Category: Philosophy

November 2, 2021 – Why I Continue to Hunt When My Success Rate is Near Zero

November 2, 2021 /

Over the years, I have shot three deer. If I started when I was eleven and now I am forty-six, that is thirty five years of buying tags and two of those were when I was still living at home. To be fair, I only hunted one year in college and I took a multi-year hiatus while I was getting settled.

I have always had an exploratory heart. I often wonder about the road that takes off the highway and goes off into the unknown. I fanaticize that this is some secret access point into the woods that no one knows about. But it goes even deeper than that. Today, I am sharing some of the things I saw last weekend to justify why I feel this way.

Have you ever seen spawned out salmon? Me neither. It is not super clear but the picture above is two dead salmon that have finished their lifecycle. They were born in this stream, went to the ocean for several years and came back to reproduce. Once that happens, they die. They were probably 24″ long. In fact, as I looked across the creek, I saw probably twenty of them in this one spot.

Pictured above is the Elderberry fruit. Normally, they are ready to pick around Labor day and it is highly unusual to see them this late in the year. Elderberry is high in Vitamin C and is prized in herbal medicine for it’s immune boosting properties. Outside of that, it is used for jelly, syrups and brewing adjuncts. Some day I want to pick a bunch of this and do something special.

How about a hiking trail in the middle of nowhere? At this point, I could lead someone to this spot, but to be able to provide directions would be nearly impossible. Roads in these areas are cryptically marked and there is a patchwork of tribal, timber company and public land. I don’t think this is the beginning of the trail because there is no parking, I pulled off the road to snap this picture. Who knows if it goes somewhere interesting.

The difference between private timberland and public land is stark. Above is a slash pile resulting from a thinning operation. That pile will likely be burned in the coming weeks. In fact, I saw multiple active burns while I was up there. Policy since the 1990s on public land has essentially left it to grow wild. In this area that is a patchwork of public and private you go from dark woods to very open and actively managed forest land.

End Your Programming Routine: Friday is the end of deer season. Saturday is opening elk season for some areas near me. In all of my years hunting, I have never seen elk during the deer season so I don’t bother getting a tag. The elk season only lasts for one week anyway. As I close out this year, I know that I haven’t put a ton of effort into being successful but I feel like I had some new experiences. I went down some new roads and have a better feel for what I want to see next year.

October 15, 2021 – That’s Not a Knife

October 15, 2021 /

It’s Friday and maybe a day for some humor.

For some unknown reason, my in-laws were overly influenced by infomercials. We have seen the copper pans, the Emeril Pasta & Beyond, the Sweepa (buy one, get one free) to name a few. I think buyers regret sometimes set in and then we were the recipients of ‘gifts’. One time, my father in law bought was a whole lot of cheap knives.

I subscribe to the buy once, cry once mantra. It is why I have a 2003 pickup that I have owned since it was new and a paid off 2010 vehicle. I plan to get the most out of them. When it comes to tools and gear, I look to the premium side first because I think you get what you pay for. I should also say that I am big on value as well. If something at $20 is 90 percent as good as something that is $200, I am going to side on the value proposition in most cases.

I am sorry to say that knives made in Pakistan don’t make my definition. They were poorly built out of poor materials. I knife is not just a knife. It needs to take and hold an edge to be effective. While these may resemble knives, they don’t do either. To top it off, there were fifty of them. In that lot were some that were extra special, like below.

That’s right. I have a sword that came out of that lot of knives. I can’t remember the exact transaction or timing, but one day my father-in-law brought this over and said that I was to give it to one of my kids one day. It has been a number of years ago now, maybe ten.

Now, this is not a jab at my father-in-law or even my relevant disgust for As Seen On TV habit. I do intend to give it to one of my kids, because it was his wish. And, I cant wait to do it. I am sure it would hurt to get hit by it and I think it could do some damage. But, it is not sharp other than the tip. I think that it is cast aluminum, not even steel. The whole thing is heavy and awkward.

About eight months ago, two people were killed in this very town with a sword. A very strange and bizarre situation were three men were high and got in an argument, somehow two ended up dead. There were little terms of details released about this to the media. Those were the first two murders I have heard of in the sixteen years I have lived here. That is to say that violence is pretty rare.

