Hugh Hollowell

The Notebook

There are some authors who were made for audiobooks. They are more spoken word artists than true writers.

Rick Bragg is one of them. Another is David Sedaris.

Like many people, my introduction to Sedaris was through This American Life, when he reads excerpts every Christmas from his essay The Santa Land Diaries. At the time, I lived in Raleigh, NC, where he grew up, so there was the additional level of cool because I knew many of the places he mentioned, and often ate at the IHOP where he stayed up late and wrote while in college.

As someone who writes and tries to tell stories, another thing I like about David Sedaris is that he basically writes about himself. He does do occasional fiction, but it isn’t his strong suite by any means: He is at his best when he is talking about himself, and the world as he observes it.

In his essay Day by Day, found in the collection Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, he lays out his process:

Keep a notebook with you all the time, and make notes about things you find interesting.
The following day, refer to your notes to write a diary entry, fleshing out details while it’s still fresh in your mind.
Periodically review the entries for items that merit fleshing out into stories
In front of live audiences, read the stories out loud and get feedback, which you use to edit the stories.

In short, it all starts with a notebook.

Trying to blog daily while living with ADHD in the middle of a pandemic ain’t no joke, y’all. I will have really cool ideas while on a walk, or while doing something else, and will think, “That’s it. That is what I will blog about. But then I sit down in front of my computer tomorrow to write one of the 8 things I have committed to write this week, and suddenly, I got nothing. It’s like every single thing I wanted to talk about is gone.

So, I bought a notebook.

It’s a simple pocket notebook, roughly the size of an index card, which I carry in a leather wallet I bought for the purpose. There’s room for a pencil in there, too, and when inspiration hits me, I stop and make a note. But really, I think any sort of notebook would do, as long as you remember to carry it with you. Thus the wallet, as I need my license and debit card, so this way it’s all together.

Should this notebook ever be stolen, it will make no sense to anyone. For instance, the entry that led to my post I called No Man’s Land literally says:

Pool, skylight, abundance

20, 21, 22, Thunk!

Guy splashing in next lane

And that’s it. I sat down in the locker room at the gym and scrawled it down as soon as I got back in from the pool, and the next day, that was the backbone of my entry.

So, that’s what I do now: I scribble in a notebook. Yes, I know you could do this on your phone, but I really hate writing on my phone. Like, really. I also forget it’s there. All the apps on my phone – it’s like they are not there – that whole object impermanence ADHD thing. But with a wallet in your pocket, it’s somehow more real, and I don’t forget it.

Yesterday, I was thought about something else to write about, and when I pulled my notebook out, I thought, “I could write about this notebook habit!” And wrote the following entry:

Carrying a notebook!

And that is this post.

The Apocaloptomist

It was Thanksgiving morning in 1986, I think, that my Daddy’s friend got gunned down in a trailer park by his cousin. There was liquor involved, and a shotgun, and much screaming, and my Dad’s friend, who had tried to get his cousin to put down the gun and go sober up, was instead shot down and left to bleed out on the gravel in front of his house.

I remember it was Thanksgiving because we were getting ready to go to my grandmother’s when Dad heard the news. He told Mom he would be back soon, and then hopped in his truck and went over to see the family. It was a dirty, shabby story, with no way to clean it up or make it make sense. It was the sort of tragedy that happens when families squabble and there is both alcohol and guns involved.

Eventually, Dad came home, and we went to my grandmothers and ate, while Dad pushed the food around on his plate, and then got up and went for a walk, leaving us all at the table.

In the weeks that followed, I heard Dad and others talk about the man who had died. He had been a leader in his small community, had served on the Volunteer Fire Department, and was generally seen as someone to look up to. That he died trying to de-escalate a bad situation only added to his personal legend.

It was the first time I really thought about what people would say about you after you were dead.

* * *

A while back, a friend sent me the Urban Dictionary entry for an Apocaloptomist and said, “It’s you!”

I looked at it and realized, sadly, that it was. I do believe the world is going to shit, but still at least hope it turns out OK. I am inordinately hopeful, in the midst of overwhelming evidence that the world is crumbling around me.

I’m not some Pollyanna – In fact, I’m somewhat resigned to the facts: The world is getting warmer, the systems that hold us together are failing us, and our politicians have sold us out for campaign contributions. But if the world is ending, well, what sort of person do I want to be when the world ends?

Do I want to be the guy on the jet, eeeking out every bit of hedonistic pleasure, or the person committed to the very end to hold on as long as possible, to scratch and scrimp to save as many people as possible for as long as possible?

“What sort of person will I be when the world ends?”

I think about this question all the time. Not the specific form, but the general: What sort of person will I be when X happens?

What sort of person will I be when the supply chain runs out of food? Will I be the sort of person who had enough food to share with their neighbors, or the sort of person who sits on their roof with a gun, to defend their homestead?

When I am old and my grandchildren learn in school about the Obergefell v. Hodges, the same way I learned about Brown v. The Board of Education, what sort of story will I have for them when I get asked about where I was? What sort of person was I in the years up to Obergfell v. Hodges? In the years after?

