My One And Only Regret

For the sorrow that is according to God worketh penance, steadfast unto salvation; but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

2 CORINTHIANS 7:10 DOUAY-RHEIMS

I don't think it is possible to get through life without making mistakes. Our Lord made one "mistake" in choosing Judas Iscariot except God doesn't make mistakes. God chooses to use our mistakes for His end. That is a very important lesson to remember. It allows us to try and keep trying even if failure may be the result. The only real failure is quitting.

I have made many mistakes in my life. I expect the same is true for you, Gentle Reader. Mistakes are part of the learning process. We fail our way to success. We discover what doesn't work until we find what does work.

Sins are not mistakes. We know better. God even uses those for His end. This is why you shouldn't beat yourself up for the rest of your life over those sins. God forgives. Learn to forgive yourself.

When I assay my life with my sins and mistakes, I realize I have only one regret in my life. It was the decision to become an atheist. I hung up the phone on God. That one decision, sin, and mistake yielded virtually all of the other sins and mistakes in my life. In that decision, I turned from trying to quitting. I knew God was real, but I did not understand Him. I still don't understand Him, but I trust in Him now when I lost faith and trust in Him all those years ago.

There is nothing to gain in atheism. Without God, your life has no value or meaning. Guys like Sartre and Nietzsche see this as a grand opportunity to find meaning in a meaningless existence. It can't be done. I gave it a good decade before coming to that conclusion. You will always go nowhere as an atheist.

There is a certain type of person who deals with trauma and crisis by turning inward. They try to find the answers within themselves. When this fails, they try to find the answer in a liquor bottle or some other self-medicating vice. This is just plain pathetic. I can't stand these people.

You should always turn to God with your problems and despair. God cares for you, and He will get you through. The pathetic navel gazers don't want this answer. They know God is the answer, but they prefer to ruminate and immolate their sanity and their lives. At the root of this is a hatred for God. When you hate God, the only one you are destroying is yourself.

My story has a happy ending. I hung up the phone on God, but He called me back. I picked up the phone again, and I have resolved to never hang up on God again. I might scream into the receiver once in awhile, but this turns to relief. Temporary circumstances should not turn into permanent decisions. Life is hard, and God hears your prayers even if they are groans. Trials and sufferings produce good things when offered up to God. Never lose your connection to God. Everything else will fall into place.

Gear

The gear you can’t afford is not the barrier keeping you from success. Gear has very little to do with photography.

CHASE JARVIS

I make a distinction between tools and toys. A lawnmower is a tool. A motorcycle is a toy. Tools are for getting work done. Toys are for having fun until they get repossessed by the bank or finance company. Gear is the middle range between tools and toys.

Examples of gear would be a backpack, a bicycle, a headlamp, shoes, gloves, etc. Gear is simply the collection of things you use to do other things. These things could be utilitarian or recreational. There can be overlap. I have a love/hate relationship with gear. I need gear to do things, but I don't like spending money on gear. The people that manufacture and sell gear prefer that I spend money on gear.

I am not a cyclist, but I have come across blog posts and YouTube videos about bike snobbery. That issue captures what I see as a problem across many fields of endeavor. Many cyclists have gone to bike shops only to be insulted by the bike shop operators as ridiculous amateurs for not wanting to buy the expensive road and mountain bikes they sell. People who use bikes for utilitarian reasons want commuter bikes. People who want to ride bikes for fun want beach cruisers. The bike shops don't care to sell to these people even if selling to them is more lucrative than selling to the "professional" riders. The irony is that these so-called professionals aren't professionals at all but posers who like to pretend on the weekends. These bike snobs like to gate keep the cycling world because bicycle commuters and fat people on beach cruisers shatter the myth of cycling as a serious sport.

