Lifetime(s) ambition(s)

(741 words)

I think being pre-occupied with death is a not unhealthy byproduct of being occupied with life.

So many ways to die means there ought to be just one way to live and that’s exuberantly. I’ve felt that way ever since it dawned on me that I, aw shucks, wasn’t going to live forever.

It’s becoming more acute with me lately. It’s either the near daily news reminder I could get killed going to either — pick one — a store/gym/bar/school/church/movie/other or selfishly fretting about my own prospects, but I’m dwelling on my own mortality more than ever.

It’s more an awareness than a fear. But it’s only human to want to extend our portion.

I figure seven more lifetimes ought to do it.

With one additional lifetime I’d like to devote myself to earning some serious dough. I’ve never had crazy money. It’s never been a priority. But choosing to live an interesting life over a well-compensated one not only is unconventional, it is in many ways just plain stupid. I never intended it to be this way and I remain optimistic upcoming endeavors will alter the situation, but being low income (often NO income) is no way to live. I’d like to have another lifetime to see if a reasonably bright guy like myself could score some scratch if he made that tawdry goal a priority. 

I’d like a lifetime to play golf. I’ve been a pretty decent golfer twice in my life, for about a total of nine days with only five of them involving actual rounds of golf. They were really great days. I know many good golfers and they make being skillful at golf seem as satisfying as I feel after composing some wisdom worthy of being said aloud in my Yoda voice. Give me an entire lifetime to play, enjoy and get good at golf. 

What kind of human being wouldn’t want a whole lifetime to lavish on helping human beings? When a school girl asked Albert Einstein to share with her the meaning of life, the genius said in essence it was to help one another. Wouldn’t you like an entire life to spend making the world a better place? To feeding the hungry? To comforting the sick? And bringing cheer to the hopeless? I regretfully confess there’s no reason why I haven’t in Lifetime No. 1 done more of that.

I’d like one lifetime to stand for something, something that matters. I’m cursed with an ability to usually see multiple sides to every argument. We Americans have spent much of the last three years vehemently arguing over fences. Now, there’s only two sides to a fence yet I see maybe six different arguments. I’d revel to have one lifetime where I was absolutely certain I knew all the facts to every argument and that those who disagree with me were not only idiots, they were evil idiots. It would be so much simpler than cerebral subtlety.

Or I’d like a lifetime that coincided with a universal mindset that it’s better to walk in another person’s shoes than to seize that same person by their throats.

I’d like a lifetime to spend in the study of faith. I’m a spiritual, at times nearly mystical, person. But I admire men and women of unshakable faith who enjoy rock-like foundations in what it all means and all that comes next. Talk of any afterlife always reminds me of the famous last words of Apple salesman (not a genius) and founder Steve Jobs who is purported to have said as he drifted into the other realm, “Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow!” My fear is my death bed exclamation will be, “Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!”

And I’d like another lifetime to live this lifetime all over again just exactly as it’s been. Nothing — nothing — has worked out the way I’d imagined it would when I was young and certain my life would result in fame, fortune and healthy longevity. But it’s all been just so interesting and happy I’d like to start it all over again just so I could experience all the very same loves and laughs once again. Thanks to those of you who’ve been a part of it.

And because that’s only six lifetimes and I said seven I’ll choose to do the last one twice!

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How much living in 54 years?

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How much living in 54 years?

(592 words)

It was toward the end of the family birthday festivities when Josie, 16, observed that, man, 54, is getting up there.

Understand, she wasn’t being at all snarky or mean. She’s not that kind of kid.

I think it was more a reflection on mortality and the realization the number of years I have ahead of me are fewer than the number I have behind.

I thought about her comment and brought it up the next morning as I was driving her to school.

“You were right about 54 being old, but you were mistaken about one crucial point,” I said. “I’m not 54. I’m 100.”

Years are convenient, but poor ways to gauge life.

I’m 54 years old, but I’ve lived so much more.

It’s why I told my wife on our 20th anniversary it felt more like 40 years. Do not mistake that for a slam. Not at all. Our situations have bestowed us with more togetherness than many busy working couples can justify.

We share common interests and enjoy being together — just us or with the kids. For many, many years we had lunch together every day and dinner most nights. 

