Blog: They Have Already Damned You.

He folks, welcome back! As with last week, my initial plan for THIS week was to write a travel blog about New York. Also like last week I had another topic swirling & twirling around my brain that I felt pressing to write this week. Once more, also like last week, this blog will be a serious one, if the title alone hadn’t tipped you off to that fact already. Trigger warning I suppose to those of you who are dealing with religious trauma, post election fallout, murder/killing, religious themes, & on the flip side of that coin, may be upset by the contents of this blog. Today we will be talking vertical vs. horizontal morality.

I have had, over the last week, across numerous social media platforms & conversations, the notion or idea of vertical vs horizontal morality pop up & it actually, I think, helps to explain how certain groups can vote or feel the way that they do based on belief & history. I know, for myself, I have struggled with the idea of those who claim to live under the banner of “love thy neighbor as thyself” going to the voting booth & doing the exact opposite often condemning their ‘neighbor’ to harder lives, deportation, lack of access to healthcare, higher tax rates, or downright voting to strip their rights away. Taking that “what you do unto the ‘least’ of these, you do unto me” & really just punting it through the proverbial field goal. One creator, Rachel Klinger Cain, put it simply by saying the following:

“They are never going to care about our suffering, because they are okay with our damnation.”

— Rachel Klinger Cain

This immediately struck me & got the wheels of my brain turning. She goes on to explain further stating:

“So many of us right now are sitting in the space of desperately trying to explain it to them in a way that induces the empathy. Like if we can just find the right words, if we can say it the right way, provide the right evidence, remind them that we’re human, then we can get through to them. That they’ll see what they’ve done. That they’ll see what’s coming. That they’ll be willing to stand with us when we need it, but none of that is going to work with people who have already accepted that we are going to Hell. They believe that we are going to Hell, a place of eternal conscious torment, & they don’t stand with us. They take the side of the God who would do it. They claim that they love us, but they’re fine with our eternal conscious torment & they’re fine with our tormentor.”

— Rachel Klinger Cain

Now. I know that’s a lot to digest. I’m sure for some of you reading it stirred up a lot of emotions or feelings one way or the other. I challenge you to sit in those & understand what about that paragraph makes you feel that way & why you feel that way.

I will say, to my personal extent, that paragraph feels a bit atheistic & I can’t begrudge Rachel for feeling that way. Though it doesn’t necessarily align with my personal beliefs, it does align with my personal feelings & experiences around the majority of those within the evangelical base. I know the retort to that is going to be the “a few bad apples ruin the batch” argument, but I think with most things around that sentiment, Maren Morris was correct in saying “The rot at the roots is the root of the problem” (I know she’s talking specifically about the country music industry here but I’m borrowing the analogy). The bushel isn’t being contaminated by a few bad apples, I think, for the most part, the ‘good' apples are the exception from a tree that has taught us how easy it is to condemn another human being for living a life that is different than our own.

I can just hear the people clicking out of my website from this one already. I again, challenge you to bear with me going forward & really dissect the way this is making you feel. If something challenges the narrative you believe if is often a good idea to figure out why & then figure out whether or not what is stated is factual or not & reevaluate from there.

I’d like to get into the meat of this & really discuss the “why” of all of this? Why do people who spend almost every weekend being taught a book of love statistically go out & vote for candidates who perpetuate hate, division, scapegoating, gluttony, greed, & selfishness? Because of vertical morality.

I’m going to go back to Rachel here in a second because I think the discourse happening on her page outlines the differences in the two types of morality perfectly specifically using the example of murder/killing. With vertical morality you have a system of morals not build on empathy or common understanding, but instead built on authority. This idea makes the beliefs of those who post things along the lines of “well, how will children learn morals if they aren’t taught The Bible?” make so much more sense.

You see, within the discussion on her page, she is met with a man who confronts this idea by saying “Really how can something that created everything kill & slaughter if he can just ‘uncreate’ everything.” It’s this idea of ownership, that if Almighty God decided to undo creating that He has the authority to do so simply because He created it.

Using this specific example she lays out the following:

“Under a vertical moral system murder is not wrong because it harms somebody, it is wrong because you don’t have the authority to do it, but that also means that IF you have the authority to do it, you can to it. This is the problem with a vertical moral system. This is why they become violent so quickly, because all they have to do to convince themselves it’s okay to kill someone, is to convince themself that they’ve been given the authority to do it by God. ”

— Rachel Klinger Cain

She goes on to give examples throughout history of this, of times in which Christianity or Christian Nationalism have sparked violent movements that led to countless deaths or allowed them to watch from the sidelines unbothered because of the authority of God or those whom he has ‘ordained’ as having the authority (i.e. kings, queens, presidents, popes, etc.). This also goes outside of Christianity to other theologies that implant vertical morality & even include the deification & idolization of leaders. Some examples that include, but are not limited to; the Holocaust, the Crusades, slavery, colonialism, manifest destiny, the AIDs crisis, the Manson Murders, Gaza.

On the other side of that morality system lies the horizontal. This way of belief says that murder is wrong, not because you don’t have the authority, but because it causes harm to another human being.

“It’s not about authority, it’s about harm. When you have a horizontal moral system then you are criticizing a god who would kill people, because it doesn’t matter if that god is bigger or stronger. Might does not make right. It doesn’t matter if He claims to have the authority, He’s still causing harm. But under that vertical moral system, might makes right. It’s authoritarianism. & when their religion is authoritarian then that means their moral system is authoritarian. & when their moral system is authoritarian it will trickle down into all kinds of other beliefs including their politics, including who they vote for. & if they believe that God as ordained it, if they believe that the ultimate authority figure says it’s okay, then it doesn’t matter who it harms. Appeals to empathy will not work, because they don’t get their morals from empathy, they get it from authority. They’re authoritarians.”

— Rachel Klinger Cain

Again, a bit more atheistic than I’d probably put it myself, but I think the point still stands.

Another creator, Theologian Ciarra Jones, piggybacks off of Rachel’s points to discuss a lecture that she gives every years at UC Berkley around Race, Religion, & Public Policy.

“I always tell students when working with Christian communities that the stakes are different. We’re not talking about systemic inequality & its impacts, we’re talking about heaven & Hell. Salvation & damnation. This focus on sin & punishment, salvation & damnation, actually cuts off most fundamentalist Christians from normative processes of empathy. Fundamentalist Christian communities have constructed God in a way that cosigns & corroborates the existence of systemic inequality.”

— Professor Ciarra Jones

She then lays out an excellent example around LGBTQ rights using the following:

“If I go to a fundamentalist pastor & I say “you voting on anti-LGBTQ policies harms LGBTQ people’s safety,” they would say “well queerness itself is a sin & if a queer person wasn’t living in this way, then they would experience systemic inequality.””

— Professor Ciarra Jones

I would interject here but I think the way she continues on is so eloquently stated that I’m just going to continue to quote her here!

“We have constructed God as a God that insulates power, that insulates systemic inequality & that is one the side of those who are enacting harm on marginalized communities. This makes fundamentalist Christians impervious to critiques about how their theology is related to our policy landscape.

One of the most common Bible verse I heard growing up in fundamentalist, pentecostal churches “we are called to be in the world & not of it,” means that Christians start to bifurcate themselves from non-christians. They almost cut off their humanity & empathy towards non-christian communities or towards those they believe are living in a type of sin.

This means for Christians, for example, voting on ‘pro-life’ policy, even when ‘pro-life’ policy harms particularly women of color. There isn’t any empathy towards these communities because the idea is ‘I am voting on the side of righteousness’ & in fact my ability to separate myself from humanity & vote on policies in the way that God is asking me to do is a sign of my own unique Christian divinity. It’s a sign of my commitment to God. So separating themselves from their empathy actually ends up being a sign of their commitment to God.”

— Professor Ciarra Jones

I know this week was a heavy one, I know this blog also may seem like I’m over here doing the most to shit on Christians when in reality I consider myself among them as so many of us who are begging for your empathy do. We read the book. We were taught the lessons. We took them to heart & somewhere along the line that was lost amongst what I would say, & what statistics would say, are the vast majority.

Additionally, I have seen so many postings this last week & a half around the idea of “I don’t know how to convince you to care about other people” so I wanted to weigh in with the things that I learned from these two amazing female creators. They helped me to understand why the last eight years of begging friends & family not to vote the way that they do despite the damage it does not only to me, someone they claim to love, but also other communities at large have clearly gone exorbitantly unheard. Appeals using examples & proof go unheeded & unnoticed because we lack the ultimate authority of what they have decided is moral or is not.

They are not going to stand up for a right or a community that they think or have convinced themselves is sinful, no matter the amount of harm it does to the lives of their fellow human beings because the belief is that they do not have the authority to make that call, God does, & what God says (translation mishaps & political alterations included) is the ultimate scale of law & justice to which they weigh their vote, not your lives & the ways in which it may harm you.

I hope you have a fantastic week,

Much love as always,

-C

“It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong & powerful & against the weak & the oppressed. This despite the gospel.”

— Jesus & The Disinherited by Howard Therman as presented by Professor Ciarra Jones

Blog: In All Honesty, I'm Terrified.

In all honesty I’m not really sure where to start with this. Initially my plan for this week was to do a New York City travel blog, but given the nature of & the events of the week doing so feels dismissive & entirely subversive of the way that so many, my self included feel. I then contemplated not doing a blog at all, but I’m sitting with this incredibly palpable bag of emotions & hurt & I felt the need to come on & express that here with you all. I don’t know what form that will take or what path this blog will end up going on, as at the moment the tangents in my brain are fighting for dominance. I guess my goal in all of this is to make those of you out there who, let’s face it, probably have checked out &/or aren’t going to read this at all, understand a little bit more of how a lot of us who find ourselves in communities deeply effected by the results of Tuesday’s election feel & on the other side of that coin, show those of you who find yourselves in a state of deep mourning & pain feel seen & heard. I am here to express my pain & my undeniable fear of what if probably to come. I’m going to start by relaying all of this to myself & my personal sphere, because let’s face it, that’s what I know best.

I am someone with a deep understanding of policy & politics. I typically know who is saying, doing, promoting, regressing, whatever in most of the chambers & branches of The US government. I got this way because at the turn of 2016 I found myself with limited knowledge of anything that had transpired or anything that was going to transpire around the election that had just occurred & I regretted that sorely. I then spent what has been the last eight years deeply engaged in the ongoings & inner workings of the government because I never again wanted to feel like I wasn’t in ‘the know.’ The frustration part of that is that I then had friends & family members come to me with political questions that were quickly dismissed when the answers didn’t fit their narrative for what their specific party or belief on an issue was or is. Additionally, my upset when damaging policy came down the pipeline was met with patronization & deemed too emotionally driven or “just what I believe” instead of being deeply rooted in fact & statistics. I was told I was over reacting, or the topic was changed to other unrelated policy altogether, or it devolved into outright gaslighting. So, following the results of 2020, I receded. My family, friends, & acquaintances seldom heard about my politics because it had become clear to me that despite knowing leagues more about them than others, my intelligence, interest, passion, & knowledge were an annoyance that did little, if anything, to move the needle of what had been deeply engrained in their belief system; no matter how bat shit or rooted in propaganda, wishful thinking, outright racist/heteronormative/unscientific/regressive/xenophobic/etc those beliefs were/are.

Turning the page to this year. I don’t think, compared to previous elections, I was as vocally outspoken on the interwebs as I have been in the past, & maybe that was my mistake. No politics were brought up to my family, unless they were brought up to me, because I knew it was wasted breath because as the post that’s going around this last week so lovingly says “I don’t know how to convince you care about other people.”

Election day was horrible for me, even before the results started rolling in I was anxious to the point of it making me sick. I think in total I slept around 2-3 hours that night, waking up as so many of us did around 4 AM with an ultimate sense of dread even before peaking at my phone. From there my anxiety grew & also gave way to severe hurt & depression because I knew what was coming down the pipeline. I knew where we were headed & I saw the cataclysm & damage like a tidal wave barring down on all of us, whether those who voted for this want to see & accept that or not.

I had at least hoped that if Trump was reelected, despite the myriad of reasons he is beyond unsuitable for the presidency a first, much less a second time, that the legislative branch of the government would at least remain as a safeguard to the atrocities to be passed down. My hope was & has been since extinguished & the reality of the collision course we’re on rushed over me & sunk me for days. I instantly started research into expatriating.

I’m sorry if I lost you on that last sentence, I’m sorry if, to you, that seems too extreme or like I’m being a ‘sore loser,’ but I’m going to walk you through my reasonings & try to make you see why that’s where I landed. Additionally, this is my blog, my feelings, my life. Yes? My feelings & motivations are my own. Please bear with me.

I’m going to start talking policy which is typically where I start losing people, especially if that policy does not align with your inherent understanding. Again, please bear with me & have an open mind, a little empathy, & try to understand. We’re going to start out talking about (hold! hold! hold!) Roe V Wade & Project 2025.

I’ve laid out my arguments in favor of Roe many a time. It is not just a case that allowed for abortion but also granted women the right to bodily autonomy. Its overturning has been detrimental to the health of women across the country & continues to escalate in that direction. I don’t think that states legalizing the right to abortion will end up mattering unfortunately & I think that the Trump era nationwide ban is on the horizon. BUT I’m not here to talk specifically about Roe, but am instead here to talk about the precedent that it set within the conservative majority Supreme Court.

Roe V Wade was a ruling brought about through right to privacy. It is the same avenue that cases like Obergefell V Hodges used to legalize same sex marriage, the same avenue that Griswold V Connecticut used to allow married couples rights to contraceptive & later Eisenstadt V Baird used to allow unmarried couples right to contraceptive. It is the same exact avenue that Lawrence V Texas used to make sodomy laws illegal & Loving V Virginia used to instate the legitimacy of interracial marriages. All of these items used the same path of ‘personal privacy’ as the vehicle for which to get each of these respective issues legalized or decriminalized. Then came the overturning of Roe, what the Supreme Court has hinted at & outright spoken about being the first of these rulings to fall.

If right to privacy falls, & many of those statues with it, same sex couples, interracial couples, non-married (or even married) couples engaging in protected sex, will all be considered criminal almost overnight. Sounds archaic, I know, because it is & that’s just the highly insinuated Supreme Court side of things. Let’s shift lenses to Project 2025.

Project 2025 is a plan for a conservative held federal government that has been laid down by the vast majority of the right wing conglomerates out there. The Heritage Foundation, the AFA, the Claremont Institute, Moms for Liberty, etc etc etc. It was disavowed by Donald Trump after his initial endorsement of the project because it polled as incredibly unpopular, even amongst conservatives. A lot of those on both sides of the aisle were not overly concerned about the instating of Project 2025 because there would of course be “checks & balances” within the government, which of course holding all branches of the government, there are none. His allies have since stated, post win, that Project 2025 is & was the plan all along. Shocker.

So what lives within the policies of Project 2025? Let’s list a few shall we? Dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency (bye bye safe guards on clean air & water), dismantling the Department of Education (deuces special education programs), end no fault divorce, ban contraceptives (see supreme court section), eliminate worker unions & OSHA regulations, end the Affordable Care Act (what allows millions of Americans to have healthcare), end climate protections & re-incentivize the fossil fuel industry, end marriage equality (see supreme court), defund the FBI & Homeland Security, end birthright citizenship, eliminate the FDA (cuz who needs their drugs tested & regulated?), eliminate NOAA (where 99% of our weather data comes from), end civil rights & DEI programs, ban books (anything ‘non-christian’ this also includes books about slavery), ban African American & gender studies at ALL levels of education (including colleges), cut Medicare, cut Social Security, raise the retirement age, provide additional tax breaks for the 1%, increase taxes for the working class, end school lunch programs, leaving NATO (say hello to the Russian invasion of Europe), the list goes on & on & on & now, there is nothing in the way to stop it.

I know that may sound extreme, it may sound a bit like fear mongering too, & I also understand that there will (hopefully) be people within the Republican party who stand up & prevent these things from happening, but if 2016-2020 were any indication, I don’t think I have much faith in that. I challenge you to think of the generational harm that all of this will do even if half of that list is accomplished. Even if a forth is accomplished. We have been steered into a maelstrom to which there is no course correction & those who were out here telling you all “I told you so” will be the one who pay the price the dearest for this folly.

I want to touch on a few more things before I leave you with my closing remarks. Those being what Trump has promised to make the incepting blow of his term; tariffs, immigrants, & trans individuals.

First tariffs. Trump plans to impose a 60% tariff on any goods coming from China & a 10% tariff on all other goods coming from other countries. Where do we get most of our tech from? China. Where do we get most of our steel from? China? Who pays for the tariff? ChiWRONG. You do. The consumer does. The price of most goods in the tech & metal work field are projected to go up around 40% minimum in cost. Nissan has already laid off 9,000 workers in anticipation of the tariffs. A steel company in Pennsylvania has reported that they are striking Christmas bonuses this year in order to stockpile resources before the tariffs take hold & their costs go up. Enjoy your grocery items & every other items you purchase going up in cost.

Now immigrants. Another of Trump’s day one agenda items is the deportation of around 20,000,000 immigrants from The US. A logistical nightmare to say the least, part of this deportation will also include the denaturalization of many immigrants whom the administration also plans to…somehow deport or place into camps. The horrors of that aside, immigrants make up around 50% of the food & manual labor workforce. Without them the literal bottom of the food supply chain barrel & infrastructure barrel falls right out & sweeps the rest of us off with it. The economy will crash & the dollar will be a wash.

Lastly, transgender individuals. The Trump administration wants to inshrine the existence of two genders into the constitution. They also want to force individual to be only able to go by the gender of the sex they were at birth & they want to penalize any & all healthcare workers providing gender affirming care to trans youth. This includes capital punishment for those caught performing gender affirming surgeries on individuals under the age of 18, a practice that isn’t happening anyway.

I’m going to be entirely frank with you all. I’m not very hopeful for the four years going forward. I know there’s another election in two with the midterms but I foresee a whole lot of damage being done before we ever even get the change to get there. I’ve seen a lot of sentiment of “well, you survived the first Trump presidency” going around & I want to remind you all that millions didn’t. Because of his policies, because of his COVID response, millions are now dead & that was with ‘checks & balances’ in place, of which there are now no guard rails for ‘King Trump.’ We have shown this man & his goonies that not only is he above the law as a treasonous, rapist crook, but that it is encouraged. The range & scope of what he will do will increase & things are going to get very bad for a lot of people very quickly.

I’d be lying if I told you all I wasn’t terrified. Not just for Evan & I but for the friends we have who fall into the crosshairs of the Trump administration. I am scared to the point that it sent me to urgent care where we speculate I may have developed an ulcer from stress. These are the policies so many of you voted in favor of. These are the policies that many who call yourselves ‘friend’ or ‘family’ have inflicted upon us & I’m having a really had time seeing how that can be loving in any way. How you can claim to love someone or want what’s best for them & then turn around & vote for someone who hates us. I don’t know how that’s loving, much less how you can classify yourself as someone who is Christian after doing that. Christ said embrace the immigrant, love your neighbor & your enemy, help the needy, feed the hungry, care for the sick, & so many of you who profess that as the anchor for your life went & besmirched that. Not only that, but then you turn around & try to gaslight us into still being connected with you. You claim it takes the bigger person to disagree & still be friends but we are not here disagreeing on how our taxes get spent, we are here disagreeing on who has the right to life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness all for a man who has made his life around swindling & conning his way to the top. I honestly don’t know how they can be justified.

I’m leaving you all here. I am sorry I don’t have a message of hope for you all, but at the moment I am far from hopeful, in fact I am feeling entirely lost. I hope to God I am wrong about all of this. I hope I am, truly, but for now Evan & I wait on bated breath to GTFO before it becomes too late for us to do so. & that is our reality. I’m sorry if this blog was too emotionally driven, I tried my best to keep it grounded but I am at a loss, I am heartbroken & scared & incredibly hurt by those around me who claim love for me but that I know voted against mine & Evan’s livelihood.

-C

Blog: Put Your Hand In The Flame You Lazy Bum!

…Are you all still here? I haven’t scared you all off with my inactivity have I? I sure hope not. I’m here to address the elephant in the room, my absence over the last couple of weeks & in doing so, shine a light on another, less talked about facet of ADHD. As listed in the title of this here entry, today we shall be discussing executive dysfunction.

For those not in the ‘know’ executive dysfunction is a symptom of many neurodivergent diagnoses in which the tasks before you present themselves as so devoid of dopamine triggers that your brain treats it like sawing off your leg. That’s not be being dramatic, the part of a neurodivergent individual’s brain where we see the signals light up during a bout of executive dysfunction are the same exact ones that light up when you are told to reach your hand into a flame. It’s the part of your brain that says “nope, that’s dangerous, that’s of detriment to your health & well being, we are definitely not doing that,” except instead of being about physical or emotional pain, it’s about doing the dishes, writing a blog, etc.

Here in lies the common misguided diagnosis from those within the neurotypical frame of mind brand those of us with ADHD, OCD, Autism, etc of laziness. We are lazy because we can’t complete our tasks when in reality, in our minds, doing said tasks would be harmful to our well being…at least that’s what our brain tells us. It’d be like telling someone to jump headfirst into a junk yard of needles & calling them lazy then they can’t bring themselves to do it. I know to a lot of you that may seem like madness & let me tell you, as someone whose brain does this constantly, especially in the darker, colder months, it’s maddening to me too.

A large portion of us have an internal monologue, that voice in your head that tells you about yourself or thinks thoughts aloud. When we fall into executive dysfunction that internal monologue goes H.A.M. & breathes down our neck the most vile, putrid insults you can imagine. For all of the things I’ve heard from the outside while experiencing ED (lol), I promise you, what’s happening on the inside is worse. What then happens is that you fall into a loop. Negative self talk leads to negative feelings & emotions that you begin to believe about yourself & then you descend farther down the depressive spiral until eventually, hopefully, you break free. Then you’re still left to face the trauma of the occurrence & rebuild your demolished self esteem & confidence. & there in lies the last couple of weeks for me.

Each of the past few weeks I have set about the week with full intention to blog. I try & try & try to force them out but doing so feels like crawling up a mountain using only your hands. Even today I spent most of the day with a ‘to-do’ list of minimal items when I spent the morning avoiding as best I could. I’m going to be entirely honest, as I’m writing this, it is taking literally everything in me to do so, & believe you me, that sounds & feels nuts. It is taking everything in me not to leave this page mid sentence, slink onto the floor & do literally nothing for a foreseeable however long, but I’m here. Doing this. Writing the thing. Because I can’t continue not doing that. I can’t continue feeling like my ADHD is winning that it’s beating me down & stalling my progress, because it does that often. I have to, as much as it truly pains me, do something to try & break the wheel & hopefully kick back into the gear of momentum.

I think that this turned into much more serious a blog than I anticipated, but anytime I write something like this I do so to educate, not to give my excuses to the world, or to gain your sympathies. I am living an experience that so many others do & I am blessed to have a platform that allows me to share that experience out to the world in the hope that those of you who don’t understand will find a little empathy & those who do understand will find camaraderie. I literally spent three hours last Saturday staring at a blank blog sheet & could not for the life of me write a single word. I lost that day & you bet your whole ass I beat myself black & blue for it instead of giving myself grace & patience but this is a case where I want you to do as I say, not as I do. Give yourself grace & patience.

I don’t know what else to tell you my lovelies, but if you have any questions about executive dysfunction or neurodivergence in general I’d be more than happy to answer them in the comments below!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Release: Missed Calls

The Song

Missed Calls started out life as a conversation between my dear friend, Frye, & me. She & I were in her Burbank apartment studio one autumnal afternoon & were discussing seasonal depression. We each passed anecdotes & experiences back & forth discussing everything from the physical/mental sensations, the way it feels both externally & internally, & the shape & form our respective depressive episodes take. She had this idea written down called “Missed Calls” that centered around the themes that we were discussing as well as the idea of being stuck in a depressive state & finding yourself unable to even go so far as to answer your phone, especially when you know a lot of the calls would be people trying to be you “savior.” Naturally it felt like the obvious choice for a write seeing how we both had experience in the field. I remember her & I discussed at length this feeling of wanting to disappear. I often refer to it as the desire to become nothing, to just sink into a hole in the ground dissipate into the aether. It’s not a desire for an ending, simply the desire to not exist for a while, then reenter life at a later time. Often these episodes take the form of crawling into bed & staring at the wall for a long while, which is exactly where we started the song.

