The first step leads to Happiness

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. ~ Laozi

In this blog I have talked about many facets of happiness. Whether those are making sure that you are physically fit and well, or that you are finding time for self-care. I’ve also talked about how important your mental health is to your happiness and doing whatever it takes to make sure that your mental health is intact. At almost any given time we all are working on some facet of our happiness. As I’ve discussed recently my happiness is dependent right now on handling the transition to the next chapter of my life. Of course, while also maintaining happiness in the moment. As the Taoist say, live like you’ll die tomorrow and learn like you’ll live a thousand years.

I don’t think I’m too awful unique in that I procrastinate, especially when something big is coming. People procrastinate in different ways. Some start things and then put off completing them, but I’m of a different type, my procrastination comes at the beginning of things. Once I take the first step I’m great, but it’s taking that first step where I seem to have the most hesitancy. Every time I think about taking the first step, my mind goes back to my first day on the Appalachian Trail. Of course by time I’d made it to the trail head in Georgia I had already taken many steps. Prepping for a 2000 mile, six month hike takes a lot of planning, months of planning in fact. By the time you set foot on the trail, you’ve had to make sure you’ve taken care of six months of bills, that you have all of your gear and maps. You’ve already set up your transportation to the trail and most people set up a number of mail drops that will be sent to various parts of the trail across multiple states. There are so many details that you’ve already dealt with that the first step on the trail is almost anticlimactic. But the reality of things is that it’s not anticlimactic at all.

My first steps on the Appalachian Trail were far from anticlimactic, they are seared into my head, as clear a memory as I possess. What wasn’t lost on me that day, and I want to talk about tonight is the implications of that first step. On the trail that day, I was caught up in the fact that I had never done a multi-day hike in my entire life and I was starting maybe the longest, hardest hike on Earth. It wasn’t lost on me that I was alone, at that moment I didn’t know a single soul on the trail. I was nervous about my skill level, the weight on my back and even where I would sleep that first night. It was nerve-wracking and thrilling and it led to one of the best experiences of my life.

And that’s what often follows times of high anxiety before starting something or making a transition in life. This anxiety puts me in neutral, it makes me procrastinate and keeps me from taking that first step. Happily for me, I’ve been in this position many times and I know that once I take that step, once I get things rolling, that momentum will carry me forward and almost always, good things are on the horizon. It is that confidence that allows me to move forward, but if it’s your first time, it’s belief or faith in something that you have to have to make that first step. So before you make that next big move, identify what you believe in. What I hope you have faith in the most is yourself, if you believe in yourself then you can know that taking the first step will lead to better things and happier days.

It feels like in the last week I really took that first step on my next transition. In the last week I’ve made a lot of plans, I’ve started several needed projects and have scheduled others. It feels good and has greatly improved my mood, nothing better for me than having plans in motion, progressing on the path to becoming a nomad again. As I may have mentioned here before, in March/April of 2025, shortly after my retirement, I’ll be heading back to the Appalachian Trail, I’ve got some unfinished business with the trail. And honestly, need the time and the miles to walk off the last five years of an unfortunate job. So here’s to taking the first step towards happier days. ~ Rev Kane

Celebrate for No Reason!

The most beautiful things are not associated with money; they are memories and moments. If you don’t celebrate those, they can pass you by. – Alek Wek

I’ve gone through a few months of really being in neutral. Not depressed but just no extra energy, I’ve been doing everything I need to, going to work, working out, cooking, cleaning etc… But I just haven’t had the energy for anything extra, not mentally or physically. So I’ve been stuck about the final plans for the actual date of my 60th birthday, I haven’t been writing beyond the minimal work of getting this blog out each week and just doing nothing else. The upside, I’ve caught up on a lot of streaming shows, but have spent far too much time on the couch.

I spent some time recently at a conference, it was great to see old colleagues and have the type of interactions that make you feel like you have some worth to folks, something I don’t get on my own campus very often. This trip seems to have kickstarted things, a good friend called and we’ve made plans for my actual birthday, today I made some arrangements for another trip I’m planning. I also had my quarterly blood test today.

One thing I’ve been doing lately has been to look for small things to celebrate. I’ve also been celebrating in smaller ways to make sure I don’t go overboard on cokes or pizza. I’ve been doing a bit better on my blood sugar issues lately. But finding time to do these small celebrations, really just doing little things I really enjoy has helped my mood.

This afternoon, after my blood work I decided that today should be one of those days. So after swinging back into the office to get some necessary things done, I did my favorite thing at work and went over to the child development center to see my little friends. I popped in just at the end of nap time, so the munchkins were at full speed in no time. I was attacked with imaginary spider webs, by monsters and even by one skeleton-pirate-robot. At one point I yelled save me and one little girl came running over with a little sign she made for me to use to scare away the monsters, it was adorable.

After leaving my friends I went to the grocery store and picked up the ingredients to make chicken parmigiana and raviolis for dinner and to really make it a celebration a tiny container of ice cream and bottle of Sioux City Sarsaparilla, just enough for a single root beer float. I’ve finished dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, put my lunch together for tomorrow and turned on a big foot documentary, all in all a pleasant evening.

It’s important friends to find the time and the ways to do these little positive things for yourself. Call it self-care or maintaining balance. Personally, I like the idea of them being tiny little celebrations of happiness, for no other reason than celebrating you’re alive. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Happiness is going to the movies

Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out. ~ Martin Scorsese

I love movies and more than that I love going to the movies. I’m fortunate to have been born in the mid-sixties which meant that as a teenager I was lucky enough to see some really amazing movies in the theater. I went to a lot of movies as a teen, there wasn’t much legal to do in my hometown for teenagers. So I saw Jaws on the big screen, all of the first three Star Wars movies, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET and Alien. The trailer for Alien on the big screen was an experience that gave me goosebumps. The trailer gave little information and yet no trailer has ever made me want to see a movie more, in case you’ve never seen it, you can find it here.

Maybe my favorite movie to ever see in a theater was the original Blade Runner. Saw it on a summer night, with my best friend in a historic old movie theater that has unfortunately since burned down. There have always been what I call big screen movies, movies like the Lord of the Rings films that were epic, large landscape films that just hit harder on the big screen. Probably the most recent example would be Dune.

Over time however, I’ve gone to the movies less and less. It started with VCRs and just got worse over time until it became horrid with cell phones. People have become so used to watching movies at home that they’ve lost consideration for the other people in theaters. They talk constantly, answer their phones or text through the movie, thoroughly ruining the theater experience. And I have little tolerance for it, it’s a situation that often leads me to react in less than polite ways. As such, I only go to big screen movies at the theater and always after they’ve been out for a couple of weeks and usually to a weekday matinee just to avoid people.

Then the pandemic hit and going to the movies was just out. So today, for the first time in five years I decided to skip out on an a late afternoon meeting and go to the movies. I went to see Civil War, it’s really been hyped up, it’s been out a while and is still in matinees. It was ok, but it was really fun to be in a theater, with a bag of popcorn, and a coke.

I’m not a film snob, I can equally appreciate and most times prefer a fun movie like The Big Lebowski over watching a classic like Citizen Kane. I’m more than happy to enjoy a movie, not spend my time analyzing it, looking for the director/writer’s motivation or bigger social message. But at times, a movie is so damn good that I do get a bit film snobby. Tonight will certainly be one of those nights as recently I saw what may be the best movie I’ve ever seen.

The film is directed by Jonathan Glazer, who directed a film I really don’t like, Under the Skin and one I like, Sexy Beast. And Lukasz Zal is the cinematographer, known for nothing you are likely familiar with in theaters. There are definitely spoilers ahead, I don’t think they’ll ruin the movie for you, but my best advice is stop now, go watch the movie.

