Afterword

I did 5 miles today on my lunch hour. I can tell I’m going to hurt a bit tomorrow, but hell if it didn’t feel great! I am debating if I should get up early tomorrow and ride the opposite direction of my meeting in Portland to do my weight day. It will make for a long one, but I hate it that I’d otherwise have to miss.

Anyway, Shar and I had a bit of a discussion about my airline miles credit card. I paid for my flight (Thanksgiving week no less) with my Delta card because I had accumulated 70,000 miles. Sort of stupid since I was saving up for a trip to Europe, but with the baby coming along, I really didn’t want to spend $700 on a flight to Michigan in November. Anyway, that’s besides the point.

The reason I had 70,000 miles on my credit card is because I spent $70,000 on my credit card. That alone should give me pause. Sure, it was over the course of a year and a half, but still. I pay it off every month, but it’s one of those things where I didn’t really think too much about whether or not I had the money to spend because it wasn’t coming out of my checking account right at that moment. So, I spent more than I should have, consistently.

So I’ve switched over to using my debit card, which in and of itself is enough to curb the spending. When you see your checking account balance, the internal debate is a lot stronger as to whether or not you need a specific item. Most often, the answer is ‘no’. Anyway, I think I’m reigning it in and the spending habit is being curbed. Besides, if you just saved the annual fee you spend on those things, you’re halfway to a ticket right there.

And traveling is something we want to do. Where, no one knows. Neither of us have traveled with a baby before, so that will be freaky. But I know we both need it.

As for work, things are going fine. I just passed my 1 year anniversary in the new role and I couldn’t be happier with the change. It’s sort of strange being slightly lower on the totem pole, but sometimes you have to take a step back to move ahead, and my happiness and fulfillment are pretty high even if I’m not getting rich anytime soon. Of course the benefits don’t hurt - we did the math the other day and it’s going to cost about $600 out-of-pocket to have the baby. Not too shabby if you ask me. Things are cruising.

The interesting and difficult thing will be doing the math early next year. I think a lot of people are going to be shocked when they do their taxes with the changes made to the tax code since Trump took office. Let’s just say I hope you increased your withholdings if you’re the type of person who likes to get money back. Your vacation may be a staycation.

And since it will be the first year Shar and I can choose to do our taxes jointly or apart, that adds another element of difficult. Mostly because both of our student loan payments are based on income. So if we file together, our income is higher, and our payments could potentially go up. We’re both on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) train and I’m about halfway done with it before the remainder is forgiven. In this situation you want to pay as little as possible. So we may file separately despite the implications for our taxes. I may post a spreadsheet here once I get it figured out just in case anyone else is in a similar boat.

At any rate, I’ve got the house to myself tonight so it’s time to go hit some strings on my guitar. Nighty night.

As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, I’ve been going to the gym every day on my lunch hour. With the exception of Thanksgiving week when I went to Michigan to visit family, I’d say I’ve been going every day for at least 7 weeks, with a week or two before that when I went 3 days a week. A couple months doesn’t sound like much—and really, it isn’t—but I feel like I’ve built a habit and now I can’t wait to go to the gym. I never thought it’d be me.

Although I haven’t seen any change at all in my weight, I’m feeling a lot different and my body feels leaner and more tone. I feel like my muscles work now, and every movement I make becomes more apparent. I can feel my core and my thighs and my arm muscles and it gives me more confidence. Sometimes even the slight pain caused by a good weight session feels good. Honestly thought, I don’t hurt a whole lot. I’m wondering if it has something to do with my vegetarian diet.

I began with 3 days of cardio and 2 days of weights, but with all of the reading I’ve been doing, it sounds like weight training might be where it’s at. Now I do weight training 3 days a week and 2 days of cardio. So if I get any excercise at all on the weekend, like with a walk or a hike, I’m getting three of each. It’s a lot more likely I’m going to get in a passive cardio day on the weekend anyway. Walking to the train everyday helps me get in some steps as well.

I started with really intense cardio sessions. Like trying to run long distances on the treadmill. But after reading a book by Rich Roll, an Ultra Man, I’ve switched to heart rate targeting for weight loss, even if that means quickly walking for an hour.

