Something Out of Nothing

I spent the day trying to let go of that idea. I am here now and it’s good enough, in fact, it’s better than good. I’m happy. I have several new clients and a few more prospective projects on the back burner. A new 9-5 might make me just as happy, definitely more secure but it also runs the risk of me falling into the same old traps.

I’m working on changing my expectations of myself — I’m aware of them now and I’m trying to let them go. They are a remnant of the past, a remnant of what I think society expects from me. Most everyone I’ve talked to, family and friends, agree that I’m on the right path, they see how much happier I am.

If I had to summarize the mental shift it would be this:

“I am no longer unemployed. I am SELF-employed.”

It’s not a consolation reframe; it’s an accurate description of reality. The identity lag between external circumstance (Two Bit Consulting is real) and internal self-concept (still running on employee firmware) is closing.

I think part of why I have a hard time letting go is fear: fear of failure, fear of losing something I created, fear that it won’t be enough to support us. Fear of success. If this does work, I have to sustain it, I’m responsible for keeping it going. I have to keep the business coming in. The fear of losing Two Bit feels categorically scarier than losing my former job — more personal, more exposed, even more like a referendum on who I am. But working through the actual comparison: I loved my job for twenty years while carrying the background risk of losing it, no job is ever 100% secure, especially in this economy, and it was fine. I had outgrown my previous role in many ways, even if I couldn’t admit it at the time. The risk was always there, it just had an institution absorbing it.

The fear now isn’t bigger. It just feels more exposed because there’s no institution absorbing it. But the underlying condition is the same: do work you care about, carry the risk, do it anyway. And the upside is actually better now. More control, more creativity, more room to grow, more freedom, more alignment between the work and the person doing it. The possibility of success makes the risk worth it — I’m choosing the path that feels right for me now. I am ready to move on and embrace the risks and rewards of forging my own path.

The world is my oyster. Even if I don’t really like shellfish.

We went to see Paul Simon last night. He’s 84 and likely on his last tour. I can’t adequately describe the show — epic, beautiful, career-spanning, emotional. I’m still singing songs from it in my head.
That’s part of what I love about live music: a brief escape from daily life, a connection to thousands of strangers feeling the same thing at once. I’ve listened to Paul Simon my whole life — Simon and Garfunkel, his solo work, all of it part of my soul.

The show was quiet in places, his voice strong but a little wavery. A full two-and-a-half-hour set with a short intermission. The first half covered the entirety of his latest album, “Seven Psalms,” a quietly questioning album, most likely his last. It’s beautiful, poetic, and seemingly a sort of exploration of life from someone who’s lived one. It’s different than a lot of his other work, but definitely worth a listen. The second half was a career-spanning set — he opened with “Graceland”, performed many hits, crowd favorites, and his personal favorites, whether they were hits or not. His wife, the wonderful Edie Brickell, joined him for several songs. I loved her work with the New Bohemians and her solo records, and seeing them perform together was something else entirely. He closed his second encore with “The Sounds of Silence” — performed alone on stage, just him and his guitar. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. We gave him several standing ovations, all of them earned.

We almost missed the show. I somehow had the date wrong on my calendar. We’d just settled on the couch after dinner, debating what to watch, when I came across a Reddit post asking about traffic heading to Starlight Theatre considering the FIFA crowds heading towards the nearby Arrowhead Stadium. “Wait — tonight?!” I thought. I checked our digital tickets. Sure enough, the show started in just under two hours. I told Maura, we changed clothes, put on our shoes, took the dogs out for one final potty break, and drove the fifteen minutes to nearby Starlight. If I hadn’t seen that post, we’d have missed it entirely — and we would have been devastated.

During the short intermission, we decided to stay in our seats rather than fight the crowds heading towards refreshments and bathrooms. While we sat talking, a bird took aim and fired — it missed my head, but the blob landed squarely on my leg. I’d been sneezing earlier, so I had a tissue handy and wiped most of it off, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the precision it must take to hit one person in a crowd that size — windspeed, trajectory, all of it. I’ve heard that it’s good luck to get pooped on by a bird, the odds being what they are. Hey, I’ll take it.

Paul Simon has been a staple in so many homes across the country, over the decades. He is beloved by all and that showed, the audience was rapt, even when we sang along it was at a respectful sound level and the applause was truly genuine — you could feel the love flowing up to the stage.

