Tag: diy

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.

do hard things

“There is an amazing series of events that happens when you identify something you can’t do, and then choose to take it on anyway. there are countless examples of this in all of our lives, because there’s a pretty good chance that if you are good at something, you probably spent some time sucking at it.”

There is an amazing series of events that happens when you identify something you can’t do, and then choose to take it on anyway. there are countless examples of this in all of our lives, because there’s a pretty good chance that if you are good at something, you probably spent some time sucking at it… and for some reason, likely either through the enjoyment of the activity or through identifying the merits of performing such a task.

The example I come to when I think of this is running.

Now, I used to weigh 340lbs and be asthmatic, and if you’ve known me for any real stretch of time then you know that I am by definition, a late bloomer. In other words, running isn’t JUST a thing I ever thought I’d be able to do recreationally – it’s something that I never even wanted to attempt.

Until I did. I literally started running because it’s hard.

I had taken a few small measures to eat cleaner and I dropped a couple pounds and had an infusion of energy – so I opted to put that energy to good use.

It took some serious TIME and MILEAGE to get where I am now, but at this point if I don’t run at least 3km, then I didn’t run at all, because that’s when I start sweating. A 8km – 10km run is a pretty energizing start to the day, and if I want to run the tank dry then I’ll keep going to 14km, maybe more.

That time and mileage is important – it’s where the discipline was adopted and strengthened, because I know just as well as anyone else does – if you want to climb the ziggurat, you must start with the first step. The first step for me was finding a ‘Couch-to-5km’ program on the internet. There are a million of them and they’re all roughly the same, but what programs like this give you is a guided process.

You don’t have to run. You can do something else, but you do have to start.
What you do is up to you, but to stretch yourself beyond what you’re currently capable of doing is always amazing.

When I was obese, asthmatic, depressed… existence was hard. Waking up in the morning was hard. Everything was hard… but I soon concluded (similar to a linchpin line in a cartoon I saw once, stating that ‘when everyone is a superhero, then no one is’) that when everything is hard, then nothing is.

peacekeepers

“After all, tossed in the salad with the other personal virtues such as love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control; it would seem that ‘not war-mongering’ is an easy one, so I’d place a hefty wager that ‘peace’ had more to do with the state of one’s internal battles since it was so carefully placed among other personal strengths, rather than political ones.”

After 41 years of walking around and interacting with people in general; many of which have navigated multiple global pandemics, several financially motivated wars, one or more housing crises, poorly managed adolescence, and a countless array of other traumas and triggers – I can say emphatically that the word ‘peace’ means something completely different than it did when I was a little kid in Sunday School.

What once brought about a ubiquitous definition; a thought of people I don’t know choosing not to end the lives of other people I don’t know in some war torn desert city – though, to be clear, I would like those people to stop killing each other – is not the image that comes to mind when I hear the word ‘peace‘ anymore.

Peace is a much more tangible and personal quest for me now.

I’m speculating, of course, but I’d like to imaging that the once-popular prophetic young Asiatic man who upheld the ‘fruit of the spirit’ and the ‘beatitudes’ may have had a more personalized definition when he spoke of peace. After all, tossed in the salad with the other personal virtues such as love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control; it would seem that ‘not war-mongering‘ is an easy one, so I’d place a hefty wager that ‘peace’ had more to do with the state of one’s internal battles since it was so carefully placed among other personal strengths, rather than political ones.

All that said, when it comes to the idea of ‘inner-peace’ which is really what I’m getting at, there are a number of other things that ‘peace’ doesn’t mean. In fact, when it comes to defining our terms, it’s likely easier to institute a process of elimination of the things I don’t mean… but I’ll try to stay pointed in a solitary direction.

Peaceful doesn’t mean complacent. You’re not dead, and you haven’t been neutralized. If anything, it’s the opposite. My own experience has brought me to realize that it’s a daily pursuit in balancing the self and the ego. Since the ego can’t survive without the self (and vice versa), the goal is not to embrace contentment anymore than it is to embrace chaos. We are always moving forward, always growing, and always renewing. Finding peace is finding the center. The balance point.

To become centered in meditation, we engage in a practice where we focus on a solitary notion – such as our own breath. When we are new or out of practice, our thoughts drift and our attention is stolen – but the purpose of meditation is to regain focus faster and faster to the point that we are not ignoring everything around us so much as we are centering ourselves in it. So to be in a meditative state is to be aware of everything that’s going on around us, though other people’s perceptions are the opposite. People with a strong meditative practice are actually more aware of their surroundings than those who are newer to their practice.

