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I’m blogging every day of November, with each day being a post about a thing for which I am grateful. – HH

On the sixth day, I’m grateful for our home.

I don’t take it for granted. I spent more than a decade working among and with folks that had lost theirs, and it still, after all these years, feels fragile, like a thing that could slip away if you turned your back on it for a minute.

It sometimes feels ridiculous, this house of ours. After all, we are just two folks, who bought this house – with two bathrooms and three bedrooms and a living room AND a den and an eat-in kitchen AND a dining room. And a half an acre of land and a carport… compared to our last 1,000 square foot house with the tiny bathroom, it felt like a mansion at more than twice the size of the old house. Sometimes, it still does. I lose Renee in it regularly.

It helped that house prices in Raleigh were beginning to climb, although nothing like they did after we left. And prices here in Jackson had been stagnant for years, meaning we were able to buy the huge house here in the nice neighborhood for $20,000 less than the tiny house there in the, uhhhm, transitioning neighborhood.

The house in Raleigh had a leaky roof and uninsulated walls and on hot days the AC would struggle to get the inside of the house under 80. But we lived there five years, Renee recovered from her heart transplant there, we were able to provide a safe place for our niece when she needed a place to live for six months or so, and we tried hard to leave the neighborhood better than we found it.

This house, the one in Jackson, was a Methodist parsonage for 70 years before we bought it, meaning it was well cared for, but well cared for by a committee. Nobody loved it, in other words. But we love it. We love the long hallway, with hardwood floors, that reminds me of the neighbor’s hallway when I was growing up, that I would run and slide on in socked feet. We love the huge dining room, with the table for ten that was always crowded before the pandemic curtailed that. We love the deck we built last year as a COVID project, the fireplace in the living room, the hot pink bathroom in the hallway and the hardwood floors throughout. But mostly, we love that it is ours.

Friends who disagree

I’m blogging every day of November, with each day being a post about a thing for which I am grateful. – HH

On the fifth day, I’m grateful for people in my life who disagree with me and yet try to stay connected with me.

I am a passionate person. I feel things deeply. I have a highly developed sense of empathy, and so I feel what I perceive as injustices to others viscerally. I don’t bend easily. I look around at the world as it is, with all our problems and it feels unbearable to me.

This runs a lot of folks off. And that’s regrettable, but I get it. There are some people who I so disagree with I cannot stand to be in the same room with them. So for the ones who try hard to stay in the room with me, I really appreciate the effort.

The other night, I was talking to someone I went to high school with, but hadn’t talked to since 1990 or so. Things have changed a lot since then (I probably had a Bush/ Quayle sicker on my car in those days) and I was trying to catch her up. She was someone whose essential convictions had not really changed – she was a progressive teenager, and is a progressive adult. I was just right of center on a lot of things, and moved dramatically left.

How did that happen, she asked?

I explained that moving away and meeting all sorts of people who were different than I am was a big part of it. As my relationships changed, my beliefs had to run to catch up with my relationships. In short, I changed because my relationships changed.

For me, it’s all personal. It’s all extremely personal.

I’m pro-choice because of the people I know and love. I’m pro LGBT people because of people I know and love. I’m a Universalist because of the people I know and love. I’m for Civil Rights because of people I know and love. I’m for the South because of people I know and love. I’m for working-class folks over Billionaires because of people I know and love.

And this extrapolates, too, to issues where I don’t know anyone personally involved. Because people I know and love have been on the wrong end of the Powerful, as long as there are people on the bottom of class and power, I’m for them, regardless of the particular issue.

I agree with Eugene Debs, who said, “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Every single bit of who I am and fight for is personal.

And all that happened because the people I ate with, the people I had conversations with, the people who fed me, the people who held me, and the people who loved me, changed. And when I was confronted with ideas from those people that challenged me, I didn’t run away, but I tried hard to understand, because they mattered to me, and I wanted to stay connected to them. And so I appreciate the people who disagree with me, who I make uncomfortable, who struggle to stay in the room with me, but do.

