Changing life's guitar strings

I haven't changed my guitar strings in years. My electric guitar has been sitting in its case for at least two years, while my acoustic still hasn't forgiven me for my neglect - even though I've picked it up more often these past few weeks.

Old strings, though, they break a little easier. They're cruddy and grimy and - if you haven't played in a while - are a bit out of tune. New strings not only look shiny and new, but they feel like it, too.

But old strings feel better. You remember the time you strung this new set into your guitar. You remember all the songs you've played on them, in front of people or alone, and the ghosts of those songs play in the ether somewhere. Most of the time, your strings will only get changed out of necessity. Either they break or they become unplayable - whatever. Still, you wouldn't change them if you didn't have to.

I think about change a lot these days. I think about how our world is changing in ways we don't even recognize, and we won't recognize how everything has changed until years later. Time equals a critical eye. Only later will we realize the sand is shifting beneath us.

A Time article has me thinking about how work is changing, and my visit out to see Andrew (and our conversations in LA) just solidified the whole thing. Freelancers are becoming the norm. A "stable job" is a rare, shy beast these days. I see it at work now. Pensions are a thing of the past, benefits are being cut or eliminated, and only recently have our 401(k)s begun to recover. Things are weird out there.

It's humbling (which, I argue, is a good thing).

Like some hippo in the Niger River, I've adapted to be wary of these kinds of changes. But lately that's changed. I'm more willing to go with the groove, and less likely to stay in the water where it's cool and safe. It's probably out of necessity. I read about things like burnout and I think, "Man, that could be me."

One thing that hasn't changed is my love of trophies and certificates. I know I'm a vain person, and I deal with it in ways that I hope aren't cloying to others, but man - give me an piece of etched glass and I glow. Very Gen Y, right? But it's always been that way. I collected awards in college like Jay Leno collects cars.

In that respect, this year has been terrific. Three national credit union awards, two state-wide credit union awards, and now my "30 and Under" designation - it's enough to make anyone's grandma annoy total strangers for longer and longer periods of time (take mine, please).

But even all that's not enough to keep me happy. Nope. For once, the prospect of change is the stuff excitement is made of. For the first time in my life, I'm embracing the idea of "different."

I'm working on changing life's guitar strings. The current ones are brittle and ready to break. Yes, they're comfortable, and yes, they still sound okay. But I can't wait around until they snap.

It's time to be proactive. I need a brighter sound.

Now for something completely different.

Next week, I face the first week-long vacation of my adult life where I have no plans.

I've never taken time off from work and done nothing.

By "nothing" I mean no cross-country trip, of course. My first dose of vacation time took to me my first solo trip, a long weekend in Chicago, and from then on it's been 1,000 miles or more. It's the only way I know how to operate.

But it's not like I have "nothing" to do. I've got an entire list of projects, errands, and favors I can attend to. In fact, I plan to use some of my time off to plan my next giant interstate (or inter-province) trip.

Through May, I'm using the last of my remaining vacation time. There's an entire week off next week, and then there's a five-day weekend for Memorial Day later this month. For that, I've had a few ideas. I've wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail, so I thought about heading down to the Tennessee/North Carolina border and roughing it. Yosemite National Park is also on my to-see list. Part of my big end-of-July trip involves me actually having money, however, and each of those trips seemed costly. What's a budget-minded person to do?

Here's the beauty of Facebook: I planned a long weekend in Los Angeles with Andrew thanks to a few wall postings. How's that for planning? All it will cost me is the plane ticket and money for food. And perhaps a Dodgers game.

All that's in the future. Next week, though, I plan on tying up any loose ends in my life. That includes thinking seriously and deeply about what I want to do with the next five years. Where do I want to work? Where do I want to live? What else do I want to do?

My mom's death left me introspective. It's not that I didn't see it coming, but I realized that I've been stuck in a rut. Mom dying woke me out of it. So from here on out, I'm not going to be so nervous about trying on new things, tasting new experiences, and quit living life day to day as I have been.

We get comfortable. You've probably felt it yourself.

Then we wake up 20 years down the road and have a lot of unchecked items off our big To-Do List. I don't want that to happen.

So that's what I'll do next week: work on the next big project. I'll have plenty of free time to think, do, and plan.

On resting, and living, in peace.

My mother passed away last Wednesday. She left us peacefully, in her sleep.

Her death stands in stark contrast to the freewheeling life she led. Us kids, my oldest sister and me, were merely along for the ride.

Many that know me know that I cut off any relationship with my mom in high school. It wasn't due to any lack of love, but I had my own self-preservation to think about. A decent life could not co-exist with my mom.

I've reacted to the news the way anyone would react to the death of a long-lost aunt or distant cousin. There's that tickle in the brain when you lose someone you love but have no real relationship with: it hurts a little, but only a little.

I just finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, and in the book the character of Ma Joad becomes the head of the family after instability rocks the ground underneath the Joad men. Through her steady hand and strong will, Ma Joad becomes the solid foundation of the Joad "fambly" - despite the move cross-country to a state full of unknowns.

My own life has lacked one continuous "Ma Joad" figure. When I was young, my Grandma Bonnie (my mother's mother) was there for me. As I grew up, my Grandma Maxine (my dad's mother) and my Grandpa Bill (my mother's grandfather) helped me along until I moved in with my dad right before high school. I needed the help because my own mother was the anti-Ma Joad: a constant source of chaos, instability, and high drama.

But all that is gone, now.

My sister gave me an old photo album Monday night, when her, my grandma, and me paid respects to my mom in our own, traditional way. Inside were pictures from when my parents were still together and I was a newborn. These pictures, combined with many others I have from my childhood, reveal the chimera that was my mother. Sweet, fun-loving, easy to laugh - this is what I remember and saw in those pictures. In fact, it's obvious that she cared about me as a baby. Then there was the ugly side.

Which is why looking through the pictures points out my mom's tragedy. A person so vibrant and so happy eventually ruined her own life with drugs and alcohol. Things could have been so much different.

As it was, I never had that sense of "fambly" or stability that I read about in Grapes. I attended 10 different elementary schools, three in the 5th grade, and four different junior highs. We lived in more houses and apartments that I can remember. We were homeless for a while. Life was a whirlwind, and that kind of living has a tremendous effect on kids.

So there are other things, besides pictures, that my mother left us. For myself, I've learned over the years that I have a neurotic attachment to stability. I have my schedule, and my routine, and I hate it when things don't go "according to plan." I show up early, and I fucking hate moving. The direct result of my mother's chaotic life was an aversion to chaos; I swung toward order and ritual, and I swung hard.

My sister - my poor, poor sister - is another story entirely. She bore the full brunt of my mother's behavior, and she deals with the consequences ever day. And because she never left my mother behind, my sister is having the most trouble dealing with my mom's death.

But even she said, at dinner the other night, "I kind of feel relieved."

This is the legacy of my mom. Being with her was like living in Florida, knowing there's a high possibility that a strong hurricane would come and blow your shit out to sea.

I chose to up and move to my dad's when I was 14, in search of a stable household and a parent who didn't abuse themself or those around them, but I'm sure in some ways my mom never left me. She was always outside the boarded-up windows I built for myself, howling away and wrecking havok.

It's sad that we all feel relieved now that she's dead, because we should be feeling something else. Not sadness, not peace, but that we lost something important to our lives.

That's not how it happened, and so I haven't felt much at all in the week since she's been gone. I did such a good job of keeping her out of my life for the past few years that I didn't really lose anything when she passed. She was gone to begin with, in my eyes.

Now she's finally at peace. And so am I.