I’m taking it easy on the weights, for the most part. It’s been over a decade since I’ve done any sort of weight training and the last thing I want to do is injure myself and set myself back. But I think I’m getting to the point where I don’t feel like a total weakling and I can start lifting heavier.

As I said earlier, my body rarely hurts anymore from lifting with the exception of squats. Before this month, I don’t recall ever doing a squat in my life. I have some chicken ass legs and I’d like to change that, especially after injuring my quads in winter kickball the last 2 years straight. I figure it’s time to get these things into shape.

I’m gradually seeing my body change, but the quickest changes have been in my attitude and mental health. Honestly, I’m just a whole lot more happy. Every day I just feel happy and peaceful. I sleep better. I’m more content. It’s like all of those years as a hyper-caffeinated smoker with anxiety are washing away. Those days where I felt like a worthless punk with no motivation - I can see those attributes slipping away. And I like the way it feels.

I spent the weekend doing nothing an onlooker would find spectacular, but it was altogether exactly what I needed. It seems like the go-go-go sometimes needs a break, and that’s what we did. At least in the sense that we weren’t off to somewhere or something for a change.

I cleaned out my closet. Yep, dug down to the bottom of things. All of the stuff that doesn’t make me feel great to wear, or my belly has outgrown them. Lots of 34 size pants. A few medium shirts. We filled up a donation basket and brought it to the second hand store. It feels good to have some space cleared away, and hopefully someone else can find them useful.

We thought about getting a Christmas tree this year - a large one, but decided against the expense - we’ll look for sales after the holiday. This year we’ll use the little 3-footer Shar got from the dollar store a few years back. One of my favorite and least favorite things about Shar is how notoriously cheap she is. She may reform me yet.

We took some holiday photos with the dog. I immediately thought about those DINKs who take photos with their dog. Yeah, I guess we are those people. But so the fuck what. We love our dog. Here it is:

Last night we relaxed on the couch and watched the movie Crazy Rich Asians. Shar wasn’t very excited about it because she’s not into RomComs, but she actually ended up liking it more than I did.

I was telling her last night how nice it has been settling into our life together. I couldn’t have been more grateful sitting there sinking into the couch with both of my girls at my sides.

For the last several years, I’ve had a bit of a heart…flutter. It’s not a painful thing and it’s completely sporadic. I thought maybe it had something to do with smoking or perhaps how much meat I was eating. Maybe it had something to do with my sleep apnea.

But I quit smoking a couple years ago. I don’t eat meat anymore. I wear my CPAP machine every night. And my heart still does this weird skip-a-beat thing maybe 10 or 12 times a day.

About a year ago, I connected online with a half uncle whom I’ve never met. Long story, but my paternal grandfather and grandmother divorced, my grandfather moved to Florida, and started another family. Well, over the course of our email conversations, I found out that both my uncle and my grandfather have had heart attacks and open heart surgery to correct a genetic heart condition. This got me a bit worried.

So for the last several months I’ve been trying to get it checked out through Kaiser Permanente. My doctor ordered an EKG, which came back normal, and then asked if I'd like to have a 24-hour holter monitor. Indeed I did.

But KP has been short staffed and evidently has no openings for appointments. It’s been months now. I emailed my doctor to ask if they could refer me out to someone not in their network, and he told me “no - this is not life threatening and it is extremely unlikely that I have a life-threatening condition.” Well, this doctor can kiss my ass. And so can KP. Here I am, before open enrollment for my insurance, and I want to switch so badly but can’t because my wife has been seeing the same medical team throughout her pregnancy and the baby is due next month.

I am just so flabbergasted that KP has been so amazing for my wife’s pregnancy, but absolutely dropped the ball through this seemingly simple - but important - thing for me. I want to get to the bottom of why my heart is doing this, and I think my family history backs up my rationale, particularly since my g-pa died in his 60s from a major heart attack. I wanted to like Kaiser, but I’ve just heard too many crazy stories to stick with them. Even if my heart is fine, I hate the not knowing, and I don’t think anyone should have to wait on something so important.