We left the session with only a pre-chorus & a chorus if I remember correctly. We had the following written:

“The whispers in my head, pulling at my threads tell me that I’ll make it. The whispers in my head say I’ll end up dead if I don’t face it but I’ve got missed calls, I’m staring at the wall, crawling deeper cuz I’d rather not exist at all. It’s a free fall down the rabbit hole, spiraling giving into the siren’s call. I promise that I’ll tell you when it’s over, I promise that I’ll stay sober, you don’t need to try & save my life. Got missed calls, staring at the wall, going deeper, yeah, I’d rather not exist at all.”

& a lot of that ended up, as is, being the pre & the chorus. Naturally, over the years (yes, years) it ended up being massaged & falling into place a little better, but for the most part, there it was. And so it stayed for what I think was two or so years. It wasn’t until Jess & I had wrapped Consequences Of My Honesty & were looking for the follow-up single that Missed Calls popped back up & demanded to be heard.

We had spent the afternoon session in Jess’s home studio going through options for the next single but nothing that I played felt right. We even tried to come up with a song ourselves but again, it all felt a bit passive. It wasn’t until the demo of Missed Calls tugged on my brain & said “hey, remember me?!” that we found our follow-up!

At this point Missed Calls was still only a pre-chorus & a chorus so, not wanting to waste the session, we set about flushing out production ideas & figuring out what we thought a depressive episode would sound like. With space for verses inserted I took the track back to Frye via Zoom & we set up a session to finish it out.

For our verses we really wanted to get back into channeling that feeling of sliding into debilitating depression. Verse one was easy because we basically just took the inception of the feeling & injected that into the lyrics. I had this idea that it was somewhat similar to the experience of giving into any vice or altered state experience where you can feel the waves of effect happening but your body & your psyche do their best to fight it off until you ultimately succumb. Hence the opener of “turn on, breathe in, freak out” which is a reference to the saying “turn on, tune in, drop out” about LSD. The lyrics from there continued along that theme going for a “take your medicine” type feel where you don’t want to but you feel its inevitability & it’s more comfortable to give into it than it is to fight it, especially since it’s often fruitless to do so, at least in our case. I had this imagery in my mind of the acceptance of drowning. The weirdly macabre serenity that is often portrayed in movies when someone accepts that they have been met with their fate & they surrender to it. Verse two was a little different, it was a bit more of an uphill battle as most songwriters will tell you second verses often are.

I’m a very analytical songwriter. I view songs like a story & often come up with an outline of where I think the story should go & the beats that I think it needs to hit along the way. Frye & I both struggled to find the beats of the second verse because we felt that it was hard to expand upon the feeling of ‘nothing’ once you’re in it. After all, nobody wants to listen to a story that is all more of the same across the board. So we didn’t try to. Instead we opted to take in the direction of expansion. We expounded upon what was already there, doing our best to demonstrate that sunken place. To us, the middle of a depressive episode feels like drifting. It feels like you’re in an emotional void, not really existing but also not being entirely detached from your physical being; a ‘void of all consuming nothing.’ Like you’re a cosmonaut sheltered in your vessel made of blankets, drifting through the vacuum of space. We also didn’t want to have the entirety of our song be consumed by doom & gloom, so we injected little pockets of hope throughout, like the knowing that the state is temporary & eventually you will ‘resurface.’

Finally, for the pre-choruses we decided that the punch of the line regarding ‘death’ needed saving til the last, so we rewrote the previous two with the intention of that inner dialogue getting louder & louder throughout. So we go from whispers, to voices, to screams. Apparently not everyone has an inner dialogue, so for those of you out there without who have no idea what I’m talking about, my apologies. However, we both found that ours tends to be almost ‘guardian angelic’ in its tone during these moments. It’s reassurance & understand but on the flip side you have the undercurrents of self deprecation. The “I understand, take your time” is weighed against the “you’re worthless & lazy” & depending on the state you’re in, often the scales tip one way or another. We opted for the helpful angle I think, again wanted to inject those glimmers of hope & show that the voices pulling you along, tethering you to reality, often also shine the spotlight towards the surface & give you a helpful nudge that says “whenever you’re ready, there’s the exit.”

I want to get ahead of the line about death that reads “the screaming in my head says I’ll end up dead if I don’t face it” & explain away any insinuation of suicidal ideology or tendency. The line isn’t meant to alarm in the way that I think some people who have heard it think it does. Isn’t that always in the question when dealing with topics of mental health? Of course. Have majority of us faced the depths of our respective ends & turned away towards the light & chosen that? Mostly, yes. But I think that what we are referring to here is that delicate balance. When it comes to diving there are two alternating forces at work. You have what is called ‘surface suck’ where you get pulled to the surface because of the expansion of gases (air in the lungs, sinuses, etc.) in the body with the loss of pressure, then you have the opposite where the depth & the pressure over come you & you sink deeper & deeper because the air has been constricted & compressed to nothing under the weight of all of the water above you. A depressive episode often sits in the space of perfect buoyancy, tugging you one way or another. When I say “you’ll end up dead” it’s not overstepping to say mean that you’ll end up leaning clinical, but I mean more you’ll end up sinking into the depths with little to no way of finding the light without help. You will end up worse off if you don’t keep your eye on the exit & rising back up out of the episode.

The last thing that I want to touch on before we move into production was an idea that came from the lovely, Leena Regan. I went to her when I couldn’t seem to figure out where to end the song & she suggested flipping the final chorus, doing a drop out of the ‘missed calls’ refrain, putting that at the top of the chorus & simply ending on a cliff hanger with “I’d rather not exist at all.” Which is where we went & I think it totally has simply the dopest effect!

The Production

With production you often have target songs or specific sounds or effects that you like & use as reference. Even if you aren’t blatantly pulling up a song & saying “that guitar sound,” “that drum feel,” etc., it often finds its way in through “what about a such & such feel with so & so style production.” For us those sounds came from multiple locations.

I had been listening to Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poet’s Department, so naturally that made its way in to a degree. I really liked the sparse yet moving production on “I Look In People’s Windows,” the way it used plucky acoustic guitar, strings, & heavy rhythm which in a lot of ways was also similar to “Satellite” by Harry Styles.

I had decided pretty early on that I didn’t need Missed Calls to be ‘strictly country’ or even lean that direction. I was fine weaving in & out of genres to suit the song & the style that it asked for. I am a genre alchemizing singer-songwriter after all. A few years ago Lizzo says “genres are dead” & I took that to heart & it seems so did a lot of other artists, especially female artists like Taylor Acorn, Beyoncé, Kacey Musgraves, or Taylor Swift. I’m fine releasing a country song one month, then a pop the next, or a rock song after that. It doesn’t bother me one bit because the through line is still me, even if the instrumentation is constantly shifting around that.

Additional references were “Issues” by Julia Michaels, “A House In Nebraska” by Ethel Cain, especially for the piano, & naturally some of The 1975 with “If I Believe You,” specifically for the choral lines.

Jess & I also decided pretty early on that we wanted to “Hey Ya” or “1975” the song where in you take a song with pretty deep, serious subject matter & make it more palatable for your audience through the use of ‘fun’ instrumentation & production, opting for a more upbeat feel instead of sliding into the dirge-y ballad feel that the song feels that it should be on paper.

I’m also someone who really likes throwing real world sounds into songs, not just in the form of acoustic instruments, but also using sampling or interpolation. With the theme of calls & phones throughout we used that to our advantage. At certain points we inserted our own versions of iconic iPhone sounds (sorry Android users, we weren’t deeply familiar with your sounds like we are with the Apple library). We didn’t want to run into copyright issues so we opted for recreating the sounds using slightly modified melodies, tracing the ‘themes’ of certain sounds, or flat out having me mimic them in a microphone. There’s one such instance at the end of verse two in which I make the ‘email send’ sound & another in a pre where I ‘pop’ like the key tones used during texting. Additionally, in the second verse, during the section that talks about giving into the void we immolated the sound of a black hole like the one NASA released a few years back.

Being a vocal major, I also often get to annoy Jess with my insistent vocal stacks, this song was no different. With Consequences we opted for more of a “Avatar: The Last Airbender Closing Credits” feel for the bridge, here we went with “Grassland Chants” from The Lion King in addition to the multitude of choral stacks used throughout the verses & the chorus refrains.

With most of the song finished we both felt like there was something major missing from the production. I decided to bring in my cello & try a few things out on it to see if they filled in the gaps & I honestly think it made the song. We almost treated it like a vocal (cello is the closest instrument to the human voice) & layered & stacked it as well, alternating between plucked notes & sweeping bowed bass lines.

We ran into a unique issue when we felt we’d wrapped principle production. It was unique because neither Jess or I could hear it, but those under the age of 28 all seemed to hear it almost instantly with laser precision. There was a frequency in one of my vocal lines that only Evan & a few others could hear, all of whom are under 28 years old. We actually had to bring Evan into the studio to pin point where & what the sound was, because no matter how we tried, we couldn’t hear it at all. It seems we found it & took care of it though…hopefully.

Another thing that I’m sure drives Jess up a wall is that I am a meticulous mixer. I know how I want the song to sound in my head & I am obsessive until it gets there. The annoying part of modern mixing is that it has to sound good across a multitude of speakers. It has to sound good in proper speakers, in car speakers, in headphones, in earbuds, in phone speakers, so finding that balance can often be a pain in the ass. You’ll think you have it entirely figured out then you go listen to the song from a different platform & it suddenly sounds like garbage. We struggled for a minute to get it right but I’m so glad we took the time to & I’m grateful for the patience it took from others to get there. Additionally, a special thanks to Max Hurrell & Joshua Gleave for their help on it!

Finally the song went off to Adam Grover for master where it was boosted, leveled out, & returned as a completed bop!

I feel it may be helpful to help people who don’t know understand the difference between a mix & a master. A mix is individual tracks; track volumes, track equalization (turning up & down bass/mids/treble & everything in-between), panning (left & right stereo placement), automation (volume fades, pans, etc.), & any effects applied there within. Mastering then takes that overall mix & polishes it. It makes it consistent volume wise with other songs on the market & also adjusts levels & equalization of the song as a whole. It’s the top coat of the song. Don’t skimp on either.

The Visuals

I had this idea, unfortunately, a little too late of shooting the artwork & other digital assets in a pool. In my mind I was fully clothed with flowing clothing on & there would be a light from above shining down into the water. Additionally I had the thought to bring in a blanket with me to wrap up in. My initial idea was very much in line with “The Fall of Icarus,” having the blanket & the clothing being like the wings that had burnt by flying to close to the sun.

My initial idea came to me while Evan & I were in Kansas which would have made the perfect photo location as I could have asked for access to the fourteen foot deep pool at Midwest Aquatics. I wouldn’t put Evan in dive gear & used an underwater rig to shoot. As I stated, unfortunately I thought of it while we were in Kansas, on the second to last day of our trip there. All of the clothing I had in mind was back home, as was our lighting rig, & dive gear. So unfortunately, it didn’t get shot where I’d planned.

I then spent then next couple of weeks searching high in low in Nashville to find a deep pool that we could shoot in. I asked friends who I thought may have access to pools, looked into renting one for an hour or two, but all roads came up dry…Eventually Evan decided to reach out to our HOA & see if they would allow us to use our neighborhood pool after hours. Which they agreed to!

We shot the album artwork for Missed Calls on a bit of a time constraint. The day we had planned to shoot, there ended up being a thunderstorm, & the day after we ended up shooting we were headed out of town for a week & still needed to wrap up things at home. We also basically had an hour window to get in & get out before a rain storm rolled in. The artwork was shot in five feet of water with Evan using my iPhone 15 Pro Max inside of my Oceanic Dive Housing, in the midst of a rainstorm all while I had an active ear infection & my phone kept overheating. I held my breath as long as I could, as did Evan, & I used dive weights hidden in the pockets of my pants to hold me down under the water.

The rough images we got from the pool session & the finish product are two wildly different things. I have Evan to thank for that. He took these often very plain looking pictures & made them extraordinary. We Bob Rossed & “embraced the happy little accidents” & those ended up being some of our favorite pieces from the shoot.

The image for album art itself was an instant love of mine. Evan expanded on a very cropped image, a shoulder to shoulder frame with only a little space above my head & down to around my upper shins, & made it a marvel. I sent him a picture of a field of coral that looked similar to the way the blanket was wrapping & he nailed the execution of the addition.

We actually bickered back & forth about the artwork itself. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted from it in mind & so did I. In the end we took the best of each version & combined in into what it is! Which is something that I know both he & I are very proud of.

All in all, the photo assets came from a tight squeeze, a long shot, & a shoot that Evan was very nervous to do & ended up with some honestly incredible art on his part.

The canvas & the promo video also was a bit of a collaboration. I took a video that I had taken while diving in The Philippines that we both loved & that we felt encapsulated the feeling of the song. I had my camera set at the wave line & was allowing them to wash over the lens all while it rained. If you look closely at it you’ll actually see a massive bug fly into frame for a total of two shots. Evan then color graded it to match the artwork & I went in & learned how to do a mask dodge in Final Cut Pro to make the title & the information for the single wash in & out with the waves. It took me far too long but I’m so happy with the results!

Final Thoughts

If you are reading this, if you have made it this far, then Missed Calls is out. It’s available to you! You can go listen to it, share it, express your feelings about it, & make it your own! I am incredibly proud of this song & am beyond grateful for all who helped bring it to life. They say it takes an army & this song surely did. Missed Calls is a piece of me, it’s a very honest expression of my life & reflects the feeling & the experience that I know a lot of people out there share. I hope that this song finds a place in your life, even if it’s just from an empathetic level, or even just because you find the production fun. I don’t know how far this song will go, but that doesn’t matter. I have put it out into the world & if even one person connects with it, then I have done my job.

You can find links to Missed Calls below the credits, there will be an embedded link that should then link you to the streaming platform of your choosing & allow you to access the song!

Thank you all so much for reading this, for pre-saving the song if you did, & for listening to it! Creating music is one of my great joys & I’m so fortunate to get to share that with you all!

Credits:

Written By:

Charlie Rogers & Frye

Produced, Engineered, & Mixed By:

Jess Grommet

Performed By:

Charlie Rogers

Keys, Guitars, Rhythm, Synth, & Programing By:

Jess Grommet

Cello & Additional Voices By:

Charlie Rogers

Mastered By:

Adam Grover

Photography, Graphic Design, & Digital Assets By:

Evan Michael

Distributed By:

TooLost

Publicity By:

Trend PR

Special Thanks To:

Joshua Gleave, Savannah Hitchcliffe, Max Hurrell, Leena Regan, Ethel Smallmon Ford, & Jenna Vitolo

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Blog: Life Through An Ever Shrinking Lens

I know that title sounds daunting, maybe even fringing on the nihilistic, but I promise you, this blog will be quite the opposite. Over the years I’ve written many blogs with the title of “life through” or “life in” or something else along those lines, so that’s how the title came to me naturally in the midst of the brainstorm that was coming up with the topic for this blog. Life through an ever shrinking lens. Okay, so it’s not nihilism, it’s not deprecation, & I promise you it’s not claustrophobic as the imagery probably draws into your mind. So what is this blog about? This blog is about the shift in perspective that seems to be coming with age, or maybe it’s just a sign of the times.

A lot of the time when I sit down to write blogs at the end of my week they end up being about synchronicities, those moments in my day to day life that shared an over arching theme for the week, month, or however long the greater powers that be saw fit to hammer the lesson into my brain. This week was one such week. I had a friend send me a tweet on twitter (I shall never refer to it as X. it’s idiotic) that said the following:

“Me at 22: Wow, life really ends at 21.

Me at 25: Wow, life really ends at 24.

Me at 28: I’ve really been in the mood for an apple danish lately, I can’t wait to get to walk to the corner store & get myself an apple danish! :)”

— @LeftAtLondon On Twitter

To which he accompanied with the comment, “tea kinda” which then sparked a conversation which then led to the inception of this blog. & you know what? It is “tea, kinda!”

Again, I haven’t decided on whether to caulk all of this up to age, as both he & I are in our early thirties with a fully developed frontal lobe (in theory) or whether it’s an experience that those younger than us are also feeling of late, the data sample is far too small & limited for anything conclusive there. What I am noticing, however, specifically speaking for myself, my friend, & even Evan, whom I asked his thoughts on when the topic originally came up, is that we all are finding ourselves more & more in the mindset of enjoying the little things. Caring more about the “sweet treats” that make us smile, the company that we share a kindred soul with, & finding wonder at every turn.

I’m sure there is a term for all of this, I’m also certain that if I allowed myself to venture into the internet in search of it that this blog would end up being delayed another hour or two in its completion simply from the rabbit hole that I would no doubt stumble headlong into. What I do know if that the lens is shrinking. I no longer care so much what the broader collective thinks & feels about me, I no longer care what they want from me as an individual, & I no longer seek the approval of those who I know I would have to encase myself in some false presentation of who I am to be in the good graces of. I am, all in all, in search of simple, humble, minuscule happiness. I am looking for connection, not out of need for acceptance or desire to expand a social circle, but simply to share something human with another person on the same level. To laugh & collaborate, to create & feel & empathize with because I think we have lost a lot of that in the rat race of clout, fame, popularity, & ambition.

I live a lot of my days of late in more silence that I had allowed in before. I sit & ponder the thoughts that pass through my brain, I think of the daily cross sections of humanity & how beautiful a lot of what we encounter in our day to day lives actual is. I think about life & its cycles. I think about evolution, adaptation, passion, experience, & I marvel at how grandiose it all is. How precise, calculated, & yet utterly wild it all is. In a lot of ways, in shrinking the lens, in minimizing the focus away from things that really don’t matter, I am finding infinite streams of beauty & expression.

I know that last paragraph sounded pretty ‘woo woo.’ I hope that I didn’t lose you in it, but in all honesty that is what I feel, that is what is flowing through my mind. That is how I am living my life at the moment. & it’s simple & mundane at times but it is so refreshing to live in the quiet sometimes. To just be. To experience the marvel that it is to be human & the astonishing ways in which that manifests.

I’m going to leave you with one last anecdote before I sign off on this blog & let you all continue about your day. It’s a story that involves one of my favorite topics, Harvey. I’m going to keep this story light. I’m not going to delve into the pain of missing him or any of the grief there in, but I do want to tell you all a story that involves him in his later years.

Harvey on our daily walks was prone to literally stopping & smelling the roses. This was probably way less to do with the flowering fauna he frequented himself & more to do with the other dogs & animals who had done the same, marking as they went along. Either way the story rings true. Harvey, on our walks, would stop often to take deep long inspective sniffs at many of the plants along the path, most of whom flowered at one point or another. Often Evan & I would try to hurry him along to keep the walk moving, that was until we read something that mentioned that dogs stopping & investigating is ten times more stimulating for them & their brains than just the walk itself. Then we too slowed & allowed his reprieve from the walk.

When Harvey passed our vet sent us an ink print of his nose. Evan & I then went around to each of the spots that he would stop each day on our walks, collected & dried the flowers from the plants that he had spent so much time & waining energy interacting with. They now adorn his nose print in a wooden frame in our living room.

So what’s the lesson here? Why bring it up? How does it connect? Harvey saw the value in stopping the motion that often was difficult for him to stop & start & taking in these expression & signatures of life. It wasn’t til he was gone that I truly appreciated them for what they were, that I truly understood how important if is to cut it all out, stop, & experience something just for the beauty of what it is or the signature that it bares.

We live in such a grind culture. We live in a culture that idolizes, that rewards the image & not the individual. We project our most attractive aspects up onto social media or our blogs but seldom do we take the time to shut it all out & really experience what it is to be human. We don’t think about the years that pastry chef spent perfecting that danish that lives at the corner shop you love, down the street from where you build your life & the cross section that all of that is. We don’t allow ourselves to feel the embrace of our partner or our friends without the fear of judgement or the pretense that we feel is required because that is what media or life has taught us we must do. We don’t ask for the things we need simply because we don’t want to be a burden so we suffer in the discomfort. We don’t stop & ponder the rain or the birds or the plants & the cycles they exist in & perpetuate. We try to force our lives into an all encompassing, broad lens, but I think if you zoom in, shrink it down, you will find all of the magnanimous happenings that you have been searching for.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Beauty & Grief

Hi friends.

I hope you have had a wonderful week, though I know for a lot of you that hasn’t been the case. For whatever reason there seems to have been an uptick in those passing this last week or so; dearest friends & loved ones, beloved furry companions, staples of communities, & sudden shifting tides that have led to difficult decisions & great heartache across the board. If you find yourself in any of those categories I first want to offer you me deepest, most sincere condolences. I also want to shed some light on what you can expect going & hopefully bring a little peace your way through shared experience & understanding.

If you weren’t aware, back in May I lost my almost decade & a half companion Harvey & while yes, he was “just a dog,” he was so much more than that to me & to most of the people that had the pleasure of knowing him. I have no children other than those who bare fur & walk on all fours. That’s not a dig at saying my (non-existent) human children are very bizarre, I’m simply saying that all I have, paternally, are the animals that I have adopted over the years. I’m not going to turn this blog into a statement about how people should or shouldn’t be able to grieve their pets, but a lot of recent research shows that those of us who have strong, almost familial connections to our pets, mourn them in an identical way to how you would mourn the loss of a family member. Harvey was my boy, he was with me for over thirteen years of my life & he was, for a long time, who I looked forward to coming home to at the end of the day. So his loss ripped me apart, it shattered me to the core, & forced me to rebuild a life without him in it.

I’m not going to sit here & lie to you or belittle you. It’s hard, it’s impossibly hard, the grief that lingers like fog & settles into your bones like lead. You will have days where it is debilitating, but you will also have days where the sun shines through the blinds & melancholy & hope replace the anguish & despair. But with all things challenging in life you must face it head on & take it one step at a time.

There will be a time, when the wound of loss is fresh, where you will seemingly forget a time when your eyes were not floodgates constantly on the verge of spilling over. Then too will come a day when you can’t remember the last time you felt that way, when you can’t remember the last time you cried. You will be visited in your dreams & reach for them in your sleep & wake up with a tear soaked pillow & a yearning that can never be satiated. There will be times when a certain song, sound, smell, phrasing, sight will hit you in just the right way & you’ll find yourself back in the thick of it all. Even I still find myself here once in a blue moon all of these months later, but it does get easier & the triggers get fewer & farther between & at some point melancholy takes over the bitter sadness & all you will find is sweet longing & remembrance.

There’s a quote that I use often because of just how perfectly stated it is. It can be found in the Disney+ Show “WandaVision” at a point where one character, Vision, finds another, Wanda, sitting in the room ruminating on the death of her brother. In my mind Wanda becomes apologetic for her expression of grief & Vision delivers the beautiful line "what is grief if not love persevering?” That’s a line I think about often & as someone who often deals in lyrics or creative writing, is ultimately one that I wish I had thought of. Though as of now it definitely would’ve reached a wider audience on Disney+ than me.

We seldom think of grief this way. My perception of it has always been a dark, navy/grayish cloud of despair that sticks to the skin & sinks into the marrow. Almost like some dark force whose job it is to chain you to the depths. I think recently that idea has changed for me. We like to quantify grief in stages. First you hit the one, then the other, then the other three. And while a part of me thinks to an extent that is true in terms of the overarching experience, I think we dip in & out of each of the five stages intermittently & at times randomly. You see, if we look at grief from the perspective of love’s perseverance it becomes something entirely different, it becomes an immensely beautiful, deeply human experience.

Those who do not grieve are whose who have not known love. They have not felt its entirely. individually unique hold on their heart to then know what it is to suddenly have to live without it. They do not see the way in which our memory replays each of the moments, begging us to find what is irreplaceably lost. They do not understand the vacuum of space that feels ripped from your chest because they have not felt that level of DNA melding, intertwining love. Be so glad for that. Know that your sadness can only come from one who has been loved.