So much for auld lange syne

Nothing says "cliche" like a list of New Year's resolutions. To avoid such a stigma, I've compiled a list of to-do items for 2009.

RUN A REAL 5K
About a month ago, I took Planet Fitness up on their $10/month gym membership offer - and so far, so good. I didn't realize how much I missed running until I started running again. An annoying pain in my knee stopped my previous running effort just as I had completed my first full 5k in 2007. Over the summer I tried again, and the pain returned. It even plagued me on my New England trip: there were some hills I just couldn't manage, and I was lucky to make it up Mt. Cadillac.

But now the pain seems to be gone. I stepped back in to the couch-to-5k plan I started with last year, and I've found this year it seems to be easier. It's like my body remembers what all this nonsense is about, and decided to take it easy on me. "Okay, you fool," it seems to say to me, "have it your way."

I drive across town to the Planet Fitness facility two to three time a week, after dinner, and work out for an hour or more. The first half-hour is dedicated to the treadmill, and the second half-hour is centered around weight training. I haven't used a full-on gym since high school; I used a small free weight and a lot of push-ups and sit-ups to get me through the years since. But now, with a complete gym, it feels pretty darn good to really work myself.

Winter is tough for everyone, and I always seem to gain a few pounds. Not this year. The ultimate goal will be to finally(!) run in a true, organized 5k run somewhere in the area. As long as the knee holds up, and I keep myself motivated, I can finally strike "run a 5k" off life's to-do list.

And you know what? It's like my body remembers what running is like. I've actually skipped ahead of the couch-to-5k workouts because I needed the challenge. Check the weather in hell!

LAUNCH NEWTON POETRY AS A SELF-HOSTED BLOG
Most people have sensible, easy-to-explain hobbies: horses, scrapbooking, photography. It's a little harder to center your hobby around technology that was discontinued 10 years ago. But that's what I've done, and my little Newton blog has grown and grown in the year since I launched it.

I set a modest goal - 500 visits a day - and once that goal was achieved, I told myself (and my readers) that I would launch Newton Poetry as a self-contained blog. I already switched the domain name from a .wordpress-hosted blog to newtonpoetry.com, and since then there's been a measurable uptick in readership. The magic of the Internet can never be fully understand, I think - only negotiated with.

So sometime in 2009 I will take the blog off of Wordpress and buy hosting space and experiment with PHP and JavaScript and all these crazy languages that no sane person dabbles in without preparation. My prep is in the doing itself, and God Help Me it should be interesting.


PAY OFF MY LAST CREDIT CARD
It seems like forever ago that Suzanne and I took Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover class, but I only have to look at my savings account, my self-accountability, and my spending habits to realize the lessons we learned have stuck - hard as glue.

I don't have Suzanne around to keep me accountable anymore, but I gotta say - I've done okay on my own. I have $1,000 stored away for my emergency fund, I've paid off three credit cards, and this year - if all goes according to plan - I'll pay off my final and largest credit card. Last year I transferred the balance to a 0% APR Chase card so that every time I make a payment, I'm hammering the principal. It feels damn good when I plunk down $150 on the barrelhead every month. As the year has gone on, I've chipped away at the balance so that, in 2009, I'll make one big payment and have the goddamn thing out of my life forever.

After that, I'll have my two student loans (about $18k) and my car payment (about $4k) to go. Ramsey recommends that I take the credit card payment ($150/month) and add it onto my next debt (one of the student loans) so that I'm making giant payments each month. That giant money hammer will pound that debt, and then I'll add THAT giant payment to the next debt, and so on. A debt snowball. It works like a charm.

I've cut my spending down so that every week I give myself enough to buy groceries, fill up my tank (easier these days), and have a bit of fun - so that I'm by no means "sacrificing." But I think back to my bygone college days and LBD ("Life before Dave"), and I wonder how I put away any money at all.

My point in all this is not to brag (though I do congratulate myself a bit for maintaining this level of discipline), but to point out that even before the economic crisis I was concentrating on getting my financial affairs in order - and 2009 will feature the biggest payoff since I started. To celebrate, I'll overpay by $1.25 on that Chase card so that they're forced to send me a credit check when I close the account. Why? Simple. So that, for once, they owe me money. Cool, huh?


That's not all for 2009. If you really know me, you know three measely goals are never enough for Dave Lawrence. I have one in mind that I meant to tackle at the end of last summer. More will spring up in the meantime, I'm sure. They always do. But 2009 is lucky: I won't put a lot of pressure on the the new year, which means life can go at my speed: methodical, prepared, a slow grind.

No stigma there.

Everything's amazing, nobody's happy.

Money quote: "You're sitting in a chair in the sky."

It's all so true. My big foible is sitting at red lights, and people not going fast enough down suburban streets. To think: I could be walking in November while it snows.

PBS had a marathon re-showing of "The War," an amazing documentary about World War II and its impact on four American towns. One scene in particular spoke to me, and it's when a lady - a little girl at the time - lives in a prison camp run by the Japanese. Her entire family almost starves to death during the War. She says how, when she got home, everyone was complaining about rations and the bad news coming from overseas.

"They just didn't get it," she said.

And boy, isn't that true for folks our age and younger? I've already talked with my grandma about this. I told her that, in a few rare cases, I've never known the kind of want that her generation and, especially, the generation before hers experienced. For that reason, any complaining I do will be consciously kept to a minimum. What right do I have to complain, when hell - it could be a lot worse.

Happiness comes from within, says the Buddha, not from without, and that lesson keeps popping up in my day-to-day life. Thankfully, I'm very content with my situation right now. Life is good. It might not always be that way. But at this time, and at this moment, I can breathe and eat and stay warm and enjoy typing on my Macintosh computer that also, amazingly, can talk to space.

Who can complain about that?

On backing up.

The collapse of Washington Mutual was called the "biggest bank failure of all time," meaning that - in today's times - no one is "too big to fail."

So it's good to have a backup plan. That's what blogger Khoi Vinh recommends, especially when it comes to anything you have stored online.

This advice is applicable to most areas of our lives: fire escape plans, fire-proof lock boxes for valuables, generators for power outages, etc. Planning, "just in case," can be a real lifesaver.

Just this week, I had an instance at work where I'm glad we made a backup plan. Our marketing department stores our files (ads, newsletters, web site graphics, etc.) on a network disk. That network disk has failed before, and the first time we had no backup plan. We lost all our files in an instant. Then we started to store our files on our work computers, and copy them to the network disk. But that didn't always happen, so when our network drive went down again, Marketing had a big scare. Luckily, we were able to recover most (but still not all) of our files.

After that crash, we bought an external hard drive to backup all of our files. I do this personally every other day or so: move files from the network disk to the external disk. So when we lost our network drive again this week (thankfully, only briefly), I didn't freak out. We had a backup plan.

Do you? If you store files online, like I do all over the place on Flickr or in my Gmail account, do you have them stored somewhere physical? What about your money? Do you have a few dollars of spare cash hidden somewhere, just in case? Maybe a spare gas can for those "uh oh" moments?

My brain seems to be in constant survival mode. I'm constantly backing up my Mac files, regularly buying canned goods, having my trusty sword available for intruders, and keeping food on me at all times. But there's always more I can do.

Vinh's bigger point is that, anymore, no one is "too big to fail":

The size of a company is certainly not a reliable shield against failure, but being small doesn't necessarily guarantee a company will be around in the long term, either. I just don't think that it's realistic to assume that all of the data we're storing online is safe. So a friendly reminder: back up.

He makes the point about online items (Facebook profiles, e-mail messages, banking information), but the point can go further to life in general. Anything can fail.

