02072016
   I've been on the hustle since 7 this morning.
   I did a few things today. Mediocre things. Daily chores.
  For the most part, I'm happy.
  We made some burritos for dinner that were excellent. My daughter was over with my grandson Olly.
   He's a great lil 11 week old lil boy. Slept most of the time and kept it chill.
   We watched the Carolina Panthers lose Super Bowl 50. What an upset.
   I really expected to see them win.
  I don't know, what it is but my battery is drained and I'm ready to jump in over my shadow and pass the fuck out.
  I don't know if you did anything noteworthy today. I hope you did. If not today, perhaps tonight.
  I haven't had much of a connection with you lately. It may be for the lack of effort on my part. I have hinted that I'm writing here but I may never know if you took to the hint.
   You may have hinted that you know that I'm writing here, but you were good at covering the hint with a decent distraction of your subject matter.
   Today, is a good day. I imagine it's a great day for you. Maybe a new love interest or perhaps a new job. Or maybe the introduction to a friend with similar interests which you may cliché with. Maybe my imagination is better than your true reality.
   I'm beat. Either way. I knew I needed to write something.
   I hope it finds you well my friend.
  Be well and happy. Laters.

02082016
Rather than fix my mountain bikes flat tire, I decided to open this here. Another letter to you.
The day is pretty windy. We are experiencing 30-45 mile an hour wind gusts today here in South Dakota and the idea of sitting outside trying to work on something doesn't sound appealing.
I haven't rode this bike in a couple of years. I purchased it in a pawn shop about seven years ago.
It's an above average mountain bike. I mean it's not a Cannondale but it's not a Mongoose.
One of my last rides on it was pretty tragic. I was riding down hill on a street. I was doing around thirty miles an hour when a little girl decided to make a right turn into a street right in front of me without using a turn signal.
Yep.
I used to ride this bike everywhere and it kept me in pretty good shape honestly. I remember being able to pedal up the same hill easily back then. It hurt. It was steep but I could do it.
I don't think I could do it today though. It took a while for me to get to that point. It really did.
Anyway I wound up T-Boning that SUV and rolling over the front of her hood and falling over the front of her bumper and landing on the soft pavement where I clearly have myself a concussion.
I cracked some ribs as I broke her passenger mirror and ripped open my pinky finger to the bone.
Wound up with 25 stitches in my hand and still don't have a lot of feeling in it. I swore to never ride it again.
The second time I rode it after that was up a hill here called M Hill. You can google it. It has a bunch of bike trails on it.
I tried my best but totally sucked at riding something I used to ride once a week. Too far out of shape.
So my attention was diverted to walking it instead and my bike, was left in the garage for years.
Recently diagnosed with pre-diabetes I decided to try and get back to basics. I lack true motivation though.
It's my day off. I really should go have an adventure.
I hope you're doing something today. I know I should be.
Dayton Wyoming is calling my name. The newest adventure there I think is something within reach without traffic. I know a guy there who teaches people how to ride the wind.
I've done it before. I feel like I need to do it again.
I think first I should get back to my bike. Try to enjoy some aspects of your day my friend. Be well.

