On Facebook I read all this banter about some TV show called “Lost” that I guess has been around for a few years.  I’ve never seen it.  Not even part of it.  I have no idea what I am missing, which is apparently a lot.   But I just don’t watch TV enough to get it.   I see glimpses of news when grandma has it on or something, and I shudder and turn away before my soul starts wilting.    No, but really, I’m relieved to not know things like that.

I remember some people in a church group we attended a few years ago in Boulder were all aflutter about scenes for some hollywood film being shot downtown.  They talked about the actor and actress knowingly and shared all this information about their films, gossip or whatevernot.   I was actually pleased to not have any idea what they were talking about.  The names of these “famous” people were not at all familiar.  I liked that.  It affirmed to me that I really have had some history now of being outside the flow of all that stuff.

This Friday I learned that the Superbowl was going to be played tonight.  I had no idea.  I kind of wondered why the chip aisle at the grocery store was somewhat wiped out.  Then I started hearing about the Colts and the Saints.  I tell you honestly that I had no idea that those were even NFL team names.   They just didn’t ring a bell.   And if you asked me from what states they were from respectively, I would have been even less clueless.  I still don’t know where the Colts are hailing from.   I learned the Saints were New Orleans just because my AP news alert on my iPhone announced them as the winners.  Wow, I actually know who won this year.   I usually don’t.

It’s not that I don’t like sports or something.  If I’m with people who like watching football, then it can be fun.  Not on my own though.   Eating and shouting and stuff.  That aint all bad.  But by yourself?   That would be stupid.  I actually know a lot about football and what happens in all the innings.   But I don’t really understand the actual rules and I guess most people don’t.  Probably.   Unless I’m watching tennis.  I know pretty much about that.   I’d watch tennis.

I need to buy myself this shirt and wear it proudly:

Words words words…   I’m free writing again.  This means I have nothing to say and any attempts to sound meaningful will be pretentious.  So here is some fluff today or maybe not, we’ll see where this goes.  I have, after all, committed myself to doing this and I am embarrassed by my own inability to commit to things.  My family seems to be the only exception there.  I’m deeply committed to my wife and kids.   It’s a part of my core being.  My commitment to God I would like to say is as strong, because I think that’s the right thing to say somehow, but I’m not so sure.   Not that I am not serious about that commitment, but were it not for the grace that comes to me through my wife and kids I just might as well be a betrayer of the faith.   Perhaps in some little ways, through my wrong attitudes sometimes, I am.

What am I getting at here?   I guess I could feel a little more passion.  To me this means loving something so much you are willing to hurt for it.  Experience pain.   I think I am passionate about not experiencing pain.  So solve that paradox for me.  No, that was a little semantic joke.  What I am really trying to say is that life is too easy.  It’s so easy that it is hard.  Or little things seem hard.  Maybe that’s it.

I’m unemployed and my days are passing quickly and they all seem very similar.  I get up, shower, dress, get kids up, make their lunches, get them all ready, remind them to brush their hair and wear coats because its cold out there, drive them to school, come back home, start looking for a job on my laptop on the kitchen table and have some oatmeal, my preschooler gets up, I feed her breakfast and get her involved in something, then I try to get a few things done on my list like calling the insurance or putting something on ebay because money is getting tighter, then Wifey and I whip up some lunch and get our smallest one dressed, we take her to preschool, then we come back and….  the day rolls on predictably through dinner and baths and bedtime story with an occasional variation in the day like a trip to the library or grocery store.      I do my seminary homework in the evening until bedtime.  I wake up and it starts all over again, and again.

Being February 2nd yesterday, I did actually watch Groundhog Day per tradition.  I woke up today with the feeling that it was just like the day before.   The difference here is that I know change is coming.  You just hope that it is going to be change you want, and not change you just have to deal with.   I want a job, but I don’t just want any job.  I’m spoiled and whiney about not wanting to work 8 hours a day in a cubicle, doing things I am inherently indifferent about or at least having to fake that I care about it.  Working for the man requires playing this weird head game with yourself.  I had to do the same in school.  If you are going to get the good grade, you have to convince yourself that you actually like the subject.   Maybe this is what was trying to get at about passion.   I want to work at what I feel strongly about.  I don’t want to fake it.