Things can easily get out of hand. Guys building bunkers in their backyard during the Y2K scare (remember that?) took things a little far. But hey, as long as you've got the storage shelter there, it's one less thing to worry about.

You know, just in case.

You don't have to be a paranoid person to realize that unexpected things happen. A wise person will set time aside to think about the "what ifs" life throws at us, and plan for them as much as possible.

I don't now, but I used to.

I used to watch a decent amount of TV. I'd get up in the morning and watch CNN while eating breakfast, come home and catch the news, and maybe grab an episode of "The Simpsons" with Don. Now I can honestly say I watch maybe a half hour to an hour of TV of week. I don't watch a lot of TV now, but I used to.

But that got me thinking: what do I do with my time now?

I only have to look at the hand prints on my iBook to know what I do. I'm on the computer constantly, either writing blog posts like this one, or that one, or researching trips and trip ideas, or doing tons and tons of reading, or I'm actually inside the computer trying out DIY projects and living to tell about them.

And I'm not alone. People are watching less TV these days, and finding far more productive uses of their time. Just like me.

In fact, I feel like I'm busier nowadays than I ever was when I was in tons of organizations and zooming off to meeting every night and spending a ton of weekends in Adrian. Now, I look back on that time and wonder, "How the heck did I manage?" I guess I managed by spending my time differently. It's no better or worse than before.

Now, though, I actually look down on people who watch a ton of TV. "Jesus," I catch myself thinking, "don't they have anything better to do?" It's not very fair. Television can have its redeeming qualities. But to me, the real world happens outside of that glowing box. Maybe I've said this before?

The change began, I think, when I first discovered MySpace in the spring of 2005. It became my cognitive heat sink. I read the vast amount of blog posts from back when I first discovered MySpace and - again - I wonder where I had all that free time. My political and social and personal thinking was all there, out for everyone to see, and now I'm lucky to post something new to MySpace once a week. I don't post to MySpace so much these days, but I used to.

Part of it is that, while I'm not involved in so many things as a whole, I'm deeply involved in the organizations I participate in. It seems my to-do list for my recycling group is never ending. But what could be a better cause? My political and environmental passions both get stoked, and I'm doing what I love. Same with Rotary.

So all that time I spend watching TV - wasted time, when you get down to it - I'm busy doing something else. Not to say that watching TV is a bad thing. I still adore my "The Office" episodes, and football on Saturday, and watching "Wheel of Fortune" with grandma. But the news? I listen to NPR religiously on the way to and from work. Or I read it online. And trust me: I'm reading or listening to the smarter news these days.

After that, I'm busy taking walks or going for a bike ride or undertaking whatever "wouldn't it be fun if..." project that shapes and grows my brain a little bit. It's been a blast. What's more, you'll never hear me utter the words, "I'm bored." Never.

Because I'm never bored these days. But I used to be.

News from the front [April 28, 2008]

Meet Too Tall.



Too Tall is a chocolate bunny that is, incredibly, too tall for his packaging. Too Tall is so tall, in fact, his ears have burst through the box top.

But is this the truth? Is Too Tall truly taller than his bunny comrades? It turns out Too Tall isn't tall enough.



As you can see, there is plenty of room in the bottom of Too Tall's box. His feet could rest comfortably on the real bottom, and there would be clearance between his "too tall" ears and the box top. There's no need for the hole.



Removed from his packaging, the effect is even more astounding. What would happen if you or I were to lie to little children like Too Tall is doing? Is his ego the only true thing bursting from the box?



I believe so. I believe Too Tall has an inferiority complex. It could stem from his hollow nature, or his average height, or a lack of a loving relationship in his parental rabbit den. Whatever the origin, Too Tall is simply telling a too-tall tale.

What kind of society have we become?

---

In other news, I got promoted last Tuesday to "Senior Communications Specialist." That means I'll be doing more of this, and some other video- and web-based projects. Which is cool.

But it also means I have to toss out my unused business cards and order new ones. Not cool.

---

Have a dirty...anything?

Two words: Magic Eraser.

I tried it out on my iBook this weekend, and it looks like a new friggin' laptop. Amazing. And all from simple abrasion.

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Running season is here again, and the new Nike+iPod kit is doing wonders. Just to have numbers (calories, average time per mile, etc.) to go along with my workouts is a dream come true.

What's better is the iPod Nano is so much better to run with than my clunky 30 GB model.

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Worked 24 hours in two days this weekend. Joy.

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A few birthdays, mine included, came and went without much celebration on my part, and I'm sorry for that.

Keith, hope your par-tay was fab.

Mine? Simple enough, and much appreciated. Just a nice relaxing weekend at home.

---

Spring is here, which means the entire universe changes direction, and moods lift like evaporating snow.

This year, I've really started to pay attention to birds. Not just my good friend the whip-poor-will (who I swear I will actually lay eyes on for once), but also the cardinal and the starling and all the noise-makers who are so cheerful first thing in the morning.

Buds are budding, trees are greening, and the birds are returning, as they do every year, to fill our hearts with gladness.

Now to figure out which ones are making which noises.

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Speaking of noises, I got my bike fixed so that I can tackle the Falling Water Trail - all 10 miles (one way) of it to Concord.

A quick breakfast, and off I'll go on some sunny Saturday. Eat lunch in Concord, and bike back. If that isn't the perfect day, I don't know what is.

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And speaking of perfect, my BBQ chicken breast is sizzling. Off to dinner.

News from the front - Jan. 29

Ben Franklin is my kind of American. He's long been a hero of mine, every since I read parts of his "Autobiography," but now I'm reading a bunch of books on the Founding Fathers to prepare for the big New England trip this spring.

And I don't dig Ben just because I use "Franklin" as my name during restaurant reservations. He was a genuinely fun, prototypical American - full of industry and humor and inventiveness, a true man-about-town. Ben was a carpe diem fellow, constantly using every available moment in his life to be productive or useful. I admire that.

I'll always remember the image of him carting rolls of paper around Philadelphia, just so he appeared to be a hard worker (really, he was - but it was all about appearances). Plus he's a printer and journalist, and those two professions always have a place in my heart.

So does Ben. He was America's original American, and it's great getting reacquainted with him.

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As a teenager, I wasted many hours playing "Warcraft II," a war simulation game with a fantasy twist, and I'm here to report that the sickness is back.

Owning an original iMac allows me to run all the old Macintosh software. With this in mind, I'm revisiting some of the older games that kept me occupied as a high schooler (I'm still looking for "Sim City 2000" and "Star Wars: Tie Fighter" - the greatest space shooter game ever invented).

The "Warcraft" I got includes a mode to play online against other people, and I've come to learn one thing: people that play games online aren't very nice.

I'll admit, I'm a "newbie" (or "n00b") when it comes to online play. But Sweet Cannonball Jesus, these guys are ruthless. They have little patience for people trying to learn the ropes, and often comes the game when everyone gangs up on me and blasts me into next week.

I don't take it personally, because really these guys have nothing better to do than sit at home and play games all day. Shit, I've heard stories of guys dropping out of high school to dedicate their sad little lives to "Warcraft" ("World of Warcraft" is even worse, I hear). And I just can't compete with that.

Nor should I. My mistake is trying to play for fun.

---

I'm pitting my chili recipe against nine other coworkers tomorrow.

Faith comes easy, but after placing second in the last American 1 International Invitational Chili-Con Cookoff, I have renewed passions for my chili and its deliciousness.

The secret is the experimental ingredient I always include. Last time it was pineapple, the time before it was beer (which is now a staple), and the time before that it was venison. What to do this time? Any suggestions?

