I’ve Got Nothin!

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Michael Kane
rev kane cobra selfie

You can’t fix yourself out of a mental health issue. You can’t wake up and say, ‘Today I’m not being depressed!’ It’s a process to get well, but there is recovery. ~ Margaret Trudeau

I’ve Got Nothin!

I’ve been writing this blog for fifteen years and this has been the hardest week to come up with a post, and honestly I haven’t. I’m snake bit right now, hence the image. This image comes from an amazing day, my second day in the famous Jemaa El-Fna square in the old city, Marrakesh, Morocco. It’s an absolutely wild place, an amazing and old Islamic culture running face first into the modern world, tourists from everywhere in a soup of French, Arabic, English and lord knows how many other languages. The old city in Marrakesh is an intense place, the hustlers are on you constantly. Walking the winding and confusing corridors is one of the most intense travel experiences I’ve ever had. You’re walking in a maze, GPS is a waste of time, every three feet some new person is offering to guide you, sell you something or hustle you in some way. And a share of them will come at you when you turn them down, it’s some of the most aggressive hustling I’ve ever experienced. And it’s a full-on sensory experience! You’re dusty and thirsty and the smells are out of control, from spices to foods to incenses it’s really overwhelming. The peace of the inner walls of your riyadh is heaven compared to the madness, and of course, I loved it.

The square is one of the most famous tourist destinations on the planet and it’s absolutely magnificent. From snake charmers to musicians to pick-pockets and all manner of tourists there is a constant buzz. Food of every type imaginable and of course I tried the camel burger, it wasn’t half bad. But the day in this image was spent doing something I’ve always wanted to do, sit in a cafe in Morrocco, sip mint tea with old Morroccans and watch the world go by and that’s exactly what I did. I picked the least touristy, least welcoming cafe on the square, one where I did not see a single white face. As I walked in, old men scowled or looked at me quizzically. I took a seat at the edge of the square, greeted the waitress in Arabic and ordered a pot of mint tea. I then spent two hours and went through two pots of tea just watching the square and it was everything I hoped it would be, couldn’t have been better short of Indiana Jones, Rick from Casablanca sitting down for a chat.

My favorite thing that I saw that day was a scam being run by a huge Morroccan dude with a very well-trained monkey. He was hanging out in the square and when he saw a loving couple walking through the square he would toss the monkey on the man’s back. The monkey was trained to scramble up and sit on the man’s head. He would then run up and say, “how cute, take a picture.” He would then offer to take a picture of the couple with the monkey on the guy’s head, they of course always did it. Then, this very large, and very scary looking guy would hold out is hand with a gnarly look on his face and say, $20. While of course holding their phone and with the monkey having two full hands of the man’s hair. So of course they paid, seriously, every single time they paid and I saw no negotiating. He then would make a hand signal and the monkey would leap off and climb up on his shoulder. I watched him run this dozens of times over the two hours, he had to have made several hundred dollars.

There are always snake charmers in the square and they really don’t pay enough attention to their snakes. They draw huge crowds and have a dozen snakes, cobras and desert rattlesnakes and other various forms of slithering death. I watched at one of their shows, while I was sipping my tea, when one of the desert rattlesnakes slithered off at a random direction, they had no idea. They were so focused on playing with the cobras and hustling the tourists that they didn’t see as this snake just kept going. It was amazing to watch as the crowds split along the path of the snake like the parting of the Red Sea. Eventually one of the snake charmers realized what was happening and went running after and retrieved the snake.

I had decided I wanted a picture with a cobra, so I went over to one of the groups. Now, I’m not really cool with snakes but the world’s most dangerous reverend has to do, what he has to do. So I went over and watched the show and then started working towards getting my photo and I made one small mistake, I didn’t get the price settled and paid first. So this guy gets this huge cobras attention while holding my phone and tells me to squat behind it. As I do, the snake starts to turn my way and this is a frightening moment, this snake is solidly five to six feet long and can easily strike the full distance. To get the snakes attention focused back on him, he whacks him right in the head with my phone, which does the trick happily for me and then he takes the photo above. Right after that he gathers up the snake and is holding it and my phone as he tells me the price. It was at that moment I learned two things, one, I’m fairly brave, and two, my bravery has a limit. And it’s where I came up with the adage, never negotiate with a man holding a cobra. Seriously, they fleeced me for this photo, it cost me like $40. They were happy, I was happy, in fact they were so happy they were willing to throw in a bonus, they were willing to hang six, yes six, non-venomous water snakes around my neck and take another picture. I absolutely declined, and we all had a good laugh.

