With Chris flying out for a work trip Thursday, I had to stay organized to keep the family routines running. We are a small family–me, the first grader, and the dog.

First grader got to school, I got to work, then back to get the first grader after work and walk the dog and do the homework and go to bed and get up to do it again on Friday.

Friday was harder because there was an event in the evening. Why did it have to be 100 degrees? The dog walk was super-fast and dinner was picked up to eat at the event. Then home and FaceTime with daddy and go to bed exhausted for everyone.

But the dog. She whined in the middle of the night. Stumble up, let her out. She’s getting old and needs to be let out in the middle of the night as a usual thing now. Stumble back to bed and try to sleep again.

But the dog whines again. WHAT?! Stumble up, let her out AGAIN and back to bed.

Still whining. UP AGAIN and this time muttering at her, “What is WRONG? You have been let out, what do you WANT? You have food, you have water…”

Oh. The water dish was completely dry. Ooops.

I filled it up. glug glug glug. Now my whiny dog would hear the water being poured into her dish and should leap up to drink.

She did not. I had to drag her over and SHOW her the water before she realized it was there. She drank and drank. Stopped, her tail still down. Then I led her to drink some more.

I was not happy about being awake. Can’t this dog go drink out of the toilet if she’s so thirsty she has to whine all night? Doesn’t she KNOW there is water right there if she’s so desperate?

And I realize, she’s only a dog. She has one place in this house for water. That water had run out. She didn’t troubleshoot this solution. She’s just a dog.

I remember another story. How the Mayflower landed and the Pilgrims set out to make a new life for themselves in a new world. And they starved to death. Like, half of them.

They were surrounded by food. But just like my dog, it wasn’t what they expected it to look like and where they thought it would be. It took some Native Americans’ pity and help to keep the last half of them alive.

It’s not just dogs. People are the same way. We only look for things where we expect them.

Our comfort zone can turn into a prison.

A friend of mine has created a whole curriculum out of this idea. It’s human nature. Even more than human. It’s almost universal to get stuck in our habit and narrow understandings. It’s a useful thing to eliminate all the places we will NOT look for what we are looking for.

Most of the time.

Then there are the times when, like my dog, we are stuck in an uncomfortable and even dangerous spot that requires expanding our horizons.

My friend’s theory is that we should stay in our comfort zones. We can pull and stretch our comfort zone slightly, a bit at a time, not asking ourselves to go into the red zone of terror. Right now, the red zone of terror is where the desired outcome is.  It may be where we eventually want to be. She says we can take little steps, and grow into the desired outcome.

My dog wouldn’t think to get water on her own, but we can. People can look to find what we need in unexpected places. The start is to have in our minds that it is possible. To believe that what we seek can be found. That hope can grow into a new expectation.

We can always keep growing.

I started a diet this week. I’ve been on a diet since I was a young teenager, but last year I thought I had found The Secret.

I did this cleanse a year and a half ago. I figured out dairy was a problem for me. So I stopped eating dairy and I felt fantastic! I recommend the cleanse, you can check it out here.

A lot happened in that year and a half. I stopped eating dairy, and huge changes whirled around me. The sort of changed that I knew would normally have tipped the scale. Yet I wasn’t ‘dieting’ and I was still staying the same.

I was SURE I had found The Secret.

Only where did these ten pounds come from? Damn. Back to the diets.

Yesterday I was reading this woman’s essay about addiction. She was determined for the first time in her adult life to give up pot. She wrote this piece early in the process–day 5? day 8?–and she was raw. Raw and powerful.

Here’s what she said:

The only way to quit is to never quit quitting.

There is it.

You and I might find The Secret to some thing we’ve been struggling with. Maybe it’s a new way of looking at it. Maybe it’s in a book, or a flash of inspiration on the road to Damascus.

Only after a while, the Secret wears off and it’s back to what it’s always been.

The only way to do it is to always be doing the thing you are trying to do.

The only way to quit is to never quit quitting.

There will be times when it’s easier. There there will be the rest of the times.

That’s no secret.

Happy monday people.

I had a kind of horrigying dream about spiders last night.

Have you ever read Gaiman’s Anansi’s Boys?

The spider is supposed to be a clever storyteller. Perhaps this is a sign that I shoudl start telling stories.

I can at least make a blog post. Start small, you know?

This last month I have started to listen to popular music again. the BILLBOARD HOT 100!!

HOT HOT HOT!

Well. They are not actually that great of songs. Some of them are catchier than others. But they are new and they make me feel energized and young.

We went to a four-year-old’s birthday party this weekend. I brought my bluetooth speaker and the microphone that goes with it.

Little 4 year ole (Okay, he’s precocious) knew all the songs from the hot 100. So did his older sister and Veronica…

It kind of freaks me out to be enough on the grid that other people know the words to the songs I’m listenign to.

I’ve been so indie for so long that I wouldn’t expect to have any overlap.

But one of the benefits of accumulating experience (My term for getting older) means that I have a reservoir. If I know enough songs, some of them will evnetually overlap with the songs that other people know

huh

How about that?

As we do every year, we brought Veronica to the fair. Her favorite, every year, is feeding the goats.

The Los Angeles County fair has a big pen full of goats of varying sizes, most of whom are interested in the little cups of feed they sell for $3. The goats and sheep, with the occasional alpaca, will bump up to demand their share of the feed pellets.

Yes, they smell like animals. The barn smells worse. I take her around to see the funny chickens, rabbits, pigs, and what-have-you on display.

I remember my times at the fair. The Alaska state fair, where I spent my early teen years taking care of different animals.

We were part of 4-H. It started with rabbits, and then moved on to pigs and calves. The apex of 4-H life was the fair. When we were exhibiting, and we exhibited every year, we had to go to the fair every day for a week to take care of our animals. Feed and water them, sure, but also wash and groom so that they showed well. They were judged.

Some of the 4-H kids would enter other things in the fair. Baking or sewing was easier; you didn’t have to stick around to take care of those. There were arts and crafts too.

Not just for kids. Grownups joined in the contests too.

The county fair was sparse this year. From what I can tell, 4-H doesn’t really do animals and crafts like they used to. It’s moved on to “lifelong learning.”

The supporting institution, the Extension Service, isn’t even a thing anymore. It’s combined and repurposed into something else altogether.

4-H started out as a way of empowering kids to learn something even their parents didn’t know. How to grow plants and livestock even better. And the county fairs were about letting regular people have a chance to show off, to work for and achieve recognition.

Communities have set aside these places, fairgrounds and competitions. We have formally valued them as our traditions, like Christmas or 4th of July.

It’s eroding. I’m sad to see how the fair has shrunk from year to year, even as the prices have gone up.

I wonder whether our daughter will have the tradition to share with her children. No doubt it will be very different then.

Daddy explained to Veronica why this is a holiday. “It’s to honor people who work.”

Veronica rightly deduced that the person in our house who works is me.

She has made an extra point of honoring me. She helped me change my bedsheets, and gave me a spa day including painting my fingernails.

“I guess they don’t have capitalists’ day,” Chris said.

This week, I had a conversation with a new friend in the business of making things. “I can’t stand stupidity. I will let people know and I am not nice. I have made people cry.”

A time portal opened and I remembered. The first time I cried at work. Really.

This is what happened:

After 6 months of taking care of the video communications for the merger, I knew how to get operations on track. It was clear to me what needed to be done.

I’d gone to the director to present my plan.

“…that’s what it’s going to take to resolve the troubles we’ve been having. I know we can get this department to world class standards.”

I’d jumped several rungs of the organization chart to meet with him. I was still pumped with the adrenaline of saying my piece in the face of this risk when he answered.

“What makes you think we would want a world-class department?”

My body responded before my mind did. My mind flashed on the long hours of work against impossible odds. Discovering what was hidden, getting the pieces in order, all the responsibility, all the blame, with the best news being silence.

If we got silence we had done well.

I’d asked this middle manager for help to resolve our recurring problems, not much at all. Probably able to be handled by petty cash.

But this director said that all my hard work meant nothing. The hours I’d spent struggling, fighting and winning when it was impossible didn’t matter.

My body responded faster than my mind. My body was crying.

Hard.

He gave me a Kleenex. “Please. Don’t be embarrassed. I think it is wonderful that you have so much passion.”

I didn’t know him well. Men of a certain age have a way of turning into driftwood. Leached of color and vibrancy, all the distinct edges smoothed off. So many of the mid-level offices held these softened specimens of manhood.

Maybe it wasn’t age. Probably it was a life of constant compromise.

He said some more things. I had nothing left to say to him, not really. He essentially patted my head and said I could make another presentation to him that had some more information : “…a pro forma.”

My new friend makes things he wants to make, and he is madly in love with those things. If someone gets between him and his product, his art, they are hurting what he loves. So he fights back.

I remembered Mr. Softened Manager, and how he had made me cry. I wondered if I would inspire an anti-stupidity tirade. I’m not perfect, but I doubt it.

Even if I did get an earful for making a mistake, it wouldn’t make me cry.

It doesn’t break my heart to hear someone tell me to do better. It breaks my heart to hear I cannot.

One of the things that surprised me about Chris when I first met him was that he was funny, but not snarky. He was smart and witty, but not bitingly so.

Then I met his friends from high school, when they were having a game night. These were some heavy-hitting smartsters, most of whom had advanced degrees and had gotten together since they were teenagers to play brainiac board games together.

Intimidated much? Absolutely!

They were nice. They were patient with me and explained how the games were played. They welcomed me and said they were glad to have me there.

What the hell. Did they think I was so far below them that pity was the only response they could give?

I was not used to this. I was used to constant pecking order, and power struggles between friends and enemies.

The word frenemies hadn’t been invented yet, more’s the pity.

These guys got together and played strategy games that involved devious backstabbing and shifting alliances. They played at it.

On the board.

In real life, they were good friends, and continued to enjoy one another’s company as the years went by.

I got away from my teenage mean girl cliques. By the time I met Chris I was trying to make it in my corporate career.

I thought I’d left the cliques behind. I did not know. The disenfranchised adolescents gave way to disenfranchised employees. And like the teens, my co-worker comrades dug in and made a lifestyle of mean.

Mean people suck.

Chris’s friends showed me a new way. I could easily extrapolate from the present adult relationships the teenage ones that had been.

People can be nice.

Even teenagers.

Even my boss.

Just because they hadn’t been doesn’t mean that all people of that type will follow suit.

That’s one of the things you say when you talk to the public through a new technology.

I don’t remember if my blog started that way. But it may well have.

The point is, my blog started. And it continued to address the world for years.

Until 2010.

The blog didn’t stop in 2010, but my employer began to stalk it and behave in threatening ways until I felt the best way to keep my job was to shut down my blog.

It was against company policy for them to threaten me in that way.

When I said Hello World, the world got to respond.

It responded with power. My employer, or people my employer employed, abused their power and used it to bully me into silence.

I have always been careful about what I say on my blog. I would not talk about my work in a way that would damage it.

However.

There are times when anything you say can and will be used against you.

At that time, when an anonymous person from my employer was looking at my blog every day, in addition to how I was treated on the job, I knew they were looking for a way to torture me. Ironic, because they had every legal right to fire me. Anytime they wanted. That’s how employment works.

But I think the people who were in power didn’t have *quite* that much power.

That’s also how employment works.

So, one or more people were working to build a case to…damage me.

Like a cat toying with a mouse.

I hated how they were bullying me at work. But I most hated that they were taking away my speech.

I know how free speech works.

They were not taking it away. They were breathing their hot halitosis breath down my back to say they could use it against me.

I could have kept saying whatever i wanted.

I did talk to a lawyer.

In the end, I decided my free speech was worth less than my job.

I rolled up like an armadillo. I went underground.

The world is a big place. There are a lot of ways to say hello.

The first time Chris and I went to Disneyland, he was very excited. I enjoyed it, and yet I had to ask “Is it art?”

I’ve written about Disneyland before, and that conversation before. Where art is and is not depends on the eye of the beholder. I’ve since expanded my view of art.

There is another side to the amusement park that’s hard to ignore: It’s expensive. It is commercial art, if it’s art.

Yesterday the family and I went to Knott’s Berry Farm. That amusement park is super close to Disneyland in Anaheim, but it was first.

While the highway system of America was being developed a whole category of Roadside Attractions sprung up with it. Back before cars had air-conditioning or other comforts, it was very important to have a place to stop and recharge on a car trip.

When my family lived in Humboldt County I loved to keep an eye out for Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox as we travelled through the redwoods.

And getting from the San Francisco Bay area to Hwy 5 took me past the delightful Casa De Fruta a true roadside attraction. I heard it was so popular a roadside attraction that they actually moved the road to give it it’s own exit and keep traffic flowing.

That’s how Knott’s Berry Farm started. It was a chicken dinner restaurant run by Mrs. Knott, and people came from miles around to eat there. The wait times could stretch for hours. So Mr. Knott started building rides to keep the customers amused. It grew organically, naturally.

Walter Knott was interested in history. His amusement park had and still has a western museum, a ghost town and slightly outside the park he build a full replica of Independence Hall.

That’s what mattered to him. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to ask if Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park was art. The founder made it about history and then even he became part of its history after he died.

Chris and I wondered about this very American park, and what might happen to it in the future. How long will the vision of Walter Knott linger in it? I’m sure his children think it’s changed a lot, but for me, the first time visitor, it feels drenched in history.

Walt Disney made his park non-organically. He had a vision and made it the way he wanted it to be. Also, he started out as an artist. He did make the cartoon animations of Mickey Mouse at the very start of his career. So it’s natural to wonder what he was trying to convey with Disneyland, and if his creation has achieved what he wanted.

Disney wanted a wholesome place for adults and children to play, so he made Disneyland. There is a long and continuing history of sketchy and unsavory amusement parks. Other parks in this area have that reputation.

Knott’s Berry Farm, though, doesn’t. It’s clean, homey and safe. Mr. Knott set the tone, he kept the standards high and the visitors respected it.

How interesting that these two similar parks came to be in their unique way.

The story of King Arthur and his search for the Holy Grail never gets old. The idea is that this noble King, who wanted equality in leadership–the round table–puts all his resources and bravest men on the job of finding this one sacred object.

If only he could find the Holy Grail!

Yet, it’s not even clear what the Grail will do for anyone. And when I watch those movies or read the books I can’t help thinking that the quest has unnecessarily put everything on hold.

Didn’t Arthur have a kingdom to unite? Wasn’t he supposed to focus on building equality and bringing prosperity for his people? What a massive waste of time and resources to have a quest for this one object, which may or may not be achievable or even exist.

Perhaps King Arthur manufactured the whole grail quest to keep his restless knights busy. Sounds very likely. The greatest danger to his power was his knights. The powers that be have known to do this since before history began.

Maybe the whole thing was just a distraction.

The Holy Grail has become a metaphor in common usage. It’s something out there, a quasi-hopeless goal. A magical thing that will make everything all right.

I’m done with it though. I have spent years looking for the right approach to solve personal problems. If I were having trouble with a particular person, I would convince myself that there was a perfect solution. If only I could find the perfect phrasing to explain that my point of view is correct!

It’s another grail quest. Maybe the trouble with that person is that I need to cut off connection. If it takes repeated tries of perfect magic sentences, then perfect magic sentences aren’t the answer. The answer is to look elsewhere.

However if I stay stuck in my quest for the perfect thing, I never get around to looking elsewhere. Just like King Arthur, I’m in a rut of choices and actions that get me nowhere.

Perfection doesn’t exist. The right answer is not one thing. It’s a series of beliefs, actions and choices all working together–constantly updating and changing that get me to an approximation of happiness and satisfaction.

I don’t need some extra-terrestrial woman in white to give me one sacred object. I was given what I need when I was born. I don’t need to meet some standard of purity to be granted my heart’s desire.

My heart’s desire is my heart’s business. If I can avoid wasting time on impossible quests and requests, I can get to that important business.