The Zone of Interest is a masterpiece. It’s a Holocaust film, but not like any you’ve ever seen before. There have been some amazing an impactful films made about the Holocaust. Schindler’s List is spectacular, Life is Beautiful, and I love The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

There are a number of things that make this movie so amazing. The most powerful thing about this film is the lack of violence, blood, or visual horror. All of the horror in this film happens off screen at the periphery of the film. There are a visual and audio indicators, bits of conversation and a few direct scenes that make it clear where you are and what is happening, and that is the genius. This film on the surface is a film about a family and a dad’s job. And honestly if you didn’t pay a ton of attention you could take this as just that, but it’s not, it’s so much more powerful than that. The subtleties build up in small and powerful ways until the true horror of the reality slips into your brain and hits you with the full impact.

Another thing that was so incredible are the night scenes. The scenes were shot using thermal imagery. The scenes are a stark contrast to the rest of the bright daylight scenes throughout the film. These scenes relay a particularly poignant story from the period and one that turns out to be true and amazing. The thermal shots which I’m assuming computer enhanced are absolutely amazing and incredibly sharp, even though few in number, they are powerful as hell.

I loved this movie, I could teach a film class on just this movie alone. I need to re-watch it this weekend, I know early on I absolutely missed some of the subtleties and I want to re-watch it so that I can catch what I missed. See this movie, it’s wonderfully done, deeply thoughtful and moving and watching a really amazing film always makes me happy.

Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Getting older is interesting

Getting older ain’t for cowards, this getting older is a lot to go through. ~ John Mellencamp (Don’t need this body)

The quote tonight comes from a John Mellencamp album, Life, Death, Love and Freedom. I’ve always been a John Mellencamp fan, have always found his songwriting to really feel like notes from blue-collar America. However, the album above I find to be his most personal and best songwriting. The album really sounds like a guy who is getting older and looking around at his life and where he’s been. There’s a great line on the album, all I’ve got here is a rear view mirror. As a writer of poetry, I always appreciate when poets and songwriters find really interesting ways to say simple things, the rear view mirror line is such an amazing way of saying at this point in life, I’m only looking back.

Over my life I’ve been pretty immune to the impact of birthday numbers. Turing 30 didn’t bother me, even if my mother did send me a dozen dead roses for my birthday that year. When I turned 40 I was so excited I did a year full of celebrations. It was a hell of a year, my first Burning Man and my 50th state among the celebrations. I was equally happy to turn 50 and really enjoyed my celebrations that year as well. It was the year that I hiked the Appalachian Trail and wrote my book, Appalachian Trail Happiness, I celebrated my birthday in a trail town just over the Mason-Dixon line.

However, turning 60 for me seems to be a bit different. Maybe it’s that life expectancy for men in America is only 75. Maybe it’s having lost some friends over the last couple of years, some even younger than me. Maybe it has something to do with all of the change that is about to happen in my life. You see I will turn 60 in August, I’ll likely be semi-retiring about five months later. The plan is then to move all of my things to the East Coast. Shortly thereafter to start my second attempt at thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail at best, doing the thousand miles of trail I didn’t the first time at worst. So this once again means that 2025 will be another year of being homeless.

Now please understand, being homeless is one of those nervous/excited situations for me. I’m a nomad, it’s in my bloody DNA. Rubber tramping for a few months then hitting the trail for up to six months is me living my best life. But getting it all together, not knowing where I’ll be sleeping for the two months in between, setting up all of the logistics and then of course a few things have changed since I hit the trail in 2014. The biggest being that since then I’ve been diagnosed as a Type 2 Diabetic and two heart conditions. Not to mention I’ll be ten years older, of course I’m also 25 pounds lighter and hopefully will be thirty to thirty-five pounds later when I hit the trail.

The trepidation and excitement the first time I hit the trail will not be the same this time. This time around I’ve experienced months on the trail before. The feeling will be more about how will things compare, will I make the same connections, will I get hurt again. Will I be able to connect with the new generation of hikers on the trail?