I made my last car payment this month. It’s hard to believe I’ve been making that $320 payment every month for 5 years. Hell, I can’t believe how much has changed in 5 years. But I won’t go there!

I also got the private mortgage insurance removed from my house. I bought a short sale a couple years ago with very little money down. You need to have 20% down to not have private mortgage insurance, or 80% loan-to-value (LTV). So I had the bank do a broker’s price opinion. That came back $120,000 over what I owe, which is like 63% LTV. So we’re good. My payment went down by $100/mo. Thinking back to a few years ago living in Michigan, this would never have been possible. I bought at just about the highest point out here, but got lucky with a short sale fixer-upper near the MAX blue line.

I’ve also been taking the train to work. My yearly transit pass is paid for by my employer. I parked the car in the garage and haven’t moved it for over a month. I figure I’m saving about $100/mo on gas and I have no interest in going back to car commuting anytime soon. My stress level alone has dropped tremendously not having to fight traffic. Plus, it’s only a 20-minute ride. It was sort of stupid I held onto driving for so long - blame it on my Motor City area roots.

Since I don’t have my car at work, I’m not eating out for lunch as much because anywhere I eat I need to walk to. I’m bringing leftovers most days now. I’d say, sadly, I used to eat out 3-4 times per week. Now I do about once. I figure I’m saving at least $80/mo.

However, I did join a gym and I’ve been going every day on my lunch hour. That’s $25. I have time to do this since I bring my own lunch most days.

So…I think I’m saving about $575 per month.

If I removed collision insurance from my car and just got comprehensive, I’d probably be saving about $600/mo (that’s $7200/year).

I mean, that’s like getting a 15% raise. Isn’t that crazy? I swear, car ownership and insurance are the biggest scams.

I feel like a lot of people’s issues with money could be resolved by moving closer to a bus stop.

“I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So, I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.”

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Geez, a year goes by quickly. I started this blog out of an excitement for living more intentionally, and as a result of living more intentionally, this blog fell to the wayside. I started a new job that I love, got married, went on a honeymoon, became a vegetarian (7 months!), quit using nicotine altogether (almost 2 years cigarette-free, 3 months vape-free!), and now my wife is 22 weeks pregnant with our first child. Whew.

And yet life has not been all sunshine and butterflies. My mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. She’s about to start chemotherapy this week. It’s been difficult emotionally thinking about my mom as anything other than super human, but also just being far away and not able to be there for her in the ways I think I should has been difficult for me. My middle brother is also going through a divorce and navigating what that looks like with a 12-year-old daughter.

About a month ago, I deleted my social media accounts that I thought were mostly just a waste of my time. I’d succumbed to participating in meaningless online political debates and probably lost some friends as a result. I also periodically fell for the trap of comparing my life to other people’s highlight reels. So I thought it was the healthy thing to do.

So I think, instead of trying to maintain this space as some sort of self-help style blog for others, I intend to refocus my energies on shorter thoughts that are more self-centered and focused on my own journey and growth as a human. Anyone who wants to peek in or pull up a seat, by all means 

There are certainly far more important topics to cover than social media, but I’ve had some thoughts on this topic bottled up inside my brain for about a year now and I felt it was a good time to unburden myself of them. Our collective preoccupation with social media may seem pretty innocuous, if not wholly ridiculous, but I feel strongly that it can have some really negative consequences for both mental health and interpersonal relationships.

I’ve gone through periods of time when I get completely jaded with social media and I’ll temporarily deactivate or delete all of my accounts. Part of it is my frustration with my own addictive personality and how I can get so wrapped up in it, but I know I’m not alone in this. 

It can be pretty freeing in some ways to completely ghost from your online life. Last year I deleted all of my social media accounts for six months. All of them. Even LinkedIn, for crying out loud. I was so committed! I was going to be present, dammit! And in a lot of ways, it was the happiest I’d been in a really long time. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but the evidence is pretty compelling that if we’re more present in our everyday lives, it pays dividends in the form of happiness and contentment. 

