Much of what people do for work is now fundamentally counterproductive to humanity’s progress. Work absolves people of personal responsibility in that many of our day-to-day options are predetermined by others thus encouraging people to not rely on themselves for what they’ll do with their day. At age six the conditioning process begins, and so what others want us to do becomes our priority. As this carries forward into our adult years, we are able to give nearly 10 hours a day over to the requirements that revolve around work, including travel time. There is little ambiguity about what one will do besides working towards fulfilling the objective of the employer. While the individual might make choices of how they will accomplish the tasks at hand, they need not concern themselves with their own education or self-entertainment during this large block of their waking hours.

Monday through Friday, most adults have, at best, about 5 hours to themselves, significantly less if they have children. Even children find their time is limited as they sleep on average about 10 hours per day. Then we add school and homework, and soon, even our young members of society are only able to find about 5 hours a day to themselves.

I see this conditioning as problematic for our societies as the average person is not focusing on how to continue their education, have productive hobbies, or spend their precious time developing new skills. The need for these abilities won’t typically develop unless a life or career-changing event demands it of us, such as losing a job, health issues, or retirement.

This is on my mind right now because I was recently confronting my own need to figure out a new path after three months of focusing on things outside of my routine. Returning to my routine or constructing a new plan, I initially felt overwhelmed by the choices in front of me. Where do I start if I want to interject new stuff?

The thing is, I’m not only interested in what I’ll do after work or this weekend because I need an idea about a larger arc, as in what I might be doing for the next 3, 6, or even 12 months. How will I allocate time to the areas I believe I’m interested in or that I can cultivate?

Most people, in an effort to escape from and relax due to the demands of work, opt for things like mindless time spent habituating social media, video games, or television. I refuse this path as it feels like the easiest choice in the world to make, with none of them requiring any effort.

Why is the effort one of my imperatives? I’m running out of time to discover more of who I am and what I’m capable of, just like everyone else. I’m not content to sit passively and observe what comes at me; I need to see and hear what I create emerge out of an ambition to discover.

When people steal your time, they’ve stolen the most valuable thing you own. Now that I better understand the brevity of life, I can see that I have been throwing away a thing I can never earn more of. I’m left stupefied by my naive belief that I was doing the right thing by offering so many unworthy people my true wealth, but such is the price for learning about others and ourselves.

Why is time so precious to me and apparently of little consequence to others? The answer is complex, multifaceted, and maybe too difficult to answer. For me, I believe it started with a love of books at a young age and how they brought me to other eras and places. I enjoyed lingering with people throughout history as they shared their stories with me. I wasn’t so much interested in my own moment as I was in the discovery of experiences that were imbued with mystery, drama, and the exploration of exotic locales as written about by people across time. Growing older, I started cherishing the stories that were coming out of my own experiences as the book of John was being written.

I explored more aspects of my relationship with time and how I could experience it. The more I knew about it, such as its limitations and how much of it I was allocated under the best of circumstances, I grew increasingly protective of this diminishing resource. This doesn’t help explain my assumption that many of the people around me don’t seem to hold time in such high esteem as I do, so I continue to ponder the larger questions of how time is of value to the rest of our species.

What’s of value is a broad, subjective question that incorporates the breadth of human needs, and while I recognize those complexities and personal choices, they all seem to circle back around to the one asset that’s at the core of it all: time. So again, why do others seem to me to be frittering away their time or at least acting oblivious to its incredible value?

One answer might be that they are locked in some form of perpetual adolescence in which time is still infinite. When time is limitless and forever, the desires we have are not from the past, nor are they in recognition of what lies in the future; they are the immediate needs and wants that should be satisfied in this very moment.

In my perception, time is elastically stretching back- and forward, dilating and contracting, dependent in part on whether we are in routine or finding novelty. The past is the foundation of my knowledge, and the future is the possibility of any of the potential I might be fortunate enough to acquire or exercise. My potential rests on the tools I bring to the present that allow me to sculpt tomorrow. If I sacrifice using my skills so I can put myself on equal footing with those who do not care about anything more than immediacy, then I feel that I’m throwing away the honoring of myself and the investment made to see what life is offering other than simple observation.

