The Philosofer

I’m not going to lie or sugar coat it.  2013 sucked balls.  Too foul?  It was total shit.  Still too much?  2013 was difficult, unpleasant, and incredibly depressing.  There, that was the one.

Sonja, my normally sweet and kind wife wanted to make a shirt that simply said in black letters, “F*ck 2013″, and I don’t blame her.  2013 was so bad that until a couple of days ago I wasn’t even going to write a “Year In Review” post, something I have been doing for 6+ years now.  But I’ve had some espresso and I’m feeling good and even a bad year deserves a recap.

A lot of the shittiness resulted from the events of 2012.  We returned from Africa and I for one had a bumpier than usual landing with cultural reentry.  That was quickly overshadowed by the traumatic and completely unexpected loss of Sonja’s parents in a car accident on November 17th, 2012.  In some very weird ways I had insight that something horrible was going to happen but I wasn’t sure what.  It’s very strange to know something huge is coming at you but you don’t know what it is.  Kind of like in a dream when there is an enormous presence moving towards you and your legs are lead and somehow in your dream you’re still asleep, helpless to run or fight.
Nevertheless, we were completely devastated and ill equipped to deal with the grief that blindsided our family.  We were held up in the following weeks by our friends and family who gave money, time, meals, and favors that far exceeded anything we could have asked for.  People who I had fallen out of relationship with came out of the woodwork to support us and give whatever they could.  I finished 2012 feeling more empty and broken than I ever have but also more loved and supported than I ever have as well.  It was a strange dichotomy.

2013 began with 3 of us, Sonja, myself, and Sonja’s little sister Summer who chose to come live with us after the accident.  Looking back I can see that we probably should have never been an option for Summer but in the moment it seemed wrong to not offer our home as a refuge for Summer.  I didn’t realize that we were not financially or emotionally able to care for a troubled and grieving teenager.  Summer was hurting, Sonja was hurting, and I was confused and lost.  As is true for most traumatic events, after a month everyone forgets about you and you’re on your own again.  Other than my family I felt completely abandoned and on my own with a grieving wife and an angsty teenager.  In my confusion and stress I realize that I didn’t deal with Summer in the best way.  Instead of addressing her grief which was disguised by acting out and destructive behavior, we addressed her reactions and this was a serious mistake.  Nearly, everyone around me was counseling that discipline and structure were what she needed and while I don’t disagree I feel that I could have acted with a lot more love and kindness, something I am very regretful of.  In March things came to a head and Summer ran away.  We filed a missing persons report and we didn’t know where she was for nearly 2 weeks.  It was an incredibly stressful time, which is saying something because the previous 3 months were more stressful than I could have ever imagined already.  She finally surfaced in Arizona and Sonja’s uncle and I drove out there and back within 36 hours.  It was decided that she would live with Sonja’s aunt and uncle who are much better suited and equipped to raise a teenager.  Because of the way things ended Summer wouldn’t talk to me for another 9 months.  I have since apologized to her for my lack of understanding and heavy handedness and I think we’re good.  My value for family is now a first class priority and I really don’t want any break in relationship if there is something I can do about it.

After March Sonja and I were able to start figuring life out again.  Sonja was able to breathe and begin to grieve and we just trudged on.  Sonja has a great job at a local bank and works with amazing people and I have been working on a myriad of businesses and projects.  Looking back I had a very hard time seeing anything good from this last year.  And I spent some serious time thinking about it.  We had good moments but there was nothing I felt proud of.  The one exception was the publishing of Sonja’s latest book, Liberty Hill.  It was a project I took on in a flurry of espresso fueled inspiration and saw through till completion.  At this point I think we have still dumped more money into the book than we have gotten out of it putting us in the hole but it was still worth it.  A high point was where we did a free promotion and received 12,000 downloads.  Although we didn’t make any money it was still very exciting to see that many people with Sonja’s work.  She is amazing and her writing is clever, funny, and colorful and she deserves to be famous.  When I tell people about the book I find myself using the phrase, “It’s actually really good”.  I feel like I have to use the phrase “actually” because people who self publish often have mediocre skill and a poor story.  Sonja is a born writer and out of all her talents writing is her best.  I am a extremely critical reader (if you know me, you know this) and I legitimately enjoyed Sonja’s book which is a testament to her skill and gifting and not my bias as her husband.

