Finding A Pattern That Works for Me

I write three blogs now, labors of love, this one, one on affirmations, Envision Your Best Self Daily , and The Duck Stops Here, which is about Duck Football. None of the three are going to make me rich. Let's be honest, none of the three are going to make me a dime. But all of the experts say the secret to true success and true happiness is to find your passion and follow it. At some point I'll add a poker blog and a golf blog, and the chief benefit of all that blogging will be that I'm writing every day. Writing is life, hope, and engagement. Writing is the exercise and the discipline that gives life to my heart and mind. Oh, I have to admit, a good deal of the time I don't have a whole lot to say. But in writing you discover your voice, and the effort to dedicate and develop yourself is more than worth it. It engages me. It gives me hope, and the means to reflect and to grow. It isn't a seamless or quick process. It's something you dig out of the ground, like mining for gold. You have to move around a lot of dirt to get to the priceless stuff. You have to keep believing the priceless stuff is within you. I fervently believe it is.

I made an important discovery today, or more accurately, an important rediscovery. The best time for me to write is in the dead of the night, The dark early morning hours when the apartment is quiet and everyone is asleep. That's the time when it can't get sidetracked by the demands of the day or heat or noise or pressing obligations. It's the sacred time that isn't clogged up with anything else. This is the best time for me to write. This is when I am the most trusting and the most clear and the most earnestly committed.

I don't often want this to be the subject. It's dangerous to be writing about writing, navel contemplation to the ninth degree, holding a keyboard like the guy on the Cream of Wheat box holding a box of Cream of Wheat that has a picture of a guy holding a box of Cream of Wheat. You can get lost in paradoxes or redundancy. There's far more interesting stuff to consider.

Tonight however I needed to make a declaration. I want to write, and I want to write every day, and the best time for me to do that is in the wee hours of the morning when every thing is dead silent and the years and memories come back to me. I can make out the outlines of the shadows. I can hear the voice of God and the music in the stillness. I can't write when someone is watching me with suspicious or distrusting eyes. I can't write in chaos and clamor. I need quiet. I grew up in a chaotic house of seven children and two dysfunctional adults who were either in a frenzy of codependent ecstasy or screaming misery and nightmare violence. The quiet soothes me and takes me back to my safest place. I crave quiet and stillness. I'm terrified of meanness, sarcasm, anger and demeaning brutality. I have no stomach for hurt. There's a shame within me I'd give almost anything to avoid revisiting. Except when I'm writing. When I'm writing I'm not afraid of anything, which is why I want to do it more than anything in the world. I'm glad I got that out. I don't do it to slight anyone or ignore anyone or hurt their feelings. I do it because it's the most necessary and vital journey of my life.

Here's What I Gotta Do

1. Eat with more forethought and attentiveness. Eat sensibly. Control my portions. Eat smaller meals more often. Mix in some vegetables. Don't eat merely for comfort or entertainment. Drink more water--don't fall into the trap of eating because I'm thirsty, eating because I'm bored, eating to pass the time or accompany the television. Take time to focus on and enjoy my food, take small bites, really chew and taste the food. Don't gobble. Avoid eating mindlessly or indifferently. Avoid eating on the run or while occupied or preoccupied with something else. Part of the benefit of saying a blessing over food is to remind us that food is a blessing, a celebration of safety and provision and abundance, and the act of eating is an acceptance of mercy and sustenance and grace. It's foolish to take the food I eat for granted. It's a grievous detriment to my health and well-being. Mix in some exercise and activity. Get moving. Don't be a slug, or a slave to habit. Get started. Don't waste the day, particularly my leisure hours, which are precious and hard-earned.

2. Stop harboring murderers and thieves. Anger, worry, frustration and hurt are the soul-destroyers and silent killers. They age us by the minute and rob our lives of joy and hope. Examine why I have these feelings. Let go of things I can't control, and develop a plan to do something about the things I can change. Take the first step. Declare my intentions. Stand up for myself and what is important. Stop wasting time in misery or inattention, reflect on my life, and change its direction. What is my purpose? What is my plan? What am doing about it? I have to realize that bad habits and mindless pastimes and stored misery will keep me stuck forever, but only if I allow it. Move forward. Be honest with myself and others. Reach out instead of clamming up and suffering.

3. Make a list. Make several lists. I ought to have a bucket list, a list of goals, a list of obligations and issues and problems to solve, a list for the day, a list for the month and year. I ought to pray over those lists with same devotion I pray over my food, because these tasks and hopes and assignments are the abundance I am given to "eat" in life. I spend too much time staying numb and keeping occupied, while the undone and unexamined and unaddressed pile up around me. I am lazy in heart and failing life. Most of the time I merely exist. This is harsh criticism, but warranted. All the important things I ignore. So many of the trivial things obsess me.

