Yesterday, My Dog Died

 OK, so it wasn't exactly yesterday.  It was probably more like two or three weeks ago.  I'm not completely sure as there have been a lot of other things going on in my life right now.  It does feel like yesterday, though, for a number of reasons.

Yesterday I picked up his bowl.  The other animals in the house used his bowl most for water because it was always the freshest water.  Since it was constantly being drank, it was constantly being filled, so it was always fresh.  I have to remember to refresh the other water dishes around the house a bit more frequently now that I finally decided to pick his up.  It's packed away with the bin that used to contain his food.

A week ago I took his last bag of food and donated it.  We had just purchased him a new bag of food before he got sick, but before we opened it he stopped eating.  None of the other animals in the house eat senior dog food, and I didn't want to return it, so I donated it.

Two days ago my brother-in-law gave us a memorial blanket.  I can't even open it.  I had to fold it with the photo on the inside so I can't see it.

Every time I walk in the kitchen I look to see if the water bowl is empty.  It's difficult today to look and not see the bowl there anymore.

Every time I see a white flicker in the corner of my eye I think it's the little white fluff at the end of his wagging tail.

Under every pile of blankets I expect to find his happy face.

I can't bring myself to pack up or get rid of his bed.  Our other pup has been using it since he died, so, she doesn't want me to get rid of it, either.

Almost nine years we had with Boswell.  He was the chillest pup I've ever met.  He just hung out, got pets, sniffed around, and wagged his tail.  The only issue he ever had with other dogs was how much they liked to hump him.

We traveled across the country with that pup.  He's travelled more than some of the people I know.  I don't know where he's originally from, as we adopted him from the pound when he was three or four years old, but I do know in the nine years we had him he spent time in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Idaho, California, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and various rest stops along the way between all those places.  He flew in a plane.  He road tripped cross country and back.  He saw the Grand Canyon, the Pacific Ocean, and the Snake River Gorge.  He drove through Vegas a few times.  He lived in the high desert of southern California, the arid Inland Empire, and a number of places in western Pennsylvania.

I hope we were able to make him as happy as he made me.  I wish there was something more I could have done for him.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.  I really just needed to spend some time processing this pain.

COVID Concerns Ruining Medical Experiences

 A few months back I posted a "quick tangent" in the middle of one of my posts about how I hated the COVID restrictions I had to deal with when I took my son to the hospital.  Recently I have had a lot more interactions with medical providers in general, and, honestly I wanted to write an entire post about how awful these restrictions have made the user experience for anyone interacting with medical providers.

First and foremost, a lot of the people in my family, myself included, deal with some level of mental illness.  Depression is very common in my family, as well as anxiety, and other pathologies.  This means that a number of people in my family interact on the regular with psychiatrists, therapists, and the like.  Last year during the initial COVID reaction, most all (as far as I can tell) of these services went digital.  People can now call, text, video chat, and the like.  It's probably great for some people as it's super convenient or because they have other fears they're dealing with, but it really erases a human element to what I can only describe as one of the most human-centric forms of medicine.

Now, as I've said before, I understand that COVID is real and, while I might be able to look back now and say that the reaction last spring was too strong, I don't believe anyone in the moment would have said that, and I completely understand why services like these decided to go digital.  They're important enough to keep up, even if seeing people in meat space is potentially super dangerous.  The problem I'm having, though, is that was almost a year and a half ago now, and we have (or at least should have) a much different perspective of the virus now than we did then.

Most, if not all, medical professionals are likely vaccinated at this point, and if they're not, then that's entirely their choice and they better than anyone should understand the risks involved.  Many individuals outside the medical field are also vaccinated, and again, if they're not, it's not because they don't have access to get the vaccine.  Thus, I believe we're at a point (and probably have been for 2-3 months now) that anyone who wants to be vaccinated, has been, and we all just need to move on with our lives.

Here's the problem: medical professionals aren't.  I have not met a single psychiatrist who is seeing patients in person that isn't working for an in-patient clinic.  I see very few therapists seeing clients in person to this day.  It's a major issue because, like me, many people find talking to a therapist over a video chat to be dehumanizing, demoralizing, or at the very least abjectly worse than seeing one in person.  Like I said, you're missing a human element when you're talking to someone remotely.  At the most basic, you can't even make eye contact with the person you're talking to.  It's just absurd to think that, even now despite all that we know about COVID and despite the fact that 70+% of the population is vaccinated (especially including the therapist) that we can't see a therapist in person.

I can only speak anecdotally, but I'm curious how many people have stopped utilizing these very important tools right now because they're only able to see the resource digitally.  We're in the middle of what's been described as the largest mental health crisis of our lifetimes, and the people at the front lines are too afraid to step up and actually meet with the people that need help the most.