You can be married for 50 years but only be together for five.

My own parents for example were married, I think, for about 18 years, about half of them during the four years before Dad died when they were together a good bit and seemed to enjoy one another. Once they became empty nesters, they began sleeping in separate beds.

I sleep slammed up against Val all night, the sole exception being nights when our rat-like yip dog burrows in between us and leaves me sleeplessly fearful this’ll be the night he decides he wants to begin nibbling on my nuts.

As for being a Dad, geez, the only time I’m not there being their father is when they’re in school. We’re together all the time.

It’d be impossible to underestimate the years I’ve logged being buddies with so many friends on golf courses, in saloons and at ballgames. The memory catalogues are thick as old big city phone books. 

I’m at an age when many friends are contemplating retiring. And there in lies the rub.

They’ve worked — truly worked — many, many years.

I’ve worked about three.

It’s been unintentional, for sure. Who in their right mind would plan for their entire career to be one long sabbatical? It's utterly preposterous.

I feel in many ways like an intern with a promising future. Put me in coach.

It’s like if Roger Goodell suspended Tom Brady for four regular season games so the QB’s body would be rested and his vital game reactions wouldn’t peak until the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl.

Not that that would ever happen.

The only problem with feeling like a 54-year-old intern is if the failures continue to crest, there’s a very real chance I could wind up back living on the couch with Mom and, boy, will this blog take a dark turn if that ever happens.

So, you see, time is elastic and measuring your life in brute years is pure folly.

Really, the only time years are an accurate unit of life’s measure is when you’ve been convicted of a felony and the judge sentences you to a bunch of them without parole.

Fear not death.

Fear instead the death-bed realization that you never really lived.

Insinuate yourself into enough hearts and you won’t just live to be 100.

You’ll live forever.

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The many ways in which I'm like Henry David Thoreau

(760 words)

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me earlier, but the writer with whom I have the most in common is none other than Henry David Thoreau.

He began writing “Walden” while spending two years living in the woods on Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. 

I wrote “Use All The Crayons!” while spending eight years drinking at The Pond near Latrobe, Pennsylvania!

He was a Harvard divinity student who wrote: “The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.”

I was an Ohio University C student who wrote: “I wonder if temperature in heaven is individualized or if some old ladies complain it's always too cold & bundle up in sweaters.”

He believed in the abolition of racial injustice and once wrote: “The only house in a Slave state in which a free man can abide with honor is a government prison.”

I believe in the abolition of racial injustice and once wrote: “As a believer in American equality, I don't miss Jim Crow; as a believer in American folk music, I do miss Jim Croce.”

Reading “Walden” in college was a foundational experience for me back when I was seeking a life-guiding ethos. He talked about shedding our petty contrivances in favor of spiritual elevation. A Thoreau-guided life promised transcendence, simplicity and soulful peace untainted by crass materialism.

It promised all the things an idealistic young man craves save two, all but two.

Babes and margaritas!

Happily, I had a friend who turned me onto young Jimmy Buffett and — cheers! — my formative years segued into what seemed like one long tequila commercial.

Now I’m more than halfway through with my mortal portion and I’m wondering what happened to the Thoreau part of me. It still informs so much of philosophizing.

Heck, both my book and my blog titles hint at the benefits of the simple life, an existence devoted to companionship, reading and embracing the vivacious joys each day offers.

Yet, I spend my nearly every waking moment fretting about money and persistent fears of failure.

What gives? How did Thoreau throughout his entire life maintain his aesthetic core?

I decided to investigate. The answer was as plain as the nose on his face.

Thoreau never got laid! A man known for his earthiness never got down and dirty.

That has to be it.

Living in the woods for most any guy with drinking buddies would be a cinch. You’d never get lonely because your married friends could come visit. They’d bring beer, chips and maybe some woodsie wieners.

It’d be like an endless tailgate party, one where you didn’t have to worry about the daintiness of urinating in some stuffy Port-O-John.

Was his apparent celibacy self-imposed as, perhaps, a way to achieve higher understanding? Maybe not. This from the Thoreau Wikipedia “personal appearance” chapter: “Thoreau was a homely man, with a nose that he called ‘my most prominent feature.’”