4. Get a new job. My present job is a perfectly honorable and good job, for someone else. It doesn't interest or engage me. I spend my work day being abused by toxic people over something that isn't my fault and doesn't matter at all, something that wastes time and rots their brains. It is eight hours of misery and drudgery and fear and anxiety and unpleasantness. I dread climbing the stairs to work. I have a lousy shift, a terrible boss, and poor pay. And it's my own damn fault. I didn't plan, I didn't apply my skills and resources, and I haven't researched or prepared a better solution.

5. If I want to write, if I say I want to write, I have to write. Every day. I can't allow myself to be bullied by harshness or sneering criticism, by blow-back. I can't worry about the reaction. I have to write what I see and feel and observe and know and stop hiding. I have to write like my life depends on it, because it does.

That's it for now. There's a lot more I gotta do and consider, but that's a start. Stay tuned.

The Power of the List

Schindler had one. Nixon had one. Every man who gets sent to the grocery store for more than two items ought to have one.

There is an innate power in making a list. It's the beginning of commitment. It's the first step in making a concrete plan for any purpose. Any time I make a list, of my chores, my goals, or my tasks for the day, I create a useful road map toward getting where I want to go.

I had a list today with sixteen things on it and I got fifteen of them done with a half hour to spare. I had four hours, and defeated the time suck and inattention that might have swallowed up the day. I was organized. I was systematic. I avoided false steps or distraction. I feel better already.

There is an old saying, "how do you eat an elephant?" Answer: one bite at a time. Anything, any task, any problem, any goal, any budget, becomes more manageable and doable when you divide it into parts. The path becomes clearer. The first and subsequent steps become more obvious. It becomes easier too to make adjustments. When the plan falls apart or runs into a snag it's easier to prioritize and reschedule.

I like simple lists because they don't seem cumbersome or restrictive. They give me just enough structure to orient myself. My time flows more surely. There's a satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

For the rest of my days I resolve to be a list maker and a list achiever. That's important, because I'm getting to the point where I need to compose a bucket list, a list I'm already starting to compile in my head. Next week I have a four-day weekend; I'm taking two vacation days for a much-needed mini-holiday. I have another one the third week of August. It will be a great time for knocking more things off my list.

No one ever has enough time or money. But by using the power of the list, we can make the most of what we have, and recognize with better clarity how much of each we have left. That's a powerful tool for a better, more rewarding, less stressful life.

A Perfect Day

The sweetest music in the world is the delighted chuckle of a small child. I gave Ethan a ride on my shoulders, and you'd have thought he was the star of the circus. I bought him a used eight iron for 6.99 and watched him devour his mother's chicken salad. I held baby Elizabeth and she urped all over the shirt I was wearing to work. She cuddled against my chest and I rubbed her tiny back. Kourtney is growing up to be a confident and well-adjusted preteen, in seventh grade in the fall. She gave up soccer for competitive dance.

In all the ways that count I am a rich man. Louis Oosthuizen won the British Open, but I got to play putt-putt with my grandson on a summer day. I'll wear the urp like a trophy and remember it forever.

The Trailer Trash Returns to Earth

He took some wonderful shots, and made a dozen putts that just burned the edges. If a handful of them had fallen or tipped or wrinkled their way into the hole he would have been in the thick of things. That didn't happen this time, and the man in the funny pants was left to face the press in sadness. He made the cut, but he's no longer part of the story. It's not his weekend for glory or redemption. John Daly fell back.

Sports are like that sometimes. The heroic effort fizzles or falls just short. Last year a 59-year-old Tom Watson needed to make just one more putt to win his four British Open and ninth major with everyone in the world rooting for him but missed the hole and then lost a playoff. We can marvel at athletes in pressure situations, and cry occasionally, when fortune fails and proves that they are human. Defeat and failure are an essential part of the story. Sometimes even victory is bittersweet. Ask Stewart Cink. Last year when he won people said it was like he defeated Santa Claus. Winning became a footnote to the story everyone hoped to read.

Tomorrow two Englishmen and a diminutive South African with a name no one can pronounce with certainty have the best chance at hoisting the Claret Jug. They'll duel in the howling wins. Louis Oosthuizen, 27 years old and never before a contender in a major championship, will try to sleep tonight with a four-shot lead. This morning countrymen Gary Player and Ernie Els called to wish him luck. Will he collapse under the pressure? No one knows. So far he has been calm and steady and in perfect rhythm, even when conditions were daunting. Tomorrow at the birthplace of Golf he has his chance to become a champion or a footnote. John Daly will putt out hours before and wave sadly to the crowd.

