With your feet in the air and your head on the ground

Sometime in 2009, I read a Rolling Stone article about Bob Dylan, and since then, I’ve often thought of something he said in the interview. He was talking about kids and their damned technology.

“It’s unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cell phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games,” Dylan said. “It robs them of their self-identity.  It’s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that’s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.”

I could never figure out whether I agreed with what he was saying.  He has a point, I guess, beyond his being an old fogey. He’s saying that plugging in and keeping your head down is a good way to miss the inspiration of the world around you. And, I suppose he’s right when he says that.  But, I disagree with his tone, that it’s some unconscious move on the part of “the youth.” I disagree because I know that I’m tuning out when I plug in. That’s exactly why I do it.

I try so damn hard to be something other than what other people my age or in a similar position to me are. This, in turn, makes me pay attention to things in degrees that can’t be healthy. Right down to minor details, like speech rhythms and diction and avoiding colloquialisms people don’t even know they’re using. For instance, have you ever heard someone ask the question, “Right?” in the middle of a sentence? Think about it for awhile. I’m sure you have. The person was probably talking about some intellectual topic—maybe education reform or the recession. For a certain subclass of young, educated and informed people, this sort of thing is normal. It’s an accepted stalling speech mechanism and, for unknown reasons, it doesn’t put your intelligence into question the same way inserting an “um” into the middle of your sentence does. I’m almost certain no one notices how much it’s slipped into the status quo. That is, except for me.

Another example, from college, was starting a sentence with, “I’m not gonna lie….” I’m not gonna lie, you can start any sentence that way; and people did. Over and over and over. But what I don’t think anyone realized was that it wasn’t their choice to start their sentences that way. It became part of the lexicon and slipped subconsciously into mostly everyone’s vocabulary. But in my mind, it was just something everybody said and because everyone else was saying it, I couldn’t think of anything worse than hearing it slip out of my mouth.[1]

How does this tie back to Dylan and his rampage on iPods? Well, I choose to plug in for self-defense reasons, probably more than any other. As E.E. Cummings said, “To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I’m not saying that I plug in because I want to avoid everyone. Well, wait a second. I am saying that. But, the reason for doing so is not because I hate other people. (You’ll have to believe me when I say that I hope that statement is true, despite the potshots I’m about to take at unsuspecting and presumably very nice abstractions of real-world people.) I’m not defending myself from having to deal with my own social anxiety or something. No, I’m defending myself from the groupthink (maybe that’s too strong—it could be “groupspeak”) permeating everyday conversations. If I don’t hear the unconsciously-chosen public vocabulary, the argument would go, it’s a hell of a lot easier to avoid letting it slip into my own.

So, in at least one respect, I think Dylan got it wrong when he said this constant, technologically-enhanced reality robs us “young people” of our self-identities. Sure it does if you spend your whole day watching YouTube clips or listening to Justin Bieber.[2] I understand that argument—there’s nothing self-affirming in those actions. You only learn to think like everyone else that loves YouTube or Bieber.

But on the other hand, I’m not sure how much walking through the world Bob Dylan’s done lately. Because if he has, and he’s been seeing the same things I’ve seen, well, then he’d be seeing a lot of the same old thing. The same old people, the same old expressions, the same old manner of interaction. And, honestly, the same old thoughts and outlooks. If you ride the Metro in D.C. during rush hour, and listen to some conversations between twenty-somethings, oh boy, you won’t really hear much you haven’t heard in some other form. The people even start to look all the same. Here’s a girl in a sundress, strappy shoes and pearl earrings. There’s a guy in a suit with a dark skinny tie. (I don’t mean to pick on D.C., in particular, it’s just an easy target and a readily accessible example. I suspect this works for any city, anywhere.[3])

What does listening to people yammer on about happy hour deals or how tired they are because it’s been such a long week have to do with finding my self-identity?

