What I Plan to Do with My Next Four Years

I have very few illusions about how the next four years are going to go. As a nation we are recklessly plunging towards disaster. I hope I'm wrong. 

I've spent a fair bit of time over the last couple of months thinking about what I intend to do about it all. [Waves arms hopelessly in every direction.] 

The first thing is I'm going to start giving myself a bit more credit about how hard I'm trying at my job. I don't write or talk about my job a lot -- yes, this is probably why I'm afraid to watch the show "Severance" -- but I work with a bunch of people to make it easier to find good, truthful, accurate information in online library databases. If I do my job well, it becomes easier for good information to crowd out misinformation, and good information needs all the help it can get these days.

Still, these days in the Age of Misinformation it feels as if I'm one of those Japanese soldiers defending his foxhole on a remote atoll while the war has swept past him. So I'll also spend some time looking for a better opportunity to help good information.

Second, I'm going to keep an eye out for opportunities to help where I can be my most effective. It's easy to despair when it seems all about us is burning. It's impossible to fight everything. So pick one thing that you can do, then do your best at it. Then when you're done, rest up, find another thing then do your best at that. No single one of us got us to this place. No single one of us can get us out of this mess. But if all of us do just one thing to move the ball in the right direction, things will improve.

Along those lines I picked a few groups I like that will be extra busy over the next four years and sent them a little donation today: the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and Amnesty International. It made me feel better about things. I recommend it.

Third, we're headed into four years of meanness for meanness sake and performative cruelty. I'm going to do my best to fight back with beauty and joy and humor. When I say that my plan is to fight fascism with pretty pictures, I mean it. Fascism feeds on hopelessness. Beauty feeds hope. I intend to do my little part to feed hope.

Over on Bluesky the artist Jay Bigam (@jayispainting.earthskyart.ca) -- who created the wonderful #ArtAdventCalendar movement -- recommended that today be a day to post #OnlyBeautifulThings online.

I like that notion. So I leave you with a pretty picture.

Hang in there, everybody. Try not to let hopelessness get the upper hand.

Farewell, 2024

Normally I put together a little year-end poem for my final out-of-office message at work. This year all I could muster up for 2024 was a haiku:

Twenty Twenty-Four,
A kidneystone of a year.
Farewell. Good riddance.

That seems a bit depressing, so we'll see if I come up with something else before 5 pm. What I'd like to remember of 2024 is that we welcomed Benny Beagle into our home, we saw a cool solar eclipse and several amazing nights of aurora, we built a new porch and deck, and that Monique and I have made it to the wrapup of this year a little the worse for wear, but still here and still in love with each other.

I live a blessed life and I'm keenly aware of it -- even in the midst of a day-by-day disaster like 2024.

I'm also a usually a pretty optimistic fellow, but it seems likely to me that we're all headed into rough waters in 2025. I'm going to give some more thought over the next couple of weeks to just what I want to do in 2025. I haven't felt very effective in recent years. I've mostly felt exhausted. But perhaps I can find a useful place to put my shoulder to the wheel and find an effective way make things a little better at some level in the world. 

For now I'm trying to combat it all with pretty pictures. Here, have one of my favorites from 2024!

That might not seem very effective, but in an online world filled with possibly even more horror and anger than we see in the real world, some beauty to balance the scales can't hurt. 

I've thought about dipping my toe back into politics. I've been pretty good at fixing things and building things in politics, but it seems to me that the next four years may call for constant full-volume screaming into the void. I could do that, but I'm not sure it would change anything and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like who I'd become by the end of four years of that.

I might try going back to some writing in 2025. Time flies and it's been quite a while since I've written any fiction. The last sustained push was a couple of decades ago when I wrote a few short stories set in a near-future dystopia. I set it aside for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons was that it was a fairly depressing world to live in. Now that I find myself actually living in a near-future dystopia, maybe it's time to revisit it. (I wasn't entirely prescient. I thought it would take at least fifty more years to get to where we are now.) I'm not sure another run at science-fiction is in my future. But I might like to tackle something. We shall see. I fear it might devolve into what I mentioned above about politics: four years of shouting loudly into the void to no effect.

Hmmn ... time for another pretty picture:

Or I might try something else altogether. Whatever it is, I think my way of dealing with 2025 and beyond is going to be building something for the future, whatever it may be. For a long time now it has felt as if life has me on the run, ground down and trying to hold on to what I've got. That hasn't felt all that good lately. It's time to try something new.

Whatever you might be thinking of doing with your 2025, I wish you all the best with it!

Here, have another pretty picture: 

So long, and thanks for all the fish stocking.

A bit of news from me -- I've decided not to run for another term on the Wolverine Lake Village Council this fall. Twelve years as our Village President has been a good run, but it's time to let somebody else pick up the gavel.