Tiger Woods is ten back and hasn't a chance to win. I'm delighted to say his misery continues. He deserves it. As long as he stonewalls the questions and maintains his proud indignance, he deserves every embarrassment he gets. He failed as a person and succumbed to his monstrous appetites, and so far hasn't exhibited the courage or the heart to redeem himself or change the storyline. He squandered an empire and a family. It will be curious to see when he'll gather himself for a true comeback story of his own. He lost twice this weekend, once to St. Andrews, and once to the British press. No doubt he'll find his golf swing, but will he find composure, grace, humility and perspective? He'll have to wait for another weekend to show it. For now Jack Nicklaus' legacy is safe, and his is supremely tarnished.

The most interesting stories in sports are not the results and statistics, the money won and the trophies raised. The most interesting stories are the human ones. They are the reason I watch. Tomorrow will be an interesting day, watching how these men handle victory and defeat.

Triumph of the Trailer Trash

I was raised on a poor dirt farm in Eastern Oregon, sixty acres of skinny cows, sagebrush and sand. I was hoeing and milking and driving farm trucks by the age of nine, a hired hand. We were dirt poor. One of the strongest memories of my childhood was the day the lineman came to shut off our electricity one summer. When I was ten my father parked a truck in Prosser, Washington. We had five loads of watermelons to sell, a summer's work of hard labor that had raised blisters on our backs, and now the crop was ready and it was time to cash in. He told me I could eat dinner in the restaurant across the street, and that I should sleep in the truck. He had to go to The Dalles with another load. This one was left to me.

In two days I made $163 selling watermelons three for a dollar. This was 1965, when gas was twenty nine cents a gallon and a hamburger was twenty nine cents. I kept the money in a paper sack under the bench seat of the truck, a beat down old Chevy with rusted paint. On the third day the Prosser cops came and asked me where my parents were. They took me to the station and filled out a bunch of forms, and drove me to juvenile hall. I spent the night in solitary detention. There was a stack of magazines on a bench, Boy's Life and Sports Illustrated, and when I grew tired of reading I kicked the walls. The next day a caseworker drove me the 55 miles home.

We were trailer trash, pure and simple. We didn't live in a trailer, not literally, just a rundown two bedroom farm house, three kids to a bed. My grandfather built us a shotgun third bedroom on one of his vacations. My mother had another child, my sister Monika, the same year. All the younger ones were towheads. One year we were so poor at Christmas my parents cut down a shrub from the backyard. My parents were all was fighting and making up. He left home for months at a time. He drove long haul truck and worked construction. One summer she and a woman she knew were going through some boxes he left behind, and found a box of condoms. Six children and he took condoms with him on the road. Eastern Oregon winters are bitter cold, not Midwest cold, but the wind bites right through you. The house was always filled with tension and uncertainty. It had sawdust insulation, and mice. My mother cried to herself. I'd find her in the kitchen, muttering and distressed, speaking German. "Mama, what's wrong?" "Nothing. Go back to bed."

This morning the British Open is on as I write this, and John Daly is the early leader at minus five. Daly has had a tumultuous life, four wives, alcoholism, drunken brawls and embarrassing run-ins with the PGA brass. He squandered a fortune in tournament winnings and got fat and lost his swing. He went dry and fell off the wagon and made comebacks and vowed to give up golf altogether, lost his tour card and got into tournaments only on past victories and with sponsorship exemptions. He was suspended, fined, ridiculed and broken. He cut a country album and chain smoked and hit a drive off a beer can. He shot 84s and 63s, sometimes within weeks of each other. He missed cuts and had loud, embarrassing scenes with enraged gold digger wives, losing millions to bad judgment and free spending and excess and dissipation, making a mess and wreck and a laughing stock of himself. He wasn't cut out for success. He couldn't manage himself, take advice, or overcome his demons. He was Tonya Harding in golf cleats. And now this morning he leads the British Open at five under.

I have a soft spot for the John Dalys of the world, the guy in crazy pants guzzling Diet Dr. Cokes and trying to keep his head right. It would tickle me to see him hold it together for the weekend and thumb his nose at his critics, bring the Claret Jug back to Arkansas and conquer his chaotic nature once and for all. For all I know he could flame out by Friday afternoon. Wouldn't it be something, though, if he could do it? After all the hoopla over Tiger Woods and his sordid story and 750 million dollar divorce, to have the trailer trash from Arkansas steal the storyline and the show? Wouldn't that be delicious? That would tickle me to no end. Go John, go. Keep your mind quiet and grip it and rip it. I can't wait to see what happens next.

I'll be one hick rooting for another. If I won that kind of money I'd get my teeth fixed and throw a party. That's what trailer trash do.

A Day I'll Never Get Back

There's a certain pressure in realizing every day, every hour or minute of your life can only be lived once, and once misspent or squandered, is lost forever.