So, the message tonight, there is no message, just a memory of a really great day, from one of my travels. I’m honestly in the deepest well I’ve been in, in nearly fifteen years and I’m completely snake bit. Right now, nothing, absolutely nothing is going right. So while I have a final level interview on Friday there is absolutely no pressure, because given the way this week is going, there’s no way I’ll get the job. This actually makes it kind of an easy gig, and while it will cost me a bunch of money to fly to NY to do the interview, I’ll also get a chance to see some family and friends and of course, eat some real NY pizza.

So this week my friends, I have no advice, I have no energy, honestly, I’ve got nothin, so I just hope that you can do your best to have a happy day. ~ Rev Kane

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I Love the Fall

Posted on September 29, 2025 by Michael Kane

Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night. ~ Hal Borland

I Love the Fall

Fall has always been my favorite season. I don’t like the heat and so Summer, while it certainly has lots to like particularly around getting in the water, heat, particularly with humidity truly makes me miserable. I grew up in the Northeast, so humidity was part of summer, as were the damn bugs, flies and midges during the day, mosquitoes as the sun goes down, not a fan. One of the reasons I have so loved living in the dry environs of the West Coast is the lack of bugs. It’s not that there aren’t any, but there are a lot fewer, and particularly during my time in the desert, there were almost none.

Fall on the other hand meant that the cool weather cut down on the number of bugs. Even when there are hot days in the fall, the nights cool off significantly. The leaves begin to change colors lighting up the forest, and even the crackle of dry leaves on the ground as you walk makes me happy. Falling leaves have a special place in my heart. I love catching falling leaves, one of my favorite memories as a child was a game I would play in elementary school at lunchtime in the fall. There was a massive old elm tree in the center of our school’s playground. A side note, my sister taught at that school and years ago I went to visit and realized they’d cut the tree down, I was very sad. At lunchtime after eating, I would go out to the playground, and instead of jumping into the daily kickball game I would catch leaves. If you’ve never done it, it’s amazing. Leaves fall in absolutely no rational way, trying to catch them, in the breeze, when you’re a competitive little shit like I was, takes total focus. I would get completely lost, running, spinning even falling down as I tracked a leaf. And then I would do it again and again and again until the bell rang and I had to go back to class. This I would repeat every day from the start of leaf fall until that big old tree was devoid of leaves. It was a simple thing but I loved it, loved getting lost in it, the only time I get that way at this point in life is writing or taking photos.

Fall was also the time of year to be in the woods. It was cooler, no bugs, fewer snakes, with the leaves dropping it was easier to spot wildlife. As a kid, fall meant hiking and hunting and it was absolutely the time of year I spent the most time in the woods. Camping in the fall is amazing, after a long day of hiking, unlike in the Summer, you get a nice cool night to sleep in, I absolutely love it.

Of course you substitute when your world changes, my substitution on the West Coast has been desert camping in the winter. It’s a close approximation to the falls of the North East, nice sunny days and cool amazing nights. In the Fall, or in the desert Winters, you get dry nights which means no clouds and bright clear stars when you get into places with dark skies.

The other thing that Fall often brings is rain. I have a weird relationship with rain. I love rain, the experience of petrichor, the smell of the forest when it rains after a warm dry spell. To me that is the smell of life, warmth and safety. I also love thunderstorms, big thundering rains and downpours, the sound of rain pounding on a plastic or tin roof is one of the most soothing sounds I can imagine. But how I hate cold rain, and my time on the Appalachian Trail solidified that. On the trail there is a saying, embrace the suck. It means accept and even engage and love the horrid conditions, because a lot of the time will be like that. Until you can get past the physical discomforts, you really can’t get the gifts that are all around you while hiking the trail.

