Shacknews LoL

Tldr : Old age isn't guaranteed. Don't put off going on adventures.

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I have been dreading writing this for a couple of years. Between Christmas and New Years my neighbor and mountain bike friend, Roland, passed away from liver cancer at the age of 63. I'm not writing this because I'm looking for condolences. I'm writing it because he taught me something about living life and I'm passing it on to you. Or rather reminding you of something you already know, even if the pandemic has slowed you down.

Roland retired from fire fighting in his early 50s. After retirement he biked around Italy and traveled north America on 2-3 month long bike trips. He rode bucket list trails in Canada, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and other states. He traveled in his Westfalia (Westie) and parked where the trails were epic and the stars were bright. He made the best of the ~8 years he was healthy. I was fortunate to go on a couple of adventures in southwest Utah with him.

The point is that if he had put this stuff off until retirement age, he would have worked for retirement and then died. Old age isn't guaranteed. Obviously we can't all retire in our 50s. Many struggle to retire at all. Certainly the pandemic isn't helping right now. But we can ask ourselves if we are putting off achievable experiences/goals because of time wasting activities that really aren't that important.

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See you there my dawg! Miss y’all.

This tour has been fucking incredible…the energy is out there in a big way. Every city you feel it. People need a lil connection.

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Asif said he’d like recipes on Cortex, so here’s one from Shack history.<br /> <br />Read more: <a href="/cortex/article/104/beans-texas-chili-with-no-beans">Bean’s Texas Chili (with no beans)</a>

AND FOR THE RECORD: seeing certain other longtime valuable POC Shackers be bullied and used as fodder for racist jokes during the first couple days of the protest movement was what originally made me leave. There are some grotesque bullies in our community and not all of them have been called out, subdued or learned to mend their ways.

I did stay away to finish a big project too and only decided to come back when that was done and skimming the Chatty seemed like some of the worst offenders had toned themselves down.

I’m irked that me posting again has touched off a flare up of the same behavior that made me leave. Stop all trying to jump in some alpha pile, people. It’s unnecessary amongst such old internet acquaintances. It’s ridiculous to turn Chatty into Lord of the Flies.

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Her name was Doreen. She was my mom’s best friend and my caretaker/tutor. She’s why I learned to read at 18 months, chapter books at age 3. I was kind of weak, always tired, after almost dying of a spinal meningitis infection when I was 13 months old. I loved her more than my mom. I mean it—I didn’t tell my mom I loved her until I was 16.

I couldn’t love someone who subjected us to my father’s unpredictable rages, who didn’t leave the day he hit her and caused her to miscarry. My mom was going to name her Miriam. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I loved her when she said it to me until the day the divorce was finalized.

Doreen hated my father, saw right through him. And she did everything she could to keep me safe from him, or safe in spite of him. She had convinced my mom to leave him and move with her to Miami just a few days before she died. Real sudden. She collapsed on her treadmill, from a brain aneurysm it turned out. I was 10 and she was my world and when she died I fell out.

I stopped sleeping, eating. I hanged myself. I was 11 when I started teaching myself to lucid dream so I could at least see her in my sleep. I cried so much into the couch in the unfinished half of our basement that the smell—the corduroy fabric, the dust, the basement smell infused in the fibers, and the tearsalt I added—was etched deep into my mind.

I am lucky in that no one close to me had died since that day, up until a couple weeks ago when my granddad died of being 100 years old. I had been terrified of his death. We knew it was coming, and with each passing day the panic rose up and up in me because Doreen was my only experience with death.

The hell that was her death had become my model for all deaths for people that mattered to me. I feared that my granddad would die and I wouldn’t get to see him or say goodbye because of the pandemic, just like with Doreen. I thought the floor would fall out from under me and I’d descend into a dark, helpless, hopeless space. Then he died. And I was fine. It was sad, but I was okay. The fact that he was old, that I knew his death was coming, that helped. But in the days after his death, I realized something.

Since I got sober 9 years ago, I have made it my goal to create a life that is safe, stable, supportive, authentic. I have spend hundreds of hours in therapy, at AA meetings, or just walking and thinking and repairing myself. I haven’t had a cigarette in 1 year. I got my Master’s. I just signed with a literary agent. I have an amazing wife who believes in my writing so much that she has encouraged—demanded, at times—me to focus on my books and to let her bring in the regular paycheck.

I was safe. Someone I loved had died, and I was still okay, still safe, and I didn’t need Doreen and the dream of safety with her anymore. I could finally let go. I could finally just say the words, “Doreen is dead.” I have been mourning her for 22 years. I know that this is not the last time I’ll be grieving her, but it does feels like it’s the first time I’m not. And it’s wild. I feel lighter—no, it’s more like the world feels less heavy.

https://twitter.com/Jwheels208/status/1203541528553017344?s=19

Wow. We need to hear more of these types of rants. Guy is spot on.

Meh it doesn’t matter. “Don’t politicize these deaths” is the weakest fucking take. Politics is in everything. It’s literally why these people died

I'm going to rant here for a minute. Please forgive me.

I am angry today. I am angry that our government is a fucking dumpster fire.
I'm angry that we are having a military parade in our nation's capital for no fucking reason.
I'm angry that there are human people being held in concentration camps in the southern states for NO REASON.
I'm angry that I didn't know that these things could happen within my lifetime.
I'm angry that there is nothing I can do but donate money and call congresspeople who seem to have NO POWER to change anything anymore.
I'm angry because my vote doesn't make a difference like it should.
I'm angry that almost everything that was taught to me in school has been a lie. How can we expect people to change from being racist assholes if the education we get sucks? The best way to help people is teach them that it's wrong but how do we do that when education is so poor right now?! Individual teachers can be awesome but the system as a whole is broken, like so many of the systems here right now and I don't have any idea how to fix it.
I'm angry that there are people here DYING because they cannot afford their medications.
I'm angry that women are terrified to care for themselves in some states.
I'm angry that people think they are allowed to tell others how to live their lives, even when it's detrimental to them.

This is not the America I want to live in. This isnt what I think of when I used to think of America. I am not proud of what America is right now. I had hoped that we had learned from the things that happened in the past and we would try to be better. But it seems like everyone is out for themselves and fuck everyone else.
I will never understand why people can think that the best thing is for everyone to be white and straight and rich. Diversity is awesome. Being different makes life more interesting. I just don't know. I will never understand. But I will fight for it. My kid is never going to be the kid that is treating others badly. Hopefully, he will be the kid helping instead.

I'm going to hopefully celebrate today with my little family and our friends. Ignore my Republican in-laws and their bullshit (I have fought with them more times than I can tell you) and try to have hope for our future. Maybe this dumpster fire is what we need in this country to change all the shit that is wrong. It opened my eyes in the last 2-3 years. Maybe it has done the same for a lot of others too.

Sorry for the rant but I needed to get it out there. Sitting around crying all day won't help anyone.