Yesterday our company had its annual employee meeting. We were summoned to a large concert hall, the buses leaving the parking lot of the call center at 7:30 in the morning, the middle of the night for me. I work till midnight and invariably waste an hour or two when I get home, for a snack and a couple of games of Internet chess or catching up on TV. This summer I'm following "The Last Comic Standing" and "America's Got Talent". Neither show has earth-shattering significance but both are entertaining.

You develop an interest in the performers and it's enjoyable to watch emerging new talent, and consider along the way the difference between genuine excellence and mediocrity, true vision and mimicry. The shows pull you in with human interest vignettes. Decidedly there's a formula, but you can't help rooting for certain contestants and mildly despising others. The hand whistling old lady repulses me; she doesn't even whistle in tune. Yet everyone patronizes her with applause. The two little boys who dance are off in their steps, but everyone raves over them because they are supposedly "cute". The troupe of eleven year old girls gave a more precise and nuanced performance but got far less credit. That's just how I saw it. You are free to disagree, and that's the beauty of it. I think the two singing girls, the heartthrob Justin Beiber clone and the blacklight fraternity brothers dance act are sure to go through, and the judge-baiting juggler and catsuit-wearing sketcher (by no means an "artist" are sure to go home. The cheesy crooner hasn't got a chance; his gestures and posture don't win the crowd. Already I'm too involved in this: it's just a show. I like the cheerful graceful good humor of host Nick Cannon. He has a generous spirit and an infectious likability, perfect for his role.

On the comic show host Craig Robinson also is perfectly placed. Everything about him is funny. His gestures, his mannerisms, his delivery are pitch-perfect and you can't help but be drawn in. Among the contestants I like Felipe Esparza, Maronzio Vance and Roy Wood Jr.. James Adomian and Jonathan Thymius weren't funny at all, Thymius doing a couple of head-scratching where-did-that-come-from bits about Aesop's Fables and Paul Giamatti as John Adams; Thymius doddering around the stage left you wondering when the jokes would start. Rachel Feinstein is gifted with a distinct voice for her characters but I don't connect to her comedy.

So in the last two nights I've spent 46 minutes on each of these, mercifully shortened by the length of the commercial time thanks to the miracle of the dvr. They eased my transition from work to leisure and accompanied my late-night dinner. TV becomes our most trusted companion and accompanies far more of time than conversation or exercise or sex. It makes me a dull person. Then again, it gives us something to talk about, something to fill the void. Could I have made a better choice?

About the employee meeting I had no choice at all. We suffered through five hours of sloganeering and pep talks, interspersed with lame skits and titled bigwigs trying to be cool. They wore Hawaiian shirts, which was supposed to make them more relatable, but it just drove home the point for me that they were the only ones among us whose compensation could allow them to afford a trip to Hawaii or anywhere else with white sand and blue water. Like most seminars and meetings the useful information conveyed in the meeting could have fit on one side of a 3x5 card. Some people bought into it with both on hands on the company Kool-aid pitcher, the sticky red sugar water running down their neck and their shirts as they pranced about in goofy costumes and waved ridiculous signs. Bubble blowing machines, air horns, noisemakers and clackers and foam applause sticks. There was even a house band that did three songs, some woman from sales incentive trying to gyrate and be Lady Gaga for ten minutes, the black man from engineering trying to be hip in a beret. They did some 70's rock and roll complete with a keyboard solo, nothing memorable, nothing that would make the second round of "America's Got Talent" nothing worth five precious hours in the middle of the day. Now the whole rhythm of my week is off; I'm behind in everything and out of my routine. I haven't had enough sleep, I've neglected my workouts and missed a day of writing. I'd have to really love something to work thirteen hours a day at it, although some people have the admirable dedication to do that every single day, mothers more than most.

As for me I'd have rather been home watching TV. Attendance was required. Having witnessed the whole tepid show I can't begin to imagine why. Nothing about it was inspiring or informative. I was neither educated or entertained. They paid me for nothing and wasted my time, the most precious thing any of us have. Not that I would have spent it any better myself. I just treasure the freedom of making my own bad choices. It's an inalienable right in an indifferent world.

Life is What Happens When You Are Making Other Plans

It's a wry observation squared, violently illustrated by John Lennon's own life, ended abruptly by a crazed fool with misplaced fascinations. We have our chore list and our bucket list but the off-kilter wheel of life neither stops or slows down for anyone. Oh, we can make our plans, but they'll be thrown off line at every turn. We can make our paths straight but life will surely add some twists and turns of its own.

