The Uniforms We Wear

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my career, as an Emergency Manager, and the careers of others. I've been thinking a lot about how our jobs fit into the broader context of our lives and the meaning of the roles we assume in our jobs. To frame these introspections, let me first say that I don't believe we randomly just arrive on this planet, and just survive for as long as we can. I believe that we come on this earth with a purpose, a mission, a plan for our live - a plan that focuses on enriched life experience, growth, and evolution. Enriched life experience to me really means we travel, we explore, we try new things, we meet and enjoy people, we educate ourselves, we enjoy the lives of family and friends and cultures of our planet. Growth and evolution refers to the meaning of it all, the life lessons we gain, the accomplishments we achieve, the ways we apply knowledge and life experience to achieve goals.

In the philosophical framework of a life focused on enriched life experience, growth, and evolution, I wonder the role jobs / careers play in this process. I watch people, carefully: how they go about their jobs, how they behave, how they interact with others in their line of work. I'm trying to assess if they are just there to collect a paycheck, or there because it is a passion and a life's work, and it just so happens that their passion generates dollars. It's not always obvious. People can be extremely effective at their jobs, and be doing it for the sole purpose of generating dollars. People can be completely awful at their jobs, but they find a sense of purpose in it. Why are people janitors, why are people presidents?

I find myself in the very fortunate circumstance of having a job / career of my choosing. How many generations has it been that people generally had that choice? Luckily for me, I live in a time, and was raised by a family and a society where I was permitted to decide how I wanted to work and generate dollars. My parents not only gave me opportunity to choose, but encouraged me to choose, and didn't AT ALL influence that process. They gave me an amazing gift: the ability to explore and choose - one that caused my mother to gain many gray hairs.

My path ....

When I was a young boy, sometime in elementary school, I decided I wanted to be an electrical engineer. I can't exactly recall the reason why, but I remember wanting it and being very clear in that choice. One time in third grade, the teacher asked us to take turns standing in the front of the room before our classmates and proclaim our career desires. I said with enthusiasm that I wanted to be an electrical engineer. I suppose it had something to do with using a computer for the first time: a Commodore 64. It had a blue screen, and you could instruct it to change the color of the font when typing and I thought that was the damn coolest thing I had seen. I had computer lab in 4th and 5th grade where we used a program called Turtle Logo, and it was basically a triangle, but we had the ability to program its' movements on the screen, and that included direction, duration moving in that direction, colors drawn on the screen while moving, and the ability to loop commands so that ultimately, you could create designs on the screen that looked like elaborate geometric designs - it was damn awesome. And I think it solidified my intent to interact with technology as a career choice.

In junior college, my career trajectory changed.

While working my way through my undergraduate curriculum, cracks in the walls of my plans began to emerge. My sister had met and fell in love with an electrical engineer (EE), my now brother-in-law (who I cherish). He went to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, a prestigious school in California for engineering, and I idolized him. So I set my focus on that school as where I would obtain my EE degree. But as I continued through my undergraduate calculus and physics courses, a combination of factors altered the course of my life. My brother-in-law, my EE idol, didn't have faith in my ability to be a successful EE. My physics teacher, a brilliant man, didn't have faith in my ability to be a successful EE. And that tapped into my self confidence issues about my abilities.

The ax in the coffin.

My wonderful brother-in-law set me up to have a job in the industry, working for a company he worked at while I was at junior college - a company that build gas analyzers. I was very proud of that job, it was like an internship in my field while in college and I remain grateful that he lined me up for this position. I worked as sort of an entry level technician, building gas analyzers, working on their computers, and other duties as assigned. But I was working alongside REAL engineers, my brother-in-law, and the owner of the company, and they are extreeeeeeemly competent and accomplished engineers, while I was just a technician. I felt that I would never rise to their level of expertise. And I felt something else: I felt like something was missing. I wondered how happy I would be spending a life in a warehouse building electronics. I felt something was missing.

This realization that I may never be an excellent engineer coupled with a belief that that career choice left some of my life skills unutilized, greatly saddened me, deeply. I had, after all, focused my life on this idea that I would indeed be a successful electrical engineer. I wanted to be an engineer who worked in the audio field. I loved music and audio equipment. When I was in high school, I liked installing stereos in cars, and indeed had a custom stereo in my car. I studied speaker enclosure design and downloaded software that modeled the audible response of subwoofers given design characteristics and speaker characteristics. I built many custom subwoofer enclosures and to this day, I have a custom stereo in my truck and a 12-inch sub that is housed in a custom enclosure that I built. I wanted to design high fidelity amplifiers that used tube amplifiers, "tube amps." I was told once that tube amps created a warmer more authentic sound and I was enamored by the idea of revitalizing a technology of a bygone era that created warm rich sound. I even had a name for the company I would found: Iridescence.

But alas, my dreams of becoming a successful engineer leading a company that provided audiophile quality home audio equipment, and a life pursuing a dream crafting with my hands products that bring the joy of music to people, was dashed by the depleted belief that I could be "good" at this. And so the day before I was to sign a lease for an apartment in Morrow Bay, after having been accepted to my dream EE school Cal Poly, my lifelong dreams were in a matter of hours, gone.

