Some Thoughts from a Tough Month

A Peek Inside my Journal

Trying to stay grounded. Near Lake Willoughby, Vermont. Photo by author.

Occasionally, in lieu of a carefully composed Substack essay, I like to publish a selection of entries from my personal journal. In similar fashion, the following entries are from the Notes app on my iPhone, covering most of June, 2025. Lately I’ve taken to dictating brief, undeveloped thoughts and ideas into my device as they come to me, usually while walking. Of course, these notes can be quite grammatically messy. Here, I’ve done a minimum of clean-up, correcting spelling and punctuation, and clarifying a few unclear sentences. Thanks for reading! 🙏💚

June 3— I have not studied to be a Buddhist; rather, I have allowed Buddhist teachings to facilitate my awakening to the true nature of “me.“
Now that I know who I am, I can let Buddhism go.

June 12— This subtle shift in perspective has made a big difference for me, not just politically, but spiritually:
Instead of thinking of Trump as someone to hate, I think of him as someone to stop.
Action, resistance, change; all are necessary and good. Hatred is not.

June 13— I blew my chance to be a good father.
Can I tell it like it is, or like it was, without a vengeful voice? (Note: I did go ahead and complete an essay with that first sentence as the title. It was helpful, cathartic even, to write, but I decided not to publish it.)

June 16— When I lived in Michigan for a year, I never got a job. I was hunting and selling collectible books and other things on eBay. But every day I walked to town to the coffee shop, sometimes stopping to spend time beside a brook that ran through a park.
The state of mind that I was in then (2005) seems to be the same state of mind that I’m in now in Hyannis, Massachusetts. I was working hard contracting for many years, but since the pandemic, I have not been. I’ve been doing the odd job, doing a lot of writing, and almost every day spending a couple hours in the coffee shop, reading, writing, thinking.

June 18— Because I’m feeling so hurt right now, by J____ not wanting to meet with me and placing conditions on my attendance to his wedding, I was telling myself that I was only an illusion anyway, and while I was telling myself that I was an illusion, I had the sudden powerful realization that, illusion or not, I still need to express myself. And specifically, I need to express my pain, my suffering, what I’ve been through, how I’ve been hurt by not getting enough love in my childhood and by losing my children’s trust. I need to express, express, express it. Somehow. With Art? I’m not sure. I just know I need an outlet for my pain. I need to express it.
Grief. That’s what it is. Why didn’t I realize that? I just read the word in a book, and it hit me that that is what I am suffering.

June 19— I just have to acknowledge that no matter how much I’ve been practicing meditation, mindfulness, and trying to achieve a peaceful and harmonious existence, I’m still capable of losing it. I had a big blowout with J____ today. We both said things that we shouldn’t have. I lost my control. I raised my voice. I became defensive, I brought up subjects I shouldn’t have. It was pretty ugly. The things he said to me were pretty ugly too. He called me arrogant, dishonest, self-absorbed, concerned only with my self-image, implied that I was being manipulative, shifting blame, and avoiding a “real” apology. He said I wasn’t a good father. It was the same old argument. We’ve had it before, verbatim. I don’t know how I allowed myself to get pulled into it. At first, I said no, it’s not a good idea to talk about your mother or the past. But then it happened anyway. And eventually, I lost my ability to take control of the discussion.

June 21— Life; you don’t solve it, you just allow it. Or more specifically, You ARE it.

June 24— I think deeply but not fast. That’s why I hesitate to go on podcasts.

June 24— I think I’m running out of room in my mind to read other people’s thoughts on Substack.

June 24— There was a flow of experience, and as soon as this flow noticed itself, it named itself “me.” I then forgot that I was a flow of experience and assumed I was a solid, static thing that I could control and hold onto.

June 24— Such a strange feature of the human mind that it can have feelings about the feelings it’s having.

June 25— The truth is, unless salvation is right here where I am, at this very moment, then it is a delusion, a dream, a chimera. And in this very moment, is there even such a thing as salvation? What is it that I need to be saved from, anyway? If I asked myself that question with honesty, I think my answer would be, from my own fear and disappointment.
And what are fear and disappointment but illusions, projections into the past and future, themselves illusions?

June 26— At 60, and after a lifetime of working with my hands as a carpenter, I’ve earned the right (and the aching joints) to slow things down a little bit, not that I can afford to.
More often than not, by the time I get my tools together and head for the job, it’s already coffee time, so I stop at the coffee shop first. And if I bring my book with me, well, there goes another hour, haha.

June 27— I read somewhere, I think it was in the book, Why Buddhism is True, that our need to be liked is rooted in early evolution, where it was important to be accepted by the tribe lest one run the risk of being shunned and then becoming prey to the wild beasts.
I thought that was a pretty neat explanation, but just now I had another thought that challenges that.
In general, I think that when we react to the feeling that someone doesn’t like us, we make ourselves even less likable. So, our need to be liked is actually only doing the opposite; it’s basically ruining everything!

June 27— Why is everyone fighting? I think it’s unnatural that we humans fight so much. From wars all the way down to couples bickering, battling, berating. It’s outrageous, it’s ridiculous, something isn’t right.

June 27— Here’s a thought I’m having today that I think might be worth noting.
I was in the bank and I was thinking about J____ and I thought, I just want to disappear. Like, my body can stay but I want my identifying, feeling sense of self to disappear.
I had this feeling that I just don’t want to be a person who other people need, use, or make demands of.
I’ve noticed I feel that way about writing too. I want to be a writer, I want to express my thoughts eloquently in long-form essays, but I don’t want to be a personality for people, I don’t want to participate in podcasts, I don’t want to be interviewed or filmed. I don’t want my person, my personality, to be a thing that people want. I don’t want to market it, I don’t want to cultivate or curate or adjust or perfect or display it for anyone. My person is not for sale, it is not anyone else’s to make demands of or to use in any way.
And I don’t think this is just fear or avoidance. I honestly don’t think humans were meant to be used in that way. Or at least, I’m not. It doesn’t fit my personality to be something for others. I don’t want to be something for anyone, not even for myself.

June 28—(While sitting under my favorite beech tree) I don’t want to be special; I want to wake up from my dream of being special.

This photo of my wife and me was taken by my daughter at Lake Willoughby, Vermont

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