Some of the benefits: Freedom from prying eyes. Less opportunity for judgment. Freedom from bullying cleverly disguised as differences of opinion. Much less exposure to extremist politics or worrying about being politically correct. Fewer interruptions. More focus. Better in-person connections. Freedom from those phone notifications buzzing your thigh every thirty seconds. 

For the most part, it was fantastic. But leaving the online life behind wasn’t without its growing pains. 

As weird as this feels to write publicly, there were some amazing moments and experiences I really wanted to share with the world. I had recently started dating my fiancé and it would’ve been a convenient way for far-flung friends and family to get to know her, if only in a virtual sense. But what I was least prepared for when I quit social media was how it can feel like some people stop caring about you. Scratch that. How it feels to seemingly cease to exist to people with whom you thought you had a stronger connection. 

For instance, just one month off Facebook and the only people who got ahold of me on my birthday were my Mom and my two brothers. No joke. It’s in those moments when you realize who the most important people are in your life, and there’s a pretty good chance they’re not the 200 people who wished you a happy birthday on your Facebook timeline. 

But you know what? After the initial shock of being social media-less wore off, I was probably happier than I’d ever been. It was pretty amazing to actually feel like I was living in the moment—in all of the moments—and not constantly worrying about sharing with the world whatever thing I was doing at the time.

Recently I’ve been feeling the pull toward living without social media again. But one of the biggest deterrents to not going completely rogue is that I’ve got this blog now and it’s difficult enough as it is to get the word out. Hell, you can’t even have a Facebook page for your brand without an actual personal Facebook account. So there’s that. 

But there’s also the 13 years of status updates and photos and memories that I’d rather not have weighing me down anymore. I’d rather focus on myself now and the man I want to be rather than who I was before today. I don’t care what your algorithm says, Facebook. I neither need nor want that memory popping up in my feed every year ad nauseam. 

After some serious thought, my solution has been to compromise. I deleted my Facebook account that I’ve had since 2004. I’ve started clean, scaled back the friends list to a manageable level, and I plan to nurture those online relationships that are the most enduring, meaningful and mutually supportive.

A few weeks ago, I spent some much needed rest and relaxation in my home state of Michigan. Not only was it good for the soul to go back in summertime because northern Michigan is a true gem, it was an opportunity for me to introduce my partner to family and to show her some of the prettier parts of the state since she had only been to Flint (no offense, Flintstones). Besides, I was starting to get a little bit bitter about spending all of my vacation time on frigid Christmas holidays.

One of the biggest things I miss about home are the lakes. Their beauty and charm are ubiquitous to natives, but vague and seemingly pretty dull to a lot of people I’ve met in the west. Shar, upon seeing Lake Michigan for the first time, said:

I forgive her. In my experience, west coast natives have a terrible sense of geography for anything east of the Rockies. I don't blame them. There's just too much going on out here geographically speaking to care much about what's going on back east. But I still like surprising people who don't know any better with a trip to Sleeping Bear or the like. 

Here in the west, there is the ocean and the mountains, all of which provide stunningly gorgeous scenery. I’m continually in awe of it all and their novelty hasn’t worn off yet. But there’s just something about the Great Lakes and the thousands of inland lakes in Michigan that give summer a different feel than what I’ve experienced here in the northwest. It’s peaceful and relaxing, and it seems like every other person or their family member has a cottage or second home on or near a lake of some sort. It is engrained in the culture of the place. 

With the lakes come quaint lakeside villages and towns. It seems like they’re everywhere. Tourists flock to them in the warmer months, bringing much needed commerce. I don’t see the same thing here in Oregon or Washington. The major cities are amazing, dynamic places, but there just aren’t that many historic little towns to escape to. It’s pretty sad, actually. 

But having lived in Michigan for 34 years, moving away, and then heading home for a week or two at a time as a tourist gives me some perspective. Those little towns, as comforting as they may be, are depressing places for most of the year, especially for some of the people who live there. There may be a few of them that can survive on skiers or snowmobilers bringing in some tourism dollars, and maybe a couple places have capitalized on being port cities, but there really isn’t much going on in terms of vibrant economies. Truth be told, I can romanticize them all I want, but they probably wouldn’t be great places to live full-time. Even if you’re lucky enough to be of retirement age with a substantial savings, chances are you’re a snowbird. 

