Moving On

It’s funny but I think it was easier to get my identity  changed by all the different government and financial institutions than it was to start a new internet identity. I was so happy using lacadaz as an internet handle that I didn’t quite know what to do with it when it became obvious that it was based on initials that I don’t have anymore. So I’m starting over. Again. For those of you that have bookmarked up to 10 different blogs that I’ve started over the last five years I feel for you. I am sorry. Hopefully I can find another outlet to change my outlook other than starting a new blog. Anyway here are a couple of new links.

This Circuitous Route (Blogger: my rantings)

This Circuitous Route (tumblr: links and stuff)

Who am I?

I was born Lee Anthony Haynes. This was the first name I learned to print, back when I was in the first grade. My parents were no longer together by then. My mother married John Cazahous before I started the second grade. That was a new school and in a new town actually. I began using his name then. Five schools later I found myself ready to start high school. John was gone but his last name had been with me for what life I had lived. I stopped. I considered. I thought of my mother’s family who I have always felt closest to. I am Impeartrice. I know have always known that. The thing I considered doing the most was dropping my first name for my middle one and changing my last name to that family name. But there was already an Anthony Impeartrice that had come before me and an Anthony Impeartrice growing up fast behind me. I wanted a name that was mine alone.

That was something I was sure that I already had. I was sure to be the first, last and only Lee A. Cazahous. And it had the added bonus of being something I knew, something I was used to. So with little consultation I made that change permanent and with some help got the State of California to make it official. Lee Cazahous I had been known as. Lee Cazahous I was.

It has been nice to have a unique name. Though it always felt a little strange with people asked me where it came from and then I had to explain that it and I were from different backgrounds. My mother and my sister shared the name but I was the only one that had hijacked it. From the family I had done that from never once came any acknowledgment of my existence. That was fine with me. I didn’t miss them. But there was something that wasn’t quite right with this fit.

Of my own name and my own father, I wondered sometimes. I wondered if there were things that we were missing. Traits that we might share despite the lack of influence on each other’s lives. I tried not to dwell. After 35 years things like that just don’t change overnight.

But of course they did change overnight. I was discovered on the internet, on Facebook, of all things, by a father that I did not know. A father that was interested in me. A father who I seem to share little, but relate to nonetheless. This was the revelation of my early summer. It took awhile to set in but I have become comfortable with it. Happy even.

Next week I’m getting married. As it came time to apply for the license, I felt that pull to come to a decision again. Who am I? Did I really want to start a new family with a name that was feeling less and less like my own? Kelly and I talked about it. We talked about it a lot. In the end we decided that this was time to let go of my association with a family that really wasn’t mine. Lee A. Haynes I was born. Lee A. Haynes I would be again.

Next week we will step up as Lee Cazahous and Kelly Morrison but we will step down as Lee and Kelly Haynes. I wanted everyone to know. I’ve begun the transition at work and I’m going to start the transition online now. I wanted to put something up to go along with that to avoid too much confusion.

Thanks for everyone’s support and good wishes through all these changes.

R&R

It’s been an anxious July so far. I’m still dealing with a little culture shock about the whole instant family thing. Up till the last two day the weather has been pretty typical San Francisco July, that’s to say overcast and cool. That and the darn World Cup have played havoc with our traffic at work. It’s Summer and I want to sell some glasses. The Wedding plans are moving along, but that’s because they have to. It’s getting closer everyday. None of these should be major stresses but they have been combining to keep me off balance and feeling a little down. I’ve been trying to shake that off. A little sunshine the last couple of days has helped. My boss has been great. My new family is being very understanding and patient as I try to process this. My Mom sent me a couple of real treasure level photos from forever ago. I’ve been working on my own photography again and that feels good. But above all I’ve had the love and support of the most amazing woman. I should really marry this girl. Oh, yea I’m doing that.

Life is good. All of the things on my list are positive things. (The fact that business isn’t great isn’t positive but the fact that I’m still working in this environment sure is.) I feel foolish for complaining. I’m taking a long weekend this week. I haven’t had a good stretch off since Mom came out for the Italian Festival in October. I have some plans but no real obligations. I’m hoping a couple of days of rest and recuperation will go a long way.

Independence Day

It’s Independence Day and I’m in a writing mood I guess. I’ve just hit play on my traditional paying of the Wild the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle for 4th of July Asbury Park. I was up before six writing my morning pages. I wrote for an hour which is about twice as long as usual for me. I also wrote 2,000 words which is unheard of for me in the morning. I also broke past the 100,000 word mark since I joined 750 Words. For the most part today I was writing about writing. I was trying to make sense of the disconnect between what is my best year of journalling ever and what has felt like my weakest year of publishing since I started living more online.

