Saturday, October 31, 2015

What *Is* Poverty?

Saturday, October 31, 2015


"We have historically understood poverty as moral failure. And, in fact, we have an entire sort of architecture of language we use to talk about this, the culture of poverty, the notion that there is something inherent in individuals that leads them to be poor, some sort of moral, emotional, intellectual failing, or some sort of collective culture that is born and bred in poor communities, in which we pass poverty around almost as if it's some sort of disease."

- Stephen Pimpare in an interview on Democracy Now


Yesterday was a special day. I attended an event on the University of Minnesota campus to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the AmeriCorps program. I currently work for a non-profit organization focused on providing skills development for homeless youth here in the Twin Cities. It can be very demanding work. But I am enjoying it nonetheless.

During the commemoration of the AmeriCorps program I was introduced to Stephen Pimpare through a video presentation that offers thirteen lessons regarding our collective understanding of poverty. I found many of the lessons presented in the video to be spot on. I am going to specifically write a bit about two lessons contained in the video. These are the third and seventh lessons presented in the video. The particular issues examined in these lessons are that "childhood poverty is toxic" and "persistent poverty is a disability problem."

In the third lesson Pimpare notes that poverty "is exceedingly stressful...especially for children." Put succinctly children who are at a disadvantage in their earliest years are more likely to struggle with significant challenges over the duration of their lives. It thus follows that any successful strategy to alleviate and eradicate poverty must address childhood development and how a society takes care of its children. In lesson seven a quote from Shawn Fremstad notes that "disability is both a fundamental cause and consequence of poverty." A person's ability to work (as well as the skills they can offer in the labor market) is thus also a significant predictor of risk for poverty.

While I found Pimpare's presentation quite compelling I still find it rather problematic that poverty is so often equated with monetary deprivation. In my mind poverty is so much more than a lack of money and the subsequent consequences of having little money. There are many more important factors that contribute to a good life. Consider what makes for a good childhood.

It's obvious that children need the same things that any other human beings need. They need food, shelter and clothing. But they also need consistency in their relationships. They need caregivers and other people they can rely upon to provide them not just material sufficiency but also the more intangible nurture we speak of when we use words such as love, care, friendship and so on. When children grow up in a world defined by chaos, confusion, insufficiency and violence the stress of such circumstances can (and often does) have serious consequences. Pimpare notes that such stress exacts physiological consequences...among other things. Indeed, stress can create an enormous toll. To appreciate the impact of stress I encourage any of my dear readers to read from the resources of post-trauma coach Michele Rosenthal. A cursory review of her videos and other resources will further substantiate Pimpare's emphasis on the physiological consequences of stress.

So in the spirit of speaking about what poverty "looks like" I offer my own list of what poverty tangibly can look and feel like:


Poverty is:


  • Not knowing if your mother or father will have a reliable income because job opportunities in the local community are inconsistent.
  • Not having a reliable source of clean water because a local plant polluted your water source and was not held accountable for its conduct.
  • Not feeling you can trust the people who serve in your community's police department.
  • Wondering if you will get a welfare benefit you rely upon in a timely way because your local county office is understaffed.
  • Having your father serving in the military overseas and not knowing when (or if) he will return home safely.
  • Living in a culture where the predominant media distracts the populace from pressing issues rather than contributes to a healthy discourse about those issues.
  • Having no viable work options in your community that pay you a living wage.
  • Being victimized by the policies put in place due to the undue power of special interest groups (the many members of said groups apparently think their own rights are more important than yours).
  • Having no promising options to repay your student loans.
  • Being a student in a school system that pays insufficient attention to issues such as bullying, gang violence and drug abuse.
  • Having no real time to spend with those you love...because you are too busy working to make a living.
  • Living with a disability and having insufficient support to provide for your most basic needs on a daily basis.



These are just a few of the realities I think of when I think of poverty. Of the "looks" of poverty I noted above I can identify several that I have personally experienced.

