Small Talk Is Vampiric

      I think I'm personable.  I think I get along well with others.  I outwardly accept most situations, even though sometimes someone throws a serious curveball and I'm ill prepared to mask my surprise.  Most of this may seem intangible so I'm prepared to back it up with examples.  But before the example backup, ask yourself how well you roll with the punches.  I guess it's not necessarily even punches I'm talking about, because that implies a hardship, and even though that's a portion of what I'm talking about, it's more frequent.  Ask yourself how well you can make someone feel that you relate to them.  How well do you put people at ease, allowing them to feel safe enough to give you a glimpse into their twisted lives?  I feel that I have, in some scope, refined an ability to do this.  It sounds sociopathic.  It sounds like social engineering or psy ops.  I suppose it is on its most basic level.  It's social guerrilla warfare, a manipulation of perception swayed in your favor to gain an insight not just anyone can gain.

     As a general rule, I'm not a "small talk" kind of person.  It's awkward and irrelevant.  Small talk is, at best, a disengenuous act of feigning compassion about someone else's concerns.  I'm more of a "say what you need and then let's shut the hell up" kind of person.  This may sound a bit harsh, and maybe I don't mean it quite as harsh as it seems to sound.  Basically, I want my conversations to stay relevant.  I have been known to tell people that I think their story is too long.  I can fake interest in brief sections of time.  But when someone's story drags on and on, I get antsy.  Gotta keep moving.  I liken it to someone telling me what they dreamed.  This is so irrelevant, it makes me want to cry vomit.  Yes, cry vomit, since it's so sad and nauseating at the same time.  What happened in your dream is pointless and holds no bearing on real life(I'll not get into a debate about psychic phenomena or future predictions from dreams, here).  Often, when someone is explaining their dream, it is an ill-constructed, plotless, weird recount of events that have no structure or climactic payoff.  They all end with "then I woke up."  There is no character development, and no plot line resolution.  Its a waste of time.  The only format in which dream recitation is acceptable to me is in two to three sentence explanations.  "I dreamt that you had a goats head, then we hunted you and ate you for dinner.  Pretty weird, huh?"  Quick, to the point, and a breath of fresh air.  So, I'm getting off the dream stump now, and back to what I'm trying to convey.

     Since I get bored with small talk and everyone seems to want to do it, I have no choice but to engage in it so I can fit under the societal umbrella of normal.  So I often play a game.  I roll with what people tell me.  I feign interest.  I ask follow up questions and I listen way more than I talk.  If you ever get a chance to watch two people engage in small talk, I recommend that you look at it through this prism:  Every intention that the two people have during the interaction is to twist the conversation into something meaningful and relevant to them.  It's a struggle for floor time, a struggle for each of them to keep the conversation about themselves, to gain control of the spotlight.  If I get stuck in a small talk situation(which is not that often, since I'm easily put off by it), I allow it to be about the other person.  I don't grapple for the focus.  It's interesting to me because it makes people really feel that I care.  But it's also exhausting because I am loading up on someone else's emotional baggage.  If I could come up with a way best to explain it, I would call it "emotional energy transference."  I am letting someone use me to unload their emotional energy and so I absorb it, making them feel better and me feel like I now have their emotional weight.  These people are energy vampires, off-loading their negative energy and corrupting my positive energy.  That's why I don't like to engage in it.  It's exhausting. 

     You'll find that when you don't wrestle for the focus in conversations, people will tell you way more than you expect to hear.  And also, your reaction will alert them as to wether they feel safe to continue or if they feel that they've said too much and back off.  I always try to handle whatever people tell me as normal and not too far off the beaten path, even when it is way outside the grid.  "Oh, you killed your girlfriend last night?  Hmmm.  Sounds reasonable.  How'd you do it?"  This makes them feel safe and they will continue, knowing now, that you are not judging and are sympathetic to their point of view.  

     So, I'm obviously and constantly thinking inwardly.  Outwardly, I accept what people tell me.  Inwardly, I'm thinking crazy thoughts about this killer I'm talking to and how I hope they don't kill me, and how can I get out of this conversation without getting kilt.  (Decided to use the vernacular of "killed."  I don't know, maybe now I'm getting bored with my own story)...

     So anyway, I guess this post is about holding a reaction to get more insight because it makes people feel more comfortable.  And I guess it's about how if I can avoid it, I will, but also, if I can't avoid it, I try to seem genuinely interested to build that trust to see how much I can get out of them.  Mostly it's about how bat-shit crazy my mind is, and how long conversations suck the life out of me.

5 Life Lessons In 36 Years

Here's a list of lessons that took 36 years for me to learn.  While I understand that just reading this list is no substitute for actual experience, hopefully it can allow one to arrive to the conclusions a little more expediently than it took me.   

1.  People are selfish.  Big deal, you knew that already, right?  People want to feel important.  People's worlds revolve around themselves.  Obvious lesson, right?  I think I knew that early on, but maybe not quite to the extent that it realistically is.  There are subconscious subtleties to this lesson that I never considered or even fathomed.  It starts at one's desire to hear their own name to wanting money, fame, etc.  We, even me, want it all.  Everything.  It's a deeply rooted, base feeling inside us all.  It's the human condition and can lead to pretty substantial problems.  A surface word for it is greed.  But it's more than that.  It's a subconscious fear of inferiority.  None of us are confident.  We hide it through arrogance and vanity.  But it's there.  

     The lesson, I guess, wasn't that people are selfish.  As I said, I knew that early on.  The real lesson was how to deal with this fact.  It was the 36 year long struggle with how to interact with people in a world of selfishness that was the eye opener.  So here's the secret,if you haven't figured it out yet in your own journey through this tangled world:  Play into it.  Very simple.  Use people's names.  Ask questions from the perspective of what's important to them.  Remember details.  Stop talking and listen.  Do this, and your desire to feel important will be fulfilled, because you'll find that people suddenly want to be around you.  You'll become likable.  Funny how that works.  

     As a manager, I've hired many people.  More applicants than you might realize speak in terms of what they want.  Instant interview killer.  Without being too insensitive, here, I just don't care what they want.  I'm interviewing people to find qualities in someone that I want.  

   

   "So, Mr. So-and-so, why do you want to work for our company?"  

    "Well, I'm ready for a change of pace.  I need to make a higher salary.  I wanted better hours than my previous job and I just had a baby so I need the benefits...."  Blah blah blah.  How about speaking in terms of what the employer might want?

     "I feel that I might be a good fit for your company because I have experience doing x,y,z.  Also I'm really impressed with the operation of your company.  (A little ego stroke). I feel that I can add value to your organization because blah blah blah."  Speak in terms of what other people want.  You will instantaneously become a desirable person to be around and a breath of fresh air to the selfish monotony of other people.  Not just in interviews--that was just an example--but in life.  Talk less, listen more.  And when you do talk, speak in terms of the other person's desires instead of your own.

2.  Nothing is free.  There is a cost to all things.  If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is, and if there is a truer cliche, I don't know it.  We all wish for free things, but there is no substitute for working hard to get it.  Working hard for things adds value to the thing you got and builds confidence when you succeed.  It's not our fault that we feel like sometimes we should catch a break on something.  We are indoctrinated.  As kids, most of us lived with parents who provided for us and for a long time, things truly did seem "free."  It wasn't.  Our parents worked for the "freebies" we enjoyed.  We know that now, as adults, but we still don't fully consider it.  I see it with my kids, too.  We want to provide the very best for them and we do, but there will come a time when we unleash the real world on them and the realization that nothing is free will come to them.  Despite this realization, we desperately want the free ride.  We want a taste of that innocence again, the worry-free attitude of the hand out.  It's a natural feeling but understand that it's gone and it will not come back.  

     There has been a lot of debate recently about government filling that cavity of emptiness we all have.  And it is a tempting notion.  But remember, nothing is free.  Whatever it is, must be paid for by someone, somewhere.

3.  Everyone has skeletons in their closet.  We have all done some things we are not proud of.  We have all made mistakes and have had to live either with the guilt of not getting caught or the consequences of what we did.  We all have embarrassing moments.  We all have memories of something that happened to us that still makes us cringe with regret.  We have all lied about something at some point, and we all have all of that hanging over our heads at all times and the stress of it has made us into who we are presenting to the public today.  Baggage.  Emotional baggage.  I have a theory about this.  In life, we start out with no property, no emotional baggage.  As we age, we accumulate a bag, a small one.  Eventually that bag turns into a suitcase and later still, that suitcase turns into a forty piece luggage set that you carry with you everywhere.  We cannot let go of our past mistakes.  We will carry that baggage with us everywhere until our death.  That's not my theory, though.  My theory is this:  If you get married young, the other person will have less emotional baggage for you to have to deal with.  The older you get, the more emotional baggage and the less likely you'll be to get past it all.  Like going on vacation, it's a lot easier to travel with two bags than it is with three. You see where I'm going here.  The theory is only a theory so unbunch those panties!  It's simply an idea I've had about people and relationships for a while and there's no way to prove its accuracy.  There's WAY too many variables for a controlled experiment to occur.  But know this simple lesson.  Everyone is dealing with a personal past and it shapes who we are today.  It is the reason that someone has trust issues.  It is the reason someone adjusts the rear view mirror every time they get behind the wheel and it's the reason someone is doesn't take no for an answer.  It is trivial, and it is gigantic.  It doesn't matter how small or big, it is the reason we are who we are.