This meditative practice, much like the pursuit of inner-peace, takes a life-time. Maybe that’s the real reason why we say our deceased friends and family are ‘at peace’ but in the case of we who are still living, we can count on the fact that life will continue to throw thing at us, thereby knocking us off of our center – but we can choose how to handle it, either with frustration, or with calm demeanor.

There will always be a balance to find between the ego and the self.
There will always be peace.

As an aside, I feel compelled to mention that one of the things that brought the most peace into my life was the decision to stop eating animals or any products that come from animals. I literally felt the ‘animosity’ leave my body as I became a completely different, more well-rounded, methodical, and spiritual person. I’ve since reclaimed my health and my personal aspirations.

It’s been amazing, and one of the finer decisions I’ve ever made.

the boomer narrative

“If we believe it’s bleak, then were right – but the fact of the matter is that it’s not as bleak as we’ve been told. Truthfully, every day for the past 25 years we could have had a TV news reporter broadcast a story stating “less people are living in poverty today than yesterday” and it would have been 100% true every single one of those 9125 days.”

Hey all. Welcome home.

A couple months back I listened to a podcast episode on the Rich Roll Podcast – one of the few I listen to with great regularity – where Rich Roll interviewed Seth Godin. I highly recommend anyone who’s creatively inclined check this one out for a great number of reasons. One of the several nuggets that was mentioned that really stuck out to me was around the boomer narrative (and I’m already paraphrasing, btw). It was a quick part of the conversation, but I’d like to expand on it here.

Since the beginning of anything that any of us can remember, a specific generation of people have been controlling the narrative of the entire planet, and this is the baby boomer generation. I’ll assume everyone reading this knows what that is, but for the kids at the back of the class: The Baby Boom Generation is that age demographic of people who were born between 1946 and 1964, aptly named for the influx of pregnancies that resulted from people coming home at the end of World War 2 and starting families.

From that time on, the narrative of western civilization has been told from the voice of that generation, and despite the fact that this generation is reaching their end of life and/or their end of their working years (it’s an 18-year span) – they are still driving the narrative of pretty much everything.

Now, don’t @-me because I don’t have a dog in this fight, and don’t get all hashtag-not-all-boomers on me either, because of course there are individual exceptions to the rule. I acknowledge that the individual is smart, nuanced, and capable of change but in higher numbers, humans have a tendency to adopt a ‘mob mentality’ which serves no one.

Ok. When rock & roll and hot rods and teenage rebellion came about, it was a narrative driven by the boomers – of course it was. This carried over through the 1960s up until the Vietnam war happened. At this point the narrative became all about the draft and how the war was pointless. As the 70s & 80s the narrative became all about arena rock, the corporate ladder and property ownership which brought about construction booms and fuel shortages.

As the world came barreling through the 90s and into the new millennium, things like punk rock and pepsi-cola became synonymous; not because of the quote-unquote Pepsi Generation but because the boomer generation was packaging and selling the next generation’s own version of teenage rebellion back to them. Music, TV and Film were largely handed down from the boomers to their children under the guise of being ‘indie’ even though marketing budgets were huge, and the companies were top-heavy. This was all endorsed by a since-falsely proven theory of trickle down economics perpetuated by – you guessed it.

Environmental concerns started to materialize as GenX and the Millennials started to take note, but it was the Boomers who were finessing and dictating how that story was going to be told and they did a very self-serving job of it right up into the 21st century when the bottom fell out of the market that the boomer generation had been using, profiting from, and bleeding dry for decades. Thereafter the pensions and nest eggs that many boomers had been working for to enjoy their retirement were essentially stolen by other, richer boomers.

Now we have a – and this is where I start to get to the point of writing all of this – ongoing narrative surrounding the idea of a dystopian hellscape future not unlike the boomer-made films ‘Mad Max’ and the ‘Terminator’ franchise in amongst the Church-going God-fearing belief that the End Of Days is upon us. And why do we have this? We have this because ultimately, the boomers are afraid of death – so the narrative is death.

Even though their time is up, and 2 other generations are set to inherit this planet, we’re still using their guiding light into a bleak future.