It’s difficult not to beat myself up for this. Of course finding something to beat myself up over is one of my favorite pastimes so it’s not like I’ve had to look far. But I’m trying to just take stock and cut me some slack whenever I can. Here at pretty much the half way point at the year I can say it’s been an amazing year. That said it has also been a stressful one. It’s a back and forth. As I approach five years at my job I find that I’m more efficient than ever. On the other hand the economy and my store’s neighborhood continue to struggle making for some continued soft numbers. I love living with Kelly in our wonderful little Pacifica cottage but the stresses of moving and the growing pains of living together and sharing a small space make for the occasional trying time. I’m cooking more and more at home and enjoying doing it more than ever. However Friday I bought shirts in a size that I’ve never had to wear before in my life. I’ve been welcomed whole-heartily into Kelly’s family and very recently re-connected with a father I haven’t talked to in many decades. Yet I continue to be estranged from my sister and miss my mother, niece, aunt and cousins terribly with so many miles between us. I’m getting married. This is a wonderful thing. The most wonderful thing to ever happen to me. Yet the decisions and the details are difficult, elusive and much harder and broader than we had ever thought when we envisioned this nice easy, casual, wedding in the park. In short it’s been an action packed year so far and sometimes it takes more time for me to processes it than I would like. By the time I come to grips with one thing it’s another. I know. This is just the reality of modern life.

But back to the writing. I found myself wondering just how much of my unedited, private journal needs to stay private. Thinking about it, I think only about ten or fifteen percent would constitute things that I wouldn’t want to or am not ready to share. So then the question comes to mind why don’t I just do more copying and pasting of these morning thoughts. The answer to that is the answer to the question, “How much of my journal is boring, repetitive and uninteresting?” Accurate or not I feel like the answer is 90 percent. That’s why I don’t just throw that work out to the ether. Yet in the end I feel like there is a me that is represented in those morning pages that I do want to share. There is picture of who I am that I haven’t been able to reproduce in other ways that I don’t feel a need to keep private. The answer for me I feel is to keep writing. Morning pages are designed as a way of taming your inner sensor. I need to do more of that. I need to show more courage, stamina, and industry in my chosen arts.

The three things that make up the bulk of the personal side of my daily to-do list are: morning pages, blog post and picture publication. I’ve got that first one down pat. The second one must come out of the first. I need them to work hand in hand. I want it to be okay to share what comes up in my personal journal even if it is heavily revised or truncated. And finally I need to take my picture taking seriously again. I’m shooting different pictures now. More around the house. More out in nature. It’s been a struggle to see those as a big of a reflection of my art as my city pictures. True or not it’s where I am right now and I should at least run with what have.

It’s Summer. My least favored season. Yet here I am, writing to myself every single day. Here I am, laying down yet another public declaration of artistic intent. Here I am sharing, growing, creating.

Instant Family

So here’s the story. The start of it anyway. On Sunday while I was working my mother forwarded me a Facebook message that she had gotten from my father. He was looking to open up a dialogue with me. The thing is the last time we talked Nixon was president. My mom asked if she should forward my email and I said yes. Monday I got a very gracious message from him. The whole thing was putting me in a state of emotional shock. All of a sudden I was back in childhood trying to come to grips with what it meant to have a father. It took most of my two days off to write my way to a place where I could respond. That was yesterday afternoon. I let him know I was interested in continuing communicating. By then I was pretty drained so I asked Kelly if we could go to the movies. We saw the Singing in the Rain/Casablanca double feature at the Stanford. Of course that made me feel better. During intermission I got another very positive response.

All of this came after having such a good time at Saturday’s annual reunion for Kelly’s family. They have all been so open in welcoming me to the family. The big news out of my father’s messages is the additional five siblings and 20 nieces and nephews I’ve picked up all of a sudden. It feels like my family roster has exploded this weekend. I’m happy but more than a little shell shocked. I assume there is more to come on this subject.

iPhone 4

I’ve been going through some rocky times lately. It’s seemed like I couldn’t get much traction on anything. I was coming home from work with little motivation to do much of anything. Yesterday was my seventh straight day of working and that was getting to me. But today felt different. I did my morning pages and then for some reason I decided to revisit OmniFocus and thus spent a morning getting organized. It felt good. I had a productive day today. I did some stuff for work, I did some writing, I did some cleaning around the house. And then the new phone arrived so I set it up and transferred Kelly’s stuff to my old phone.

As for the new iPhone I am very pleased. The screen is a marvel. The text couldn’t be crisper. Photos look amazing on it. I’m already upgrading my photography apps to take better advantage of the new camera. Also the battery is noticeably longer. I haven’t tried tethering but it seems pretty straight forward.