Dissed by Wikipedia, one of the most bland websites in all creation! I can only guess Wikipedia’s never gazed in a Wikimirror.

So I don’t feel too bad I haven’t lived up to the Thoreau standard set in the revered “Walden.”

I’m blessed to have a darling wife and daughters. That I lay awake at night trying to conjure ways to be a better provider for them is a small price to pay for all they give me, even when prices to pay are for things like college, car insurance and new iPhones.

Then there’s this: I read it took Thoreau five years to sell 2,000 copies. This may be difficult for you precious millennials to comprehend, but the only Amazon in 1854 was a piranha-infested river in South America.

I wonder if the old technophobe would appreciate the irony that a Facebook page dedicated to him has 293,404 likes.

Me, I’ve sold more than twice that many “Crayons!” books in just four years.

And the poor guy died at just 44 after contracting bronchitis while walking in the woods during a thunderstorm. 

What? You thought this apostle of the pastoral fell into a primitive combine?

On his deathbed he said what to me is the most blessedly elegant observation anyone’s ever made about the relationship between mankind and our creator. Had he, it was asked, made his peace with God?

“I did not know we’d ever quarreled.”

How profound. I’ve never written anything so sublime.

But the day’s young and The Pond is open for business again. And I can’t think of a better place to make a real splash than a place called The Pond.

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The prisons we construct around ourselves (from '12)

It was 24 years ago this weekend I quit my last job and began shacking up with Val. I last wrote about it in '12. Still feel the same so it's today's re-run.

I thought about commemorating the 20-year anniversary of my doing mostly nothing by doing more nothing, but that seemed too obviously redundant.

This weekend marked 20 years since I quit the last salaried job I ever had. 

There’s more. It wasn’t just the last day I ever had a steady paycheck. It was also the last day I had what I guess you could call a steady girlfriend. This weekend in 1992, I took the step beyond steady.

While I was becoming less committed to stable employment, I was becoming more committed to the fair Valerie.

If you judge my life on the wisdom of those two life-altering decisions undertaken within 24 hours of one another then I’m an absolute genius.

First, I left daily newspapers, an industry that in the next 20 years would shed profits, payrolls and prestige.

Second, moving in with Val was the best decision of my life. Our 3-year shack-up commenced on July 1, 1992, and led to an escalating progression of love, marriage and eventually our two darling daughters, Josie and little whatzzer name.

So in one 24-hour period I went from being a single guy with a job to being an off-the-market guy with no job. Everyone thought I was crazy, including the woman who today is, in fact, diagnosed with a form crazy herself.

My mother was flabbergasted that I would leave what seemed like a stable newspaper career to work full-time doing oddball features for America’s most notorious publication, The National Enquirer.

Why would I even consider such a thing? What will I tell my friends? Aren’t you worried about your reputation?

“Mom, you just don’t understand,” I said. “This will make me a much more interesting person.”

“But you’re already interesting enough,” she wailed.

She was mistaken.

From 1992-1999, I wrote more than 1,000 swashbuckling features for Enquirer, many of them involving the world’s most fascinating people and places. You can check out a nearly 4-year-old recap here.

It’s impossible to calculate how much prestigious and profitable work I passed up in favor of work that would be fun and interesting.

This has been to my financial detriment, but will I in the long run be better off?

I remain surprised I’m not yet a successful novelist. I have for five years been pitching a novel that gets great reaction from top people throughout the publishing hierarchy. I reprise the premise here in case any of you are powerful literary agents or publishers who’s been reading my blog strictly for the fart jokes.

The book is called “The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool.”

It’s about a 117-year-old man who in 2079 is identified as the last baby boomer. By then people are so sick of baby boomers they will put him in a museum suite and charge contestants $25 each to spend 15 minutes with him in the room.

If they’re in the room when he dies, they win the jackpot.

One problem: He won’t die.

It’s a coming of old, old age story.

Because everyone has to die, but only one of us gets to die last.

I know what you’re thinking: I can’t believe that’s never sold. I can’t believe it either.

Maybe I should rewrite it and add parts where the old man has sex with zombies.