When I am “…layin’ on [my] back, lookin’ at the roof of the church / Preacher tellin’ the truth and it hurts”, to quote DMX, well, what sort of person do I want them to say I was? What sort of person do you want to be when you are dead?

I don’t believe in the great man theory of history – that some are born great, waiting on history to recognize them. Instead, I believe history is made by those who show up, who decide to take a stand, who, when given a choice to do something or to do nothing, choose to do something.

And I will, as long as I can, be the person who does something. And I know I’m not alone in that. It doesn’t all depend on me – there are lots of us that choose, in the moment of truth, to do something.

And maybe, together, we can change things. We can definitely try.

And that gives me hope, in spite of the facts.

Sitting in The Dark

It was Tuesday morning when I got the call.

It was Nessie, Lena’s daughter.

“Momma died this morning, Hugh. Can you come over to the house? We are waiting for the funeral home.”

It’s never convenient. It’s never easy. It never fits in your plans, and it is always emotional and difficult. It isn’t happy.

That’s why I call it sitting in the dark.

* * *

I met Lena shortly after moving to Raleigh, NC, nearly 15 years ago. I had only been in town a few months, and was just getting to know people.

Lena was short and stocky, a Black woman with a huge grin and a near toothless lisp who acted like a momma to many of the folks on the street.

When we first met, she was only a few weeks sober after a lifetime of drinking. She had woken up in the hospital after a blackout, and the doctor told her if she drank again, she would die. This was complicated by the fact her husband also drank, and refused to quit. So she left. She chose life.

Lena struggled to find employment, and bounced around the shelters for a while, but eventually she got a small duplex apartment and a job at a dollar store. Things were going pretty good.

It was sometime around the end of that first year when she ran into me in the park.

“Hugh, I need some help. I was sick last week, and missed some work. Now I don’t have any money to pay my light bill. Can you give me the money to pay it?”

I had only been in Raleigh a little while. Eventually I would develop a network of agencies, colleagues and friends who could help with a $75 shortfall like this, but back then, I had none of that. I was barely surviving myself, and I just couldn’t do it.

“I’m sorry Lena, but I just can’t do it.”

Lena’s smile turned into a tight-lipped frown, and she put her hands on her hips.

“I thought you were my friend! And now you won’t even help me?”

I got pissed. I was trying, you know? I didn’t know what to do, and felt helpless.

“Dammit, Lena! I am your friend. I don’t have any money, and I can’t keep your lights on. What the hell do you want me to do?”

Lena looked at me with sadness, and resignation, and no doubt, fatigue.

“I want you to come sit with me in the dark.”

Damn.

It would be several weeks before Lena could get her lights turned back on. And nearly daily, we would sit in her cold, dim living room on a couch of questionable provenance and tell stories. She would tell me about her two adult children, about their own drinking problems, about her son’s time in jail, about her ex-husband. She would tell me about the preacher she was convinced was a hustler, and the drug dealer on the corner, and her landlord who she was convinced was also a pimp. I told her about why I had moved there, and about Renee, who I was dating at the time. She wanted to know when we would get married, and why I lived in the “hood”, and what my life had been like growing up.

“I know you grew up poor. I can tell. You aren’t scared of poor people or Black people.”

I would often run into Lena at the Salvation Army’s soup kitchen, and she would introduce me to folks. Lena is one of maybe three people who made it their mission in the early days to show me around, tell me how the streets in Raleigh worked, and gave me credibility among the folks who live outside.

I remember when I told her Renee and I were getting married.

“Hugh, I’m happy for you, but you need to get that girl a good place to live. I know you’re a hood rat, but she’s from Arkansas. You need to move into a good neighborhood. Trust me on this.”

For the next few years, Lena was one of the constants in my life. We were, in every sense of the word, friends. I owed her so much – she had taught me who I was meant to be.

* * *

Eventually, she got her disability approved and got into income-based housing, and I saw a lot less of her. I would visit her apartment, but she didn’t get out as much as she used to; avoiding the riff-raff, she called it.

One day, her daughter called me to tell me her mom was in the hospital with breast cancer and was in a dark place. Could I come visit?

Of course I can. Lena had taught me all about sitting in the dark places.

The next few years was the battle with cancer. First a lumpectomy, then a double mastectomy, then chemo for a while. I probably made 10 hospital visits for various things.

I was stuck at the office a lot in those years, so when she was feeling OK, she would come and see me to catch up. We would talk about her noisy neighbors, and she would ask after Renee, and she would talk about her fears around dying and her regrets about her children not getting along.

Around January of 2017, Lena got the diagnosis that her cancer was not only back, but had spread all over. She had maybe six months to live, at best.

I wish I could tell you I visited her daily during that time, but I didn’t. I would go by periodically, and she would come by, but it wasn’t anywhere near as often as I should.

When I had gotten back from being out of town and the staff told me she had come by looking for me, I meant to call her back, but I forgot, honestly.

So when I got the call from Nessie that fall morning telling me she was gone, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

“Please come, Hugh. The funeral home is coming for her. Sit with us.”

“I will be right there,” I said.

I was feeling regret and sadness and powerless, but sitting is something I know how to do.