In the spring we dusted off the old Toyota motorhome and began exploring the state parks nearby.  I finally convinced my dad to buy a trailer again and so my family started camping with us.  The Texas hill country is beautiful with it’s lakes and rivers and it’s been a joy to discover them and call them our own.  In California I was given a kayak by a friend and for Christmas of last year I got a paddle.  Less than a month later I sold the original kayak and bought a tandem for nearly the same price and began what would be my 2013 hobby.  Rivers and lakes oh my!  My dog India and I explored them all, even the places we were told not to go.  The Guadalupe was my only refuge this year and nearly every weekend for the first half of the year you could find me on some stretch of the river with a fluffy white dog as my first mate.

June brought an epic Guys Trip where we kayaked a flooded and dangerous Guadalupe and nearly lost a couple of our best mates.  It was scary and exhilarating and unforgettable.  There were many moments where we floating along the river which was brown with sediment and the trees were lush and green and overhanging the river and I felt like we had been transported to Southeast Asia or the Amazon.  Later that month my best friend married the love of his life and I had the honor of being his (V)Best Man.  His wedding brought into town all sorts of people from California we hadn’t seen for a long time.  It was a great time of reunions, hugs, and catch-up conversations.

In June I also tackled a massive project of putting up a privacy fence.  Being generally terrible at building anything I undertook 443 feet of pure misery.  My little brother, Trevor, helped me with most of it and it was a great bonding experience with him.  It was hot, complicated, and expensive but in the end I had a butt-ugly fence that I am proud to call my own.  Plus the deer were no longer able to eat my bell peppers.

We trudged through the hot summer months while most everyone went on vacation and fun trips.  One fun adventure we did on Labor Day was a trip to to the coast to go to a sailing school for the weekend.  It worked out we were able to stay in a sailboat for free while doing our classes which gave us the ultimate sailing experience.  As with any good adventure there always has to be something amiss.  The boat we stayed on hadn’t been sewage pumped for who knows how long so the whole thing literally smelled like an outhouse.  Not only that but it was moored 30 feet from a nightclub that thumped music into the wee hours of the morning.  All we could do was laugh and enjoy the moment.  We went not knowing a thing about sailing and returned confident that we could pilot a boat on our own if we had to.  There is something so powerful about slicing through the blue waves with a warm sun overhead, the wind as your motor.  We’ll be back to further our skill and get more time and practice under our belt.  I will continue my patient siege to convince Sonja that we need to sell our house and live on a sailboat.

We waited until September for our time off and flew out to California for a wedding marathon.  My other best friend Josh married his bride at which I was also honored to be a groomsman.  More reunions, hugs, and good talks.  A friend of Sonja’s got married up in the mountains and we were able to reconnect with so many people.

On our way out of town we were able to stop at Sonja’s parents gravesite for the first time since the burial and it was a somber and painful moment remembering all that we lost.

We made our way to  Mendocino at the bed and breakfast we stayed at on our honeymoon. We visited glass beach, ate good food and drank good wine.  I was able to fulfill a dream and explore the sea caves of Mendocino.  It was an incredible experience I won’t soon forget.  We stayed in Mendocino for a few days and then drove south to Anchor Bay where we had camped with our pups and motorhome a few years prior.  It was cold and rainy and wasn’t as fun as we remembered but we did drink coffee on the beach and enjoyed the serenity that is unique to the northern coast.

Soggy and cold we packed up and drove south again to Ocean Cove where we met up with all sorts of friendies from Sonora.  Our dear friends Natalie & Matt got married on a cliff overlooking the crashing surf and it was quite possibly the most beautiful wedding I have ever been to.  We drove through the night to make our flight back to Texas and arrived home exhausted but happy.

We were only home about 10 days before we took off again to Florida with my family.  We went 9 months without any real time off and then did 2 vacations almost back to back.  In Orlando we visited Universal Studios for 3 days and reveled in Harry Potter World, superhero roller coasters, and more butterbeer than you could shake a stick at.  It was a total blast and by the end I think we were all wiped.