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Speaking of New England trips...the plans are coming right along.

I've already got my map staked out, complete with spots to visit and sites to see, plus the where-do-I-start question has been answered (Philadelphia).

But it got me thinking about all the fun adventures I want to do before I die. So I've done the cliche "100 things to do before I croak" list, and here it is. I'm a bit over half-way done:

100 THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE


1. Drive Route 66
2. Drive across New England
3. Write a book
4. Learn to fly a plane
5. Live in another state
6. Own an apple orchard
7. Travel by train across Europe
8. Visit India
9. See the Acropolis
9. Hike the Appalachian Trail
10. See a Michigan/Ohio State football game
11. Own a boat
12. Learn to use Linux
13. Build a website from scratch
14. Be debt-free
15. Shake hands with the President of the United States
16. Eat a meal in Italy
17. Retire early
18. Change my own oil
19. Hike up a mountain
20. Start my own non-profit
21. Be my own boss
22. Drive 100 mph
23. Swim in a Canadian lake
24. Drive to Alaska
25. Save someone's life
26. Sell everything I own
27. Camp in absolute wilderness
28. See a San Francisco 49ers game
29. Work for Apple
30. Win a national award
31. Eat a lobster on the Maine coast
32. See the Grand Canyon
33. Make a major contribution to an environmental cause
34. Meet the Dalai Lama
35. Drive Route 66 again, or the reverse way (Santa Monica to Chicago)
36. Run for political office and win
37. Own a copy of "Amazing Fantasy 15" (first appearance of Spider-Man)
38. Become a Notary Public
39. Swim in a Swedish mountain lake
40. See "A Prairie Home Companion" live
41. Get my master's degree in communication or english literature
42. Go to a Buddhist temple for a week-long retreat
43. See the Himalayas
44. Cook Thanksgiving dinner
45. Visit all 50 states
46. Swim in Walden Pond
47. Eat a Coney on Coney Island
48. See a Michigan/Ohio State game live
49. Live to 70
50. Eat at Zingerman's Deli
51. Beat Final Fanstasy VII
52. Go on a horseride through Montana
53. Float in the Dead Sea
54. Participate in a bowling league
55. Appear on an NPR program
56. Craft my own wine
57. Win money on a gameshow
58. Play guitar or bass in a band

More items to come...

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Oh yeah. I'm on Twitter.

Check it out, send me some tweets.

The ice cream truck turns left, then right

Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless, queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide a grin."

- Frank Moore Colby, "Imaginary Obligations"

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Today is the perfect day, an 80-degree June wonder, a great afternoon to scribble out the American Dream, brittle and dry after so many years in a senseless war, who comes out to chase the ice cream man, but finds the truck turning right instead of left. It leaves this lonely writer alone to sit and sun and dream of Rocket Pops.

Here in the grass of Ella Sharp Park, the few remaining honeybees in existence buzz in vain for nourishment. Across the softball field, rocket hobbyists and radio-controlled plane operators engage in all-out war - the plane is zooming, whipping up a terrible frenzy in the tranquil bee population. If the rocket guys aren't careful, they could blow that plane out of the sky. Things might come to blows.

A whoosh, and a puff, and a trail of smoke follows the exploded rocket down to the earth. Across the street, families are putt-putting, and downtown is full of the constant roar of motorcycle men and women, leather-clad even in the heat.

I stood at the corner of Blackstone and Michigan Ave. for twenty minutes as the parade of beards and noise and chrome thundered by.

"...a local attorney drove his car across the sidewalk and over the ledge of my entranceway, where he leaned on his horn and tried to knock down the door with his bumper. A visiting poet hurled a garbage can under the wheels of a pssing bus, causing a noise like a bad accident. My upstairs neighbor said it sounded like a Volkswagen being crushed. 'It jolted me right out of bed," he said. "But when I looked out the window all I could see was the bus. I thought the car must have hit it head on and gone underneath. There was an awful dragging sound. I thought people were mashed down there in the wreckage.'"

...and so it goes in Dr. Thompson's amazingly funny "Hell's Angels," just like I'm sure it happens all over this great country...at this exact hour...on a perfect June day.

If only we could engage in our world as often as Mr. Bush engages in the world, we might be a sunnier people.

Like the families that bring their lawn chairs and coolers and watch their daughters battle on the soccer field just across the way.

Soon the smell of cut grass will ride this cool breeze over to me, and the bi-plane circling overhead will land somewhere for lunch. If only that goddamn ice cream truck would stop this way...

...blast! He again avoids me, turning into my own damn apartment complex instead of passing by the sun-drunk field where I sit. He won't get away with this. It's times like this I wish I had a metal Frisbee that I could throw and shatter his teeth like glass.

It didn't have to be this way, Mr. Ice Cream. It would've been the easiest $1.75 you ever made in your life.

News from the front - May 3, 2007

Had a nice weekend in Chicago, thanks for asking, and it was kind of the unofficial kick-off to the May that Will Never End.

I took Friday off, left from Jackson at 1:30 p.m. with the Anderson Printing crew, and enjoyed a heckuva weekend - great weather, great food, lots of walking, and good company.



Friday we ate stuffed pizza at Giordano's, and went to Second City and saw "Between Barack and a Hard Place," a great comedy show. Saturday we strolled around town to the Art Institute, Michigan Ave. and the Apple store (where my actual profile pic came from, thanks to iSight cameras and free internet), Millenium Park, Dick's Last Resort for dinner, and the Excalibur Club for some booty shaking with some aging Gen Xers.



Sunday we ate at the best breakfast place in the Midwest, Lou Mitchell's, and I took a quick nap in the park - which just goes to show not even the third largest city in America can stop me from sleeping.

Home and Trader Joe's and wine and drinking on the train - it all made for a good weekend. Thanks to Suzanne and Carolyn for including me in the fun.


* * * * *



Don and I have a new roommate.




[wait for it]



Meet Mario, our new goldfish!



Katie's been encouraging me to get a pet fish, especially since the only other living thing in our apartment is the plant. And Mario has bonded quite nice with the plant; he tends to stick on that side of the bowl.

Mario had a brother, Luigi, but sadly he didn't make it past the second or third day.

But the whole deal was a bargain. Got the fish bowl out garage saleing for $0.50, and the fish certainly didn't cost more than an ice cube - why not?

Mario's not very affectionate - must be that stint in 'Nam with the Agent Orange - but he's good company.



* * * * *



Yesterday morning was like diabetic Christmas.

I had my quartely check up at the Diabetes Center. I've lost five pounds, my blood sugar is a little higher than it should be, and I walked out of there with tons of free goodies.

Goodies like a new blood check monitor (the stylish OneTouch Ultra 2 - the Sequel!) and a whole $30+ bottle of new insulin to try out.

I've heard on the news where drug companies woo doctors to push their medication, and I was kind of against it. But now? Hell, bring on the cronyism!



* * * * *



This weekend is a trip to the west coast - a Rotary conference in Kalamazoo and then on to Lake Michigan and some beach-town fun. Then bachelor parties, weddings, going-away parties for dearly-loved little brothers, and a giant trip across this great nation.

See you in June.



* * * * *



God bless Jon Stewart.

I'm not a regular viewer of the "Daily Show," but when I do catch it I'm always struck at how much I end up respecting the man. He's out there doing what a lot of journalist SHOULD be doing, which is point out the absurdity of modern life in America.

But after the Virginia Tech mess, he had a representative from Iraq on for an interview, and he asks the guy, "We just had a terrible tragedy happen in this country. How do you deal with this kind of horror on a daily basis?"

Bam. There it was.

