The Genius in Us All

I read an article this morning that warned that the tech bubble was about to burst again. It spoke of billion dollar valuations and unicorn companies and a bunch of other things that I found interesting. I’m a fan of innovation and creativity. Makers of things and dreamers of big dreams drive my sense of what can be and help me to dream my own dreams. Now how many of these “unicorn” companies are actually making a difference remains to be seen. From what I read, they aren’t actually producing any profits for their investors but are fixated on expanding their reach…for their products…that aren’t actual products…that don’t actually do anything to make anything better <insert bursting sound here>.

There is a saying that goes “iron sharpens iron.” To me it means that one person enhances another with their interactions. Hopefully it’s in a positive way. Someone told me that people want to matter.  That gave me a moment to pause and contemplate the significance of that statement. I think I understand it on the surface but when I boil it down I realize that I want to matter, you want to matter. We all are looking for the same things. We all ask ourselves the same questions about why we are here and what my purpose is. We find the answers to those questions by our interactions with one another. We sharpen one another by the sharing of information and experience. The true answers to those questions are answered in working with others toward some common good or reaching a shared goal.

I run into people every single day that have no idea how a lot of the gadgets in their homes work. They have no idea how you type it on the screen and the screen answers back. I met a young man in his early 20’s that had no idea how to change the SSID or password for his router. I was thunderstruck. In this day and age, I would expect him to be schooling me. I’ve seen that particular scenario repeated over and over again during the course of my day. In my dreams I think mankind should be pushing out into space but most of the people in my experience can’t perform the simplest of functions on their own computers. We’re not going to get to Mars like that. The solution to me is pretty straight forward. Educate one person, then another, and another. The hope being is that at some point in your exercise in self replication will take on exponential growth…iron sharpening iron.

It’s the small stuff that really matter. I lose sight of that when I’m dreaming my big dreams. Dreams and ideas stay exactly that until you start to actuate them…when you start to move toward what you want. One person at a time is greater than zero; every time.  My goal for the week is to teach one person one thing. Simple. Doesn’t matter what it is just as long as it happens daily. Building on the small blocks makes the larger forms and with larger forms come larger dreams. More and more people getting in the mix to work the impossible. That’s how we will grow as a species. That’s how we get to Mars…it’s how the big dreams become the future.

“Just keep swimming” – Dory

FIN

Ghosts

I saw a ghost yesterday. A no shit, full body apparition on a job I was working on in a two bedroom apartment in a run-down apartment complex. I was there installing internet service for a very nice Hispanic lady that was doing English to Spanish translations for her cousin who was my actually customer. It was small; two bedrooms one bathroom, maybe 800 square feet. It was full too. Most of the rooms were stacked floor to ceiling, in some places, with things. There were all sorts of things; kid things, adult things, shoes, and junk. I marveled at the mad collection of items that someone thought were important. There was no judgment from me...just a kind of silent awe and wonder at the scene that was lay before me.

I managed to sift through the mass that was most likely a child’s bedroom. If the art and the pictures on the wall were any indicator her name was Estelle and she was probably seven. She had all the usually things I would expect to see in a seven year old girls room…frozen, Disney princesses, and other things of that nature. There was also a 48 inch flat screen complete with Xbox. A sub-woofer, a sound bar, and a hodge-podge of other things that one might associate with a teenage boy or a young man that hasn’t completely come to grips with the fact that he has a wife and children and that his childhood has left him; but I digress…

We were asked by our interpreter if it would be possible to install three video boxes. Yes, three...In a eight hundred square foot apartment with three large televisions. Of course my partner tells her. He wants the upgrade points that would go with such a sale. I’m leaning the other way because I’ve had my fill of this place. It’s hot, I’m sweating and I’m terrified I’m going to knock something over and the whole shithouse is going to come down on top of my head. It’s his call so we decide to run an outlet over the pile of stuff on the bed and through the wall into the closet of the nice woman with all the tattoos who I have previous referred to as our interpreter (yes she lived there as well).

She lets me into her bedroom so I can drill the hole through the drywall…well look at that…a baby. There’s a two-ish year old baby asleep on the bed in a diaper and a t-shirt. She never missed a beat. She opens the closet moves all her shoes out of the way and leaves. So there I am with a Dewalt hammer drill, bell hanger bit, and a confused look on my face. I sure don’t want to wake the baby…I have a baby...I’d knock a guy in the head for waking her up…but there is work to do so I press forward. I slowly, so very slowly press the bit to the drywall and give the trigger the gentlest of pulls. The motor quietly comes to life as I push the button just enough to make the gears turn and for the bit to start cutting…I slowly and very quietly push the bit through the drywall.