4.  Do things you don't want to do.  Obviously, I'm not talking about killing someone or anything even remotely harmful or illegal.  All I'm saying is to get out of your comfort zone from time to time.  I don't know many people that like doing things that they're not already comfortable with.  It is awkward, uncomfortable, humiliating, maybe.  You cannot do something confidently until you've had practice at it, or at least have done it a couple of times.   We don't like feeling unsure.  I get it.  We don't like that we might look foolish.  But really, who cares all that much if you look foolish?  Just you, that's who.  I made a decision a while back to just charge in and try it.  If there's something I haven't done before, I refuse to go in meekly or timidly.  I will either surprise myself and do whatever it is well, or I will fail miserably and look like the biggest fool ever.  And I have decided to be okay with the latter.  I'm already dragging a few tons of emotional baggage around anyway, load me up.  I have found, and I guess here's the real lesson behind the scene, is that when I charge into things head on like that, and even when I aggressively fail, my emotional baggage stays the same size.  It's a mental preemptive choice, to accept that I might fail, and that if I do, to take it in stride.  

5.  Be honest, and give bad news.  No one I know enjoys having to give bad news.  In fact, most people try to dodge it at all costs.  It's difficult to do and emotionally painful, but do it anyways.  Most people will be surprised by your honesty.  Don't mistake what I'm trying to say though.  Don't seek out bad news just so you can inflict an emotional breakdown on someone.  That is ethically defunct, and mean for no good reason.  But if you must give someone bad news, don't avoid it.  On top of that, it has been my experience that the sooner the bad news is delivered, the easier it is.  In counterpoint, the longer you avoid it, the harder it becomes.  Get it out of the way so it's not sitting heavily on your shoulders for any length of time and so that whoever is going to receive the bad news can begin to accept whatever it is and move on from it.  

     I have witnessed a lot of people pass the buck when it comes to bad news.  The buck stops here!  People appreciate the honesty in most cases.  And even when they aren't gracious enough to not take it out on the messenger, well at least you're not carrying that burden around any longer.  In all cases, it is necessary to deliver the news with a certain level of tact.  I fear a misinterpretation on this one.

     Five steps to major life lessons in 36 years of life.  I'm not perfect by any stretch, and often it is a struggle to remember even simple lessons I've learned in life.  For some, I'm doomed to repeat for a long time to come.  For others, I have them mastered.  We make mistakes to learn, but when the mistakes get made, we also have to be in the right frame of mind to receive it as a lesson, and that may be the most difficult lesson of all.

     

Are You A Winner Or A Loser?

     Are you a winner or a loser?  As I was driving home from the gym this morning, something on the radio got me thinking about this.  I really only listen to talk radio, since most of the music stations seem to only get the rights to play the same four songs in a cycle of repetitive monontony (I honestly can't even begin to substantiate this claim, but I've spent a lot of time imagining a back story for how this occurs so in the interest of making myself feel like it was time well spent, I'm going to blindly believe that I somehow correctly guessed how the industry works).  Bottom line:  I choose to listen to talk radio as an alternative to music radio.  It is entertaining, keeps my mind engaged and its different everyday.  The reporter was relaying a story about a school somewhere (who cares where, am I right?) that has made the decision to not keep score during their soccer games.  We've all probably heard of this scenario at some time or another.  They decide not to keep score so that the kids don't get their feelings hurt, they all get trophies, yada, yada.  But as I was still coming to terms with the fact that I've become desensitized to this whole line of thought, the story took an additional twist, one for which I was not prepared.  Apparently, some of the children couldn't dribble the ball(aha!  Are you impressed with my knowledge of soccer terms??  Dribbling in soccer, unlike basketball, simply means handling the ball with your feet to work your way across the field).  Well, they couldn't dribble the ball quite as well as some other kids, so they elected to leave the ball out of the game.  Are you freaking kidding me?  Imagine watching this game of pretend soccer where the kids are running back and forth on the field, no score, no ball, and wait, why am I watching this?  This sort of sounds like running around a track, now.  Just tell the kids to do some sprints.

    Okay, now we're going to play tennis, but sometimes the ball hits the net and that could disappoint someone, so let's remove the net.  The tennis racket can get heavy after a while, so let's just pretend we are holding a racket and you don't have to worry your delicate little mind about missing the ball, because guess what?, we are going to just imagine that the ball is there.  No need for those pesky out of bounds lines, they can be such a nuisance!  I know that some people can get tired of running back and forth faster than other people and that's just not fair, so no running allowed.  Alright!  Good game! You guys played your hearts out, out there!  Good job.  Tomorrow, you get a trophy for sitting on the couch and watching TV.  Keep up the great work!

    This doesn't adequately prepare children for life.  In life, producers are rewarded.  Laziness is punished.  At work, promotions occur because someone is better at something than someone else.  People that can produce results get paid more than non-producers, and this makes sense. 

     "You tried but your results were the opposite of what we were going for, but dammit, you tried.  Here's a pay increase for trying."  Nope, it would never happen.  Can you imagine the shock these kids experience when they grow up, get out into the real world, and never get a trophy for just participating?  Everything they learned in school taught them that all they need to do is participate.  They've never been subjected to performance pressure and now they are not conditioned to handle it.  Freak out.  Depression.  Confusion.

     Here's the truth...Tell as many kids as you can, so they can be prepared for life:

     Are you a winner or a loser?  Everyone is both.  We don't always win.  But, on the positive side, we don't always lose.  Learn to accept a loss.  It teaches you what not to do next time so that maybe, when you are presented with the same situation, you'll make the necessary adjustments to win.  We lose to learn.  Use it as a learning experience.  Everyone's goal in life is to win more than they lose.  Produce.  Producers are rewarded.  Hard work is rewarded with wins.  Mediocrity is rewarded with losses.  Welcome the loss objectively, even positively, and change the thing that made you lose.  We are all trying to beat the other team.  Life keeps score.  Bosses keep score.  Life puts the ball in play and life gives trophies only to the winners.  A loss means you need to work hard and practice more. A win means you need to work hard and practice more.  Get it?  It's the same.  There will always be a competitor that worked harder than you, practiced more than you.  Acknowledge this fact, it's the natural order of the universe.  The goal here is to get good enough to capture a few wins, and then more.  Everyone is after the title and no one can stay on top forever.  Try to give yourself a few moments up there, because its always brief.

     Life makes you play with the soccer ball.  Skill level in sports, in everything--in life, is like fingerprints.  There is no one that is an identical match.  If I were on that scoreless, ball less soccer field, I would still try to be the best damn imaginary soccer player out there, because I want the biggest imaginary trophy ever not given out for not being the team's irrelevant MVP.

     Now get out there and produce!

Breaking Up With Yellow

     I'm not much for sentimentality.  I don't have a problem letting go of inanimate objects just because they're attached to a particular memory or feeling.  I'm a pack rat in reverse.  I throw things away I might desperately need at a later date.  Thinking that I might need something two years from now is simply not enough reason for me to retain it.

     I like clean lines, clutter-free, knick knack free countertops and tables.  My home is not a retail oddity shop.  You cannot come to my house and peruse an eclectic mix of bizarre items from around the country.  Functional items often cross the boundary into decorative, and this might be okay to some people, but I'm not trying to inflict my own personality onto the items I own.  I don't buy things because they're "cute."  I buy things that I need.

     Maybe it's a function of testosterone, maybe it's a function of a fear of personal attachment, but for the most part, I can throw almost anything away.  I think people, as a general rule, don't consider themselves enough.  People don't often sit down, have some quiet time, and consider who they really are.  We're on the go.  We have things to do.  We lose our sense of self awareness in our daily grind.  Our personalities are there, buried in us.  The fight to get out, though, has been lost.  We stand by original convictions as if we still feel the same way.  Case in point:  when I was very young, I decided that yellow was my favorite color.  Many years have passed, now, and when someone asks me what my favorite color is, I blankly, and without much thought, tell them it's yellow.  I have never revisited this stance and I am comfortable with the color choice of my six year old self.  I'm so comfortable with it, that I have a hard time revisiting my original conviction and I'm not really open to change it.  It's been yellow for so long, I feel that I might lose a little piece of who I am if I just up and abandon poor yellow.  And then where would yellow be?  Out on the streets, tossed aside like a used diaper in the trash!  We've been through a lot together, me and yellow.  How could I ever abandon you?  This may be an extreme explanation, but it illustrates the attachments we feel towards things.  And that's not even a physical thing, it's a concept.  Sorry, yellow, it's time for you to get evaluated.  People change.  It's not you, it's me.  