* * *

Lena and her son were living in a rooming house on a narrow side street. A house designed to have two bedrooms had been cut up and partitioned into seven rooms, all of which were rented out by the week, with a common bathroom at the end of the hall.

When I arrived, there were a ton of neighbors on the porch. The hospice nurse was on the porch, just finishing a phone call.

“Are you the preacher? They been waiting on you.”

We went in together. The house smelled of sweat and fear and cabbage and desperation, the narrow hallway lined with flake board walls pressing in on us as we moved to the back of the house and entered a crowded 10×8 room.

Lena’s son was there, a huge man with tears running down his face. He grabbed me in a bear hug and thanked me for coming. Nessie’s son was there too, a 14-year-old boy Lena never tired of talking about. And on the bed was my friend, Lena, who had fought a long time for dignity and respect and sobriety and later, her own life, and who had been tired and was now at rest.

The hospice nurse asked me if I would say a prayer, so I did, and then I read from the Bible on Lena’s nightstand:

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

For the next 20 minutes or so, we stood around her bed and told stories, and remembered her boldness, her sassiness, her big smile and her determination.

And then it was time. The funeral home guy showed up, and Nessie, her son and I went for a walk while they took Lena’s body out of the house, because there is no way she should see that.

Then there was paperwork to fill out, and things that needed my signature as a witness, and then the car with Lena’s body in it left and we were left in an empty room that contained nothing but a twin bed, a loveseat, a tv and some memories.

Nessie and her brother and I walk to my car.

“I’m glad you came this morning. You been part of our family for a long time. It was right that you were here.”

Her brother hugs me again, and thanks me for coming.

And I get in the car and drive away, having sat in the dark with Lena for the last time.

The Box at the Side of the Road

It didn’t look like much, sitting there on the side of the road, sticking out of a box along side a broken air popper and a lamp with a missing lampshade. But you couldn’t fool me – I knew what it was.

My brother-in-law was visiting us – this was in the before times – and had gotten up early and went for a walk in the neighborhood. When he came back, he had told me that a few streets over, someone had set a bunch of trash at the curb.

“And sitting right on top of it all is a cast iron skillet.”

I drove over to check it out. It was, in fact, a cast iron skillet; a 10 inch one, to be exact. It wasn’t any collectable brand; just a no-name workhorse of a skillet, the sort that used to be in every southern kitchen, and still hangs on the wall of mine.

But, it had been a long time since somebody loved it. It was filthy, and covered in rust. I put it in my shed to “deal with later”. And then a few weeks later, a global pandemic happened, and my mind became filled with other things.

But last week, I came across it again, as I was moving some things about, and decided it had been neglected long enough.

In the book Hannibal, the author Thomas Harris has Hannibal Lecter write a letter to Clarice Starling, in which he says the following:

“Do you have a black iron skillet? You are a southern mountain girl; I can’t imagine you would not. Put it on the kitchen table. Turn on the overhead lights.

Look into the skillet, Clarice. Lean over it and look down. If this were your mother’s skillet, and it well may be, it would hold among its molecules the vibrations of all the conversations ever held in its presence. All the exchanges, the petty irritations, the deadly revelations, the flat announcements of disaster, the grunts and poetry of love.

Sit down at the table, Clarice. Look into the skillet. If it is well cured, it’s a black pool, isn’t it? It’s like looking down a well. Your detailed reflection is not at the bottom, but you loom there, don’t you? The light behind you, there you are in a blackface, with a corona like your hair on fire.

We are elaborations of carbon, Clarice. You and the skillet and Daddy dead in the ground, cold as the skillet. It’s all still there. Listen.”

I love that. Cast iron is sacred to me, in a way other skillets are not. They have soul, personality, character. Perhaps it is the vibrations in the carbon. In any event, it was time to make things right.

There is a lot of mythology around cast iron, but it isn’t rocket science. It requires a modicum of care, and there are rules to its use, just like there are rules to how to use nonstick.

So I ran a sink of hot water and dish soap, and scrubbed it down with a Scotchbrite pad. I scrubbed the grease and the rust off, and when it was done, it was a pale grey with some splotches of rust here and there, but clean. I then poured white vinegar in the pan and scrubbed the rust, adding kosher salt to make a paste.

With cast iron, your two enemies are acid and water. But the dose makes the poison, and first, we have to strip it down before we can season it.

After it’s clean, I turned the burner of the stove to low heat, and then set the skillet on it for 10 minutes or so. I want it dry as can be, and the heat drives the moisture out. While that’s happening, I turn the oven on 450 and let it heat up, and get out the vegetable oil.

There is a lot of mythology around seasoning the skillet, but it’s just that – myth. All you are going to do is create a thin coating to protect the skillet. And virtually any oil will work. The old folks used lard, because that is what they had, but plain old vegetable oil will work a treat. What we are going to aim for is 4-5 thin coatings. You don’t want one thick coating, because it will glob up and get sticky.

OK, now your skillet is on the burner, and dry and scalding hot. Pour a small dot of oil in the skillet – like, twice the size of a quarter, maybe. Then put on an oven mitt and, with a pair of tongs and a folded up paper towel, smear a thin coat of oil over the entire skillet, inside and out. I can’t emphasize how little oil will be on the skillet at this point – a thin coating, with no oil remaining when you are done smearing. Your skillet will look the same as it did before, only slightly darker from the oil.