Imagine, friends, dealing with something on the scale of the Virginia Tech shootings on a goddamn daily basis.

I wouldn't be surprised if you can't, because I can't either. That's not the kind of world you and I, and the rest of this country, live in.

Stewart was on with a brilliant man, Bill Moyers, a superb journalist and all around decent human being, on his new PBS show "Bill Moyers Journal" (I've been listening to the podcasts). I encourage you to grab it, because it's the smartest interview I've probably ever heard. Stewart has this country. He sees, with a glimmer in his eye, what bullshit is going on, and he stabs at it with humor and intelligence that is sadly lacking from TV journalism - and he's not even a journalist.

Stewart recently beat the snot out of the once-respectable John McCain, and it was beautiful. Check it out.

Maybe I'll make more time to see "The Daily Show" now that I truly understand what it does and what its purpose is: to show Americans just how fucked up everything is right now.

Fear and tanning in Jackson County

"Spring won't come / the need of strife to struggle to be freed / from hard ground." - Type O Negative, 'Green Man'

---

My profile picture was taken a whole year ago - that magical age of 25, with Guster and Mates of State and Suzanne and I at the bar. It seems like a world away, and in a lot of ways it is. A lot's changed.


* * *


If spring won't come, then I'll leave. I took a look at my agenda for the Orlando conference and things will be...easy going, to say the least. I fly in Wednesday evening, with nothing to do but swim and drink and lounge and enjoy. Friday, I get the whole afternoon to explore one of the Disney parks. And on Saturday, when the rest of the card service officials are golfing, I'll be doing...something else.


* * *


I'm going to do battle with Detroit again tonight. We'll call it the rubber match, because last time Harpo's got the best of me. A slashed tire, a scary drive home, all after the great KMFDM show Don and I saw. Now we return to see Type O Negative.

And to think the guys from Type O pick Harpo's as their favorite place on Earth to play. Maybe they've never driven there. Maybe they don't have to worry about parking.


* * *


The show tonight wraps up birthday week 2007. It's been decent. Last Saturday felt more like my birthday than yesterday did, but it was nice to have the extra day off. And I've eaten pretty well over the past few days, thanks to good friends.


* * *


Thursday's blog started quite the discussion (see the comments section if you have any doubt), but I think it was the last comment that summed it up for me. How would my friends have felt if I had deleted a comment I didn't like, before it had a chance to be read?

It's too bad when people have to experience something before they identify with it. I always think of Dick Cheney in cases like this. The president is all for outlawing gay marriages, probably because he doesn't know anyone who's gay.

The VP doesn't hold the same epistemological outlook at Bush, lacking the born-again label, but he doesn't stray into outlawing rights because he has a gay daughter. So why does it take having a gay daughter to identify with people who don't sleep with the opposite sex?

Locally, I have a feeling we'd all be pretty angry if one of our transgendered relatives were treated like Julie was treated. Or we'd really be angry, at Adrian, if our beloved College World was ever stolen from the bins.

Maybe I lack a definite prism through which I see the world. But I like it this way. Makes me sound less dogmatic and self-righteous in arguments.


* * *


My good friend Josh came to see me at work the other day. We used to be the best of friends, and now our jobs and lives take us away from each other.

But he still makes it a point to stop in and see me when he's working out at the YMCA or testifying against some law-breaker at court.

I'll never forget when I first started working at American 1, Josh came in and asked for Dave, the president of the Gay Club of Jackson (or something like that). He freaked our receptionist out, and gave me a good story to tell. He knows how to embarrass people, a skill I think we've shared and perfected through the years.

He thought it would've been funny, on my first day, to wheel me in Hannibal Lecter-style - with the mask and straps and gurney.



* * *


Today I went tanning for the first time.

I was nervous about the whole thing (nude? lotion? do I cover "it" up?), but the friendly lady at Bronze Villa was really helpful about the situation.

Tanning comes pretty easily for me, thankfully, but I tend to burn the first time I greet the sun. I figured that before I head to Florida I should build up a base or something.

There's something about lying naked in a bed of glowing tubes that frees the spirit. I'm not really any darker (I only made it to level 1, with its UVB rays, today), but I am wiser.



Twenty-six years wiser, to be exact.

In like a lion, out like a sonuvabitch

It's been a rough week.


And it shouldn't be this way, really, because the weather is turning beautiful (it seems like a whole month early), and I see more and more people walking in the park. It's like when the geese return, honking their way back North: people "come back," too, as do the robins and the daffodils and the blue sky.

The trouble started first thing Monday morning, when I woke up with an itch in my throat and arrived at work to find my Dell Dimension 8400 was DOA. Two strikes in the morning that not even that first cup of coffee can fix, no matter how strong.

It's crushing to a creature of habit, finding his home or his workspace or his main instrument of art in disarray. I seem to crave stability as much as the Red Chinese, and having my good friend and companion since the winter of 2004 fail due to a corrupt hard drive...well, I sympathized with Job.

Our IT department's scorched-earth policy ("It's junk - we'll set you up with a pitiful replacement") didn't fly, so I grabbed the diagnostic discs and ran Repair multiple times - my shirt sleeves rolled up, my dress slacks dirty from crawling under my desk - to no avail. My hard drive failed all the tests I could throw at it.

And so has my health. That scratch I felt early Monday morning turned into a full-blown Nuisance. Not even a warm-night's walk with Katie to the Parlour for ice cream helped. There were some nights this week I couldn't swallow, my throat was so closed, and I would wake up with terrible fits of chill and heat due to fever. I couldn't understand what my body was telling me, so I drowned it in expired prescription drugs - hold-overs from a 2003 ear infection my first summer on the job.

Then my dad called. It seems my only stable childhood home, my grandmother's house, was bein sold. My dad bought it after my grandpa died, paying off all four of his siblings for the right to keep the house in the family. Now he can't afford it.

I remember spending endless summer weekends there, catching butterflies and going fishing and riding the old, creaky bikes my grandpa repaired and sold on the front lawn. He earned enough extra money to keep him and my grandma comfortable, and they even afforded an annual trip to Ocala, Florida, every winter.

After my grandparents passed, and my dad bought the house, I felt like I still had at least one thing from my childhood I could hold on to. It's the one thing in my life that has always stayed put, no matter how much I moved around, but now my dad was selling it because the other house he bought and fixed wasn't selling. "I can't afford two mortgages," he told me on the phone. "So we're going to try to sell the old one."

Unlike his son, my dad never was a sentimental man. Nor did he have the bond with that old one-acre farm house property I associate with so much happiness. So I can't imagine the decision to sell my grandparents' home was a tough one for him. And the worst part is he wants me to help him move.

"Don't do it," my grandma said. "You don't want that to be your last memory of that house."

She's probably right, but how can I say no to a man I see maybe once a month?



But maybe things are turning around. I woke up this morning and could swallow effortlessly, with little pain. The green tea and honey help. Today I got my old computer back - with a new hard drive. Really, anything would better than the measly 256k RAM machine I worked on this morning.

Tomorrow friends are coming for my annual birthday bash, and that makes me feel good. I tend to celebrate my birthday for an entire week, and tomorrow will be the kickoff. Andrea and Jimmy and Cowboy and Sarah are all due at 7 p.m. Then I have next Friday off, and Don and I are traveling to see Type O Negative at Harpo's. The week after that will be Orlando.

So maybe this is a trial period; I'm going through a tribulation so that my soul will be cleansed as I hit the big two-six. March is a terrible month, weather-wise. Maybe it should be life-wise, too.