The reality is that you get judged by your gear. Cycling is not alone in this snobbery. I see the same thing in the radio world as ham radio snobs sneer at people who use CB and GMRS radios. Somehow, the "amateur" part of amateur radio gets forgotten as these radio snobs with their $1000+ radios look down their noses at the white trash with their $100 radios. The cost of your gear is a signal to the world of the seriousness of your commitment to the sport, hobby, or activity.

Gear snobbery diminishes people's interest in various activities. I see that most acutely now in the outdoor activity space where people think they can't go hiking or camping because they don't own or use Patagucci gear. Wearing and using gear from Walmart brands you as a rube. Even hunters are getting in on the snobbery train as sportsmen judge each other on the rifle, bow, crossbow, and camouflage they wear. Why would anyone want to join these comparison traps?

The sad reality is that so much of what we do today has been diminished to buying and collecting gear. Instead of doing things, we purchase things. The activities amount to showing off the things we've purchased. I reject this vanity. I mock this vanity.

One of the words that I have come to love is "pedestrian." A pedestrian is someone getting around on foot as opposed to a car or a bicycle, but the word can also mean "common" and "dull." People rarely use this second meaning of the word, but I find that it fits. For instance, my bird watching is pedestrian because I look at birds in my backyard and sometimes use my $20 monocular that I didn't buy for this specific purpose of watching birds. I am certain that if I joined up with the bird watching club that they would sneer at my cheap looking glass and indifference to logging what I saw. My bird watching was accidental, and I intend to keep it that way.

I try to keep everything I do at that pedestrian level. The key to this is to not spend a lot of money on gear especially branded gear. Now, I don't believe in buying junk. You don't save money buying junk. But you don't have to spend a lot of money to get decent gear. For example, skiers praise the Kinco work gloves for their durability and warmth and wear them on the slopes. This is why I look to workwear and hardware store options for much of my gear. The headlamp I wear for my night walks came from Harbor Freight and cost me $9. I have been very happy with that headlamp.

I have a strategy when it comes to gear. The first part of that strategy is to eschew those activities that require a lot of gear or expensive gear. This is why I am not a golfer or an Ironman Triathlete. This is why I don't do ham radio or go thru-hiking. My aim is to do as little as possible when it comes to these types of activities. The things I choose to do are done at a very pedestrian level. Part of the joy is knowing that it doesn't cost me a lot of money to do these things.

The second part of my strategy is to not buy gear that I don't need. For instance, I don't buy FitBits and fitness trackers for my walking. My Casio watch is all I need. I was going to buy myself some Merrell Moab hiking shoes for trail walking, but I talked myself out of it. You don't need those shoes to walk a trail.

The third part of my strategy is to buy gear at a low cost relative to its value. I have an Igloo cooler that I used at work for my lunch that cost a fraction of the price of a high dollar Yeti. That cooler survived a nasty truck crash, and I still use it today for keeping grocery store purchases cold for the trip home. It cost me $20 from Big Lots. Needless to say, I am an Igloo fan.

Ultimately, I care more about the activity than the gear. I find that basic, affordable, and durable gear does the trick for me. I eschew high dollar brands that are more for status than function. My top destinations for basic gear are Walmart, Harbor Freight, and Tractor Supply. I never go to REI or Cabela's. As for gear snobs, I let my cheap gear serve as a middle finger to their vanity.

The Workwear Option

We’re not in the business of making jackets. We’re in the business of making warm friends.

HAMILTON CARHARTT

Normcore is a label that generally applies to the way I have dressed since high school. Basically, I have dressed in a way that doesn't stand out from the normal. I was never into bell bottom jeans, skinny jeans, suit jackets, bow ties, biker wear, or anything else distinctive. What has made me distinctive is my tendency to choose workwear over more casual wear. For instance, I choose Dickies and Carhartt over Levi's. I choose steel toe workboots over Timberland hiking boots. This is known as the workwear option.

