Purple

7.18.09

My dog has been sleeping around. I can't say I blame him. In fact, he wandered off Thursday morning, and I haven't seen him since. Last night I got an email saying he was having a good time. I don't think he wrote it, though.

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A calendar view of the last few years would show a semi-automatic splatter pattern of life events, often leaving me with an image of whoever is on the cosmic trigger sporting smeared clown makeup. Good, bad and otherwise, the moments that define a life have been holding the door for one another, the redshift of one blending into the the blueshift of the next so that a crack in my skull would leak its uniformly purple ambient light.

(Max's favorite color is purple. That cannot be an accident.)

I have settled into two primary coping behaviors. First, I take a lot of pictures. Most days require a second look. Second, I triage and cross my fingers. I've been picking a handful of things, focusing on them, hoping the rest don't flat line by the time I get back around to them. I run hard for a few months, then sequester myself for a long weekend to do my best to catch up on all the things I have ignored, thus far not uncovering anything fatal or criminal (knock wood).

While the dog's basic bio inputs and outputs have been met, a lingering point of stress and regret has been that he has not had the attention a border collie demands and deserves. An earthbound floppy frisbee is a sad and unnatural sight.

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Flat paint and kids work together roughly as well as Sarah Palin and Perez Hilton on a blind date. Trust me. I tried (at least the paint/kids part). Each glimpse revealed some new stain or scratch or minor impressionistic masterpiece bringing wedgies of frustration that I had never replaced the thin dusting of pale yellow chalk my corner-cutting builder had left on the walls as the last check cleared.

As the kids steadily worked their unique take on wainscoting the halls, that fucking paint became the sole object of misdirected and mounting stresses. A rational person would have simply repainted the walls, but that's not where I was at the time. That cheap paint refactored itself into a bright line in my mind, the boundary of what I could handle on my own, the exact point where I needed someone else -- God only knows who -- to come in and fix it. I resented and fumed about those walls because it was safer than resenting the whole house, because that might force me to consider how I was feeling about the whole set of broader duties and responsibilities that was overwhelming me. I was a real peach.

A new batch of fun soon made my event horizon again glow purple, illuminating the likelihood that I would soon be free of that paint, those walls, the house, swapping one batch of overwhelming for another. Somewhat ironically, the logistics of getting out forced me to finally break down and paint those walls. But now the task had become an assertive act of reclaiming some manner of control in my life, no longer a concession to the responsibilities I had not been able to live up to. As such, I embraced it. I took a week off and went scorched-earth on the various Lowe's paint chip stands. I started painting.

Early mornings slid into late nights for days on end, draining and refilling an iPod battery. Hours passed anonymously on a step-ladder edging the ceiling, lying on my side surgically painting trim, wielding a roller Daniel-san style, patiently up and down, up and down. Annoying holes and nicks were filled and sanded pleasingly smooth. The angry splatter of stains and markers and crayons gave way to rich monotones. Chalky flat was buried beneath washable eggshells and satins. That carpal tunnel week became a meditation on textures and drips, edges and corners. Somewhere in all those moments of tactile contact, of constant attention, one of them was the inflection point where my relationship with those walls, that house, flipped from resentment to pride.

Several, though not too many moments later, I made the never-since-doubted decision that I was not leaving the house.

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If business books included dragons, aliens, wizards -- or at least a lot more shit blowing up -- I am sure I would be running a company by now. (Business books, by the way, are the plankton of the literature food chain -- a couple cave trolls couldn't hurt.) But beyond the tickling of the reptilian brain, good fantasy and sci-fi is a wonderful vehicle for morality tales.

The Harry Potter books do a masterful job of laying bare the evolution of of Voldemort's evil, weaving a slow, deliberate path from a popular but troubled Tom Riddle to a splintered and murderous soul. His unique intellect and talents build his belief that he is an exception to common sense and civility, fomenting an ever-uglier view of those not like him (the basely named mudbloods and muggles). Disrespect hardens into resentment, and resentment descends into a denial that those not like him are worthy even of the basics of human dignity, leaving them fair game for horrific acts. Rowling carefully exposes the twisted logic of the racist through a story compelling to teen minds -- minds working in fits and starts to construct their own views of character. Plus, the monsters are cool as hell and lots of shit gets blown up.