This week I've gained great new friends, perhaps lost one, had my emotional life mixed in a blender (on "HIGH"), reached out to coworkers and Rotarians in the never-ending quest to Get Things Done, and laughed out loud at the story my grandma shared about my mom getting her ass kicked out on a busy Jackson street.

It's the little things, right? They can lift you up, but they can bring you down - much like everything else.

Hope springs eternal. Here's to a better week.

On desire

"He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy."

- William Blake

---

Ginny asked me, simply, "What more could you want?"

If only the answer were as easy as the question, because lately I've been thinking a lot about the things I want. Out of life, out of myself, out of a relationship.

Desire is not an occupation, but it's a helluva way to pass the time; a search for some grail that will have us - not immortal - but keenly wishing for something else.

And that's where it gets us: the wishing. The "what-ifs." The damned desire.

It never seems to spawn anything worthwhile (except for, rarely, love). Look at the poor, doomed Angels of the Old Testament. They saw the Women of Earth, prostrate, and desired them completely. God doesn't allow his first-born the benefits of sex in Heaven, so they fall to Earth, have their way, and get banished for their efforts.

The result? Giants who terrorize the ancient world.

Recently I've experienced my own misgivings with what I want. I think about how much time I spend thinking about some sort of "plan" for my life, and what would make me happy, and it all feels like such a waste of effort. What good can all that thinking do for me? Can I really run my life through my thoughts?

Mr. Keillor put it pretty well a few weeks ago, speaking about the sneakiness of desire, and how simple it can be:

I am an American in headlong pursuit of happiness and here was a lady expressing an older and earthier philosophy that my aunts would not have disagreed with: Better than happiness is acceptance, a gift of God. You wake up every morning and pull on your jeans and make coffee and look at the newspaper and pour bran flakes and milk in the bowl, and as time goes by you realize that this is preferable to what you once imagined would make you happy.

Madame Larina was quite pleased with the line "Instead of happiness, heaven sends us habit." And she sang it several times. I put my hand on my wife's knee. She was sitting next to me in the dark. It was snowing in Minnesota, a gray blustery Russian sort of day, and when we walked into the theater, a multiplex in the suburbs, we were in the mood to see "Eugene Onegin" live on high-definition TV from the Met, starring soprano RenÈe Fleming and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Keillor notices that, surely, our sense of want and need for plans change over time, like everything else. Simple is usually better, he finds. But his advice is lacking for a twenty-something guy who feels like he's on the edge of...something. Teetering, just waiting to fall, or land safely. Especially when he tells the story of the play he's watching:

It simply was the most moving thing I've seen at the movies in a very long time. Mr. Hvorostovsky is tall, cool, handsome and everything that Elvis was hoping to be, and Miss Fleming's bare left shoulder is more erotic than Madonna naked and when she puts her hand to her bodice, she makes my nostrils twitch. She plays Tatiana, who goes crazy for Onegin and writes him a letter and agonizes over it and plucks at her bodice and finally sends it to him.

He coolly rejects her. He doesn't believe in marriage. He is in search of happiness, not the life of habit and dailiness. The chorus gets to sing and dance, and he shoots and kills the tenor, which I suppose we've all wanted to do now and then, and years later he meets her again -- she is married, and now he is wild for her, and after a passionate duet, him on his knees, tugging at her, pleading, sobbing, pulling her down on the floor, she decides to be faithful to her husband and walks away, leaving Onegin tortured with regret.

...For three hours on a Saturday afternoon, everything that had been on our minds faded to black and we lived as in a dream with a handsome man in search of happiness and a beautiful woman who found satisfaction, and then we walked out into the snow and started our cars.

The search for happiness. The torture of regret. It seems like those raw emotions make life what it is. But to experience them firsthand, in the now, makes you long for something else. There's that desire creeping up again.

What is desire? Imagine there's a hole in your spirit. Now imagine you want to do something to fill the whole. What do you do? What do you fill it with?

For Christians, they say it's a God-shaped hole. Fill it with Jesus, and you're set. Buddhists say the hole is self-shaped. Be content with your self (or yourself), and your desire will end. After all, we have limited control over our environment, so why not settle our mind and emotions - the few things in life we can control?

But what happens when you try to fill the hole with other things, like alcohol, or drugs, or sex, or relationships, or material things, or money, or power, or knowledge? Most say it's folly. Stuff can never fill our hole, but we try anyway.

And maybe that stuff does make us happy, at least some of the time. I know nothing in this world makes life come into sharp focus more than a hot cup of coffee.

But suffering comes from the realization that those moments are fleeting. What can last forever? What shape is your hole? William Blake knew what he was talking about: enjoy the fleeting moments of joy (since, really, who can fault you for it?), but try to chain the joy to desire, and it's not going to be much fun at all. No sir.

Just letting things happen. Ever try that? It seems like a sure-fire way to beat the big D, but it's harder in practice. I'm learning, though. There's little in this world I - or you, or anyone - can actually control.

Why not focus on those things you can control, and let the rest...just happen. Shit, why not?

It sure beats the tortured regret and all that nonsense.

On being too busy

"Do few things and do them well." - St. Francis

---

Busy people recognize busy-ness. In conversation, we can connect with our compatriots.

"I've got a meeting tonight, and I have to run and do some errands, but later if you want to we could..."

In between all that, a busy person will recognize his or her own situation. "Yeah," they might think, "I know how that goes."

But, like most of a busy person's relationships, that may be all we glean from the encounter. It may be that appointments and engagements takes the other person away, or perhaps your own busy-ness carries you off. For what can be learned of our friends and family if there's no time to learn it?

Thomas de Zengotita, in his book "Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live In It," likens this skimming to the feeling you get when a limb - arm, leg, foot, whichever - falls asleep. "Ever notice," he writes, "how, when your hand is numb, everything feels thin?"

Sure, anyone can relate to that. Zengotita says this can be read as a "guiding metaphor" for the "mediated adult" - being someone who is so "busy" being an adult, with all its activities and responsibilities, that life tends to feel a bit thin. Or maybe we don't feel it at all. We're so used to that thinness that we think life should feel this way.

Only when "the ultimately real descends upon us in the form of tragic accident" does that haze lift - sometimes, only briefly. "And then," Zengotita goes on, "we remark upon how things have been put in perspective."

Like a stone skimming a pond, we merely tread the surface. We tip-toe on only the tip of the iceberg. In both, we never truly get wet.

Unless disaster strikes.

I can certainly relate. I remember there were times, in college, when I would have an entire day's worth of activities and to-dos planned that only at the end of the day could I really sit down, relax, maybe get some homework done. Things haven't improved all that much. I'm still involved in many organizations, have friends in town and out to visit and socialize with, have hobbies to maintain, and somewhere in there I eat and sleep. Then get up and go to work. Over and over again.

Life is fleeting. It's fleeting because I'm so busy doing the flying.

Lately, though, I've been stepping back and taking a look at how I do things. Instead of running all over hell's half acre, I make a point of setting aside a few nights for relaxing, or doing things with friends, or just doing nothing at all. I'm selfish with my time. And why shouldn't I be? It's one of those things you can never get back, no matter how much you multitask.

Multitasking, in fact, can be held accountable for some of our busy-ness. Even on the ride home from work, you can call friends or family, set up your schedule for the rest of the night, maybe do a few errands why you're out and about. So busy. With cell phones, PDAs, etc., technology has its stake in this, too.

We probably never set life on cruise control as we do now. Now, we just let the engine of busy-dom jet along at an ever-faster pace. Meanwhile, our relationship with our actual lives begin to thin at the margins.