I have a casual set of clothes that I wear to church or the doctor's office. I call this my normcore uniform. It is a buttoned down shirt paired with a pair of Carhartt pants. This casual uniform is to be distinguished from my work uniform that I wear 90% of the time which would be a buttoned down work shirt paired with some Dickies work pants. The key difference is that my normcore uniform doesn't have dirt and grease on it or holes and patches. Because I wear the normcore uniform rarely, it stays clean and presentable.

With these two basic uniforms, I go with the workwear option. The reasons for this should be obvious. Workwear is durable, functional, economical, and basic. Whenever possible, I exercise the workwear option when buying clothing.

The variable in my wardrobe is the footwear. When I work in the yard, I wear boots. When I walk for fitness, I wear New Balance sneakers. When I wear the normcore uniform, I go with some brown Skechers. Function determines what goes on my feet.

I do not wear athletic gear in the style known as athleisure. This trend grew out of the gym rat and endurance athletic culture. If you spend a lot of time in the gym or running for exercise, it would be obvious that you might wear the same clothes to the grocery store or for other errands. It has even gotten to the point that some people wear this athletic wear as their primary uniform. Needless to say, I am not into this.

I do not wear shorts or even own shorts. I don't own any dedicated athletic gear. I wear a Carhartt hoodie around the house and a vintage Starter windbreaker if it gets wet outside. Those are the only things that come close to athletic apparel in my closet. Generally, I don't wear athletic apparel because I am not an athlete. Most people are not athletes, but the apparel makers have sold this vanity to the public to get them to buy things they don't need.

I got clued into this when it became fashionable for a season to wear work boots to the gym. I think this began accidentally as blue collar workers would hit the weights after work. Work boots provide a more stable platform than sneakers, and steel toes are great for protecting your feet from a dropped plate or weight. Yet, this is frowned on now by the gym cult. Some gyms will ban you from the premises for wearing workwear instead of gym wear.

I don't go to the gym, so the gym apparel is a moot point for me. I walk for fitness and do a modest regimen of strength exercises that I call "bodywork." I wear my work clothes for all of this. I only change my shoes and socks. I don't see the point in changing out of sweaty work clothes into sweaty athletic apparel. As for freedom of movement, work clothes are designed for this. Somewhere in our culture, we forgot that work is exercise.

I would never recommend workwear for a game of basketball or baseball or running a marathon. Athletes play sports, so they dress as athletes. As I said before, I am not an athlete. I am willing to gamble that you, Gentle Reader, are not an athlete either. I find that most people are pretenders fantasizing about being athletes. That fantasy is what sells all of that athletic apparel.

These athletic fantasies are a species of larping where people pretend to be something they are not. We laugh when a kid wears his cowboy outfit, but adults do much the same thing when they wear the apparel of their athletic heroes. This is people attempting to live up to their fantasy selves, so they buy the costume for the person they want to be instead of who they are in actuality.

When you get old and busted up like me, you aren't aiming to become an Ironman triathlete or Mr. Olympia. You're just trying to keep the parts moving. My physical fitness regimen is derived almost entirely from physical therapy and not the gym. My "heroes" are the old ladies that I used to see walking the mall. They wore normal clothes paired with comfortable shoes.

There is another trend that has emerged over the last few years known as gorpcore. This is when people wear outdoor gear in non-outdoor settings. I don't know what makes gear qualify as outdoor gear as virtually everything I wear is made for being outside. The key difference is this gorpcore outdoor gear uses Gore-Tex and costs a fortune. One jacket I researched for this blog post costs 900 bucks.

Now, the entire outdoor industry and culture is a gigantic exercise in larping. I see people each weekend with all sorts of outdoor gear on their vehicles including kayaks and mountain bikes. Yet, in all my time visiting outdoor places, I never saw people kayaking or mountain biking. They buy this stuff and transport this stuff, but they don't actually use this stuff. It is all pretentious fantasy. But I digress. . .

