Chasms

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I'm sitting here with the wind coming and going and the boys going about their business and shot of bourbon next to the computer and the weight of a frustrating week behind me and I feel the need to write, the urgency to get words into print but (for a few days now) when I sit down thoughts evade me.  My weeks work is a series of near starts and abrupt stops accomplishing nothing but a growing sense of despair digging a deep chasm between myself and my writing.  I have over come this chasm before, my writing history is a maze of bridges slowly zig-zagging forward in very tight turns bringing me to yet another chasm and another bridge to build.

It is all well and good but sometimes I am weary of the effort it takes to pick up, drive forward, and lay words onto paper.  Some writers talk about the seemingly effortless process of writing, how the work produces itself while others compare a good days writing to letting blood.  For me it is a combination of each, the chances I get to write are marred by early morning exhaustion or the sound of my children in the background and words come slowly if at all.

Today I feel like I should be reflecting on Christmas but I haven't the energy to dedicate to the day in writing just now--perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, perhaps not at all.  As a husband, father, carpenter, and general man of the working class I welcome the brake from the mundane, the daily grind, a chance to retreat into my family and let it all slide away for a day, or two, or three.  As a writer I long to capture it all in words, preserve it, explore it, contain it forever.  But usually I find myself standing on the edge of a chasm with not way across and no sight of the ground below.

Slowly and painfully I begin building that bridge, one drop of blood at a time.

Christmas: Changing Anticipations

It is a week and a half until Christmas.  The atmosphere around stores and shopping areas is thick with anticipation and anxiety.  At Costco the other night people were walking around with vacant, hollow expressions in there eyes as they mindlessly loaded packages of things into their carts.  Multi-packs of utility knives and gloves and vitamins and candy and toys and movies and cinema tickets and stuff and stuff and stuff.  Haggen, our local grocery store, has had Christmas candy out since thanksgiving day.  There is Christmas music on the radio, trees in windows, lights on houses, and a growing collage of Christmas cards taped to a wall in the kitchen.  All of the elements of the season that I look forward to are in place yet I feel strangely subdued this year.

I am looking forward to Christmas, I always do.  For my six year old, this is the first year there has been a nearly unbearable anticipation as things have started to come together, a month of slow preparation has wired him to volatile tension.  For my 20 month old, the anticipation is not there, he is happily oblivious to the plans, excited by the lights, but for him it is a day like the one before and everything is still a grand discovery to be made.  He will be no less excited than his brother on Christmas morning.  This year, I think, beyond all else, I am looking forward to the excitement of the boys.  After all, we celebrate the incarnation of Christ, a gift to all, but the day, the season, is for children.

Perhaps this is the first year I've truly realized that, maybe I'm grieving just a little bit as I accept adulthood.  Not that I won't enjoy it or that I don't look forward to Christmas morning, but the day itself has magic for children in a way it can not have for adults--adults whose minds are torn between giving in fully to celebration and always keeping half a thought on life in the world of tomorrow.  The day after.

I remember, with vivid clarity, my dad going to work the day after Christmas.  We would wake up and there was a dull emptiness that follows catharsis.  My brothers and sister and I would go through our gifts stacked under the window that had been unloaded from the car in haste on our return from my grandparents house and my mom would be occupied with something that needed done around the house, the house having the air of Sunday about it and we all expected my dad to be around but he was at work. 

Life rolls on as normal through the holiday season--breaking for thanksgiving, Christmas, and new year and picking up immediately where it left off.  We are changed with each passing year, affected some how, because we approach Christmas different each year:  older.  But I can't help thinking it would be better to remain children lost in the anticipation of Christmas morning rather than adults weighed down with burdens of the world.

In the Absence of Inspiration

Writing in the absence of inspiration, motivation, urgency, or expectation is one of the hardest things I am having to overcome.  I don't write because I lack the desire but desire counts for very little in the context of my day, minutes ticking on towards different things, other expectations, and pressing priorities displace writing as a necessity and presently it is left undone.  I must learn to write in spite of it all.

I am trying to rebuild my morning routine, clinging to those moments before I have to get ready for work in earnest.  It is a generally peaceful time of the day.  In this season the Christmas tree is up and the soft glow of the white lights on our modest tree offers a measure of comfort.  Today I am joined by my 18 month old, snacking on bread and wandering around the house, checking in with me periodically to grab at the computer or reach for my coffee or pull himself into my lap.  Little distractions that are hard to tune out but happen in the course of a day, week, month...

It has occurred to me that inspiration comes at different times within the process of writing.  It comes of its own accord, out of the blue, and strikes a deep chord of thought and energy or it transpires within the process itself, as a result of discipline and mental exercise, a writer (or any disciplined artist) conjures inspiration as a result of dedication and discipline to their craft.  I think that inspiration is best served in the context of the disciplined artist, for my part, when I am inspired in a dry season of writing, I have no way of channeling the inspiration into a days work, there is no foundation upon which I can apply it.  But within a discipline/dedication to the craft of writing, when inspiration comes, it is a great release.  There is a sense  that every word is pre-written and I am simply a liaison between the story and the page and as it runs its course writing is easy and effortless and fulfilling.  In the absence of inspiration writing is a like trying to let your own blood--painful and seemingly useless.

I am on the road to create a new discipline of writing, if I sound like a skipping record it is because I am focused on this task of writing daily in spite of life's distractions.  In the absence of inspiration or not, I am committed to writing.

Seasons: A Belated Reflection on the End of Summer.

This has been an interesting season for me (and my family).  The transition into a new job in August had brought a reserved acceptance to life as a carpenter.  All the promise and hope I had laid on being laid-off--a chance to re-define my occupation and hopefully bring it in line with my passions and the things I longed to do (vocation)--seem to dwindle, rapidly, as I became desperate for work.  This blog was started in the excitement of that promise, the light of a new beginning, the anticipation of following a passion, whatever it be, into a new career.  But whether it was fear, circumstance, ignorance, blindness, or a combination of them all, I am back to where I have always been, working as best I can, and staving off complacency and despair as I cling desperately to dreams and must up inspiration in sporadic measures.

I began writing in this medium for an outlet, a chance to release the thoughts surrounding my process and as the process crumbled, my desire and discipline to write crumbled as well, hence the complete lack of anything representing consistent writing in my blog.  But the blog was an important part of my day when it started, it was a disciplined (in the sense that it was consistent) approach to writing, it was the beginnings of a foundation to build upon.  When I resigned to being a carpenter, again, I let go of my desire to write/create, the longing to let this be the way I make a living was too painful and dark in the context of work for which I have skill and pride but no burning desire.

Lately I have been reading--Pearl Buck, Pat Conroy, Charles Bukowski, Sebastian Faulks, David Mitchell, and others--and re-discovering the magic woven into the craft of excellent writers.  Writers speaking truth and experience through their prose, shedding light on realities most people would otherwise never know.  I realize that my passions lie within the pages of books and though I have many other interests I am truly excited by a good session of writing or a well crafted novel or composed poem or candid memoir.  My attempts, in my season of unemployment, do define my passions and discover a new career fell flat as I turned my back on literature and writing.

For now I work as a carpenter, I apply myself to the trade as best I can, but I recognize and acknowledge that my true passions are in words and my working heart will always be there.

The Extinction Event

Ernest Hemingway wrote a novel called Across the River and Into the Trees.  It is a well crafted novel centered around a U.S. army colonel near retirement and death and focuses on selected flashbacks while he spends a weekend with his much younger lover, an Italian princess.  His novel is tender and candid and draws readers into the limited world of the colonel and his princess as they block out the fading war, his years of combat, and the social struggle they have as a couple.  In fairness, it is a classic Hemingway novel--sparse in the words on the page but rich in emotion and imagery.

There have been few authors since Hemingway who could captivate imagination, defy literary norms, and live out a powerful and effective career as a a writer.  David Black is not Hemingway.

His recent crime thriller The Extinction Event shares only two things with the work of Hemingway (specifically Across the River and Into the Trees).  A love affair between a man in the twilight of his life and a much, much younger woman, and sparse language.  Fortunately for those of us keen on trying out Black's novel, the language is sparse and the book ends quickly.  As for the affair, well, it comes across as an indulgent fantasy of an old man.  The novel overall is an indulgent romp through tired crime novel cliches.  It was obvious, predictable, and boring.

The Extinction Event centers on lead character, lawyer, Jack Slidwell who is, apparently, a super bright guy from a poor family who made it through law school working on the docks and chumming in the red light district of Mycenae, New York.  After he finds his partner and a prostitute dead in a hotel room he soon finds himself on the run--beautiful law firm employee Caroline at his side--from an unknown entity desperate to hide the truth. 

