Category: Journal

Anger, Fear & Democracy

Probably the angriest I’ve been in many years, was when I felt like I had to defend the integrity of my Burning Man camp. I’m not done apologizing to folks for how I did this (I truly was misguided) – yet I also found it instructive. If what pulls us to anger is defending what matters to us… then we all must be feeling like a lot of what matters to us has been under threat recently.

I certainly have. Every time I look at the news, there seems to be another threat to our democracy. There seems to be another threat to the rights, respect, and/or quality of life of average Americans. Even knowing that my news feeds have learned that anger keeps people engaged so they can show them more ads… is the news inventing these things for us to be angry about? I don’t think that’s exactly the case.

I’ve been thinking about how our history determines our future, in the sense of our politics. For me, the way to go about ending homelessness in my region is to bring together a wide array of people in the community and unite them around the common goal of ending homelessness. However, what I’m just wrapping my head around is that a lot of these people (even if I’m just meeting them for the first time) have bad blood already. They are nursing slights, hurts, upset and offense from previous attempts to make headway on homelessness in our region. So far I’ve been adept at getting these folks in the same room at the same time, but how do I help them to forgive each other? Or, at the very least, be open enough to working together again? How do I help these folks leave the hurt of yesterday behind, so that it doesn’t become the hurt of tomorrow as well?

Probably a lot of these folks felt like they had to defend what really mattered to them, from each other. Probably a lot of these folks felt like their ideals were under attack. I was in a conflict resolution training recently, and the trainer wrote that the Conflict Cycle starts with some sort of event, and then someone perceives negative intent behind that event. They act on that perception, and then people react to them. Then there is another event… and we are now in an ongoing cycle of conflict. Hence, the name. What struck me differently this time around was that someone has to perceive negative intent. I know that happens a lot in our community – people perceive negative intent pretty regularly.

One could argue that trait actually varies significantly across our political spectrum. That people on the right perceive negative intent from anyone who isn’t on the political right, and those on the political left perceive negative intent even from their own allies. Not sure how true this is, but a take to ponder further.

I think we need to stop thinking about Democracy as if we are done improving it. I fear that, in America, we’ve gotten so accustomed to revering the constitution and the founding fathers that we’ve forgotten that we can actually make our democracy better. And by better, I mean more effective at embodying the will of Americans.

An idea that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind is the idea of neighborhood representation. This is the idea that every neighborhood would elect someone to represent them to every elected official and government institution. The goal being that no one in America would be more than one degree of separation from someone who has the power to set policy and address their concerns about government. Of everyone reading this, how many of us have that experience now? I’m guessing it’s very few. Because of the nature of my work, I know quite a few elected folks in my region… and in my experience that is really rare. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that conspiracy theories and distrust of government is so high when so many of us are disconnected from the process and the outcomes of the process.

I also think we need to break up our two big parties. I have heard the “big tent” argument from Democrats, and I think we’ve all discovered that our current political climate would be much better if we had 4 to 6 viable political parties in this country instead of two. This would mean breaking down all of the institutional advantages that the Democrats and Republicans have, while making it real easy to start a new party and removing the barriers to running for office. It would probably mean completely undoing our primary system, and scrapping the electoral college. If we had an assortment of parties, we could avoid a situation in which extremists take over one of the two major ones. It is also much more difficult to paint anyone that isn’t in your party as wrong, evil, not a patriot, etc… especially if each party has to partner with others to get anything done.

These are just my ideas, but we need to have more. How else can we make the structure of our democracy more conducive to actual democracy? I think if we are unwilling to make our democracy more effective, we provide ammunition to the people in the world that argue that democracy is too chaotic. That the best governments are autocracies, dictatorships, or worse.

I do believe that it is a human right to have a say in how your government operates. I do also think that democracy has to be a lifestyle, a way of life. It is not sustainable to live our lives as little dictators who vote occasionally on who will dictate over us. I think that means working to achieve buy in, consensus, and agreement in all aspects of life. At work, at play, in our families, and in our communities. That means not forcing our desired policy outcomes on people.

