Monthly Archives: September 2019

on Dragging my Family to the Middle of Nowhere, USA

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My wife, my son, and I departed our house in Colorado on August 6th.  It’s been seven weeks since then…and we still have a couple days until we are home.  I miss my dogs. I miss my family. I miss my bed. I miss my kitchen. I miss the standard routine.  But I also know that going on adventures and taking risks is part of what makes me feel strong as a person.  It’s part of what keeps my marriage strong. And I hope like Hell that it encourages a sense of adventure in my son.  I may miss my old life, but I am so happy that we came.  

Our adventure started off with some fun.  We planned a two week vacation to the Pacific Northwest.  Many of Sofia’s friends gather every year at some big AirBNB.  We hang out all weekend and catch up. This was our second time going.  We were first among everyone present to have a kid. So Henry got to be the center of attention.  Sofia and I got to relax and catch up with everybody. We may not have gotten enough sleep, but it was a great weekend.

We followed the trip up by heading up to Seattle for a few days.  We celebrated our four year anniversary. We hung out and continued to fall in love with a city we hope to end up in one day.  It’s always amazing to go. But it is hard as well–it always reminds us how much the culture of the Pacific Northwest agrees with us.  Don’t get me wrong–I have always considered Colorado to be adopted sibling to the Pacific Northwest. But to be around close friends as people get married and have kids sounds amazing.  It’s a hard thing to find as an adult.

After all this, we would normally head back home.  Instead, we packed the car back up and made our way to Williston, North Dakota.  If you’ve heard of it, it’s probably because you read that one article that went viral about how the oil boom got so out of control here that they were flying strippers in on weekends from Vegas.  Yeah. That city. That’s where I brought my young wife and 8-month old son.

For six weeks.

Was it the right decision?  I’ll probably never be able to answer that question.  Sofia and I have always tried to maintain an attitude that adventures are good for the mind.  Going out of your comfort zone and routine is good for the soul. On a personal level, that is why I said yes to this assignment.  The professional level was even more clear cut. I want to enter management. Showing that I am willing to take on a hardship position that no one else is willing to bodes well for my resume and future interviews.

We arrived in Williston with that philosophical mindset.  We were quickly hit by the reality. A one bedroom hotel room which made Henry’s naps a bit of an adventure.  A town that had so little to do that a real coffee shop was impossible to find. Waitresses who heard my wife say “milk allergy” and rolled their eyes.  And literally nothing to do for a hundred miles in every direction.

It was easy to see the difficulty in everything.  It took us time to find the good. We found a way to watch TV shows on the laptop while Henry slept.  We found a semi-decent coffee shop stowed away inside a bookstore. We found a couple restaurants that accommodate milk allergies and patronize them a little too often.  And weekend trips to far away places–like Regina (the first time any of us had been in Canada) or Sidney, MT (It was the only microbrewery for 100 miles).

It wasn’t easy by any sense.  But we survived. With the wanderlust/adventurelust out of our system, the comfort of home is calling.  We are ready to set up a playpen for Henry (who is now nine months?!?!). We get to once again be in a place with culture and things to do.  But, most importantly, we get to be in the comfort of our own home. I am looking forward to that more than anything.  

I know it won’t  be long before we are gripped again by the thought of adventure.  That is simply who we are–that is how we want to live. But, for now, the comfort of home is calling.

Fighting Alzheimer’s Disease

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FutureTimeline is easily one of my favorite websites to follow.  This article really took me off guard. I have this image of America in the 2040s, with people in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and 100s going about their daily life with these stylish hats that are actually actively warding off (and reversing) Alzheimer’s Disease.  I get too excited every time I see development on the research front.  But, even if it is in the early stages, it is exciting to see something show signs of actively fighting the disease.  Most of the research I have seen focuses on stopping it–and even those are still in their infancy.

After watching my grandmother fight it for a decade and watching my mother take on the role of being a caretaker for a decade, I cannot help but be excited about incremental progress in this fight.  It is a terrible disease and I cannot wait until we can fight back.

Deleting Facebook

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I’ve spent the last few years going back and forth on whether or not I should delete Facebook.  Not just delete the app from my phone. I’ve done that multiple times. I mean erase my profile entirely.  Remove all my pictures, posts, and everything associated with it. The idea started as a small whisper in my mind–something easily brushed away.  As the months and years have passed, the whisper grew and grew until it was shouting. Now I am finally listening.