My advise to you is to feel these moments. Live in these memories savoring the shimmeringly perfect details & embrace the pain & the detriment that comes with them because these moments will fade. The intensity at which you feel their loss will fade & so too will the sharp edges of those bold, flashing memories. Grieve as you are told to love, wholeheartedly & know that you don’t owe anyone your tears or your smiles. You are allowed to be as “put together” as you need to be, or to not be. Feel what you need to feel because that is the only way to experience grief for what it is, without allowing it to compress down & fester & become this thing that sours your soul or the memory of those who you have lost. Be vulnerable, be bold, claim time for yourself & feel. You will get through it & you will find that those memories that bring you pain will, over time, fill you to the core with that feeling of love that I know right now you feel you have lost. I would also advise you that those you have lost would want you to continue living your life & to not let the delicate balance between succumbing & healing shift too far into the former.

My thoughts & love go out to you all. I understand that no words that I say or no sentiments that I extend will be enough to repair what has been broken, that is entirely up to you.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: It Must Be Nice

Every two to four years the US likes to turn up the gas on the conversations that happen over family gatherings & across social media platforms. I’ll be the first to admit I kind of enjoy the biannual purge that cleans out my social media followers & friends. It can actually be refreshing from time to time to know where people actually stand. And look, I know a lot of you read that last bit of sentences & had the lovely sentiment of “just because we disagree in the voting booth, doesn’t mean we can’t still be friend” & unfortunately I think we’re way past that societally, morally, & “loving.” I’m sure, once again, me saying that has lost a few of you & some of you have already checked out or clicked out of this blog because you “won’t be a part of divisive politics” which in this day & age is, let’s face it, oxymoronic. If you’re still here & you have a little bit of time I’d love to fill you in on what I mean by all of this & show you why I, & so many who find ourselves living in marginalized groups, feel this way.

Let’s start at what prompted this blog with a little bit of back story. I was on the phone a few weeks ago with someone, whom I shan’t name here because they trusted me enough to speak about their political beliefs openly with me & inadvertently trigger the contents of this blog from the conversation that they & I had. In said conversation we were talking about the upcoming election in which I voiced my support for the Harris/Walz ticket & the general feeling of hope that came with it. We talked policy & things of that nature & the rebuttal of the person I was talking to was very economically driven, as most people are to do when they vote red. They are a well off individual & were upset over the amount of taxes they’d had to pay this year from the sales of an entity that they had worked their lifetime for & which had allow them to retire. I informed them that we hadn’t had a new tax bill since 2019, but their concern was that the incoming potential of a Democratic win would further reduce their earned pile & that which they had prepared to leave for their children once they passed. My response was, what a luxury, that must be nice.

You see while they’re dealing internally with issues like tax policy & inflation (which is mostly a global issue by the way, majority of the rest can be chalked up to corporate greed) I’ve just spent the last several months investigating the deep possibility & probability that had Biden not dropped out, Evan & I would most likely need to expat to another country.

I don’t think that’s over exaggerating either. In fact a lot of people that I know who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, individuals of color, or women, had been doing exactly the same thing to varying degrees. Evan & I had gotten to the point where we were narrowing down countries, looking into visa applications & price, & planning to start the processes for all of these things. Tax policy was honestly the farthest thing from our minds & that’s exactly what I mean when I say “it must be nice.”

It must be nice not to worry about your fundamental rights every election cycle. It must be nice not to fear that the only way that you & your significant other to be together would be by fleeing the country. It must be nice when the things on the ballot for you are not life altering, but instead whether or not you have access to a military grade machine gun. It must be nice not to be worried about whether or not you’re going to be able to afford or attain healthcare. It must be nice to know that certain aspects of who you are as human will not diminish you in society to any degree no matter the outcome. It must be nice not to worry about housing or food or whether or not we will even have a livable planet in 20-30 years. It must be nice to balance the fate of so many, whom you are supposed to love unconditionally as a so called christian, on a vote in favor of your wallet when the alternative could potentially ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. It must be nice.

So no, I don’t mince words, because we are past the point of where an election is simply deciding where & when we spend our tax dollars. We are voting on whether or not those who are different than you; who look different, worship in a different way, love different, have a different tax bracket, have different core beliefs, are worthy of basic human liberties or not. And if you are not someone who can agree with that from a moral stand point, I have little to no interest in anything you say. Because at the end of the day if we can’t agree that all people, no matter their race, gender, background, sexuality, religion, etc. are worthy of life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness equally, without barriers or restrictions that keep them from living a life with no consequence of your own, then you have lost my respect & any integrity that I thought you might have.

This is not about tax policy. This is not about budgets. This is about the livelihood of millions of Americans who don’t fall under the christian, cis-gender, heterosexual, white blanket & I fear that should this election go the way it looked like it was headed just a month or so ago, then we will have lost any & all hope of regaining & rebuilding America as any form of a United States.

-C

Blog: Ponderance & Teacups

Lately I’ve found myself leaning more & more into ponderances & have caught myself marveling at the ‘through lines’ of it all. Yes, I know ponderances isn’t a word, but I enjoyed the cadence of it in my brain & the way it fits in form. To ponder is to think carefully or in detail about & adding the suffix “ance” insinuates a state of being, ponderances therefore being states of thoughtful thinking. There’s something shimmery & quant about that. Like nostalgia set to theory. I don’t know if it’s the years, the journey into mindfulness, the season of life, or what the cause of this often aloof status would be, but it’s brought about many connections in my head that warm the heart & bring me to marvel at the grand ‘happenstance’ of it all.

One such ponderance & the conclusion that it led to finds its way back to me almost on the daily in the form of teacups. I am a lover of beverages in most of their forms. Most dietitians I’m sure would scoff at the amount of “wasted calories” that I drink, but there’s something altogether entertaining about a drink that’s tastes invigorate the senses & occupy the mind. I am a tea drinker, of course, because of this love (in addition to coffee, cocktails, juices, craft sodas, tonics, etc. etc.). I find the combination of flavors, as well as their medicinal properties, to be fascinating & therefore I consume some form of tea almost each & every day. The existence of this love for beverages has also led me to the accumulation of many a drinking vessel, all of which sit in the same cupboard awaiting their specific & unique intended use.

My mugs, which are often the cup chosen for tea time, actually sit opposite all of the others in my kitchen. However, the tea strainers all sit with the other tea items; the teapot, the ceremonial tea cups, etc. & with the tea paraphernalia lives two very distinct tea cups that are actually one of the newer additions to the collection. Did I mention they also come with a story?

When I go to make my tea; when the water has been warmed, the mug & the leaves has been selected, & I go in search of a strainer they always catch my eye & I can’t help but smile as my fingertips drift over them to where the things I need are stored. They don’t look like much. They’re small, entirely porcelain white, except for the blue lined base & two little raised details that sit on either side of the cups; a soft greyed purple & a blush pink flower & a few cerulean & sage leaves. The tea cups are unassuming. They’re delicate & beautiful when taken in but when places in a collection I’m not sure they’re the first thing that most people would notice. That’s definitely not the case for me as they stand out like a spot in the night, anchoring me to lineage, fate, & a bond between peoples living on opposite ends of the earth.

I don’t know entirely where the teacups originated outside of knowing that they are Japanese in make & in origin. They were brought across the Pacific Ocean, packed carefully in with an assortment of other personal treasures & articles of a life being transplanted from one country to another. Through time & years they ended up in a home on a hilltop in Hillsboro, Oregon where a first generation Japanese family lived with their daughter next door to my parents & their daughter at the time. I’m not sure at what point the family moved away back across the sea, but I do know in the interim, in that time spent as neighbors, they & my parents became rather close. Just as my sister did to their daughter. I have no recollection of the bond or the family in my early years of life because I was a newly minted human being & I’m fairly certain they were gone before my time of memory, but when they departed this country they left behind certain items & gifts, two of which where these teacups.

Years went by & stories were told & the family became a staple of the history that is my immediate family though the years had drifted us apart. Technology had changed, each of us had moved ten times over, the children were grown & starting families & lives of their own, & the ties & bonds slipped nearly into fable. My mother would often sit & express how much she longed to reconnect with the friends whom they hadn’t been able to reach for the many years of separation they'd endured. That was until my love stepped in.

Evan is notoriously good for finding things & people lost to the internet, he should probably be a private investigator, & in the span of around thirty minutes to an hour, he was able to find the socials & email for the family now living in Japan. From there my mother began to reconnect which then led to her connecting me with the daughter of the family whom now I share an online connection with delighting in the photos she posts of her & her blossoming family. And then there are these teacups.

My mom isn’t a tea drinker, if she does, she’s a mug drinker for sure favoring something that comes in a bag over loose leaf. She has not the desire for the ceremonial, meditative aspects of tea brewing & drinking & in knowing that I do, she gifted me the teacups along with the story of their origin. It was a while later, after using them & having them as a staple of my cupboard of cups that I really realized the serendipity of what I had. The amount of life that these simple ceramic vessels had seen & endured all while intertwining two families from two entirely different cultural backgrounds & locations.

The cups were gifted or bought in Japan, where they were crafted. They were used by a family who crossed the largest ocean on the planet to start a new life in an entirely different country. They were passed, lovingly, to my family as their previous owners parted these lands where they sat, waiting the years for the one member of my family who would use them for their intended use to be gifted them. They would then reignite the stories & the desire of connection in which my chosen partner, someone from an entirely different family, from an entirely different part of the country, would reconnect the two separated families. And now they have a home in my house in Tennessee where they frequently spark my sense of wonder & amazement at the sheer tenacity of the invisible string that guides us along. Where they are an anchor point of admiration & love across time, space, generations, & peoples.

I know someday these cups may break. I’m sure out of clumsiness that some day I may accidentally knock them from their shelf & shatter them into a million pieces. And while the idea of losing these points of reference & reverence saddens me, I know that their meaning & their purpose will have been served & that their timing, their patience, & fortitude will have amounted to so much more than just a pair of teacups. Things are just things, stuff is just stuff, but meaning & love & companionship leave behind marks. We can never see them but they are very much felt & maybe, who knows, when the timing is right & if these cups have outlived a love I carry for their practical uses. Maybe they too will make another trip across the sea where they will be returned to a member of the bloodline that gifted them so lovingly to mine & the intersectionality will continue.

Blog: I've Got That Summertime, Summertime Sadness.

Typically this is the type of blog that you would find popping up on my page during the colder months of the year & while those depressive bouts definitely feel different from the place I currently find myself in, I feel that this is no less relevant a topic to so many of you who read my writings. Summer is usually the time of year where I am in my emotional & energetic highs. I love the heat, I love that everything is green & lush & all of the best foods are in season. Also, being a water baby, summer offers the most opportunity for me to be submerged…comfortably. I don’t think all of that is not entirely true currently, as I feel what I’m experiencing has nothing to do with the season itself. I suppose to a degree that the title of this blog is a misnomer, as I don’t have seasonal depression as some do with the warmer months, but instead I find myself in a slump triggered by something else…it just happens to be taking place in the heat of summer.

I’ve written many times about my experience with ADHD & I feel like this is more in line with that side of my psyche than the seasonally depressed one. If you’re unfamiliar with ADHD a lot of us get what is referred to as “executive disfunction.” This form of “ED” (lol) is typically entirely driven by one of two things; dopamine or anxiety. I think I’m dealing with the former, but I’m going to talk about the latter first.

Often times people with executive dysfunction that stems from anxiety get that way because they have too much on their plate. They’re looking around, seeing all of the things they feel they need to get accomplished, & they flounder because their brain can’t figure out where to start. A lot of the time when you’re neurodivergent everything comes across as having equal importance so when you’re weighing one thing against the other your scales can come out flush. This is where the ED sets in & you find yourself breaking down & doing nothing instead of getting the things done that you needed to get done which then results in feelings of low self esteem, self worth, etc.

On the other side of this dysfunctional coin lives the dopamine drive, which people who are neurodivergent are often driven by. You see, we crave novelty, we crave change & constant moments of “oo, look at that!” which is often why people with ADHD are impulsive spenders. Autism typically manifests in the opposite way. Those who are autistic often crave stability, comfort, & constants in their lives.

I’m coming off of almost two to three months of dopamine switch backs. I worked on a single, was writing for other people, did PR & asset work for said single, helped a friend move, worked on an acoustic version of said single, started & finished another single, shot assets for it, went to Colorado, played shows, etc., etc., etc. But the line of exhilaration & burn out it the edge of a knife & I think I found myself burning out which then caused me to falter & stop, as I should which then left my dopamine & novelty meter to run out which then causes me to go in search of quick dopamine fixes; food, social media, working out, etc. With those quick fixes in place my executive function sets in because the things that take longer than five seconds to an hour or so now seem not worth the energy & the cycle perpetuates itself over & over & thus, much like the anxious style, so too does the depression.

The problem is that executive dysfunction begets executive dysfunction & the depression definitely perpetuates it as all it makes me want to do is wallow. It is a battle to get up & do anything at all, truly. Even this blog has been a sloooooooog for me & my brain to get through today as the dopamine payoff is long & delayed. (Most blogs take me about an hour & a half to two.) But unfortunately, I have to re-regulate, I have to push through the slump & do the things that take time, avoiding the quick fixes as best I can in order to get back on track which is typically much easier for me to do in the summer months because there is more going on in the world & amongst my peer groups.

As with any blog regarding my struggles with depression or my ADHD symptoms, I don’t write them for your sympathies or to make excuses for myself. What I do is share all of this because I know there are those of you out there who feel the same way I do or are dealing with similar moments in your lives. Additionally some of you may be reading this to better understand the ebb & flow of mental states of someone in your life, & if that’s what has brought you here I applaud the hell out of you & your desire to engage from an empathetic stand point.

Living in a nuerotypical oriented, ‘go, go, go’ world can be incredibly difficult for some of us & often those who find themselves aligned, mentally, with the world that capitalism has built, don’t understand what it is to not have your brain fit in the box constructed around us. I write these blogs to help educate as much as I do to help those in the same boat find commonality with a stranger on the internet.

I’ll bounce out of this, I’m sure of it. I’m in a low tide moment where the sea has receded & I’m forced to bake in the sun for a while but I know the tide will shift & I will once again be rolling in the surf.

As always, much love to you all!!!

-C

Blog: Why Not?

I think for a lot of us we really get in our own way. We over think the way that we believe others feel about us, whether true or false, but typically in the negative. Seldom do we think about a relationship of ours & think “wow, so & so probably enjoys my company,” “x,y,z, must get value in our companionship if they keep inviting me around” & of course we don’t because even just reading those, it sounds psychotic! That’s not how our brains work, that’s not how we’re all wired & I get it! I understand why. As a member of the kingdom ‘Animalia’ we are hard wired to be looking for the things that are '“wrong” in any given situation. We are programed to be constantly reevaluating the patterns of life around us in search of a change that would indicate danger. (Especially if you’re nuerospicy.) It’s a survival tactic. Even amongst our peers & our loved ones there is a part of us that must always keep up our defenses in the off chance that we have to engage in fight or flight or that our behavior finds us ostracized from our social groups.

I feel like most animals are pretty adepts at reading the body language of their fellow like species. Dogs & cats pick up on aggression cues from one another down to the smallest twitch of the ears or the positioning of the body & we humans are no different. A large number of us are so adept at picking up the interpersonal cues we share that we almost become fortunetellers, putting the pattern recognized cart before the proverbial horse. Sometimes, especially when growing up, certain situations can devolve human behavior & pattern recognition into trauma responses, often from dealing with a neglectful, narcissistic, aloof, abusive, insert your desired adjective here*, care giver. Sometimes those trauma responses come from being outcast by our peers in school or amongst age similar social groups & when left untreated all of these sheltering attributes follow us into adulthood.

Now, I’m not here to give you a sociology lesson or a psychological one. All of this pretense is simply in the way to set up something that I myself have been working through. Maybe it’s the fully developed frontal lobe that finally decided it wants to show up to work or maybe it’s personal growth. Whatever it is, I’ve found myself lately saying “why not” more & more.

If that felt like a hard left turn to a few of you reading this, I promise, the thread will come back around & we’ll tie all of this in a nice little ribbon. I am someone who has always been fairly self conscious. For a lot of you that may come off as surprising given my profession & that I get on here most weeks & spew my thoughts to the world wide web so that they may be read the world wide. But it’s true. I am fairly self conscious. I was never a classic cool kid, until high school I really only had a hand full of friends & I always felt like the black sheep of the suburban lower Midwestern world that I grew up in where people, especially in school, were never slow to voice their opinions of you. I was always taller than everyone in my class, always the weird one, all ways the one who got called ‘gay’ or ‘strange’ & those are badges of honor that take a long time to own, if you ever do. But more & more I’ve abandoned the preconceived societal norms & simply embraced life for what it is.

I think the most recent example of this came from my show the other night. It was the first time in a long time that I had done a full band set & following le pandemmy, I actually redeveloped a bit of stage fright that typically takes me the first song or two to work through. So as the act before me was finishing up, I was off to the side having a bit of a panic at which point I stopped & said to myself “why not just have fun? This is what you love doing, performing, singing, making music, entertaining people, why not just do it for the joy of doing it? If you mess up, you mess up as is human to do & you carry on. No one is here to watch you fail, everyone would rather see the best show you’re filling to give than watch you stumble timidly through a set.” & so that is what I did. I got on stage & I had fun.

Not only did I have fun, but in actually I had a blast & it may have been one of the favorite sets that I’ve done in recent memory. Me having fun allowed the band to have fun which allowed the audience to have fun & following the set I had more people percentage wise come up to me to say how much they loved my music & my energy than I have ever had before.

Another example. I’m someone who has always found themselves reserved with my emotions or the way that I feel, especially when it comes to those I am partnered with. I find myself holding back often & lately I’ve been answering that restraint with “why not?” Why not let your feelings be apparent? Who does it benefit if you hold them back? If anything all it does is create this ere of distance because there is actually self inserted space between you.

I put on music the other night, I thought why not dance? So that’s what I did. Unreserved, unrestricted, I danced freely & had a ball doing so! Why not be honest about what you want to eat when people ask where you want to get dinner? The worst they can do is disagree & then at least you’ve made the attempt & won’t spend the rest of the evening wishing you’d said something, wondering if the evening could have ended up where you wanted to go instead. I’m not saying to be uncompromising here, just telling you to be honest.

Too much of what could be life’s shimmering moments go by behind lock & key. Too many of them pass with fear & hesitation instead of with vigor & joy. If people judge you for doing the things you want, for being the person you want to be, that’s their burden to bare, not yours. Your open expression of joy is often met with the limitations of someone else’s self sabotaging prohibition. Your life is yours to live & feel & embrace, not theirs.

I hope you all have a fabulous ‘whatever point in time you end up reading this’ & will lean into those ‘why nots’ a little more. Have fun, be a shining example of freedom & joy & unapologetic expression because that’s what you deserve. Start small, work your way up! You’ve got this!

As always, much much much love to you all!!!

-C

Release: Consequences Of My Honesty

I had “consequences of my honesty” sitting in my notes app for about three or four months before it ever got written. Any time that I felt anything that I thought pertained to the topic I would drop it into the note & close it out until the next time I felt inspired by it. It wasn’t until Evan & I went to a write with Chase Coy that the song ended up flowing out & boy, did it flow out.

We had tried a few separate ideas with Chase but I think that none of us were really feeling & we actually got to the point where we were preparing to pack it up & call it for the day having not really written anything. I remember Evan had gone to the bathroom & Chase pulling up a random track that he’d been working on & something just clicked. I literally had packed up my bag & just happened to scroll by the idea for “consequences” & we were off to the races.

Majority of the first verse was just spewed from what I had written in my notes & I actually think it was almost written in its entirety by the time Evan returned to the room. We talked as we went along about how the idea had come to be & about how I felt around the content we were putting to page. The answer of “swept under the rug” came up which is where we ended up with our lovely chorus. Verse two was a bit of a talk through as we pieced together association. Aside from there being consequences for my honesty, what else did it feel like there had been consequences for? Which is where we landed on clarity. From there the song really built itself; the refrain sat in naturally & within 30 minutes to an hour we had finished the entirety of the song…which I then proceeded to sit on for almost five years.

I remember saying in a TikTok that I made a week or two ago that I felt like COMH (Consequences Of My Honesty) was a bit of a party trick that I would pull out from time to time. That it was this song that I had deep flowing emotions around, that was an ultimate expression of how I felt at the time, that I could never put out. I would bring it out when people were asking me to show them songs I’d written & I did so often so that I could get people to take me seriously as a writer & an artist. Not just one more CIS/Hetero White Guy who had nothing new to say in the country music space. I also felt like putting the song out would be a betrayal to my family, even though, in truth they were who had made me feel the way I did at the time that the song was written.

Now, I’m not here to throw anyone under the bus. I am not here to shame anyone or make myself seem holier than thou in anyway. I want to preface this before we go forward & talk about the story behind the song & its meaning & be completely transparent, open, & honest. I want to acknowledge the struggle, as there was one for a long while, but I also want to acknowledge the growth, because I am immensely grateful for the growth & effort that my parents put in to changing from where we were in June of 2019 to now. I applaud them for their willingness to listen & to have a myriad of hard conversations over the many years that led us here.

In March of 2019 I came out to my parents. I left them each handwritten notes explaining my (bi)sexuality, my taken relationship status to someone of the same gender, & how it was something that has been a part of me all of my life. I was visiting them in Kansas, passing through on my way back to Nashville with my former manager who I was helping move cross country from LA. Having grown up with ADHD & the cognitive processing that goes with that, I knew my parents would be reactionary. I also knew anything I said would fall on deaf ears at a certain point. I also knew myself & knew if I didn’t write down what I wanted to say that I would mess it up, become reactionary, become emotional, & breakdown. So I left them the notes in the morning on their pillows & made our way back to Nashville.

It was a painstakingly anxiety filled day, waiting for their response which I didn’t end up getting until probably 8 or 9 o’clock that evening in the form of a text. My father called me a coward for not telling them in person, even though I knew the fallout & told me my mother had been throwing up ever since reading the note. Additionally they sent an email to my former manager & chastised her for the “mishandling of my brand.” After that I didn’t hear from them for two to three weeks.

I lay all of this out because I think it has deep relevance to the song itself. I again, am not here to judge or punish anyone publicly for their actions or beliefs, as at the end of the day we are all humans who have deep ingrained belief systems that really don’t like it when someone chucks a rock at their hornets nest.

When I finally heard from them it was like nothing had happened. Like everything I’d said, the weeks I’d gone through in silence & in pain, amounted to nothing. It was all just swept under the rug. In psychology we call this “dishonest harmony” & it is something that affects older generations at an alarming rate. It is the notion that it is better to have harmony at any cost, even if it is entirely fabricated or glosses over a conflict. This song was written in that time period where I felt the weight of the dishonest harmony as well as was receiving the consequences of my honesty & clarity.

Again, many hard conversations & years later & we are all at a place that is lightyears beyond any improvement that I could have predicted.

In Feb/March of this year I started working on new music. Initially it was with my typical producer, Joshua Gleave. We were working on a song called “Woebegone.” Josh, who is on the road with Sam Hunt, found himself greatly disillusioned with producing & quit all together sending me a long list of recs whom I listened through & seriously contemplated. It was then that I remembered an old band mate of mine, Jess Grommet, had reached out asking me if I needed any demos done as he was now full time in the production space. I reached out not for a demo, but to see if he was full on producing as I knew he & I had similar taste in music. He sent me over a sample of some of the artists that he’d done projects for & I was blown away!

Jess & I met one rainy afternoon at Frothy Monkey in The Nations. We sat & conversed for almost two hours, catching up on life, music, etc etc. At the point where music was brought up I pitched him a few ideas that I felt I’d be cool working on. He knowingly asked if there was anything that I had written that I felt strongly about & COMH was brought up. I explained the song & the premise & told him frankly that I was nervous to cut the song as I knew it would require yet another hard conversation with my parents, but we agreed that it would be the song we would do & set a date to meet up again at his studio.