That also means seeking out accountability. It is only the un-democratic who avoid accountability. If we seek out accountability, we are willing to own that we have messed up. We are willing to grow. If we avoid hearing that we are wrong or that we did something that is not okay… we are just going to continue doing those things, but in more sneaky ways.

We are also going to avoid holding our political leaders accountable when they do things that are wrong, because we don’t want to be held accountable ourselves. We become enablers.

The political discourse in America does feel like it can be broken down around accountability right now. The left seems to want to hold everyone accountable, the right seems to want to avoid accountability entirely – and to say “we’re not that bad, the left does the same bad stuff we do!” Of course, there are certainly people on the left side of the political spectrum who want to avoid accountability. It is an impulse we all must get over, after all.

A glaring weakness that is showing up for me recently is that I do not seem to have the patience to see where folks are coming from… or at least not as much as I used to. Whereas in the past I would be more understanding of people and their behavior, I am now much quicker to assume bad intentions. Or to just be angry with people. I do think that a big part of this for me has been Donald Trump. Being bombarded every day by clearly negative intentions from him and his allies makes it hard to have patience for anyone who resembles that sort of thinking. Covid added a layer of stress to that. So did the fires locally.

But another thing that I think robbed me of my patience has been starting a new homeless services agency. For me, that made every day high stakes. Will what I do today lead us to get a contract? Will I miss something that will endanger our financial stability? Am I working too slow? Am I too aggressive? Am I not aggressive enough? Will any of our program participants die? Will I assemble a team that works well together? How do I do everything while being a husband and a father, and having friends and a life? Did I miss something that is going to have catastrophic consequences? Will the people in the rest of my life be able to adjust to how different my life is? Will the powerful people in my community work with me or shut me out?

Will I get vilified by other service providers? Will I get vilified in the press? Will I get stabbed in the back (metaphorically)? Will I get stabbed in the front (metaphorically)? Will I be able to maintain any semblance of health while doing this? How much time with my family am I willing to miss? How much time with friends? Will I make a fool of myself? Will I let down my funders? Will I have to fire people I really care about? Will this adventure destroy relationships I have with people? Will I make myself unemployable and broke? Will my family leave me? Will I die early from the stress of doing all of this? Am I doing so much that something is going to inevitably come crashing down?

Am I going to be the focus of a targeted attack?

These are the worries that I haven’t been allowing space for on this journey so far. But there is a saying that I know to be true; what you resist persists. Being unwilling to air these fears out has meant that they have not gone away. Maybe writing them all now will start me on the process of re-balancing myself. Will I even remember what it feels like to have a strong emotional equilibrium?

Regardless, there are things that I have learned on this journey. The most valuable thing, I believe, is that I am as capable as I believed I was. I yet may be even more capable. Knowing that has changed my life irrevocably. Knowing that has caused me to consider what bigger differences I can make in this world. Given all the stress, frustration and fear… I find myself saying “What else can I do?”

Writing through Writer’s Block

Ok, ok. So for years I’ve said (mostly to myself) that I don’t get writer’s block. But here I am, stuck with it for months now. But if I don’t get writer’s block…? I’ve always felt that the thing to do with writer’s block is to write exactly what you are thinking. That is what I’ve been reluctant to do, and that’s why I’ve been stuck. So here are the things on my mind…

Seeing Elon Musk out himself as intellectually vapid with fascist leanings in his take over of Twitter has been something. I mean, being a native of Silicon Valley, I’ve known about his shortcomings for a long time. But to see someone completely expose himself on a worldwide scale so quickly… I did not think he would do so much obviously dumb stuff so fast.

Being a burner, I’ll never forget Elon criticizing someone by saying that they have “never been to Burning Man.” Well, now it’s clear to me that Elon managed to insulate himself so much from the experience that he didn’t learn some of the fundamental things that people learn for themselves when they go to Burning Man; namely, a commitment to community. Elon, at this moment, seems to be most interested in self aggrandizement. Just as the shine is coming off of another self aggrandizer in America (Trump), Elon shows up to take his place.