I never wanted to join Facebook.  When it comes to social media, I was reluctant at best.  I started my social media footprint on Livejournal. I was friends with maybe ten people.  I wrote long entries that were angsty and honest. I was a teenager in the 2000s. Together with those ten people, we were a close group that talked often.  Then, as the Internet began to evolve, I watched as those close Livejournal friends slowly migrated to MySpace. I was one of the last ones. I hated that the focus of MySpace wasn’t the writing aspect.  Instead, it was about who your Top Friends were and what interests you listed. It felt so fake.  

But by then I was in high school.  A lot of my social life was already online.  MySpace had the added element of every one of my peers being present.  If you didn’t have one, you were invisible. So I got one. Reluctantly.  I promised I would keep up with my LiveJournal, but I didn’t. Social Media is taxing.  Keeping up with multiple platforms was too much. Plus, I eventually realized MySpace had a lot of cool things.  I could have music play for anyone visiting my page. I could customize the background and the buttons. I was able to make it my own personal page in a way I never had with LiveJournal.

I graduated high school in 2007.  By then I was already seeing MySpace decay.  Facebook had crashed into the scene and everybody was moving on over.  I hated it. I hadn’t even wanted to move over the MySpace. Facebook seemed even worse.  You couldn’t customize anything. It incentived shorter entries because they were more likely to get “likes.”  I was nostalgic for my close-knot LiveJournal community that would engage in open and honest discussions about life.  It felt like it was being replaced by a corporate monster that incentived the wrong behaviors. I held off for as long as I could.

I joined Facebook three weeks before Obama was elected president in 2008.  I remember hearing that people were posting a lot of political things on Facebook.  That, mixed with the loneliness of the post high school world, forced me into the realm of Facebook.  It was another version of go with the times or be ostracized. Being a kid who stayed in his hometown for college already made me feel ostracized.  I didn’t want that to get any worse.

Much like with my LiveJournal, my Myspace account fell into disuse.  I went looking for them not to long ago. I found them–with broken links and so many changes.  But they are still there like some historical part of the early internet. Now eleven years have passed.  Facebook still reigns. There are other Social Media websites. I’ve tried many. The thing is, I still miss what social media meant for me 15 years ago.  Keeping up to date with 5-20 of my closest people. Like, really keeping up with them. Knowing what they are going through. How they were really feeling.

That whisper has been in the back of my mind for years.  It has waxed and waned with time. I’ll get in a political fight with my brother-in-law and wonder why I have a Facebook at all.  Then I announce to the world that Sofia and I are expecting and the support reminds me why I keep it around. But then my unborn son was diagnosed with Gastroschisis.  That is when everything changed for me.

Much like my long LiveJournal entries from my teenage years, I still write to sort out what is going on in my head.  I often share what I write because I like my close friends and family to understand my thought process. So, when we found out we would be facing an uphill battle with our unborn son, I started writing.  And then I started posting. Not to Facebook. But to my modern equivalent of LiveJournal–this website.

The response I received was unlike anything I expected.  I was so used to “likes” and “congratulations” that I forgot  what it was like to have have an in-depth relationship with my close friends and family members.  I was able to keep people updated with what was going on while also being open about what Sofia and I were going through.  It gave me a connection to the people who couldn’t be present through that journey.  

By the time Henry was released from Children’s Hospital of Colorado in January of this year, I knew that my days on Facebook were limited.  It all felt so false. To top it off, the whole Cambridge Analytica, Russian Interference, and Facebook literally doing nothing about it were at the back of my mind.  The thing is, I was pretty busy with a new house and a newborn. I didn’t feel like I truly had the time to make the transition. So the idea kind of faded from my mind.

It’s not so much that any one thing has pushed me over the line.  The biggest development for me is that my son is becoming aware of screens.  He sees me when I am on my phone. I have become quite aware of my time on the phone and my desire to limit that time–especially in his presence.  I want to raise him in a world where technology is limited and positive. Not overwhelming and addictive. And to encourage that, I have to live it.

I talked with Sofia about this a few hours ago.  She asked if there was anything holding me back anymore.  I realized that I did not. I’ve pretty much made up my mind.  I want to write about my life in long-form. I expect only those closest to me to keep up with this website.  And I will have more time to try to keep up with those closest to me. Not through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.  But through direct communication or blogs.

I am downloading my Facebook information as I write this.  In the coming days, I will let those closest to me know that I will be deleting Facebook and that RichardThomasReilly.com is the best place to stay updated.  Sofia will remain on Facebook, so pictures of Henry and our growing family won’t be gone entirely.

If you have any questions about the process of deleting Facebook, let me know.

 

~Richard