I kid you not when I tell you I waited until the night before our session to have that conversation with my parents. When I did, I told them exactly what the song pertained to, when it was written, why it was written, & why I felt it was important to put out, even if I knew that it would make them uncomfortable or that they simply would not like what I had to say. They were surprisingly cool with it.

Jess & I started tracking & over the span of 3-4 sessions had the song entirely pieced together, also adding in drums from Alec Parrish. We pulled inspiration from everywhere: The 1975, Taylor Swift, Brothers Osborne, Usher, & even Avatar: The Last Airbender. In addition to all of my precious releases! After we had it to a place that felt good we did two in person mix sessions & sent it off to Sterling Sound to be mastered by Adam Grover. The song was distributed by TooLost with PR by Trend PR & photo assets by Evan, & I am beyond proud of it!

Even leading up to the two or so days after the song came out I was anxious about its release. It was an incredibly vulnerable part of me that I had just shoved out into the world for feedback on. Additionally, my parents hadn’t heard the song, at their request, until after it had come out to the public. They apparently really like it. If I’m being honest, I’m over the moon with how COMH turned out. I think it has turned over a new leaf for me & allowed the walls that surrounded my creativity to come cascading down. For so long I was so afraid to say the wrong thing, to hurt someone close to me even though it was how I felt, & putting this out into the world has given me the permission to be authentic & open 100% in my music & writing. Even if the song is a “flop” I am beyond grateful for all that it has shown me & the freedom it has given me! I’m naturally also grateful to all of you out there who are streaming it & sharing it! It means the world!

Consequences Of My Honesty is available anywhere you listen to music! The acoustic version, that I self produced, will be out in just two weeks & you can pre-save it below! If you’re reading this after the 19th of July 2024 it’s already out & you can just stream it too!!!!

I am so beyond grateful for your continued support & for the love you’ve shown me & this song!!!

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Do We Still Need Pride- 2024 Edition

Every year I don’t think I’m going to redo this blog until I sit down in the month of June & find myself reentering the title into the title line above. I never planned for this to become a yearly installment, but alas it seems here we are once again. Each year that I do this blog I end up highlighting the reasons in which celebrating the month of June as LGBTQ Pride is still entirely important. I do so using current & pending Anti-LGBTQ laws, relevant stories, & shamelessly, a bit of my own personal opinion as someone who lives within the community & finds the vast majority of their friends falling under one of the letters covered in the month.

If I’m being frank, I don’t take much enjoyment in writing this blog year to year. A lot of the time the reason for that is because the resounding “yes” of an answer to the question presented in the title of this piece comes with heavy news & disheartening statistics. A lot of the time this blog also ends up taking the form of a research paper when majority of what I do is think pieces, travel blogs, personal stories, & the like. This blog often weighs heavily on me as it feels, in a lot of ways, that true equality & freedom get farther & farther our of reach.

I understand that in a lot of ways progress has marched on & made a lot of headway. There is more & more queer representation in media, more queer artists are receiving their much deserved flowers & not being maligned because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. But with the march of progress & the normalizing of things that the hateful deemed taboo for many many years comes those with loud voices who make massive waves in the public by having a platform that is divisive & fueled by scapegoating & misinformation.

I want to make a few things abundantly clear before I continue on. If you are someone reading this who finds themselves on the side of history where you’re saying things like “why don’t straight people have a month” or “I just don't understand why they have to rub their lifestyle in our faces” I want you to read the following paragraph very carefully. Okay? This is a safe space for you as much as it is for those of my fellow members of the alphabet mafia. This is a safe space for you to challenge & question if what you believe & feel is true or not or if it’s just talking points & frustration. Your emotions are valid & they exist for a reason, though I’m not sure entirely if they’re being pointed at the right folks. Are you ready?

The LGBTQ community does not endorse pedophilia. We do not & will not ever include pedophilia in the rainbow banner, nor will we ever praise the outward expression of such. If anyone has told you otherwise I would ask you to reexamine your sources & reexamine their sources. Along that same vein. No one is giving gender reassignment surgery to minors & if they are (big if there) the vast majority of us also agree that said doctor should lose their license. The last & final thing that I need you to be clear on before we go forward is whether or not any of this is natural. The science, the legitimate science, has proven same sex attraction, gender dysphoria, etc, etc, etc, to be a common & pervasive thing not only amongst human beings but also all over the animal kingdom. That is no longer up for debate despite that seeming to be a “discourse” I hear brought up time & time again. Being queer is not a choice. Having the courage & the privilege to live an openly queer lifestyle that honors who you are as a person inside & out is. It is something that needs to be normalized because it is normal. No one is trying to convert children into becoming LGBTQ, if anything people are, again, trying to normalize a scientifically normal occurrence so that those who fall under the blanket of being LGBTQ stop feeling & being ostracized, vilified, murdered, beaten, abused, driven to suicide, & misunderstood. We are talking about human beings here. We are talking about your sons, daughters, children. We are talking about your brothers, sisters, siblings, mothers, fathers, parents, guardians, aunts, uncles, relatives, best friends, significant others, we are talking about real people in your lives that you probably claim to love.

As I mentioned above the march has been discouraging over the last couple of years & June 2023-June 2024 is no different. States continue to propose & pass laws that limit the rights of those in the queer community & hate crimes, specifically against those who are trans, are reaching decades long record highs. We are currently staring down the barrel of Project 2025, a Republican plan to completely gut the rights of LGBTQ Americans on Day 1 of a conservative dominated Washington DC. That’s not hyperbolic, you can read about it on the RNC’s site, laid out in plain English, right here. We are at a pivotal point in our history where the casual hate & bigotry has reached a boiling point that threatens to boil over in November of this year.

Additionally, retailers like Target, Walmart, etc. have either scaled back their Pride collections of entirely dismissed them following the outcry of the vocal minority during June of 2023. While rainbow capitalism isn’t great, neither is erasing the visibility & presence it gave to the community on a national scale.

Pride is once again slipping back into the realms of its origin & becoming a protest. A protest for visibility, for public safety, for rights. It’s becoming a protest for freedom, not only of expression, but also of peace of mind & security. Pride is undoubtedly more important than ever. It is a demand to be seen, to be heard, to not go silently & turn over because it’s convenient or easier for those who live on the outside looking in. Pride is not only needed, it is essential. It is essential for those who someday dream of having a quiet, normal life with their partner & their children. It is essential to the person who one day dreams of looking in the mirror & seeing their body reflect the beautiful human underneath. It is essential to those who dream of living a life free of fear of persecution, of emotional & physical harm, of having to chose between who you are & who those with outdated mentalities think you need to be. Pride is essential. Pride is community building, fortifying, & solidifying. Pride is health care, preventative care, & suicide prevention. Pride is expression, & honesty, & loving. Pride is, & continues to be, needed.

If you are someone who is reading this who finds themselves within the community; whether that’s questioning or confirmed, you are loved & you are valid & there are people out there who are so beyond ready to embrace the real you & show you what real, true, unconditional love looks like. If you are someone who is not in the community but loves its members personally, on behalf of all of us, thank you. Your support, affirmation, & affection goes so much farther than you could ever know. If you are someone who is neither of these things I challenge you. I challenge you to make a queer friend, to reach out to that estranged loved one, to make a genuine human effort to see them as who they are because I promise you’ll find so much beauty & unfiltered love waiting there. Set your beliefs, your politics, your whatever aside for a while & meet someone where they are, just as two human beings trying to make their way through the world. And finally, if you are someone who claims to love a queer person but then votes against them every chance you get, I beg of you, listen to what those in marginalized groups are trying to tell you. Please. It is not a loving act to claim that you care for someone & then worsen their lives because you think they’re overreacting or being alarmist. The last couple of years have proven that none of us were or are being alarmist.

As always, much love to you all,

& of course, Happy Pride!

-C

Blog: Life In Repair

I’m not going to spend this blog talking about Harvey, though I could do so indefinitely. I’m not here to talk about my ear or anything regarding the anxiety I have/had around it. Though these things will feature in the blog only in their remnants, what I’d like to talk about today is more in line with what it means & what if feels like to be living life ‘in repair.’

In addition to the two aforementioned events, Evan & I had a tough May 2024. Everything seemed to be perpetually going wrong. Our month started off with me noticing a mealybug infestation on a whole room of my house plants. After failed treatment after failed treatment I finally took them outside, removed the dirt entirely, lightly pressure washed the plants, soaked them & their pots in a water & castile soap mixture for around thirty minutes, rinsed them again, sprayed them down with alcohol, rinsed them again, & repotted them in new soil that was treated with systemic to get rid of any possible eggs which all took about six hours total. (I found more mealybugs back on the same plants yesterday…) Then one of the more expensive pumps on my fish tank went out. Then our dishwasher broke & flooded our kitchen & the cabinets. Then we started to hear birds in our walls which then lead to an infestation of bird mites. Then Max scratched the screen of Evan’s brand new MacBook. Then Harvey passed. Then our AC went out. And while in the grand scheme of things a lot of these items are trivial, they still added up to be major stressors.

Additionally while all of this was happening Evan was departing his old job preparing to turn his other into a full time gig, I was wrapping recording & mixing of my next single, we were shooting & creating content for it, all while trying to maintain the every day day to day events & goings on around the house & within our social lives. We were both getting more & more stretched thin while fighting the anxieties of healing & later to currently the grief of losing a member of our immediate family. We truly began to wonder if were in fact cursed.

I’m not bringing any of this up to gain your pity, I’m not here to say “oh, poor us, look at the shit storm we’ve been navigating.” I understand life comes at you in waves & that sometimes the surf can be treacherous to even drowning. I just needed to outline those events for you so you understand where I’m coming from. I’d be lying to you all if I said I didn’t feel like I had a bit of stress fatigue, I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t still actively grieving though each day does get easier than the last. But what I want to illustrate to you all if what I am trying to extend to myself & what I recommended extending two weeks ago when I wrote “Healing Doesn’t Happen Overnight.” That it’s okay to give yourself grace & have a little patience as you do your best to reassemble a life.

I am living life in repair, as I know so many of us are right now. What does that look like? What does that mean? It means I’m chugging along but I’m being mindful. I’m keeping stock of the things that still require my attention both within my being as well as in my environment & doing my best to mend & set them properly so that they begin to heal or are easier to pick up & complete along the way. I’m extending the understanding that it’s a long month & that I’ve been through a lot. I’m also keeping vigilant & staying at the ready for the inevitability that more things will come.

I’m allowing myself to say no, I’m conquering projects that I put off, I’m prioritizing my health, my wellbeing, because I cannot properly help & assist anyone else while I am still fractured & neither can you & neither should you. You are worthy of health, you are worthy of peace & the feeling of safety. You are worthy of life as it exists to the fullest extend. And so am I!

I know fixing the problems & sitting off to the side while the world seems to go by can be disheartening, it can feel like you’re wasting away or like you’re being antisocial, a bad friend, a bad family member, but your health, in all aspects, is important. Repairs are worth the time that it takes for them to take hold & be functional again.

I also want you to realize that sometimes things don’t heal in the same way that they originated. Some things wither off & die, but it is only to make room for new growth & new life. In traditional tarot reading there is a card called ‘The Tower.’ The Tower to a lot of people signals doom, & to an extent that’s what the card stands for on the surface. In reality the story behind The Tower is a fire that destroys the building in its entirety. What happens next is a beautiful thing. You sift through the ashes & find what remains. You find the pieces that resisted the fire, the resilient, the gems that were tucked away in the walls, & from the ash & dismay, you build a better tower to stand in the place of that which you thought you wanted but was no longer serving you & was standing in the way of something better.

Be diligent in sifting through your ashes. Notice the messages, the lessons, & once you have everything you need to move forward, plant that first brick, then the next. Build your tower more magnificent & glistening than that which stood before. Repair, remake, & remain resilient.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: On Harvey

Introduction

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to skip this week’s blog or not simply out of bereavement, but the more I sat with the idea, the more I felt it was important to use this as an outlet & to show the world just how amazing a dog it just lost. I know for those of you who knew Harvey, even in the limited capacity, you understand. He was something truly & deeply special that extends well beyond being ‘just a dog.’ I know this blog will be hard to write, I’ve faced that & accepted it. I know for some of you it may also be hard to read as the hearts broken by this loss are not simply my own. I don’t, as of writing this introductory paragraph, know exactly what shape this blog will take but I know at the very least it will include a bit of an obituary, probably a reflection from yours truly, & maybe something else. I guess time will tell. If I seem to lose the plot or narrative from time to time, I apologize, as previously stated this blog is going to hard for me to write, I am sure I will break down a few times, as I already have just from writing of him briefly in the middle of this section.

History

Harvey was born on January 21st, 2011 at a puppy mill somewhere in Missouri. He was the last of his liter & at a certain point was either sold or given away to a dog seller in Bolivar. I found Harvey in mid-May of 2011 in an ad for the Kansas City Star after finishing my freshmen semester at Belmont University. I’d just moved off campus & was in desperate search for a dog as I missed having one around. We’d always had dogs growing up & I’d always wanted a golden retriever & Harvey seemed to be the purebred golden that nobody wanted as he had sat in a concrete kennel for the first four months of his life. Harvey & I first met on May 20th of 2011. I loved him instantly. My sister drove me to go get him where I payed $250 dollars cash for him & fell in love instantly. He was dirty, in desperate need of a bath & a name change. At the time he was going by “Rusty” which is ironically what my father was called as a child. After throwing up in my sister’s car & pooping in my parents carpeted bathroom, he was given a thorough bath & driven back to Nashville with me.

Harvey & I hit it off instantly, we were basically inseparable. Most anywhere I went, he joined. We slept in the same bed, ate at the same time, ran together, swam together, spent evenings on the couch together & were truly the closest & fastest of friends. Harvey was goofy, he had an infectious smile & energy & often got the zoomies, especially when take outside & let off the leash in the vacant field behind my apartment. He was impossible to potty train, as prior to our meeting he’d never been on grass & my first apartment was concrete slab flooring, but I did my best to have patience with him.

Harvey saw me through breakups, spiraling depression, days where I couldn’t get out of bed but knew I had to for his sake. He was always there to rest his head on my legs & look up at me with the kindest eyes & the warmest kisses, especially on the days I needed them the most.

He & I moved out of the city to the suburbs in December of 2012 where he now had a yard to play in & a river to swim in which he quickly adapted to & became obsessed with on our afternoon runs. And there we lived, all this time, seeing changes in seasons, roommates, relationships, & life.

Around 2019-2020 Harvey’s health started to decline. At the age of nine he really started not doing well; his joints were diminishing, he was having liver issues, he was barely eating & didn’t want to do majority of the activities he loved. The average lifespan of a golden retriever is around 10 years so I began to think maybe it was just approaching his time. Either way I switched up his diet & began to walk him a little more. The real turning point came in June of 2020 when Evan & I adopted Peter. Pete was meant to be a bit of a ‘bridging dog,’ planning for the inevitable & making the transition hypothetically easier. Pete gave Harvey new life & on he went kicking for another three years or so.

At a certain point we had to stop our hikes, our trips to the river, & way before any of those, our runs. His old body just couldn’t take it anymore but he never lost his heart, his smile, or the love that beamed from him at all times. He just slowed down.

In November of last year Harvey fell while on a walk. He was walking, faltered a little, & then fell over. From there he almost completely diminished. He wouldn’t eat or walk. He had no interest in treats of anything. So we took him to my family’s for Thanksgiving so that they could say their 'goodbyes’ to him fully anticipating that he wouldn’t make it through the following week. I wrote a blog around that time call “The Part Of Pet Ownership That No One Takes To Heart” you can read it by clicking the title if you’d like. Eventually though, Harvey bounced back. Apparently large retrieving dogs are prone to strokes in their old age, which they can heal from & get over.

Harvey continued chugging along until a few weeks ago when he started to become very picky about food. It wasn’t necessarily that he wasn’t eating, is was that he would take a whole day to finish a bowl he usually polished off in one setting. We chocked it up to the kibble hurting his gums & switched him entirely to wet food & rice, which he ate most of upon being served.

What Happened

Earlier this week he stopped taking much interest in the wet food. He would eat a bite or two, but would let it sit & would nibble throughout the day. He would still always finish the bowl until a few days ago when he cut his food intake down from two bowls a day to barely making it through one. I had the intent of taking him to the vet on Friday if nothing changed but he beat us to it.

Thursday Evan & I fed the dogs, Harvey ate a bit but not much, but he was still his normal energy level & self so we left to run a few errands, see a movie, & have dinner with a friend. We arrived home later in our evening to find our kitchen covered in blood. The blood ended up being Peter’s & was coming from the tip of his tail which we originally wrote off as “Happy Tail Syndrome” where a dog smacks its tail on a wall or something sharp & bleeds. After we got him mended, we turned back to the both of them to instigate a walk.

We’d noticed that Harvey seemed aloof when we got in the door, he didn’t greet us there like he typically does & was laying against the window with his tail tucked & his head hung. We checked him initially to see if he had any bites from Pete as they’ve been known to fight from time to time, but he was unscathed. We tried to get him up to go outside before his walk but he had to be helped, not uncommon. He went to get a drink & immediately fell back over. Evan managed to get him outside where he said he kind of just wobbled around & didn’t do anything before coming inside & laying down. I tried to rouse him for the walk of which he showed no interest & when I got him back up he simply sauntered into the laundry room & slumped against the wall. It was then that I noticed his breathing was heavy, he was having contractions of his lower abdomen, & he was salivating a ton, in addition to being hyper lethargic. We loaded him & Peter up in the car & took him off to the emergency vet.

When we got to the emergency vet I had to carry him in. With the weight he’d lost over the last couple of weeks & age he was fairly light, relatively speaking. The doctors put him on a gurney & rushed him to the back. We sat for about an hour with no word. Eventually the doctor came in & explained to us that they’d done an x-ray & it showed a mass effect where his liver & spleen sat. He gave us two options. We could either put him down or have him stabilized until the morning at which point they would do an ultrasound & a series of tests to determine the cause. We asked for a quote for the latter, just to make sure there was nothing that could be done to heal him. They came back a while later with a quote of around $3K just for the hospitalization & the tests. At this point it was round 3 AM & we asked if he was stable enough to take home so that we could take him to our normal vet at 7:30 when they opened to see their thoughts & recommendations. We didn’t get him back & out of the hospital til around 3:45 at which point we got help from the techs loading him into the car on a towel.

I carried Harvey into the house & laid him on the bathroom floor, his favorite sleeping spot, especially when he was hot. He was running a mild fever so it seemed fitting. I got out my sleeping bag & bed mat & set up a temporary arrangement by his side to spend the next couple of hours in case he needed anything. I laid there stroking his fur as he breathed heavily until he fell asleep & I did the same.

Around 6 AM Harvey attempted to get up, he didn’t make it very far off his side & proceeded to defecate on the floor of the bathroom. I only share this detail because it’s important for the coloration. Typically when dealing with liver diseases or cancer you see a build up of yellow bile in the system, this was entirely that. I hoisted him into the bath tub, got him all cleaned up, & prepared to depart for the vets office.

At this point I had no misconceptions. I knew I was about to lose him but I wanted a professional to tell me there was little to nothing that could be done. I told Evan that he needed to prepare for that, that I was 95% sure we would be returning home later in the morning without him. He agreed on the feeling.

We arrived at Belmont Animal Hospital right before they opened. I followed a receptionist in & explained what had happened & that even though I knew I didn’t have an appointment I was hoping they’d still be able to help. She got the nurses to gurney Harvey in where they initially took in the back to get a doctor’s opinion before bringing the three of us into an exam room. The doctor met us there where she instructed us that she thought there was likely nothing they could do. They were willing to run the tests if we wanted them & needed that closure, but she said that even if they had answers the likelihood of them being able to do anything to fix it at his age was slim to none. We agreed that it was time & began the process of saying goodbye.

Harvey was so tired at the end. He could barely keep his eyes open, he had no interest in the bit of bacon that the brought him, & you could just tell that he was ready to go. I know selfishly we all want our dogs to live forever. We all want them to recover indefinitely & be with us til we go, but that’s not the deal, & it hurts like hell to have to make that decision but I don’t regret it one bit. It was his time & anything past that would’ve just extended his suffering for my own selfish reasons.

The doctor gave us time to say our goodbyes, the doctor he’d had since he was a puppy came in to sit with him for a while, then we Evan & I sat on the floor with him as they administered the euthanasia.

I’m pretty sure Harvey was gone after the second dose of anesthetic they gave him. He let out one last big deep breath even before the euthanasia had been administered. Harvey passed away peacefully & surrounded by people that loved him to the ends of the earth around 8:30 AM on Friday May 24th, 2024 at the ripe age of 13 years & 4 months & 3 days. We sat with him for probably another thirty minutes to an hour before we left him in the car of the staff.

The Aftermath

I’m going to be real with you all. I miss my dog. I miss him so horribly that I can hardly stand it. It is grief like that which I have never known. Harvey was my best friend. He was one of my favorite things about my life. I would have done anything for that dog. He had this ability to bring out the best of us & his sweetness & kind heart knew no bounds right up until the very end. He was a better companion than I ever could have dreamed to asked for & is honestly one of the main reasons that I still make footprints on this planet. Our house feels like a vacant shell without him, like all that is good has been sapped from us & our hearts & we are left to deal with nothing but pain & emptiness. Harvey was by far the best of us. He inspired so many into not only adopting Goldens but adopting dogs in general in the sheer hope that they too would get to experience the level of love Harvey poured into all of us nonstop. He is irreplaceable & the greatest dog I think I will ever have the privilege of knowing, all biases aside.

There are things that no one tells you about losing your dog. They never tell you how you’ll relive lost echos in each room you pass through, that you’ll walk in the door still expecting to be greeted but that infectious, loving smile, & it’s just gone. They never warn you how empty your house feels. How you’ll cautiously turn every cornered, widening your birth because you expect to see them still lying there on the floor. They don’t warn you about the vacancy'; not just the physical but also the massive, bottomless hole that it leaves in your heart. The feeling that a piece of you is gone that you will never be able to retrieve or mend, but will instead just eventually get used to. They don’t warn you that your other dog will whine in their sleep, that he’ll search endlessly in the usual places around the yard & in the house for them. That they’ll begin each day by looking for their leash then laying to watch & see if they return through the front door. They never warn you that’ll you’ll make too much dinner. That you’ll repeat the practice that you’ve carried on for years not realizing you’ve made too much because there’s a bowl that will forever remain empty now. They never warn you about the favorite toys, the leashes, the bowls, the special treats that are scattered around the home waiting to flood you with grief. They never warn you about the smells that you’ll catch on an old blanket or hoodie that immediately take you back to them. They never warn you about that first walk without them, about how much ever single step hurts when they’re gone. They never warn you about the signatures they leave behind; the hair, the smudged on the window where they used to sit & wait for your return, the scratches on the floor where they used to roll & scratch after they finished their supper. They never warn you of how the pain sneaks up on you, of how something will pop up out of the blue & remind you of them & in an instant you’re back on the floor whispering your goodbyes to them. They never warn you about how hard it is to carry on after a great dog goes& they never warn you how much it rips you to shreds to not be able to call their name & watch their ears perk up.

Harvey, I will miss you forever. I am so grateful for all that you were not just to me, but to so many & the outpour of love in your name speaks volumes to just how amazingly bright a star you were. I love you to the deepest extent of my soul & your passing has demolished me. I will spend the rest of my days searching endlessly for a better dog than you, though I know that is a fruitless & hopeless endeavor. Rest easy Rooster, I will spend my lifetime counting down the days til I am reunited with the dog who was nothing short of an angel.

I miss my dog y’all, more than anything, I miss him so damn bad.

Please hug your pets for me tonight. They are more precious than you can possibly imagine.

With love always,

-C

Harvey May 2020

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

Blog: Healing Doesn't Happen Overnight.

About mid-March something happened while I was diving in the Philippines. If you’re an avid reader of my blogs you may already know to what I am alluding, but if you are not, worry not, I will fill you in as we go. I sustained a small, yet meaningful injury while out in Bohol that ended up altering the course of my trip as well as the weeks & months following it & for the last two months I’ve treated said injury like it was nothing, like it was healed or a thing in the past, which for all intents & medical purposes, it is. But I came to the realization this week that I don’t think I’ve psychologically healed from it.

