Bo

Suiside

Listen now

3 months ago · 5 likes · 9 comments · Bo

I think we need to address the underlying problem rather than keeping these conversations in quiet. According to one website over 90% of suicides are Guns/Hanging/Poison. It’s interesting that this does not really account for so many other methods, jumping, intentional car crash, intentional dangerous situations, or even cutting. Today in my town a distraught woman was up on a roof, and it shut down many blocks. Would it not be more reasonable to legalize the whole process with some restrictions and tools.

Imagine if an adult could go to a clinic, declare that you wanted to end your own life, have a 24 hour hold, stay in a nice room, have a decent meal, talk to someone if you were so inclined, and if in 24 hours you still wanted to end your life you could have an IV put in by a nurse and take a fatal dose and just go to sleep. This seems a more reasonable way to end ones life. And the damage done to the rest of humanity would be dramatically reduced. No more finding your husband with a gun in his hand and a hole in his head, no more walking in to the garage and finding your wife hanging from the rafters, and no more shutting down a neighborhood because someone is standing on a building refusing to talk to anyone.

Bring the whole process into the light, make it all reasonable, and make as much attemept as possbiel to solve the underlying problems. And if a loved one does end their life, the clinic can send an actual councilor to the family to try to explain, and hopfully be of some benefit to those who are still alive. This whole idea of suicide being a sin is not helpful to anyone, it’s not a sin, its where we go when everything is just too much and we can no longer manage the energy to push forward.

The cost to goverment and society of back alley suicides is huge, both financial and energetic. We cannot erase those losses, though if we can manage to reduce both at the same time isnt that an option we need to look at?

(again in no way am I intimating that I am seriously contemplating ending my life, or that anyone should end theirs, rather that we all need to talk about these issues in an open way… my writing is just a starting point on that conversation)

The recent shelter mess in my area has put this topic on my mind on almost a daily basis. I know the man responsible for the shelter, and it looks like he is also responsible for the killing of hundreds of dogs during the decades that he has run this “no-Kill” shelter. Other shelters have paid this shelter to re-home their animals, and this financial gain looks like the reason for all this “criminal” activity. “Public” shelters in the area where they exist kill upwards of 1000 animals a year, and that’s legal. You can see where a person could justify their activity to themselves by finding a percentage of animals headed to the rainbow bridge homes while “humanely” dispatching the rest. Some people are in an uproar about “shooting dogs” being cruel. Having killed hundreds of animals in my life, I would classify a bullet to the brain as probably the third most humane way to dispatch any animal, following drug and decapitation. I put down my own cat at 12, I did it with a shovel, and to this day I wish I had used a rifle.

I gave my LGD to this very shelter almost a decade ago. I was experiencing serious brain issues, needed to relocate to Los Angles to seek some sort of help. I sold all my goats, and took my LGD to the shelter. I asked if they could house her until I came back. I knew they had been losing a chicken a week to some predator, and once my LGD took up residence there that stopped. She spent over 8 years there, passing away just last year. I could have taken her back 2 years after I took her there, though I knew on some level she was in a good place, that she was doing her job, and that she was loved and appreciated. I found her a home that I determined was good, and rather than forcing her to move again, I left her there. In my opinion I did the best I could for her. Even when I had predator problems on my sheep in Oregon I did not consider moving her. When we as humans take guardianship over any animals we need to continue to make the best choices for them as long as they are alive.

When I was 12 my male cat would roam the neighborhood, one day he came home missing his two front feet. His legs had been severed at about his elbows by an animal trap that had been sharpened to do exactly that. A cruel land owner did not like other animals on his property and this was his solution. I put my cat down because missing his two front legs, and in my fathers estimation the meant he had no quality of life. At that point I had no real understanding, today I agree. My father gave me the choice to put him down myself or he would do it. He recommended the shovel or the gun, foolishly I took the shovel. At 12 this was a critical lesson for me, and despite when some might think, age appropriate. After burying my cat in the manzanita, eyes full of tears I found a couple of the traps on my neighbors land, and threw them through his living room window. I left when I saw him headed for a back room. Foolishly(in a small town) he told people about me doing that, and it quickly got out what happened to my cat, and the personal backlash he received was overwhelming.