02092016
The word of the day is, Hiraeth.
It means to yearn for a home. Homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home that maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.
It's a noun, that I'm not sure how to use in a sentence. Eh, but I do know the feeling.
Sometimes I think of home being where I grew up. Sometimes it is in a place I lived from one time to another.
I recently once lived in Tucson Az. I've made many friends there. I miss them dearly but it's been almost ten years now since I've lived there. So... I guess not so recently.
I've gone back and visited every year since moving usually for a weekend or so.
It turns out I do more living there when I go back than when I actually lived there. I spent a lot of time in tattoo shops. I really wasn't living so much as I was making a living.
Most of my living in Arizona was basically wasting myself in my twenties. Gallivanting and getting wasted.
Hey, I made friends too though, though, only a few of them are people I visit on the regular.
When I do visit, I go down memory lane. Visit the shops I worked in and see my closest friends. Eat at places I used to grub.
But you know, even though I made a lot of memories there visiting... I can't call it home anymore.
I talk with my friends from time to time, but so much has changed that I really have very little connection to any of them but the time with them is spent remembering the good times, for sure. And making new ones.
Sometimes, I think of the times I had here in South Dakota. I never really considered it home. Even if I had a home here.
Once in a while I visit Deadwood and Lead. My early twenties, I did pretty much the same thing. I remember being drunk with coworkers and climbing balconies to the top floor in a blizzard, to a friends apartment to trip him out by knocking on his back door.
I remember stomping up stairs from main street at two in the morning climbing them in the snow to my apartment from the bars down there. When I look now, those stairs aren't even there anymore. Oh the good times I will not write here.
One time I woke up to a partner in my bed, who was twice my age. I couldn't remember her name or how we got to my place. But I remember it being a good morning. One I rarely talked about with anyone.
When I look at the place now, it doesn't say Louie's Apartments anymore. It isn't anything like the place I met Seli, Skysha's mom. And it doesn't matter how much you pay to enter that museum, it isn't home.
I remember a few places that aren't home.
One of the best places I ever lived. I mean truly lived, was called Elko, Nevada.
In 1996, when I started this tattoo thing, I was twenty two and I wanted to experience all there was to offer. If I had to buy it. If I had to borrow it or if it was freely given, I did it.
One of my favorite memories there was hiking while being microdot. That's LSD. Walking with my girlfriends dog Sid.
Frying high in the high desert was pretty awesome. Technocolor and no Walkman. We were happy buddies walking through some of the wildest terrain. We climbed to the top of this hill that over looked the airport runway at two in the morning. The lights were amazing as they lit up the runway. And the planes landing and taking off. The dog running back and forth. Talking to me with his body language and grunts.
A few years ago, I showed up in Elko. It had nearly been 18 years then, since I last walked away from there. Sure there were a couple of the old spots like the casinos and and the building where I started my tattoo career.
It used to be home.
But it wasn't anymore. Things have changed so much I could barely recognize it.
The old titty bar I used to frequent was still there but my want to go in had changed quite a bit. Hell, I didn't even get out of my car. I just drove around to a few familiar places and then found a place to fill up.
I used to have some great times there. But I wasn't inclined to relive them at all.
Even the people coming in and out of the gas station were unfamiliar to me. And I literally knew everyone there. Not anymore.
I was a stranger in the crowd. Filling up. Not even a smile from any local and as weird as it sounds, I was comfortable knowing that Elko forgot about me as much as I thought I had forgot about it.
I used to think a lot about home being this cowtown in the valley where I grew up. I thought for sure that even if I gave everyone notice that I was coming, people would be up in arms about me finally coming there.
As if they were all going to ride out red carpets. And welcome me with a parade and the key to the city.
Kev finally came home!
Jajajajaja. I didn't really think that.
But seriously, I went and visited friends I haven't seen in thirty years or less. I went to tattoo shop to work next to a friend who just wasn't interested in anything I had to offer and was out of the shop most of the time I was there.
Anything, that I remembered about it was different. The town was way smaller when you have a car. It literally took three minutes to cross town when it felt like it took two hours to walk it when I was kid.
All the farm land there had been turned to neighborhoods. There were a few stores that were exactly where I remember but there were quite a few more that I don't remember ever being there.
All my childhood friends have grown up. Have kids of their own. Have their own places to live. They are so far from what I imagined them to be like. So far from what they had said themselves, what they were going to be like.
I'm sure it sounds crazy, but maybe I am too. Maybe I'm nothing at all, like I said I was going to be like.
But I did say I was going to be a tattooer.
They said yeah, but in prison.
I never made it to prison. I'm sure I may of had, perhaps if I stayed in California. Maybe I would have. Or worse.
Never been one to begin with.
I met my son.
I was happy to see that he was more than I imagined. I mean that every possible standard was met. He even lived in the same house I left him in with his mother so many years before.
We took a trip to the coast.
It was the longest we spent together alone. Most of the week I was there I spread myself truly thin, but that was the best time I had the whole week.
I wish I took more time with him rather than finding where my home was.
It was nice seeing all the people who did come through. And it was nice to make extra money to fund the trip but the expense of time was never met by what pennies were made.
I visited with old friends. I saw the home where I grew up. It looked way different. But it wasn't home.
And the longer I stayed there, the more I wanted to go where I had come from.
I wanted to go home.
I have made a great home. It has the best people in it. Where I work, I have the best people there. My favorite people.
The best timeline I've had in awhile. It's pretty comfortable.
It isn't for everyone. That's a fact. It isn't for anyone. It's for me.
The place I call home now.
Sure. I experience a little hiraeth from time to time, but I know where I am as well. Experience tells me that going backward for the reason of experiencing a sense of home, isn't always a bad time. Eventually you will learn exactly where home is.
If you leave for any extended period of time you will realize where you want to go back to. And that is home.
It's more than what you make of it. It's where you leave your comfort. Everything else is an adventure of facing your insecurities.
And with that, I bid you good night.