It’s hot…why is it so hot? I pull the drill bit from the wall and stand. Out of the corner of my eye I see my partner come up along side of me. He probably needs to see how I’m doing…I turned and moved my lips to speak…”shhh…the baby...” but it isn’t him. I’m looking eye to eye with a brown skin manned with white hair, brown coveralls and a white shirt…his eyes are big and brown like saucer plates…My heart hammered in my chest for two beats and then he was just gone. “I saw you,” I said out loud…”I saw you sir.” The baby never made a sound.

The last job I worked on this afternoon was at a retirement facility. We moved some equipment for a nice lady that was living there and had just moved to another room. Her daughter was very kind to us and went out of her way to make sure that we were able to work with as much ease as possible. That’s something you’re always thankful for in my line of work. Our nice lady was at a celebration that had lots of food and music and all the things that one would expect at such an event. She joined us as we were wrapping up. I covered the usually bullets to make sure that they had what they needed and everyone knew how to work the equipment. As we started to leave, this wonderful old lady starts to tell us about how she raised three kids all by herself and….”oh mamma…you guys better get out of here before she gets going.” We left. I was disappointed. I love a good story. We found our way out…moving silently past people in wheel chairs, people in seats, people looking out windows into nothing. Head down eyes down I kept saying in my head as I walked trying not to make eye contact…until finally we were out the door.

We sat in the van closing out the job. A tall older man starts to make his way toward the van. I cringed inside as telco people do when someone walks up to them randomly…some question forming on their lips; it never ends well. “I know you guys are busy but I was wondering if I might ask a favor…” here it comes “my mother-in-law is in the dementia ward and has pulled all the cable out of her equipment. She’s done quite a job and I can’t figure out how to put it all back together.” I can feel my partner’s eyes burning into me…”of course,” I said. I follow the man back into the facility and into his mother’s room.  She sat there, looking perfectly normal…talking with her daughter-in-law, not even throwing a glance my way. I quickly get things back together. I show him how it all goes just in case something like this happens again (I get the feeling it happens all the time). He thanks me profusely on the way out and tries to press a twenty dollar bill into my hand…”no sir, I can’t take that…it’s not a good deed if you pay me for it.” He starts to insist but I shake my head, shake his hand and tell him “it’s going to be ok.” He smiled a weary smile at me, thanked me again and went back to his mother.

I am reminded again of the shortness of this life. It is precious and not to be spent frivolously. The foundation of my faith is built on the teachings of a man from Galilee…and Nazarene as the story goes. Someone that taught that it was better to give then to receive and that I should treat my neighbor as I would myself. Simple stuff really. Unfortunately I don’t live those teachings every day. I try. Some days I get it right and some days I don’t. I move in a world that gives me access to people at their most personal…their most vulnerable. I see them at the beginning of their lives, the middle, the end, and sometimes the after. I see the towers they build for themselves, the things they acquire, and the loneliness those things bring.

My sweet nurse told me one time that when you put the blue gown on, everyone is the same. It doesn’t matter who you are or who you were. The blue gown doesn’t care if you’re rich, poor, or some place in the middle. The blue gown is the last thing you wear when you take your last breath. It just doesn’t care, it’s blue and it’s just for you. Stuff doesn’t matter. People matter. Be good to one another and live well.

(the story about the ghost is true just in case you were wondering)

FIN

Man I Am

My wife told me once that men need to be around other men. She said this somewhere in the early days of our marriage when I thought I knew most everything about most everything. The ironic thing was that she actually did understand quite a lot about men even back in those days. To make matters worse, I actually understood that too but at that point in my life had no idea how to make any changes that would enable me to have new male friends. It wasn’t always that way though…

I served in the US Marines from 1984 to 1988. I was a 1371 which is a Combat Engineer. I spent a couple years on Okinawa and a couple at Camp Pendleton. It was peace time. I got to travel some but I didn’t go slay bodies or spend any time under fire. Like many young men I served, I did my time, and I got out. The reason I mention it is because the Marines have a culture of brotherhood and the men that you serve with can become closer to you than your natural born family.