End Your Programming Routine: So, I have talked about cheap knives and murder, where is the humor? I guess the humor is getting a white elephant out of the blue, which happens to be a sword which links to the two stories together. I do think that he genuinely thought this was a worthy endeavor. For now, I am the custodian of the transaction and my son can do as he chooses when he is old enough to take possession.

October 4, 2021 – Let the Pictures Speak

October 4, 2021 /

This was my view when I woke up yesterday morning. You are looking at Mt. Thielson in central Oregon. As I said on Friday, I was going fishing last weekend with my family. Because of Covid, because of everything that went on this summer, because of some philosophical differences I have with my wife, this was the first and probably only family campout of the year.

Nearly everything was perfect, nearly. The only thing that wasn’t great was the fishing but it was OK in that we caught some fish. The weather was in the mid-seventies, the lows were above the freezing. The wind was light and the company was nice.

A little bit about my philosophical differences with my wife. We both enjoyed camping when we met. It is just that her idea was a camp ground that required showers and bathrooms with running water. I would say that I am not entirely opposed to that concept but there are so many beautiful and new experiences that we could do that are limited by that criteria. Over the years our necessities grew as well and required a trailer or second vehicle to haul everything that I get burned out just packing.

I suspect that at some point, there will be an RV in our future. With that, there are definitely more creature comforts and hopefully less packing to get out the door. I would also like an RV from the standpoint that it makes it easier to enjoy some of these places like I was this weekend without the constraints of running water required.

My goal this time was to be light and agile. I did bring some extra stuff like my hunting pack (just in case) and camp chairs (and the dog which was easier than finding someone to watch her). We only brought no cook or freeze dried meals which made cleanup easier and cooking faster, so we could spend more time fishing.

You can see my biggest freshwater fish I think that I have ever caught. I measured it at 16″. That is on the dinner menu tonight. That was the only fish I caught. Unfortunately, my son didn’t catch a fish. I think all told, our party caught around twelve in the duration of the trip from Thursday to Sunday. Not great when you consider the limit of (5×3)4 + (2*5)2 = 80 possible. But hey, I said my favorite kind of fishing was the one I was doing, and that is the truth.

End Your Programming Routine: As I said on Friday, I have passed up too many opportunities to spend time with my family because I have been ‘too busy’. I suspect that if I was not a single parent and not blocked it on the calendar, I probably would have found an excuse to miss this one as well. I am very happy that I made the effort to make part of the trip even though it was a lot of work. I hope that I can get my act together so that this will happen again in the future.

October 1, 2021 – It is Opening Weekend of Deer Season and I am Going Fishing

October 1, 2021 /

Let’s hope that caps the week of food with more food. When I was a kid, I was so excited for opening weekend of deer season. When I was a teenager, I used to dream of when I was older, I could spend more time in the woods. Now that I am here, I hope to get out once in the season. This isn’t going to be the weekend for hunting but I will spend some time with my family fishing.

I talked about this a few weeks ago when I was talking about the decline of the outdoorsman. While my dad didn’t spend months straight in the woods, we did split hunting and fishing about equally. He always has owned a boat and we would go out at least once a year. He would take a fishing trip with his friends usually around Father’s Day. We used to go salmon fishing as kids. So, I like fishing too.

Since my dad has retired, we have been applying for draw tags in eastern Oregon. We get them about every three years. Since we won last year, this year we didn’t and decided to go fishing instead. I have applied every year for the last ten years. But I have only gone one time even though we have gotten tags three times. We did get his rifle sighted in last Friday however.

When I left my job in South Carolina, I moved back to Oregon and joined the company that my dad had worked his entire career. I remember talking with my uncle and he said “That’s great. Now you can have lunch together every day.” I remember feeling a little guilty that I barely saw him, let alone had lunch. And to some degree, I carry some of that guilt today. We live about twenty minutes apart and yet it will frequently be months in-between talking.

I do believe that the quote “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” applies here. But I can’t help and think that there isn’t something slightly wrong with me. If I get truly personal, I am overwhelmed by the size and volume of my wife’s family and when I am not in that I want my personal space.