So turning 60 this time has so much baggage attached to it, mostly because of all the change that’s coming with it. And getting older in general is interesting. Time flies by in your mind, you don’t realize how long it’s been since you’ve done things you did when you were younger. Then you go to do something and you find your body is just not capable. This is one of the reasons I started running a couple of years ago. I realized I hadn’t actually run in years and felt like that was something I should be able to do. One of the bigger shocks was grabbing a foul ball from practice at the college. So I decided to throw it back onto the field. I played baseball my whole life including in college and so when I threw the ball, expecting it to land over the bullpen and into left field, I was shocked to watch it drop into the bullpen, a good 20 yards short of where I intended. It’s a small thing, but it hit me pretty hard. It makes sense, I probably hadn’t thrown a baseball in twenty years. But in my mind, I’d thrown one just yesterday.

So many things change with your body. I find that I’m beginning to have that saggy old person skin. My arms are beginning to resemble my grandfathers, as my old Tai Chi instructor used to describe them, steel wrapped in cotton. There’s muscle there, but it’s wrapped it too much skin. Hair grows everywhere as you age, one day you look in the mirror and you realize you’re turning into a bloody hobbit. Now if I can live a 131 years like Bilbo Baggins I might be ok with that, you know minus the evil ring. The one great present of getting older is the ability to injure yourself simply by sleeping. Go to bed fine, wake up with some new mysterious, leg, back or knee injury. One of the things I’ve found interesting is there is a bit of nostalgia that seems to come with aging as well. I’ve made the mistake of giving into this a few times. You reach out to someone from a past part of your life, only to realize once you did that nothing is the same. You see, no matter how consistent you’ve remained in your personality and values over time, you’re just not the same person you were back then and neither are they. I’ve come to realize that these dips into the nostalgia pool live you feeling more empty in the end. So it’s best not to jump in the pool.

In the end, it’s a privilege to be aging. I’ve known far too many people over my lifetime who did not get the chance. One of the early ones that always hits me when I think about him, is a kid named David March. He died of brain cancer when we were teenagers and it has always seemed so horrible. He was maybe the nicest kid I ever knew, an early lesson that life is not fair and that no one is guaranteed tomorrow.

So I’m happy to be here, maybe not Mr. Happy Go Lucky (to stick with the Mellencamp theme). But I’m doing well, I’ve already lived a decade longer than my maternal grandfather. I’ve tried hard to live life to the fullest and hell, if I’m on Hobbit time I’m barely middle-aged. Have a happy day my friends, and stay out of Mordor. ~ Rev Kane

Happiness, Loneliness and Connection

Loneliness is different than isolation and solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have. In the gap, we experience loneliness. It’s distinct from the objective state of isolation, which is determined by the number of people around you. ~ Vivek Murthy

Many studies on happiness have come to the same conclusion, connection is the key to real happiness and a lack of those types of deep connections leads to loneliness. What most studies show these days is that while people highly value friendships, researchers also report that in America people are increasingly having fewer and fewer close friends.

Lately I’m really feeling this trend impacting me personally. I have some great friends, one I even credit with saving my sanity if not my life by being there for me at one of the lowest points of my life. The problem I face is two-fold, first is related to a negative consequence of being the nomad that I am. I’ve made incredible friends in different places and chapters in my life. But often I geographically move on which means I have a lot of physical distance between me and those good friends. Secondly, as you get older your life gets more complicated and of course as they get older it’s the same. People have partners, children, jobs, businesses they are running. Increasingly people as they get older have both responsibilities of taking care of children as well as older parents. All of these things eat up your life and often it’s hard to carve out time to connect with people we care about. It’s of course easier if they are down the road or across town. It’s easier to co-mingle your responsibilities with your friend time if you’re at least in the same area code.