Where racism insinuates itself in Rowling's fantasy, lust for power subtly corrupts Anakin into Vader in Lucas' universe. The outlandish extremes of sci-fi provides stark relief to expose the details of how racism and narcissism can invade intelligent but troubled minds, how untreated disrespect hardens into resentment, and how, by then, you are on the fast track to the center of all that is evil across multiple universes.

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Clear Connecticut weekends fill our cul-de-sac with kids -- and now teens -- aimlessly pursuing impulses, loosely overseen by us older folks tending our yards. Short of adding a small flock of sheep to the mix, the scene could not be better for an obsessive border collie trolling for someone to kick a ball or toss a frisbee. Jax's play time has been crowdsourced all his life, but lately, on my kid-free days, he has been taking his more serious canine duties on the road, cleaning the scraps from underneath other kitchen tables, barking at other doorbells, and diligently guarding the feet of other kids' beds. He has even headed to work with some of the kinder neighborfolks during the day. All in, it is a great set up as he has lost weight, perfected his frisbee technique and still takes his full shift here when the kids are on my watch.

The other day, Jax' new sugar-momma offered to take him to the vet as she had an appointment for her biological pet. Wincing as I admitted how long it had been since I had taken him in, I thanked her for her kindness. When she further suggested that I get his blood tested for Lyme disease, I winced again at my recent neglect of his required regimine of Frontline and powders and sprays. When you live mere miles from Lyme, CT, this is pretty damn important.

Turns out Jax has Lyme disease. He'll be fine after the antibiotics work their alchemy. But I'm an ass.

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While I am fairly confident that I am not yet on the short list to take my turn as the Source of All Evil, the comic book exaggeration of how resentment eats away at judgment and character does strike the fleeting wonder whether The Empire ever thought of building a Death Star from composite beams and vinyl siding.

The twisted cosmic clown is either tiring or popping in another clip, but whatever the reason, purple haze seems to be resolving into more discreet reds and blues. With a little more time to reflect, I see resentments I am not proud of and judgments influenced by them. I neglected and resented those walls because I (wrongly) felt that the burden of fixing them was something that had been put on me, done to me -- a normally (over)rational guy twisting resentments into misplaced anger.

Some shrink might even look at me and my dog and make an absurd claim that I hadn't gotten him to the vet because that was the sort of thing someone else used to do, an extra task now thrown on an already overburdened me, something I could triage out because it would be somehow less my fault if something went wrong. I mean, I could see how someone else might think that. I, of course, never could. That would make me an ass.

While I don't think I am on the verge of storming the Jedi Temple quite yet, I do need to get some things in order. My guess is that the list of things I most should be doing right now is precisely the same as the list of the things I least want to do. I mean, just a hunch...

But for now, I need to fire up the iPod and get a couple chores done, including a popping a couple antibiotics into a hot dog and tossing it to a dog who just lazily strolled back in, frisbee in his mouth, pissed off that I am still typing.

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.

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.

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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…

The Hype Cycle (or, Please, Disappoint Me...)

I work with a guy who spent several years at Gartner, a research firm that tracks the business of technology. Gartner takes special interest in how and when emerging technologies will be ready for companies to lay down bets on them actually, you know…working.

The mojo behind firms like Gartner (and Forrester and Jupiter et al.) lies in their ability to quickly summarize complex technologies and the landscape of options in simple ways that even us ADD marketing folks can grasp. Forrester is famous for their wave and Garter counters with their magic quadrant. What is nice about working closely with someone from this world is that he can take our wacky ideas and thinly stretched plans and give that gloss of professionalism, make them look like we actually know what we are talking about. (I mean, of course we do…and, like, stuff.)

Gartner also lays claim to a model they have dubbed the “hype cycle,” that lays out a typical evolution of the roller coaster of perceptions a promising new technology will face in the market place. The fact that key stages of the cycle bear snark-laden labels like, “Peak of Inflated Expectations,” “Trough of Disillusionment,” and “Slope of Enlightenment” makes it clear that Gartner is not looking to be especially complimentary of the zeitgeist that tends to follow the “next-new-thang” in technology circles. Expectations rise unreasonably fast but give over to a harsh fall the morning after. Disappointment is presumed in this model.