Ever notice how life seemed so much slower "back then?" Perhaps it was because there was less to do, but also because people didn't feel the compulsion to cram their day with the day-to-day. Long conversations, extended meals, walks and community events - these are what filled people's time. It was quality, not quantity.

Saint Francis understood this. His words tell us that a person's life can be truly fulfilled only when mastery of a few key ideas, skills, or accomplishments are realized. Today's world is filled with so many choices (think about the cereal aisle at the grocery store) that to land on and master any one thing become difficult. Why do a few things well when you can do all sorts of things half-assed?

But Tom Hodgkinson, in his book "How to be Idle," says that being busy robs us of the very things that make us human: thought and self reflection. How can we get to know ourselves, he argues, when we're too busy to stop and think?

He even quotes Oscar Wilde, from Wilde's essay "The Critic as Artist":

The contemplative life, the life that has for its aim not doing but being, and not being, merely, but becoming - this is what the critical spirit can give us.

In other words, a "to-do" list (which I swear by, I'll admit) keeps us from finding ourselves. It's all a distraction. Amidst so much to do, we have forgotten what matters. And - back to that "thinness" metaphor again - we eventually become superficial beings, instead of the realized versions of a potential self.

While playing video game football hardly helps me realize my potential self (accept, perhaps, when I can beat Don), it helps me settle, helps me use my brain, and helps me relax.

It's also one of the reasons I've found Buddhism so attractive lately. I don't have a religious bone in my body, but something about the practical aspects of mindfulness, and concentration, and just sitting and thinking - it's awfully hard to ignore the benefits. Instead of being so worried about planning, or regretting, or being anxious about things I can't control, I simply let them be. It's a fine art, and a talent, and I hope I can develop it more.

For some, however, being busy is all they know how to do. Running on all six cylinders is the usual - only on vacations or when they're asleep do they know the meaning of "down time." In the meantime, there is this drive to get things done. Perhaps, when the too-busy person looks back at their life, they will feel a sense of accomplishment.

But at what cost?

I think you can have it both ways. You can do lots of things - strike off those items on the to-do list, one by one - but still keep a sense of connectiveness to those you care about. It's about moderation. And (here's a multitasker's buzz-word) time management. Shucks, even a day spent on the couch, watching a movie, being lazy - it can be beneficial. Running on overdrive has to have its cost, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and certainly physically.

And when it does, what will all that running around be worth?

Living life 1.5

I picked up a copy of Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" issue and - lo and behold - the person being celebrated was me.

And you... And everyone.

The shiny, white iMac on the cover caught my eye, as did the reflective Mylar - a postmodern gimmick that reflects the viewer's own image back at them - and because I've been hearing so much about user-created content and Web 2.0, I just had to read more.

What I learned, and what I'm sure everyone logging into MySpace later today already knows, is that people are taking over the internet.

It goes something like this... In the old days, big corporations - Nike, Coke, Apple, The New York Times - built web pages where people would go to read, purchase, browse, whatever... But the companies and organizations that owned the web site controlled what you saw.

Web 2.0 says we control what we see... Go to my Flickr account and you'll see all the photos I've taken in the last year... Come to my MySpace profile and read about how I survived New Year's... Go to eBay and bid on stuff I'm selling... Point your browser to Amazon.com and read the book review I just wrote... That's Web 2.0.

And, essentially, it's the power of all that people-created stuff that made Time pick everyday citizens as the people of the year.

Why not?.. From the sounds of it, we've all been pretty busy...

This raises concerns, however, because if you've ever visited a random YouTube video - maybe the one where the guy performs dance moves to music through the decades, as Stacy showed me one day (and I want that six minutes of my life back, dammit) - you know that there's an awful lot of garbage out there.

That makes the quality stuff, the real cream, harder to find among all the junk... Web 2.0 provides tools, like del.icio.us, to help us sort, thankfully... But after a whlie all that crap takes up a lot of our attention - and a lot of our time.

For the most part I've embraced a lot of 2.0 stuff... I love reading through Wikipedia... I could spend hours on there, browsing through all the links, learning about how information interconnects... I use backpackit to keep a list of books I want to buy or interesting software I want to check out... I read Lifehacker every day to see how some geek in Idaho turned his Mac SE into a neon fish tank (and how I can repeat the process)...

I also read about people spending their entire lives on the computer, noting every little moment, typing in every little to-do for the day, wasting hours on YouTube watching a kitty fall over asleep.

Brian Williams, in a kind of counter-argument to the "Person of the Year" spread, wrote that "the danger just might be that we miss the next great book or next great idea, or that we fail to meet the next great challenge...because we're too busy celebrating ourselves."

I like spending time online, and wasting time reading my friends' blogs, but I make sure to actually live Life, version 1.0, because that's where the really good stuff happens.

You can't beat a scrap piece of paper, scribbled with the daily to-dos and crammed into your pocket... You can't beat actually watching some goofy animal do some goofy trick, right out there in nature.

[Side story:.. I'll never forget the day I watched a squirrel fall out of a tree - actually lose his/her footing and come crashing to the ground - while I was eating my lunch outside one summer day... That's life!]

And you sure as hell can't beat finding out about a person's life from their own lips... I learn more about Suzanne or Don or Ladane from spending a good meal together than I ever will reading their bulletins, no matter how much information they pack in there.

It makes me wonder how people my grandma's age ever got along without the Internet... Isn't that a strange thing to think about?.. Life Before?.. Here we've grown up with..the Web..since we were at least teenagers, and I've learned a lot trying to teach my grandma what all is possible with something as simple as, say, a Google search on who sang "Lean On Me.".. She still heads to the encyclopedia, even after all these years.

Sometimes just sitting, and thinking, and picking your teeth with a toothpick can be the best thing in the world, you know?

...well, maybe not... That one's pretty personal.

It'll be interesting to see where all this stuff leads to - where, say, Web 3.0 could take us... I just hope it won't be the hyper-celebrations of the Me Culture, the incessant desire to become..some crypto-Internet celebrity, that I have nightmares about.

But in the meantime, I'll be living the best of both worlds - trying to stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest, but still taking the time to live a life that isn't contained within a 17-inch LCD screen.

Courage: you couldn't come at a worst time

To live is to see change, but here lately change has been hitting me like a truck.

Consider this:
- I got a new apartment in September
- I've made lots of new friends, and reunited with a few old ones
- I've garnered more responsibility with Rotary and Recycling Jackson
- A few side projects - Jackson Magazine, for instance - ran their course
- I've organized two outstanding ATO alumni events
- My grandma is probably going to lose her house next month
- My car was broken into, shattering my sense of security
- I've reclaimed my personal time, at the expense of some important relationships
- ...let's not even get started on that word, "relationships"
- I'm planning a country-spanning trip in May
- I became an MacGeek


...these are the concrete things, issues and events that have their place on a calendar or in my inbox somewhere. But then there are the more insubstatial factors. This general, unplaceable sense of change and disruption and...progress? Evolution?

Transition. That's the word I'm looking for.

There was moving to Brooklyn and attending Columbia for high school. Going to Adrian. Sophomore year of Adrian. Senior year of Adrian. Graduation. Moving out of dad's. Becoming single. Getting involved in the community.

Now, there's now. The year of our lord 2006.

Lots of friends have written about this "quarter life crisis" - how, here in the real world, life is a bit tougher than they imagined. Or maybe they just can't find a sense of direction. Or are asking themselves, "Is this it? Jesus!"

I'm not feeling any of that. But still, a sense of foreboding; an ethereal electricity in the air. Could be rain.

Could be something bigger.

Guess it just feels better to write it out there, and see if I'm not crazy.

Can anyone else smell it? Or am I just being a doom junkie?

Idle class for the lazy ass

We work too much.


Duh, right? Who doesn't know that? But what do you do about it?

Or maybe you're one of those rare mutants who actually likes to work.

Not me. I'd much rather have free time, to do my own thing, than sit at work for eight hours every week day. Money isn't as valuable as time. You can't ever get time back.

Thank goodness there's a British chap who thinks like I do. I just finished Tom Hodgkinson's "How to Be Idle" - a great book full of tips and philosophy for those of us who like to sleep late, take long lunches, and take back a pint (or two) among friends.

Hodgkinson organizes the book according to times of the day, and what you could be doing at that time - other than working, of course. He starts off with an 8 a.m. chapter, "Waking Up is Hard to Do," and goes through the day highlighting "Sleeping In" (10 a.m.), "First Drink of the Day" (6 p.m.), "Sex and Idleness" (1 a.m.), and "Party Time" (3 a.m.).

Work is a product of the Industrial Revolution, Hodgkinson says, when capitalist fat cats wanted everyone at work at a certain time, for a certain length, and to produce a certain amount of products. Gone are the days (unless you're a farmer or freelancer) when you could putt around the house, do chores, do whatever trade you worked in, then head to the pub and dream up revolutionary thoughts.

The alarm clock? A whip's crack. The hour lunch period? Indentured mealtime. No drinks on the job? Pure madness.

I like the way this guy thinks.

Idleness is different from laziness, however. Laziness is getting nothing done, while Idleness is getting things done when you're damn well good and ready. Who can't subscribe to that?

And the whole history of Western Civilization since the early 1800s has been an effort to get us to work - often longer and harder. But, Hodgkinson says, it comes at a price. Instead of daydreaming (where good ideas come from) or lying in bed and thinking, we're forced to get up, get dressed, and go to work. All the great thinkers were idle. Jefferson, Einstein - these guys sat and thought. It was guys like Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison who swore off sleep and preached more toil.

I just don't speak their language.

But neither do some other folks. There's a counter-strike brewing against people who think we should sit at our desk all day. Efforts like the Slow Food Movement and endless web sites that make fun of work are popping up. Hodgkinson also founded a magazine, The Idler, that preaches to the idle.

Why do we work so much? Hodgkinson thinks its our consumer culture, making us feel inferior if we don't own the latest and greatest. Unhappy? Buy stuff! Can't afford it? Work harder!

I'd call him a communist, but he probably doesn't have the energy for it. Besides, communism praised the worker, and Hodgkinson doesn't have time for that nonsense.

He's still sleeping.

On childhood.

Today at lunch, while enjoying my quiet dish of tuna-cheezy noodle casserole, a few co-workers reminisced about the time when they had similar dishes as poor kids; when they couldn’t afford milk to put on their shredded wheat.

I knew what was coming.

"Kids today don’t appreciate anything," one woman said. I think she heard my eyes rolling, because she and another co-worker addressed me - and the fun began.

Stories of children who didn’t appreciate their $100 tennis shoes or who demanded a cell phone at age 13. Stories about, when they were kids, working night and day, all summer long, to afford a pair of pants for school in the fall. Up-hill both ways.

"And isn’t it weird," I said, "that your parents probably said the same thing when you were kids. ‘Our kids have no respect.’"

Oh no. Not their parents. Our generation was apparently special. We are selfish, spoiled brats, demanding a TV in our room and a Lexus when we graduate.

As in Macbeth, a lot of sound and fury signifying bullshit.

First, I don’t think there’s anything about our "entitlement generation" that bucks trends from the last - oh, I don’t know - umpteen generations before us. Our parents wanted more from their parents, who wanted more from their parents, and on and on. And our parents gave in. They wanted to give more to their kids then they had. It’s the American Dream.

Second, any glorification of one’s childhood amounts to a pissing contest. "Well, we had it worse" and "You don’t know how bad we had it" just becomes a silly boxing match, neither side giving ground until they end up barefoot in the snow, tilling fields for pennies a day (if they were lucky) and enjoying a rare ice cream cone on Sundays.

I don’t care how bad you had it as a kid. You made it out alive.

And if you’re using your woe-betrodden childhood to make your life legit, you deserve the rotten kids you have now.

I was diagnosed type 1 diabetic at age seven. I went to about 15 different schools up until high school. I had an unfit mother.

These are my experiences, and they make me who I am. But I don’t trot them out for the world to stand up, take notice, and identify with my suffering. In fact, I rarely share instances of my childhood. Because they’re mine.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe when I have kids, as those women in the lunchroom say, I’ll "understand." Understand this: I’m going to spoil my kids rotten. Why? Because, like my parents were supposed to do, I’m going to give my offspring a better life than I had growing up. It’s the greatest legacy you can give to the world, my grandmother says - a well-off, responsible, loved child.

Why complain about giving your kids the world, even if comes in the form of a Playstation? I think if you do your job as a parent, your kids will care about the things that matter. And, after their selfish teenage years, they’ll appreciate you as a parent when they reach adulthood.

You don’t, after all, have to buy a new car for your kid when they graduate. You can make them earn it with an after-school job.

But I can just hear it: "Junior’s job isn’t nearly as tough as the one I had as a kid."

Beat your 'soft addiction'

They say that youth is wasted on the young - and "they" are right - but it may be more accurate to say that life is wasted on just about everybody.

That's the news from Judith Wright, author of "There Must Be More Than This: Finding more life, love, and meaning by overcoming your soft addictions," who says that we most often "check out" of reality, ourselves, and those around us by using "soft addictions" like zoning out in front of TV or heading to Starbucks five times a day.

Why do we do it? Wright says it's to distract ourselves from feelings or thoughts we don't want to deal with. Or we have certain hungers that we can't, or won't, satisfy, so we create new hungers - like watching four sitcoms on "Must See TV."

"Yes, I know people need to relax," Wright says in a Newshouse News Service article, "but don't tell me that four hours in front of the TV or computer is making you feel really good."

Who can't say they've never succumbed to one of these soft addictions? I can think of a few I've held: eBay, CDs, Spider-Man comics, CNN, MySpace.

My worst, and one from which I still suffer, is my e-mail. The mouse is seemingly forever hovering over the "Refresh" button, while I wait with baited breath for new messages to pop into my inbox. Why do I do it? Apparently, according to Wright, perhaps I suffer from lack of communication with those around me. I have to rely on others, outside my immediate zone of reference, for communicating and intimacy.

Distractions, it seems, are the prescription for anxiety.


But really they are just a waste of time. So-called "soft addictions" can also be a waste of money, when you add up all the CDs and lattes you've purchased to make you not-so-happy. Think of all you could have been doing instead of browsing through photos on MySpace, or shopping for that Beanie Baby (old reference, I know) you just had to have.

My grandmother likes to say that there isn't enough time to "enjoy all the beautiful things in this world." And she's right. Much has been written about humankind's quest for immortality, and it's not to use up all that time collecting things and watching episodes.

Some, of course, need help. The line between a soft addiction and an issue needing treatment is one I can't diagnose. But most of us fall into the former category. And there's something we can do about it. Namely: go outside and play. Read a book. Take a walk in the woods. Go somewhere where life, as its happening, wasn't made to entertain you.

And think.

It's tough, I know. I often use music to escape actually thinking about what's going on in my life. But then I take a walk, with no headphones, and analyze...whatever.

Find yourself in front of the TV? At the Starbucks counter about to plop down $2 for a cup of coffee? Shopping on eBay?

Step back, take a breath, and go talk to an actual, live human being.

It may help you beat your soft addictions, especially when you think about how all that...stuff...isn't really helping you at all.