Digismack

I'm an input junky with a buoyant fix threshold. Tied off and leaning over an array of digismack syringes, I taste the news from whichever blinks most anxiously. Lately, though, I resent my reliance on real-time remote, a good first step on separating habit from need. I mean, those sound like the right words to say.

I've grown ambivalent about More. Outside of a few techy gadgets, MoreStuff faded a while back. MoreCleaning, MoreFixing…MoreBatteries, more space in my head cataloging where I put it all. I have an iPhone app that GPS marks where I park my car in alien garages. I used it the other day to store where I put my powerdrill when I was done fixing that day's dose of MoreStuff because I spent way too much of that same day trying to remember where I left the damn drill in the haze of the last fix.

Yup. I am summoning the lazy pulses of orbiting spy satellites to keep track of where I leave my tools. In my own house. That's my life.

Like its analog analogue, the digismack is a pose. I've known that. But I am only now in full admission that my use had gone beyond weekend recreation. As I write, Facebook is a furry something-or-other skipping its smug, warm-blooded ass right by puzzled Googleraptors and 'Softisaurs chilly and staring at a comet in the night sky. Zuckerberg and Co. have mashed up every one of the world's high school cafs, college bars, coffee houses and office hallways, now cramming them all into Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Kids devices that we check anywhere and anywhen. Practically everyone we have ever known, for better or for worse, is real-time remote (pants and hygiene optional).

Of course, your lap's highest and best use is not shelf for a keyboard. Somewhere there is a child with a book in need of a perch, a lover in need of a nap. A lap may not even be justifiable when a dog needs a good run. Nevertheless, we are a closer world for our digital connections -- that is undeniable. But lately, I am sensing a lack of balance, realizing that my habit fell into need, evolved from feeding a John Nash intellectual curiosity to a Sally Field need for...reassurance. Hell, these innerwebz are cheaper than therapy, arguably more effective, but whatever the approved medicinal uses for MoreInput, pure uncut digismack is toxic in the long run.

So how to solve for MoreX? With six bright eyes trained on my every move, surely there is MoreDad. Entering my PrimeEarningYears with finances still reeling a bit from divorce and recession, surely I must figure out a little MoreJob.

But what seems like a simple bit of GrownUp calculus exposes the essential tension in the demands of being a GrownUp. On the one hand, the simple sum (MoreDad + MoreJob) turns out to be > the number of hours in the known human week. Solving for other variables, however, it appears < the stuff that fills a human soul.

Perhaps showing my work in GrownUp math is just making clear flaws in my time management or my values. I'm confident in my work ethic, but I get a little nervous around the Saint or Soldier who fills their own soul through sacrifice and service, especially when my particular call to service and sacrifice includes a well-heated house, a Volvo and an office with a window. I've got some thoughts on how this all shakes out. Next entry. For those that like to read ahead, I'd suggest taking a listen...here.

For now, however, some socks need a-sorting...

Dog Bowls

9.7.09

I'm not cynical enough to dismiss the notion of free will. I am, however, saying that it belongs more on a box score than a lineup card.

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Having spent their whole lives in a city on the backside of its history, my parents left Akron as soon as chance allowed. Having spent only a couple years at the end of high school in a Bay Area on the rise, I have found myself wandering back, in both thought and U-Haul.

This past summer brought family trips, extended and immediate, Ohio and California, respectively. Forty years and a cloud of dust out of Akron, my Dad still finds an old friend on every corner, many of those corners still recognizable from a distant and apparently slightly misspent youth. In contrast, only a few years removed from my last attempt to return, I got lost driving on a hasty web of fresh pavement just a few blocks from my old home, an erstwhile hometown buzzing with so many people I don't know, better-heeled replacements for my dispersed generation unable or unwilling to shoulder a cost of living that quickly outran most of our career paths.

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For all intents and purposes, I grew up in the Metroplex, surfing the forces of adolescent impulses as Bedford stamped rolling horse farms into metered-out lots of Edward Scissorhands sprawl. I was therefore surprised when my first reaction to the news we were moving was excitement. I loved Texas. I was hitting a stride with a Breakfast Club stew of school and friends and sports that was filling my days with fewer hours dropping dice behind a Dungeon Master's Screen, more testing chance with girls, some who even smiled back. But DFW back in the day was a community for migrant workers in the burgeoning cube farms. We stayed, but every year or two my best friends seemed to leave for some reason or another: corporate whims pulling dads elsewhere, family ties pulling moms back, a brother's addictions spilling their bounds, an asshole father avoiding responsibility with a surprise enrollment in a remote and religious boarding school. I guess I wanted to stay, finish out my last two years of high school there, but I also guess that I expected that one way or another I would succumb to the varied polarities that so rapidly pushed and pulled people through the Mid-Cities.

