Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

December 5, 2018 · 23:46

Breaking Strain Redux

A bit more than a year ago I wrote pretty much the same thing that I was going to write tonight.

Go ahead and read that first. I’ll wait. (If that link doesn’t work, just search this site for “Breaking Strain” and you’ll find it. And please let me know that the link doesn’t work – how can I fix it if no one tells me it’s broken?)

Interesting to see the concept, desire for, and borderline desperate need at times for pillow forts. I had thought that particular recurring theme was recent, but everything old is new again apparently.

I’m thinking about this gem from Kipling tonight in terms of expectations, dreams, desires, reality, and hopes.

The juxtaposition of gratitude for what I have, the recognition of how much worse it could be, and the desire for what I dream of.

The memory of passions past, the despair of passions lost, the lust for passions regained.

Those are some nasty little three-ways to be caught betwixt and between!

And yet…

As Kipling reminds us, we don’t just fail…

Abide the twin damnation- 
To fail and know we fail.

…unlike the inanimate stuff we build with, we KNOW we fail!

And yet…

In spite of being broken,
Because of being broken
May rise and build anew
Stand up and build anew.

…we try again.

A year ago I said, “We’re badasses! Even when we don’t think we are.”

I wonder now just how much thinking is involved. It’s not the brain, it’s the heart. It’s not the body, it’s the soul. We’re badasses not when the world knocks us down, but when we get back up anyway.

Get some sleep. Hug someone you love if they’re there with you. Think about someone you love and smile if they’re not there with you.

Tomorrow morning stand up and build anew.

1 Comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul

December 4, 2018 · 23:46

Beacon Of Hope (Real World)

Even a bit of double hope over there on the right…

It’s not without justification that the Bible says that God gave Noah and his family the rainbow at the end of the Flood as a sign of Hope.

(I’ll pause to allow some recovery time for those of you who passed out after seeing me reference the Bible…)

Aside from the biblical references, multiple societies refer to the metaphor of rainbows (hope) following storms (difficult times).

This one was from a few days ago when LA got it’s first decent rain in a long time, which helped put out those fires. (And brought mud slides and flooding to the burn areas, but let’s not get too nit-picky here.) Tomorrow and Thursday we’ll get more rain and perhaps more rainbows.

I fear that the worst “storms” might be ahead of us in any number of dimensions, so I’ll start stocking up on rainbows now. I think we’re going to need them.

When the storms hit, whether they be in our personal lives, the lives of those near and dear to us, in our state, country, or across the whole world, let’s remember that there are going to be rainbows if we can just hold on to see them.

1 Comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography, Weather

November 16, 2018 · 22:02

Too Tired To Sleep

Bad night.

Long day.

Tomorrow’s going to be much longer.

Have to get up at O’Dark Thirty – need to go get some sleep while I can.

Too tired to get up and go to bed.

Too tired to sleep once I get there.

This shit was a badge of honor when I was twenty-two and I did what I had to do to get through college.

This shit was a pain in the ass when I was forty-two and I had to do what I had to do as a single dad.

Now it’s just shit. Maybe twenty years from now I’ll have something clever to say about it – right now, not so much.

G’night all.

1 Comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Health

July 5, 2018 · 23:28

Double Mondays

It was good to have a holiday yesterday, but having the one day off in the middle of the week has consequences.

On the one hand, it’s like two separate, teeny-tiny little two-day work weeks, which are MUCH better than these lousy five-day work weeks.

On the other hand, it also means there are two Mondays, at least in the “it sucks to have to go back to adulting after spending the previous day having fun” definition.

I’m not 100% sure the good outweighs the bad here. It probably does, but it’s like 50.1% vs 49.9% when it would be so much better if it were, say, 75% vs 25%.

Those are odds I can live with.

Wait, that means that there are two Fridays also!

Okay, the two Monday thing is still a major flaw, but the scale is definitely tipping here.

Have a Happy Second Friday tomorrow!

1 Comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts

June 22, 2018 · 23:57

Life Lessons From Flying

Many lessons learned while learning to be a pilot can translate well to “normal” every day life. For example, fuel management.

It’s pretty important to not run out of fuel when flying. Ask the crew of the Gimli Glider if you don’t believe me.

Ditto with yourself in the slightly more metamorphic sense.

When flying, if something unexpected is happening and you’re about to run out of fuel, there are probably some warning signs. It might be natural to brush them off as a sensor error or some other minor flaw, but at some point you need to pay attention, possibly declare an emergency, and find a place to land **NOW**.

Ditto with yourself. Hopefully without the emergency part, but I guess there could be times when that comes into play.

