07.29.26

There’s a grass stained coffee maker on the counter. Every morning it gets fed fifty-one point five grams of ground up coffee beans. From there, the machine performs its magic and spits out exactly twenty-seven point five ounces of black gold. This happens every day. It is a coffee flavored clock.

A ritual. A behavior. A measure of time.

Twenty-six years without alcohol today. Grateful for the path I chose. Grateful for the fruit this tree has born.

Buzzer beater alarm clock sand. Backyard bushes through the trees in the back room. Shirts hanging over chairs. Fan spinning through the ceiling. Morning music confused with the basement tunes and all that time on the trainer. Meditate. Sit with nothing. Put the phone down and accept.

Let it go.

07.24.26

Ice rink ratification. Abandoned brooms and dust pans full of dirt. Beer can trash bags cell phone video. There is peace in patience and no joy in comparison. There are ankle injuries and dehydration and headaches at the outset. Redo the kitchen and tile the backsplash. Replace the sink with another sink that does the same thing. Aesthetic. Prosthetic. Prophetic.

Road map energy. Driving in circles. Credit card payments and stacks of utility bills.

Is the thing you’re seeking really the thing you want? Or are you seeking the thing to satisfy that vacancy that abandoning the other thing created? Are you whole? Are you quietly crafting filler to feel full? Have you fallen? Have you fell? Do you wonder what will become of you when the lights are off and the phone no longer rings?

Office gossip reconstruction. Plywood cements the hallway shut. Two lined with concrete and four with sand. The ice goes back in next month. Locker room disaster with the unsupervised kids. Cake eaters I suspect with no evidence to support the claim.

It’s like I never worked there. Alarming really and something to be unpacked and analyzed. Take the money. Never sell the soul.

Rain boots. Co-op. Coconut oil. Pit bull.

07.23.26

The pendulum has swung and the dog doesn’t have a tick. Adjustment. Chiropractic. Analytic. Scrub the walls and sweep the floor. The city is on fire with guns and the haves are running for the woods. Blue towel hanging where the blind cord goes. Games in the group chat. Forced writing this morning, as has been the case so many mornings before.

There was the one hundred word exercise with the guy that I thought was my friend. Turns out that’s not the case and the work and the title are more important. Perspective. Everyone tending their own lawn. A street full of road bikes. A gutter full of cars. Coffee, flower, eggs. Mow the lawn and go fuck yourself. Waist-high weeds. Crumbling concrete steps. Grape vines taking over the shrubs. Butterfly. Flutter by. Butter burger. Yellow dog. Aging infrastructure. It’s like I never worked there.

You’ll never understand the depths of the depression until you get down in it and spend some time there yourself. A round of golf won’t cure it. A better job with a bigger paycheck won’t solve it. Another bike or a fishing pole or a new shirt won’t reconcile it. Nothing can undo it except time and eventually even that runs out.

Sunshine. Porch. Wildlife. Expired appetite and some paint missing that looks like a heart. Garbage truck times two. A city bus. Nobody reads this. Nobody cares. Dirt bike. Fat bike. Semi-truck. White car, black car, broken down van. Short sleeves under a grey vest. Capitalism will have you working two jobs to get by. Call it.

07.22.26

Freeway peeping into the backyard lives of everyday Americans. A moments glimpse into the decaying pools and collections of crap that adorn the domiciles of the working class. Cemented in their state by the chains of economic strife.

Poor people being poor and staying poor. The levers of capitalism being flipped up and down by the hand of those that feign support. Fuck you and die with your piles of shit. Let your children come by to clean things up and sort through the mess. Let them be burdened with the task of separating your things into groups with labels like keep and donate.

Today is the tough one. Today is the day without sleep when the inventory gets reduced to only the items that are mandatory.

You have no value. You have no worth. You are useless. You aren’t even a memory of yourself. Break the mirror and swallow the pills. Another coffee isn’t going to help.