     I'm not saying that I hold absolutely zero sentimentality.  I like to look at old pictures, I feel connections to things I've had for long periods of time, and I have certain books that I just can't simply give away or throw out.  What I'm saying is in those rare times when we make a decision to like something, when we evaluate how we feel about something and respond according to that decision, we very rarely look back and reevaluate.  Once the decision is made, we take for granted that we will always feel the same.  We take comfort in never having to analyze that feeling again and years pass as we blindly assume that once we like something, we'll always like it.

     Sometimes, I make a snap judgement to throw something away that I don't think I want to throw away.  And it's hard.  But once it's in the trash, I move on and rarely ever think of it again.  Just recently, I was cleaning out my garage.  In there, I found an old beat up lamp, with no shade, in the shap of a koala.  The koala on the base of the lamp was a stuffed animal sort of thing, fluffy, hair matted down.  The lamp was not mine, it was my wife's and she had had it for as long as I can remember, probably before we had even known each other.  But I was cleaning out the garage.  I couldn't remember the last time we even attempted to plug it in.  Into the trash!  I continued cleaning out the garage, but luckily (and as an act of sheer self preservation), I got into that rare mindset of reevaluating my initial feelings.  Who am I, I thought, to inflict my personal feelings about keeping sentimental things onto my wife?  I thought about it for a while before I pulled it back out of the trash can.  Who knows what kind of memories this item holds for her?  Who knows what memories she would forever lose because this lamp was not here to remind her of them?  It was not my place, and I overstepped the boundary of respect for her belongings, assuming that she could have the same sense of disconnect that I have.  

     All of this begs the question:  Are we the sum of our belongings?  In a way, the answer is yes.  We acquire things and we project memories onto them.  We see an item and are reminded of a certain time and place, a situation, a smell, a feeling.  If not for the item, the memory inspired by the item, while not completely lost, will dull with the inactivity of thought.  These items bring it back, remind us of the memory, and repetition always equals retention.  

     So what, exactly, am I advocating here?  It seems as though I'm contradicting myself.  Throw it away, keep it for the memory it reminds you of...

     I'm saying that we are human beings, with thoughts and feelings and personalities.  We are unique and diverse.  I'm saying use the power of thought.  Don't blindly accept something just because it always was.  Reevaluate.  Hold yourself to a higher standard of thought and self awareness.  Try to understand how and why you feel a certain way.  It's easy to forget it in the mundane course of everyday life, but one day you'll wake up, and years will have passed.  It is the difference between letting things happen to you and making things happen for you.

     And come back yellow, I miss you already!

     

   Check out by book here!

     

Airport Shenanigans (part one)

People are amazing.  Recently, I flew to Atlanta on a work related expedition for product training.  

JIA is a humble airport, with a spattering of terminals, resting serenely, almost with an air of nonchalance, as a nearly insignificant blip on an otherwise uneventful swath of land inside the rim of Jacksonville's northern extremity.  I suppose what I'm trying to convey here, is that Jacksonville has a wishful airport, big boy pants for a waist that's just too small...it's trying, though, and one day, maybe soon, the waistline will fit the pants.

With ticket in hand and bags checked, I confidently made my way toward my designated terminal.  I wouldn't, by any remote stretch of the imagination, call myself a frequent flyer, but over the last four or five years, I've flown to Atlanta twice, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, and Richmond, Virginia.  While I I'm not a Lord of the Rings level traveler, I would at least consider myself comfortable with and accustomed to the act of flying--in a plane, in case you thought I had acquired the next level of human evolution or come up with an aviatory solution not otherwise already considered.  Because of my past experiences with this sort of thing, I elected to bring a Tom Robbins novel with me in an attempt to quell the boredom of the inevitable wait.  I already knew that waiting in a security checkpoint line, on the plane before takeoff and after landing, and then on the tram to the hotel, was imminent.  Plus, the book is wildly entertaining.

Everything was textbook as I boarded the plane; everything was standard airport monotony.  I can find entertainment almost anywhere and people-watching at an airport could be the Super Bowl of a lifetime of people-watching training.  There's much to digest, if observing people is your bag.  

A little off-topic, and as a simple example (I like supporting evidence), I hadn't been inside of JIA for ten minutes before I witnessed the first of many soon to come novelties a simple airport has to offer.  I was standing on an escalator, heading down.  The escalator to my left was on the upward rotation, creating a technological letter "X" in the form of metal steps.  I mind my own business for the most part, I don't seek out strangers to talk to, don't give them a reason to talk to me.  In fact, in public places, where there is an abundance of people, my goal is to be invisible.  I slither through the crowd, not making eye contact, not making a scene in any sense of anything.  I'm not sure if my ninja skills were honed just so precisely on this occasion, or if the woman on the up escalator just didn't care that I was there, because she suddenly turned to two men about twenty feet back on the escalator behind her and asked loudly, affronted, if they were talking about her, and that she could hear everything they had said.  I, as previously stated, was on the opposite escalator, moving in the opposite direction and so was not privy what the two men had said.  One of them looked at her square in the eyes and told her, yes, they were talking about her.  Then she released the Kracken on them and began to unleash some words in the English language that I had only heard tales about.  

The voice trailed off the deeper I rode the escalator down, as my thoughts moved from how homeland security could possibly have executed her right then and there for causing such a stir in the airport.  They would have been within the limits of proportionate reactions because the woman had lost a grip on her sanity and quite literally had become a threat.  I never got to hear the end of that argument, but it would end up being just a simple skirmish in the war of my day.  

So, my thoughts moved back to finding my terminal, which I did, and fast forwarding, I ended up on an aisle seat, sitting there, invisibility cloak wrapped tightly around me, Tom Robbins book in hand.  The book had been a gift, and I had just started reading it after I had situated myself in my seat.  I was on page one.

The seats were five across, with an aisle in the middle.  I was on the two seat side, close to the aisle.  I only describe this arrangement to facilitate the understanding that the window seat was currently open, the plane not fully boarded, but really it illustrates that when my aisle-mate would arrive, we'd be in intimate quarters, just the two of us with no third wheel buffer.  A third wheel buffer always keeps the invisibility cloak in tact.  Head down in a book keeps it in tact too, mostly, because most people just don't feel comfortable interrupting a person reading.  My aisle-mate arrived and I stood up to let him get to his window seat.  A break in my reading, and a break in keeping my head down not to have to converse with anyone occurred because of this movement.  Obviously, I had not properly planned this out.

We were forced to exchange cordialities.  He was in his mid to late fifties, a little overweight, gray hair, but still held on to a youthful vigor only discovered after he began talking.  

"What are you reading there?"  Dammit.  Here we go.

"Oh," I muster a deceptively fake air of outgoing charm.  "It's a book by Tom Robbins."

"Not very far into it, are ya?"  Dick. 

I rally.  "I just got it.  Brought it to read on the flight."  There.  Short, to the point.  Stated my intentions. Leave me alone.  He gets it.  And he really did seem to.  I continue reading.

The plane begins to take off in the late afternoon, early evening.  The sunlight is waning, but there's still enough that I can comfortable see the words on the pages.  The airline had taken measures to ensure a convenient experience.  I like to believe that the meeting went like this:

"Look, we can give them more leg space, bigger seats for comfort, or we can give them overhead lighting.  We can't give them both.  Cut backs causing strategic use of our funds dictates this.  We have some tough decisions to make, boys."  He probably slammed his fist down on the table for emphasis.  The members sitting at the boardroom table probably jumped a little at the unexpected punctuation.

"Lights."  They all agreed.  Except Smith, who always went against the grain.

"Fuck you, Smith, it's gonna be lights."

So there I am, legs curled up to my chin, thinking about how Smith needs to grow some balls and stand up for his convictions.  I reach up to turn on my overhead book light, since my side of the plane is angled away from the sun.  I push the button....and nothing happens.  Wow.  I lose.  I accept it quickly, and go back to reading in the dying light.  There's still enough to easily make out the words on the page.

"Ya have to hold the button in for a few seconds to turn it on."  My best friend next to me suddenly exclaims.  Apparently, my dilemma has not gone unnoticed.  I graciously say thank you and hold the button in.  I hold it in a little longer than what I deem necessary, but it's just so my helpful buddy sees and knows that I gave it a shot according to his directions.  No light.

"The flight is only 53 minutes.  How long are ya gonna hold it in?"  Holy shit man.  This guy just directed me to hold the button in and now he's ridiculing me for doing as instructed.  This guy!  I don't respond directly.

"Oh well." I say.  "No big deal."  Still using as little words as possible, no longer so I don't have to interact anymore, but because I've already decided that I don't like him.

He turns his light on and directs it toward me.  "Thanks," I manage.  Maybe he's okay after all.  I would never find out.  The plane touches down in Atlanta and I'm off the hook with him.  "Good luck in your travels," I tell him, and he, none the wiser that homeland security could very well have wrestled me to the ground if they had but known my thoughts as I exited the plane.  