Here's the most absurd example I can think of: a member of my family was being evaluated at a hospital for whether an in-patient clinic stay was necessary.  The psychiatrist doing the evaluation refused to come into the room and would only speak via Zoom from his office.  The nurse in the room had to hold up a tablet so the doctor could evaluate the patient from another room in the same building.  I don't even know how to describe how infuriated I was by this.

This paranoia goes beyond mental health professionals, though.  My brother-in-law's baby was born today.  It's his first.  I have been at the hospital for the birth of almost every one of my nieces and nephews, and those that I wasn't on-site for the birth I was able to see within hours after.  I will not be able to see my new nephew today.  The waiting rooms at the hospital are all closed.  Visitors are restricted to incredibly small windows of time.  Only one person is allowed in at once, and no one else is allowed in the building while that one person is in the room.  So, if I want to visit, I have to wait in my car until the person currently visiting comes out to their car, then I can enter, be screened by the person at the door to make sure I don't have a fever (which, I really want to go off on another tangent about but I'll stop with this tiny rant), then walk all the way to the maternity ward.  Given the distance from the visitor parking lot to the maternity ward and the really small visitor window, there's enough time for maybe 2-3 people to see the baby if everyone spends 15 minutes or so in the room with the parents.  Thus, I won't be able to see my nephew today as we've all agreed that the grandparents should be given the ability to see the new baby first.  I might get to see him tomorrow if I'm lucky.

This waiting room paranoia goes beyond just maternity wards.  When I went to see my own doctor last month I was forced to wait in my car and allow them to call me when the room was ready.  When my wife goes to see her OBGYN for her routine prenatal visits, she has to wait in the car.  I wasn't even allowed in to those visits with her until late last month after the governor of our state reduced the COVID restrictions finally.  I didn't miss a single appointment with my first son, but I only just got to hear the heartbeat for the first time at the new baby's 20 week ultrasound.  When we took my family member to the hospital for evaluation, no one was allowed in the waiting room, and the ER waiting area was literally empty.  I sat in the car and watched a woman in her own car bleeding into a rag that she was holding up to her forehead for 20 minutes before she went in to get stitches.

Only an industry that people literally rely on for their health and wellbeing could be as callous and heartless as most medical facilities are being right now in the name of safety from COVID, a virus that more than 70% of the population is vaccinated against.  I doubt I'm alone in saying that I've avoided seeing a doctor in over a year because of how poorly offices are treating patients.  I don't know what to do about it, though, because, as I said, we all rely on doctors and hospitals for treatment every now and then, but it's infuriating to be treated so poorly by the staff of these facilities simply for existing and coming in to the facility in person.

When can we move on with our lives?

When you're older, absolutely everything makes sense!

 So I've been reading this book about self-esteem, The Psychology of Self-Esteem, and I just finished a portion about emotional maturity.  In one particular passage, the author, Nathaniel Branden, essentially says that kids believe that there are things that are unknowable until they're adults.  The exact passage is: "To a child, the world around him is - necessarily - an immense unknown.  He is aware that adults possess knowledge far in excess of his own and that there are many things his is not yet able to understand."

This book has been all about reason, conceptualization, and, most importantly, integration, and so I find it perfectly appropriate that my immediate response to that line was to start singing in Olaf's voice, "When you're older, absolutely everything makes sense!"

Questionably funny anecdote aside, this actually bring me back to something I've been thinking about a lot lately.  I've been spending some time on Reddit lately, and a few of the subs I interact with regularly are about parenting, as I have a small child.  It's finally helped me to realize a few really important things that just clicked really in my head this week.

You ever hear the saying, "Kill your heroes"?  I've heard it before, and I had a vague notion of what it meant, but never fully understood until yesterday.  You see, as a kid, I had an expectation of my parents that I now understand was outside the realm of reality.  I thought they knew everything, could do anything, and, most importantly, would always be there for me.  As a teenager, I was disabused of those notions, but not in a way that made any sense.  My parents didn't act the way I expected them to, but they were always just extensions of my own consciousness and when they "misbehaved" it was upsetting.

No, "kill your heroes" means that those heroes you're worshipping are human, too, and should be treated as such.  We shouldn't worship another human being.  They're just as flawed as we are.

Just this week I understood for the first time (fully understood, conceptualized, and integrated), that my parents are their own people whose actions are of their own volition and who have their own ideas, opinions, and flaws.

Parents aren't super heroes.  They're not perfect, and they have motivations beyond the grasp of their children.  I can't believe it took me till I was 31 to fully realize this, but I guess it took having a child to fully understand.

I guess Olaf was right.  This all makes sense now that I'm older.

What is Reality?

I've been thinking a lot lately about life in general, and what is reality.  If you recall, a few months ago I posted about not knowing what's real anymore because there seem to be multiple realities available on the internet.  It seems that around that time I wasn't the only person with those thoughts, because a few of the podcasts I listen to regularly had episodes about similar ideas that really got me thinking.  The problem is that I'm consistently 6-8 weeks behind on podcasts because I have so many I like to listen to and my podcast listening time is greatly reduced since my commute time was cut from 40 minutes to 10, so I just got through the January podcasts in March.

