Ponderings and Musings

I saw the following letter on this blog entry. It is entitled “How To Be Free”.

Um, yeah.

Dear Jake and Connor,
I turned down a really good job offer today. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t even that hard. Even in this new normal, post Great Recession world, the allure of a good job working for someone else just doesn’t exist for me anymore.
It could be because I know it will never be a great job. It could be because my freedom – and the ability to see you guys whenever I want – means too much to me.
You are only 7 and 3 years old right now. You haven’t caught on to the changes that have happened in our lives and in the world over the last few months and years.
The past 2 decades have brought to the world a revolution like no other. The world is now digital and flat and you are connected to almost every other person on earth. You have access to every great idea ever thought by mankind.
This is a threat to anyone with power right now. They aren’t sure what to do….they don’t know how all of this is going to shake out.
As you read this remember that people often overestimate what they can do in 2 years but they wildly underestimate what they can achieve in 10.
Never under estimate yourself! The key to happiness and success in this world is believing you deserve it and knowing you can achieve it. You can! It is as simple as deciding right now that you are happy. That you will define your own success.
I have no idea how old you are going to be the first time you read this but at 7 and 3, you are both incredible people. All parents think their kids are smart and cute and funny so I’ll spare you what I think and let you know that other people tell us these things all the time.
You both have a magnetism that isn’t easily explained. You make people feel better about themselves. In this crazy world, that is truly a needed talent! I hope you both recognize it in yourselves and I hope your mother and I have properly nurtured that talent….because the world needs more of it.
I want to explain something to you guys: At some point, the world is going to offer you a deal.
It will try to convince you that what it needs from you is what you really want.
It will spend millions of dollars on advertising and education, info-tainment and propaganda to steer you in the direction it needs you to go.
The world will tell you that if you work hard, you will achieve success.
That success and happiness are just over the next hill top.
You will go to the finest universities and you will meet incredible people.
Almost all of them, with their souls quietly yearning for something bigger than themselves.
The world will promise a decent living at a good wage. You will travel. You will see foreign lands.
It will offer you guarantees from exile, with friends and followers willing to pretend they are hanging on your every word, as long as you pretend to hang on theirs.
You may even be one of the lucky ones to whom the world offers a soul mate.
Of course, it will neglect to tell you that your submission to the world means you may not be soul mates forever.
It is going to offer you safety and security. It will entice you with imagery of comfort and luxury.
The world will offer you a steady paycheck. A release from the fear of being able to provide or survive.
It is going to offer you the dream of a happy, care free retirement. It will offer you equity in its markets, it will be kind enough to let you relax in your golden years.
The world will offer you a death with dignity. You do not need to suffer alone or be in fear it will say.
The world will take care of you.
This is a generous world. For all of this, it only asks for one thing in return. All the world wants is your humanity.
Fuck the world….go your own way and never look back.
Go make deep connections with incredible people.
Don’t subsist on the shallow connections the world wants you to have.
Go discover new things. Create. Be beautiful.
Don’t buy into the world’s illusion of happiness through wealth.
Go teach people that they don’t have to trade their humanity either.
Show the world you don’t fear expulsion because the connections you have made are too real….too deep.
Show the world you want to be with your soul mate forever. That you won’t sacrifice your love or your family because the world says that is the way it is supposed to be.
Show the world that you do not need its illusions of safety or security.
That you do not want its versions of comfort and luxury.
Show the world that when you make deep connections you do not have to suffer alone or live in fear.
Show the world that when you keep your humanity you get to share it with others.
Only then will you be free.
Love,
Dad

Being out of town for work has afforded me the opportunity to eat out a lot this week, and it is only Wednesday. I am terrified to jump on the scale when I get back home, but aside from some alcohol choices I wouldn’t normally make, I have been doing my best to eat healthy during this trip.

Aside from feverishly looking up calorie counts while gazing at a menu in the selection of restaurants I have been in, I have noticed something that has brought a smile to my face.

99% of the men I have seen in restaurants this week have removed their hat for dinner. And better yet, there is evidence that these men actually did it as demonstrated by their hat sitting on their knee as they sit at the table or in the booth with their family and friends.

There is hope for our society.

I have mentioned before that it makes me quite crazy when a man doesn’t remove his hat for a meal. I find it rude. I’m not going to go on about it tonight, after all I have lectured about it before, but I guess it says something about the folks in this part of Texas when it is apparent that it is still standard practice for a man to remove his hat while at the dinner table. Granted, my observations would hardly qualify as a scientific study, but nonetheless, random samplings of data have given me hope that all is not lost when it comes to this aspect of polite behavior.