Thanks for the advice, Mr. Dylan, but if you don’t mind, I’ll take my iPod on days like that. Considering the alternative, I choose to have inspiration pumped into my ears. That way I can let the wonderful supercomputer that’s between them work out the rest.

 

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Keep your head down, strive for balance and keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

 

 

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[1] See, it’s things like this that really call my sanity into question. I can’t figure out whether I’m just “observant” or “insane.”)

[2] Did I just unwittingly betray my out-of-touchness with whatever it is the “kids” do these days? Is YouTube out of vogue? How about Bieber? Is he still “in?”

[3] My feeling is that someone in New York would read this and say, “Hey, this isn’t true of the NYC subway—you get all sorts of ‘originals’ on there!” To them, I would say this: “Okay, I’ll buy that, but don’t you think almost anyone who lives in New York, and likes it, would say the exact same thing?” And they, in the way only a New Yorker can, would self-righteously reply, “Damn right!” Then I’d say, “Okay…well, I think that proves my point.”

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A Couple Shots in the Arm

I find inspiration in strange places.  And, it almost always motivates me in strange ways, pushes me in a way that might not make sense to anyone else.

Today, I have a few stories to illustrate these points.  First, though, I should say that I meant to upload a different post before this one, but it’s saved on a computer that is, right now, out of battery power and sitting in my parents’ living room.  So, you’ll be getting a daily dose of inspiration today—but, the good news is, this post and that post actually work decently as a duo, so maybe I’ll put that one up later this week.

Friday night, I came to my parents’ house to watch over my dogs because they (my parents) are out of town this weekend.  I had been in Quincy earlier in the day, and drove into school for a conference on narrative non-fiction, and then drove back to my parents’ in Quincy pretty much right after the conference ended for the day (it resumed Saturday, and I’ll get to that, because it leads me to part two of this post).

I should take a step back.  I’ve been relatively busy lately, running around interviewing people for stories I need to write, going to classes, writing those stories, and then doing other things, such as hobnobbing with established narrative non-fiction writers.  What’s gone by the wayside during this time is exercise.  Another step back is that I don’t have a ton of money right now, so I’m being extra frugal with eating out and that sort of thing (or, I’m trying to be extra frugal, but not really being that frugal).  But, still, I’ve been eating a lot of crap.  And I haven’t been working out at all, and it was getting to a point at which I was starting to feel bad about these things.  My body’s just a little doughier than normal (or, I at least perceive it as doughier), and I just know I should be doing something more.

On top of this, I’ve promised my sister that we would do a triathlon together sometime in July.  So, it’s getting to the point where I should be starting to work out in preparation for that.  That adds to the self-frustration.  But, mostly it’s the doughy thing.  To get to back to Friday, I was starving that night, because I forgot to eat lunch before I went to the narrative conference, and that took all afternoon.  So, I decided to get a burrito on my way home.  I ate the burrito at about 8 p.m., then like eight 150 calorie chocolate-chip cookies by 9:30 p.m.  Then my computer, which had been playing episodes of some half-decent sitcom, ran out of batteries.

Friday night isn’t much for television, so I ended up on the CBS College Sports channel, which was playing the national championships for women’s triathlon.  Perfect.  I watched with rapt attention as one girl with an incredibly taut midsection (she was racing in a sort of sports bikini) overtook another on the bike portion, and then held her lead through the run and won the race.  She was from the University of Florida, an exercise physiology major, and was, according to the announcers, going to be starting her PhD in the fall, in order to do something ridiculously charitable, like helping kids with muscular dystrophy or something.

There’s nothing conventionally exciting about watching triathlon on television.  After the swim portion (which I always happen to miss whenever I catch a triathlon on TV) it’s just people out on the road by themselves moving their legs repetitively, either on foot or on bike.  There’s no way to judge their speed or their effort level, really, until they get to the end and collapse from dehydration.  There’s also no way to tell how hot it was (and, this particular race was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and was definitely hot).  Still, whenever I watch one of these on TV, I transplant myself into those bodies with incredibly taut midsections and think about the possibilities.

