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.
06.15.26
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.
04.09.26
Bike ride basketball lunch break closer.
Twenty miles in the late afternoon and I can’t feel my feet.
Neuropathy tendons diabetes disorder.
Words flow together like sand through an unclenched fist.
Vacation. Dinner in a box. Coffee table shoe rack.
Waterbottle stiffness, don’t forget to charge your batteries.
04.08.26
Children stumbling out of trailer homes, backpacks slung from slumping shoulders.
Parents stuffed behind steering wheels in idling cars with windows cracked for the quick escape of the early morning cigarette smoke.
Buttoned up corporate car culture caravans by, coffee in hand, on its way to appease the investors.
Nobody rides bikes here. Nobody gets ahead.
This is America. Blurry economics masquerading as humanity and buried alongside rotting RVs just off the shoulders of decaying two-lane roads.
04.07.26
Fireworks in the parking lot of the grocery store. A raise to $24,000 a year. Newcastle in a Sbarro cup. We took more compact discs in that summer than either one of us could count.
The novelty of youth. The bliss of ignorance. The liberty in reckless abandon.
A trunk full of beer. A full day’s drive.
I wore a bowling shirt the day my family celebrated my high school graduation. There are photos of it somewhere. My friends were there and it was great. Finally, I knew the taste of being free.
04.06.26
Profane existence. Leadership from inside the toilet. Drain pipe discourse.
The man is a grifter and a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
04.05.26
Red car accident and the beauty supplies order will be written by tomorrow. A handful of long-term employees and an older guy named Phil. Mustache, bulk bins, wooden shelves and a café that leans into lentils. For all the blue tile I’d have assumed this was a fish wholesaler.
Cigarettes out back and a plan for the future. No kids. One dog. Early morning couch.
Wander through the hallways of time. Wonder through the hallways of time.
Spark.
A town the size of a nickel.
We’re back here practicing and it’s evident to us. The words don’t flow. Everything feels forced. Yet somehow we seem locked up on a particular memory tied to a particular place in time. Nothing cemented in place. Nothing tethered to an outcome. Simply a window into a couple of years that have a lot of unknowns and what might have beens.
Onward.