There is a danger of going forward with the expectations of others having acquired knowledge-driven insights, as the vast majority do not appear to care or think about things beyond their immediate needs or, at best, being able to determine if something is cool or not. The weight of awareness is upon the shoulders of those who live in the full embrace of time and who try to encounter others living similarly. We risk vulnerability when comparing knowledge if we are still naive or embarrassing the other if they are still early in their search for what illuminates the mind. The bank of knowledge is only cultivated through the acquiescence of time spent investing in oneself beyond the banality of entertainment and the engorgement of the ego on conquering life instead of winning its luxuries.

How many of my moments are used for setting up architectures for creating providence while I witness others go about trying to find the next intrusion of mindlessness to ward off their boredom? In my circular discussion, looking at my idea of normal and being witness to other’s ideas of normal, I wonder how they fail to understand that boredom arises out of a mind unable to have a conversation with itself? They are the architect of themselves but have relegated that responsibility to mass media without any regard for well-being as they are driven only by animalistic instinct. I, on the other hand, want to believe I’m building a tower to some kind of intellectual and cultural pinnacle, even when I’m simply contributing to others’ efforts to propel humanity forward.

What part of humanity cares as to why they exist, and for what purpose or have they given that responsibility over to religion? In regards to their flavor of piety, I don’t see that they are able to experience real devotion. Instead, they demonstrate a kind of moral superiority by paying lip service with their attendance at a church service for an hour a week. There is an assumption that those channeling the sermon have already done the heavy lifting thus absolving the congregation of the need to be truly holy or having to live conscientiously within the realm of awareness. They, in effect, choose to live outside of time.

Our opportunity for being is brief, and the time of existence with some minor form of purpose is even shorter due to childhood and the risk of dementia in later life. This is a double-edged sword where the dilemma of awareness might focus us on how little we will ever experience or be able to own regarding knowledge and the tools of how to use it. Not exploring this essence of being human leaves people emotionally and intellectually destitute while remaining vaguely aware of the void that can require some form of medication to cope with the empty space.

The perception of permanence is built out of ignorance. In the bigger scheme of things, there is no forever in nature. While rocks, suns, and the universe might seem eternal, they, too, are a temporary occurrence that evolves over time, coming in and out of existence. The only possible thing I can conceive of that might persist longer than any form of matter is time. So when we are only afforded the briefest of moments to encounter time and learn about ourselves while in it, why do we act as though it doesn’t matter? We understand that water, soil, air, and sunlight are requirements for life, though even those precious elements that support life are mostly taken for granted.

A paradigm shift in awareness would seem in order, but I can see the necessity of that having been a requirement for the past 50 years. We’ve been ignoring the larger questions that ask if we can turn a blind eye to that which is obvious, such as the environment, how will we open our minds to that which is as esoteric and nebulous a thing, such as time and knowledge?

This is Drake, the dog that resides with Ylva and Dion in Solana Beach, north of San Diego; he’s temporarily under my charge. The reality I anticipated coming over is different than what I’m experiencing, though. You see, Drake is 11 years old and a bit cantankerous. I get it; he has his routines, but what I didn’t anticipate was that he’d be whiny about Ylva and Dion up and disappearing.

Due to a bum knee, he fatigues fairly quickly, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to go out. We go for walks with gusto, though I learned early that as soon as he hits about a half-mile, his enthusiasm comes to a crawl, kind of like his speed. The more time I spend with him the more I’m learning about the nuances of how Drake travels. Once he poops, we are at the halfway mark, and I need to point him in the direction of home lest he overexerts himself. Sometimes, he’s not ready to go home and belligerently pulls me in the opposite direction, so I have to hold my ground until he comes around. Patience is on my side.

Drake normally poops three times a day, but currently only twice as he’s cut back on eating after his depression set in. He’s the master of controlled peeing, maintaining a reserve that ensures he’s able to pee on approximately 30 locations over the course of our half-mile walk. The first two days, Drake pooped in places that allowed easy cleanup of his droppings, but as he must have realized that Ylva and Dion were not coming back anytime soon, he started pooping on bushes and in flowers that required me to nearly scrape his turds out of other people’s plants.