I have always been an early riser. Once I’m up, I’m up — no need for caffeine, my brain just starts running. I used to read, find stuff to do around the house, or catch up on the news, but the last few years I like to walk in the early pre-sunrise morning with our two dogs, Rosie and Gus. I first started walking in the dark in college when I joined the new Student Security work-study program. We would walk the campus in the wee hours to make sure nothing untoward was happening, we didn’t have any real authority, but we had a walkie-talkie to contact Security in case anything came up. I never encountered anything more than students wandering back to their dorms from a party or late-night study session. But I learned to love the campus in a whole new way. Most of the time, no one else was around, I had the whole place to myself and it seemed much more contained somehow. Things look different when there’s less light shining — colors are muted, shadows are extended — and the quiet — so peaceful, almost meditative. I still enjoy that particular quiet that only exists before the rest of the world wakes up.

These days, Rosie and Gus always go with me, they live the routine as much as, if not more than, I do. Rosie is almost always her full-speed-ahead somewhat oblivious self, but Gus is so attentive on our walks. He’s constantly looking back at me to check on me, especially if it’s been raining and there are mud puddles around. He makes sure I’m aware of them and guides me around them.

I often have the best ideas on my walks. I’ll sometimes listen to audiobooks or podcasts — some days, my brain won’t shut up and I end up pausing whatever I was listening to, and then my brain shuts up. As soon as I turn it back on, my thoughts continue. Stupid brain.

The three of us have gotten to know our neighborhood in a new way, walking around that early. As it was in college, everything is quieter, more serene, the temperature is usually still tolerable, and the world feels closer somehow, less expansive and overwhelming. Occasionally there are days that I don’t feel like getting out that early, but the dogs insist and every time I’m glad they did. The only thing that keeps us from going is heavy rain or extreme temperatures. When that happens we all have a little less energy for the rest of the day.

For the last five months, since leaving a twenty-year career, I’ve been walking in the dark — moving toward an uncertain future. While I’m trying to make plans for the future, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. And yet, I keep getting out there, walking in the dark, choosing a direction to go that day and moving forward. Where do I go next? Wherever we end up, I know Rosie and Gus will be my guides; Gus making sure I don’t fall and Rosie racing forward with that ambitious energy.

Maura and I had a wonderful twentieth anniversary day in town this year - we both have a lot going on so we decided to delay any travel until things calm down a bit. We played hooky yesterday, taking the streetcar to the River Market to wander around. Our primary destination was one of our favorite places in the city - https://rivermarketantiquemall.com. Sometimes we don’t find anything we can’t live without, but yesterday we both found several potential treasures to bring home. We both decided on something from the same cabinet. She fell in love with a couple of Russian ceramic pieces, both of them a man and a woman wearing brightly colored clothes and holding little dogs. They reminded her of pieces we’ve seen at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. She had a hard time deciding on one couple so I told her to get both; she didn’t argue. I found four little books by one of my favorite artists, Peter Max and Swami Sivananda. Published in 1970 by William Morrow & Co., Inc. They are simply beautiful books with writing by Sivananda on one side and a complimentary Max illustration on the other. Here are the covers:

The book called “Thought” is my favorite. Maura and I had a little happy hour in the River Market at Brown and Loe and while we were waiting on our drinks and appetizer (the Baked Pimento Cheese — OMG), we both read though a couple of the books and I found myself getting chills and tearing up a little. These books, written in 1970, feel so timely right now considering everything going on in the world and in my life. It felt like the Universe giving me a gift. Here are a couple passages and the accompanying image:

Thoughts are bricks with which character is built. Character is not born. It is formed. Man’s thoughts are the architects of his circumstances.

Whatever you think is a boomerang. If you hate another, hate will come back to you. If you love others, love will come back to you. Therefore, understand the laws of thought. Raise only thought of mercy, love and kindness from your mind and be happy always.

