6/18/2023

Hello Blog Readers,

There are so many ways and angles for me to approach this blog entry that it’s a little overwhelming. Maybe a chronological approach will suffice and won’t get me into too much trouble. So we’ll start this blog entry in the early months of 2020, right before the pandemic; right before a whole bunch of loss, heartbreak, and life-altering events; but immediately after my family had moved away from Red Bluff and I found myself alone in California. At that time, my students knew a few things about me: first, that I was the authentic, one-and-only Mr. Taylor – an almost caricature of myself who had an over-the-top handlebar mustache; enjoyed distance running; taught them math, law, and social science; worked hard to try to keep their small, Catholic high school going; was for some reason described by students as everything from ‘scary’ and ‘intimidating’ to ‘kind’ and ‘benevolent;’ who was perpetually alone outside of work and church; and, who in his spare time enjoyed fine steak and bourbon whiskey.

In fact, my penchant for Kentucky bourbon was so well-known that one time I provided a student’s family some legal advice on a minor matter, and in return instead of paying me in cash (which I refused), the family later thanked me over the holidays with a bottle of good bourbon. Their method of giving me the whiskey was a little suspect (their child walked into my classroom before school one day and handed me the (thankfully) unopened bottle of bourbon with a note explaining the gift, which I then had to hide away in my bag for the rest of the day, leaving me in a state of worry and anxiety over the ethics of (a) my student delivering to me their parents’ gift of whiskey during school hours; and (b) a teacher having a bottle of whiskey stowed away in his bag over the course of a school day), but these are the sort of dilemmas that arise when you practice law and teach in a small town at a small school where you often end up being friends with students’ families.

Anyways, by the early months of 2020, many students more-or-less could tell that Mercy was winding down as a school in light of its financial struggles, and this thing called the ‘coronavirus’ was becoming a more-common topic of discussion throughout the community with whispers of a potential quarantine or lockdown on the way. A TA of mine named Tommy one day asked me what I would do if everything shut down and Mercy closed its doors. I responded with something like, “I don’t know…it’s too depressing to think about. Maybe I’ll go to Kentucky and learn how to make bourbon whiskey.” Thereafter, we spent (a highly productive five minutes) brainstorming what I should call my future whiskey (for some reason it would be called Judge Robbie T’s Fine Kentucky Sour Mash Whiskey even though I’m not a judge and I do not go by Robbie T), its logo (a picture of me with my mustache), and its slogan (“For Quali-T, trust Judge Robbie T’s!”).

Here was the fine sketch that we came up with for the product. In hindsight, I probably wasn’t the greatest teacher or mentor to these kids.

So with that background in mind, fast-forward a bit to November 2021. I had just moved out of Red Bluff, and had spent around a month exploring Michigan, New York, New Hampshire, and a bunch of Revolutionary War and Civil War battlegrounds through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia before dropping into Kentucky to spend some time with my family in the area. Unfortunately, we were still in that weird limbo stage of the pandemic where some places did not want to let go of coronavirus restrictions, and so it was kind of tough touring bourbon country, but I still had a memorable and enjoyable time visiting the Woodford Reserve and Maker’s Mark Distilleries. We finished that trip with a dinner here in Louisville. Because it was winter with the sun going down early, and because I had had a bit to drink over the course of the day, I only remember seeing the city lights at that time and thinking to myself, “Wow! This is a big city.”

Kentucky also just had a lot of charm in the fall.

Fast forward again! Now to June 2022. I had just moved to Marquette, started work on my job, and was eager to participate in my first Zoom conference with the other Catholic Diocesan and Archdiocesan stewardship and development directors around the country. You see, each month nationwide all of the people doing what I do come together through Zoom to check in on each other, discuss current trends, and present and debate on best practices in the field. That month in June was a sort of ‘check up’ month for directors though, and in that spirit they had a psychologist of some sort (Labor Psychologist? Is that a thing?) presenting. She started the presentation with a simple, anonymous response question to the group: Are you feeling spiritually and emotionally satisfied in your career? The question had the sort of typical multiple choice responses to a question of that nature, with options for “Very spiritually and emotionally satisfied;” “Mostly spiritually and emotionally satisfied;” “Somewhat spiritually and emotionally satisfied;” and “No spiritual and emotional satisfaction” (this wasn’t the exact question and responses to the question, just my recollection of it). Me, happy in a brand new job and coming off of my year long spiritual journey that led me to Marquette, happily checked the “Mostly spiritually and emotionally satisfied” option (I mean…it was still an office job after all…there was always room for greater spiritual and emotional satisfaction). Yet, to my surprise (especially in a job of this nature), the majority of responses coming in across the country were anonymously admitting that they were experiencing a low level or no spiritual and emotional satisfaction in their work. It was fairly eye-opening for me, brand new on the job at the time, and it left a bit of an asterisk on the career that I had just agreed upon. Why were so many people working for the church feeling emotionally and spiritually drained in their work?

Was it even possible for me to find myself feeling spiritually and emotionally unfulfilled when serving a place like this one?

Fast forward again to December 2022. My grandfather passed away over Christmas, and I spent that first day back to work working remote. About the only task that I could muster that day was planning for my travel back to Omaha for the funeral and registering for work-related conferences for 2023. One of the conferences that I signed up for was the annual one with the development directors mentioned above, which will be in Orlando in the Fall. But then there was another conference put on by a group called Petrus here in Louisville, occurring this week. This second conference is geared more towards smaller development offices, which, seeing as my office consists solely of me and my administrative assistant, seems to fit the bill. So, keeping that in mind, and thinking that I could really use some time back in bourbon country after my grandfather’s death, I signed up for this conference too.

