Rick's creations

I am getting divorced, I’ve been separated for several months now. And for several reasons, not the least of which is that I’m not getting any younger, I am highly motivated to find a fulfilling new relationship. Recently I’ve subscribed to several dating sites and I’ve been pretty aggressive about surveying the landscape of available women.

In fact, I think I have developed Dating Site Addiction (DSA)! Instead of watching sports on TV or reading books like I used to, I’m scrolling through profile after profile of women. I keep telling myself to stop, but its to no avail. The allure of the perfect mate is just too strong.

Contrary to what people might think about people who use dating sites, I’ve been very impressed with the attributes so many of these women; there are many, many ladies who are well educated, physically fit, and attractive, at least in their photographs. Now many of those photographs may be from 1997, but they look pretty good! I feel a little bit like the mouse in the cocaine maze, I just keep swiping across for more pictures and another hit of dopamine.

The photograph themselves till quite a story. Most of them are reasonable shots of women with their dogs, or their children, or on vacation; there are lots of pictures of women on ski slopes or beaches or boats. But then you come across some inexplicable stuff – like the women who have only posted photos wearing sunglasses. Do they think they will never have to display their eyes? Or occasionally you see women looking particularly grim, like a mug shot. I guess they are trying to say, I might as well show you my worst and get that over with. Or they are establishing dominance from the get-go. And of course, there are many who want to display an ample quantity of skin. I don’t really have a problem with that, I like pretty breasts as much as anyone, but in many cases, it really wasn’t the best decision.

I must admit that, being a member of the lower order of species, that is, men, I do always look at the photographs first. Attractiveness is probably the first thing on my priority list. I should know better, but I also know that all the other men that I talk to feel pretty much the same way, so the whole gender is irreparably flawed on the score. I’m aware that it doesn’t take very long in a relationship until you discover that enjoying conversations with your partner is a lot more important than what they look like. But I can’t help it. I’m a helpless jellyfish in the presence of physical beauty.

So, I just start scrolling, look at photographs, hit that “like” button if I find the woman attractive, and swipe it away when I don’t. I have to say, though, I really find this highly troubling. I’m really conscious of the fact that every one of those photographs represents a human being, a person who is just as hopeful as I that she will find a breakthrough relationship, and just as disappointed when it doesn’t happen. I know that many of these ladies are extraordinarily nice people, kind, honest, intelligent, and ready to give their hearts to the right gentleman. They deserve better than to be scanned like tomatoes at the farmer’s market. But I keep squeezing the metaphorical fruit.

As for my own results on the dating sites, well, I’m not getting quite as many likes as I had hoped or expected. I think my photos look pretty good; I usually have my dogs in my front of my face, I don’t wear sunglasses or display a lot of skin, and my photographs were all taken after 2010. I reckon I’m just not as good-looking as I thought I was. I’m thinking about hiring a professional photographer and make-up artist.

Maybe it’s not the pictures, maybe my problem is the profile. I certainly have not unlocked the key to creating an irresistible profile. I’ve tried short and simple figuring nobody’s going to read it anyway. I’ve tried serious and heartfelt, but what the hell, I’m not sure I have that gene. Right now, I’m going with humor; but the problem with humor is it needs to be humorous. So that’s not working very well either. I think my next iteration will just be outrageous and bizarre, so that the women who read it will be compelled to inquire further about just what the hell is wrong with me.

As for the profiles that I read, a lot of them are very much alike. Most of the women seem to have had good careers and are highly educated. They are very active physically, they enjoy running, cycling, Pilates, yoga, etc. They love to travel and talk about all the exotic places they want to go. Being at the beach is big, very big. And of course, the one universal thread in every single profile is coffee. I’ve come to believe that the life blood of the human race is coffee. (Interestingly, one of the dating sites to which I subscribe asks everyone how they feel about marijuana, and so almost every profile starts with “I don’t care for marijuana.” I never thought marijuana was so important. It’s certainly not in the same league as coffee.)

I’m not making light of or poking fun at these profiles. I think they are necessary and honest and often useful. If I were to tell the truth about myself, which I always do, I would write a lot of the same things, except I’m not that wild about the beach and I don’t drink much coffee. I love coffee, but unfortunately coffee doesn’t love me. Anyway, I read and try to glean what I can from the profiles. I definitely like intelligent women and I certainly like a sense of humor and I surely prefer women who are physically active. So, reading their profiles is mandatory.

Still, I wish the profiles could get at what’s really important about somebody and what makes a successful relationship. Once I heard a happiness expert explain that everyone looks for people who have similar interests, but there’s no evidence that similar interests make for successful relationships. What is important is that people are complementary, that they learn from each other, and grow together and salve their symmetrical wounds. After all, who wants to be involved with someone who has all the same interests that you have? If I match up with a woman who is as obsessed with golf as I am, how will I tell her, no, I don’t want to play with you, I want to go play with my friends, don’t you want to do macramé or quilting or something? So, my take is it’s great to have some things in common, like dogs, coffee, clean sheets, and so on, but it’s best not to take it to extremes.

