Blog

Several years ago, we purchased a Nissan Versa — a small hatchback car known for being cheap. It was supposed to be the car I drove to keep the mileage down on our other more expensive cars when we didn’t need the capability they presented. It turns out that I don’t need a pickup truck all the time, and that minivans aren’t required when there are only one or two people to transport. This car was supposed to cover the space where these two were ill-suited.

This little car served us relatively well for a few years, but not long before we moved to Utah, it started misbehaving. Some of the failures were relatively cheap and easy to fix, but ultimately the transmission began to fail. Looking around the wide world of information on Nissan continuously variable transmissions, I realized I should have done more homework before purchasing this pile of scrap. The transmissions are notoriously weak — to the extent that they are the subject of multiple class-action lawsuits that were just outside the parameters for the car I owned. Not only are the transmissions weak, they are horrendously expensive. Spending $5000 for a rebuilt transmission (not including installation labor and all the other random bits and bobs that accompany that kind of repair) to repair a car with 85,000 miles on it that only cost $10,000 new is a stretch.

While we weren’t super excited about putting a new transmission in the car, we didn’t rule it out either. The car was otherwise in good shape, and if repaired would be at least as good as anything else we could purchase for the cost of the repair. We thought about it, and decided we’d just drive it until it totally failed, then make up our minds when the time came. Instead of making a decision, we decided to delay that decision until we had no choice. In essence, we would get as much use out of the car as possible before potentially scrapping it or resetting the expiration date by putting in a new transmission.

While we bought the car for me to commute in, I’ve almost never driven it. One of the kids has generally had a stronger claim to it than I have, so it’s been the teenager car since we brought it home. For the last several months, Isaac has been using it to get to his martial arts classes, seminary, and his classes at Bridgerland. In essence, it’s been his car that I happen to pay for, and he’s had to deal with the stupidity of a transmission that randomly stalls and otherwise behaves badly. My decision to postpone a decision cost me literally nothing personally, since I didn’t have to live with the consequences.

That decision turns out to have been a major money saver. A few weeks ago, I was driving home when my phone rang. The display in the car indicated an unfamiliar phone number from a region where I know literally nobody. I had every reason in the world to ignore the call. I generally do ignore such calls. However, for some inexplicable reason I answered it and was surprised to hear Isaac’s voice.

“Uh… Dad… I’m not sure how to tell you this… I rolled the car.” This came out almost deadpan. He and a friend had been driving down a dirt road not far from home when he lost traction, skidded, almost recovered, but ultimately slid far enough into a ditch that the vehicle rolled over. Both his phone and his friends were outside of service range, but someone had come by on the remote road and let them borrow theirs that happened to be on a different carrier. Nobody was hurt beyond a few minor bruises and scratches. No property was damaged other than the car. No police were called. No ticket issued. Insurance covered the wrecker I had to call to get the thing back on it’s wheels and out of the ditch. In the end, all it did was make my decision about whether or not to fix the transmission very easy. I lost a car that needed $5000+ in repairs that would have been worth no more than $5000 even after I fixed it. No real loss. No real decision to make. The car is scrap metal, and that’s okay.

Now, not long after that experience, it appears I will be put in a similar situation. I’ve spent almost the last two years struggling with my government customer at work. They have created conditions where I really dislike the job I had expected to love. I like the company. I like the people. In theory, I like the application of our technologies. I can’t stand the way the government customer treats us. I can’t stand their indecisiveness and proclivity for assigning blame for their shortcomings to us. I can’t stand how they expect and hold us accountable for progress in spite of the fact that they themselves are the chief impediment. I can’t stand how we have wasted millions of dollars on a pile of paper that they don’t even bother to read, but insist on having in case someone somewhere questions their actions. I can’t stand my daily grind in a job where I had every expectation I would be happy.

I wanted to love my job. I suffered through jobs I hated while on active duty knowing that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I knew that somewhere out there the world found ways to actually accomplish things, and I expected to join it. I had evidence that my company routinely delivered things that met or exceeded expectations. Then reality torpedoed it all, and for months now I’ve pondered walking away and spending the resources I’ve accumulated trying to get a small business up and running so I could be answerable to nobody but myself.

At this point, I’ve developed multiple business plans. I’ve explored several markets. I’ve thought about the entrepreneur class I attended as part of the transition assistance program I went through prior to retirement. I’ve tried wringing time and energy out of myself after an exhausting day of drudgery to spend on developing the intellectual property I intend to use for the business. In that regard, I’ve failed. I can’t do it as a side-line. There isn’t enough time, and I don’t have the energy to do it. The effort it has taken, and my inability to make time for it, is evident in the infrequency of posts here… I don’t even have time and energy to sort my thoughts out on the only forum where I manage to do so. A side-hustle isn’t the answer. If I am going to make self-employment work, I need to be all-in.