02102016

A WORK IN PROGRESS.

I see that wattpad has updated.
Now I can add photos every time I want to. I could post the work I'm talking about doing or even photos of the moments and whatever.
That's a cool feature for sure.
The cool thing about using this site is that I can tell there is a whole team of technologically sound people all working together behind the scenes to make sure that this all goes down properly. Works easily. User friendly so any able opposable thumb using idiots can write a book here without a hitch.
Get his or her point across very easily. May not even have any idea how to write one. Just the urge to.
Man, I wish it was the same everywhere I went.
What would baseball be like if there was two people playing? Pitching, catching, and batting. That shit wouldn't be any fun to watch.
Okay. Take the super bowl for instance. The Panthers were the team to beat. They were expected to win.
They had all the players. Best offense. Second best defense.
For some reason, they lost.
That reason was that they weren't at their best. Which translates to me, that they had teammates not pulling their weight. Not just the quarterback, the whole team.
Maybe to some sports fanatic, I may sound like I don't know what I'm talking about. But the point is simple.
What if your doing some white water rafting? Everyone in your boat must do their job or you will be tossed about over irregular rifts in the currents.
Say you're a team of five? One on the rudder and four paddles in the water. You want to steer clear of rocks and the walls of the canyon and you're trying your best to make sure none of your friends fall out of the boat as you paddle your ass off and away from danger.
You look over and you see that there's one guy just enjoying the ride.
Smiling and pointing at the sights and paddle in the water, as you and your other pals are working your asses off. Sure, he paddles a little bit. But not really contributing.
This not what wattpad is about. I'm sure they're all focused on the same objective. How to make things even better. Brainstorming the next best option for the site.
This is something that is happening in my shop. I'm keeping this secret for the guy who isn't contributing. It isn't helpful to anyone but him.
All the while, I am forming a huge resentment over this responsibility and watching him continue to jack ass his way along the ride of our boat.
I begin to question my reasoning for holding on to this secret.
Look, if you're ever going to join a team of any sort. Please, always do your utmost best to always contribute yourself beyond your own thinking. Don't be fucked up and fuck off your chances to be totally fucking rad.
Don't be a know it all. There is always more.
Don't use excuses like, that's how I was taught, or that is all you know. When there is a team of people telling you a new way that is more effective and you choose to not listen.
Please learn your lessons only once. Why waste your time relearning old lessons. It's just dumb. I know, I've been dumb before.
My whole life has been subject to the microscope. The behavior has been dissected and gone over and ridiculed. I have laughed. I have cried. I have walked through life numb as fuck to my feelings and emotions. I've been over emotional at times.
But finally I'm on a team with what I thought were like minded individuals. Wanting the best for our shop and I have this guy who could care less in it.
Always do your best. Always.
People won't feel this way about you.
I'm only a dick if I don't like you. Sadly, history is only kind to those who are.
Our lives cross paths for a reason. I'm not always sure of life's intent. Who can be?
Thanks wattpad. You're doing great things behind the scenes for a guy like me. You have a rad team.
Don't be afraid to advance in your trade, your talents, or your life. Keep learning. Nobody wants to lose you if you're pulling your weight. Make it hard to fire you.
It's simple free advice. Take it or leave it. Good night my friend and thanks for the read.

