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The Boring Company

From the pile of gar­lic mus­tard on my counter to the two win­ter-worn deer bones on my floor (so old the dog showed no inter­est in them); you might think that I’m some sort of mod­er­ate­ly gra­nola hedge-core shaman (there are oth­er signs, too; yet, I’m still a pos­er at every­thing: it is my nat­ur­al state).

I went for a walk with a friend though; she knew where to find it all, and showed me her witch hazel tree. I helped turn the earth for plant­i­ng and hope­ful­ly fucked up her mint’s plans for world dom­i­na­tion. Shov­el and axe are still my pre­ferred meth­ods. Pro­duc­tive exer­tion. The mind needs it too.

I under­stand that I am deeply boring.

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This Place Is Where I Store My Frustration

I worked at Cuya­hoga Coun­ty when the FBI raid­ed it. Dozens of peo­ple went to jail for their cor­rup­tion and greed. Projects and staff were man­aged poor­ly, bud­gets and strate­gies were opaque, many of the peo­ple work­ing there got their jobs because they were polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed. The Board of Com­mis­sion­ers was replaced with an exec­u­tive-style gov­ern­ment, and the first Coun­ty Exec­u­tive was a micro­manag­ing mega­lo­ma­ni­ac who treat­ed the remain­ing staff like they were all crim­i­nals, despite being too irre­spon­si­ble to renew his dri­ver’s license for sev­er­al years. A project that start­ed my last year there took 8 years to fin­ish and was mil­lions over-budget.

How­ev­er: the City of Cleve­land is the worst place I have ever worked.

The rot­ten­ly cor­rupt Cuya­hoga Coun­ty of 2008 did a bet­ter job at the duties of gov­ern­ment than the City of Cleve­land does in 2023.

Orga­ni­za­tions keep the employ­ees they deserve.

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2022 Year in Review

The last year was a mixed bag — all of the cre­ativ­i­ty (linocuts & zines below) and ful­fill­ment hap­pened over the first 6 months, more or less, and the rest of the year was gen­er­al­ly trash for myself and my son. Start­ed a new job, and while the pay is nice, the job is ter­ri­ble and the lead­er­ship incom­pe­tent. I’ve been threat­ened with law­suits 4 times, and I can’t hire or spend bud­get with­out over­sight from peo­ple who don’t under­stand my job and aren’t even part of the air­port. The sit­u­a­tion is so des­per­ate that I feel fine say­ing this with no wor­ry about reper­cus­sions. If they fire me for this opin­ion, they’ll be even more up a creek than they are now.

I believe things are start­ing to sort out with Abra­ham, but try­ing to build con­sen­sus on what’s best for him is most­ly impos­si­ble. As a par­ent, the only thing I fear is not suc­cess­ful­ly prepar­ing him to live a ful­fill­ing life with­out me.

I took up weight lift­ing in March — but I’m hav­ing an almost impos­si­ble time los­ing weight, even though I’ve estab­lished a fair­ly strict diet. I am much stronger though.

Hope­ful­ly that strength will help me and my boy get through what­ev­er 2023 throws at us.

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Resistance Training

I have been lift­ing weights reg­u­lar­ly for a lit­tle over 6 months, and the results are start­ing to become vis­i­ble. I nev­er thought I would enjoy this type of work­out, but I found a good train­er who lis­tened and helped a mid­dle-aged man devel­op his skills at an appro­pri­ate pace. It feels good to assert dis­ci­pline on my body that does­n’t require as much men­tal grit as run­ning or cycling. I no longer have what it takes to push through the “this is such bull­shit” feel­ing; all that juice is used up at my job at the city.

I haven’t man­aged to lose any weight though, Still hov­er­ing around 220, when I’d like to be at 200. When I flex I feel like I look kind of big, but the flab gut needs to go. I need to cut the fat in a lot of dif­fer­ent areas.

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Wreck Walk

The tran­si­tion into high school has been tough for my son. I feel com­pe­tent to han­dle just about any sit­u­a­tion involv­ing him except when a sit­u­a­tion occurs and I can’t talk to or see him. In these cas­es, frus­tra­tion is hav­ing the pow­er to resolve con­flict and help my son, but not being allowed to use it.

So I took a long walk, and toward the end of it, at dusk, passed by a group of chil­dren play­ing. One of them imme­di­ate­ly drift­ed off and fell into step beside me — a young man prob­a­bly around 13 or 14. He said “I’m ready to go home.” and I said, “Me, too, kid.” He then ten­ta­tive­ly said “Dad?” to me a cou­ple times, and we made eye con­tact. I gen­tly said, “I’m not your dad” and he looked a bit off guard and said “Oh.” One of the oth­er kids said “that’s a neigh­bor, not your dad, don’t talk to him!” and the young man drift­ed back to the rest of the group.

The ener­gy I was pour­ing into wor­ry­ing about my autis­tic teenag­er drew anoth­er one to me. He also need­ed com­fort, and, as much as I want­ed to, I could­n’t pro­vide it to him either. He voiced what I assume my child also need­ed that day. To be home with dad.