Back in March I perforated my left ear drum. I’m not entirely sure if it was done while diving or when I had two o-rings pop on scuba tanks right next to the ear ear in question, but I am starting to feel it was a combination of the the two with the latter being the inceptive event.

I went to a doctor in the Philippines for the injury as well as two separate otolaryngologists here in The States that assured me that the hole was there initially & that it was sealed up & in the process of being healed. I noticed the injury going forward mostly within the first month of having it. Loud noises would cause it to buzz uncomfortably, almost like the feeling of a high pitched dental drill, but without the sound, & it also kept me awake at night. My eustachian tube would crackle & pop all throughout the night, adjusting to the pressure within & without the mending drum. Other than that, I had no physical pain or wonky discomfort & by all measures of medicine, I was healing.

I came to the realization earlier this week that I hadn’t had my ears underwater since being diagnosed with the perforation in the Philippines. Yes, I take showers & cleaned my ears, but I hadn’t taken a bath or gone swimming which for someone like me who craves the water & being submersed there in, is incredibly strange. I realized that for two whole months I hadn’t stuck my head underwater, which medically is probably wise since a perforation can take a total of 3-4 months to fully heal, but psychologically I found myself getting very anxious at the sheer thought of submerging my whole being back in water which is something that has never happened for me.

The body keeps score, whether we as people want to acknowledge that we’ve been through something traumatic or not, the body knows & often times the latent affects of that take a while to make their way up through the grey matter of our subconscious into the forefront of our thinking, conscious brain. For some of us that never happens & we end up living out lives unaware of the trauma that we are storing in certain parts of our body & the physical manifestations therefrom. The more I thought & thought about submersion, the more anxious it made me, & the more angry I found myself getting that I would be anxious over something I thought so trivial & stupid. I’ve been swimming as long as I can remember, bodies of water, especially oceans, are my calming, safe place, my retreat when I need to stop feeling like I’m drying out. To an extent that all felt kind of ripped away from me even though I knew there were ways of going forward in life had the perforation continued to exist. It didn’t take me long to decide that I needed to reclaim my strength & fortitude & try dealing with my trauma head on so that hopefully, it too will start to heal.

I guess the powers that be kind of forced my hand too as Evan & I had to have birds removed from our walls & the only way the retrieval crew could get to them was through the ceiling of our shower, which I have since patched with drywall & fixed. However, while our shower has been out of commission, I was forced to take baths to get clean.

I spent a relatively long time in the bath the other evening. Our tub is fairly large & allows for a person to lay down comfortably in it at least majority submerged, so I spent my time there preparing for the inevitability of having to dunk my whole head to get clean. When the time finally came & felt myself having to overly prepare for it mentally, like stepping into a cold shower or an ice bath. Once my head was finally under I found myself having to fight to regulate my heart rate.

I did this a process a few more times, each time trying my best to calmly navigate my way through it, osculating my head back & forth to make sure to get the water in my ear. At a certain point I got comfortable enough to set with it & fortunately, by the end of it, my ear didn't end up having it feel wonky or uncomfortable.

I found my anxiety continuing even after the conclusion of my bath. I sat in bed mentally checking to see if anything felt off physically with the ear or if I felt it had been a mistake to carry out my trial, but the more time I sat & thought about it, the more anxious I became. I decided to put it out of my mind for the night & see if the morning bore any different results from those of the evening.

Morning came & went & nothing came of the fears that still lived within me. I took another bath that evening & allowed myself to go through the trials of the ear drum once again, drying it thoroughly afterwards just to be safe & using medicated drops to make sure the moisture wouldn’t become trapped & result in an infection. Still I felt uneasy about it all.

I realized I was trying to rush my healing. I wanted to force & mold something delicate & tender with sheer brute force & will power & I had to realize that, as with all things, healing takes time, especially when it comes to healing the mind. I have to give myself & my body the space & patience they need to come back together on the same page, in a place where I am able to submerge without becoming anxious or fearful that my ear drum is going to just fly back open. Just like my body didn’t physically heal over night, my mind can't & shouldn’t be expected to do the same.

I’ll be alright, I know I will. I know there will come a time down the road where I won’t thing twice about fully entering the water & that is worth waiting for & it is worth putting in the effort to heal along the way.

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend or whatever point of the week this blog finds you & remember to extend a little patience & grace your own way!

As Always, Much Love,

-C

Blog: *Insert Title Here

To be honest, I’m here staring at my screen, watching the place indicator blink on what was a previously blank page with the word “blog:” typed in the title slot above. It’s been that way for about an hour now & while I don’t know if anything will come of it, I figured it was better for me to just start typing & figure the rest out along the way. I don’t know what this will be, if it will be anything at all. I can’t promise you that it will be worth your time to read or that it will change your mind about some goings on in the world at the moment, I’m just a guy sat at his computer, desperately trying to squeeze some creative juice onto a virtual page. At the end of the day is that enough? Is my lack of prophetic insight this week enough to classify it as content, is it enough to keep those who read this virtual collection of thoughts & experiences satiated for another week? I don’t know, but here I am, still typing away.

Maybe this will end up being more of a brain dump, at least that’s the direction it seems to be going following that previous paragraph. What meta commentary I have for you all this week. But I don’t outwardly know what I have that is exciting for me to talk about with you all, & maybe that’s okay too.

A part of me is sitting here saying “just delete the whole thing & go do something else, no one is going to want to read this nonsense, just call off the blog for this week until you have something interesting to say.” Then there’s another side of me telling me that that is a cop out. That I need to power through & put data to page simply for the act of doing so & to hell with the idea that having it be accepted by anyone as a genuine ‘blog entry.’ I can’t dictate how you feel about it any more than it seems I can come up for an idea for this week’s entry. But to some extent, isn’t this an idea?

Isn’t my rambling, my word vomit, some form of an idea? Because if I’m being frank, I want you to relate to me. Selfishly I want you to read this & understand & empathize with what it is to stare your weekly commitments in the face & come up dry with anything that you deem is of value. Which, let’s face it, we all can relate to.

If you’ve made it this far & haven’t snuck out on me, I applaud you & I guess I also thank you for your time & whatever persistence is driving you through this borderline nihilistic hogwash I am putting us all through. I can’t make promises that next week’s blog will be better or more interesting or that I’ll have a better grasp on a concept to present you all with because I don’t know those things & typically when I sit down to write with no knowing of where the blog will take my I eventually come up with something, but my inspiration is fleeting today it seems. Sorry for the run on sentence.

I don’t know if I can pull some profound meaning out of all of this for us to tie up in a neat little bow, nor am I sure that I want to, because in a lot of ways that would feel inauthentic & I fear would present me as a pontificating try hard. I truly don’t know where or when to wrap this or even why I continue typing as I am, but it is what it is I suppose.

I could, in theory, relate this all back to what it is to be a creative, to be expected to ‘turn on’ my creativity like a light switch, but that feels like playing the martyr, when in reality I’m so blessed to be able to do this. I’m blessed to have readers who return to this place like Nic Kidman in an AMC ad (at least that’s how I imagine it), I’m blessed to have the ability to afford a laptop, internet, a squarespace subscription, a domain, that allows me to have this public voice. I’m blessed to have a creative mind that I get to squeeze from time to time & I’m blessed with the aspects of myself that have drawn you all in to reading this, to listening to my songs, to liking my photos, etc. Again, no idea where I’m going with all of this.

I’m curious though. As I think this will be one of the last paragraphs of this open journey entry what this blog has left you with. What has it made you feel? What emotions has it brought up? Do you feel that I wasted your time or did you find some form of solace & comradery in my musings? Please let me know, if anything this blog has piqued my curiosity in the inner workings of you all & how you depart these brief sessions we share together each week.

As always,

Much love to you all,

…sorry I didn’t have something more interesting to say,

-C

Travel Blog: New York City, New York: Turning 32 On West 35th Street!

Prologue

Well, well, well. I bet we all didn’t anticipate being back here so soon did we?! Another travel blog?! Why yes indeed dear reader, another travel blog! This time, however, we’re staying stateside & visiting a city that I love but hadn’t been to in almost half a decade, which just typing that is blowing my mind. As per usual, you are currently looking at the “prologue” portion of this blog which will be a one off. No multipart series this time around I’m afraid. With that in mind let’s get into the details shall we?!

Evan & I had literally just gotten back from the Philippines, We’re talking arrived home the day before on a Sunday & woke up the Monday after to an email from Southwest Airlines with an offer that they extend our way every few months, & which we usually do our best to take advantage of. The offer was that if we booked a round trip flight within the next three days, to be taken in completion by mid-May, that we would earn a companion pass for two months at the end of summer/beginning of fall. I am someone who unfortunately spoils himself rotten & likes nothing more than to travel for my birthday, surprise, surprise. Having not been to New York City in five years & desperately wanting to see Sweeney Todd before it closed, New York City was the winner & for about $200 round trip we got our flights as well as earned our companion passes which allow us to fly free with a companion during the months in which it is active.

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NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

Day One

Typically Evan & I are early fliers, this time we went with an evening flight which was really nice because it allowed us the freedom to go about our day, pack & prepare at an acceptable pace, & get an adequate amount of sleep the morning of. It does definitely negate the ability to have “another day” in the place you’re visiting but Ev also had to work half the day leading up to our flight so it worked out.

We ended up being delayed an hour or so for our flight to Laguardia, but once we were up & away I spent the duration of our two hour flight editing dive videos from Bohol & Evan did a bit more work for his other job. Other than the small British child whaling & kicking the ever loving hell out of my seat, the flight was fairly painless.

We arrived in New York around 9:30 PM. We made our way through the terminal, gathered our baggage, & hopped aboard the Q70+ bus, a free transfer, headed into Astoria. From Astoria we popped onto the Manhattan Bound E train. Once we were at 34th, in the Garment District, we got off & walked the remaining distance to our friend Anne’s apartment. I met Anne through a start-up she began years ago called “Steereo” & though that business fell through Anne has continued chugging along in the start-up space with her current venture Dose.fm. During the Steereo days Anne & I ended up getting fairly close & I used to see her often when she was living in LA. We were greeted with an infectious smile, a glass of wine, puppies, & an ushering to the room we’d be sleeping in. After a brief life catch up Anne informed us that she’d ordered a few slices of pizza from Artichoke Basille’s Pizza for delivery & we set about to grab a few bottles of wine before the shops closed at 11.

Barely making it into the store before they closed I snagged two of my go to basic bottles of red wine that seem to be crowd pleasers at a decent value; A to Z Pinot Noir & Louis Jadot Beaujolais. Both are lighter reds that aren’t too tannic & still are somewhat fruit forward.

The pizza came right after we returned & we all three split the three massive slices she had ordered; the Artichoke, Margarita, & Staten Island.

After about an hour of wining & conversing we decided it was time to call it a day & off we went to bed.

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

End Of Day One

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Day Two

I awoke to it being my birthday! No longer was I in my 31st year, now we were on to 32! Be sure to wish me happy belated in the comments & share your most prized picture of me to your social media feeds…Please don’t do that haha.

We slept in a bit. After showering & dressing we bid Anne goodbye for the day & out the door we went to some birthday day exploring of the city.

Our first stop had to be coffee. As someone who was born in Portland, Oregon, my need to venture into any Stumptown Coffee overrides any trendy or top rated coffee shop simply out of familiarity. Call me basic if you’d like, I will forever be a Stumptown loyalist. The closest one to us was in-between Koreatown & Flatiron & is located inside the Ace Hotel. I got some sort of Iced Strawberry Espresso drink & Evan went basic with his Iced Vanilla Latte which honestly is hard to beat. With caffeine acquired & the day turning into something truly lovely we went off in search of some sustenance.

Pistachio Passionfruit Roll

Pastries & Coffee

I’m going to make another choice here that I think a lot of New Yorkers would probably find basic &/or a little touristy but it’s been a staple of mine for a while in the city & I desperately miss having them available in LA when I visit. We stopped off at the Dominique Ansel Workshop just down the street in Flatiron for some pastries. I got a Pistachio Passionfruit Roll; croissant with passionfruit filling & pistachio icing, & Evan got another of his standard orders, a Pan Au Chocolate. We munched down our pastries & finished off our coffee at their standing tables that overlook their bakery before we hopped the train to go uptown.

I don’t know if this is something that I often broadcast. I definitely know it isn’t something I share often here, but just after COVID I got very into Mineral & Crystal collecting. Apparently it’s something I’ve done since I was a kid as a few times ago when I was home I discovered a box of affects from my childhood filled with different stones I’d found, naturally most of them being a variant of quartz. However, since I’d rekindled this fascination & developed a deeper appreciation for the formations of the earth, I hadn’t had the chance to revisit the American Museum of Natural History & explore their mineralogical exhibit otherwise known as the Mignone Halls of Gems & Minerals.

Main Hall of the American Museum of Natural History

While we were in line to get tickets for the museum I began looking at matinee seats for Sweeney Todd the following day. I had them pulled up, was debating which ones with Evan, picked a set, had them in my cart to check out when I got an airdrop notification from Evan. It was a picture of the tickets that he had bought once we’d been confirmed to come for my birthday & they were almost the exact seats I was looking at; Dead center of the Orchestra section, Row N. I was overjoyed!

With added excitement to a trip I was already excited to be on, we bought our admission & made our way downstairs to where the gem exhibit lives.

Blue Whale

In addition to the gem exhibit I also like to stop into the Hall of Ocean Life on not just to glimpse the sheer size of their big ole Blue Whale that they have suspended above the exhibit hall. It’s truly astounding.

After walking through the ocean exhibit we headed towards the minerals, stopping on our way through the Hall of Human Origins where there was a fascinating interactive display showing what specific environmental conditions caused what specific genetic mutations in humans, where those mutations originated on the planet, & where they can be found on the human genome.

After that came the Hall of Meteorites where I was shocked to find a large quantity of meteorites from my home state of Kansas. Additionally, they also had a massive Moldavite, about the size of a small fist. I added it to my mental list of things I would pillage from the museum if ever given the ethical chance…we all have the mental list, don’t act like you don’t!

Azurite/Malachite

We finally arrived at the main event, the Gem & Mineral Halls. The halls feature gems & mineral specimens from around the world & when you walk in you’re greeted by two massive back to back Amethyst Geodes. I think Evan & I spent around two hours wandering the halls. We went to each & every case appreciating & remarking at the different crystals & rocks there within. What was interesting to me, & what will be a bit of a ‘hair toss’ here, is that some of the pieces in the museum I felt I may have better specimens of at home. That’s not to say the vast majority didn’t blow anything I own out of the water.

Chrysoberyl

Alexandrite

Another two items that I added to my mental personal collection were the two Chrysoberyls. One was the traditional yellow-green & was the size of a clementine, the other was an Alexandrite. As one of the rarest gemstones in the world & a personal favorite of mine, Alexandrite possesses the unique ability to change colors based on the type of light it is being exposed to. It either appears anywhere from blue-green to reddish-purple. This is because the crystal lattice structure refracts different wavelengths of light differently within the stone. There are several at the museum, but my favorite was one of the smaller ones that happened to have an almost complete cyclic trilling, which gives the stone almost like a snowflake appearance.

While we were in the exhibit my dear old friend, Morgan Turner PhD, send me a message asking if her exhibit was on display. Not knowing she had a potential exhibit in the museum I asked her to expound more. She informed me that she’d done a video installation for the museum a few years prior using her discoveries around dinosaur footprints & their walking patterns though she wasn’t sure the video had ever actually been installed. When I tell you Evan & I spent an hour walking around the different halls of dinosaurs on the fifth floor, I mean it. Morgan even went as far as emailing the director of the museum to see where the installation was. Unfortunately she didn’t get a response til after we’d left. Oh darn, guess I’m going to have to go back again just to see it.

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

Central Park

Our next stop was more caffeine. Our coffee obsessed friend Dan had tipped us off to the fact that WatchHouse, a UK based coffee shop that you can find previously mentioned in one of my London blogs, had opened their first location in the US in Midtown. We took a lovely midday stroll through Central Park to get there. The walk took us around 30 minutes but the weather was so perfect that is was entirely worth it!

Upon arrival at WatchHouse I ordered a Flat White with an Asparagus & Leek Danish & Evan got their Cold Brew which was served in the coolest Kinto glass that looked like it was a plastic cup.

WatchHouse

Feeling renewed & with evening approaching, we decided to head back to Anne’s to lounge about for a bit, shower, & prepare for our dinner reservation.

Bread Basket at Hav & Mar

For my birthday dinner I had booked us a spot at Hav & Mar. A James Beard Award finalist this year, Hav & Mar is an Ethiopian inspired Seafood restaurant from restauranteur & chef Marcus Samuelsson located in Chelsea. The menu isn’t overly Ethiopian, though its presence is definitely still felt! Evan & I tend to go family style at most meals we venture off to & this one was no different.

We started our evening with a celebratory cocktail, the Seashore Spritz which featured Mallorca Melon, Black Tea, Apple, & Celery along with Prosecco, it was a lovely light imbibement. We kind of then played the rest of the menu by ear having asked several different staff members what to get upon arrival. The first thing we ordered was the Hav Bread Basket which came with Injera Crisps, Teff Biscuits, Blue Cornbread, Shiro Hummus, Honey Butter, & Tomato Jam. We picked our way through them, trying each combination of bread with each of the spreads.

Scallops at Hav & Mar

Next up came small plates.

We ordered Hamachi with Black Ceviche, Cippolini Onions, Grammy Smith Apples, & Fennel. the Spring Salad with Baby Romaine, Red Endive, Fava Beans, Ayib, & Spiced Pepitas, & probably some of the best Brown Butter Scallops with Spring Vegetables, Turmeric, & Pumpkin Coffee Crumble that I’ve ever had!

Havatini at Hav & Mar

We were honestly starting to get a bit full but that didn’t stop us from splitting an entree & two sides of which we ordered the Havatini which was a Bucatini with Crab, Uni Butter, Shrimp, & Ramps. It slapped! Our sides were the Hav Fries which were a combination of Yucca & Sweet Potato with Shiro Hummus & Awaze & the Farroto, a Couscous & Farro dish prepared like Risotto served with Confit Mushrooms & Ramps which was sinfully good.

And since there’s always room in the dessert stomach it too was brought to the table in the form of a Spring Tart made with Guava & Calamansi both of which are two of my favorite tropical flavors!

All & all Hav & Mar was a smash! We didn’t have anything there that was anything less than stellar & I’m truly just upset that we weren’t able to try more of the menu as it does contain quite a few items, all of which that shift seasonally.

Following dinner I made the executive decision that I wanted to go clear across town to the Lower East Side & visit a bar called ‘Double Chicken Please.’

Double Chicken Please is a front bar with a backroom speakeasy that is currently sitting pretty at the #2 slot on the World’s 50 Best Bars list! The front room bar features draft cocktails & the back bar, or ‘The Coop’s’ menu is more made to order. Both share a food menu of mostly chicken sandwiches.

The Coop at Double Chicken Please

When we arrived they were on a bit of a wait, but my superpower always prevails & we were told “well, we have a reservation arriving in 30 minutes, but if you’d like their table for just a drink or two we can arrange that.” So that’s exactly what we did.

All of the drinks in The Coop are modeled after food. I got the Mango Sticky Rice with was Bacardi Reserva Ocho Rum, Mango, Sticky Rice Pu’er Tea (I actually have this at home), Wakame, Cold Brew, & Coconut. Evan, on the other hand, went the savory route & got the Japanese Cold Noodles which was Bacardi Superior Rum, Pineapple, Cucumber, Coconut, Lime, & Sesame Oil & it definitely was more on the savory side which was really interesting to have in a drink. Both drinks were immaculate, though I’m glad that I ordered what I did.

We finished up right around the time our friends Holden & Erina finished up the movie they had gone to. They reached out to see if we wanted to grab a drink somewhere. With us in the Lower East Side & them up by Midtown I suggested we meet in the middle around Flatiron at a bar that was recommended to me by Joshua Gleave called Patent Pending.

Patent Pending is a speakeasy located at the base of the building where Nikola Tesla conducted many of his experiments on radio waves & there-in lies the theme. The whole bar is themed around early electricity & the life & journals of the late, great Nikola Tesla. The drinks are also served with a bit of flare! All in all we ended up staying way longer than we were supposed to & each ended up with about three to four drinks over the span of two plus hours. So in all honesty, even looking at the menu, I can’t really remember what I ordered though I know I stuck to rum most of the night.

What I do remember is that the drinks were very well crafted & balanced. One of mine even came with bananas that were brûléed tableside! I would recommend it for the experience alone!

Anne’s Poor Window

At around midnight we said goodbye to our friends & headed back west towards the Garment District.

We tried to be quiet getting back into Anne’s but I think we didn’t do so great of a job as Evan broke the blinds for our room trying to close them for the night. He literally twisted the pitch knob on them & they completely disconnected from the top of the sill & just hung slack, still attached on one side.

All in all, it was an excellent birthday & a very fun day filled with amazing people & places!

Ceiling of the American Museum of Natural History

End Of Day Two

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Day Three

Another day of lightly sleeping in. I’m not going to lie to you all, I woke up hungover as sin. Ever since around the age of 29, hangovers have really hit me like a tone of bricks & just tend to get worse & worse as the years go on & as my body becomes less suited to my BS & the poison I occasionally in take.

Evan & I had a late morning coffee date set up with a friend in Brooklyn, so after climbing the morning mountain that was getting out of bed, we headed off across the East River with electrolyte drinks in hand.

Coffee in Brooklyn was at a Columbian shop called Devoción. When I say it was a Columbian coffee shop, I mean it, that’s what they specialize in, all things Columbian Coffee!! Evan & I waited, not too long, for our friend to arrive at which point we each got a Pistachio Milk Cortado & our respective morning pastries. I went with the Guava Croissant, Evan his staple of Pain Au Chocolate.

We sat there for a good hour & a half/two hours talking about the past, photography, musical theater, the macabre, parents, trauma, dreams, life, & relationships. It was a lovely rekindling as well as a much needed venting session for the three of us regarding shared experiences & people. Nothing was said that wouldn’t be said to anyone in questions face, nor was any of it things that hadn’t been said or happened. It was a healthy & honest dive into a shared commonality.

Feeling a bit famished & having the void remain despite coffee & pastries, Evan & I bid our friend a loving & fond ‘adieu’ & made our way back to the island.

Lunch was at a restaurant in NoHo called Fish Cheeks. We had met the owners of the establishment, Jenn Saesue & Jesse Morav, back in 2021 at a dinner with music industry friends in Nashville & had been meaning to make the trek out to their establishment. We finally did!

Somtum Corn Salad at Fish Cheeks

Fish Cheeks is an awesome Thai restaurant located right off of Bond Street. Their menu isn’t necessarily what I would call familiar to those who divulge in their local Thai restaurants, but the items on the list still very much maintain their Thai authenticity while naturally having their own twists & turns. As per usual, Evan & I ordered a bunch of things to split & made our way through them as they came.

The first two things that we ordered were the Zabb Wings & the Somtum Corn Salad. Somtum is typically a Papaya salad, though this one had Cweet Corn as its replacement. The dish was very savory with a slight sweetness from the Corn & a prick of heat from the Birdeye Chilis as well as a very nice mouth feel & a springy crunch from the Green Beans. The wings had outstanding flavor with a dry rub of Chili & Makrut Lime Leaf. I’m typically not one to go in for dry rub wings as they can get a little ‘dusty’ but the flavor made up for any potential hesitancies ten fold.

Coconut Crab Curry at Fish Cheeks

Between courses I ordered a cocktail they had as a special for Songkran (Thai New Year) in hopes for a little hair of the dog, but I found myself, at no fault to the cocktail itself, incapable of drinking it without feeling queasy. The drink, called the Little Cha, was a Thai Spiced Rum, Thai Tea, Plum Sugar, Makrut Leaf, & Lime twist on an Old Fashioned & I truly wish my pesky handover had let me enjoy it.

