Headache problem resolved?

 274th day sober. I got Ebay stuff listed last night, and then got some practice in. It went pretty well, although that top octave still needs a ton of work of course. 

I'd tried everything for my headache yesterday, and finally had a little "No Salt" which is potassium chloride, and that *seemed* to help. So maybe I'll try taking a little of that each day. 

I packed a few FedEx thing because I didn't wake up until almost 4, and FedEx is open until 8, an hour later than the post office is. 

The drop-off went fine, and I picked up some shipping materials and boxes and also got out a pulse generator plugin from the storage unit since I'd sold a plugin that size so I had room for another plugin. 

I stopped by Tom's place because I had to anyway to pick up packing stuff from the place next door. Tom and I ended up talking about everything under the sun, as usual. Among the things, I said Tom would love the Big Island in Hawaii because you can still buy land for a few thousand dollars an acre, and it's kind of the "wild west" out there and a handyman kind of guy like him would be right at home. I also mentioned that I've passed a threshold where I have 10 grand in savings. It's enough, I feel, that I could go back home to Hawaii any time from now until whenever I'm good and sick of working for Ken and ready to leave, which I'd planned for when I'm 62 years old and thus would have Social Security to back me up. 

I mentioned also how I know how to make money back there, as I'd be 1000s of miles away from Ken and out from under the "non-compete" situation I'm under with  Ken according to Ebay, and I could go right back to what I grew up with, shell collecting, as some of the shells I know how to find lots of are now going for something like a dollar each. That's for ones with holes ready for stringing, naturally, which means picking out the piece of sand that's so often in the mouth of the shell, and putting a clean hole in. Even just using a sewing needle I didn't lose too many, and I'd use a tiny drill these days. 

The thing is, I feel I could go back there now and get going on Ebay on my own and actually support myself. My 10 grand could float me long enough to get going. Of course I'm fairly serious about doing exactly what I told Ken I'd do, and wait until 2024. By then, I should have somewhere between 20 and 30 grand saved. 

Anyone reading this thing - and thank goodness no one does - would know I've been going back and forth whether to convert to Judaism and move to Israel, or go home to Hawaii. I've suddenly got a gut feeling that Israel is not going to work. On Reddit, on the pertinent sub-Reddits, I see tons of people who want to get out of Israel, and haven't seen one who wants to go in. Of course there are tons of people who want to move to Hawaii, and every one who isn't "local" is starry-eyed and unrealistic and would be tons better off moving to Florida. But while Hawaii is losing people, there's always been a trickle of people moving back to retire, help family, etc. 

Israel is just. plain. out. I'm done even thinking about it. At least back in Hawaii I have family, and tons and tons of memories. I really miss my older sister too. We wrote letters back and forth really often, I want to say at least once a week, and then emailed back and forth I think even more often. When the economy crashed in 08 and I lost everything and was sure I was going to be living in the street, I had the idea that I should go back to Hawaii with the hope that maybe she could co-sign on a cheap room for me. Meanwhile she acted like I wanted to be homeless, and things got ugly. I'm pretty sure I'd had a beer or two when I insulted her school, meaning here snobbishness about it, in return for her insulting me by saying I "wanted" to be homeless. 

The whole thing was really stupid, and I don't even feel that way about her school. The truth is, I actually did need to "drop off of the grid" for at least 7 years to get out of the trouble I was in, and that was best done here on the mainland. I've tried writing to her, emailing, emailing her husband, etc and nothing's worked. I've even lied and said I got a high-paying job at Applied Materials since money impresses her, and that didn't work. Maybe she checked somehow and could not verify that I worked for them although I used Applied Materials because they're a large company with lots of branches. 

In any case, if I'm back there we *will* run into each other, because Honolulu's a small town. And I'd sure like to be at least back on speaking terms. I don't think any of our other siblings had the closeness with our father that we did. So each of us only has the other to talk with about him, and the longer I live, the more unique I realize he was. I ought to write some stories about him someday. 

But another thing is pretty big in this final realization that back to Hawaii is the only place for me to go. The trumpet may be a great instrument, but it's not a good fit for Hawaii. None of the places I really love, that I want to go back to, have any need for trumpet music. It would be an awful intrusion into such calm, quiet places.

So I have ordered another shakuhachi made by "Jim Johnson" music, in Hong Kong (or was it Taiwan?) that seems to be a perfectly fine student flute, and not Godawful ugly like the "Shakuhachi Yuu" that's the student go-to. My last shakuhachi, same brand, had been nibbled by a mouse, or a roach, or something, that decided the buffalo-horn mouthpiece was tasty. It still played at least kinda OK but I was so annoyed by this I put it on Ebay for $50 and it sold overnight. 

I'll have it in a few days, and if I practice on it like I've been practicing on trumpet I might start getting places. I like very simple things, and when I worked as a bench tech I always used very few tools and got tons of different uses out of them, and I've gravitated to the trumpet because of how simple it is, not needing pads or strings etc. 

But a shakuhachi is even simpler. In fact I can learn to make them and I doubt I'd ever be in a position to make or even repair trumpets. And a shakuhachi is really easy to carry, too, as a soprano sax case works fine. And it won't stink like death like brass instruments seem to in Hawaii's tropical climate. 

Going home can work if I have lots of different things that can work there. When I tried moving back in 2003, I was going to do scrimshaw on actual ivory. I had a legal source of it, and I'd done it as a kid, and as far as I knew it was still popular in Hawaii. It was not, and regulations on ivory quickly shut down the whole idea. I didn't have anything to fall back on. 

But right now I can think of (a) selling general things like books and odds and ends I find on Ebay (2) picking shells and selling those on Ebay or Etsy (3) Busking (4) Art and (5) Just receiving social security and being the cheapest bastard around. Plus I won't have a few thousand dollars in debt payments breathing down my neck each month. 

That last thing is something my older sister probably didn't understand. I had to keep paying on all that debt to keep my credit card working to keep Ebay paid so I could keep selling on Ebay. I actually thought I could find some scrimshaw jewelry seller to work for, they'd pay me, I'd pay my rent and food and I'd just ignore the credit card bills until they went away. 

This is actually what happened, except instead of doing scrimshaw I left Hawaii again after about 4 months, and moved to the Bay Area here and went back to selling electronics surplus. Things went OK-ish here and I was even starting to make some headway against my debt and then it was 2008. That's when I really dropped off the grid. I'm glad I did it here because it's enabled me to really get "the mainland" out of my system and also Honolulu being a small town, if I skipped on my bills everyone would know it. 

Now I can return without money worries at least in the sense of "no money, no worries" not someone haunted by debt.