The Happiest Days, Part 1

The happiest period of my life was, without a doubt, my 10th grade year in Marina, California. And the happiest part of that year was from about March to June. It took me a long time to understand what made it so good, because there was more than one thing.

The first thing that made that time so happy was that I was experiencing almost complete freedom. I had all the money I needed, which wasn’t a lot in 1976 - comic books, about the only thing I bought for myself - only cost a quarter. I earned money by working at the 7-11 on Reservation Road, owned by Jim and Linda. I also had all of the benefits of being taken care of with almost none of the problems. In other words, I didn’t live with my family and that was another type of freedom. My mom, in an act of awareness and kindness, arranged for me  to live with John and Joan Eich (and their son Tommy), so I could finish out the year (and the school play A Date with Judy). For reasons I won’t go into here, it was a huge relief to not have to deal with my parents (especially my mom, despite this kindness) every day. Joan was my mom’s co-worker at The Monterey Herald, and I would babysit their son Tommy. Tommy and I would watch wrestling on TV and then we would pretend we were the wrestlers and then he would happily go to bed and I would happily read some comic books. The house was always cold perhaps because the Eichs wanted to save on their gas and electric bill in the midst of the Energy Crisis. But the Eichs knew and liked me so they were happy to host me for a few months. 

When I wasn’t home, I would walk around Marina. Just walk. I would think up comic book stories and just enjoy being free. Sometimes I would walk to Ralph and Diane’s apartment. Diane said I was like a son (though in fact they were only nine years older). But mostly I would just walk around. It was a small town, but there were four different places to buy comic books off the spinner rack (this was before comic-book stores were as available) - the Food Corral, Stop-and-Shop, Rexall’s, and 7-11 - so I always had somewhere to go, but nowhere I had to go.

School was the second reason this was such a happy time. I went to Seaside High School and it was only the third year I stayed in the same school for an entire school year. Every morning I would walk a fair distance to be at the same bus stop as my best friend Rudy. Rudy and I had our last three classes together. We had different math classes for Period 1 and for Period 2, he had Photography and I had Psychology, and for Period 3 I had Science Fiction and I don’t remember what he had. On the second half of the day we shared PE, General Business, and Journalism. After school I went to rehearsals for the school play A Date with Judy. I played the character of the annoying little brother Randolph, complete with a squeaky pre-adolescent voice. (That voice was my own brainstorm and kept me from getting dropped from the cast.) Judy was played by Cindy who was Rudy’s girlfriend. Cindy’s best friend Patty was also in the play.

After rehearsal I’d take the late bus home. I’d take some good-natured teasing from friends about the size of my nose or notice the shape of clouds (one time I was reminded of Jesus breaking the bread) or read whatever book or magazine I had on hand. The bus rides home were fun and the song I associate most with those rides was Still Crazy after All These Years by Paul Simon.

I was free and I had friends. It was a nearly perfect time.

And it had to end. It took me a long time to realize it had to end and the lack of that realization caused me problems for a long time. But it had to end and, thank God, it did.

 

A Practice Blog

 Tomorrow Is a New Day

It’s almost July 4 and I haven’t written about freedom in days. I was so diligent and then I fell off and I don’t know why. I could easily come up with all kinds of excuses…being busy, celebrating my birthday, being tired, being scared. They’re all true, but the last reason especially. I am sure I have nothing to say. I am reading a lot and that’s good. I'm also writing in my personal journal, but I haven’t written anything for this book in five days! I’m writing a book about freedom, but without self-discipline there is no freedom and there will be no book. This is a hard truth.

In my head, I write every day. Every day. Without fail. I’d even be happy with five days a week with weekends off, as if this were an actual paying job. But I can’t afford to take five days off from writing this book. The other day someone told me that my inability to sleep without medication (which started during the pandemic) is because I need to get out of my place and to the same place every day - a coffee shop or a library, perhaps - and work there. That might not also help me with my sleep issues, but maybe, just maybe, being in a different place, a place I have to walk to, a place that is quiet, might give me the structure I need in order to write on a consistent basis. Although tomorrow is July 4, I could still get up early, go to the gym, come home, have breakfast and shower, and then go to a coffee shop and work. I’d rather go to the library, but it will be closed for the holiday. Tonight, after writing here, I could pack my lunch and book bag in preparation for the morning.