There's more to the story, but my time to write is winding down.  Perhaps soon I'll revisit it and explain the rest.  Maybe, when its rainy outside, or the kids are at school and I'm alone in the house and with no idea what to write about, I'll create the second part.  Enjoy!

Don't Eat The Meatloaf

Somewhere, in the winding recesses of my brain, locked up tightly, and probably rightly so, is true, unadulterated honesty.  It's a promise of secrecy we often share with ourselves, careful to spill only a few drops out at a time for authenticity.  Honesty is a hard truth to tell, an array of a million judgmental telescopes, all pointed at the world around us.  We're victims of perception, slaves of an authoritarian device telling us what to make of things.  How we manifest those views into language, how we articulate the feelings to ourselves and others is the measure of how well others respond to it.  But, as the cliche goes, "the truth hurts," and so we elect to keep the pact of secrecy we've made with ourselves to spare someone's feelings.  It just might be a dangerous precedent.

Take, for example, my lack of desire to eat food that someone has made from home.  "Here's some ravioli," she says to me, eyes hopeful that I'll enjoy it, "I made it from scratch."  Declining the offer, undoubtedly, is offensive to the would-be chef and several questions immediately populate my cerebellum.  What does her kitchen look like?  Did she wash her hands? Did she taste a little of it and reuse the spoon afterwards, without washing it?  What do her pots and pans look like?  Have they been properly cleaned?  Has she made ravioli before?  Did she cook it at the proper temperature?  A slew of questions, which, in and of themselves would be offensive to ask before I gingerly accept the fact that I'm getting ready to put my life in someone else's hands.

I'm okay with the fact that this might be an absurd feeling to have.  I'm comfortable with it.  My comfort with the absurdity of it doesn't make it any less real for me, though, and I have opted for a tactic of preemption.  When I meet new people, it casually comes out that I have a propensity towards obsessiveness about not eating food from someone's home.  This happens when there is not yet even the idea of an offering.  Sure, it's a preemptive strike, hitting them while they are unaware to solidify the fact that I am not personally singling out your food.  It is a general irrational belief that all food from someone's home kitchen is somehow contaminated.  They dismiss it as an eccentricity and life goes on.  Three months down the road, when people at work somehow come to the conclusion that a potluck is in order, they are not offended when I tell them I will not be participating in the act of devouring roaches from their homes.  Obviously, I sugar-coat it to spare any residual offense they may take.  But the result is that people remember that initial conversation and connect, subconsciously in their minds, that its not personal, it's my 'eccentricity.'

Suppose, for a moment, that you selectively choose who's kitchen you think is clean enough to eat food from.  People see you try their food.  It's delicious.  You eat it up.  Then Violet, who might be one gene away from literally being a filthy pig, decides she will bring some food for others to try.  You've already eaten someone else's food.  She saw you eat it.  TROUBLE!  Now you really have to decline the offer, as meekly as possible.  "I'm full," you tell her.  Lie.  "That's okay," she says.  "Just try one bite and tell me what you think of it."  TROUBLE!  There's no way in hell you're eating her food.  You remember her telling you about her rat problem and how she caught one by stomping on it.  

When you premptively ban all food before there is an offer of food, it is essentially you saying, "It's not personal."  People cope well with it and all you might have to do is to remind them that you have an irrational mental hang up about food from people's homes.  They easily accept it because you've already set the stage.  But you HAVE to use the word "irrational."  People will not accept the notion if you try to defend it as something that makes sense.  It makes the concept a little more manageable for people to cope with, and though they don't understand it, well, they believe you don't understand it either, and that it just is.  

Back to honesty, back to the filter, back to the charity of sparing people's feelings.  We think offensive things about other people every day.  If we chose to unleash those thoughts on society, there would obviously be a retaliation strike and we don't want to deal with that.  I can certainly dish it out.  But I certainly don't want to take it, and not because I have a weak tolerance for meanness, because meanness is a false projection.  It's honesty.  I don't want to hear negative truths about myself.  I don't think any of us do.  The act of not being honest with negative thoughts and feelings about someone else is actually an act of self preservation.  There is no "high road" simply because you just want to spare someone else's feelings.  You are subconsciously quelling a retaliation blow to your ego.  

Believe it or not (though, how could one not at this point?), I think inwardly and assess situations mentally before I act.  But I move fast.  I suppose it means that I've had so much practice at it, I'm at a level of automation where people can't typically see the wheels turning.  I respond quickly to a million possibilities, choosing my perceived best option in nanoseconds.  I often wonder if everyone thinks this way, keeping that inner promise of negative honesty a secret, moving forward, compartmentalizing, cataloging perceptions, and choosing better options than instincts suggest.  

In the end, and I guess as a bottom line, please understand its not personal.  I do not want to eat your cockroach meatloaf.  Not today, not ever.

The State of the Union

I'm trying to decide what to write about today; feeling tired and its rainy out, so I'm just sort of coming off the cuff today with a few thoughts I've had lately.  An open mind is better than a closed mind.  I'm always open to possibilities beyond my comfort zone.  True or false, I dabble in the business of writing fiction, so any idea is always a good one to me.

I typically don't post on politics, and I plan to keep the status quo here, but right wing, left wing, it doesn't matter, aren't you people embarrassed by your leaders?  What has happened to government?

  Once upon a time, there were some people that wanted to be free from religious persecution.  They moved to a place where they could practice their religion without that fear.  And that fear was replaced by a new fear: hostile natives.  They did the best they could, built homes, created families, etc.  Then they decided that they wanted to control how their tax money would be spent and didn't like the government that had established itself as the leader of this new area.  So there were protests which eventually led to a war.  A lot of people died.  Strangely, the rebels won and were free to establish their own laws and taxes and overall to govern themselves in this new area.  The sun rose on a new nation and everyone was hopeful.  The people of that new area decided that there should never be one person in power, because they knew that one person in charge meant that they could be forced to abide by a whim.  The people wanted the people to be in charge.  This way, they could have a say in what new rules and laws would be enacted.  

They got the help of this one guy, who they knew was capable of writing well and asked him to write a set of rules that would forever keep the people in charge of themselves, so that no one person would ever be able to control everything and thus make the people that decided to live in this new area victims of someone else's tyranny.  Ultimately, this set of rules would prevent the situation they were trying to escape when they fled to the new area.  Again, everyone was hopeful.

Things went well.  The people began to multiply and it soon became obvious that the people, since their numbers were becoming so great, would have to decide upon an individual to be a spokesman for them.  Leaders emerged and the people decided that the spokesmen should be people that could represent their particular town or village.  The people knew that not everyone could easily agree on things so they decided that the best way to go would be to let the chosen leader of their town or village lean in a direction that appeased most of the people in that town or village.  Essentially, he would speak up on things that was important to most of the people in the town or village he represented.  The people of each of these regions patted themselves on the back.  They now had one voice.

The area grew.  Years passed.  People, with hard work and human ingenuity, could become a relevant member of society.  They found that despite humble beginnings they could achieve greatness if they made a meaningful contribution to society.  The shackles of status or class were not forever etched in their family's history.  The individual could now achieve more than he could ever imagine.  But, of course, hard work and the worth of that hard work played a significant role in a person's potential future.  Turning a profit was admired and respected by all.

At some point, the power of those chosen leaders of the villages and towns corrupted them and they quietly made back door deals against the will of the people that had chosen them as leaders.  The deals provided the chosen leaders with power or wealth and in most cases, both.  The leaders wanted to make sure that their families would be forever taken care of, but they did it at the expense of the people they represented's wishes.  Often the people didn't even know; they blindly trusted the leaders they chose.  The leaders began to manipulate the circumstances of the people's choices so that the leaders could stay in power.  Some people caught on, but they had a hard time convincing others to beleive it and if the majority didn't believe in the corruption, the corruption would inherently continue.  That, coupled with the compromised system of choosing representatives allowed the corruption to infest this new system of government.

More years passed.  The people that had originally moved to this new area to escape persecution and persue freedom were long gone, but their children's children were still there and a lot were desperately clinging onto the tradition and ideas that their ancestors fought so hard to achieve.  Unfortunately, most of their children's children didn't fully understand what they had sacrificed for freedom and became complacent.  They allowed their chosen leaders to power grab and amass so much wealth that they couldn't get out from under the oppression of the leader.  The leaders, however, knew the underpinning situation and continued to fool the people with empty promises.  The people didn't know the promises were empty, and frankly had stopped thinking for themselves, since the leaders had most of them convinced that the leaders themselves could think for everyone.

There was a shift in what was important to most people.  They were trying to make ends meet, to feed their families.  They didn't have time to concern themselves with the freedom their ancestors died for.  That battle, in their opinion, was already won.  