I personally feel quite good today. I have had the leisure to actually sit and write out my thoughts here in my blog. I have been able to get some chores done and not feel rushed! I have eaten healthy food and not felt rushed as I prepared it. I have also enjoyed an atmosphere of calm and serenity. Many people living in violent neighborhoods both throughout America as well as abroad would feel quite fortunate to have a completely quiet day not punctuated by gunfire.






Thursday, October 29, 2015

All These Terrible Things...That Never Happened

Thursday, October 29, 2015


Over the years I have gradually come to a deeper and deeper appreciation of how little our mind's can actually know. We can take classes, obtain academic degrees, spend years of our lives in the pursuit of researching very specialized subjects and yet still fail to accurately anticipate what people we know will do tomorrow.

Early life conditioning seems to have a significant bearing on the patterns of thought that may fill our own minds. If we are subjected to chaos, violence or excessive stress over long periods of time we may eventually come to expect such circumstances to always be our reality. In a similar way an early history of being deeply hurt by other people might seemingly predispose us to expect to be hurt by people in the future. Expecting people to disappoint or hurt us on a regular basis is a horrible way to live. Unfortunately it's a type of thinking that plagued me for years. I attribute my own early life history as being a significant factor in the patterns of thought that became common in my mind later on.

And yet the mind's predictive power is finite! I was reminded of this last night when my greatest fears running through my mind were not realized. Nothing horrible happened to me. Indeed, the end of my day instead had an anti-climactic air about it. It was a bit surreal how easily I could get carried away with the ruminations and deepest fears contained within my own mind.

Some habits take a while to break.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

What Is A Dis-Abled Way of Experiencing The World?

Tuesday, October 27, 2015


Another full day is behind me now. I feel positively exhausted as I have been awake for nearly sixteen hours. Perhaps this isn't impressive to medical doctors and others who go without sleep for thirty-six to forty-hours on occasion. I am nonetheless pleased with how well I managed my day considering how stressful it was. Being asked to do so much with minimal resources can be such a challenge.

I spoke with my therapist tonight. I actually sat in my bathtub at home while I spoke with him on the phone. I wanted to chat in person but the hectic rescheduling of my day made necessary by a number of  challenging issues these past few weeks required me to be creative and accept a less than ideal way of 'meeting' with him. I've never "met" with a therapist while sitting in my bathtub at home.

I spoke about the major stressors in my life these last few weeks. The stressors I have experienced have been ponderous enough to cast me into a persistent feeling of needing medication to modulate how I manage my life each day. But I am determined to see what is happening as only a passing challenge. The bumpy road of my life has only been predominant for about two weeks now. This too shall pass.

I continue to experience amazement with my eyesight on a daily basis. I recently have decided to "drop anchor" and allow this newfound appreciation of what my eyes perceive of the world to become a central facet of the person I wish to be in the future. By that I mean I want to do something in my professional life that uses my eyes in a more intensive way. It seems my appreciation of the world around me is not going to wane any time soon. It thus seems to be a permanent part of who I now am.

As I have reflected on the gift of my eyesight I have found myself contemplating what a "dis-abled" way of viewing the world could be. I will write about that more in a future posting.

Monday, October 26, 2015

"When Are You Going To Get Over It?"

Monday, October 26, 2015


I had a nightmare last night. When compared against the nightmares during my sleep time I have had throughout my life the one I had last night was fairly bad. The dream imagery was interwoven with feelings of dread and fear. The fear I felt in the dream was due in large measure to the visual imagery that surrounded me.

When I awoke this morning I felt all too familiar feelings of sadness and anxiety. And I found myself wondering how I can be a man of forty-two years of age and still be plagued by disturbing dreams. The one I had last night I can easily associate with that summer of 1982. I have previously written about that time in my life here in my blog. It was a very difficult time. I felt a lot of fear then. I was afraid I was going to die. And I had good reason to feel that way. I won't put myself through pain again by once again recounting the details here.

