Talking with my wife last night we decided it would be best to speed up our moving process. We’ll begin looking at houses and getting the paperwork together immediately. The next couple months will be hectic and for as much as I’ve changed to get here, I’ve got more to change to make this a reality. Mostly cleaning up, but if I were to change nothing from this point then my house would still be in better condition than when I bought it. Presentation is everything though, a buyer is essentially making their decision based on a first impression. Running through my head constantly are the lists of things I will need to do. I don’t want to clog my writing with these thoughts, but it’s my writing and these thoughts are me. At least it’s Winter and I don’t have to be mowing the lawn on top of everything. Writing down lists is helpful to clear the head, whenever something is stressful and the mind is stuck in loops, write down as much as possible. The rest of December will be spent preparing paperwork, as early as January 2nd I could see us traveling to the new destination to look at houses. With us moving to a fairly secluded area and wanting a lot of land, that puts us into a niche market. There might be a couple houses coming on the market now, but most of what we’ll be looking at will have sat for awhile already. Bing bang boom to get us under contract for a new place and that’s when the clean up of our old place will have to heat up. I remember how frustrating it was waiting for the paperwork to close on my current house, but this time I’ll be too busy to worry about that.
5 December 2023
Lately, I’ve been running more as an attempt to lose weight. At the beginning of the year my weight was getting higher than I’d like, that’s when I began my pursuit of 100 push ups in a day. Combined with Summer, being active put me at a comfortable weight. The goal for push ups is now to do 100 consecutive push ups and I’ve been getting into pull ups too. The best way to get my numbers up is to make every repetition lighter. Running has it’s own difficulties, it’s a high impact activity so my joints and especially my back have a soreness different than what my muscles get. In time any pain should fade into background noise, that will require consistency though. Getting up and going to the gym has been the biggest hurdle in the past, it’s made easier with the baby, taking her there serves as an activity then I just find a way to stay busy. The need for consistency gives my body time to adapt, putting up with the pain will make it go away one day and avoiding exercise because of the pain will make the next session harder. Raising the baby has made me more resilient, the Army was tough, but for the most part we were able to take legally required breaks. The baby takes no breaks and continues to transform into a heavier weight that wishes to be carried. I imagine the phoenix when I think about who I was before and after the kid, the excesses were burned off, in a similar sense making every repetition lighter. Things I don’t have time or energy for were removed so that I can better do my job as Dad.
4 December 2023
A lot happened this weekend, most annoyingly another car drove into my fence. It was the first rain we’ve gotten in awhile and they crashed close to 9 PM. Whenever I find out a teenage boy was behind the wheel, I sort of shrug, what am I going to do? I remember my dangerous driving as a young lad, though it did prepare me for combat driving. Cars are phenomenally powerful, the distances and speed they cover while the passengers rest sitting is unnatural. Getting a car is probably the first taste of power for a lot of people and it can be overwhelming. Mostly of the proudly bad drivers I’ve met have been physically underwhelming people, protect them in a metal box that goes 100 mph and suddenly they become Superman. The sentiment is one I stay on guard towards, control the ego. I am not the car, nor any of the possessions I own. The fence was the sad side of my weekend, but there was more good than bad, it was a beautiful case study in how we could have a day filled with joy only to have a slight negative at the end, despite best efforts my body wants to focus on the negative. Hopefully I’ll fix the fence tomorrow in a couple hours with spare wood I’ve already got. More importantly my baby girl met Santa for the first time this weekend. She did better than expected, usually it’s tears from the start, however Santa worked his magic with a little stuffed elf and a toy to bring the baby back. After that we got some food in the mall with my wife and her mom, my favorite moment was watching my daughter sitting in a high chair eating her food when she decided it was time for more and reached onto the table grabbing a nugget out of the box. She’s a rockstar.