Now put it in the oven upside down and leave it there for 30 minutes. It might smoke a bit – this is not failure. Using your oven mitt, take it out and repeat. Small dollop of oil, smear it all over, thin coat, put it back in the oven for 30 more minutes. And again. And again. Do it at least four times.

You put it in upside down to keep any oil from pooling. There shouldn’t be any oil to pool, if you used as little oil as I told you to, but still – better safe than sorry. The fourth time, just turn the oven off and let it cool, with the skillet in it. And when it cools, you are done.

It’s now ready to use. You don’t have to be precious with it. Use it to fry bacon, make cornbread, or really to cook anything, although you should probably avoid heavily acidic dishes like spaghetti sauce. And when you are done, use a scrubby pad to clean it with a little soapy water – the no soap thing is another myth – dry it off, and put it away. I usually dry mine by putting it over low heat for a minute or two to drive the moisture out, then wipe it down with a few drops of oil.

And that’s it. Using it continues to season it naturally, and your drying it and wiping it with oil protects it. Keep it dry and it will, properly treated, outlast the kitchen in which it is stored. I do not, however, recommend storing it in a box at the end of the driveway.

No Man’s Land

The pool at my gym is in a huge room, with a knotty pine ceiling, pierced by large, square skylights. The room is at least 20 feet tall, and the skylights are at least 15 feet across, so you feel like you are under the open sky if you look up. Or, if you are like me, prefer to swim the backstroke.

I say prefer there, like I have a quiver full of strokes available to me, but swimming is a skill I learned as an adult, so it’s pretty much backstroke, breaststroke, or sink. But it’s fine – I like the backstroke and the relaxed pace it forces upon me. It’s hard to stress about much when you are in the rhythm of the backstroke.

The guy in the lane next to mine, however, was doing the freestyle crawl, and he had lots of gear with him. He had a person who was timing his laps, and while I’m strolling along, leisurely stroking (Tickle, T, Touch. Tickle, T, Touch…), he is powering through. It’s obvious he is preparing for some form of competition.

I decidedly, am not. As I make my slow way down the lane, he passes me multiple times. Part of me feels some form of atavistic urge to accelerate, some concern that he is doing better than I am, that he is somehow superior to me, somehow more masculine than I am.

As I swim down the lane, I am looking at the sky overhead – another reason I prefer the backstroke in this pool. The clear blue sky with traces of white clouds sail by, and the 25-meter pool has two and a half skylights under which I will pass as I swim each length. As the swimmer next to me flails past, I suppress the urge to push ahead, to be faster, to engage in some futile attempt at competition, and instead notice, high above, a jet airplane headed west, away from the airport.

I wonder briefly where they are headed, the people on that plane. Are they on a business trip, the fate of the account depending on their being sharp at the meeting to which they are headed? Is it for pleasure – perhaps a trip to see grandma, after almost two years apart because of COVID? Or an emergency trip home, because someone’s unvaccinated parent is about to be taken off the ventilator?

This passes through my head as I count my strokes, while Greg Louganis in the next lane is splashing for all he’s worth, and the time keeper shouts encouragement. I have to count my strokes, because this is not a pool designed for races, and thus has no row of flags near the end of the swim lane. Which means that if you lose yourself in your thoughts while doing the backstroke, you will smash your head into the wall of the pool.

As a person with ADHD, I have before described my inner monologue as actually like being in the electronics department at a store, where there is a wall of televisions, but all with the volume up and all tuned to different channels. At times I can tune into one, while the others drift into the background, but it always requires concentration to do, and if I relax too much, it all becomes just noise.

So here I am, counting my strokes – I hit the wall somewhere between 21 and 23, so at 21 I become careful. But while I’m counting my strokes, I’m also aware of swimmer guy in the next lane, and also balancing my urge to compete with my awareness that the vast sky is above me, seemingly going on forever (12, 13, 14). And it occurs to me that competitiveness is based on scarcity – the certainty that only one of us can win, that there are only so many ways to win, that the person in second place is the first loser, and all that – while the unfolding blue sky is a sign of the abundance that exists all around me, and (16, 17) there is no reason to think that I should be denied participation in that natural abundance.

THUNK!

I hit the wall. Hard. And not for the first time in my life, I reflect on the balance that I came up against in that moment, in the deep end of the pool, as I thrash about for air. The desire to live in my head, where I feel connected and integrated, and the necessity to maintain an awareness of the world around me so I do not hit my head on the wall, or lose my license because of a forgotten ticket, or watch undocumented folks get scapegoated.

That no man’s land on the border, between the aspiration of what could be and the stark reality of what actually is, seems to be my lot in which to dwell, and so I find myself here in the Deep South, living between Humidity and Hope.

Advice You Will Ignore

Since posting my story of burnout, I have had no less than 5 conversations with people in similar places. All people in the so-called helping professions, all doing good work, all exhausted.

I used to teach classes on self-care, but if I did it now, I wouldn’t call it that. Because sometimes, the most self-loving thing you can do is walk the hell out the door, never to return. And I’m not really interested in helping uphold failing systems that rely on the sacrifices of good people to survive.

