midnight potatoes

At midnight on my birthday, I was standing in my kitchen cutting up two potatoes.

For months, I haven’t felt right. The doctors say my kidney numbers are stable, which is good news, but stable isn’t the same as strong. When you live with one kidney running at about forty percent, even an easy day can leave you feeling like you ran a marathon.

I had just finished a three-day photo shoot. Nothing physically demanding, but by the end of each day, I was wiped out.

Then tonight something strange happened.

After falling asleep in a chair, I woke up around 11:30 with something I hadn’t felt in a long time: energy.

Real energy.

The aches were gone. My mind was clear. My body felt almost normal again.

And the first thing that came to mind was those potatoes sitting in the kitchen about to go bad.

Kidney disease makes potatoes complicated. Peel them, cut them, rinse them, soak them overnight to leach out the potassium. It’s a process. But there I was happily working through it like I had somewhere important to be.

After that, I packed up two camera bodies I had sold, printed the shipping labels, and set them by the door. Took the trash out for morning pickup. Kept looking for the next thing to do.

For a few hours, I felt like the old version of me again, the guy who always had too much to do and not enough hours to do it.

Not the guy who spends most days just trying to get through them.

At one point I almost went for a midnight walk. A mile or two just because I could. I wish I had.

So why write about something this ordinary?

Because someday I might stumble back across this and remember there was a night when I felt almost normal again.

When I’m not exhausted and hurting, I’m a different person.

And I like that guy.

Around two in the morning, I glanced at my computer calendar to see what I had coming up next.

That’s when I realized something.

It was my birthday.

I had forgotten.

Birthdays always seemed like things for kids anyway, but I never forgot my mom’s. And maybe the real reason birthdays matter isn’t the day itself, it’s that someone notices you’re still here.

About twenty-five thousand people have read things on this blog. I don’t know who any of them are.

But tonight I felt good enough to wish myself a happy birthday.

Because there really isn’t anyone left who will.

So here it is for the record.

Happy Birthday, old orphan.

And thanks to Teresa, the last person on earth who remembered. Fifty years later, you still did.

Right now, there are two bowls of potatoes soaking in the sink.

And for tonight, that feels like a small victory.

hello there old friend

The house was quiet tonight. The kind of quiet that almost has a sound to it.

It’s been a while since I last wrote here, though not much has changed. There have been a few good days scattered in, but mostly the kind where nothing much moves you. I still miss the people who are gone, and I still say real prayers for the people who remain. Sometimes I have to remind myself to include my own name in those prayers.

Jason had a birthday a few days ago. The kid I used to hold next to me is now a middle-aged man with a family of his own. I didn’t call. I never want to force myself into a place where I might not be wanted. He knows how to reach me if he wants to.

That thought always takes me back to my own father. Neither of us called. Not once. And then one day it was too late, and he was gone.

Maybe that’s why I stopped in here tonight. There’s a chill in the air outside — not cold, just uncomfortable enough to notice. I know that feeling well. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the temperature. It’s the same quiet chill that settles over a life lived mostly alone.

Still, there is peace in knowing that, unlike so many others who have passed through my life, my God has not left me. Even when the darkness and silence try to convince me otherwise, I believe his promise that I will never walk alone in this world or the next.

Physically, I haven’t been feeling well the past few weeks, but the lab results tell a better story. The disease that should be getting worse has, at least for now, stayed where it is. For that, I’m thankful.

Ruben stopped by a few days ago to check on me. He didn’t look so good himself — maybe a little thinner than usual. I fed him some of his favorite cat food. One tub turned into three, and he ate almost all of it before wandering over to sit with me for a while. We took our first selfie.

Truth is, Ruben may be the only one who regularly checks to see if I’m still around. No one else ever knows if I’m dead or alive these days.

And if I’m being honest, some days I feel like a little of both..

At least the practical things are getting done. I sent all the tax prep to Mel today and took care of some banking and Ameritrade business — things I usually put off until the last minute. It felt good to finish them early this year.

Tonight the house is quiet again.

But for a little while, it wasn’t.

Thanks for stopping by, Ruben.

Writing to No One

OFF LIMITS

The alarm clock hasn’t been set in a long time.

For most of my life, I checked the calendar every night, figuring out where I had to be and what time the alarm needed to go off to drag me out of bed the next morning.

Now most days contain almost nothing that can’t wait days even weeks.

I’m not officially retired, but between the virus and my health, the odds of setting that alarm ever again are getting pretty slim.