I’ve said (to myself) for a while now, American culture has a fetish for achievement. But it’s shiny “look at how perfect I am!” achievement, not the achievement that comes from hard work, failure, and mistakes. So people like Musk, like Trump, spit-shine their failures and manage to actually accomplish very little – all while claiming that they can do anything. With enough money, you can make any mistake look like a success. Musk and Trump had enough money from the beginning.

I’m sure part of my reluctance to write about my true feelings about the world is that I am now the Executive Director of an organization. I haven’t wanted my thoughts to be construed as the official statements of the organization that I have built. So I’ve said nothing…

Which is not healthy. And the truth is, is that I have always kept a bright big line between what I say and do in a professional capacity and what I don’t. Writing this blog gives me clarity. Writing this blog is about the thoughts that I am thinking. My work is not about that.

So, what else is on my mind? I’m pretty darn proud of my oldest daughter these days. Why is enough for a whole blog itself… so keep your eye out for that. You may have a hint if you follow my wife on facebook, though.

So, the fight to maintain democracy goes on in America. This is something that deserves a lot more writing from me, since it’s something that’s on my mind a lot – but I’ll collect my thoughts before I publish them.

Meanwhile, I think I’ve said what I need to say today.

I Don’t Know What to Write Anymore

These last few months I’ve felt that I should be writing more blog posts. That I’m neglecting something by not writing occasionally. I don’t know what I’d be neglecting, it’s not like I owe anyone blog posts or anything…

Nonetheless, I’ve felt like I should be writing. Yet I’ve had nothing that I want to write about. My life seems to be consumed with projects at the moment, and I don’t like writing about projects before they are ready for public eyes. Conceivably I could write about my experiences working with people who are homeless, but I haven’t had anything that I’ve wanted to share on that front. I could write about parenting, but…. I’m not inspired to do that.

I stay off of facebook and all the other meta products these days mostly, so I’m not having conversations about current events that I could hash out via blog. Not that there isn’t a ton to talk about with current events. Writing about politics seems… silly right now. Silly? I don’t know. Wasteful, maybe. What there is to do is to defend democracy. What else is there to talk about? What is defending democracy, these days? Lots of people write lots of things about defending democracy and our political environment right now, but I don’t see democracy as any more defended than it was before.

We all know that news and current events coverage has devolved into a straightforward chase of clicks. Which makes trying to follow the news a slog of “LOOK AT THIS TERRIBLE THING!” “LOOK AT THAT TERRIBLE THING!” while very little, if anything, changes. Then when something does change, we’re so exhausted from all the crazy headlines that we’re numb to the crazy changes going on. I shouldn’t say “we”… I mean “me” here.

Did someone call this the fire house of misinformation?

But, it’s not a total numbing. It’s not a helpless feeling. Not for me, anyway. It’s a “I see what you’re doing here, and I’m tracking what will need to be undone when this country isn’t so divided.” I know a lot of people are doing the same. I know that the division in the United States, and the world, will not last. I know that this era will end. We will learn the lessons we need to learn from what is happening today, and we will apply those lessons. Humanity will not always be susceptible to the things that it is susceptible to today.

I know some people say or think that it is a myth that humanity matures. For me, it is a matter of certainty that it does. Maybe not 200 years ago, maybe not even a hundred years ago. But today, with the speed and depth with which we are able to share our culture and experiences, I think it is undeniable. In the US, we have grown dramatically away from the cultural norms of my childhood. And though people are attempting to turn us back, they will be unsuccessful. The cat is out of the bag. There is no going back.

What do I do with this knowledge? Keep moving forward, I guess.

Yet the more I move forward, the more often I feel like an imposter, you know? The more I find myself in spaces where I’m afraid that people will find out that I have no idea what I’m talking about. Even though I do know what I’m talking about. That was a thing about my earlier blogs posts, is that I felt like I had nothing to lose by blogging. Now I feel like I’m up to something. There are stakes in what I’m doing. I don’t want things to go wrong… and that fear has made me more uncertain. When the stakes were low, my certainty was high. For me, writing is often an exercise in expressing certainty. If I’m sure of something, then I let myself write it. Even if it’s just that I’m not sure. But when my life has been full of uncertainty…

In my life, there is truly nothing but what I do for other people. I’ve been working on this project to make the Santa Cruz Free Guide into a full homeless services provider for a while now. I know that I can keep contributing, and I know that what I’m embarking on is due only to people joining me on this journey. People keep joining me. And I guess that means something. I guess that means that I’m doing the right thing. Even though they all could leave at any moment – they don’t. Even though there is no guarantee that I’m doing the right thing… The people who’ve joined me on this journey are people that I love and respect immensely. If they are telling me to keep going, who else would I listen to? There is literally no one who I would take advice to heart from more than the people who are with me on this journey of starting this new agency.