I never made it to the golf course this weekend but I did enjoy a can of cold beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon, a working man's beer, reliably cold and beery, a can of suds to celebrate the end of the work week. We were knee deep in grandkids, called to baby sitting on both days. The first night I was grousing and resentful, and I let my resentment spoil the opportunity to enjoy them properly. It was only supposed to be for a couple of hours, but we ended up chained to each other until midnight, without car seats or a check-in or a plan. When their mother got home I was miffed and snarky, at my passive-aggressive best. I didn't know we were going to be home all night, I said. They were seeing Frankie's brother Pat off, he's going home to San Francisco. They had to drive him to the airport. To San Francisco? I asked, pointedly, rudeness disguised as humor, the tactic of the chagrined. I was ungraceful and not proud of myself afterward.

I lack the self-assertion to set limits, and then loathe circumstance for my own cowardice. It's as simple as the question, "When do you think you'll be back?" or "Can you leave their car seats?" or "Marie and I wanted to go to the gym and dancing for our date night; we can't watch them past 7:30." That would have given them three hours, plenty of time for a round trip to the airport and even a beer in the airport lounge, even though the lounge probably doesn't have Pabst Blue Ribbon by the can. That's a pity. Although if they did, it'd be five dollars a can, enough for a six-pack of tallboys at the store.

But I often do this, this stoking of resentment by expecting others to anticipate my unstated expectations, expecting sensitivity from the oblivious. How's that worked out so far? Sometimes we have an uncanny radar for self-deception, letting people take advantage and then building barriers of carping snippy resentment afterward. It's a very self-defeating dynamic. Ashley plays us for fools, we throw a hissy, she stalks off, lather, rinse and repeat.

Then the next day to begin the cycle anew I called to apologize to her. Wonder what Dr. Phil would say about these goings on? I suspect this pattern is repeated among the generations all over the country. It starts with the perception or rather the misperception that anyone over thirty five has one foot it the grave and nothing better to do than be a temporary depository for bored children. I love my grandkids, all six of them, but if I wanted to operate a drop-in, no-appointment- necessary daycare center I'd do it for profit. At least tell me when you're coming back for them. It shouldn't be open-ended. I shouldn't have to ask.

That said, I feel like a miserable fool for not making better use of my time with them. They are beautiful, bright, remarkable little girls. I was grumpy and disengaged. It's not their fault, not for a second. They deserved better from me.

Saturday's duty was much happier. We played on the living room with Madilyne. We played the Giraffe Game and the Bear Game and tickled her with her Glow Worm and she bounced in her Johnny Jump Up. I sang her "Take Me Out to The Ball Game" and buzzed her belly. She was seven months on Friday, happy and engaged, incredibly alert for such a little one. From the time she was two months she has been content to be on the floor and play with her toys, and she is very sweet about it. She's teething now but still in good spirits.

Usually the plans we've made aren't that important. It's the lives unfolding in front of us that are. I have to remind myself not to make the same mistake over again. When my kids were little I was too busy earning a living to live. Like almost all parents I'd give anything to have one more day with them when they were little, to play on the floor and have earnest conversations about their dollies and Hot Wheels, to act as if nothing else in the world mattered in that moment. Because nothing else does. Resentments and self-absorption can rob us of a rich opportunity to be truly alive.

The Intense Pleasures of Freedom: It's a Horrible Mistake to Take Them for Granted

We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy - he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer.

---Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption

For the next two days I am a free man. I have two days that belong completely to me and my family, and I don't have to worry about work or supervisors or any of the nonsense that has dominated my thoughts for the last couple of days. I'm helping Marie's daughter Ashley move, and I'd like to take my wife dancing, but other than that, I haven't got a care in the world.

One of my favorite movies ever is The Shawshank Redemption , from which the quote above is taken. I love redemption stories, and this one is beautifully written and wonderfully acted. It endures in the memory, this story of friendship and redemption in a brutal place.

All of our lives involve a certain measure of servitude or imprisonment. It's the simple reality: man was born to toil. We are redeemed by our moments of freedom and belonging, and by the intense pleasure we can take in drinking a cold beer with the sun on our shoulders. It's my aim to never let those occasions pass without celebrating their richness. This afternoon I'm a free man. I think I'll have a cold beer, maybe sneak in nine holes after supper.

What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Most of us worry far more than we should. Our worries take us far beyond our actual circumstances, to things we can't control, can't predict and can't change. What if I lose my job? What if my spouse leaves me or cheats on me? What if I get sick or injured or have a wreck? Fear and worry take us to the dark corners of What Might Happen, to untold shame and embarrassment and failures. The phrase "beyond our wildest imagination" doesn't apply: most of our imaginations are pretty wild. There's a lot of anxiety in the closet, and when it starts howling and beating around, the shadows can grow pretty dark. Some of you know what I mean.