I’ve been a fan of Peter Max’s psychedelic art for years. I fell in love with him when I first laid eyes on some posters my dad had hanging in his office at the music store he owned, the Music Box, in NKC, MO. I would spend hours contemplating his artwork. I definitely had favorites. The posters were from a poster book he produced in 1970 both in a softbound version and a limited edition, signed hardbound edition. My dad had removed many of them and hung them in the main office of the store, among other more crass, Xerox copied, cartoons that initially confused me (were they meant to be funny?) When I went away to college, after the store had shuttered, he gave me the posters, remembering how much I liked looking at them. I, of course, plastered my dorm room with them. I think I still have some of them, but they aren’t in very good shape at this point. I would love to find a copy of the poster book in good shape! I’m not sure what spoke to me in the illustrations initially, I loved the colors, the patterns, and the otherworldliness of them. My favorite, by far, was Cosmic Window:

The piece draws you in immediately; I love the sense of looking into another world, of escape, of a mystical world, ripe for exploration.

I didn’t even know these little meditative books existed, and yet, on the day we decided to skip out on our responsibilities and spend some quality time together, there they were, just waiting to be discovered. I’ve spent the last several months reinventing myself, exploring who I think I am versus who I want to be and working on the discrepancies. I’ve been realigning the course of my life. Some days it takes more effort than others; it feels like a giant ocean tanker with a wide steering radius. Other days feel easy and perfectly aligned with the Universe like the day Maura and I had together, several wonderful things happened that just continued to make our day. A woman at Brown and Loe came inside from the patio and just had to stop to tell us that she LOVED our style in a very genuine, humorous, self effacing way. It was nice to hear and kind of adorable. After we finished our dinner, the waitress brought us a small gift — a bottle of wine to take home with words and hearts written all over it to celebrate our anniversary. One more quote from Sivananda and occupying Max image, from the book “Love”:

There is no virtue higher than love; there is no treasure higher than love; there is no knowledge higher than love; there is no religion higher than love; there is no truth higher than love. My dear child of love, tread the path of love. This is your highest duty. You have taken this body to achieve love, which alone is the goal of life.

I know these aren’t new ideas, but we could really use them right now. There’s something meaningful about finding these books and holding them right now. T They are beautiful reminders from an artist who shaped how I see the world — words written fifty years ago that feel written specifically for right now. Maybe that’s what the Universe does when you’re paying attention.

What if consciousness didn’t originate with human awareness? What if it was always out there, in the Universe, and our evolution allowed us to receive it, to connect with it? Consciousness happens at the nexus of human awareness and the Universe.

I don’t know that this is true, but I find it to be a fascinating and beautiful idea and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

Recently, I had a quick chat with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. After catching up on life, we started talking about this topic, which just happened to coincide with some of my recent thoughts. We’ve talked about deep ideas before, we both enjoy exploring ideas that might be considered a bit “out there” He knew I was open to it and love to talk about things like this but him bringing it up, when I had been doing my own exploration into these ideas felt meaningful and somehow fated to be — the Universe pushing us to explore further. The idea that our consciousness, our ideas and thoughts about ourselves are both bigger AND smaller than us is interesting to contemplate. I was a Philosophy major, and for good reason — I love to explore interesting ideas like this. The theory is that consciousness comes from outside from an external quantum field and our brains have evolved in such a way that we can recognize it and interact with it. We assume that it’s our own, that it comes from within our own minds. In reality, it’s both, existence comes from the external field and our brain’s interaction with it, and our interpretation of it.

I’ve always been a deep thinker (some might say over thinker). I like following the threads of topics that interest me and this one has come up in several different contexts lately, most recently when catching up with a good friend. I haven’t had the capacity to do this kind of mental exploration for a while; I was too busy managing systems and people (which I also enjoy) and solving more immediate problems. I enjoy having the luxury of sitting with ideas and questions that don’t necessarily have answers, that fascinate me for exactly that reason, they are unanswerable. I appreciate having the time and mental energy to sit with deeper, unsettled, sometimes unsettling questions again.

I do believe there’s an efficiency and elegance to our evolution, all of life’s evolution. As weird and messy as it can be in the short term, over the eons it somehow finds the best, most efficient way to exist in the world. Our brains are powerful information processors — a four pound lump of meat, astonishingly energy efficient, better than any computer we’ve built. Maybe that efficiency isn’t just clever biology. Maybe we’re not generating consciousness so much as tuning into it.

After the conversation yesterday, I brought up the topic with AI to help me process my thoughts on it a little further and it came up with a great quote towards the end of the conversation:

“We are talking about the nature of thought because, in a very real way, the universe is using both of us right now to try and understand itself.”

