Project: Rebuild Your Life

The last 2 weeks and change have been crazy...and it all started with a text message. My brother in law Zach pinged me about the Thomas Fire which all other sources said was just a small thing north of Santa Paula. He said that it was moving fast and might even be passing his house in East Ventura. I went out and lookup up at the sky and saw all that I needed to know - smoke billowing down out of the north and being pushed right over the top of our house.

I cautiously split our emergency kit gear between our two cars and prepped them to be loaded up. Another glance upwards a few minutes later showed that the situation wasn't getting better and with the gusting winds picking up, was bound to get worse. I went up and woke Sokny up to get her up to speed on the situation and as the sleep worked its way out of her eyes, she started to pack up some of her things as well.

We had the kids sleeping in the living room for a sleepover with daddy that night which put them in the best spot possible to be staged for easy loading into the car. The power begun to cut out...then on...then out...taking our already spotty internet up and down with it. A few more glances up at the sky made it clear that it was likely we would have to leave so we started packing up some things for the kids, clothes and some key electronics.

As the power continued to flutter on and off, I handed out flashlights and staged battery powered lights around the house to allow us to continue our preparations without having to stumble around more than necessary. I shared with Sokny that we needed to be 5-minute ready...ready to leave with 5 minutes notice which was barely enough time to get the kids in the car and go.

That point came sooner than either of us expected as the next check outside revealed a strong orange glow emanating from a point just over the ridge to the north east of our housing tract. I quickly ran across the street in my socks to wake our neighbors with 4 kids at the same time noting that most of the neighborhood was completely devoid of activity, with only a handful of lights visible from other souls who had been alerted to the proximity of the fire...or perhaps just responding to the lack of power in the area.

As the orange glow brightened even more, we carefully loaded the kids into the car with their backpacks, blankets and pokemon cards to keep them company. They didn't have a chance to pick out anything to bring but as a consolation, they didn't have to experience the tense rush out of the house consciously.

The power was out so after we backed out of the garage, I disconnected the connection to the automatic door opener and eased the door down into place, which thunked down with all the finality of a tombstone. We eased down the street, into the flow of a handful of early adopters who similarly feared what the later hours of the night might bring to our homes.

It dawned on me that many of our neighbors had not been alerted to what seemed to be imminent danger so I cautiously gave the horn a few honks wondering if when the morning came, I would be remembered as the village idiot or the town hero. As we rounded another dark corner, I sounded the horn a few more times with a bit more confidence. As we went down the final stretch of the neighborhood, I was at full confidence, sounding the horn to alert any and all who dared sleep that something was amiss in the hopes that they would realize what was coming over the hill to consume the beds in which they now slept.

We evacuated to my parent's house just a few minutes down the hill and set the kids up for what seemed like a fun sleepover with the grandparents. Sokny and I wouldn't find much sleep that night, with the police scanner reminding us of the rush of activity to and from our neighborhood and those near us on the hills of Ventura.

As the night wound down, the winds continued to stoke the fire. At its peak, the fire moved as quick as 200' per second, carried on winds gusting at up to 80 miles per hour. From my parent's house, we could see the fire dancing across the hills, making them seem like a playground for a fire-breathing dragon. It was a tense night as we attempted to decipher cryptic calls to remote fire teams to various 'blocks' around town.

At 3am, our bodies gave out and we succumbed to sleep, waking just a few short hours - that would be easier quantified in minutes - later to more of the same. The fires continued, with the daylight only serving to remove

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April still feels like march

I don't really understand the inner workings of my mind. For the last 2 years, my brain has felt full, slow, overwhelmed and warm. Like someone squeezed a pack of handwarmers and set it in there under my brain...it's just too much.

First, the cancer. When I first found out I had cancer, it was so fast...from diagnosis to the right radical orchiotomy (removal of a testicle) that it was essentially a non-issue.

When it came back a few months later, I was excited because it meant time off work...and that should have been way more of a trigger than it was at the time. It was a relief that I didn't have to continue in the hell that work had become. Working 14 hours + per day as many days/week as I could fit in. So stressed out that I couldn't sleep more than a few hours per night which only made it that much worse.

Neither brains or bodies function well without enough sleep. The cancer coming back meant I had to undergo chemotherapy...I think it was a BEP cocktail bleomycin, etopside and cisplatin and boy was that gnarly stuff. It took all my energy away and made me feel sick. Truthfully, I was spared most of the terrible symptoms associated with chemo but it still wasn't much fun. I did have fun cracking jokes at people who instantly become overly sensitive about everything because chemo is awkward. I'm the same person...but my body has been poisoned...by doctors...on purpose...over and over and over for 9 weeks.

But yeah, I was happy for it. I gleefully drove out of the P&G Oxnard plant the day before chemo, absolutely stoked and feeling free as a bird. It was only supposed to be 9 weeks...then extended to 12 with a few weeks for recovery, but it felt amazing. To be honest, if I had to pick between staying at P&G in that role with that leadership team or chemo, I'd take chemo any day. It saved my life...and not just from cancer.

Before I was forced to take time off, the stress, the insanity of how much they put on me without any support felt normal. It sucked, yes...but it felt normal. Leaving for 2 months...3 months and what ultimately was 6 months was the best thing that ever happened because it was a long enough break that it showed me what life without stress was like. I wasn't as stressed about the cancer as I was about work. With cancer...through chemo and later, surgery, I was able to sleep fine. I was able to breathe fine without feeling like I had a bag of cement on my chest.

