Work

I listened to a podcast today with Owen Benjamin and Bert Kreischer wherein they discussed manual labor and the benefits thereof.  I've done manual labor my whole life.  I've been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a half hour lunch break for ten years now.  I have a bachelor's degree, my father has a masters in education, my mom's parents were both teachers, and her mother also had a masters in English.  All of my grandparents were also farmers, as has the family been (mostly) since we landed on this continent.  As far as I can tell, most of my family has been in manual labor for centuries, based on our countries of origin and religious association.  There is a small connection to some royalty and some outlaws, but mostly we're just normal people. 
I have come to enjoy manual labor more than my brief stints at desk work.  I have also discovered that the more a job pays, the worse it is.  I used to make "X" per month and that job was terrible.  The sacrifices I had to make were large.  So, I quit and got a job that netted me half the pay but was MUCH more tolerable.  Thanks to a bunch of people gambling on junk mortgages, that company went out of business and now that my profession life has seemed to have regained some stability, I'm now making a quarter of "X" but I have achieved a level of pleasantry in life that I enjoy greatly.  Now's the time to keep what I have gained and now try to grow the "X" factor.  However, I digress.
There is a certain and very solid appreciation for manual labor that those who haven't made a hobby of it can't recognize but I believe those who do other work have the same opportunity to feel it.  See, you have certain skills and abilities that people pay you to exercise that I don't.  I can do things you can't and for these skills I am compensated.  The pay may be different but the satisfaction in a job well done is the same. I can stand back at the end of the day and identify concrete objects I have created, tell you how I did it and why.  Manual labor is similar to meditation or doing menial chores or riding motorcycles in that it either requires all your concentration or very little, but you're doing something physically.  I always enjoyed a job that at one point requires total concentration and then at another, very little.  I once was discussing a holster I had made with a guy and he was impressed I had made it myself and said he could never do such a thing.  I later found out he was a retired heart surgeon.  Now clearly he is capable of many things I am not, but he respected my craft just as I do his.  All that to say, any job done well and with pure intentions is valid and valuable, no matter how manual it is.

Honesty and Perception, or, My Take on the Election and News Media

Here's what I think happened: People have generally lost trust in political figures.  For whatever reason, Hillary did not appear trustworthy.  Now, many will say Trump didn't/doesn't either.  They're both guilty of pandering to certain demographics in an effort to try to get votes.  The Democrats seem to have taken for granted they would get certain votes and therefore didn't have to work for them.  Granted, Hillary won the popular vote.  Obama has said several times since the election that the reason he won Iowa is he was there on the ground talking to people.  Trump had a tendency to change his position almost all the time, but it was easy to believe he stood behind each of his statements no matter how crazy or unfounded they sounded.  Hillary seemed as though she was trying to please everyone, and I think this may have been a downfall.  Americans just want simple honesty and to not feel tricked. 
This concept continues to news coverage and political ads.  I lump these together because the money and the motive behind both are unknown to common citizens.  It would be foolish to take at face value any information disseminated via political ad without some internet research, not only into the validity of the statements but also the source of the financial backing.  The same bleeds over into this rash of "fake news" that may have had a large impact on the election results.  Some folk say "fake news" is the new word for "conspiracy theory" but this is not quite accurate.  Fake news can be dispelled quite quickly via Google, but conspiracy theories usually have no defined debunking. All this to say, there is quite too much unreliable information spreading throughout.  We're all too busy staying paid and getting ahead to dig into the deeper information to see what's legitimate and what isn't.  Also, a person naturally accepts information that makes them feel right about their position and rejects that which doesn't.  Thanks to algorithms online, what we see can be tailored to match what we've looked at already, leading to a bubble of self-supporting information. 
All humans have ever wanted is to just not be lied to.  We want to be able to trust each other and those that give us the news.  Denzel was right when he said "If you don't read the newspapers you're uninformed.  If you do read the newspapers you're misinformed."  Every print and online publication has some known political leaning which can taint or twist not only the information they disseminate but how they portray it.  You just can't trust anything or any political figure anymore.  I'm not saying its the only reason Trump got elected but I do think he appeared more genuine, even if he flip flopped a lot.  Ok, flip flopped all the time. His tendency to spout off without thinking appeals to Americans because its totally different than our current crop of politicians who are extremely adept at answering a question and not saying anything whatsoever.  Even if Trump sounds like a loose cannon buffoon, we appreciate that he doesn't sound like what we're used to.  Politicians as a rule have been afraid to take a stand of any kind or lose a single vote for so long they've forgotten what they were elected to do in the first place, and the American public are so thirsty for a politician to actually do something that they're willing to overlook a large array of poor behavior to achieve it.

That's my two cents.  For full disclosure, I didn't vote this time around as I was unwilling to cast my lot with either candidate.  I am for lower taxes on the middle class, higher taxes on the top one percent, abortion rights for women, gun rights for everyone, spending on infrastructure, tax reform to help keep American companies earnings in America, continued climate change reform, and Sunday alcohol sales in Indiana!  Oh, and I believe you should be able to marry whomever you want, and pee in whatever bathroom you are legally recognized as.  LEGALLY. Not in your heart but on your driver's license.  Not necessarily what you were at birth, but what the state that issued your license recognizes you as.  That should clear things up.