My exercise in being the buddy of a big dog is leaving me wanting my independence back. I don’t just start the day and do what I want; there’s a big dog that requires me to get dressed and go where he wants to go, or he gets stubborn. Our walks take about 20 minutes. By midday, if I’ve been out a while, I feel I owe it to the dog to visit him and let him ease the pressure of his bladder and spend some time with him so he might break out of his sadness. Around dinner time, it’s time for another jaunt around the neighborhood. Finally, around 9:00 or 10:00, he and I go for a walk around the complex where he lives, and if I’m lucky, he’s out of poop by this time.

I’m guessing he’s acting aloof because he’s trying to reject me as his caretaker. When he sits near me, he walks up, looks me right in the face, and just as quickly turns around with his ass pointing at me now and sits down like I should rub his backside. There’s nothing cuddly about this giant white furball that is shedding hair like a sheep being shorn. He loses so much hair that I’m vacuuming the carpet every day.

So, what were my original expectations? My buddy dog and I would go to the beach and coffee shops where he’d just chill with me while I would write, basking in the sun on these cool coastal days in Southern California. Instead, Mr. Unhappy Gimp Dog shows me his ass with a good dose of a bad attitude.

There are moments he seems to be coming around, so there’s that, but in the meantime, I’m at his beck and call working on his schedule so he doesn’t get so angry as to shit on the carpet out of spite.

I’m learning that I’m not a dog person. Cats don’t require people to dedicate an hour a day to their exercise and waste elimination routines. Cats can be left alone for a few days as long as the food, water, and litter supplies are deep enough. Dogs are like children with all of the emotional shenanigans that accompany a toddler. I enjoy owning my spontaneity and being unaccountable to everyone but my wife for as long as I want or need.

I know the argument that dogs are a man’s best friend, but I’m not buying it. The dog is happy towards its caretaker when it wants something. I think the dog has trained humans to respond to its needs by showing it things that make the person jump to obeying the dog’s needs. Then people anthropomorphize the dog, believing the animal is acting in a humanlike way, which only works to endear the person more to obeying their dog. This feeling like a person is gaining the dog’s affection is a bizarre gap being filled by an animal when snuggling and playing with another human is missing. People should learn to love each other.

Growing older, I’ve been fortunate enough to also grow away from anger. The inherited disease was given to me by a father who was never very far away from his own deep-seated rage. Later in life, I learned that he was given the gift by his own father, who likely also inherited it from his own parents.

This is a primitive emotion that has never proven helpful regarding love, but as it has moved into the background, I can honestly say that I do not miss it. Contrary to my father, I did not find this ugliness within a gift, and I would have gladly given it back had I understood early on how toxic it was. I only call it a gift because, apparently others cherish this beast that leaps out of their emotional weak points and have embraced owning it.

Even after discovering through patience how to distance myself from my own worst enemy, I cannot claim it is dead. What I now know about it is just how detrimental it is to my very being. Not only have others suffered when I’m in its grip, but now I see the anguish it leaves me with.

I can go long periods where honest anger is not present, and the minor annoyances should be seen for what they are, but during the now rare moment when I butt into this Goliath of hostility, I am left not only shocked at how profoundly it takes near-total control of me but how raw I feel the next day. The chemical wreckage is felt as though I’m hungover.

If not for my sense of love for my best friend and wife, Caroline, and her ability to stand with me, trying to negotiate the turbulence where uncertainty breeds greater volatility, I may have never escaped the trap that blinds me.

There is no permanent cure for the lurking monster, as it was cultivated for far too many years during times when examples of love, nurturing, and mentoring were supposed to be at the forefront of a developing child’s evolution. When parents show their children raging hatred, how can it be that they are surprised when young adults demonstrate back at society their own raging hatred for not being loved?

How was I so dumb? Why did I believe I needed a central authority to bestow credentials on me before I could do something I wanted to do? What I wanted was to write, but I knew my English skills were severely handicapped because my primary schools told me so. How could I write if I wasn’t adequately prepared for the mastery of my native language?