“Tomorrow is a new day.” That can be an excuse for not doing work today or it can be a beacon of hope. Tomorrow will be a new day and every new day is a new chance. 

Steven Pressfield writes in The War of Art, “Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.”

Pressfield also says, “The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

I am scared of this project, but I’m more scared of not finishing. I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. I feel like I’m being presumptuous and foolish and that I’m wasting my time and that nobody likes me and nobody will read it and that I should be looking for a “real” job. But then I look at the state of the country and how it’s sliding into totalitarianism and I have a gift of writing and I have the time to read a book a week and I’m great at summarizing ideas and synthesizing them into my own and I don’t want my kids to live in Nazi America, so I have to do something even if it’s to write a book that nobody will read. I have to be able to say I at least tried.

Today someone told me that this country has been in this shape before and we will either bounce or go splat. I want to see our country bounce back into full freedom for everyone. Tomorrow does not seem like a new day for this country, but an older and much harsher day. I want to help make tomorrow a new day.

Just Getting through LIfe

 

I’ve spent much of my life just getting through life. But once in a while I’ve actually accomplished something. And whenever I’ve done that I found most of my accomplishments all had something in common. First, they were, as I said, difficult. Not one of them was easy. Secondly, they usually took time, sometimes months or years. Thirdly, there were always, always, always obstacles. Fourth, I would usually have at least one major setback that made me want to quit or made me feel the goal was no longer possible. Finally, when I did reach my goal, I always felt better about myself and I could always look back on that accomplishment and know that no one could take it away from me.

            Interestingly, however, I found there were different circumstances or origins of those goals. One was simply that it came up, usually unexpectedly, but it looked like something that was fun. For example, when I was 13, I learned that there were events called “Comic Conventions” or “Comic Cons” in which hundreds of comic collectors and professionals would meet in a common place to buy, sell, and discuss comic books. Being the comic book enthusiast I was, this seemed like my idea of Heaven on Earth. Then about a year later events conspired to allow me to go to my first Comic Con in San Diego. My dad would be living in San Diego and so my parents arranged it so I could stay with him and go the 1975 San Diego Comic Con. Once this was settled, I did everything I could to earn money including babysitting and delivering newspapers. It was a magical time full of optimism and excitement and it was when I first understood the power of goals. (Also, was my father moving to San Diego, of all places in the world, serendipitous or did I somehow manifest it? If I did create that, what does that say about our potential power?

            Another reason I reached a goal was more negative than positive, but no less effective. When I was 18, I joined the California Conservation Corps because I desperately wanted to travel. I was so excited when I was called and asked if I was still interested in a job I had forgotten I had applied for months previously. But my excitement turned to fear when I realized what a rough group of kids I worked with and, more significantly, how easy it was to be fired or “terminated” as the CCC called it. As I saw people being terminated right and left, I made a decision: I would survive the training month and go on to my first assignment. I did not want the humiliation of being fired. I did not want to return home a failure. That would have been too horrible an embarrassment. The day I graduated was one of the happiest of my life.

            The third reason I set a goal was because a gauntlet was hurled. I had recently finished writing my fiftieth blog and someone challenged me to reach one hundred blogs before my next birthday (which was about two weeks later). The goal seemed fun and do-able. It was also hard. There were setbacks, like the time I realized I had miscounted and had to write one more blog. I found myself being irritable if I were in social situations instead of at home and writing. Very little else mattered except reaching 100. I reached it on my birthday. A teacher in the 9^th grade telling me I wasn’t mature enough to understand Kurt Vonnegut was another gauntlet hurled that caused me to read most of his works within the next six months.

            The fourth reason I accomplished something was almost unknowingly. I did not set a goal or have a vision. Instead I simply found myself in circumstances, not completely of my own choosing, in which I had to change. The circumstances were difficult and unwanted, but they were thrust upon me. I was like Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in the film The Big Lebowski. Through no fault of my own circumstances intruded upon my life and peed on my rug. (See the movie if you don’t understand the reference.)  If there was a goal, it was this: get through this thing and be successful with it. Interestingly, these have been the events that changed me the most.