Kaprow at Fish Cheeks

For our main course we ordered the Coconut Crab Curry & the 30 Day Dry Aged Beef Kaprow both of which were outstanding! We had been warned that the crab curry was spicy, though we were also informed that the rice would help balance it out. She was warm to say the least but the flavors there in made me keep coming back, despite my mouth being aflame. I’m typically someone who does fine with spice as well, but this was a whole new level. If your tolerance is high & you have the chance I can’t recommend it enough, it’s just not for the faint of heart. The Kaprow was also a delight! The Aging, the Duck, the Veggies all made just a perfectly rounded dish!

With mouths still lit, we decided that Ice Cream was needed, fortunately they had some on their menu! Dessert was a Pandan Jackfruit Ice Cream served atop Sticky Rice. I am a huge fan of both of those flavors, both of which I also feel are criminally underrated in the US palette. (See last week’s blog from the Philippines where I scoured a market for a fresh Jackfruit.) Pandan almost has a bright peanut-y flavor to it that leans a little more on the ‘green’ side than the legume itself & Jackfruit tastes like a combination of all the popular tropical fruits: pineapple, banana, mango, & coconut.

After lunch we popped around a few of the shops in the NoHo area, doing our best to avoid the scattered drizzle that was falling here & there, before we decided to make our way back to Anne’s.

We sat around conversing with her for a bit before it was time to get ready for the main event!

Sweeney Todd Playbill

Sweeney Todd was at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, which was just a short walk from where we were staying. The revival of the show originally had Josh Groban in the titular role with Annaleigh Ashford as Mrs. Lovett, & Gaten Matarazzo as Tobias Ragg but had since switched to having Aaron Tveit, Sutton Foster, & Joe Locke in each of those respective roles. Having been one of my favorite shows for a very long time, I have seen many a production of Sweeney Todd but truly this one blew all of the others I had seen out of the water!

Aaron, despite being mostly a Tenor in a Baritone role, actually nailed the part. Each of the actors brought their own unique takes to the roles in question, he was no exception. Aaron’s Sweeney was charismatic, often almost bipolar, but definitely personified the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ motif perfectly.

Sutton stole the show in every scene she was in giving a portrayal of Mrs Lovett that I can only describe as fangirl-ish. She let her character’s obsession with Todd take main stage & her willingness to do anything, as long as it got her closer to him, became all the more believable because of it. Prone to body humor, Sutton was often draped over Aaron going so far at one point during “A Little Priest” as to have a one sided sloppy make out with the side of Aaron’s cheek.

Joe Locke surprised me! I’d only known him from the Netflix’s adaptation of Heartstopper, the boy has got pipes!

The two other stand out cast members were John Rapson’s Beadle Bamford & Nicholas Christopher’s Adolfo Pirelli. Both of whom played their respective roles with different levels & styles of flamboyance & arrogance that made two characters, especially in the sense of the Beadle, bounce off the stage.

Truly the revival & the choices made by both cast & crew were masterful & really gave the almost 50 year old musical a fresh coat of paint & a new & interesting edge. I’ve done my best to try & get all of my friends who I think would like it or could possibly have the opportunity to, to go & see it before it closes next week.

After the show we went in search of food. Unfortunately, since it was a week day, a lot of the places we tried were closed. Alternately, a lot of the other places we tried were full to the gills with people who had just done the same as us & gotten out of the various shows dotting Midtown Manhattan. We eventually settled on a random 99 Cent Corner Pizza shop where we each got three slices which we took back to the place to eat.

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

End Of Day Three

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Day Four

Out last day in New York was a bit of a light one. Truly I was still a touch hungover from two nights prior, yes that’s how bad it gets, & we had decided we kinda just wanted to putz around the city for the day.

We did wake up fairly late & were planning to return to WatchHouse for a coffee. However, we decided that food needed to come first.

Wanting to land somewhere around WatchHouse, which is in Midtown, I pulled a restaurant from my handy dandy ‘travel list’ in my notes app which landed us at Jōji Box by Grand Central Terminal.

Jōji Box is the light version of the sushi restaurant Jōji. Jōji is an Omakase (a Japanese phrase essentially meaning “I leave it up to you”) with a Michelin star, where a seating ranges from $300-450. The Box is their more casual friendly take away option.

We had some trouble finding the restaurant that actually turned out to be more of a kiosk tucked in the basement level under the One Vanderbilt building, across from the underground entrance to Grand Central.

Omakase Box from Jōji Box

I ordered the Omakase box & Evan got the Jōji Box 1. Upon ordering we were informed they had opened only 15 minutes prior & were already almost out of boxes, but that the boxes were restocked every two hours until closing.

We took our boxed lunches down to the dining pavilion of Grand Central where we stood & munched down of the chef’s selection for the day.

To be honest, there were several things in my box that I had no idea of. Lots of different varietals of Tuna, two cuts of Salmon, a Toro Roll, a Snowcrab Roll, Bream, & Scallop but there were two items in the box that I had never actually had before in Nigiri form; Uni (Sea Urchin) & Salmon Roe.

The Uni & Roe were both sweeter than expected with the former having more of a briny finish. The Roe had a fun texture to it & I genuinely enjoyed them both, though I think I’ll stick to Uni as a mix in for other dishes for now.

Post sushi we wrapped around the corner of the concourse & got a staple of a New York City dessert, Magnolia Bakery Banana Pudding.

WatchHouse Rarities Tray

Post sushi & pudding it was coffee time. We walked our way from Grand Central over to WatchHouse where the cafe was actually fairly busy. Managing to snag a table Evan ordered a Flat White & I got one of their rarities, of which they were out of the last time we were there. WatchHouse has a collection of “rare” single origin beans from all over the world. The coffee is chemex brewed & served in a carafe with an empty glass & a glass of cold juniper tea that you are to use as a palette cleanser before you begin to drink the coffee. Each coffee also comes with a QR code which when scanned takes you to a page with all of the information surrounding the specific coffee that you’ve chosen. Mine was Deiro Garcia, also known as Finca Lord Voldamort. I’ll link its page here.

Post coffee we did a little bit of bobbing around. Our evening flight wasn’t until around 9 PM so we had plenty of time to kill. We ended up at several different shops before heading down to Flatiron to grab a LeVain Cookie.

LeVain Black & White Cookie

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

LeVain Bakery is a stable of the New York dessert world offering not only their famous cookies, but also breads & other baked goods. The also ship their dough nationwide if that’s something you’re interested in!

When we got there there was a line of about 20 people but with three registers open & people filling orders seperate of the cashiers it moved quickly. I think it took 5 minutes tops for us to get in & leave cookies in hand. I got a Black & White Cookie which is exclusive to the Flatiron store or online. It was Chocolate Dough with White Chocolate & Dark Chocolate Chips, & it smacked! Evan got a traditional Chocolate Chip, which was amazing & blew some other famous one named cookie store’s Chocolate Chip out of the water…not naming names here.

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

While at LeVain we noticed that we weren’t too far from the World of Harry Potter Store & since we had time to burn, we walked on over to check it out.

We perused all of the character wands, looked at uniforms & cloaks, picked through the interesting memorabilia, & finally ended our visit to the rather impressively large shop with a glass of Butterbeer, which comes in a collectable cup they let you wash & keep with you.

Feeling satisfied with the trip & our accomplishments this time around in New York we headed back to the Garment District to begin packing & preparing to depart that evening. We had another few glasses of wine with Anne & chatted about before we grabbed all of our belongings & made the reversed trip to the airport as that listed above.

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

End Of Day Four

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Photo Credit: Evan Michael

End Of Blog!!!

Travel Blog: Bohol, Philippines- Part Three: Let's Play It By Ear...

BOHOL, PHILIPPINES

Hiya folks, welcome back to the blog!

This will unfortunately be the last segment of blog from my trip to Bohol. I know, I know, we’re all sad about that. As we should be. Fear not though, we still have several days work of content, as well as a previously heavily hinted at & foreshadowed ailment to discuss in this blog. If you’re joining us here & looking at that big ole ‘Part Three’ at the top in confusion & bewilderment, worry not, the links for the previous two parts of this globetrotting romp will be posted below for your reading & visual pleasure! With all of those pieces of business out of the way I say let us continue along!

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PART THREE:

Day Six

We started off our day in the usual way. 6-something AM wake up, pancake with fruit, black coffee, & fresh mango/pinapple juice with ice. Next step; preparing gear/cameras for the day, loading up, & briefing & off we went to our first dive site.

You’ll only get a single photo from me on this dive site. The day prior Cari, Darin, & I had requested a change of pace & asked the guides if it was possible to do a muck dive (silt/sandy bottom, easily stirred up if you’re not careful) to which they obliged with a site just off of Anda town called J. Eden’s Place. No clue where that name came from apparently.

The trip out to J Eden’s was a bit tumultuous with larger waves than we’d experience the entirety of the days before. Evan found himself getting a bit sea sick. Despite the larger surge, we suited up & into the water we went.

I have a set of earplugs that are designed specifically for diving, they have a tiny hole in the middle so that the air inside the concha & external auditory canal creates a seal while still allowing the possibility for equalization. Since my left ear was feeling a little off the day before, I put in the large sized one & attempted the dive.

Chocy Chip Starfish

The large wasn’t big enough apparently & by the time we had gotten down to depth, past the Chocolate Chip Starfish & were starting to sink further to around 35 feet my left ear was screaming at me. I signaled to the group that something was wrong with my ear & that I was headed back to the boat only a short bit aways at this point.

The whole way back to the boat I was clinching my teeth, I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, & I felt a burning sensation in the left side of my throat. I got back to the boat, threw off my gear & began to clear the water from my ear while sitting in the sun awaiting the return of everyone else.

Of course when everyone returned they raved about the dive. My group had worked at one point to free a bunch of fish & a Mantis Shrimp from a dropped fishing net which they brought back on board with them. Additionally they’d seen Seahorses, Bluespotted Stingrays, & all of the other fun things that you find living in the substrate on a muck dive.

Clownfish In Anemone

We weren’t entirely sure the diagnosis of my ear but as we continued on to the next site it began to feel better so I thought, you know, I’m going to give the larger earplug a try & see if that keeps me from feeling like this. I promise you, I am more intelligent than I seem at times.

The next site was a wall dive ironically named Wonderwall. With my larger earplug installed & a fresh tank we set about trying again.

I went down slower than everyone else, adjusting incrementally as the depth increased. The larger plug worked like a charm, I had no pain, no issue equalizing, I thought I was in the clear & that maybe I was just sporting the beginnings of an ear infection. I also had the team on deck prepared to help in the case that I had trouble equalizing on my way back up from depth. Neither ended up being an issue.

Soft Coral Crab

Marine Betta

Porcupine Pufferfish

Stonefish

The wall really was a wonder! There were tons & tons of varietals of Nudibranchs, Commensal Shrimp, Arrow Crabs, the largest school of Engineer Gobies I have ever seen (talking like several feet in diameter), & a Marine Betta (Comet)! Additionally the wall house schools of Anthias, Scribbled Boxfish, Porcupine Pufferfish, & even a Stonefish which when JR gave me the signal for, I thought he was indicating that he was low on air. (The indication of stonefish & low on air are both a closed fist, only low on air is a closed at the chest.) Funny enough the signal for stonefish is also the signal for danger as stonefish are highly venomous if stepped on.

I made it back to the boat completely unscathed. The ear plug had worked & I’d had no issues with my ear at all during the dive so I was clearly not dealing with an equalization issue.

For lunch Cari & I had also made a request the night prior. I had raved to Evelyn, the resort manager, about the Filipino stew I’d had at lunch while we were all on our sunset cruise. A few of us, Cari & myself included, then had used that as an opportunity to request more Filipino dishes be served during our stay because why would you fly halfway across the world just to eat the same things you do at home? She had gladly obliged our request & in the morning had given us the option between a saucy beef & peanut dish or a mung bean soup. I chose the beef, as did most people. The thing that I knew, that I refrained from telling the rest of our party, was that the beef dish wasn’t just beef, but was in fact beef skin that had been cooking for almost a day & a half. The dish in question is called Balbacua & was absolutely delicious!

After lunch it was once again time for our afternoon dives. The site in question was called Dapdap & was in fact just off the coast of Magic Oceans to the west. The dive was actually projected to end at the resort itself. JR & I ended up being the only two from our group to go so he & I had a nice little private dive. With my extra large ear plug in place & kit assembled & accounted for we began our decent into the blue.

Curious Little Flatworm

Dapdap is a site where, yes, you drop in on a wall, but around the last fifteen feet of the wall, from the bottom, is a dome carved out of the rock face. We started our dive in that little alcove. Here I found yet another Marine Betta, another Ornate Ghost Piperfish, & a rather curious little Flatworm cruising along the substrate.

Farther along & out a ways from the wall we found more interesting critters. We found a little grouping of Sexy Shrimp (yes, that’s literally what they’re called & no, I don’t know why), more Eels, two separate types of Mantis Shrimp; one peacock & one the name of which I’m not sure, & yet another Sea Turtle.

The Largest Turtle

Everything was right as rain & business as normal until we came upon it; the largest Sea Turtle I have ever seen! No joke, this thing had to have a shell that was 4-5 feet from top to tail. It was enormous & was doing its best to wedge itself under a rock to sleep away the late afternoon. There was enough room on its back for two full grown Remoras which hung on snug while still leaving ample room for a good 3-4 more of them to nestle in.

Leopard Wrasse

Banded Pipefish

We rounded off the dive & made our way back to shore. Along the way we stumbled upon a pair of Banded Pipefish, a big ole Coral Catfish, & a couple of Leopard Wrasse.

Bubble Coral With Shrimp

The ascent out of the water was an interesting one. We’d come up on the short & were in only about five feet of water when all of the sudden, there in front of us was the boat with its steps extended down into the water. JR de-finned first & climbed up & I followed only to find us at the resort’s dock, parked. We’d gotten out of the water, into the boat, to walk up onto the dock, & into the dive shop. It was a bit of a disorienting feeling.

Turtle

More Turtle

After I got all of my gear taken care of for the evening I was met by Jamie who told me that he thought I may have a perforated ear drum. He recommended that I do an easy test to check & had me gather Evan & my ear plug & head to the resort pool. In the resort pool I had been told to go underwater, plug my nose, & blow out like I was trying to equalize. Evan had been asked to go in with me & with his mask on look to see if there were bubble evacuating from my ear. Sure enough there were.

With the ear mystery mostly solved we all agreed that is was probably for the best that I be done diving for the week even though there was another day’s worth of dives to go on. It was also recommended from both Jamie & my dive insurance that I go to a local doctor to get checked out & have them confirm our findings. Additionally it was advised that I start a preventative antibiotic as perforated drums often get inner ear infections from the water that has gotten in.

So off I went about the rest of my evening, to dinner & the like, with the newly acquired knowledge & field diagnosis of a perforated ear drum, knowing the following day I would need to find an official, proper diagnosis, & some medication.

Reef

End Of Day Six

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Day Seven

I changed up my breakfast. With no risk of sea sickness or motion sickness from diving I opted out of my normal Pancake with fruit & instead went for a Ham & Cheese Omelet. It was lovely as well!

After breakfast I walked down to join everyone else while they were preparing to depart. I joined in their briefing, helped people to suit up, etc. etc. & once they were on their way I went & got dressed for my day on the town.

Jamie had already informed the main office that I needed a ride to the clinic. I went in to check on the status of all of that & they informed me that a tuk-tuk had been called & asked me to wait in my room until it arrived. They would send someone to fetch me once it showed. They also informed me that the tuk-tuk would be about 500 NFP (8.84 USD) each way & apologized profusely that I’d have to walk to the top of the hill to get into it, as it couldn’t make the drive down the steep driveway into the resort. I told them it was truly no problem & went back to my room to await my transit.

They had originally quoted me something like 30 minutes to an hour but it ended up only being about 10 I believe. I was retrieved & returned to the head office where I was greeted by Marj, one of the resort staff. She informed me that she would be accompanying me to the clinic, if that was alright, along with Shakka, one of the resort dogs.

We walked up the hill to where the tuk-tuk waited & filed in the back. I’m assuming he already knew the purpose of our trip because no words were exchanged other than ‘hellos’ & off he went.

I had never ridden in a tuk-tuk before. I’m assuming they’re similar world wide, but this one was essentially a motorcycle with a hard shell covering mounted to it.

Our trip took us back the way in which we’d previously gone for the Whale Shark dive. We turned from the peninsula where Anda sits & ended up in Guindulman. After weaving through the side streets a bit we arrived at the clinic.

Liao’s Clinic is a two room operation sat on the end of a strip. When we arrived there were around 10-15 people already sat waiting. The doctor didn’t arrive until 9 AM & I think we were around 20 minutes early so naturally we had to wait. The driver’s booking included him waiting so Marj, Shakka, & I waited outside the clinic in the back of the tuk-tuk.

The time went by quickly. Marj & I struck up conversation. We talked all about each of our separate curiosities about how the other lived & what life was like respectively & I introduced her to the scientific fact that white people can’t do ‘the Asian squat.’ At one point I remarked at the two roosters who were leashed up outside of the store down the street from the clinic. They each had a leash tied to one of their ankles & each time they would reach the end of their cord they would behave as though its existence was entirely unbeknownst to them up until that exact moment. There came a point in which one of the children waiting at the clinic released the CO2 filled balloon he’d been holding & it got picked up by the wind. Unfortunately for one of the roosters, but fortunately for me, the wind eddied & swirled right where the rooster had taken up residence at the end of its leash. I watched for a good 10 seconds as the balloon whirled around & around, smacking into this poor rooster over & over. All the while the rooster did its best to escape, exclusively doing so in the direction opposite of where he was tied. I hate to say I cackled at the poor beast, but nevertheless, I did.

When it was time for me to be checked out Marj accompanied me into the room where the doctor worked. He sat me in a white lawn chair & heard me out. Marj translated any words that were lost in the language divide, he looked in my ear, & sure enough confirmed that I had a lightly perforated ear drum with a hole only about the size of a pin. He prescribed me a preventative weeks worth of antibiotics & steroid drops which I was to do twice a day for two weeks. My total at the clinic with medications included was 2700 NFP or $48 USD. #CriesInAmerican

After I’d paid & acquired my drugs we asked the driver if he wouldn’t mind stopping at the market down the street for us to check on something. I am a lover of Jackfruit, I love it dearly. If you read any of my Indonesian blogs you’ll know that to be true, but anytime I’m in the islands or in Southeast Asia I do my utmost to find out. We went to the market to peruse for one but unfortunately came up empty. Though I’m grateful for the attempt!

Dive Boat

We had a quick turn over when we returned to the Oceans of Magic, well relative to the turn overs of the rest of the trip. We were to meet those who had gone out diving on a beach between the resort & Anda for a barbecue. Evan & I departed with the staff & a few other resort guests as the others would arrive by boat.

When we got to Bituon Beach we found the kitchen staff already hard at work. They were grilling marinated meats (Chicken & Pork) & had a whole line of cloth covered tables set up with table settings all along. Ev & I sat & waited for the boats with our party members to arrive which only took about ten minuted before they appeared. Once they were sat we were served the Meats with Soya Sauce, two kinds of Salad (Potato & Garden), & beverages we’d ordered ahead previously in the week.

Bitoon White Beach

After a wonderful lunch on a perfect day at the beach we were treated to Ube ‘Dirty Ice Cream’ as the dive staff serenaded us via the Karaoke booth on the other side of the beach.

Don’t worry, I won’t leave you hanging, I’m going to address dirty ice cream & where the moniker originated, or at least what I was told the name came from. Dirty ice cream is so called because it typically comes from a street vendor. That’s not the dirty part. The dirty part stems from the vendors walking around selling their goods with a bell. When kids would ask their parents if they could get ice cream their parents would always say “nah, that’s dirty ice cream” as a way of deterring their children from wanting the vendor’s product. The ice cream & the vendors are perfectly clean, the name just stuck as a way to make children not want it.

At a certain point during Evan dipped from lunch to go hunt down a bathroom, as he is one to do. (He’s going to beat me for saying that.) Upon asking to be shown the restroom he was brought over to someone’s home near the beach where he was ushered inside & shown to their personal bathroom. After going about his going abouts he turned around to leave the bathroom & there, on the back of the door, is a 8X10 cut out picture of none other than early 2000s Disney icon Hilary Duff.

The Queen.

Boat Ride Back From The Beach

With full tummies & sunburnt skin we boarded back on the dive boat & were taken to the resort from there.

Knowing I would be forced to spend my day landlocked I had booked a massage. The resort had a built in spa where you could request services up to an hour before you would like them. I booked a 90 minute Hilot massage.

Hilot is a Filipino type of massage. It is a mix of deep tissue massage & energy healing where the practitioners use their hands to find areas of blocked energy & knead them out. The massage itself, while being deep tissue in nature, is very gentle & is less like the Swedish variety where pressure is applied in long strokes to the muscle fiber & more like the kneading of a cat along the fibers. It was absolutely lovely.

About an hour into my hour & a half of relaxation the Tokay Gecko that I was unaware lives in the room decided to start chirping right above my head. The gecko’s call is loud, very loud & it scared the ever loving hell out of me. Imagine being in a state of total relaxation & having energy work done & out of nowhere you’re ripped from your tranquility by the “EHT EER” of the gecko. Click on the sound files in the wiki link attached to the name if you want to hear what they sound like.

After my massage I found Evan sat at the bar, gossiping it up with Ester. He had let it leak to her that I am a Singer/Songwriter & she had gone through the trouble of pulling up my entire Spotify catalog which she then proceeded to wait to play until I showed up. We made it through all of the songs several times.

Around 7 PM we were all called to dinner where I got to sit & hear the rounding out of everyone else’s week of dive. To be entirely honest though, I had had a fantastic day. Inspire of the injury, inspire of the inability to dive, I got to travel around & do one of my favorite aspects of travel which is connecting with people around the world & submerging myself not in their waters, but in their lives. To once again be entirely honest, this is one of the days of the trip that I remember the most fondly & with the utmost joy in my heart.

Me.

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

End Of Day Seven

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Day Eight

Wake up was the normal 6-ish AM natural occurrence. With our last day of activities ahead of us breakfast was again starting a little earlier than the previous day & with no more diving, boat rides, or current in my near future, I opted for what I thought was a Breakfast Sandwich for breakfast. It turned out to just be a sandwich with assorted veggies & no egg. It was my fault for misreading the menu.

Tarsier Sanctuary Entrance

After breakfast we all loaded up into the vans with a day bag & a potential change of clothes & off we went to see what the day held. Some of the dive & resort staff joined us, including JR & Lee Ann & after about an hour to an hour & a half we landed at our first stop, the Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary.

Tarsier

The Sanctuary is, as their name suggests, dedicated to protecting the Philippine Tarsier, one of the smallest primates in the world, inhabiting the southeastern most islands in the Philippine Archipelago. The primates are nocturnal & only measure around 3-6 inches in size with an adult weight of between 2.5 & 6 ounces.

The facility itself consists of a parking lot, a placard arched entrance, a set of facilities, & an informational museum which serves as the entrance to the sanctuary as well as an educational center. Once you pass through the museum you find yourself in a chainlink fenced in forest scribbled with meandering trails. Posted all over are signs telling you to please be quiet & refrain from flash photography as the Tarsiers are trying to sleep during visiting hours.

Tarsier

The first of them we encountered was amongst a cluster of short palms. It was tucked up in the foliage about seven or eight feet from the ground. It looked to be clinging to the palm for dear life, hoping to blend in from us, which I would assume it took as predatory. The next couple were in similar predicaments with the farthest we found only being about nine feet off of the ground. Some were more active than others, peaking up from their slumber to watch us, all had ears that reminded me of Yoda.

After we’d pestered the tarsiers enough we all went about our separate activities. Some wandered the museum, watched the informational videos, & asked questions to those who worked there. Evan & I on the other hand went out to the entrance patio where one of the area dogs had brought out her puppy. As I approached she gave me a bit of a snarl but I sat & waited for her approach & approval before giving her a pet & continuing on to see her puppy.

