I haven’t posted any personal updates since March. The days blend together when we’re “social distancing.” So, behold, some highlights from the Life of Jason.

In no particular order:

Cats. The feline overlords who dwell indoors, Murphy and Fiona, are doing well. My outdoor domestic friend, Ziggy, is hit or miss; his weight goes up and down and up and down, and he’s scrawny to begin with. He’s been somewhat less people-friendly for the last few months. Whether it’s a function of him perhaps being ill (or old) or recognizing he’s in territory where he’s lost fights, I cannot say. I am convinced, however, that he’s recently gone fully or mostly deaf, based on changes of his behavior and the way that I interact with him. “My” two new outdoor cats — Kali and Orange, ferals who know each other in some way — went from full-on social distancing to acting like lifelong domestics. In fact, Kali basically lives on my back porch now and every time I go out there, she gets excited and purrs and demands petting. Even Orange (an intact male) occasionally seeks some attention, including occasional belly rubs, and he goes nuts over catnip.

Reading Books. I’m still (usually) doing a Reading Sabbath day on Sundays. I’ve recently completed The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class (Joel Kotkin), The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times (George Weigel), Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despite One Another (Matt Tiabbi), Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race and Class (Charles Murray), Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism and the Future of the West (R. R. Reno) and Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Nassim Nicholas Taleb).

Writing Books. Long-time readers of this beautiful, well-honed, sublimely reasoned blog know I’ve been writing several books. One of those projects — From Pencil to Print — has undergone a significant transition. When it slithered up to the 200,000-word mark with several chapters still outstanding, I took a page from my friend Ken’s playbook and opted to split the project into several smaller volumes. Three of them are in a mostly done state … and as of yesterday, one of them is finished. Yes, The Diction Dude Essential Guide to Getting Started as a Professional Writer is complete and available as an advance review copy, should any of you wish to review it. I’ll be out for purchase in print and ebook form in mid-to-late August. This volume is the first in a series of 10 planned volumes in The Diction Dude Essential Guide series. The second volume (Mechanics of Fiction) is probably 70 percent done; the book about short-form technical non-fiction (Service Journalism) is probably 40 percent done. Two of the volumes are at zero percent because they’re new ideas that didn’t fit into the original plan, but the remaining five are somewhere between 20 percent and 60 percent done, thanks solely to me slicing up the Pencil to Print manuscript. Likewise, I’m progressing through Delivering MIRACLES (my healthcare book) and should be done with the first draft by the end of the summer. So excited to see these multi-year projects finally come to fruition. It’s been slow going, running several projects in parallel instead of in series, but I’ve learned that I’ve got a cap for how long in a week I can work on any one project before my eyes roll into the back of my head and I just want to smash some battleships in World of Warships.

Health care. As I mentioned in March, I likely had Covid-19 disease. At the time, I hadn’t been to my doctor’s office in, oh, maybe a decade. (I’m a healthcare quality consultant. Just as auto mechanics tend to drive junkers, we HQCs tend to use spit and duct tape to keep our bodies going.) The nurse on the phone was absolutely horrid to me, so I elected to switch primary-care physicians. My new doc is young and aggressive. My family “enjoys” a long and intimate relationship with hypertension — and I, myself, had blood pressure high enough to compare favorably to jetliner hydraulics — so she ordered a bunch of tests: enough blood work to impress Dracula, a transthoracic echocardiogram, a renal vascular ultrasound. (Pro tip: The ultrasound tech is not amused when you ask, during a renal ultrasound, if you’re having twins.) Anyway, it turns out that I’m not dying. She prescribed some long-overdue meds for blood pressure; that’s my one major genetic inheritance from which there’s no escape. I also was very, very, very low on Vitamin D again, which probably explains the slow recovery and frequent deep exhaustion even after I recovered from probably-Covid. So I’m back to daily supplementing, and spending more time in the Great Outdoors.

The funny thing about blood pressure — I know on paper the factors that adversely affect pressure, but I didn’t know how those things affect me, personally, in the real world. So I ran an informal experiment on myself, testing what happens when I do and don’t enjoy things like fast food, cigars, alcohol and coffee. For the most part, coffee kicks my butt very hard, reading-wise, for a few hours, then the effect dissipates. I can’t see an obvious short-term contribution from cigars. Alcohol matters if I go above two or three standard drinks in a “session” with effects that last at least 36 hours. And fast food? All that sodium makes a huge difference … and that difference lasts for 48 hours to 72 hours.