Going all-in is scary. I don’t know how the average small business owner manages it. In the class I took, we were told to expect not to turn a profit for one to two years. We were told that the best strategy is generally to leverage whatever capital you have, and hope to roll the debt over until things creep into the black. This is particularly scary for someone who lived through an abrupt income shock and protracted poverty when my dad decided to leave the corporate world to become an artist. I am terrified of being poor again. Only now, after 25 years of professional life, do I feel like I can occasionally spend a few dollars without having a good reason. If I take the plunge and branch out on my own, that financial freedom dries up for at least the near-to-mid-term

I’ve struggled with this anxiety for a while now. I’m afraid of the decision to walk away from an almost sure thing. To walk away from a comfortable income and generous benefits. To tighten my belt again and return to the ways of a constrained income. To ask my kids to accept the impacts of my inability to continue to tow the line in my corporate drudgery. To put my heart and soul into a product line that may ultimately be rejected and wasted. I am a scared little man.

However, looking at my situation rationally, I have no excuses. Courtesy of my retirement I have a guaranteed income stream that puts me firmly in the middle class even without any business or employment income. I have access to medical care through both my retirement (for me and my family) and through the VA (just for me). If I am willing and disciplined enough to tighten my belt, I can make due without any employment income whatsoever. If ever there was someone outside the moneyed elite who was in a good position to take a risk starting a business, it’s me. I’m just afraid, and that has been the status quo for over a year.

That status quo appears to be on the fast-track to disruption. Today alone, I was twice within a hair’s breadth of walking away. My frustration and outright anger about our customer and the lack of progress has been breaking through to the surface often enough recently that upper management (a retired O6 who was trying to play the Colonel mentor for a promising O5 who just needs to see the light) called me in to try and convince me that life was good and that I should be more of a cheerleader. Instead, when he abjured me to be the O5 they hired, he learned how close I am to chucking it. They didn’t hire an O5. That’s not me anymore. What he had expected would be a “look on the bright side” rah-rah speech turned into more of a “don’t quit without giving us a chance to find you a different project” discussion. I left the meeting raging inside, if externally contained. That was the first close-call today, and it took almost all I had in reserve.

The second close call came when I saw the finalized guidance the Federal Government issued for requiring all government contractors to have a 100% immunized workforce no later than 8 December 2021. No exceptions for those who have acquired natural immunity through illness and recovery. Technical exceptions for religions objectors were included, but with coercive and punitive “accommodations” such as 100% masking, social isolation, weekly testing, and any number of other coercive measures that render those non-options. I’ve made my stance on the science of the vaccine previously pretty clear. What I haven’t talked about is the bigger issue though…

I spent 25 years in total being told how to dress, act, speak, look, think, and what medical interventions I was subject to. I was told when and where to go. I was told what to do for work. I was an indentured servant, held hostage to the pension I would lose if I said “no” to anything. As a result of my inability to say “no,” (a discussion on why is another topic, but accept it for now as a fact) I came away from the military with significant mental and physical health issues. I came away with children who were damaged by the frequent and severe disruptions caused by relocations and my almost constant and/or extended absences. I lost time with parents and siblings. I missed significant milestones in the lives of literally everyone I love. I came away with scars that run deep and will never fully heal. All because I couldn’t say “no!”

When I took off the uniform to try and piece my life back together, I earned the right to say no. I can’t get back most of the other things that the military took, but I can have that back. I WILL NOT relinquish that right without a warrant and an arrest. I WILL NOT BE COMPELLED to submit to any form of medical treatment or procedure without a court order and physical restraint. I WILL NOT SUBMIT to arbitrary demands based on political ideologies and agendas. I WILL WALK AWAY from a good paying job if that is the price of non-compliance. If that means that my decision whether or not to strike out on my own has been made for me, so be it. The more important decision has already been made.

We’ll see if the executive over-reach actually survives first contact with reality. It probably will in this scare-mongering world we now live in. People who are worthy of public notice don’t seem to value individual liberty and personal autonomy unless it involves some other cause celeb like recreational drug use, sex, body modification, abortion, etc. This isn’t a cause celeb. It’s quite the opposite, and I’ll find no friends who aren’t equally unpersons guilty of thoughtcrime. I believe that if it is eventually recognized as the government overreach it is, it will be after my lot has been cast and the consequences realized.