Maybe that’s the point. Because building a team is not about being out in front. Building a resilient team is about building a mutually re-enforcing team. And this is a way that I need to be re-enforced. When I look out over my screen of zoom meeting attendees, I can see folks who are re-enforcing me when I’m having my doubts. When I’m afraid that this is all going to fail, they are still there looking back at me.

Maybe this is what I’ve been afraid to write all these months. I’ve been reluctant to embrace that it will be alright. That I will be okay. We will be okay. I’ve been afraid to let go of the worry. But I can let it go. I will be okay.

I Used to Write Poetry

I just emptied out my old storage shed, and amongst many things, I found my poetry from when I was in high school. Since the actual paper copies weren’t in a condition to keep, I scanned what I could. Assuming everything in our lives going forward is going to be digital, these seems as good a place as any to save them. Also, since this year marks 20 years since I graduated high school, the timing just feels right to visit these again.

Freshman year. I should note, I’m only posting the poems that were published in the yearly creative writing publication of my high school, called The Myriad.

Well, that’s a freshman poem. I don’t know what else to say about that. Let’s move on…

My freshman English class put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet, and I wrote this introduction to it. I mean, I can’t disagree with my point here – that Romeo and Juliet is actually a story about how hate poisons everything. The love that Shakespeare describes is just the catalyst that draws the hate out. Nicely done, me.

I think that’s all that was published from my freshman year. Let’s go on to sophomore year…

This is one of my favorite things I have ever written. It so well captures my feelings of walking the halls in my high school as a sixteen year old – with girls. GIRLS! Oh, the girls. You may see, that becomes a theme here.

Apparently all my life I’ve been re-writing songs with my own lyrics. Threw in a dig at the cold soullessness of corporate America at the end. Not that I had ever been to a Wal-Mart at this point in my life(!) but I guess one doesn’t always need to write what they know.

Geez, this is so frickin’ corny. It was when I discovered this poem that I re-considered my idea to make this blog post altogether, just because this poem is so corny. But you know what? I have a point here about “exuding compassion” actually being a thing. Being able to exude compassion is an invaluable ability. So, okay, not terrible… me.

On to junior year!

Part of me wants to say a lot about this poem. Part of me wants to say nothing at all. When Fiona Apple released Every Single Night in 2012, I thought “she knows this feeling.” I guess you either know this feeling or you don’t. I felt this a lot in my high school years.

Can our love survive the inevitable turbulence that life will bring? That’s a good question. First seeing this again made me think of In Each Other’s Arms by Amy Obenski, but maybe a more fitting song is Love Me Again by John Newman. Maybe this was a sentiment that simply fit the time for me; that we all knew that mistakes, misspoken words and mess ups were inevitable in this world of love that we were exploring. Would we make it?

No, we would not. But we learned on the way. To senior year…

Ugh. This brings back things I’d rather not remember. Remember when I said we learned along the way? Well, here I am… learning. It honestly took me years to learn to navigate the feelings behind the words in this poem.

I had completely forgotten that I had written this. This is as true for me today as it was when I wrote it. I am, honestly, gobsmacked at this poem. Holy moly. If I ever doubt that I can write, I need only look at this poem.

This seems to be inevitable after writing With You? a couple poems up. Yep.

What’s funny is that I’m posting these in the order that The Myriad published them. I don’t know that they are actually chronological. But it feels like it now. I mean, of course I would write this after writing Losing. Reading these poems again, it makes sense that I left high school feeling less confident than I was during high school.