One of my dating sites gives you a percentage of how you well you match with someone. I had a 94% match with one woman! I explained to her that we were fated to be together and it would be really bad karma if she wouldn’t sleep with me. Astonishingly, I never heard from her again.

Here’s the other part that bothers me a lot about the dating sites. They all tell me when a woman has looked at my profile. And sometimes it’s a woman to whom I’ve already expressed a ‘like”! Yet frequently, those women don’t contact me! How can that be?! They looked at my profile, they know that I like them and yet they chose not to contact me! I know, right? The obvious conclusion is that I just have failed to express adequately who I am; how else could one comprehend that they could still swipe right past me? I find this rejection highly discouraging.

I think, I hope, we all feel this way. That if a prospective mate really knew us, they would fall in love. That we are all special. This is of course totally true and totally untrue. But I really am unique, just like all the other eight billion humans.

Obviously, I don’t know what women want. Do they want someone who is highly successful? (I wasn’t particularly; just somewhat.) Do they want some who is knockout handsome? Do they want someone who is really kind and considerate and gentle? That’s me, at least with my dogs. I guess I’m just too nice a guy, and we all know that nice guys finish last. As you can see, I really don’t know anything about what women want, and I never have.

However, I do think that the most important thing to know is that every single woman, every single person, is different. Just when I think I’ve learned something from the last interaction, the exact opposite is true in the next one. That’s one of the reasons why these dating sites are so addictive, the endless and beautiful, beautiful variations of human beings. It never gets old.

What I wish the dating sites could really show you is the important stuff about a person. When she wakes up in the morning, does she start thinking about what will make her happy that day – or what will make her partner happy? What would the cashier at the grocery store say after he has processed her order? Does she tell stories about her friends to her other friends, and take pleasure in their misfortune? If there’s a big spider in the kitchen, does she take off her shoe and obliterate it, or start squealing for help? Why can’t the sites unveil the important stuff?

I’d like to thank you very much for reading this piece. It felt really good that I got a lot of this off of my chest. I’m sure I have a lot more to say, and I may say it at some time in the future. But for now, I’ve spent way too much time writing this and I neglected my swiping. There are so, so many great women out there, and so little time. Here I come!

Yesterday I had a conversation with a woman, let’s call her Cathy. She got in touch with me because she heard a speech I made last week at a fundraiser for the fight against pancreatic cancer.

Cathy has been battling pancreatic cancer for several years, I don’t recall exactly how many. Her cancer metastasized from her pancreas to other parts of her body, most notably her lungs where she says she has many lesions. Because of this she has never been a candidate for surgery or radiation, her only treatment option has been chemotherapy. She’s been doing chemotherapy for several years, which may have extended her life, but offers very little or no hope for remission.

Pancreatic cancer is pretty much the perfect disease, the king of all diseases. It has no clear symptoms until it is generally too late for it to be treatable. It spreads rapidly to many of the vital organs in the body. It is very hard to detect, even when it is suspected, because it is hard to see on any kind of scan. And it leads to a long and unpleasant death. However, medical science is making strides, the five-year-old survival rate has more than doubled to 13% in recent years, and lots of innovative clinical trials are under way. Its not hopeless, but the odds against survival are daunting, and everyone who gets it knows this. And for those who are lucky enough to have success in treatment, there are usually reoccurrences that require further treatment, which may or may not be successful.

The standard chemotherapy regimen for pancreatic cancer is called Folfirinox, and it consists of infusions every two weeks of a virulent cocktail of four different poisons. These poisons attack the fastest growing cells in your body, which are cancer cells. Of course, they damage a lot of the other cells in your body as well, and the list of side effects from this protocol is longer than a CVS sales receipt, including nausea, diarrhea, mouth sores, neuropathy, and much, much more.

Cathy told me she has been hospitalized three times in the past six months from her reactions to all of the chemotherapy. She’s also lost a great deal of weight, she said she’s down to about 90 pounds. This is typical for people going through such intensive chemo.

I was much luckier than Cathy. I am a nine-year survivor of pancreatic cancer, and the reason I am still here is that I had two tumors that were localized around my pancreas, with no spread to other parts of my body. So, they were able to treat my tumors with chemo and radiation, and eventually remove them with surgery. Of course, none of that was as “easy” as it sounds; my chemotherapy was also arduous, and the surgery was complex and extensive. But my situation was basically a best-case scenario with pancreatic cancer.

 I’ve had three minor reoccurrences since the surgery, which have all been treatable with more chemo, radiation, and in the last instance, surgery to remove a small wedge of my lung. I’ve now been clean for almost 4 years.

Cathy got in touch with me because she hoped that there might be something in my story that could be useful for her, maybe some innovation or different type of treatment that might be helpful in her case. Of course I was willing to talk to her, though I knew I had a little to offer. And I think that she knew that too, but felt it was worth the attempt.