I will be demonized for my decision. But then again, I’ll be demonized if anyone from that torch-and-pitchfork mob of social justice warriors who fret so anxiously over my lack of compliance and obeisance to the anointed and all-knowing academic and government “experts” ever reads anything I’ve posted here.

I have COVID-19. I started feeling ill last Saturday with tiredness, a raging headache, and body aches. I almost always feel like that, and we were at the end of a 10 day, high-stress, not always fun, spend 8-10 hours a day in the car with an autistic kid who can’t stand driving, vacation. I wrote it off as vacation fatigue, and went in to work on Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, though, it was clear that it was more than just a vacation hangover, and I left work early. Wednesday, after sleeping for 15 hours or more and feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, I called the VA clinic who asked me to go to the emergency room at the local hospital where testing confirmed the presence of the SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) virus. I was sent home with a shot of Torredol, a blood oxygen sensor, and instructions to lay low and come back if I ran a fever over 102F, or had oxygen saturation below 80%. I’ve been following those instructions.

At this point, many people look askance at anyone who gets COVID. They reason that the vaccine has been universally available, and that there is no reasonable justification for someone like me not getting vaccinated. My illness, they argue, was unnecessary. I suppose they are right, at least in part. I have had ample opportunity to be vaccinated.

To further complicate matters, my wife is a firm believer in alternative medicinal approaches, and utterly hostile towards the current generation of experimental vaccines. She is active in several communities working to provide people the option to not participate in the grand social experiment that is society’s response to COVID. There are a myriad of reasons for her approach to health, and all utterly reasonable when viewed through the lens of her lived experience. I’ll not try to explain or rationalize here, but it’s enough to say that she would rather risk dying of the disease than accept voluntary vaccination, and I’m okay with that.

That choice is absolutely her choice to make. Either we as humans are masters of our own bodies, or we are not. You can’t have it both ways. Either we can opt out or into medical procedures like abortion, vaccination, body modification, gender reassignment, etc. Or we can’t. It’s that simple for me. If she chooses to trust alternative medical treatments that end up being ineffective against some future fatal malady, that is a choice she can make and my family’s consequence to live with.

My greatest concern at the moment is that the infection, should it become severe, will be used as a weapon against my wife. She will likely be treated as though it were her fault that I got sick and that responsibility for the outcome is ultimately on her shoulders. We have already seen it in the case of a close friend under similar circumstances. I need to address her role now. She bears absolutely no responsibility for my choice. She did nothing to prevent me from being vaccinated. She couldn’t have stopped me had I decided to take a different path than her, and she wouldn’t have tried. The idea that it might be her fault that I made my choice simply is not true. I want to set that straight, right now.

My choice not to get vaccinated was my own. Had I decided to get vaccinated, it would have happened. Would my wife have been disappointed? Sure. She’s been disappointed in decisions I’ve made before, and we’ve worked through them. That wouldn’t be an impediment if I felt it was something I needed to do. I know her well enough to know that we would have been fine, even if it took some tense conversations about potential side effects and other related topics. Vaccination (pro or con) is not nearly as difficult a conversation topic as many we’ve tackled in the past. Life has been hard, but my choice related to vaccination wasn’t one of the topics driving that.

So, why did I choose to forego the vaccine? There are a range of reasons, some articulable, some not. Understanding them requires understanding more of my history and experiences than is possible in this kind of medium. However, I’ll list a few just to make it clear that this was MY CHOICE.

For 25 years, I was subject to forced vaccination against any number of things that I wasn’t likely to ever be exposed to. For 25 years, I was told where to go, when to go there, how to dress, how long to leave my hair, etc. For 25 years, I was the government’s guinea pig, and I have the mental, emotional, and physical scars to show for it. After being robbed of my agency for so long, is it really that unreasonable that I should want to exercise it now that I have redeemed my soul from the purgatory that is government control?

That, alone, is almost enough of a reason. However, during at least the last 20 of those 25 years I watched from the inside as government decisions were made over and over again based on shit data, incomplete data, no data, political agendas, personal biases, institutional inertia, bureaucratic self-interest, raw power seeking, sheer incompetence, and a host of other equally terrible factors. I trust NO decision made by the State or Federal governments. I trust NO government “expert.” I was one. The entire decision making process is too fundamentally limited, corrupt, and irredeemable.

