Blog Posts

primitive machines

I’ve mentioned my car in previous posts – sometimes passively and sometimes not, but I’ve got a 1962 Ford Fairlane 500 2-door sedan that I have had for 13 years, and I’ve been making up for lost time with it as of late. There’s a high probability that I’m the only vegan, environmentalist, rockabilly-playing old car enthusiast you follow.

It’s been road-worthy for almost the whole time I’ve had it but there have been a few things it’s desperately needed over the years that are finally getting done. I feel like this car teaches me something every time I crawl under it. It’s a series of interconnected, simple machines that need maintenance and rebuilding from time to time and I’m blessed with the opportunity to look after this piece of gas-guzzling history. In truth, it gets better fuel mileage than my modern truck.

I’m not sure if I gained patience over the years, or if I’ve become more patient with this car, or both – but I’ve reignited a kinship with this automobile, where I take care of what it needs and it takes care of what I need. The series of little wins that come with things as small as oil-changes or putting new pads on the pedals, and as big as rewiring the whole car, or custom building the exhaust system, have done wonders for my mental health and have helped me to navigate around my brain and my ego in a way I’d never anticipated I’d ever be able to… or ever thought I’d have to.

As we round out the month of July, I can pretty much count the number of weekends of summer tinkering and enjoyment I have left before I ‘shift gears’ and take on some manner of winter project. I’m anticipating a fruitful winter of productive work on the interior of the car assuming we don’t dig in before then (and I say we because I’ve had the luxury of sharing this part of this project with my girlfriend).

The journey of self-discovery through vehicle maintenance has been wild and I’m fortunate to have such a presence in my life at this stage of the game.

easy does it

“I can actually be stubborn as an ox, when I choose to be – so I imagine it’s time to stop choosing to be.”

There’s nothing quite quite so humbling and self reflective as someone’s uninhibited criticism of you. Even when the emotion is removed, there are nuggets of truth, or at very least nuggets of perception – but even then, someone else’s perception of you is always the truth to them.

If someone is mean to me; especially if it happens on multiple occasions, it’s no stretch for me to conclude that the person in question is mean. The fact that other people love them and can be vulnerable and safe with them doesn’t change my perception. So, when I act the way I act and someone finds it smug or distasteful… well… I am those things.

I know I can’t govern how I’m perceived. I can only control my actions and reactions – so I naturally move forward with a newfound sensitivity to how I might be behaving – at least for a while – and in the meantime I try to create a new habit or a new outlook that is move loving and inclusive. It’s a tall order for an introvert such as myself but there’s no reason why I can’t learn this new behavior as an individual – after all, we as a society do this all the time. There are a lot of words and phrases that we’ve said that are no longer acceptable to say in polite company. We collectively gave our heads a shake and made some improvements.

My issues are more behavioral though. I know I can come on a bit strong and I’m pretty hard to argue with on certain topics – but I can learn to have a little more grace. I can actually be stubborn as an ox, when I choose to be – so I imagine it’s time to stop choosing to be. The last thing I ever want to do is make an enemy out of a friend, or negatively impact someone’s life so badly that they consciously decide to run hard in the opposite direction, not only physically but spiritually.

To carry that guilt would be the absolute worst.

Truth is, I can have a little more grace with myself, too. I honestly get the worst of my own criticism and I’m certain that I’m not the only person who is my own worst critic. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be a certain way – the most disciplined, the most hardcore, the smartest, the strongest, the best musician, the most poetic, the most impactful, the most available and the most efficient.

What I have learned recently is that I find things that save me and I envelope myself in them. Veganism. Music. Endurance Sport. Most recently: My Car. These things come to me when I need them most and I throw in hard with them to a point of obsession. I’ve done so negative things as well… junk food… booze… pills… and I have become the worst example of humanity available at the time.

But I still look myself in the mirror and am ultimately grateful for the fucked up weirdo I was, because that fucked up weirdo got me here… and I should go easy on him.

And if I can extend grace to my worst critic… then I can extend grace to anyone.

So… easy does it.

labor fruit

“So much work had been done without any serious driving between jobs that when I finally got it on the road, it ran and drove so good that it was almost unrecognizable. “

I have a car.
It’s a 1962 Ford Fairlane 500 and I bought it in 2010.
For a while, it was my only car.
I love that car. But that’s an easy thing for me to say right now… it wasn’t so easy to say that a couple years ago.

With some much needed willpower and some encouragement; and well, some straight up miraculous help from a friend, I rekindled my love for this car in the fall of 2022 and since then I’ve poured a lot of energy and burnt a lot of calories improving it. It’s been incredibly cathartic… and it runs and drives better than it ever has in my 13 years with it.