But, I do recognize that exhausted people have very little capacity to effect change, or to fight for their own liberation. And if giving someone the tools to conserve even a portion of their energy for their own use gives them margin to effect change, then it’s probably worth doing.

Here are some things, in no particular order, that I wish I had learned and taken seriously early in my career. Many of them I have shared before, while others I have only recently learned. None of them are definitive – in most cases, they are starting points for you to investigate. Most of them are inexpensive, or can be budgeted for. None of them involve spa-days or pedicures.

I also want to say that you will probably ignore all this. I did, and I was the one teaching it. But I really wish I hadn’t.

The most important thing you can do, if you want to change the world, is to survive long enough to do it. It has been my experience that dead people have very little influence on society.

Buy yourself a calendar, and write things down. A calendar is an integrity document – things that go on it are promises to yourself and others. Important things get scheduled. Schedule non-work things – lunches with friends, trips with your spouse, doctor visits – just like you would an appointment. Guard these against work intruding.
You need a few people you can trust without question. Schedule regular time with those people.
Make friends who have nothing to do with your work. You are more likely to keep up with friends if you schedule them as appointments. Like, the 3rd Friday of the month at 3 PM is always “Coffee with Judy” on your calendar.
Related to number 3 – the more standing appointments you can have, the less you have to think, and the fewer decisions you have to make. Set it as a recurring meeting in your calendar and then you never have to think about it again. This can be everything from the barber to the gym to the therapist to the coffee shop. I had a period there where every Tuesday afternoon from 2-5 was just when I did my writing, and every Wednesday morning I met with my direct reports.
Remember always that you, as a person, are nowhere near as important as you think you are to anyone at your work. If you dropped dead tomorrow, they would have your job posted before you were in the ground. If removing you from the picture will kill it, it’s already dead and you are just paying for it to stay alive with your energy.
Decisions you make when you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired will probably be bad decisions. If you feel any of those things and are facing a big decision, HALT. (Get it?)
Sleep is everything. If you aren’t getting at least 7 hours of sleep (without self-medicating) on a regular basis, do whatever you need to do to make that happen.
A surgeon must protect her hands to protect her ability to work. You must protect your energy for the same reason, and just as rigorously. Energy is like money – it’s easier to spend less than it is to make more.
Develop a life and an identity apart from your work. You won’t always be Pastor Sarah, but you will always be Mom. So maybe don’t invest so much energy in something that won’t last.
Read books and watch movies that have nothing to do with your work.
Find affordable luxuries to pamper yourself with. You are unlikely to go broke because you bought the good face soap rather than the generic, but the good soap will make you feel special every time you use it.
Take the vacation. In blocks of 5 days in a row or more.
Develop rituals in your life. They will ground you and give you things to do when you don’t know what to do.
The more options you have in any given situation, the better you will sleep and the more peace you will have. Fight to have as many options as possible.
Eat the best food you can afford. It is both fuel and pleasure.
Daily exercise – even if it is just a walk around the block or riding your bike to work – is crucial. And no, all the steps you get in while at work doesn’t count.
You are probably dehydrated.
The temptation to use chemicals to manage your state is overwhelming. A “beer after work” is easy to become a “bottle of wine after work”. Find non-chemical ways to manage your state.
If you don’t work from your home, figure out how to turn work off before you walk in the door of your house. Transitional rituals (like stopping at the coffee shop on the way home, or silencing your phone after you park the car in the driveway, or walking around your garden before you go in the house) can help with this.
If you do work from home, figure out how to signify when you are done with work – like, closing the laptop, or shutting the door to the office. I will often walk around the block when I’m done, as a way of telling myself I’m “walking home”.
There are no such thing as guilty pleasures. Like what you like. If that is eating ding-dongs while listening to Taylor Swift, own that shit. The sheer amount of guilt people will try to put on you is nearly endless, so don’t guilt yourself.
Your ability to survive long-term in a world filled with ugliness is directly related to how much beauty you have in your life. Beauty is like Vitamin C – your body needs it, and yet cannot store it. Search for beauty and surround yourself with it like your life depends on it. Because it does.

The Decision

George was 57 – just 7 years and change older than I am now – but he looked 70. He smelled of urine, he slept outside, and hadn’t showered in months. He shuffled when he walked, and a naturally small man, he was a popular victim when it came to street violence. When we first met, he had been mugged three times in the previous four months.

It hadn’t always been that way. George had been the dairy manager at a grocery store in a Raleigh suburb. He lived in a middle class brick house, in a subdivision. His wife was a school teacher. He had one daughter, who had gone to a good state university.

The house was no longer his. Neither was the wife. And the daughter had a restraining order against him and he had been trespassed from the bank where she now worked.

George liked to drink. And for years, he made it work. He would have a hard day at work and come home and drink a few, to take the edge off. Eventually he had to drink in order to go to work, too. Then he started drinking during lunch.

He wasn’t a bad drunk. He just got silly, and then sleepy. He got fired when his boss found him passed out in the dairy cooler. His wife got a divorce shortly after that. He was too drunk to fight, or to show up for court. He lost everything.