I found a day to sneak away and drive about an hour north and rent a kayak for the day.  I paddled along a small river that, due to weather and tide, was unfortunately dyed brown like tea (or coffee if you prefer, but it looked more like tea).  The river twisted and wound and I got to see all manner of wildlife and birds.  Near the end I was still holding out for the famous Florida alligator and I finally found one!  As you can see he was a little guy and I actually paddled over to try and catch him but some people came around the corner at the last minute and I chickened out.

However, I was stoked to have seen one in the wild and that was good enough for me.

We said a brief farewell to my parents and Trev and they flew home while we drove south to Cape Coral to meet with Sonja’s uncle and cousins.  We spend a wonderful weekend at a gorgeous house visiting and relaxing with them.  We were also able to visit Sonja’s grandpa, her dad’s dad, who is very old and has alzheimers.  He was quiet but cute in that old man way.  Sadly, it was hard to tell if he was aware of what was going on around him.  His wife Ann made us an incredibly delicious and extravagant German meal and we ate ourselves sick.  As we were leaving an incredible moment happened when Sonja was giving Grandpa Joe a hug goodbye.  For a moment it looked  like the mental fog cleared for him and he held Sonja out at arms length and grabbed her face and said, “I love you”, and then kissed her on the cheek.  It was incredibly sweet and touching and we both walked away from that a little teary eyed and happy knowing that that might be the last time we ever see Grandpa Joe.

We got home refreshed and ready to get back into a routine again.  November proved to be a hellish month for us for a lot of reasons the main one being the 1-year anniversary of Sonja’s parents accident.  A bright spot in it was a visit from our dear friends, Alex and Doug, who were riding through on their motorcycles on a road trip promoting Alex’s vision for a non-profit coffee shop in Tanzania, see Zion Coffee.  I was able to buy a motorcycle and ride with them out West.  It was an amazing, painful, scary, and cold trip that I will never forget.  I was able to see the Grand Canyon for the first time as well as Zion National Park.  I broke my bike in as well as acquired skills on the road that would have taken me months, if not years to acquire through normal town riding.  I raced a brutal cold front home doing 1,200 miles in 2 days and returned home feeling like a champion.  My bike received about 3,000 more miles as well as some new dings and scratches but all in all we survived and I had an incredible time with two amazing guys with an incredible vision for community development in Tanzania. 

We held Thanksgiving at our house this year and before we knew it Christmas was upon us and now…New Years Eve.  We had a wonderful Christmas and were so blessed by my family with presents, thoughtfulness, and of course, food.  Now I am looking back over the year and ruminating on my thoughts.  We did a lot but I don’t feel like I really accomplished anything. My goals for 2013 were pretty laid back but I still somehow managed to fail almost all of them.

- Run A Marathon = Failed (Trained for the majority of the year and didn’t run.  Knee pain was too bad around mile 13 and I knew there was no way I could finish 26.2.  Very depressed, very upset)

- Go bowhunting for deer = Failed  ( I guess I expected to make more connections with people who had land to hunt on.  I practiced for the better part of this year in preparation and got my shot down pretty damn good but never went hunting.)

- Sell 100 purses/month for 3 months = Failed (Too depressing to go into.)

- Maintain Daily Discipline for 2 months solid = Ambiguous  (I set out a daily discipline to follow and while I did better than any year in the past I don’t think I did 2 months solid without missing a day.  However, I did add some good habits.)

-  Publish Sonja’s Book = Success!  (Yep!  One success!  Woohoo!  The year wasn’t a total waste)

I’ve consoled myself that this was a survival year.  It was a hunker down and get through it year that sucked so bad it was hard to look forward at times.   Looking back with my minds eye I see 2013 as a dark and foggy forest, something Tolkien would have written about yet with small bursts of light and color here and there.  The gnarled roots from old and cranky trees reach and trip.  The darkness feels like a smothering blanket that presses you into the cold dark earth.  Sure, there were moments of brevity and joy but they were only moments amidst of sea of doubt, depression, and pain.

I know there is no real difference between December 31st and January 1st but the point is that WE make it a delineation.  This year is over and we have a new one in front of us.  What are we going to aim at?  I always like to do two separate posts, one for a year in review and one for looking forward to the new year.  In the next week or so I will put together another post looking forward to 2014 and what I want to wring out of it.

All said and done I am glad this year is over.  I’ve decided to put all the negative energy, defeat, depression, and heaviness from this year into making 2014 such a stellar year that it makes it up for 2013.  Here’s to new beginnings!