The first was a series on the School Sucks Podcast that was all about spirituality and coming to an understanding of oneself.  It was actually incredibly interesting and I'm really considering going back and listening to it again.  I'm not really ready to talk on this subject yet, though, because a lot of this information is completely new to me.

After that, though, I listened to an episode of the Jordan Harbinger Podcast about Suggestibility that tied into that really well, and really made me want to write something about it.  I've put it off for a few weeks since then, though, because I wanted the time to sit and focus on my thoughts, and I haven't really had a ton of that recently.  Even now as I write this I hear my son calling me from the other room because he wants a cup of milk...

The final thing I listened to that really got me wanting to write on this subject was an episode of my old reliable podast, now called The Chris Spangle Show, on Showing Mercy in a Divided World.

The biggest thing I took away from all three of these podcasts is that my "checking out" from national politics is actually the right thing to do.  Let me explain.

I haven't completely given up on politics, even during this "checked out" phase I've been talking about since November.  I still get the news regularly and I review important headlines.  I still listen to at least two political podcasts (though, as mentioned above, the news on those is usually fairly old by the time I hear it).  I occasionally scroll through Facebook or Twitter and see what everyone is talking about.  What I've really done, though, is stop caring so much, and that's the key.

I don't have any control over what happens in our national government.  Literally none.  I vote, but only because (a) my wife would be really upset if I didn't and (b) I can at least give my vote to some libertarian candidates to show the established parties that I'm not with them.  That being said, since I vote L instead of D or R, I know from the start that vote is only there to register a protest; it doesn't effect the outcome of the election at all.  Not that a D or R vote would make a big difference, either, but at least there I could look forward to my candidate potentially winning.  After they won, their choices are theirs, so I don't really have any control, but it does give me a sense of control.

I don't have any control over the state government, either.  Similar story, even if it is closer to home.  I've signed a petition to recall my governor because of what I feel was a blatant abuse of emergency powers over the last year, but I know that will go no where.

I have very little control over my local government.  I can attend the county and municipality counsel meetings (even easier now since they're on Zoom), but, especially now that they're on Zoom, there's only so much I can do or say.  The government is going to do what the government wants to do, and, in most cases, that's spend more taxpayer money than they have available on unnecessary services, then look for ways to take more money from me and other tax payers so they can keep doing that, over and over.

So, how did I respond?  I stopped trying.  It's not something I can control, so I stopped trying to control it.  I stopped paying attention when it was just BS back and forth (as so much politics is) and only really pay attention when there's some new policy that will actually meaningfully effect my life.  The rest is just noise.  It's been liberating to say the least.  That's what I'm here to talk about.  I've stopped trying to control things out of my spheres of influence.  That was my major takeaway from those podcasts I talked about above.  I can't control the government, but I can control the way I live my life.  I can't make changes to who's in power, but I can make meaningful changes to the ways I interact with those around me that can profoundly effect the people I see every day.

When I stopped caring about politics so much and started caring more about my daily life, friends, and family, I realized I had far more time to devote to them than I had ever had before.  My expectation before was that I was going to be too busy to do some things, so my reality matched that.  However, now my expectation is that I need to be focusing on those things, so my reality is changing to match that.  That was the big takeaway for me from the suggestibility podcast: Expectation Creates Reality.  I really want to talk about that more later, but I still need to gather all my thoughts before I can.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is that as I've been pulling back from politics, I've seen my wife and mother taking a greater interest in them.  It's funny because my mother's disinterest in politics throughout my life (and during the most recent election cycle) was part of the reason I stopped paying attention in the first place.  It's less funny with my wife, though, because she really wants me to engage with her on these topics and I really don't care about most of them.  She brings up things that are just noise to me, and if it were any other setting I'd just ignore them, but I can't ignore my wife.  I know that I went through the phase of being very interested in politics for a few years myself, so I can't reasonably look down on her for it, but it really does bring into perspective what I must have looked like to other people at the time, talking about things I have no control over and getting worked up over something that doesn't effect my life in any meaningful way.

So, if I had to wrap this up into a TL/DR bit of advice: learn what your spheres of influence are, and focus on those.  Pay attention to the things that will meaningfully effect your life, and recognize that the rest is just noise.  You can solve your problems much better than the federal government.

It's been a week

 So, daylight savings time started today.  For those of you who live in a saner part of the world that doesn't adhere to this BS tradition, well, good for you.

I had this very cogent and well thought out post I wanted to get to a few days ago.  I was driving and thinking about it, and it was good.

Of course, I was driving, so I couldn't write down any of those thoughts.  Then, I suffer from immediately forgetting about what I was thinking about in the car when I get out of it (some form of threshold memory), so I can't for the life of me remember what I wanted to write about.

Oh well.  None of my other plans for the weekend came to pass, either, so it's par for the course at this point.

Daylight savings time is awful, and I can't reconcile the fact that it's supposed to be 6:00PM as I'm writing this.  It doesn't help that I slept very little last night due to dogs and my son, so I dozed basically all day today, but that's another story.

What I guess I should probably talk about is my son breaking his arm.  It happened a week ago yesterday.  He's two and half, and it was now the second most terrifying thing that I've had to deal with since he was born.  If you've been following my blog for some time (I think there's one person who has), you'll know that almost exactly two years ago now, my son spent a week in the hospital with RSV.  That was honestly one of the most difficult weeks of my entire life.

This requires some back story so I can set the stage.  First, I try to get down on the floor and play with my son every day for at least 20-30 minutes.  We wrestle a lot, and he really enjoys playing rough and being thrown around.  Once I threw him on my bed and he then spent the next 20 minutes just standing up and asking me to throw him again.  We've also done this with the couch.  It looks apparently scary enough that my wife usually yells at me when she sees me do it, but we've never had an issue and the kid's laugh is super infectious when I throw him so we do it all the time now.

Second, my bed is a combination of a really old bed frame that my wife has had since she was young, and a really expensive latex foam pillow top mattress.  It's a little absurd, but with the super thick mattress and the frame that sits high enough off the ground to store shoe boxes under the bed, we end up with the top of the mattress measuring in about three feet off the ground.  It makes it difficult for my twelve year old beagle mix to get into the bed, and, honestly, me to get into the bed when I've run too far and my knees are sore.  It's also super fun for the kid to climb because it's got lots of hand holds and it's pretty high up for him.  Bonus: once he's climbed up, he can bounce on the bed, which isn't springy because there are no springs, but is bouncy just the same.

Finally, as I know I've mentioned at some point, last year we got a new puppy. She's a German Shepard, and, at just over a year old, she's still super hyper.  Most of the time when I rough house with the kid, she gets super excited and wants to play to, so I end up wrestling with the kid and fending off the dog at the same time.  It's fun and funny but sometimes ends with the kid getting wapped in the face with her tail or me getting a pretty bad ouchy from her really scratchy paws.

So, now I've got all the backstory, so I can set the stage.  The kid and I had been wrestling in the living room, but I rolled over wrong and hurt my old man body on the hardwood floor.  He wanted to keep playing, but I didn't want to roll around on the hard floor anymore, so, my brain decided to go with "throw him on the bed."  It was a hit, and I jumped in after him and we continued wrestling on the considerably softer surface of the bed.  Then the pup joined and confusion ensued.  We were having a good time, and the kid "knocked me over," so I had to take a moment to recover.  While I was recovering, he was bouncing on the bed.  He was a little too close to the edge for my comfort, so I rocked to the side to sit up and pull him back to the edge, but when I sat up, he was gone.

It wasn't one of those slow motion situations.  One second he was there bouncing on the bed.  Then he was gone.  It was like bad cut scene magic.

Then I heard him hit the ground, a bad crack, and then he started yelling.  I got to the edge of the bed and he was on the ground with his arm behind him at a really bad angle.  I didn't have to touch him to know he broke his arm...

I jumped down and scooped him up to try to comfort him.  The dog didn't realize the game was over so I had to lock her in the bedroom as I rushed the kid out to his mommy for super mommy comfort.  I was looking at his arm while she was holding him, and the middle of his forearm reminding me of Harry Potter's arm when the bones were removed.  Once again, I was certain it was broken.  My wife wasn't, but I splinted it and told her we were taking him to the ER.

Quick tangent: I really, really, really hate the BS COVID restrictions in the ER.  I couldn't go into the ER with my son.  I couldn't even sit in the waiting room.  I had hastily left the house because my son was screaming in pain and I wanted to get him in to the ER as soon as possible, so I didn't make sure I had my phone with me.  That shouldn't have been an issue, except now I have to sit in the god forsaken car, so the only lifeline I had to know how he was doing was back at my house 10 minutes away.  If we're all wearing masks, it's not like we're trying to pack the whole family into the room.  There is absolutely no reason the hospital should have a one parent policy.  It's complete nonsense and I really wanted to rip the woman who told me a new one.  Some other father there did in response to her telling him that he couldn't go back to see his daughter.  At some point I was allowed in (ostensibly to swap with my wife, but they didn't make her leave), but by then I had already missed the vast majority of my son's time in the ER.  He had already seen the doctor, had the x-ray, been diagnosed with a fractured radius, and was just sitting in the bed awaiting the temporary splint that would allow us to go home.  I can't think of a time I've felt more helpless.

Anyhow, kid ends up with a cast two days later.  I guess they don't cast kids in the hospital anymore at 9:00pm on a Saturday, so we had to wait with the splint until Monday morning to go see the ortho specialist in a different facility.  That was another nuisance, but whatever at this point.  The kid is in his cast for at least a month, and he seems perfectly fine except for the fact that his range of motion is limited due to having his left arm pretty much unusable.