Now if we could do something about the high caloric counts in the food!

Last year I was fortunate enough to get myself a 60-minute massage at the Saratoga Springs Spa and Resort at Walt Disney World. I love getting a massage (I prefer the deep tissue version) and it’s one of the few activities where I can completely disengage my mind and ramp my RPMs back to zero for a few minutes. It’s a wonderful feeling. I’m hoping to do it again next month during our upcoming vacation.

While getting ready for this massage, the masseuse wanted me to select which lotion or oil she should use for the treatment. She had me smell each one in a choice of four and then she had me smell each one again. She told me that my body would tell me which one it needed (not wanted) based on my attraction to each scent. The one I liked the most was the one that my body wanted the most. I think that makes sense and it turns out that it worked out just right for me, because I was able to turn everything down to zero and she massaged sandalwood scented oil deep into my skin.

Ah, heaven.

Yesterday my body was screaming for chocolate. I didn’t want sugar-free chocolate pudding, I didn’t want a chocolate protein shake or bar, I wanted chocolate, like that which is found in M&Ms, the way god intended chocolate to be.

I had several handfuls of M&Ms yesterday. Jumping on the scale this morning, I lost nearly two pounds versus yesterday.

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.

As I passed by the M&M dish just a few moments ago, I realized that I just didn’t have the hankering for M&Ms like I did yesterday. I felt no impulse whatsoever to reach into the dish and gobble some down like a gorilla at the zoo. Today I had a hankering for a salad. So, I had some salad with a lovely dressing my husband made last night. That’s the complete opposite end of the spectrum: M&Ms vs salad. I admit that I could eat M&Ms right now but I wouldn’t enjoy them the way that I enjoyed them yesterday. Yesterday I could have eaten a salad but it wouldn’t have fulfilled anything, the way I feel fulfilled today.

I guess listening to my body and eating what I really want to eat instead of what I think I should eat might help get me through this last stretch of winter weather with my weight loss goals relatively intact. What my body is really screaming for is to ride my bike on a country road somewhere, but that’s not going to be happening for at least another month.

I guess in the meantime we’ll hope that my body maintains a yearning for the gym.

I’m working at the office today and it’s your typical Monday. My schedule has been filled with conference calls and I’m eating lunch at 1:00 p.m. There’s little room for complaint, I’m getting things done and I feel productive, so all is well. I have a smile on my fuzzy face.

Driving back and forth to New York this past weekend gave me ample time to think about work and the future and the like. It’s what I do and I guess it helps me process things. I started thinking about retirement and the like; though I’m theoretically around halfway through my work career, I still have goals that I would like to focus on. I like what I do for work and I generally don’t have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. If I do find difficulty in getting up, it’s usually weather related instead of work dread related. I’ve been in the work dread mindset before and it’s not fun; I’m definitely far, far from that these days. I don’t think that writing code and doing the geek thing for pay is going to be my last career though. I have one more thing that I would like to do in the later years of my career and it will help me make that easy transition to retirement if and when I decide to ever retire. It isn’t something I’m going to discuss right now, but having that goal gives me something to focus on.

One of my goals for 2013 was to improve my focus and I have to admit that I think I’m making strides in that area, though I do waiver from time to time. Focus is not something that comes naturally to me. I will freely admit that I am easily distracted and having access to the world while working on my computer does not help with this at all. I can be working away, being productive while listening to music, when a song will come on and then I find myself looking up the lyrics, seeing who remade the song and then I somehow end up chatting about the song on Facebook or something of the like. Distraction leads to rat holes of non-productivity. Concentrating on my goals and the like, keeps my focused and that’s when things starting working well for me.

Then of course, I ramble a lot, which I’m doing right now.

But it’s a focused rambling. Some of the time.

So I’m sitting on the couch in our Great Room trying to write code for a project that I am working on. I usually sit in the rocking chair that Earl bought me years and years ago, but Tom has decided that he should use the rocking chair during this part of the day and he shall not be disturbed. There are some rules that are not meant to be broken. So I sit on the couch trying to get into the zone while he naps in my zone.

I have no idea where the shirt I am wearing came from. It’s a nice shirt and it’s the right size but I don’t ever recall being given an IBM shirt. I was given quite a few Apple shirts a few months ago, and I love them a lot, but I don’t know if this shirt was part of that lot or not. It’s quite comfortable regardless of how I got it and that’s what’s important.