We worry, yet almost anything is survivable. We're far more resilient than we think, and sometimes it takes a stern test to teach us what we're capable of. Disaster reorders our lives in marvelous ways. The loss of a job or a love, though devastating at the time, can become our finest hour. Which doesn't mean we should be negligent, inviting disaster just for the rush of working our way out. If my life is to have a purpose I have apply my gifts conscientiously. I have to act knowing actions have consequences, and the accumulation of the small choices I make become my destiny. I have to remember to be on time and pay attention and respect my spouse's feelings and meet her needs. Living consciously and conscientiously is an antidote to worry.

Worry creeps in in the empty spaces of the day, when we are alone with our thoughts, after a bad moment or bad day when stress is having a heyday in our unoccupied and unattended brain. Night worries are the worst, just before sleep. I can work myself into a dither, and suddenly my wife's snoring and the electric fan are just unbearable. I can't get comfortable. I can't stop thinking in circles. I have to get up for a while, and occupy myself with a book or Internet chess or dime poker, just to quiet the squabbling demons of doubt and uncertainty wreaking their havoc at the door of my soul. My boss called me into the conference room again yesterday. Two months ago I'd been five minutes late coming back from lunch. He'd wrote it down and saved it, and now he had his assembled evidence. Day after day I come in seven minutes early to start up the computer off the clock, and now my job was on the line for stopping to use the toilet and wash my hands, or a sandwich line that was too long. He keeps track of every petty crime because he is a petty man. He wants the joy of lording it over me. It makes him feel important, this buffoon who can't spell ordinary words. He wants me to grovel or look distressed. I won't do either. I'm kind to the customers, even when he is petty and brutal to me. One of these days he'll get to issue his second written warning, and then the last. I'll be fired. It's just as well. I can find another lousy job somewhere else.

At a garage sale a couple of months ago, in Crescent City when we were visiting Marie's mother, I found several incredible bargains. I think I could make a living buying and selling things I find, a bookcase for a dollar, six pairs of men's casual shorts for a quarter each. Buy cheap and sell reasonable, a simple formula. Obviously I won't do that, it's too uncertain and bound to meet complications, but the elegance and craft of it appeals to me, living by your wits, being an itinerant peddler. I'm cut out for that in my farmboy soul. It's a pleasant diversion from worry, this idle contemplation, an alternate universe of a pickup and a cardboard sign and a lunch of baked chicken from Winco and a couple of pieces of fruit. A life without the small agonies and indignities of a working life, no clocks to punch, no empty slogans and acronyms to cite. There's an old bumper sticker that said, "stop the world, I want to get off." Part of me wants to get out of the world, to a place where their are no cell phones and two-year contracts, a place where there is no insipid hold music or form letters or collection notices. Oh, I'll do the right thing and be responsible. But I remember days when I had to collect pop cans to buy lunch, and I know in my heart those days were no worse than this, these days where my dignity and identity and worth are in the hands of man who hasn't had an original thought or said a meaningful prayer in his entire life, a soulless and unoriginal and fundamentally cruel man, hardly a man at all, hiding behind his petty little authority. Some people live by the credo, "I have as little authority as anyone, and I'm going to use every bit of it." I don't care what he does or says to me, or how many stern memos he misspells.

He can't do anything to me that will matter a bit six months from now. The worst that could happen is just another turn in the road.

Late on the Fourth of July

My boss is routinely rude to me, and his ordinary communications are flecked with a thinly-veiled hostility. His emails are terse and contentious. His monthly evaluations and scorecards carry the hint of a threat, of impending "corrective action." Odd thing is, my numbers this month are among the best on the team. My scored calls are strong, and I received a customer compliment last month. I process nearly eleven calls an hour, with courtesy and professionalism. I was late twenty minutes on the fourth of July, but that was the first time in three months, and it was the slowest day of the year.

Any day now I expect he'll fire me, and if he does it will be a relief. He's hostile. He's abrupt. And he has been almost from the beginning. My only hope is to perform strongly and escape his attention by choosing another shift at the next shift bid.

He's overweight and a bit of a buffoon. Recently he sent us all an email stating time cards had to be completed by Thursday, that six of us had waited until Friday and this was (sic) "unexceptable". I emailed him back, asking him for a clarification of the policy, since in a meeting just a few weeks ago he had told us specifically not to forecast our time, and this email told us to do exactly that. I apologized for my unacceptable behavior, but without italics. I've had the feeling that from the first week of working for him that something about me pissed him off, that all of our petty little run-ins and calls to his desk were vaguely personal. He fired one of my coworkers a couple of months ago, without warning. I think he enjoys that part of his job.