I found myself asking a hard question this morning: "When am I going to decisively 'get over' my early life history?" What will it take for me to no longer sometimes feel haunted by what I endured? As I reflected on the long and painful shadow of my early life history I found myself recalling a small piece of written material in which the same general question is posed. I pulled it out this morning to read it over. The title of it is "The Ten Biggest Myths About Grief". You might expect to see such a piece of literature in a hospital chapel or hospice office. The following is directly quoted from this miniature guidebook on grief:


"The biggest myth about grief is that we 'get over' it. We don't. We absorb our loss and learn from it. We are changed forever after someone we love dies. As poet Paul Irion says, 'Life can be the same after a trinket has been lost, but never after the loss of a treasure.'

The harsh reality of loss brings acute grief, a pain that is all-consuming, overwhelming, and unpredictable. Grief does not follow an orderly path through stages, phases, and tasks, and come to an end that is clearly defined by 'acceptance,' 'closure,' and 'emotional detachment.'"


I believe the aforementioned myth is a convenient little myth that nonetheless can do a lot of damage when we structure our lives around its incorrect core assumption. It's a myth I personally believe is almost essential to cling to as a means of living in the hyper-connected and hyper-busy culture of American society. Or perhaps 'coping' is a better word choice than 'living'. How can you feel that you are truly living in a culture where we are taught to always be moving on to the next thing? Being 'busy' is one of the quintessential American addictions. But what is all the busyness for?

Twenty-eight months of rigorous self-inquiry, writing and dedication to my own personal wellness has taught me a few things. One thing I have learned is recounted elsewhere in this grief guidebook. All losses are not the same. Another powerful piece of wisdom can be found hidden inside another myth that contends that there is only one right way to grieve. There are as many ways to grieve as there are people on the planet. I personally found it helpful to reclaim what I could of the life I had never lived as a way of grieving the years from my earlier life that are now gone forever. We cannot turn back the clock but we can choose to live a better life in the future.

I am inclined to think that an article posted by PTSD recovery advocate Michele Rosenthal somehow ignited the dream I had last night. The topic of that article was shame. I think American culture all too often does something incredibly disempowering and shortsighted to those who are immersed in grief. It shames them. People get shamed for not 'getting over' their grief. Such is the harm that can be inflicted by a culture virtually obsessed with moving faster, being more productive and so on.

As I pondered my own particular life reality in the hours immediately after waking up this morning I asked myself a painful question: 'Do I personally feel ashamed by the fact that I am apparently still not 'over' some of what happened to me more than thirty years ago?' A harsh person lacking compassion might indeed think I am pathetic for not having finally healed from all the uncertainty, violence, corruption and harsh language I was subjected to as a kid. Indeed, shouldn't twenty-eight months of consistently going to therapy on a weekly basis have helped me reach that seemingly magical state of 'being healed'? Not necessarily.


I find myself becoming more and more gentle and patient as time passes. American culture would often conflate such qualities with weakness. But anyone who knows me well knows I am a strong individual. My appreciation of the beauty and fragility of human life has deepened these last two years. I am aware of how the smallest words and gestures can have long enduring impacts, both positive and negative, for those both on the giving and receiving end of such interactions.

I personally would like to reach a point in my own life where I no longer feel so vulnerable to the ravages of vivid nightmares. I would like to have more enduring friendships. I want to be happier. I want to do work that energizes me. And I want a special person to have as my husband. These are my big dreams for my future. Maybe these wishes will manifest in another six months. Maybe it will take another year. I don't know. I continue to do the work to move in the direction of a bigger, brighter, bolder and more enjoyable future. I hope one day I will finally awaken...and actually be in my much dreamed about reality.



Sunday, October 25, 2015

Giving 100% All The Time

Sunday, October 25, 2015


I had an important realization today. It's not healthy for me to be pushing myself hard all the time. When waking up this morning, on a Sunday, I began to review what I hoped to accomplish today. As I began to think through all the tasks of my day and all that was required to accomplish them I began feeling increasingly overwhelmed. In an attempt to encourage myself I said the following to myself: "Just go as fast as you can." I then paused and realized there was a certain problem with my thinking. Going as fast as I can is basically the equivalent of driving a car at maximum speed. While this can be tolerable and feasible for some duration of time it's not realistic to expect we can push ourselves hard all the time. Fully using our capacities (giving 100%) all the time can be exhausting and ultimately lead to burnout.

