A lot of fond memories at the old UF Infirmary…
“The infirmary could be demolished, but there is discussion about whether to find a new use for the building.”
Muscle Memory
I found myself on a basketball court not long ago. As will happen on a basketball court, a basketball came to be in my hands – or more specifically – my right hand. I hadn’t held a ball in either of my hands for a long time, but there I was.
I had a ball.
I was looking up at the rim.
The ball was dripping with unfulfilled purpose.
Without thinking, I took a quick half step forward with my right foot. I brought the ball up, cradled gently in my right hand, palm facing the sky, and fingers spread along a seam. In one graceful motion my back, hips, knees, and ankles uncoiled, as I jumped… just enough for my toes to leave the ground (so not really a jump… more of a hop… but I digress).
With the ease of countless hours spent taking jump shots in my youth (day and night, by myself, under a lamp-post at the end of the street) my arm shot up, and with a flick of my wrist I launched a back-spinning ball towards the goal.
There was a time when it was popular to refer to the sound of a ball passing through the net of a goal as a swish, but my ears never heard it that way. To me, it sounded like the net and ball were calling out the name “Chuck.” Maybe there was a day when nets were made of thinner, finer materials which lent themselves to a silky, swishing sound. But the courts I played had course, rope-like material. The courts I played didn’t sound like the ball was being caressed. It sounded like it was being beaten.
“CHuK”
Anyhoo, back to the ball recently in hand.
Although I was looking at the back of the rim as I released the ball, I knew as soon as it left my hand it was perfect. I didn’t need to see it or hear it, I KNEW as it came back down it was going to catch nothing but…
Wait.
Nothing?
It caught… nothing but gravity?
The net was supposed to speak to me – THEN – I’d hear the ball bouncing on the ground.
Riding the Rails (to trails)
Cheryl and I did a half day on the bikes yesterday, peddling through the flat rural landscape of north Florida. We did an out-n-back along a twenty mile stretch of paved trail, converted from an old rail line between Keystone Heights and Palatka, FL. It was my first ride of forty miles (or more) in at least four years – and late-forty legs REALLY felt the last five miles. But it was a great ride. Some folks find the long straightaways a bit monotonous, but I find ‘em hypnotically peaceful. The air was cool (for FL), the wind was calm, and the soft whir of spinning spokes and churning chain made it easy to forget the rest of the world for a few hours.
That’s Twenty-One!
Sorry to disappoint but this is not a gambling post.
This IS an open letter to my daughter on her birthday.
Why open? If I’m honest with myself, it’s mostly for selfish reasons. Bragging about a child is feels like bragging about yourself, regardless of how much (or little) you actually had to do with the outcome.
I’m going to say something that may sound like a back-handed compliment, but it’s not meant to be: you exceed expectations. THAT has as much to do with me as you. You see, if we switched places, I don’t think I’d be where you are. You may not believe it, but you’re more self-assured and self confident than I was at your age. I don’t tell you this enough, but I’m proud of how you’ve grow into yourself in college – setting goals and working towards them with resolve. I stumbled through majors like a lost hungry lion on LSD, in a field of red meat growing like wheat.
You’ve cultivated a network of college friends, acquaintances, and advisors to lean on when you need help. I wouldn’t have known the registrar’s office from a dentist’s office, if I hadn’t gone to college with 90% of my high school friends.
You’ve dealt with money shortages and the anxiety it brings, in addition to the challenges of a tough course of study, and excelled. I stopped going to a French class after only a week because I thought the professor was a dick. To be fair, I think I could have convinced a jury he deserved my scorn.
You have done these things. YOU. You’re yet another reason I’ve been extremely lucky in life. In the moment I didn’t always see things as easy, but with the benefit of hindsight I know they could have been much harder, and that’s because you were a good kid. You ARE a good person. Instinct (to some degree) leads us to love our children. We cherish you, our oldest child, because you have such a good heart.
Happy Birthday kid!
Love, Dad
I feel her pain
Let’s get one thing out of the way. All things being equal, it hurts way more when it’s my body doing the hurting – as opposed to someone else. My superpower is not empathy.
That said, sometimes I’d prefer to be the one in pain, rather than watching.
Chronic pain can feel mighty helpless but there are some ways to cope – and I’ve logged A LOT of hours in therapy and counseling over the last few years. I’ve been trying to overcome feelings helplessness in relation to MY pain. There can be a feedback loop to pain. You hurt, feel anxiety/stress because of the pain, which amplifies the pain. It’s much more complicated than that – and that’s only one component (of many) to pain, but breaking that loop helps.
And if you’ve ever heard me say something dismissive about meditation, you’ll never hear it from me again.
That’s not to say I don’t feel pain, but I rarely feel helpless anymore. I feel a certain amount of control. It’s not like I can flip a mental switch and make it go away, but I can do something about it – I can somewhat manage it. If nothing else, a bit of meditation helps take the stress/anxiety (at least partly) out of the equation, and the more tools you have to work on something, the more empowered you feel – and thus not so helpless.
I can’t say the same thing now, with Cheryl suffering some pretty severe, somewhat debilitating, back pain. Now I feel helpless again. Feeling helpless leads to stress. Feeling stressed triggers more of my own pain, which is always in the background… and garsh-darn-it-all, in a way I think I AM feeling a bit of her pain.
No más
I can’t take anymore Facebook. I’m out. I’ve been beaten.
My intention is not to pile on Facebook while it’s fashionable. Well, this post might be – but not my behavior leading up to it. I’ve poked my head in to check on a couple of folks I knew were going through a rough time. I’ve tossed in a few random thoughts I figured might amuse a few people. But all of my recent incursions have been surgical – in with a specific goal in mind, and quickly back out. I don’t linger. I don’t browse. The app no longer lives on the home screen of my iPhone.