So, while this nostalgic post was really just me wallowing in a time of year I really love, the message and the lesson tonight is embrace the suck. We all have shit in our lives almost all of the time, our jobs, bills, obligations and responsibilities. We live in a complex, frustrating and disappointing world. At some level however, you have to find some level of peace and acceptance with the sucky parts of our lives, because until we do, we can;t see the gifts all around us and find the happiness we deserve. So embrace the suck my friends and have happier days. ~ Rev Kane

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Take a Bath in Nature

Posted on September 22, 2025 by Michael Kane
Taoism, happiness, cycles

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. ~ Lao Tzu

Take a Bath in Nature

I’ve spent a lot of time in nature, a lot of time on hiking trails, sometimes weeks, sometimes months and bathing is always an issue. Most of the time, you bathe when you go into towns to resupply and sleep in a bed for a night. Of course, sometimes you do bathe on the trail. And while you want this to be the way it happens in every western film, rarely have you hung your clothes on some branches and suddenly notice the attractive woman bathing as well. You know the scene, she asks you to turn away as she gets out and then steals your clothes and runs away. It of course always turns into a meet cute for the big macho cowboy, lose this image of bathing on the trail. Usually it’s a wash rag and a stream, some soap, not much of a bath and even less privacy. Once in the Himalayas it was really fancy, a metal bowl of hot water, standing in the November sun at 15,000 feet, stripped down to my underwear and using a wash cloth and the bowl. Honestly, it was maybe the greatest bath I’ve ever had.

But tonight I’m not talking about bathing in the traditional sense, what I’m talking about tonight is bathing in nature, you most often hear it referred to as forest bathing. Shinrin-yoku (Japanese: 森林浴, 森林 (shinrin, “forest”) + 浴 (yoku, “bath, bathing.[1]“)), also known as forest bathing, is a practice or process of therapeutic relaxation where one spends time in a forest or natural atmosphere, focusing on sensory engagement to connect with nature. This practice likely originated in Japan but has also become popular in Finland, South Korea, and most recently in America.

The simplest way to explain this is just taking time to disconnect from life and be in nature. There is no mystery as to why this is as beneficial as it is for your health. It’s just a great idea to disconnect for ten or fifteen minutes and be in nature. We know that things like bird songs can help calm our nervous system and make us less stressed and anxious. As someone with a background in evolutionary biology this makes perfect sense to me. At the core of our lizard brains, for all of those hundreds of thousands of years that humans were wondering around in nature, birds singing meant safety. If you’ve ever been sitting in the forest and suddenly the forest goes quiet, you’ll instantly feel nervous. Animals go quiet in the presence of things that might eat them and all those centuries ago, those things might eat us as well. So when the birds were happily singing, we would, and still do, feel safe.

So my friends, in these anxious times, find some way to do small bits of nature. You just need to get far enough off of the concrete to get away from traffic and human sounds. You don’t need absolute natural quiet. Natural quiet is a term used to describe being far enough out in nature that you can hear no human sounds, this is not an easy thing to achieve. But you don’t need that, you just need it quiet enough so the sound of nature is the primary sound and human noise is limited and in the background. Spend ten or fifteen minutes walking or sitting in a place like this is enough to make you feel better. And you can even find this in parks in cities sometimes. It’s important to have your phone off, and also to really engage your senses. Take time to feel some leaves, (make sure you know what poison ivy looks like), crumple some pine needles in your hand, roll them around and breathe in the aroma. Close your eyes and just listen for a bit. Disconnecting from life, and using all of your senses to experience nature will help you have a happier day my friends.

Appalachian Trail, hiking, happiness
White Blazes make me happy

I’ll end this tonight with two quick memories of forest bathing and one moment of what I call mountain bathing and even desert bathing. I think you can do this type of thing in any type of environment, not just forests. The desert absolutely works, and you can do this sitting on the shore of the ocean, a river or a lake.

There was a day on the Appalachian Trail (AT) when it had turned into a really hot afternoon, I think I was in Virginia and I just needed a break and it absolutely turned into a forest bathing experience. I found a stream, a really lovely rock to sit on and I pulled off my shoes and soaked my feet in the cool stream. The sun was breaking in around through the trees, the trickling of the stream was really soothing. A little breeze blew through and I could smell different plant smells and I spent about fifteen minutes sitting there watching the biggest damn bullfrog I’ve ever seen, hop, swim and crawl around in the stream. Honestly, it felt like I was in the Lord of the Rings watching Gollum kick around in the river.

One of my absolute favorite moments on the AT was when we were heading into a trail town in North Carolina. We were flying along and I was hiking with another hiker and we came over a little ridge and dropped into a little bowl in the forest and I just stopped. My friend asked if I was alright, I said yes, I’m just gonna stay here awhile and he went on. This little bowl of forest was amazing and I sat down off the trail on a log and just took it in for about twenty minutes. It was a green, beautiful forest and everywhere there were little white and pink flowers in bloom. It was a fairly windless day and because of that, the aroma of the flowers was just settled into this depression. This is forest bathing, disconnected from the world and sitting in a beautiful forest, listening to the birds and having the most amazing floral smells wafting around you, it was spectacular.