I've had a lot of issues over the years with health care providers, but, honestly, this was one of the worst experiences I've ever had.  When the kid was in the hospital with RSV (different hospital), the staff there was wonderful and treated us like we were scared parents of a sick child.  The staff at the local ER treated us like we were children, including the multiple employees who told me just how great my emergency splint was like I was a child who just drew something that's going up on the fridge.  Then to spend an hour in the ER just to get an x-ray and a better splint which he'd have to wear for 40 hours before he could see the ortho specialist to get an actual cast was obnoxious.  Not to mention the absurd amount of money I'm for sure going to get charged for that hour, when, according to my wife, my son spent most of hour watching Monsters, Inc and chatting up the nurses.  Thankfully, the ortho office was super friendly, got us in three hours after we called, and the doctor there was great with the kid.  In fact, we spent less time getting a cast and a second x-ray than we spent in the ER when all they did was take an x-ray and slap on a splint.

Anyhow, kids, am I right?  How come no one told me this parenting thing would be so hard?  At least he only has to wear the cast for 4 weeks so long as it heals as expected.

Alright, enough of my complaining.

The Problems with Modern Capitalism

This week I was listening to Jason Stapleton's Podcast, title "The Problem with Modern Capitalism."  I'd link to it, but his website isn't user friendly and I couldn't figure out how to find the link.

Anyhow, I was expecting a deep dive into the troubles of modern corporations, corporatism, consumerism, and other ails of our society caused by modern capitalism.  What I got instead (before Matt came on and sounded like a complete conspiracy theory nutback), was the the problem with Modern Capitalism is that large corporations can use the government to avoid competing.

Now, this certainly is a problem with Modern Capitalism, and I don't want to downplay it, but I don't believe it's the problem, or even the biggest problem.

 - Quick aside: The funniest part about the podcast to me was when Matt talked about how, "libertarians always like to blame the government and ignore the fact that corporations are the real problem," but Jason had literally just spent the entire episode blaming the government...

Anyhow, to get back on track, I don't believe that corporations using the government to avoid competition is the biggest problem with Modern Capitalism.  The more time I spend thinking about it, the more my conviction grows that the biggest issue with our society today is us.  The people who live in our society are almost all incredibly consumerist, childish, and lazy.  I include myself in that estimation; I spend far more of my income on junk I don't really need than I'd care to admit.

The "low hanging fruit" of this issue is fairly obvious: average people like me (and probably anyone actually willing to read this) spend more of their income on things they could probably live without simply because someone was really good at convincing us to buy it.  I'm sitting here typing this blog on a hand built computer that cost a few grand, on a beautifully backlit gaming keyboard, using a 1080p high definition 24" monitor.  I could just as easily be typing this on my janky old Chromebook that cost me $125, but I like this setup better.  I didn't need the expensive video doorbell, or the high-tech smoke alarm/carbon monoxide detector that cost $150 and talks to me in English when there's an alert, but it's certainly nicer looking and easier to manage than the $25 detectors from my local big box store.  I definitely don't need to have most of the lights in my house controlled by listening devices scattered about my living space that also act as personal assistants and speakers in nearly every room of my house, all of which cost a decent sum on their own, let alone the extra amounts I paid for the wifi controlled switches and bulbs and plugs, but, hey, I like being able to ask the void to turn on my lights for me.

My wife and I own literally thousands of books, hundreds of DVDs/BluRay Discs, a few different computers, smart phones, and even a tablet or two.  There are more bluetooth devices scattered around my house than I could ever possibly use.  I certainly don't need the fancy place settings or special plates/bowls/cups/etc that we had to purchase a special storage cabinet for and only pull out for holiday dinners.  I could live with only one television (or none) in my house, but it's nice to have two.  My son has his own playground in our backyard, complete with swing, slide, and, coming soon, a jungle gym climbing dome (I still have to build that one).

The point I'm making is, I could have forgone a lot of these things, and I'm sure almost every person in the US right now can say the same thing.  You, reading this right now, can probably look around the room you're in and identify half a dozen things you could easily live without.  You likely have things in closets, drawers, and/or boxes in your house that you hardly ever, maybe never, use.

This is the problem with Modern Capitalism.  My life is immeasurably better than the lives of people who lived a hundred, or even just fifty years ago.  I have at my fingertips (or, now with just the sound of my voice) access to knowledge bases my grandparents couldn't even dream of, and mostly I just use it to turn lights on or off without having to move my butt off the couch while I watch videos of cats on the computer that I call a television.

I'm not saying this as a way of making a moral argument; I'm actually saying this is beyond a moral problem.