In the middle of chemo, I became sick and had a chest xray to check on that...and they found that the tumors in my lungs had not changed in size at all. Because I had a 'mixed' cancer, it was likely that it was going to require chemo and surgery to remove as half of the cancer responds to the chemo and half wouldn't. The lumps in my chest were the non-responsive type and required surgery.

Thankfully, all 3 tumors were in the lower lobe of my right lung which was removed (right lower lobectomy) at the skillfull hand of a da vinci robot, controlled by the leading surgeon in the field in Santa Monica, California. We were excited that the robotic surgery was an option as the alternative was to cut open an incision between two ribs and spread me open, making a larger scar, and required a longer time to heal.

The surgery wasn't stressful except for the hour or so leading up to it. Moving into the operating room was freaky and I definitely could have used some anti-anxiety medication but I went to sleep and woke up with stitches and a tube coming out of my lung. The details aren't important but suffice it to say that it went as planned and I was back up and at 'em in no time.

I returned to work a few months later and that's when it really hit home. Immediately, P&G resumed dumping work on me and the stress came back within a matter of days. It was as if I was watching the whole thing on TV. The amount of stress they put on each other and accepted there was comical. I had a hard time taking it seriously because it was just so absurd. Not so much because of what the work was but because of how they treated it.

Work is work and I have never had a hard time doing work...hard, dirty, long...whatever. Get it done and get on with it. But the way the leadership treated the rest of the staff there was embarrassing. That wasn't the company I grew up in or the kind of company I wanted to work for. I pushed back a bit as change only happens when people with vision drive the change and see it through to completion but I simply did not have the energy...physically or otherwise...to do that and I knew it.

The residual effects of the chemo would last nearly 2 years before I felt normal again and I was still in the very early stages of that process. Within 2 weeks of returning to work, it was clear that it wasn't going to be long term for me...even after spending more than 17 years with P&G. It blew my mind but I've never been one to linger or reminisce once a decision has been made.

I started lining up options and paving the road out of P&G. I was back at P&G just over 2 months before I put in my notice and left the company on April 27th, 2017.

With all that has transpired, my brain has changed. It feels like aging but I'm not willing to accept it. I attribute it to part chemical thrashing from the chemo. I'm not clear on how much of that is long term damage and how much is short term damage...or if this is even a factor. I don't think the much hyped detoxes actually do anything though it may be worth a shot.

Another part of this is just the sheer volume of stress crap that I've piled on over the last few years with the first round of cancer in 2015, the second round of cancer in 2016-17 including chemo and surgery, quitting P&G, the fire burning our house, moving, rebuilding...or something else? Relationship stress? Dunno. Life is crazy. I wish it came with a manual...but it would probably be wrong anyways...or I wouldn't read it :)

Sorting all of this out...maybe a blog or introspective journal is the right format, maybe not. I suppose it helps to talk through it with myself which is what I liken this to. Perhaps even better would be a therapist that knew the questions to ask, the pain points to look for and the roads leading outward and upward from it. It's not pain so much as it is just clutter in my head. It would be nice if I had a pressure release valve or lever I could pull to purge the buildup from my head.

I'm leaning into Tim Ferriss' books and podcasts for sharp lessons and poignant observations into life, functionality and effectiveness for clarity. Some of his stuff is great. Most is mediocre. That's life. Most of it is mediocre. Some of it is great...and that's ok. It's more likely that the mediocre stuff of his just isn't relevant or as relevant to me at this point in my life. Maybe that will change. Maybe it won't and that's ok, too.

I think daily journaling and some form of meditation would be helpful. Maybe I need to start taking my phone into the sauna after working out to listen to podcasts while I steam. That's another Tim thing...something about raising the core temp of the body after a workout to help it heal and minimize soreness after tough workouts. I'm leaning into daily protein shakes to minimize the muscle loss that seems to be eating away at my physique. Not sure why physique matters...I just want to be highly functional both at the mental and physical levels. Not so much to climb a mountain or run a marathon...but to hike what I want to hike, when I want to hike it. 

The Beauty of the Burn

Fire brings destruction but it also brings heat, warmth, cooked food and cleansing. When the Thomas Fire consumed our family home the morning of December 5th, 2017, we were shocked. We evacuated knowing that it was the safe thing to do but had no way of knowing that we would be back a few short hours later to find little more than a pile of rubble where our home, hot tub and comfy couches had been.

Losing our things was rough at first. It fuzzed up our heads, leaving us confused and overwhelmed. Did we really just lose our home? Are all our things really gone? It took a few days but when that reality set in, it was like a weight dropped onto our backs. So much work to do to find a place to stay, figure out what we would do for food, snacks, underwear and slacks and that was only the beginning.

No tools, laptop chargers, stickers or beds for our boys. It wasn't so much an emotional journey but a stark confrontation with the magnitude of the task at hand. We were together and left an hour or so before the mandatory evacuation so we were all physically safe and healthy which was by far the biggest blessing from the entire experience.

As we sorted through random donations and ran errands for hours on end, the tables turned. We encountered an entire community that had faced the Thomas Fire together. Our entire community stayed up all night watching as it danced around the hillsides, at times moving as fast as one acre per second, buffeted by 80 mile-per-hour winds that carried ash in overhead rivers of fire.

We discovered beauty in the ashes. Not of our home...as not much was left there...but the ashes spread around our community. As friends and family rinsed the ash off of their cars and homes, they were compelled to pour out onto those who, like us, lost everything. We were humbled by the outpouring of support from family and friends

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