These days my thoughts tend to fall into two categories.

Things that are off-limits to talk about — even if there were someone to tell.

And things that feel like pipe dreams, considering how little time there may be left to do anything about them.

A question circles through my head several times a day.

Is it even worth it anymore?

So I write.

Writing is how I break the silence in this house.

But memory has a way of sneaking in when the room is quiet enough.

The clocks tick loudly here now. Louder than I remember them sounding years ago.

Maybe they always sounded like that.

Maybe there were just more voices around back then to drown them out.

For years I pushed most people away. Often for reasons I still believe were good ones. But good reasons don’t change the outcome.

Silence.

Just the ticking clocks in the background and the long hours between them.

Sometimes I look around and wonder what any of this is for anymore.

Two houses that need decisions made about them.

One that could be remodeled. One that could be sold.

Plans that once felt practical now feel pointless.

The cameras sit in their cases with dead batteries.

They remind me a little of the man who owns them.

Once full of energy. Now mostly sitting still.

I have more of everything than I ever expected to have.

More space.
More things.
More quiet.

Except for one thing.

Someone to share any of it with.

Strange how life can end up like that.

Though if I’m being honest, this ending didn’t exactly happen by accident.

My standards for the people I allowed into my life were always strict.

In the end only one person ever truly met them.

And I miss her more than I know how to say.

My friend.
My mentor.
The reason for anything good I ever managed to do.

My mom.

I knew losing her would be hard.

I just didn’t know it would leave the world this quiet.

So now I write to no one about everything.

There are no arguments here.
No interruptions.
No one trying to fix a life they didn’t live.

Just the clocks.

The silence.

And my prayers that God keep his arms around me and those who need it.

Even the ones I pushed away.

I pray for you, too.

Everything works out in the end.

But in the meantime…

The clock keep ticking and I hear ever second.

old dogs

A few nights ago I got the idea of searching the internet for the name of an old friend from decades ago and while I didn't exactly find him, I found an obituary for his father who I had also known long ago. In the obituary for his father it named survived by with the name of the friend I had looked for, his brother who I had known, and then the part where his mother had also passed away years before and his sister all that I had known and been very close to all those many years ago when I was in the process of getting through the trauma of divorce and just trying to find my way. 

As I have gotten older I've found that deaths have the effect of forcing me to look closer at my own mortality and just how quickly death can come and how instant the finality of life is at death. 

I began looking up other names from the past and even the high school FB page from the class I would have graduated in. This was a mistake for me as many names I was familiar with have died. This put me in a place of deep sadness when I realize how short a time we are actually here and how much of that time we just waste as if we can make it up tomorrow. 

I've done very well in some areas of my life and failed miserably at many others. I've spent more time trying to look back and figure out how those failures happened even while knowing there is no going back to fix that stuff and none of those opportunities to make wonderful memories has a do over option. My time spent looking back is an example of the waste a lot of us probably do that makes no sense but we do it anyway and then some of us write about it compounding the waste.

When the minutes, months and decades are pissed off, we don't get any of those back. They are gone forever and in their place lies piles of regrets we take with us for the rest of our days. I'm finding the load to be quite heavy and hard to manage these days. I need to stop beating myself up so viciously at this stage of the life I have left and find ways of not adding more weight to the regrets I already carry. 

Can't go back, can't recover what has been lost or given away, and those who have passed before me would have given anything to have had one more day and you can bet it wouldn't have been wasted looking back and drowning in grief and depression. 

what I miss most

My brand of therapy is writing or purging. This is both. The death of a family member spurred my need to relieve some of the pressure so this, is that. My Gran's sisters babysat me when I was a little kid and I remember them being so sweet and caring. We didn't stay close and now both are gone. Like so many other members of this family a lot didn't stay close and most of those people have since passed away. I find death forces me to search what is left of my soul and more often than not I don't like that I find more regrets filling the space where peace should be. 

The DEATH OF THE FAMILY itself has to be acknowledged and given its due in order for me to find perspective when a new death brings back old memories. I am old enough to remember when we were all gathering around Gran's dinner table and actually seeing each other and hugging and hearing each other's voices that are just a memory now. The cousins playing in the backyard when we were little now we rarely even speak to one another until we find ourselves at a funeral for someone we cared about decades ago but didn't show up much while they were here. Everything that was good and better than we knew at the time, is gone now. While many have passed away, so many others have just disconnected from all that was. All thats left for me now is some of the memories and visiting the graves of those people who created me and those memories, that is all I have to hold on to.