Let me tie this together.  I hate my job.  I didn't always, but recently I've been trying to work my way into management, and as such I've been paying more attention to the managers of my facility, and my company at large.  I've been scrutinizing decisions they're making, and I'm seeing a pattern.  You see, the people that run my company, much like the people that run most companies, are also lazy consumeristic children masquerading as responsible adults, much like I am.  They might be able to buy bigger or more expensive toys, own larger houses and have nicer accessories, but, in the end, they also really only care about having nice stuff.  They really want their nice stuff to be nicer than other people's stuff, too.  You can see it in the stupid decisions they make.  I stupidly decided to buy a brand new car this year.  That hurts me and my family because now I'm going to be paying for that car for 5-7 years. The management in my company wants to make money to buy bigger and nicer things, so they're making decisions that hurt all of the people that work for them so they can make a bigger profit.

Example: head count.  I hate the term head count.  I work out of a facility that regularly ships $14M+ every month.  Mine is one of four facilities in our division, and not the highest grossing facility in our division.  We can't afford to bring in two more people to back fill positions that literally existed a year ago.  We're making more money than we were a year ago, but when those people left last year, the company just...decided we were better off without those positions.  The remaining employees in those two departments all now have much higher workloads, and the odds are fairly good that more people will be leaving soon because of that, but no one gives a crap because we're making more money now.

Downstream employees are also affected.  One of those positions was a middle manager position responsible for 22 people.  Those people now have to report to a higher level manager.  Seems like a good idea: remove a middle manager and save the company $85-100k a year on a salary that only existed to be a go between for the lower level employees and the upper management staff.  Those front line employees now report directly to an upper manager, who doesn't really have time to deal with them because it turns out upper managers have more responsibilities than dealing with the day-to-day issues of front line employees.  Oh well.  Guess we don't care if the turnover in that department (which used to retain employees for literally decades) is now so high that even the trainer is quitting because he can't train all of the new employees as fast as they're being brought on.

It's all so short sighted.  That's the real problem with Modern Capitalism: no one is planning for next year, or five years from now, or twenty years from now.  All we care about is this month, maybe this quarter, and stretch goal this year.  That's it.  As long as this month is more important than this month five years from now, we're going to continue this race to the bottom.  I'll buy that extra gadget I probably don't need this month because I have the cash right now.  I could have set aside that cash and saved it for when I need it for something important, but I'll deal with that expense when it happens and not worry about it until then.  Companies can plan for the future and try to get a well trained staff capable of doing more than the business currently demands, but, hey, why waste money on extra people that aren't needed now when the business can run without them right now?  Maybe we'll need to hire someone later, but until that's absolutely necessary there's no reason to pay someone to work less than 100% of their maximum effort every day.

The question is, though, how did we get here?  That's the moral question, and what I'm still pondering.  I hope to get closer to an answer someday. 

Musings on Mortality

 There's been quite a bit going on this week, but the number one thing I have taken out of this week is the amount I've been thinking about mortality lately.

Last weekend when my wife and I were taking down Christmas decorations, I can't remember what triggered it, but I was upset by the fact that my Grandmother didn't live to meet my son, and specifically spend Christmas with him.  Then, by some crazy train of thought, I realized that she only actually met one of her great grandchildren (there are currently four), and she never got to spend a Christmas with any of them.  I had to stop in the basement and just cry for a few minutes after that thought.

A few days later my wife and I were discussing how we really need to get our living wills created, and we spent a fair amount of time discussing what would happen if one of us should happen to die, or if both of us died.  It's not a conversation we have often.  It wasn't upsetting, but it's not exactly a fun conversation to have.

Last night on the way home my wife mentioned that she was sad that she didn't get more photographs with her grandmother while she was here for the holidays.  There were a fair few photographs taken, but I realized that what she really meant was that she might not get to see her grandmother again and, while she loved the two months her grandmother was here, she is scared she won't have enough photographs of their time together to appreciate these memories in the years to come.

These are just some examples, but lately I've just been pondering mortality a lot.  I've never really given it a ton of thought.  I mean, sure, I've been to the funeral of three of my grandparents, two great aunts, and, most depressingly, a two day old infant who was born to a member of my family with a whole in his heart.  I've thought about death before, but I've never really put thought into mortality, and what it means for life.

The other day I was listening to Fun., and I heard the line, "...we talked and talked about how our parents will die...", and I realized I've been thinking lately about how my parents will die.

You ever really look at someone you've known for a long time?  I heard once that we don't see people we know well, at least not fully.  The last time I spent time with my father I looked at him, really looked, for the first time in a really long time.  His face is so different than I realized.  In that moment I understood that he is aging.  I hadn't seen the age marks on his face until that very moment, and the realization hit me like a truck.

I don't spend enough time with my family.

But most of the time I just...go on with my life...and don't consider it.

I know if I spent all my time thinking of mortality that I'd have no life to be concerned about losing, but I don't feel like spending no time thinking about it is healthy, either.

This post didn't go quite the way I wanted.  It's taken me an hour just to get here.  I'll try coming back later...

Is This The Real Life?

