Cold days are coming, the snow has been falling all morning where we are. My daughter got to experience snow for the first time, that’s wonder, it may be the last snow in awhile as we’re moving further South. The amount of snow we’ve already gotten is probably considered a blizzard for here. When the snow is falling I have to reminisce about my days at Fort Drum. Since getting out of the Army I’ve spend most of my time in the South, snow went from being a part of my everyday life to once every couple of years and I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen more than two inches of snow. One of my fondest memories is doing land navigation in about four feet of snow, even my tall self struggles to step out of that much snow. I’ve said before that I love land nav, walking through the woods combined with math. When the Army does land nav, they give a couple different coordinates and the soldier has to go to those places where there will be a little placard with a symbol or letters on it. We’d write down the symbols for the different locations and return back to base. The problem with the military is the hurry up and wait system, we’re often training for a certain amount of time rather than to complete a goal. When I returned with the answers to my coordinates, the sheet was graded, I was given new coordinates and sent back into the woods. It was at that time that I walked far enough in to not be seen and I made a little home for myself sitting and eating snow. Those were good times.
12 January 2024
I had to take yesterday off because I was sick with a sinus infection. The Army bro was leaving and the baby was at daycare so I slept as much as I could. It feels like I’m on the upswing now, still I’m taking it easy. For the last couple days I was working to put the brakes on things because I could feel myself getting sick and this time last year I was some of the sickest I’ve ever been and that dragged on for weeks, maybe months, because I couldn’t take the necessary time to rest. Looking forward it’s more the same, packing and cleaning everyday, the other half of the Army bros. will visit Sunday to take away more of our stuff. He’ll have a trailer to fit more on though he’s taking the ugly stuff like fence poles and a tiny shed rather than indoor furniture. Then I’ll figure out a way to get rid of what’s still floating around. There’s a bedroom dresser set my wife bought used as a teenage that takes up a lot of room, we don’t use it because they give the clothes inside a cedar smell. My wardrobe is so simple that everything I wear is kept in a Rubbermaid bin and when the clothes are dirty they go to the laundry bag. There are more complicated clothes I have that are already packed, I hardly wear any of it now. My lifestyle over the last couple years has adapted to be all about efficiency, I have the same T-shirt brand the Army used in 12 different colors and two pairs of jeans. Complicated clothing will be back in my life soon, I made a costume shirt for my podcast and making my own clothes is the route I’d prefer to take.
10 January 2024
One of the Army Bros. is visiting while packing up stuff we’re getting ride of. We are funny creatures, last night we drove to get some food and my buddy was on the phone with the girl he’s dating. It was an ear piece so I guess he was ok leaving it in while we talked and maybe she listened to the conversation. She asked if he’d ever been camping and that got a big laugh out of me. At a certain point what we did shouldn’t be called camping, making it hard to compare the two. We were living in the woods which seems like the basic definition of camping. We were living there though, that’s where things feel different, it was as if nothing was supposed to change whether we were in garrison or the field. The individual would pack their life in the bag they’ll carry and the unit equipment will go on the trucks, then set up where we land. Of course on days when we’re going out to the field the loading process is taking place between 2 and 4 AM. And we wouldn’t be mountain soldiers if our work wasn’t being done in negative temperatures. When I look back on that time I feels like an outsider looking in, that it couldn’t have been me in those situations. Not the current me, but a slice of the multiverse. Thankfully I get to reap the benefits of being that person in the past, I suppose there was a price to pay as well. Still I focus on the positive. There’s less stuff in my house, that’s a win for the day. Tomorrow we’ll get rid of more, yesterday was trash day and now I’ve got two empty cans.
9 January 2024
There’s a big rain storm going on, the pond is flooding. I love the rain and when the land floods, it washes away and cleanses. The sound of rain is the most complex song written. Dr. Suess’ Mr. Brown described the sound of rain as “dibble dibble dopp dopp”, I can’t say I agree but the attempt is admirable. Sheets is a good adjective with rain, whether it’s falling in sheets like when looking into the distance seeing clumps of lines going together, or when holding a loose sheet of plastic or metal. Giving the sheet a soft shake sounds like rain falling and an intense shaking would be thunderous. Through my whole life my favorite pastime has been watching the rain. When I saw Of Mice and Men a line in the men’s dream is that when it rains they can say heck with work and watch the rain, their dream took root in me. The best part of the Army was when we’d be abandoned in the woods for long stretches of time in the rain. When properly equipped, everything stays dry and I’d rather be working in the rain than sun. About 10 years ago I famously drew up a quadrant graph showing that I like warm, sunny days and cold, wet days. When the traits are mixed into cold, sunny and warm, raining I take issue. I’ve mentally registered a day in basic training as the hottest I’ve ever experienced. The temperature was only 100 degrees F, but there had just been a quick storm and now it was sunny. Additionally we were walking into woods leading to 100% humidity. Wet and dry temperatures are as drastic as people say because temperature is meaningless to a human, the expense of mercury, or when water boils. My body cares about whether it needs to sweat to cool off and whether that sweat can dissipate. When the sweat has no where to go you might as well be wearing a plastic bag.