02112016

  Who knew that words spoken so softly could weigh so much? In the corner of my mind the dust creeps up the corners. Building on top of itself,  a mound that rounds out the edges.
  The truth of the matter is that it's dark where I hide the whispers. It never sees the light of good reason. It's shadow hides in mine.
   The truth is that I'm angry.
   I'm angry about words spoken. Words unspoken. Words from the corners of your eyes.
   Words cannot describe how angry I am inside.
   I can not push. I can not lead. I can not take you to the heaven you desire. Nor can I pull you from the depths to which you have fallen.
   The world does not revolve on my back. It doesn't spin on my finger.
     I'm angry that I have no control over people places and things.
  I have no control over any noun which can be pronounced.
   I'm like the dust building in the corners of my mind. Waiting for a rain. Hoping it will be heavy enough to wash it all away.  Until then I wait.
   Like a spider in the upper corner, a freshly built web in a house that has been sprayed just a week earlier. Hopefully waiting to catch you like the prey of my desired flavor.
   But unless you fly in, I can do nothing. But wait.
    My face in Palm. Wishing I made way better choices in my life. Wishing I had the sense to listen to those who were trying to guide me into better pasture. Grassier plains.
     Devine dimensions.
   If I could go back with what I know now.
   You will never truly know how passionate I am about your success. How brilliant I really think you are. How substantial you truly are in the world we both stand upon.
   I can only be so much like those dudes who helped me along the way, face palming themselves over the same very reasons.
    Keep up or get left hanging my friend. Days make years real fast.
   How many times does it take to relearn your lesson? I will never understand why it took so many for me.
   I have gone from living selfishly to selfishly wanting a better life for those I am closest. Giving all to the takers. Never expecting anything back.
   I only hunger for the fire. The fire to burn inside me again. The emotion of ambition to overtake me once more. To train me. To feed me. To feed my life. To overcome the lives of those around me so that we can burn bright enough that the sun itself takes notice.
    Stack us together, uniting the flames burning hotter. Illuminating our motions. Casting shadows. Chasing the darkness from us. Draining the cold of its Arctic feel.
   That feeling of hearts beating loudly. That feeling of cold air in deep breaths. That exhilaration that comes when achieving the unexpected.
    That's what I'm longing for.
   Not happiness. Not stability.      That feeling of climbing. Digging your escape. That running with the wolves type of feeling. That band of brothers against the world kind of feeling.
   That kind of fire.
    That " THIS IS MY PIT " kind of feeling. I want that! I want it so bad. That dumb youth gone wild kind of feeling.
   That Ollie kick flip to 50/50 to nollie kind of feeling.
     That Hood Ornament on a Freight Train kind of fucking feeling. All bad ass but still grimy.
     Yeah. I wish I could find that again. I wish for that, "I could do what they said I couldn't do" kind of feeling.
   I am imperfectly perfect.
   I was inhumanly human.
   I will not die a never was.
  Real shit. Whatever. I'm out.

02122016
The topic of today is family.
Sometimes they are really close. Like a one of the those photos in magazines. All huddled together playing some board game and laughing along.
You know the picture where it's a bright sunny day at the park. Dad is sporting that apron that says Dad Chef Beware. Everyone sits around the picnic table with that plastic cover smiling with there hot dogs and solo cups of kook aid or ice tea or whatever.
Maybe it's the family that all sits together at lil Scotty's baseball game waiting for lil Scotty to score that Homer. Everyone cheering him on as he runs the bases.
Maybe you remember the picture or you can form it in your imagination.
Everything along with the shiny mat paper. Turning pages in better home. Looking through one of those better living mags. Or family health magazines that you run across in the dentist office.
Maybe you're like me.
Maybe, just maybe, you think those pics are great, but they're total horse shit. The illusion of someone's dream of what family in America looks like. Some pumped up bullshit if you ask me.
My dads home was broken. My home was broken and all my kids are from broken homes. Weirdly or not, I'm sure their kids' homes may be broken.
We are latch key kids. Kids who unlock the doors to get in when our parents aren't home.
My sister and I have a half brother and sister.
I have 4 kids from different moms.
My sister has a daughter who's father isn't around because he passed away.
Getting my whole family together for a BBQ is something yet to be done.
We have a family big enough to play a softball game. We really do. But that isn't seemingly going to ever happen.
Those photographed memories of family in magazines just aren't realistic.
I don't know if I will have all my kids together in the same place. They are all living out their lives already. I don't have to worry about them anymore. But I do.
I would love to catch a second in time with them all together while we play a game of TROUBLE or YAHTZEE. All laughing as I BBQ up some ribs or a brisket. Some of them smoking like one of those Newport ads.
While the grand kids are playing kick ball in the background with a soccer ball on green grass with out dog shit in it.
But I'm afraid, it will never happen.
My younger sister and mom don't get along.
My mother has a different favorite depending who is in trouble.
My brother and I are twelve years apart.
My other sister has more problems than she knows what to do with, and limes to escape her problems by helping others. Taking on her problems as if they were hers.
If we all got together at the same time, the sky would seriously fall. I'm not smack talking about my family here.
Don't get it wrong.
The pictures of what they portray the American family to be, is crazy. Crazy unrealistic at least for me. And many of my friends. And many of my clients.
It just isn't like that at all.
I have those times more with friends than I ever do with my family.
And then it goes. Who is the family you choose? Are they even more close to you than your blood family? Is the family you have chosen knowing more about you than your blood family?
Probably.
Hell if you have read all the way to here from the beginning you know more about me than most people.
My family doesn't even know that I write here. Not yet. At least as far as I know they don't.
There are days I wouldn't trade my family for anything. I love them dearly. But that doesn't mean I fucking like them all the time.
Sure.. I want to tell you different.
I would love to paint you a rad pic of what it is in my mind. But it just isn't realistic.
Everyone of my relationships with my family has been strained in some way. And it has also grown stronger in some way.
It's a balance. It's a tight rope.
Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it's awesome. But honestly it has never been a picture in a magazine that depicts the family in America that you have ever seen in a magazine.
I love my family. Chosen or not.
I miss you bud. I've been missing you your whole life.