So I’m happy. It’s late and I’m tired but I’m trying to use my new found energy to jumpstart my writing and sharing. We’ll see how well that works into tomorrow.

Some Pictures

Last week I played a little bit of catch up with my photo editing and publishing. I uploaded a nice gallery of pictures we took on the anniversary of our first date. I finally dragged Kelly to the Academy of Sciences. This one is my favorite. It felt good to get the pictures up. I’ve been writing every day on 750 Words. I’ve actually run my streak of days writing up over a hundred. That’s a first for me in all the years I’ve been trying to keep a daily journal. But that is stream of consciousness writing and while it makes for a calmer head I don’t really feel like I’m getting any creative work done. So it felt good to put some time into my photography. Hopefully I can make that a habit. I’m actually looking forward to the new iPhone and it’s improved camera. It will be nice to always have a decent camera on me.

Yesterday’s Goals Tomorrow’s Goals

Yesterday I was backing up my 750 Words journal locally to my MacJournal. I started feeling ambitious and ended up collecting all the different entries I’ve made in a variety of computer programs over the last 4 years. That left me with the overwhelming task of typing the previous 10 years from their handwitten homes. It’s a project I’ve been wanting to do since I bought my first mac and stopped keeping longhand notebooks. I figured if I do one a day I’ll catch up in a year or so and maybe learn a little about myself. So I found where I had left off. December 11, 2005 to be exact. So I leaned up the old moleskine and started typing. After a couple of minutes I realized that I was thinking almost the same things four years ago. I had been starting my 2006 resolutions early. What I wanted from 2006 was to read more, write more, take and share more pictures and publish my thoughts more often. Those remain my daily desires. So what has changed? Do I feel stagnant? Actually no. Like that December day four years ago I feel very forward thinking right now.

A Month of Writing and Not Writing

This morning I finished my third straight month of writing every single day. Since the 4th of March every one of those journal entires has been on the 750 Words site and has been at least 750 words. This week I passed 70,000 words since joining that site. So on the one hand I’ve been writing a great deal lately. On the other hand it’s been over a month since I wrote anything here. It’s been almost 2 months since I uploaded anything to flickr. This is another gap between production and publication as I just looked and I’ve taken about 600 pictures since then. That’s actually a little light for the amount of time for me but it isn’t nothing. I’ve shared some of those pictures on Facebook but actually not all that many. I haven’t been updating my activity and opinion on twitter all that much either. I don’t know if I’ve grown lazy or weary or what. I’ve been active lately. I’ve been creative. I just haven’t felt like doing the next step I guess. I haven’t been processing my pictures with very much regularity.

Today feels different. This morning feels more like a fresh start. I did my morning pages but I also went and started working on a new set of to-do lists on Toodledo. And here I am back on my blog. Now my creative productivity going in ebbs and flows is nothing new. What is striking about today is what time of the year it’s happening. Normally I go through creative hibernation in the Summer. Summer is not my favorite time of the year. The world gets brighter and hotter and both of those things just make me want to hide away somewhere and wait for it to pass. It is rare that I write more than a few journal entries a month between the end of April and the beginning of October. I’m a fall and winter person. The silliest thing about this comment is that I live in the Bay Area so none of these seasons are really all that different from the others. I’m just overly sensitive to changes in time and temperature I think.

But here I am. On Memorial Day (which truth be told is cold and foggy in Pacifica) and I’m looking back on my most productive period of journalling in at least five years. I finally signed up for a 43 Things account and am thinking about goals and the future. I’m going to upload some of my pictures today and most importantly I’m going to stop feeling guilty about…well I’m going to just try to stop feeling guilty.

That’s what I’ve been writing about lately. This last week has been very trying on my personal life. People I love have been hurt and are hurting and while I’m not responsible for all the feelings being bandied around I have been the center of it. It has been difficult but I’ve been trying not to fall into my old pattern of crippling guilt. I’m trying to just be me. The best me I know how to be. I’m trying to fix what I can, learn from what I can and move on. This feels new and not a little liberating. It’s in this space that I’m taking on this summer. With an eye towards creation and less guilt and more true empathy in my heart.

Silly Little Annoyances

Yesterday I was boarding a crowded 47 and made a move to sit when my headphone cord got caught in someones bag ripping them out of my ear. I sat down and went to repace them only to find that the silcone cap on the left ear was gone. I looked all around the floor and on my seat but the bus was packed which made that difficult. I was bummed. This has already happened before and now I was missing both of the small covers which fit the best. But I shrugged it off and dove into my bag for my back-up pair. I put away my good pair and plugged the new ones into my phone and put in the right ear. When I put in the left ear though it fell right out. Now I was getting annoyed. I tried two more times before reaching into my ear and pulling out the missing bud.