So the simple fact of my life is that what I am dealing with right now is a connection gap in my life. I still have people who I am deeply connected to, it’s evident in the way we connect when we have that chance. These are people, who when you meet up with them, it feels like no time has gone by and time goes by too quickly. These are the people who when they show up on your caller ID, you always pick up.

One of the things I enjoy the most in these close relationships are the deep conversations we have. I’m someone who is a deep thinker and I like, hell I crave the opportunity to have these type of conversations. Particularly with people who you don’t have to be guarded with because they know you really are inside. This is what is missing given my current reality. I’m on the precipice of huge decisions, I’m retiring from my job, moving across the country, finding a new place to live. As you can imagine there are a million decisions I’m making and I’m missing the opportunity to run these down with people that matter to me, people who’s opinions and ideas I respect.

Given all of our life realities right now, our contacts are a quick email, message or text, or a like on social media or a quick response to post. I don’t fault any of them for that, as I stated above, we all have complicated and busy lives and even live in different time zones for an added complication. But this doesn’t erase my need for connection, nor the impact not having it has on my level of happiness and my mood.

And what I’m describing to you is becoming common for a lot of aging people in our society. Often, due to divorce or the death of a partner, more and more people are finding themselves on their own for the first time. They are becoming isolated from previous social connections, and are finding with our social media focused society that connections are increasingly virtual, text message and meme driven. Even phone calls are becoming something people just don’t do.

We all need to find ways to connect, and not just at a surface level. It’s not easy, how do you make new friends as a single, senior citizen. The best route is through organizations, volunteering with events, basically finding ways to connect with something you enjoy, that can allow you to make new social connections. And that sounds great, but the actuality of doing it can be quite difficult. And as social connections get harder, and virtual connections get easier, it’s often just to easier to sit at home and scroll on your phone.

As I move into the next chapter of my life, one of the big considerations for me, as I will need to work for insurance purposes for another five years, is working at or being near a four-year university. Through the cultural and sporting events a college offers, I see a way of being involved with others and hopefully making new connections and avoiding the social isolation that can literally be deadly as we grow older.

So my message tonight, we all have these connections, our lives get busy and we don’t maintain them the way we should, so after you read this, drop an email a real email or better yet make a phone call or even make plans to get together. We’ve all lost people we were close to because we didn’t maintain those relationships, they’re important, don’t lose another one. Keep those people close and you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Happiness is my tiny patio garden

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul. ~ Alfred Austin

I love gardening! It’s probably my oldest hobby after eating pizza. I remember working in the garden with my mom when I was four or five years old. My job back then was radishes. I still love growing radishes and when I talk to teachers about bringing a gardening lesson into the classroom I always recommend starting with radishes. Basically they’ll grow almost anywhere, they grow fast and are colorful so they are really exciting for little kids, and big kids like me. The other plant I recommend are peas, it’s really exciting to watch them both grow and climb. Unfortunately my peas didn’t do great last year. I start almost every gardening season by laying in a quick crop of radishes. For my tiny patio garden this year, I’ll be putting in my radishes later this week, it would have happened yesterday but I forgot to buy the seeds.

This is my second year in an apartment with a patio while living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last year was really an experiment to see what would grow, and how long of a growing season I really have here. The biggest surprise really was how incredibly long the growing season is, particularly for tomatoes. I was still getting tomatoes well into November.

This year’s tomato crop

Without a doubt my single greatest love in a vegetable garden is growing tomatoes. Last year, I had six tomato plants and I experimented with a cherry tomato plant, I’d never grown them before. I also cheated on the cherry tomatoes by buying a fully grown plant. My main hope was to get some early cherry tomatoes to appease my desire until the big tomatoes started coming in. This year I went a little hog wild on the tomato side. I’ve got six tomato plants and then I bought two fully grown cheaters, the one early girl plant already has two golf ball sized tomatoes already on it. Last year I planted this garden in late May, but this year I’m in a month earlier. Given how late my tomato plants produced last year I’m looking forward to five to six months of homegrown tomatoes, that’s just heaven. For this reason I also only planted indeterminate species.

