date: 7/30/2026 ~ 1719 subj: ranting no time ------------------------------------------------ I do feel a bit like there is no rest, no break no recharge. As I go from task to task for days at a time, doing so gets pretty dang difficult. The mental feeling becomes a bit like being on a treadmill without a way off, continuously forced to walk or jog. I suppose its good for me to wrestle with this issue, there being a possibility I could understand what it feels like to not be joyful because knowing tomorrow will be just like today which feels a lot like being full of failures, and the light at the end of the tunnel starts to shine a lot less than before. The constant to-do; I signed up for, and caused myself to experience it. Right now in its season it is time to stay with the entire experience and process. Maybe then the wisdom will appear, the acceptance might appear, then the joy might appear. Others have been through this, even I have been through this before. ------------------------------------------- date: 08122026 ------------------------------------------- Thinking backwards today: Riding my bike about 20 MPH down the road I sometimes ride on, I saw for the third time ever, a car cross a driveway from the main highway into some property. There is no stop sign for these crossings, and given its on a part of the road; I've only seen a car drive across one of these ways once, I never slow down. I think to slow down but never do. The time before was about thirty seconds before the one I just saw happen, but instead of seeing the car in my mirror it happened in front of me. Two vehicles one a car, and the one before a type of small bus. As I passed that road, I saw a for sale sign, and in my mind thought 'that is why I'm seeing traffic here. I better slow down before crossing.' just as I speed up heading to the next driveway. About two minutes before I was speeding on the gravel path and between my front wheel and back wheel as I peddle hard, a chipmunk attempted to dart across the path. My mind was upset about the little animal's choice of timing. Hoping the chipmunk made it without injury, contemplating how I didn't feel any unusual vibrations from my tires, while thinking about how it would hurt to have my small tail ran over if I was that little creature. I still peddled on. About seven to ten minutes before seeing the cars cross the road I'm on into those private properties, I was looking to the right heading up the hill into a campground at a large truck with a large tank near the public restrooms. The person tasked with driving that truck is probably extracting excrements left behind by park visitors. As I was passing the truck near the crap deposit center at an angle about ninety degrees tangent to the direction I was riding in the smell of poop entered my nose. In the moment, and an awfully powerful the smell in my nose, my mind thought 'it must be a job that is not going to vanish anytime soon. People need to poop, and they do so wherever they may be, therefore someone will have to remove the poop from places its deposited at, and deposit those poops into other places. Can working such a job allow a person to live a life and raise a family?' It was that shit smell that got me thinking more about what happened this morning. I was on camera for a meeting with my manager. One of the second things my manager said was, "you look tired." I tried to tell her I'm just getting older. Later I thought about that... hmm I must look tired even though today I think I got more rest, just not enough to combat accelerated aging due to living a stressful life. As I wrote before, I did do it to myself. Just before my call with my manager my wife and I talked on the phone and she expressed how exhausted her body is, and how tired she feels, and her eyes wanted to shut while driving to work. Her voice sad, emotional, and sobbing a bit. She tells me she misses doing what we once did which we have no time or energy to do these days. (We don't have the energy to do the things that make the kids that are taking all our time and energy). Things like just sitting together. Playing DCSS, or just enjoying each other. (all we have time for is solving problems.) She talked about not having the energy to do good at things, not be short with the babies. (I do know that feeling, often times when I'm low on energy I'm short with people and grumpy.) I wish I could do something for her, help her, make it easier for her, but I can't seem to find a way to accomplish that. These things I did to us, now that we are deep in the mud of it all. As the mud collects on our feet, and hands, they grow heavy, all we can do is our best in the slogging through the mud. Mud .. reminds me of Sound Garden's song The Day I Tried to Live, therein he sings of wallowing in the blood and mud with all the other pigs. Although we are not pigs (yet), and there is no blood, we are in the mud, and trying to live. Just like others in there lives doing their best to get through the difficulties of life, where nobody can take the pain, or hardship from us. We asked for it, it is ours to overcome. I must find a way to be more grateful for what I'm experiencing and stay with each moment. I can't regret becoming a father, but as my wife shared her woes on the phone with me today, I too feel similar, "I am working for someone else every moment." There is no time, and everything we haven't done lay here not getting done becomes the growing pile of things we couldn't complete. I wonder if all parents struggle with and overcome times like these herein this document? I don't know, but I've asked some older people who raised children, but they've seem to have forgotten any difficulties if they had them. Some seeing us stroll our children around say its going to get harder. I still haven't figured out how to resolve it all, because I'm too tired to sit and contemplate it. My best idea is to be with each moment, and become grateful for them. While I cook for others, clean up for others, labor for others, become grateful for those moments. Even riding my bike is a to-do, a fitness routine, tired or not, I do it so I can stay healthy. Is it healthy to do something just to stay healthy even if you don't want to do it, if the joy of it is gone?