Moral of the story, kids? No one’s immortal. I’m in good shape under-the-hood for my age and genetics, but as we get older, we must do what we must to avoid falling off the Cliff of Good Health without a parachute. And for most people, the Cliff is kinda obvious, but easy to stumble over by accident. I’m avoiding my cliff, and I hope and pray that you do, too.

Hiking. Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to the woods I go. In the last few weeks, I’ve:

• Completed a 5-mile loop at Millennium Park (the yellow trail plus the to/from stretch to the trailhead).
• Completed a 4-mile loop at Grand Ravines Park (the path around the park) with Brittany and Mel.
• Completed a 4-mile loop at Seidman Park (the outer-ring path), which includes segments of the North Country Trail.
• Completed a 4-mile loop at Aman Park (the outer-ring path) with my brother and his friend.

Plus, in two weeks, my brother and his friend and I will undertake an 8-mile section hike of the NCT, northbound from Nichols Lake South to 14 Mile in Newaygo County. He’s also suggested that he really, really, really wants to do Isle Royale, so we’ve tentatively planned it for Memorial Day 2021. 

I took pictures at three of those bulleted hikes; check out the photo galleries to view them.

Politics. I was roped into running, for a second time, for the 17th district commission seat for the Kent County Board of Commissioners. My district is something like D+50, so we joke about me being a “sacrificial goat,” but it’s still a good exercise in civic engagement. Similarly, if you haven’t checked out the #Unity2020 ticket information and you’re not a fan of either Trump or Biden — well, check it out.

Church. In June, Sacred Heart re-opened at 25 percent capacity, as authorized by the bishop. Kudos to the parish team for a smooth transition. The parish added two additional Masses on the weekends — both of which are billed for vulnerable populations and thus masks are obligatory — and did a ton of great stuff, including Zoom-based all-parish meetings, to keep everyone connected and engaged. As of July, we no longer need to sign up for services. 

Because Sacred Heart is in tune with the full history of the Church Universal, with a pastor with an admirable degree of erudition and foresight, we actually re-introduced a practice that was common during the Black Death years, centuries ago: Liturgical forceps. Yes. Holy tweezers. When you attend Mass in the Extraordinary Form (i.e., the pre-Vatican II Mass), you kneel at the altar rail to receive the Eucharist on the tongue. In the Middle Ages, with plague sweeping across the land yet lacking knowledge of the germ theory of disease transmission, the Church in sua sapientia authorized (and still authorizes) special liturgical tweezers so that the priest does not risk touching your mouth with fingers that might have touched other mouths. So Sacred Heart busted out the forceps at the EF Masses. (With the forceps, he drops the Host on the tongue, he doesn’t just lay it on, so the forceps themselves never touch you, either.) And with the priest wearing a non-liturgical neck gaiter during the distribution, we actually complied with social-distancing rules even during a moment as intimate as that.

Social events. With the Coronapocalypse still with us, social activities have been somewhat spare. Tony and I went on June 1 to the grand re-opening of the Firekeepers Casino in Battle Creek, Michigan. I enjoyed a lovely Sunday dinner with my friend Patrick a while back, and I got to check out his scrumptious library. Plus I enjoyed a lovely walk around the Grand Ravines county park with my friends Mel and Brittany (and Brittany’s dog, Mischief). The writers’ groups have been meeting virtually since March. We did, however, have a pair of cookouts at my brother’s house — one a few weeks ago, with grilled burgers, and then on Independence Day, with slow-cooked ribs. Both events were faaaaantastic.

All for now.

Something fun happens once every four years—and I’m not talking about the interminable agony of the presidential election cycle. Today marks leap day, the quadrennial recurrence of the 29th of February. To my fellow children of the Ford Administration, I say: Happy 10th birthday. Just think: In 2060 or 2064, you’ll finally be old enough to legally raise a toast in your own honor. Perhaps by then, some of you will even have adulted.

A handful of miscellaneous reflections follow, in alpha order by subject heading.