In addition to tomatoes, I’m growing basil, a variety of lettuces, spinach, cilantro and of course my radishes. I still have some scallions from last season, as well as lemon balm and mint that survived the winter. Last year I grew cucumbers and squash and frankly they produced but not very well, the same with the carrots that I grew so while they are all staple garden plants for me, in the patio garden containers they just didn’t work very well.

My Grandpa Kane, standing in his garden.

My other love in a garden are roses. I got that love from the man pictured above, my Grandpa Kane who taught me how to grow roses when I was young. I wasn’t really into flowers and he brilliantly got me into growing roses by explaining that first, you have to go fishing. I was really into fishing, so I was in. To explain why he said this, he always put a fish in the bottom of the hole where he would plant the bush to act as fertilizer. I’ve been growing roses ever since. So in his honor today I bought a rose bush to add to the tiny patio garden.

One thing I’m really happy about is how well my lavender bush did over the winter and here it is in all of it’s purple spring glory, lavender is one of my favorite scents and I love growing these plants. I hope you had the chance to do something that made you happy this weekend. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Happiness is Hanging with Whales

Some of the greatest minds on Earth, live in the seas. ~ Anthony Douglas Williams

So as I mentioned last week I spent a week in Mexico, Baja generally, San Ignacio Lagoon specifically in the breeding/calving grounds of the Pacific Grey Whale. The trip I did was with Baja Expeditions, I did this trip several years ago during the pandemic and below are links to the posts I did about that extraordinary trip.

Baja Whale Adventure – Part 1

Baja Whale Adventure – Part 2

Baja Whale Adventure – Part 3

On this trip I didn’t get as lucky as I did the first time but it was still an amazing trip. The trip works out this way, you fly into Cabo San Lucas for a day, check-in for the trip the next day. You get up insanely early and take a bus to the private airport at the San Jose Del Cabo airport. You board a small Cessna and fly 150 miles up the coast of Baja and land on the beach. It’s a lot less adventurous than it sounds but still pretty exciting. You eat a quick lunch and immediately board a 15 foot panga (a small local style fishing boat} with six or seven other people and head out into the lagoon and the whale sanctuary. The whale sanctuary is a UNESCO World Heritage site and well regulated to protect the Grey Whales. These regulations include limiting the number of boats in the lagoon, the speed they can travel and the amount of time each boat can spend there.

The really amazing thing about this place though is that the whales have become incredibly curious about humans, to the point of wanting to interact with them. This time I was there near the end of the season, the males had moved on and it was just mothers and calves left in the lagoon. These little babies are already eight to twelve feet long. The whales seem very comfortable being near the boats and very curious about the critters in the boats. The baby whales especially spend a lot of time swimming up near the boats and playing with the people. Often people on the boats splash water at the whales hoping to attract them. And the whales seem to really dig this. Probably the coolest interaction I had this trip was a baby whale that we were splashing a couple feet from the boat who appeared to love it. The little whale stayed at the surface while we splashed it, and even rolled over so we could splash it’s belly. All the time this little whale was looking right at us making full eye contact the whole time.

There isn’t much else to say about the trip, I talked about the people on the boat last week, I was fortunate to have a good group on my boat. The photo at the top of the post was taken by Jen on the boat, she also took this one:

This particular whale did no less than a dozen spy hops in about twenty minutes. It was wonderful to be in the sun on the ocean, but even with SPF 70 on the first day I got a little too much sun on my face, so I took precautions:

Below are a series of videos that I took on the trip, enjoy and have a happy day. ~ Rev Kane

Happiness is Making Friends

Grey Whale spy hopping in San Ignacio Lagoon

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. ~ Khalil Gibran

I love making friends with toddlers, I love their honesty as well as their creative dishonesty. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they have not yet been fully initiated into the social contract of “polite society”. This allows them to be utterly brutally honest. Where as an adult you would never dare to point out that a person is overweight. I have seen and been the target of a toddler asking, why are you fat? And after giving a rambling, babbling answer about eating too much, you usually then get, why do you eat too much, just don’t do that. Of course they are not fully aware of all of the complexities of life and society and as such their kid logic often doesn’t hold up, but I find it refreshing.