Do you need a $900 Gore-Tex jacket to brave the elements between your car and the front door of a store or an office building? Personally, I find an umbrella and a cheap windbreaker to be sufficient for the task. When I go for my walks in wet weather, I wear a cheap rain poncho I bought from Walmart and a windbreaker. My only concessions to the outdoor apparel industry are the cheap fleece jackets I bought from Walmart. Both were made by Starter. I have never owned anything from those big name apparel makers.

I find that the best apparel you can wear for the outdoors is workwear. When it gets freezing, I bust out the $80 Carhartt active jacket I bought from Tractor Supply sometime back in 2008. I don't care for those puffer jackets from Patagonia or The North Face.

It's not hard or expensive to buy a warm coat. Just buy the coats the farmers, ranchers, and workers wear. If those jackets can survive the rigors of heavy and demanding physical labor, they will certainly suffice for your hike in the woods. But that is where things get nasty.

Somewhere, gate keeping has crept into outdoor activities. You can't ride a cheap beach cruiser from the bike section at Walmart. It has to be a $3000+ name brand mountain bike. Similarly, you can't walk the trails without a Patagucci outfit. People forget that these activities existed before these companies did.

I think it is perfectly acceptable to wear a pair of thrift store Red Kap work pants on the trail paired with some New Balance sneakers. I wouldn't wear this to climb Everest, but I'm not climbing Everest. I'm just walking.

The final thing I can say about the workwear option is that it saves you money because you don't need separate outfits for your activities. You don't need one outfit for the gym and another outfit for the trail and another outfit to mow the lawn. The workwear option is like the play clothes you wore as a kid for everything from climbing trees to building forts to digging in the dirt. Ultimately, you want clothes that can take some dirt and abuse. Workwear is made for this.

What I Want To Do And Not Do With The Rest Of My Life

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life; it goes on.

ROBERT FROST

I recently came across a video on YouTube from a fellow who had a life altering event. He witnessed his neighbor die from a heart attack next door. It brought home to him the crushing reality of memento mori. We all must die, and we can go at anytime. This made the fellow decide what he wanted to do and not do with the rest of his life. I don't agree with everything on his list, but his life is not my life. What I did agree with was the idea of deciding what to do with the time you have remaining. Here is my own list of what I want to do and not do with the rest of my life.

DO

1. Live the devout life.

The great project in life is to become a saint. It always bugs me when people decide to be more intentional with their mortal lives and blah blah blah, but they never mention their faith or religion. Most of their goals, intentions, and regrets are focused entirely on enjoying what remains of their lives. Fools!

I am not a fool. I know that the best life is a tragedy if it ends in Hell. The goal is Heaven. Anything short of that is a failure. For me, I intend to spend the rest of my days growing deeper in my life of prayer and devotion to the Lord. My faith is where I find the greatest comfort and purpose as I contemplate what is ahead.

2. Spend as much time as I can with my wife.

I already spend time with my wife, and she almost lost me in 2018. She is the person that matters most in my life. I am old and busted up, but I am still alive. I pray that God takes me first. Life without her is a cross that I do not wish to bear. Until we part, I want to make every day count.

3. Work.

I love working. Somewhere in the path of my life, I learned to turn work into something more than what you do for a paycheck. My TBI has dramatically diminished my capacity for work. The time I used to spend on the day job is now spent in a dark room with my eyes closed. I call this the "down payment on death." It is not what I wanted for my life, but it is what it is. I work for brief periods of the day on chores and errands around the house. That list of chores is my barometer for recovery, and my recovery is barely noticeable. I tell people that I am building a sand castle one grain of sand at a time. I pray daily for God to remove this thorn from my flesh. Until then, I do what I can within the limits of my injury.

4. Write.

The only thing God spared in the accident is my ability to write. Writing is the only thing that I consider to be a natural gift. I have no clue why God gave me this gift or spared this gift. I have given up trying to understand God's mysterious ways. What I know is that I have to continue writing. I have settled into writing a weekly post for this blog and a monthly post for my wife's blog. I have no ambitious plans for writing books or any of that. Since I expect Google to end this platform at some point, my Plan B is to write longhand entries in notebooks and journals that no one will read. Writing is good therapy for the brain, so I will continue with it even if it earns me no pay or prestige.