I didn't run for council in the first place to become El Presidente for Life. When I joined our council, our village faced some serious financial challenges. I thought I could help us work our way through them. Thanks to a huge amount of work by a ton of people: staff, boards, volunteers, and my fellow council people, we made it through the hard times and emerged better than ever. There aren't enough thank-yous in all the world to cover everybody who helped us get to this point.

I'm really happy with where the village is right now. The finances are rock solid and the leadership team is strong. It's a good time to bring in some new energy and some new ideas to the council table.

Democracy is participatory. From potholes to police and from fish stocking to financing sewers, you'll find there's a heck of a lot more that goes into making a municipality work than you ever imagined. And you'll find that there are a lot more great people making it work than you ever imagined.

The deadline for filing to run for council is July 24. Nominating petitions and an affidavit of identity must be returned to Commerce Township by 4 pm on that date. You can pick up an information packet and petition at Village Hall or the Commerce Township Clerk’s office.

Have at it folks.


Meanwhile, what's next for me? I have no idea. I'll be around. I'm not disappearing. I tend to get involved in things, so I'm sure something will come along. In the meantime, there might just be a few extra naps and a bit more time on the ol' pontoon boat.

So long, and thanks for all the fish stocking.

Things to work on in 2018

Wondering what I'm planning for 2018? Well, so am I. I wouldn't go so far as to call these "resolutions", but here's what I have in mind:

Taking better care of myself physically -- I made nice progress on my back and my weight last year, and I feel better for it. There's still more work to do, though. Hitting age 50 made me aware that right now I am defining the arc of my declining years. I'd like that to be as good as possible.

Mental reinvigoration -- As many of you have observed, I got pretty worn down the last few years. As I've worked my way back from that case of mental burnout I've noticed that I've gotten a bit stale. I need to learn new things this year.

More rest, more nature, more physical exercise -- I've gotten into some pretty bad habits on these fronts. I'm going to try to rebuild better habits: earlier bedtimes, more time outside, more time moving my body. Less couch potato lifestyle.

Rebuild my attention span -- more books, less media. My job does a fine job of eroding my attention span. I don't need to accelerate that erosion in my off-time, too.

Less social media, more socializing in person -- despite this post. Oh, I'm not disappearing from FB or anything like that. But the last couple of years have felt a bit isolating. Mostly I think I've let my inner introvert take charge as I became worn down and tired. I'm going to make a conscious effort to reconnect with some folks in person this year. And I'm going to make a conscious effort to check in on FB and the Twitterverse less often this year.

And that's it. This all seems reasonably do-able as I write it out. For the most part it's just a matter of shifting priorities and tamping down some bad habits. I don't expect a revolution on any of those fronts. Just improvement. We'll see how it goes.

Good luck to all of you with whatever you plan to work on in 2018!

Keeping my social media sanity over the next four years...

I've started to make a bit of progress on the "making my life more manageable" pledge from my last post (Kvetching and resolutions.) Here are a couple of the first decisions and steps.

I intend to treat the Republican Congress and Donald Trump with every bit of the respect that they've shown for Barack Obama over the last eight years. So ... that probably means I'm going to say some pretty ugly things about them on a regular basis. But I'm going to try to keep partisan politics -- especially Trump bashing -- off my Facebook page and over on Twitter where it belongs. Longer thoughts will mostly go into this blog, and I will continue to link to it from FB when I post something I think people may want to read.

There are a few reasons for this:

1) I have yet to see anybody's mind changed by anything partisan on FB.
2) Mostly all I want out of FB is little updates from friends and family about their day-to-day life. I kind of assume that's what most of my FB amigos want from me, too.
3) I've often described Twitter as a place for awful people saying awful things. That makes it an excellent place for me to finally say awful things back to some of them.
    3A) In particular, look for me to tag things with #ThisIsALie whenever I happen to come across something from Trump that is egregiously untrue. It's shouting into the wind, but at least the shouting will help to keep my sanity while a compulsive liar is our president.
4) Twitter is Trump's preferred communication channel. That probably makes it the best place to communicate my opinion of what he tweets, says, and does.
5) Genuine politics are complicated. Every now and then I'm going to want to make a complex case and point. This blog is my platform for writing longer things. I originally thought I'd keep it relatively politics-free, but there's no reasonable way for me to do that when I have complex political things to say and this is my place to say complex things.

If you do want to follow me over on Twitter, my handle is @Patioboater. My feed there used to mostly consist of me making the occasional comment, but mostly retweeting cool sunsets, astronomy info and photos, random items that amused me -- especially from Drunk Hulk, Drunk Miggy, and Conan the Salaryman -- plus links to new posts on this blog. That stuff will still be there, but it's likely to be accompanied by a lot of reposted Trump bashing as well as a good deal more direct Trump bashing from me. You've been warned.