02132016
  The day before Valentines Day.
   Man the shop was buzzing today. There were people of every genre in today. People of every color it seemed.
   Well except Asian. There aren't very many Asians here in Rapid City and the few that are do not seem to be getting tattooed at our shop today.
   We had a lesbian couple. We had old and young couples. We even had a couple of family members who came in and got tattooed together.
   The conversations were far and wide and everybody was working.
   You used to be able to hear everyone working in a tattoo shop. Everybody used to use conventional coil tattoo machines. And they're loud.
   But now as they are, we all use rotary tattoo machines. So I can literally hear everyone's conversations. Yep.
   Rotary tattoo machines are practically silent. Electric motors that push ink.
  Pretty epic day honestly.
   My favorite moment in the shop is when everyone is in my home,(Our shop) and we are all working, laughing and too busy to answer the phone. It's the best feeling ever in our shop.
   Four tats and a couple piercings. It wasn't bad.
  And the end of the day, I'm on top of the world, right? And then it dawns on me.
   I've been putting it off for a couple of days. I knew it was coming.
   I never leave early enough.
  And we always make plans right after work to eat and so I really haven't took the time to do anything for Valentine's Day.
  I did get in some stuff that I ordered last week, but I didn't get the little things that make a gal realize that she has one awesome guy in her hands.
   I looked at some stuff online. But by the time you order everything for delivery, it becomes very expensive and then you don't know what you're really getting plus, I am ordering at a time when everyone else already has an order in, and I can never remember the addy I need to put in for the salon.
    And the salon is next door to a flower shop. And I still couldn't navigate the interwebs. Jajajajaja
   So I head out to a store here where I can get all that I need. And would you believe it?
   Evidently I am not the only last minute sap in town.
From on top of the world to a low point in less than three and a half minutes.
   The store is crawling with men pricing flowers and candy. The card aisle was populated with married men and some of their kids all searching out a gift for mom. For the wifey. For a girlfriend.
   And there was me. Right along with them. Reading each card carefully making sure I got one that said what I wanted to say without having to write it. One that wasn't corny. One that wasn't so fluffy that it seemed like I just grabbed one and walked out. One as unique as the one I wanted to read it.
   The flowers and candy. Not so cheap that it screamed where I got them. Not so expensive that it hurt me to know they would die. Even though they will at some point.
  The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.)
   February 14th was chosen because it was the day that people found that birds started mating around or on that date.
Bird mating season. Awesome.
    Even though Valentines Day is as old as the 5th century and it seems that it took a long time to get to where it's at now and yet even now, as old as it is, men like me and all these other fellows still last minute shopping the damn holiday.
   I love Tancy more than it shows. And I know she knows that I do.
   I have never been in a relationship sober. I used to get high to tolerate the life I was living with other women in my life.
   I don't feel the need with her.
   She takes on the responsibility of a mother, never being a mother herself. She loves everyone of the kids and knows my struggles with each one of them. 
   She is a voice of sense and reason when it seems I do not have one.
   I am a much better person when I am around her. I definitely subside my more negative characteristics when she is with me. I wouldn't want to misrepresent myself when I am with her.
   I love her a whole lot.
   But yes.  I have to last minute shop on a day with all these other saps mostly because I cannot hide from the fact that I'm an average imperfect male human.
   I know. Sad but true.
   I'm a human.