I think that ultimately, nothing has more potential to impact us and the world around us – for good or ill – as much as our relationships do. And for the people who disagree with me but try real hard to stay connected to me, I’m grateful for you. I see how hard you try, and it means the world to me.

Freethinker – Day 4

I’m blogging every day of November, with each day being a post about a thing for which I am grateful. – HH

On the fourth day, I’m grateful to have been taught to be a free-thinker by my parents, even when it hurt them.

I know I tell a lot more stories about my dad than I do my mom, but that’s mainly because Mom is a pretty private person. The truth is my personality is almost a perfect split of the two of them – the part of me that is calm and introverted and pastoral, that stays calm in the midst of crisis, that can solve mechanical problems – that was Dad.

But the part of me that makes me the Mennonite you most want with you in a bar fight; the part of me that that marched a couple of dozen folks without houses into the city council chambers of Raleigh, NC; the part that gets so damned angry when people use their power to take advantage of others – that is all Mom.

I have lots of stories, but they are not mine to tell. But I will tell you this one, which also sums up a lot of our relationship.

I was back home for the weekend of my 20^th High School reunion. That Sunday, the church I grew up in was having a Homecoming Sunday service, and so I went with Mom and Dad.

It was after the service and they were all up in the potluck supper. Dozens and dozens of people were crammed in this room, plates balanced precariously as they stood in line to get chicken and dumplings, various casseroles, and caramel cake. The people were all talking, and I had said hi to a bunch of folks, but most of the people I knew were dead now, and so mostly I was just eating food and looking around, when I heard my name mentioned.

I sort of hid behind the cake table to see who was talking about me.

Old Lady: My son showed me the sort of things Hugh writes on Facebook. I know you didn’t raise him to be so liberal. I’m sorry he ended up like that. It’s not your fault, you know.

Mom: What? Of course it’s not.

Old Lady: Well, I mean, I didn’t want you to think I thought you failed somehow, raising him.

Mom: No, we didn’t fail at all. If our goal was to make him think like us, we would have failed. But that wasn’t our goal. Our goal was to teach him how to think for himself, and he does that, and that’s great, even if he doesn’t always think like we do. He does good work, and we are very proud of him.

The old lady shrugged and walked away, and I went and got some more cake.

I rode home in the car with them later, and nobody mentioned anything about that conversation. And 12 years later, we still haven’t.

Books – Day 3

II’m blogging every day of November, with each day being a post about a thing for which I am grateful. – HH

On the third day, I am grateful for my love of books.

I grew up on 33 acres, 10 miles away from a town with 800 people in it. My best friend lived a mile and a half away. It could have been a lonely life. But I never felt that, because I had my books.

I can never remember not being surrounded by books. Our home had piles of them everywhere, and both of my parents read before bed every night, and they both read to me every night, and eventually I read to them every night, and even now, I cannot go to sleep without reading first.

My parents were just babies themselves when I came along, but I was mostly raised by people in their 50’s and 60’s, the elders in our community that stepped in for my dead and absent grandparents. And those people loved to read, and they ooohed and awed over my reading. I remember being five or so and at a neighbor’s when they had company over, and handed a newspaper and getting a rousing ovation for being able to read it.

They also didn’t cater to me. When I was 8 or so and would stay over at my great aunt’s, I would read her paperback mystery novels, largely because there were no “children’s” books to be had. I was taught to use the dictionary for words I did not understand, and I learned to love both dictionaries and pulpy mystery novels.

To this day I can get lost in either – there is nothing more comfortable to me than seeing Hercule Poirot assemble everyone in the drawing room for a satisfying denouement, or getting sidetracked in my search for a word by finding other words I did not know existed.

My immediate neighbors, an elderly retired farm couple, did not read books, but they read the paper each day as if it were Holy Writ, and taught me to do the same. It was a never-ending story, current events were, with chapters spread out that you had to piece together yourself.