Sometimes when flying you might foolishly know that you’re really pushing your luck on fuel capacity, but you really, really need to get there and get through, so you try to push it that teeny, tiny little bit more rather than landing for refueling… These pilots are generally known by the more common term, “statistics.”

Ditto with yourself. Again, perhaps not quite as drastic and life threatening, but a good life lesson nonetheless.

So tonight, when I had goals to reach and knew that I was tired and “running on fumes” but pushing it to get things done…

Let’s say that it’s a good night to recognize the signs, realize that none of those things is truly life and death, and to shut down **NOW**. Which is what I’m going to do.

Good night!

Leave a comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Flying

June 16, 2018 · 23:24

That Feeling When – June 16th

That feeling when you’re thinking about the last straw again, the one that will break the proverbial camel’s back and you’re really hating that you’re the proverbial camel and you’re not sure how you got the gig or how much notice you need to give to resign and will you get any severance, but seriously you can’t figure if that last straw is going to be a steel beam falling from low Earth orbit or just feel that way despite only being a feather-weight and otherwise totally inconsequential thing and of course it’s going to be the latter since that’s the whole point of the figure of speech and wondering if the stupid thing you did tonight because you’re too fucking tired to see straight is going to be *IT* or just another wasted hour tomorrow to fix and you could fix it tonight if you really, really wanted to be an A-type but if you’re too tired to do things right it’s probably an even more stupid thing to try to fix it without getting some sleep so maybe you’ll just leave this here as a reminder and instead listen to some depressing and melancholy music for a while before drifting off in exhaustion and desperation…

Or I could just stay up another hour or so and start watching World Cup games. Who’s on first, Costa Rica and Serbia?

2 Comments

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul

May 19, 2018 · 23:49

That Feeling When – May 19th

That feeling when all you want to do is get some sleep, a lot of sleep, get caught up on sleep without being woken up by stress dreams or fever dreams or a full bladder or leg cramps (most of all by leg cramps!) and when you wake up you want it to all be better so that tomorrow (as being defined as “what happens when I wake up”) is missing all of the really shitty things from today but keeps all of the really good ones.

Not sure you can get there from here.

The only way out is through. Sleep deprived or not.

Leave a comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Music, Paul

May 7, 2018 · 23:39

That Feeling When – May 07th

That feeling when it seems you’ve been beaten heavily about the head and shoulders for weeks and except for being in ICU or prison or the morgue it’s not clear what else can go wrong or add more stress and you’re about to give in and go with “barely good enough” because it’s all that’s available and even that’s iffy but it’s all you’ve got left and “Plan D” is a HUGE freakin’ leap that’s sort of a last resort but at least you have that option when all of a sudden with no warning there’s an opportunity that’s like a bolt of lightning and while you really don’t dare to hope because you’ve gotten your spirits crushed repeatedly you want to hope and you need to hope and when things actually fall into place and this huge weight is being lifted you’re horrified to find that almost all you can think of is a nightmare “what if” scenario where all of this good stuff is just a trap that will temporarily put you on a pedestal so that the upcoming fall will be that much harder and you want to tell your brain to STFU but you can’t quite get past that as fast as things got better for no damn good reason other than blind luck they can get horrible again just as fast.

“Adulting” is sucking it up and going ahead full speed with the good things, despite knowing that those bad things might still be lurking.

Did you see “Arrival” a couple years ago? The big reveal at the end left me a weeping puddle. This is why.

We go on, despite our fears. Maybe some day we’ll even be able to let go of some of the fear.

1 Comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Music, Paul

April 30, 2018 · 23:34

That Feeling When – April 30th

That feeling when it’s dark but not too late yet and you’ve been busting your ass all weekend and you’re really tired and sweaty and from a couple of blocks away you can hear some music and you’re thinking about how different sounds and frequencies carry better than others because what you hear clear as a bell (if faintly) is a trumpet line from some music and you’re thinking that must be why trumpets were used in battle and so on, because the sound carries further, and you’re thinking it must be a quinceañera or something with a mariachi band when suddenly all of the pieces snap into place and you realize it’s the background trumpet music from the choruses of The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to listen to mariachi music the same way again.

1 Comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Music, Paul

April 27, 2018 · 23:37

Two Borrowed Images

After a delightful long weekend in Toronto, it was back to work, packing and panicking, and trying to find any spare time at all to try to keep current with what’s going on out at the hangar.

Two images stuck with me all week:

Remember this scene near the end of “Deep Impact,” after the comet’s hit? Metaphorically, I’ve been Lea Leoni in this scene every freaking day.

I’ve been trying to be this mouse all week. I don’t know how well it worked, I feel a lot more like an owl pellet at the moment.

Leave a comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul