Interest or not

Tag: writing

  • It’s a peaceful life in the North West. Early Fall and the days are warm and nights are cold. It’s not much of a city here with the country side just down the road. From here, and this is the biggest city for many miles. From far away and this feels like a town. All-nighter clubs and bars don’t exist. Most go home before dark. The community is quiet at night. The highway through town brings travelers from across the country and their haul. Timber, pears and seafood from the west coast.

    I worry about illegal hauls, drug runners from south of the border poisoning the community with addiction. It’s a fierce battle for peoples health and safety, freedom and livelihood. The addiction is real, young kids get hooked on a drug growing up making bad decisions and risking it all. Keep your eyes open and nose clean. Word to the wise.

    I grew up one day, made better decisions than when I was a young man. Still the scars are on peoples lips at work, scars from bad decisions made they’re paying for to this day. Work is labor, it’s not the office kind. Work is controlling traffic at a construction zone. Good for a young man not in college trying to get by. Good for an older man who didn’t graduate college and still has the strength to stand for eight hours on the side of a road for a days pay.

    No hi paying salary here, that’s for a career at a desk. Sometimes I wonder what will become of me when I no longer have the strength to work on my feet laboring day by day. I hope to live long and in peace, one day with caretakers who keep me housed and fed. Keep your chin up.

    It’s a different kind of look into the future living paycheck to paycheck. Used to laboring for pay will come to an end one day. It’s not a future where all needs are met and then some. Being thrifty goes a long way. Limited money speaks for itself. It is worth living. Making the most of every day.

  • Timing

    Have you ever heard, “timing is everything” I’ve heard this statement time and time again from a young age growing up. In today’s world so much happens in 24 hours. On news reports that are aired to the public, the public receives the report instantly in the case of live news. Similarly making a live feed on TikTok or Facebook have a similar effect. This is the world humanity have adopted and growing into. Time’s have changed. Growing up cell phones did not exist. When there was news to share it was face to face in person. Time to tell a story and receive the story was at a human pace. Cellphones changed the way we communicate. To call someone we used to have to be home to place a call or at a payphone at a fixed location. Or at work. With cellphones the instant we want to share a story we can dial the number and press send from almost anywhere including in flight. And have live video chat instantly with the person answering on their cellphone. I am lucky. I’ve seen both. When a live news report on television was not as common as prerecorded news reports. When I had to be at home or at work to place a call. And those calls did not include live video. They were not in flight.

    This was normal for me and everyone else. When cellphones were made available on the market people gradually bought them and service for them. It took years and years and years before most people owned a cellphone.

    This is not the case today. Younger generations are growing up going to elementary school with their cellphones. It’s considered more safe to have a cellphone for many reasons.

    News travels as fast as the click of a send button. Dizzying is a way to describe how fast technology has developed. Dizzying for older generations. Younger generations are growing into the ability to communicate instantly. That is normal these days.

    It’s so tempting to place an instant call to a person you know to tell them about a news report you just watched. While that is your choice remember the phrase “timing is everything” There are opportune moments to tell someone a story and there are inopportune moments to share a story. Humans are sensitive. Humans are more sensitive than any technology. Humans are more receptive than any technology.

    It might make sense to call a family member to tell them about something that happened instead of waiting until your with them in person and able to tell them face to face. Some things can wait to be said when you’re in person, other things are important to say on a phone call right away.

    I live alone. My family live around United States and in foreign countries. Opportunities I have to speak to my family in person and face to face are limited in the many miles we live apart from each other. I know not to call my parents in the middle of the night waking them up. Similarly when I was living with my family I knew not to wake them up in the middle of the night to talk. Respecting others has to do with timing. Knowing when a good time to call family or a friend is important. Living many miles and states and borders away from my family make timing of my calls to family very important. Even during the day when I’m awake in Pacific time zone and family have already been awake for four hours on Eastern time zone we have to be sensitive and careful to make calls to each other when it’s sensible.

    If you think back to before the invention of the phone, people communicated mostly in person. Those days are before my time. We had one phone at home growing up. One person at a time could talk to someone else on it locally and long distance. Those days are our shared human history. Those stories are precious and remind us of when things went at a slower pace. Sharing news was done on horse back. That was the fastest method to get a message to someone else.

    Communicating is human nature. Humans are social beings. Communication is learned and speaking is powerful. Speaking to one-another and to groups is how society gets along and grows and learns from each other.

    I might not like or agree with a news report I watch during the day and how I respond and communicate about a story is important.

    The words I speak and who I choose to speak to has an effect.

    Many lessons can be learned from history, distant and recent. Saying the first words that come to mind are important living in society. Sometimes taking time to think about the words we use to share a story is sensible. Both are important and both are human nature.

  • Free

    At a young age I was taught “freedom isn’t free”. I didn’t understand the meaning at first and over time as I grew older I gradually began to learn meanings of the sentiment. It’s a truth I understand much clearer today. Freedom isn’t free refers to many things. One in particular is freedom of speech. As a human I have the freedom to speak when and where and to who I want to. I have the freedom to say what I want to, and there are consequences.

    Like in science, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Speech follows similar responses. Speaking with someone I agree with more often returns a favorable response. Speaking with someone I disagree with might not return a favorable response depending on the words that are the topic of conversation.

    Young people learn this early on. Friends group together and entertain themselves and one group of friends often share many of the same words and lingo in their communications. Where a different group of friends have their own unique lingo and expressions. These two groups of friends are important to each other.

    While a person in one group of friends might not often speak to people in the other group of friends in United States the English language is a common bridge people use to communicate. While English is the most widely spoken language in United States it is far from the only language people speak in this country.

    Growing up in United States I was encouraged to learn a second language. The options in my middle school were French and German and Spanish. I learned some words in each of these languages. Later I chose Spanish as my second go to language beyond the English language. I was brought up speaking English. English is my first language. I speak some Spanish. I value my ability to speak Spanish and enjoy learning Spanish words. My ability to read and write Spanish is limited.

    I believe when a person is able to communicate in a second language they strengthen their relation to other people from different cultures. It’s important to me to have good relations with other cultures. Here in Medford Oregon most people speak English. Many other languages are spoken in my community and are fewer and further between. English sounds “normal” to me.

    When I lived in Los Angeles I was surrounded by people speaking many different languages. It took getting used to. Los Angeles is one of the largest cities on Earth with one of the largest amount of people on Earth. Getting used to living in the megalopolis of Los Angeles was difficult. There are many reasons getting used to Los Angeles was difficult for me. It was a challenge and the challenge it was to me I am grateful for.

    Challenges are important. It might be interpreted as a challenge to speak to someone in a different group of friends because they might sound different than what you’re used to. They might dress different than what your used to. Their lingo are likely to be different than what your used to. These differences while at first may feel like a challenge to start up a conversation, the challenge is worth it.

    Unfortunately when I was young I got into trouble in and out of school. I made bad decisions and suffered the consequences. The group of people I surrounded myself with were similar to a gang. We liked each other and we were sometimes suspicious and skeptical of people who were outside of our group. We caused problems individually and as a group. We grew older causing more problems to ourselves and to others. We compromised our freedoms collectively and individually and compromised freedoms of people we wronged.

    I moved far away, over 1,000 miles away from the “community” I was raised in. I’m no longer under the influence of negative and dangerous people. I’m fortunate that I was able to move far away from those influences and start fresh in this community. There are many people in this community. People I care about and people I know and respect. Life experiences have taught me to be around people who have my best interest in mind. People who respect themselves and others. These are the people I consider my inner circle. People looking to make the world a better place right here in this community.

    Moving far away from where I was raised was not easy. It was worth it. Moving to a community that was new to me was not easy. It was worth it. Not everyone can or have reason to or should move from where they are raised. Many people learn early on to respect themselves and others and look out for one another.

    The most successful people in a community often are raised in the community the live and grow up in to adulthood and as an elder. This is an example of people with no reason to move from where they were raised. This is the epitome of stability and structure.

    On the other hand many people choose to move from where they were raised and for many reasons. A work opportunity is a reason why a person might move to a new community, possibly very far from where they were raised. Economic factors often play a part in these decisions.