Cynical as it may seem, the hype cycle has proven to be exceptionally prescient since it debuted around 1995. Gartner likes to tout how it was used to predict the bursting of the dot-com bubble, and annual updates of where the latest shiny toys fall within the cycle are anxiously awaited and oft-cited events. Having noodled around South of Market, dabbled in start-up ventures, and stumbled trying to get new technologies into battleship companies, I declare that the hype cycle is real.

I concede, of course, that while real, the basic mass hysteria notion underlying the concept of the hype cycle is not a Gartner original. In fact, what got me thinking a little more about this was the fact that nearly every mention of this idea leads to my Gartner alum colleague quipping that, “EVERYthing follows the hype cycle,” with a smirk revealing that this he is not trying to be especially complimentary of the fundamental order of things.

It is a cynical notion, a lemming rush to unrealistic expectations followed by an almost inevitable plunge into disappointment. The ray of hope in the model comes when cooler heads prevail and find a more reasonable, practical, sustainable role for some of these once-hyped technologies that bring real benefits to consumers and long term value to the shareholders.

The thought that takes me down the rabbit hole here swirls around whether my Gartner pal might be right in the ubiquity of the hype cycle and, if so, whether its underlying jab at inflated expectations applies more broadly as well. To put a finer point on it, we all get excited…we all get disappointed…with everything from relationships to jobs to lottery tickets to unopened FedEx. But…so what? For instance, if you take the sober rational “big company shareholder value” approach to emerging technologies, you never toe the leading edge (let alone rail grind the bleeding edge), you stake claim in being a fast follower, a conservative adopter of technologies that have already proven their value and scale. I get it. Trust me. Even the hippest of technology companies can deliver duds.

But let’s get away from the technology of business for a moment and consider that initial rush of the new. If you run a business funded by other people’s money, then being easily excitable, being one who rushes to the mere possible…these are not traits that likely make you a good steward of outside investment. Fair enough. But say we are talking about our own expectations and dreams and fears AND we grant that we are weak sauce irrational at our core, running up the escalators that would have gotten us there anyway, hoping hype this time will deliver it all, knowing that likely it won’t.  Knowing that statistics tell us beyond a reasonable doubt that we are reading too much in to what could be with that new ________________.  Knowing that we will likely be disappointed.

The Big Honking Question: knowing all that, do I go all eTrade monkey and go for it, or do I go Fortune 100 CEO and…wait it out, catch the things important to me only once they have demonstrably leveled off at the “Plateau of Productivity?” My prose betrays my preference.

My biggest regrets come from making my biggest decisions buying in markets on the Productivity Plateau, picking up the Consumer Reports best buys from among the proven and safe picks…making my decisions based on the roller coaster rides others took. Such acts are safe…transactions. Fair…exchanges, like for like. Such acts are not the stuff of dreams.

But here is the subtlety…and in this is all. The trick, I think, is not in chasing all that is shiny, no more than it is in accepting only the safe. I think it lies in something like knowing that passion and loyalty and commitment and wonder can only come from riding out the whole cycle, placing bets, being there when it is risky so you have a well of value to draw on later. That means getting on eyes open, knowing that the first hill on the roller coaster is always the highest, but also that it is the only one that has a shot at giving you the momentum to get through it all. And that sometimes it won’t. Fair enough. I need to make myself strong enough to handle that.

But, given a choice, get me high. I know it won’t last just like that, but I have to be ok with that.

So, in short…please, disappoint me. Soon. It’s the only hope in the long run.

Walking Dude

There is this guy who walks around our neighborhood.  Constantly. That is pretty much all I know about him, but from this one facet I have constructed a world for him.

Here’s what I know. I guess him in his 60’s, but could be older. His standard outfit is a gray sweat suit, dark sunglasses, bright orange reflective vest, with matching orange hat and gloves (when necessary), and a walking stick. He walks hard, but not in that goofy heel-toe race-walker way. Drive by and he stops, raises his hand and gives you this great smile from under his full, gray beard. Drive too fast and he first gives a slow-down hand signal in a gentle way that reminds you that dudes are walking, folks are jogging, and kids are playing. Then he waves, smiles, turns on his heel and walks.

If you are outside when he is walking, he rarely slows down, but will always say hi, wish you a good day, and not break stride. If you want to chat, though, he will happily stop and tell you how great the lawn looks, how much he likes how the perennials are growing in, ask about the kids. It’s never about him, just all the things he is observing about the neighborhood he loves to move through, to look at, to know. He never stays even one word beyond the moment when idle banter becomes awkward.

He carries the stick because of some ill-behaved dogs in the neighborhood. Less so the German shepherd on the corner, or the two English bulldogs across the way that will suffer Hanna-Barbera contortions as they run through the electric fence lines. He really doesn’t even worry about the American bulldog pups that a new family is struggling to control on the circle around the way. More so the angry schnauzer at the steep part of the big hill, the old basset-retriever mix with a death wish that chases cars, bikes, and anything else that moves. If Jax is out in the yard, though, he will stop and kick his soccer ball for a while, patting his head each time my dog plays snout soccer to get it back to him.

I don’t know much of his story. I don’t even know his name, but he knows each of my kids’ names. He never pushes himself in conversation, but from what us neighbors have pieced together, he is a widower that had some serious health issues of some sort in the last few years. Walking is part of addressing them, and…this guy walks. On the way to work I pass him one way, on the way home I pass him the other. On the weekends, I see him coming down the hill, always hugging the curb to his left, taking the whole cul-de-sac at its widest, never cutting across. He walks for hours. I suspect he has some military in his background.

After six years of this Walking Dude, he is as much a part of my day as coffee or a shower. Something is…less-than…if I miss him somehow. I am usually late. I usually deserve the slow-down reminder. The fact that he actually stops and turns to wave as you pass…it makes it more than a courtesy, it’s a ritual.

The fact that I know so little about the whos and whys behind him has allowed me to fill in the mad-lib details of his life as I like. I view Walking Dude as the symbol of…content, happy. Savoring each day in a consistently dutiful, caring, observant – but above all – thankful way. I have penciled in his adjectives so that he has this honest nature, a gratefulness for each and every day, and a ceremonial way of expressing it.

Walking Dude is my metaphor for being thankful for each day, and for clearly comprehending why I should be thankful for each day. If his laps run counter to my drive times…I feel like I missed something that day.

I wonder what he would think of all this. I am sure his life has its complications, its pains and regrets and mornings where the knees can’t get him out on the streets. I’m sure there are times where behind his smile and wave he is really pissed that I was driving too fast, that he was really distracted by some thought from his past. But I need him at this distance. To know more would make him something other than the Walking Dude. I need his…metaphor.

I have a lot of folks that I have reduced to metaphors. People from my past that I misremember in convenient ways to support my smoothing and tucking of the random and the guesswork of days past so it realigns into a story, not just a collection of moments. I force whole people into single slices of what I knew, or what I choose to remember, good or bad, discarding the rest. The less I knew, the less I remember, the more likely all that you are is represented in my head as some one-liner.

I wonder how many people might remember me as a metaphor. I wonder how the intersection of our lives combines with what they need to remember to define my metaphor.

I wonder whether I should get to know Walking Dude, or keep him as this wonderful metaphor.

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The last day of this trying year was defined by a several hour trek through an expectedly bad snow storm in an SUV that suddenly decided that it would not slip into four-wheel drive. I live in the country, at the end of a last-plowed cul-de-sac that however you approach it requires the scaling of some steep slippery hill. With only front wheel drive, I tried every way back home, finally finding myself actually sliding backwards down a hill into oncoming traffic. A rather shitty metaphor to close out this year.

I guided my over-priced sled into the curb, hit the hazards, pulled up the hood, and started hiking home to get some chains for the tires. A couple hundred yards into it, with about a mile still to go, a trooper pulls up and asks if that is my vehicle on the side of the road. Yup. Sure is. Make me an offer, any offer, and it's yours… He clears his front seat and offers me a ride. Nice guy. Great timing.

As I he pulls up to my house, I notice he is in jeans and I ask if he got called in because of the snow. No, he says. He is off duty today, but had his cruiser at home and it was the only way he could get through the snow to get milk and diapers for his family. He was on his way back from the store, when an old guy in a funny orange vest flagged him down and told him that a car was stuck on a hill and might need some help.

A rather wonderful metaphor to close out this year.