But “Use All The Crayons! The Colorful Guide to Simple Human Happiness” is showing signs it may flourish, and I’m getting interest from important people on two non-fiction proposals.

“We are born free and spend the rest of our lives constructing prisons around ourselves.”

That, I believe, is the most profound line I’ve ever written. It sounds almost Biblical, or like something that could have been written by ageless sages like Plato, Socrates or Jeff Probst.

But it’s mine and I truly believe it. In fact, I live it.

The prison I’ve constructed for myself has no security. It’s cheerful, nurturing and filled with love.

Ironically, for a place with no security, it has a lot of bars. For the last four years I’ve done most of my writing right above one of them.

As I look back on the last 20 years, I thank God for the decisions I’ve made.

My life has been interesting with interest compounded.

It takes my breath away to think the next 20 years could be even more interesting. 

I’ll be content if it’s even half so.

And it’ll be nice if it pays just a little bit better.

A prisoner of the past says Happy New Year!

(692 words)

You can tell just by peeking in my checkbook I’m really looking forward to 2016.

As is my custom, this is the week I designate our 9 year old to begin writing “16” after all the 20s on the dateline of each check.

I do this because I’m one of those boneheads who’d use the old year on checks clear up through May before I’d finally stopped living in the fiscal past.

But I am looking forward to 2016.

Saying that makes me seem like a rosy optimist and, yeah, I am.

But I’m enough of a dour realist to stipulate I do so because I have no choice.

I can’t stop time even if I wanted to.

Would I stop it right now if I could? This week?

It’s been a very good week. We had a fantastic Christmas. It’s a joy to have two loving daughters around this time of year. And Val does so much to make everything special.

But, of course, I’m broke and believe 2016 will be the year that changes all that for the better, I hope. So I’m itching for happy results the new calendar is sure to bring.

That almost never happens, but I’m convinced one day it will.

Maybe part of my problem is that according to my calendar it’s still 2013.

That was the last year I’ll ever buy another calendar.

I used to put a lot of thought into buying the current calendar. I’d wait a few weeks for the prices to drop — you can get a $13.95 calendar for just $5 in February if you’re not picky about your January dates.

I’d get snazzy golf ones, ones of lighthouses and once in a while one that was a tasteful homage to Moe, Larry and Curly.

That all stopped in 2012 when my daughters for Christmas gave me a “Girl’s Coloring Book 2013 Calendar!” The cover promises “A fun new picture to color every month!”

Why it was restricted to girls, I don’t know. It seems unnecessarily sexist, especially in these days when people are more sensitive about those sorts of things.

I’m sure a lot of boys like coloring pictures of rainbows, flowers and unicorns, too.

Anyway, the girls colored all over the thing and stood there while I gushed about the result.

What could be more precious?

So I’ll keep it forever. I just print out the new month and tape it over the lower half date part so I don’t get confused.

Now part of me will be forever stuck in 2013.

A lot of bad things happened that year.

It was the year of the Boston Marathon bombing, Edward Snowden, the death of Nelson Mandela and the year our Catholic friends had to adjust to life under not one, but two living popes.

North Korea was up to no good, George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin, partisans in Syria decided it was time to commence to killing, and in Washington there again was gridlock galore.

But the Pirates made the playoffs for the first time in 20 years, we took the kids to Disney, I scored an invite to golf at Oakmont and immensely enjoyed the final season of “Breaking Bad.” And it was in 2013 I got my picture taken with Playboy Playmate of the Year Clair Sinclair.

I wonder if she still has her copy.

Too numerous to note are all the times I laughed with friends, hugged my family, experienced contentment, enjoyed a good book, savored a fine meal, and felt grateful that so many of you read my blog.

I contend it’s not surprising bad things happen to us.

What is surprising is how much joy we can wring out of even the worst of times.

So bring on 2016. Let us revel in the possibilities the future may bring.

Sure, the news is full of dire prophets who contend it will be a terrible year.

So what?

If our happy history proves anything it is that we’re all are capable of having really great times even during bad years.

Bring it on.

Happy New Year!

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Oh, and one more thing 2011

I hope I don’t die while the Pirates are winning and I hope the Pirates never lose