Cats

Over the last few months I’ve accumulated a second pair of cats. These felines, whom I’ve cleverly nicknamed “Kali” (the calico) and “Grey” (the grey), have grown accustomed to receiving their daily sacrifices of kibble. Both seem semi-feral; they don’t skedaddle at the first sign of their human butler—a red tabby sometimes stops by and it darts for its life even if it sees me in the window—but I can’t get too close. Kali, in particular, shows up on the back porch every morning around 9 a.m. and greets me with alternating meows and hisses, darting to-and-fro but never getting within arm’s reach. That little bugger won’t even go near the food until it sees me on the other side of the kitchen window.

Relatedly, Ziggy d’Cat still stops by intermittently. He remains scrawny, but not as deathly emaciated as he was a few months ago. However, he still expects shredded chicken and will bypass kibble if he thinks I’ll see him and therefore bestow upon him a portion of the holy bird. As such, I keep some of the shredded rotisserie chicken I buy for my lunchtime salads reserved for him.

Meanwhile, indoors, Murphy d’Cat has largely forgotten his trauma of my Bonaire trip, while Fiona d’Cat has discovered that if she’s persistent enough in ignoring my attempts to redirect her, that she eventually will find a perch on my left arm whilst I recline at my work desk. Both occasionally play with the toys Brittany brought for them, and both love the new cardboard scratching posts that she gifted to Their Feline Majesties.

Church & Lent

I’ve grown accustomed to the rhythm-and-flow of Mass in the Extraordinary Form at Sacred Heart, which I’ve attended since October. I think I much prefer the EF to the Ordinary Form that most Catholics experience. Probably the biggest reason relates to being left alone. In the OF, you’re forced to be a “community.” So one must endure congregational singing with insipid 1970s-era Simon & Garfunkel show tunes. You get ad populum priests, who must then put on a “Mass face” as if he were a performer. You suffer the hand-holding and cringe-worthy “prayers of the faithful” and a mismash of ill-trained altar servers. The nice thing about the OF is that you’re there for a purpose, but it’s up to you whether you follow along in your hand missal, or pray inwardly, or line up for Confession, or whatever. And there’s no army of “extraordinary ministers” or hippies with guitars to be found. That said, I still prefer the current Liturgy of the Hours versus the old Divine Office. The Office isn’t as rich in Matins as the LotH Office of Readings, quality of the psalter notwithstanding.

As I occasionally YouTube-surf deep-think videos, I occasionally find some with a religious theme. I’m struck by the intellectual poverty of much of contemporary Christian apologetics. Several examples showcase my frustration. First, I’ve watched a few hours of YouTube videos featuring Dr. Taylor Marshall, a well-known “trad bro” commentator—one of those younger, gleeful traditionalist Catholics who’s into smells-and-bells, lots of babies, the “traditional Latin Mass,” Communion on the tongue, and theories about the alleged assassination of John Paul I by nefarious cardinals affiliated with the Freemasons. Lots of decrying the “Novus Ordo” (more properly, the Ordinary Form) and boasting of their fecundity. Second, I watched a series of lectures from the BeThinking National Apologetics Day Conference from 2011, which was a response to the New Atheism. Distinguished speakers included William Lane Craig, John Lennox, Peter J Williams and Gary Habermas. These videos constitute the cutting edge of Evangelical apologetics, but they’re fighting last generation’s battles. (So are the New Atheists, for that matter; none of them take seriously the problem of quantum probability as a significant blow to the classic formations of the Cosmological Argument.) Third, I’ve watched a series of lectures by Robert Barron, the priest who founded Word On Fire and who, a few years ago, became one of the bishops in the archdiocese of Los Angeles. He seems like a nice guy, and certainly learned, but he can’t stop preaching to the converted.

My biggest problem with apologetics, writ large? It’s only persuasive if you’re already on the inside. No one’s speaking, really, to people who may be sympathetic but not yet within the tent. Arguments tend to rely on Scripture or too-precious argumentative scrupulosity presented as if the conclusions were stronger than they really are. Not a lot of grappling with fundamentals. For that matter, the “apologetics” offered by modern atheists prove similarly defective. I think there’s ripe ground, somewhere, to make an inductive preponderance-of-the-evidence argument for questioning agnostics who enjoy better-than-average knowledge of modern science and who prove capable of thinking themselves out of a wet paper bag. But if such a resource exists, I’ve yet to encounter it.

