My recent stroke has compelled me to reevaluate my life and goals. Here are the ten issues I am most focused on. 

10. Keeping My Sanity

Have you ever been hit by a torrent of water from a fire hose? 

The past year and a half has felt like an unrelenting flood affecting us all. POTUS issued too many Executive Orders to count and made unilateral decisions—without Congress—to dismantle laws and regulations that protect our health, freedom, and safety; started wars; deported hundreds of thousands; indicted anyone who has troubled him; and suppressed voter rights. 

He’s rallied his political party to follow blindly, all in the name of... wait, anyone with a functioning brain can see this is just a power grab meant to distract from ongoing grift scandals and the Epstein files controversy. 

9. Politics

I lived in Washington, D.C., in the seventies and early eighties for nearly ten years. I could see the top of the Capitol dome from my apartment on Capitol Hill. In my last days, I walked past that building on my way to work. 

I’ve been close to power before, and I’ll tell you the problem with politics and political power is that it’s always about holding on to power if you have it or taking it if you don’t. 

In both cases, you’ve got to fight to hold on to it, sometimes by any means necessary. All while telling your constituents that you’re doing it for them. 

And I’ll grant that some may believe their rhetoric, but it’s always about power in the back rooms and alleys, sometimes at any cost. It’s been like this for centuries, so why should we stop now? 

Maybe we should.

8. The Second American Civil War

All we talk about are these wars: the U.S. and Israel against Iran, the Israel-Hamas war, or the one we all seemed to forget, Ukraine versus Russia. 

What we don’t talk enough about is the war here at home. The war of Americans versus Americans. 

We seem to be constantly warring now. Or at least I get that impression from all the videos that flood my Facebook page, Instagram, Bluesky, and my YouTube channel. 

Whenever I check my phone or computer, it seems like a war between Americans is happening somewhere. The wars that make no sense are the ones between Americans over the dumbest things. I mean, dumb. 

Sometimes, somewhere, one set of Americans has stopped believing that this country belongs to all Americans and that we’re all going to succeed as a nation or we’re all going down together. 

7. My Health

Speaking of health, I’m still in recovery mode after my mild stroke this past February. 

It’s been a little over five months, and I’m still struggling to get my head and the rest of me around the trauma that hit me like a hammer to the body. 

Short-term memory loss, difficulty finding words when speaking, the sense that the world is operating at a different speed, and, man, those sleep patterns that make no sense, up and down and down and up (thank goodness, it’s getting better every night). 

I recently joked that I’m spending more time in doctors’ and therapists’ (speech, occupational, physical, and behavioral) offices than at home. 

I’m grateful to have health insurance to cover it. I know a lot of people don’t, and that reflects poorly on this nation.

6. When I Grow Up

When I graduated from California State University, Long Beach two years ago at 75, I thought I would go to graduate school to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. 

But the realities of tuition, age, time, and then my health made me realize there must be a better way to spend my Act Three. Then it came to me. 

I want to write, read, travel, visit a few hundred museums, watch a few thousand films, attend a couple hundred plays, maybe check in on an expert’s lecture on writing or the state of America, volunteer to share the wisdom of my life with the next generations, and lie at the edge of America on a beach with my feet touching the water, close my eyes, and hear nothing but the sound of the ocean overwhelming me. 

Yeah, that sounds good.

5. Speaking of Travel

Last year, we went to New York, and it was the first time in a long time. It felt strange. It felt new, as if I had never been born there or grown up there (Read THIS). 

I didn’t make it to Washington, D.C., because of my stroke. But I know I have to go. I haven’t been back to D.C. in, I don’t even remember, maybe 24 or 25 years. I know it was after 9-11, or at least I think it was. 

I’ve been told I won’t recognize the city. The places I stayed when I first got there in the early seventies are now beyond my financial reach. 

Yeah, I’m ready for that. I need to see for myself, see some friends I haven’t seen in a very long time, and do some research and interviews for my book/performance piece. 

Although I will never leave Southern California, I still have heartfelt connections to both cities that I will never sever. Too many good (and bad) memories still linger from my time in both cities. 

4. Our Home in Long Beach, California

We’re celebrating thirty-two years in Long Beach and twenty-eight years in our house this year. Trust me when I say that’s the longest I’ve ever stayed in one city and in one home, by a long shot. 

There’s something about living in the same city and house this long. You have history in the city. What began as a bedroom community for me turns into a place where the house you live in becomes something more. 

It’s not only an address in a city. The house at that address begins as a simple structure. It’s made of wood, metal, and inanimate materials. 

Then you give it life by what you bring into it. Contribute sweat equity and your spirit; it’s not just the decorations, the furniture, those inanimate objects; it’s the life you live there. 

It goes from just being a house to a home in a city where you have given and received in equal measures. 

3. Friends

I know many people, but that doesn’t mean anything if I can’t maintain and build my relationships because everyone, including me, is so damn busy, or we’re still afraid of being around too many people (Pandemic or these poltical times). 

Sometimes you settle for a phone call, a post on social media, or a text, and you lull yourself into thinking that’s fine enough, when it isn’t by a long shot. 

Then it hit me. Finding community as you get older is always going to be a challenge. It’s the curse of aging. Friends die or get sick, or they’d rather stay home instead of going out and partying. They tell you, “You should do the same.” 

I’m tempted for a nanosecond, and then I quickly remember what I said in number six above. 

You either get living, or you get dying. I’ll take the former. 

2. 78 this December

I thought turning 75 would be a crisis, but it wasn’t. 

There’s not much I can add that countless others haven’t already said. It’s going to happen whether you like it or not. Period. 

You can’t slow it down or pretend it won’t happen. Oh, it’s going to happen. I didn’t overthink my age this much, even when I turned 50. I celebrated turning 50 with joy, laughter, and gratitude for having made it that far. 

So why the anxiety over 78? It’s just a number that measures how long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. Even with the PTSD from my stroke and all the small things wrong with my body (and probably my mind), I’m alive and thriving. 

That must count for something. 

1. My Extended Family

My partner, Sumire; my sons, Antonio and Daichi; my brothers and sisters; my past wives and live-in partners (yes, I’ve been a very busy man); my cousins, seen and unseen; in-laws; all the folks bound together by DNA and blood; the family who has passed on, whose memories linger in my heart; and my decades of friends. 

I just wanted to tell them all that they are always on my mind. 

From the ancestors who touch Europe and Africa, from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic to the Bronx, New York; Brooklyn; Queens; Hartford, Connecticut; Washington, D.C.; Arlington, Texas; Los Angeles; and Long Beach, California, there is a trail of DNA, ancestry, friendships, and legacies that bind me to decades of memories I call “My Extended Family.” 

Love you all. You are forever in my heart.