Our company has a weird culture. There's a lot of group-think and sloganeering. We don't really solve the customer's problems; we just apologize for them. Our engineering and technology is faulty and repeatedly fails, and in customer service, we absorb abuse and send patches that don't really work. Folks are angry to be calling back three and four times. I don't blame them. Our products are expensive. I'd fix it if I could. I'd be more thorough in troubleshooting but I have to keep my handle time down. Most of my coworkers keep their numbers looking good by evading the scheduling of trouble calls, sending resets that don't really work. We're required to sell extra products, so the good soldiers create bundled packages, offering customers a discount on their existing products and adding a third product they don't really want or need or use and usually plan to cancel later. It's a dance of cynicism and inevitable distrust. I make peace with it by politely offering new services and scheduling transfers and additions when I can. So far I've evaded the noose.

But it's coming. I have no doubt if I made some kind of mistake or was unlucky enough to encounter an angry, vindictive customer (and we have a few of those) my boss would throw me under the bus. Particularly if it made him look good, made him look decisive or organized. I have coworkers who have half the sales percentage I do, 20% lower calls per hour, glaringly low work order accuracy and deplorable attendance, but somehow I am G______'s chief target. It's a repetitive misery I choose to ignore, because I can't do anything about it. It's a fact: not everybody is going to like you. If that person is your boss, fasten your seat belts, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

You might think, why don't you just go in and talk to him, try to clear the air? You can't really clear the air on a vendetta. This conflict is like the Arabs and the Jews, it has nothing to do with reason, there's no real room for negotiation, and most of enmity is based on long-buried history so deep and hostile it's become almost primal and genetic. I remind him of someone. He doesn't like the way I speak or answer his questions. He's probably not even aware his dislike of me is so irrational and one-sided.

As much as possible I like to get along with everyone. I like harmony and peace and wholeness. I work to earn a living and pay the bills. I wish I was a good enough writer to make a living writing. I wish I could win the lottery or get saved by an act of fate or good timing. In the meantime I'll muddle along and do my best, and try never to be late again. If I lose this job I'll look for another one. I just hope I don't wind up saying, do you want fries with that?

That would be really hard for me, because all day long my heart would be screaming silently, don't eat the fries, they're bad for you. Have a salad and a nice grilled chicken breast instead.

The Sum of All Fearlessness

What's my excuse? Last winter Marie and I saw a TV documentary on The Learning Channel about Mark Goeffney, a man born with no arms who can drive and play guitar with his feet.

Time and determination are the greatest warriors. Beware of the time suck, which robs you of your power. So easily we get caught up in mindless distractions and the dead end side roads of busy-ness, when with time and determination and goals and focus we could accomplish anything.

I mumble and grouse about my lousy job and lack of accomplishment, I fume and fuss over the lost opportunities and the regrets of my life, and every day I encounter remarkable stories of people accomplishing great things by the power of their spirit and their will.

We limit ourselves. Our small choices accumulate and become our destiny. We squander what God gave us with inattention, and the chief thing I squander is my time. By living with no intention I give away precious hours that turn into years. If I were more directed, if I were selective and self-determined, I could accomplish anything.

I could even learn to play guitar.

Declaring Our Independence From a Cruel King

In a jungle shipyard in Ecuador police confiscated a diesel submarine being built by a Colombian drug cartel. It could hold a nine-man crew and ten tons of cargo, and cost over a million dollars to construct. Last week in Mexico a standoff between warring drug lords near the U.S. border killed 28 people. It's all there in yahoo news and elsewhere.

The drug trade is lethal and unstoppable. The money is too great. The madness and evil are too overwhelming. The cravings are too intense.

If they can build a submarine and equip an army, if they can make billions of dollars and ravage our streets with an insatiable sickness, what next?

The war on drugs has succeeded in nothing except making clever evil men rich. There's no winning it. The toll is senseless.

Would society be better served by legalizing and regulating drug traffic? I'm not wise enough to know. But what we are doing is not working. The evidence is all around, and mounting every day.

Wonders Never Cease

George Huber, a scientist from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has developed a process that can create gasoline from sawdust, according to a report by Jim Motavallie of Mother Nature Network. Huber estimates the fuel produced could be "price competive" with gasoline produced from oil by 2019, and the process is carbon nuetral, because the wood or grasses used absorb carbon dioxide while they are growing.

I'm a very loving and optimistic man. I want to believe in a hopeful future. I want to invite positive people into my life, good news, belief and creativity. I'm reading a book right now called Bolt of Fate by Tom Tucker, about Benjamin Franklin and the his experiments with electricity. It was the age of reason, and influential men were fascinated by science and progress, the wonders of the natural world, and the possibilities of harnessing them by the application of reason and the scientific method. Competition was fierce to explain and demonstrate natural phenomena. Papers were written. Electrical demonstrations took place in fashionable salons and scientific societies, before royalty and the elite. It turns out Franklin's famous electric kite was hoax, but the urgency and fervor over ideas in that time provided impetus to a remarkable transformation of human history. In the 1740s an English apothecary named William Watson became a celebrity by transmitting electricity forward and back across the Westminister bridge. In another experiment he transmitted it eight miles, using a simple hand-cranked machine called a Leyden jar that generated static electricity. Out of wonder and curiosity a new age was born, a technology central to our entire lives, that we understand only a little but benefit from every day. We flip a switch and wonders breath to life. It all started with questions and experiments and curiosity.

