Category: Morning Drift: Post It Note Prophecies

Morning Drift: No Reset Required

January 2nd. Morning Drift number ten, I think.
It’s raining — raining heavily — as I go to work on the first day of 2026.

I’d been thinking about the New Year and the holidays. Not a big holiday guy, not a bah humbug — but it often feels like there’s a lot of fake sentiment.

I’m not some earthy-crunchy, finger-wagging type. But when someone who’s normally socially aggressive and slightly caustic suddenly becomes merry and cheerful for two weeks, it puts me on guard. When the season ends and they go right back to who they were, that whiplash feels dishonest.

I don’t understand what’s so magical about a date that it’s meant to rinse away the sins of the year before. If it matters, it could happen any day. The work doesn’t need a calendar.

Us recovering Catholics call it absolution or confession — atonement, making amends, whatever name fits. Those are things meant to be practiced regularly, not stockpiled for a single date. But every year, it seems like New Year’s Day becomes the rally point where everything is supposed to be fixed at once, and that kind of load rarely holds.

No day is more special than another — at least not by default. We give days meaning: anniversaries, births, milestones, moments that earn their weight. New Year’s isn’t one of those on its own. It’s just the end of a count and the beginning of another.

Sometimes I tell myself I’m better suited to do something tomorrow. There’s truth in that — starting a diet on Thanksgiving doesn’t make much sense. Timing matters. Still, it’s just another day. The decision comes down to mindset.

Resolutions aren’t January-only. They’re just decisions — choosing to act or change, and meaning it — and we make them all year long. We also break them. That’s part of it.

The other thing I’ve noticed is how people tend to remember the bad and overlook the good. When a year ends, the rough parts get replayed and tallied, and everything else gets waved off with “good riddance.” The wins don’t make as much noise. That wasn’t my experience of 2025. Deano had a great 2025.

It’s funny — as I had that thought, the rain started to ease. The storm didn’t disappear all at once, but the sky began to thin, and I could see the sun coming up over the east.

There’s no bad time to start a good habit. Timing can make things easier or harder, but it doesn’t decide intent. And if it really is the wrong moment, then it’s just that — the wrong moment, nothing more.

2025 was good.
Two days into 2026, I’m liking the view.

Morning Drift: The Long Way Around

This is the ninth entry in my Morning Drift series — a personal search and journal of gratitude, presence, and the shifting truths I find in sobriety. These aren’t polished guides or programs, just lived moments: presence, gratitude, reflections, frustrations, questions, and the daily work of finding balance.

My daughter leaves back to Montana in a couple of days. She’s 21, heading into the final semester of her senior year in college, and she’s on the dean’s list. I’m extremely proud.

That had me thinking this morning about recently having all the kids together. Not at a dinner—just hanging out—going back and forth, giving each other a hard time, reminiscing about things.

I often talk and write about gratitude. But when does gratitude become a reward? I’m very grateful for what my kids have become, and for the reward of seeing the work put into trying to help shape them.

I have three children—two 19-year-olds and a 21-year-old. They’re maturing, figuring things out, enjoying life. That, in itself, is one of the rewards.

When I was their age, I was on my own little Survivor show. I’d been on my own for a couple of years. I lived on the streets—nothing like you’re thinking. The mean streets of Tustin, in Orange County, California—and that’s sarcasm. Very different from a large metropolis. I had friends. I slept where I needed to. Sometimes in the back of cars.

When I look at my kids now, I see them with jobs, school, vehicles, friends, hobbies, passions. That’s rewarding.

And one of the things I found myself focusing on this morning was realizing I was actually happy hearing them bitch and moan.

They joke now about things I used to take them to do, but it’s always with fond memory. And I guess the lesson there is this: when you’re raising your children, don’t be afraid to take them somewhere they might think isn’t fun.

It still etches a memory somewhere deep. Their eight- or ten-year-old self might not enjoy it, but their nineteen- or twenty-one-year-old self remembers it. Later on, they might laugh and say, “Oh God, remember when Dad used to take us there?” The key is this—you don’t get that opportunity back.

That brings me to this weekend.

I went shooting at the range with one of my sons. I had a full-on conversation with my other son, which was great. And I went out to a hidden beach spot in San Diego with my daughter.

We had some coffee at a new place she knew about and absolutely loved it. We ended up at In-N-Out, which is a favorite of ours. We’re big foodies, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously about how seriously we take ourselves about food, so we found ourselves comparing In-N-Out to other regions.

She goes to school in Montana, so before she left, she obviously needed her In-N-Out fix. From there, we found ourselves down in the Sports Arena area of San Diego—not the greatest part of town, a lot of traffic, a lot of homelessness—and that’s when I found myself thrifting in a Salvation Army.