07.17.26

Vermont sunrise category king. French toast coffee maker and a granite slab that is just off center. Woke up in a van after sleeping on the dog beds. Swollen leg circumstance and a couple of Adirondack chairs. Winding roads. Hot dogs. Coffee cups. Another trip to another spot for another thing. Screen door ceiling fan. Refrigerator cabinet and pocket music. Dish rack balance beam and you can pay to do the chores. Practice. Renew. Practice. Balance. Pursuit. Balance.

06.22.26

Roadtrip rattlesnake, yellow dog in the backseat. One thousand miles to simmer and the golf course is overrun by the overweight. Money tree, broken branch and some double track to nowhere. Updates from the field in real time sent in to real minds calculating the exact nature of our wrongs. 12-step boat breach and taking on water. Broken neck bench seat and I’ll bet you the farm. Mailbox raccoon and three horses standing in a field. Another trip south for the one with the rotten tooth.

06.21.26

The pursuit of balance.

The pursuit of meaningful relationships.

The pursuit of the end of suffering.

The pursuit of the end of the idea of superficial interactions.

The pursuit of the truth.

Stop.

I am depressed today and letting things go as I grieve a bit. Turning it off. Walking away. Again. Another goddamn time.

Cannot rest.

Cannot accept.

Cannot get in line with all the others.

Cannot and will not. Chose not to. At every fucking turn.

Fuck you and fuck them.

I am imperfect. I get upset. Sometimes I get angry. Every time I move through it. Every time I learn a little more. Every time I emerge better. Every time.

The pursuit of balance.

06.17.26

Rainy Wednesday morning and I don’t owe you shit. Another seven applications in the hopper and I wonder how the Kool-Aid is spilling out of the pitcher east of here. Drunken masterpiece in Kansas City and pile of rentals stacked up to the ceiling. Avocado breakfast hotel lobby. Cascade. Cascade. Cascade.

Riding bikes along the river. Riding bikes along the quiver.

Riding into the city and up to the Washington. Cigarette smoke on the banks of the Hudson. Over and over and over and over. I’m you! I am the new version of you! Fading. Waning. Rainbow.

One-hundred words. Check in. Check out. Have another drink and don’t you ever call me mister again. This one is all over the place and I suppose that’s okay because we make the rules here. Writing. Writing. Writing.

I wonder why you disappeared though? Left to read the thing and then poof. Evaporated. Onward.

06.16.26

There isn’t much to write about today. The truck is back in the shop for another round of dollar injections. The bike was ridden yesterday as transportation. I woke up with a sore throat. I’ve been spending too much time on the internet.

Hit the pause button. Drink the coffee. Enjoy the summer.

06.15.26

Long walks after dark.

Long walks in the park.

Green jacket earth worms and an empty paper towel roll.

Missed the sales meeting by a handful of weeks. Rolled across the damn and couldn’t give one. Lots of folks out on bikes today, none of them affiliated. Park ranger golf cart walking through the fields. Snowman, Florida, dog walkers. A retirement community flourishes inside the chain link fence.

Freedom. This is almost like not having a car.

06.14.26

sunday morning hangover from the significant increase in weekly steps. work done in earnest at the risk of upsetting the apple cart. looking through a different lens. mechanics versus experience versus the how’s and why’s of everything.

fifteen miles north and the wind blows constantly. fifteen miles east and nobody gives a damn.

work. sleep. repeat.

draft concepts and publish fleshed out ideas. a sales meeting in the neighboring state and the world just keeps on walking. the bicycle business is exactly like every other business in that it doesn’t give a damn about living wages and worker’s rights. the play is exponential growth and market domination and spread sheets for meetings about meetings. bicycles, in this context, are not machines that produce pathways to freedom. rather, the bicycle inside the business is a means to a profitable end.

diversify the portfolio.

hold the leverage.

win at all costs.