In the case of COVID, this is particularly true. Every step in the process that has led to the widespread vaccination of the world population has been subject to the worst kinds of governmental malfeasance. There was simply too much politically to gain (regardless of the speaker’s political persuasion), too much control to grasp for, too much power to take, too much money to make, too much influence to peddle, too many votes to buy, and too much of every other governmental vice. Even under the kind of message “shaping” or “fact checking” that the media machines engage in, more than enough evidence has come out to cast severe doubt on whatever the bureaucrats are saying. Under conditions like this, the safe bet is to bet against the government, and I did.

To those who would counter that I should have been able to “follow the science” to see that the vaccine really is safe, you are deluded. Science requires open inquiry both for and against a hypothesis. In a world where professionals with decades of relevant experience are shouted down because their questions cast doubt on the foregone conclusion, there is no real science. In a world where the outcome has been determined — and it’s just a matter of collecting enough “evidence” to support it — there is no real science. In a world where long-term impacts are never even considered in study design and decisions are made for only short-term outcomes, there is no real science. In a world where negative outcomes are suppressed at the individual, organizational, local, state, federal, and world levels, there is no real science. I have personally seen all of these behaviors. And, anecdotally, they really don’t appear to be infrequent aberrations in the data.

If my decision to forego vaccination results in a negative outcome, blame the “science” for not doing real science. I am a fan of science, and I have a hard-earned PhD in science and engineering to prove it. Had there been an honest public debate where nonconforming ideas were met with something other than a witch hunt, where data wasn’t so blatantly cherry picked and re-worked to “manage” the mass hysteria and support desired outcomes, where time was taken to evaluate (or at least acknowledge) the risk of long-term complications from the developed medical products, where people in power were willing to say something as simple as “I don’t know” instead of make grand pronouncements based on little more than hot air, where politics weren’t the driving factor in narrative, and where there was an honest conversation about risk, I might have chosen differently. Maybe. But then again, I’m not in a particularly high risk category for really negative outcomes even according to the scare-mongers’ data.

Don’t counter that I just happen to have been sheltered from the impacts on people who are infected. I’ve had friends, coworkers, and acquaintances who have died, almost died, or are dealing with “long COVID.” I’ve also known a large number who contracted the disease and passed through it like it were a common cold. It’s a capricious beast that leaves some people alone, and kills others. That is something I’m aware of, and was part of my risk calculus. Life sucks, and something is going to kill you eventually. I decided to accept that fact and get on with my life. There are worse things than dying. Is my risk calculation about to backfire? Maybe, but probably not. Statistically speaking, I’m probably looking at something like a one in 100 chance of death. Those are better odds than I’ve had at multiple points in my life, and I can live (or die) with that.

Back when camping was still fun and didn’t require lugging a 60lb lead acid battery around to power a CPAP, I decided to take Isaac camping and hunting for small game. At the time, we were living within the confines of Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska — a fairly small outpost of humanity in the vastness of the Alaskan wilderness. As a reference, the Fairbanks North Star Borough (a county equivalent that included Fairbanks and Eielson) is roughly the size of New Jersey, contains the second largest city in the state, and was home to less than 100,000 people and more than 300,000 bears. There is a lot of wilderness to enjoy just about everywhere you go up in that region of the globe, so we didn’t have to go far to find a place to camp.

Just outside of Eielson is a several hundred thousand acre Army training ground, accessible by dirt road from Eielson. At the end of that dirt road was a primitive campground where we could set up camp, and the remainder of the training ground was available for hunting when it didn’t conflict with ongoing training. We decided to make use of these local features and spend a couple days hunting snowshoe hare and just enjoying the great outdoors in the wild north.

As part of my day job, I was responsible for the maintenance of a series of seismometers scattered over 80,000 acres of the training lands, so I knew the area well. I’d seen all kinds of wildlife and signs of wildlife, including an active wolverine den, showshoe hare, many moose, ruffled and spruce grouse, ptarmigan, brown and black bear prints and scat… you name it. I figured we’d have no trouble finding some unfortunate small game we could harvest and cook up for dinner. Grouse and ptarmigan are pretty easy to find, easy to shoot, and taste great. Hare is generally plentiful in the area, and cook up well too. We had options, I thought.

We spent the evening and part of the night trying to flush grouse and hares. One ruffled grouse surfaced, but the two large chicken nuggets it provided weren’t going to feed the both of us. We kept at it, but found nothing but a few squirrels. They would have to do… I was getting tired and hungry, and so was Isaac. We cooked up our meager harvest and went to bed under the midnight sun, hoping for better luck in the morning.

Hunting the next morning wasn’t any better. In fact, it was much worse. We didn’t even come across squirrels. I’d never been out in this area before without coming across at least a few critters, but for some reason, literally everything was gone except for the mosquitoes. And, with no other food sources nearby, those were particularly interested in us. The camping and hunting trip was looking like a total bust.