When all you have left are memories, you have reached a place in line you may not be fully ready for. It's a very heavy place, an empty solitude surrounded by sadness, grief, and regret. A look back at how we all began to disengaged with one another and drift apart isn't a pretty picture to spend the time I have left painting but I often feel the need to go there and try and find the reason. This is what happens when the well runs dry and I wish I hadn't been so wasteful of so much time. 

I will press on like I promised mom that I would and I will continue to thank God for giving me the mother I had that continues to save my life every single day, and on days like this. 

it doesn't matter anymore

This morning I was up at 6:40am and I was in the newly renovated bathroom debating where to put a new box of kleenex I had in my hand. Would it be better here or over there and just as that was actually happening I began to realize how insignificant so many things are that I spend time on even at a stage in life where my time is running low. 

If you were in a desert and only had water to survive another day you wouldn't waste a drop of it yet there I was standing there deciding on where to put a box of kleenex. When I was shooting photos, one fraction of a second was the difference in an incredible captured moment and a forgettable one anyone could take. Life is also like this, an ongoing succession of tiny moments that seem to go on forever until they don't. Not wasting any of our moments is all too often learned only during the last breath we take. 

These past two years, since my mom passed away, it has been my task to sort through and do something with about two hundred years of my family's belongings that were kept throughout generations. Little did I know there would be more than just the house to contend with, but the memories, mementos, photos, furniture, some a hundred years old that had value to the lives of loved ones no longer here. Those larger-than-life people who had very little yet raised, fed, and clothed the generations that comprise the family we have today left these things that the younger generation has no practical knowledge of or connection to, and I have an understanding of that. 

I'm cutting myself some slack over the gut-wrenching time and emotions going through these things has brought to me and I will be eternally grateful to God for choosing me to have these connections. At times, I have felt and still feel that I am not living up to deserving to have come from these people who were my family, but I know completely that God doesn't make mistakes, and he made me a part of them because he thought I deserved them. I have to remind myself of that often, and it's up to me now to live the life that honors God's choice of giving me the roots that I have to some of the most wonderful, resourceful, and loving people that will have ever walked on this earth. 

A recent visit with my nephew and his wife gave me some particular insight that I didn't think I wanted but in the end I knew I needed. We cling to things that belonged to the people we loved when those people pass away as if it were a piece of them we can't let go of. Those things can and in my case do, number in the hundreds and thousands from several generations. Those things can become a burden of weight in ways our loved ones would never have wanted for us. While it's somewhat uncomfortable to say it this way, but it is of monumental value to acknowledge that weight and then lift it off our own shoulders.

Cyndi sat there listening to me whine about what to do with these thousands of photos I have, some dating back to the 1800s, and of people I'm not even sure who they are, and when I asked her what she thought I should do with them she very calmly looked me straight in the eyes and said, either scan them and get rid of them or just get rid of them. 

Wow....... That was the moment I began to realize a lot of this weight is self-imposed and not at all what those people I desperately miss would want for me. I love you Cyndi and your candor and perspective out of care was exactly what I needed. Even though I already knew it to be true, I just needed to hear it from another source. I'm intending to implement that sentiment throughout the rest of this journey I'm on. 

the people, not their things.

Sure, I'll keep a few things, but I can't keep it all, and most of it has to go. It's on me now, but it always was, and my mom left it to me because she felt confident that I could handle it and do the right thing. Her own words to me were to be right and to do the right things. 

I'm evolving from grief and loss into realizing that the things we leave behind don't really matter. What matters is that we are remembered as having done our best to be right and to do the right things.  

One of the mind tricks I have to get over is the self-induced and completely manufactured guilt when thinking of getting rid of things. It says nothing about how I feel about the people who owned and kept them. Those feelings are in my heart and will go with me the rest of my life. It has everything to do with saving myself and my sanity to go on living like I promised my mom I would do. I miss her like crazy and giving clothes and stuff to the Goodwill is exactly what my mom would want me to do. The habit we all have of accumulating things is nonsensical to me and we all do it. When we are gone and that can happen in two seconds, this practice of accumulating goes from nonsensical to burdensome on those we leave behind. 

One of the greatest gifts you can give today to those who will grieve and suffer at losing you one day is to do the work while you are still here to declutter and purge your accumulated stuff so others already grieving your loss don't have to.   