1 December 2023
It’s the first of December and Christmas decorations are up, there wasn’t as much as I thought, I was able to carry the box of decorations on my own. We’ve been getting real trees the last couple years since there’s a nice market down the street that sells trees, it’s nice that we don’t have to store a tree year round. My Army buddies are excited to visit again for for Christmas, it’s what got me in the spirit to decorate. I haven’t gotten to the level of decorating the outside yet, I’m sure that will be a box onto itself someday. With only the inside decorated it can be hard to get motivated and feels more like a chore to do because it’s that time of the year, only to have the chore of clean up at the end of the month. It’s easier to do a task for someone else than for ourselves, turning that attention inward feels selfish, but outwardly it feels like helping. A lot of people begin to lack self care with this thinking and see it as a virtue when their life is falling apart, justified in their caring of others. It’s not selfish to be the best version of yourself possible and in that pursuit we serve others. No person is an island, we’re a connected web and the decisions we make, big and small, effect those around us. Walking around a decorated house leads to Christmas songs playing in my head, a sense of cheer which changes my interaction with everyone I encounter, that’s how despite only me seeing the decorations they have an effect on the outside world. People are quick to think because they can’t see a connection in the now, there might not be one, we must believe our actions matter.
30 November 2023
The end of November marks the real beginning of the Christmas season. With Thanksgiving being so early in the month there was a nice lull in activities this week. The hustle and bustle is starting up again, I ended up getting a lot of the decorations out and about yesterday, it always feels nice to transform the house for a little bit. December is also the home stretch of the year, any big projects should have already been completed and it’s time to make plans for next year. While this year had it’s share of adventures, next year is shaping up to be even wilder. We’ll probably be moving next year and hopefully upgrading to a bigger plot of land. The last time I stopped doing my blog was because I had just bought this house and the amount of work that needed to get done was beyond my childish comprehension. Speaking of, I had never in my life considered having a child before moving out here, it wasn’t until we got established and life began to get quiet that I sought to mix things up. The internal change those decisions sparked was that I seek out those disturbances as I’m getting comfortable for continued development. I know taking on more responsibility makes life more difficult, but I akin that thinking to adding weight makes the bar heavier; I want to lift heavier weight. When I was in highschool we learned about the renaissance and a “renaissance man”. Afterwards I wrote down a list of what I needed to learn to be a renaissance man. That list is long gone, but I’m satisfied in who I’ve become, there’s even a number of activities from reading to music that I didn’t think I had any hope in. After decades of accomplishing goals, I don’t see any limit on what I can achieve, slow and steady wins the race.
29 November 2023
Lately my writings have been biographical, I have to continue changing my style. The form will be formless. Rigidity provides stability and overtime those stable walls become a prison. What’s called stable stops being what provides support and becomes what is recognizable. Any given day and maybe a couple times a year we will wake up to news that changes the way we live. In the constantly changing world familiarity feels like comfort, even that becomes co-oped for nostalgia purposes. There are countless remakes providing a somewhat similar character and story hoping people will consume the content with no promise of quality. Nostalgia is bait, people take it as the devil they know, I accept 40 years in the desert without seeing the promise land. We must push forward, looking back is only a pillar of salt. The individual needs to know their self outside of group interests. Groups don’t exist in nature, by that I mean they are social constructs. Pointing to a human, most humans will be similar to that, but examining a group doesn’t provide information on all groups. The group creates it’s own parameters, socially constructed, that provides the stability to know what is inside and what is outside. The danger is when an individual doesn’t have a sense of self and begins to believe their defining characteristics are the group’s characteristics. A person can grow and change while remaining the same person, a group with different parameters is a different group, so a person without a sense of self adopts group traits as their own defending any change to the group parameters as an attack on themselves, growth stops and everything under that umbrella decays. The answer is to accept change, not rush into it or refuse it, time marches forward and things will happen. We choose to view events as half full or half empty, continuing find the good in our current situation is how the cup overfloweth.
28 November 2023
I’ve probably slept more in the last couple days than I have in months, it astonishes me that the body can work in such a way that there is some sort of reserve energy which isn’t calorie based that I can pull from. Hopefully things go well today with daycare and I can continue catching up on sleep though I’m prepared for them to recommend in the first couple days to only leave a child for a couple hours. One is more than zero, I’m grateful for whatever I can get. After that my work focus will be fencing though that’s a project that will be stretched out over Winter and even then I’m hoping to finish before Spring. We went out together with my Army buddies to get a Christmas tree and now it’s time to decorate, my long term storage for things like annual decorations is in a barn down the hill. In the back of my mind I’m planning how to get the decorations into the house, whether I need the wheel barrow or I’ll carry boxes individually over time. Some day it will be good to have a utility vehicle like a John Deere Gator, a weak link in my chain is the ability to carry weight over distances and it’s compensated with my sweat. About a month ago I made a video picking up rocks, there was a pile of rocks on my land I wanted to clean up and was repurposing the rocks to build a dam for the pond. With the rocks I hit a ceiling for what I can do with my wheel barrow, there were more rocks than it can hold in a single trip and when full I struggled to move it. There was a lot I learned from that experience as I do from all the work I take on. “I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.”