Black skirts the social issues that must dominate aspects of life in the smaller cities on the East coast; the influence and presence of "established" families trenched in their old money and name that acts as a golden ticket versus the ambitious professionals doing their best to make their own name.  But it is forced, a theme that is so rich and available is shoehorned in to give the protagonist something else to fight against.  In general I found most elements of the novel forced:  the surgery from Caroline's old life that left her, most likely sterile, attempts to draw imagery from impending storms and oddities of nature, the constant comparisons between plants and wounds with the human libido and genitalia, the vague relationship and interchange with between various family members amongst themselves...

The novel is more like "The Forced Event"--it never flows, never surprises you, and never makes you rush back to pick up where you left off.

A Culinary Outrage.

In this time of conflict between organic and natural food stuffs, the old stand byes and processed foods of our youth, the clamor for free trade coffee and cocoa and grass fed beef and free range chickens and a tofu alternative to every single meat option there is (and I say what the fuck is the point?  tofu is never going to taste, feel, or look like turkey or bacon or beef, why do people choose to be vegan/vegetarian then clamour for a tofu replacement?  So typical of the human spirit to abstain from a perceived health threat only to recreate it in a perverse and deranged image).  We are affronted with a growing assault on our culinary sensibilities: turkey bacon.

I had thought that chicken sausage was perverse enough.  That beyond turkey burger we could stoop no lower.  But tofurkey signaled the death knell for the purity of food and now we have to cope with turkey bacon.  There is a watery argument (much like the flavor of said abomination) that it is similar to the bacon I know and love, that it has the same flavor and texture with fewer health risks.  Turkey bacon is championed as something from the hills, something pure and good and wrapped with old-timey graphics.  It is everything bacon with the notable exception of being bacon.

In our exuberance to denounce everything grown, raised, butchered, or otherwise produced using chemicals, hormones, corn, or cages--in effort to take marbled beef off the shelves, make sausage healthy, and wage an ideological campaign against the traditional American farmer--we have wrapped ourselves into a very real but vague moral outrage against whatever we think maybe different from what we want.  Within the campaign to make produce natural (I've always been drawn to the inorganic plastic fruit from the popular children's kitchen toys) factions have emerged and our strength has become divided.  Is this organic grass fed or organic corn fed? Did it ever have a shot to keep it from getting sick?  If so, why didn't you take the loss and destroy your income, I mean livestock?  Did someone ever pee on your garden and chemically taint the soil?  Were the worms in these apples ever in fertilized apples?  And on and on and, as a wise consumer populace, we have become as week and divided as the political parties under pressure from the tea party.

Our guard is down and we are vulnerable and the result is turkey bacon.

I, for one, am outraged.  Who will join me in attempt to quash this attack on our culinary consciousness?  Is there anyone else not afraid of the powerful poultry lobby?  Is anyone else willing to help me put turkey back where it belongs, shunted to its day of glory towards the end of November?  If we don't draw the line here, what is next?  Turkey Bratwurst?  Turkey chicken breasts?  Turkey prime-rib?

We must act now, before it is too late.

I Have To Read.

Its been hard for me write this past week.  Yesterday I spent some time with my coffee staring at the flashing cursor on the computer screen, unsure of how to proceed or what to do.  After some time had passed I started to write, three beginnings sit unused and barely legible.  Is my life so boring that I can't muster one post this week?  That is entirely possible.  I have removed myself from the inevitable election, weary of the adds, the smear, the lies, the promises, and the bickering that obscure the issues at hand.  I have removed myself from religious controversy and I haven't read anything in a couple of weeks.  (I will book binge for two or months straight and then fall into a barren spell in which I will read nothing at all.)

The truth is that I have been exhausted.  Tired, worn-out, and unable to get up and motivated in the mornings.  This, right here, is a supreme challenge for me and each passing line is a mental mountain to climb.  Bereft of creativity it is apparent to me that to write, lucidly and with  little effort I have to be reading as well, I have to be immersed in language.  It is worth the inconvenience of the library to maintain a stack of books to read.  It is worth a re-visit to the home library to re-read an old stand bye.  It is important for writers to read.

I am afraid that is the extent of my powers this morning.

A Long Way From Home

This fall has been very nostalgic for me.  My oldest son has started kindergarten which has turned out to be a sublime trigger to a flood of emotions and memories as we race into fall.  The Pendleton Rodeo centennial was this year (second full week in September) and contrary to what I expected I have had this feeling that we should have been there to be a part of something of a milestone for something that defined, by and large, the town I grew up in.  And this fall, more than ever before, there is the sneaking suspicion that I should be getting ready for deer season, something I haven't done in 10 years, but it is there and very real and with each passing day, each tree that drops its leaves, the feeling is a little more real.

It isn't clear to me if I would have felt this way with the advent of kindergarten or not but that seemed to trigger the fall memories.  One year I jumped out of the top bunk, on the first morning of school, having slept in the cloths I intended to wear.  The halls of my elementary school are vivid in their soft colors, lined with bricks and tall windows.  The gym, the green basement where the cafeteria and kindergarten classes were.  The black top were we played four-square and basketball and the grassy fields for field sports.

Generally my memories of elementary school are a blur.  The faces of my teachers stand out but their names have mostly faded with textbooks and schoolmates and lessons and the individual memories of school.

I was not prepared for these emotions this year.  Fall is usually a nostalgic season for me, however, it defines so much of how we grow up as the starting point for new school years for the formative time in our lives.  I don't think the firsts ever get easier, for the parents or the children.  When my son goes to first grade, the public school down the street, I will be fraught with emotion, once again.  I remember walking onto the campus of Western Washington University for the first day of classes--small, lonely, frightened and a long way from home.

I have a new home now.  A family of my own.  New joys and trials and adventures and challenges in which to participate.  But this fall I feel a long ways away from myself, as though I have drifted to far away from home.

Who I Am?

Its been hard, lately, to get into a daily rhythm.  Commitments and obligations are constantly being shaped and added and it seems that the most subtle shift can have a disproportionate effect on the daily regime.  I am not a person who does well with either a loose schedule or a tight schedule that is constantly evolving.  I am a creature of habit and I crave normalcy and a constant schedule, all the while I long for variation and change. 

It isn't because I love eggs and toast that I eat them every morning, and I could easily find a substitute for coffee, if I was so inclined.  These are things that ground my day, just as riding my bike to shop that the company I work for is based out of is a way that I take control of how I am defined.  I remember a pastor once said to look at the lords table (communion) and recognize the elements--bread and wine--as the most basic food the disciples would have had available on a daily basis and find something like that in our life.  It has struck me as I struggle with my identity and work and general attitude towards life lately that I take on my routine to maintain control of who I am.

I don't sit down to my breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee and make a conscious choice to enter into a time of communion.  Rather, I sit and recognize who I am.  This breakfast is something I made because i enjoy it and wrapped up in what I enjoy is who I am and what I believe.  I am on a quest to severe, in so much as I can, the connection of my identity to what I do for work.  Who I am is more what I believe than how I make a living, what I enjoy more than what I have to do.

We do what we have to do to survive--pay the rent, but bread on the table, gas in the car, and shoes on our feet.  As a husband and father I sacrifice elements of dreams for the pragmatic reality of daily life.  But who I am does not need to be defined by what I do.  It needs to be defined by who I am.

Halloween: A Holiday Hemorrhoid.

The end of September is drawing near.  Slowly we are adjusting to a new fall schedule and my oldest son is settling into school.  The weather is unpredictable and sporadic and will feel like the dawn of winter one moment and the heart of summer the next.  The back-to-school sales have ended and in a desperate need to fill every season with an insane marketing scheme the Halloween enticements are out in abundance.  It is not only the stores that are trenched in for the rest of September and through October, but the houses, sprinkled through out the town, have begun to morph into wax museums, haunts, and general gaudy holidayness. 

It is a damning indictment of our culture that we can spend well over two months (in Costco Halloween paraphernalia was out at the end of August) on Halloween and go straight to Christmas, letting Thanksgiving fall as an after thought, the bastard holiday between the start of school and Christmas.

So, here is the thing, I hate Halloween.  It is with no small amount of trepidation and dread that Halloween approaches.  I was never scared by a hideous costume or yelled while trick-or-treating by surly homeowners.  I was never beat up and ransacked for candy by the neighborhood bully.  There is no trigger in my past for my dislike of Halloween, but a slow progression away from costumes and candy and disgusting masks and public foolishness.

I am not opposed to all public foolishness but I can't think of any I support.  It isn't just Halloween, i struggle with the "christian" derivative, the harvest festival, as well.  A harvest festival, where your encouraged to put on a costume, consume massive amounts of candy and treats and socialize in a group with other people who have been similarly encouraged and have cheerfully complied?  Yeah, Halloween!  Call it what it is and give it a rest.  There is nothing, at this point, to suggest that participation in Halloween makes you a pagan just as there is no reason that celebrating Christmas makes you a christian or celebrating thanksgiving makes you thankful. 

At the heart of it I don't like putting on a costume, I would rather withdraw, than draw that sort of attention to myself (I know, everyone else is in costume to thus the attention spread out over a large number of people.  It doesn't feel that way.)  My dislike of costumes, or dress-up for all, has morphed into a general dislike of Halloween and all the accouterments that make it such a big deal.  As for the unspoken contest of who can be the most grotesque and shocking?  I have small children.  I am disturbed by the masks I see I can only imagine the effect it has on young, imaginative minds and I can not imagine a scenario where I would let my child wear some of the masks I see during Halloween.

Halloween has become my holiday hemorrhoid.  Annoying, somewhat uncomfortable and if I ignore it, maybe it will just go away.

As Summer Changes to Fall

Its dark out and I've got a cup of coffee.  Soon, I'll have to get up and finish getting ready for the day--eat, dress, commute, etc...--but right now I'm clinging to my coffee and the restful silence of the morning.  It wasn't too long ago that there would have been light this morning, summer seems like it is just behind us but we are around the bend now.  The afternoons are still warm, when the sun is out, but the mornings are dark now and evenings turn to night much faster than they used too.

Bellingham usually has a really nice September but this year it almost feels like October has come quicker than usual yet is still a week and a half away.  It is the clouds and the constant threat of rain and the changing leaves and the school buses passing me while I ride to work in the mornings then ride home again in the late afternoon.  This changing season invokes melodies of slow, sad country songs--there is an essence of nostalgia and sadness in the air as summer changes to fall.

And yet I look forward to this time of year, I enjoy the layer of chill that is in the air and the way the colors change and the promise of school.  Even though I am not a student (I had to drop the class I was taking...for a variety of reasons) there is something rich and exciting about the new school year that still effects me.  And, it could be the returning college students, there is a buzz in the air and more people out on vintage bikes and long boards than normal, people out, just killing time.  Killing time, not something I do a lot of, or, not in the leisurely fashion of a student.

So here we go, a fall Friday.  A 30 percent change of rain, most likely cloudy, but so long as it isn't raining there is always a chance of sun.

Fall is Here

It is early, I woke up late.

It is dark. 

The sun is just begining to make an appearance with a faint, orange glow out the dining room window. 

The sky fads from the orange glow to a clear blue to the dark, lingering night to remind me that it is early and fall is here.

A New Grind

When I started this blog it was a daily thing.  Every morning, as part of my routine and regiment, I was up, grinding out this blog.  Writing about writing, coffee, my depression as I faced certain lay-off.  I wrote about my thought process as I looked toward career paths.  I wrote that I had made decisions on this or that career path only to change my mind.  I don't know why it is so difficult for me to make a decision.  No, that's not true, I do.  I am afraid of making the wrong decision.

In most everything I do, if the outcome isn't certain success or accomplishment or fulfillment I choose a different way.  I am a careful, cautious card player and only loose when I abandon all caution.  I am a careful, methodical mountain biker and carpenter.  I hate to pick the wrong answer, the wrong path, the wrong method.  As I struggle with settling on a career I am horrified of making the wrong choice, horrified to the point of inability to process.  So many interests and possibilities careening through my head with a limited "brain triage" to filter them through.  I only know that I don't want to be a carpenter for the rest of my working life.  But that is where I always find myself:  employed utilizing my most marketable skill, carpentry. 

Today I'll go to work, fitting together tedious trim pieces that are down stairs then up a ladder, a long way from the table and chop saws.  Cut, fit, modify, prime, fasten.  A lot of down the ladder, up the stairs, down the stairs, up the ladder, etc... I'll be trying to stay focused and committed to quality and precision in midst of tedium and boredom.  When I'm done with that I start a class at Whatcom Community College, chemistry 121.  I am taking preliminary classes that are pre-reqs for Physical Therapy a career path that was a tangent from another career path. 

This is not my final answer, but I have never been good at multiple choice.

Dawn is a Long Time Coming in September

September is winding down.  The weather has shifted from the dry-ish heat (in Bellingham it is always a little muggy) to alternating between rain and a heavy, muggy heat like cloths coming out of the dryer that are not quite dry.  College students have descended and the number of drivers making the roads dangerous for local drivers and bike commuters has risen exponentially.  My oldest son is starting kindergarten, I'm starting a class at the community college, the leaves are changing, and we have just moved for the second time in seven months.

Second time is seven months does not sound quite as dramatic or challenging as it really is, packing and sifting through stuff and letting go of where you have lived and watched kids grow is emotionally and physically demanding.  And after a full weekend of moving its back to the grind on Monday morning.  So, here I am.  Incidentally, the beginning of school also marks a return to my blog. 

It has been a rather long sabbatical from blogging, the challenge of sticking to a routine while I was unemployed has changed now that I am employed.  It has been hard to revive the quite, early mornings I was so accustomed too just a year ago, as life changes so do habits and routines but I always find a way back to quite mornings before the family and the day has risen.  In many ways its frustrating that my morning regimen slipped away during the summer, I missed the early morning sun, the cool summer mornings, the subtle change from 5 a.m. light to dark, dawn is a long time in coming at the end of September but the day is quick to start.

Summers Dusk.

5:45 am and dark outside.  The sure sign of changing seasons for me is the dwindling morning light.  As summer fades into fall, this long dusk between seasons, the light in the morning is my litmus for falls progress as it encroaches onto our lives.  The leaves haven't begun to change, in earnest yet.  But there is a strange bite in the air in the mornings that seems to feel like fall mornings.  It is vague and barley discernible but present and very real all the same. 

I look forward to fall as a season of new beginnings.  My oldest son will start preschool and I'll be taking a couple of classes at the local community college as well.  My wife is working, part time, but this is new for us, a new beginning, and it began on the cusp of fall.

What I look forward to most are the cold sunny days of fall.  The barren trees set against a deep blue sky that slips into the ocean seamlessly on the horizon.  The bright sun acts in gentle juxtaposition to the crisp, cold, air and just off the beaten path the leaves gather in nooks and crannies and have found their resting place until the winter when the rain and snow will cover them and speed up their decomposition.

And this year is no different, I hold onto the last, long gasp of summer but look forward to the imminent fall season.  This year I am ready for the summer season to end, symbolically.  Our summer has been fraught with stress and change.  Our youngest son has spent time in the emergency room and our doctor trying to control breathing problems.  Our oldest has discovered a stubborn eagerness to assert his will over the world.  I have searched and been rejected for an uncountable number of jobs until this one (carpenter with a local remodel company) came available.  My wife has put up with unemployment, strong willed son, and the health problems of the other with admiration and grace--I can say with complete honesty that as a family we would not have made it through this summer with out her.  She, in turn, has also started working.  The summer has been chaotic, if not entirely busy, and we are ready for it to end.

In addition to the seasonal qualities of fall, it also grounds the schedules of our society and the free-for-all of summer is replaced by the constraints of school, it seems to settle our schedule and that gives us a certain freedom from the pressure of creating a productive summer.

Life in Moderation

It has come to my attention that as a moderate, in nearly every discussion, I will always be in the minority.  Any conversation about politics--it is the extreme and committed party line voters who talk politics--or religion involves people who are dedicated to one belief/stance or another.  Sports, academia, work - I am moderately good at these things but not quite exceptional.  And being moderate is not a bad thing, indeed, I am quite content to be the moderate balance to nearly everything I apply myself too.  I have deep passions for this or that, but find there is little natural aptitude for many things.  I do read exceptionally fast but I wonder if I only comprehend moderately?

It can be a frustration world in the life of the moderate man.  Having deep passions for soccer i have only moderate ability so my desire to play, win, and enjoy the game is limited by my moderate fitness, moderate talent, and moderate time in which to apply myself to the world's game.  I love mountain biking a great deal but I have only moderate skill on the trails, further, I have only moderate courage when it comes to trying new and challenging components of the sport.  I suppose this is an element of the cross I bear.

For all my moderate abilities I am able to develop deep passions about the things I moderately believe in...right...I become consumed with the little things my neighbor does that annoy me, that I am sure he does on purpose.  Like parking in such a way that I have to back up to drive away, or dumping scrap lumber on the city right of way where the block is able to park thus eliminating a parking space.  I become consumed with the knee jerk reactions of all the extremist political parties.  The debates and positions collide in my head and run my mind ragged with their antics until I have exhausted my (moderate) capacity to internalize my thoughts and they flare out quietly.

I am an extremist impaired by the mentality of a moderate and I am destined to take on the mantle of the devil's advocate in a very moderate way.

Its Been a Hard Days Night, I've Been Workin' Like a Dog

I am two and a half weeks into a new job doing remodels.  Again I have searched and searched and searched for work outside my immediate area of experience and have come up with nada the result being carpentry once again.  I don't mind carpentry.  Working with my hands, thinking critically and outside the box to accomplish the task at hand.  These are things that appeal to me, that I'm good at, and, apparently, the only work I can get hired for in Whatcom County.  Carpentry is well and good, but it is definitely not what I want to do with the rest of my working life--there are other things to explore.  But more immediately on my mind is the nature of getting acclimatized to working with a new company.

After six odd months of unemployment it is refreshing to find a job.  Making three contacts a week (the conditions of unemployment insurance) eventually paid off--however, suddenly I am accountable to someone else for my time, energy, actions, and habits on the job.  It is kind of a shock to the system.  Having had small projects of my own here and there and showing up anywhere between eight or nine in the morning to getting  a slight reprimand for being five minutes late (albeit every day) is shocking.  Truth be told I was a little put out!  So it struck me, as the day progressed, that I have lost a great deal of promptness in the past few months, but also fail to see the importance of having such a strict starting time.

This notion that we should be five minutes early, to start the day a little ahead of schedule is admirable--I guess.  (Let me say, before I progress, that I am thankful for my job.)  But it makes implications about the relationship between the employee and their job.  Such as commitment, dedication, passion, and energy.  I gotta be honest, I can't seem to muster a whole lot of that for another job swinging a hammer.  At least, not for the work I've been doing lately.  When I'm working for someone else I feel the stakes drop a few levels, there is nothing at risk for me, nothing to really fight for, and I feel, in some respects, like robot in my daily routine.  Some might say a robot badly in need of reprogramming.  But my awareness of, my reaction too, and my relationship to work is changing.  I fail to see how showing up five minutes early (I remember my 9th grade careers teacher talking about how important it was) is important or reflects on my craftsmanship.  I fail to see the value in the puritan work ethic we are brought up to embrace.

My work is not my life, I don't get paid enough to be consumed by a day fixing someones house or condo or garage or whatever.  Nor do I have the mentality to let myself fall into a career-rut, following the tracks of a job to retirement whether I enjoy the work I do or not.  I am in the process of retraining, taking the preliminary steps to return to school, but for now I have to struggle with a carpentry job that I am close to being completely indifferent about.

The Returning Black Hole.

It has been challenging to get back into a routine of blogging prior to getting ready for work.  Obviously.  But the new job isn't all hat is keeping me from blogging.  For the past couple of months, or so, my blogging frequency has dropped off dramatically.  I feel like I'm living in a mental black hole--I've written this before--wherein all my thoughts and strides towards originality and creativity are pulled into nothingness and lost forever.  Even now, Monday morning when I should be relatively fresh and alert, I'm falling asleep at the computer and struggling to string one sentence to the next.  Coffee beside me, I'm trying, desperately, to hammer on this blog.

But the truth is that I have nothing on my mind.  Well, nothing cohesive that would string out to one thing after another and into thoughts recognized as complete.  So, while it leaves me annoyed with my inability to thing and my frustration at being so damn tired I'm going to put this post out of its misery.

Jobs and Careers.

Its been a while since I've taken my spot at the computer to blog.  I haven't been away from the computer, per-se, but I have been keeping myself distracted with other things.  With the beginning of the EPL eminent, there has been a lot of talk about who will be playing soccer at what club in England and what club is sacking what manager and all the usual intrigue about money, transfers, and general nit picky gossip.  Fascinating stuff, riveting reading, mindless plague of a distraction.  But honestly I think I've been hiding from my blog, checking in periodically for all the comments I don't get but generally keeping away from the meat and potatoes of writing.

I started a new job last week, working for a contractor who specializes in remodels and additions.  So far so good I guess.  I reflected with a friend after I got the job that it does more to emphasise the need to retrain as much as bring comfort and security to our lives.  I was hoping to leave this season of unemployment with a clear path and understanding of what I wanted to do with my life besides carpentry.  I enjoy, immensely, woodworking and look forward to curating a shop of my own in the future.  But for a career I want..I need something different. 

It frustrated me that the path is no more clear than it was six months ago when I was laid off initially.  By and large the mud has settled and I understand, clearly, what I don't want to do and now, I am tentatively pursuing a career in the physical therapy sector but how that will play out I am not sure and what the final goal is i am not sure.  The road to a position of assistant is short and intense and paved with immediate rewards and a quick realization of the top of their respective totem pole.  The road towards therapist is long and arduous but the benefits at the end are two or three times greater.  It seems like a no brainer, but it is close to six years of school to put together any classes I am missing then obtain a Dr. of Physical Therapy.  That is a lot to ask my family to undertake.

But the time is now and soon I have to make the decision to go after one or the other.  I wonder if I can pursue them both?

Landon Donovan Revisited

A few months ago, on the eve of his loan move to Everton FC in the England Premier League (EPL) I wrote that Donovan didn't have the physical presence to be successful in England.  That his technical, to the feet game was more suited for Spain or France and my prediction was that his experience would be complete failure from soccer perspective.

I was wrong.  Very, very wrong.

Donovan's time at Everton was a success.  He endeared himself to the club, the fans, and proved that he is an American player of extraordinary talent and ability by slotting into the team immediately and having an immediate impact.  He created goals, scored a couple, and generally did what he does:  carry the ball, run at defenders, create openings for others, and work exceptionally hard.  Yes, Donovan has a great work ethic to go with his exceptional talent which is somewhat rare for creative players of his type.

Donovan is at the peak of his powers.  If he was ready to go abroad and be successful it is now.  He will fade dramatically in Major League Soccer (MLS) from now to the end of his career if a move to European club can not be facilitated.  I can understand the MLS wanting to keep him in L.A., he is the crown jewel in a mediocre league, but for the sake of his career, in honor of his service to American soccer, the MLS should work to let him go and he should have a hero's sendoff.

Landon Donovan is a joy to watch play soccer.  In the nature of those who are truly gifted at what they do, he makes it seem effortless and cultured and he is a rare talent for any country, much less the US.

A New Job

It has been six months of unemployment for me and today I start a new job.  It is ironic that after all the emotional turmoil and searching, the gamut of emotions from deep depression to a final acceptance, the reams of paper that became cover letters and resumes to a diverse range of industries and jobs, the job I am offered is remodeling houses.  Let me be very clear:  I am thankful for a job.  I have been working very hard to find a job and finally it is here, I am very thankful.  However, this is not what I want to do with the rest of my life.

The striking reality is that, while I was applying for whatever carpentry jobs there were available, my heart hasn't been fully in it.  There was a big part of my mind that had accepted a version of reality that saw me as my own boss while I started school.  This version of reality was vivid and I had come to fully accept it, come what may.  So, today, I will be at Advent Construction Services shop/office going through an orientation, filling out my paperwork, getting the skinny on the jobs happening, negotiating wages, learning about benefits, and getting a solid feeling for the company I'm about to start with and start the slow process of changing my mindset from independence to employee.

I am still planning on taking classes in the fall, getting the ball rolling to facilitate a change in career.  I am not a lifetime carpenter but for now it will facilitate change.

The Blind Side--Blind Sided.

It is true that I hate American Football--gridiron to the rest o the world.  I find it to be a singularly brutal and pointless sport that is wrapped in a culture of heightened toughness and injury that does more to destroy the bodies of those who play than anything else.  It is also true that Sandra Bullock, by and large, drives me absolutely bonkers.  Typically, on screen, she is shallow and one dimensional and I try to avoid her movies like the plague.  I was never going to watch The Blind Side as it contains football and stars Bullock but my wife brought it home, I acquiesced, and this morning my mind is covered in the residue of the film and I can not shake the films impact.

The Blind Side (directed by John Lee Hancock) revolves around the story of Micheal Oher and the family that brought him into their home.  Micheal Oher is black and grew up the son of a drug addicted mother in the slums of Memphis Tennessee. He was separated from his family at the age of seven and had learned to cope with the hell he grew up in by closing his eyes and letting the past disappear. He was taken in by a privileged white family when he managed to obtain admission to a privileged white private school. This family loved him, provided for him, and believed in him. Eventually, just before he turned 18, adopting him and making him an official part of their family.



It could be that a film based heavily on a true story is, sub-consciously at least, more moving than fictional inspiration stories.  These based on life films about sports are quintessential tear jerkers that move me to want to be a more responsible, caring, engaged adult and parent.  I am a sucker for a success story and The Blind Side delivered a beautiful story based on the life, thus far, of Micheal Oher.  It is fair to say I had no idea who Oher was before we watched the movie, I have never seen him play football and if I had he would have been one more moron on the field.  But his story is truly inspiring and brings out the realization that children, no matter age or size, need a family who believes in them, is willing to sacrifice for them, is willing to protect them.

To be honest, for the most part on a strictly critical view it is an average film.  The script is just good enough and nothing about the directing makes it a special movie.  But Bullocks performance is singular in her career for the sincere depth, genuine belief, and pure focus she applied to the character of Leigh Anne Touhy.  Her performance reminds me, to some extent of John Waynes performance in True Grit, his Oscar winner.  One, standout, brilliant performance in a prolific career of mediocrity.

So, congratulations Sandra Bullock, you truly deserved your Oscar for The Blind Side.  Congratulations Micheal Oher, your story is inspiring and compelling and has changed, slightly, my perception of football players.  The Blind Side is not a movie that will trump all other inspirational movies but is heartfelt and genuine and worth a couple hours of your time.

Work vs. Work

Its strange being unemployed. Spending hours and days and weeks and finally months searching for work--editing resumes and cover letters, networking, bullshitting with people in your preferred industry or profession--and when work finally formalizes there is still the subtle dread of spending a day at work.

I believe that, as humans, we are created to work. To enter into co-creation with our creator to, erm, create something new. This is the base nature of work. Most jobs, in their purest sense, revolve around a new creation being set in motion to enter into society. It is a stretch for some of the products to fit this bill, but basically, work is a process of creation--it is doing something we are meant to be doing. I understand, believe, and pursue this goal. However it doesn't change the fact that going to work, irregardless of how long i have or have not been employed, still triggers a negative cognitive response. And, really, it is more the hanging feeling of disappointment or something very near it as I drive to a job after a long lay-off.

Now, the irony is that I want to work. I spend a lot of time and energy doing the job search thing and being unemployed has been extremely challenging so as work does come available it is a strange mental place I myself in. Confused and frustrated, it is hard to produce the best work available in this state. Not all work is like this for me, some projects come my way that are interesting and challenging and engaging in a unique way like building storm window frames or remodeling a garage that is on the verge of collapse. Fun, unique projects that stretch my imagination and broaden my skill sets. Others, like installing vents or finishing small framing projects are tedious and boring and no matter how much I need the work every fiber of my mind cries out to be finished.

When I work for the sake of working, take whatever job comes my way irregardless of the nature of the project, it is like a cancer in my conscience that darkness my mood quickly and dramatically. When I work at something that engages me creatively and draws on skills and abilities to learn new skills and abilities and uses unique applications of my experience and talents work becomes what it was meant to be all along: co-creation with the creator.

Unemployment: Reflections on Old Jobs.

It was July. School had been out long enough that the empty days stretched out like a hot vision in the desert, just out of reach and we sat around the coolest place we could find--the river, a basement, a park in the shade--waiting for summer jobs to come our way. Mostly, we waited for harvest, the lurid days behind the wheel of the little wheat trucks or the water truck didn't pay particularly high but after all the hours that got put in it paid well. But harvest was a ways away from the last day of school, so we waited, patiently, letting the boredom well up.

I don't remember how, exactly, Zach and I got the connection, but a mutual friend had a girlfriend whose mom's boyfriend had a couple of hay fields and he needed someone to buck bails for a couple of days. Our mutual friend couldn't help, football camp, or injury, or other commitments, I don't remember, but he would have been ankle high in the hay stubble if he could have been, I am sure of that.

Pendleton finds itself in a complicated setting. The Umatilla Indian Reservation stretches away to the east and the town itself is surrounded by wheat fields. Between Pendleton and Mission (the reservation town) is an awkward stretch of small farms and trailer parks littered in a wide, flat valley. It is sort of a purgatory between the Rez and Pendleton with a retirement home, views of the trees that grow thick around the river, a ready mix, train tracks, and acres upon acres of hay fields and pastures. Zach and I where in the middle of this no-man's land working for a guy named Todd with two old timers who were his hired hands: a tall Native American roper who road a tall buckskin horse and a drunk tractor driver who didn't do anything as far as I could tell at the time.

Hay fields in July are hot. From about 9:30 am to dark. There is no shade except the that the tuck and trailer cast stingily about and there is little time for rest. The bales weigh anywhere from 60 to 100lbs. and each one is thrown onto a trailer, by a guy in the field, and stacked by a guy on the trailer. The truck doesn't stop moving but crawls along the rows of bales in a big circle. Zach and I trotting beside pitching bales while the roper and the drunk took shifts stacking on the trailer. Todd didn't help, I don't think. At the very least, I don't remember him working much at all.

I'll be perfectly honest at this point and say I was happy for the distraction and there wasn't really that much hay to take care of. We probably move three or four tons the first day. Enough hard, physical labor to get our backs and arms sore, for sure, and we were tired on the drive home. But each of us, I am positive, counted the wages of the day, assumed it to be eight bucks an hour (the standard high school farm pay) and we were happy in the days work for 80 bucks. Time spent outside, in the company of interesting strangers, makin' a bit of cash. Good times. We arrived the next morning, 7 am, ready for more of the same.

We waited in front of Todd's trailer for a half hour before we knocked. He answered the door in his underwear. Fat beer belly pressed against the screen door, he was putrid with body odor and beer and asked for a few moments to get dressed. The hired help showed up shortly, Todd gave us the day's instructions then disappeared down the road, and the four of us went to work stacking hay. Loading it from one pile, driving down the road, and stacking it in another. Remember the scene in Cool Hand Luke when Luke is forced to dig a whole, then fill it, then dig it, then fill it? That's what moving hay feels like. It's heavy, its hot, we were sore and tired from the day before and the drunk slept behind the wheel between stops and the roper rubbed his sore elbows and Zach and I bucked up and bucked bales and made relatively short work of the hay. Napping on the drive from one stack to another, sweating in the heat of the sun, the heat of the truck, the heat of hay, and looking forward to some hard earned cash.

As we finished moving the hay, Todd appeared with a sack full of cold drinks. Soda's for Zach and I (I learned full refreshing value of Squirt that day) beer for the old men. We sat on piles of hay and let the sun finish its damage on our skin, the heat seeping into us, restful in the knowledge of finality. We drove back to the trailer, the drunk and the roper walked to the horse pen and started getting ready for roping practice.

Todd gave us each a 50 dollar bill before he disappeared into the trailer. We looked at each other and silently left. Zach's bronco kicked up the dust as we drove slowly back to the paved road. We made three dollars thirty-three cents an hour.

We didn't talk about it and I never bucked bales again.

The World Cup Ends.

So, it is finished. The Dutch and the Spanish faced off in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the world cup final and after 117 minutes of intriguing soccer, the Spanish scored to win the game. I say intriguing in the sense that the game really hinged on tactical prowess. How were the Dutch going to stifle the open, possession game of the Spanish and how would the Spaniards, in turn, nullify the efficient Dutch attack. The Dutch kicked the Spanish off the field and the Spaniards did what they do: patiently pass the ball back and forth until the opening comes. It took a long time to find the opening but it appeared and with two touches--a sublime chipped pass from Fabregas and a cool finish from Iniesta--the Spaniards became world champions.

It is not a classic game. Barely a shadow of the final of 2006 (Zindane going mental, remember?) and that one was hardly the stuff highlights tapes are based upon. I missed the Dutch team that punished Brazil barely two weeks ago. As turns would have the petulance and disrespect exhibited by the Brazilians in their loss was contagious and the Dutch exhibited the same degree of ignorance and selfish complaining.

Referee Webb is not blameless, not at all. His officiating is poor at best and is almost a mirror of the English game. Is this the best the English can offer?

So, it is finished. The hours and hours of soccer have come to a halt. The readily availability of the worlds finest talent has been taken away and soon the worlds best soccer talent will be swept away to specialty channels and odd times and I will be following it all online, no more games at the local watering hole or shared with family friends. Soon the punditry will peter out and I will be left with the grim realization that all in the world is much the same as it was a month ago.

I had half expected a magnanimous change in response to the showcase of the world's game. To emerge, somehow, better and improved and in a place of ambition and promise. But, to be honest, nothing has changed. I polished the bar at the Copper Hog and held down a couple of tables at Coconut Kenny's and consumed mass amounts of other peoples thoughts and insights on the teams of the world. But tomorrow I face the same challenges and fears I had to face a month ago...a week ago...yesterday.

A fun distraction that has come to an end. It was fun while it lasted.

World Cup Final

The finalists for the world cup have been decided and on Sunday an eighth team will be added to the exclusive list of world cup winners. My heart is with the Dutch. Unspectacular and coldly efficient they have waltzed through this world cup undefeated and dangerous. Making the most of their players and strengths, the Ducth have nullified the teams they've faced, been backed by excellent goal keeping, and the unity and team work on the team is a rarity among the Dutch egos that usually find themselves named on the team. But Spain may be the safe bet.

The Spanish have controlled each game they've played even if they haven't looked exceptionally dangerous. The problem with beating the Spanish: teams have not been able to make the most of the rare mistakes the Spanish defense has made and the Spaniards have made the most of bits of genius from David Villa and company. Even with a unfit Torres acting as an unreliable liability the Spanish have contrived to win games with disciplined patience and a fluid passing game that is as much a keep away training exercise as it is game plan. It was sad to watch the Germans fall to the Spanish passing machine, the final team that had played a fast, flowing, direct attacking game that resulted in high scoring and passionate soccer.

I'm looking forward to the final on Sunday, after a month of waiting, the final two teams have been, across the board, the best.

The World Cup, Another Way To Survive.

One of the things I've been depending on this past month is the World Cup. I've been losing myself in soccer, becoming absorbed with the teams and tactics and the bracket as I track the progress towards the final. I will get back to writing, directly, about being unemployed and the way I've been surviving, but today I've got some things to say about soccer.

The U.S. Men's Team was fantastic. It is a shame Altidore was so wasteful in front of goal, in that respect he is the American Emile Heskey, a giant, clever forward who can't score goals. His play in the group rounds and against Ghana, to a lesser extent, was fantastic in all aspects except his wastefulness in front of goal. If he could score when one on one with the keeper the U.S. would have racked up a much higher goal tally and would most likely still be in South Africa. Additionally Landon Donovan was immense. He is truly, currently, the best U.S. player in the game. He can't be compared to past greats because we haven't had a similar player before. I take back what I wrote six months ago about him not being able to hack it on the big stage, Landon Donovan has full filled the potential set out before him and is the true leader of the team. Dempsey, Bradley, Felhaber, and Edu all performed exceptionally and with such a strong midfield available it is a shame that coach Bob Bradley is such a tactical dinosaur.

Credit goes to Coach Bradley for directing his team out of the group stages, he instilled a lot of discipline and drive into a team of dedicated, if largely limited, players. The team played an open, fast, direct game that suited them well, drove forward as they could and, as mentioned previously, if they weren't so wasteful in box would have easily overcome the teams they faced. However, I wonder what a 4-2-3-1 formation would look like on this team. With the depth in midfield it would allow for some screening in front of the the defense which is, admittedly, a bit shaky and allow the more natural attacking midfielders (Donovan and Dempsey) the chance to roam forward from the width to work off of Altidore playing as a target. With Bradley linking between the two screening midfielders and Altidore it seems a much cleaner, efficient, system that could be changed to a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 as the situation demands. Coach Bradley was successful with this team, against all the criticism, against all odds but his time with the team, as head coach, is over. The mad search for successor will begin before we know it.

Unemployment Guide to Survial (or Best of a Shitty Situation) Part 2: What Are You Going to do Now?

It is very, very hard work to be unemployed.

It isn't so much what you are going to do with your time in as much as how you are going to prioritize the time you have. There are some pitfalls in coming out of a 40+ hours a week job directly to unemployment. And, while I was mentally prepared (as much as I could) for the inevitable lay-off the wide open schedule was (and continues to be) daunting to say the least.

At first it is easy to layout a grand master plan for personal domination. Get out the guitar and relearn how to play, right more, exercise more, enter into any number of self improvement projects and programs to make yourself a better person. There is this need to not waste any time, any time at all, and to drive forward with passion and energy and maintain the rigid schedule that was in place while you were working. I am afraid it isn't so easy.

For some, who are naturally disciplined and focused, creating a schedule and maintaining an action plan might be easy and their well recorded steps for success and achievement make the unemployed hoards around them feel low, worthless, and pathetic. I can assure you that people like that are in the decline and the majority of your fellow unemployed (in my area as many as 1 in 10 not so long ago) are flailing about just as wildly as you are. There is an initial knee jerk reaction to losing your job that finds people scrambling to navigate unemployment insurance, intently revising resumes, filling out applications, and seeking career counselling and advice from what ever parties are available to them. I remember feeling this sense of hope and purpose that the period of unemployment was available in which to redefine the career path I was on and seek out an occupation that full filled my artistic tendencies and personal goals. I have found it isn't so easy.

I am a hardworking, dedicated, professional carpenter (or I was before getting laid-off) and I thought, going into yet another lay-off I would be able to keep my schedule and focus together and build on the down time. I looked forward to time with my boys and wife and initially treated the spare time as an serendipitous vacation of sorts. Initially, I was successful. A small side project brought in some extra cash and the down time was spent mt. biking, with family, and working on my resume, all the while planning for career counselling. I entered career counselling with determination and focus and things gradually went down hill.

There comes a point when all the career choices, future plans, and next moves are in your court and I found myself paralyzed with fear of making the wrong choice and struggling to make ends meat yet desperate for change and liberation. The conflict between the need for change and fearing the wrong decision was mentally paralyzing and threw me into depression and anxiety. There is a fine line between hope and darkness and it is like walking the tight rope. I am always falling off the rope, one way or another and rarely can I balance to the finish.

It has helped, immensely, that I find so much pleasure in mt. biking. I harped on this for exercise, but the way I exercise and my hobby is the same. But it is important to have a hobby, a mental outlet to wile away the hours. The time that is normally filled with work doesn't go away and I can not stress how long, lonely, and isolating those hours can feel whether you are physically isolated and alone or not.

Over the course of one empty day to a week to a month it is easy to fall into a syndrome of emptiness and the effort it takes to fill those days with even three or four hours of purposeful, productive activity is excruciatingly difficult. But it is critical.

World Cup Fever

I have to give some mad props to the U.S. Men's National Soccer team today for coming back from 2-0 at half time and getting a well deserved 2-2 draw that, but for a phantom offsides call on a free kick, would/should have been a 3-2 win.

(The blurry crowd filling the bar at The Copperhog)

In my time zone (Pacific time) kick-0ff was at 7 am and I wandered down to the local gastropub, The Copperhog (http://www.thecopperhog.com/) for the game, a full breakfast menu and a vibrant crowd cheering on the USA. I wasn't able to order food--too busy--so i can't speak to the Hog's breakfast menu--dinner/lunch is fantastic--and the coffee service was overwhelmed but the atmosphere was electric. Every positive play from the US was cheered, the Slovenians were jeered and the ref was adequately demonized--all good natured--as the game progressed.

The Slovenian team is well organized, fast, and aggressive and works a unit well. As many pundits have said before me, a very similar team to the U.S. There isn't a lot of standout talent, very few individuals to watch for, rather a collective performance based on the greater strength of the team. On evidence today, that was generally well organized defense and fast counter attack. The U.S., on the other hand, went for broke.

Lined up, officially, as a 4-4-2, they almost played more of a 3-2-3-1-1 to start with Torres and Bradley sitting deep to allow Donovan and Dempsey the chance to drive forward to support Altidore and Findley initially. (Briefly, if Findley starts against Algeria I will be shocked, his pace is terrific but his decision making is atrocious and his lack of big game experience is telling in front of goal, the greatest criticism of the U.S. team is their lack of composure and the ability to put away clinical chances in front of goal.) This is a team whose tactic was to run at the Slovenian defense. Against England, I think that was their secondary game plan as well--after they broke up the play from the middle, of course.

Every player in the attacking third of the U.S. team broke with pace and poise and was comfortable taking on their markers. From Bradley to Donovan to Altidore this team showed great class and composure in running at the defense. It is the American strength and it works time and again. A direct passing approach, the ball on the ground, at speed. The U.S. team doesn't play balls out of the air, in attack, well, they don't flick, they aren't particularly clever. But the game played at tempo down the throats of the defense is the perfect strategy for hardworking, athletic, grafters. This isn't the only time this has worked. Spain in the confederations cup, the first half against Brazil, the game against Egypt. As far back as World Cup 2006 against Italy this has been the American strength. When it works, it works superbly.

And, today, Bradley got his tactics right. Edu on for Torres, Feilhaber on for Findley, and at the end Gomes on for Onyewu. Breaking from midfeild with pace, Micheal Bradley was my man of the match and Donovan and Altidore were runners up, those three were at the heart of everything the U.S. team did that was positive. Great game and a decent result for the boys in S. Africa.

The tournament has come alive. The Swiss beat Spain (Spain=my pick to win it all), Mexico beat France, the U.S. has drawn with England and Slovenia, the German trouncing of Australia and the upset by the Serbs (Serbia 1 Germany 0). It promises to be a classic after a slow start.

The Unemployment Guide to Survival: The Best of a Shitty Situation Part 1

I want to come out and say that being unemployed is hard work. Its depressing, frustrating, and defeating. Day in and day out knowing that your locked in competition for the few jobs available in the area each candidate pushing for the extra edge over the other, potential employers flooded with resumes and cover letters and always, always, always wondering what the next day will bring. That is hardest part, for me, the uncertainty of the next day, the empty schedule, the loose ends that seem to be floating around my vision. I strive for normalcy, go to parties, host people at our house, engage with the world around me as though my life were perfectly normal but its not. I'm unemployed. Week in and week out it is a struggle to meet the financial commitments we have, every day is a test in patience and perseverance. Yet, we survive.

A lot of what I've written lately has focused on how hard and dark this time is and that is true. I flutter in and out of dark depressions and paralyzing fear. The numbing sense that my world is crumbling and the stark realization at how temporary the creature comforts we acquired can be. But we, as a family, survive. Some how, some way, we get up with the new day and go forward, albeit a little blindly, and trust that the steps taken are the steps to take. And over the past few days, or weeks--however long its been since I last wrote here--I've come to realize that there are a few key elements to surviving unemployment that I can share and there will be more as I identify them. Incidentally, this will give my blog some structure, as I am starting this on a Wednesday I think I'll post a new element to my Unemployment survival every Wednesday. It will be known as the Survivor's Guide to Unemployment: The Best of a Shitty Situation.

The Best of a Shitty Situation #1: Exercise.

(My New Covert)

It is challenging to identify the reasons I've made it since February, unemployed, with out loosing my mind. The coping mechanisms are not always black and white and one may be contingent on the other. But I intend to do my best to share what I've found to work. The first thing is to exercise.


Besides sex, for men, I can't think of anything that helps maintain confidence and energy and self belief and a reason to go forward like identifying a highly physical outlet that allows for pure release and exercise. I look to mt biking, I am fortunate to have Galbraith Mt. less than 10 minutes from my doorstep (preliminary info here: http://www.ridegalbraith.com/). Mt. biking has been, far and away, one of the most (besides the support of my brave wife) crucial elements to my survival thus far. Frequency has ebbed and flowed, one of the draw backs of riding often is breaking equipment or getting injured, both of which have put stops in my riding, and of course recovery from the ol' vasectomy put a damper in my ride time as well. But around those little draw backs, I have relied heavily on Galbraith and my bike as a way to break up my day, get some exercise, and have an outlet that was purely mine. In a sense it has filled some of the gaps that work filled prior to my unemployment situation.

I identify heavily with work, as a carpenter, a great deal of who I am is wrapped up in what I do, the detailed finish work, the aggressive, fast framing, the long days and even a bit of the tedium of repetitious carpentry created an identity that I could live with. I may not love being a carpenter, I may have very strong feelings about moving forward with my life to do other, powerful, and meaningful things. Yet, working as a craftsman has been, for the last 5 years, a chief identifier in my life and a somewhat creative and often physical outlet on a daily basis. To be perfectly honest, I did not realize how important and crucial that outlet was to my psyche. I am not a homebody and being home for large swaths of time gives me anxiety and a restless depression that is hard to break out of. Mt. biking has been a more than suitable replacement for work. If only I could get paid to ride... I will most likely never be a professional rider but I will always enjoy it.

(View of the Columbia River and Oregon from Syncline, sorry no local pics. yet.)

And if you happen to be on Galbraith any time soon, be sure to check out the new jump trail: appropriately named the Unemployment Line.

Imagination is Limitless

I should have hit the blog last night. A little rum flowing through my system and at one point fragmented ideas and thoughts were blasting through my head. There are times when it feels as though a grenade has exploded in my brain and the shrapnel rips through my sub-conscious mind and all the feelings and thoughts I had stored for reference and further examination are destroyed and once the dust settles the float around, just beyond the conscious mind where I can't quite grasp them. It often seems that thoughts and feelings are just beyond my reach. This morning, for example, I will have a very hard time progressing from here...especially now that the boys have woken to shatter the silence of the morning.

Drawing thoughts together isn't a new struggle for me, I believe I've written about it before. It is a constant thing, this rattle can in my mind. Last night I was bouncing between Libertarianism and unemployment. (Unemployment, the near constant state I live in.) This notion that Libertarians can be libertarians in-so-much as we live and function in a democratic society, not because libertarianism is a realistic system of government or set of ideological platforms to live by...unemployment is not so much a thought as a state of being right now.

Being unemployed, not working, forced lay-off, laid off, new opportunity, new challenges, new direction, a shit load of stress. I remember now! I was thinking about the recession!

I did not live, obviously, in the Great Depression but my grandma did and I have seen the way it impacted the life she lived. Not directly of course, but she is a frugal woman of 89 and always has been. Certain life circumstances made this an important part of her life as she raised three kids, in their teens, alone. The depression left its mark in that she laid away preserves and saved money and new that by these actions, in more prosperous times, when the hard times came there would be enough. I wonder what mark this recession will leave on my family?

I am not implying in anyway that this is what it was like to live in the Great Depression but as a recession it has hit my family in a very real and frustrating way. The amazing thing to me is the disparity of who the recession has hit, now that the dust has settled and those who were going to lose what they would lose have lost it and those who weren't sit comfortably in their cars-offices-jobs. There are people around me living lives as if nothing changed, for some maybe nothing did. People--some friends of mine--living life, planning and taking vacations, moving on as though the recession were but a hiccup that has since resolved itself. And maybe it is. But people are still jobless. People are still losing their homes. In my half of society, people are still struggling in a bitter battle.

Peoples lives are being ruined and falling apart.

This is happening in one of the most prosperous nations in the world.

It isn't right.

I don't understand our failure to adequately take care of the week, oppressed, powerless members of society. Once people are under the thumb of debt they live their lives in shame and fear and it is a fast downward spiral to the bottom from there. But the collective lifestyle consciousness of our society is based on imaginary money (borrowing what isn't their, i.e. credit cards) and imagination is limitless. At least, mine is.

Mornings

One of the curious things about being unemployed is the way a schedule deteriorates right before your eyes. I was able to hold it together for a few days, a couple of weeks even, but presently the lack of meaningful work or urgency to get anywhere early became the catalyst for my schedule to crumble away like yet Sheetrock. It is almost as messy too.

I used to feel so much more connected to friends, industry, the world at large. The mornings driving to work, listening to the news on the radio, the community gossip at lunch, a feeling for the town as I drove through neighborhoods before and after work. But now it is a blur. I have no idea what is happening in the world, the setting I once depended on for news is gone, there is a vague understanding of an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico but I don't think I really heard about it until the other day--until someone posted some anti BP videos on facebook, ironically enough.

It has been apparent, for sometime, that my sense of routine and order were falling apart and my feeble attempts to hold it together were completely inadequate and lacked real conviction. Honestly, I don't see that changing all that much until I actually get a job. Today, though, is an anomaly, it is a quarter to 7 and I've been up since 6.

There is a peaceful quality to mornings that i appreciate, that i thrive on actually. A time before the family is up and the serenity of the day is shattered (not in a bad way). At one time I thrived on quiet mornings, me and a cup of coffee and this blog, lately that has fallen away. It takes a morning like this, up for no reason in particular, to remind myself of the importance this time has.

I wish I could write something earth shattering and profound on my blog, something that would rock the foundation of beliefs and values and make people reanalyze their lives. Perhaps someday I will. For now I'm locked tightly on my own insular struggle, pushing as best I can forward and into the great unknown of the future.

The Weather Seems Fair.

Yesterday's post was a downer but I had to let it go. It is a human anomaly that we can feel isolated and alone even though we are surrounded by friends and family. I am typically not bothered by the fact that the majority of my friends and I are in radically different places in life and I am not blind to the fact that we have a lot of friends because we have kids the same age, not necessarily because we connect on another level.

Our friends are awesome and supportive and generous and generally kind but it is interesting the way kids bring people together. They are the great social equalizers and they force us, as parents, out of our shells and into the world. I have often wondered if I would be friends with some of the people I am friends with if it weren't for my children.

Because many of our friends are in radically different places right now it does generate this feeling of isolation and frustration. I thought, at one time, it was envy of their homes and cars and vacation plans and well behaved children (okay, there is a little of that) but a lot of the way I identify myself is through my work and that is the way my friends, generally, identify themselves as well. Without work part of my identity is lost, no, part of my self-worth and confidence is lost and to be in community with others who have that in tact takes its toll on my emotions.

But today is a new day, there is some work to be done, and the weather seems fair. Right now, in the silence of the morning life doesn't seem all that challenging or complicated or painful. It is just the eye of the storm.

Shooting at Shadows, Trapped in the Fog

Life is a blur of resumes and applications right now. Three a week to maintain unemployment and several others sent into the community to various, potential employers. Taking shots in the dark when I am used to only shooting what I can see. I am careful with my ammunition, generally, but as desperation grows the shooting becomes more complex, less discerning, and far out of range. It is not easy to be unemployed, ever. But with children, married, in a circle of friends who are employed, generally doing well, busy, and employed there comes this sense of isolation. As they hear me talk about looking for work and the nature of the job market I get the sense that they don't really know what I'm feeling or going through. The feelings of dread and fear, the empty pit in my stomach that will not go away, the beating that my confidence is taking after so many rejections and non-committal generalizations about the future.

It isn't my nature to be pessimistic, I am, believe it or not, an eternal optimist but my great paradox is the dark cynicist that stands opposite my optimism. In ordinary life they are in harmony and balance. Now, slowly cynicism and darkness are taking hold. It isn't just me, my wife and sons feel the heat of the situation. The depression eeks into my relationship with my family like a fatal epidemic. My wife, who has been so brave and supportive is privy to my mood-swings and destructive depression. My five year old, a dreamer and creator and artist (so much of his personality and nature are in me as well) feels the wrath of my uncertain moods and displaced anger. I hate this time in life. The uncertainty and growing desperation, the darkness...

Self-confidence has never been a strong point in my life, perhaps I have covered my insecurities with brash humour and boisterous acts of egotism but it has all been a mask, a mask that no longer fits. There is the move from youthful insecurity to the early adult years of self-discovery into adult hood in earnest (post college, married, children) when it is supposed to fade away but now in the heat of the action I am almost paralyzed as spectres of my weakness rise up and fog my vision.

It is hard for me to vocalize how I feel, my friends don't really understand. The nagging comments my wife and I have begun to make, the pit in my stomach, the clouds of fear that hang on the horizon. I can't express it any more than to say I feel sick with no clinical symptoms of virus or disease. I feel paralyzed yet maintain movement. I feel hopeless but try to drive forward, forward into a brick wall. I am in East Germany and freedom is a yard or two away and nearly in-obtainable.

I am sorry for this darkness and depression. But that is where I'm at.

Conformity, or Not.

I have to confess to being somewhat of a non-conformist. Maybe non-conformist is the wrong word but labels like rebel, hippie, conservative, extremist don't fit. Maybe its not appropriate for me to assign my own label but I don't think that non-conformist is, necessarily, a label, rather a descriptive term for my personality.

Ultimately conformity baffles me. Not so much because a group of people--even an entire sub-culture--go about acting and dressing the same but because most of these do so under the spectre of non-conformity. If an gang of white youths from middle class backgrounds and privileged allowances turns their hair into dread locks and embraces a pseudo rasta lifestyle haven't they conformed to a American brand of Rastafarian living? They don't even have to go so far as the dreads and and the tie dye just the glorification of Bob Marley and the little "hip" linguistic choices like "Rastafarian mon" and suddenly the young, leftist thinkers have all conformed to a dramatic stereotype of pot smokin' hippies. This is an example, my problem with conformity neither begins nor stops with the dread lock rasta wannabes that flutter in and out of the insular world of like minded validification (usually found in a University setting). Conformity is no unique to the non-conformists.

I find conformity rampant in a social perceptive of acceptance and propriety. The way we dress for jobs, the way we cut (or not) our hair... Maybe its me, but it seems we, as a society, are afraid to be alone so we glom onto like minded people to validate our lives and in doing so we begin to make statements--fashion, social, political--that bring together other peoples of our ilk. This isn't necessarily a problem but it does begin to make me a bit wary. I am not in the business of validating personal ideology--religious, political, social beliefs--I have neither the time nor energy of a lifestyle of apologetics and defense of my beliefs. I am ready and willing for a dialogue but let me beg the question: when was the last time you were able to engage in an active dialogue with someone about which you fundamentally disagree? And, was it a dialogue or a shouting match? I digress.

My wife made dread lock comment yesterday and that is what spurred this little rant but in the process of dissecting these thoughts in my head it brought me to a conclusion that I hate to agree with people. Not all people but when someone holds a belief or ideology so close, close to the point of obsession my knee jerk reaction is to recoil and condemn it. Even if I agree to some extent, my mind begins to tear apart their beliefs irregardless. With left-wing liberals, right-wing conservatives, Christians, atheists, agnostics, the only people I identify with are right dab smack in the center. I can't help it. I don't mean to be an asshole or jerk, I don't intend to disagree for the sake of disagreement but most people so far into their own little world of skewed ideology and beliefs are so disconnected from reality that I can't help myself, I want to bring them down. In claiming to be non-judgemental they judge those who freely judge others. In claiming to be open minded they close their minds to those who are close minded.

I am not, admittedly, the bedrock of reason and compromise, their are some stances upon which I stand irrevocably firm; however, I am willing to dialogue about them. You will not change my mind, and I may not change yours but I'll listen to what you have to say.

On a very base level this whole spiel means that I have a problem with social conventions. It makes me sick to dress for an interview or write a functional cover letter that is recognized as acceptable. Stereotypes of romance, passion, camaraderie, art, decor all bore me to a point of vanity and conceit. In someways I have alienated myself from some very decent people leading conventional lives in acceptable ways, people chasing the American dream of their choice. Conversely I have developed some very powerful and rich friendships with people from all walks of the social ladder, people with unique talents and far reaching mind sets.

The biggest challenge I face is a lack of conviction, when asked point blank out of context of those around me. However, what are your convictions? Want to dialogue?

Vasectomy

This has been a crazy week. Yesterday I had a vasectomy and the days leading up to the procedure were fraught with anxiety and anticipation. Constant questions as to the nature of the decision were being made, is this the right choice? what if, what if, what if... But the choice is made and I am comfortable with that. I do have a poem to share and I would love your thoughts.

Over


I grasp at the pulp of language
to squeeze ink—into memory—from my pen.
I grasp, like a lemon, the rind and
let the juice run over my hands
onto paper, into consciousness.

The juice fills and stings the wounds carved
in my skin and like an astringent it leaves
them cold and burning.

And I am left empty again.
Having let it all go
over
my skin.

Evolving Work Ethic

I've got a cup of coffee, my oldest son is awake and pouting because it isn't time for him to sneak in and cuddle with his mother. The day promises to be brilliant with sunshine and a high of 67. The world keeps spinning and the days continue to roll in and every morning I wake up and keep trying. Keep trying to find a job, discover a career path, parent my children, and be a good husband. When I was laid off from my job as a carpenter in February, I never expected the journey and process of finding a job and discovering a fulfilling career path (not necessarily the same thing but not mutually exclusive either) would be so challenging and long.

I had never expected to be unemployed four months later. It isn't like me to not work but after a while a routine develops and presently there is a sense of contentment...no, reassignment, that sets in and even though I'm applying for jobs and filling out applications and polishing my resume and firing off application packets to various potential employers, and doing as well as I can, the belief that I'll actually find a job diminishes with each day that ends with out a phone call or another rejection.

Today I have a bit of work, not great, not challenging or exciting, not high exposure carpentry that I enjoy, but a bit of work all the same. But I am torn. I can recognize in myself the deterioration of my work ethic to some degree and how, as a way of coping, my mindset on work has become so idealistic that the ideas and yearnings some homeowners have are distasteful and horrifying to me, never mind the practical/financial applications.

So, I'm rambling on and on and I think I'll be done for today.

A New Path

February, March, April, and now into May. The clock ticks off each hour of each day and we squeeze by, week to week, on unemployment checks. The morose darkness that plagued my mind has abated some what but the eager excitement of the early days has also abated. The process of discovery and exploration that I looked forward to so keenly has been slow and arduous, each meeting with another professional, councillor, or advisor a notch in the belt and a small step closer to figuring out the future but nothing so compelling as the path to take. And there isn't one right path. There are several and each leads to a different destination. But a combination of interest testing and personality profile has given me more specific programs to follow, the combination points me towards mass communication. For me, specifically, that means graphic design, or visual communication.

There was a time, a long time ago it seems, that i was a good photographer. Good meaning i was patient with framing shots and understood my camera (Cannon AE-1) very well. I have a box of black and white photos somewhere, the mats, i am sure, falling apart and the photo paper degenerating rapidly...I didn't know that a profession like that existed. I was horrible in the dark room and never destined for a life of photography but a life of graphics, well, it could be. I am excited at the possibility, fully, excited to have something concrete in mind. I may seem like the most indecisive person, based on this blog. First teaching now visual communications but under the gloss of the ideal is the reality, an aspect hard for me to see, and the reality of teaching is not all Dead Poet's Society.

We have come to a point where i have to choose, where I am getting to settled in the waiting place and no one is going to come get me out, it is up to me. I am tired of waiting and searching and being disappointed at the end of the week and going to bed Sunday night filled with a hollow desperation and dread of the week to come, an empty week. Monday is the worst for me, with nothing scheduled and nothing promised it is an empty day left to me to fill and the motivation to fill it has fallen flat to the floor and become heavy and fat with inactivity.

Today I have a little hope, I can visualize myself in graphic design and I can eagerly look forward to the classes and the real world application. Tomorrow, well, I'll see about tomorrow as it comes.