Thank you Cyndi and David I love you to pieces. I'm unloading as much stuff as fast as I can so you don't have to do it.

no soup for you.

One of the best business moves I ever made was to fake my way into television. The other was investing in the stock market but that’s another story and just as unimaginable a success for an oddball high school dropout like me. A Rolling Stones, ZZTop concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas hooked me on video and a few years later tv news would be my way in. Looked simple enough. Find the on/off switch and point the right end of the camera towards the action, hit record, have a blast, get paid. What, is that it?? Surely there was more to it than just those things and there were but a lot of the rest of it had me wondering if it was even remotely possible that this is all there is to doing this. 

When I figured I had enough in savings to buy one of those big cameras I started calling around tv stations to get a feel for my chances of making any money before writing a check for every penny I had. At first no one would even talk to me. To get rid of my persistent calling and leaving messages for whoever the grand poo-bah was (the poo-bah thing was for you Mike at NBC5 to keep you anonymous for having laughed at me for even thinking I could just walk in and do this, oops…) that did the hiring, I finally got 5 minutes with the “anonymous” NBC5 guy who was anything but encouraging but just telling it like it was. 

Other than to ask what my experience was (I had zero) and what markets I had worked in (there are markets?), the goal was clearly to let me know, this ain’t how it’s done. I was a 10th-grade dropout and was working in a warehouse at the time driving a forklift and apparently, there just aren’t many openings for uneducated forklift drivers in the television business. Who knew.. The message I was given to remember was this, “son, if it were that easy to just walk in here and do this because you want to, there would be a line outside our door around the block.” Exact words and thanks NBC5, you’ll never know (well you do now) how much of a fire that lit under my ass to find a way. 

The naysayers were swarming out of the woodwork and for a few moments I will admit, they almost had me convinced this wasn’t doable especially for me. Long story short, 25-30 years later I made enough, invested enough, and retired early while I’m certain some of them, are still working in the most tarnished and disrespected profession that has ever fallen from heights of the Cronkite era when truth, facts, respect and dignity were the counterpoint in every newsroom. 

The camera in this photo was my first, a $36 thousand dollar Sony BVW 300A. Was 4:3, shot tape, and standard definition before high definition. That $36 grand was every penny I had to my name and I risked it all against sincere attempts to dissuade me from more educated and experienced professionals who knew more than I thought I ever would. That camera before it’s unceremonious retirement many years ago made me approximately 2 million dollars over the years of its life and I still have it as a souvenir along with my fake media credential I printed off the internet to get into scenes and learn how everything was done. Several cameras, network shoots and shows, corporate gigs and travels around the world several times later, here is this photo I found taken by who the hell knows at a time when broadcast media was a respected and useful profession. I had bucked all the odds and because I was too unsophisticated to know I wasn’t qualified, I just went ahead and did it anyway.  

I still have that hat around here somewhere. Never let your lack of education interfere with your success and NO actually means, oops, I need to take another route.

All this nonsense enabled me to discover that I had a lifelong dream I didn’t know I had. To finally make my mom proud. And she was. Things, money, travel, nothing compares to knowing she was proud of me before God took her hand and led her away to be with him. What an incredibly strange and weirdly rewarding life this has been.

close friends

I've never had many friends. Many acquaintances, but few friends. Now that I've reached the second half of my fourth quarter of life with health issues raining down, it occurs to me that my solitary lifestyle, one that I cultivated and perfected, might not have been the best way to go..

Facebook says I have almost 5,000 friends as if I needed more evidence that social media is fake and a poor substitute for life. Having never been a "people person," it's no surprise that this part of my life where days and nights are hauntingly quiet and dinners for one are my way of life.

Around this time of year with Thanksgiving and Christmas bearing down it is especially tough seeing what was once warm and comfortable enter the rear view mirror. So many we once knew have moved on and away, some have passed away and in some cases just walked out of our lives.

It's interesting how working on my Will recently and sorting through all the complexities of who to leave what and how much and all the legal jargon and wanting to be fair and on and on has ended up giving me an intense general feeling of, who really gives a shit more than anything else. People who were not much if at all in my life while I was here, I've spent hours trying to sort out what they will get when they accidently hear that I'm dead and now all that seems like wasted time and a bit foolish on my part.  

All of the people who made a difference in my life have passed away. There is no one left. I'm leaving a few things to some of the people who helped me along the way in my professional life that gave me the assets to need to write a Will in the first place and I feel good about that. Not life changing things, just things to say a final thank you, appreciate it, see you on the other side. 