I should point out in this next one that there are a couple of typos. “Ali” was supposed to be “Ah” and the “No” at the beginning of the next line was supposed to be “Not.” I don’t know if I turned this into them handwritten, or if they just made typos.

I can never claim that there was a time in my life that I was not bold. I was pretty fed up with school at the end.

That was another thing to learn, that when it’s over there is no going back. This reminds me of Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri, except from the other person’s point of view.

That’s the last of them. I seriously have no desire to write poetry ever again. I think it’s because I associate that sort of writing with the emotional turmoil of high school. I had never written poetry before my freshman english teacher assigned it to me, and after I got out of high school there wasn’t a structure to continue writing like that. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, dear reader, as I’ve enjoyed looking back on a previous version of myself.

I’ve Been Making a Movie, To Death

The process of making this film outlasted my passion for it

I’ve been making one movie since I was 23. I’m 38. I’m done with it. More precisely, I’ve been sick of working on it for years – but I finally have an edit of it that feels finished.

I’ve learned a lot making this movie. It’s a documentary, and the big lesson I learned was how not to film a documentary. Even though the raw footage was only about 20 hours; because I did not have an idea of how the final product would look, I spent countless hours watching the footage to find the story, refining the story, organizing it, putting it into a digestible format….

All while life continued. I had a day job, or multiple day jobs. I met the love of my life, and we got married. We got dogs. We had kids. We bought a house. We got a cat. So a project that I wanted to take three years on, became this. I never wanted this to be a fifteen year project. I never wanted to spend the amount of money or energy on it that I did. But it’s my first feature film, and it never felt right to give up. Even when emotionally, I was long done.

What’s the documentary about? It’s a focus on the gaps in the mental health system that lead to people who are depressed, bipolar or suicidal to average 5-7 years after onset of symptoms before seeking help. It illustrates the structural reasons that exist that lead a to huge number of Americans to live lives without the mental health assistance that they know they need.

What’s sad is, those conditions haven’t changed notably in the fifteen years that I’ve been working on this project. I’m sure that the content of the film is just as real and relevant as when I kicked off this project a decade and a half ago.

From a filmmaking and communication perspective, the structure of the film is wrong. But it would take at least one more re-shoot to do it right… and I don’t want to spend a few grand more of my money on another shoot. I don’t know if this film is going to go anywhere, anyway.

I want to be proud of this film, like I am of my first music video. But I’m not. I’m sick and tired of it. I’m embarrassed that it took this long. I’ve been embarrassed for a while. I think my feelings toward this film kept me from finding a structure for it I like – I have certainly lost the capacity to think creatively about it anymore. I’m writing this blog in the hopes that by writing and posting this I can unload some of the burden that this film has become.

I wasn’t originally going to post the film here, but here is the link. After I’ve done such a great job of selling this movie, I’m sure you can’t wait to watch it 😉

It’s a little less than an hour long. If you’d be so kind to take a look, I need to know what it this film is, and if it’s worth pushing forward with it. I lost perspective on it too many years ago to know. That link is a private listing, if it gets a bunch of views I’ll take it down.

Thanks for listening, friends.

Too Much at Once

A quarter of my town burned down. One of my participants at work passed away. I worry about people at work, and work in general has been really hard for me recently. Coronavirus is still going on and drastically affecting my family’s quality of life. Politics in this country are as alarming as ever…

There has been too much going on for me recently, too much to write about. I’ve sat down quite a few times to write, and it never felt right.

Right now, I don’t know how to write about my experiences at work without violating my participant’s privacy. Nor how to do it while capturing the wide vacillations of views I take on any given circumstance. Working with people who are homeless is great for forcing you into moral quandaries that you aren’t ready for. I don’t think there is anything I would have done differently, but I nonetheless feel wounded from the experience.

Burning Man didn’t happen, either.

Damn.

Anyway, for those of you who regularly read this blog, I wanted to let you all know where I’m at. I’m good, but there’s been a lot. Too much. Love to you all

Coronavirus: Day 54

the hatches are battened

So much has gone on in the last ~40 days. I’ll make a list:

-My brother in law passed away unexpectedly. He was 36 years old, married, with a four year old son. It’s still not clear why he died. He did test negative for COVID-19. Nonetheless, his death has been shocking, tragic, and painful for all of us. You can read what his widow wrote here (on Linkedin) and my wife wrote here (on facebook). The gofundme for his family is here.