I have been feeling overwhelmed lately. I have two jobs now. It's not my preference to be so busy with working to earn money. I want to enjoy my life and not fall into the American trap of living to work (as opposed to working to live). In addition to my work commitments I also attempt to regularly write in my blog, attend a leadership development program that requires me to commit some time on Tuesdays and Saturdays, exercise, meet with my therapist once a week, spend time with friends and make some plans for my future beyond next August 1st. That is a lot to juggle. It becomes even more taxing to juggle so many demands on my time when things go awry or are delayed. If you are living a life where you have basically no time margin for error and grant yourself little time to refresh yourself you are quite possibly on a path to burnout. I want to live a life that is rewarding and energizing. I have been burned out before. It's a very unpleasant experience.

So rather than give 100% all the time I realize it's important to downshift and leave some energy in my own personal "tank". An imbalanced life can often (though not necessarily inevitably) lead to significant problems later on. As autumn deepens and the silence and solitude of winter approaches I realize now is an ideal time to prune my life of commitments and clutter that no longer serve me. And yet it can be difficult to let go.

Those influences which prove prominent in our early development can prove quite challenging to consciously recognize as well as observe dispassionately. If we are not consciously aware of these influences we might awaken one day (perhaps belatedly) to discover our lives do not feel much like our own. We may feel our lives are actually being driven by something we don't even understand. One of the influences I recognize played a powerful role in my own development was religion. I grew up in a family that is good at being of service to others. But taken to an extreme a person dedicated to service to others can become a martyr. And in becoming a martyr we can lose our very selves. It's thus healthy to step back on occasion and reassess the quality of our lives.

I feel as if I was virtually captivated by the martyr archetype earlier in my own life. I was so dedicated to being of service to others that I failed to recognize the very real risk of losing my own self in the process. And while it can be very healthy (even downright therapeutic) to get involved in the lives of others (both to be of help as well as being a source of distraction from our own concerns) there is indeed a fine line where service turns into self-destructive martyrdom.

There are times when I still feel immense grief. There are moments when the grief weighs upon me so heavily that I could be easily convinced I am living through 2013 all over again. These days the grief that arises in me is often connected to periods of my life very different from those I explored when I first began seeing my therapist in June, 2013. As I noted in a recent posting I have a deep desire to recapture my sense of my own youth. My own youthfulness hasn't been lost. But I don't feel I appreciated my power, beauty, energy and youthfulness as much as I could have when I was biologically younger. When I ponder the life I lived in my twenties I marvel at how much I gave to others and how little I gave to myself. I was laying the foundation for the burnout I would experience
years later. I was also living in what I now recognize was an imbalanced way. I was living a very serious life.

Restoring your own personal health and vitality after a sojourn in the landscape of burnout can be deeply personal and deeply challenging. And the process can require much patience and self-inquiry as well as the aid of others.

While working today I unexpectedly took note of the fact that it was exactly twenty-eight months ago that the seed was planted from which would bloom my odyssey of writing. Twenty-eight months ago, on June 25, 2013, I received a health diagnosis that would ultimately cast me on a new course. It took a while for my vision to sufficiently clarify such that I could start to see where I was going. I can honestly say that I can now see more clearly than I ever have before.

Life is wondrous.

Allow yourself to change. Allow the people around you to change. Allow the wisdom of change to inhabit your life.





Thursday, October 22, 2015

Recapturing My Youth


Thursday, October 22, 2015


So this evening I went to assist with the triennial survey of homelessness here in the state of Minnesota. I went to a location near downtown Minneapolis to assist in administering a survey to homeless people staying in a shelter environment. It’s a sobering experience to meet homeless people. You very well could become a homeless person. You quite possibly know at least one person in your vast network of friends whose housing situation is currently quite precarious.  You just might not be aware that this is true. Many people barely making it financially are not that far way from becoming homeless. All it takes is one catastrophic event to push many people down the “economic ladder” into destitution.