He had been on the street for 5 years when I met him, drunk as a lord. We hit it off well, and eventually, he decided to quit after having a heart attack. He went into a rehab facility where he stayed sober for 100 days, and then he went into a halfway house facility, where he got another 100 days, and then he went into a private apartment where he got less than 10 days. He didn’t have the money to pay the rent the next month, having drank it, and was back on the street.

I saw variations of that story play out over and over for more than a decade. I watched people – good, hardworking people, lose everything they had because of alcohol.

I didn’t grow up around alcohol, but not for religious reasons – it was because once Dad began drinking, he didn’t have an off switch. So he drank his last drink when I was 4. His half-brother lost everything because of drinking – wife, kids, stole from his mother and my dad, and as a result was exiled from the family for years and years.

I later learned my mom’s side of the family had people with similar stories. People who drank to forget trauma, who drank to manage pain, who drank and drank until it cost them everything.

I drank my first beer when I was 15. We stole it from the store I was working at that summer, and drank it hot behind the carwash. It wasn’t very good, but the cheers, the social approval, the back slapping – that felt amazing.

In the Marines, I drank a lot, because it was a social lubricant. Cheers, the social approval, the back slapping. My girlfriend Heather was an alcoholic, trying to cover the pain of being Queer in a world not ready for that.

I drank when I was a Financial Advisor, because I hated my life, often having to down a pint of vodka in the parking garage in order to stomach going into the office.

And when I became a pastor, I learned some folks drank as a way to signify that they weren’t some hellfire and damnation fundamentalist. “Hey, I’m not like those conservative jerks that called you a sinner: I drink single malt scotch!”.

The 12 years or so that I worked with people experiencing homelessness was the time in my life I knew the most alcoholics, but honestly, a good portion of them were social workers, pastors, and medical folks who just didn’t have other tools for dealing with what they felt.

And because the only people in the world who did know what you felt were the people you worked with, you could grab a drink after work, and then you get the chemicals from drinking and the chemicals from the social interaction, and you didn’t have to feel what you felt anymore.

One day not long after George lost his apartment I noticed that was what I was doing, and so I quit drinking after work with my peers and started looking for healthier ways to deal with what I felt.

Because that’s the thing: Abusing chemicals (whatever the chemical it is) is a way to hit pause on what you are feeling. And then you hit pause the next time you feel it. And then one day, you hit pause earlier than you did last time. Until one day, you haven’t felt that thing in a long time.

As an aside, this is one of the things that makes sobriety for an addict so hard – because suddenly, you don’t have your coping tool any more, and the last time you had to feel what you are feeling was whatever age you began using.

I’m not some religious wacko that believes there is no such thing as responsible usage of alcohol. Honestly, I love a good Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, but since Renee can’t drink because of her medications, I often would have a bottle go bad before I would finish it. Or else I would finish it all at one setting, which worried me more. So I quit drinking at home.

Eventually I went from being a person who was worried about drinking too much to being a person who just doesn’t drink.

I didn’t “need” to quit – it just made my life easier to quit. And it greatly reduces the number of ways I can screw up my life and financial future.

And because I don’t “need” to quit, but chose to, I can choose not to. Like last month a friend I was staying with offered me a glass of wine, and I had one while unwinding with them. It was maybe my second drink in two years.

I’m not telling you what you should do – Lord knows I am powerless over the pull of caffeine on my brain in the morning, but then again, I don’t know anyone who lost their house because they drank too much coffee. If your life is working for you and the people who love you, then rock on.

So, why AM I telling you all this? Partly because I’m big on admitting when something scares me, as a way of reducing its power over me. And honestly? Losing everything I own because of addiction scares the hell out of me.

But also, because I have lots of people in the so-called helping professions that read my stuff. And if that’s you, maybe you have noticed that the beer after work can easily become the six pack after work, or the glass of wine before dinner can become the bottle of wine every night. Maybe you tried “Dry January” and had a dry 4 days instead. Maybe you drunk text your friends at 3AM and then spend the next week apologizing for what you said.

Maybe you drink as a way of hitting pause. And maybe you’ve thought about not doing that any more.

I just wanted you to know that it’s OK to do that. To drink a Diet Coke at the bar instead of the mixed drink. To not have friends you can only tolerate when you are doing shots. To really feel the things you feel.

It’s OK to stop, if you want to.

The Things That Stay

On our kitchen island is a giant cutting board, some 18 by 30 inches and nearly two inches thick. It was a stress purchase early in the pandemic. I had wanted one for years, and I finally found one for $50 at a restaurant supply house.

At the time, we had a 7-year-old boy living with us, one of six foster children who lived with us over a two-year period. The Boy lived with us for almost 10 months, leaving to be reunited with his family just 2 days before my Dad’s death from COVID. We hadn’t expected The Boy to leave when he did, but the foster system is cruel and capricious, not to mention utterly pragmatic, at times, and the feelings of foster parents are often a distant consideration, when they are considered at all.

The Boy and I cooked dinner together every night, and he had a special knife we bought for him to use to chop vegetables. He was a little fella, so he stood on a chair, and together, we prepped and cooked. And one day, when he was alone, he took a Sharpie and made a small mark on the cutting board. I have no idea why – I doubt he knew, honestly. It was a small carat looking mark, easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there. Sometimes, mischievous boys just want to mark something up. A sort of way of them knowing they exist, and to make sure you know it, too.

The Boy left his marks everywhere. There were whiffle balls in the flower beds, and he was always leaving his baseball glove in the yard, and his bicycle would get left out, and his dirty clothes would somehow often end up under his bed instead of in the hamper.

And even though he has been gone now for 15 months, evidence of his having been here still shows up sometimes. The last time I cut the grass, I found a rubber ball hiding under a shrub, where he had lost it. Since October of 2020, his baseball glove has sat at the base of the hackberry tree in the backyard. When he had to leave abruptly, he couldn’t find it – I found it there a few days after he was gone, and I haven’t had the heart yet to move it.

We miss him a lot, even now. His name comes up every few days – Remember when we ate there with The Boy? Remember when The Boy planted that flower? Remember when The Boy said such and so? Like marks on our brain, the stories – most of which I can’t tell you here – remain in our head and in our heart.

The other day, I was preparing supper, standing at the big cutting board. The combination of cooking for fewer people, the ennui of pandemic meals and the general depression I entered into at the end of 2020 all combined to make me cook less than I had done when he lived with us, but still, I found myself cutting potatoes up for supper, to coat in oil and creole seasoning and then roast in the oven until done.

And while I was cutting them, I moved the pile of peelings just a bit and saw the small caret mark, made mischievously with a Sharpie, sitting there, greatly faded after all this time but still there, still present, still a real reminder of the love that had been there.

One day I will have to sand down the board, which will erase the mark – it’s just part of the maintenance of such a thing. And one day I will pick up the last whiffle ball, and one day I will finally pick up the faded, decrepit baseball glove that still sits under the hackberry tree waiting for him to come back and pick it up. And when those things happen, the only marks of his existence left behind will be in our head and in our hearts.

And those will be the marks that last.

My Favorite Picture

In 2014, due to the generosity of friends, we had our first (and to date, only) trip out of the country together. Together, we went to Costa Rica, where we stayed with some friends in an amazing house on the side of a mountain near San Juan, overlooking a coffee plantation.

We had several adventures on that trip, and we have some amazing pictures of what was truly a paradise. We played with monkeys, stood in the Pacific Ocean, walked through ancient churches, and met some amazing people with whom we shared long meals and laughed much.

But my favorite part of that trip was that we took what has become my favorite picture in the world.

There is so much I love about this picture. Let me explain some of them.

I guess the first is that smile on Renee’s face. We had been married for almost 5 years at that point, and we were finally on a big trip together. One thing we do well together is travel, and this was (and still is) our biggest trip. She took a big risk marrying someone who does the sort of rarely well-funded ministry things I do and we honestly never expected to be able to go to a place that is legitimately considered paradise.

And then there is that scar peeking out from under her shirt. When we were dating, her heart began to show symptoms of the heart disease that killed her mother, and she had to get a pacemaker with a defibrillator, to shock her in case her heart stopped. Before she would get a transplant a year after this picture, it would shock her at least 8 times, saving her life multiple times.

Her health was precarious in those days. Two weeks before this trip, she had had an ablation to prevent the wild rhythms her heart would swing into. But more about that in a minute.

Another thing is that we are there, in literal paradise, because of friends. It is a reminder to me that I get to do work that some people find valuable, and because of that, they invest in me and us and want us to have good things. This trip happened because people loved us, supported us, and invested in us. The wealth that sent us on this trip was the wealth that comes from friendships and community.

You see those glasses she is wearing? Those were $14 frames from Walmart she bought because that was all we could afford at the time. It sent me into a spiral of depression that, because of my career choices, she could not afford “nice” glasses, but for the years she wore those, she got compliments everywhere we went, and she would light up. I don’t know that $1000 frames would have ever made her happier.

I bought her that handbag early in our marriage. It was handmade by a Raleigh designer, and we had seen it in a shop downtown while window shopping. It was more than $150, which was a huge amount of money for me then, but I had seen the way her face had lit up when she saw it, and I knew I had to get it for her.

And let’s not forget that this picture is taken in front of one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world, in the cloud forest of Costa Rica, in the middle of a wildlife preserve. The roar of the water, the mist that hits your face, the sheer amount of biodiversity around you – the toucans in the trees, the birdsong as you walk through the woods – it really is the most beautiful place I have ever been.

But the main reason this is my favorite picture is none of those things. It is because of what happened within minutes of this picture being taken.

The day this happened, we were at La Paz Waterfall Gardens in the highlands of Costa Rica. It is an amazing place, with a wildlife preserve, an aviary, and this long, winding trail down into the valley, past the waterfall, and back up again.

This picture was taken and almost immediately, her heart went into one of its wild rhythms it used to do in those scary days before she was transplanted. This would present itself as crushing chest pain, fatigue, and shortness of breath.

We had walked for more than a mile at this point, all downhill. When it happened, we had no choice but to walk out – more than another mile forward, all uphill, with probably 500 stair steps in various places. It was walking a few steps forward, and rest. It took us hours to cover what should have been 30 minutes or so.