The events over the last six weeks have definitely had an impact on me. I have seen my parents aging, I have seen the slight decline in physical ability and I know that the horizon is in view. It definitely has gotten me thinking about trying to spend more quality time while I have the chance to do it and I need to be more aware of the signs of decline.

My brother, dad and uncle left yesterday. Me being a single parent right now, I couldn’t swing the time off, I was hoping to leave tonight. but my kids have to play pep band at the football game tonight. So, we will have to settle for Saturday and Sunday. We didn’t do any family camping this year and I have never gone with my kids and without my wife but I am really looking forward to it.

End Your Programming Routine: I don’t really care if we catch any fish although I think it is likely we will. The weather is supposed to be pleasant and I have a good time with that crew. The point of this is to spend some time together doing something we enjoy. It is looking like next weekend is out, but I am still going to get some time in the woods this season before it ends.

September 17, 2021- The Value of Local Business and Relationships

September 17, 2021 /

I talk about planning a lot. I am pretty good about planning my stuff, but I fail hard on planning for the relationship level. Mother’s Day, Valentines, Birthdays and Christmas are all things that I dread. I would guess that it is because I don’t have a lot of interest in those things personally. I could care less if I do anything different on my birthday or not. Others in my family think it is a national holiday.

I have been holding on to this story since June, I am not sure why but I thought that I would save it until I really needed an idea. I know that it was at least partially because I wanted to do the topic justice. I don’t think that is really today, but it seemed like a good day to use it.

I live in a small town. It is the kind of place that nearly everything is closed by 8pm. Maybe you can imagine what that looks like but often doesn’t leave a lot of options from a retail standpoint. I would best describe the environment like you can often find something that will work but may not be exactly what you want.

I am speaking about hardware, building supplies, sporting goods, clothing and electronics. I am sure that it applies to other things as well but these are the things that I am often in search of. I have definitely grown more accustomed to going directly online. But that doesn’t work well when you haven’t planned in advance, see paragraph one above.

June 1 was my mom’s birthday. Of course I wasn’t prepared so I thought that I would get some flowers. Little did I know the flower shop closed at 4pm and it was 4:15. Fortunately, we already have a non-business relationship and she was still at the shop. I suspect that she would have done it for most people but it at least made me feel like I got preferential treatment.

In building this relationship, I have also learned that how things are done matter. For instance, I have learned that ordering directly from the flower shop puts more margin in the owners direction. So, while you might pay the same ordering from the shop directly versus a national service when the owner does better on the sale, other things happen. I talk about this more at the end of this post.

I do try to give business in town when I can. Without patrons willing to frequent the business, they wont be there at all let alone limited hours. Sometimes I pay the extra 30-50% premium to do my part for the convenience. I should also mention the next bigger city is nearly half an hour away. You are trading time for money in many instances. Unless money is really tight, time is often much more valuable to me.

The second half of this equation is that relationships aren’t free. Of course there is the financial part of it but I am talking about the quid pro quo side. I agreed to transform a picture frame into a memory box by cutting some slots so slogans written on blocks of wood could be slid in for a daughters graduation/birthday party.

It probably took me two hours to do. I will say that I was way more careful than I would normally be because it wasn’t my frame to damage or mess up. But, that is a good lesson for me as well as I can be a little too casual sometimes and things don’t go the way that I think they should in my mind.

Getting back to the theme here. Sometimes the relationship occurs before the business or sometimes it is the other way around. When I was in college, I became friendly with a guy whose parents owned a Chinese restaurant. We did our fair share of buying meals, but usually we got something comped or brought out to sample as well. There were a couple of times that we were invited to the Chinese New Year dinner with the family. That was really cool.

I will throw in one last example. There was a local gas station that unfortunately developed a tank leak and had to be torn down for environmental cleanup earlier this year. He says the plan is to rebuild quickly, I hope so.

I was going to the station across the street because the price was the same and it was the easiest to get back on the road in the direction that I wanted to go. But several times, the attendant asked me to wait 15 minutes for their staff meeting (we do not have self-service gasoline in Oregon). After about the third time this happened, I left to the first station I mentioned and never went back.