I’m not the guy who doesn’t like to shop. I actually enjoy it. I love farmers’ markets. I love swap meets. I’m not a big fan of the mall, but I’ll go. I’ll enjoy myself. I’ll find something. And I’m not the guy who gets impatient or pissed off when the people I’m with want to browse.

I get it. It might not kick in my endorphins, but I understand that others enjoy it. I’ll politely and patiently sit until we get to a shop or something that I like.

I’ve never been thrifting. I was looking at it in a kind of jovial way, like an overzealous garage sale. And yet, I walked away with about $26 worth of stuff, which was hilarious.

I found a shirt designed by an anime guy—I don’t even know who, and I’m not big into anime. We looked it up online, and it goes for about $156. I got it for five bucks. It’s a great shirt. I love it. I also grabbed a wall decoration for eight dollars for my apartment, which still has nothing on the walls.

That’s the last part of making it my own. I digress. I’m standing there looking around, and you know that part of you that judges yourself, thinking, What the fuck am I doing here? You laugh about it, even if you kind of hate it.

And then it hit me.

My daughter was doing to me exactly what I had done to them all those years ago. She was making me create a memory out of something I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I wanted to do—and I was actually having a good time.

I guess I’m old enough now to recognize that sooner rather than later. Driving to work this morning, recapping the weekend, I saw it for what it was.

You never know when the tables are going to turn and the lesson comes back to you—the very one you thought you were teaching them. That’s a reward. Gratitude comes with rewards, I guess.

The memory of my daughter taking me places, introducing me to things, is etched in my memory. It’s going to keep this smile on my face for the rest of the day.

It’s not the first time she’s turned me on to things I really enjoy. And I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the thrifting at the Salvation Army. It was fun, and I never would have done it without her suggestion—“no, we’re going over here, let’s do this.”

And that’s great. Because when I say it’s not the first time, it’s the first time I really realized how incredibly special that gift was—and is.

Morning Drift: Watching for Weather — The Only News That Matters

This is the eighth entry in my Morning Drift series — a personal search and journal of gratitude, presence, and the shifting truths I find in sobriety. These aren’t polished guides or programs, just lived moments: presence, gratitude, reflections, frustrations, questions, and the daily work of finding balance.

When You Can’t See the Sky

It’s the 22nd or 23rd—I think it’s the 23rd of December—around 6:20 a.m. And in San Diego, we’ve been experiencing some pretty intense fog. There are a lot of internet and Instagram memes saying the fog is radioactive, which is hilarious, but the whole thing is interesting — especially because today feels like there’s no real fog. I saw one that said the phenomenon basically translates to something like a fog tsunami. And when you’re watching those time-lapse videos—whatever they’re called—it’s fascinating to watch it roll in.

But this morning, when you look up, you can’t see the stars or the sunrise. There’s nothing. Normally around this time—I think we had the winter solstice last night, or the day before, I forget—but on other normal days, you’d at least look up and see some color—reds and pinks and purples.

Comfortable Complaints

What I realized was that I check the weather in all sorts of places, because I have connections in Philadelphia, Minnesota, Montana, and the Cascade area. I guess that’s why I like looking at the weather.

I think one of the things about that is being so privileged to have a “horrible” morning that equates to 52 degrees—which is hilarious, because it’s not horrible at all. Usually that 52 degrees turns into a 70-degree beautiful day.

And yet you’re still bitching about the morning — even knowing how ridiculous that sounds.

I remember back in the day, before weather became so calculated, it could just rain out of the blue, and you’d say, they didn’t say anything about that on the weather last night.

The Need to Know

That was always pretty funny, because I don’t even know if they were actual meteorologists back then. I guess they probably had that designation, but the information and technology we have these days is just amazing. And that’s why I bring up the weather—because it reminds me of a song by Simon & Garfunkel.

It’s The Only Living Boy in New York, and the lyric goes, “I get the news I need from the weather report / I can gather all the news I need from the weather report.”

And in contrast, I’ve been remembering that about a year ago—maybe a little more than a year ago—I was a news junkie. I watched every single newscast.

Every single channel. I’d start at 5:00 p.m. with ABC or CBS, roll into the 5:30, then hit the 6:00 news on NBC or FOX—whatever was on—cycling through all the major broadcasts.

Watching With Assumptions

It was almost like a mission. Or a mantra. I had to know. I needed to know. It felt like staying informed meant staying prepared. But the more I watched, the more I realized how little of it actually mattered in my day.

In the end, I didn’t really need all of it. I just needed to know what the weather was doing. And even that was subject to the same need to know.

In this day and age, it feels like that same need to know feeds the narrative—what they’re trying to portray—often at the expense of the actual facts. There’s always an angle. Or an edge.

It’s funny, because while I’m watching, every time I move from one broadcast to the next, I would already think I knew what the narrative was going to be.