Granted, it’s necessary and valuable to use Scripture and various parts of the Magisterium to succor the congregation. The problem arises when pastors consistently pick the low-hanging fruit. A person who’s not in the congregation, or perhaps in the pews but doubting, isn’t ever going to be persuaded by an argument that relies on some anodyne phrase in 5 Galassionians 87:331, and isn’t going to care that William Lane Craig believes that the multiverse challenge to the Cosmological Argument is insufficiently parsimonious to be true. 

Anyway, it’s Lent. Last week, Sacred Heart offered a 40 Hours devotion. It launched at the end of the 12:30 Mass last Sunday (a Missa Cantata in the Extraordinary Form), with a Eucharistic procession in the nave and the full, chanted Litany of the Saints. I volunteered for the midnight-to-2-a.m. shift on both Monday and Tuesday morning. Then, Ash Wednesday. So this week I landed 10-ish hours in the nave. I observed the fast-and-abstinence rule on Ash Wednesday and the first Friday of Lent (yesterday). I intend to keep that practice “religiously” this year. 

Diving

I’ve managed to flesh out the remaining courses I’m planning to take through the dive shop. With those courses and their mandatory dives, and a few additional dives over the summer, I’ve set a goal of achieving the SSI Master Diver milestone by the end of this year’s season. I’ve already completed the Nitrox and buoyancy specialties. So the five I’ve asked to get scheduled this year include Navigation, Diver Stress and Rescue, Science of Diving, Search and Recovery, and either Night or Deep diving. Upon logging 50 dives and completing five specialties (of which, Stress and Rescue is mandatory), the Master Diver recognition automatically applies.

Diving is an expensive hobby, but all of these courses were bought and paid for last April, as part of a package for my new computer and new BC. So my 2020 out-of-pocket for all of this is effectively $0, which is nice. (And the same held for Bonaire; the resort package and the airline tickets were bought in mid-2019.)

Reading

My Sunday Reading Sabbath activity continues apace. In the last few weeks, I finished:

• Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
• Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall and Afterlife of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik

I’ve been working through Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) and Civilization: A New History of the Western World by Roger Osborne. In addition, during the 40 Hours last week, I read—in one sitting each—the Book of Job and the Gospel of St. John. 

Next on the list, I pivot to St. Augustine, with The Confessions, The City of God and On Christian Doctrine. These books, as I own them, constitute Volume 16 of the Great Books of the Western World series—the second (1990) edition, edited by Mortimer J. Adler. I picked up a mint-condition package of all 60 hardcover volumes a long time ago, on eBay, but until I read some Nietzsche a few months ago, I hadn’t really cracked any of them open except to marvel at the thin paper and minuscule type.

After Augustine, I think I’m going to lighten up a bit. I “liberated” some of the old Write616 library, including some Jim Harrison books that heretofore I haven’t encountered. I’ll probably use Harrison as a breather, then pivot to Aquinas later in the year. 

One thing I’ve learned from Osborne’s book is that you can’t fully understand the last 1,500 years of European history unless you grasp the Augustine-Aquinas frameworks and how the worldviews promoted by these two saints radically shaped the intellectual life of Western Civilization. You don’t get medieval Christendom without Augustine; you don’t get the Enlightenment, the Reformation and the Counter Reformation without Aquinas and the Scholastics. And you can’t rally grok the fundamentals of the modern debate between liberalism and populism/integralism without listening for the echoes of the Augustine/Aquinas tension.

Social Calendar

My social calendar hasn’t been super active lately, which is good. I continue to attend my two writers’ groups, and in February I hosted one. A few weeks ago, I hoofed it to the East Side for cigars and dinner with Tony, Jen, Dr. Jon and the Doctor’s Wife. Had lunch last week with Brittany. I’m going to visit my mother tomorrow. I had a cigar and the “Champagne of Beers” with my former landlord and his wife last week. I enjoyed lunch a few weeks ago with the old crew from Priority Health. I keep missing drinks with Scott because of our opposite travel schedules, and lunch with Patrick keeps getting bumped, however. 

Videos

I generally don’t watch much television, but I have been watching Doctor Who on BBC America. I’m conflicted. On one hand, I’m satisfied with Jodie Whittaker’s incarnation of The Doctor, although following Peter Capaldi, who was my favorite, is a tough row to hoe. On the other hand, I really, really dislike how on-the-nose woke the Chibnall era has been. I can’t improve upon the review recently authored by Simon Danes although I’m not as bearish about Whittaker as he.