            I’ve learned something else about myself. I have not usually planned or set goals. As I said, I’ve just gotten through life. But sometimes something would come up – an opportunity, a challenge, or a difficulty and I rose to meet it. I would persevere and win. And I was in the moment and in the future simultaneously. That had advantages, but I’ve since realized that unless I have a goal, I’m only in the moment – not present, as Eckhart Tolle says in The Power of Now, but just in the moment with no eye to the future for myself, my kids, or my career. This is why it is important to think about the future: so we can begin to create it. Life will still happen to us, but maybe not as hard if we Get Started and Keep Going and not just get through life.

Our Country

The United States seems to be creeping towards becoming a totalitarian country. This movement is being (and has always been) fueled by an ideology that favors whites over people of color, guns over lives, fundamentalism over grace, fear over love, and the maintaining and increase of profit over everything else.

Because our country has lived in (relative) peace since 1945 many of us have grown inured to the lessons of history. Totalitarianism and mob rule happened in 18^th century France, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The turning in and turning on of friends, family members, and neighbors happened in those times and places, not in America (forgetting the less-violent, but no less real Red Scare of the 1950s). Most of the world’s collapse of governments and the ensuing insanity happened “there and then” and it could not possibly happen here and now.

Because our country has lived in (relative) prosperity we are certain the conditions of Ethiopia, Central and South, America, southern Asia, or Haiti could never happen here, not realizing that those conditions are created not just by politics, but also by exploitation of the weak, the poor, the racially marginalized, and by environmental changes that could alter life as we know it in a heartbeat.

We decry abortion but not the economic and social conditions that make abortion a viable option. We want the baby to be born but we defend its death as an adult in routine traffic stops, while sleeping, jogging, or even a trip to the grocery store. My faith teaches me to oppose the ending of life before it begins, but ignores the means and conditions in how it lives or how it ends. We say “Blue Lives Matter” but apparently not when a Blue Life is ended by a white life with a semi-automatic weapon. But we do send “thoughts and prayers.” Equally frightening, a trend is occurring (actually re-occurring) to suppress voter rights and to make it illegal to even give water for those waiting in line, thus ignoring and contradicting Jesus’s own words, “When I was thirsty you gave me something to drink.”[1]

The faith I embraced for so many years, Evangelical Christianity, a faith I thought to be based on love, grace, inclusivity, has a dark counterpart. Historian Will Durant said of it, “It’s done devilish things, but it’s been basically beautiful.”[2]

Jimmy Carter wrote, “(T)he greatest challenge we face is the growing chasm between the rich and poor people on earth. There is not only  a great disparity between the two, but the gap is steadily widening.”[3]

 Totalitarianism has only increased the conditions of injustice, racism, and wealth disparity. Ultimately it has also damaged and destroyed its most fervent supporters. It is based on, above all else, fear, fear there will not be enough money, land or resources for all of us. The answers are complex and not easily reached, but perhaps we can start with the admonition of the ancient Hebrew prophet Micah:

He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?

 

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Nixon and Trump

 

There have been comparisons to Richard Nixon, the 37^th President and Donald Trump, the 45^th.  At first glance, it’s not a far stretch. Both were considered extremely corrupt. Both made use of the existing divisions in the country. Both made populist appeals, Nixon to the “Silent Majority,” and Trump to angry (mostly) white voters who felt disaffected by Democratic politics, the Affordable Health Care Act, and changing demographics. Both men had highly questionable pasts, Nixon politically as a Red-baiter (someone unjustly accusing people of being Communists) and being fast and loose with finances. Trump had multiple accusations against him for questionable business dealings, such as Trump University and Trump Tower. And there are other similarities between the two men.

            The first similarity is the word “impeachment,” a word that will be written in the histories of both men. But for Nixon it was only a threat, a highly likely one given his admitted obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair. The threat, however, was enough to cause Nixon to be the only US President to resign. If he had been impeached would he have been removed from office? That is only for lovers of counterfactual (What-if?) history to debate, but it should be noted that three presidents, one before him and two after him (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump) all survived the impeachment process, if only barely. Trump survived his impeachment, but, as of this writing, is undergoing an unprecedented second impeachment for his incitement of riot in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. However, by the time that process is through, Trump’s term in office may already be over.  For both men, the end of their terms were and are highly controversial, leaving many Americans cynical about the government while others breathed a sigh of relief that it was over.

            But here the similarities end.