Many years have passed since the economic implosion of 2008. Regardless of what word choice is made to describe that time (Great Recession, etc) many, many people were harmed by that time. I wish I had been better prepared for that horrible time here in the United States. Had I been better prepared I might not have suffered some of the hardships I have experienced these last several years. Learning how to plan and manage the affairs of your life is a vital and mature task to commit to. It is sad that there are many people who lack the essential skills to manage their lives as adults. Others find themselves still making up for underdeveloped skills later in their lives. I definitely fit into the latter category.

As I left the site where I assisted with the survey I found myself aware of my great yearning to recapture my supposedly lost youth. Is it really lost? I don’t know. I have written about this idea of lost youth and lost time elsewhere in my blog. Some would argue it is possible for an individual to recapture earlier times in his life when that earlier phase of life unfolds in such a way that leaves him feeling seriously unfulfilled, alienated, disenchanted or all of the above. I do believe such revisiting of an under-enjoyed past is possible. The trick to successfully recapturing lost years seems to require the application of an adult attitude marked by patience, thoughtfulness and discernment.

My twenty-eight month journey with my current therapist has proven vital to my successful plunge into addressing and healing the deepest wounds of the earliest years of my life history. And yet it’s amazing how unsteady I can still sometimes feel even after doing so much work with the guidance of a therapist. It doesn’t help that I live in a nation marked by such dysfunction and backwardness. A mentality approximating that of a spoiled five-year old child seems to characterize much of the interactions in our government these days. One can see examples of this at the local, state and federal levels of government. It can be easy to want to recapture “lost youth” when it appears as if few other people who are of biological adult maturity nonetheless act petulant, selfish and downright mean. Why be a mature adult when it isn’t the “in thing” to do these days? Why indeed.

Despite the abundance of regressive and petty behavior one can read about in the daily life of the American nation I nonetheless feel fairly pleased with the state of my own life these days. I have been working full time for nearly three months now. I actually like my primary job! This is not a small thing. Many Americans hate their jobs…if they have one at all.

So what to do about the blog? Yes, I am still writing. And yes my life has evolved tremendously since June, 2013. It actually seems strangely surreal that the memories I have of that time in my life are actually of real experiences from my own life history. It no longer seems actually possible that I was as sick, disheartened and angry as I was that summer of 2013.

I am currently cultivating contacts to lead me in a new career direction in 2016. But actually the direction isn’t really that new. Instead I want to bring my life full circle and get back into the world of work involving marine policy, exploration and research. I feel that great things are going to open up to me in the coming years. And cultivating a healthy belief that such a wondrous life is indeed possible is a first and vital step to realizing such a dream!

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

To Overcome Adversity

Tuesday, October 20, 2015


Adversity can be the ground from which springs the soothing power of compassion. So goes the stream of thought contained in a New York Times article I recently read. I tend to agree with this central thesis of the aforementioned article. More than once I have wondered who I might have become had I not endured the hardship, loss and trauma I experienced in the earliest years of my own life.

I find myself feeling a bit stuck lately in regards to writing my blog. I sometimes feel it is primarily a result of the fact that I now have a "responsible" job that consumes much of my time and energy. As I noted in a very recent posting the pace of my life has changed tremendously. These last ninety days have featured an enormous amount of positive change in my personal life. Now that I find myself so busy with the task of assisting in uplifting the lives of local homeless young people I find I have much less time and energy for other activities. Maintaining my blog still interests me. But it seems somewhat unrealistic for me to place an expectation on myself that I write each and every day.

So what is different about me as compared to twenty-eight months ago? Here is one big difference:

I am very, very aware of the time sensitive nature of opportunities.

I tend to believe such an awareness is at least partly an inevitable result of maturity. As we grow older and accumulate more life experience we naturally experience the truth that not all opportunities that come around once will come around again. It seems such awareness will thus lead us to become more grateful for what we do have and more willing to jump at amazing opportunities when they do happen to come around.