27 November 2023
That was an exhausting weekend, everything went well, I just need some rest. The baby starts daycare tomorrow, that will be my chance, so I only need to make it one day and a wake up. There’s so much to process it will take me at least a couple days, but my wife invited our guests to stay for Christmas also, maybe I’ll be processing all month with new information at the end. I told my Army buddies it was surreal having them here, it’s been almost 15 years since we were in Iraq together. Back then the three of us did in fact sleep side by side, I try to provide better living conditions, but they’re happy to set up in the garage. I’ll have to furnish my garage for future visitors. The way I structure my life is to make pretty the house and whatever is on display for my wife and visitors to appreciate while I am happy to spend time in a shed. My garage buddies enjoyed the shed and the 17 year old nephew even said it was “cool” in there, it must be true because he barely said anything else. There was an episode of Black Mirror where the husband dies and is brought back as an AI with a realistic body, he ends up sitting patiently in the attic until he’s needed, that’s often how I feel in my shed. All of my thinking revolves around the baby so when I have free time, I end up waiting until I’m needed. Hopefully with daycare I’ll be able to get back to work again. There’s a fence project that’s high on my list, removing a chain link fence and setting it up else where. There’s also Christmas decorating to be done, the boys went with us to get a Christmas tree last weekend.
24 November 2023
Thanksgiving went well and I hope the same for everyone else. We were building towards a perfect meal until the dish one of my buddies was making hit a snare. He was excited to make a macaroni casserole, everything was good until he was sliding it into the oven and the disposable aluminum tray got a tear in the bottom. There was a cheese sauce that started pouring into the bottom of the 400 degree oven. No body was hurt, we opened the windows to air out the smoke and will clean the oven today. All of that added to a memorable holiday. I feel bad for the guy that wanted to share his family’s recipe, these sort of events pattern his life. When I went to visit him for a Forth of July barbeque he had a great spread planned, but hours before people arrive a tornado passed by knocking out the electricity and knocking over his grill, the fall broke the cap off the propane tank. A tough life has made him strong. My pattern for tripping at the finish line ironically has to do with words. I think there’s a little dyslexia in my family, I don’t know what causes dyslexia, but when it comes to important documents or decisions I never trust myself with the final submission. No matter how many times I reread every word, I will miss the silliest mistake. Computers won’t process if it receives a syntax error, then it’s a struggle to get a hold of another human to correct the mistake. I wanted to say computer errors can’t hurt you, that’s not true though, lives are ruined by clerical mistakes. Still, I’m grateful not to have any serious damage done to anyone and we can continue enjoying the time with have with each.
Thanksgiving 2023
This year I have a lot to be thankful for, not least of all my health and for the most part all those around me are healthy. All the hustle and bustle seems important until someone is ill and that’s where real life begins, not when when people are relaxing and enjoying themselves, but when it hits the fans. Stressors reveal who we truly are, I’ve always been happy that under pressure I act the way I thought I would. I’m thinking now about a time our convoy was hit by an IED, there is protocol to follow and that’s what I did. Later I confirmed with my gunner that my actions were justified. I’m thankful to not have to deal with that mess anymore and that my gunner is also doing well in life, he continues to grow and gives me someone to compete against though indirectly. I’m thankful for the people I’ve been privileged enough to be around, they’ve shown me there’s more going on than my little world and provided companionship along the ride. Everyday I’m thankful for my daughter and that she’s doing well, growing everyday. She’s been the biggest competition of my life, there are no more days off. As she gets bigger the weight I carry around the house increases, I would not be as strong as I am today without her. I’m thankful for all the delicious foods we’ll have today and that I’ve been able to provide my guests, having something essential to life no longer worry me is a gift. Receiving the same gifts everyday like health and food allow them to seem like background noise, but without them everything else I’ve built doesn’t stand. I’m thankful for the life I live and will do my best to honor it.
Chris' Morning Pages 