-The homeless shelter I manage has been able to increase capacity while maintaining social distancing. We have increased staff. It’s now also looking like we will be able to increase the rate at which we are helping people to get housed. One of the reasons that we’ve been able to increase capacity is because of these. The organization I work for is Housing Matters, and I manage the program that those pallet shelters are in. I’m really proud of how we have responded to this crisis.

-Santa Cruz County has, as far as I can tell, done really well in it’s response to this pandemic. We’ve shut down beach access to folks from out of town. The county has opened more shelter and managed camping, including just across the street from our shelter. Our peak of cases was relatively low, and we already seem to be on the tail end. As long as we don’t open up again too soon…

IMG_2206

Here’s the source for that image.

-Speaking of opening up again too soon, it’s really frustrating seeing people in the right-wing media bubble saying that we need to open everything up again to keep the economy from getting bad. There is no way that I’ve seen to open up again without infecting thousands of people with this disease, and thousands of people dying. An effective president wouldn’t have closed down the CDC office specifically responsible for containing outbreaks in their country of origin. An effective president would have moved quickly and decisively when this virus appeared in our country. An effective part of the shutdown would have included a total pause on all rent, loans and mortgages. It would have made sure people had access to food and medical care, as needed. All of these steps would have mitigated the impacts on our greater economy significantly. It seems to me that Trump supporters don’t know how an effective president would behave, and so they champion his unending string of failures, claiming they are successes. Of course, if you are reading this, I know you are going to have one of two reactions. Either you are outside of the right-wing media bubble and you’ll essentially say “no, duh.” Or you’re inside the right-wing media bubble and you’ll essentially say “I’m so sad to hear that you’ve been manipulated by the mainstream media.” Such is the state of our world today.

-Shopping for supplies is completely different now. The aisles in the grocery stores are one-way only, and everyone is supposed to stay at least two shopping cart lengths apart. A staff person is wiping down every shopping cart after they are used. Early on, a lot of store shelves were nearly bare. Now most stuff is at the store. But toilet paper is sold by the roll (it used to be sold 8-12 to a pack), and for a while at least there was a limit on how many rolls you could buy at once. Clorox wipes, which used to be a staple of our house, are now essentially impossible to find. I’m now doing all of the shopping for the family, because there is a limit to how many people in a party can go in a store at once. Below are my shopping lists, you can see as time goes on more things were available in stores.

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-Geez, I nearly forgot! We had a wedding in our front yard during the stay-at-home. Short story shorter, this couple had to be married by a certain date but their courthouse wedding was cancelled due to coronavirus. So, they got married in our front yard. It was them, our family, and the photographer. We all maintained social distancing, and all of their family and friends watched online with zoom. I officiated. I’ve anonymized what I wrote for the occasion, but I’d like to share the text of the wedding with you all here:

Life has a way of taking us down unexpected twists and turns. And often, it’s those unexpected paths that take us exactly where we need to be.

Today, on an unexpected day, in an unexpected front yard, with an unexpected ceremony, We are here today to celebrate two people, who met by chance, not by design. Who found each other while swimming upon the wild seas of fate, and took a leap together. And, I presume, have kept taking leaps of faith together – and found themselves, after each leap, where they’ve always wanted to be.

Times, I understand, are always uncertain, however these times feel more uncertain than most. But uncertain times have a way of crystallizing our priorities. Today’s priorities are clear; love, commitment, family, each other.

I am honored, we all our honored, to be able to be here with you to celebrate your love and commitment to each other.

-My wife is still working from home, while overseeing our kindergartner’s schooling, while wrangling a two year old, while managing two dogs and a cat. Often when I get home she is exhausted from having to juggle too much in a day. Often when I get home, I’m exhausted from the highs and lows of managing a shelter and getting people who are homeless into housing. Though we have hit our stride, and made this our new normal, it is a fragile normal. It’s a high-stress normal.