5. Walk.

Walking was the gift I received from my accident. I had to learn to walk again, so I do not take that for granted. I enjoy walking, and it pairs well with my writing life. I regret that it took an accident and half a century of my life to discover the wonderful benefits of walking. Walking is the one thing that brings me some relief from the torture of my brain injury. For 15 minutes or so post-walk, I am a pleasant person with a small boost of energy. It is the old me paying a visit. I just wish it was permanent.

NOT DO

1. Collect toys.

I live in a place where buying boats, fancy cars, Jeeps, RVs, ATVs, and motorcycles on credit equates to life achievements. I have never been into this idiocy. I never will be.

2. Go on frivolous trips and vacations.

Some people decide that they should spend money on experiences instead of possessions. This is also idiocy. Basically, these people blow a year's worth of disposable income on a cruise or a trip to Vegas. I have never been into this idiocy either. I never will be.

3. Blow money on expensive pleasures and entertainment.

Some people dial it down to just eating weekly at expensive restaurants or going to concerts and shows. I wish I could say I have never been into this idiocy, but I was young and single. Now, I eat simple fare at home and get my entertainment from the radio as an old and married man. Nothing I have ever done in my life has brought me as much joy as those simple pleasures at home.

4. Pursue bucket list adventures.

Climbing Everest, thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, completing a marathon/ultramarathon/Ironman, or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane are things I do not care to do. Obviously, brain damage has torched those vanities, but I certainly would not do them if I was miraculously healed. Life is short enough and miserable enough without making it shorter and more miserable.

5. Get rich or die trying.

Getting rich is the ultimate vanity. For some reason, people think they have failed in life if they don't become millionaires. I already have everything I want and need in life. Once your material needs are met, you should realize that you can't take it with you. I will live a modest lifestyle and save for future needs, but I don't care beyond that. Money is a poor substitute for happiness.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that I am going to spend the rest of my life pursuing the quiet life. This is the opposite of all those people who want to go out in a blaze of glory. I think the real adventure comes after death. In this life, I am a nobody, and I think being a nobody is the best way to live. If my time remaining is long or short, the program remains the same. I know what I am about, and I am not changing a thing.

Typewriters Versus Computers

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

I am guessing that the last time that I used a typewriter to write a paper was sometime in the 1980s. I would write a draft in long hand. Then, I would painstakingly hunt and peck until I had a typewritten paper. I took my time, but I would end up making a mistake. Typewriters are unforgiving on mistakes. Once typed, it can't be untyped. There is white out and the correction ribbon, but the scars remain. You messed up, and perfection is lost. Needless to say, I was not a fan of typing.

Eventually, I got a computer. It was one of those desktop models you got from RadioShack. That changed my writing life. For the first time, I could type up a paper and experience forgiveness for my mistakes. It was so liberating that I gave up writing in longhand and went straight to the keyboard. Things were fine until I encountered instant damnation. Whenever we lost power, all of my work would be lost. That old computer didn't have auto save. That's when the old typewriter would have a laugh at me. The typewriter saves everything automatically. The manual typewriter doesn't even need electricity to work.

I have used electric typewriters before, but I really hate those things. If I went back to typing, I would use a manual machine. My preference would be a Smith-Corona. That was the typewriter I used at the beginning. My aunt gifted it to me when she switched to the electric typewriter. I miss that minty green contraption. If I had been smart, I would have kept it.

Today, I use a computer to write these blog posts. I write straight into the blogger software. There is no first draft or final draft. My work is automatically saved. I am constantly reading and revising the posts even after I have published them. I am always catching typos and adding updates. Those mistakes have increased dramatically since the accident and my TBI. I lean on the spell check now. Typewriters don't have spell check.

