Becoming B

5:50 AM. First coffee, quiet, fire. Then off to the mail trail. Hope you have a great weekend! Fire 163 3.15.25

Friday. Fire 162. 44 out there. I heard thunder earlier, at least I hope that's what it was. I continue to train a carrier. I look forward to a few days off next week. I remember my Dad working his factory job for 30 years. He started right around the time I was born. He was union. Got paid vacation and all that. Here I am at 50, union, and looking forward to paid days off. The world of work. Off to the mail trail. I hope you have a great day! 3.14.25

Thank you to those who have zapped some of my posts since I joined Nostr. There's nothing like a zap to start my day!

Bitcoin will win. #Bitcoin

"All enterprises must be self-supporting, must pay for themselves. The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body — that so the life not be a failure. For instance, a poet must sustain his body with his poetry. As is said of the merchants, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the life of men is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied. You must get your living by loving." -From Thoreau's Journal; March 13, 1853 ### This quote really spoke to me this morning, especially the last line. One of my biggest fears, maybe my biggest, is my life will be a failure. And if I am able to disengage from the post office and make my living growing native plants and building resilient plant communities I will have achieved my living by loving. Fire 161 3.13.25

Yesterday, on the way to work, I saw a big bearded man standing next to his pickup in the distance. As I passed by him at 60 miles per hour he held up his jumper cables. The positive in one hand; the negative in the other. My first thought: I'm late already. My second: Screw it, work can wait. Up the road there was a roundabout. I went around it and headed back to the short version of Paul Bunyan waiting for a jump. I pull up next him, pop my hood, and he's already reaching for the lever to disengage it. I get out and as he's hooking up the cables he says, "Thanks man. There aren't many people that would stop to give a big bearded guy like me a jump." I looked in the back seat of his pickup and saw two little kids eating gas station snacks. A minute later his truck was running. As I unhooked the cables from the battery of my mail jeep, and he from his he says loud enough for me to hear over the hum of the engines: "Thank you, and God bless you." I was only 10 minutes late for work. No one cared. They were happy to see me Off to the mail trail in a few. Hope you have a great day! Fire 160 3.12.25

7:25 AM. I'm usually at work sorting mail at this time. Today I get to start an hour later. Someone is training on my route. I will get some time off next week. I'm a bit nervous. The past 20 months have been a grind of 6 days a week with no days off in sight. I don't know what I am going to do with myself. It might feel like the olds days when we were both working part time. When we had days together as a family. It seemed life made more sense then. Off to the mail trail. Fire 159 3.11.25

I'm a bitcoiner. I'm happy about this. One reason why: I work for a wage. I've been a full time rural route mail carrier for close to two years. I will earn a wage increase after 96 weeks of service. It's roughly an 8% increase. The dollars I work for lose 7% of their buying power a year. My wages can't keep up with inflation. Bitcoin doesn't lose its value. It only goes up in value. Why? Because there is no bank that can print more of it. It is a decentralized and secure protocol. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. No one can change that.. True Scarcity.

"When we fall in love, we begin to imagine; and when we begin to imagine: we fall in love." -- James Hillman Good morning from the front of fire 157. It's later than usual. Talked with my 15 year old son for a while about dating, masculinity, and toxic masculinity first thing this morning. He listens to a lot of podcasts. He's got questions as he gets ready to make his way in the world. It was awkward. I want to be here for him. I want to make sure it all goes smoothly. It won't of course. I look back on my life at that age and into my midtwenties and it was rife with life altering mistakes, successes, and heartbreak. Ironically, I have been thinking about that period of my life a lot lately. It could be because I have been listening to so much Led Zeppelin on the mail route. Who knows why we do what we do. But it's a powerful period of our life, adolescence. I think it's so powerful because we follow our hearts and we get ourselves into all kinds of messes. He's getting ready to get himself into some messes, my son. I can hear the imaginings. Now I get to be like the adults that had patience and the ability to see the good and gifts in me. They helped me get through that period of my life. If he gets himself into a quarter of the messes I get myself into, it's going to be a wild ride. I am thankful for those that were there for me. 3.9.25