-Nothing illustrated the fragility of our new normal than when the internet went out at our house. My wife, our kindergartner, and our friend who rents our back house all rely on being able to use the internet everyday during the stay-at-home to get work done. My wife and our renter do provide essential services, that thankfully are able to be done remotely. To suddenly be without internet doesn’t just impact them, but it imperils the commitments that they have made to the people in the vulnerable populations that they work with. I had to take the day off of work and spend 8 hours attempting to communicate with Comcast to get the internet working again. It turned out that Comcast wasn’t at fault for our internet going down, but it also wasn’t able to help us figure out what wasn’t working. Because the three of us weren’t able to work that day, three essential workers weren’t able to provide their services because of one bad internet connection. This pandemic amplifies everything else that isn’t working in our lives.

-Every day I work with folks who are carrying a lot of scars from life. Something that has struck me, in hearing stories from friends and family since this pandemic has started, is that the scars that people are getting these days are going to last a lifetime. I have a rule, not to tell anyone’s story on this blog but my own, but what people have gone through so far is going to stick with them forever. And…

-All of this may just be getting started. I’m wrapping this blog post up on May 9th, 2020. I fully expect that there will be another wave of coronavirus cases as many states in the US open up in the next few weeks. I expect the federal response to continue to be wholly inadequate – which means that not only will we be too slow to shut down again, but the second shutdown will also be mismanaged. Which will lead to a recession or a depression. We’re already hearing about meat becoming much more expensive soon, because so many meat processing plants have had to shut down because their workers are getting sick. The headline on the paper as I walked into the store today was that unemployment was at 14.7%. What else will we all lose before the federal government does the right thing?

-I miss hugging. I miss shaking people’s hands. I miss being able to relax. I miss being with my friends. I miss having lunch with people, in restaurants. I miss going to dinner. I miss walking through downtown. I miss seeing family. On a national level, I miss what life was like before 2016. I miss being able to focus enough to feel like I’m writing well.

I tell you what, though. There’s going to be a lot of fun to uncork when all this is over.

 

I’m Thankful For All Of You

Growing up, I had a lot of ideas about what my life would look like as an adult. Thankfully, few of them came true. One thing that I did not imagine, that I was really incapable of imagining, was the depth and richness I would feel every day from my friends and my community.

I did not imagine that I would have friends who shared their victories and their losses, their strengths and their foibles, their tragedies and their triumphs. I did not imagine that I would have friends that I could share all of those things with. I didn’t imagine that I would experience tragedies at all… but tragedy is a part of life, isn’t it?

I did not understand being there for the people I cared about, and allowing them to be there for me. Nor did I understand, as I do now, that I would find those two things to be the best parts of life. Allowing myself to be vulnerable, to be upset, to fail… and then to reach out for help. And to be there for the people I care about to reach out to me. To be there for friends as they figure out and get through the hardest parts of life, and to let people in as I figure out and get through the hardest parts of my life… this I truly treasure.

I treasure doing this with you. I treasure seeing you grow and change, and adapt to the challenges the confront you. I treasure your wins. I treasure sharing in your struggles, and seeing you overcome them. I treasure sharing our lives together – even if most of that sharing, in our modern world, is done online or over the phone.

For all I have faced in life, it has been sharing my struggle that has gotten me through it. It has been doing this thing called life, with all of you, that has made me experience a richness far beyond I have ever imagined. A richness that money can’t buy.

So thank you. I love you. I love you all. I look forward to tomorrow, tomorrow’s tomorrow, and beyond… knowing that we are doing this thing called life together. I’m eager to ride this ride with you.

Coronavirus: Day 16

Even if we don’t have it, it’s taking it’s toll

My county, Santa Cruz, issued it’s stay at home order on March 16th (if I’m counting correctly). So I’m counting sixteen days from that day to today. Santa  Cruz county also got over the 50 confirmed cases threshold today. I’m just gonna share the stuff that is on my mind:

-My wife has been working from home, essentially home-schooling our six year old daughter, AND wrangling our near two year old daughter, a puppy, a dog & a cat. Schools & daycares are shut down. My wife works in the schools system in Santa Clara county, their schools are shut down.