I don’t want money alone to be the motivator that causes me to convince myself that I am excited about a job.  Its ok to have money as a motivator to a degree.  I’m not knocking that.  There is an important practical utility to it and certainly more of a motivator for a more materialistic person.  I don’t have too many fantasies about what I would buy if I won the lotto so it doesn’t really work for me like that.  I’m more experience oriented.   I want experiences, not stuff.  I want to hike mountains with my kids, not have the nicest house together with them, or whatever.  And believe me, I feel that pressure to sell my soul 8+ hours a day to make the lucre so we can be materially secure.  But that sucks.  I don’t want to sell my soul for “security.”   I want that time to spend it with my family.   Screw that idea that if we had more money we’ll have more “quality time” because we can use the money for better experiences together.    That is one slippery slope and I’m not willing to gamble on the edge there.  Because you start with “security” and end up chasing comforts and luxuries and status and frivolity.  Security is much easier to come by than we let ourselves think.  We let the market society tell us what security means.  Like I said, screw that.

But get this.  Maybe the pain and anxiety inherent in passion is because it puts a degree of security at risk.  The more passion, the more risk?   I’m still chewing on this one.

my earth coloured friend
why hidest thou
thy warmth concealed
in thy slot awaiting
heed not the morning
with its beams alight
thy promise shadowed
threatened with butter
and frost

My brain is swirling with ideas on how to break out of the cubicle for good.  I’m not in one right now, but the pressure will be coming in the next few months to go get a “regular” job.  Being a technology professional who sits in front of a computer all day, working for-da-man means you sit in a box.  I did work my way into a private office once with a lavish view of the Boulder Flatirons, but I was “too close to the sun” as it were, nestled between two chief offices.  I was getting too much inside scoop on people getting scapegoated for executive errors and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I became a scapegoat of some kind.  But that is a whole other story.  I ended up leaving and found myself in a great job – but in a cube.  It was a really nice cube as cubes go.  But still… a non-living box.   I don’t want to go back there!

It’s like those people who have a little lapdog and they keep a cage in the corner so whenever the dog gets a little out of control they say “Into your box!  Into your box!” and the poor little thing obediently slinks to his little cube, tail between his legs.   THAT is the image I get when I work in a cubicle.   “Meeting’s over.  Into your box!”

So I am racing against the clock…  doing everything I can do to get my own business running.  I’m an Internet junkie.  I can spend hours playing with php and theme templates and code snippets…  and I like to write content.  So I’m attempting to converge this into a monetized web project of some sort.  It’s changing shape almost daily and a great experiment that might fail.  But I’m going for it.

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
-Robert F. Kennedy

A few confessions:

• If I stay in one place for longer than a year, I get cranky.
• I have a period of mild depression after returning “home” from a road trip.
• I notice every RV parked or on the road.
• I take unusual interest in the boondockers at the local big box store.
• While living in Florida, I had a secret fascination with people who lived in RVs (and there were lots of them) but suppressed it because of the stigma of backwoods trailer people. (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”)
• I have looked at RV classified ads for at least 30 minutes a day (sometimes much more) for the past 2 years.
• I’m constantly thinking about how life fits into a full-time-on-the-road context: laundry, meals, school, toys, books, work, illness, rainy days, etc…
• I want to “roadschool” my kids.  And they want it too. (Grace?)
• I’m actively selling all my stuff online in the expectation that I will be taking it on the road (even though I have no idea when this can actually happen).
• I love this website.
• When I learned that Andrew Jones was a RV-fulltimer veteran with more kids than I, his points with me went through the roof.