I spent some time thinking about what I would do now that my EE dreams were gone. Up to this point, there was no other focus of my life's work, and now, with that dream abandoned, I had to begin the arduous process of refocusing my energy to something else, a process I had never envisioned would occur. I thought to myself, what career can I do, and love, and be successful? What do I love? It came down to geology (I wanted to be a Vulcanologist) or meteorology. I decided that I would never make much money as a guy who studied rocks, so I chose meteorology. But since I had never considered this as a career option, I literally didn't know how to proceed. EE was simple: go to Cal Poly, get degree, start company, never look back. Meteorology, ummmmm.....

So I did what any lost soul should do in a crisis: I sought the advice of a wise man - a time honored tradition. I was at that time taking a geography course by a professor Ted Wieden. I had a profound level of respect for this man, and he, apparently, did for me as well - after all, he got me a job with a friend / county employee working on eradicating noxious weeks (yellow star thistle, you bastard). So, I asked if I could ask his advice during his office hour. When I met with him, I told him this extreme dilemma I was in, the precarious place I had found myself in - during that time, I never felt more lost in my life, it was like falling in a pit of darkness and not knowing when I would hit the bottom. I told Ted that I wanted to study meteorology but that I didn't know how to proceed from here. He asked me what I wanted to study, and I had not put much thought into it actually. To that point, I just knew the atmosphere fascinated me and every time as I child I observed a thunderstorm, I wondered deeply how it all worked, which was the reason I chose meteorology. So I sat for a second and thought about it and I said, I wanted to study severe weather. What happened next changed the course of my life, something Ted to this day does not know.

After I told Ted that I wanted to study severe weather, without hesitation or thought, Ted looked me squarely in the eye, he leaned forward at his desk and said with such confidence: "You are going to the University of Oklahoma." He didn't say, you should consider the University of Oklahoma, and maybe this or that school, he told me I was going there. What balls!! Can you imagine a better adviser for a life decision that would change the entire course of your life???

Up to that point, I had encountered people who only doubted my choice to be an engineer, and sowed seeds of doubt. Now here was a man that now only had confidence in my abilities, unwavering and unclouded confidence, but also a plotted and decisive course forward for me in my life. How could I doubt this message?

So he decided my fate, and changed the course of my life: Thank You Ted Wieden. From that day forward, I focused my life's journey on Oklahoma. Which was fucking crazy because not in a million billion years had I ever considered going to Oklahoma. But I applied for what I later learned to be one of the most prestigious programs for meteorology in the country, and the leading program in the world for severe weather research, and I was accepted. And off I went to Oklahoma.

The thing is, even though I knew I wanted to study meteorology, and I had been accepted and was attending OU (Go Sooners!!) to study meteorology, I didn't know what I was going to do with this degree, once I obtained it. After all, I spent my life focusing on engineering. Now, I was surrounded by people who focused on meteorology since they were children, now I was at a disadvantage. Again, it was scary: How do I support myself and make a living with this knowledge? I didn't want to be on TV, and I was fairly certain I didn't want to be a forecaster, but what? Enter May 8, 2003.

May 8, 2003. I was studying for my upcoming dynamics final - to this day the hardest class I have ever taken. It was my second semester at OU (which means I knew nothing of storm structure) and all of my classmates were storm chasing in Kansas. I stayed home to study because grades were more important. While I was studying, it happened, my NOAA Weather Radio began to alarm. "Tornado Warning." Which means, a tornado was coming. I decided to break away from my studies to go see what was happening. After all, I had never seen a tornado and always wanted to. So, I drove north on I-35 and put myself in a location of the storm I would later learn is called The Bears Cage. I saw what I believed to be a lowering in the storm to my north and I was both excited and scared - I thought that lowering was the beginning of a tornado. I was scared too, after all, I was in the heavily populated city of Moore, OK. The lowering dissipated and I believed nothing would happen. I then looked west. I saw something in this storm I would never see again, a rising motion into the storm like nothing I had ever seen, or would see again.

My life was about to change, forever.

About a quarter mile to my west, just across I-35, a motel exploded. Absolutely blew into a million pieces before my eyes. I had one of those time-slows-down moments while I tried to process what I had just seen. And before I could figure it out, nature gave me the answer. Tornado. Here is something that is not commonly known: the part of the tornado you see, it's called the condensation funnel, and sometimes it forms after the tornado touches down. What happened? An F-4 tornado touched down and hit the motel and absolutely, in the matter of a second, destroyed the hotel. Then it appeared: a stovepipe, black, F-4 tornado, and it was headed right for me - how about that for a first tornado experience? I was at an abandoned gas station, I thought the overhang over place where once fuel pumps were placed offered my piece of shit Mazda protection against large hail, should it fall. I had my camera around my neck, ready to capture the images of the first tornado I would ever see. Except, it didn't happen that way. The moment I saw that tornado, and realized it was a 1/4 mile from me and headed at me at 35 mph, I didn't take pictures, I didn't pass go, I didn't collect $200. I ran for my car - for my life, drove across an intersection with a red light where the cars were waiting patiently for the light to change, and drove like a crazy person at a right angle to the direction of movement of the tornado, to get out of its path. I heard nothing, no freight train, no deep rumble, nothing. I looked through my sunroof, and above me was a swirling array of debris from the tornado, I was that close.

After some crafty driving, and when I say crafty, I mean reckless driving to save my life crazy driving, I was behind the tornado and no longer in danger. My heart was beating, I was alive.