I’ve been driving it more this year than I have in a long time… but I even needed encouragement to do that.

I’ve really enjoyed the work. Over the past 6 years (2 of which I was angry and did nothing), I’ve rewired the entire car, replaced the alternator, put new wheels & tires on it, designed (and redesigned and redesigned) a new mount for the alternator, put an electronic ignition in it, rebuilt the transmission, put new u-joints in it, did some brake work, painted the underside of the floor, replaced the window rubber, put in some aftermarket gauges (and almost burned the car down doing so), put in a new clutch (again), pulled out the interior door panels and cleaned out the insides of the doors, made custom exhaust, and Lu & I are wrapping our heads around the interior.

So much work had been done without any serious driving between jobs that when I finally got it on the road, it ran and drove so good that it was almost unrecognizable.

What I didn’t do was stop & smell the roses.

At this point I’m spending some time behind the wheel and enjoying the fruits of my labor and it’s been reminding me that it’s okay to do that in other aspects of life, too.

Maybe you need that reminder, too…?
I sure did.

happy where you are

It’s pretty easy to be happy when everything is fine… a little harder when it’s not. I had something knock my positivity a little off-course a couple months back and it’s been difficult to reclaim my bearings a bit, but I’ve gained clarity on things in a way I thought I understood before; and maybe I was right, but is much more obvious to me now.

I’ve heard lot about being happy where you are, which is ultimately the foundations of the phrase ‘money can’t buy happiness‘ but I’ve always had difficulty squaring that with my motivation to move forward and do more, being the goal oriented person that I am. Only recently have I realized that in the context of my everyday losses & victories that I ultimately couldn’t possibly be any happier than I am right now. My struggles are my own, but the truth is that I wouldn’t trade them for anyone else’s. I am self aware and moving forward, and over all I am happy – in part because I am happy moving forward.

I suppose I got it into my head somehow that the term ‘being happy where you are‘ gets broken into 2 halves, (a) ‘being happy‘ and (b) ‘where you are.’

‘Being happy‘ is not a foreign concept, but ‘where you are‘ somehow presents as some stationary place, as in ‘if my life never changed, would I be good with that?’ but that’s really not what it is. It’s more momentary and granular than that. As I type this, I’m sitting at my laptop and I am happy doing so. After this I’ll be doing something else and I’ll be happy with that – and it will lead to something else.

What I’ve come to understand is that rather than a term with 2 halves, it’s a term with an action and a qualifier. ‘Being happy, where you are.‘ and I’ve realized that ‘where you are‘ for me IS moving forward. When I am right now is putting time and action between myself and an undesirable circumstance, and if I’m being truly honest with myself then I must acknowledge that every day since that hard situation happened is better than the day before it, because progress is cumulative.

The only place we allow our failures to define us is in the mirror, and most of us would never allow someone else to talk to us the way we talk to ourselves. You wouldn’t allow someone to talk that way about a close friend, and a close friend would come to your defense if someone was slinging slander at you.

I can’t speak for you, but the little fat kid I see in the mirror needs me to defend him. After all, he got me all the way here… and objectively, here is pretty great, and he worked really hard to do so.

If we’re going to live in a frame of mind where problems compound on each other (and most of us do, regrettably) then we must also allow our victories to compound, or we’ll never feel that sense of balance or accomplishment, and we’ll never really be able to ask ourselves: “Am I happy where I am?” without fearing the answer.

So we either DON’T allow our problems to compound, or we DO allow our victories to compound. That’s a matter of preference I suppose… but in the checks & balances, I’m willing to bet that a lot of us are closer to being happy where we are than we might think.

pursuits

I like to do hard things. Hard things have historically included feats of endurance, like an olympic length triathlon course or a half-marathon, and while those things are obviously still hard, this has been a different kind of summer.

The fitness portion of my life, although still in existence, has felt a bit directionless lately. I’ve been struggling to allow myself to rest. Not only rest, but to enjoy things that stretch me as a person beyond normal rigors of endurance sport. My brain has been stretched and bowed by a new role at work, and by problem-solving with my hobby-car, among other self analysis and mental exercise including my propensity to snack like the binge-eating addict I am, and the culmination has truly been exhausting. Add some indecision of what physical activity to double-down on, and a later-than-it-should-be bed time resulting in an over-used snooze button… but again, I’ve been struggling to let myself off the hook as far as fitness goes.