I’ve had a lot of great desert bathing experiences but most recently I have been camping in Valley of the Fire State Park over the Winter Holidays each year. I found a spot my first time there that I visit every time. It’s about a mile hike off the road, not really on a trail, where there’s a rock finger sliding up out of the ground. At the base there is the most amazing purple rock and it leads up to wind blasted sandstone with various colored lines running through it. Sitting on the back side, in the shade near sunset you can’t hear the cars and the desert opens up in front of you in every direction and in every imaginable rock color, really spectacular.

Second Gokyo Lake

My most amazing nature bathing experience happened in the Himalayas at what I have since that day referred to my favorite place on Earth. I spent thirty days hiking in the high passes of the Himalayas. We went through three valleys during the month and the second valley we went into was the Gokyo Valley. This valley is special because as you climb up to almost 17,000 feet in this valley you pass the seven sacred lakes of the valley. These lakes are revered and not to be entered. During the hike there was a peak, an ice saddle called Kangtega, and for some reason I was really drawn to it. On our hike up the Gokyo valley a couple miles short of the tea house we’d be stopping at for the night, there was a spot above the second sacred lake. After getting to the tea house, I hiked back down and spent three hours sitting on a large rock above the lake with Kangtega in the distance and just was, for hours, it was my favorite moment in the Himalayas.

happiness, everest, be happy, hiking
Rev Kane and a hiking friend

I think my blood pressure dropped ten points just writing this post, the links above almost all lead to previous travel blogs I’ve written, be well and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness when you’re on empty

Posted on September 14, 2025 by Michael Kane
Just Rev Kane petting a 35 foot Grey Whale in Mexico

Don’t die old, die empty. That’s the goal of life. Go to the cemetery and disappoint the graveyard. ~ Myles Munroe

Happiness when you’re on empty

We live in an ever increasingly turbulent and stressful world. Hell, just in the last week a prominent right-wing podcaster was assassinated leading to all kinds of hateful rhetoric all around. Russia decided to fly a dozen drones into Poland causing NATO to scramble jets and shoot them down giving off all kinds of WWIII vibes, prices at the grocery store are up and it’s increasingly looking like the economy is about to tank. Not to mention that this country probably hasn’t been this politically divided since the 1860’s. So if you’re feeling a little stressed out, a little anxious, a little drained of the energy it takes to be happy, well, that probably means you’re a thinking and caring human.

Times like these, and even personal situations where your pushed and stressed to the edge does a very specific thing to us, it drains us of our emotional reserves. Emotional reserves are that cushion or barrier that help you take a breath and not just react. When you have them, and someone cuts you off in traffic, you might swear a little in the car but you keep driving. When you don’t have them, you lay on your horn, you become irate and it ruins the next hour. Those reserves give you the space and ability to moderate your emotional reactions. When those reserves have been drained for a long time you just go flat, meaning you start to lose the ability to react at all, the world becomes a dull, gray flat landscape and that’s where empty turns into depressed, so it’s important to stop that slide.

It’s been a long six years for most people since COVID and that applies to me. Since COVID I spent two years working in a turbulent work environment as literally everything we do in education has changed. Add to that an organization that has had continuous changes in leadership, I’ve had 6 supervisors in 6 years, and our organization has had 6 presidents in 6 years. And finally, the stress and changes associated with having impending, then actually having open heart surgery and recovering. Now I’m fully engrossed in a cross-country job search which quite honestly has been frustrating for a number of reasons.

So many of us are on empty.

The question then becomes, what about happiness? How can you continue to be happy, when you’re on empty. I believe that this is one of those situations where you have to fall back on the answer to the age old question, how do you eat an elephant? One small bite at a time. Likewise, if you try and make grand gestures or huge changes you often fall flat on your face. So you need to work back a little bit at a time. First, and if you read this blog regularly you’ve heard this from me before, you have to start with the basics. Are you eating right, drinking enough water, getting exercise, sleeping enough and are you safe? That safety is both a physical and mental question. You can’t move forward to work on being happier until you get the basics well in hand.