In the small town we lived near, the town hall, the fire department, and the library were all in the same building. The library was really just a small room, perhaps 20×15, with shelves around the perimeter and a row of shelves down the middle. Ms. Lea was the librarian, and she was a retired English teacher. They only were open a few days a week – perhaps Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and only a few hours each of those days.

I read books at a prodigious rate and would, in the summer time, check out a stack of books on Saturday, bring them back on Thursday, and get one or two then to tide me over until Saturday again.

They had a summer reading program every summer, and after my winning each summer for 3 summers in a row, I was given the equivalent of a lifetime award and was not eligible for further participation, “to let the other kids have a chance.”

I didn’t care, as long as they let me read the books. I would rather read than compete: Still would, in fact.

In my early 30’s I would, for a few years, own a bookshop, which is somewhat akin to being an alcoholic and owning a bar. I had just gone through a horrible divorce, and I would sit in my quiet shop, early in the morning, before the shop would open.

The sun would come in the windows, and dust would catch on the rays of the sunlight against the backdrop of the thousands of books on their shelves and I would feel like I was surrounded by friends, and I knew – just knew – that nothing very bad could happen to me.

I still read at a prodigious rate. For instance, a quick search of my records tells me I have borrowed 121 library books since January, and bought another 43 (almost all used), plus others I have gotten as gifts, and I have reread more than a few.

My office is at the front of our house, and I can look out my window at the world going by, but inside here, I am surrounded by bookshelves on every wall. And every time I enter it, it is like being surrounded by friends, and I know – just know – that nothing very bad can happen to me there.

Imperfection – Day 2

I’m blogging every day of November, with each day being a post about a thing for which I am grateful. – HH

I’m grateful for having had parents that encouraged me to be bad at things.

My dad was a pretty good photographer. He was a pretty good woodworker, and a pretty good carpenter, and a pretty good electrician. He wasn’t amazing at any of them, but better than most.

And he was OK with doing it less than perfectly.

In the dining room of our current house, the doorway has a piece of trim I put up and the miter is imperfect. It’s noticeable, but really only if you are looking for it. Of course, the first time they came over I pointed it out, embarrassed.

Being Dad, he told me not to worry about it, and then told me about a friend of his that studied how to make furniture.

“He would take all year to make a bookcase, but when he was done, it was absolutely perfect. But I wanted to know how to make a bookcase, and how to make a cabinet, and how to wire it for lights, and how to fix the engine on my car, and how to carve a whistle. He could make a bookcase better than me, no doubt. But he only knew how to do one thing perfectly, and I learned how to do lots of things imperfectly.”

I was never pressured to be perfect. I was never pressured to fit into their idea of what I should be, and it was fine for me to bring any grade home as long as it was a C or above.

“Because C is average, and you are not below average.”

Or this exchange I will never forget, when I was about 12:

Dad: Son, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Me: I don’t know Dad. What do you want me to be?
Dad: Happy, son. I want you to be happy when you grow up.

Renee – Day 1

I’m blogging every day of November, with each day being a post about a thing for which I am grateful. – HH

I take privacy pretty seriously. I am pretty open with my life, but I made the choice to be. As someone who has been writing on the web since 2003, I’m pretty clear about what parts of my life are open for sharing, and which are not.

Other people get to choose that as well.

You have the unlimited right to tell your story. But you don’t have the right to other people’s stories. My wife Renee is much more private than I am, and so I don’t write much about her here, and anything I do choose to say about her has been read by her before I hit publish.

So what I wrote below is a fraction of what I could say about her, but sometimes, less is more.

Any list of the things I am thankful for has to start with Renee. The list of things she has given up to be married to me is long and lengthy. She’s always believed I could do it, no matter what “it” was. She believed in me and my ability to make it work when I couldn’t. Her confidence in us is staggering.

Her love for me is rivaled only by her love for 90’s Hip Hop. And even though she would much rather eat Kraft mac & cheese and chicken fingers than anything I want to cook, she lets me do all the cooking.

Whatever my idea of living a good life is comprised of, it includes her.