I don’t think the reasons for this situation have very much to do with the seasons changing. I think it has more to do with how their economies are structured, and more importantly, how we’ve chosen to structure our national economy — including allowing the middle class to shrink and the gap between the rich and poor widen.

There seem to be two schools of thought out there, both of which I think live in their own little myopic bubbles, yet both have truth to them. On the one side, people claim there would be better paying jobs if only we shopped locally - 'SHOP MAIN STREET!' they cry. A well-intentioned philosophy with some truth to it. The other argument is that if good-paying jobs weren’t shipped overseas and we didn’t make such little money, we could afford to support good local businesses. People would use their higher incomes to purchase goods in the local economy if there were better paying jobs, which would support still other jobs, etc. Again, well intentioned, but not the full story. The macro and the micro have to be taken into consideration together.

I’m very pro community and economic development and want to see local economies thrive. However, what bothers me the most about the ‘Shop Local’ movement is how some adherents to this philosophy seem to ignore the macroeconomics at play that are completely and utterly stacked against Main Street and the working classes. These days, ‘Shop Local’ is a privileged movement for middle to upper income people. 

People shop at Walmart and Amazon and Walgreens because their budgets are squeezed, not because they don’t like Uncle John’s TV and Electronics Shop. And why shouldn't they? Who am I to judge the working class family who shops at Walmart so they can scrimp and save to put their kids through college? They're just working within the confines of the economic environment they've found themselves stranded in, where once vibrant and thriving economies have long since disappeared. Sure, people probably buy way too much shit. Big screen TVs, cell phones, unnecessary automobiles. You name it. But if the primary sectors of the economy in which our middle class was built are shipped off to places with cheap labor and little to no environmental standards, how can you expect them to spend what little disposable income they have on local shops? And I can assure you that spending money at Uncle John’s TV and Electronics Shop is not going to create any middle class jobs save for perhaps John. Maybe. 

What our downtowns in small places have become are caricatures of their former selves and the play things for people who are well off. Take a look around the next time you’re in one of those places. There’s an ice cream shop and a few trinket shops hawking tourist goods like M-22 shirts and bumper stickers. But the majority of businesses in so-called thriving places are full of breweries and restaurants. As great as these things are — I literally had the best burger of my life at 7 Monks in Traverse City — these are the only types of businesses that can’t be outsources. Yet. And it’s not because people particularly enjoy spending $15 on a hamburger (usually). They're doing it for the convenience, but more importantly they're doing it because they like the atmosphere or the experience.

These things are privileges, unlike the days when there was only one appliance repair shop in town and you knew the owner by name. The days when a diverse downtown full of businesses providing necessary goods and services was a way of life.

As far as I know, there currently is no way efficiency, automation, or logistics can make a burger-eating experience more enjoyable. However, is it very difficult to imagine some not-so-distant future where people spend most of their time in their homes on virtual reality headsets attached to their phones while all of their food is delivered via Uber Eats? Is it that far-fetched when people can order all of their household goods from Amazon by simply saying the word "Alexa - I need toilet paper"? What would happen to our downtowns then? 

There used to be businesses of all varieties, but those peddling everyday products and services can't compete anymore and they're not coming back. Totally gone the way of the buffalo. Should we be ashamed of this? In my personal opinion, yes, but that’s not why I’m writing this. What’s done is done. But what I would like to see is the locals acknowledge that “buying local” is a privileged perspective and that good-paying jobs are not in retail or restaurants. Any “buy local” campaign should be coupled with a strong economic development plan that goes beyond redeveloping or promoting Main Street. 

There are other benefits to buying local. In my opinion, they are namely the positive impacts that retail and food industry jobs have on historic preservation, and the psychological and community impacts of living in a place that is vibrant at street level. These can, in some circumstances, attract larger economic drivers—sometimes even in small tourist towns. But this is not possible everywhere and let’s not continue to fool ourselves about the economic reality on the ground for most people when we talk about the importance of buying local.