I am personally tired of this. If we believe it’s bleak, then were right – but the fact of the matter is that it’s not as bleak as we’ve been told. Truthfully, every day for the past 25 years we could have had a TV news reporter broadcast a story stating “less people are living in poverty today than yesterday” and it would have been 100% true every single one of those 9125 days. But… that’s not sensational, so it doesn’t happen.

I’ve spoken before about how ‘realism‘ has been incorrectly pair with ‘fatalism‘ falsely, and that optimism is far more realistic. I’d love it if you dug in on my ramblings about that right here. The principle holds true and generationally speaking, we need to decide consciously how we want to move forward as a planet and as a species… because not making a choice is still a choice, and choosing not to choose is a weak option.

We’re going to need to take an active role in our own future, and it starts in our daily lives with what we buy, what we eat, and what we throw out. We can all do a little better, and I don’t even need to tell you how.
There are changes you want to make in your life.
There are changes I want to make in my life.

Why wait?

the outliers

“I’m not suppressing emotion when I say this, but I can successfully tune out a lot of the negative criticism. I can do this because I am resonating at a higher frequency than ever before, and I know in my heart that I am right where I am supposed to be – in the moment – in this life – in this time and place, and I learned earlier this year that “you will never find a hater that works harder than you.” “

This lifestyle is surprisingly polarizing. I’ve regularly been misunderstood by my peers and certain members of my family, so it’s not particularly alarming that I still am, to a large degree. I’ve come to accept it, and I’ve come to accept the people who misunderstand me. At this point; however, if anything is alarming it’s people’s reactions to my healthy lifestyle.

Lemme know if this sounds familiar:
– I’ve been not-invited to gatherings because of my dietary regimen.
– I’ve had my sanity questioned by my peers.
– I’ve had people refuse to try things I’ve offered them.
– I’ve had people tell me that what I’m doing goes against human biology.
– I’ve had people tell me what I am doing is not sustainable.
– I’ve been handed all kids of labels from ‘crazy’ to ‘rigid’ to ‘overdoing it’ to ‘exceptional’
– I’ve had people tell me I must be super healthy and protein deficient – almost in the same breath.

None of that bothers me anymore, but I will say that to be openly criticized for what I’m doing, but to turn the question around on the person asking it somehow makes me hypersensitive and insecure. For example, “Where do you get your protein?” is a question I can answer, but when I answer and follow up with “how much protein do YOU get?” – I’m being rude.

I’ve learned how to let all that go, and honestly the fact that I’m seeing results from what I am doing is a big help in avoiding these polarizing questions, but it doesn’t make me any less of an outlier. Vegan as I might be, I’m not super connected to a community of vegans in any tangible sense, nor am I connected to a community of athletes. I’m part of a community of musicians and performers, and I’m a bit of an outlier there, too (though there seems to be a bit of a sobriety movement going on and I’m here for it).

I’m not suppressing emotion when I say this, but I can successfully tune out a lot of the negative criticism. I can do this because I am resonating at a higher frequency than ever before, and I know in my heart that I am right where I am supposed to be – in the moment – in this life – in this time and place, and I learned earlier this year from David Goggins that “you will never find a hater that works harder than you.“

These words alone keep me blissfully uninvolved both as a defender of what I’m doing, and as a potential critic of what someone else is doing – because I very much CAN find myself looking around at the gym from time to time, or on the running trail, assessing my surroundings. That said – the people around you are not to be ignored. Seeing what someone is doing and wanting to work towards it is part of our human nature. It’s bred into us to assess our surroundings and be aware of whether or not we’re safe or in danger – just don’t put yourself in danger of sinking to a lower level of gossip and criticism.

This is an exercise in mental toughness, and like any exercise – you have to start with light weight and build up. Don’t expect sainthood from yourself on day 1, just do a little better, and then do a little better than that.

a cry for me

“In any case, nobody saw value in me until I saw value in myself… and I didn’t see any value in myself until I decided that I needed to be a better father and partner. Then I made some changes.”

I recently went down a rabbit-hole of music I wrote and recorded. Which turned out to have the effect of losing track of time flipping through a photo album, or what I imagine an old diary might bring about if I’d ever bothered to keep one… well, maybe I inadvertently kept a very public audio-diary.

These records serve to document my adolescent to adult life. If I was going to sum it all up, I’d likely say that it documented my intense need to belong to a culture or way of life, or in some cases – a person, that I just couldn’t seem to adhere to no matter how hard I tried… Christianity… the punk scene… A series of wonderful ladies, including my eventual wife… alcohol and pills… binge-eating… none of it really ever belonged to me the way I wanted it to, but I certainly belonged to those things at one time or another.