Conversely, I’m really enjoying Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access. I love the pacing, and the plot, and the acting. There’s enough genuinely new material that it’s an eye-popping new perspective on the Trek universe, but the callbacks to TNG are appropriately subtle and well-done. I even enjoy Wesley Crusher’s The Ready Room recap videos.

Weight

Weight loss continues. According to records in MyFitnessPal, I haven’t been this light and airy since 2013.

A while back, I augmented MyFitnessPal with notes I made in various places (including this blog) before the app even existed, so I input data points going back to 2004. It looks like a slow-motion roller-coaster. I started 2005 around 275 pounds, although I believe that even by then, I had lost a fair amount. My guess is that in the summer of 2004, I hovered just below 300, but at the time, I didn’t own a scale. By May 27, 2005, I recorded a weight of 210; that was the holiday weekend where I changed my hairstyle and wardrobe and replaced by glasses with contacts. On May 1, 2006, I logged 160 pounds, although I had achieved that milestone several months earlier. That 157-to-163 weight fluctuated consistently until late 2009. On August 8, 2010, I logged 210 lbs again. And from there, a slow ascent—230 pounds in December 2012, 250 pounds in May 2016, 270 pounds by July 2017.

Lots of those data points directly correlate to various stresses. Over 2009 and 2010, I relocated three times and was involved in a major car crash. In late 2012, I had a ton of work stress with reorgs at the hospital. In mid-2016, I was doing HEDIS. By mid-2017, more work stress with a new boss at Priority Health.

Now that I’m self-employed, work stress goes down. So does my weight.

Funny how that “works.”

Work

Speaking of work—yikes.

I made the executive decision a year ago to prioritize my books above all other tasks. I think that decision proved sound. Of those tomes, one is mostly done, and the other is coming along nicely. Writing books isn’t an easy process; it takes time and research. And if you’re not in the mood, forcing yourself to write usually just subsequently forces you to un-write what you’d committed.

I have been contracting with just one client—a media company—performing content renovation full-time for a year, and part-time for several years before that. The role pays enough, and because it’s through a payroll company, it’s W2 work (with benefits) rather than 1099 work. However, the client shut down with no notice in early December, rebooting again in January. I went an entire month without income. That wasn’t fun. I made it through, but it cut close to the bone. Last week and this week, the same client temporarily restricted everyone to 85 percent of hours. Not helpful.

As a freelancer/contractor, it’s never a good idea to rely on just one client. I’ve always known that, because I’ve freelanced in some capacity for a decade. But I got burned by sacrificing portfolio diversity in favor of focused book-writing time. So over the last week, I’ve been on a mad-dash of client acquisition. This “reach out and contract with someone” process moves faster than I hoped, because I really wanted these books to be done first, but it is what it is. I also thought seriously about going back to a 9-to-5 office job, but the problem there is one of over-specialization. Jobs I could land tomorrow won’t pay more than my current contracting gig. Jobs that do pay more prove more challenging to obtain because they’re (a) more rare in this local market and (b) in different industries than health care. So I’m at something of a competitive disadvantage for Quality or Analytics roles in West Michigan because I don’t have an IT degree and I hail from the health care industry.

So over this week and last week, I’ve been doing a few things to shore up my personal finances:

1. Set a goal of $10k in revenue per month. It’ll take some time to materialize, but I’ve never actually goal-set in this manner before. 
2. Acquire new writing-and-editing clients to augment short-term cash flow.
3. Add two new business lines to Gillikin & Associates to support local businesses with self-funded insurance coverage to better manage employee health.
4. Launch Diction Dude (likely on Monday), which I’ve been working on off the side of my desk. I didn’t want to launch it until my book was done, but … yeah.
5. Launch Lakeshore Literary (also likely on Monday). This is the one-man successor to Caffeinated Press, which we closed in December.

Writing

And on the writing front—

• I penned two short stories for my writing groups. So they’re going to be workshopped next month.
• Progress is solid on From Pencil to Print.

—30—

The new year is a mere 2 percent complete but so far, so good:

• Kicked the new year off right with a 6-mile hike along parts of the North Country Trail and some horse trails, near Yankee Springs Recreational Area. Went well. My brother came, too, which was nice. The hike was sponsored by FBET; I’ve recently registered for a series of FBET trainings to occur over the next few months.
• We held a board of directors meeting for Caffeinated Press. John is back from sabbatical. Woohoo!
• Met the new landlord.
• Already prepared federal taxes for Gillikin & Associates and VLO Media.
• Lots of odds-and-ends wrapped up.
• Welcomed two new members to the Grand River Writing Tribe.