Quietly, a new battle had begun.  Like the militia who hid behind trees to hit their marks instead of lining up in formal battle.  The government was sneaking behind trees, firing, then quickly retreating back into a secret foxhole.  It was so quick, one could question if it ever happened at all.  The people's freedoms were quietly dropping away from them as they contended with their everyday struggles, oblivious that their leaders had stopped representing them and had begun an engagement of self preservation.  

More time passed.  Today, our elected officials break our trust and more than half the population is oblivious or supports it because they believe it's in the best interest of the nation.  Long gone are the days where we were accurately represented.  Re-zoning, vote tampering, law changing, and purchasing power of our elected leaders prevents the common voice from being heard.  Laws are now putting everyone in a choke hold so that achieving the American Dream has become more difficult than it ever has been.  Once upon a time, one could change their stars.  Government is taking away the ability to raise our station in life.  It is choking out the creativity and ingenuity that made us a giant in the first place.  

My fear is that the wheels are in motion, and the brake line is cut.

Choose

There are thirty people in a room.  There are explosives tied to these thirty people.  There is a madman,  in a remote location with his finger on the detonator, and he is waiting for you to make a decision.  You say the word, and he will push the button, annihilating those thirty people.  But also, in his other hand is another button that he is just as willing to push.  All you have to do is tell him which one.  This other button can remotely detonate a different location, on the other side of town.  This other room has a single person in it.  Which button do you tell him to push?  There are no other choices.  He is going to press one with or without you telling him which one.  If you do decide to tell him which one to push, he will comply with your wishes, but no matter what, he is going to push one.

We now arrive at a moral dilemma.  How could we possibly choose someone to die?  Who are we to play God?  Well, the obvious choice is to save the thirty people by losing the one, right?  Could you really tell this madman, "Yes, go ahead and kill the guy."  Congratulations, you just saved thirty people!  But, conversely, you will have to live with the fact that you are responsible for someone's death.  You may justify it to yourself because of the thirty you saved.  

Let's think about this again, but with a minor change.  Imagine the one person alone in room number two is a loved one.  A spouse, a child, mother, father, whatever.  Someone you love very deeply.  Now what?  Still save the thirty people?  

For a while, I thought about it and decided, "Nope!  I will not make the call.  I will let this lunatic with the two buttons decide which one to press and then I can live on, conscience clear of any wrong doing because it was not me who decided that someone should die.  Of course!," I said to myself.  "Well played.  I guessed the correct answer, ethics in tact."  But the more I thought about, the less sure I was.  What about this:  the madman will press both buttons if you don't come to a decision.  This puts a kink in the idea that not deciding is a morally sound choice.  More people die if you don't tell him which to press.

The point I guess I'm trying to make, albeit in a non-intuitive way, is that sometimes we are forced to choose the lesser of two evils.  When no choice is a good choice, at least maybe one could be a better choice.  We often meander through life in this way, making acceptable choices given a buffet of choices, some good, some bad.  Then, as in a game of chess, we sacrifice a good choice for a bad one, because sometimes the risk of a bad choice is acceptable.  Just like sacrificing a pawn to get in a position to take a better piece, a rook, perhaps.

Our goal, in life, is to make good choices more often than bad, and to delineate the lesser of two evils and choose that one, and to weigh the consequences of a bad choice and decide if it is worth making.  Most people, I would guess, make decent choices.  But I wonder, too, what makes a choice decent?  If I benefit from a choice, is it then a good choice?  Ideally, and I'm really only postulating since I just don't know what the right answer really is, or if there even IS one, a person should settle on a choice that benefits one's self while not infringing on someone else's ability to make good choices.

I would like to think of this as the meaning of life:  to be faced with a cavalcade of choices and always try to choose either the best ethical option or the lesser of evils.  Depending on your particular religious belief, if we are to be judged upon death, those choices become extremely important--in fact, it is what we are being judged against.  And even though it's a BIG no-no, let's face it, we judge the hell out of others too.  How people view you is wholly based on what choices you have made and how predictable you will be when you are confronted with a future decision.  When we feel that we can predict, with some level of accuracy, what someone else's choice in a given matter will be, we feel like we know them.  We are comfortable with them.  Our entire life is defined by the choices we make, is what I guess I'm saying.  And we choose to be close with people that would make similar choices.

When they are cornered and must make the best choice among bad options, it is then that we see a person's mettle, it is then that a leader can be born, or a will can be shattered.  Decisions can be tough sometimes, and hindsight can always force someone to second guess, no matter the choice.

So the clock is ticking.  Choose wisely.  Look at the big picture and never, under ANY circumstances, get into a situation where you must decide who gets blown up.

7 Reasons People Fail

Everyone fails. Sadly, everyone fails more often than they succeed. If success were easy, it wouldn't be a goal worthy of attainment. So, let's go! It's just around the corner! A little effort and you've got it! In this blog, I postulate that success isn't hard. I also postulate that when we fail, we fail most often because of inward influences. I postulate, (now I'm just using the word gratuitously) that there is a proven method of success for every endeavor you may wish to pursue. If it can be done, chances are, someone's already done it, right? I'm obviously not speaking absolutely, here! Gee whiz! Cut me some slack. There are things that have never been done....trying to beat world records and such. I mean generally speaking. Most things that you, or anyone, wish to do, have already been done by someone. So, no matter what your goal, no matter what the measure of your success may be, there are things that keep us from that goal. The list, however, contained herein, may not be a complete list. There may be other, personal influences keeping you from success, but it's likely that most or all of the obstacles you face are in this blog somewhere. So, without further narration, as I tend to be long winded....can writing be long winded?....maybe the term is long prose-ded....or expositionous? Now I'm just making up words. The point is...the list of reasons why I have surmised that most people fail:

1. Lack of ability. This is one of the few seemingly external reasons people fail. And even though, upon first glance, it seems like an external reason, it's still internal. Lack of ability. Is the lack of ability really a lack of ability? Or is it a lack of practice? A lack of research? A lack of understanding of what you are trying to succeed at? Have you devoured every scrap of information on the subject? Have you studied the people successful at this same thing and understand how they arrived at success? Success, at any endeavor, requires an understanding of the process it takes to be successful at it. That's why the beginning of this blog, I stated that there is a proven method of success for any endeavor. Obviously, someone has seen success in the same field in which you are striving for success. Learn their story. History can teach you about possible pitfalls, before you have to experience them. Lack of ability, to me, really boils down to lack of knowledge. Make no mistake, though, knowledge of the success of others doesn't mean instant success. There are other factors. Let's explore another one.

2. Lack of effort. You can have an amazing grasp of what it takes to be successful in whatever area you are trying to be successful in. But understanding and education are static. Now, you must act on them. Lack of effort is one of the strongest contributing factors of failure. You didn't try hard enough. You didn't put everything you had into it. Most of the rest of the reasons for failure explore the motive behind this lack of effort. There is no amount of research you can do on a topic that will cover for it. There is no amount of conditioning or practice that makes up for not being fully invested when it matters most.

3. Self defeatism. Just who do you think you are, trying to do this? You must have some nerve! You are a fake! You are a fraud! All your life you've been a nobody. All your life you have failed at everything you've tried. You should quit now, while you're ahead, so you don't have to experience another failure. We tell ourselves all the time what we cannot do. Eventually, we start to believe it. The clichéd phrase "a can-do attitude" is desirable because if someone has it, they are willing to at least give it a try. Are you willing to give it a try? Are you going to try it, but then convince yourself that it's beyond you? This is a mental battle and it's hard because you can't clearly see to opponents, two sides. This is why we believe ourselves. Surely our own subconscious has our best interests in mind? If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? This requires a paradigm shift, and it's not simple to do. It is case by case. Don't let yourself fail before you've tried. A positive mental attitude can bring you to the finish line.

4. Fear. This is a tough one because it requires you to explore what it is, exactly, that you are afraid of. I mean, beyond just the failure. As an example, I will tell you what I fear the most when it comes to success. I fear that I will not have a lack of effort, that I will not self defeat, that I will try my hardest.....and still fail. Because of this fear, I often choose to save face, let people see that I didn't try my hardest. It's a fail safe. If I succeed, then great. If I fail, well, obviously, I wasn't trying as hard as I could have. And people know it. Once upon a time, I was an excellent basketball player. The people that knew me and my ability always picked me first for their team. Because of it, there was pressure to perform, to succeed in the role they believed that I could fulfill. Often, when I was not playing to what I thought was my best, I purposefully stopped exerting my usual effort. People knew that I wasn't trying my hardest, and I was content with them thinking that. My pride simply couldn't handle people thinking that I had played my best and still performed substandard. It was, at the time, a happy compromise. But, of course, a simple game of basketball is less important that the real success we try to achieve everyday in our personal and professional lives.