It was then that my eyes opened and I saw what had happened. I proceeded to drive through a neighborhood that the tornado had ravaged. I was there even before police and fire. Just a dumb kid from California driving his piece of shit Mazda who wanted to see his first tornado. It wasn't a majestic display of nature roaring through a farmers field in the middle of nowhere. It was a force of nature that destroyed (and luckily on this day, didn't kill). I saw homes on fire, people running to and fro responding to their emergencies, people sitting on curbs crying, people standing and observing the horror, and unable to comprehend what had just happened. That's when it happened, that's when I found my calling.

It was at that moment that I realized I wanted to be an emergency manager. I wanted to be a part of a system that helped people get their lives back after disaster. I knew then that I wanted to spend my life helping people, helping society prepare, helping people recover, when nature's inevitable wrath struck.

That was 11 years ago. After that day, I found a way to be involved with FEMA as a reservist (another story for another day). I am still a reservist with FEMA. I found a career position with Georgia as their Hurricane Program Manager. And I spent 7 years working toward making the state of Georgia a state that was ready for a major hurricane. I now find myself as an emergency manager for a county in Oregon preparing citizens for disasters: winter storms, earthquakes, terrorism, pandemic influenza. And I'm beginning to wonder why. Have I been successful in my desire to assist people in preparing for and surviving earth's fury? That day in Oklahoma, that day that then shaped the future of my life, in the way that Ted Wieden did when I wondered where to go with a heart's desire to be a meteorologist, have I succeeded in my mission? I wonder.

But my journey in this life, one that has been focused on contributing my strengths, my capabilities, my efforts: has my focus on my career been one that was solely focused on generating dollars or one that has been focused on my life's work, and that life's work has resulted in the generation of dollars. I wonder.

How many of us are allowed to focus our work and careers in a way that does more than generate dollars? How many of us are lucky enough to do something that we are passionate about, AND, it generates dollars? And, most importantly, have I been successful? Because I have two goals: I want to be financially capable of supporting myself, and hopefully, someday a family, even wealthy; and also, I want to make a contribution to society. I've learned through this whole life journey of discovery, that I want to leave the world a better place than it would have been had I never been born. I want the world to benefit because of my accomplishments. I want to do something, that is a benefit. And I've learned that the pursuit of dollars and the pursuit of career fulfillment, can be mutually exclusive.

But it also causes me to observe people and ask myself where they are in their journeys. How do their jobs fit in with their life's goal of life enrichment, growth, and evolution? Is their job a means to accomplishing these goals? Or is their job solely a means for generating dollars for life survival? I wonder.

Life is an interesting journey. There are those who seek careers solely for the purpose of generating dollars. And there are those who achieve life goals in their jobs and it just so happens that their job generates dollars. Passion. No passion. And I've had this realization that people assume their jobs like people wearing uniforms. Their uniforms identify them as representation of their life's purpose, or it's just a suit they put on in the morning so they can continue the pursuit of dollars. Where is my job as an emergency manager on that spectrum. I wonder.

Flight of the Butterfly

One early morning in early July (2014), I began my journey to work as I normally do: I tiredly staggered to my truck, fingers crossed that I had remembered everything I needed for my day, fired up ol’ Priscilla, and began my trek to work through the back roads of Oregon. About 10 feet out of my covered carport parking spot, I noticed a stowaway: it was a green bug that looked like a grasshopper, but later research has identified it as a bug that either is or looks strikingly close to a Katydid (below). 



This stowaway was perched on my windshield about 6 inches from the top, right in my field of view. I was convinced that this bug would take a short ride and jump ship – I could not have been more mistaken. 

My initial jaunt from my apartment is a hilly windy road, so certainly this little guy would be blasted off my beautiful Priscilla once I reach such breakneck speeds as 20 mph. No. This little guy held on. Side note: how in the hell do bugs create their own foot glue and hold on to surfaces like glass and tile, and even climb walls. Brilliant. 

I reached my first stoplight not having broken 25 mph, and he was still there (for the sake of this story, that bug was a he). I sat at the stoplight wondering how long he would last: another mile? Two? Half way? After all, only longer more challenging roads lay ahead. The light turned green and a short (roughly 100 yards) jaunt before my next light (which is always red btw). He made it. 

I began the next stretch of road, this stretch more challenging: about 4 miles of non-stop residential roads with top speeds reaching 40 mph. I thought for sure he would give up and fly off the windshield. After 4 miles of winding roads with hills at 40 mph, I reached the next stop sign. He remained. After three prolonged stops, a pattern of behavior was emerging: at a stop sign, he would begin to let loose of his grasp of my windshield and roam a bit, but once the wind picked up from my forward travel, he would face into the wind and hunker down, and hold on for dear life. 

I began the next leg, another 2 mile stretch through residential areas with speeds reaching 40 miles per hour, before reaching a more main road. At the next stop sign, he remained, having survived the strong winds a bug would experience traveling at 40 mph. I noticed something about this bug while driving: his long antennae would bend back strongly in the wind and his legs would struggle, waving as gusts of wind passed. This particular stop sign exists at a road that is too damn busy, meaning, it sometimes takes up to 5 minutes before a break in traffic emerges that you can merge into. When my gap in traffic emerged, I jumped on it (as I always do) and merged with traffic. This stretch of road, while only about 2 miles long, has a top speed of 55 mph. When I reached top speed, I watched the bug hold on for dear life, which it did. At the next stop, a traffic light, I was certain this bug would take flight and move on. I hoped he would, because the next stretch or road is about 10 miles long with speeds reaching 60 mph, so the effort required for this bug would far exceed anything endured thus far. But as the light turned green, once again, he faced into the wind and hunkered down. I was really impressed by the effort being made by this little creature. 