Chapter four

Some things are too precious and personal to make public until years of life have offered the proper perspective and reflection into their impact.

Chapter three

The crushing disappointment with life is we don't receive any forward notice regarding the pivotal experiences before or while they're happening. It isn't until years later we  look back and identify exactly where things took an unwelcome turn. Sometimes events happen involving us at too young an age to understand or fully process its impact.
When I was fourteen I sleeve two days hanging out with a good friend of mine from church. We went canoeing with his dad and then I spent the night at his house. The next day we went to see the movie Twister and then they dropped me off at home. Five minutes later they were hit by a tractor in a freak accident and my friend died instantly. While I never felt it was my fault he died, it's hard to not feel responsible for them being where they were at the time. This event may have led to my not feeling like planning ahead or saving money was worth much thought. No matter the plans or large reserves you may have, sometimes a tractor with bad brakes comes down a steep blind driveway and crushes the side of your car and kills your son while he listens to a cassette of a comedy routine he hopes to perform at an upcoming talent show. Sometimes you sit at the dinner table for hours, spinning a nut back and forth on a bolt waiting for a phone call to find out which person died and which one lived. And every day you're glad you didn't drive to see why all the sirens were going down your normally quiet country road shortly after your friend and his dad left your house. Fourteen is just too young to learn about the realities of the world we live in. A person should be eased into reality slowly. Every three years after that event I lost someone-a friend at school in a drug and alcohol fueled car wreck, a Grandma, a co-worker, a grandpa that was very important to my formative years, then my parents divorced, then my last grandparent died. By this time I had grown crusty with defense mechanisms. I struggle to hold onto money of any large amount. I moved every year or less for ten years. I have few friends, though the ones I do have are very strong friendships. While these events may not be related its hard to think the first didn't affect the following.

Chapter two

Have you ever brought your head up from your normal plodding daily step as a horse harnessed to a plow and looked around accidentally? We're not supposed to do it, but when we do we recognize the absurdity of the situation. Weaker men than us have chained us to the machine in order to make more money for them. In much the same way do relationships work. Yesterday i realized again i have often been the strong shoulder for others to lean on, yet when i need the same there's no one around. Perhaps there is but i don't recognize them as such. Therefore, in times of need or stress, like always before, i turn to writing as a pressure relief valve. I've always felt i had a story to tell, but no way to fictionalize it and no way to tell the facts that would be of any interest. All I've done is ramble around, try to escape my inner demons and have a good time. I've done all three of those quite well. Even now, one of my favorite things in the world to do is drive around aimlessly with no direction other than ending up at home before i pass out. No high speed, no strong liquor, no particular place to go. Just going, and looking. I also enjoy having a task to achieve, especially if it doesn't require an inordinate amount of time. I don't think anyone will particularly enjoy reading my story because i didn't accomplish anything amazing or overcome any major shortcoming. All i did was live my life as i saw fit, doing what i wanted when i wanted to do it as much as possible. That's not much different from anyone else i don't think. Maybe what i did is a little different but it's not spectacular, at least by my estimation, but then again i was there.

Chapter One

We didn't have television so i grew up either entertaining myself with books or wandering around outside. I still spend most of my time looking around thinking "That's interesting" and moving along, never really investigating anything in depth but certainly kicking around in the leaves a bit.
My favorite author as a boy was Louis L'Amour. He wrote the same story repeatedly buy he was good at it. I grew especially enthralled with the brief biography on the rear cover of his books and accidentally mirrored in my own life. I didn't set out with any specific plan or goal, just a general desire to go somewhere i hadn't been and see some new things. Bruce Springsteen days there are two kinds of people, goers and stayers. I successfully avoided sedentary life for ten years after being awarded my freedom and have now surrendered to the inevitable. A vast majority of people stay the income bracket they were born into, and i believe the same holds true across all aspects of life. I'm raising a family, working a menial job, and trudging along just as hundreds of years of my ancestors did. It's acceptable given the history, yet completely terrible to reflect upon.

Missing Person

Last seen 5/26/2014

Hard to say when I was last seen in whole. Before Labor Day, 1994 I'd guess. I had a good childhood, a proper upbringing, enough religion to make me good, enough good family to make me secure. I'm not bad but I am missing. I'm a missing person. I look West and see mountains, north and see pine trees, south the Gulf and East, well the Massachusetts shore, or the Shenandoah Valley if I look southwest. I see almost every major interstate system. I catch glimpses of people, places, old buildings, gas stations in the middle of the night, living rooms, rooftops, and barrooms, lots of barrooms. But when I look up, or back, or inwards, I see all the people forgotten, lost, dead or missing. They're still here. I feel them, hear them, wonder what they're doing or what they would be doing. People told me things would get easier after a sudden loss. The pain is just as sharp, I've just developed some way to ignore it, not feel it, focus on other things. It sneaks up on me at the most random times like a brick to the skull and I have to fight back tears. I've been stolen from, by life, and I can't replace the faces after they're gone.