When the others had exhausted their fill of the primates & the dogs had their fill of me we all loaded back up into the vans & headed down the road to what would be lunch.

Lunch was an interesting one. We were only in the van about fifteen minutes before we were dropped in Loboc at the Loboc River Tourist Complex. Once we were checked in we were all shown down the outdoor corridor to the river itself where we were directed down a flight of stairs & onto a series of floating barges each with restaurant seating set up. We were all asked to be seated & were brought Cucumber Lemonade before the boats swiftly departed from shore.

The Dinner Cruise Line

The Spread

Once we were moving we were then directed to line up at the end of the barge where a table strewn with all sorts of Filipino foods had been set up. We each grabbed ourselves a plate & made our way through selecting the items that looked appealing to each of us. As we began to dine a singer & guitar player took up a mic in the corner & began to serenade us with mostly 80s love songs. It was charming.

A couple of minutes up river the duo stopped & instead we docked right up to a stage that jutted out into the water. There about twenty people were dancing & singing their way through a catalog of assorted traditional Filipino & Spanish songs & dances (the Spanish occupied the Philippines for over 300 years.) After they were done they waved goodbye & we continued up river.

Farther up stream we found ourselves privy to all sorts of activities both in the river & above. There were zipliners darting back & forth from bank to bank in the hills above, there were kids swinging into the river doing the latest trick they dared, & even a few fishermen hauling in their daily catch. All while the duo continued their cantations. We doubled back at a certain point & enjoy the drift downstream before we reconnected with the complex we’d began our journey at & shown through to the gift shop. I’m not going to lie, I purchased a shirt. It’s blue tied dye with the Bohol insignia on it.

Once we’d finished our shopping we were loaded up & back on down the road we went.

Chocolate Hills

I was severely undersold the Chocolate Hills. Severely. When I asked what they were & if they contained chocolate I was told that they’re simply some hills & that no, the do not in fact contain chocolate. While that is somewhat true, calling them “just some hills” is the understatement of the century.

The Chocolate Hills are haystack shaped karst hills. They formed from eroding limestone in the region as well as tectonic activity that thrust them up into the air. Not only are they a geographical monument in the Philippines, they are also a staple of the island of Bohol. There are around 1,200 of these hills in the center of the island & they vary in size from 100 feet tall to the tallest at 390 feet tall. They are referred to as the chocolate hills not because cacao grows there, but because during the dry season the vegetation covering them turns a rich chocolate brown.

Chocolate Hills

They are nothing short of stunning.

We arrived in the region after about an hour drive inland. Turning into the visitor center, we rounded one of the larger hills to a lot where we were once again dropped. Meeting the lot was a set of around 200 steep steps which led to the top of the hill we’d just circumnavigated. It was a bit of a climb but the view from the top was spectacular! Not just the hills, but the valley in which they sit. You could see for miles!

Once we’d all had our fill of the tops of the hills we descended where we drove just around the corner to Graham ATV & Bugcar Rental.

ATV Track

When you arrive at Graham ATV & Bugcar Rental you are handed a helmet, a waiver, & asked to choose between a two person buggy or an ATV. Then, following a briefing, you are shown to your respective vehicle & away you go.

The tour is about an hour long & takes you along muddy trails in-between several of the Chocolate Hills. You dip in & out of forest & meadows going over hills & through streams before looping around to return the basecamp. Evan had a hard time getting into it initially, but once he felt comfortable he was all in. I, on the other hand, was gung ho from the beginning!

After an hour of zipping around the hills we rinsed off our mud soaked selves, changed our clothes, got some ice cream & started to make our way back towards the coast.

Along the way Lee Ann abruptly asked our driver to pull over. She’d caught a Tempura Street Stand as we’d passed through Carmen on our way back. She & one of the other resort staff who’d come along for the day hopped out & immediately started ordering from the stand. Never one to not dive headlong into my curiosities, I joined them. Lee Ann ordered for me & gave me a bag with several tempura items in it. I think one of them was just strips of fried dough, the other was a fried egg. There were also a series of sauces which you dumped directly into the bag. I went for what was warned would be the spiciest, but it was actually a very pleasant sweet chili vibe.

We loaded back into the van & off down the road we went.

The evening was a planned party. They had pulled the tables out from the restaurant & assembled them along the grounds near the dive shop. There was also a band from Manila who had come in to play.

As everything was being set up we were instructed to start emptying our designated spots in the dive shop & change into something a little nicer. I went back to our room, packed up all of my gear, showered, & got my other luggage together.

The party was so nice. They’d pit roasted a Lichon for us & set up long tables filled with food under the sky & the hung ropes of lights above. The whole of the resort staff was there & were able to let loose & celebrate with us. Apparently we were the first large group of the busy season & the resort & its faculty were excited about it!

During dinner the band played 80s covers, clearly a favorite decade of music, as we ate. After we’d finish Ester stepped into the role of MC & started calling up people to sing along with the band…….

The first to sing was the chef! Yes, the resort chef. He had a lovely voice & sang two or three songs. During his set I got a grip on the shoulder & turned to find Ester who looked me dead in the eye & told me “I hope you know I’m not letting you run off for the night without singing something.” To which I laughed & obliged. Next up was Lee Ann, the karaoke queen struck again & did two songs as well as a song with Ester! Then came my moment of doom haha.

Me Doing The Thing

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

Ester, still holding the mic, called me up on stage. I got up & walked on but asked what I should sing. I was told an original. I asked if I could borrow a guitar to which the lead guitar player handed me his. After adjusting the height of the mic stand (I’m a good head or two taller than most of the filipinos I encountered) I went in on “When He Was Me” I was shocked when I got to the pre-chorus & the rest of the band join in with me! They followed the chord changes as best they could & when I finished I was greeted with a standing ovation & a call for more songs. I agreed & decided to play “Just Another Late Night” since the chords were the same throughout & it would allow the band an easier time following along. They crushed it!

After finishing up “Just Another Late Night” I once again got the request for another song, even the band was now requesting more music. So I did the same thing as before, I played “Insomniac” since the chords are the same throughout.

Still the group wanted more songs, but I turned down their request, it wasn’t my show to take over, it was the group who had come in to play, so I passed the microphone & the guitar back to their owners & descended from the stage.

They made me feel like a rock star, I’m not going to lie. I got off stage & JR immediately wanted a picture, then so did Lee Ann, then so did a few others. I thanked them all profusely for their kindness & hospitality & sat to watch the band sing through a few more songs.

When the toll of the day finally came to tax me of my energy I headed off to the bar to pay my tab for the evening. There Ester met me with a hug & a request for a photo to which I happily agreed & we said our good-byes until next time.

Chocolate Hill From ATV

End Of Day Eight

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One Last Sunset

END OF PART THREE & END OF BLOG SERIES!!!

Travel Blog: Bohol, Philippines- Part Two: It's A Shark, It May Have The Word 'Whale' In Its Name, But It Is A Shark!

BOHOL, PHILIPPINES

Welcome back, welcome back! How’re we feeling today? Ready to embark on another adventure into the deep blue? I sure hope so! If you are coming into this post & seeing that big ole ‘part two’ across the title & scratching your head, fear not, I’ll link Part One of this here trilogy below this here paragraph. If you’re coming from the previous post, welcome to it! Glad you stuck around! Sorry we didn’t get into any diving with that one, I promise this one will be different in that regard. Now, if we don’t have any more points of business to get out of the way, I’d be happy to continue this ongoing story. Strap on your BCD, bite down on your reg, & let’s dive on in!

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PART TWO:

Day Three

One of the only times that you will catch me being a morning person is on the days in which there is diving or some sort of other adventure involved. I tend to be more of a late morning riser & a night owl than an early bird but when you dive, a lot of times your dives will start sometime around or before 8 AM. That was no different here.

Papaya Tree

We awoke around 6:15/6:30 AM. Having made our way to the resort in the dark I wanted to a brief bit of exploring. I revisited the path I’d gone down the night prior; a pair of jet black honey bees were zipping around, pollenating a papaya tree that had cropped up near the trail. Continuing along it I sat & watched the newly minted day from the overlook above the rocks, listening to the waves dash against them.

Dawn From Overlook

Breakfast at Magic Oceans begins around that time & is custom, made to order, from the menu provided at the table. Along with your freshly made breakfast options you also have the ability to order coffee, tea, water, or an assortment of fresh juices such as apple, mango, orange, & pineapple. I tend to lean something a little more carb leaning, less greasy or dense, for days I plan to dive, especially if we’re going out on a boat. It was a tip that Elaine taught me back in Fiji that helps mitigate the potential of “feeding the fish” should the boat ride out, or the currents under the waves, prove to be rocky. With that in mind I ordered the Pancake with Fresh Fruit.

The plate sized pancake was less your traditional southern/midwestern American dense dark golden brown disk & more akin to a thick crepe or a dutch baby. Whatever it was, it was delicious. It came covered in fresh pineapple, some of the best mango I've ever had, & bananas. It felt sacrilegious of me to put syrup on it, so instead I asked for honey, which I drizzled gingerly atop.

With breakfast also came the remainder of our briefing from the night before that had been cut short by the exhaustion we all shared. Evelyn filled us in on the remainder of the resort proceedings while Jamie, the Dive Master, began briefing us on what our days of dive would consist of. We were to be at the ‘dive shop’ each morning at 8 AM for check-in & briefing where we’d pack up & depart for two morning dives before returning back for lunch, refueling, & going out for our afternoon dive.

As we all began finishing our respective breakfasts & departing for our rooms to gather our belonging for our dives we were once again greeted by the dining staff who were taking out lunch orders.

With lunch you had the option for whatever you wanted from the even broader lunch menu. However, each day the kitchen staff would pick two items from the menu that they would then offer to guests as a way of making the load on the kitchen for lunch easier. If neither of those two options suited you then you were more than welcome to order from the menu.

Resort Dock

Once we’d all retreated & reconvened down at the dive shop we set about setting up out tanks for the week. Each of us was given a polished wood station with room to hang your BCD (buoyancy control device), your wetsuit, & a milk crate in which to put things whenever you needed them. As I was getting situated, JR, who would be my guide for the week, came over & metered the nitrox from my tank for me. You meter with each tank so that you know what percentage O2 your tank has which then is inputted into your dive computer which uses the exact measurements to calculate a dive requiring no decompression time. We finish measuring my tank, attached it to the BCD, & screwed on my regulator, then it was Evan’s turn.

This is where I think we ran into the trouble of the week, the trouble that we probably won’t include in this part of the blog, but will probably occupy the majority of part three. We got Evan’s tank measurements, signed off on them on the sheet saying we’d measured & crosschecked the tank, & went to assemble his dive kit. We screw the BCD in place & I go to attend to something in my milk crate. The next thing I know there’s a loud pop from my left & a whooshing. Those of us who are experience divers have already called it; it was a popped o-ring. An o-ring, for anyone not familiar with plumbing or any type of activity involving the sealing of two connecting points, is a little rubber ring that sits in the connection fro the tank to the regulator. It prevents air from leaking out the connection. Evan’s had just blown. Totally normal occurrence, nothing to be frightened by or upset about. They pull his reg off the tank & inspect the issue. I immediately see the problem, there’s not one, but two o-rings in the slot. I call that out & turn my head back to my kit or whatever I was fidgeting with on my kit. Another pop right next to my left ear. The blown o’ring had been discarded & another one had replaced it, which then also blew.

Bubbles

I want to be very clear that I’m not tacking blame on this for anyone, especially since I was basically the only one who could see the second o-ring from where I was positioned & the way the tank was facing. I understand having taken the regulator off, seeing the o-ring attached to said regulator connection, & replacing it there assuming that it was the only one present. I also speak at a pitch that tends to blend in to the background noise of the world around you, so I may not have been heard. I made sure to point the mistake out before the same thing happened a second time though.

With gear finally assembled & loaded on board the boat, we gathered around for our briefing & to be divided into our dive groups.

At this point I suppose it’s worth noting the following. Anytime I write stories or blogs I do my best to not include the names of persons under the age of 18, unless I am personally related to them. I am not their parents/guardians, the extent in which their personage being spread across the world wide web is not my choice to make. There will be several mentions of underage party members throughout this blog series, but I shan’t be naming them. They will simply be referred to as in relation, i.e. so & so’s daughter, such & such’s friend, you get it? If you’re one of the aforementioned reading this, I promise I know your names & don’t mean to diminish you to who you are to someone else! Continuing on…

Evan & I naturally got placed together, along with Deb (whom I adore & dove with previously in Fiji & Indonesia), & Darin & Cari’s Daughter (whom I also adore & dove with in Fiji), as she was rooming with Deb. Cari departed from her assigned group & joined ours under JR as the group she was assigned to with Darin, their son, & his friend, would be busy certifying their son’s friend as a diver. So we became a group of six, JR included, & they became a group of four.

Our boat held three groups, which meant that our last group from our party would be on another boat for the week, but they didn’t seem to mind! At least as far as none of them voiced.

Our first dive of the trip was a site called Birhen Sanctuary. A lot of the diving that we did around the peninsula that Anda sits on were wall dives as the shore went out a ways before dropping off drastically at a depth of around fifteen to twenty feet to around eighty to one hundred. Birhen was no exception. With our max depth for the site set around eighty-five feet we all suited up & into the water we went. I was eager as always to resubmerge & was actually planning on trying out a new bit of tech that I’d acquired, the Oceanic+ Dive Housing which uses the already solid camera output from my iPhone 15 Pro Max as its camera!

Regal Angelfish

Pygmy Seahorse

Greyface Moray Eel

The Philippines did not come to play. In terms of an “introductory dive” for the location, it put all of the cards on the table. We got down to depth, immediately a massive field of Garden Eels (if you follow me on any of my socials you know how much love I have for garden eels.) Slight turn back towards the wall, boom, Sea Krait. This was all within the first minute or two of the dive. We saw Regal Angelfish, Ornate Ghost Pipefish, Scorpionfish, Frogfish, & even some Pygmy Seahorses (only about the size of a fingernail) camouflaged & tucked into a Gorgonian Coral. The site was splendid! If offered Greyfaced Moray Eels, harems of Anthias galore, & tons & tons of different varietals of Nudibranchs.

Clarki Clownfish

At the top of the wall sat an additional reef where we ran into a Peacock Grouper, a school of Durgon Triggerfish, & a Powder Brown Tang in addition to all the Anemones with Clownfish & a plethora of Long-Spined Sea Urchins.

Returning to the boat we were met with coffee, tea, bananas, & a container full of fresh cut mango. The crew was put in charge of changing out our empty tanks for the next dive & we set about burning through our hour long surface interval.

Any time I do these blogs, specifically the ones involving large amounts of diving, I never know exactly how much or how little you, as the reader, know about the activity of diving. Typically, I feel like most people sit in the realm of knowing very little about dive other than what they’re seen in tv or movies, often which promote very unsafe practices in their frames. BUT with the feeling that most people don’t know much about Scuba & its practices, I tend to overshare about the items or activities in which I am referencing. *See entire paragraph about ‘o-rings’ above.

Comb Jellyfish

Clarki Clownfish

Surface intervals, for those that don’t know, is the time designated for you as a diver to sit in our natural environment, the surface, & breathe out some of the nitrogen that has accumulated in your system at depth. The deeper you go, the longer you stay, the more pressure forces nitrogen into your body, the longer your surface interval needs to be. One of the goals of recreational diving is to stay within the threshold of what we call “no-deco time” or no decompression time, meaning you don’t require decompression to get back to normal above water stasis. All of these are fun things you learn if you ever take a dive course. During the surface interval is also typically the time in which you move from one dive site to the next, as we did.

Nudibranch

Fishermen

Our next dive site was called Seahorse Point, another wall with a bit more sandy & sloped of a bottom. We still had a bit of time left before we could go diving so we sat & watched an outrigger pull up a fish trap full of fish. I swung around the back of the boat to use the bathroom & found Lee Ann, one of the other dive guides, eat something that I’m still not sure of its name with rice. I asked her what it was, which she gave me the name of, which I swiftly forgot, & then she offered me some. I took a pinch of it & it was exquisite! To describe it, it was a savory, salty reddish mush that I could not for the life of me tell you what was in it or what it was called. All I know was that it was very good & I am grateful she allowed me to try her lunch!

Lionfish

Nudibranch

Common Octopus

It was once again time to suit up & get in the water. The six of us jumped in, descended as a group, & started to make our way over the wall. The current at Seahorse Point was a little stronger than that of the previous dive, but was still manageable. We started this dive headed East, away from our boat. On our first pass, near the base of the wall we found lots more Nudibranchs, Feather Duster & Christmas Tree Worms, & an anemone full of Sarasvati Anemone Shrimp. We’d just made it to the halfway point of our dive & gotten the ‘turn around’ signal from JR when I spotted it. Nestled in the wall, doing its utmost to hide from us, was a rather large Common Octopus. I would have missed it entirely if I hadn’t been waiting for the rest of the group to start their return back the way we came. I only noticed it because of the white flash of its respiratory siphon.

We all gathered around the octopus as it did its best to blend into the reef wall & the cavity that it had claimed to hide in. It’s always an exciting find when you stumble across an octopus or any other type of cephalopod as their alien like appearance never ceases to amaze.

Electric Flame Scallop

Going back the way we came we stumbled upon another fun find, an Electric Flame Scallop, tucked back in a slight cave, flashing its mantle to attract plankton which it filter feeds out. The scallop isn’t really electric, but it gives the appearance of such as it tucks & untucks the white edge of tissue around the edge of the opening of its mantle. Additionally we ran into more scorpionfish, more frogfish, & even more schools of anthias.

With the morning dives completed, it was time to head back to the resort for lunch.

For lunch Evan & I had chosen the burger option. It was definitely an interesting take on one, a far departure from the American style, but it was still very good. The patty came with your usual lettuce, onion, tomato, mayo, but additionally had fresh cucumbers on it, I’m assuming in place of the pickle. It made for a much “fresher” take on the classic dish.

After lunch it was back to the boat for our afternoon wall dive at Snapper’s Cove.

Snapper’s Cove is aptly name. There is a cove, in the wall, that typically is host to a school of Snapper. Imagine that. Evan skipped out on the afternoon dive & opted to relax by the pool, as did Deb, so our group of six was down to four.

In my experience afternoon dives can be hit or miss. A lot of the stuff that is active in the morning has started to hide away for the approaching night & a lot of the things that are active at night haven’t started to come out to hunt in the darkness yet. This one turned out to be a solid one!

The wall was chockablock with different kinds of nudibranchs as well as soft corals such as Pulsing Xenia & Waving Hand Anthelia. Additionally we didn’t find any snapper, but we did find a whole school of large Cardinalfish. I tried & failed to fulfill my endless pursuit of getting two Yellow Capped Cleaner Wrasse to clean my mouth & we found a massive white Giant Frogfish perched on some sponges awaiting whatever unlucky fish swims too close to it. We stumbled upon a school of juvenile Engineer Gobies, a duo of Zanzibar Whip Coral Shrimp, & some Orangutan Crab nestled in a Bubble Coral.

Frogfish

Sea Turtle

On top of the reef we ran into another Sea Krait, a few rather large hermit crabs, tons of Leather Corals, another frogfish, & our first Sea Turtle! Evan really missed out.

Back on land Evan & I made our way to the bar. I typically edit & post dive videos while on my trips & it usually takes me the entirety of the evening to do so, but I found myself having technical difficulties. You see, I am used to shooting on my GoPro, which has phenomenal stabilizers but can’t do macro (anything closer than a foot) to save its life. My iPhone, on the other hand, can shoot macro & wide but lacks the stabilizers. So I spend the good part of an hour or so editing footage, trying to figure out how to stabilize it on my iPad, which simply wasn't' happening. I decided that I’d wait til I returned stateside to compile my videos this time around since the stabilizing tech on my computer is absolutely astounding at times! I resigned myself to enjoying my time & not putting the pressure of content creation on myself this trip.

Here we meet more key players for the week; Ester & Ian, both of whom run the bar at the resort. Ester is by far who Evan & I spent the majority of our week conversing with & I would say we left the week decent enough friends! Ester was also in charge of the daily specials, her ‘cocktails of the day’ were always innovative & fun & we all sat at the bar most nights talking about life, movies, & joking around. This was to be the first of those evenings.

Dinner was called at almost exactly 7 PM & was served family style, just as it was the night prior. We were sat with water & a lovely sweet fruit tea along with an appetizer, a soup, or a salad. We ate dinner at a leisurely pace & once we were done it seems we’d all been taken by sleep, as every one in our party immediately went off to bed for the night.

Sunset From The Dock

End Of Day Three

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Day Four

I woke up Tuesday with the biggest pep in my step, not that I don’t normally when it comes to diving, but today was the day that we were crossing off one of my bucket list dives. We were going to be diving with Whale Sharks!!!

Taug Whaleshark Watching

Along with Manta Rays, Whale Sharks have always been a big “I wanna” for my dive bucket list & with over 60 dives under my belt, I had yet to have gotten a chance run in with either of the gentle giants. That was due to change!

Also, quick interjection here. THE ARE SHARKS, NOT WHALES! They may have ‘whale’ in the name, but it is used here as an adjective, like Goliath, it is meant to denote their size. They are not mammals, they are fish. They do not lactate, grow hair, have lungs, or have warm blood. I don’t know how many people I’ve talk to about this who have said something along the lines of “omg, I’m so jealous, I’d love to swim with whales” or “weren’t you afraid to be that close to whales.” They’re not whales. At all.

END OF SOAP BOX RANT.

Breakfast was served a little earlier than normal as we needed to be on the road headed to the dive site around 7:30. I had my usual pancakes with fruit & before I knew it, we were off on the one & a half hour ride to the site.

The staff had asked that we gather & group our dive gear the night prior so that they could load it into the truck that would go ahead & meet us there with everything already previously prepared so that when we arrived & it was our turn to go, we could just find & collect our things from our milk crate, dress, & get right into the water.

We arrived at Taug Whaleshark Watching just before 9:30. Upon arrival we were ushered through a series of vendor stalls before being sat under a covered patio where we received our safety briefing about the sharks & filled our or consent forms & waivers. One of the main rules that was being hammered in was that of distance & touch. Naturally they asked that you not touch the sharks & that doing so would accrue a 15,000 NFP fine. Additionally they asked that you not get within 10 meters of the sharks or 12 meters from their tail as it has a rather large swing radius. They also explained that this morning, when the crews got to work, there were about eight whale sharks out off the shore & now there were three as they show up each morning to be fed by the organization.

I want to pause here to talk a little about the morality of this, of feeding wild animals essentially as a tourist attraction & where I fall on this spectrum as I know certain other members of the dive community at large fall on very opposite ends of what they believe to be right.

I, in the past, have done very similar experiences where the animals are incentivized by the prospect of food to show up & be spectacle for divers or other tourists, that’s essentially what happens in Beja during their shark dive as well. (Read about it here.) Each time that I participate in such a program I always end up with the same grey area feeling around it but, I think that Jamie, the dive master at Magic Oceans, actually had very good insight into the practice, especially in Bohol.

One night at the bar Darin asked Jamie his feelings on the feeding of the whale sharks. His response came in the form of a story. Jamie said that it used to be that whale sharks were free game. Free game for fishermen, for butchers, etc. There were no protection for the sharks & they would often be caught, butchered, & sold at markets for their meat. Then something shifted. Someone along the way picked up on the fact that a very large percentage of the world would love nothing more than to see a live whale shark up close, so they started a business & began feeding the sharks planktonic organisms in the same spot each day. This naturally got the sharks accustomed to being fed & not having to search the oceans for their rapidly dwindling food source. Then they started hiring staff, then they started allowing vendors around their business, & quickly the other locals picked up on the fact that people would pay for the experience which then would enrich their chances of also getting a slice of the pie. Turn back to the local markets, people started to get run out for selling the shark because it became an active representation of the destruction of the livelihood of those in the community & almost all at once the fishing & sale of whale shark meat diminished & disappeared.

