family took me out for a birthday dinner and we had a great time. It was a hibachi place so of course mentioning my birthday led to this. Including beams of light erupting from my head.

Visiting Brooklyn of course means two things I love, my brother’s family and real New York pizza. So I spent two days, climbing up and down slides, getting ice cream, getting asked 500 questions and of course getting beat on by my niece and nephews, it was glorious. And of course, out of six possible meals, five of them looked liked this.

This was an incredibly laid back vacation, good people and good food. My three days on Cape Cod consisted of swimming in the ocean, swimming in the pool, laying in the sun, staring at the ocean and eating a lot of bacon wrapped scallops. This morning I wrapped up the eating frenzy with some homemade biscuits and gravy for breakfast.

This was also a very cerebral vacation. A lot of hours on the road and laying in the sun with time to think. My life is about to change in a hundred ways and I’m making some pretty big relationship related decisions. I talked about a lot of this in my last several posts. And now that I’m back, it’s about 140 days to retirement and leaving California. So full speed ahead on getting all of that wrapped up and organized, it will go by fast. So waive the starting flag, here we go.

Finally tonight, whenever I return to SFO I pass this art piece and I absolutely love it. It reminds me of the horses with the White Walkers in Game of Thrones.

Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Posted in personal happiness | Tagged be happy, birthday, east coast, family, friends, happiness, happy, life, pizza, travel | Leave a comment

Remember to Celebrate!

Posted on September 8, 2024 by Michael Kane

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

Remember to Celebrate!

Life is hard, bad things happen, too often things just don’t break your way. But sometimes they do. And exactly because life is hard, you should celebrate when you can. And I do mean whenever you can, celebrate the big things of course but celebrate the little things as well.

Did you just finish a project at work, celebrate, maybe it’s just a nice dessert that night or going out to lunch. But do something to recognize the accomplishment. Did your friend, partner, child attain some milestone or have something exciting happy to them, celebrate. Buy some flowers, make a special dinner, let your toddler, who just did their first day of pre-school, pick what’s for dinner tonight.

We do a pretty good job of celebrating things for our children but we often don’t celebrate things for ourselves. I really recommend getting into a habit of celebrating. Me, I’m a big celebrator, I celebrate my achievements at every level, I celebrate birthdays for weeks and birthdays that signify decades for entire years. When I turned forty I set up a list of forty people, and created ten events and invited all forty to all ten events. That was the first time I went to Burning Man and the year I traveled to Alaska as my fiftieth state that I visited.

This year I turned sixty, so as a year with a zero I’ve been celebrating all year. I returned to my favorite city to celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I’ve traveled to Baja to hang out and play with grey whales, I surprised my family in NY on Memorial Day. Friends came in for the Pizza, Beer and Bagel Festival in San Francisco. Other friends came in for a two-day eating and walking tour of San Francisco. I spent a week floating in a mineral spring pool and getting massage at an expensive resort in Calistoga. I’ll soon be heading east to visit with family and friends and spend a few days in Cape Cod.

The year isn’t over though and I’m still scheming how I’ll celebrate in October and November, and I’m already planning a return to the Valley of Fire for Christmas. And then next year I hit another milestone, I’m retiring at the end of January, so it’s time to celebrate that as well. And the biggest part of that will be returning to the Appalachian Trail to walk again, perhaps a thru-hike but at any case add to the thousand miles I’ve already done on that trail.

Celebrate my friends, life is a meal made up of tasty and not so tasty things, so celebrate and drown that meal in celebratory, tasty and happy gravy!

Some images from my celebratory sixtieth year. Have happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane