so there's that. 2024

 I wanted to use this forum to remind myself of the important things that happened in 2024. I decided to break ties with American Airlines because of the irritation I felt over the stupid contract they forced me to sign and sign again and again over and over. So I doubled my day-rate knowing that would end our relationship and apparently it did. I say apparently because I received a note/email from Steve saying they would not pay my new rate. That's all it said. Nothing formal just that they wouldn't pay and then I never heard from Steve again. No calls to see how I'm doing or to check to see if I'm alive or dead, just nothing. Another so-called friend is gone. I'm used to this type of thing but it still is disappointing to realize how few real friends there ever are. So there's that.

I do still hear in 2024 from Tim Auman regularly and Jose Gant from my TV days and it's always nice to hear from them although the calls from Jose seem more mechanical than the ones from Tim where we talk about so many things and it seems very genuine and like a real friendship so I'm very grateful for that.

Wednesday, April 17, 2024, one of the most loving and best friends I have ever had, passed away. My neighbor's cat Ruben. Maybe he was just a cat to many but to me, he was much more than that. Ruben stuck by my side every minute of every day throughout my journey to find a way to live after Mom passed away. Might sound weird to some but he knew I was having a rough time and would insist on laying on my lap and just looking at me. He would sleep on my lap and the times he would lay in the chair beside me, he would watch me looking directly into my eyes as if he knew I wasn't doing well. That animal was connected to my soul in a meaningful way and I will miss him the rest of my life.   

August 22, 2024, I was shocked to learn my blood sugar says I have type 1 diabetes. Wow. Not what you want to hear when you already have kidney disease but both of those usually end up together as a one/two punch and here they are. This day I went into attack mode and went from not walking much at all over time to 11,000 steps. I threw away the bread I had and the potatoes and went from eating whatever I wanted and whenever hungry, to eating once a day vegetables and chicken breasts I cook in the air fryer. I walk every day now and try my best to get in 3 to 4 miles a day but it's still 100º and tough to keep it up when it's that hot but I'm doing better than I expected. I brought Mom's treadmill over for days when I didn't feel like getting outside and I've dropped 15 pounds. We'll see how this all goes but knowing I'm completely alone in this world I realize that I can either give up or take charge and that is what Mom always wanted me to do with my health. So there's that..

August something, 2024. I'm going through contacts on a new iPhone and I run across an old friend I used to talk to many years ago and hadn't heard from. She was an older woman and her and her husband had befriended me during my days shooting for the Business Press. Unbeknownst to me they were a very wealthy couple and just great people who for whatever reason had taken me in as a friend. I decided to Google her name honestly thinking of how old she would be today and as I feared might be the case, she had passed away 2 years ago. This was one of those wishes I would have called and kept in touch things we all do when we let things go for too long and then it's too late. Her husband has passed away a year or so before her and now they are both gone.  

September 17, 2024, Bobby and Linda. I got a text from David saying he needed to update me on things with them. Turned out that the boys decided to place Bob and Linda in an Alzheimer's care facility for a 3-month tryout taking them from their home and telling them they were going to a place where they could get more care and not necessarily that they would be living there. This had to be one of the hardest things the boys have ever had to do in their lives. My overall feeling is that assuming it's a nice place with nice caring people, this is probably best for them. David says the visit they had there was good and they liked the people so with prayers for God's hand in this and what David thinks, Bob and Linda will hopefully accept it and feel good about it. That is yet to be determined as this only happened 2 days ago. 

I put a call into Judy who is Lind's sister in Oklahoma to let her know and it took 3 calls and 2 texts to get her. Told her what I knew and the location of the place etc and then as per usual we got into it over the dumbest of things unrelated to Bob & Linda and she ended up hanging up on me which was the last straw for me. It was right then that I decided that my relationship with her was never going to be worth the irritations and tension and I wrote to tell her I was done with her. I blocked every avenue for communications to seal the deal and that was that. Hard as it may seem to let a so-called "friend," go as I've done MANY times, letting a sister go is on another level but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. 

2024 has a little over 3 months left in it and the upcoming election if I were to gauge it by what has happened so far, has the makings to cap off a miserable year. 

I have removed another thing from my life this year and that is the saying, "Well, it can't get any worse."        

a look back, at the future..

I've heard it said that it isn't the dates on our headstone that matter, but the dash in between. The life we live between the beginning and the end. Odd thoughts like, of the people who I miss the most who are already gone, would those people agree with our perceptions of them? Should it even matter to me at all once they're gone and why do I spend time even thinking of such things- My spiritual beliefs include that all who are still here now, know exactly where they stand with God including myself even though I struggle at times with feeling less than worthy and coming up short of God's expectations..

The past several years have worn me out. A life lived completely alone is harder than I expected even while still wanting to be left alone. As I sit here today I lack hope that the future here in America is going to be anything but dark, and darker than this day. My lone companion, depression, has met someone new to hang out with, grief. Welcome to the family.. My overwhelming sense is that while I struggle personally, evil has engulfed my country and the entire world in fact, and that there is no escape.

     

Red flags appear with each new day that the person I once was is now hard to recognize. The weight of depression and grief is bone-crushing even on a good day and furthers my health decline. But others have it much worse I tell myself to lessen the load.. But I no longer buy the tricks I try to play on my mind and then it is what it is, plays on a loop inside my head. 

I have written often to myself, about not being able to call my mom and hear her voice or go back further and meet my father and learn who he really was. I often look at his face in a photo and wonder how he might have affected my life had we known each other. But no answer comes and no perception fits and I know that no matter the struggle I face I must fulfill the promise I made to my Mom that I would be OK and keep going while getting closer to God so that we will see each other again when it's time.         

I have experienced good fortune and extreme heartaches, life has at times kicked me around and I had to learn that getting back up and working to make things better wasn't an option on a list, it was the list. 

Rough new normals are that Linda and Bobby are now being cared for in their own home by complete strangers while they struggle with memory issues. Our country is being intentionally ripped apart because of an insatiable desire for power and control by those in control at the moment while our enemies eagerly await our final attack on ourselves. My attempts at communication with my son go unanswered and the work I once enjoyed I no longer do while the deafening silence surrounds my days and takes its predictable toll.    

Wars are breaking out all over the world and in our own streets where it's no longer even safe to walk. The internet with its faceless names is now our living room where we once sat and talked about things and how we were doing with people we loved. Those times and people have been replaced with a screen looking out over a vast and ever-increasing ugly and vile world.  

With all the darkness described herein, there is much that I am grateful for in this life. The mother I had was my undeniable proof that God exists and that God is good. I have experienced what love feels like and I have loved in return in my own awkward and failed ways. Actual friends, I have had a few of those. That shiny new Schwinn Stingray bicycle Mom couldn't afford but bought for me anyway when I was a weird kid, I was so proud of that bike and you Mom for knowing how much it would mean to me. Family, I got to experience times with some of the most resilient, giving, wise, and loving people God ever created. Rarely speaking of their hardships, they went to great lengths to make sure ours, all of us kids, were easier hardships than theirs. Thank you Gran and thank you to Papa who I never met and who had to be the best in the world or Gran wouldn't have chosen him to make the family I was a part of. From the two of you came so many wonderfully giving and loving people any has ever known. 

Having done well in some areas I do absolutely regret not being better at the important things like being a better husband, a better son for my Mom, and a father to my son. I regret becoming a recluse hermit and hiding from a world I would have to live in alone at the end. 

My memories I will try to use as fuel to restore some of my energy and lessen my worries. May God help me to find ways to honor those who came before me as they did for those who came before them.  

the square peg

being just a couple of years in front of 70 has me conserving what energy I have left to get on with the days God has given me to still be here. But I still devote for whatever reason, swaths of time throughout these days to looking back over this life and trying to figure out the why and how I got to this place of isolation and living this hermit lifestyle.. 

I have managed to avoid the woe-is-me that usually comes with this kind of story by doing well financially and traveling around the world with a fun job, but none of those things seems to ease my troubled mind. 

I assume thoughts of one's own mortality especially at my age are a common thing but it seems to be a daily cluster of thoughts for me. Like if I were to suffer a heart attack and die at this very moment while writing this it would be months before I was found. All my bills are on auto-pay and it's often several months between a text or a phone call from anyone I once knew. Soon after those thoughts comes the uncomfortable realization that after nearly 7 decades of life on this earth, no one cares enough to check to see if I am still alive or dead! I don't dwell on this I just wanted to write it down and see if it feels any different reading it as opposed to just knowing it. 

In our family, once the matriarch passed away my Gran, what was left of the family generally broke apart and went their own way never getting together again until one of those still left passes away. How sad and real that is.  

The Bible says we are to leave our mother and father and go make our own family and I believe that covers most people but strangely enough not me. I did make my own family but soon after was unceremoniously pushed out of it and never attempted it again. As a kid I generally wasn't allowed to play with the other kids in the neighborhood for whatever reason I can't recall.  They were often older than me but not by a lot so I have no idea why I had to play by myself. I carried that isolation into and through my school years and it didn't sit well with others as it was looked at to mean I may have thought I was better than them when in fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. So no real friends in school either. "The square peg," and I were becoming a thing. 

All these years later nothing much has changed but being young and alone is one thing, and getting much older and alone I'm finding, is quite another. I don't kid myself it can't be any other way at this point, the die was cast so long ago. I miss the days back when I had a chance to maybe turn all this around and have a different life.

In Memorium to times better and those including me, who never fit in.  

note to self..

Everyone has probably been where I feel I am many times before me. 4 plus years since mom passed away and I am still a mess. It's taken more of a toll on me than I saw coming both physically and mentally and the void her passing leaves in my life will never fill and I will likely be for the rest of my life, a broken man.

It doesn't help that the world is upside down and on fire and that my country is unrecognizable and the one I grew up in has died before my eyes. It would be depressing even without great personal loss health issues and so on. But watching the younger generations be the catalyst for a future they will regret is steadily weakening my care and concern.    

The things I once looked forward to just a few years ago making photos and videos, and looking for new work, are all a long-lost memory. My well is dry, and devoid of life.  

Always the loner never feeling comfortable around people persists and has increased a thousandfold since mom has gone. A reclusive solitude while it fights with my sense of well-being is my only comfortable place. There are people I feel love for, family even, that I would like to feel comfortable with, and yet it just isn't there.

My mental and physical health has suffered and a lack of peace in my soul is outpacing my will to address it. Things and people have changed since mom passed away I keep telling myself, only to realize the change is in me and it just hurts more.  

Maybe I'll pick up and move someplace my mind as it wanders, change my name create a new life make some new memories, those thoughts have crossed my mind then the newest lab results remind me there probably isn't enough time. I reluctantly asked a friend to help me put a house up for rent or sale and while she graciously agreed she baled and that was that.     

I know I have to do something here before the clock runs out even if it's wrong or doesn't make a whole lot of sense. God will surely lead me in some direction that is better than treading water in this place. 

I've upped my purging of things from Mom's house and mine for the past year or so and more lately in the hopes of spurring me on to make some type of progress as  I'm feeling a need to pick up the pace. 

It's 4am and I am sitting here writing instead of resting up to make use of another new day. Some random reading of Suzanne Summers' husband of 55 years who said some time ago of her passing and how peaceful and calming it had been. She had battled more health demons than any 100 of the rest of us and yet she managed to make use of every minute she had and stayed in a loving relationship till the very end. 

Suzanne's huge house and 100 million dollar fortune couldn't save her and isn't going to comfort those who are left behind when they need a hug or to hear her voice. The emptiness that is left behind when a matriarch passes away is something no one can relate to until it happens to them. How you deal with it defines the legacy that a loved one leaves behind and right now I don't feel I'm honoring my Mom's legacy by not being well myself and getting on with whatever life is left for me. I have a lot of work to do..

Link: Note to self..

       

a life lived

I felt compelled to write. 

There are no souls of importance left in my life to make what I see ahead anything but uncertain and unfamiliar. A successful life by any measure other than relationships with people will produce a flawed and inaccurate result. I learned this by measuring happiness by the number of jobs in a week, month, year, and bank balances. But those measures had cruel ironies attached and ones I had to go through and experience to realize. 

The older and wiser adage is a real thing where I've gained greater focus on all the mistakes I made over the years like valuing the wrong things while just being and experiencing life with others took a back seat or had no seat at all. I thought it would be much easier to eventually shift from that accumulating lifestyle to one more related to inner peace but I'm finding that not to be the case. Being one of the crowd was never a fit for me and I actually did suffer because of it, but the suffering then pales in comparison to the anguish now since reaching my fourth quarter of life.  

As a kid, all I ever wanted was to have money to buy stuff and now that I can afford whatever I want, I just want what I used to have, that dream.. I was already rich long before I had a dime in that I was experiencing love without condition from a mother who could have fallen from the weight of husbands and fathers of her kids who didn't support her or us. Not knowing how well off you are until later in life is one of the cruelest of all ironies. I've often wondered if those who graced my younger life and have now left this world, did they know at the time the value of their impact on our lives and did they die knowing how rich they made everyone around them just by living a good and decent life throughout all the hardships they had to endure?  

Whether real or imagined my soul today is heavily burdened with things you want less of like regret and sadness. Regret that I pushed aside some of those who are gone now and sadness that I wasted so much time focused on the less important things. Often in prayer, I ask God to forgive me for those things which I regret and although I know that he does, I am suffering unimaginable grief that while my loved ones were here, I didn't show them often enough how meaningful they were to me. 

I woke at about 9 this morning, did the morning routine, and sat down to watch the markets. For hours I watched and did nothing else till I fell asleep in the chair and woke up about 6:30 having never set foot outside. I doubt my grandmother, Gran, ever had a single day or minute in her life to waste like that.  That lady had too much to do, too many kids to care for, feed, sew clothes for, and work because her husband, my grandfather whom I never got to meet, died at an early age leaving them and her to fend for themselves.

The memories so long ago of the family getting together at Gran's and the telephone party line we kids played with and the spearmint lifesavers she would give us just one because the roll was another nickel she didn't have. Kenneth's odd laugh and Peggy's beautiful smile and big hair. The cousins are all playing outside and how uncomplicated and uneventful those times were before we all grew up and time stepped in and took it all away from us. Nothing could have prepared me for the loss of those times and nothing now can replace it (for me) or ease the sadness of not being able to talk about those times with some of those who were there and now passed away.. 

Faith is all that I have now to help get me through this final chapter. While it should be enough, all too often I worry it may not. I am using prayer to touch base with all those whom I miss who have passed before me and for all who remain and are in need. Often I have to remind myself to add my name to that list.

Guidance and a path well lit is what I seek these days and it seems so elusive. What will I do with what little time I have left I ask myself daily with no definitive answer. The days and nights are too quiet and my mind keeps moving back to that place in my life when I had everything I ever needed and didn't realize it-