After you’ve got the basics handled then you can work on being happier. So what does one bite at a time mean in terms of happiness. Honestly, it simply means to start small. And my recommendation is start with yourself and your internal voice. It’s a silly thing that I often recommend to people I coach and counsel, it’s about changing your internal script. We internally talk to ourselves all day and this has an impact, it goes back to the old cliche, whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right. If you are consistently reminding yourself that you are stressed out, on empty, that there’s nothing positive to look forward to, that is exactly where you will remain. So here’s my recommendation, each morning, first thing, and I mean this literally, take a look in the mirror and tell yourself, I’m a good person, I deserve and I can be happy. Then follow through and consciously plan to do one thing that makes you happy that day, no matter how small.

The small things can be a whole lot of things. Maybe you plan to buy a cookie after lunch. Maybe it’s planning and taking a 10 minute tea break all by yourself or a short walk in nature. Maybe it’s an act of gratitude where you purposefully take time to write a thank you to someone today. Maybe you plan to do something nice for someone today, we know that gratitude and doing for others makes us feel better as well, which fills our own tank as well as theirs.

So my friends, even if you’re on empty, little by little look and find ways to fill your tank. Being consistent about this over time will bring you back to where you hope to be, a happier place, having happier days. ~ Rev Kane

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Look for joy and happiness, not just comfort

Posted on September 7, 2025 by Michael Kane
happiness Ireland
Rev Kane scaling the castle gates in Ireland

Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain. ~ Joseph Campbell

Look for joy and happiness, not just comfort

My life is clearly marked by a level of comfort. I understand absolutely, that makes me a privileged person. I would imagine that having a life of comfort puts me in a better position than likely 40% of Americans, which means that I’m likely in a better spot than literally billions of people on this planet. So let me start by saying I know how fortunate I am to be in the position I am in, and right now my life, even post surgery, it is full of comfort

What do I mean by comfort, I have shelter, I have food, a job, but it’s more than that, it means not just the basics, not just the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. But it means that I can not just afford to eat, but can afford to eat good food, to go out to dinner, to live in a very comfortable apartment, albeit one with thin walls. I’m not constantly worried about finances or whether or not I can afford a vacation this year. Hell, given my job I’m even comfortable in the sense of time, I get a good number of holidays and five weeks of vacation each year. Pretty good, at least by American standards.

But the thing is, something is missing, has been for awhile now and that’s joy. Sure, I occasionally still take decent vacations, I spend time exploring San Francisco, I have good books to read, great music to listen to and from time to time have some really exceptional meals. About the only joy I have in my life right now is my weekly pizza.

Now, given my life of comfort and privilege in many ways I have no complaint, as I stated at the beginning I know that I have it much better than most, but I have large appetites and I’ve lived my life in search of joy and happiness, not just comfort.

For me, my joy and happiness usually comes through adventure, when I’m traveling, or out in nature particular on long-distance hikes. It’s been far too long since I’ve done any of that and the days are getting shorter. My next chapter needs to contain a lot more joy than I’m having right now, as far as I’m concerned, our lives are made by how much we live, how much love, how much adventure and most of all, how much joy and happiness. Stay focused on that and you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Don’t Make it About You!

Posted on September 1, 2025 by Michael Kane

I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. ~ David Lynch

Don’t Make it About You!

Someone said something to me while visiting during my recovery that I thought was really profound. When you come to visit someone recovering they said, never bring them anything that creates stress or an obligation. She was responding to the fact that several people had brought me plants. Now in my case, it wasn’t a big deal, I already have a tiny patio garden and a couple extra plants was no significant burden, but the point was valid. I love that people have good intentions, but I hate that people don’t stop and think about the impact of those intentions. My mother is a great example of this, she lives on the East Coast, me, the West Coast for like thirty years now. She refuses to pay attention to the time difference. So much so that I’m forced to turn my ringer off every night because if not, I’m liable to get a call or text ridiculously early in the morning, for my birthday recently she texted at 4:15AM. She’s not alone, my father texted me a blank text yesterday at 4:42AM. Again, the intention of a birthday text is to wish someone happy birthday, a good intention, but the reality is possibly waking that person up at 4AM.

This is a common sitcom trope, the dad goes out an buys the mom a new riding mower for her birthday because she wants one, or she buys him a spa gift certificate knowing he won’t use and she will get to go in his place.