I've been thinking a lot about how a change in environment, whether physical or social, can cause people who might otherwise work together toward common goals to be at odds with one another. Sometimes these changes are caused by things beyond our control such as a natural disaster, but sometimes they are by design in order to keep us distracted from larger goals. 

One of the most interesting courses I took in college was an anthropology class on ancient civilization. We learned about Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, both part of what was known as the Fertile Crescent. What struck me was how these societies, despite their proximity to one another, evolved so differently. How was it that the Egyptians lived in relative peace for so long while Mesopotamia had so many warring tribes and no real semblance of unity? The difference, it is thought, has a lot to do with the rivers of the region.

The Nile, on the one hand, has always been pretty predictable in its course. Ancient Egyptians built their civilization upon its predictability, and because they were able to rely on it to irrigate their crops and provide water for basic needs, they built one of the greatest civilizations in history. Their society certainly was not without its problems, but it was relatively stable because the river’s course stayed true, and the region prospered for it. Economic wealth was certainly funneled up the chain of command, but people were generally able to provide for their livelihoods. On the other hand, the Tigris and Euphrates were not so reliable, and civilization there evolved very differently. These rivers have changed their courses many times over the millennia, and this fact had major impacts on the people of Mesopotamia. 

Imagine trying to farm alongside a river that periodically changed its course. In an arid region, irrigation is essential, so if you suddenly weren’t able to grow crops for your family, or if your community became extremely food insecure, it’s easy to imagine the stress this would cause. These periodic shifts in the courses of the rivers caused a lot of strife and wars to break out between different groups of people who fought for access to the waters. Although today the region’s problems are incredibly complex, there are some anthropologists who even argue that these rivers played such an important role in the region that their irregular courses and the strife this caused centuries ago laid the groundwork for the culture of conflict that exists in the Middle East to this day.

This may seem like a big leap, but I think the situation above is relatable to our modern lives and the political climate we are currently experiencing. Most of us in the U.S. may not have to worry so much about war, genocide, or a river shifting its course on us. At least not in a literal sense. But millions of Americans struggle with poverty and economic hardship within a quickly changing system that is very much the equivalent to a those shifting rivers in ancient times. It frightens me to think about our social safety net dissolving, and the resulting chaos that could ensue. What's sad is that I feel like sometimes, because of my privilege (perceived or real), that people view me as an enemy instead of an ally. I am a white male who is approaching middle age and I live a comfortable lifestyle. But that doesn't mean that I don't have something to contribute to the betterment of society. 

As an adult, I didn't have what I would consider a middle class life until I was about 30, but I did have a social safety net. I had a family who backed me up, provided support when they could, and I had many luxuries by the very virtue of that sturdy ground my family relationships provided. I was lucky, even before I account for the privileges my race and gender afford me. I know that even the fact that I was able to go to school, fail, and go back again (twice if you count my master's degree) was an enormous privilege. As hard as it was to succeed at times, I know countless people did not have the same opportunities that I did, and I'm grateful for those I did have. Yet for someone as reflective and socially minded as I am (if I do say so myself), I struggle at times with accepting my privilege.

Sometimes it's hard to admit how good I really had it. Sometimes I get angry when people assume that I had everything handed to me or that I didn’t have to work for what I have. Like my hard work wasn't really work at all because of my privilege. I have to try hard to keep myself calm and not get personally offended when people assume I didn’t struggle because of my race or gender. 

Sometimes I fail miserably and lose sight of the larger goals of social justice in the face of defending my personal circumstances. I fail at times in formulating my ideas and in communicating my feelings with others. But I do take people's opinions to heart and try to understand their perspectives and hardships. I recognize my own shortcomings, for the most part, and know I still need to work on them. But, in my experience, the social justice warriors certainly don't make it easy to be on their team, either. 