I still track calories and macros, and I get out and run, and lift weights, and have developed a bit of an interest in Ashtanga – but not with my usual “nailed to the training program 6 days a week” fervor that I typically adopt. I’m trying to find a way to be okay with this… but there’s a part of me that feels I’m not doing enough.

I know there are seasons to life, and this season right now is the off-season for me. I’m entertaining the idea of signing up for a race in the fall, and I can’t decide if it’s pride or discipline that’s preventing me from doing any less than a half marathon. My challenge is more about whether or not I have enough training weeks between now and then, and less about willpower.

If I sign up, I’ll do it – and I will finish, pain or not.

It’s really easy to say things like “there are seasons to life” when you’re training regularly and killing it. It’s not so easy to say that when your focus is split between other passions. I know what I need, and it’s a regular (hard) training schedule that I can indenture myself to – but I also need this rest, and I need the mental challenges I’m facing.

The only thing I really know, is that I must remain present – in the moment.
That’s the true balance – being 100% present.

And if I’m being honest with myself… I am present.

And presently… it’s time to go for a run.

dealing with it

“I’m fine doing the work that needs to be done, but that work takes time and that time was already precious and in demand before it was redirected to the tasks at hand. “

In the aftermath of a hard time, there’s a cautious optimism that weaves it’s way through chaos. It’s almost undetectable unless you’re specifically looking for it, but it’s there. That feeling that bubbles up from god-knows-where as you figuratively look at the metaphorical wreckage of what once was, and picture it more grand and beautiful than ever.

This is what I’ve been hanging onto lately. I mentioned in recent weeks that we were caught in the blast radius of some undesired situation. I’m elated to say that the dust has settled and swept aside, and the rebuild is most certainly underway.

That said; and I know exactly how selfish this is going to seem, I am remorseful for the way things were before the event took place. I’m fine doing the work that needs to be done, but that work takes time and that time was already precious and in demand before it was redirected to the tasks at hand. What’s actually amazing about the whole ordeal is how much time I was able to redirect – it actually makes me feel like I was wasting a lot of time before, because I really don’t understand how I’ve been able to come up with so much of it – but I DEFINITELY know what I want to do with that time as it makes it’s way back to me.

All this to say that I am always learning, always improving, and even when it sucks the most – always taking care of what needs my attention.

All in all – I’m happy.
I’m happy to be improving the situation, I’m happy that I’m learning more about myself, and I’m happy learning how to better deal with and lead through adversity. I’m happy to be embracing a role of service to the people around me.

Whether I like the task in the moment, I am living my purpose.
I am aligned.

rolling with it

“I’m reminded that good changes are not any easier than the changes that are hard on us. They all require a bit of resilience and strength to keep pushing forward. “

It’s a widely acknowledged thought that change is hard. Life is hard, really… but when everything is hard, then nothing is.

You might not like that sentence. I don’t really like that sentence, but as I pick my own words apart, I’m reminded that good changes are not any easier than the changes that are hard on us. They all require a bit of resilience and strength to keep pushing forward.

As I write this, I’m plagued with examples – the most simplistic of which is that a few years back when I dropped over 160lbs, I had to furnish myself with a new wardrobe, which was a task I wasn’t really financially prepared to deal with in one fell swoop (as as many of us seldom are). The truth of the matter is that if I had gained weight, I’d be in the same situation – maybe a little sadder about it, but the way my pocketbook would be affected would be the same.

Covid-19 got us all trying to wrap our heads around what ‘the new normal’ was going to be and after 2 or 3 years when it was time to start reclaiming the lost pieces of our social lives, it was harder than going into whatever form of ‘lock-down’ your region was facing. I know live music fans who are still less-than-comfortable with being in large groups indoors AND outdoors, and those are just the ones willing to admit it.

I’ve been dealing with change in my life and in my home and although the net result is positive, it does take a toll. On the day-to-day, I’m actually great. I recognize my little victories and I try to help the people around me to do the same – not by writing about it on the internet – but by actually listening to them and trying to speak optimistic truth into their lives, perhaps an occasional good deed. It feels good to do those things, which I believe is an alignment of purpose with the self (I don’t do it to feel good, but it feels good to do it… if it was painful, no one would do it). But if you had intimate knowledge of all my challenges that I have to roll with, and stepped back for the broad-view of my life you’d probably conclude that I’ve got a lot on my plate.

I can’t dwell on the negative.
I mean… I can, but it doesn’t serve me anymore.
I lead a rich and full life, and I am constantly changing and evolving… sometimes it’s hard, but it’s always good.