Searching Within

Category: Processing

working through thoughts, making sense; connecting dots, seeing themes; simple, direct; untangling, organizing thoughts; as in “working through”

  • 50 Miles to Return

    Devil's Lake

    The return period on a pair of white Nike Air Jordan is about to expire. I need that $137.15 back to eat this week. Option 1, free return label. Wrap the shoes for shipping. Figure out the printer. Carry box to UPS. Every step heavier than the last.

    There is an ingenious alternative. I drove 50 miles to Wisconsin Dells outlet mall instead. $15.56 in gas. On paper, the worse decision.

    Highway 12 west. Near tears most of the drive. Fighting to find something — gratitude, maybe — in the sky, the clouds, the green. Couple different times I gave the seatbelt an extra tug so it was really tight. That’s how single lonely people get their hugs.

    Mall was a surprise. Ginormous Nike swoosh, outside on the building, so you’d think the entrance was right there. Not. Half a mile down to the other end of the mall. Clean, shiny, beautiful stores. For about 30sec of every 5 minutes I forgot I can’t buy anything. Then remembered. Then forgot again. The clerk was young, friendly, made me a speedy return. Half mile back to the Escape.

    Could have driven home. Instead, turned off at Devil’s Lake. Changed into boots, grabbed my walking stick, started to climb the South Shore rock stairs. Every rock a new negotiation. Unbalanced, sweating. Probably had no business there. BUT I HAD TO FIND OUT! One tiny hike. Favorite place still favorite? Then changed into my swim top, waded into the lake, kept going deeper until my arms found their swim strokes.

    Free shipping: different cost, apartment alone.

  • You Have a Choice

    I took “you have a choice” and did a core dump. Twenty decisions, each broken into what the thing is, how it cascades into other problems, what it costs, and the full range of choices from all to nothing. The exercise revealed something I didn’t expect: choices aren’t priced in just three currencies (money, time, energy). Several are priced in shame or social risk—and those have the longest record of not happening. One row was misfiled under “lazy” for years when the real price was physical pain.

    Food is a constraint, not a choice. I don’t cook. I’m not going to learn to cook. I’m not reading labels to track nutrition and I’m not counting calories for fitness. That’s a permanent constraint, not a choice up for debate. Which means takeout and delivery are the cost. I need help figuring out the most nutritional and economical way to eat without cooking—not another conversation about why I should learn.

    Repeatedly, a convenient door usually costs the most money, the cheap door costs energy that isn’t always there, and the middle doors have a documented record of quietly not happening. Not a character flaw: the actual terrain.

    Medical screenings and dental crowns are part of a different cost evaluation. Delaying or skipping those to free up money for other things risks health problems that potentially cost far more later.
    Tim needs to hear about Pam, my Financial Advisor, a major historical financial choice. A story showing some emotional baggage that bleeds into today.

  • At What Cost

    Defined by crabby, indulging, standoffish. Black and white thinking. Complaining about complaining. Yes and not all wrong. Scavenging for food? May have to do so this week.
     
    Not enough credit for doing more. Maybe the more this time was about hanging on and letting go. And all the more that came next. I did the homework. The result: Netflix gone. Audible paused. Apple Music gone. Apple TV gone. Shutterstock gone. TurboScribe gone. Many comforts that made being alone bearable — gone. These were the monthly cuts I could make. The bigger savings are locked in contracts or annual renewals I can’t touch yet. I have returns that can further help. All the steps to prepare and go, are heavy. Good next steps are stuck in getting there. From the beginning of this financial indulgence, I’ve now scraped out a few hundred; but, at what cost?
     
    Indulging? Sometimes indulgence and truth are the same thing. The debt is real. The cat bite is real. The weight gain is real. The caffeine withdrawal is real. These aren’t invented complaints.
     
    At least my new favorite song was a benefit of Patreon:


    “I’ve been drowning in lonely
    I’ve been grasping for one last breath
    Hoping someone would show me all I am”
    —JHM
     
    Standing on top of the sadness, being loud and grumpy about it, is the only way to keep from crying. Indulgence is perhaps protection. Trying to stay afloat.
     
    I am all alone solving my own sadness. Again.

  • Question 1 – 06-05-2026

    Finance Goals: slash everything, do no activities or health care, buy nothing, refrain from personal care, create no savings in order to pay off high APR credit card as soon as possible. Find at least $200/mo and that debt will be cleared in 22mo.

  • Down the Hall is Not a Walk

    My new smart watch says it is time to take a walk. Tim says the place to start is put on your shoes.