Social media aside and back in the real world, it isn't the numbers that have any meaning to your life or mine, it's the closeness or the distance like in my case that matters at my stage. I would say that I have one close friend. Not dozens or hundreds certainly not thousands, just one that feels close. And two or three others that I speak to occasionally if I do the reaching out.

Depending on your definition of "friend," the "close friend," if you have one at all, can make a really uncertain 4th quarter of life a bit easier to think about. 24/7 no matter where I am or where he and his wife are, I could call and he would answer without fail. I cannot say that with any certainty about anyone else including those who I spent and probably wasted, a lot of time on in the process of the Will.. 

One final, here is a link to a youtube video made and written by Steve Faktor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JHsLJH0Rdk&t=211s

Paul McCartney and Carl Perkins - My Old Friend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn19iLYFZKw

social studies

absolutely nothing happened today. 

No catalyst for this beyond the feeling over the past ever so long, that social anything has drained my senses. Not just the internet but walking down the street, driving the car, working, entering or exiting a business, social just about anything has reached a point in my life where it requires more energy output than I have left to give it. 

Interactions between myself and all but a few is so incredibly draining that I end up using more energy to avoid contact than I do trying to pretend I'm not doing that.

Political buffoonery I can't tolerate, I mute commercials, meaningless chit chat makes me grind my teeth to the root, mindless texts and emails, my tolerance for all of it has just about run out completely. Most  of what is commonly considered by most to be ordinary back and forth with people, places and things have now taken their rightful place as the useless wastes of what little time I have left while on top of this earth. 

This blog has always been the purging of things in my mind that have no other legitimate place to be expelled but here where it feels more sane to write than to sit alone in a dark room and talk to myself. 

Gone are those days when you knew if you went missing for a day or so someone would ask about you or come looking for your body. Those people, those someones, they're all long gone now too. I'm constantly thinking what's the point in regards to just about anything I do or get involved with and it wasn't all that long ago I could find some beneficial reason to endure a few things that made the social exercise seem worth it but no longer.

My world is different now, a different life than the one I lived just two years ago and I've found everything about it and in it to be damaging to my soul. While I do not fear the end of this life and have said many times that I am not eager to go, I wonder at times if perhaps I look forward to that end a little more than I care to admit. 

My promise to my mom that I would continue on is why I will remain here until God decides, not me, that my usefulness here has run its course. Until then I will keep looking on my own for some light on a dark path. The days and the nights where I live are very quiet even though I know I'm not actually alone.

He who finds the light, wins.

Moderna Booster Reaction

For several health related reasons and advice from my Doctors I got jab #1 (no reactions to speak of) in February 2021, jab #2 (some cold related issues but not bad at all) in March, then just this past Saturday the booster. I got all of mine at CVS pharmacy #1 and #2 in Abilene because no appointments locally, then the booster locally.  

Almost all in line for the booster this Saturday were older people with only a couple of exceptions. The pharmacist was the "shooter," and oddly enough he wasn't wearing a mask and wore only one glove which I thought was odd considering all day long for days on end this guy was presented with and being face to face with people some of which had not been vaccinated at all. 

I have zero interest in the debates going on over to get or not to get as I made my own decision for my own reasons and that is that. But I do have a concern over this pharmacist not wearing maximum protection around all these people giving them shots so there's that..

Day of shot, the shot itself was painful going in. He took aim, didn't hold the skin with one hand and just jammed the needle in and yeah, it hurt a bit. He didn't say I should hang for a few minutes to see if I had a reaction I just went to my car and headed home. This was about noon. By 6pm I was not feeling well. By 8pm I was feeling much worse. Body aches all over, chills I was wearing a jacket to keep warm, a headache that would kill a moose, the injection site on my arm felt like I had been hit full swing with a baseball bat and not enough energy to get off the couch. 

Sunday I woke up about 1pm and I felt like I had been slammed into by a train. Haven't felt this bad in years. On a scale of 1 to 10 and 10 being the worst, I was 10 plus and wondering if even catching Covid would feel this bad.

That was the worst of it so far at least as today, Monday I feel like my bad number of 10 plus is more like 5 today. Headaches are still there but not as intense and body aches are less with the exception of my back. Maybe the worst is over but we'll have to see. I've done what I can to help prevent myself from getting this China attack on the world that my Doctors say with my ongoing other health issues would probably kill me and that's really all I can do.