I was very lost until I realized that I was enough for me, and if you’ve figured that out then you know exactly what I’m talking about. I had so much to offer and I felt so dejected for so long because nobody wanted it, and maybe because nobody wanted it, I also didn’t want it… or to flip that around, maybe nobody wanted it because I didn’t even want it.

In any case, nobody saw value in me until I saw value in myself… and I didn’t see any value in myself until I decided that I needed to be a better father and partner. Then I made some changes.

But those changes brought about more changes… and more changes… it strengthened my relationship with my kid and my girlfriend… then I got healthier… then I got stronger… then I got disciplined… then my artistic output improved. With every step my value increased… the value I put on myself, and in turn, the value others saw in me changed drastically.

Every day you see me is a day I’m at my strongest and most valuable.

Sometimes I feel pity for that weaker version of myself. Sometimes I shed a tear for how lost I really was… and for such a long time. Sometimes I shake my head at how long it took me. But I love that stupid fuckin’ kid, because that stupid fuckin’ kid got me to where I am now, so I must show him grace and compassion, and thank him for not throwing in the towel no matter how many times he thought about it.

Training… I haven’t been talking much about, but it’s not because I stopped. I was touring through the mountains into the Okanagan last week with my rock & roll band and I got out for a couple good runs – first outdoor runs this year.

This time I’ve been pining for is finally here – and I aim not to waste it.

what is real

“this is mainly to illustrate the point that we actually don’t know what’s real – not when there are still hundreds of millions of people who believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election and had it stolen from him”

A side effect of my lifestyle is that I spend a certain quotient of my time in hotel rooms, and I; like most people, am ultimately at the mercy of commercial-laden movie channels featuring 20+ year old films featuring the likes of George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, and Jim Carrey for a way to pass time between performances, meals, and whatever writing and work I can get done through the day.

Since commercials are usually a thing I can skip past, watching them has been a total trip, and I can’t help but notice a pattern. Be it cheap shampoo or frozen chicken wings, the recurring linguistic exchange seems to circle around the concept of what is real. It’s not hard to point out the fact that nothing is real, especially in commercials, from the captions that say ‘real people, not actors’ to the idea that the individual consumer than determine what is ‘the real thing’ vs the competitors alternatives. Proclamations of real taste, real feel, real sound, real look, and real smell coupled with the appeal to the consumer’s ego that they can differentiate what is real vs what is fake seem to be the perfect equation for successful sales.

Real coffee, real music, real pickup trucks… it’s truly dizzying.

The problem here is that what is real is not the point. The point is to drill the subliminal belief that you know what is real and that this subliminal implantation can be called upon when standing in the frozen foods section or… wherever.

This is what advertising is. By author and entrepreneur Seth Godin’s account, advertising is a company having the money to interrupt you so they can make enough money to interrupt you again.

Advertisers have rules they have to operate within, and that their slogans stay with you your entire life – so much so that the idea that ‘milk does a body good’ is still a strong belief that people have despite the fact that (a) milk does more harm than good and that’s a fact, (b) this is an advertising slogan, not a scientific study, (c) that the calcium you get from dairy can also come from spinach, whereas the spinach doesn’t carry the addictive and cancer causing components of dairy – but it does have fibre, which you need, (d) there are alternatives that are more flavorful and less pus-laden than animal-based dairy, and (e) the dairy industry has lobbyists, whereas the spinach industry doesn’t.

I could go on drilling this comparison into the ground, but this is mainly to illustrate the point that we actually don’t know what’s real – not when there are still hundreds of millions of people who believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election and had it stolen from him.

So then, what is real?

The spiritual connection I feel to my environment, my family, my dog are real. The sense of purpose I feel when I strap on a guitar and holler out into a dimly lit room full of people is real. Running through the river valley is real. The healing and nutritive properties of plant foods is real. Fellowship, and exchanging ideas is real.

I put forward that we need not worry about what is real so much as what makes us feel alive – What gives us purpose? What clears the cobwebs from our periphery and connects us to the universe?

If we can’t answer these questions, then maybe we’re a little too distracted by what products we can buy that are the most ‘real’ and we have changes to make.

You can change if you want to.
I mean, change is hard, but I argue that not changing is harder – especially once you find what makes you feel alive.

So… find that.