In a previous era people would drown unwanted puppies or kittens, rather than put them out into the world without good homes. Today that’s considered cruel, and instead those same unwanted puppies and kittens get dropped off on the side of the road, or to some shelter. Less than 30% of animals dropped at any shelter end up finding homes. It is much like my article one “guardrails” on highways, the fact they are there leads people to drive at an unsafe speed because they have that extra safety. The “shelter” reality has allowed people to take on pets they have no business taking on, knowing that if it does not work out the animal can always be dropped off at a shelter and it becomes someone else’s problem. We need a new reality, one where people take responsibility for the animals who they take on. If those people had to take that dog they did not want out into a field and put a bullet in it rather than drop it off at a shelter, they might think twice about taking on an animal. I”m still on felony probation, and I have realized it’s part of why I I have not taken on a dog. If I go back to prison, what happens to that animal?

The shelter reality here is this country is on very thin ice. Many municipal shelters have closed due to high costs and overloading. Many private shelters are more driven by profit than success, leading to messes like we have here in Humboldt. As these shelters continue to run into financial, legal, ethical, and functional difficulty, there are going to be less and less of them available. The lack of “guardrails” is not going to change the driving habits fo the public. We have a systemic problem in this country and there is very little we can do. A good first step is to make spay/neuter/vasectomy free for all dogs and cats. As I have discussed before, we live in a monocracy, to do our part in this change it’s how we allocate our money. Personally I will no longer support any shelters, rather will turn that support to free spay/neuter/vasectomy services.

By no means does that mean you need to agree with me or even like my content, if you think my writing is bad, my logic is faulty, or just don’t like it, say that. It’s the silent “heart” and subscribe that I have zero use for.

I I could remove subscribers I would probably remove every one who has yet to comment on a single post.

Goose-Gander: I have read at least a few articles of every person I’m subscribed to, and read every article of a good number. Every time someone reads and comments on one of my articles I go snd read and comment on one of theirs. I only subscribe if I find the content something that pushes my mind forward and I want to read more.

Why are you subscribed to me?

I failed again the other day. I set up a date to do a local citywide yard sale, got a space on Main Street in a nearby town, and collected most of my handmade tables and got a friend to help open my wood yard. I sold a few odds and ends, though I had zero real interest in any of my tables, the point of doing the sale. Yes I had nice comments; gorgeous table, good price, love the legs. No actual action.

The point of all my prep and work was to be able to sell some of the tables I have spent much of the last year working on. I failed. It’s not just a lack of sales, it’s an investment of time, a decision to make tables, to do the design work, the finish work, and how and where I chose to sell them. Some times when I fail at something it’s a learning experience and I just take the lesson and move on. Not so much this time. I went home after cleaning up and cried myself to sleep at about 3:30 in the afternoon. I kept crying for about two days. It’s about 5 days later as I write this now, and I’m finally starting to move on. I’m dreading bringing 11 tables home and letting them just sit around my house until I figure out how to sell them. Sunday I wanted to put them all in a pile and burn them.

At 15 I would have cried for a week and carried the weight for a year. At 25 I would have stuffed my feelings and had them leak out at inopportune moments for years afterwards. At 40 I would have talked about it in counciling for six months at a cost of 3-4 grand. Today, I cry, get angry, plant some seeds, clean my house, allow my feelings to just be.

How to deal with failure is a very personal process. Mine continues to adapt and change, and having a week where my productivity suffers because it matters too much to me that I cannot sell investments of my time and spirit is reasonable. Im not certain what my next step in this process is. Short term I doubt I will invest time into making or selling my tables. It will be a little frustrating to have them stacked all around my house, though short of the bonfire that’s likely my only option. No doubt this daily reminder will bring up my own feelings of inadequacy along with the lack of return on my investment of time and materials.

As long as I can remember I have picked up broken things and fixed them. I have had a life of picking up other peoples rejects and dusting them off, repairing a few facets, and putting it back out there. I walk down the street and pick up washers. I clean up a fence line I pick up stray scraps of wire and put them on the fence post, maybe keeping a piece if it’s too short. I pull chunks of long dead trees out of the ground and take them off with me. All of these things are rejected by others, considered waste, yet hold more value to me.