I was one of his earliest repeat customers I am pretty sure because he had just purchased the station. Each time I would hand him my debit card he would take the time to read the name and thank me before I left. It wasn’t long and he knew my vehicle, what I wanted. This guy was a people person anyway and I noticed over the years people would pull into the station largely to talk.

He also employed local kids to work. But the real reason I kept going to buy my gasoline was that I began to notice his business was a frequent sponsor of youth sports teams, seasonal music etc. I have never seen the station across the street sponsor anything in this town. Even though I paid at least 10 cents per gallon more I made the choice to spend my money there because it was working harder at things that were important to me.

End Your Programming Routine: The point to all of this is that business can build relationship. And, when you have commerce with relationship that becomes community. Community is caring, the drive to belong and participate which allow both to business and relationship to thrive.

September 8, 2021 – The Book of John and Loving Like Jesus

September 8, 2021 /

It is hard for me to convey how difficult this time has been. It is not that I can’t do the job using words, but that I don’t want to get deeply into explaining the situation. It involves the feelings of loss and despair along with a history of conflict. But for context reasons I will provide an abstract summary below.

Let us just say that there is a significant person in my life that is struggling. There has been a history of conflict with this individual. As a result of the conflict, most people including children have distanced themselves to the point where they are unwilling to do much more than topical help. This person is at a point where help is necessary to function on a day to day basis.

To be 100% fair, this is not my burden to bear alone. In fact, I am a lessor party in this dynamic and it is more directly impacting my wife. The problem is that we are also having some issues related our differences. We have been seeing a counselor over the summertime to try and help. We know the problems, it is more about how to move beyond them.

In general, I am opposed to conflict. Intellectually I know that sometimes it is necessary, my issue is the frequency, intensity and root cause of the conflict. I understand that there is a give and take in a relationship. For the most part, I am ambivalent about a lot of things and then the problem is that I don’t have strong enough opinion leads conflict. For those reasons, I have been tempted to give up but for some reason God pulls me in.

This entire year, our church has been going through a series on the book of John. I didn’t give it much thought last fall when the series began. The truth is, sometimes I have a hard time with continuity because I would estimate that we attend 50% of Sundays. One time a month, we are at the church but teaching in the children’s area and missed the service altogether.

Not this year, with the sermons getting put onto podcast form, I can now listen at any point in the week. That has made me follow the progression more closely and it has also put more faith touchpoints in different parts of the week. Consequently, I have put more thought into the message and how it applies to my life.

If I am honest, there are times that I have not lived to the values that I aspire. Christians would label as ‘sin’ but I think a better descriptor would be ‘humanness’. It is not easy to engage in a situation that outside of your comfort level no matter how right it is supposed to be.

Let me cut to the chase, do you help someone significantly if you can’t stand to be around them and you are the only person willing to entertain the thought at this time? If I play devil’s advocate for just a second, the faith dichotomy comes to head. One end of the spectrum there is living like Jesus versus the god will provide belief.

My journey through this year has led me more to the former and living like Jesus. It is the reason that I made an attempt to resolve relationships with my brother in law. The thing that I did wrong was not trying to understand his perspective and stop having a relationship as a result. Despite doing that, I am under no illusion that there won’t be difficult times in our relationship in the future.

How else can you reconcile values versus action? By doing the difficult things because they are the right things to do is the only thing I know. Standing alone is difficult, it is thankless and it makes you question your decisions. But, I think that is the only way.

End Your Programming Routine: This situation is not all entirely my decision on how to proceed. So, I cannot say how it will ultimately play out. What I am trying to convey today is that regardless of the choice, the path is not easy. Additionally, I appreciate the opportunity to follow along in various forms of media to help me walk my walk. We can only get ‘better’ as humans by looking at our actions and striving to make corrections for the future.

August 30, 2021 – We Made it Through

August 30, 2021 /

I am all over the place this morning. It doesn’t happen very often, but today I completely scrapped what I initially wrote and started over. It was an emotionally and physically draining weekend with the funeral of my father-in-law Frank. I think part of my indecisiveness this morning has to do with the juxtaposition of feelings that multiple people have. I will try to explain.

Before the service, my wife was saying that she was feeling light headed and feint. This was after waking up with a headache and an upset stomach. I felt it was anxiety which she denied it but I know but having had all those symptoms related to anxiety myself, I am almost sure of it. Things calmed down a bit as we readied to get to the funeral home and arranged all of the memorabilia and prepared for the service, until my mother-in-law showed up.