During my recovery I dealt with this a lot, a bunch of really wonderful people were incredibly helpful to me. But often, in their desire to do something nice they had the complete opposite impact. I’m a single guy, I live alone and while recovering my appetite wasn’t very large. People would continually ask, what food can I bring you, I’d say nothing, but they would show up with a bag of fruit/vegetables or take out. If I asked for an apple from the store, they would bring three. All much appreciated, however it meant a lot of food went bad and I really hate wasting food, no doubt related to as a kid, not having food to waste.

So it’s a simple message tonight, please do nice things for people, we want to show the people we care for, that we care for them. But take the extra step of thinking about what impact will that action have, will it create an obligation or end up having the opposite impact that you desire? We all live busy hectic lives and we’re trying to check off our to do lists, so often if it’s a gift or a gesture we do it quickly to get the list done. Slow down my friends, take a breath, think a little more deeply about it and you’ll create more happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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A Walking Day in San Francisco

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Michael Kane

San Francisco is a mad city – inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty. ~ Rudyard Kipling

A Walking Day in San Francisco

I know my time living in San Francisco is growing shorter, so I want to make sure I tick off all of the things I want to do here. To be honest it’s a really short list, I’ve done a good job over the last six years of taking advantage of much of what the city has to offer, at least those things I’m interested in. I was having a conversation at work the other day with a Burmese staff member and realized I had never had Burmese food. So I asked for a recommendation and Burma Superstar became my first walking target on my latest walk. I got the Chicken Basil, Burmese Fried Rice and the Tea Leaf Salad and it was all absolutely fantastic.

From Burma Superstar I walked over and through the Presidio.

Coming out of the Presidio I walked over to my next target, the Palace of Fine Arts, someplace that looks absolutely amazing when you drive by it and I’ve always wanted to get down there. But honestly, it’s big, and pretty, but wasn’t all that exciting.

The beauty of being in the Marina District is that you do get great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and sometimes, it seems like the bridge is right in the city.

Finally, after finishing about ten miles of walking I ended up down near Fisherman’s Wharf for my last target of the day, my very first cable car ride, pictured above. Even got the locals discount, although honestly I just think the conductor was lazy and didn’t want to deal with a Clipper Card so my ride was free. It was a fun ride because of the tourists, had a good conversation with some women from NOLA and a couple from Australia. Ended up one car short of getting to ride on the Willie Mays car #24.

All in all a lovely and long day in the city, and a complete rarity, not a single pizza slice the whole day. And of course San Francisco wouldn’t be San Francisco without a little bit of weirdness.

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Happy Birthday to Me!

Posted on August 26, 2025 by Michael Kane

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you! ~ Dr. Suess

Happy Birthday to Me!

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my birthday, I imagine most people do. Usually that’s about aging, but that’s not the deal with me, the only birthday I had any issue with was my last one. Turing 60 got to me a little bit, felt like official old man age, although honestly, I don’t feel old. It was the only one though, not turning 50 when a friend reminded me I was closer to 100 than birth. Not even 40 when my mother sent me a dozen dead roses to my work. Honestly, growing up I didn’t think I’d see 30, tried to kill myself at 14. In my twenties I knew I wouldn’t see 40 as I had gone from being an alcoholic and addict to pretty much clinically depressed and that lasted until my early 40’s. Honestly, my last twenty years have been my best.

Growing up I don’t remember having a lot of great birthdays. I remember a couple of half-assed parties, a weekend where a couple of friends stayed over at our cabin, but honestly no really fond memories. Too much parental alcohol, broken promises and at times, too little money. As I got older I tried to rectify this, when I turned 40 I decided to celebrate for the whole year and I did a damn good job, that was my first Burning Man adventure and the burn happens around my birthday every year. My best birthdays happened at and around Burning Man. Had some good ones in Tennessee, two good people there, one shares my same birthday, the other only a few days shy. We had some great celebrations together eating good food with good company.

But all in all my birthdays haven’t been great, usually celebrated alone and on the present front, well as my mother just told me, she doesn’t know me well enough to get me a present without me telling her what it is supposed to be. The crowning event of my birthdays of course is that the love of my life married another man, you guessed it, on my birthday. So a complicated relationship with the day of my birth.