8 January 2024
Packing is picking up, all weekend we’ve been packing, this morning I’ve done some packing, and I’m going to be packing once I’m done writing this. My Army bros. are taking a lot of furniture and stuff we don’t use, yesterday we donated about 10 trash bags of old clothes, and we still have too much stuff. I like to consider myself a minimalist, it’s hard to be so with this much stuff and it makes me happy to be getting rid of so much. At my current location we have three sheds for storage and a two car garage we don’t park in, this has allowed for a lot of stuff to build up out of sight and out of mind. There’s nice stuff, I’m glad other people can use it. When we bought our current house the previous owners left a lot of furniture including a dinning room table with three leaves and 10 chairs, we’re a family of three and even at holiday dinners we’ve never used more than 6 chairs at a time. Everyone knows one man’s trash is another’s treasure, most of the stuff we have we didn’t buy, we were just willing to treasure someone else’s trash. General life advice I have for people is along those lines, don’t waste time competing against others for a limited quantity when there is someone who will give away or sometimes pay to have someone take a perfectly good product. A little legwork is required to find those people, nothing in life is free. I’d rather put energy into what I want than have it taken by others while I wasn’t looking. Both of the houses I’ve bought have been in this category, they’re deals because they’ve got issues most people don’t want to deal with, at least I get to manage them on my own terms.
5 January 2024
Bit by bit we climb the mountain, there are places to stop for a rest and we can’t even see the top. There’s an expression people would say in running that if you look at the ground that’s where you’re headed. There are some people who get discouraged when they see others succeeding, worse if they become jealous, but the discouraged is an issue I’d like to resolve. We can’t abandon all standards for those afraid to even try, it’s about trying to get everyone on board. Too many cook spoil the broth, not everyone needs to be a chief and in fact there’s only one all mighty. Taking orders is not a belittling thing, every is a bad servant and a worse master meaning we may find it difficult to do what we’re told, but given complete autonomy we won’t know what to do. Often times people turn to self indulgence; idle hands are the devils play things. I essentially retired when I was 25 in the sense that I stopped taking orders from anyone. That freedom is not easy, and I might write another day on that meaning of freedom isn’t free. Freedom means no purpose, otherwise the purpose would be constraining. I often tell people to be careful with their dreams of retiring because retirement is usually as far as they plan. What are they going to do when they retire? Relax, which brings us back to self indulgence. For those that can’t see self indulgence as self harming, type 2 diabetes is a physical manifestation of that. The person eats too many sugary foods, the pancreas produces insulin to deal with high blood sugar. After prolonged insulin production the pancreas gets tired and stops, then the high blood sugar means single blood cells become sticky and unable to pass through veins smaller than a single blood cell. Then there’s a traffic jam causing other things to shut down, the point is too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.
4 January 2024
Since the holidays I’ve been sleeping in in the mornings until the baby wakes up, recovering sleep and the Winter makes it hard to operate before sunrise. Today is also the first day of push ups, exercise had to take a back seat for the last month while things were hectic. While traveling, packing, and hosting I needed to conserve energy and now I need to prevent my body from loosing ground. Too much work and too much play lead to disaster, switching from work to play is relaxing, when it’s time to switch back there’s a struggle. One day at a time is the secret, it’s not possible to pick up where I left off a month ago, there needs to be an on-ramp. In the moment 10 push ups now is harder than 40 before the break, I don’t focus on the moment though, it’s all part of a slow incline. There’s always issues going on in the moment that will distract and it’s easy to let the holiday distractions last until Summer when it’s time for another break, but that would be regression. The pain is never as bad as I think it is, it’s closer to an ice water plunge. This too shall pass, that was my mantra in Iraq. Then it was all about time passing, now what’s changed is I’m building something, waiting won’t be enough. The slow incline helps by going slow enough it feels like I’m doing the same things everyday, routine. By making my routine one of slight improvement, things get better over time. Gains will be short lived if I don’t continue to edit the routine, adding more where I see fit. Hopefully six months is when I’ll reached my limit, then take another extended break and start the process over again.