Like if I watched one channel, I knew it was going to feel left-leaning. If I watched another, I knew it was going to have a right-leaning angle.

A Three-Minute Window

But again, what does any of that mean when it comes to the weather? I think the weather is probably the most—and the least—important thing at the same time.

It’s most important when you’re back east, somewhere where it can change in an instant. I remember being in Ohio one time.

My cousin had taken me to one of my favorite chili dog places, Skyline Chili. We were inside when it started pouring outside, and I was like, oh crap, because usually when it rains like that, it’s going to rain forever.

And she whips out her phone—some sort of weather app—and she’s like, we can go now, we’ve got about a three-minute window.

And sure enough, the rain stops. For three minutes. We get in the car, we start driving, and boom—it starts pouring again.

But I think that moment mattered, because at the time the weather mattered more than anything else.

The point is this: you have to find what’s actually important in the information that’s being given to you—why it’s being delivered, how it’s being delivered, and who’s delivering it.
And regardless of what anybody says, just like my tagline: no single tide, no single truth.

The Cost of Comfort

It’s fascinating to know what’s going on in other places, and how people have to react—or live. I can’t really imagine anymore getting up, pulling on jackets and scarves, and scraping ice off a windshield.

But anyway, what’s the trade-off? If there’s something in that climate that you desire—something that completes you or makes you happy—is that the trade-off? Is that the give and take?

Or is the give and take that you’re lonely in paradise—and it’s still paradise?

Poor men think money will make them whole. Rich men realize it doesn’t.
Some of the poorest people I’ve known were wealthy. Some of the richest had almost nothing at all.

Still Learning How to Notice

I think that’s kind of the theme lately. Not that things suddenly got simpler—you don’t get to choose the circumstances—but you do get to choose where you spend your energy. You can focus on what’s wrong, or you can choose to put the work into seeing what’s right.

There’s always something wrong. That part’s easy to find. What isn’t as easy is noticing what’s still working, or what hasn’t broken yet. And most days, seeing that clearly takes more effort than simply reacting to what’s wrong — and I think that effort matters.

And I think that’s where the weather comes back into it. You can’t control it—you just react.

And I think people are a lot like that. We react more than we reflect.

I’m trying to be better about that myself.

In the Pauses

It’s Christmas Eve morning. And it’s quiet—at least quieter than it usually is. There’s still traffic. There’s still movement. But there’s something different about it. It feels softer.

And I think people talk about the Christmas spirit like it’s mandatory. Like you’re supposed to flip a switch and suddenly be joyful, generous, grateful—on cue, on brand. And if you aren’t—if you’re not ho ho ho’ing, throwing magic reindeer dust around on everything like it’s holy water—it doesn’t just feel awkward. It feels like you’re the problem. Like you failed the vibe check. Like your lack of cheer is somehow a character flaw.

But I don’t think that’s how it actually works.

I think that’s why it feels more like the weather again. It’s just there—you notice it when you slow down enough.

The spirit isn’t in the decorations. Or the music. Or the commercials either.

It’s in the pauses. It’s in the moments where nothing is being asked of you.

A Real Gift

I think we get distracted by the idea of gifts — what we’re giving, what we’re getting, what we think we should be doing. And we miss the things that don’t come in boxes at all: time, patience, grace, presence.

Those things don’t cost anything — but they aren’t free either. They take effort. They take intention. And that kind of effort feels similar to what I was thinking about yesterday — about choosing where you put your energy, and about noticing what’s still working. And Christmas just makes it more obvious.

It’s not about pretending things are perfect. They aren’t. Families are complicated. People are complicated. Life is complicated. But there’s something about this time that reminds you that you still get to choose how you show up, and you still get to decide what you carry forward.

It’s Christmas morning now. And I’m thinking a lot about growth — about the difference between who you were and who you’re trying to be. For me, that includes sobriety. I don’t say that in a dramatic way — it’s just part of my reality.

Sobriety isn’t about willpower. It’s about clarity — about being present enough to notice what you’re actually feeling, instead of numbing it or pushing it away. It’s not always comfortable. But it’s honest. And honesty, I’m learning, is easier to live with than denial.

I don’t think growth happens all at once. I think it happens in small decisions — over and over. Choosing differently. Responding instead of reacting. That theme keeps coming back: weather, news, people, myself.

I don’t beat myself up for the past. I don’t glorify it either. It just is. What matters is what I do today — how I respond, what I pay attention to.

And I think that’s a real gift. Not something wrapped. Not something bought. Just awareness. And the willingness to keep trying.

Morning Drift: The Need to Fix What Isn’t Broken

This is the sixth entry in my Morning Drift series — a personal search and journal of gratitude, presence, and the shifting truths I find in sobriety. These aren’t polished guides or programs, just lived moments: presence, gratitude, reflections, frustrations, questions, and the daily work of finding balance.