I think what bothers me most is the condescending tone from many people who are social justice-oriented. It bothers me a lot, despite me believing in and supporting many of the ideas they espouse and the policies they support. It feels bad to have my motives questioned when I share a differing opinion, like my actions are worth less than my words despite having worked 10 years in the affordable housing industry, for instance. To have my character questioned and my perspectives minimized simply because of my privilege does not feel good. 

Make no mistake: I believe that all people should have similar footing and predictable ground on which to build a life and not be damned at birth by whatever station they were born into, or by their race or gender or sexual preference or anything else for that matter. Everyone should have a place where they have an opportunity to thrive and provide for themselves and their families. Furthermore, I think sometimes the only means we have in capitalism to provide those opportunities is through social programs. 

I am angered and scared and saddened by the current administration and the potential for its policies to reek havoc on disadvantaged people from all walks of life. I’m scared for the people I serve at my job and what the future holds for some of them. I feel the swell of emotions and the fear is palpable. But my biggest fear of all is that the alienating language of social justice advocates to the ears of the majority will be counterproductive to the cause and we won’t get anything done. 

I don't pretend to have a solution, and I don't mean to minimize the rage of the oppressed and less fortunate. Hell, if you're NOT angry, then you're not paying attention. But I feel like most people won't listen if they feel alienated. Would you? This is anecdotal, but I feel like the last election was indicative of that. There were other things at play, not least of which was misogyny. But I know a lot of progressive people who felt alienated by the Democratic campaign because it felt like a war was being waged against them because of their privilege. 

We have to do better and that starts with, at very least, acknowledging those who are on our own team, and then having more productive and respectful conversations with each other. Let’s not allow these assholes to change the course of the river in order to divide and conquer. If we do, we'll have a lot more to deal with than just having a Cheeto-faced clown for another four years. We’ll have another swamp to drain. 

Your Identity is Not Defined by Who or where You Came From

Over the years, and for as far back as I can remember, I was intensely interested in genealogy and the stories of my family’s heritage. Growing up, my biological father didn’t have a relationship with me. But even after he died, I kept in contact with his mother because she showed an interest in me and my brother. She was born in the US to Italian immigrants and I was always really intrigued by her stories of them. Like the one about my great grandfather being one of the construction workers who put the gold roof on the Fisher Building in Detroit. 

For one reason or another, I always felt like that one-quarter Italian blood running through my veins was more important than the rest. I don’t think my feelings on this had anything to do with genetics or familial success. Those on my father’s side were neither particularly good looking nor very successful. What I’ve concluded is that it probably just had more to do with the fact that my Italian heritage was easily traced and that I had real stories going back to the mid-1800s in Vigo di Cadore. The other three quarters of my genetic makeup is such a mix that I never really knew where to start researching, and even though I did make some gains, I didn’t feel a connection to any of the other cultures the way that I did with my grandmother’s Italian heritage.

I don’t think I’m alone in this interest of researching my family’s past. It’s practically an American pastime to celebrate, usually in some comical or caricaturistic way, that drop or two of Irish or German blood we claim to have within us. What I suspect is that this pride of ours for heritage is somehow a combination of our collective national identity crisis stemming from the melting pot of our culture, a national philosophy steeped in individualism, and our human tendency toward tribalism. Who knows? What do I know?

Over the years, I’ve had my own fair share of pride in this regard. Periodically, I’d sign up for one of those Ancestry.com accounts where you can research your family heritage. But without fail, I’d usually end my subscription in frustration after only a month. Not because it wasn’t working; quite the opposite. I’d cut off my subscription because it was working too well.

If you’ve ever actually sat down and looked at a family tree, you might know what I mean about getting frustrated, even if you know a lot about your heritage already. These things start out easy. You write your own name down. Check. Then you write out your parents’ names, your grandparents’ names. You put on some coffee. You come back and maybe you know most of your great grandparents’ names and you ask Uncle Charlie for the others. Then it starts to get interesting. You start asking people for help filling in major gaps or you have to go digging through censuses and draft cards and ship manifests. This can be fun. If you don’t get frustrated at this point and you have some success in your research, the tree continues to grow, and it can grow damn fast, especially if you connect with other users with a common ancestor. At some point you will hit dead ends, but rest assured that each successive generation doubles, whether or not you know who contributed to your genetic makeup or not. A lot of people had sex to make you.