Cathy is nearing the stage, or perhaps has reached the stage, when doing more chemotherapy seems overwhelming and futile. And having gone through the same regimen of chemotherapy for 20 rounds, I completely understand.

Part of the accepted conversation about cancer is the phrase “never, ever give up.“ I’m pretty sure that the people who say that have never gone through extended periods of chemotherapy. The eight months in which I underwent chemo treatments was the most difficult period of my life; it was physically and emotionally overwhelming. The physical part – nausea, diarrhea, neuropathy, lethargy and depression, overpowering fatigue – was truly awful. I lost 40 pounds in eight months.

But the emotional part was even more difficult, lying in bed, believing that I was likely to die before too long, knowing that the treatment was just delaying what was likely inevitable, and understanding that it would be a miserable and prolonged decline.

I am a very different person today because of cancer. I have neuropathy in my feet because chemotherapy killed many of the nerve cells; I don’t have as much feeling in my toes and on the edges of my feet, so they are cold all the time, even in the summer. I don’t sleep very well, and I’m tired pretty much all of the time. I can just lean against the wall and fall asleep. I’m also unsteady on my feet, I don’t think I could pass a sobriety test, like walking in a straight line or bouncing on one foot.

I get very drowsy after eating, and often I have to take a nap. Conversely, frequently at night I am unable to sleep, and I generally wake up in the middle of the night. I can’t get back to sleep unless I get up and eat.

But most importantly, my anxiety level is always pretty high. I’d say I’ve always been high-strung, but this is a whole different level. I’m generally worried about something all the time, and usually about things that are really just not very important. And I often feel depressed. I’ve come to believe that the anxiety and depression are a result of chemical changes and imbalances in my body, and not that related to anything going on in my life. It’s giving me a very different perspective about the nature of depression.

I have tried a lot of ways to mitigate these effects, and some of them help, but mostly I just try to cope with them. The quality of my life is still very good. But the fact of cancer in my life is never far from the surface of my consciousness.

But I know that I am still incredibly lucky. For most who are afflicted with pancreatic cancer, the reality is like Cathy’s story. It’s hard for me to even imagine what her life has been like these past few years, the suffering that she has endured, and I’m better able to understand than most. But I think she’s done with her fight now, and gearing up for her final stages.

I really don’t know anything about Cathy, her career, her relationships, what she loved or what she hated. She did tell me she continued to work up until very recently, which I find amazing. I know it’s important to for sufferers to continue to have a purpose and to find meaning, but it also had to have taken a tremendous amount of determination and toughness for her to keep working.

I don’t know anything about her family. I don’t know if she was loved by two people or 20 people or 200 people, but I have no doubt that she has touched a lot of people and made a difference to a lot of people in her life. I could just tell by her strength and her grace.

I really wish I’d been able to help Cathy. But I’m pretty sure that there’s not anything more that can be done for her than what she is already doing. Still, at the end of our conversation, she was effusive in thanking me, and what really struck me the most was that she told me she was really glad she had gotten in touch with me. Even though we both knew that I had not shared anything in terms of useful information.

But what she said was that it was just good to talk to somebody who understood. Just good to share with another person who comprehended what it has been like for her as she has gone through all of this overwhelming suffering.

When I thought I was dying, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my life was all about. I didn’t have a particularly great career, I didn’t make a lot of money, I didn’t do things that impacted a lot of peoples’ lives. I did raise three terrific children, three people who have turned out to be wonderful human beings. This is the most important achievement of my life.

But what I realized when I was going through the worst of my ordeal was that the only thing that mattered to me was that I had made a difference in the lives of those who I had known. That I had helped to make their lives happier, more satisfying, more meaningful in some way.

In the end, that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? That we can make and do make connections with other people at the deepest and most authentic level. That we really touch the lives of other people and allow them to touch us. As far as I can tell, that is the true meaning of life.

So that is what I heard when Cathy said “I’m glad I got in touch with you.” And even though I’m feeling very sad today, Cathy, I’m glad you got in touch with me too. I hope you will go peacefully, knowing that you made life better for everyone that you touched. I know that you did.

After a long hiatus I finally just decided to paint whatever I could find. Purple is my favorite color to paint.

I took this photo of Dan and Dusty the Devil Dog around 2016 in Riverbend Park. This is charcoal and paint, which I’m sure you’re not supposed to do, which is one of the benefits of not having much formal training.

This is from a couple of photos I liked. I’d rather paint real things or my own photos, but I don’t get out much. Painting someone else’s is better than not painting at all.

This is from a photo of an iris down the street. I always prefer painting things from my own experience. This one is pretty big.

Charcoal, before a hike in Giles County. My brother Mike and Denali (right).

This is watercolor. I can do this upstairs with little fuss, as opposed to my messy studio in the rec room where I get oil paint all over everything. So this is a (better) alternative to TV.

This is the first thing I’ve done without any model, it was just an idea that became a vision. It’s not great but I’m still proud of creating something from nothing.

I like bulldogs. Couldn’t think of anything else to paint. This one is pretty big.