Home Home
A Spinning Foundation
August 16, 2013 Leave a Comment

A Spinning Foundation

A couple times a week, I get dizzy and confused. It doesn’t last long, and I know what causes it (a benign tumor in my head). It’s a feeling I’ve known for over a decade.

I don’t like it, but what can you do? All I can do is plant my feet firmly on the ground and know the vertigo will eventually pass. As long as I think about my feet planted firmly on the ground, I’m good no matter how toppled space and time seem.

If it’s a big spin, I remind myself that I’ve been there before. Sometimes when it’s really bad, I think about how the planet is spinning and falling through the universe beneath my feet. (Probably not the best idea, but it’s a good reminder that I always win. If that doesn’t take my feet out from under me, nothing will.) Against the mass in my head, and the spinning of the planet, I’m grounded
.

And when the moment passes and I feel my feet are below me again, I trudge on, falling through time and space on a big blue rock, enjoying it all just a little more than before.

Filed Under: Life
Information Overload
August 14, 2013 Leave a Comment

Information Overload

A couple times in recent months, somebody’s asked me if I wanted to do something and the moment I said yes, they changed what they initially said or asked. Suddenly that meal with just a friend becomes a huge event with many people. A quick errand for someone becomes a scavenger hunt. Sometimes you agree to help someone and then…silence. So you move on with your plans, but at the last minute, “I STILL NEED HELP!!!”

The people I notice doing this — the people who suddenly drop a to-do list into your lap, as if you don’t have your own list — are often the people who seem the most hurried.

I Need You To Do This For Me

I preface this by saying I’m generally a helpful person
. I do things for friends and family; I’ve given up my time to help even acquaintances. I’ve noticed a trend, though: people who decide to do something they don’t have time for and then bringing others into it.

It might be somebody deciding they want to have a party. They ask if you’ll attend, and you say, “Sure.” And then it happens:

“Cool! Can you contact so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so to see if they want to come to the party, too? I’m so busy — it would be a big help.”

Maybe I’m different, but when I invite others to my home, I don’t expect them to do anything but show up. I would never think to give them a to-do list to make my job easier the moment they agree to the invite. I prefer seeing to-do lists shrink during the day — not grow, and I assume the people I know feel the same way.

I Have No Time

I understand that time is a commodity. The strange thing to me is the people who often delegate to-do lists to others because they claim to have no time are often the same people you  always see on Facebook trying to get others to play Candy Crush.

If you can pin these people down for a lunch, they are the people who can’t make it through without texting people or checking Facebook or Twitter a handful of times. It’s not that they don’t have time — it’s that they let distractions rule the time they have.

Take a Break

I like social media and other things online. Obviously. But when I’ve taken breaks from social media, I found an old focus return.

Even after the break, I found myself taking a strange sense of pride in being able to stand in a long line and think about writing or something else that really matters to me. And…I noticed how often people who are overloaded with information are rarely in the moment. I also noticed more people trying to get others to do things they should be doing because they feel so busy.

If you feel you never get a moment to breathe, put your phone in another room for a few hours. Close your Web browser and anything else that is a distraction on your system if you have to work on your computer. Turn off the TV or put down the video game controller.

If you like all those things — great; by all means, enjoy! But don’t tell others you’re at a loss for time (and definitely don’t push your to-do list onto them)…

Filed Under: Productivity Tagged: ,
Why I Like Health Food
August 12, 2013 Leave a Comment

Why I Like Health Food

The photo above was taken at The Cupboard in Denton, Texas. The Cupboard is a natural foods store/a health food store/a hippie food store…whatever you want to call it.

I call it a nice 20 minute drive north through the country to a store I’ve loved for years…

My First Time

I grew up like so many people, going with family to huge grocery stores. Okay, so they may not have been huge by today’s standards, but they were the big grocery stores most of the town I lived in went to when they bought food.

I was maybe 9 or 10 the first time I went to a health food store. A good friend’s mother took us to a store that was nowhere near as bright and big as the store where we usually shopped. It smelled different when the doors opened…not like cleaning supplies but…fresh! Seriously, it smelled like the tops of carrots and other good things.

This friend’s father studied, I believe, at the Culinary Institute of America…back when being a chef evoked a sideways glance and asked which branch of the military you served in. For my friend’s family, there were occasional runs to the “health food store” for ingredients you couldn’t find in normal grocery stores. It’s weird that I remember that trip so well. It was the first time I tried karob and some other things I never heard of.

I wasn’t a fan of karob, but something about that trip stuck with me.