I have 5 minutes before I leave for work. I am going to throw a thought out here quickly. The pressure is on. In a conversation at work the other day I had someone tell me that political tribalism is the same as tribalism as a human social organization. It's not. Whether or not you identify as a Democrat, Republican, Green, or Independent has nothing to do with whether or not our species will survive into the future. Humans have only lived in two social organizations: Tribes and Civilization. We lived in tribes for hundreds of thousands of years. Civilization for roughly 10 thousand. That's the difference. One has to do with social organization in an evolutionary sense; the other is what you choose (consciously or unconsciously) to identify as. Off to the mail trail! 📬 Fire 155 3.7.25

No matter what they decide to do at that level I am going to stay humble and stack SATs. :-) #Bitcoin https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/06/trump-signs-executive-order-for-us-strategic-bitcoin-reserve.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawI3wGdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQkCX-xCZKpFfkIj5F1qKyq8C6JS4ry7C4fwCvKnvoK9tXihBynIyKqWfg_aem_eF1y-lBwObjxvczwLDcDQg

Good morning from the front of 154. Off to the mail trail in a few minutes. I didn't deliver any mail yesterday, just packages. That wouldn't have been possible without 4 wheel drive. There was over 8" of wet, heavy snow on the roads and driveways. By the end of the day the roads were starting to melt as the storm broke and the sun started to peek through. That's the nice thing about a March snowstorm, the snow doesn't last long. Looking forward to more melting today. I'm off! 3.6.25

#Bitcoin

Anything the red Feds do, blue can undo, and vice versa. But *transfer* power and money from the Feds to the states - both red and blue states will take it - and resist giving it back. Make government compete daily across fifty models rather than every four years across two. ~ Naval Ravikant

6:09 AM. Good morning from the front of fire 152. I offer this poem this morning. People want you to be happy. Don't keep serving them your pain! If you could untie your wings and free your soul of jealousy, you and everyone around you would fly up like doves. ~ Rumi I think about this poem often. How it plays out in my life and others. We spend a lot of time with our wings tied. They're great moments when we do get them untied. 3.4.25

I'm in front of fire 150. Feeling like I need to say something. If I don't, my days don't go as well it seems. Seems I have to push the boundary a bit. Be transparent and vulnerable. So when I push the post button it feels I may have gone too far. That no one will ever see me the same again. My posts will be ignored, etc. I talked to a guy after work yesterday. It was mid-afternoon. I had time and space. The sun was shining. I had a good day on the route. A few minutes into the conversation he tells me if he ever ran over a child on the mail route he'd go him and off himself. He has a special place for children in his heart because of a bad childhood, he says. ### I'm interested. I am interested in people's stories most of the time. It's been that way my whole life. When I was a child and throughout my teens I spent a lot of time on the telephone talking to whoever. A number of times I would hear this: "It feels like I have known you my whole life." My middle school friend said I talk to you longer than I do my girlfriend. I don't know why this is. It just is. ### He went on to tell me about the addictions he's had. And how he's been in recovery for 8 years now. How his recovery started the day after he was going to drink himself to death and it didn't work. He just checked himself in. While we were talking he told me how his body filled with goosebumps as he told me about connecting with a higher power in the recovery book he was given. And when he starts feeling like he wants to break his sobriety his sponsor will call him out of the blue. It can be six months without talking and he appears in my life, he said. ### The first thing I did this morning was read a few Rumi poems. The first two I read I wanted to post here. One of them I would share with the 41 year old man I talked with yesterday. ### The Tent Outside, the freezing desert night. This other night inside grows warm, kindling. Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust. We have a soft garden in here. The continents blasted, cities and little towns, everything become a scorched, blackened ball. The news we hear is full of grief for that future, but the real news inside here is there's no news at all. ### 3.2.25

Good morning from the front of fire 149. I'm off to the mail trail for my 6th and final day. Then it's Sunday off and home with the family. I love Sundays as of late. Hope you have a great weekend! 3.1.25

What I just saw happen in the Oval Office looks serious and unsettling. I have never seen a press conference like that. Wow.

Good morning from the front of fire 147. It's Friday. Ready for a day off. That's not until Sunday. Between now and then I look forward to more of the unpredictable. Conversations at work that I never thought I'd have. A smile and a wave from a customer. Or a spring sound that I hear only this time of year. Time' is short this morning. Off to the mail trail. Hope you have a great day! 2.28.25