TAHOE PATCH

One man’s work is another man’s play. Pulling up an Adobe product and jamming on it for a little bit is actually how I wind down. Here’s a travel patch I made for Lake Tahoe just for fun. Would be a blast to get these made for everywhere I go.

HUNTING FOR HOME

A little update: this month is something else.

Our lease is up on the 28th and we still don’t have a real solid idea of where we’ll end up then. We’ve been shopping around for a home, but it’s looking like that whole process hit a few snags and won’t happen right away. (And it’s definitely not gonna be the house in this picture, though it would make for a great fixer.)

We also haven’t started the packing up process I’m not looking forward to. Especially because...

Deanna injured her leg and can’t put weight on it for another month or so. I’ve been driving her to and from work, sometimes taking an hour and a half each way because of the traffic in between our offices. When it comes to house and dog chores, it’s like we’re playing with ten guys on the field and the missing one is Messi.

So that’s life right now. Everything that isn’t on fire is on pause. It’s a lot, but I like to think of it like a high intensity workout for the spirit. Thankful that I have the ability to step up to help out more these days. Thankful that we can even think about housing in a city as tough to afford as San Diego. Thankful that bones heal (cause how much would it suck if they didn’t?)

All that to say, when February is over, I think I’ll treat myself to a poke bowl.

SHOW SOME LOVE

Good day to show some love.

Made this little reminder for two good reasons.

First, it’s Valentine’s Day and no matter what you’ve got going on in that department, you’re worthy of some Love.

Second, I was listening to @perspectivepodcast and @prspctv_cllctvgave us the challenge to go show some love with shoutouts to three of our favorite creatives.

Most podcasts I listen to don’t assign homework. But I like this assignment. And it’ll be tough to keep it at 3. But here we go!

1️⃣ @bradmontague - constantly making things that are so full of heart. And Brad is just as fantastic offline too.

2️⃣ I’ve been really digging @toddhenry’s Daily Creative Podcast. It’s a quick 3 minute listen full of really good insight on doing creative and meaningful work.

3️⃣ I also wanted to shoutout somebody I knew IRL who I think does work more folks should be familiar with, @garyware - his mission to remind us to play more is as fun as it sounds.

There are also so many others. I should do these lists more often. Maybe I will!

VALENTINE’S 2019

Life has been all kinds of chaos lately but tonight we had pie.

Aussie meat pie and guava hand pie and guava cider and mango sticky rice ice cream and heavy rains and roses.

Thankful that even when life is mostly chaos, I’ve got the best teammate to steady the ship with.

BEHOLD THE DREAMERS

“It's the fear that kills us. Sometimes it happens and it's not even as bad as the fear. That is what I have learned in this life. It is the fear.”

This was a good read and I needed a good novel.

Immigrant fiction isn’t new. The Joy Luck Club and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent have been around awhile. But the past decade has been such a boom for this subgenre. It could have its own canon.

I’d start with Americanah, We Need New Names, Everything I Never Told You, The Leavers, American Born Chinese, and this book. And probably so many more.

These more recent ones are less about feeling cut off from home and are more about being a person with two places that wear that name, each with their good and bad. That’s a fascinating reflection about how the immigrant experience keeps evolving.

NAEL

Allow me to introduce, Nael-

“Before, a lot of people here earned money by rushing sugar over the Dominican border. This was too dangerous,” he told me.

Nael decided the better way to earn a living was through farming, but it wasn’t necessarily easier. He told me he would work from 7 in the morning to 7 in the evening and earn 20 Haitian gourdes.

I had to do the conversion in my head. He was working 12 hour days for the equivalent of 34 cents.

He and his wife have eight kids. Some live over in Port Au Prince. Nael lived there too for a short while, but went back to his home village because things improved. As he learned sustainable agriculture techniques and as reforestation improved his village’s soil, he increased his earnings bit by bit.

Now he employs 14 people.

Sending love out to the people of Haiti as things have gotten intense there this month. Several people have been killed during demonstrations. It’s a complex scenario, but the Haitians who keep moving forward in spite of everything are some of the most resilient people I’ve ever met.

THE PARADOX OF DESIRE

An idea I’m recently obsessed with lately is called the paradox of desire. Esther Perel explains that the desire for intimacy is experienced when there’s a little bit of space for attraction to take hold.

“It needs a bridge to cross and someone on the other side. It needs me to want to be curious about the other person,” she puts it.

This mostly refers to sexual intimacy, but I think it also applies to the relationship we have with life.

On a day to day basis, the routines of living obscure the sense of wonder that life really is. But the moments where we get to zoom out are the best reminders. They help us realize that all the other parts, the little things, the chores and the lazy Sundays, they’re also notes in the middle part of a symphony.