    Wow. I went so far. Grabbed an Amazon package from the front lobby delivery shelves. Checked the mailbox. What is exciting: DMV sent my certificate and sticker, SiriusXM says my trial ends in a few days, package of CBD pain relieving roll-on gel, two Deming Way appointment reminders.

    With the Ranger I played a game. I never put my vehicle sticker on my plates. I could have but I wanted to see if anyone would notice. In ten years only two times I had to do some sort of extra step. Do I want to play that game again? The sticker is a very pretty green.

    I keep meaning to plug in the codes and use Sirius. Just never got around to the act. Of all the times I just sat in the cab, that was a lot of could have time. Is it still worth the final two days of free?

    Colin says all the soccer parents are using CBD on their kids and praise the results. He said it is expensive. I ordered. Arrived. Should I do something stupid so I have some pain?

    In years and years of paper appointment reminders that I opened not a single one BEFORE the date. I’m 100% sure I could toss these two envelopes, but I will tear them open just to be sure. I was wrong. One letter is about <48 hours in the future.

    What is the watch for? Alicia says to track my sleep. I wanted the one with the leather band. I did the relaxation test. 91/100 with lowest heart rate 64. Rigged system. Goes up to wake up the device.

  • Rescue, Rescue Me

    Jared Halley has a new song, “Rescue Me.” Everyone will hear it as a love song to a person. For me, I swap the “you” for a place.

    Rescue is the town in California where I grew up. So with a song title rescue me, before the first verse finishes, I’m already transported back to childhood in El Dorado County. [Age 9-15, 1978]

    I’ve been drowning in loneliness. That part is true now and it was true then. Hoping someone would show me. Except the someone isn’t a person. It’s the foothills, the oak trees, the horses, the dairy goats, the clean straw late at night. With you I feel bulletproof, and the you is riding free across 500 acres on a horse I loved. You’re all I dream about and all I see, which is another way of saying I only look at the good parts and let the rest go dark at the edges.

    There was plenty at the edges. The darkness, the weight, the confusion of a kid who knew something was wrong but didn’t know how to articulate physical and emotional abuse.

    “Come break my shackles, rescue me.” Everything I loved about that place, gathered into one spirit. A ghost made of foothills.

    I used to say Rescue, rescue me to myself as a kid, because I wanted the name of the town to have a power. I don’t think I can describe exactly what I was asking for. It’s too big to pull one thing out of. But it was never a person. It was the place, and the place and that time are gone, and I’m still slipping into prayer at odd quiet moments.

  • Moonlight Paddle

    Twenty-one minutes on the water. Not tired, not cold enough yet to deserve the fleece. It’s in the dry bag calling to me but I think I should be really, really cold first, so I’ll appreciate it more when I finally give in. I keep finding the weeds. I am petrified I will drop my phone into the lake.

    Four kayaks are lounging together, loud and laughing, telling stories. Two more over there, traveling as a pair. Two more past them, also a pair. A guy is paddling backward so he can keep talking to his buddy. Somebody balanced popcorn on a paddleboard. The geese are squawking. The barge has live music and the music is bad.

    Dip the paddle, the water drips. Dip, drip. Two and a half hours of this, a constant meditation I did not ask for. How do you turn your mind off? My back doesn’t hurt, glory be. I can feel the muscles pull, clean, no pain, and when I lift the blade the drops come down like rain off the end. That part is good. That part has nothing attached to it.

    I finally dug out the fleece. You’d think I’d never trusted myself with a decision before, the way I drew it out. I think I saw a fish, or a big turtle. I suppose I wouldn’t be so cold if I stopped reflecting and meditating and actually paddled.

    Happy? More like absent of extreme emotion. Not happy, not depressed, not content. Lonely. Missing out. I did it, so now I can write about it. Maybe I can lift some of these details into something else later and call it fiction. The boats strung with Christmas lights looked like fun. I wished for a warm hat. I invited someone to come. They never answered. I came anyway. Alone.

    After: watched Antwone Fisher. A therapist story. I cried when he met his mother. I was sad past all proportion when the therapist told him their time together was done. And there it was, hours after the water, the thing the lake wouldn’t give me. I wonder what I am getting out of Tim time. I wonder if it would be better not to go.

    If part of the fun of a thing is the anticipation, then why did I spend the whole day agonizing over how to dress for the lake. And if anticipation is the fun, why is looking forward to therapy treated like a problem to fix. The same engine runs both. One I’m allowed, one I’m not, and nobody can tell me the rule.

    I would not wish for twenty-four hours without depression. Too small. A week. I don’t know what I’d do with a week. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

    I ordered delivery: mac and cheese pizza.