As I reached a top speed of 60 mph, I began to gain a sense on concern, this little bug was surly going to experience pain as strong blasts of wind whipped past. Surely, a gust would reach this guy that would exceed his ability to hold on, his grasp would be exceeded and he would blow off the truck in a torrent of turbulent air that is cascading over my truck. 

I reached the first break in speed, a roundabout which required me to slow down to about 15 mph. Surely he would evacuate now, after miles of strong winds. But no. He held on and kept going. This became a fascination now, wondering why he didn’t leave and wondering what compelled this bug to hold on. Another stretch of long road with speeds reaching 60 mph lay ahead. Mile after mile, turn after turn, speeds pummeled this bug who faced into the wind and held on. Finally, I reached a stretch of road a mile long with a long line of traffic that led to a 4-way-stop, with plenty of time to wave the white flag and move on. But now, he wandered the windshield exploring his surroundings until I reached the stop sign, and began my next stretch of road which once again, was a few miles long with speeds of 60 mph. Once again, he faced into the wind and held on. 

We reach the next juncture, and after this long journey of being beaten down by fierce turbulent winds, I wondered how much more this little guy could take. And once more, I feared for him, for even though the journey had been tough, the worst stretch or road yet laid ahead: a 6 mile stretch where speeds reached 65 to 70 mph. When a gap in traffic emerged, once again I surged forward accelerating in speed and reaching a top speed of 65 mph, this time, my fear for the challenging conditions reaching a pinnacle – how could this bug possible endure these turbulent winds?? 

Then it happened. The winds were so strong, that one of his legs bent back in a way that could have only meant it broke, it was an angle too unusual to be normal. My heart sunk. I felt a sense of horror, I felt responsible. If it were not for my speed, perhaps this bug would not be losing a leg. And I just can’t cause another living creature pain. I can’t. I can’t even kill a spider, I shoe it into a cup and let it loose outside. Causing another living organism pain is just unacceptable for me. As soon as I saw this fate for the bug, a leg being ripped backwards in a way that surely was to its’ end, I searched frantically for the first place to pull off the road, which was a left turn lane about a mile down the road. For about 60 agonizing seconds, I watched this leg flail unnaturally in the wind until I could peel off and swap the bug off my truck. By God if this bug was not going to exit my windshield of its own accord, I would swat it off to prevent it from enduring any more of this leg crushing wind. So, I did. I grabbed a piece paper and swatted him from my windshield. 

After having swatted the bug from my windshield, I began the final length of my journey to work. I arrived at work wondering what happened to this bug, and as I exited my truck, there he was, right there on my windshield, much to my dismay. He had survived, the entire journey. And what surprised me even more, was he walked toward me on my windshield and faced me, his leg seemed to work perfectly. We starred at each other for about a minute before I departed my truck for work, after all, it was 8:02, and I officially began my day at 8. I didn’t really want to leave, I wanted to see what happened to this bug, but alas, I had to go. I walked away amazed that the bug made the entire journey. 

But the journey of this bug had a profound impact on me. He not only endured a long torturous journey, wrought with high winds, a leg bending unnaturally backyard, and being swatted by a rolled up paper, but he also found himself in a new place. It made me think about times in our lives when we are unexpectedly thrust into a new life, never to know the life we once knew. After all, in bug miles, this bug just made the million-miler club. A bug, as far as I know, could never make the journey of 25 miles. I have to believe that bugs, without human intervention, probably live their lives in a relatively small area, perhaps in an area of a few miles.  

This bug was just hopping around, exploring its’ environment, and ended up on my windshield, just minutes, even seconds, before I arrived, taking it on a journey that would forever change the life of this bug. This bug was probably born, and lived in and around my apartment complex in Tigard; now, it finds itself near Dairy Creek in Hillsboro, never to see Tigard again. Never to know the places where it searched for food, or water. 

I found myself relating to this bugs journey. At one time or another, we all find that without a moment’s notice, we are thrust into challenging conditions, and changes in our life, ones that whether we are prepared for it or not, thrust us into a new life, one where we are never to know the life of our past again. We all move to new places across the country or the world, or lose a loved one, or start school at a new school, or begin a new job, and are faced with a new set of unfamiliar conditions – at times, with no notice or time to mentally prepare. 

My life has had many of these “flights of the butterfly.” At 22, I left California, my parent’s home, my friends, familiar roads, familiar restaurants, familiar life, to pursue a degree in Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, Oklahoma. I spent two and a half years there, learning new roads, meeting new people, experiencing a new school, and chasing storms across the Plains, at times feeling like I was taking my life into my own hands. 

While in Oklahoma, I moved to Texas to work for FEMA, arriving on the day of my move at a house where I had booked a room for rent, only to learn the room had been rented and I had not been informed, and there I stood on the porch of a house, with a car full of my life, with nowhere to go, hundreds of miles from home. The next summer, I took an internship in Monterrey, CA, and three weeks before moving, my assignment was changed to Bay St. Louis, MS (thanks Navy!). I could not find a place to live, so I drove there, all day, arriving at midnight, with no place to stay, and once again, with a car full of my life, wondering what to do, and no place to go. 