We cleaned up the camp and made preparations to go home to get some actual food. Hoping that my luck would turn, I drove very slowly down the 8 miles of dirt road through the training range hoping to flush another grouse or hare. I looked into every clearing. I scanned the brush along the road (favorite ptarmigan and rough grouse hiding spots) looking for signs of life. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Something had changed. All the critters that normally filled this area were either gone or in hiding.

I decided to totally give up and just head home, so I pulled over to unload my 22 rifle and self defense handgun before reentering the controlled area of the base in compliance with base rules. Then I saw them. The reason that all the game in the area was gone. A pack of about 20 gray wolves stepped out into the road about 25 yards in front of me. The largest of the bunch turned and looked at me. I looked at him. It was a bit of a standoff. I could swear I could hear him wondering if I had enough meat on me to be worth the work. I’m sure he heard me cursing the fact that wolf season had closed a few days prior.

We stood there staring each other down for what felt like an eternity — both of us just standing there in the middle of the road with parts of our families behind us wondering what was going to happen next. Then, just as quietly as they had entered the roadway, the leader turned away and headed deeper into the training lands. His pack followed.

What a sight. I had been standing there staring down a Wolfpack 25 yards away. Probably the same Wolfpack that would spend the winter killing, dismembering, and eating several 2000lb bull moose and leaving only piles of scat, fur, and damaged equipment behind for my crew to clean up. It would have been easy for them to overpower me, but I get the feeling they had at least some experience with people and firearms. That, and compared with an Alaskan moose, I’m pretty scrawny.

Today, again, I ask my self why I’m still doing what I do professionally. From outward appearances, my career is successful; I am well respected in my professional enclave; I have influence over large things; I am plenty far up the food chain within my organization; I’m recognized as an expert among a field of very highly educated and trained people; and I have had a series of projects that have successfully accomplished something to be proud of. I should be happy. I’m not. Not really.

Why aren’t I happy? Some of it could be because I have ideological differences with my customer. I feel like a lot of what we do is wasted, and think there are better uses of the money. Some of it could be that my customer is the one end of the business that doesn’t seem to trust or respect me. Some of it could be that the nature of my customer means that I put up with some of the same stupid that taught me to hate the military and it’s unconcerned way of treating individuals as consumable quantities. Those don’t seem like particularly strong reasons given my current situation.

Ultimately, I’m not really sure why I’m so unhappy with what I do during the day. I suppose it just isn’t what I want to do. I don’t really want to be responsible for keeping a team of people gainfully employed and shouldering the burden when things I can’t control result in people losing their jobs. I don’t really want to be in charge of trying to complete a complex task that depends on things that are outside my control. It’s rewarding when I make it work, but the struggle it takes to make it work costs more than the reward I get in return.

To a large degree, I guess I’m just a control freak who would rather be in a position where the things I’m supposed to control are things that actually are in my control… And the only thing I’m actually in control of is myself, mostly, most of the time. I don’t get a “thrill” out of perceived control over others or being in charge. Prestige, for me, is a burden. I don’t understand the kind of people who deliberately seek out leadership positions. There are times when I feel compelled to accept leadership when I’m in a position where I can do the most good, but every time I end up in that position, it takes a toll on me. The end results have generally been good, but I would have been just as happy (if not happier) if someone else had been put in that position and succeeded.

All that is to lead up to the conclusion that I really would rather work for myself. To be my own master, and master of nothing more. The sad part is that I have a path that would provide that. I believe I know what I want to do. I have the skills to do it. I have a business plan that makes it look feasible. But there are no certainties, and that’s where things get complicated.

Stepping off into the unknown is very difficult to do. Where I am now, I have the financial latitude to pay for the alternative medicine and organic foods Liz believes are the key to controlling her medical issues. I can support the alternative treatments she’s pursuing for Michael. I can support the activities that help Isaac feel like he’s not just a third wheel as we focus on the chaos that is Michael’s health. I can afford to work on the projects that are intended to make this house our home. I have a path to building a workshop for me to retreat to when I need my own space. I can save money so that Liz isn’t destitute when my retirement and disability dry up after I pass. My ability to do any of these things is questionable at best if I commit to self employment. Self employment comes with sacrifices. I’m not convinced that they are worth it. In a best case scenario, I’d need to be able to absorb several months without income to get the business started. This isn’t a good time to try that. I’m not sure there ever will be a good time.

So… to my original question. Am I being responsible, or just a chicken?

It’s Tuesday, and I’m already done for the week. I’ve had enough. I can’t handle any more fun.