The Dare

In my early 20s, while drinking beer with some friends in their apartment, one of the friends dared me to go vegetarian.

“Why not?” I thought. “I can do this…”

And I did it for almost three years before one evening, when drinking beer with the same friends, I said, “So…the vegetarian bet. Did I win?”

It took a moment for it to sink in with the friend who dared me to stop eating meat. When it clicked, he said, “Oh, yeah…I considered that a win a few weeks in…”

Round Two

After that, I went back to eating meat
. First thing back after almost three years? Italian sausage. My digestive system protested for days, but I went back to eating the way I ate before the bet. And I got really big! So big that it actually got in the way of things I wanted to do.

Winded on a walk one evening, I remembered how I biked 20 miles a day when I was a vegetarian — how I hiked and juggled for hours. I mentioned to my wife that I wanted to get back to that, and she was game.

1999 was the last time I ate meat. A year later, we went vegan for over a decade before allowing the occasional vegetarian meal back into the mix. (Mainly when traveling or going out with friends.)

The Cupboard

I’m still a big guy in need of losing some weight, but when I go to the doctor for a checkup, gone are the days of high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes that were there before “The Dare.” Twenty years after that, I’m healthier than I was through my most of my 20s.

I don’t care what or how others eat — I truly believe that like religion, politics, whatever…as long as you don’t push your plate my way, I won’t pick it up and dump it and my plate back in your lap. This has just worked for me, and I like it. Know what I like even more…?

I like that when the doors to The Cupboard (or any similar store) open, I always think of the day my friend’s mom introduced me to the health food store. I’m still not a fan of karob, but I consider myself lucky for still being in touch with these friends — and being in good health — so many years later…

Filed Under: Food Tagged: ,
Time is Money, Right?
August 10, 2013 Leave a Comment

Time is Money, Right?

It’s funny: the people I hear who say, “Time is money,” the most are often the people who seem to complain about never having either.

It’s a bit of a throwaway statement, but if you really follow it, there’s some truth to it; although I prefer to think of it more as “Time is happiness.”

Your Money or Your Life

I rarely latch on to books that were suggested to me with a certain degree of hype. Friends swore to me that I’d love Getting Things Done, but it seemed like too busy a system for me. Others have recommended books about making money, but money has never been a motivating factor in my life beyond essentials. (The people who recommend those kinds of books to me are often the people chasing one get-rich-quick scheme to the next.) Somewhere along the way, somebody recommended Your Money or Your Life to me.

Like most non-fiction books I read, it seemed padded. I’d rather have a 100-page book that matters than a 100 good pages and another 150 pages of padding so it seems like a book. Your Money or Your Life was no exception to me, but it was still the book that put into words what I always believed: that there’s a lot to be said for putting a monetary value on your time
.

The quick version: is it really worth three hours in traffic 5 days a week, having to buy designer clothes, and deal with maintenance on a vehicle just to make an extra $15,000 – $20,000 a year? I know people who drive from one side of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex to the other every day, work overtime, and have little more to show for it than a state of exhaustion. Why not figure out what an hour of your life is worth in a dollar amount (the books suggests ways to figure this out), and take a closer look at what you might be throwing away.

Time Is More Than Money

To me, at a certain point, time is worth more than money. Once I have enough to survive and do something cool now and then, time to do things like writing this blog entry is worth more than time in traffic to be able to say I make $20K more than I currently make. When you factor in the time in traffic, wear in tear on a vehicle, and the effect on one’s health from always being on the go, the extra money isn’t worth it to me. I have time to maintain a couple blogs, do a weekly podcast, and still spend time with my wife and other people I care about.

While a little bit more money would be nice, it’s not worth trading the time I have. As a tech writer, I know I can make more than I do, but right now I work at the best job I’ve ever had. I work from home a couple days a week, my commute is roughly 5 miles to a neat office complex in the country, and I like everyone I work with. (No office politics — just cool people!)

I recently had to reschedule maintenance on a car bought in May because it still hasn’t seen the mileage necessary for maintenance. The dealership seemed surprised that in 3 months, the car’s only seen 1700 miles. There was a time I would have put 3700 miles on a vehicle in that same amount of time…

A Different Outlook

Once I really started looking at how lucky I’ve been to usually have time for things, I viewed little things so much differently. I won’t spend an hour on the phone with a billing department arguing a $10 charge and getting stressed when I can go for a walk with my wife in that time. Why spend an hour (or more) each day getting worked up and arguing with people online when you can use that time to write a novel, build something cool in your garage, or see someone you love? Why watch hours of news that’s not really news when the time can be spent in a more relaxing manner?