Most recently, I divorced my wife, and in three weeks’ time, made the decision to move to Oregon, pack up my life, and drive five days across county to arrive in Beaverton, OR, with a room for rent in a man’s apartment whom I’d never met (he is now one of my best friends). I didn't have a job, seven thousand dollars in savings, and wondering, what to do. Like this bug, I had made a long journey, found myself in an unfamiliar place, and had the perseverance and courage to survive. 

We all do that. We all, at one point or another in our lives, find ourselves thrust into an unfamiliar environment, and a set of new conditions, and subsequently realize that we can never again return to the life we knew just moments ago. It’s an inevitable fact of life, we can’t hide from it, we can’t “plan” our lives enough to escape moments when our lives change forever at a moment’s notice. All we can do is find ourselves at the end of that long arduous journey, face the circumstances that led us there (the bug and me at the truck), take it all in, and begin anew, and for a moment, pay reverence for the growth that we will only later appreciate.   

I'm Melting ... Mellllllting

I'm still "new" to Portland. I moved here in November, 2012, and have lived through one summer so far, and heading (excitedly) into number two. When you move to a new place, there is a lot of "new" in that new place. And particularly for a weather nerd like me, new includes climate. 

When I was plotting where I was going to move from Atlanta, and scouting out Portland, of course a weather geek like me gathered climatological data and compared it with climate date for Atlanta. Yeah, that's how I roll. So, I knew what I was getting into, from a climatological point of view. 

What I did expect was cooler summers (about 10 degrees on average). What I didn't expect was the human element, "the Portland effect." And it TOTALLY cracks me up. Let me explain.

Today, while running an errand at the post office, a woman and her 6 / 7 year-old son are at the counter getting a package shipped. The guy at the counter leans over the counter and tells the boy "Be careful this week, it's going to get hot!" The kid replies "My dad is going to get out the super soaker." Side note: do you remember the super soaker? The alien-looking water cannon that can soak a kid head-to-toe at a 100 yards or take an eye out at close range? LOL Classic toy. Apparently, the kids still have 'em. 

Random child ready to make water war. 

So, everything sounds normal. Right? It's going to get hot and a dad is going to play with water toys with his son? Well, maybe it would help if I shared the forecast. 

The peak high temperature for the week for Hillsboro, OR is going to be a staggering, blistering, paint-peeling 88 degrees on Wednesday (May 14th). That's Fahrenheit, not Celsius. 88. As in, the number of miles per hour the Back to the Future Delorean needs to travel in time. 88. 

Portland, August 21, 1982. The temperature reached 92!!!

88 is also the temperature at which Portlanders melt, like Wizard of Oz Wicked Witch of the (Pacific North)West melt. And they endlessly moan and groan about how "hot" it is going to be. This postal worker was serious, he meant to be careful, like the kid was going to burst into flames if he was outdoors when the ozone layer evaporated from the scorching hot temperatures. 

Last week, it reached into the upper 70s and while walking to my car one evening after work, a coworker tells me that she missed the cool weather, and that she didn't like this heat. "This heat???" What heat? It's 77 degrees out?!?!?! AND, it was the first week that we actually had some warm weather since last October! People here don't seem to have a sense of what "hot" actually is.

I should also add that it's never humid here. Never. It's a dry warm. Relative humidity humid? Sure, I'll give you that. Georgia summer your gonna sweat walking to your mailbox humid? No. Not even close. In Georgia, you don't ever really "dry off" when you get out of the shower, you just towel yourself until you are slightly less wet than you were IN the shower. 

But to Portlanders, even today was hot. On my drive home from work, I saw a guy walking down the street in shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt, and it was 74 out! Seriously? Sleeveless t-shirt weather? C'mon bro! LOL I Love this place. 

SO, if you ever want to see thermometers explode, crops wither away into fallow fields, and small children explode into flames right before you eyes, come on out and spend a summer day in Portland. Just be sure to take precautionary measures, it does after all, get into the 80s.  

Stuck in the Horse Latitudes of Love

I am single. I am 35. And I am divorced. I have to mention that because all the forms I fill out these days ask for that information. I’m not sure why “single” or “married” is insufficient, as if they need to know that I have had a major failure in my relationship life, and somehow, that is information they need to process my application for a Costco membership, but they all seem to want to know if I’ve been successful in my dating life. It’s relevant to Costco.

I’m a single, white, mid-30s man, who is a long way down the road of my relationship life, beginning to wonder what it’s all about. Not sure why it’s taken almost 20 years / more than half my life to begin asking “why,” but it has. I guess because ever since I was a young lad, I had a clear path forward for my relationship life: I would find my soul mate, we would marry young, you know, like “I have a lot of maturing to do” young, and we would have children, the house with the dog in the yard, you know, the “American Dream.” This vision was not only clear to me, but carried with it the emotional inertia of a coal hauling freight train. That is to say, it wasn’t just something I thought I wanted or believed I should do because that’s what people do in America, it was something I really really wanted. So, I guess because of that, I never really questioned it.

Until now.