A few months from having exchanged top-siders and pegged acid-wash for Jams and flip-flops, I decided that my purportedly annoying penchant for "back-in-Texas" stories was a sign that I should be back in Texas. I filled out all the right bubbles in #2 lead and all the right forms in blue or black ink, and was on track to return to Dallas thanks to the generous and proud SMU alumni and their well-funded scholarship programs. My first Evil Plan was playing out quite nicely, thankyouverymuch, when grumblings about some if-ya-ain't-cheatin'-ya-ain't-tryin' problems with SMU football recruiting exploded into revelations of systemic corruption that dropped the NCAA's first "death penalty" on the entire football program.

A couple weeks later, still confident that the Evil of my Plan trumped the evil of some boosters, I was on campus to finalize and accept the scholarship...on the very day that the SMU Board of Governors was forced to admit they not only knew of, but actually approved and somewhat oversaw some of the most egregious violations. The football team had gotten the death penalty, but the school had lost it's soul.

The Back-to-Texas Evil Plan in shambles, I got an excited call at an inappropriate hour a few weeks later from a proud UCLA booster letting me know that because the initial winners of that year's Bruin nerd-off were forgoing Westwood for more Ivy-covered climes, I was officially the top consolation nerd. I took a trip south. I stayed for the next four years.

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Evil Plan: The Sequel, now had me studying economics while captaining the nationally renowned UCLA debate team in nerdgasmic glory as I constructed the ultimate application to some or another law school run by demons actually listed by name in the Bible.

I dropped off the debate team, ditched economics when the math got hard and came out the other end with a degree in philosophy, hair to my shoulders, a love of teaching, and a fairly potent jump serve that once scored a point on Karch Kiraly (and to be clear, it was the only point we scored out on Venice Beach that day.)

I got rejected to every graduate program in philosophy I applied to. Except one.

I did well enough in grad school to likely secure one of the scarce academic positions that pop up each year. But as I was reading in library basements, those positions got stripped of tenure, benefits and much of their already modest pay. Finally, common sense was surgically removed when I was courted to teach paying college students classes I had never taken myself from books I had never read on subjects I had never studied.

Grad school side jobs morphed into a scheme to open a restaurant in Providence. I was out-eviled once again when my partner and I got hit up for a shockingly large bribe to secure a liquor license. It didn't help that while managing a joint I had also pissed off some low-level mob dude whose waste management company would regularly, though "accidentally," flip my dumpsters.

Late-'90's Evil began wafting in on breezes from the west, so I loaded up the eight or nine things I was able to purchase as a grad student and headed back to NorCal to cash in on the dotcom boondoggle. Through old buddies and fast talking, I was quickly working South of Market.

Selling life insurance.

I was told I would never finish the dissertation if I left. I did.

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I had always laughed at anyone who would be foolish enough to plan a wedding outside, leaving already unrealistic expectations and emotions bare to the fickle weather whims. I got married, beautifully, outside bare to the the sun cutting through remnant haze of night-before rain.

I always wanted some undefined number of kids, but felt pretty strongly that they should be spawned at a reasonable pace, allowing space for each soul to grow, time for each parent to recover. My three kids tumbled into the world all within 24 months (plus 5 days!). Now I can't imagine it any other way.

My old school Evil Plans turned on a dime, desperate as I was to avoid the corporate world. I now work in a beige cubicle tucked in a Connecticut suburb for a once and future Fortune 100 insurance company that just took TARP funds. I've learned far more in my many-colored workplaces than in my decades of school.

I spent most of my life unnaturally intimidated by cheerleaders.

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I have a thing about keeping the dog's water dish cold and full, but nine times out of ten, I find myself merely swapping stale water for fresh, a whole bowl at a time. Nevertheless, the dog never seems thirsty. Oddly, my toilets are never full.

Creases

I just stumbled badly through a rare perfect moment.

My kids somehow conspired to grant me a peek at my life through their eyes (it involved dancing and chocolate and balloons and rain) Then they each faded lightly, allowing me a glimpse of their hearts each rising and falling softly, breath by breath...asleep in a warm house solid against wind and, I think, a little thunder.

And as the world might have it, I had this amazing opportunity to think these moments through, feel them all, with a drink on a porch fingering a nice cigar, feet bare in a welcome, drenching spring rain.

And even then, my mind wandered to other moments. Tensions building to all the things that might and should and could come next. A couple thoughts of what I might want this all to lead to when it all came down, when I figured it out, when I finally and responsibly grew the hell up...

