Greetings to all the regular RPR readers, and welcome to all the new ones. Dozens of people subscribed in August alone, and I’m primed and ready to fully underwhelm you with the content I provide. Seriously though, whoever has been sharing this little newsletter and urging others subscribe, please keep it up. The numbers are growing at a surprisingly fast pace, and the dopamine hit I get every time I get an email alerting me to a new subscriber is addicting.
If this is your first RPR email — besides the welcome message that gets delivered as soon as you subscribe (hopefully) — here’s what you can expect from this newsletter:
Every fourth Sunday of the month (unless it’s our “Floodversary,” which you’ll learn more about in this newsletter, or I’m late), everyone who’s subscribed to the newsletter will receive the monthly email on the project. If you’re not subscribed, you can still see the posts I put up on the Substack website, but you won’t receive the email updates.
Good Things Did Happen
September 1, 2022, marks the one-year anniversary of the day our home was flooded, and my family was forced to rebuild the entire first floor of the house — not literally, a small team of contractors, flooring professionals, neighbors and even a guy in a Tool cover band did the actual work, but you get the idea. If you would’ve told me when I was tossing my furniture and personal belongings into a dumpster that in a year’s time I would step out of a home with a completely rebuilt first floor to walk my children to their bus stop, I wouldn’t have believed you.
The future was something I couldn’t even imagine a year ago. All I could do was take everything one day at a time, hoping all the while that another unexpected disaster — a flood, a family death, an accident — didn’t destroy the tenuous grasp I had on the shit, my shit if you will, that I was just barely holding together.
On the wall across from my second floor landing is a sign that reads “Good Things Are Going to Happen.” I stared at that sign for hours on the night of the flood, the night I watched the Perkiomen Creek creep up toward my second floor, one step at a time, like some variation of Chinese water torture. I can’t tell you how many times throughout the past year I’ve looked at that sign and thought about tearing it down and throwing it out. I’ve given the sign the finger many times, and I’ve even yelled “F*ck You!” at it.
But here’s the thing: That stupid sign was damn near prophetic. Good things did happen — and lots of them. In the year following the flood, one of the most challenging (if not THE most challenging) ordeals of my life, here are just some of the positive things that I have experienced:
A level of gratitude that I didn’t previously know was even possible. Between the physical help, the financial assistance and the emotional support (so many calls, texts and emails) I received, I was transformed from a cynical borderline curmudgeon who was easing into angry-old-dude-who-hates-the-world status to something similar to an optimist.
New friendships. I’m not talking about acquaintances here. Acquaintances are a dime a dozen. What I’m talking about are legitimate friendships, the kind that are surprisingly difficult to establish when you’re a middle-aged suburban family with a couple of kids in tow. Johnny (check out Services on Q for everything from home theatre installation to major repairs) and Tara are the most notable of the new friends we’ve made. They essentially camped out in our flood-ravaged residence during the initial weeks of the rebuild. Sharing that experience helps you bypass the years of tedious small talk and awkward meetups necessary to sustain a lasting-friendship.
A peek into what was built wrong. If it weren’t for a flood that forced us to essentially gut the first level of our home and start over, we would’ve never seen the many things that were done wrong when our house was built (1960) and renovated (2013). Because of this inside look we could only ever obtain through a natural disaster, we were able to fix some major issues while everything was still opened up.
A new passion project. Like my friend Shawn says, I process things by writing about them. River People Rebuild has not only been therapeutic for me, it’s also been creatively rewarding. Perhaps the most rewarding part of all: People actually read this — even a notoriously book-averse friend who happens to own a giant blue and white school bus, who could’ve easily just subscribed to shut me up but instead reads, engages and shares regularly!
An airtight excuse for screwing up. Look, I’ve never been above pulling the tragedy card when my disorganized ass was in a jam, and this flood has been no exception. Is telling an editor that you’re going to need an extension on that deadline you simply forgot about because you’re home was just flooded even if said recent event took place nearly a year unethical? Maybe. Ok, probably. But is it effective? You bet your ass it is.
A newfound appreciation for the dumpster industry. A lot goes into those receptacles we use to get rid of our shit.
A new and improved perspective on what’s important. When your home is nearly destroyed by muddy creek water, you start to take inventory on what’s truly important. Right before the flood, I was in the midst of a pathetic, low-level mid-life crisis over the fact that I was turning 40. Natural disasters suck in a lot of ways, but they are super effective at snapping you out of your petty, self-involved bullshit.
Despite all the good that’s come out of this, however, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a truly horrific side-effect of this ordeal: The term “Floodversy” that my wife insists on using. I don’t care how hard she tries, Floodversy will not become a thing in our newly rebuilt house.
New Content
For the first time in a while, there’s a new post on the River People Rebuild site appropriately titled, “Be A Dick ..”
Here’s a little sampling:
The first piece of advice Dog offer proved to be the most pivotal. Be a Dick, he said to me several times throughout the conversation. That advice hasn’t always been the easiest to follow through on, but it’s certainly been the most beneficial. See, one of my most self-destructive traits is my obsession with coming off as a nice guy. Don’t get me wrong, I can be a total asshole, and I have been many, many times throughout my life. Those incidents are generally either for comedic purposes or because I lost my cool over something that doesn’t matter, though.
Over the next few months, there’s going to be a lot of new content on the site, including an untitled Q&A column (suggestions anyone?) from experts in the disaster and climate-change fields. I’ve already lined up the first two Q&A subjects.
Also, Substack added a Guest Post function that supposedly makes it easy for other to post. If you’ve got any ideas, pitch me!
RPR’s ‘Moment of Zen’
Back before Trevor Noah was at helm, a chap name Jon Stewart ran “The Daily Show” in between doing stand up and tearing Tucker Carlson a new asshole. There was a little segment at the end of the show called today’s Moment of Zen. These little moments — often 30 seconds or less — ran the gamut from ridiculous adults acting ridiculously to children describing dinosaurs. Here’s River People Rebuild’s own Moment of Zen:
Want me to write about something specific? Let me know
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Til Next Time,
Jared