(That picture was taken on our first full day of married life, back in 2009, at Carolina Beach. I always love this smile)

30 Days of Gratitude

I said when I started this project that it was ultimately about my trying to learn how to live a good life. I went through a lot of pains to try to come up with categories that I thought went into that, like Resilience, and Reflecting, and Sharing, but you never think of everything up front: One I forgot was Gratitude.

I have been incredibly fortunate in this life. I’ve swam in both oceans. Seen other countries. Ate Michelin starred food. Been published in National and International publications. I have a row of books on my shelves in which I’m quoted. There are at least a couple of dozen people alive right now because of work I’ve done, that would most likely not be had I not done it. I have lectured at Graduate schools and Seminaries. Read at least 8,000 books. Seen works of art that stagger the mind. There are several nonprofits around the country doing amazing work whose origin story includes my work. My wife and I helped raise more than a dozen kids, including six that lived with us when they didn’t have anywhere else to go. My refrigerator is covered with pictures of friends from all over the world, who live on every continent but Antarctica. My wife loves me and together we have faced down death, tragedy, slander, depression and suicidal ideation and we came out the other side intact. I’ve exceeded every expectation anybody ever had for a working class kid from Marshall County, MS.

If it all ended tomorrow, I don’t see how I would have any complaint at all. My life has been amazing. And it seems to me that, in light of all that, the only proper response to it all is gratitude.

There is a popular meme on Social Media where people note the things for which they are thankful, one a day for the 30 days of November. I have often meant to participate in this, but being the ADHD-riddled Chaos Muppet I am, incapable of advance planning, I forget until we are halfway through the month.

This time, I remembered. But as often happens with me, once I started writing, I had a hard time stopping. So while other people would write, “I’m grateful for books!” I wrote 1,000 words talking about how grateful I am for books. So I decided I would post the series here on the blog – a post a day for the rest of November.

As always, I would to know what you are grateful for, either in the comments here or on one of the social sites where this blog is shared.

Managing energy

I have spent the last 15 years working in the so-called “helping professions”. People like nurses, doctors, pastors, social workers, teachers… that’s us – the helping professionals. And for helping professionals, the main resource we use in our work is our energy.

And to make things more complicated – I’m an introvert. That doesn’t mean that I’m shy, or I don’t like people. It just means I derive energy from solitude, and I expend energy when I engage people. In other words, people are expensive.

In helping circles, a lot of time is spent talking about self-care, and it has even slipped over into mainstream conversation. But all too often, self-care is equated with doing something enjoyable: A spa day. An afternoon at the movies. Soaking in a hot tub.

Those can all be fun, but the real task of self-care is energy preservation and repletion. If energy is your single most important resource, a primary job of self-care has to be protecting and replenishing that resource.

I know a surgeon, and the list of things he just won’t do is long because he simply cannot afford to hurt his hands. They are the means by which he earns his living, and that is too important to risk on something like mountain climbing.

Or another friend who is a bartender, and she makes her living on her feet. The money she spends on shoes and inserts and care for her feet gives me chills, and she too has a long list of things she won’t do, because it could hurt her feet and impact her ability to do her work.

I propose we should take energy management exactly that seriously.

That sounds simplistic and privileged, and it is. But something can be both simplistic and true: You have to manage your energy to be in this fight long-term. This sort of work – helping work – is an endurance sport – a marathon, not a sprint, and we will not get the better world of which we dream by working 14 hour days on the regular.

And privilege is both a noun and a verb, and while energy management is a privilege in the noun sense, it is also something we must privilege in the verb sense – we must privilege it, make it a priority, in the same way we make eating a priority.

A big part of how we do that involves listening to your body, and then building your life around what you learn. The most important knowledge is always self-knowledge.

Here is a personal example:

Because I know myself, I know my most creative time of the day is early morning, that my least productive time is after 3:00 PM, that I really need 7 hours of sleep to be my best, and that more than 8 hours of sleep will not help me and actually hurts me. Carbs are not my friend, and sugar makes me tired. Exercise of any sort helps me focus. Mingling among crowds is exhausting, but being on stage is life-giving.