    People who learn early on to respect themselves and others are more prepared to make the most with the community they live in. and if they move to a community new to them are best equipped to thrive in it. The same goes for moving domestically and moving internationally. I don’t have experience moving internationally.

    I have experience traveling on vacation internationally and learned from my travels, life outside United States while similar in many ways is very different than living in United States.

    A common saying goes, to learn is to travel. Depending on where you travel you might learn things you want to and things you didn’t want to learn. Both are true and depending on the reason for your travel will make a difference in what there is to learn about.

    Things people consider free are different in different cultures. What Americans living in United States consider free vary widely to what citizens of a foreign country consider free in their country.

    Freedom is very important. Freedom to live in peace and in a stable economy are not free.

  • Anger

    I have a lot of anger regarding my father. It’s a mixed relationship at best. I am angry about how he treated me when I was growing up and how he was absent and unavailable to talk to for so much of my youth. Sometimes I wake up late at night angry at him. It’s a mixed relationship because on the surface everything is appropriate. We are polite to each other and cordial. Deep down inside I have moments when my anger about him is all I can think about, it lasts for several minutes and then dissipates.

    I’m 47 and live across the country far away from him. This is good. It’s difficult to make progress with family when there is a long distance separating us. The last time I saw him was last summer. I traveled to visit him and my stepmom. They invited me to their home and as a guest in their guest room while I was in the area. The visit was polite and cordial. We didn’t talk about anything that would have angered us.

    My father becomes very defensive when his actions are questioned by me. A good thing about the physical distance between us is he’s not here.

    The older a person becomes the more set they become in their ways. It’s not a terrible relation. I don’t wish harm against him. I wish he would apologize to me about his negligence when I was a young boy.

    My stepsister seems to have a much better relation with him. She pointed out to me that our grandpa died when my father was around 18. My grandfather worked very hard supporting his family. According to my father, my grandpa seemed to spend much of his time working.

    I know my father admired my grandpa for his work ethic. My father has a large appetite for work. He has worked most days for as long as I’ve known him. Father is on the verge of retiring.

    I wish I made better choices in my youth. I wish I made better choices in my twenties and in my thirties. I wish my father would have respected my mother throughout their divorce and after. I wish my father would have kept his negative opinions and words about my mother out of his mouth when speaking to me. I wish he could have shown respect and been dignified to her. I wish he could have treated her with respect and dignity while I was a young boy and through my teenage years.

    I wish he did not introduce me to pornography magazines and on pornography on his computer. I wish he did not tell me about fucking a raise between his secretaries legs when she asked for a raise in salary. I wish I didn’t walk in on him having sex with the woman he hired as a live in nanny to look after me. I wish he didn’t tell me about when he had sex with a prostitute at a brothel not very far from our home. I wish he never pushed me to the ground and would not have kicked me when I was down.

    I wish he new better how to raise a young boy. I wish when I was a young boy and chose to move out of my mothers home to live with my father he could have made more time to play ball.

  • I unfortunately have done numerous crazy things in my past. Fortunately I’m making rational decisions these days followed by rational actions and have learned not to react to something I don’t like when there is no reason.

    One crazy thing I did was look online for love. I’ve heard of success stories about couples who found each other through dating websites, something I’ve had minimal luck doing. I decided I wanted to get married and convinced myself that I needed to look internationally online for a woman who was looking to get married. This was about 13 years ago. At the time I didn’t feel confident approaching women in person about dating.

    I was making other crazy decisions and actions back then but for this post I’m going to focus on the specific crazy decision I took upon myself to look for love internationally. I’m not saying looking for love internationally is crazy. People do it all the time and create loving relationships that last. I wasn’t confident enough to approach women in person about dating and resorted to reaching out through the internet hoping to find a lover.

    Have you heard the song American Woman by Lennie Kravitz. That song summed up my opinion about American women which left me looking outside of United States for love. I spent hundreds of dollars on contacting women in foreign countries through websites that offer the service of connecting couples looking for marriage. Not much came of it.

    I wrote a letter expressing my interest in finding love and marriage to no one in particular and posted it on to Craigslist “man for woman” long term relationship in San Jose Costa Rica. I received numerous replies to my post and after vetting the replies one specific reply stood out to me. A young woman who was a college student studying to be a Doctor and living with her sister’s family in San Jose replied to my post.

    I liked what she wrote to me. We started writing back and forth and eventually had a Skype meeting where we got to see each other and listen to each others voice on a live video meeting. I got my hopes up. I was falling for her. Five months later I boarded an airplane with my buddy in Denver Colorado and we flew to Miami and then from Miami flew to San Jose, Costa Rica.

    Long story short, it didn’t work out. We arrived in San Jose and the next morning when I met the woman in person I was hung over from cocaine I took the night before. The impression I made on her was lacking. I did my best to give a good impression. I was on time and brought her a fresh bouquet of flowers and when we sat at a table in a restaurant for lunch I knew within me then and there I was not ready for marriage. Our meeting went well although not as planned and the spark I thought we shared did not show itself.

    I went back to the hotel where I was staying and proceeded to do more cocaine. Would have a spark between us have lasted if I would have stayed sober and arrived chipper to our meeting I do not know. Other than doing illegal drugs I was making other irrational decisions in my life back then.

    I’m going to stay on task and continue the story. For the rest of the trip I hired a tour guide who brought me to historical landmarks in San Jose one day. The next day I hired the same tour guide to take me to a beachside Resort outside of San Jose.

    A cab driver drove us to a small town on the coast where I hired a small boat and captain who brought us over the open water to the other side of the peninsula. When we docked I hired another cab driver to drive us through the jungle to the Resort. I rented a room with two beds at the Resort and spent the afternoon on the beach and drinking alcohol at the tiki bar beside the pool.

    A guest arrived at the resort paragliding into the ocean and swam to the shore. The tour guide I hired connected with the guest who paraglided in. She was a Canadian and on vacation from working at a Spa. The next morning I left early to make it to my flight to Miami on time. I left my tour guide at the Resort and hired a cab to drive me through the jungle to the pier where I bought a ticket on a large boat with many passengers that floated us to the small town on the other side of the peninsula.

    Back on land I hired a cab driver who drove me directly to the Airport in San Jose. I arrived at the Airport early and eventually my buddy showed up. We flew back to Miami Florida and then to Denver Colorado. From the airport in Denver I drove my car home. The next day I returned the gifts I had brought with me for the woman I went to Costa Rica to meet at the store where I bought them and went back to work.

    Not long after that I got a call from her one evening while I was eating dinner at a restaurant and told her that I was hung over and had taken cocaine the night before our meeting. That was the last time I heard from her.

    The moral of the story is don’t do illegal drugs. Like I said there was other irrational decisions I was making back then and was not ready for marriage.

  • Desire

    I want a woman to share my life with who is a mate and a lover and my best friend.

     Most of my relationships with women are polite and basic. I rarely am in a relationship with a woman. I am very attracted to women sexually and would like to have a woman as a lover.

    When it comes to meeting a woman, I do my best to be polite and appropriate. I believe there is a woman who wants to be my friend and lover and mate and partner. It’s up to me to meet her. I’m 47. I have never been married and have no children. Depending on the woman I meet these are considered my attributes. I have more time to dedicate to a woman than I would if I had children.

     I feel that when I meet a woman if she has children, I will do my best to be a good man in their lives. Honestly if I meet a woman I’m attracted to and she has children, the thought is scary. I don’t have experience raising children. If I meet a woman who has children, and her children are already living on their own I would be relieved. Many a single parent raises their children on their own and need a good fiance or fiancee in their lives. I will do my best if I meet a woman with children to be a good man to each of them.

    Last night I got up in the middle of the night and poured out the rest of the bottles of beer in the sink. It felt good knowing I don’t have anything intoxicating at home. I don’t get drunk these days. I stopped getting drunk over 12 years ago. The most I drink in one sitting is 5 beers. Usually if I drink, it’s two beers and I stop. I don’t go to bars often and want to stop going to bars. I’m better off when I don’t drink a drop of alcohol. I don’t do drugs. I’ve been clean from drugs for over 12 years. My sobriety is very important to me. It’s very important to me that people in my life are not getting drunk and not using drugs. Healthy relationships are very important to me.

     Relationships are a two-way path. In a relationship it’s important to be on the same path. It’s important to acknowledge people on the path they are on and when our paths meet to respect each other on the path. Friendships build this way. I think everyone is on a path. Some paths have many people on them. Other paths have few people on them. Some paths appear to be straight. Other paths zigzag. Meeting people where they are on a shared path is how to live in society. Some paths are wide with room to walk around others on it. Some paths are narrow with just enough room to walk around another person on it. Paths go in many directions and to many destinations. At 47 the paths I travel are more predictable than 12 years ago. There are good people I meet every day on shared paths. The world is a safe place overall and there are good people everywhere.

  • Evening in Medford Oregon

    I went to the bar just before dusk.

    A couple were seated at one end

    I traveled there alone and sat down on a corner stool.

    A big woman with long straight dark hair asked me quietly, “what are you having”?

    Do you have Heineken in a bottle? I asked. “Yes”, she brought me the beer and asked, do you want to leave the tab open?

    “I’ll leave it open”. I replied. Several people were seated along a wall gambling on big machines where the players pull levers down or press a button and hope for a winning score.

    A small group of younger men were gathered near a pool table focused on the balls at play.

    The bar has good food. Last time I ate there I got a plate of quesadillas with grilled chicken. I sipped the Heineken and ordered another.

    On television the Sandiego Padres were playing a team I did not recognize. Their opponents black Jerzy had a capitol A on the breast pocket area, white and silver. The television stats kept the opponents team a mystery to me. Padre’s were up 4-3.

    The couple at the end of the bar noticed the baseball game on television for a moment and seemed to be enjoying themselves. They are a Hispanic man and women in their mid-thirty’s. Several other couples were seated around the room at tables. An Oriental man appeared to have more than enough drinks to possibly walk home.

    It’s a quiet neighborhood bar in a small shopping center with a Domino’s Pizza and a drive through coffee shop. Joes, Bar and Grill. Is it a franchise or one of a kind? I don’t know, I enjoyed the beer and social environment.

    The waitress brought me a second beer and spoke up, I’m glad. It was good to hear her voice above the voices of patrons. I settled my tab then drove home.

    It’s early in the evening, Thursday in the all American town. Tonight will cool off some from the summer heat.

  • Human relations

    I’m trying to get the word nigger out of my thoughts. The n word doesn’t occupy my mind often, but when it does it’s deliberate. I don’t consider myself racist. I speak to people with respect appropriately that depends on the individual. When I was a teenage boy I repeatedly got in trouble, some of that trouble was with other black boys of similar age as me.

     In current news media the n word is shunned for good reasons. Most of my friends were white growing up. Sometimes we’d joke around and call each other dog or the n word in a friendly manner. I understand from learning US history the n word emotionally hurt many people and is very divisive. I remember using the n word once yelling at a black man who didn’t pay me for driving him in a taxi cab to the destination he asked me to.

     There are less black people in the community I live in, in comparison to Los Angeles where I met and befriended many people from a variety of cultures. I learned a lot about people living in L.A. It’s my opportunity to not label a black person in my thoughts as anything else than human. A living breathing person who has feelings and feels encouragement and respect when those thoughts are present.

     Thoughts are things. I left my teenage years over 28 years ago. I’ve learned how to relate better to people since. I don’t feel guilty or ashamed for having thought the n word when coming in contact with a black person. I’m glad I don’t use it. The n word is a heavy thought. It’s my old psychological baggage I let go of. We are a free country, free to live and love and prosper.

    I’m making the world a better place letting go of old psychological baggage and wishing readers health and happiness. This post is meant to encourage continued good relations with people of all colors.