This year is a significant one, a little over three months post open heart surgery, feels like a new beginning, have even considered changing my birthday to May 7th. But, as the Minister of Happiness, it’s an obligation to find ways to be happy, hell, that’s an obligation as a human as far as I’m concerned. So, while I’ll be starting my birthday in the morning by having my annual work evaluation first thing, I’m determined to make it a good day, and a good birthday.

So tonight, I baked my first ever cake, pictured above. I’m not a baker but even so, couldn’t help but tweak a mix, added some cinnamon and vanilla to the batter, very good decision. The cake is quite tasty! Tomorrow morning, after my evaluation I’m coming home to make an early lunch, bacon wrapped hot dogs and a coke, go for a walk. After leaving work at 7 tomorrow night coming home to a meatloaf I made tonight, for meatloaf, noodles and gravy a little trip back to my childhood, cake for dessert of course. Then I’m taking Thursday and Friday off to make it a five day weekend. While I wish I was on the Playa, 50 mile an hour winds, rainstorm and all, Burning Man is not on the agenda. But this weekend I’ll do a few last things on my San Francisco checklist, I need to go to the Palace of Fine Arts and the European Art Museum and then finally, yes, really, I need to take my first cable car ride. And of course, some good food and decent pizza.

So a quiet but good birthday hopefully, hope you’re having an equally good time my friends, happy birthday to me. ~ Rev Kane

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The Variable Nature of Time

Posted on August 24, 2025 by Michael Kane
flexible time

Some people live more in 20 years than others do in 80. It’s not the time that matters, it’s the person. ~ The 10th Doctor Who

The Variable Nature of Time

Over the last twenty-five years of working, I have on several occasions quit and traveled for a year, taken a new job for several years and then quit and done it all over again. During one of those breaks I hiked a thousand miles on the Appalachian Trail. I’ve also attended the Burning Man festival in Nevada seven or eight times now. One of the things that all of those have in common is their impact on time.

Time, or at least the perception of time, is not a constant thing. We all know this, you can get lost in an activity and time goes by in a blink of an eye. We all have also been in meetings, long, grinding, boring meetings that although they only lasted an hour on the clock, felt like they lasted forever, time is elastic.

When I’ve been out of the workforce, traveling, spending a week off the grid at Burning Man and especially while hiking on the Appalachian Trail, individual days were very long, time went by at a very slow pace and it was glorious. When time slows down it’s easier, to steal a cliche, to stop and smell the roses. Quite literally, but also figuratively. Slow time means it’s easier to focus on the moment, to be more mindful of your surroundings, your thoughts and of the joy and happiness of that particular moment in your life.

I was reminded of the fluidity of time the last two weeks. I spent three months recovering from open heart surgery, this was another time in my life when time slowed down. It made the recovery more intense, but it was also important to focus on the moments and each minute and aspect of my recovery. Those three months moved gloriously slowly, one of the biggest benefits of that was giving me a significant break from the stress of my job. Stress eats you alive and it was certainly chewing me up, the break was needed. Now I’d prefer not to have to have to be cracked open like a lobster to get that kind of break, but a mental break it was none the less. The last two weeks at work have gone by in what seemed like an hour. It’s terrible to feel life screaming by at that pace, to have weekends, my only truly free time disappear in a wink of an eye.

So the point of this post tonight my friends. Find your way to a path in life where you can walk a little slower, where time can slow down and you can find a way to be more present, more mindful and focused on the moment. That’s exactly what I’m engaged in doing right now. Do this, and I promise you happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness and Sleep Apnea

Posted on August 24, 2025 by Michael Kane

When you dream you always remember, when you wake you always forget. ~ Neil Gaiman (Sandman)

Happiness and Sleep Apnea

When I went in for my heart surgery, there was something I hadn’t thought about and that is the fact that throughout my whole recovery I would be sleeping on my back. I mean, I knew that I would be, but I hadn’t thought about sleep apnea. I’ve always known I had some level of apnea, an ex-girlfriend once told me I stopped breathing at night and it freaked her out. But I typically sleep on my side, and when I do I don’t snore and don’t have any significant level of problematic apnea as far as I can tell. Now, when they do sleep tests for apnea they count two things, all at ten second intervals, of either non-breathing or shallow breathing. So even on my side, I probably have some level of apnea, but once I get to sleep, I do at times suffer from insomnia, I sleep pretty well.