I’ve been on this quest for a soul mate for 20 years, one that has included one night stands, casual dates, casual relationships, serious long-term relationships, and marriage. And after 20 years of searching, I’m where I began: single and alone. After 20 years of searching, I’m starting to ask some questions I’ve never asked before, or even thought to ask. Questions like: Do I really want to be married (again)? Is staying single a more rewarding path forward? Is the single life the one I’m destined for and pursuit of a partner futile? Why do people get married anyway? Is long-term sustainable happiness even possible? And, if I’m “destined” for marriage and kids, why is that life so damn hard to find?

I should add to the mix that I believe in a higher power. I don’t believe in the Christian view of God, you know, repent you sins or burn in hell for the rest of time. That doesn’t make sense to me. But I do believe there is a something more to the universe than us. And I believe we interact with that higher power, that it offers us guidance, guidance that is intended to direct us toward life goals and growth we came onto earth to accomplish. And I believe that this “guidance” towards our goals forms a “path of least resistance.” When we are on the right path, things fall into place with relative ease. When we are attempting to follow a path away from our goals, things are a struggle, like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

For me, a logical extension of this philosophy applies to finding my soul mate: if I am indeed intended to find her, and have a family, then things should fall into place with some ease; conversely, if I’m not meant to find her and not have children, then all efforts should lead right to the John Crapper.

This protracted and unsuccessful search has forced some considerable introspection and caused me to ask a tough question: Is there a soul mate in my future? I’m starting to wonder because I’ve spent a damn long time seeking her out, and I’ve only come up with a long path of failed relationships. That dream of finding her and having children while young, and growing and maturing with her, I must now concede, is gone. I’m not an old man, but I’m not a spring chicken either. I am, after all, reaching the age where I complain about my aches and pains and listen to NPR more often that I listen to trendy music. So, that dream is gone. It’s just a function of my age and the maturing I’ve already done.

And now I find myself asking if I need to continue to hold on to the idea that I could have her, my her, or just let go of that dream entirely and move onward into my future, alone. As a single guy. As a guy who always picks the TV program, always picks the restaurant, and generally doesn’t care if I have something in my teeth. In other words, do I give up on this dream? After all, a man can only dream a dream so many times.

Which leads to my next questions: Why do people do it? Why do people seek love? Why do people get married and commit their lives to one another? Why? I was always that kid that asked “Why mommy, why?” As you can tell. It’s why I’m a scientist. People who ask “why” a lot make great scientists. But I’m really struggling with the concept of long-term sustainable love, and wondering if it is even possible. Frankly, if it were not for my parents who are happily celebrating their 50-year wedding anniversary this year, I would probably not even be wondering. And 50-years together is NOT why I believe this. It’s because I watched my parents be in love all those years. Random hugs and kisses in the kitchen, them talking for hours while lying in bed on a Saturday morning, every Saturday, for years.

So, it’s not that I doubt that long-term sustainable love is possible, it’s just that my observations of so many couples have led me to believe my parents are a Hope Diamond, a statistical anomaly, a true one-in-a-million. One of the observations I’ve made, which I hope is completely false, is that the vast majority of long-term married couples (10+ years) are not “in love” anymore. Love each other? Most of the time. “In love?” Almost never. These couples are often the ones you see at dinner at a restaurant, just staring at each other or their phones or tablets, with nothing to say. They are the couples that arrive at a party, almost immediately split up, and then return to each other when they are ready to leave, having spent almost no time together the entire evening. A stronger clue for me, that someone is in a comfortable relationship, or even a bad on, is that they complain about their partners, sometimes publically, before complimenting them, if they even compliment them at all. I agree that you never know what happens behind closed doors, but that to me is a strong indicator about what’s going on behind closed doors.

And the sex. What happens to sex in a long-term relationship? I used to wonder why non-married guys bragged about their sex lives with their girlfriends and married guys seldom did, if ever. I used to think it was because married guys were being respectful of their partner and honoring the sanctity of their marriage. Nope. It’s usually because there is nothing to brag about. What guy wants to brag to his buddies about a 10 minute Saturday morning quickie? Is long-term attraction and fulfilling love making with their partner an impossible dream? What is a healthy expectation for a long-term relationship?

There seems to be a common progression for marriage, from my perspective. You fall in love, that person becomes your everything, you get married, have children, and 10 years later, you are bored, comfortable, you let yourself go, and are just getting by. Is this because I have not found my soul mate and I don’t know what it’s like to have that life-long partner that brings a deep level of fulfillment to my life? Perhaps. Is the concept of a deeply rewarding and joyful relationship an idealistic concoction of a lonely heart? Perhaps. But my observations have been that very few couples are still “in love” after 10 years of marriage and I strongly fear that outcome in my life.  

There are couples that give me hope. A couple from my Lions Club in Georgia celebrated their XX years of marriage together before I left (something like 50 years or so). They had a party for friends and family at a local community center to celebrate their anniversary, and the woman when addressing the room full of people during their “Thank you for coming” speech, said something about her husband that I will never forget, something that led me to believe that this dream of life-long happiness is possible: she said “…even when we are at a party, and he is in the same room, across the room, talking to other people, just hearing his voice, just hearing his laugh, makes me feel complete, knowing he is there.” She then cried and grabbed her husband and lovingly kissed him. Those two people, despite their occasional typical-married-couple bickering, found the real deal: true love. Those two people are still totally in love. They still look across the room and see their partner, and feel a sense of peace, a sense that their lives are complete, and a deep admiration for their partner.