It’s a culture of adversity you see. Its foundation is built on the idea that, “yea this sucks ass but we’re going to get through it together.” It means that you won’t let me quit when I want to. It means that I’d be too ashamed to quit. It means that I got your back and you got mine no matter how terrible things become. Men don’t fight wars for flags, or countries, or ideals for the most part. You fight for the guy on your right and the guy on your left.  Those are the guys that you are going to keep alive so they keep you alive. If you ask a Marine what he misses about the Corp when he leaves, he will tell you “the camaraderie.” Pretty simple stuff so far?

Men can have a hard time forming new bonds even under the best of conditions. It only gets more difficult as you get older. As we age, we have a habit of lapsing into a cycle of laziness and cynicism. We no longer look at ourselves as being worth knowing. We forget about the things that use to drive us or that we had passion for. We can and do slip into obscurity and die quietly (hopefully with a long suffering wife that has put up with our cranky asses).

My wife became my best friend and as time went on, my only friend. Now if you’re a lady reading this you might be thinking “well that’s right, you should be best friends with your wife,” and on some level you’re right. However there is a difference between being friends with your wife and having a bud that you trust. I am not of the mind that I need to know absolutely everything about my wife or vice versa. She needs to have her own thoughts that have nothing to do with me and I need to have separate thoughts that don’t have her at their center. Now don’t misunderstand what I said. My wife and I know each other so well we don’t even have to talk some times. I can hear her thoughts in my head and I know she can hear me as well. So we are connected on a very deep level. We are of one mind and one purpose. We are dedicated to one another in a way that keeps two people together over the course of a life…but even on that level, a man needs to be around other men.

When I make that statement the first thing that comes to my mind is that we need each other so we know how to act. I know that sounds strange but I believe that one of the reasons the men of this generation have such a hard time with their identifies is that they don’t have strong men around them to teach them what is and is not acceptable and appropriate. We need to make fun of each other, to be encouraging, and to talk with. There aren’t too many things I won’t discuss with the wife but I don’t want her to see me be unsure or weak. A good male friend is someone that you can show that side to. Sure, he may tease you a little…call you a puss or tell you to man the fuck up but he won’t let you go off the grid. He will hold you to whatever standards exist between you. If you’re lucky enough to be in a strong group of friends you’re even better off. That’s what a platoon of Marines can be like. It’s tough…mean at times but you know where you stand. There is no ambiguity.

I haven’t had that in a long time. I recently took a new job that put me in a training environment that was so much like the Marines it made my head spin. We started off as a class of fourteen. Over the course of six weeks we lost a couple guys and ended it up with twelve. It was a tight group. We were united by the adversity of the situation. Endlessly being told how precarious our situation was gets on your nerves (i.e., “there are fifteen behind you to take your place if you don’t like it”). For some, they were learning things they had never seen before and had a hard time getting their heads around. We helped each other. We encouraged. We taught. We also cussed, farted, called each other gay, and farted some more. It was like a gang of ten year old boys. It was glorious. I made some new friends and I felt good about a lot of things.

Yes, men need other men. I think if we could find a way back to having more masculine culture things would be better. Men of character and men of substance hold each other to high standards. They don’t lie, they don’t step on others for their own benefit, they treat woman with love and passion, they teach their children right and wrong, protect the weak, and fight back to back for the good of all.

Thank you my new friends for helping me remember.

FIN

Thinking Out Loud In a Public Space

I’m not sure how cheery this will be so if you’re looking for something uplifting, this may not be the place to be….you’ve been warned. I did a phone install in a very lovely home for a very nice man on Friday. I thought it was a large house for one person so I assumed he had a wife and probably a family. Turns out we were there for his 94 year old father who lived in the house alone and whose wife had died a month earlier. They were married for 66 years. If that doesn’t stop you in your tracks right there, then you probably have no soul.

I didn’t see the father at first. He wasn’t anywhere near where I was working. He being 94 I assumed he was doing whatever 94 year old men do. I thought about how tragic it was that he had lost his bride of over six decades and imagined how I would feel if I lost my wife. I tried not to focus on it too much. I had work to do and if I got too vested in this emotionally, I would never get done.

I had to run a phone-jack through the closet to the outside. The son was nice enough to move a bunch of stuff around so as to make my life a little easier. I always appreciate even the smallest courtesy. While I was in there I started to look around; always a big mistake in my line of work. The closet was filled with clothes and shoes that belonged to a woman that no longer needed them. Most of the shoes were covered in dust suggesting that it had been a good long time since anyone had put them on. There were endless bits of a life stacked in boxes and shelves that had yet to be processed by someone that cared about them. You could feel the sadness in the air. It was heavy and thick. I tried to stay focused on the task at hand.