            Nixon, for all his faults, was a brilliant man, at least in some areas. His knowledge of foreign affairs is legendary. Had it not been for Watergate, Nixon would have been most likely remembered for the president who ended the Viet Nam War, sent a man to the moon (though that process started under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), and, most of all, “opened” or re-established a diplomatic relationship with China. Unfortunately, he was also a Shakespearean man, like Hamlet or Romeo, sowing the seeds of his own demise. Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s Secretary of State, said, “Can you imagine what this man would have been like if somebody had loved him?”

            Trump is not brilliant. He seems not Shakespearean, but Faustian, like a man who had sold his soul to the devil, gained the world, lost his soul, and then lost the world he craved. His story is not over and is too current to be history, and maybe that’s why it’s easier to feel some sympathy for Nixon because time can soften anger and create perspective.

            Both men seem narcissistic, craving constant attention and approval, but Nixon was far more introverted. He was also sneakier. He secretly taped all his conversations from 1971 to 1973 and that was what undid his presidency. Trump, far more extroverted, constantly “tweeted” his thoughts without hesitation or filter. Unlike Nixon who kept his thoughts secret though ultimately they became public, Trump wanted everyone to know what he was thinking at any moment. Finally, Twitter, the app he used as his public platform, closed his account, but only at the end of his presidency during which time he incited the first American insurrection.

            History allows us the privilege and the burden of never ending our stories or our interpretation of events. But for the sake of this country, I hope our stories get better than Nixon and Trump.

           

Being Broke Is Expensive, Part I

 

Being Broke Is Expensive, Part I

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”

 Norman Vincent Peale

 “Were you born poor?” a friend asked me.

I’d never considered the question, but I suppose I was. As an abandoned baby from Turkey, I can only guess as to the economic situation of my birth mother and/or father. I was adopted seventeen months later by an American couple. He was in the Navy and they were stationed in Turkey and unable to have children at the time.[1]

In the military many needs are provided for the one who serves and for his or her dependents. This includes health care, housing, and reduced prices for goods and services. I remember at the age of ten my mom taking my brother and me to Saturday catechism classes and from there we would walk to the base theater and watch two movies for free until about 4:00. It was free childcare for my mom every Saturday. She might meet us before the movies and get us lunch at the base cafeteria. Popcorn was ten cents. Sodas and candy weren’t much more. I did this every Saturday for about a year. (To this day when I see movie credits, I want to have popcorn.)

Other services were provided for military dependents like art classes or sports and to my knowledge all of these activities were at a reduced price or free. When we moved to another military base, movie prices were an astronomical 25 cents. Yet as a kid almost everything in my life was doubly-provided for – first from my parents, then from the military.

Yet despite all this, something was rotten in paradise. My dad almost always worked two jobs. He would leave the house many nights to teach English to Japanese adults. When we left Japan and moved to California, both parents worked.  Between those two stops we lived in Indiana with my grandparents for a few months while my dad stayed free of charge in a small apartment called Bachelor Officer’s Quarters (BOQ). Yet despite both parents staying rent free, my mom felt the need to get a job for those few months. I also remember her complaining that her own parents wouldn’t give her gas from the gas tank they had on their farm and a depressing conversation about money troubles she was having. I don’t remember the details, but I remember how hopeless I felt.

There was another more significant sign. Every once in a while, after my parents gave me money or I had earned it, they would question me about where the money went. Most of the time, I didn’t know. Honestly. I really couldn’t recall where my money went. Sometimes I knew I had spent it on comic books, but most of the time I really couldn’t remember. These were often tense conversations. There were two underlying problems with these conversations:

·         first, I could not make an account of my spending; and,

·         second, though my parents berated me for wasting money, they never, not even once, told me how I should handle money.

I never heard words or phrases like “invest,” “delayed gratification,” or even “save.” They just told me I wasn’t good with money. So, then I would stop spending for a while or, amazingly, give away the things I had bought thinking that would undo what I had done, but eventually I would go back to my old habits.

If I had any philosophy about money at all…and I don’t think I did…it was, “If I have money, I can spend it. If I don’t, I can borrow it.”