I’m not here to say it’s objectively right or wrong, what I will say will err on the side of the former though. Whale sharks are an endangered species, climate change is decimating their populations as their food source continues to lessen & lessen in availability. We take in rhinos for protection, we take in big cats in the hopes of rehabilitating & reintroducing them at later dates, what’s the harm in doing so with massive sharks while still keeping them in their natural habitat? Do we not sell safaris in nature preserves to pay to protect the animals there within?

After sitting, waiting our turn for around 30 minutes to an hour we were called to dress.

Kitten

The dive was a shore dive with a max depth around 45 feet. We were asked to suit up quickly & get into the water to finish off our kit so that the boats coming in with those who had gone out to feed & observe from the surface could get in & start unloading/loading their groups. All in all there were probably just short of a hundred people mingling about either beginning or ending their trip with the sharks. We were apparently the last dive group of the day, so we weren't given a time limit for our excursion.

Long Spined Sea Urchins w/ Threadfin Cardinalfish

Once we were all in & kitted, we began the kick out to the site. The shoreline was rather rocky & full of urchins so they had us submerge as soon as we could in part so we weren’t stepping on anyone of their homes but also so that we could get lower in the water, giving the sharks ample space to swim above us just below the surface.

We were at about 35 feet when I saw my first wild whale shark. I was just kicking along, out into the Bohol Sea when I heard the clicks of JR’s carabiner. I found him in the water & he pointed up & there, about twenty feet above me, swam three whale sharks.

Whale Shark

Whale Shark Tail

The group of three featured two sharks that were about 15-20 feet in length, the third was massive probably anywhere from 30-40 feet in length with a tail around 9 feet in height. They were easily the largest animals I had ever seen much less been in close proximity to. I was beaming!

Over the next hour we floated, suspended almost entirely in the middle of the bottom & the surface staring in awe & amazement as the sharks crossed back & forth collecting the food that had been thrown out for them. The largest shark, however, seemed to have the whole “feeding game” figured out & was situated at the surface the entirely of the time at around a 45º angle between the two boats that were throwing out the food. It didn’t move from its spot as its tail swooshed back & forth behind it, keeping its head elevated to the surface where it funneled in a constant flow of water & food.

Whale Shark

At one point we all got a little sick of being reserved to the bottom/middle of the water column as we watched the groups of snorkelers go right up next to the shark & we decided to raise ourself up to a depth of about 15 feet instead. As soon as we did this I almost got bulled over by one of the smaller sharks who swam in from behind me. Luckily I saw it coming & was able to drop back down underneath it, which ultimately resulted is an amazing shot!

After we got out we dried off & dressed. There were refreshments waiting for us & our ride back. We repacked all of our gear into our milk crates & boarded the vans back to Magic Oceans.

Since the dive site was a ways away it ate the time slot for both of the morning dives, meaning that following lunch there would only be the afternoon dive to round out the day.

Whale Shark

Swimming Feather Starfish

Our afternoon dive was a wall dive called Coco North. A sloping wall dive, this one featured deep fissures where schools of fish would gather & take refuge. During out time here I actually encountered another nautical first for me, which is a swimming Feather Starfish!

Torch Coral

Feather stars get their name from the frilled appearance of their appendages of which there are anywhere from 10-200, though they always appear in groups of five. They dust these super sticky limbs through the water collecting food but also use them to maneuver through the water appearing almost like a dancing spider as they do. To see them stationary is fairly common place, but occasionally you’ll manage to see one fluttering about, which is a rather surreal experience!

Fimbriated Moray Eel

Banded Coral Shrimp

Dogfaced Pufferfish

In addition to the starfish we also stumbled upon a multitude of clams, some Yellow Boxfish, a few Orange-lined Triggerfish ( I prefer the aquarists term of “Undulate Triggerfish), & even happened upon a Fimbriated Moray Eel! The eel was tucked behind a crusting coral & didn’t want to say hi, despite our best efforts to get the beautiful creature to come out of its lair for a few photos.

In addition to all that the wall hosted a number of clownfish with anemones, Banded Coral Shrimp, Nudibranchs aplenty, Cleaner Wrasse, & more.

When we rounded the top of the wall there was a large school of Sergeant Majors waiting to greet us in addition to all of the soft corals & even a Banana Wrasse.

Post dives we made our nightly trip to the bar to await dinner & chat with Ester whom we got into a lovely heartfelt conversation about the differences in life between The US & The Philippines. As per usual, we also talked about movies & TV shows & which she was watching in the evenings when work was slow or when she got home after getting off. We made our recommendations & she made hers.

Stars From Dock

Dinner was served in the usual way & after some much need sustenance we once again retired for the night. Though before my head hit the pillow & drifted my off to dreamland I snuck down to the end of the dock for a bit of star gazing.

One of my favorite parts about being in a more remote part of the world with not as much light pollution, especially around the water, is the ability to see the stars. They’re the only times that I’ve managed to catch glimpses of The Milky Way.

All in all, it was one for the books, a day I will remember forever!

Dive Boat w/ Stars

End Of Day Four

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Day Five

Another morning, another Filipino Pancake with Fruit.

Marbled Tile Starfish

Our morning dive was a site called Island View. Yes, it did contain a view of an island, that island being Bohol. So I guess technically all of the dives we had should’ve been called “Island View.” It was also a wall dive.

Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish

While diving the view we encounter a multitude of lovely fish & other oceanic critters. There were a few types of Puffers: Porcupine, Dogfaced, & Valnetin’s Sharpnose, an Ornate Ghost Pipefish, loads of Anemones with Clowns, more Garibaldi Shrimp, Marbled Tile Starfish, a Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish, the clusterf- of Nudies we’ve come to expect, Frogfish, & even a little Snowflake Eel.

The morning dive was followed by a second at a site called “Coral Garden.”

Coral Gardens

Coral Garden was aptly named as the top reef was a vibrant myriad of corals & fish swimming about. Most of the top side crew were Damsels in variety: Sergeant Majors, Black Damsels, Staghorns, & Yellowtail Blue Damsels. Once we descended over the side of the wall, down the drop off, the reef traffic definitely got a bit quieter, & a lot less territorial.

You know, now that I think about it, this may be the first & only dive trip in which I wasn’t attacked by some sort of Damsel while diving…huh.

Bigeye Soldierfish

Spaghetti Lookin’ Nudibranch

Sea Turtle

Off the wall we found Big Eye Soldierfish, a few Dwarf Hawkfish perched in the Barrel Sponges, more schools of Juvenile Engineer Gobies, Rabbitfish, a Soft Coral Crab, some spaghetti looking Nudibranchs, a school of Drummerfish, another two Sea Turtles, & a colony of Coral Catfish! It also ended up including one of my favorite dive happenings; diving in the rain!

Tomato Clownfish In Bubbletip Anemone

Nudibranch

Cari asked me when I explained that I love diving in the rain if I’d even noticed that it was until we’d hit the surface & while I don’t think I outright knew it was raining from depth, I definitely could hear & feel it around 20 feet. It also does something interesting to the animals below water where I feel it makes them a touch more active, though that could just be a wildly skewed observation that has no actual scientific merit to it in any regard. Either way, I love coming up out of the water into the rain, there’s something otherworldly about it.

Bohol Through The Rain

When we got back to the resort it was lunch time. I can’t entirely recall what the option was for the day but I’m pretty sure it was like a chicken sandwich or something. As we were sat waiting I noticed JR & some of the other dive guides going up to the kitchen with a bowl & a plate & leaving with something entirely different than the options that we had been presented. I called over one of the kitchen staff & asked her about it, she told me it was the staff lunch, a Filipino stew of some sort. Naturally, I ask her if I could try it. She disappeared back to the kitchen for a second & returned to ask me if I was sure & when I said that I was she asked if I wanted it with rice. I told her to bring it however they would eat it, but only if there was still plenty for the staff. She brought me back a massive bowl of the stew & a side of rice.

I’m not entirely sure what was in the stew other than a varietal of Bok Choy & maybe some Pork with Potatoes. Looking through Filipino stews online I’m not sure it wasn’t Nilaga/Nilagang, either way it was salty & savory & really hit the spot on what had turned out to be a rainy afternoon.

I can’t recall if I skipped out on the afternoon dive or if there wasn’t one because of the events planned for the evening. I think it was the former as at this point I think my ear was being a bit wonky…we’ll get to that in part three… At any rate I think I may have napped & then gone & sat at the bar for a bit before our scheduled evening activities.

The Duffins are rather huge fans of a sunset cruise. They like to book the dive boat out with drinks & snacks & go out on the waves for a bit & just spend a little bit of time socializing & relaxing in the sea air & I’m not mad at that. We did one in Indonesia (you can read about it here) & I think attempted one in Fiji as well, but the tides wouldn’t allow for it. So as the sun began to sank we all filed onto one of the cleaned off dive boats & away we went.

The staff had thought ahead & taken our two drink order days prior to the expedition. They prepared plates of chips & other snacky bits & also had a partial service bar set up to bring us our preordered beverages. Evan & I both ordered Rum & Cokes because they’re an easy staple, especially in the tropics, & we sat atop the cabin sipping them & talking with Deb & some of the other members of our party.

At a certain point someone spotted a pod of, what we thought were dolphins. The boat maneuvered in the direction it looked like they were headed & when we got closer we found, what I believe to have been, a pod of Melon-Headed Whales. They were breaching the waves, skimming along the surface & every time a new one would crop up we’d head in their direction. Previously Ester had mentioned that right after the pandemic their had been a Sperm Whale sighting off the coast of the resort & that when they had shared about it to their socials they’d had a person later come looking for it. Some guest had flown halfway across the world to the resort & requested to be taken to the whale…a migratory species that swims up & down the globe.

Melon-Head Whale

Sunbeams From Cruise

After about an hour cruising around on the waves we headed back to the resort for dinner. A lot of us we a little toasty from the drink both before & during the sunset cruise so dinner was a bit of a ruckus. After dinner the staff brought out a congratulatory cake for Evan & the Duffin’s Son’s Friend who had completely a Nitrox Class & an Open Water Certification respectively. The cake was adorable, it featured who little fondant divers over a reef with their names inscribed in icing.

We all enjoyed a slice of the cake & with the alcohol starting to leave our bloodstreams & the exhaustion setting in, went off to sleep.

Reef Wall w/ School of Fish

End Of Day Five

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Bohol Through A Wave

End Of Part Two

Travel Blog: Bohol, Philippines- Part One: I Flew To The Other Side Of The World To Go Diving & All You're Getting Is One Singular Mention Of The Ocean In This First Blog

BOHOL, PHILIPPINES

Prologue

Hello Fellow Travelers,

Welcome back to one of my absolute favorite blog series that I do here at my beloved site; travel blogs! I know, for a large handful of you all, this is also your favorite series of mine & I think for good reason. This is often the blog that I get to share major passion of mine, travel, as well as a few subsequent others such as food, beverage, dive, & storytelling. Fortunately for all of us, this series will contain all of these aspects & more! So, if you’re along for the ride, buckle in, as the full scope of this trip & its embedded tales will take up a good three weeks worth of space on this blog! With all of that being said & everything else out of the way, let’s dive on in shall we?!

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PART ONE:

Day One

Los Angeles, California

Evan & I landed in Los Angeles around 10 AM on March 7th. Our direct flight options for our arrival with Southwest Airlines were either the flight we chose or one that got in around 9:15 PM, which would have cut us far too close to our 10:35 PM departure with EVA Air for Taipei. This naturally left us with around 9 hours worth of time to burn before we had to check-in for the aforementioned flight. Initially our plan was to have our friend Jenna pick us up from LAX & drop us back later but upon looking into the amount of time it would force her into in commutes on our behalf we opted to rent a car for the day instead. Popping on over to Avis we snagged the rental I had booked the evening prior, a Tesla Model 3, of which Avis has an exclusive deal for the rental of. The really nice part about it was that we weren’t responsible for charging it upon its return which really helps save you a bit of cash, especially with LA gas prices being around $5 a gallon.

Downtown Los Angeles

Jenna had planned to head over to Pasadena to catch our other friend Rory’s Barry’s Ass & Abs class. She’d suggested dropping our luggage with her in North Hollywood, then carpooling around together, but unfortunately the time it would have taken for such a measure would have forced us to miss Rory’s class. So we opted just to meet there instead. We made it to Pas with about ten minutes to spare & loaded our luggage into the locked trunk & loathsomely named “frunk” (front trunk) of the Tesla.

I think Evan has cursed us, either that or it’s all to do with the timing of when we travel seeing as he is off Wednesdays & Thursdays so we usually end up flying those days. Either way we seem to always do a “leg day” the day prior to large amounts of travel, I guess this time would be no different.

Barry’s has a lower focus class on Tuesdays & an ass & abs class on Thursdays, that usually ends up being the cause of his post-leg day flight woes. Even if we don’t end up at Barry’s we typically end up adhering to their schedule so that we don’t get thrown into a wonky “I’m too sore for this” situation should we decide to hit another of their classes during the week.

Burlington Arcade In Pasadena

After class we were all desperately craving a coffee. Evan & I had wanted to venture into The Burlington Arcade in Pasadena for a while & the Pas Barry’s location just happened to be right within the same block or two, so that’s where our search began & ultimately ended.

The Mandarin Coffee Stand is nestled right in the middle of The Arcade. It is a teeny, tiny coffee shop that has a customer occupancy limit of four guests at a time. The are a local, Asian women owned & operated shop that specializes in Chinese style coffee. I got a latte known as the “Toasty” which consists of Rooibos, Cinnamon, Espresso, Brown Sugar, & Oat Milk. Not typically a fan of the milk of the oat, I tried it anyway at the recommendation of the barista & it was nothing short of bangin’! As we stood around the strip sipping our respective coffees we all decided the next necessary & logical step would be to find food.

If you were to dig into the notes app on either Evan or my phone you’d discover a shared note simply titled “Travel Visits.” In said note you will find lists upon lists of mostly restaurants & bars that we’ve written down over the years to try should we ever find ourselves in any of the locations listed therein. Despite our many years in LA the list for it seems to continue to grow & grow & so we both began to pilfer through in search of what would inevitably be that day’s lunch.

Many of the locations that we found were either evening only, too far from Pasadena, North Hollywood, or LAX, weren’t open that day, or weren’t a type of food we were all feeling, but at the end of our extensive filtering we ended up deciding on a deli in Westlake called Langer’s.

Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant was founded in 1947 & has been in the Langer family ever since. They are a member of the LA Times 101 Hall of Fame & have been a staple on the Michelin guide for many years. They are famous for their #19 Pastrami Sandwich which has been voted amongst the world’s best which is exactly what Evan & both ordered. The sandwich was excellent, sporting Pastrami on Rye with Coleslaw, Swiss Cheese & Russian Dressing. Jenna ordered a simple sliced Salami on a Hoagie it Provolone which was simple & delightful in its own way. After lunch we ended LA’s early afternoon traffic & made our way towards Jenna’s place in North Hollywood. Once we’d gotten to North Hollywood we pulled off into the CVS to grab a few provisions.

Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

Anytime I fly overseas or on a flight that is longer than 4-5 hours I bring the cabin crew a sack of goodies just to say “thank you” & help ease their time on the job in even the slightest of ways. I typically pick up some family sized packs of chocolates, candies, & snacky things to give out. In addition to our care package we also picked up some Zzzquil for the flight, since it was an over nighter. After acquiring our items we continued onto Jenna’s to recharge for a bit; both for ourselves & our devices which had already made it through a morning of travel & a day of light exploration.

With our time in LA coming to an end & our need to head off to the airport approaching, we popped into a quick shower, refreshed deodorants & the like, & swapped over into our travel clothes before packing everything back up, bidding Jenna a fond farewell, & beginning the hour+ commute to the airport.

Once we’d dropped the car back at Avis we headed into LAX to check-in for our EVA Air flight to Taipei with continued service to Manilla. Once we got to Manilla we’d have to go through immigration & customs before rechecking our bags & continuing on. We met the rest of our group from Midwest Aquatics that were headed to Bohol at the check-in gate & after greetings & hugs we all headed through security.

The process was lighter than usual so we found ourselves incredibly early for our flight, so much so that the British Airways flight occupying our gate hadn’t even received their plane. We wandered around the international terminal before settling in on something to eat. After some truly mid fish tacos, I found a secluded corner in which to write two weeks ago’s blog & awaited the boarding process.

We boarded right on time & once we’d taken off, & eaten our in-flight meal, we took the Zzzquils & attempted to get some sleep.

Downtown Los Angeles

End Of Day One

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Day Two

Taipei, Taiwan

We arrived in Taipei around 5:15 AM, local time. I managed to sleep for about a half or so of the duration of the fourteen & a half hour flight, Evan managed about two thirds. That was when he wasn’t attempting to shut off our sleeping neighbor’s over head light.

We had booked ahead online & gotten ourselves the exit row. I’m a rather tall gent at 6’4” & definitely need the extra leg room that the exit row or premium economy provide, especially on airlines based out of parts of the world where people tend to be on the shorter side. I had the “window” (there was no window) & Evan had the middle. At the time of our booking the aisle seat was already occupied, we actually assumed that it was Deb, a member of our group. It wasn’t, it was a gentlemen we had no relation to. When you’re in the exit row all of the buttons for your seat are located on the arm rest to your left about thigh high. Strangely enough, in EVA Air Economy Class, the reading light for the aisle seat illuminates the middle seat. No joke. Like each of the other buttons illuminate each of their respective seats, except for the aisle which basically doubles up on the middle. Additionally, the man on the end’s button for his over head light seemed to be a little on the sensitive side & every time he shifted in his seat it lit up the light over Evan’s head. I legitimately thought it was his own light until I noticed him slyly reaching over, across the man’s lap, trying to tap his light button. In his words “I had no issue with the light itself, it was the heat that it generated that was keeping me awake.” When he finally got around to turning off the light the man shifted in his seat thirty seconds later, immediately reigniting Evan’s personal warming bulb. Later when he got up to use the restroom, Evan positioned the man’s blanked so as to block any accidental bumping of the button from occurring.

Wheel Pies

We had about a three-ish hour layover in Taipei & we’d arrived before any of the shops & restaurants had opened. So, we as a group, decided to stretch out collective legs & walk the length of the terminal. By the time we’d made it all the way down shops had begun to open. Several members of our group took special interest in the Sanrio shop but I had my eyes set on a bakery that was beginning their prep as we initially walked by. The bakery in question is called Mazu Village, it’s half wheel pies & half boba stand. The boba & wheels pies are presented in a combo format so Evan & I opted for the one that would let us each have one of each of the two flavors; Salted Custard & Salted Custard with Peanut Butter, & also gave us each a Taro Boba Tea. The rest of the group ended up with something similar & while the two of us had decided that we favored just the custard pie over the one with peanut butter, as we found it too rich, the others disagreed.

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

After our saccharine breakfast we sat around making calls for a bit. Evan called his family & I called my sister, whose birthday it still was in the states. At this point we’d crossed the international date line & were a half a day ahead of everyone back home. We waited around a bit longer before I went to a booth to buy some Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup which Evan & I split. I actually think one of the best parts of the soup was the Sauced Cabbage that came with it & the hyper sweet Cold Assam Tea. We wandered around the airport for a bit after we finished our food, flitting in & out of the assorted duty free shops before we descended to our gate to wait to board.

In the Taoyuan International Airport all of the gates are situated a level below the main parts of the concourse so you have to ascend a flight of stairs/take an elevator up when you arrive & descend the stairs/elevator when you plan to depart. It’s nice because it keeps the waiting areas separate from the hustle & bustle of the main terminal. The EVA Air Gods saw fit to grace us with the Sanrio plane for our trip from Taipei to Manila. I was actually surprised to see how many of us in the group were excited about that, but the plane was cute! Even once we’d boarded the plane was full of little Sanrio easter eggs such as the Hello Kitty air freshener holder in the lavatories.

Sanrio EVA Airplane

We departed Taipei at around 9:10 AM local time & began our two hours & thirty minute flight across the Luzon Strait to the Philippines & Manila.

Manila

Our flight landed in Manila at 11:45 & we were immediately ushered off the plane to immigration. Evan somehow made it through the passport check without filling out the online application for a visa, the rest of us weren’t so lucky. We were all handed a QR code to scan & fill out a digital form before we could get our stamp. Pretty standard procedure, just thought it was odd Evan got through without it, he must just have one of those faces.

He did fill out his visa application retroactively as we sat waiting for our baggage to come through. Figured it was better to have it done & entered in, especially if it ended up being needed upon our departure. Once we all had our luggage collected we headed out to the transfer area where we booked the transfer shuttle to the local departures terminal & exchange USD for Filipino Peso.

The man running the shuttle kiosk at the international terminal told us that it would be about a forty-five minute wait before we would have a transfer & it wasn’t guaranteed that we would all fit, in which case they would have us wait an additional 30-45 minutes for the next shuttle. I’m not really sure how or why the transfer times on the shuttles are so long, especially since the walk time between the two terminals was only about 5-10 minutes. We all opted for that.

The walk was a bit of a system shock. Most of us changed into lighter clothing before hand, but coming from LA & then Taipei where the weather was sitting in the mid to upper 50s, the shift into the 80s felt like much more drastic a change. By the end of our walk to the other terminal we were all sweating. Each of us reapplied deodorant & proceeded to the Philippine Airlines ticketing counter where we were met with one of the more common annoyances when it comes to checking baggage internationally across different carriers; entirely different baggage rules. We made it work & got everything figured out without the need for any extra dollars being exchanged.

By the time we made it through security we only had about an hour to an hour & a half left over in what was our four hour layover. We camped the bags & we went out exploring in waves to see what the airport terminal had to offer. Two party members came back with some rather tantalizing looking Boba Tea & Evan & me, & two others set out to find & claim our own.

Once the teas were acquired we returned to our gate & waited to board. Around 3 PM we all started lining up to board & before long we were off on our way to the island of Bohol.

Bohol

Bohol-Panglao International Airport is a bit on the smaller size, boasting around five or six gates in total. We arrived after our brief hour & a half flight just before 5 PM where we descended the escalator to the single baggage carousel, collected our belongings, & were greeted by the Magic Oceans transfer crew with water bottled & some bomb ass banana chips. We all climbed into the two vans they’d provided, with out luggage occupying a third vehicle, & off we went towards Anda.

Bohol, Philippines

The drive to the dive resort was a long one, not going to lie. We’re talking like two & a half to three hours long. After being in planes for a total of 22 hours off & on & laying over, I think all of us were ready to be done & there. The benefit of these far out locations & trips is that once you’re there, you’re there for a while! They also certainly drive different in the Philippines than we do here in the states. For starters there’s no speed limits, at least not in Bohol, unless designated by a work or school zone. They also don’t necessarily abide by the lanes. Evan & I got sat on the front bench of the van & I think we both regretted it as there were many times that each of us was slamming down our foot on the imaginary brake that we each wish we had. At the end of the day though the driver DID deliver us safely to Magic Oceans, even though I though we were going to hit dogs or those going out on the then Saturday evening who were walking along the side of the road.

I did manage to sleep the last hour & some change in the car, mostly because I had to pee & it seemed the only solution to avoiding that issue. We arrived in the darkness to Magic Ocean where we were all guided to the dining area for dinner, which was in full swing. Dinner at Magic Oceans is served family style with an exquisite chef preparing an appetizer course, a main course with around five dishes, & a dessert. I made it about halfway through the trip before I realized that I’d forgotten to write down the nightly menus so unfortunately they will be absent from this series despite their amazing quality in nature & the chef who prepared them’s lovely singing voice (we’ll get to that in later installments).

Once we were all situated with food, Evelyn, the resort manager gave us a quick briefing regarding our rooms & the plan for the morning in which we planned to start our diving. Once she had finished we were each escorted privately to our rooms where our luggage awaited us & promptly showered & went to bed so as to be ready & refreshed for the adventures that awaited us the following day!…but not before I went out the door of our room to the sandy overlook where I sat listening to the rush of the ocean for a few minutes.

…see, I mentioned it, once…& yes, that did happen, seriously. There were Dwarf Zebra Hermit Crabs in the sand fighting over a scrap of food. Evan even took a picture of me headed there! (See Below)

Path Outside Our Room At Magic Oceans

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

End Of Day Two

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END OF PART ONE