Work sucks. For the last few weeks the sword of Damocles has been hanging over our head as our customer has progressively dropped hints that they were going to re-scope our effort. Once they admitted to the fact that they were going to be changing things, they reassured us that “we’d like most of it,” but wouldn’t tell us anything about what the changes were or why we’d like them. I didn’t buy it, and after the “big reveal” today, I still can’t figure out why I should like it other than they’ve finally managed a little bit of realism in terms of schedule. They’re handing the interesting/challenging/worthwhile pieces off to another group who is demonstrably incapable, and we’re somehow supposed to help make them successful without having any real leverage or control over them. They get the real credit if it works (it won’t), and we get blamed if it fails (it will). What’s not to like?

On top of that, we’re supposed to legally have a special relationship with our customer — more of a partnership than a contractor/customer relationship. They don’t seem to believe that. We are supposed to be trusted agents, advisors, and risk reducers… not traditional contractors. They treat us like blood-sucking, bottom-feeding, soulless, profit mongering, heartless, slime-eating, contractors. Rather than pull us into their discussions about how to re-scope the program we’ve spent the last year trying to help them define, they hide it from us and ask people who have partial and partially incorrect information to tell them how to re-scope to meet their new objectives. I’m pissed, but can’t say or do anything about it. My profanity filter is struggling to contain my opinion on this matter.

Ahh, you say, at least you can go home and be around those you love. NOPE. They are out of town, and it’s just me and the dogs. Sometimes I like being alone. When I’m feeling okay, I get a lot done when I don’t have competition for time. I have time to write, tinker, whatever. It’s only a temporary thing, because being alone for too long is a sure-fire way to screw me up, but in the near-term it can be kinda nice. Not today. I came into this week not feeling great. Work has fed that beast. Fed it, and let it loose. It’s about all I can do to make myself cook food and do much more than watch YouTube. I really need to spend time working on business development stuff, and I’ve not really written anything for a while. It’ll wait. I can’t make myself do it. A part of me wants to just get blindingly drunk and wait for the week to end. Too bad that’s not really an option.

The sun has come out, I’ve had at least enough time outside to turn my skin from a ghostly white to something more normal, and I’m the better for it. Winters have always been hard. This one was no exception. But as the sun comes out, the temperatures climb, and the world comes out of hibernation, it’s easier to overlook the stupid in the world and crap that bothers me to find a few minutes of joy — or at least peace — with my bare feet in the cool grass or straddling my motorcycle with wind in my face. Thank heaven for summers.

Edit: The transmission on my motorcycle ate itself 500 miles after the rebuild, and I only got two or three rides in this summer. So much for that. Then I ended up spending almost all of the summer working on a large re-scoping and proposal. I still haven’t had time to look more closely at the motorcycle to decide if it’s even fixable. I wasted the summer, and now it’s gone. What have I done?

A few years ago, I picked up a pear that one of my kids had taken a single bite out of and discarded. The irrational miser in me couldn’t stand to see it go to waste, so I picked it up and took a bite with the intention to finish it off. No sooner had I sunk my teeth into the fruit than I understood why it had been discarded. The apparently healthy, ripe, juicy fruit tasted awful. A potent flavor of mold overpowered my taste buds and flowed up into my nose. I couldn’t get the piece of fruit I had bitten off out of my mouth fast enough. Apparently there was a small spot of mold on the pear somewhere, and the byproducts of that infection had spread throughout the entire fruit without visibly affecting it. It was a nasty surprise.

So what does that have to do with a mind? In short, that pear represents how a contaminant can invisibly soak through something and ruin it without any outward indications of what has happened. I feel like that has happened in my mind. Something has permeated and tainted it, with the end result being that almost everything I have historically enjoyed is at best bland and tasteless, or — more often — bitter and disgusting.

I used to love to read. In particular, I loved the characters and stories created by the likes of Dickens and Hugo. Now I find the abuse and inhumanity of the “bad” characters too much to read. I used to love reading history, and wasn’t particularly bothered by the failures of humanity or the biases of the historian. Now I often have a strong urge to set the book down or turn off the recording because everything seems to be reduced to black and white in terms that grate on me.

I used to love to write, and spent enormous amounts of time piecing together two novels. I sat down to re-look at one of them tonight to consider revising it to make it better conform to the model publishers expect. In scanning through it to assess the feasibility of this task, I realized I don’t like what I wrote, and I don’t have any real desire to revise it — especially to revise it to meet expectations for commercial fiction. At this moment, sitting in the dark typing away, I write because I am sleepless and need to vent some bile. Nothing more. I don’t particularly enjoy it.