I will share another aspect of how I have changed in my next posting.



Saturday, October 17, 2015

From Stagnation To Supersonic Speed

Saturday, October 17, 2015


My life has become so fast paced (compared to this past summer) that I sometimes marvel that I am able to keep up with all the change in my life. There are some days when I feel quite overwhelmed by the demands on my time. I felt quite exhausted for much of August. All the changes that took place in a very short period of time left me feeling grateful to meet my bed each night during the last weeks of summer.

I am about to leave to go do my second job. Tomorrow will thankfully be a day when I don't have to go out and do anything characteristic of the world we ideally inhabit as responsible adults. I'll have some time for play and pleasure.

I do intend to keep writing and am actively visualizing what my new life can look like now that the unhealed trauma of my early life has finally, finally, been resoundingly addressed. Twenty-eight months have passed since that eventful month of June, 2013. I am grateful those days are long since gone. The pain I felt at that time was extraordinary.

Have a great Saturday! And find something beautiful about the day to enjoy!

Thursday, October 15, 2015

A Mountaintop View

Thursday, October 15, 2015


Today was the type of day I wish I could bottle up and somehow magically repeat on numerous other days that I work. I felt quite exhilarated by the opportunity to introduce good people to one another in my workplace. Being a "connector" is one of my favorite activities.

The theme of dreaming big was at play throughout my day. I currently work in what I call a youth serving organization. The youth my organization serves not infrequently come from some very difficult circumstances. I have empathy for the circumstances many of these youth have come from because I had significant obstacles in my own childhood I had to overcome. Life can be very mean and alienating at times. And yet, somehow, if we want to realize an amazing quality life we have to not only allow ourselves to dream big but actually engage in such imaginative exercise on a frequent basis. Our lives ultimately become the "outpicturing" of what we consistently imagine and believe to be real and true.

Does what I claim sound like some ridiculous New Age "happy talk" you would expect to hear from a self-identified fortune teller or magician? I can understand if my words meet many skeptical ears. I was once skeptical myself. But then I learned about the powerful technique of creative visualization. I later tested out practicing such a technique after reading books written on the subject. After I enjoyed a single instance of irrefutable success in creating something I consistently took time to imagine actually experiencing I knew that creative visualization was indeed a legitimate art.

If you want a big life it's essential that you dream big. You also have to make big requests. And, eventually and finally, you must learn to welcome in the big life you dream of once it indeed comes to fruition.


Monday, October 12, 2015

The Avid Explorer

Monday, October 12, 2015


I want to do some amount of exploring as part of my future professional life. What exact job I will hold where I can do some exploring as a regular part of my work remains unclear to me at this time. I thrive on opportunities for adventure. Work that features an excessive amount of mind numbing repetition has a way of quenching the fire in my soul. I need something much greater than that. And I am capable of something much greater.

I finally feel relatively whole, strong and focused. It was quite a process getting here. I never would have imagined that the transit of Pluto in square to my natal Moon would bring about such a veritable 'festival' of (still) unhealed trauma and associated memories to wade through. Plutonian transits can be notoriously long so it's best to buckle up and prepare yourself when a harsh transit comes along. It's a suitable moment to use astrological language considering that the Moon has just begun a whole new cycle. It was exactly new only a few minutes ago.

I was given this question at the last cohort day for my current service work. The question read something like this: "What age would you like to be able to be again...or always?" And I picked the age when I was completing my graduate degree under the instruction of Pamela Colorado. I remember it as such a vivid, exciting and stimulating time in my life. I want that type of life again.




Sunday, October 11, 2015

Paths Never Taken

Sunday, October 11, 2015


Periods of time marked by a Mercury retrograde phase have a way of introducing us to elements of our earlier life histories that we may have (erroneously) concluded we had long since put behind us. I was reminded of this tonight when I went out to a local bar that I have previously frequented in the time I have lived in the Twin Cities.