So while I was in the hospital, they noticed the apnea when they first started to cut down the oxygen they were giving me at night. So in order to sleep well in the hospital I convinced them to keep the oxygen flowing and I slept with a pillow tucked up under my chin to try and keep my mouth closed. Kind of a poor man’s version of CPAP. My doctor on the step-down floor suggested that I do a sleep test after I got out of the hospital.

I signed up for and got the sleep test done, it’s an odd little thing where you wear something on your finger and wrist while you sleep. When I did my appointment after the test I was told that I was experiencing 75 apnea events PER HOUR. I was of course still sleeping on my back. They offered me a CPAP machine to test out if it would help and I took it for two weeks. Now the way they do these trials is whacked. I decided to try it out for a nap at first and laid down, and as I nodded off and my mouth opened a bit, the CPAP kicked in with like 20 pounds of pressure, felt like someone was water boarding me. It took me about four different nap attempts before I could even nod off with the CPAP on. So I finally get the process dialed in a bit and sleep with the CPAP for a night and I wake up with a raging sore throat. The air pressure and dry air was the problem. So, now it was off to solve that problem, I’d read that using a saline nasal spray could help and so I went out to buy the spray. At the same time I found a saline nasal gel and bought that as well. In the end, the nasal gel absolutely helped but my throat was still a little sore when I woke up.

When I went in to return the unit and have my after appointment, they reviewed the data but it was all over the place. Happily I had a really reasonable technician who filtered out the goofy nights and determined that the CPAP was leaving me with about 15 events per hour, so I was a candidate to get a CPAP. After we talked about the issues I had, the technician related a few things. When I would get my own unit, it would have a humidifier so the air wouldn’t be so dry, and they would set it at 4 pounds of pressure instead of 20 pounds. When I got my unit, it was such an amazing difference. I had no problem immediately sleeping with it, my throat didn’t hurt and it really makes me wonder why they do the test in such an extreme manner. But more importantly, I wish they would have told me the pressure was adjustable and that there would be a humidifier with the permanent unit.

In the intervening two weeks while I waited for the unit to arrive I did some research about how to keep my mouth closed while using the CPAP. At first I ordered a chin strap. While it worked when it was on, there were two problems. During the night as I tossed and turned sometimes I would knock the chin part off and it would be completely off when I woke up. Another issue was that it had to be tight, and the straps across my head would leave dents each morning when I woke up. Not an issue for those of you with hair, but honestly I’m at least a little too vain to walk around every morning with strap marks across my dome.

Then I saw something, a neck collar that is supposed to keep your mouth closed and your head in a position that keeps you from snoring. There is a name brand one for $40 or $50 depending on where you get it from, but I bought a generic one for about $19 dollars on Amazon. Here it is:

I tried it out on a couple of day vacation and it was a little uncomfortable but I quickly got used to it and it seemed to keep me from snoring. A few days later I got my CPAP and started wearing the full, lovely gear set up pictured above. The unit tells you how many events per hour you have during the night. Immediately on the first night, the number of events dropped to 1.6 per hour. Since then my nightly events have ranged between 0 and 1.6 per hour with the average being about 0.5 per hour. This means that my apnea events in an eight hour night have dropped 600 to 4, which is pretty amazing. I’ve actually requested to do another sleep test so that I can wear the collar without the CPAP. While I’m guessing the combination is the trick, and I can see what the CPAP alone does, if the neck collar alone is getting me to low numbers, I really don’t need to do both. Certainly, for traveling, I can take just the neck collar, a lot easier to pack and carry.

Fixing your apnea is supposed to do a lot of things for you. A lot you can’t see, it’s supposed to lower your risk of heart attacks, help you control your diabetes better, and help with a range of things including depression, anxiety, acid reflux and even chronic pain. You’re supposed to feel less tired and more energetic during the day. So it’s a good thing to do. However, like most things, the most frequent question I get post surgery is, “do you feel so much better?” The answer is no, I had no actual symptoms pre-surgery, but I don’t worry about an aneurysm blowing out and killing me if I strain too hard weight lifting or if I get hit in the gut, so better, but not a noticeable physical change. The change I’ve seen with the new set up is that I’m actually sleeping fewer hours and feeling the same level of rested. I’m someone who to feel rested usually needs between eight and nine hours of sleep, always have. With the set up, I’ve been pretty consistently waking up naturally between seven and eight hours of sleep. So that’s definitely a benefit. All in all a good thing. So people who are really struggling with their sleep and have apnea, I absolutely think it’s a good idea. And better sleep makes for happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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