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
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
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.
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
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
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
We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem. ~ Douglas Adams
Incremental Steps to Happiness
This week was my first week back to work and I’d forgotten how utterly and completely draining this job is on a mental and emotional level. But, week one in the books. Week two includes a meeting with HR about the retirement process and a return to my “normal” schedule. This idea of normality and how draining work was this week had me doing some thinking. My normal response to stress is to eat comfort food and too damn much of it. So, I returned to work and ate a ton this week, so my blood sugar and weight are also correspondingly up. The way I’ll deal with both, is the way you approach any goal or deal with any problem successfully, and that is incrementally.
No issue gets solved all at once, at least, no personal issues. So the best way to address change that is needed, is to take it step by step, incrementally. So for me it has meant this weekend just trying to do better than I did yesterday. So each day, I’ve walked a little more, ate less carbs and did more self-care types of things like some self-massage, meditation, using my shakti mat, writing and a big one for me, music.
This simple process of doing a little better today than you did yesterday has a lot of benefits. First, it’s not hard, no matter how badly you did yesterday, and in fact the worse you did, the easier it is to do better today. The big secret is to string together a nice stretch of days in a row so that you are able to see the gains. This works no matter what issue you’re addressing and this includes happiness. Happiness is a process and a state of being. I don’t know anyone who lives in an eternal state of happiness, we all have down days and down times. We’ve talked a lot on this blog about all of the various ways of raising our levels of happiness. We’ve discussed gratitude, self-care in all of it’s forms, spending time in nature and as always, making sure the basics, food, sleep and safety are all taken care of first. So on any given day, on any of these fronts, we can do a little bit better each day.
So a short and simple message tonight, don’t beat on yourself, just endeavor to do better today than you did yesterday and you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be. ~ Douglas Adams
Happy Three Pizza Day!
During my last week of freedom from work while recovering from my heart surgery, I spent the day walking in San Francisco. I spent some time at the Cal Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, The Haight and made three separate pizza stops including a new place I’ve wanted to review for a time.
My first stop of the day after a three mile walk up from BART was the California Academy of Sciences. I really like this place, mostly because of I love planetarium shows and they run three different shows every day, so yes, I did three planetarium shows. I also want to give Cal Academy credit for having True Moo chocolate milk in their cafeteria, without a doubt, the champagne of chocolate milks.
They have a new exhibit on for the summer, about a dozen animatronic dinosaurs, including a pretty huge T-Rex and Brontosaurus type dinosaur. If you’d like to see videos of those check out my Instagram page at @michael_rev_kane. Cal Academy has a mix of old school museum rooms and more modern features like the planetarium, I always find the Africa Room to be a bit depressing with it’s majority of stuffed critters, but the live penguin exhibit is always a hit with the munchkins. One small but interesting visit is the earthquake room where you get a taste of both the Loma Prieta and the Great 1906 quake. I always find the 1906 quake experience to be amazing, and they only put you through it for one third of the time the quake actually lasted. The one stuffed critter I do find amazing there, is the mount of the last living California Grizzly, a chance to see this extinct species up close.
The planetarium shows were amazing as always, I love their little planetarium. The aquarium is ok, it’s actually probably way better than I give it credit for, but when your 90 minutes from the Monterey Bay Aquarium it’s hard to be impressed by anything else. One really well known feature of their aquarium is their giant albino alligator in their Southern Swamp exhibit. Of course, I’ve often wondered if it was actually alive, every time I’ve been there it’s in one place and never moving. So it was a rare treat this time around as I got to see him actually swimming. They also have a several level rainforest experience and honestly all I ever care about is the highest level because that’s where the butterflies hang out and there’s a ton of them and they’re gorgeous and occasionally even land on you.
Below is a gallery of some images from Cal Academy.
After leaving Cal Academy I strolled through Golden Gate Park and over to the Haight, it’s the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Grateful Dead, so the Haight’s been hoping for a bit this year. There were even a couple of old style deadhead touring buses and heads around the neighborhood. Some pictures below from the Haight:
The beauty of my route this day was that rolling through the Haight I would pass two pizza places, an outpost of Tony’s Slice House, which I’ve reviewed on the Pizza Page, and a place I’ve been meaning to get to that gets a bit of press, Escape from New York. Finally, the walk back to BART would take me back past Gioia Pizza, the best NY slice in San Francisco and pictured at the top, couldn’t wait to take a bite before I took the photo. Tony’s Slice House, an outpost of Tony’s Napolatana in Little Italy, is always a bit disappointing to me. Tony Gemignani, the owner, is maybe the most decorated and awarded pizza maker in America and frankly, a pizza at his restaurant is amazingly good. At the Slice Houses though, the experience just doesn’t translate, I think because the slices sit and don’t hold up that way. I was lucky on this stop to get a pepperoni slice from a pie that had just come out of the oven, so much better than normal. The one thing they do absolutely right is their pepperoni is super high quality.
I’ve seen Escape from New York Pizza end up on several best NY pizza in the city lists so I’ve been curious about getting a chance to check it out. The good, it feels like a NY pizza place, pizzas on display behind a glass counter, celebrity signed photos and posters on the wall, and even the we don’t give a shit about you attitude of the employees. Hell, right down to the overflowing garbage cans and the crappy soda machine. The pizza looked good and it was fine, it would be an average slice in NY, grade it out at a “C”, compared to the slice at Tony’s that would be a “B” and Gioia that would be an “A”. If you’re in the The Haight and hungry, definitely worth it, although walking a half block further to Tony’s would be better, assuming you can get something fresh out of the oven. Some images below from Escape from NY Pizza.