As a scientist, I have to geek out and think about the numbers. What is the statistical probability that I will actually find that person who makes me feel the way the Lions Club couple feels when I’m 80? It must be a damn small number, because the vast majority of couples I observe are more like marriage survivors. They are just getting by. They don’t look adoringly at their partners from across the room anymore. They don’t have random encounters in the kitchen where they hug and kiss and say sweet things to one another. They complain about their partners, even publically, and even worse, cheat.

Why this cheating btw? Why? More of me asking why. I just don’t understand this behavior at all. If you are not happy at home with your partner, enough to go seek out someone else and take them back to your hotel room or office or wherever, and cheat, why don’t you just fucking leave your partner and move on first? Why this destructive hurtful behavior? You can, after all, just break up and move on. There are no iron shackles holding you two together. But people are just outright hurtful to their partners. This is the risk we take when we give our precious tender hearts to another. We risk them just tearing it up. And in America today, it seems all too common.

Why do this? Why seek love when the most common modality is a love destined to evolve into a friendship, or worse. Why do this when the prospect of long-term-sustainable happiness is such a minute statistical probability? The 50-year-happiness-marriage seems to be a six sigma relationship. I’ll tell ya, whoever said love is deaf, blind, and stupid hit the mark dead on. Because no matter how many reasons I fabricate to justify giving up, there is this thing that prevents me from doing it: my damn weathered, beaten, stomped on heart. It just keeps on beating. The desire for the six sigma relationship drives me. It’s a desire that never leaves, no matter how much pain I have, no matter how beaten down from a failed marriage, no matter how many times I’ve been cheated on, no matter how many times my partner has punched me in the face, it … just … keeps … beating. The desire to have a soul mate, and children, never leaves me.

I know this because I’m writing this.

It’s a strange thing love is. My need to have closeness and love with my soul mate is sooooo deeply rooted and sooooo powerful, it keeps my heart beating no matter how many times my partner has cheated on me, or punched me in the face, or lied to me, or done any countless other hurtful things. It keeps me coming back for more, endlessly. It didn’t keep me married. LOL But it keeps me looking for "her."

And this is going to sound crazy, but who gives a fuck, this is my blog and I’ll write crazy shit if I want to. LOL I keep seeing “her.” I don’t really know how to convey this thing that happens other than to give an example.

Recently, I was on a work trip to Emmetsburg, MD. Three coworkers and I stopped in Fredrick on our way to Emmitsburg for dinner. It’s a beautiful historical city and we decided to walk around a bit to see the city. Photo album here: https://plus.google.com/photos/113395078611575176797/albums/6004797522690032977?banner=pwa Just about the time I snapped the following picture, I saw her. 

She was walking down the street with some friends, wearing a sun dress. She was not by any means a super model, but beautiful to me. She didn’t stand out in any way from a 100 other women I saw that day. But there was this vibe, this feeling I had about her, like she was “the one.” Of course she isn’t, but something about her gave me that feeling, like that woman exists and is out there somewhere. I don’t really know how to explain what that feeling is, it’s just like “that’s her, right there” when I know it isn’t. It’s like God, or whatever you call a higher power, if you believe in that thing, is telling me that she is out there, she is perfect, and don’t give up. And for just about five seconds, that higher power is going to give me a feeling that makes me feel like I’ve already found her, but just for about five seconds.

So now I find myself in this strange place. After a string of horrible train wrecks of women that have been my “post-divorce dating life,” I’m wondering if she is out there, being bitter about not having found her yet, wondering if finding her is part of my journey in this life, and wondering if I’m just a bit too long in the tooth for children. I’m questioning the very meaning of love, the probability that I can still have that dream of a soul mate and children, and wondering if I should give up and relent to a life of a single man.

For the moment, I’ve given up on my quest for love to seek answers to these questions. I’m stuck in the horse latitudes of love. Not moving. Still. A quiescent atmosphere surrounds me. My ship, just sitting in a vast open ocean, with no wind in my sails. There are no ships on the horizon. Just me. Not making progress in any direction. Not moving toward love. Not moving away from it. Just sitting there. Waiting for satori to strike me. Just waiting.

The worst part about the horse latitudes of love is that I don’t know which direction to go in, even if I could conjure wind for my sails. Is love a part of my future? Or have I spent 20 years dating, seeking love, when it was never “God’s plan” for me. Am I meant to be single? No children and grandchildren around the Thanksgiving table? No family holding my hand while at my death bedside? I just want satori. I want to know if I’m wasting my time seeking love. And unfortunately, all I can do is stand on the deck of my ship, in this vast empty ocean, peering through my captains spyglass, seeking answers, seeking resolution, trying to figure out what course to take, while stuck in the horse latitudes of love.  

McBadAss

People who are not from Portland are most likely unaware of the cultural icon McMenamins. If you fall into this category, which I did even during the early days of my arrival here, then allow me the pleasure of introducing you to this family who has overhauled schools, poor houses, movie theaters, and old folks homes, turning them an eclectic collection of unique hotels, restaurants, bars, and movie theaters (I think I already listed that one ... yes, they turned old timey movie theaters into, well, old timey movie theaters, but with the McMenamins spin). For those of you who are my Portland peeps, you will just laugh and say "Yup, that's SO McMenamins." 