Maybe you really like arguing on the phone, online, or getting worked up about some news story that really has no direct bearing on your life, but I’ve known few people who genuinely like those things. We’re all different, and free to do what we want with the time we have, but once I respected my time more, I found myself cutting things out that made me feel buried. And because of that, I found even more time for the things I like doing — even if it’s spending an hour doing nothing at all.

Filed Under: Life
Twenty-Nine Years (in Texas)
August 8, 2013 4 Comments

Twenty-Nine Years (in Texas)

The first thing I remember about August 8, 1984 is the heat. I don’t remember what the temperature was in Chicago when I stepped onto the Braniff flight that brought me to the Lone Star State, but I do remember the blast of heat the moment I stepped from the terminal at DFW Airport that early afternoon. No sooner than arriving in the state that would become “home” for now, twenty-nine years to the day, my mom and I were dive bombed by some big, stinging insects that the Texas Board of Tourism never mentioned.

State of Pain

While my record of never being stung by anything has remained intact for my 44 years, it wasn’t for the lack of the State of Texas trying. With one plane ride, I found myself in a state out to kill my Yankee ass. (Yes, I was called a Yankee quite a bit when I moved down. Don’t hear that as much these days…Hoss!) Within days, I experienced the joy of bare feet in a fire ant mound in the yard. Up north, the grass was soft and green; the ants didn’t swarm. In Texas, the grass was brittle and I learned quickly to always look for ants before standing or sitting anywhere outside for any length of time.

Seeing scorpions in our house was unsettling. Up north, it was the occasional salamander in the basement…maybe the rare carpenter ant that found its way in through an open window (an open window because you could open the windows some days in the summer up north and not bake). But in Texas, we discovered scorpions in the house were not that uncommon where we lived.

The first time I ran through bull nettle without the protection of jeans, I knew what it might be like to run through acid. And these are not fun in bare feet!

It felt like the entire state was out to hurt or kill me.

State of Change

A lot has changed about the area where I live in 29 years. No more do we have an outlaw biker clubhouse in the town of Southlake, Texas. The Solana Complex that many deemed an eyesore when it was constructed in the 80s? I work there, now. State Farm Road 1709,  which was once a two-lane, almost-domed nightmare of a road (rain = seeya in the ditches!) is now three lanes each way…with a turn lane! The tiny high school I went to has been replaced by multiple high schools that are some of the best public schools in the nation. (At least that’s what I hear…and I believe it.)

So much has changed in 29 years, but if you look closely, you can see hints of what used to be there…the things that were the same as they were 29 years before I moved to Texas.

The Right State

Even with the high temperature today being over 100, I’ve grown to like a lot about Texas. I do miss friends up north, but I can’t imagine my life without the friends I’ve made down here
. More than that, I’ve shared my life with an extremely talented Texan for over 21 years. Sure, there might be scorpions in that wood pile, but the armadillos and other things more than make up for it. The people I’ve met and the experiences I’ve had in these 29 years are so good that if I find myself spending another 29 years in Texas, it won’t be so bad.

In fact, if you know where to look, despite all the changes, it’s quite a cool place…scorpions, fire ants, goat head burrs, and all!

Filed Under: Places Tagged: , , , ,
The Company We Keep
August 5, 2013 Leave a Comment

The Company We Keep

During my sophomore year in high school, I became a bit obsessed with the Romantic poets — particularly Samuel Taylor Coleridge (because of Rush’s “Xanadu” and Iron Maiden’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”). When I found out more than a few of the Romantic writers hung out together, I thought that was the coolest thing
. I imagined what it must have been like and dreamed that one day, I would be part of something bigger than me like that.

The Funny Thing About Movements

The Romantics, the Transcendentalists, the Beats: all movements…in hindsight!

At the time, it was just a group of people with similar interests and goals pushing one another to get better. As a fan of comic books, similar groups exist within the medium; in fact, some of the people I hung out with when I wrote independent comic books have gone on to greater things. I say that not to boast that I was in good company, but because it hit me one day: these movements weren’t movements at the time.

You Might Be a Part of Something Right Now

It’s not like Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, David Foster Wallace, and Mary Karr got together, settled on a secret handshake, and decided they would simply become a thing. They were just four friends who wrote books.

If you write, paint, play music, juggle, whatever — even if it’s a group of people online you support and who support you — that’s a group with potential.

So many times we daydream about being part of the groups and movements we look up to, not recognizing that we might already be in the midst of something bigger than we ever imagined at this very moment!

Filed Under: Art, writing
« Previous Page
Next Page »