5. Importance level/Commitment. This almost should go without saying, but it's a point that, however apparent, must be stated. If the importance level of the success is not high, who cares? If your commitment to it is not high, then failure becomes an acceptable option. Why even try to begin with? If it isn't important, brush it off and move on to other endeavors that meet the requirement. Are you wasting time and energy on trying not to fail at something that is inconsequential? Are you draining time and energy from something that isn't inconsequential? This is a common misdirect. Focus on the things that matter. If you spend a lot of time cleaning your house and take pride in every pillow on the couch being in place, the curtains just right, everything organized and being in its place, what does all of that matter if ITS BURNING TO THE GROUND?! Grab a fire extinguisher, call the fire department! To hell with your bed being made! Focus on things that matter. Look at the big picture as often as you can remember to.

6. Complacency. After seeing the same thing for so long, as humans, we learn to accept it. That's why some of these reality TV shows are even in existence. They make over homes and people, rescue failing restaurants, teach parents how to discipline their kids, show people how to lose weight, etc. We get complacent. Don't feel too bad about it, though, it's human nature. We need an outside view, sometimes, to pull us out of our complacency. Imagine if we could look at our home, or business, or life with an outsider's eyes. Try it. It's tough. You really have to think about it. But it's possible. The point is, then, don't get complacent.

7. Refusal to change. If it's not working one way, try a different way. People have failed because of the simple inability to admit that the decision they made failed. Why continue to do something if its not working? It's not going to miraculously and suddenly start working. Change it. If you own a failing restaurant and you opened it as a steakhouse, but there are ten other steakhouses nearby, not only did you not follow rule number one, you are holding on to a failing decision. You need to switch your cuisine to something the market has a need for. Seems obvious, right? Your pride is in your way. It may also be a bit if rule number six-complacency, but the bottom line is: you need to make a change. Don't not change and continue to be unsuccessful. Take the leap. Change. The new decision may also fail, but at least you have eliminated another failing idea to get to the successful one.

Anyone who has been a success at anything has experienced multiple failures before the success, from Ernest Hemingway to Michael Jordan. It is how we respond to failures that will define us as successes and usually, when people succeed, we all reap the rewards of their successes.

Are You A Good Person? (Intention vs Action vs Perception vs Reality)

The thought has occurred to me on many occasions and it is just now that I have decided to consciously notate it here, quasi-indelibly. By it's very nature, I'm not sure that the word "indelible" can be prefixed with the word "quasi" but I use it loosely to begin with because by "quasi" I mean that this blog is only as permanent as allowed by its owners which, in every case, is not me and can therefore be rendered a death of which i cannot control. But I'm getting off topic here, so let me reign it back in...

The thought has occurred to me on many occasions: What makes a person good? I suppose first we must agree on an absolute definition of what we take for goodness. I don't typically deal in absolutes, because nothing, to me, is an absolute. Yet, to be fair and to stifle variables, to quell arguments of the definition of such a subjective idea, let us suppose that "good" in the most narrow scope as possible means morally and ethically sound according to the most popular consensus of what people understand it to be. The Christian bible is as good a place to start as any, because, though most people may not know it, this is the ultimate rule book that dictates what most of society considers right and good. It lays out an ethical code one should follow for righteousness. Religious or not, most of the world population can agree with many of the rules the book puts forth. In fact, I posit that we all know them so well, we could usually make an accurate guess at what choice, in an endless sea of choices, would be more ethically sound, given any number of scenarios. Then we come to that Einsteinian problem of relativity. From a different vantage point, a good choice could be a bad choice, and so the question then becomes "good for whom?" But for the moment, I will dispense of all relativistic issues, dispense of all subjective possibilities and throw out tedious interpretations of what good really means. Lets get basic.

So, really now, what makes a person good? Four possibilities. One. What if there were an intention of goodness, but the end result turned out bad? Two. What if there were an intention of goodness, everything worked out, and it turned out good? Three--the darker possibilities: What if there were an intention of evil, but things went wrong, and the end result is good? And finally, four, what if there were evil intentions, success, and the evil idea came to fruition? I contend that it is intention that makes a person good. Even if something turns out bad, it is the intention of the individual that really shows where their heart is. I'm talking true intention, here, not simply saying that good intentions were present. But then there's another problem, and funny how logic problems can turn a simple solution into a dilemma so quickly. We now have a problem of perception against reality.

Perception IS reality. What I perceive to be true and real, really is true and real--to me. If I perceive the ocean to be yellow and the sky to be red, these things are real to me. I'm sorry, but no amount of arguing will convince me otherwise. The rest of the world could see the ocean and sky as blue, and that would be their perception, their reality. But not mine. And so my point is that perception is reality and we all live in vastly different worlds of reality. It could be a tone of voice that changes a positive statement to a negative one. I hear the tone of voice and interpret it as sarcasm. You hear that same tone of voice but interpret it as emphasis. The interpretation can change our perception of reality. And whatever we perceive is real to us. To tie this all together, I'm basically saying that I can see a good action, despite the disposition of the intention and perceive someone as a good person. Their intention could have been negative in nature, but they failed and a good action came about. In my perceived reality, that is a good person despite the intention they had to do evil. So, then, can intention really matter at all in the scheme of things?

I think there is no accurate way to decide if someone is good. We can only judge by a person's actions, never by their intentions. We are in a best guess scenario when it comes to judging others. If we see that most of an individual's actions are good in nature, we might be able to correctly assume that their intentions align with those actions. But that's all it ever is: an assumption.

The only thing we can truthfully decide upon is whether or not we are good people. It is a self assessment. We know our own intentions. We understand our own motives. But we are in a brilliant world, a world congested with competing personalities, all trying to assess one another.

This all comes down to a skill most of us have adeptly refined. It's one that I believe holds a negative impact on one's righteousness. And that skill is perception manipulation. We constantly try to force other people's perceptions. We want people to see us a certain way. We want to inflict an impression of ourselves onto someone else. So we weave a reality from the fabric of perception. The intention here is to control the environment, to hold the power of how people perceive reality. We want to be the puppet masters controlling the show and we try, with all of our might to force the view. Again, I feel that this is negative behavior. We all want to be good. We all want to be liked. The power is truly in the hands of those who release the attempt to control perception. Live life. Create your own reality. Let others perceive their own reality without interference. It is then, perhaps, that you have become a good person.

OZ The Great And Powerful (movie review)

I remember my mom and dad setting my sister and I down in front of the TV about once a year for the annual CBS playing of The Wizard Of OZ. Not only did we love watching it because it was a great movie, it aired in the evening and we got to stay up just a little later than normal. I can't remember if we watched it every year, or if we even watched it more than the one year I am currently recalling, but I remember, this one time in particular, at least, it was a family event. That is the memory I associate with the original movie. How could a new rendition of the original even compare? And after watching RETURN TO OZ? Forget it. That movie ruined my belief that a new OZ movie could work. Return to OZ was a decent movie, but it was too different, too weird. As a stand alone movie it would have been better, but they really bastardized a classic there.

So The bottom line becomes the top line: I have decided that I liked the movie. Shame on me, I didn't build up any suspense! A movie review is suppose to build pros and cons and then, to keep the readers in suspense(and hopefully to keep them reading), I'm suppose to reveal my final assessment at the end. Well, if you haven't noticed yet, I'm not really into doing or writing what is expected. So my final assessment is that the movie was good. Here are my observations during and after viewing the film, for whatever it may be worth:

The word "prequel" is not in my Oxford English Dictionary for a reason. It's not really a word. Spellcheck, however, has maintained it's relevance by adding the word to its list of recognized terminology, slang added for the sheer purpose of helping one understand the trends in today's ever changing world of misguided and perverse twistings of a once eloquent language. I once took a creative writing course in college, in an attempt to hone my fiction-writing skills into something entertaining, or at very worst, readable. We were coached in multiple assignments to open the story with an attention grabber. Invest the reader immediately, to dispense with initial exposition. This is why George Lucas started with Episode IV with no intention (at the time) for Episodes I II and III. It's why he started Dr. Jones in a cave, deep in a jungle and hunting for a golden statue right off the bat. A prequel, by its very nature, should be expositional. It's all the mush before the main action starts. A good writer can make anything into a compelling story, but because it should have been a boring description of events leading up to the really cool stuff, it ends up being forced despite the skill of the screenwriter. Don't get me wrong. Writing a prequel must be way more difficult than writing an original. There are already world rules established. There are already fans that will be expecting these rules to be followed and they'll also be extremely critical with any liberties that might be taken. Yes, a prequel is a difficult write, indeed. So this new OZ, this highly computer animated, visually spectacular feature is a prequel to the original, if you didn't know. It, in a nutshell, is the wizard's venture into OZ and what he must overcome to establish himself as such. The movie never gives us much of a timeframe in respect to its relation to the first film, but it does give us a date at the beginning and eludes to a timeframe by reference of names and generations. But you've gotta be sharp to catch it.
The opening credits were a striking embodiment of Danny Elfman's musical signature. Danny Elfman, composer of the Beetlejuice score, Edward Scissorhands, and a slew of other Tim Burton films, has a distinct staccato, circusy sound that is difficult to ignore. Going into it, I didn't know that he was the composer of the score and while he composes great music, I would not have thought he could pull it off. Refreshingly, his signature was subtle and only widely considered during the opening. His score didn't pull me out of the world of OZ and if anything, his subtlety amplified the experience. Kudos to Danny Elfman. He exercised his compositional maturity by scaling back and not overpowering the action.
Homage was payed often and respectfully to the original film. It began in black and white, but not only that, it was in a 4:3 aspect ratio: a square box. It's an aspect ratio used for the old square tube TVs. In other words, it was not formatted to fit the movie theater's screen. Upon entering OZ, the aspect ratio smoothly and slowly corrects for wide screen and the color appears. I knew it would happen, but the transition was done nicely. L. Frank Baum, the creator of The Wonderful Wizard Of OZ, was given his due respects in the opening scene. We begin with a carnival, the Baum's Brothers', indicated by the banner at the entrance. It's starts the movie on a good note, I think, even though the opening felt at least a little contrived. The camera panned past carnival barkers until it arrived at the great wizard's trailer, who, straight away, was revealed to be a womanizing fraud. But it was the carnival barkers that made me feel that the movie would be an imposter. It felt almost too--stage act. Does that make sense? The scene's only saving grace was that the barkers could still be heard once they were off camera, making me relax a little, knowing that their lines went beyond the scope of the camera, adding a little bit, albeit, JUST a little bit of realism that the scene desperately needs.
This movie, unlike the first, starts at the Emerald City and works it's way back to munchkin land. The route they take is true, first entering the forest, then arriving at the corn field, then into munchkin land. They come to the corn field from the correct direction, which is odd to me that I noticed--but I did, so good. Apparently, they detour through Chinatown, which is not a decree of nationality, but instead a town fully comprised of fine ceramic, china. As in the original, the wizard begins to meet characters which add themselves to his party. I personally did not experience this foray into Chinatown because during this part of the film, I was gently scooting past the people in my row, careful of drinks and being sure not to bump knees. My son, whom I was there with had to use the restroom. Therefore, I only have second hand accounts from my wife and two girls of the existence of Chinatown. I cannot comment further on it, but I did see the result of the wizard's presence there, so I know it probably did happen.
I had a hard time with Theodora, the wicked witch of the west. She was played by Mila Kunis famed actress of That 70's Show and the voice actress of Meg from Family Guy. All I could hear was Meg from Family Guy, and it took me out of the moment on several occasions. Bummer. She played the part very well, but it was hard to look past that recognizable vocal talent and see her as someone--anyone else.
My final gripe is when the wizard first landed his hot air balloon in OZ, the whole thing was overdone. He landed in a river, in his balloon basket and floated down it as he saw many of the natural wonders of OZ. The scene was trying to be fantastic. Giant flowers opened as he passed by, a tree composed of nothing but butterflies scattered and flew all around him. Multicolored songbirds flocked around him, and he passed reeds that made music. It WAS fantastic, but it went on for too long and it was too much, as if the animators were just trying to come up with something to throw in that would be fun to animate. It was simply too much.
As a fan of the original movie, and skeptical that this one would be even remotely decent, I was quite surprised by the strict attention they payed the original and pleasantly surprised that I didn't hate the liberties they did take. Overall, it was entertaining and magical, much like the original. Go see it if you have an opportunity. I suspect the big screen does it more justice than a home television.

Attitude Is Everything

Jamie posted a picture on Facebook today of captain Jack Sparrow. It said, "the problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem." Obviously this cannot really be attributed to Johnny Depp playing a role in a movie. He spoke a line a writer wrote. But the quote is definitely worthy of reflection. I think it holds true.
I have seen it so many times. I've been guilty of it on WAY more than one occasion. I'm sure that you, who are reading this, have committed the foul before. Attitude is everything. Attitude is everything. I had to write it twice. This one idea is the single most powerful idea that can shape who you are, how others view you and how much of an impact you can potentially make in another person's life. People don't typically want to associate with someone who is always negative. Don't misunderstand. There are times when it is appropriate to be down, negative, or irritated. But whatever it is, it's not the end of life, existence, humanity. Step back. It's a problem that can be dealt with and overcome. Doom is NOT nigh. The sooner you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, the sooner you will handle the issue and move past it.
I observe people. I watch closely how people react. Without getting too New Agey here, I get a general feel for people based on how they react to problems. I'm not saying that I can read your aura. It is simply observation. And I may or may not be good at it. All I'm saying is I, like most people, consciously or unconsciously, make a judgement of someone's character based on human interaction. Then, subconsciously, we make a decision on whether or not that person would be someone we want to regularly interact with. Constant negativity is exhausting to deal with. It drains us of positivity. And whether we realize it or not, we tend to push those people away. Now. Here's the hard part. Look in the mirror. Not literally! But just look at yourself and analyze your general attitude. Be honest with yourself. But don't make the call as yourself. The trick here is this: how do other people view your attitude? We all believe ourselves validated. Validated to hate, or be frustrated. Validated to be in a bad mood. Validated to be negative. We have good reason for it--in our own minds. After all, who the hell knows what I've been through today? I spilled hot coffee all over myself right before an important meeting, got a flat tire and accidentally bounced a check. What do people know of my problems? Fuck them if they don't understand why I flew off the handle for something seemingly simple! They don't know what kind of day I've already had! Validate your negative energy. It's what we do. We all have problems. But how do people typically view your attitude? That's the question and the answer is an eye opener. So, as "unholy" as it is to judge, lest WE be judged, let's face it. We should all have law degrees for as much as we judge others. It's human nature. Lets move past it. Everyone forms an opinion about everyone and everything.
Attitude is everything. There. I wrote it three times. I have gotten promoted in my professional life several times, not because I am insanely good at everything I do, but probably more often than not, because of my positive attitude. I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm far from it. But its the attitude, the "I can handle anything you throw at me" attitude that wins the day. And here's the secret: it is noticed because most people don't have it. You want me to what?? Work a 16 hour shift and no break? Are you fucking craz----? Stop. Sure, I'll do it. Man, don't worry. I got this.
"I gotta be honest, Bill, I was expecting a little pushback. I was nervous about asking you to do this on such short notice." No problem boss. I'm your guy. The impression, now, is that I'm the go-to guy. Bill is good. He doesn't hesitate to do what we ask when we ask it. All because I didn't complain. I just handled it and with a positive attitude. Is being a "yes man" a bad thing? I guess it is if you don't exercise your opinion when you are asked for it. If you disagree, disagree. It's possible to disagree with a positive attitude.
This is a long dissertation on a simple quote, but dammit, attitude is everything! There is no can't (now I sound like Yoda--I'm leaving out the, "there is only do, or do not) or won't, unless it violates your ethical code. Everything else is manageable. Everything else is doable. Be that guy. Be that girl. The one that people know they can go to because you are positive and reliable. Trust me, it is a breath of fresh air in a room stale with negativity, in a sea of, "I can't because...."
Make it happen. Just do it. Nike has cornered the market on this phrase. Push your stupid pride out of the way and just do it.
"The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem." --Captain Jack Sparrow
Thanks, Jamie!

Wear A Purple Hat

     Somewhere deep within, somewhere quietly brooding inside of my psyche, there is a malnourished, socially unkempt, and psychologically naive hunchback of a person clawing at the walls of my brain to be released from the confines of his tiny cell. He emerges occasionally, just to make his presence known, just enough to give his host that odd quirk, that almost normal edge that fools people most of the time. And I beat him back, trying my best to decommission the bastard, but he always recovers and comes on again, just as strong as before, just as nimble and adept at the attempt to fortify his position as the premier personality as he always is.

     At first glance, I fit in. At first glance, I am a social giant, an agent of normal society, outgoing with charm and personality to boot. In a snapshot, I can make the whole seem like a masterpiece, the music heavenly and inspiring--all of that. But I get inside my own mind. My uncontrollable urge to inwardly reflect damages my ability to prove that the whole suite IS a masterpiece. Instead I'm forced to demonstrate the simple etudes and sell people on the fact that the rest is of equal quality. I'm a pretty good salesman. Despite my ability to sell the full suite sight unseen, there are times when a piece of the drivel goes public, leaked beyond my ability to curtail its release. This small fact has made me a master of cleanup, able to reign the crazy back in, and present a beautiful snapshot of sonata in behind it almost immediately. So fast in fact, that people often wonder if that glimpse of mush ever really happened at all. It has become an arrangement I can at least comfortably handle.

     I often wonder if other people have this inward process of thought. If others, too, are suppressing bouts of second guessing, lack of confidence, and unhealthy self examination. Maybe it's human nature. Who can really say they are openly honest 100% of the time? I believe that most people are not. Not are they not honest with others, they probably are not even honest with themselves. But the reality of it is that I really don't know if this is the case at all, and so I can only judge it from my own instincts, my own inward mental activity and strive to at least be honest with myself, which is a hard pill to swallow. That pill is proverbial, for your reference, in case you thought I might ingest a foreign hormonal crutch into the already unbalanced mix. In digression, I think that personal honesty is important to one's development as a human being. It is a facet to life that humanity pays too little attention to. This process of internal awareness and personal growth can be practiced without anyone else's knowledge of it. It's strictly a mental exercise. It takes time to become honest with yourself, to examine how you truly feel about something and why. It's so easy, as busy as we make ourselves to accept the surface feeling of something and then move on, without much more thought about it.