None of that is supposition or opinion: Those are facts, gathered over a lifetime. And because I have committed my life to build a better world, I have to manage my energy, so I have, to the fullest extent possible, sought to build a life that prioritizes those facts and takes them into account.

So only easy meetings get scheduled for after 3:00 PM whenever possible. I wake up as early as I can, which means trying to get to bed as early as I can (A friend once told me that going to bed early is how adults sleep in, and I can’t agree more). If I eat sweets at all, it is only after I am done with work for the day. I am more likely to accept your invitation to be a speaker than I am to attend your party as a guest. And I take daily walks that range from 20 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the amount of time I have available.

And I’m not perfect at this, in any sort of way. But I have found that doing something excellently 80% of the time always gives me better results than doing something half-assed 100% of the time. The things we pay attention to are the things that get better.

I’m not saying that any of these things are things you should be doing, but they are things that work for me, and allow me to be fairly good at my work, despite being an ADHD riddled, introverted, depressed Chaos Muppet.

I am saying, though, that you should pay attention to your body and learn how your body responds to things, and then build a life that focuses on preserving and maintaining your energy.

What have you found helps you with managing your energy?

Introversion and energy management

I am an introvert. This shocks a lot of people who know me.

“You seem so outgoing!”

“You are so engaged when talking to people!”

“You do so well on the stage!”

Introversion isn’t a synonym for being shy, or socially awkward, or withdrawn. There are introvert stand-up comedians, introvert actors, and introvert party planners. No, introversion just means you get your energy from solitude, and you spend energy on public interaction. As opposed to extroverts, who derive energy from interaction and spend energy in solitude.

So, as an introvert, I can have a very public facing job. It just costs me more energy to do it than it would if I were an extrovert.

Think of it like this:

Like a lot of people who work in the so-called helping professions, I don’t make a lot of money. I mean, I make enough to support my family and to pay my bills, but we have to be careful with our spending. Extravagances are rare, and splurges are just that – a splurge.

So, for example, if I want to go out and eat steak at a steakhouse, I can afford to do it – occasionally. Like, maybe once a month, if I plan for it. But I couldn’t do it every day. I would quickly be bankrupt and overdrawn, unable to take care of my obligations.

And if that happened, the problem isn’t that steak is expensive, although it is pricey. And the problem wouldn’t be my income, although things are tight. The problem is that I didn’t properly manage my resources. Because steak is expensive, and I do have a finite amount of money.

And for introverts like me, people are expensive, and I have a finite amount of energy, and that energy is a resource I must manage.

For example: Tonight I am going to the birthday party of a friend’s son. He is turning 12, and there will be a cookout and a bonfire and lots of kids and basketball and toasted marshmallows. And it will be expensive for me, energy-wise. But the kid means a lot to me, and the friend means a lot to me, and so I’ve decided it will be worth it. The same way you might save up to treat a yourself to a nice bottle of wine for a special occasion.

But just like me deciding to eat steak at a fancy restaurant, I can’t just do it whenever I want to. I have to save up for it. I have to plan for it. I have to look ahead and budget my energy around it. I knew I had this on the calendar, so I didn’t plan any in-person meetings this afternoon, and I don’t have any planned until lunchtime tomorrow. I’m going to spend an hour or so before we go alone, reading, and when we get home, I will be exhausted, and will go to bed. But while I am at the party, I will see people, have fun, and the people I will interact with will think I am likeable and outgoing.

Because I am outgoing. And I will have fun at this party. It’s just expensive for me.

A further thing:

I recognize that the ability to arrange my schedule is a huge privilege, one that most people don’t enjoy. It has taken me until I am almost 50 years old to have this much control over my calendar, but it is something I have been fighting for my whole life. Once you know how you best work, then trying to make your life match up to that is a huge quality of life improvement, and very much worth fighting for.

When you can’t do the thing.