So, McMenamins does things in, shall I say, their own funky style. It's nothing I've seen anywhere across the county or across the world; it's in a word, unique. When you walk into a McMenamins establishment, no matter where you are, if it's a restaurant in a strip mall or in a farm house on large acreage in a rural part of town, it is like no place you've walked into before. Think, Jerry Garcia meets the '20s. And each of them is as alike the next and as independent from the rest as possible, all at the same time. Well Chris, how is that possible? That's a paradox. You see, they take old facilities, and repurpose them into something amazing. 

Take our company lunch today, which took place at the McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove, OR which incidentally is the first one I discovered while reporting for duty one night at one of my casino gigs. The Grand Lodge is a 100-year-old building that was once a local Masonic and Eastern Star property, aka an old folks home. It is now an old timey hotel and spa with restaurants, bars, a pool and much more. Sounds ordinary, right? But it's not. It's McMenamins, were you not listening??? j/k 

When you enter the Grand Lodge, there are marble stairs, then tiled floors, you know, the old timey extremely-small-tiles tiled floors, designed into artistic mosaics. You pass rooms that were once home to the convalescent, community bathrooms - this place is European style - and the walls are covered with artistic painted designs, interesting quotes, and weird art like amazing concert posters and paintings that make you stop and say 'hmmmmm....'

Painting at the McMenamins Grand Lodge

While leaving our lunch today, I see this extraordinarily odd painting (the one above). I didn't know whether I should laugh or study it. I mean, it's a woman sitting in a goat-towed-buggy. And if a woman sitting in a goat-towed-buggy was not enough, they are flying through a stormy sky. Which makes me wonder, if they can fly, why is she in a cart? These are the random thoughts of my mind. Welcome to my version of crazy. I digress. So after carefully contemplating this deep thought - a woman with a flying goat, it just struck me as hilarious and crazy and I laughed. A young woman who is an employee of the Grand Lodge who was a few feet away from me moving boxes, heard me laugh and commented that this was an actual woman who lived in the Grand Lodge, when it was an old folks home, and yes, she did indeed ride in a goat-drawn-buggy. HOW AWESOME!!! You wouldn't think to ask this because it's just to crazy to be true and too characteristic of the McMenamins style to seem out of place. But behold my peeps, this piece of art, which should have been done on velvet, actually pays homage to a former resident. Rad. 

Yes, I said rad. 

But it's SO McMenamins. It's the type of place, no matter which one your in, that after having one of their craft brews - oh, did I forget to mention they brew their own beer, and it's freakin' good? Yes, they immediately gain 10 cool points just from this simple fact - or having one of their amazingly delicious meals (think bar food made by a well trained chef), you become acclimated to the funky weird style, and strange oddities like a painting such as this just seem to fade into the background. Except, not for me. I can't get enough. Their style is intoxicating, more so than their brews and libations. Their work, which began in 1982, and involves purchasing old relic building dating back to the very roots of Portland, and turning them into amazingly eclectic gathering places, just speaks to me. It's Portland. And it speaks to me. 

Somehow, McMenamins is like a living reflection of me, and the me I came to Portland to be. Take, for example, these two songs that both played during lunch today in the restaurant. Summertime, by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. If you don't know, stop reading, shut down your browser, and get out more. LOL This duo is one of the iconic jazz compositions of their era. One Love, by Bob Marley. How can you not be chill and in an absolutely jammin' mood (little Marley pun there) when this song is playing. Yes, both played in the same set of songs that was our McMenamins lunch serenade. What kind of place has a music station playing songs by both Marley and Sachmo? McMenamins bitches. And it's glorious. 

Let's go back two weeks. A coworker, who apparently knows me better than I thought, forwarded an email to me about Science Pub. Two things that shouldn't go together, but do here in Portland, and harmoniously. You read that right, Science Pub, a collaboration between McMenamins and the Oregon Science and Museum of Industry, known illustriously as OMSI (Om-zee). It is basically a science presentation, given by a prominent semi-local scientist and expert in their respective field, giving a talk about whatever to a crowd of people who simultaneously love beer, good food, and science. How COOL is that??? The offering two weeks ago, was held at the McMenamins Mission Theater (with roots as a Swedish Evangelical Mission and Longshoremen's Union), presented a talk on Debris Flows, by Dr. Dick Iverson, a leading research scientist hailing from the Cascades Volcano Observatory. The theater, in typical McMenamins fashion, is small, has a balcony, with seats that were clearly original (but reupholstered), wooden bench style tables so you can take notes and eat food, and wooden floors that creaked when you walk. This is the setting for memories, ones that may be a bit fuzzy if you enjoy too many of their craft brews. 

The restaurant at McMenamins Kennedy School

McMenamins Crystal Ballroom, downtown Portland

Some other examples of McMenamins charm and McBadAss style include: the Kennedy School, once an elementary school that is now a hotel where all the rooms are the old school rooms complete with blackboards; the Blue Moon, a restaurant downtown that features bar-style shuffle board, pool tables, large old-world-style wooden booths, and pot-belly stoves that are still cranking out the heat; and the Crystal Ballroom, a music venue (seen above) with a floating dance floor. Yes, this is the wizardry they call common place here in Portland. And I love it.