It's remarkable what human ingenuity can do. Centuries ago an explosion of ingenuity transformed the world and led to remarkable new resources and benefits, the ability to feed millions, the ability to communicate across the world in seconds. We need a new explosion of ingenuity, before the explosions of another kind undo us all.

Make Room for Music in Your Life

When my daughter was little I used to sing to her. The day she was born I sang James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot songs to her and rocked her to sleep. Then she got a little older and became a surly teenager. Once we were in the parking lot of Clackamas Town Center, heading into the mall to buy mall food or new shoes and I was absent-mindedly singing one thing or another.

"Dad, don't sing."
"Steff, Steff, Steff. I'm a good singer. I sing as good as Huey Lewis." Jauntily comparing myself to one of her favorites at the time.
"Dad, don't make me barf. Don't sing until we get back to the car."

When kids get to be teenagers fathers become the dumbest men in the world, a status we don't lose until the teens reach the mid-twenties. The blunt sword of sarcasm frequently punctures our fragile psyches. As much as I like to sing I only sing for babies and small children. I don't like performing; I can't even muster the courage to do karaoke. The songs are in too high a key and the blue highlight color that races through the lyrics throws me off. I admire people who can get up and take on a roomful of indifferent strangers for the mere payment of lukewarm applause. I'd have to be drunk enough to barf.

I Heard the News Today Oh Boy

Elian Gonzalez speaks out. He's not mad at his Miami relatives, ten years after being seized at gunpoint by federal agents, and he is happy living with his father in Cuba. Terri Horman is not talking to anyone, and she's hired Oregon's top defense lawyer. Car designer Gordon Murray has created a tiny car weighs just over 1200 lbs and gets over 70 miles to the gallon. The driver gets into the thing by hinging open the whole front, and the steering wheel is mounted in the center. It's smaller than a golf cart but can reach 90 miles an hour. I wonder if they could rig the thing to fly, shape it like the George Jetson mobile. A supertanker has been refitted and dispatched to the gulf. The Dodgers swept the Giants. The Ducks got verbal commitments from two speedy quarterbacks and two others are interested. A new study shows American lags behind in happiness. The Gaza Strip got a shipment of chocolate but were denied cement. CNN is suffering declining ratings; competing news stations garner larger audiences with loud, angry, polemic hosts. No one wants just the facts, calmly delivered. They want their commentators to take sides. Go right or go left, and don't let your hair grow gray. Jon Stewart wants to quit The Daily Show. He has a running battle with Fox News. Some rumors have him as the likely replacement for David Letterman. In life you're either a Lettermen or a Leno fan, a Bill O'Reilly, a Michael Savage or a Keith Olbermann. The calm voices are lost in the din. Larry King is retiring. He and his suspenders have long been irrelevant. Oprah's ratings are declining. Is Ryan Seacrest the least interesting least talented successful person in history? He gets paid a LOT of money for being able to look into the camera and pretend something or someone is important. New Moon/True Blood vampire werewolf supernatural fever is gripping the country. Every other movie and TV show has this escapist hyperviolent edge-of-evil element. It's a sign of boredom and decay, the ultimate attempt to distract and anesthetize the masses. In an age when we are feeling powerless and overwhelmed by the forces of mayhem and misery, create elaborate fantasies of hypersexuality and superhuman power. Imagine being able to leap twenty times the length of your body and feast on human flesh. For the oldsters there's a hot tub time machine, tame by comparison and infinitely more ridiculous. The Al Gore investigation is being reopened by the Portland Police. His credibility is destroyed. He'll retire to the Hall of Shame for ambitious, ruined men, in a suite down the hall from John Edwards and Elliot Spitzer. Spitzer's getting a new show on CNN. How far and how quickly they fall. Elin Woods gets $750 million in the divorce decree, the largest settlement ever in a celebrity divorce. Tiger Woods is expressly prohibited from introducing the children to any of his future bimbos, porno stars or coffee shop waitresses, unless he becomes married to one of them.

The news is a tumult. The news is frenzied hum and buzz. It flows unabated. It casts down like acid rain. It washes and thaws and gushes. It confuses. It titillates. It overwhelms. In the end it makes no sense, and one scandal is forgotten in the tropical storm created by another. Each new administration blames the last one for the mess we're in. And Al Gore must be thinking, "Somebody else please screw up, and get me off the front page."