And something caught me raw, the snag of a third-day razor, realizing I had just lost some of this moment in pursuit of...something not...here. Something else. This moment had faded into wonders of what other moments at other times in other places might somehow be like.

Unique shimmers of this moment melted into the gray of some lengthening shadows.

I am starting to think that my core issue is less that I am not doing enough and more that I am really just not good at recognizing those cameo moments when all I have done might be paid back in wonder and joy. I really need to fix that.

I need to unfold myself.

The Father of the Man

I have no idea where the thought came from, but I have the clearest memory of the moment it did. I was 28, in Providence, and was sitting on the edge of my bed, rushing to lace up my basketball shoes, late as usual to meet friends for some pick up hoops. Suddenly, my head was filled with an image that I did not recall ever considering before, but something that has not faded since.

A simple, quick scene of me in my parents’ room, back in the day in Rochester, watching my dad lace up his basketball shoes on his way out for a men’s league. The room placed the date, and the date placed my age. For some reason quick math fired off in my head to tell me that in that image, my dad was the same age as I was…right then.

That was the first moment in my life that I could actually remember my father being my age. It messed me up for days. Where I was at 28 was surely, certainly, and without a doubt unworthy of the respect and awe that the 5-year old me could recall holding for my dad when he was my age. Pulling on those black and white Adidas high tops was the precise moment when I stopped wishing I was a kid again and resigned myself to being a grown up.

I’m a little messed up again these last few days. I have no idea where the thought came from, but I realized that Emma is the same age I was when my dad was getting ready for that basketball game; the boys are not far off either, really.

I'm feeling...like I need to get my hair cut.

For the want of pink socks...

Two recent events…

A bad morning. I woke up late to cranky kids who couldn't even decide on a flavor of pop-tarts when I had given in to my convenience over their health. The whole get-to-school system got completely fubar when I had to shave and dress with the cell in my ear to deal with some work crisis that I never really understood. Finally, after clothes and shoes fly back and forth from the top of the stairs to the foyer and back, I focused an inappropriate level of my anxiety on Emma finally getting her coat on so we can get in the car. I helped the boys, grabbed some coffee. No coat on the girl. I ask again. Get the boys in the car, buckled, back inside… No. Coat. On. The. Girl. I lose it more than I should, “Why didn’t you put your coat on yet!?!?”

And she stands toe-to-toe, gathering all of the righteous anger a 5 going on 6 going on 15 year old girl can muster and screams, “BECAUSE. YOU. DIDN’T. GET. ME. MY. PINK. SOCKS!”

I fall back on my butt on the steps behind me, open my arms, and give her a huge hug as she starts to cry. Dammit, she is right. Dammit, I am an ass.

A good afternoon. We are pushing hard at work. We are a Dairy Queen swirl of internal and external needs for change and everyone on my team wears the goofy paper hats I remember the soft serve folks wearing at the DQ next to Pennington Field back in the day. Not everyone around us, however, is down with the change. After a few months of a Godzilla vs. Rodan struggle of old versus new, a much needed infusion of cooler heads stepped up with a surprisingly effective and energizing half day session on managing change.

I am generally a pretty cold skeptic toward what often seem like scripted and overt business-psychology ruses, but in this case, breakthroughs were made. The key moment for me came later in the day when we were discussing how hard it was to get folks to buy into key messages when the resident guru stopped the conversation with an old saw. What you say and how you say it are way, way low on the priority list when crafting strong, effective communications. Start first with what you want the audience to know, feel, and do.

Know. Feel. Do.

Until you have that clear in your own head, you will stumble over what you say and how you say it. As soon as you get that set…gold. KNOW. FEEL. DO.

****

The one thing I am most trained and purportedly experienced in is communication, on many levels. The one thing, however, that I most consistently screw up and suffer grievous metaphorical head wounds from getting wrong is also…(wait for it)…communication. Home work family friends north south living zombies rocks trees and emerging life forms…I am either on or off when it comes to the words. I don’t do gray here. And I am a poor predictor of when I will actually get it right.

****

So back to Emma. In the negotiating of that day’s wardrobe, I had bartered approval of her wearing the outfit I had chosen if I would let her swap for the pink socks she had grown to love in the 8 seconds she had been considering her affections for such things. Now, the whole morning ritual includes kids getting dressed and then ceremonially gathering at the bottom of the stairs to put their socks on…together. Then their shoes…together. THEN…their coats. In the tumult of the morning, I had made it known to Emma what I expected. I had even gotten her all worked up about the importance of this grand and mighty task. But, in failing to deliver the pink socks…I had left her unable to do what she knew she needed to do, something she felt she wanted to do. I left her…frustrated. (heh.) Good on her for telling me about it.