There are two reasons for this. First, Facebook doesn’t make me happy. As in, EVER. And second, I don’t feel like I accomplish anything there. I’ll try to explain, but first…
“Who in their right mind goes to Facebook to accomplish something?”
Well, if you’re really asking, I’d ask if you’ve ever shared or reposted something from the news that was AT ALL political. If you have I’d ask you: why? Simply to express your support? Again, I ask – why? Did you expect to change someone’s mind, or even plant a seed of doubt? My hunch is one of three things happened. A bunch of friends gave you an amen chorus, friends who didn’t agree with you ignored you, or friends who didn’t agree with you didn’t ignore you… and you’re not friends anymore.
I don’t know about you but I don’t take a whole lot of pleasure from any of those possibilities. In fact, I find this self-segregating aspect of Facebook pretty depressing. So in November 2016, in a misguided attempt to deal with this depression head on (insert dramatic theme music here) – I decided to focus my commenting energies on Facebook posts I didn’t agree with or support. I figured the world didn’t need another amen in the chorus, so I went out with high minded thoughts of engaging neurons (both mine and others), and offered a voice of civil and reasonable dissent.
Ask your doctor if poking a bear is right for you!
Yeah, it went about as well as you’d expect. No wonder Facebook wasn’t making me happy – all I was doing was going around picking fights. Well, I didn’t mean to pick fights. I could try to ignoring or blocking certain posts, but does the world need another Facebook echo chamber?
A few common themes kept coming up, and beating my spirits down.
Some folks were quick to say they’re angry about the tone in politics. They polished their independent bonafides by decrying the behavior of “both sides,” then shared a string of inflammatory posts… from one side. Did they loose their sense of irony? Didn’t they see THEY WERE PART OF THE PROBLEM?
Some (of the same) folks decried a biased (and therefore corrupt) “mainstream media,” then shared stories from some of the most blatantly biased corners of the internet. I’ll be damned if I was gonna read another post linking back to Ben Shapiro, Breitbart, Right Side News, Allen West, Gateway Pundit, or… crap, I think I’m gonna throw-up (my apologies to everyone I left out).
“FOUL! John, you only named right-wing offenders! What about the left?”
If you’re really asking you’re not going to like my answer. “They were doing it too…” has got to be one of the all-time worst excuses for bad behavior. What would you say to your child if they told you this after getting caught throwing rocks into traffic?
So that’s it. I’m done. I was barely strong enough to raise my own children. I’m not strong enough for a world of them.
See you back there next week?
Go Bold or Go Home
Outside it’s gray, overcast, and gloomy.
The air feels damp, like it’s itching to shed some of its load.
And yet, my Wundermap says there’s a 0.00% chance of rain.
Now in rich, glorious HTTP over SSL!
You don’t have to check the date on the last post to know I haven’t been spending a lot of time writing for this site. It’s an off and on hobby that’s mostly been off, so I decided to cut back on my expenses and migrate to a cheaper host. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re asking yourself, “Wait? LESS EXPENSIVE? You mean to tell me you’ve been paying good money to maintain this site? You’re STILL paying good money to maintain this site?!?”
I’m nothing, if not dedicated.
… well, sometimes anyway.
Now picture me: sitting on a beach with a MacBook in my lap, happily clicking and typing away for hours on end, working on migrating this site to a new host. Now eliminate the beach and replace it with a cool, dark, and quiet upstairs bedroom. Now you know I how spent free time last week.
A few days ago, I got to thinking. I was waiting for some bargain-barrel, over-burdened, shared-hosting servers to upload another batch of files, and it hit me. “If I’m already migrating to slower servers, why not tax ’em a smidge more with some security?!?”
Check your browsers, friends! Look for that glorious lock that tells you you’re browsing a secure site! Ask yourself if you’ve EVER known me to use so many exclamation points! Know that whenever you want to do a deep dive into all things John, no middle-man will be snooping on you, revealing just how banal you tastes in reading can be!
Kuro is a cat
Have you seen a black cat around these parts? Have you heard me, Cheryl, or Adam mention the name Kuro? Well, I’ve burried the lede – but we got a cat.
Not very interesting, eh?
Maybe this part will pique your interest.
Our kids have been asking for a pet for years. Beth wanted one, and she never got one. Adam wanted one and we consistently told him he couldn’t have one. We had a good reason: Cheryl and I have a history of allergies… pet allergies.
So no pets.
Then Beth left home. I can’t speak for Cheryl, but I felt bad for Adam. Beth was his best friend. He’s got friends at school but no one close to home. And he’s shown a love of animals. He wants to be a veterinarian when he grows up. I did too until I found out it was harder to get into vet school than medical school.
This summer Cheryl was around a lot of cats on vacation, and decided it might be something she could live with. I was around cats for most of my childhood, so I knew I could live with ‘em. What’s a little hay fever between loved ones?
So for Adam’s last birthday we threw him a curve. We hit him with a whopper of a surprise – something he wasn’t expecting. We got him his pet.
He named him Kuro.
Kuro is a cat.
Happy Birthday!
Our oldest child turns 20 today. I’m tempted to get all reflective and tell you what this means to me. But you know what? It’s not about me so much anymore. She’s a strong, smart young woman. It’s gratifying to think I may have had a role in her growth but she’s been opening her own doors for a while now.
Have a Happy Birthday kid! You deserve it!
(Don’t mind the old man getting a little weepy over here)