She was a wreck, I had never seen her so despondent. She couldn’t walk without two people’s help, she couldn’t breathe, I don’t think that she was even aware of what was going on around her during the service. That was definitely anxiety. We weren’t even sure if my brother-in-law Juaquin was going to attend the service and he wasn’t on the docket to speak but he did. I don’t want to diverge too much, however there has been lots of strain between my brother-in-law and the rest of the family including my mother.

When I spoke to my wife August 13, I told her that after a prayer for the family, it was on my heart to try and reconcile with Juaquin. I knew that I wasn’t living my values by trying to block out my brother-in-law. As Frank was the family peacekeeper he was the one that always looked after his son and he would want that if at all possible. I decided that I would try to apologize and see if we could move past our differences but had not had a chance to do so yet.

As was customary for Juaquin, he wanted to have the last word and inserted himself into the program after all of the eulogy was completed while the service was in progress. He spoke the truth. The truth was that Frank did not have any desire for a bunch of fuss of a funeral. It was an angry kind of Malcolm-X like tone, nevertheless it was true. What was also true was that my wife also spoke truth. She spoke the words ‘were you hungry?’, ‘were you cold?’, ‘what do you need?’. This funeral was not for Frank, this was for his wife to appease the guilt of his death, it was for his family and friends to see him one more time.

There is still a lot of hurt and hangups here. There is misplaced blame of why and where and all that. Trust me, there is much more to the back story than I have relayed, but it is personal and inappropriate for me to write about. Unfortunately, all the plans post the funeral were changed because it was just too raw for some and we needed to spend time on healing. With that, we spent most of yesterday cleaning up and delivering leftover flowers to people that had attempted to help the family post the funeral.

End Your Programming Routine: I did say that I was sorry to Juaquin for the past and that I would like to move forward. He accepted it lukewarmly, I think that was about the best I could hope for and didn’t leave a lot of room for more than that. At least I can say that I will try to be more empathetic and look through his eyes before judgement and typecasting.

August 24, 2021 – It’s Getting Late and I Did the Unthinkable

August 24, 2021 /

I am going to be short again as I spent most of my ‘free’ time moving computers around in my office. One of the many reasons I am short on time is that I need to spend time collating through my data to find pictures for the funeral slide show.

The funeral home setup a Facebook group for people to participate and interact. I think it is a great idea for most people. My problem is that I wanted to get to some of the pictures, which required me to sign up for a Facebook account. Considering my mostly hate relationship with Nextdoor and my ambivalence for LinkedIn, I really dread seeing more junk mail clog up my inbox. I am scared to death that someone is going to see me here and try to draw me in. I wasn’t quite the ‘I don’t have a cell phone type’ but I never wanted to participate in Facebook.

End Your Programming Routine: I have always believed in doing the right things for the right reasons. I do not want Facebook collecting my data and I find most of the interactions somewhere between ridiculous, appalling and trite. All that said, sometimes it is a useful tool. For that, I had to do it for the right reasons but don’t count on seeing me there any time soon.

August 16, 2021 – The Little Pastel Book

August 16, 2021 /

Last Friday I passed a milestone. I have a journal that I have been writing in for fourteen years. It is something that I do periodically often weekly, occasionally there were 6 month gaps like last summer when I was busy sun up to sun down. I guess what it has become is kind of a log of what I have done and what I am planning to do with some thoughts and feeling mixed in.

If we go back in the time machine and put myself where I was fourteen years ago, my second son had yet to be born. I was working three jobs ago and I wasn’t happy then either (see a theme here). This was the pre-podcast era for me as well so I was listening to talk radio on AM and I was reading several books on the Dave Ramsey reading list. You can see my references to Dan Miller’s “40 Days to the Work you Love”.

I was going to use this journal to document my thoughts about what I was reading, develop my goals and work on progress as it relates to those goals. This is sort of how it devolved into documenting my work over the years. I will say that it has sometimes been useful. I have been able to figure out when I did the last oil change or a general time frame of events.