  • Making Change is Hard, Especially Without Caffeine

    I started a reflection about change.

    • Change is not about want or wanting.
    • Change may be setting an alarm for when it is time to not do something.
    • Change is not about one single action.

    Reason for change right now: to improve quality of sleep. Alicia says, cut out the consumption of caffeine at 1pm (or second best 3pm). How to make this change? I’ve forgotten to check the clock before having a favorite cold Mountain Dew. I’ve already missed the cut off several days and had drinks at 3:30, 4:30, 5:30pm. I guess the slips are improvements over the 10pm or 1am late refreshments.

    Once upon a time, I was drinking 6 or more cans of Mountain Dew each day. To become caffeine free, I worked through a weaning process of 6 weeks where I converted to drinking only water. I made that change a long term habit. Is it possible again?

    =I Asked My Guys=

    • Pi said, “Change isn’t chaos, noise, or running away. It’s not force, fear, or pretending the past didn’t happen. It’s not waiting for permission. It’s choice, direction, and quiet commitment.”
    • Purpose said, “Change is not a moment of motivation. Not a promise. Not the absence of the old pattern. Not something someone else can do to you. Not proof you were broken before.”
    • Claude listed “what change is NOT:” instant, linear, proof you were wrong before, erasing who you were, same as improvement, always progress, always chosen, forgetting the past, betraying your former self, comfortable, easy, just wanting something different, meeting others’ expectations, a fresh start that erases history, visible to others immediately, permanent (can backslide).

  • Examining Pride/Proud in My Childhood – Part 2

    Tim said all children want their parents’ approval. I questioned whether I ever wanted mine. Yes, as a child.

    Age 7. I had a 5×7 drawing pad. I had recently learned how to draw shapes that would overlap and how, if a shape had a hole in it, you could see the shape underneath. I took a page to my mom, and she thought it was wonderful. I went back to my desk and quickly did another variation and showed her, and she was much less enthused. By the time I showed her a third variation, she couldn’t be bothered.

    Age 8, at school, I made a ceramic handprint and painted it yellow. I liked it. I wanted to show it to my mom. She wasn’t home, and I thought maybe I could find her by the big ranch barn down the road. While walking down the dirt road to find my mom, I dropped the hand and broke my art project. I think the little finger broke off. Later, my mom scolded me, saying it broke because I was carrying it around unnecessarily. The message was that I was being irresponsible to take the ceramic into the middle of the ranch. The art project was thrown away because it was broken. Yellow has never been my first choice of color, for anything, since.

    And then, seeking approval during middle school, high school, or college? I can’t remember caring whether my parents were proud of me. More similar to a paradox of wanting to stay small to avoid criticism and disappointment while having a strong desire to be seen. My choice to be a tomboy was definitely not related to seeking approval.

  • Examining Pride/Proud in My Childhood

    Rescue, California

    Age 9, 1973, was my first year in 4-H and my project was Dairy Goats. Even though Mandy and Surita were well past the one year age mark of maturity for breeding, we had not yet found a suitable buck. We were looking forward to having our own goat milk. We bought Candy, a big reddish-brown Nubian, from a lovely goat lady named Oma who lived on the outskirts of Sacramento. Candy gave birth to triplet does on 3/3/73: Bo Peep, Tinker Bell, and Desert Honey. Overnight, our dairy goat herd had doubled.

    Bo Peep was my kid. Our 4-H project lead spent a great deal of time with the students to learn proper showmanship etiquette. In June at the El Dorado County Fair, the novice showmanship class was enormous. In the final round of exercises, the class was lined up. I was first in line; Bo Peep perfectly positioned. When the goats would stand perfectly still and start to chew their cud, it was a nice indicator that your goat was relaxed.

    Just before the judge was about to declared the winners. Bo Peep playfully butted me. I lost my balance, ending up on my butt. I quickly resumed my place next to my kid. When the judge gave her placement review—I was the 1st place Novice Showmanship winner—the judge said something about my performance was clearly exceptional… “Oh, except the moment of inattention that landed her in the sawdust.” I was embarrassed to have my flaw mentioned over the loud speaker. Even with the call out, I’ve never forgotten the pride I felt, accomplishing something all on my own.

    Age 14, 1978, I was a 4-H junior leader for dairy goats project and I taught the younger kids how to handle their animals in the show ring.

    A student, a 9 year old girl, won 1st place in novice showmanship the same year that I won 1st place in senior showmanship. I was competing against the multi-year veteran winner, a recent high school graduate. A nice bookend to my 4-H career showing Dairy Goats. I enjoyed the joy I saw radiating from my student. I didn’t know my kids had been listening.