January’s going to be a flurry — lots of stuff that I must wrap up before the end of the month, because starting in February, my daily life is going to take a major change for reasons I can’t share yet.
But as I said: So far, so good.

A few weeks ago I remarked to some colleagues that it seemed both too early and too late for the beginning of March to have arrived. By that, I meant that so much has happened that time is flying by. But, flip side, it’s only just March. Time’s also draggin’ along.
Some recent highlights, in no particular order:
Windsor Trip. In February, a group of roughly a dozen folks met at Caesar’s Windsor, a hotel-casino property inside of Windsor, Ontario, for a weekend of gambling and consumption. ‘Twas a lot of fun. I ended up roughly breaking even for the whole darn weekend, aided by a hand-pay hit on penny slots and a big win in the high-limit room at MGM Grand Detroit. Tony and I dedicate next week’s Vice Lounge Online podcast to the trip report.
Denton Trip. Got back last week from three nights in lovely Denton, Texas—a suburb of northern Dallas. Great time with Roux, Sparkles, Edwin, Ryan and the whole gang. My trip report will be released as a VLO podcast in roughly a month, and highlights also popped into a Denton Dallas & Beyond podcast last week. (Spoiler: I appear as a guest on the DDB show.)
NAHQ Updates. Been back-and-forth to Chicago three times since the new year. We successfully held a day-long in-person focus group related to the initiative I’m co-chairing to rewrite the Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice for Healthcare Quality Professionals. In addition, I’ve been one of the subject-matter experts working through revisions to the Health Data Analytics competency area. Not to mention, I’ve been working directly with our CEO on a board strategy presentation. Meetings galore. Intensely rewarding work.
Get Published! Conference. Last Saturday, the third annual Get Published! conference, sponsored by MiFiWriters and held at Herrick District Library, went off without a hitch. Good content. Emphasis was on voice, POV and self-editing. Three panels and two workshops. The MiFiWriters team gets beaucoup credit for their excellent command of logistics.
Health & Wellness. I returned from Denton with a touch of the flu, it seems. Not pleasant. I’ve been using my elliptical to prep for an upcoming wilderness training. Turns out that ellipticals are not like the treadmills and recumbent bikes I’ve been previously familiar with—my problem on the elliptical isn’t my cardiopulmonary fitness but rather that my quads give out before I can really tax my lungs. Baby steps, as it were.
Caffeinated Press. We’ve been doing a lot, although almost all of it is behind the scenes. Brittany and I are presently running the business as, effectively, a partnership; we’ve established a weekly private office-hours session to get things done. That focused time has been helpful, insofar as we’ve made tremendous progress on things like inventory and author statements and long-term sales/distribution strategy. We’ve had to prioritize shoring-up biz ops ahead of editorial for the last few months, which was a good decision, albeit painful for impatient contributors. The way we see it, we either need to stabilize our income stream or just stop. We’re focusing on the former in the short term so that we can continue to do editorial stuff for years into the future.
Write616. Programming’s off to a good start. I’m hosting the next Get Pressed session (about “Author Media Toolkit”) this coming Tuesday evening. Beyond programming, we’ve been doing a lot of admin stuff related to the GLCL-to-Write616 governance transition.
Hobbies. So far, so good with Vice Lounge Online. We’re fortunate to have had several very generous contributors to our Patreon page to support the show. Over the last few weeks I’ve enjoyed several great conversations with people about potential scuba trips this summer—woohoo! Even if it’s just in concept. I’m working through the study guide to take the FCC exam to upgrade my amateur radio license from Technician to General class. And I’m enrolled in a week-long Wilderness First Responder course in May, in Quebec. Really looking forward to that. This trip is why I wrote my hiking-gear inventory list last month and re-curated all the supplies in my master first-aid kit.
Writing. Still working through my personal slush. Haven’t submitted much in the last month, although I’ve managed to apply for two juried contests and for a slot as an artist-in-residence at Isle Royale National Park. I don’t carry high expectations for any of this; I’m merely writing, and rewriting, and occasionally submitting to carefully selected markets. Like ya do.