To celebrate the snowstorm that accompanied hysterics of historic proportions, I grilled pork chops on the grill outside on the patio for lunch today. The members of my family found them to be quite delicious and cooking out in the snow as something I hadn’t done in a long, long while. I’m glad I took the effort to unbury the grill, shovel off the patio and spend some time outside. It has done wonders for my psyche. There is no replacement for being out in the sunshine, no matter how much Vitamin D one takes during this time of the year to combat Seasonal Affectation Disorder.

I’m really looking forward to our trip to Florida next month.

Earl is sitting in the kitchen working on our 2012 taxes. It is best to leave him be during this type of exercise because he’s really good at the financial workings of our home. Our financial approach is simple: I ask how much, he tells me, I ask which account, he tells me and then I push buttons on the ATM machine. That has worked for us for years and I really have no complaints with that. Since we live relatively debt-free (aside from the house and the Jeep) I can’t complain. If the answer is “no”, the answer is “no” and that is something that I can live with. I would rather live debt-free than get back into the ways of credit card debt that I had back in the 1990s (B.E. or ‘before Earl’). No one ever believes me when I say this, but I could easily adjust my standard of living accordingly if we ever had to. As long as I’m with people that I love and have the basics, I’m a happy guy.

Tom has readjusted himself in my chair in an effort to get as much fur as possible to every corner of the cushion. Everyone gives what they can.

I have been taking quite a few photos with my iPhone today and I plan on doing the same tonight. People probably find my random photos boring but I don’t care, I’m not out to impress anyone. I just like sharing slices of life where I can.

So yesterday was the big Super Bowl and Earl and I had a little celebration here at The Manor. Surprisingly, we both survived the Super Bowl food just fine because *I* was the one that did the cooking and such for our little party. Normally Earl does the cooking, but I’ve been feeling fantastic lately and I was in the mood to do something of this nature, so I did it. We both enjoyed the tasty treats.

Homemade Turkey Chili.

Earl and I were very moved when the Sandy Hook School Chorus started singing “America, The Beautiful.” Jennifer Hudson came out halfway through the song and added her personal touches to the arrangement and it seemed to blend well. We were moved to tears.

After a few commercials it was time for Alicia Keys to sing the Star-Spangled Banner. Sigh. Now I have complained about celebrity performances of our National Anthem before and I guess I’m going to do it again. I have already mentioned this on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, but I was really disappointed in Alicia’s performance. I don’t know a lot about her except that she’s won plenty of Grammy awards. I don’t seek her music out and I can’t say that anyone of her work is in my large library of music. That all being said, I vaguely knew that she tended to go breathy and jazzy with her music and that’s what she opted to do with the National Anthem.

She also decided to make it really long.

And change the tempo.

And change the phrasing.

And change the chord structure.

Here’s the thing. When singing the National Anthem at an event, I believe that it is the performer’s responsibility to bring pride to our country through the performance of our anthem by engaging the crowd and bringing the citizens to their feet, with their hats off, their hands over their heart and the opportunity for the person to sing along if they so desire. When you change the song to “make it your own”, Mr. and Mrs. Jones have no idea what to do to engage in their own patriotism so they just stand there feeling like idiots. On the bright side, Alicia made the song so long and so slow, there’s a really good chance that Mr. and Mrs. Jones might have fit in a nap to pass the time when they couldn’t sing.

To sing the National Anthem is a great honor. It is your chance to shine while you bring your fellow neighbors together in a beautiful act of patriotism. To change the song up to show what you can really do as an artist is self-indulgent and quite frankly, contrary to the purpose of singing the song in the first place. I am grateful that Alicia didn’t engage in the ridiculous yodeling sounds that others have done in the past, but as I sat there I couldn’t believe that I was losing interest in a song that usually moves me to tears. It felt awkward.

And one more little rant, in all of her demonstrations of having a good grasp of Music Theory 101, why did Ms. Keys opt to change the chord structure of “o’er the land of the free…”, to a darker, minor chord? That’s what this country is all about! Why would you change the chord to illustrate a dark, somber tone?

Perform the song the way it was meant to be performed: lively, full of life and full of heart. I really wish the NFL would enlist the vocal abilities of a talented service member who knows what it is like to be defending this country.

That would be another beautiful act of patriotism.