Tag Archives: retirement

Gratitude List 1804

(1) After an unusually stressful day yesterday, I came home and decided to shelter in place till Thursday. It seems a nice time to read & reflect, maybe write a little, listen to music, play the piano — and only go out for exercise. It’s interesting that it feels like I’m “on vacation” in my own place of residence! Grateful for the solitude; grateful for the leisure.

(2) On a similar note, I’m grateful for Zoom meetings.   I only have two Zoom commitments in the next three days, but neither of these people could care less if I showed up in my bathrobe.  Grateful not to have to go through a totally stressful process in order to arrive somewhere on time.  I really don’t miss searching for my keys, my wallet, my glasses, my mask, my iPhone, and whatever else I need, putting down one thing unconsciously somewhere while picking up the other, and worrying all the time that I’m going to be twenty minutes late because of it.   With Zoom, a cup of coffee, and a couple clicks of a mouse, we’re rollin.’

(3) Grateful for running and for the role it has played throughout my life.   Did two miles yesterday charging up the hill and feeling quite chipper.

(4) Although I lost the beanie I have worn every day for nearly four years now, and although it is nowhere to be found, and although it felt really strange to go through two church services and a Choir rehearsal in my fedora, I am very grateful to have run into a certain Math professor who, feeling my plight, responded by gifting me with his beanie.   Grateful for this wonderful little college town and all the nice people whom I have met here.

(5) Speaking of loss, I may have overreacted recently in interpreting a certain person’s professional declining to complete a project “at this time” as a “loss.”  Something in the wording sounded like they never wanted to see me again.   Later, I found that I was reading too much into their words — due to my own abandonment issues.   Anything is possible.   Though this particular project has been suspended, there may be a project in the foreseeable future wherein they & I just happen to come together again.   And that may be sooner than we think.

It is nice to be valued.   But it’s even nicer to value someone.   I’m very grateful for the beautiful artistic experience that this very impressive person has brought to my life.

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club.”

Please donate to Eden in Babylon.

Gratitude List 1798

(1) Ran five miles yesterday. First five miler in the past 35 days since I’ve been decidedly getting into shape. Also, first five miler at 2500ft altitude. I’m eager to get back down to sea level and run a 10-K.

(2) I’ve selected all five songs in order to complete the Keva album. It’s been a rush to find myself writing musical theatre lyrics again. I’ve written lyrics to two of the tunes I wrote down in Berkeley, and I’m happy with the lyrics. I’ve also resurrected a song called “The Joke,” and I’ve scored all three songs for female voice on Finale. Three songs completely scored, two to go.

(3) Also I’ve been coaching Zazen in singing for musical theatre. Cody let me borrow his Andrew Lloyd Webber anthology, also selections from Les Miserables. She’s working on “On My Own” and “Memory” now; also, my song “I Know Who You Are” that I wrote back in Berkeley, whose lyrics I just wrote last week.

(4) Tonight both of my theology groups are having a joint meeting at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. Theology Afield hasn’t met for 18 months now, and we’re combining with Theology on Tap (a Lutheran group), for the duration now, meeting monthly at the church. Tonight’s material has to do with the Afghan refugees and the biblical stance concerning caring for refugees from other lands. I’m also really eager to see everybody again — it should be great!

(5) In general, I am really enjoying not being as stressed out as I often was throughout the time when we were workshopping Eden in Babylon. It’s been nice to do my running and do my Art – and do the things that I enjoy – free of time pressure and other stressors. It’s what retirement is all about, and I’m grateful.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” — Marie Curie

Please donate to Eden in Babylon.

Brotherly Love

As any of my close readers surely know, I’m a person who made a dramatic shift in  location and lifestyle round about July 2016.   So dramatic, that I’ve been having some difficulty relating to old friends and family members.

I don’t know if age is “relative,” but I do know that as I’m about to turn 65, I feel like a fit and vigorous, healthy man. Even though I earlier lamented that I’d gained weight and that my vital signs no longer boasted a 55 heart rate and a 100/65 blood pressure, I found recently when I had a check-up that my pulse is still 60, and my blood pressure 112/80.  Although I suppose it’s inevitable that I eventually contract a serious disease, I’m not any more worried about it than I was twenty or thirty years ago.  The idea that life stops at 65 flies in the face of the fact that after twelve years of homelessness, I feel that my life has just begun.

So when old friends contact me, I often feel a tinge of depression.  Most of them are so depressed and distracted by life.  Of course I have moments of depression, but I don’t live there.  One of my friends never even laughs at my jokes anymore.  It’s not that I mind being around depressed people when I’m not at depressed myself.  I’m not that insensitive.  It’s that it’s hard for me to deal with their expectation that I, too, am “supposed” to be feeling depressed or miserable, at this stage in my life.

At the local Recovery Center where I volunteer, I try to help other men who have had similar issues as my own, whether derived from homelessness or from some other form of sustained trauma.   So I asked my counselors there about this dynamic.

One of the counselors suggested I don’t contact any of these people at all, even the ones whom I’ve always gotten on well with.  She said that to continue buzzing them is only preventing me from fully embracing my new and better life.

Then I asked: “What about my brother?”

“That’s different,” she said. “Contact him about three times a year, unless he contacts you first.”

At that, I figured it was about time to contact him.  So I did.  He hasn’t contacted me back, but that’s just Steve.  In some ways, he’s about as opposite of me as they come.  Whereas I tend to use too many words to convey my point, he tends not to use enough.  Also, his issues are much different than mine – what I know of them.  Basically, he was brought up by my logical-scientific dad, and I was brought up by my emotional Sicilian mother.  Somehow, she favored me, me being the first-born son.  But Dad favored my brother.  As the first-born son, I was supposed to follow in his footsteps.  But the logical-scientific stuff was just — not me.  It was Steve.  So Dad taught my little brother everything he knew — so much so that Steve got 800’s all across the board on his achievement tests: physics, chemistry, and Math Level 2.  He graduated with a 4.0 from the California Institute of Technology.   I haven’t graduated from anywhere.

Not yet, anyway.


The above is my rendition of an old Hollies song I kinda like.  In this day and age, we often feel that our siblings have been a burden to us.  I often think I must have burdened my brother quite a bit when I was still homeless, continually looking for help that he was not disposed to provide.   Similarly, I wonder if he feels he was burdened by me.  It seems to be a dynamic in modern life that one brother will “succeed” financially, and the other won’t.   I wonder if I gypped him out of some of his success, by leaning on him, as I did.

In any case, I thought of him as I played this song.   If only we, as Christians or spiritual people, could freely bear the burdens of our birth brothers and sisters, the way we so readily bear the burdens of our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Here’s hoping.

I love you, Steve.