05.30.26

marketing professional with an emphasis in artificial intelligence and a degree in business from the university of online advertising and education.

shoes greened from cutting grass and the socks falling down.

sunburned skin and a walk down to the lake.

blue coffee. brown table. fake green plants.

disjointed tables. cabinets built into the wall. summer time freedom and a thousand pounds lifted off my shoulders.

there are times during these early days where it feels like i broke free from the imaginary chains that i allowed to bound myself to the desk. it feels like i’m running away from the folks i knew and grew to love and i can hear them cheering me on and crying for their own plight simultaneously. it’s like we’re all living in some realtime run-on sentence that’s got a handful of us shackled to the spreadsheet machine and others, like myself, that broke free and scrambled into the woods. once we were all under the same roof, singing the kinds of songs that those that suffer together do to pass the time. now we are separated.

i feel free. i feel unencumbered. i feel raw and organic and on the cusp of unlocking some great worldly secret, but i know that this will likely pass and be replaced once again by the unimpressive consistency of waking up, going to work, coming home, eating and going to bed just to wake up again and start all over.

or, perhaps, it continues like this forever? the work in the next few days and weeks should decide that. do we, or i in this case, let the joys and freedoms and liberties afforded to me slip again through my fingers? or, do i clutch this moment and this weightlessness and practice to live like this for the rest of my years?

the time is now.

the decision awaits.

three frogs sitting on a log, one decides to jump, how many are left?

05.20.26

Indecision buries me under a pile of folded laundry. A basket full of broken dreams. A container full of dog food. Busted. Ended. Wondering. Coffee lingers in the back of the throat. Aches and pains. Basement music. Road trips. Wondering. Wondering why on earth the subject hasn’t been raised by a handful of others? Wondering how nobody before now has addressed the concern and why leaving was the logical best next step. Wondering.

I should come in here more often and make this a habit. I should also go to the gym more often and make that a habit. Halfway to one hundred and more active than my peers. There’s probably a reunion I won’t be a part of this year. End it all. Or don’t.

And on this roller coaster of uncertainty and broken teeth the phone rings late in the afternoon. A caller looking backward in the mirror. Echoes of ancient times. Done.

05.18.26

Box everything up and put it in the basement. Get a five pack and put em through the wash this afternoon.

The anxiety will recede.

Let it go and return to the roots that are looking at and caring for others first. No longer are we in a stage of self-preservation and conservation. The sole responsibility today is to make sure the circle is secure and that everyone in it is happy and free.

05.07.26

The pain in my face is unbearable at times and it’s been twenty years of this. Twenty years of hiding broken teeth with facial hair and never smiling. Unapproachable. In every way.

05.01.26

May Day.

Eight hours.

Fair pay.

Incentivize overtime and glorify staying until the job is done.

Do whatever it takes to get the dollar into the hopper you sad sack of shit.

Make more money to make more money.

Broken back bed rest overnights in a town along the river. Stood up again for an afternoon on the trails.

The ends do not justify the means.

04.28.26

Sunshine argument sleeping dogs noise band.

Fear cloaked as freedom and a pathway that walks the user away from the flame.

Words on paper. Words on paper. Words on paper.

Wash the car. Rake the yard. Dig a hole under the porch.

I don’t need your goddamn permission.

Seven sundays.

Seven somedays.

Seven and I’ll see you on West Second Street.

Night time day time and a pile of unanswered questions.

Paint the exterior and let the inside decay.

Christmas Eve rainstorm and a Gatorade bottle.

A sardine can full of cigarette butts.

It’s a miracle I haven’t died.

04.14.26

Early morning fog and a shuttle ride to the hospital. I forgot about the overwhelming theme of death and sickness that saturates this place. Every corner serving its master. Every outlet paying tax to the great king’s empire.

Make your peace.

04.11.26

Apple cider vinegar and I’m stuck up on the side of this mountain. Down jackets and leather boots and the kind of eyes that sink in like they’re starving. Double lake loops. Mile marker card table and a post that’s rotted from the ground up. Practice.