Now back to work. Most of us are very good at relaying information. Fact known Here is transferred to the appropriate There…via email or voicemail, or (archaically) memo, or (even more rarely, in person). We deliver facts and dry knowledge with the pompous certainty that the implications are self-evident, that the desires and drives that this little factotum inherently…means…are somehow energizing from the moment they are uttered. That somehow knowing something implies caring about it, that facts imply feelings.

Even in those instances where we get all jazzed about what we are saying, and we get those around us fired up to do something about today’s bit of insight, the whole scene falls flat if there is no sense of what anyone can do about it, whether it is because the path to success is not clear or the value in making the effort just does not seem…worth it. Either way, we flatline.

So, you told someone, but do they give a shit? If they give a shit, do they know what to do about it? If they know what to do about it, do they give enough of a shit to do what needs to be done? And even if they have all that…NOW…do they have what it needs to be done?

Know. Feel. Do. If you are going to say something, anything…what do you want your listeners to know, feel, and do? And have you done what you need to ensure that the next time you say something people will care enough to do it? So you said it, do they give a shit? If they do, have you done your share to get it done?

Even if it is just getting the pink socks you promised out of the dryer…

Oil & Water

I should have turned this corner years ago, but I am just now shifting focus from what should matter to what does matter.

I’ll spare you the steady diet of all the ways the world should be that I was fed by wonderful and well-meaning people. The problem came when the all of the plausible and well-meant ways things should be reached a point where they were…inconsistent. Each on their own made sense, but put together…not so much.

A single, clear solid explanation for how things are, should be, is gold. Two solid explanations for how things are, should be, begins to undermine your faith in what you think is a solid explanation. Add a third, and well, I’ll meet you at the bar.

I’m not sure why, but a month or so ago, I decided to stop thinking so hard about what my life should be like and focus more on what in my life I actually like.

I like to cook. But only on certain terms. I suck at recipes, and I live in a part of the country where exotic ingredients are not readily available, so I often have to substitute even some of the most basic staples. I’m much more jazz than classical in the kitchen. The other night, I was cleaning out some of the nether reaches of the house and ran across an unbreached dim sum cookbook that was a gift of some occasion or another, and in it was gold – the promise that I could, at home, make those exquisite pork dumplings I feasted on for lunch when working south of market in the dot com days. Their magic went beyond just the non-standard ingredients. There was an art to their cooking that gave you this wonderful crusty crispy fried side while the rest of the dumpling was light, moist, and just perfectly steamed. I had no idea how this freakish ju-ju was achieved.

But then, there it was. A simple technique used by Chinese street vendors for centuries. You crimp up the edges of the wrapper around the filling and then drop it, crimped side down into a little oil in your wok. And leave it there. You don’t turn it. You don’t touch it. Just…leave it there. And as it crisps, you pour about a third of a cup of water  into the…oil. Really. And just let it steam off. The loose ends of the dumpling seal and crisp and the rest of the dumpling steams…perfectly.

Oil and water…totally counter-intuitive, but perfectly obvious once done. A simple truth revealed. A new basic way of doing things learned. Gold.

I also like coffee shops. Now, I’m good with a Starbucks, though I prefer a Pete’s, long for the early days of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Westwood, and, in a pinch will, alas, suck down a Dunkin Donuts styrofoam mess just to get me to work. But what I love are hit-and-miss quirky hung-over-hippy-coffee-slinging joints that may or may not be open each morning you stop by. I love crappy art on the wall by the current girlfriend of the owner. I love people bring in their own CDs or plugging in their iPods when the music gets lame.

My goofy little New England town has this wonderful coffee shop owned by a couple that also owns a swanky restaurant around the corner, catering to locals and regulars in both joints. I stop by, sink into a comfy chair with a newspaper or a book and often have to wait 20 minutes for a cup of coffee as the owners and staff bullshit with the locals. All. Totally. Worth. It. They are constantly tweaking and moving and adjusting the furniture, adding some questionable artwork to the walls. Sometimes good, sometimes…not so much. But the coffee is exquisite and eggs and scones and homemade bagels are so very worth it all.

The best bars are the same way. The beer and the cocktails are always pretty much the same. The essence lies in the folks that they attract, the wondrous alchemy that comes from glimpses of might-change-your-life folks shaken, stirred, or whatever gets them going. But real knows real, and the best scenes arise where there is a personality, for better or worse, behind it all. (Rob, if you read this, you were Goff’s in all your anal quirky wackiness. I made you money, but you made the bar.)