The final fast forward to today’s date. I don’t know what happened between December and today’s date. Actually, I sort of do. A lot of things happened, much of it personal, mostly sad, and I don’t want to get into it; but somewhere during that time frame, life and everything in it just sort of stopped clicking with me. This was very different from a few years back when I felt that I needed to move on from Red Bluff. No, this time I largely withdrew from people socially, started struggling just to find the motivation to get out of bed in the mornings and, though not neglectful of my job duties, I became greatly withdrawn or detached from them – as though I were just going through the motions. I had fallen into a deep spiritual desert, and I no longer saw the point to…anything. I had somehow (and far sooner than I could have ever anticipated) joined the ranks of those nationwide who were no longer feeling ‘spiritually and emotionally satisfied’ in their work and lives.

Celebrating my birthday alone – completely detached from the world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’ve been feeling this way lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that while some of it is existential and the result of the current state of the world, a larger part of it is that I feel too cut off from my past, both socially and in how I used to organize my professional life and schedule. In stepping forward into a future that I do believe faith was guiding me towards, at the same time I redefined almost too much of my life too quickly. For example, if I’m being honest, I was never an extremely devout Catholic. For years, my life in Red Bluff consisted of working hard in my legal and teaching careers, making it to one Catholic mass a week on Saturday evenings where I would sometimes lector, and maybe getting in a good confession or two each year. That was quite enough religion for me alongside my professional career. Yet in this new role where I am working so close with the religious and devout laity on a daily basis, there’s a lot of pressure towards daily masses, daily adorations, rosaries, litanies, feast days, solemnities, consistent confessions, etc. I did my best to keep up with them at first, but at some point, I just couldn’t anymore. Whatever everyone else was getting out of such constant, day-to-day rituals, I was feeling increasingly drained and like the emotional experience I used to get from say a mass was no longer present. And so, I cut back on things and started making my schedule look more like how I remember it – working through the workdays, making it to mass on the weekend, and, if I feel drawn to it, maybe making it to a daily mass or two each week. And you know what? It’s helped over this past month-or-so in making my life feel a little more spiritually and emotionally satisfied, even if it meant participating less in the things that were supposed to bring me such satisfaction. I’ve learned my lesson that if I ever desire to be more devout in my faith, it will be through a gradual increase in spiritual matters, not a 0 to 90 mph shift.

And with that very long-winded, neurotic, and historic background aside, I now find myself in Louisville, Kentucky for perhaps a well-timed conference amongst others doing my job, which – if polling remains correct – a majority of whom have been feeling exactly what I’ve been feeling and who are searching for some spark that will bring them back to seeing the world with youthful eyes and joy in their hearts once again.

And it’s happening here in Louisville, that place that this whiskey loving, past country lawyer/schoolteacher used to dream of escaping to in the event that everything fell apart. So, at long last, if you’re still reading this thing, the actual blog entry! Here’s how my trip to Louisville is going so far:

I arrived in Louisville last night after an approximate 10.5 hour drive down from Marquette. The entire drive was filled with wildfire smoke (why am I cursed to still live in wildfire smoke after moving away from California!?) and the skyline in Chicago could barely be seen, looking ominous, dystopian, and like something out of Blade Runner. My sister has been worried about whether I’ll be able to handle the huge cities and hot weather of Japan in a few weeks after having lived in cool-climate Marquette this past year, but after navigating Milwaukee, Chicago, and Indianapolis to get here and spending some time under the hot, Kentucky sun, I think that I’m starting to remember how this stuff works.

My early impressions of Louisville have not lived up to the image that I (and the city itself) have created over the years. After all, here’s the Louisville that the city itself advertises to the world as being something historic, classy, American, and celebratory of its bourbon and derby background:

And yet, the reality is something sadder, grittier, and unrefined. Unlike my previous memories of Louisville as being a “big city” and the home of whiskey, in the sober light of day, I now realize that it’s not that big of a city…and classy, artisinal whiskey is hardly the first cultural thing that you notice here. Rather, the city really just looks like another Omaha, just maybe slightly bigger and sitting along the Ohio River rather than the Missouri River. Just another typical Midwest urban skyline.

Yet what has been truly depressing is the number of people I’ve seen wandering downtown who are homeless, suffering from mental health issues, and/or under the influence of drugs. Also, all of the trash and grimy smells of this city. This is seriously one of the grimiest cities that I’ve ever visited – my shoes were absolutely sticky on the bottom after wandering around downtown this morning.

I don’t think that it’s just me noticing this stuff. I’ve found over the past 24-hours that the women here are quite aggressive and open in their flirtation, much like how they were back when I went to Nashville. Yet, unlike Nashville where I think it was because the city is definitely skewed with more women living there than men, here it’s a more desperate and kind of heart-wrenching plea – an “I’ll do anything, just get me out of this town” sort of vibe. That, or I’m just overthinking things and am in fact very popular with the ladies in the States of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Luckily, my cousin lives in this city, and he was able to break me out of downtown for the day to show me some other parts of Louisville. The parks and neighborhoods that he showed me were clean, awesome and revealed a different city entirely with lots of happy, athletic looking people. This is clearly a city of extremes. (By the way, my no longer so little cousin is driving a Tesla now, living it up in a loft apartment, and seems to be thriving in both health and career. I’m proud of him, and looking forward to spending more time with him this week.)

That’s about all that I’ve got for this blog entry. I hope to do another one later in the upcoming week to report on the conference and my tours of distilleries, and I’ll let you know if I found any enlightenment or energy to snap me out of my recent depressed state and back to my usual happy self.

Cheers,

-Rob