This may quite pos­si­bly turn in to a very long post. I apol­o­gize in advance.

I’ve been absent.

Not just from this site, but from life in gen­eral. I’ve been hold­ing on to some ridicu­lous notion that I’ve been busy with this or that, but the pure truth of the mat­ter is that I just switched off.

It’s not entirely clear to me why or when exactly this hap­pened, but I’m pretty darn sure that my time in the field didn’t help.  I also think it wasn’t the cause though I may have laid blame there pre­vi­ously.  Look­ing back fur­ther, it’s really dif­fi­cult to iden­tify the last time I felt really alive.

This is a problem.

Switch­ing off has pro­vided me with the capa­bil­ity to han­dle a num­ber of small cat­a­stro­phes and major life-events with ease.  It has meant that I can eas­ily rely on the illu­sion of sim­ple prag­ma­tism to explain how eas­ily I deal with strife (with­out com­pletely los­ing my nut).

I’ve deceived myself and in the process I’ve likely deceived oth­ers.  If I take an hon­est look at the issue it becomes clear that I’ve com­pletely lost any sense of car­ing.  Car­ing for myself, car­ing for oth­ers, the envi­ron­ment and even the world at large.

This con­flicts with my morals and my dreams.

Since return­ing to Canada, I’ve become increas­ingly dis­con­nected from the beliefs, behav­iours and paths of the peo­ple around me. Some­thing is wrong with the way we live our lives (both here in ‘the west’ & else­where) and I can’t quan­tify it, and it often feels as if nobody else really gets that. Yet, I con­tinue to live the life here as if noth­ing has changed.

This cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance is no longer just uncom­fort­able, it’s sys­temic and par­a­lytic in my own life. I have let it stop me from car­ing, and I have always under­stood that we as peo­ple are capa­ble of great things, but rarely do I see more than doom, destruc­tion and death being broad­cast on a daily basis.

Going it alone.

I’ve done a lot of things solo in my life, I’ve trav­eled, bought a house, pho­tographed, run, biked, hiked, con­soled a dying friend, and stood up for an underdog.

I under­stand the need to be capa­ble of work­ing on my own, enter­tain­ing myself, and being self suf­fi­cient. In fact I have vehe­mently pur­sued indi­vid­ual goals in an attempt to prove (to myself?? oth­ers??) that I am self suf­fi­cient. I’ve turned away or ignored oppor­tu­ni­ties for assis­tance and in the process have learned what an incred­i­ble strain it is to be an indi­vid­ual in this world.

Empa­thy.

Some­thing my cousin has sug­gested in a yelling, spit­ting rage that I do not posses. This in the wake of the death of my Uncle Dale, a man I’ve learned an incred­i­ble amount from over the past thirty years and who has been the only father I’ve ever really known.

The prob­lem really hasn’t been not car­ing enough, but rather car­ing too much and about too many things. I’m not just whelmed, I’m überwhelmed. Fig­ur­ing out what mat­ters again is a top pri­or­ity and in order to do that I need to clean house a bit.

Tak­ing stock.

Over the next sev­eral weeks, I’ll be tak­ing stock and hav­ing a seri­ous look at what really mat­ters to me and what I want to do about it. There will be a lit­eral and a fig­u­ra­tive clear­ing of house in the attempt to sim­plify what has become an unrea­son­ably com­pli­cated life.

This is a smat­ter­ing of the thoughts run­ning through my head at the moment.  In the past CAVOK has been about clear­ing my mind and keep­ing my word.   It has been inex­plic­a­bly dif­fi­cult to begin to doc­u­ment the hap­pen­ings of the last few years and so I shall endeavor to doc­u­ment from this point for­ward with the caveat that I may at some time visit the past..

For those of you who still check in here once in a while, and who’ve made it this far through the post, thank you for tak­ing the time to care..