Today is the 21st day of January, in the Year of Our Lord MMXVIII. And I sit at my desk, looking at this—

—and reflecting that two months ago today, I was wrapping up time in the office and about to head out for a five-day Thanksgiving Day holiday. I looked forward to it, really; it was my chance to decompress a bit and to amp up my word count on my NaNo novel. All was well with the world. The course was locked; the tiller was firmly set amidships with nothing but calm seas enveloping the horizon.
Much has changed since then. The last two months have been surprisingly eventful—and by eventful I mean in a “I will remember this 30 years from now” kind of way, because this moment serves as an inflection point.
A cluster of storms now thunder in the distance:

• We’ve had significant board departures at Caffeinated Press
• We’ve re-branded and re-launched GLCL as Write616
• Tony and I re-skinned Vice Lounge Online
• I managed to lose, despite the holidays, about 10 pounds
• Murphy d’Cat has been puking quite a bit lately, meaning a vet visit is on the horizon
• My landlord has suggested that he’s about to sell the house where I’ve dwelt for the last seven years
• My department at Priority Health (I’ve been with the corporation for nearly 18 years) is being reorganized, and the role I occupy of departmental manager is being eliminated, although the “what’s next for Jason” question still hasn’t been answered

As you might imagine, it’s been a wee bit complicated lately. Nearly every major aspect of my life—job, hobbies, domicile, pet health—has been put under a degree of stress that they haven’t before, and to boot, it’s all been pretty much simultaneous.
Funny thing, though. In my head, this is freakin’ exciting. (Well, not the Murphy part, of course.)
Allow me to explain this apparent excursion into cognitive dissonance.
Long-time readers of this award-winning, action-packed blog know that I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 12 years thinking through the whole “what do you want to be when you grow up” question. In fact, my boss at PH has recently put that very question to me—which is odd, given that I’m a year older than she—but I’ve finally concluded that I don’t think that the question makes any bloody sense.
People identify themselves by fixed constants: Jobs, careers, family, military service, volunteer work, etc. Their self-conception is a function of their identity as defined by their role in the economy or in society. And that’s fine. So a person might answer the “who do you wanna be?” question by saying something like “a politician” or “a doctor” or “a data analyst.”
I’ve always found that framework to be deeply lacking. People are multidimensional. We do, of course, have jobs, and families, and personal and professional service commitments. But we’re more than the sum of our parts. Because most people develop deep ties to place and people, through jobs and mortgages and marriage and procreation, they’re fundamentally constrained in their ability to pivot. They’re locked. So they accept the chains and they even come to identify with them. I’m not much of a Nietzsche devotee, but the master/slave dynamic he outlines in Genealogy of Morals has its useful real-world applications.
On several occasions over the years I’ve followed a conservative impulse to not-act despite a desire to act, because it was safer to stay in place than to make progress seasoned by a higher risk potential. In particular, I think about the missed opportunity of setting out for a summer-long sabbatical hiking the Pacific Crest Trail eight years ago, although I realize in general that my list of bucket-list goals and the trajectory of my day-to-day life have been deeply out of sync for quite some time. So even though I wouldn’t have chosen that answer, the “who do you want to be?” question turned, by default, into “Humpty Dumpty.” There I sat, on the wall, waiting for the great fall. Waiting. Endless waiting, believing myself to be in charge yet a slave to comfortable inertia.
The wait is over. No matter what happens at Priority Health, for example, a point’s been reached where stasis is no longer an option. I’ve got some irons in the fire; I may well end up better off there than I am today. Or I might leave, opting instead to finally launch that health quality consultancy I’ve been thinking about (and which, my peers across the country have uniformly encouraged me to do). Who knows?
Likewise, six months from now I might still be here on Prospect Avenue. Or I might not be. Maybe I’ll buy the house. Maybe someone else will, and either I’ll continue to rent or I’ll need to relocate.
I’ve got a ton of new accountabilities at Caffeinated Press with our board turnover and with the re-launch efforts at Write616 still going strong. Do I keep going? Do I bail? Do I do something else entirely?
I’m deeply fortunate to have the economic security to weather this storm and a network of friends, family and professional colleagues who’ve been so generous lately with their time and counsel.
Six months from now, things will be very different. I don’t know how they’ll be different, or what different even looks like. But Humpty finally caught the storm winds. Humpty’s toddling off the wall. Humpty won’t get put back together again. But you want to know something?
I don’t think he wants to be.