All in all a great final walking day in the city before I go back to work. Lovely weather, a great walk, about nine miles and a day full of pizza is always a happy one. ~ Rev Kane
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. ~ Vincent Van Gogh
Impact of Small and Ordinary Happiness
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately has been inspired by my recent experience with people during my heart surgery recovery. I am not someone who has a lot of faith in humanity. I’ve talked a lot about this in regards to trail angels and hikertrash on the Appalachian Trail. My hike on the AT was one of the few experiences that really gave me faith in humanity. In general, and lately watching the political situation in America, I have very little faith in humanity.
The one place that humanity shows up, is during the big things. So people generally ignore each other, can be rude to each other and incredible entitled and self-centered until the disaster hits. We see this all of the time, in LA recently with the fires last year, the hurricane in Western North Carolina, always after an earthquake people rally around their neighbors and community. It’s the same with people, people will treat you like shit most of the time, but when someone has cancer, or gets injured or undergoes heart surgery, people rally. Honestly this is really sad to me.
People always complain that the world is cruel and unkind and daily they feel run down by the way people treat them. So the message I want to get out tonight is that we can all make this better. Simply by the small and ordinary acts of kindness and happiness. If we would all just take the moment needed to be nicer and kinder, the accumulation of those small acts could lead to a much larger thing, a kinder and a happier world. So you’re assignment, should you choose to accept it, do five small things every day that are kind and happiness creating gestures. These are small things, holding a door open for someone even if a person isn’t close behind you, letting someone into a traffic lane, giving a random small gift to someone, buy someone a cup of coffee or a muffin, or even just make an effort to say something kind to someone that you wouldn’t ordinarily say. If we all do this, if we all make this effort, we can all have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves. ~ Viktor E Frankl
Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: 90 Days
First a comment about the author of tonight’s quote, Viktor E. Frankl, his book, Man’s Search for Meaning is one of the greatest books ever written, it is a book I actually think everyone should read. The book reminds me of the story of the orange from a post I wrote, possibly maybe my favorite post, Remember the Sweet Things. Something else I recommend everyone should read and listen to.
On May 7th I had open heart surgery, as part of the recovery process I was put on a three month medical leave, that leave has ended and it’s back to work on Monday. I’m actually less excited about returning to work than I was to undergo the surgery. While going to work has little chance of actually killing me, it will kill my soul and that may be worse. The problem with my job is that it’s 90% people management and I work at a place where accountability has never been a priority, or hell, even a reality, particularly for faculty. As such, a lot of the people I manage are extremely entitled and selfish individuals. They honestly don’t seem to care about the emotional impact or stress they cause on anyone else, they are only concerned with one thing, what they want in the moment. As such, my job is incredibly stressful, I’ll also be returning to a brand new boss and a brand new president. Happily, so far I’ve heard good things about both of them.
So Viktor E. Frankl’s quote really resonates in this situation. First off, I can change the situation, but not immediately. So the challenge facing me this Monday, is to change myself in terms of the role, which means reducing my stress. This means that in order to preserve my own sanity and keep my stress in check during my continuing recovery, I need to approach things differently. I’ve always tried to find solutions that met multiple interests, that effort increases complexity and makes things more stressful, usually for me. So I need to simplify and operate on the highest level value in my job, and only that level, what’s best for students. In doing so, it will almost certainly mean I will have to be much harder on my faculty, but at the end of the day, when it’s what’s best for students it’s infinitely defensible. It will mean that people will like me less, but that’s never been a huge concern and leads to the second piece, I can change the situation. As such I’ve started a full job search, primarily on the East Coast where I hope to be, in the next few years, fully retired.
I have to admit rising levels of stress this week as this deadline has approached, my blood pressure has even increased to the point of going back on one of my medicines. But I have also made an effort this week to grab those last little bits of happiness before going back to work. I’ll be doing some posts over the next week or so talking about these, but I’ve spent some time in San Francisco, I went to a Giants/Pirates game, my littlest sister came into town, I had a three pizza day, went to the Asian Art Museum and the Cal Academy of Sciences. I’ve also done a ton of cooking, I made my first ever Beef Wellington and it came out really well. I’ve even just made a pot of gumbo for my work lunches this next week. I also got cleared for everything by my physical therapist, did my first chest workouts with weights and even did a nine mile walk.
The recovery from my surgery went way better than I had hoped it could have, I was ahead of schedule the whole time and had none of the major set backs or complications most people have. I had a lot of anxiety going into this, one person I know after the surgery ended up in a coma for a time, my best friend growing up died from the surgery, another friend had some other complications. Happily I avoided all of those things. There were some really scary moments, some extremely difficult mental challenges, a whole lot of fear, I kept almost all of that to myself, except for the night it was really bad and I had some crazy symptoms that lead me to calling 911, getting my first ever ambulance trip and a couple of hours in the emergency room. Obviously, everything turned out ok and it seems to have been just a fluke event not really related to my surgery.
The biggest things over the last three months have been my connections and relationships with people. Most of the people I expected to show up did, a few surprisingly let me down, but in general people were great. I had twenty different people who visited, came over, did grocery and pharmacy runs, moved my car for me, gave me rides, helped me move things around my apartment, hung out in the first few days while I showered and provided great company. You know, up until the point where the raging introvert that I am just had too many people around and had to really reduce my interactions. But I’m incredibly grateful for the support and caring they provided. I was surprised by the level of support, happy about it, and have thank you gifts for all of them.
So, not sure there’s a point tonight other than the quote by Frankl, I think that’s the lesson I hope people will pull from this post. And seriously, read his book, it’s truly magnificent, maybe keep a positive thought for me this week and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
The Ministry of Happiness 