     Language is a barrier to feelings. If we can not articulate how something makes us feel, how can we really even justify those feelings to ourselves? It's difficult, and often, the feeling of difficulty is so great, we don't even try. It takes too much time. Anything worth doing is difficult. I've heard that somewhere before. It makes sense, I guess. So, I suppose what I'm really wondering is do I fit in? Can I fit in? People ask this question of themselves. Normal. Am I normal? And I wonder, then, what defines normal? Normal is what most people are doing. If the population of the world wears purple hats, and I don't, I'm not normal. It is a little distressing how willing I am to make sure that I fall in line, that I too purchase a purple hat so that I'm not outcast, exiled from the right of humanity. We are defined by our individuality as people, and what we, personally, have to offer that others cannot. Yet, we don't want to be TOO individualistic, TOO off the grid and unable to reconcile what the masses consider to be normal.

     So, I'm saying that my desire to be normal is a forced action, a fraudulent move so that others can feel comfortable interacting with me. My inner hunchback, that abnormal creature clawing to get out is my individualism, my need to be different, expressive, and creative. But everything in me tells me to keep him chained up, locked away because people just won't understand it. Not in this world, where purple hats are the going trend.

Check out my book! Shift!

There Is No Such Thing As A Dream Job

What is your dream job? Money is no object. No matter what you pick, you will make enough to live comfortably. Just take earnings out of the equation. I'm trying to dial down to what job, regardless of pay potential, would make you happy just by the sheer act of performing it. Think about it. I mean, REALLY think about it. There is no interview process. You will get the job. There are no other candidates. You must go to work and do the job for at least 40 hours a week. But pick wisely. You have only this one chance to choose your dream job. Once you pick, that's it. Of course you can quit, but then you're back in the real world and must pick from an available slew of jobs that the market dictates. There will be other candidates and the pay is the pay. Think about it long enough? Okay, here we go....
Here's your schedule. Here's two days off a week. Heres nine hours a day, plus a one hour lunch. Here's your benefits package and your pay. Here are the tools, the training and the know-how to do your job effectively. Now, lets get to work!
What did you pick? I know, it's a tough decision. Well what are your hobbies? Do you like to paint? Do you like to play golf? What do you truly enjoy doing? Make it your job, right? WRONG! Anything you like doing, will turn to dislike when it becomes a job. When an activity turns into a non-optional grind, it becomes a chore. There's a reason the phrase "the grass is always greener" is a phrase to begin with, and it illustrates my point perfectly. Human nature is to always think there's something better. No one is ever truly happy with anything they have. It makes me ask what is the point? Let's put aside the job debate just for a moment and really try to consider exactly what it is that would make you truly happy. It's likely a different thing for all of us. But let's really consider it for a moment. For some people it's stuff. I would be happy if I had a 90" television. I would be happy if I had a large house. I would really be content if I had a new car. How long does the happiness that comes from stuff last? It's a pretty brief feeling a accomplishment, a euphoric blink into happiness. But now you have that thing that you said would make you happy. What now? Now you want something else. But I thought that after you got that thing you wanted, you'd be happy, content to live out the rest of your life without another desire? Nope. Guess again. What many people don't realize is that it's not the thing, job, or concept that you get a feeling of happiness from. It's the journey. It's the journey and then at the end, the accomplishment of acquiring the rewards from the journey. Once you have arrived, once you have acquired that holy grail of what you were after, you begin to get thirsty again. Not for the thing, but for the chase.
Back to your dream job. Back to the grind. Be there at nine o'clock sharp! Don't be late. Now you must perform! A job is a place where you provide a service or product for--and here's the rub---someone else. Someone else tells you what to do. You don't have the freedom you thought you had. It's not a hobby anymore, it's a profession. You have deadlines, there is pressure, there is stress. Perform! Get it done. I've always thought that my dream job would be to write fiction for a living. Yes, a novelist! How great would it be to make up stories all day and get paid for it? But think about it. I would have a deadline. There would be pressure to deliver. I don't care if you're feeling under the weather today, CREATE A STORY YOU SON OF A BITCH! CREATE! Same deal with painting or anything that takes a creative touch. You no longer get to do it when the desire moves you to do it. You must deliver. CREATE! We hold these things on a pedestal, because we see the result, not the work of these jobs. I went to college with a music scholarship and figured out pretty quickly that, while I wanted that life, the ability to perform on stage in front of an audience that would enjoy it, that I wasn't willing to do what it took to get me there. I was not willing to spend nine to ten hours a day alone in a practice room. I was not willing to digest volumes of music theory when not in class. I was not willing to practice scales all day to learn the different keys inside out, manage alternate fingerings and rehearse nuances of pitch and volume. I just wanted to perform. But one cannot perform without the hard work that creates the end result. We see jobs for the prestige but not for the grind. It's all a grind. It all becomes a grind. At the point when someone tells you you HAVE to do it, when it is no longer an option you have decided for yourself, it becomes a job. You are now doing whatever it is for someone other than yourself.
The grass is always greener. Keep your hobbies your hobbies. Do them in your spare time because that's what you choose to do with it. A job is work. A job is getting through the day, as happy as you can, while someone else tells you what you have to do. Your day on the job is a break from what you wish you could be doing instead. I have a hard time believing it when people tell me they love their job. Liars! A job is where you go to dream about doing something else that you would actually like doing. But remember: it's just a dream. The reality is different, and the journey of getting there is the magic. Happiness comes from growing. It comes from getting from point A to point B, not from simply staying on point B. If you stay on point B, you'll always wonder what the view looks like from point C. Well, dammit! Pack your bags! Get a move on! Point C isn't that far, you can do it! Your life will be perfect when you're at point C! Unfortunately, you can just barely spot point D off in the distance and WOW! that looks like a nice place to be. Pack your bags get a move on! It's not that far! Everything will be perfect at point D, I just know it! And so on.....see what I mean?
All I'm really trying to say here is enjoy the journey. Stop briefly to smell the flowers. Stay as long as you like, but keep growing. That is happiness. Don't forget that it's the journey that makes the trip, not the destination, because the destination will never be as glorious as the anticipation of it.

Why Smart People Don't Fit In

I think everyone considers themselves intelligent. I mean, how could you not and live with yourself, inferiority devouring any sense of self respect? To respect oneself, one would, by requirement, consider themselves to have at least some redeeming intellectual quality, a natural right to belong in society as a member. They are obviously wrong.
The truth is that most of society is dumb. I'm talking in generalities here, so lets not get our panties in a bunch. Why would anyone want to be a member of a community of people that vote for the next superstar in a prime time reality show? Why want to mingle in a crowd obsessed with which celebrity went to rehab this week? I'm sorry, but why settle for that? If this type of thing makes you content, then this article is not for you. Stop reading, flip your hat backwards and go to the bar with your buddies. You can blend right in. You can erase your personality in a pool of similar personalities. Get a tattoo to show that you rebel against society. Unfortunately, tattoos, once a sign of societal rebellion, are now the opposite. You are now a sheep. Glad you joined the herd, now fall in. The Chinese letters on your shoulder right above the barbed wire band wrapped around your bicep surely shows that you don't care what others think. You are an individual. But no, no it doesn't. Quite the opposite, in fact. How sad and ironic that you missed it.
Intellect...what is it? I wonder. How many division problems can you correctly complete in ten minutes? Is this intellect? Who could say for sure? I can say, though, with at least a little certainty, that smart people are individuals. They are typically introverts. They cannot relate to most of society because most of society cares what others think of them and tailor themselves accordingly. Smart people don't care what others think of them. There is more on their mind than that.
Being smart is a lonely state of being. Smart people don't typically get along with other smart people. It really doesn't matter though because they don't care to. As an outsider looking in, you might think they are miserable. They have no friends, no sense of style, no desire to interact amicably. They just don't. They seem oblivious to it all. And they are. They are simply beyond that seemingly human goal of fitting in. I mean, literally beyond it. It just doesn't exist to them. This may be a hard concept to grasp for many of us who are wound up tightly into the social scene. They have no perception of fitting in or why one would want to. They don't do things to show that they don't conform. They have their own minds. They do things differently because they just truly don't conform. It's not for display, it just is. This is the difference. If you ever notice a hermit who is not conforming, you may then see that a hermit, by his very nature is not trying to impress someone. He didn't do whatever it is you witnessed him doing because he's trying to prove that he can fit in but look like he doesn't care if he fits in. It's legit.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is this. Have your own mind. Think for yourself. Do things you like, not because you think other people will like you for it. This is the crux of intellect, the pinnacle of humanity and individualism. Be you. Others will like you for it. But by then, you wont care if they do or not. That is freedom.