This also means that I'm likely to ask my FB algorithm to hide most of the partisan repostings that fill my feed, and this includes crap from both parties. My Democratic amigos whose posts mostly consist of reposting aggravating partisan stuff are going to be hidden, too. I'm not likely to unfriend anybody, but some of the things I see posted there on a regular basis make me think genuinely less of people that I otherwise like. I don't want to think less of any of you because you're addicted to thoughtless reposting on Facebook. And I don't want to have to spend every day fact-checking your feeds because crap that you've reposted. It's a waste of my time and a pointless aggravation, since you couldn't be bothered to fact-check things yourself.

As a particular point, most of my FB friends who are politicians who use FB to say political things aren't likely to get hidden. Why? Because they're saying these things for themselves. It's the endless reposting of crap that I can't take any more.

If I do see something genuinely errant, I may point it out or link somebody to Snopes, probably just before asking FB to hide more crap like that from me. But I just can't spend all my time and energy every day trying to refute everything in the crapfest.

Related item: it's time for another round of "unsubscribe" in my email. Mostly this'll be for a list of vendors that I like who insist on emailing me on a daily basis. But it'll likely also include a lot of political causes and organizations that I like. Y'all need to stop asking me for money all day every day.

That's it for now. More to come, I'm sure. It's a start towards making my life more manageable, but just a start.

Kvetching and resolutions

I am bone tired. It all probably just adds up to "middle age" but I need to find a way to live my life at a sustainable pace in 2017.

This was the Facebook status I posted Saturday morning: "I don't want to say it was a long, full week, but when I finally got home last night I was too tired to drink beer. #TheHorror"

Really, I was too tired to sit on my couch and drink beer on a Friday night.

If it was just one long week during the run up holidays that would be fine, but this has been a long time coming. I bore you with the kvetching details, gentle reader, but I've essentially been working what used to be 2-1/2 jobs at work for four years now. I like my job, but there's too much of it. I've also served as Village President (essentially the mayor) of our village for ten years. Plus, I served as treasurer on a state representative campaign this year.

It adds up.

I'm worn out. And as a result, I'm not doing a particularly good job of the things I should be doing. So it takes me longer to do them, so I get more worn out.

Rinse. Repeat.

I no longer seem to have long blocks of time for coherent thought. My daily existence is broken into a never-ending series of meetings crammed around dozens and dozens of emails. Worse yet I sometimes find myself multitasking during many of those meetings because I am awash in unread email and behind schedule on eight-thousand other fronts. Then I come home and impose multitasking on myself as I peruse the web while half-watching sporting events or routine TV shows. I have the attention span of a ... well, I was going to say "a five-year-old child," but frankly most five-year-olds can focus better than I can these days.

I need to re-establish my ability to focus and to sustain coherent thought for long periods of time. That used to be my thing, damn it.

I haven't been taking good care of myself. Not nearly enough exercise. Too much food. And then I get tired or stressed and overeat even more. It used to be that even when I overate I usually ate pretty decent food, but there's been an awful lot of junk going into me lately.

I have become a compendium of poor health habits. My doctor is not amused by the recent trend in my overall health the last few years. His advice to me at my physical this month went something like this, "Stop letting your job make you crazy and don't work yourself into an early grave."

Junk food into my belly, junk thought into my brain. I need to read more print and do less surfing of FB and Twitter. And good print. Books.

I can't maintain for the next four years the pace and intensity of my fury that Donald Trump was elected president. It's the most inconceivably awful decision democracy has made in my recollection or study of American history. I like to think that I stand for rational, reasonable, fact-based policy and decision-making in government with an emphasis on fairness to everybody and long-term solutions for problems. "Dull, efficient government," is my motto. Trumpism is pretty much the opposite, headed up by a sociopathic compulsive liar.

Just typing that last paragraph raised my blood pressure by 20 points. I need to find some way to not let the next four years drive me mad.

Because it could. It really could. We're six weeks past the election and I still find myself in a white-hot fury about it at some point every day. Unfortunately, I have enough empathy and imagination to see that the next four years are likely to be very bad for a lot of people who already have it pretty bad. The results of the next four years have a very good chance to be catastrophic for some parts of the world.

I don't know how to turn myself off from that knowledge. Empathy and imagination is what makes me tick. I don't know how to not care. I don't know how to pretend I don't see what I'm watching right now. I don't think I'm going to be able to ignore it or compartmentalize national politics for the next four years.

But there's also not much I can do about it, either. I can do my best to get my village ready to ride it out, I suppose. And when I do my job well I make it easier for people to find good, reliable information and I make it easier for people to learn. All of which makes it even more infuriating that so many people have chosen to wallow in crappy, inaccurate information and flat-out lies. I guess I can take a bit of solace in knowing that I'm on the right side of the information war that is being fought. It doesn't seem like enough, though.

I don't think there's anything truly wrong with me that six months on a quiet tropical beach wouldn't fix. (Well, maybe four years on that beach for the Trump thing....) But that ain't happening.

So, most of all I need to figure out how to get myself to a reasonable, sustainable, healthy pace and place in 2017. I'm not there right now. And I'm not sure what the path is to that place. But I need to find it.

I think I can.

I think I can.

I think I can.