One interesting use that I had was to look back on trends. 6-16-14. As predicted, not much has changed. I did move wood out of the garage last weekend. That means that things are pretty much prepped to finish the garage re-org. Vacation was pretty awesome and did the trick of relaxing the mind. I need to do an oil change on the pick-up within the the next few weekends. Serious travel is about to begin and summer will be over. It is a bit disappointing and I am seriously reconsidering my career choice.

When I was in the diminishing days of my last job, I was reading what I wrote through the years. I realized that my first mention of job unhappiness was in 2012. I started wondering why I was still working somewhere seven years later where I was still unhappy and that is what ultimately made me pull the trigger on putting in my notice. I figured it was just as insane to quit without a plan as it was to continue to work in misery.

Most things that I write are not really private, but they are personal. I have noted births, deaths, projects and statuses in story form. In some ways, this blog is a continuation or expansion of that. My last entry in this book was going to summarize my journey over the last fourteen years. That was of course interrupted with the passing of my father-in-law so I needed to get that documented instead.

My son gave me a new journal for Christmas so I am about to get started in this one. I don’t think that I will do anything differently. I will probably keep doing it the way that it has been going. I suppose it is another form of therapy for me. I don’t really plan on what I am going to say, I just say things about where I am at at the moment.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not saying that this is for everyone. I think that it helps me keep perspective on life and a record of what I have done. It is part of that self reflection kind of time that I spend. Once I have sorted out where I am at, I can make plans to move forward.

August 12, 2021 – Teens and Grief

August 12, 2021 /

Today I am going to be an expert on something that I have no business claiming. To make things doubly worse, this is the area that my wife excels in and she is in Texas. Just like most things in my life, we are here now so lets see what we can do.

It was 4AM, when my wife called. As you would expect, I was asleep. It took me a couple of seconds to process that Frank had died. You would hope that in these situations, the person on the phone would provide some level of comfort and assurance (that would be me giving it). Again, another thing that I am not good at. In my defense, I was half asleep and shocked as well as being not my strong suit.

Being the ‘do everything now’ person that she is, she wanted to me to wake up the boys and give them the message immediately. Which I did. The hour between 4-5AM was kind of a blur. There was silence, then praying, then my kids went in two different directions. One claimed that Grandpa would want a party and so we should celebrate and the other shut down and started crying.

Olivia called again around 5AM and we all talked together for a couple of minutes. After the call, I suggested to the boys that I make breakfast since we were all up. My thought was trying to keep us all together so no one gets too low. Surprisingly, they both wanted to go back to bed. I kind of wandered around trying to figure out what my next steps should be.

While they were sleeping, I hatched a plan that we were going to get out of the house together. Unfortunately because we are in quarantine our options are extremely limited but we could drive and we could be outside. My goals were to keep us together and provide an opportunity to grieve and share and open up away from electronic distractions

My first thought was to go to the beach since it was going to be over 100 degrees here. When I posed the idea to my son, he said that we should go to Bend (east and not west to the beach). I started thinking and I also wanted to go that direction. I had yet to see what the results of the wildfires last year.

Post Labor day weekend last year, millions of Oregonians experienced the wildfires. For several thousand (in this area of the state), their lives were shattered. Kind of like ours were yesterday. We saw a town that used to exist and 75% was roads, slabs and foundations. On the positive side clean-up was ongoing and new buildings were in various stages of completion.

I think that this is a good story to make a corollary. Grieving is a process. The acute event is bad but we have to know that the damage is slowly repaired over time by taking deliberate steps. I can’t just take one day off and everyone will feel better and be OK. I was around 20 when my Grandfather died. I still thought about him for years afterward. He never saw me graduate college or get married or see his great grandchild for whom he was named.

We ended the day in Central Oregon, explored some caves and made a list of new things that we wanted to do when we came back. We stopped and looked at things I always wanted to do but never seemed to have the time. We listened to music that we thought represented Frank or that we knew he liked. By the time it was dark, everything was a little bit better.

End Your Programming Routine: This was a win for me. I started the day not knowing how to relate to each child in the way that was best for them. By the time that it was over, I think that we all felt that we took a step in the right direction. We all feel remorse that we didn’t have a chance to say goodbye or one last thing. God willing, he hears us now.