 I'll be straight up: as I've mentioned before, I've been fairly disengaged from national politics of late.  I've been vaguely aware that President Trump did not concede the election and was fighting results in multiple states in court, but I haven't put any effort into obtaining that information.  More recently I heard of the attack on the Capitol Building, but not because I was paying attention, mostly because people at work were talking about it the next day.

I think I've also mentioned before that I'm not a big social user at this point.  I jump on Facebook and Twitter every two or three days to check my notifications (and it turns out, when you use them as little as I do, there usually aren't many notifications).  I don't usually scroll, and, if I do, I don't scroll more than one or two screens without getting bored.

The two above have combined for a rather interesting experience this morning.  My son is staying with his Grandma this weekend, so my time is rather open.  My dogs wake every day by 6:30am whether I want them to or not, and getting back to sleep after taking the dogs out in the snow proves to be rather difficult.  My wife doesn't find getting back to sleep after being awakened by rowdy dogs as difficult as I do, so she was able to stay in bed.  That has left me with hours of free time and no real good idea of how to spend it.

I tried reading a bit, but I wasn't into it.  I played Words With Friends until I played all the games it was my turn, and I only made it to 7:05.  I did some dishes, but unloading and reloading a dishwasher takes less than 10 minutes.  I've still likely got hours till the wife gets out of bed, and I don't know what to do with myself, so like any respectable adult, I turn to social media.

Man, was that a trip today.

I've got a fairly diverse group of "friends" on Facebook.  My political views are certainly libertarian, but I know people from high school and college who are socialist, republican, alt right, democrat, etc.  I've also got a lot of fairly apolitical friends.  This is where things got really interesting.

I didn't interact with any content.  I was just lurking.  As I scrolled, I saw posts about how the attack on the Capitol was staged.  Right below that were posts about impeaching Trump.  Below that, posts about a new puppy.  Then, Biden is not the real president.  Then, Trump is trying to start a civil war.  Then, troops sent to the capitol for the inauguration (both pro sending and anti-sending).  Then a baby picture.  Then a post about going hiking in the snow today.

I flipped over to Twitter, which was essentially the same thing, but also multiple complaints about Facebook going on a banning spree.

There's like, three realities happening simultaneously, and only one of them jives with what I see in meat space in my area.  First reality: Biden stole this election by massive fraud of some kind (statistics like states have counted more mail in or absentee ballots then they sent out) and that the attack on the Capitol was just a plan to get Trump to concede and that it was actually carried out by Antifa.  Second reality: Trump is literal Hitler trying to stage a coup to become supreme leader of America.  His supporters are all white supremacist Nazi thugs who listened to their dear leader tell them to fight the power then stormed the Capitol and tried to hold lawmakers hostage, or maybe even execute them.  Third reality: none of this really matters.  Life is going on despite all the drama happening in Washington, and some people are capable of being happy and not worrying about whether this is the start of a civil war.

I can tell you, though I've been fairly disengaged so my opinion might be biased, that most of the real people I know in meat space are in reality three, or at least closer to that reality than either of the first two.

It certainly seems like politicians and media figures are trying to push a narrative that the country is on the brink of collapse.  What I don't understand is why.  Even people I know that have real disagreements on politics don't grab their guns and go into pitched battle with one another.

Is this even real?  Like, are we actually on the brink of civil war, and small town western PA just doesn't give a crap?  Or is the whole brinksmanship just a play to get people to tune in at a time when literally everyone in the country just wants to tune out and move on with our lives because the last year has been literal hell and we just want to be happy?  What is real anymore? 

Oh Nostalgia

Today I learned that I am indeed actually getting older.

Sometimes it's easy to forget.  Sure, I've got a two year old son who's got way more energy than I could even wish for some days, but I get to run around with him and play hide and seek and make believe and things like that keep me young.  Plus, I've still got a fairly youthful appearance and am still younger than most of my coworkers and other people that I spend the majority of my time with, so it's easy to forget that I'm actually in my thirties now.

Today I helped my sister move.  This was significant for exactly two reasons.  The easy one is, I've moved literally at least a dozen times, and helped others moved many times as well.  I've been sore after a few times, but, lord, I hurt my back today.  I realized after I tried to lift literally the very first thing that I probably should have like, warmed up and stretched or something.  When did I get so old that I have to stretch before I lift a TV?  Ugh.

So, now I'm sitting here typing this with a back ache.  Yuck, but that's not really the reason I'm here.

The more significant reason that today affected me was because of where I was moving my sister from.  Sometime in the last year or two she moved in with a man in the neighborhood I grew up in.  I'd been there once before, but as a passenger in her car, and I immediately got out of the car and went into her house.  Today, I arrived a little early in my own car, and the truck we were loading arrived fairly late.  Thus, I ended up (a) being alone in my car driving down streets I used to walk on, ride my bike on, etc, and (b) having about 30-40 minutes to just walk around my neighborhood while I awaited the arrival of the moving truck.