-I have continued to manage the homeless shelter that I manage. Which means I’m still going into work 40 hours a week, and interacting with shelter staff and participants.

-There is nowhere near enough time or energy for us to tackle everything we have to do every day.

-A friend brought us groceries and dinner one night a few days ago, and it was honestly manna from the heavens. Every time I’ve seen toilet paper for sale, when the shelves haven’t been empty, it’s been one roll of toilet paper at a time. We’re nearly down to our last roll, if I can’t find a package soon I guess I’ll be buying some rolls…

-It’s been really hard to see and hear about folks who are working from home, or simply at home not working, with no kids and nothing to do. Our world went from 3 full-time jobs (our jobs, and raising the kids while we aren’t at our jobs) to five full-time jobs (add in teaching our kindergartener and “daycare” for a toddler). My wife is taking the brunt of the change, and I’m doing what I can – but it is honestly just too much.

-I spent the last two weeks at the shelter being pulled in multiple directions at once, filling 2-4 roles. I think we have staffing levels at the right spot going forward, but I haven’t recovered yet.

-Before coronavirus, we had bunkbeds in the shelter. In order to create enough “social distancing” (which really should be called “physical distancing”) we’ve moved a portion of folks in the shelter to tents that we have set up in the parking lot. We have gotten much more thorough in our cleaning. Accomplishing this while dealing with the chaos and being short staffed has been rocky, to say the least.

-I’ve been watching the news very closely for mention of people who are homeless getting coronavirus. The only one I’ve heard of was a gentleman in San Jose, CA – who passed away from it. People are very concerned about coronavirus getting into the homeless community. Everyone has been told to practice “social distancing” to slow the spread of this disease. But our culture has been socially distancing from people who are homeless for decades. Social distance is not new for people who are living outdoors. It’s sad to say, but people who are homeless might have a higher risk of getting coronavirus from service providers and landlords than from anyone else. That being said, as soon as there is an encampment somewhere that produces about three coronavirus cases, it’s a totally different picture.

-I saw that there was a record number of unemployment applications sent in recently. Which is not surprising, given that so much is being shut down. But our food supply hasn’t been reduced. Our (already inadequate) housing supply hasn’t been reduced. What if it isn’t actually necessary for our society for those millions of folks to be working? What if we don’t need so many of us working to actually get everyone’s needs met? People who talk about Medicare for All (or single payer healthcare in general) talk about decoupling healthcare from employment. What if we decoupled housing from employment (or income) as well? This is a thought that came to me this week.

-Our whole family is processing through a cold. A definite feature of the coronavirus is the enhanced scrutiny that every sickness receives. We don’t have any reason to think we have it. Even so, I read the reports from Iceland – where it appears they are testing everyone – and it appears half of the people who get positive results have no symptoms whatsoever. It’s terrifying to think that our near two year old could get this, she had a series of medical issues recently and needs to be healthy for another couple of months before she’s out of the woods. Nonetheless, there is no way we would get tested in this country. There are  nowhere near enough tests for non-rich people who don’t have any of the primary symptoms.

-Our little mountain town has a nightly howl at 8pm, in honor of the healthcare workers on the front lines of this epidemic. It’s truly heartening to hear and participate it.

-Even though Santa Cruz county just got over 50 confirmed cases, we are currently weathering the storm relatively well. Santa Clara county, directly to the north of us (also know as Silicon Valley, for you international readers – and where I grew up), is up over 950 confirmed cases. The other county to the north of us, San Mateo, is up over 380 cases. I hope our county can keep it’s cases from exponentially increasing, but I’m not sure I would take that bet.

-At the Free Guide, we’ve had to switch to a “live” google doc that can reflect changes we’ve made to available resources for the homeless in Santa Cruz county the second we make them. We’ve had to do this because the list of resources is changing so fast.

-Merlin, the puppy, has been a boon to all of us at home and at work.

-Our oldest daughter cried today when she found out that her school will be closed for the rest of the school year. She misses her friends, and her teacher, so much.

Even though this has been hard, it’s not too hard. We’ll get through this. But all of this is tiring.