Ever since I was a kid and experienced a taste of the RV life when my parents would borrow my grandfather’s class C Dodge RV, I romanticized it terribly.  I felt more alive on the road and at camp than I ever did at the house.   In my 20s I borrowed that same RV for a 10-day trip through Utah and had a blast to say the least.  It was very hard for me to come home and go back to a “normal” life.  It was at that time that I felt that I could very possibly be a “fulltimer.”  But now, years later, I have 3 kids and all the responsibilities of managing a family that goes with it.  Feeding, clothing, educating, caring for, socializing, and loving them in the deep and meaningful way we should and want to…  but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize that going on the road might actually help in most of these.   So I am online looking at these various websites, blogs and forums where families are doing the exact thing I am dreaming of.   Most of them cannot stop singing the praises of their decision.  By now I am almost past the point of no return.  I cannot possibly see myself buying a house again, settling into a neighborhood and going to work in a cubicle for 8 hours a day.    I spend some time almost every day looking at RV sites and combing through Craigslist looking for that right house-on-wheels that would meet our needs.   I’ve come to the conclusion that I am going to have to do some degree of customization in order to get it “right” but you need to start somewhere.   The typical RV is meant for RV use… that is “recreation” and they really aren’t made to hold up to the wear-and-tear of full time use as a moving domicile.  There are exceptions.  There are some high-end rigs that are clearly out of my price range and there are the bus conversions that are made with more sturdy material.  Jake Van Slatt is a guy who did a beautiful job converting an old school bus into a dreamy, well-built machine that would do great.   I’m somewhere in between.  I’m not willing or able to do a full conversion myself.  And they are too expensive to buy outright.  I will probably settle on a good 30 to 37 foot used RV with the intent to modify things like cabinets or beds.  I really don’t want to do major changes to water or electrical systems if I don’t have to. So I will look for those as prime criteria.   That and having a solid transportation chassis.  Engine and tranny are obviously needing to be solid, otherwise what is the point?   So there you have it.   This feels like a confessional or a “coming out” where I declare officially that I am weird enough to “full time it.”  The other obstacle is money.   One needs income for this sort of thing and we are not independently wealthy.  So I am going to have to get innovative.  This is actually the larger part of this challenge.  I am pretty confident about being able to do the lifestyle of being mobile full time (probably foolishly so).  My family and I have daydreamed enough and I have tasted a bit of it enough to know we could do that part…  but we need to have income.  So I am exploring ways to monetize an Internet project and figure out some consulting arrangements to help make this happen.   We’ll see.   The wife and kids are on board with the idea 100% so I’m continuing to fuel my delusion for now and see what 2010 holds for us.  It may mean that I go back to a regular job for a year or two while we continue to get our affairs in line with this project and put money away.  Whatever the case, I’m exited.  I have been silent about it for years.

There is a museum here in town that has, as part of its exhibit, a collection of objects of a locally famous person.  In this collection is an Egyptian mummy and its sarcophagus.  I’ve looked at it closely.   It’s the body of a wealthy middle-aged woman from about 3000 years ago.  Her skin is pulled tight around her face, the nose caved in.  The teeth, slightly crooked, are protruding somewhat.    She gives the whole museum an ambiance of death.  The museum itself is the former mansion home of a fabulously wealthy local family.  There are no more direct descendants.  The last son never married and holed himself up in the place like a giant coffin where he could waft about among the lavish furnishings and possessions of a bygone era until he died.   As grand as the old place is, I hate it.  I always think of “mausoleum” rather than “museum” when I drive by the place.  It gives me the impression of lost hope, of greatness faded, of materialism choking out life, like weeds; dead treasures without people and living relationships to flow around them.   The museum to me stands as a symbol of the struggle for prosperity won and lost in this boom-to-bust town.

I know this sounds morbid and depressing.  But its not.  You have to tolerate some manure if you want good flowers.  But you need to be patient.  And I don’t think this town is hopeless or anything.  There is a lot that’s good here, but you have to look beneath the surface.   I’m quite sick of people bashing this town, honestly.  The entire time I lived in Denver and Boulder, whenever I would overhear Pueblo mentioned, it was with added derision.   One guy told me he drove through it once and “wasn’t impressed.”  And well, yeah, the best of the town cannot be seen from the interstate.  Another colleague said, “I don’t know what it is about that place, but it’s always had this awful reputation.”  None of them can believe I grew up here.  ”You?!” they say.

The other day I was reading Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg.   It’s a book to empower you in the writing of memoir.  There is a page in there about infusing your writing and everything you write about, no matter what it is, with love.  She states, “Right there, sitting with your notebook on your lap, even the factory town you drove through heading north to Denver, the town you hated and prayed no flat tire, no traffic jam would hold you there, even that place while writing about that trip that day, that year, you caress now.”