I finished running my wire and setting up my equipment. I went the extra mile to make sure that my work was ascetically pleasing even if it was a laundry room. I made it look like I would have wanted it to look if it was my father. I was pretty proud of myself. I collected the small amount of rappers and wire that I had left over and popped into the adjacent kitchen to toss the bits into the trash can. Then I saw him…

 There he sat. 94 years of living compressed into a small chair at a small breakfast table that he probably had enumerable meals with someone that he cared for more than the breath of life itself. He was thin and pale, a white mop of hair on top of his head. A head that lay cradled in his two palms. He looked down at the table staring into nothing. He neither looked up nor acknowledged my presence. My heart pounded in my chest as I stared at him, seeing all of him and feeling his pain so intensely that I almost choked on it. I backed out of the room silently, respectfully, feeling like I had seen something that was not intended for me.

This man from another time seems to follow me now. I wonder about his life, his wife, and his children. His son was dutiful in his responsibility to his father and I respect that. I am envious that I was never given the opportunity to do that for my own father. I wonder about the long term aspects of being a husband and a father as well. I’m in uncharted water. Most of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way I picked up my own; mostly through hard knocks and bad decisions. I didn’t have anyone to guide me or give me any of their wisdom. I don’t know what that looks like from an adults child’s perspective. I feel like I’ve gained a great deal of experience and knowledge over the course of my life. I’ve had some grand adventure and much heartache along the way but I don’t view those in a negative light. It’s the stuff that defines our character and dictates who we become.

Children are a grand experiment. You try and train them to be good people and do good things. The strange thing is you raise them when you have the least idea of what you’re doing and how the world turns. You do your best and hope it all works out. Then they run to the fore wind. You hope they call or come by. You hope they still want what you have but at the end of the day, they make their own choices and live their own lives. I fear that sadly, you live to be 94, head in hands in a big empty house wondering what the hell happened. If you’re lucky you have at least one that will take care of the phone bill and pick over your bones when you’re gone to throw out the shit you spent your life accumulating that really doesn’t add up to a hill of beans.

My father died when I was 13 years old. I still wonder what he would have made of my life. I wonder if I would want to hear what he had to say. Would we be close? Would I go out of my way to see him and talk to him? I like to think so. I like to hope we’ll catch up someday…when my run is done and all the things I’ve done and all things I cared about have turned to dust…

Remember I warned you.

A Tale of Two Oregons

There was the Oregon in my mind and the one that ended up being a reality. Truth be told, the one in my mind was filled with the idea of warm, open, friendly people filled with a sense of community and warmly welcoming of newcomers. What I quickly found out was there were actually two Oregons. One was the city of Portland and the other was everywhere else in Oregon.

In Portland, people do have a deep sense of community and are generally warm and welcoming. However, that Portland requires a fat wallet or 6 other people sharing a living space. The rents in the city are cost inhibitive for normal people. The job situation overall is hard to come by unless you're a elite coder or have a PhD in something or other. The fact is that there are a ton of super over qualified people jockeying for a finite number of good paying jobs. For me, I've been working in the cable industry for 15 years or so and have a skill set that is specific to that industry. As such, I am limited to what I can do and where I can work. Comcast has a large presence here but for whatever reason I just could never get them to give me a look. In my mind, it was a slam dunk. I mean why wouldn't you want a guy that knows his way around a cable network and understands the idiosyncrasies of cable culture. I was a supervisor for six years. I managed 13 techs in two markets, launched a bunch of products, put out fires, met with customers, and helped people get what they needed to live their lives and run their businesses. That seems like it would have value. It hasn't been worth much here.

My wife is a Registered Nurse. Has been for almost as long as I've been in cable. She actually specialized in cardiac which means she has worked with open heart patients and knows a lot about the subject. Shes good too and she cares about patients. Old school nurse that still advocates for her patients and isn't there to just push meds. She cares for them while they heal and has held their hands as they shed their mortal coil. You would think that would have value. It hasn't been worth much either.

Now I speak of two Oregons so there's Portland and there's everywhere else. We ended up living in the ladder. In that Oregon, people are very different. They are not filled with a sense of community (at least in my experience), aren't especially friendly, and certainly are not warm and welcoming to strangers or new comers. The job situation is even more dismal despite the fact that Nike and Intel call this place home. Again, there are a bunch of overqualified people trying to get the same finite jobs. So that left me out of work for the better part of a year. I was finally able to get on with a agency doing structured wiring for the very same Comcast that wouldn't return my calls. The money was poor, there were no benefits, and there wasn't much else. My nurse eventually found a job at a local hospital but she told me that the nursing scene here was 10 years ago. It was surreal in so many ways.

