There are many things I believe my dad gets wrong. I also believe my dad believes there are many things I get wrong.

A most recent thing Dad has wrong is the belief that once he masters something, he has that skill forever. The example he gave was holding a pen. If you're holding a pen, your hand should never drop that pen unless you deliberately choose to drop that pen. While I can understand how disconcerting dropping a pen unconsciously can be, the actual belief that one should be perfect, and have all one's actions be perfect, is absurd in the full definition ("wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate") of the word. Professional basketball players are around 78% for freethrows, the best being around 90%. Batting .400 is amazing for just about any baseball player older than a high schooler crushing 10 year olds. Keyboards have delete keys for a reason, and that reason isn't because two finger typing is superior to touch typing.

What Dad does get right, however, is his unwaivering belief that happiness is a choice. He has managed to live sleep-deprived for decades, and still says things are as fine as frog hair ("Daaaaaaad! Frogs don't have hair!" "That's mighty fine then, isn't it?"). He has managed to live decades alone, and still has a smile for friends. He has managed a restaurant for decades, been shot at, robbed, had a truck driven through the front window, had his tools and cars stolen many times, and still helps the people around him, smiles when he greets someone, and celebrates every day that he woke up.

Recently, he woke up on the wrong side of the couch, tripped over something, banged his leg, grumbled something to himself, hit the door on the way to the bathroom, then stopped, as he relates the story. "No," he goes on telling the tale, this wasn't how his day was going to be. He woke up. He has things to do, a business to run. The sun will be shining soon enough. God gave him another day, He's not done with Dad yet. And so Dad, frustrations set aside, chose to have a good day.

Grue comments frequently that I'm the most optimistic person he knows (he clearly doesn't know my dad). I want to fight Grue on his assessment, except every time I try, I end up explaining how, yeah, I was stuck behind this car going 20 mph in a 45 mph zone, but if I had gone around instead of driving patiently behind them until they had turned, I might have hit that kid who darted across the street on the next block, so, yes, I just made driving ridiculously slowly a good thing, because things could always be worse. Then Grue laughs, because I am the only person who would tell him that driving infuriatingly slowly behind a car is a good thing.

And that's the thing that has me like Dad: things could always be worse, but I woke up today, I still have a chance to improve, to build that thing, to accept responsibility for my mistakes, to fix them, to achieve that dream, to help another person, to be better. I have another chance to make space for my grief, accept it, and then choose happiness.

"How was the run today?"

"Really not good. Intrusive thoughts. Ended up stopping after about a mile, walked for a bit, ran some more. I ended up running a bit farther to make up for stopping, but that didn't go well either. So, when I finished, I sat down and started crying because everything hurt so much. And as I was crying, a bunch of ants crawled on me and on cue, all bit me at the same time. So now I'm tired, in pain, and itchy all over."

"But you did it."

"Yes, I went for a run."

"Well, then, the participation trophy is the only one that matters today!"

win!

Me: "Come to Peru with me."
Him: "No."
Me: "Come to Melbourne with me."
Him: "No."
Me: "Come to Japan with me."
Him: "No."
Me: "Come to NYC with me."
Him: "No."
Him: "Come to Italy with me."
Me: "Yay! Yes!"
Me: "Come to NYC with me."
Him: "No."
Him: "Come to SF with me."
Me: "No."
Him: Blocks me on social media and messages

Little did we know, we were standing at the wrong tracks.

We had walked over to the train station this morning, dragging our suitcases, clickity clickity clickity, and arrived with plenty of time to buy tickets and find the right tracks to be at for our train ride to Modena. I was very delighted that we had so much time to chill at the tracks. As the train departure time approached, though, there was no train on the tracks. WTF?

I looked around about 10 minutes before departure, no train, and heard a couple asking the information kiosk guy where the train to Modena was leaving from. He told them to go down the stairs, through the tunnel, and over the track 4. SHIT! The tracks had changed. Let's go, Jonathan!

We hurried across, and found our train, but oof, that rush was not what I would have preferred! But, made it!

There's a photographer that I follow on Tiktok (before you roll your eyes about the TIktok part, and trust me, I understand said eye-rolling - I mostly watch what Jonathan sends me, and flip briefly through my for-you page (FYP), but not much else. I'd rather someone else curated for me), who gives wonderful instructions on how to shoot good photos. I'm not a great photographer, but I can, according to Jonathan, find some good shots, and know to focus on people with the interesting background over their shoulders when offering to take photos of other tourists, and not have said tourists in 10% of the photo, and to use the rule of thirds, and write run-on sentences about my photography skills.

I'll try to find the actual tiktok, but the one I watched recently from said photoographer talks about how to pose and photograph someone standing casually. The photographer wants to draw the viewer's eyes along a line to the photo's visual focal point, regardless of the photo's subject being a landscape or a portrait. With people as the subject, the line can be harder to determine, but should still be there.

In this case, the pose was a casual lean against a door frame or wall, with the outside arm rotated and slightly back, and the line going from shoulder through hips to foot. I didn't quite manage the lines I wanted, but I didn't not manage the lines I wanted. The line is there, we just need to work more on the angle of the line.

Mike: "I need to find someone to hold my feet to the flames to get things done."

Me: "I think it is less about finding someone to hold your feet to the flames, and more about finding someone to help you hold your own feet to the flame."

Semi-retirement can be difficult to navigate if you're previously a high-productivity professional.