Too much personal psychoanalysis and I understand at least part of the reason is that I have been discarded; thrown away by my parents, and nearly every other person important to me in my life. My mother cast me aside for her abusive boyfriend, my dad abandoned me so he could continue to be an unsuccessful coke dealer, and most of my closest friends stopped talking to me when I went to prison. True, my dad was robbed and sent home naked on a bad coke-weed swap, and I was in danger, so rather than put his kid first he sent me to live with my mom and her boyfriend. Yes I was a threat to my moms boyfriend, if he had started hitting her while I was still there even at 12 I would have done something. I was absolutely a dick when I got arrested and even after my first bit of time in prison, true friends are there for you even when you don’t behave well, especially if there are extenuating circumstances.

Today when I cut lots into slabs I tend to take the best pieces and sell them. When I find pieces that no-one else wants, that I can see an inner beauty in it’s future. I’m not sure this is the best method for financial success, it’s the fulfillment that I get out of taking other peoples rejects and making the most of it. In other writing I have referred to myself as a broken toy, and I guess Im still looking for people in my life who are not going to throw me away.

One of the facets of self love that I have learned is not to try to fix, rather to lean into my broken parts. I’m incredibly stubborn, highly emotional, my brain is degrading, and poor at management. I remember finding a broken ceramic sun, it was one of the first times I kept the JB Weld in my pocket, and instead just placed it in the garden without fixing it. I helped work in that garden years later, and that sun had flowers growing up through it’s cracks in such a beautiful way. Not everything or everyone needs to be fixed, maybe we all just need to be loved for exactly who we are, not what we could be.

You are alone in a forest, describe the forest in some detail.

You encounter a Black bear, how do you react?

As you walk you come upon water, describe the water in some detail.

A little ways further you come to a wall, describe the wall in some detail.

Feel free to share your answers or keep them to yourself.

I keep seeing people asking for your best work, and as an artist and a member of Judgement-Anonymous, I just can’t do it. This whole high score mentality is part of the problem in our society today. I rarely read most of my work after writing, like much of my art once its done I just let it go. I have long said that the process of an artist trying to convince others that their art is good is disfunctional. For me I am blessed to do art: woodworking, writing, forestscaping, cooking or teaching.

The categorization of “best” is purely judgement. When we try to identify the “best” and it’s pure opinion, sadly often pushed as fact. A basketball player is labeled the best based on points scored or most championships, yet the true best may never even have played a professional game. We can allow for our ignorance, and share our thoughts as just opinion, rather than trying to convince others our opinion is fact.

Our society continues to push for the top, the top salary, the biggest house, the fastest car and this high score mentality is awful. For me it’s not about this judgement based comparison, rather it’s just best effort. Is a baseball players best day when he goes 4-4 and hits two home runs, or the day he goes 1-3 while fighting the flu against a pitcher he’s never gotten a hit against before. Some of my best performances have been on some of my worst days. How I handled myself the day I was arrested is something I”m extremely proud of.

“It’s about the process not the product” is the age old cliche, yet our society is all about the product. I dive into the process, bury myself in the writing, the sanding, the cooking, the shaping, and when I’m done, then I”m done. At that point I would prefer someone else take the piece, give me their feedback(positive or negative) and I can move on. I”m ready to start the next piece.

When any artist create a piece and then has to justify that it’s good it brings the element of doubt into the conversation. Today the process of sales is trying to convince others something is good, or better yet great. I work hard to improve my marketing(getting my products out there) and stop short of convincing anyone that my product is good. I appreciate when people share their opinion, “that’s beautiful” though stop well short of any universal labels. I have noted many artists that cannot seem to sell their products and I think the biggest disconnect is this process of convincing people that “art” is good.

I”m blessed to have many forms of art, and for me my only difficulty is that I don’t get to share them with others enough. If I cook a beautiful meal and only I eat it, I have a little sadness. Sometimes what I do works against me. I have had numerous adults complain that I treat them like a child when teaching them something. Kids never complain that I treat them like kids.

Please don’t ask me for my best work, if you do, I”m just going to point you to this one, and by no means do I think this is my best, it’s just addressing you are looking for the high score in our judgement based society. I hope you can learn to recognize this judgement, and just accept when things are good, without needing them to be the best.