I don’t know if that’s true — it’s a grand anthropomorphism — but it’s a beautiful idea, and and the conversation with my friend felt like evidence of it. I’ve missed having the time and energy for this kind of thinking, exploration, and discovery. I’m learning to trust the Universe again, and to allow things to unfold as they will.

I went to the End of Semester Shows at KCAI last Friday, where the students have the opportunity to show what they’ve been working on all year and sell their art if they choose. It’s a fun event and, in my opinion, the culmination of everything that I did at KCAI — it’s one of the main reasons I worked there to facilitate the students’ creative endeavors. It’s also a great opportunity to not only support the students, but to score some affordable art from up and coming artists. We have a lot of KCAI alumni work in our house. In fact, every year for the past nineteen years, I’ve purchased my wife, Maura a piece of student artwork that reflects the anniversary gift for that year — our anniversary is at the end of May. It’s hard to believe that it’ll be twenty years in a couple of weeks!

I got to campus a little early and the buildings weren’t open yet. I instinctively reached for my ID to swipe so I could enter one of the buildings and realized that I no longer had access. I knew going to campus for the first time since my last day, now almost four months ago, would be tough. It was nice to see all the work and the students, staff, and faculty that night, but it was even harder than I expected. I was walking around realizing that I didn’t belong there anymore; I was no longer a part of the community. It took a lot of effort to keep going and not just walk back to my car to drive home. I’m glad I went, the shows were great and I faced the challenge and the next time I went back wouldn’t be as bad.

Last night there was a celebration/retirement party for Cary Esser, Ceramics faculty member for thirty years, alumnus, and chair of the department for many years. There were many faculty, staff, and former faulty and staff there to celebrate her — it was so great to see everyone. So many hugs, handshakes, wonderful comments, and promises to grab lunch/drinks soon. As I was chatting with folks, I realized that I do still belong. It’s not the place, it’s the community and I am still very much a part of it. Not in the same way, I don’t see most of those people as often as I used to, but I am still part of the wonderful Kansas City arts community. I drove home from KCAI tonight feeling lighter, even happier than I have been the last couple of months. I came home with something better than art — a renewed sense of belonging.

Maura and I went to see David Byrne last night at Starlight Theater for the fourth time — it was an amazing show, again. I’ve loved him since his Talking Heads days — ‘77 was my first album — I followed him when he started his solo career — I’ve loved his collaborations with other talented artists and musicians. He makes the mundane profound. My heart soared last night as we listened to each song — I was singing along and cheering the whole time. Because I am on a sort of sabbatical, I didn’t have the stress of the day to wash away, I was able to take in the music, the visuals, the crowd so much better. Live music is very much an escape from reality, a mini vacation, but it was less that for me yesterday, it was a different experience — I was much more present. I tend to get emotional at shows, but last night I was tearing up from the sheer joy of seeing David and his band celebrating life through music — they put themselves out there for the world to see. That kind of joy is contagious.

In high school I hung out with the geeks — misfits who were smart enough to be nerds, but most of us lacked the motivation. The one exception, a friend in physics class, was coding a fractal program on the one classroom computer while the rest of us suffered through the bad magic tricks and ukulele playing of a teacher desperate to keep our attention. He, myself, and another outcast friend were simply weird. We had similar senses of humor, quoting Monty Python and coming up with our own characters that would have been right at home on the show, often to very confused more mainstream classmates. We were all in band together where we were tolerated for our musical talents — I played tuba and sousaphone. I remember scratching off selected letters from a book we were reading in an English class “Giants in the Earth” by Ole Edvart Rølvaag to leave behind the revised title “ants in the Ear.” That one caught on with the whole class, much to the disappointment and frustration of the teacher.

We were smart, bored, and didn’t really fit in anywhere. I don’t even remember how the “cult” got started, but we decided to create something for ourselves, a group where we did belong. We called it the Silver Death Cult, probably because it sounded both mysterious and slightly frightening. There were two rules for entry into the organization:

• You had to stand on a young thistle plant (or devil weed as we called them — we HATED encountering them when mowing the lawn) for ten minutes without moving or flinching.

• You had to acquire an “I AM LOVED” button from a local Kansas City jewelry store without being seen by a sales person, take it to school and scrape off the paint to reveal the silver surface beneath during class time. Then wear the button as your badge of honor.