We struggled. We kept telling each other it would get better. We kept believing that our next big break was right around the corner. We knew we were going to make some new friends and enjoy this great new life that we moved out here for. The problem was it just never happened. People don't want new friends and the jobs just weren't coming. Our money ran out and I started selling things to pay the rent. Eventually we did both have jobs but most of my money was paying for daycare and my RN hated what she was doing. Loathed it in fact. My work was boring and a chore to do everyday. We were paying 1800 bucks for a townhouse that was too big for our needs after my son moved out. So much money went out the door and it just never came in at the rate it was leaking out. A year went by and then another.

This last month we made a trip to Georgia to see my oldest daughter graduate from college. We were back in the South and it was like we never left. In many ways we thought that Oregon was a dream and we had finally awoken from it and where back where we belonged. It had been so long since someone said “good morning” or “how are you doing to today?” I didn't know how to act for a minute. My RN put a job application in for a hospital in a town near where we were staying and they asked her to come in and work the floor and talk. They made her a job offer with a sign on bonus that same day.

So here we sit, asking ourselves if its time to cut our losses and try again somewhere else. Somewhere that we at least know the rules and how things operate. From my perspective the Oregon experiment is over and has been a dismal failure. I have spent all the money I had in the world and didn't get a whole lot other than heartache and unhappiness. I don't regret the experience just how it all worked out. We did our research and we planned as much as we could. At the time it was what our family needed to knock the dust of our old lives off and start something new. Not everything we try in life is a success. I have found it's how you handle failure that defines your future success. I am not a quitter by nature but this is done and I have to let it go. I haven't worked all the details out as to how we are going to get back. We need money and all I can do is believe God will provide. He always has.

The moral of the story is that taking risks is what makes life worth living. We have to take chances. You don't know what you can do until you press the boundaries of what you know. Only then can you grow.

Musings Of A Middle Aged Man on His Birthday

Musing of a Middle Aged Man on his Birthday

I turned 49 today. I remember when I was 20 and I couldn't wait to turn 21 so I could drink everywhere even though the drinking age was 19 at the time. It didn't matter, it's one of those milestone ages. I remember 30 and 40 as being relatively uneventful blips on my time line. I can also remember being 10 and my grandmother telling me not to be in such a hurry to grow up. What did she know? She was old and being older was the greatest thing on the planet. So here I sit on the ledge of the second half of my life.

I always get kinda weird around birthdays. I think too much anyway but I put it in overdrive when another year clicks off. I start asking myself the really good questions like what have I done with my life? Have I made any progress over the last year? What will I do with the next year and what will become of that? Being painfully self aware is a mother trucker.

I was looking at some pictures of my version 1 kids when they were teens and then looking over at my version 2 kids. The v1 kids were teens yesterday. I mean it seems like yesterday. That's how fast it happened. I look at v2.1 and v2.2 and realized that I'll be 64 when V2.1 is 20. That'll be tomorrow. What will I do with the next 15 years of my life to reach my goal of changing the world and making my mark on mankind?

I have to finish that degree I've been fooling around with for the last 10 years or so. I had some dumb luck in my life and some of it got me distracted. I had this whole pipe dream thing going on about how I was going to do my 30 and sit at home tinkering around the garage for the rest of my life. Terrible idea really but it made sense at the time. Having had the opportunity to “sit around” for a while really put things in perspective. I keep saying that I'm too old and that I don't want to borrow the money, stuff like that. My better half explains to me why that is ridiculous through story after story. She tells me about the woman she knows that came here from the middle east where the only way one went to college was a lottery system. To her the US is the greatest place on earth..."I can go to college and I can borrow money to go? Sign me up." The story of the 53 year old woman that went to nursing school (when the wife was a student) and graduated and went on to the career in the medical field she always wanted. No my wife doesn't want to hear about why I'm too old to go to college or why borrowing money to do so is dumb. She's tired of listening to me bitch and wants me to be happy. Really good wives are a very precious thing.

Short term goal. Get back to Columbia Southern and work on a couple classes while I get geared up to go back to University. It may take a while to get where I need to be but as long as I'm heading that way, it's all good. You can work a dead end job for crappy money if there is light a the end of the tunnel. There isn't any reason why anyone should be doing nothing. Life is just too damn short.

Happy Birthday self, now get your ass in gear.