We had no real choice – we were at the bottom of a valley, on a trail barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The only way out was through.

But she did not complain. She gutted it out like a boss, and worked her way, slowly but persistently, up the side of that mountain with a heart doing a thing that, under other circumstances, would have sent her to the emergency room. The image of her forcing herself up the side of a mountain in the jungles of Costa Rica is a funny one to anyone who knows Renee, but don’t be confused – I married a woman who, when she puts her mind to it, is unstoppable.

And all of that is why this is my favorite picture.

Breaking Slowly

I recently began doing morning pages again. If that means nothing to you, the least you need to know for the following story to make sense is that I am doing three pages of handwritten freewriting each morning. You can read more about the process here.

Anyway, since I’m doing this intentional practice, I decided to buy myself a decent pen to write with. I’m not precious about things, but I find that paying attention to things means I respect them. So, having a dedicated pair of shoes to go walking in, and a dedicated chair to read or meditate in, and to the point of this story, a new notebook and pen to write in.

So, after reading lots of reviews (because obsessing about small things is another thing I do), I decided to buy a Pilot Metropolitan Gel Rollerball. Mostly because it uses the same refill as my favorite pen – a Pilot G2 Gel Pen.

Amazon had them in stock, but for some reason, the earliest I could get it delivered was about 10 days away. Office Depot didn’t have any in stock at their store near me, but I could order it and have it delivered in 48 hours. This is a lot of effort for a $20 pen, but again, this was special.

The package was supposed to arrive today. It (the package) did arrive today. The packing slip that was enclosed said it was a pen, but it was not. It was instead a business card holder, like you would put on your desk.

No big deal – I went on the website and there was a huge button that told me that Office Depot was all about taking care of business, and that I could talk to a live chat agent. What followed was a comedy of errors. The live chat person was typing in what appeared to be broken English. They responded to my questions with answers meant for someone else. They told me I would have to return the business card holder and they would have to receive it before they could resend my pen. Then they told me that they would mail me a check (you know, like it’s 1997) as a refund, and I would have to reorder the pen myself.

At this point, I called their 800 number (which I apparently should have done in the first place) and I spoke to a really nice man who told me his computer terminal was broken, and asked me to hang up and call them again later.

At this point, I’m more than 30 minutes invested in trying to solve the case of the missing pen. Any cost-benefit analysis is out the window. Now, it’s personal.

I call back, speak to a lovely person named Paul, and I explain to Paul on the front end that if I seem frustrated, it is because I am, but I am not frustrated at him, but at the trouble I have been having with Office Depot, and I hope he can help me. As an aside – I find this technique to be extremely helpful, as it places them on the alert that things have went wrong, and it lets them be part of the solution – almost like they are striving to be better than their colleagues.

Paul listens, has me on hold for 30 minutes (no lie, but at least I’m on hold) and then comes back on and tells me my new pen will be here on Tuesday. Yay, Paul.

But here’s the point: Look at how many things were broken in the process of my buying a $20 pen. This is a major brand name pen – a few years ago, any chain office supply store would have had it in stock, on a shelf. Amazon, masters of logistics, can’t get me this pen in less than 10 days. Again – this is not an obscure pen. Office Depot messed up the order in their warehouse, shipping the wrong product, and nobody noticed. The Live Chat operator can’t type, and obviously didn’t understand what I wanted. The first operator’s terminal was down, and was unable to recommend I do anything but try later. It took 30 minutes of my being on hold to get Paul to do something as simple as agreeing to send me what I originally ordered.

The pen was not obscure or rare. Office Depot is not a Mom and Pop company. It’s all just broken, but it’s not obvious at first, and it isn’t a collapse. It’s just breaking… slowly.

A friend the other day described what is going on right now as, “Like the end of the Roman Empire, but with Wi-Fi and streaming”, and the more I think about it, the more on the nose that sounds. My local grocery store was out of canned vegetables the other day. Like, all of them. Two years in, the local Kroger has never recovered their paper towels stock to pre-pandemic levels. I went to buy a particular saw from the local Home Depot – which their website said was on sale, and that this store had 11 of in stock – and there were none on the shelf, and nobody there knew where any were. We literally had to talk to 3 employees and 1 member of management and invest 30 minutes to find a saw they had on sale.

I’m not complaining about the employees – everyone is, I’m sure, doing the best they can. But it’s obvious to me that the system is overwhelmed. Nothing is happening like it should, and yet, everything is still going. Sorta.

I get asked sometimes why I keep a deep pantry of food, and why we invest in redundancies, like the ability to cook food by three methods, or the ability to heat our house by two different utilities, or why I have cases of water in the closet. It’s not that I think there is going to be a major Armageddon scenario, where we are all eating acorns and wearing bear skins.

Instead, I think things are just going to wind down, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until it just breaks, and then we will have to fix it. But the slow part will take decades, and we have to survive while it’s happening. The Capitalists will do everything they can to hang onto our consumption, and so they are investing heavily in a façade of normality, to keep us going.

I think, eventually, things will balance out. But until they do, a lot of people will be hurt, and if history is any guide, it won’t be those of us buying $20 pens, but rather those who can least afford it.