On the flip side, I really love their creative dishonesty. It has it’s downsides, I will never forget the havoc that my nephew brought on one night. My grandmother had called my sister’s home and he answered the phone. When she asked if he could talk to my sister he said she was in bed crying, that the police had come and arrested his father for hitting her and hung up. None of this was remotely true and it precipitated calls to my mother who then also called my sister, everyone in a panic. This is the downside of toddler creativity.

The upside for me is their storytelling. I lived with my sister’s family for a time as I was preparing to hike the Appalachian Trail. Her other children were busy in activities, my brother-in-law worked late and my niece was a toddler, four years-old at the time. And as a toddler she had a set dinner time that needed to be kept, but that didn’t coincide with her siblings later schedule. So I happily ate early dinner with her every night. And every night I would ask her the same question as we started dinner, “how was your day?” Every day she would proceed to tell me all about her exciting day at day care. This would involve her and her imaginary friend woowoo taking out a boat on the river or going shopping. Sometimes my sister would overhear and interject with, “that isn’t true.” I would send her away and let my little niece continue. The stories were beautiful and insane and made no sense and I absolutely loved them.

I spent this past week in Baja, Mexico at a camp in a lagoon up the coast from Cabo San Lucas in the breeding and birthing grounds for Pacific Grey Whales. Every day I was blessed to be out on the lagoon, three times a day whale watching and having up close encounters with Grey Whales. I’ll most more on this, including pictures and videos next week on the blog. If you’re interested in those, I’m currently editing and working through my images and posting them to my Instagram account, @michael_rev_kane.

In the group I was in, the group that shared the same boat and guide was a toddler. We became friends on the second day. She very much reminded me of my youngest niece, who we call the boss. She is brash and confident and will in an instant turn it all around and melt your heart. My new little friend was very much the same. We bonded over a couple of games we played on the boat, one was to ask me if I new every single Pokemon, of which I only know two. We played guess what animal I’m thinking about and one hysterical game where she pretended to remove her fingers and magically return them.

The tables in the dinning hall had six seats. Our boat was comprised of seven people, so the first few meals I had I floated between tables. But after becoming friends, my young companion decided I needed to eat with them. So she got the people running the camp to add a seventh chair to their table. Then she proceeded at each meal to tell everyone where they would sit and I was always assigned to sit next to her. My favorite part of our friendship was our storytelling, she told me all about how she had met and talked with aliens by going into space in a spaceship she built herself. She kindly offered to build me one and outfit me with a spacesuit and all the rocket fuel I needed, all for six dollars. I made up a story about a pet bug named Herman and she grilled me all about him and his life. We had a wonderful time together. On our flight out of the camp back to Cabo, she couldn’t set next to me and I slept on the flight. When we landed she came up to me, her family was heading to a different terminal at the airport, and she asked me how my nap was? The she took my hand, looked me in the eyes and said, “I’m going to miss you.” She totally melted my heart in that moment. She was such a sweet kid and had an equally sweet brother and getting to know them added tremendously to the enjoyment of the week.

A little selfie on a break from whale watching

There’s a joy and happiness in making a new friend, it is there no matter how old or young they might be. ~ Rev Kane

Making Happy Choices

Authenticity can’t be replicated or faked. You’re either real or you’re not. ~ Bibi Bourelly

So my early adult life was quite exciting and I certainly owe that to the fact that I was heavily indulging in a number of vices. This of course had it’s downside in terms of drama, life issues and damn near clinical levels of depression. But it was never boring. Now that I’m older my vices are a lot less exciting, I gamble a little bit and probably my biggest vice, if you can even call it that, is that I like soda too much for my health, and as a diabetic having any Cokes are a bad idea.