The Balance Between Steering and Floating

It’s about 5:18 a.m. on, I believe, the 15th of October, and I’m on my way to work.
I’m thinking about control versus mitigation — mitigation meaning trying to control the possible bad things that could happen in a situation, as far as trying to control the situation itself.

Sometimes I want to control everything, but I convince myself I’m just mitigating — reasoning through it, keeping it aligned with my way of doing things.

I see that as something I’m really trying to understand about myself.

All of those philosophical sayings and Stoic ideas about “It’s not the things that upset you — it’s how you let them in” are kind of touching on me. I’m trying to figure out where that lies and what I’m trying to let go of.

Ever since I was a kid, my first instinct has been to put foam on the corners — to childproof, to fireproof. That’s always been my way of looking at things: fireproofing the room before I even walk in.

I was that kid who was always blamed, always in trouble. Once, I was even accused of stealing twenty dollars from a teacher’s purse. They called my mother about punishing me, but I’d been home sick that day. No apology. Just, “Oh, okay.”

Maybe that’s when it started — trying to stay one step ahead of blame, making sure nothing could be pinned on me, nothing left unprotected.

When I go into a situation, I want to make sure everything is right — or at least what I think is right. But when do I stop? When do I let go of that?

How do I tell the difference — when I’m trying to control something, and when I’m just trying to mitigate it?

Reference Note

The Stoic sentiment above derives from Epictetus, Enchiridion §5:
“It is not things themselves that disturb people, but their judgments about those things.”

The 7-Eleven Coffee Hunt

Letting go of issues — I’ll give a silly example.

I’ve been to about five different 7-Elevens in the past couple of days, just looking for this one product called Stōk — a little caffeine additive, like a shot of espresso. I use them at work. I’ll grab a coffee at 7-Eleven, pick up five or six of those, and add them into my work coffee through the week.

Lately, though, 7-Eleven has these new coffee grinders / makers — actually really good ones. They’ve got about three or four different types of coffee beans on top. You push a button and choose if you want a cappuccino, a double espresso, caramel latte, macchiato — whatever. It grinds the coffee right there.

Instead of paying six to nine dollars at Starbucks or Better Buzz or Dutch Bros, you get it for about three bucks. You can make it your way — add cinnamon, caramel, whatever you want. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as Dutch Bros, but for three bucks, I’m all about it.

The problem is, just like ice-cream machines at McDonald’s always seem to be broken, these 7-Eleven machines are always down lately. For a good three months they were fantastic — now they’re not.

It’s like the novelty wore off for the owners or the workers. They’re high-maintenance. They need to be refilled and cleaned. So this morning, I thought I’d give it one more shot — one more stop to get me a good coffee and grab a Stōk before I head in, maybe grab a couple of them for the week.

And once again — machine is broken.

My first response? Pull up Google, maybe Yelp. That old impulse — review it, critique it, vent. But lately I’ve slowed down on that. I still like writing reviews; it was a hobby. I had over 900 of them at one point. But now, Yelp feels more like a complaint center than a community.

I actually shut my account down — which is crazy when I think about it. But that was another kind of mitigation. I was mitigating my own emotional response — not letting something as small as a broken coffee machine set the tone for my morning.

I can’t control that situation. I’ve tried — choosing one store over another, tracking which ones break most often. But still, I walk in, and the machine’s down again.

Memphis in the Morning

My dog, Memphis, has decided that now he likes to go pee around 4:30 a.m.

And I’ll admit — I’m the one who started it. When I was teaching him to go outside, I didn’t want him getting too used to the yard. I’m moving into an apartment soon, and there won’t be one right outside the door — it’ll be a short trot to the dog park and lawn area.

So now he wakes me up at 4:30. And I’m thinking, “Really? I’m usually getting up at five.”

I realize I can’t control when a dog decides he has to pee — that’s nature.

But I also figure, what’s the point of going back to bed for forty-five minutes or an hour? It’s not productive. I’d rather just go to bed earlier.

So there I am at work by 5:30. Normally I’d just be getting up, but now I’m already there.

And that’s what made me start thinking about all of this — am I controlling things, or am I mitigating an issue?

Closing Reflection — Letting the Day Be What It Is

I can’t control everything. Not the machines. Not the timing. Not the dog.

But I can mitigate what it does to me.

I can leave earlier. I can plan around it. I can let the moment be what it is instead of forcing it to match what I expected.

Maybe that’s the quiet line between control and adaptation — not trying to steer the whole current, just learning how to float without losing direction.

Some days that looks like being at work by 5:30. Some days it’s finding a working coffee maker. Some days it’s just Memphis at 4 a.m. reminding me that nature doesn’t wait on my schedule.

Either way, I’m learning that the tide moves whether I fight it or not.

Part six of the Morning Drift series — Tides and Truth: No single tide, no single truth…