The city I live in now is notorious for its poor street maintenance, and sure enough, our first year here, we lost a tire on the hatchback when I hit a huge pothole. At the tire shop, I asked them to change the oil while it was up on the rack.

The mechanic told me that when I had hit the pothole, I had also dented the oil pan in such a way he couldn’t get the bolt out to drain the oil.

“You’re gonna have to get that oil pan replaced,” he told me.

Money was, at that particular moment, tight, and the tire was already an unexpected expense, and we were in the process of moving into our new home, and it wasn’t leaking, so I said thanks, and drove it home with no oil change, intending to replace the oil pan myself later when I had time.

For the next few months, I drive as normal. The oil in the car was synthetic, which can go much longer between changes than conventional oil, and it was hot outside, and honestly, my ADHD object impermanence kicked in and since I couldn’t see it, I more or less forgot about it.

Then we got foster kids, and started driving the SUV almost everywhere, and I started working from home more, and instead of driving the hatchback every day, it was only a couple of times a week, a few miles at a time.

Somewhere in there, I went to the parts store to buy a new oil pan for the car, but they didn’t carry it – I would have to order one from the dealer or off the internet, they told me. I thanked them and then promptly forgot about it again for a few more months.

Then in a fit of ambition, I ordered the part and the gasket off the internet, and bought the oil and oil filter – everything I would need to fix it once and for all. I put it all in the cargo compartment of the car and forgot about it again.

And then a global pandemic happened. Neither car moved for two weeks. Then I went for six months without driving in the dark. I began working almost exclusively at home. In that first year, we put less than 5,000 miles on our SUV. I put less than 1,000 on the hatchback. For the last six months, it never left the carport. I would crank it every month or so and let it run for a while, but that’s it. It got covered in dust and ick.

It just sat there, and since it was more than two and a half years since the last oil change, I didn’t want to drive it anywhere serious, and I couldn’t change the oil (which is something I can do practically in my sleep) without changing the pan, and so it became a “thing.” My car I loved, just sitting there, covered in ick, because the emotional investment in doing the thing was too heavy.

For us ADHD types, sometimes extremely simple things become overwhelming. The thing itself isn’t hard, but the energy and investment to do it is, so it becomes a “thing”. A thing that just taunts us with our inability to do it. Changing the oil pan had become a thing.

To be clear: I had the tools. I had the parts. It wouldn’t be a difficult thing to do – there are maybe 10 bolts, all easy to get to. It would probably take 2 hours to do if I wasn’t hurrying, including clean up. And during the time all this is happening, I had enough free time to built a huge deck for our house and a 10×16 workshop in my backyard. But I couldn’t do this.

But lately, I am working on a new project that will dramatically increase my time in the car, and so it would be good if both our cars were back to fully functional. Because I scheduled this week lightly, yesterday I had a free morning and decided to do the thing: I would replace the oil pan and change the oil on the car.

I got everything ready. I drove the car up the ramps. I crawled under the car.

There was nothing wrong with the oil pan. I mean, nothing. So I changed the oil like normal and was done in 20 minutes.

I don’t know if the original guy who told me it was dented was lying to get out of doing the oil change, or confused my car with another when he was telling me about it, or what. But I have been carrying around the emotional weight of this task I couldn’t make myself do for more than 2 years when it didn’t even exist.

This is a perfect example of what life with Adult ADHD is like. The object impermanence, the sense of overwhelm at a complex, multi-step operation that just looms larger the longer you put it off, the sense of shame you feel for not being able to do the thing, even though you know you can do the thing, the inevitable doing of the thing and then the sense of shame because it took you so long to do the thing when it was so simple to do.

I will, of course, learn nothing from this. Because “this” isn’t about my laziness, but about my brain, and how it functions. It really doesn’t matter how much I want to do something. It doesn’t matter how much I need to do something. There are things that just overwhelm my brain, and no amount of self-talk changes that.

And when that does happen, sometimes you can hack your way out of it – such as paying someone to do it for you, if you have the resources. And other times, all you can do is be as gentle with yourself as possible afterwards.