Cody who?

It feels so good, until it doesn’t

I was very eager to please, not realizing what harm I might be doing to myself and others.

Photo and story by Stacey Warde

For much of my adult life, I’ve felt like the local pool boy, convenient to have around, but not of much use otherwise. I’ve worked grunt jobs, and also held roles in what others might consider the “professions.”

I’ve had experience as a pool cleaner, ranch hand, commercial blueberry grower, window washer, salesman, and flockster (raising chickens and selling farm-fresh eggs in the local market), as well as in landscape installation and maintenance, mostly laborer occupations. I’ve encountered invading squirrels, rats, bobcats, coyotes, rattle snakes, vicious dogs, and threatening bosses and angry paying customers, and received plenty of scoldings, cuts, and bruises, including a dog bite in the ass resulting in a trip to the doctor; all this in the dirty grunt business of producing food, and servicing people’s homes.

I’ve also worked as a writer, editor, and publisher, and got into spats with local government officials, readers who hated my guts and threatened to burn down the building where I worked, a bishop who fired me for writing an opinion piece about favorable interfaith dialog with pagans, and I took bites all…