When it comes to software, I despise Microsoft's Word or any program that offers to do radical surgery to my prose. I like spell check, but that's it. At the end of the day, I know how to write, and I don't need the crutches offered to functional illiterates faking their way through their careers. The rise of AI is certain to exacerbate this tragedy of idiots with keyboards. AI will reduce the entire world to plagiarism except for me. I refuse to use it.

Typewriters are experiencing a minor resurgence. Van Neistat might have something do with that. The guy uses all the cameras and tech he can get his hands on but prefers to write on a typewriter. I think the typewriter is more of a visual prop for his videos than an actual tool for writing. I think many of the people using typewriters have a fetish for the machine. One YouTube writer admitted that he takes his typewritten pages and keys them again into his Macbook. Why would anyone do this?

This brings us to the issue of process. Every writer has a process for getting words to the page or screen. Hemingway would begin with a pencil and write the first draft in longhand. Then, he would type the second draft. Then, he would retype the second draft into a third draft. That process of writing and rewriting acted as a refinery for his spartan prose. I do a similar refining process for my own writing except I don't leave a paper trail.

There is something to be said for writing in longhand. Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk writes his first drafts in longhand. Part of me would like to make longhand part of my own process. Longhand is to the computer what acoustic is to electric on the guitar. A good song written on an acoustic guitar will still sound great on an electric guitar. That process rarely works in the opposite direction. Technology kills that raw element in the human spirit.

Writers who use the typewriter are trying to recapture that raw element, but I think they are using the wrong machine. The right machine is an old fashioned pencil. A mechanical pencil will also do. The pencil allows you to make mistakes. The eraser corrects small mistakes. Larger mistakes require more violence as you draw lines through entire paragraphs or draw arrows to where they will be moved in the final draft.

There is more freedom in the pencil than the typewriter. Typewriters don't make the writing better. They just make the writing permanent. When you add up the paper and used typewriter ribbons, this becomes an expensive and aggravating waste for words that will end up on a computer screen.

Most of what I write begins as notes on pieces of paper. I prefer to use the scraps of junk paper I recycle from the junk mail that comes into my mailbox. Junk paper kills all urges to perfectionism. I could never use one of those fancy Moleskine notebooks because I would hate to mess them up with my scratches. Creativity is a messy affair. Perfectionism is the enemy of true genius. Junk paper is the antidote to perfectionism.

I am a fan of wring longhand and using the computer. I am not a fan of the typewriter. I would go back to the notebook before going back to the typewriter. The typewriter does have one supreme virtue. It is free from the distractions that plague writers on the computer. I keep my tech dumb, so this has never been a problem for me. I receive zero notifications on my computer. Apparently, other writers don't know about this trick. The other thing is that I do not use a smartphone which is a distraction even for people using typewriters.

There is a middle ground for people who like the convenience of the computer paired with the zero distractions of a typewriter. The Freewrite is one such device. These things need a name, and I prefer "electronic typewriters." They are nothing new. I remember Brother making things like this where you could type a draft electronically before it put it to paper. I think these devices are essential for those writers who need to kill the temptations and create a distraction free place to create. Personally, I think you are better off with a quiet room, a notebook, and a pencil. Whatever you create will not suffer from being keyed into a computer. In fact, that process will improve what you write.

I am a mid-tech type of guy. so I am not going back to using a manual typewriter. For me, it is the notebook and the computer. This process does not have the sex appeal of banging on typewriter keys with a bottle of scotch and a smoldering cigarette on hand. I truly think the typewriter geeks are pretending to be writers and want the props to complete the performance. I think George RR Martin gets it exactly right as he uses an old MS-DOS machine unconnected to the internet and running Wordstar. That is the epitome of mid-tech. That was me on the RadioShack computer using WordPerfect and a dot matrix printer. Today, I would use that same setup as long as I could transfer the files to my internet connected computer. But I am doing fine with my current tools.