I have lived in Minnesota for three years now. The evolution of my life has been decidedly non-linear throughout these last three years. When I arrived in October three years ago I never would have imagined the quality of my life was still being so significantly undermined by the legacy of the trauma I had experienced some thirty years prior to that time. I thought I had successfully worked through the pain and trauma I had endured as a kid. The year 2013 came along and instructed me otherwise. Over two years have passed since that eventful warm season of 2013. I feel like a new person now. I still feel grief that the life-transforming change of EMDR therapy did not find its way into my life earlier. But I am grateful it found me...at all.

While spending time with some friends tonight I found myself reminded of my life of years ago. I saw the man I briefly dated when I first moved to the Twin Cities three years ago. He still has a certain aura of unhealed trauma about him. This is not surprising considering the fact that he is a veteran of the Iraq war. I saw other familiar faces as well. Many people I might expect to see were not in attendance; I assume many of them were away at the Iowa Leather weekend in Des Moines.

My awareness of the life paths I could have taken (but chose not to) was only further reinforced by my online encounter of a man whom I first corresponded with three years ago when I still lived in the Washington DC area. As sometimes has happened before I found myself feeling my mind full of unrealized future life scenarios that never came to be. What if I had stayed in the Washington, DC area and remained steadfast in my determination to forge a career in the federal government? What if I had not immediately left Monterey, California over four years ago in search of something bigger and better in the Pacific Northwest? What if I had chosen differently on a number of occasions?

Even after taking a journey marked by such extensive therapy it can still be a bit too easy for me to fall into the pattern of reflecting on all the possibilities that might have opened to me if I had only...fill in the blank. If only I had been more patient. If only the trauma of my life history had not still been undermining the quality of my life as recently as three years ago. If only I had met certain people at slightly different times in my own life timeline. Perhaps the whole timeline of my personal evolution would have turned out differently. Perhaps I would be a much better person today. Perhaps I would be healthier, wealthier and more settled. But then again perhaps everything unfolded in the best possible manner for my highest good. Maybe that is actually the "correct" perspective to maintain about the evolution of my life.

I do know that time feels more precious to me than ever before. I am aware that we don't always get second chances. In fact it seems to me that second chances might actually be quite rare.

Use your time and energy wisely. Make time for those who make time for you.


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Le Sigh

Tuesday, October 6, 2015


I arrived in Minnesota about three years ago today. I actually tried to find the exact date I arrived so I could reference it when I met with my therapist this evening. That doesn't much matter. What is significant is that certain milestone moments are coming and going. And they are passing without incident.

I went away for a brief overnight trip with my good friend Keith this past Sunday. We traveled to the arrowhead of Minnesota. We drove through Duluth and then paralleled the North Shore of Lake Superior until we reached Grand Marais. Upon reaching Grand Marais (which was smaller in population than I had anticipated) we traveled north away from the Lake until we reached the bed and breakfast we spent Sunday night at. It was a lovely trip and exactly what I needed.

Yesterday morning, while going for a walk in the woods adjacent to our accommodation, I found myself appreciating the sound...of silence. It was nice to be almost under-stimulated by sound. I find the visual world to be an amazing source of stimulation over two years after I first tried out EMDR therapy. I reported to my therapist tonight that my fascination with what I can perceive with my eyes remains as strong as ever. Indeed, my fascination might even be growing. There are some days when it feels a bit surreal to be me. I never thought my own personal Pandora's Box would contain so many wonders when it opened in the summer of 2013.

Today was a bit jarring. It was my first day of my new workweek. I ate fast food for lunch because I wasn't in the mood to think about taking my own lunch to work when I arrived home last night. The music streaming from the speakers overhead was grating to my nerves. All the music seemed to have been created at least ten years ago. There is so much about mainland life here in the United States that I find boring or depressing. I see such suffering around me in the faces of so many people. It does indeed sometimes seem to me that we are becoming a third world nation.

I am making efforts each day to improve my own life. I am beginning to more actively reach out in search of my next job opportunity once my current role ends next August.