I read, read, and read some more. I was fully addicted to reading throughout my youth. When I arrived in Germany as a young adult, I was as close to Bohemia as I could get back in the mid-1980s, considering it was still behind the Iron Curtain. I dug deeper into literature, took on philosophy, added some sociology, and continued into the gutter with William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Baudelaire, and any other misfits I could unearth. I had a bit of a routine where, as time allowed, I’d head to a train station to pick up breakfast and the International Herald Tribune. Seated outside, I’d watch the parade of characters passing by and read what was going on around the world.

What I didn’t do was write. I wish I’d known then what I know now: that to write, all one has to do is write. No special permission is required. While I didn’t seek out approval for photography or the consumption of alternative arts, those weren’t subjects that were sanctioned by the state by granting basic competency to participate effectively. Fortunately, I only learned later that photography was a skill where others decided your skills and afforded you opportunities.

It took me years to finally give myself the exercise that would bring me around to writing, and it was related to my curiosity about photography. By the way, my interest in photography began somewhere in the late 1960s when my paternal grandfather gave me a Kodak Brownie camera. Armed with that primitive camera, I felt like a giant, just like my heroic grandfather, who used a 35mm Minolta with an array of lenses. I thought my grandpa was a pro because not only did he have a professional camera, he shot slide film that forced him to show us his photos with a projector on a silver screen.

So the way this ties together is that after many years away from taking photos, I wanted to deeply re-engage with the craft, but just taking photos didn’t seem to be enough anymore. In 2004, I was five years into taking thousands of digital images that simply sat on a hard drive not seen very often, let alone being shared. I’d witnessed the first photo blogs emerging, but as those were proliferating, I already felt they were growing stale as I quickly gained the impression that everyone had a photo-of-the-day website. I realized then that I could try accomplishing that thing I wanted to be passionate about writing. And I would accomplish this by posting a photo and forcing myself to write something about it. That’s just what I did every day for the first year.

Here we are: 14 years after I started blogging, 35 years after I sat in Frankfurt collecting my thoughts, and 51 years after I took my first photo. I’m about to bring it all together with an upcoming trip that will take me to Berlin, Erfurt, and Bayreuth in Germany, where I’ll sit down for some uninterrupted writing while also capturing the situation photographically. I’ll have two weeks of this before Caroline joins me in Frankfurt, where between there and Karlsruhe, I’ll have a few more opportunities for some contemplative writing. Our week in the region will likely pass quickly before we embark on the last leg of our European vacation. What those details are will have to wait.

Most of my travel writings have detailed the adventures of Caroline and me. Even when I’m writing a narrative that she doesn’t appear in, she is still ever-present as when we are together; I believe we see the world differently, and that, in turn, influences how I convey things. While on this trip across Germany, though she won’t be with me physically, I know I won’t be able to avoid her influence because she is somehow always with me anyway.

It is my intention to wander through places exploring the moment to find things that will only be understood by taking the time to selfishly observe nature while my mind participates in extracting things not previously seen or thought of. What words might find my hand while my body sits quietly in the cathedral where Martin Luther was ordained? Walking over the streets, Richard Wagner strode 140 years ago; maybe I’ll stumble upon the inspiration that lends something or other to my perspective. A side trip to Mühlhausen will take me to the church where J.S. Bach performed his Ratswechsel cantata Gott ist Mein König. A year later, he wrote Aus der Tiefe rufe ich after the town and church burned to the ground. Somewhere along the way, I’ll be in Weimar to visit the Nietzsche Archive set in the home where he passed away.

German music, philosophy, art, history, and even the love of my life were found in the country that has had a deep impact on my being. With these upcoming two weeks of wandering through these areas of Deutschland, I hope to find a deeper understanding of just why this land and the creative minds it produced have resonated as profoundly as they have.

This visit to Germany is, in some way, my recapturing of a lost moment I neglected to seize back in the mid-1980s. Back then I had all the freedom in the world to chronicle my adventure as a bohemian hedonist who all of a sudden had the latitude to explore in all directions, but I failed to grasp my opportunity. While today, my hedonism has withered and the crazy experimentation of youth has been satisfied, my curiosity to write through the filter of maturity gathered over the ensuing 30+ years is burning to express itself. Lucky me to have a friend and partner in life who affords me the luxury to satisfy my whims and dreams.