So when the idea comes forward that there’s a soda out there that doesn’t have a lot of calories, very little sugar and still tastes like a Coke, well it’s a temptation too hard to pass on for me. Of course this is a familiar promise, over the years there have been lots of forms of Coca-Cola and Pepsi to claim to have the same taste but none of the sugars. There have been lots of other fake sodas created, each making similar claims. But, technology advances and Poppi especially has been getting a lot of press. So I took a chance on both Olipop and Poppi sodas. They are billed as probiotic sodas with the same taste as the real thing.

First, they’re expensive, a 12 ounce can at my supermarket was $2.49 for Poppi, $2.79 for Olipoppi. The initial taste on all of them wasn’t bad, the Watermelon actually was very tasty. However not quite like the real thing, the root beer and cola reminded me of the cheap store brand root beer and colas we used to get anytime my family threw a party as a child. I always thought the grape and orange value brands tasted ok. I’d put the watermelon Poppi in that category, value brand fruity soda. The problem with all of these sodas, just like most of the other non-sugar sodas, is that there’s an aftertaste that lingers that I just don’t like.

We’re all always looking for happiness in different ways, and when we can’t get it the way we want it, we often look for a suitable substitution. Like me drinking these alternative sodas. The fact is, often we can get what we need to be happy, but we feel the cost for whatever reason is too high, so we settle for the alternative. I’m sure if I drank Poppi Cola long enough I’d come to deal with it, the so-called acquired taste, which of course means it doesn’t taste that good in the first place, you’ve just gotten used to it. For me, settling for substitute happiness just isn’t enough, not in having a Coke or anything else in life. I fully believe that if you want to be happy, make the effort, pay the price and get the real thing, you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

Podcasts Make Me Happy

Over the last few years, especially when working on a project in my office I’ve taken to listening to podcasts. The type of podcasts I’m talking about are for the most part serial stories, whether they are fictional radio plays or true crime I like something that tells a long story and can hold my attention over time.

Now there are some standard podcasts shows I keep up with, I love Marketplace on NPR, Radiolab and Throughline although I pick and choose which episodes I’ll listen to and the same thing goes for This American Life as well, for me, the original podcast.

So tonight I wanted to share a list of some really great podcasts that I’ve enjoyed and have provided me with some happy listening and hopefully will do the same for you.

True Crime

Bone Valley – my most recent discovery, very interesting nine or ten episode podcast about the murder of a woman in Florida.

Serial – I loved season one, the story of Adnan Syed. Subsequent seasons have also been good but to me didn’t have the same impact.

Bear Brook – I really liked this one, had some good twists and a really interesting story that follows the discovery of a couple of bodies in 55 gallon barrels.

S-Town – The main subject is a total freakin character and paints some really interesting pictures of life in Alabama.

Satanic Panic – really cool podcast from the Canadian Broadcasting Company about the Satanic Panic of the 1980’s

Dystopian/Post Apocalyptic/Paranormal/Twisted

We’re Alive – As far as I’m concerned the best in the genre, very long series with a couple of short spin-offs, survivors of the apocalypse trying to survive in LA.

Blackout – Rami Malek stars in this story of what happens when the power goes out, forever.

The Black Tapes – for me this is kind of like the X-files of podcasts, lots of down the rabbit hole kind of stories that tie together.

Archive 81 – a really interesting found footage podcast, think Blair Witch as a podcast with a deeper and more engaging story.

Escaping NXIVM – This cult got a lot of press because the Hollywood starlets involved, also a lot takes place near Albany, NY, close to where I grew up.

Tanis – Really cool and fascinating story with a lot of depth to it.

The Left/Right Game – crazy mindbending podcast about something that will make your next drive a little more interesting.

Limetown – One of those stories that just feel like they could be real.

The Horror of Dolares Roach – a nice little story with a twist that will smack you in the face, I love this one.