Holy Crap!

I was having trouble getting videos loaded directly into my posts a month or so ago, so I decided to create an obscure YouTube account, upload a short video to it, then link to that video inside a blog post.

And it worked!

Except I discovered that unless the YouTube and Bogger accounts are linked, it's nearly imposible for a beginner like me to find my YouTube video from Blogger in order to link to it.

To resolve that problem I had to upload videos to my Google-linked YouTube account then my Google-linked Blogger account could find them.

I'm still playing around with the whole video thing and hope to include more of them in future blog posts.

All the above is to provide context for what comes next.

That tree on the far left was a scraggly, knee-high, sickly little stick that got stepped on a few times when we built this wellhouse.

Yesterday I went into the wellhouse to check on the water pressure. When I finished checking the gauge (it was fine which means I have 'sand' clogging up the kitchen faucet again) I turned and right there next to my shoulder, as in 12 inches away, was a good sized snake all coiled up on top of the filter-bracket.

I went back later and filmed this short video

and posted it. No links, no effort to get it seen, just uploaded. That was 24 hours ago.

The Holy Crap part is that in one day's time, one circuit of the (24 hour) clock, that 1 minute video has over 1400 views!

The vast majority of my blog posts, including those that have been sitting there cooking for 10 years, have less than 150 hits. (as I write this my latest post 'Signposts', has 29 hits after cooking for 3 days)

But I don't see myself switching over to that world anytime soon. I'm a crap videographer, haven't figured out how to edit those newfangled moving pictures at all, and have no interest in plastering my face all over the forever ether.

Signposts

OK, y'all can blame this one on Michael for encouraging me to expose some of my early writings that I stumbled across recently.

This one, which somehow seems mildly appropriate for kicking off my second 800 posts (this is published post number 801), comes from a time when I had a failed marriage behind me, was settling into my second marriage attempt, was working a comfortably straightforward technical job, just right for people with brains that work like mine does, and had enough time, probably for the first time ever, to contemplate who I was and where I was going.

Between Michigan visits and work I was also on the road a lot. And for me road trips mean a lot of wandering off of the main routes. In addition to those between Texas and Michigan, I've driven every posible route between Houston and OKC, Lafayette or Port Fourchon LA, and several to Denver and Midland, and all this before GPS and Google Maps.

Driving and hiking are two times when my mind tends to open up and explore the inner and outer universe. And in the days before cell phones I used to carry a little digital recorder on the seat beside me to capture some of these, at times frustratingly elusive, thoughts.

What follows is the result of some of those inward musings on one particular trip, written on the fly - or more accurately, on the drive.

But be forewarned, at the time I wrote this many decades ago it felt pretty profound - now, not so much.

Signposts

I’m traveling an unknown road through a first time town.

My eyes dart constantly, seeking the signposts that will guide my way.
But it occurs to me that the most important signposts can only be found by looking within.

Lose myself in town, end up on Elm Street when I want to be on Main, and it's a simple matter of going around the next block, or the next, until I find the way again.
But lose my way in life and I run the risk of never getting back to where I want to be.

Every day spent traveling the wrong direction takes me past trails and turnings that I will never be able to return to.
Yet those inner signposts can be infinitely more difficult to decipher than the worst of the worst city streets.

It’s far too simple to convert other’s expectations into my own requirements.
Far too easy to travel a false path to a place not sought.
I must learn how to construct and follow the proper signposts.

My own signposts.

Just this simple realization brings a quiet peace.

Maybe I'm not as lost as I feared.

Though now, distracted by these musings, I find myself at a stoplight on 4th Avenue with a Walgreens on one side and a McDonalds on the other, and I don’t think that’s where I'm supposed to be!

Regrets

Had a visit from an old acquaintance last night when I wasn't quite sleeping.

As always, unbidden, uninvited, but not unexpected.

My unwanted nocturnal visitor?

Remorse, contrition, mortification, chagrin - call it what you will - once again it was standing there in front of me wrapped in a sturdy coat of regret with highlights of shame. (For some reason it’s an old-fashioned oiled canvas duster. I don’t know why.)

You see, one dark night in the early 70’s, when I was still a boy playing grownup, and not doing a very good job of it either, the headlights of my car briefly picked out a solitary hitchhiker on the shoulder. In that split second of bad decisions and malice I jinked the car towards that nameless - blameless - traveler enough to make him leap from shoulder to ditch as I passed on by.

I laughed - one short bark - before the import of what I had just done clamped its clammy hand over my mouth and shoved the remains of that laugh back down my throat.

I have no idea why I did it, and I’m sure that startled wanderer has long since forgotten the incident - just one more asshole in a world full of assholes - but for me it’s another eternal arrow in my quiver of regrets that continues to haunt me 50+ years later.

If anything good came of that night it’s the realization that the shine of good deeds fades fast.  The gleam begins to dull as soon as the next vehicle goes by kicking up the first of many layers of time’s dust. But no amount of Clorox can completely remove the stain of regret, no amount of time will eliminate the shame from the comet-trail of a life. So I strive to keep my trajectory as clean and stain-free as possible, because I know there’s a cost to those stains.

Freeze!

 It's OK

             It's OK

As long as I don't move I'm invisible.

            Freeeeze

                              Hooold it

                                            Holllld

                                      

Awww Damnit!

                                 I blinked!