There is only one town that could be labeled “factory town” heading north to Denver.   It’s unmistakably Pueblo.  Expressions of distaste for it are peppered throughout literature and popular culture.   Then today I saw on the Associated Press, a national headline about a couple that was busted trying to smuggle narcotics into prison through a courtroom jury box.  Location?  You guessed it.  Pueblo, CO.

But here I am years later, living in Pueblo again.  My kids are in school here and are enjoying, even though its tough to be the new kids.  They are enrolled in an after-school arts program in the local arts center and it’s truly fantastic.  And I’ve met a lot of really fine people here.  A lot of them.  I’ve started building memories here again.   Its not so bad.  It’s not Boulder or Palm Beach or any of the other great places we’ve lived… but life rolls on here.  And life is good.

About 5:30 this morning I awoke shaking from a dream.  It started out that my family was just returning from a trip.  Everyone was still getting out of the car as I went inside the house.  The phone rang and I picked it up.  On the other end was my step father who had passes away last month.  Yet here he was on the phone with me, as casual as ever, just as if it were another day and that his dying never happened.    But I knew it had happened.   And suddenly I realized that I’m experiencing this miraculous “channel” this once, a one-time bridge to the other side.   Not knowing what to say, I tell him “Wow, Pop.  It is really good to hear your voice!”   And he kind of laughs, a bit flattered or amused at my comment and says “Well, thanks.  It’s good to hear you too.  How was your trip?”   And then I realize that he has no idea that he’s dead.   Suddenly I sense that he is relieved to hear from somebody because he’s a little confused about where everyone has gone.   I say “The trip was good.”   I then realize that I have this one chance to tell him something important.  To tell him how I don’t regard anything negative between us from the past and that I’m grateful for him and that I love him.  On the desk in front of me appeared a printed copy of something sentimental that I wrote about him and I wanted to share it.  I said “Pop, if you don’t mind, there is something that I wrote that I’d like to read to you.”    ”Al-right.” he replies.   I’m suddenly aware that he is stuck alone in an alternate reality.  Everything to him is frozen in time as it was the day he passed on, just like in the movie Ground Hog Day.  Except there are no people.   He’s alone there.  He has his hobby stuff, his cameras and his apartment with his things.  Everything he chose to draw “life” from was with him.  But now facing the situation that nothing can be changed…   its not enough to draw life from.   And as the state persists, he’s become… concerned.   But its only the beginning of a very long, frightening aloneness.

I picked up the paper and just as I am about to start reading it to him, I hear my wife calling frantically from the other room.  She’s upset in a such a tone that I know something very bad has happened and I must attend to it immediately.  But I realize that once I put the phone down, that’s it.  The connection is lost forever.  But I have no choice… I simply must find out what’s happened.  Has one of the kids been hurt?  I look down at the paper in my hand and the heading says “NIGHTMARE BEFORE TRUE” which disturbs me.   I say “Sorry Pop, I have to check on something.” and I put the phone down and run into the room where my wife is almost panicking.  My grandmother is sitting on the couch.  She has died.

I woke up shaken.   My state lying there in the bed was exactly as if I had just discovered a deceased loved one.   But immediately I could hear some clinking and rattling of dishes; the sound of my grandmother unloading the dishwasher as she often does at night.   Previously annoying, it sounded  musical.

Unable to get back to sleep, I climbed into the shower musing about the significance of the things we choose to draw “life” from and if they are substantial enough to keep us “alive” for our expansion into the eternal state when our bodies die.  Of course I have no idea, but I grieved to think that Pop perhaps didn’t make those connections and begin drawing life from its source.    Because the Source is the only one that can hold up to the rigors of the Great Expansion of the soul.   To have one’s soul fitted for temporary things when the link to all things temporary are removed would be hell indeed.

My mother’s old electric typewriter was in the basement for years.  There was something wrong with it and no one bothered to tinker around with it to figure it out.  I was about 13 years old.  Boredom led me down to the basement one day and I hauled the heavy latched plastic case up to my room.  I set it on my bedroom floor, the latches snapped open with a pop and I lifted off the lid.  It was bigger than I expected.  The whole thing smelled of oily typewriter ribbon.  I uncoiled the thick power cable and plugged it into the wall.  Instantly, there was a loud grinding buzz and I quickly yanked the plug out of the wall.  You’re not supposed to yank out power cables, right?  But sometimes you do.  I think vacuum cleaner power cords get yanked the most.  Just my guess.

I poked around the typewriter’s innards, looking for what might be grinding.  I managed to remove a white plastic panel that revealed some gears that looked suspect.  I then plugged it in, and could see what was happening.  I unplugged it again.   I tinkered around for awhile, adjusting this and that and tightened some screws.     I plugged it in, fully expecting to hear the same grinding… but instead there was a soft rattling hum, like the idle of car ready to accelerate.  Wow.  I did it!   I wanted to go tell my mom.  But first… a test drive.  I had to make sure it was actually working before I claimed to have fixed it.

I inserted a piece of blank paper, looked straight ahead at the streaked wallpaper ahead of me and started typing the first thing that came into my mind.   I had just looked at the wall and so I began typing from the perspective of a young boy and his bedroom wall.  Not just any wall, but a wall that was inhabited by a spirit named “Cappie”, known only by the boy.   He innocently mentioned his friend from time to time to family members, and they thought it quaint that he had an “imaginary friend.”    The boy describes his friend in tender terms but says that he “goes out at night” and he told the boy never to ask about where he goes when he leaves and that he wouldn’t understand if he told him.   The boy then explained that he went away for two weeks on vacation with his parents, and when he came back his room smelled strange, and the wall was cracked and Cappie was gone.  A few days later Cappie returned.  They boy said he was crying and angry.   He told the boy that he should never leave for so long without telling him and that he needed the boy, and that the boy kept him from doing bad things.  Cappie was scared, but comforted.

It was a one-page short “story” that concluded my test drive, successfully confirming that the typewriter had been fixed by producing my first non-academic piece of creative writing.  I don’t remember anyone else ever using the typewriter again except me.  I wrote from time to time on it until I got a Brother word processor.  That short piece of fiction garnered a lot of acclaim in the family.  My aunt Terri told me I had a gift and bought me Shrunk and Whites Elements of Style.  I was flattered and had no idea how to use that book at the time.   Fixing that typewriter changed me and led me to believe that I had something that not everyone had.  I lost the original story about Cappie, the spirit in the wall.   But it will always live on as a memory of the birth of something new.  An introduction to a muse, maybe.

Begin to weave and God will give the thread – is a quote I kept stuck on the inside of my shower along with a few others.  It has challenged me in that I always had this feeling that I had to be electrified with some sort of creative power or spiritual release before I could do anything truly meaningful.  I’ve come to realize that there is a spirituality in the act of doing particularly for someone who is slothful like I often am.  I have to push myself to do, to act.   Other people, type A personalities, or whatever might benefit from slowing down and doing “nothing” as a spiritual discipline.  Doing stuff all the time can be a rut for them.  Perhaps that is the legalism that some have talked about regarding “working for God” and not just “being for God”.   For me, I have no problem sitting there and “being.”   It’s the doing that comes hard and puts me in another spiritual state when I am in the act of accomplishing or completing something.  Another problem I have often had, and I mean often, is that I too quickly disregard small beginnings.   Like this little free writing exercise for example.  I am jumping in here and rambling and rather than save this document for whatever it is worth in the future, say, reflection or cut-and-paste some section that might be useful, I rather just delete the whole thing.  I’ve written a lot of things like that.  I start writing from the heart, even if I don’t know where I am going with it, and I end up just feeling embarrassed or frustrated in some small way and [Delete].   I really need to stop that and understand what I am trying to accomplish when I start writing.  The thing is, I don’t really know.  I have no idea where I am going with this right now.  That is why it is called “free writing” like in good old English Comp 101.   But going back to the quote I started with…. If indeed it is God that gives the thread, then who am I to toss the tapestry aside.  It may not be woven perfectly.   But its divine thread.  Some one else might disagree or look at this and not understand how in the world this can be from God at all…  I have doubts myself quite frequently on that.  But I keep coming back to that quote.  I can’t seem to shake it.  It has attached itself to my soul.   So what do I do?   I guess I write.  And physically restrain myself from hitting [Delete].