It is 5:46 AM on October 4th, 2016. We are now into the fall season with dark mornings and evenings. Even though bedtime is 8:00 my oldest son still has a little trouble getting up in the morning and I understand. I too hated getting up in the morning for pretty much all of elementary school and high school.
The owl has returned and I hear his hooting on some distant branch. I haven’t heard him for over a year and thought something might have happened to him or he moved away. There was an owl we could hear when we bought this house six years ago and I wonder if it is the same owl or one of his offspring? In any case, it is good to have some company in the early morning hours before the west coast wakes up. It is also comforting to hear him waking up in the middle of the night before falling back to sleep.
I’m still under a lot of pressure at work. As I mentioned before my colleague resigned and I have a few customers that have brought on new finance people who, as new people do, need to change a lot of things in order to justify getting hired. I can never be sure how things will turn out and it adds a constant level of stress until things settle down again.
Last week I also had a fever and pretty bad caught. I’m just now getting over it and so I haven’t been to karate or the gym for over a week. I really need to get back into the routine of getting to both the gym and karate and writing in this journal! The fever just knocked me down so much that I’m still a little shaky getting on my feet again.
Fevers knock you down mentally. With two kids one has to have a lot of energy because kids need constant attention of course and it is absolutely draining. I spoke with my Dad and he told me that this time is the toughest because you never get a moment to yourself. I agree with him as I would love to have some actual time just to myself, even just half a day a week. But there is also the voice telling me that my kids will not be young forever so I should enjoy each moment.
I think I’ll write a note to myself on my feelings so I can read back in five years time and remember.
- I’m really tired. Kids make all adults tired, especially at two years of age. You’ll remember all the positive, fun stuff but don’t forget how absolutely exhausting two kids at these ages have been.
- I’m really going to miss them when they’re older! I miss the baby version of my oldest and want him back! I’ll also miss the five year old version of him a few years from now. I really enjoy the two year old version of my youngest and will be sad when he is just a year or two older that the two year old has disappeared forever.
So I guess the lesson here is to persevere through the exhaustion, be completely present and enjoy them while they are this age since time will continue to flow.
In other news I’ve been participating in stop.jetnoise.net. Over the past year or so the FAA changed flight patters due to NextGen which now sends all southbound traffic right over my neighborhood instead of over the ocean. This has affected a lot of communities and so a citizen has set up a website where we can all easily report the noise and it gets forwarded to the noise abatement office at SFO. The fact that the FAA just changed the patters without consulting those communities on the ground that would see a great increase of noise just goes to show that money is what America is all about. The airlines would see greater profit by saving on gas and so screw those on the ground, they just went ahead and did it.
So, the only way to fight is to get many people involved sending up a lot of complaints. This would force the elected leaders to act and hopefully reach some type of compromise. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the FAA can basically say “F U” to everyone and not even have the courtesy to send out a notice.
This is one example that affects me personally and adds to the overall tapestry of my image of America. That image is one of a big dollar sign, get as much money as you can, no matter who or what you have to screw over, even if it is the country itself. There are no shortage of examples: from the 2008 financial crisis to the Wells Fargo fiasco, no JP Morgan Stanley to the drug pushers in the pharmaceutical industry the name of the game is higher profits no matter the method. America itself is a corporation whose course is dictated by very large corporations within it.
But it is not the fact that America is a corporation that upsets me; I just wish I was told or taught this in a chapter at school. No, we’re all lied to with propaganda and patriotism and nice ‘We’re all in this together,’ speeches by the politicians. That is as laughable as HR and Marketing trying to convince us we’re ‘family,’ right before they fire half the workforce.
And so, this quest for ever more money has now increased the noise level at my house by a really great margin and there wasn’t even a courtesy F U notice left on the door.
Well, its October and I’m determined to get into the holiday mood so it would be best to forget about the things I’ve written above. The American way is to distract ourselves from reality with noise, entertainment and shiny objects. I think I’d like to distract myself until January 5th, or actually pretty much tune out for good. I’ll go into an imaginary cave: no more social media, news blackout and only focus on the things I want to let into my recently reduced world.