We three were the only members as our efforts to recruit were met with confusion and revulsion. Looking back now, maybe that was the point of the requirements — we created something for us and only us — to keep the world out and a place where we belonged. If you remember us, you probably remember us wrong. We were stranger than you knew, and prouder of it than we let on.

Before anyone asks, I do still have that button, so many years later. Maybe I should start wearing it again. I think I’ll skip the thistle standing now though.

I wrote a poem to commemorate this story

I love building with Lego. I have for most of my life. But I have a somewhat complicated relationship with Lego.

Growing up, my favorite set was the Lego Expert Builder Power Truck (set 8848 — thank you internet!) with a working steering wheel and truck bed which you could lift with a lever inside the cab. I would build it over and over, carefully following the instructions. I would also frequently take it apart to make things from my imagination. I remember well the flying ships with jets and lasers — sadly, I have no photos of these.

The strongest memory I have, sadly, is the time my dad came into my room, raging about something my brother and I did — I don’t remember what, just kids being kids — and threw me and the Legos I was playing with across the room, they scattered all over the room and the well designed box with compartments for each type of part was destroyed. I was shocked and hurt — both physically and emotionally. I was heartbroken and horrified for what had happened to my latest creation and for the box.

Jump forward a few years to just after my first marriage ended. I went a little crazy with the Lego Bionicles sets that had just been released. I probably should have been focusing on putting my life back together, but maybe that’s exactly what I was doing. I had lost myself in that marriage — I became someone who I didn’t recognize and wasn’t happy with. I gave up too much of myself. Building those ridiculous robots gave me something I could control, something I could build with my hands that worked exactly the way they were supposed to. Piece by piece. I was rebuilding something. It wasn’t just the Legos.

These days, I love building all sorts of sets and I love to display the sets I’ve collected and built. Maura and I also like to go to the used brick stores in town to buy bulk bricks — I like to build abstract sculptures and strange looking iPhone stands with them. I love the place it takes me, both when I’m following the step by step instructions, and when I’m free building the sculptures. Sometimes I get a little impatient when building by instructions, I’m anxious to get to the next step and anxious to see the finished product. When I’m free building I go into that other place, tapping into my creativity like the kid who built those weird little spaceships. It’s a fun place to escape to for a while.

Lego has become something new — not just an escape, but a way to connect. Maura and I build together, sometimes following instructions, sometimes just seeing what emerges from a pile of bricks. We’ve even had building sessions with friends. There’s something that happens when adults sit down and play with Lego — the potential awkwardness of adults playing with childish things together falls away and you meet each other at a different level. Childlike, unhurried, creative. It turns out that’s a pretty good place to connect from.

Lego has been there for me at some major turning points in my life. After my dad’s rage. After my first marriage ended. During the harder stretches of a long career. There’s something about the act of making something — anything — that reminds me that things can be put back together. And the shared joy of building, connecting — literally — over building blocks, is a wonderful place to be.

You don’t always need the instructions. You just need the bricks.

My wife Maura and I recently went to visit a good friend in a nearby town, about 45 minutes away. As we drove out of our neighborhood, she commented on a house that’s being built. She said, “Moving right along”, which triggered a song in my head “Moving Right Along” by Kermit and Fozzy of The Muppets. Since we were on the road, I thought it would be a great time to listen to the original Muppet Move Soundtrack. It’s such a great, upbeat and positive soundtrack and I love every bit of it.

I know this will date me, but I remember watching that movie in the theater when I was a kid and just feeling so inspired and empowered, especially when the giant Animal emergesfrom the building in the background to save the day. As silly as the Muppet Movie was, it had a pure spirit, a powerful message about following your dreams and the perpetual fight against those that want to keep us down. I remember walking out of the theater feeling 100 feet tall (like Animal was!) Even now when I hear the music or watch the movie it brings me right back to those feelings.

Those feelings were reawakened in high school when one of my English teachers introduced me to Joseph Campbell. I internalized his idea of “follow your bliss” — essentially, if you do what makes you truly happy, things will work out. I don’t know how much I believe in fate or destiny, but sometimes the Universe sends unmistakable messages. Two Bit Consulting is growing at a good pace. Good things are in motion. I feel more centered and excited for the future than I have in a long time. Hearing Maura say those words, having it trigger that song and the feelings and memories that came with it felt like the Universe confirming the momentum. I’m moving right along.