Charlie Cheney

Buggy Jive

charliecheney — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 16:50:09 +0000

Bryan Thomas definitely identifies with the nerds.

But not just the tech nerds, the web developers, the content managers, the office administrators, the co-workers of his 27 year career working as a webmaster for a teacher's union, it's deeper than that and goes back farther. It's that wide-eyed awkward high schooler nerd who is filled with bewilderment and fascinated by how cool the world is and how incredibly gifted but uncool he feels he is.

Carley & Charlie Songs

charliecheney — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:24:09 +0000

Letters
Baby I Need You
Want Me To
Wherever You Go
California
Dinner With My Baby
No Goodbyes
Things I Never Knew About You
Dissolve
Love Monster

Bus Ride

charliecheney — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 17:11:41 +0000

Maddie and Steve woke up to that sensation in their stomachs of the bus slowing down. The low tones of the bus driver announcing their stop. Maddie tilted her head and her eyes scanned back and forth as she gathered her senses and checked through a mental list. Put away the book. It's raining. Bag above the seat. Unplug the charger cable. She touched her face and the front of her shirt for her glasses. Felt them under her right hip. Bent.

Steve reacted slowly, felt the stiffness in his hands. A nearly imperceptible turn to look out the window announced a knot in his left shoulder. He heard clicks from stiffness in his neck.

Anniversary

charliecheney — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 17:56:56 +0000

Dec. 8th marked the one year anniversary of me renting this tiny studio apartment in Paso Robles. It all happened so fast, I'd been looking online for six months at least, searching for something close to or under $1000/mo. That was all I thought I could afford on the bus driver salary I had in Colorado and the even lower salary I'd been offered here in California in August. I applied within hours of the initial posting, had Sarah take a tout, paid the deposit online, and drove from Colorado in a rented Toyota 4x4 towing a U-Haul trailer with 90% of my stuff all within a week. I drove back to Colorado to return the rental car and trailer and lived in a mostly empty apartment there for another month to finish out my lease and exit my old job gracefully. I came back full-time on January 8th with the rest of my things in a packed-to-the-gills new (to me) 2013 Fiat 500c I'd bought from a co-worker in CO, and whammo: I was a Californian.

I found out this week that Dec 8th is also the anniversary of John Lennon's death, which I didn't realize when I moved. It feels oddly symbolic now, especially after the year I've had here. There have been so many changes. Of course I expected changes, but it's been the unexpected ones, really. I never expected to move here and not play music, that would've seemed almost absurd to me then. But here it is a full year later and I haven't set foot on a stage. I also never expected to stop drinking alcohol, but here I am 4 months into a new sobriety experiment (only 3-4 alcoholic drinks in the past 4 months, plus 4-5 O'Douls NA beers at the Pour House), and I keep re-discovering each day how much I enjoy it. As part of that journey, I doubled down on therapy and have been going through what feels like monumental introspection on my values, beliefs, and biases (both implicit and explicit). Its definitely felt like a death. The death of so many leaves and branches and roots. Bewildering in so many ways. Uncomfortable. Confusing. Awkward. And incredibly eye-opening.

I haven't taken stock of or catalogued my accomplishments from the past year in a detailed way. I've just let them happen day by day, trying to not to create goals or expectations that I can't keep or accomplish. I just keep waking up in the morning. Accomplishing tasks. Going to sleep at night. Sometimes the tasks are simple, required, necessary, like cooking bags of dried garbanzo beans and black beans in the Instant Pot, transferring them to the Crock Pot to simmer with onions, garlic, broth, spices. Slow cooking chicken or pork overnight. Spooning it all into meal-size containers for the freezer. Grocery shopping. Watering the plants. Sweeping the floor. Pouring vinegar into the toilet bowl.

And sometimes its the big things. Researching core values online like I'm cramming for a a test the next morning (my 9am therapy session), writing these blog posts, pouring through the logistics of accepting a new job far away, visualizing moving again, visualizing packing, driving, flying, changing, restarting. Asking the big questions. What do you want? Why? What are you now? What do you want to be?

I've been moving in and out of certain habits, rituals, schedules, routines. Long walks down Spring St at night have given way to shorter walks from 4 to 4:45pm on the bluffs above the beach in San Simeon on my break at work, scrambling out onto the mussel-encrusted rocks at low-tide, searching for and taking photos of sea stars and tide pools. After switching to a strict black coffee ritual, I've slowly begun to add milk and chocolate to my morning coffee, still keeping my afternoon coffee black. When I play, I've predominantly played only one latin-infused drum pattern on my drum kit, eschewing the other available patterns. I've continued with my online shoulder therapy 3-4 times a week. I've been taking B-12 supplements and preparing more meals with frozen spinach, sauteed brussels sprouts, fresh spinach, steamed kale. After two weeks of drinking two glasses of water every 4 hours in order to get to 96 ounces per day, I've veered completely in the other direction (per doctors suggestion) to drink less so I don't have to pee ten times a day, especially at night. And then there's this blog, its been a month since I've written. Feels good to be back.