I spent the first 12 years of my life in a house that was so close to the house my sister had been living in that I could see the back yard of my old house from where I parked my car.  It was definitely a surreal experience.  I hadn't been back in the neighborhood, with the one exception I mentioned above, for over a decade.  (Quick tangent: I already feel old knowing that I can say something happened over ten years ago.  Like, I graduated college ten years ago this year and man that's really getting to me.)  With time to kill and a strange desire to rediscover the place I knew so well as I child, I took a walk.  I felt like a weirdo walking around some neighborhood I don't live in, but, frankly, I still recognize a lot of the people that lived there 20 years ago, so it wasn't that odd.

I walked past my childhood home and watched a bit from a distance as the new owners were installing a privacy fence.  The deck that starred in so many of my childhood memories is long gone, along with a tree that used to sit on edge of the neighbor's property just off our front porch.  The chain link fence that separated our yard from our neighbor's was also long gone, and it made the yard I remember being so tiny look a fair bit bigger.  I continued down the road to an old playground I used to frequent.  The playground was a relic of a bygone age when I lived there.  Basically untouched for years with much of the old playground equipment either completely unusable or of questionable safety by the time I was old enough to use it.  A fairly new playground sits in its place now, though it takes up much less space.  The old playground was sprawled around through the trees, with a jungle gym here, some swings there, and I recall at one point (though they were removed in my later years living there) a large metal slide and some monkey bars.  The old flag pole was still standing from the old park.

I remember as a kid going up to that playground and running into the woods surrounding it down paths trodden by so many other kids and teens in the area.  They led down to a creek, and as a kid it was always an adventure to play in those woods.  The creek was like a world away from our tiny yard, and we would often get in trouble if we travelled so far away from home on our own.  Standing at the top of the hill today, I could see the creek, along with the road on the other side of the creek, and it made me realize how small the whole area was.  I swear it was bigger when I was a kid.  I don't know if there are fewer trees now, or if I just remember it in the summer months when there are leaves on the trees, but I don't remember ever being able to see the creek from the top of the hill; let alone the road beyond the creek.

Another thing I distinctly remember as a kid is a path that lead past the old "Indian grave stones" (which, incidentally, are just big bricks that are used to close a road), and down to a "cliff" that we would play on because we had to climb up it on our hands and knees.  There was even an old dump where we'd pretend we'd fall in and it was super dangerous.  I couldn't find the dump.  I couldn't identify the specific "cliff" area we used to play on, but there was a pretty steep hillside that led down into a bunch of different houses' back yards.  None of the trails I remember were identifiable at this point, though I did find the "grave stones."

There was an old set of city stairs not far from the playground that I used to walk every day on my way to school when I started walking to school.  They were a block away from the house I grew up in at the end of what seemed like a dead end road, though at the end you can actually turn up into an alley so it's not a dead end.  (Another quick tangent: at the end of that road is a house right where you'd expect the road to dead end.  Behind that is another house.  It's really strange and the only way to access the other house is through a driveway branching off the alley, but it's still strange.  For some reason that second house was a major figure in my nightmares as a kid.)  Anyhow, I went down the stairs, which, again, seemed smaller than I remembered.

At the bottom of the stairs is a really old house that's in really rough shape at this point.  It wasn't in great shape when I was a kid.  Behind that house is an old outbuilding whose purpose I can only guess at, but maybe it was an aviary or something.  The house looks like it was a pretty bougie place when it was first built, so I guess it's not unreasonable that the building could be an aviary.  It's also possible it was some kind of servants' quarters, though it seems fairly small for people to have actually lived in.  At any rate, that building was basically in ruins when I was a preteen, but that didn't stop me and my sisters and friends from using it as a clubhouse.  It's still there today, though in an even greater state of ruin than I remember.  It really should probably be demolished, as it appears that new children have been using it for the same purpose fairly recently.

The biggest thing I noticed from walking around was just how small everything was.  I was able to walk from one end of my neighborhood to the other with minimal effort in just a few minutes.  This little three block area used to be my whole world, but now it's just a small neighborhood I could easily explore on foot in less than thirty minutes.  That's a real perspective changer to look back on this area when it was the whole world, and it was so big.

The next biggest thing I noticed was just how run down the neighborhood is.  I knew we weren't by any stretch well off when I was a kid, but there are just things I would have never noticed until I was an adult.  I walked past houses I had been inside as a child, and realized the houses looked exactly the same as they did 20 plus years ago, and that wasn't really a good thing in many cases.  My old clubhouse looked like a death trap and I was concerned about the kids who were hanging around in there now.  It was cloying to rip of the rosy glasses of the memories of my youth and see just how ramshackle a lot of that neighborhood is.

So, anyhow, it was a fairly surreal experience.  It was like seeing my life from a different perspective, and it was...odd to say the least.  I guess it took walking around my old stomping grounds to realize that I'm getting old, and nostalgia for the days of my youth has started to set in.  Oh, youth.  Oh nostaglia.