I used to like to be helpful to others. I used to spend lots of time and talent helping people with things like fixing cars, repairing homes, whatever. It didn’t matter so long as I was being helpful. Now I am in a position where I know almost nobody, and have very little opportunity to serve in any meaningful way. To make things worse, I don’t want to be around people enough to learn what help they may need or expose my talents. That creates more demand, and my reserves are running low. Besides, who would want to spend time with an asshole like me at this point? Even my kids would rather not hang around me.

At some point in my distant life, I liked to watch movies and television. It’s torture now. I can’t stand the cookie-cutter stories, boring characters, predictable plots, and the self-righteousness of the industry that has gone out of its way to marginalize people like me. Documentaries I used to enjoy now sound like war-drums being beaten to manipulate the masses. I don’t enjoy them anymore.

Food has always been one of my greatest pleasures. At this point the foods I like most are not options, and what remains is difficult to choke down sometimes. On occasions when I cheat and eat things I shouldn’t, the knowledge that I’m caving to weakness poisons the food and ruins the pleasure. Food is no longer all that enjoyable.

I still like to be creative, but I find I have little opportunity to do so. “Free time” is all but nonexistent. When I spend a few minutes doing something like writing in this worthless unread blog, I feel guilty for not better using my time on any of the myriad of other things I should be doing. Working in the yard is more of a drudge than the therapy it used to be. Cars and motorcycles are mostly just expensive transportation. Work is what you do to pay the bills. Projects are work you do to spend what remains because that kind of work is preferable to doing nothing in the same way that eating moldy food is preferable to starvation.

I’d like to figure out what contaminant is at the heart of this mental malaise, cut out the source, and apply an antidote to what remains in order to bring back the joy. My attempts so far have mostly just been frustrating. In some cases, the therapy has been a neutral. In others it has shown me just how screwed up I am. And in others, I feel like it has brought issues that were previously unobtrusive front and center.

I have demons I can point to and name — experiences that have tainted me — but I haven’t the slightest idea how to exorcise them. I’m also sure there are other more subtle and probably more destructive ones lurking in the shadows. They are the contaminant tainting my pleasures, and I’m unsure how to move past them.

I had a relatively long talk with a co-worker in the parking lot yesterday. He had pulled a page from his Army days and confronted a battle buddy he thought was struggling. He was right. I’m struggling. Standing there in the first sunny day of what looks like spring, we talked for quite a while about options and off-ramps.

We’ve both chewed up some of the same dirt, and have many of the same frustrations with regard to where we are professionally. It’s good to bounce ideas and thoughts off of someone like that, knowing that they aren’t going to over-react or judge you harshly. As we talked, I was able to articulate the sticky place I’m in right now… tied to geography, with few alternatives that don’t involve major readjustment of expectations. Verbalizing these things is good for me since it’s one of the best ways for me to organize thoughts and pick apart thorny problems. People who know me, know that I tend to think best when I think out loud and on the fly.

In the course of the conversation, my friend hit upon a theme I’ve come back to repeatedly as I’ve sought for a future that didn’t depend on the kind of horse shit I’ve been dealing with lately — finding a way to be self-employed. It’s a super attractive idea for many reasons, but it’s one I’m not ready to put to the test. At the moment, the risks appear to outweigh the benefits.

First, all the ideas I’ve had for financial independence from big business and big government have either failed on first contact with reality, or would require several years of zero income and simultaneous investment in business development. Zero income may be achievable with my retirement check and VA disability if my family would re-assess needs for things such as lessons, organic foods, alternative medicine, vacations of any sort, etc. But I lack the resources or equity to achieve the investments required to become profitable. I’ve also lived the consequences of a cold-turkey transition from traditional corporate drone to self-employed poorly paid artisan. I don’t think I can put my family through that.

One path I’ve seen advocated, and was taught in an entrepreneur class I took as part of my transition out of the military, is to borrow the required capital. I’ve done the homework, and more significantly, watched close friends go down that path and essentially drown in debt before ultimately folding and losing everything they put into it in the first place. In the process, they’ve set back the family finances by at least a decade. To make matters worse, I have no assets against which I can borrow. I have almost zero equity in my house. No other real-estate. No 401K of any value. My cars and other personal property aren’t worth the price I could get for scrap. There is nothing I could leverage, and so would be stuck with options like utilizing credit cards. That math won’t work.