3 January 2024
While on the topic of new words there’s some others I wanted to document. “Drip” is a word I’ve been hearing since the beginning of the year unsure if it would catch on, then one of the Army Bros. was using it. Drip basically refers to clothing, gear, or merch, everyone is rushing to catch the new drip. A phrase that’s new to me that seems to have been in use for some time is “ipad kid”, referring to the children growing up with a tablet and no parental supervision. I mentioned the damage done by screens yesterday, but ipad kids are on another level. Adults with kids can only compare screen time to TV, the ipad has only been around for 14 years, hopefully none of the kids that grew up with the original have kids of their own yet. Obviously a tablet is different than a TV, most noticeably that it’s a two way street. When learning something new it is best to get as many of the 5 senses involved, the TV and tablet already capture the eyes and ears, only the tablet lets the user touch and speak back making it a more immersive experience. There’s also an internet connect with a camera, for anyone that doesn’t know computers are not safe. All programing boils down to logic, a hacker outsmarts the logic of the program, or more often the user, and is able to get access to equipment that isn’t theirs. This means that any camera or microphone can be accessed by anyone anywhere. There are records of predators turning on children’s cameras. If you don’t want to believe me that this stuff happens, there are websites anyone can access where private cameras can be viewed because the owner never changed the default settings. It’s dangerous in the wild, we have to protect ourselves and common sense is the best start.
2 January 2024
A new phrase I heard was “trad life”, pronounced with a hard “A” sound being short for traditional though. Norm McDonald had a joke that the word “cis” was a way to marginalize an otherwise normal person and it’s the same case here. Asking people randomly if traditional and normal are synonymous, I think most people would agree. I’m interested in new words though there’s something deeper going on. On one hand there is the idea that everyone feels the need now to give themselves a title, like people don’t know who they are without a 30 second elevator pitch to describe their life. The other hand is that traditional life is not how people have been living. How have they been living? Well, they work in confined sunless environments, get entertainment from screens, and eat processed food. Not much of that lifestyle was around 100 years ago, so there’s little traditional about it. Kids are coming of age now seeing the depression, ADHD, and obesity the previously mentioned items lead to and they’re looking for a different path. The traditional road has been around for ages, even millennia, and it’s what got our civilization to the height it’s at now. Along with the idea that everyone wants a title, each generation since the 60’s/70’s has been given a name and are told that everyone in that bucket acts similar. Anyone born in the 60’s is the same as those in the 80’s, 2020’s and even the 1920’s. Trying to rewrite human history and biology every decade has left people more lost and alone than ever, that is why people are returning to trad life. By releasing ourselves from the hamster wheel of pop culture people will come in contact with real life, with the community and environment that surrounds them, that is who we are. The people around us, the activities we do, and if we don’t like it we have the power to change it.
New Year’s Day 2024
New year’s eve is over, back to work. I’m only mostly kidding, the Army boys are leaving today and there will be plenty of work coming in hot. Still, now is a good time for reflection. People were posting about how their year was, this has been one of the wilder years I’ve had in a long time. Since I’ve lived in my current house it seems as if every year gets more complicated. At the beginning of this year I was sick with the vid, dealing with a new born and my wife returned to work, it was a very hard time that provided for me opportunity for growth. After I recovered from my sickness I’d been a new man getting work done on the land while juggling the baby. Most of the Summer was a blur, there was a lot of grass to mow and the baby turned one. We had a patio put in that was finished the day before the baby’s birthday party. During their stay the Army boys pulled at least 25 metal poles out of the ground took away the mess of the chain link fence. Now when I look around the land is completely different from when I moved in and I did that. Nothing happened overnight and very little went according to plan, but we stuck with it and kept working, now we’re moving on to greener pastures. My new land actually isn’t much greener, there’s more woods. The current place is far from perfect, my interest is more in sweeping changes and someone else can put on the finishing touches of their own design. This year I’m looking forward to a fresh start, taking what I’ve learned and applying it for a new outcome. I may never reach the lofty goals I set, but it’s wonderful to watch the story unfold.
Chris' Morning Pages 