Yesterday was the hardest emotional day in recent memory, the early morning therapy session was as rough a session as I've had in a long while. This process of defining and redefining my core values has proven to be very disorienting for me. Rather than freeing me up to make better choices like I've hoped it will do, its felt more like I'm figuring out ways to be even more judgmental than ever. My therapist recognized this and reminded me that core values are for me, not for others. I can't require others to live by my core values. But its challenging to differentiate. If I'm defining my core values to help lead myself through my choices from the smallest to the largest... how can I not judge *their* actions according to my core values so that I can act accordingly? Sure, I know that's not the desired goal, but man, easier said than done.

I started my list with Communication and Integrity. Those felt important because I see how good I feel if I do my job well and communicate well, but I also see how riled up I get if people don't say what they mean or do what they say. Then of course I murmured under my breath "dude, just do your fucking job" and whammo, I was in judgmental mode. That felt fucking horrible. So immediately, first thing in the fucking morning, I'm feeling like crap while I'm doing something THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD FOR ME.

Yes, yes, yes, I know this takes time, I'm not bailing on the project or anything. But I definitely feel like the next couple of steps have to find some balance. Focusing on values that light me up, like Enthusiasm, Discovery, Adventure, Learning, Creativity, Empathy, Curiosity, Love. I'm looking forward to those.

Love you. Talk soon. -Charlie

November 7, 2022 - Spinach and Brussels Sprouts

charliecheney — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 19:27:12 +0000

Health insurance is part of my compensation package as a bus driver at SLO-RTA, so I try to take advantage of the benefit when I remember. Back in June I booked an appointment to get a referral for a colonoscopy that is about a year overdue now. My previous physician in Colorado gave me a referral for one last year but I moved here before I got it done there, so I tried to use his old referral to set up a colonoscopy appointment here but needed to get a local referral first instead, which I finally did. Okay, breath.

Once I got the referral I drove over to the radiology place that would do the colonoscopy to set up the appointment, but I wasn't in their system yet, so I couldn't book the appointment even though I had the printed referral in my hand. Then I forgot about it and finally called them back to set up an appointment and they're booked out until, get this, April 2023. Yes, I am a little sarcastic about that. I've been working on reducing my sarcasm usage, and this is not helping my sarcasm-to-less-sarcasm ratio. I apologize for that. I'm a work-in-progress, changes like this will take time.

Now, I don't want to totally slag my healthcare network because a few weeks ago I didn't feel well at all and found out through an online chat with my healthcare center that I could walk in anytime without booking an appointment. That is an amazing thing in my opinion. And not only the walk-in part, but the online chat feature as well. As a result I walked-in first thing the next morning and killed two birds with one stone by getting some labs done that had also been ordered back in July. Both the labs and the checkup by the physician all happened within a few hours. It was pretty spectacular really.

The clinic is walking distance from my apartment, and if I take the shortcut across the train tracks it's an even shorter walk, maybe 10 blocks. I was feeling pretty chipper after the whole thing because my blood pressure reading was almost impossibly low. Like, hold on, that machine might not be totally accurate, low. For awhile a few years ago I got blood pressure checks a LOT. Why you may ask, and it's a valid question. At one point while I was touring with Sugar Still I discovered the existence of paid clinical drug trials and started doing them. Unlike many of my friends, I qualified easily as I don't smoke pot, have no ongoing pharmaceutical prescriptions, and I'm in pretty good health. The intake technicians looked at me like I was a unicorn. Anyway, during one of those trials, since I was getting multiple blood pressure test per day, I discovered that I could "beat" the blood pressure machines to get good readings. I'm not kidding. All I had to do before each test was walk for 20 minutes and then meditate for 15 minutes. It became almost infallible for me. However, it didn't work as well as I hoped all the time, and over time I realized it was because the accuracy of blood pressure machines fluctuates pretty wildly. If you get a poor result on a blood pressure test, consider asking them to switch machines. Also, try walking to your appointment, arrive a little early, and use a meditation app in the waiting room.

Okay, so enough of that. A few days ago my physician contacted me to discuss my lab results. She said for the most part they looked very good except that I had a troubling B-12 deficiency, and recommended I come in for B-12 shots or take B-12 supplements orally. I opted for the pills for some reason, fear of shots? Fear of scheduling ongoing appointments? A little of both actually. But I also immediately asked what I should be eating to address this deficiency ongoing and she said "green leafy vegetables" to which I responded, "Ah, yes, spinach, kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, I've been a little short on those lately. I'll work on that, and I'll pick up the prescription tomorrow."

The next morning I drove to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription but they were temporarily out of stock. On the way back home I stopped at the Smart and Final and bought a double-size bag of frozen chopped spinach. I've been adding it to the curry I made last week, and I've been adding it to burritos and omelettes. Yesterday I bought frozen brussels sprouts as well. I'd been buying fresh before this, but not eating them quickly enough and then watching them spoil in the fridge, so this feels like a viable solution so far. I'm certainly eating a lot more of them frozen than I was fresh.

No big epiphanies here or anything. But I wrote something and posted it. Go me! I apologize again for the sarcasm. I proffer to use less in the future.

Oh hey, I had a lot of fun exploring the tide pools during low-tide yesterday, so here's a photo of a starfish.

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