  • A chance encounter

    I met a woman today at work. I arrived before she did at the yard where we get ready to go out in the field, more specifically to a road and control traffic as Flaggers in constructions zones. I checked in with the supervisor at 6:30am and we waited for instructions from the power company. Instructions never came. We waited on call at the meetup location for 7 hours before it was called off. The woman arrived not long after I did. I forget her name. I introduced myself and held out my hand to shake hers. She shook my hand. She had a story to tell. She didn’t tell me her story, just her name. She had tattoos on the side of her head, a puzzle piece.

     She was a similar age as me. She had shoulder length straight blond hair and pale white skin. We all waited in our cars for the instructions that did not come. In my car the thoughts in my mind about her were “don’t speak unless spoken to” That statement I’ve never used. I won’t teach my kids to behave that way if I have kids. The women I met for a moment surely had many things to say. I noticed her reading a book in her car. I thought maybe she ate fried eggs for breakfast. She’s beautiful. Later she joined the supervisor in the supervisors truck with her book. Maybe they are friends. I would like to speak to her, the opportunity didn’t present itself. I’m new as a Flagger. I can speak to her at another shift.

     Sometimes words come to me when I meet people, the statement, don’t talk unless you’re spoken to was clear in my mind when I met her. I’m glad she introduced herself after I reached out to shake her hand and introduced myself. I shook her hand for a moment. It was a human connection. I’m glad I reached out to her. Overcoming barriers is important. I did ask her if she liked the work and she said yes.

    I noticed she had a big smile when she joined our supervisor in her truck. The seven hours went fairly fast. I turned music on and air conditioning and dozed off. I ate lunch. And dozed off again. At 7 hours another supervisor from the power company drove over and gave us papers with our 7 hours for the day. Getting paid to sit in my car for seven hours was my luck I suppose. I like to stay busy, I’d rather get paid to work than to sit in my car. That doesn’t happen very often.

  • Wow

    I think back to my experience around and with computers. My first clear memory of being around a computer was when I was about 5 years old. My mom is an author and at home in her office at her desk was her computer. Often in the morning I would find my mom typing at her desk. Mom had an IBM computer at the time. It worked as a word processor she wrote and printed drafts of her cook books on and with a printer at home. Then she would send a cookbook draft to her Editor a person who worked for Random House or Penguin Publishing in a big corporate office and skilled at reviewing literature and making recommendations on the draft.

    At one point I got to learn how to use my moms computer and practice typing. The object was to spell as many words as possible in a timed session. That’s how I learned how to type. At first I pecked at the keyboard and over time I was able to learn how to type. There was a game on my mom’s computer that was more like a mythical story. My memories of using my mom’s computer are not very clear. That was 42 years ago. There were no graphics and no pictures on the screen, it was all text, written onto the screen.

    Several years later I moved out of my mom’s home and into my dad’s home. My dad also had a computer. He had several computers. My dad used his computers to manage his business. At the time my dad owned Apple Macintosh computers. The computer mouse pointing arrow tool had recently been invented. The first computers my dad owned had black and white screens. Black, white and grey graphics where all it could display. That and words. The computer my dad let me use had a paint program where I learned to draw simple pieces of art. My dad invested more and more in computers and learned how to repair them. Later my dad opened a computer store where sales people sold new computers and repaired used computers.

    It’s accurate to say that from a young age I grew up around computers. It could have been 4th or 5th grade when at school us students were introduced to computer class. Our school had a computer room where our teacher brought us and taught us how to draw lines and designs on the Apple Mac computers with text prompts.

    So much has changed in computing over the years. Whether I was using my parents’ computers or a computer my dad gave to me, computers were a significant part of my experience growing up.

    “These days”, July 2025 the PC or personal computer has advanced so much it is mind boggling. Artificial Intellegence is powerful and so receptive it amazes me. The fear people have about AI has a basis weighted in science fiction. Why not, In science fiction stories there are villains and there are heros. In those stories usually the hero neutralizes the villain at the end. It’s a struggle.

    People with experience using a computer vary as far and wide as humanity. I’m not too worried about Artificial Intelligence’s effect on humans. Artificial Intelligence will create new problems and solutions at the same pace. People struggle and overcome their struggles. That’s life and that is human nature. Life is good. Make the most of it.