The best alternative, then, is to build up a business as a side-hustle while I still draw a regular paycheck. I work with several people who do this, including one who works as a general contractor in the evenings building custom homes. They spend 8 hours a day at one job, then another 8 building up their hustle. I can’t do that. As-is, I leave the house within 30-40 minutes of getting out of bed, get home just in time to eat some dinner, spend a few minutes with my kids, then crash out to repeat the process again the next day. I won’t give up that little bit of time I have for maintaining relationships in exchange for piss-poor odds that I can make a success of any of my bright ideas. Hell, I don’t even have the time to really explore bright ideas, little lone figure out how to monetize them.

So, after all that, I’m stuck right back where I was. Hoping to find a way out of where I am, but convinced that I don’t have a real path to do so. I’m not willing to risk what it takes, even knowing that in doing so I would risk far less than the average entrepreneur. I guess I’m just a spineless jellyfish to scared to step into the unknown unless I’m pushed there.

I hasn’t been a good week, and that is on a scale that has been recalibrated to accommodate the fucked up “new normal” prevalent in early 2021. Every day this week, I’ve allowed myself to get angry. Every day, I’ve suffered a shame hangover after getting angry. Most days, I’ve wondered how bad I want the things that my job pays for. Today, at the end of the day, I’m still suffering the emotional impact of yesterday.

I’ve continually struggled to convince myself the bullshit that I put up with at work from my customer is worth it all. I’m well paid, but sometimes it doesn’t seem enough. My customer and my management both know that it would be a serious disruption to their program if I left, so they say the right words, but their actions (at least the customer’s) seem to tell a different tale. Their actions are driving me crazy. My reactions to their actions have an even bigger impact.

I wonder how even bureaucrats can be so inept and indecisive – and that seen through the lens of extensive personal experience with bureaucrats. I wonder how they can believe that treating me and my team like shit will result in the product they hope for. They came to us in the first place because they couldn’t describe what they wanted in terms that were refined enough to take to a conventional system developer. We are supposed to serve as an honest broker and trusted agent to help them refine and finalize those things, but they refuse to trust us even in the little things.

In a year of intense work, we’ve gotten nowhere, and done nothing substantial except for generating a mountain of paper that is never read beyond a cursory search for things to complain about. We should be nearing completion of design and beginning assembly and test, but we still can’t get them to pin down fundamental objectives. Instead of working through the relevant concepts, they always find something non-substantial to bitch about. Instead of being an engineer, I’m at best a tech writer. They never seem to get to the underlying point and move on.

This kind of horse shit is a HUGE part of why I left the military. Why am I putting up with it now that I’m free? The unfortunate answer is that I’m not free. While my cohorts have had the opportunity to accumulate 20 years worth of equity in their homes, I bought mine with nothing to put down less than a year ago. Every penny I ever put into real estate was either wasted or went into the pocket of a landlord. That means that I couldn’t afford to move even if I wanted to at this point. I need the money to support our commitments, and there isn’t really much else here in the local area that has potential to be any better.

Even if finances would support another move, I couldn’t do it. While my cohorts’ children were enjoying something like stability, mine were being uprooted for a another assignment or disrupted due to a deployment. Their kids would probably do okay moving. It might even be exciting. Mine would rather die. I can’t ask them to leave again. I WONT ask them. Even if they were fine with it, I’M NOT. I’ve moved too many times. I’m so far removed from anything like roots that I don’t feel like my house is my home. I don’t feel like I have a real home. I’m not starting over. This place is going to be home. Period. Ergo a I need a job that will support that.

Yesterday, I almost walked away. Then an insufficiently filtered version of the truth came out in response to a minor case of my customer’s bull shit. Then another. Then a call to my boss from the customer telling him he needed to “rein me in.” My inability to put on a happy face and absorb repeated body blows is now putting my employment in jeopardy. If I hadn’t managed to make myself a critical asset, they would have chased me off the program, and probably out of the company, by now. I’m walking a thin line. If I can’t pull my shit together and get better control of myself, I risk having to move again. I risk losing on real estate again. I risk financial ruin. I risk further alienating my kids. I risk putting myself back where I was. I risk an awful lot.

This kind of dilemma is what drove me to make the decision to stay on active duty when I wanted to leave several years ago. My decision to hold on and hope it got better so I wouldn’t lose the one financial asset I had (my retirement) resulted in serious damage to me and my family. Damage that still hasn’t been repaired. Damage that likely won’t ever be completely repaired. Facing a similar dilemma now is drawing all that damage back to the surface. That process is feeding the beast that is eating me alive at the moment.

I don’t see a way out of this. I have to go back on Monday and try to mend bridges I want fervently to burn, knowing that burning those bridges would cost me many other things I want fervently. Maybe I should just quit wanting.