I may have picked this up from my parents. They seemed to spend money when they had it and had lots of bills when they didn’t.  To be honest, I’m not sure. But I do know that birthdays and Christmases were often extravagant affairs. In addition, they had four strong, active, healthy boys, all of whom ate lots of food, drank lots of milk, and had lots of needs and wants. Of the four, I may have been the most ambitious. I mowed lawns, babysat, and delivered newspapers starting at the age of 13. When I turned 17, I got a job at McDonalds (though that didn’t work out so well; I was ambitious, but I could also take the path of least resistance, which isn’t a good trait in the fast-food industry…or any job). But from the age of 13, I never stopped working. I might also add that I’ve been very fortunate and have never been out of work for more than two-and-a-half weeks, unless it was by choice, for my entire life.

And yet, I have almost always been broke.

Even when I was married, there were financial struggles though we both had full-time jobs. Two people who are not good with money are not going to suddenly become one who is good with money. (More on this later.)

Here are some of the financial lowlights (not highlights) of my life:

·         defaulting on a student loan simply because I did not provide a change of address and paying thousands of extra dollars in penalties over a period of years

·         having to work fifty hours in one week just to be able to buy tires for a car that was almost as old as I was

·         having people I knew see me going through trash cans to get recyclables

·         constant stress with my kids over supplying basic needs and not-so-basic wants

·         always, always, ALWAYS having to look for sales, discounts, and bargains not out of thrift, but out of necessity

·         standing in a Wal-Mart wondering if I could afford a $2. mini tube of toothpaste

·         realizing I had not saved any money for my kids’ college

·         not being able to live where I wanted

·         not wanting to go to a college reunion from embarrassment that I was in worse financial shape than I was when I was in college (when I was also broke)

·         having the lack of money be a constant problem throughout my life no matter how much I earned

·         realizing that I was worth more dead than alive.

This blog and subsequent blogs will be about my financial journey. That journey has been largely an unhappy one and for the last three years it all culminated in one of the most difficult periods of my life. During those three years I would be filled with daily anxiety, fights with my kids, feelings of disappointment and worthlessness, fractured relationships, limited choices, and, at times, uncontrollable sobbing at how my life came to this point. In addition, even when I did my best, events seemed to conspire against me. This is not a pretty story and, as of this writing, it is an unfinished story. But hopefully it will be a helpful one.

Through it all and at this point, I have learned two things that help me to Get Started and Keep Going:

·         I survived this difficulty as I have survived many others, and

·         I can change myself and thus change my life.

 

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[1] Shortly after adopting me, my mother got pregnant and had three more children over the next ten years.

It's Not a Privilege

It’s Not a Privilege

“Dying young is hard to take”

Sylvester Stewart – Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin

It’s not a privilege to be pulled over by the police and not worry if I might end up in the hospital, in jail, or in the morgue.

            It’s not a privilege if I can buy a home in any neighborhood or that I don’t even know what redlining is.

It’s not a privilege to not have my home foreclosed unjustly because of my ZIP Code.

            It’s not a privilege if I don’t have to change my name on my resume to make it sound “less ethnic.”

            It’s not a privilege to not have to change my hair for a job interview to make it “less threatening.”

            It’s not a privilege to be hired for or not hired for a job based on anything other than my qualifications.

            It’s not a privilege that I don’t have any ancestors who were enslaved, lynched, forced to come to this country, or prevented from coming to this country.

            It’s not a privilege to know that none of my ancestors were placed on plantations, internment centers, or concentration camps.

            It’s not a privilege to live in neighborhoods that are not riddled with liquor stores, crime, potholes, and needles.

            It’s not a privilege if I have equal access to education, healthcare, or any other public resources.              

            It’s not a privilege to be able to vote without harassment or literacy tests.

            It’s not a privilege to know that an inordinate amount of people with my skin color are not imprisoned at a higher rate than others.

            It’s not a privilege to go through most of, if not all of, my life without being called an ethnic slur.

            It’s not a privilege to know that my skin color, ethnicity, or sexual identity is not a barrier to employment or to anything else.

            It’s not a privilege to wonder if I’m going to make it to adulthood and realize that there’s a strong possibility that I won’t.

            It’s not a privilege to not worry that I’m “not enough” because my parents were of different ancestries.

            It’s not a privilege to not be less than.

It’s not a privilege if I don’t have to say that my life matters.

            These are all basic, human rights, not privileges. Anyone and everyone should have them, And the fact that they are labeled as privileges says that we have to Get Started and Keep Going to make our country better.