The upshot? What does matter to me? The inspiration that comes from a simple truth, a simple fix, a simple method so clear to someone with a different perspective than mine. A new place or time or way that is driven by a well-meaning if stumbling soul.

The point? It is important to distinguish between the inevitable and the obvious. I am coming to inevitable conclusions, perspectives that, for folks wiser than me are, well, obvious. But inevitable speaks to causes and effects and forces outside of our heads. Obvious, well, that is something earned and achieved by grasping the realities of our world within our tangled heads. Making the inevitable into the obvious may simply be what is meant by…growing up.

My point?  I’ve tried most every other path to fulfillment and wonder and perhaps other stuff, but in the end…my three most wonderful kids bring glass-shattering new perspectives every time I see them, in ways that are simple, straight forward and real. Each moment, I watch their personalities…evolve, develop, reveal. Their achievements and strengths make them valued by others. Their imperfections and scars and fears make them…mine.

Inevitably, my kids are the end all of what does and should matter. I’ve always known that.

Now, it is obvious.

Skipping Stones

Blogs are largely self-serving activities. To be clear, this one is entirely so. Whether anyone actually reads this or not, my purpose is served merely by the possibility that someone might. I’ll try to explain…

I’ve spent the last few decades hard-driven forward-focused, trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, taking the corners up on two wheels when I think I finally have a sense of where it is I need to be going. I’ve been successful, but hardly linear. I’ve had an amazing array of experiences, but haven’t reflected long enough on many of them for most to make me any wiser. I have been fortunate to know some of the most amazing people in the world, but haven’t been smart enough to invest in many of them to truly call them my friends.

A rough couple of years leave me right here, right now realizing that something needs to change about how I go forward from this point. I have been blessed with a rich life, but I need to know it a little better. The change I am noodling on has something to do with defining myself less through where I am going and all the things I still have left to do, and more by what got me here, the people and places, the achievements and fuck ups, the constant values and goofy whims that got me right…here. It’s a balance thing, I guess.

Writing is key to figuring this all out. Not necessarily what or why, but the simple act of just…writing. I don’t write to simply reflect what I think and value as much as I do to actually give form to the mess that is in my head. Writing is less a passive expression of who I am, much more a creative way to actually build out who I am. And I could use some design and remodel work these days.

But I can get lazy, and I tend to lie to myself if left to myself. So the idea that some of the folks that know me much better than I realize might actually stumble across some of this stuff and call bullshit…well, just that mere possibility will keep me much more honest than I ever would be just typing away on some password protected file on my laptop. Plus, this will force me to try to keep the writing interesting, perhaps amusing. If successful, perhaps I will become more of both along the way. As conceded at the outset, this  blog is a totally selfish act, a random trip through some rather loosely connected wires.

Since junior high, every time I have taken the time to reflect on what I need to do to get my head straight for some reason or another, sitting down and writing in some form or fashion has always been the first thing I commit to doing. It is also always the first thing I stop doing when habits and distractions settle back in. I am better when I am writing something, writing anything. After a couple decades of this dance, I need to accept that this is just a part of me, a place I go, a thing I do, something I need to figure out how to weave into my life for real and for good. I need to find the places and times to just write, and occasionally I might find some of it is not all that bad. Hell, as I kick through random musings, I might even find that I have something…to say. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.

***

Much of what I have to say, here and elsewhere, revolves around my three kids, Emma, Max and Cole. Emma is about to turn 6, and the boys (twins) are about to turn 4. One very cool thing I noticed this summer is how utterly content all three of them are to find a body of water, be it lake, stream, ocean (and, yeah…fountain, pool, bath tub, sink), and just stand on the edge and throw things into it. Once I showed them how to drop down side arm with a nice flat stone (a la the currently most famous Auker, Elden, a Babe Ruth-era submarine-ball pitcher) and actually skip the rocks…they can stay at the water’s edge for hours, just searching for the perfect rocks, rearing back and letting them fly.

Of all the structured activities and play dates and organized lessons and kid-friendly events I have taken them to, I really think, in the end, they would prefer the simple peaceful time chucking rocks into the water over almost anything else.  

Looking back, I think I spent a good bit of my youth doing just the same. I think I should spend a little more of my adulthood that way…an old, comfortable, reflective habit, just watching the ripples mingle with the waves. Even the best skipping stones can sploosh straight to the bottom, and if you try hard enough, you can pretty much make any rock skip at least once. But there is something elegant, something in-the-moment satisfying when you get a dozen skips on a clear glass lake, pulling off a smooth throw worthy of that perfect round flat rock.