Vegetables Need Not Apply

I started my journey into juicing with the intention of writing about it on a daily basis. It hasn’t worked out that way. The main reason being things happened too fast to keep up with for the most part. I’ve lost a couple of pounds almost every day but as the experiment went on the whole process became less about losing weight and more about nutrition and the food that we put into our bodies.

I have spent some time watching documentaries on the subject of food and how it’s produced: “Knives Over Forks,” “GMO OMG,” etc. These shows have had a profound effect on how I look at the food that I have spent my whole life eating. They have shined a light on how food in this country is now being produced and how it is engineered to be consumed in great quantities. You hear that there is an obesity epidemic in this country…I would suggest it’s almost been manufactured by the large food companies.

Most of the food that the average American consumes is processed in some way. If it’s processed, you can pretty much guarantee that it has lost most if not all of its nutritional value. The result of this is a body starved for the real nutrients that it needs to function and it constantly nagging that it’s hungry. It is hungry but on a cellular level. This produces a cycle. You eat, stay hungry and eat some more. You eat foods that are high in fat and sugar and that are converted to fat almost the minute they hit your stomach. You are then bombarded with media telling you that meat has protein, eggs are filled with omega 3 (which you HAVE to have), and that milk builds bones. All of those statements are true on some level I guess but when you peel back the layer of bullshit you realize that you don’t need nearly as much as meat as you think you do (palm of your hand sized about once a week if at all), eggs that come from commercial chicken farms are loaded GMO’s and a bunch of other stuff your probably could do without, and milk is not the cure for osteoporosis but can be the source. Now I know what you’re thinking, I live in Oregon, we just legalized pot, and I must be smoking it in great amounts. Nothing could be further from the truth. All the data is out there…reams of it. I would suggest you go find out for yourself. If you want the short version watch a documentary called “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead” by a guy named Joe Cross. It’s where it started for me. He keeps it simple and is a great jumping off place.

The recommended amount of fruits and vegetables that should be consumed is 7 servings of veggies and 5 services of fruits. If you pile all those greens up you can see really quickly why juicing is such a cool alternative. It makes consuming all those greens a lot more manageable. I started doing a 10 day juice only fast. I am on day 7 as of this writing and I have consumed nothing but juice and water over the course of those 7 days. When the fast comes to its conclusion I plan on going on a plant based diet. I am still on the fence about dairy but I feel like I will most likely move away from that as well. If you have every had a meal with me and watched me throw a beat down on a plate of pasta or a rare steak you should really question what would get someone like me in this mind set. There must be something to it. There is: it works and it just makes sense.

Should you choose to try this experiment yourself let me give you a couple pointers that might help you. First, it’s hard initially. Not going to lie, your body is filled with junk and getting it out can be painful. The good news is that it won’t last. By day 3 you should be feeling much better. You should juice about 4 times a day (every 4 hours or so). You consume about 12 – 14 ozs in each instance. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but you would be surprised how much mileage you get out of it. Juicers aren’t cheap. I paid $150 for mine and its middle of the road. Do your homework but I would suggest you go lower end (around $100) until you decide if it’s something you plan on doing long term. Check Craiglist for deals. I was really surprised how many people were selling juicers and I wish I would have started there first instead of Sears. Juicing isn’t cheap either. Produce, depending on the time of year, can be costly. If you go organic the costs can go even higher. Don’t stress about organic initially. Buy what you can afford and just stay with it. My go to juice is something called a "Mean Green." It gives me lots of energy and its relatively inexpensive to produce. As you educate yourself you can make your own decision as to where, what kind, and how much. The juicing part is really easy. There isn’t a whole lot of prep for the food. Most things that can be juiced go in whole. Things like oranges get peeled but that’s about it. The cleanup is pretty straight forward and easy.

On the upside you will start to feel better almost immediately. Over the course of a week you will find that your skin, hair, and nails get clearer and stronger. In my case, I found that my concentration and memory functions improved significantly. Lots and lots of energy: the kind that I could never get drinking energy drinks or gallons of coffee. I feel like I did 20 years ago physically. My joints stopped hurting and I found that my general overall outlook and attitude improved a truck load. I haven’t had heartburn since I started which means the omeprazole magnesium that I was taking every day is no longer necessary. The physical benefits have been significant enough that I have to really wonder what’s going on with the food. It needs closer scrutiny but that’s the topic for another rant.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself. It requires a mindset. Mine came from education. Learning what was really going on in my body as it relates to the food I eat. There’s a lot there to process but if you start with small bites, you can finish the elephant.