It’s even easier to visualize this doubling of ancestors that occurs each successive generation with what’s called a fan chart. It’s basically a series of successive circles that start out small. You occupy the center circle, your two parents in the second circle, your four grandparents in the third, etc. Each successive layer gets exponentially larger, and by the time you reach your 10th great grandparents, 2,048 people constitute the makeup of your gene pool. Ten generations might not be that far back, either. There’s usually 3-5 generations in each 100 year period.

If we think about deeper time, at least as it pertains to our species, some people estimate that humans as we know it have been walking this earth for about 200,000 years. And if the average generation is 25 years, that means there have been something on the order of 8,000 generations that came before you. Other scientists estimate that humans have only been around 50,000 years and current estimates of the number of people who have ever lived on earth is about 100 billion. That's 15 times the amount of people who are alive today. This fact inevitably left me with the feeling that researching my family’s heritage was little more than a fool’s errand.

Our egos may search for meaning in the past to help us define ourselves today, but we can only come back empty handed. By looking back, it’s my experience that we are not able to distill some powerful meaning out of our past from a handful of cultures or events or people we are blood relatives with. With any amount of time and reflection, we most often come to the realization that we are all beautifully diluted and that 99.9% of our makeup is the same genetic material as everyone else.

The point is, we are made up of the genetic code from a vast array of people, and every single one of those people lived a life of their own. Some of them were shitbags and some of them were saints and we’ll never know which were which or even who the vast majority of them were. Furthermore, no amount of historically significant information dug up on our relatives has any bearing on who we are today. We are our own accomplishments and failures, not theirs.  

Still, throughout all of my research on my family tree, whenever I’d hit a dead end, I found myself wondering what might have happened to that person so that they left no trace and no further information to be found. They probably had children who loved them and parents in turn who probably loved them as well. But the branch just goes quiet. I think this speaks to one of our greatest fears. That’s the fear of our own branch dying, going quiet, and being forgotten.

Most of us would like to be remembered after we die. I’m not really sure why, but it’s probably the ego again wishing for some small part of us to remain immortal. Unfortunately, history has shown us that the people who are most likely to be remembered are those who were in power, and I’m inclined to believe that the majority of what we think we know about those people has been fabricated.

For the rest of us, your great-great-great grandkids likely won’t even know what your name was, let alone anything about who you were as a person. I don’t write that to be mean, either. It’s meant to help unburden you from any sort of ego-driven daydream that anyone is going to care about you when you’re gone. And that’s okay.

Neither the past nor the future matter nearly as much as we think, and being mindful of how you spend your time right now is the essence of living a meaningful life, not worrying about your legacy.

On the flip side, sometimes people view you as their legacy, which can be just as difficult to deal with as letting go of your own feelings on this topic. When family is closely involved in our lives, I think it can sometimes be very difficult to live our highest and best self when we sacrifice the best parts of ourselves or our own potential for family just because they are our blood relatives (mom’s excluded – happy Mother’s Day!). Besides the potential for being a huge drain on your time and energy, families are notorious for either putting unreasonable expectations on us or not allowing us to change for the better by consistently reminding us of who we were in the past. For many of us, family might be the single greatest thing holding us back from personal growth. If you find that certain family members are taking more energy from you than they are putting back in, or it doesn't feel like they're respecting your life choices, it might be time to reevaluate whether or not you should be investing so much in your relationship with them instead of respecting and loving yourself.

It’s easy to get bogged down worrying about the past or dreaming about the future. If you find yourself anxious about either one, I’ve personally found mindfulness exercises really helpful, and you might too. I won’t go into details here, but there are a bunch of resources and information on the web and many of the techniques are easy and can be incorporated into your everyday life without too much hassle. I took a 10-week mindfulness meditation course a couple of years back and it changed my entire outlook on life in short order. I recommend it. There are also a handful of apps out there to help you learn some new techniques.

Also, don’t sign up for Ancestry.com. It’s a total rip off.