I’ve only once come close to that sort of physique, in October of 2010.  It was the combination of coming off a cycle of P90X, in which I was admittedly, in pretty good shape, and pretty strong.  But, then I had my wisdom teeth out and couldn’t really eat for a couple weeks.  Once I started to recover, I was near a mirror with no shirt on at my parents’ house one day and thought, “Wow, I’m getting kind of scary looking.”  I had dropped nearly 15 pounds and weighed less than I had at pretty much anytime after sophomore year of high school.  It was pretty amazing, and it was probably the weight I would operate at if I, too, were an elite triathlete.

Now, I’m not an elite triathlete, nor do I want to be.  But, seeing those incredibly fit women truly push themselves in the heat of the southern sun, for stakes that weren’t all that consequential (I mean, it’s kind of a fringe sport, and they would only be seen on some minor cable sports channel on a Friday night, when only slobs like me would be watching) made me come to this conclusion: “I’ve got to stop eating all these cookies and start running.”

I can’t say I’ve followed through on that vow yet—inspiration does not necessarily beget acting on that inspiration.  But, it’s a good first step, and I’ll probably head out for a little jog later today.

Now, for the second round of inspiration.  This is two-tiered, although both tiers come from the same source.  I’ll start with the less consequential.

Saturday, I attended the second day of the narrative non-fiction conference, held by the journalism department at my school.  The audience included people from all over—there was one guy from the Des Moines Register that I met, and then there was some Danish guy there, and a few local freelancers, among many others.  It was set up as a mixture of panels and keynote speeches.  The first keynote speech on Saturday was from the Managing Editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson.  The second was from Susan Orlean, who writes for the New Yorker and has also written several books, including The Orchid Thief, which was made into the movie “Adaptation” (I haven’t seen this movie, but I’ve heard that Orlean herself is played by Meryl Streep in it).  She was energetic and very upbeat in general, and surprisingly honest.  Both of these women sat on panels later in the day too.

The final panel included a legendary journalist named Gay Talese.  He’s often associated with the “New Journalists,” the same class that included Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion—although Talese really rejects any formal association with these people.  He says, essentially, that any similarity in approach was simply a coincidence.  Talese has written many books, but he’s most famous in journalism schools for what some people call the greatest profile ever written, “Frank Sinatra has a Cold,” which appeared in Esquire back in the day (I don’t really know when, but it was toward the end of Sinatra’s heyday, once the Beatles and the Stones were growing in popularity).  Talese is usually much more interested in ordinary people’s lives, and didn’t really want to do the Sinatra piece.  So, he focused his reporting on the people who were kind of tangentially exposed to Sinatra—the woman who maintained his wigs, a guy in a pool hall who almost got in a fight with Sinatra and his bodyguards, etc.  Also, Sinatra was such a grump and, since he had a cold, was extra grumpy, that he wouldn’t give Talese an interview—so, he was kind of forced to use the sphere around Sinatra to propel the piece.

Anyway, the point is, the guy’s a legend.  In every picture I’ve seen of him, he’s wearing a custom-fitted, three-piece suit and Italian fedora.  He’s a journalist, but he could pass for an unknown member of the Rat Pack.  Apparently, this is how he always dresses, and has from a young age.  His father was a tailor in Ocean City, New Jersey and instilled his fashion sense in him early.

This brings me to my first point.  In the course of Talese’s keynote speech, the last of the day, he made the point that, even if you’re a reporter, presenting yourself well, in manner and appearance, goes a long way toward showing people you respect them.  Selfishly, I was very happy when he said this, because I looked around at some of the other students, and working reporters, in the audience who were wearing jeans and were unshaven and all that.  I was pretty decked out—not a three-piece suit, and no tie, but I had on nice slacks, a dress shirt and a suit jacket.

Where was the inspiration?  Well, I was so jazzed up from his wearing the suit so well and talking about how being well-dressed can help someone do his job that I decided, once the session was over, to drive directly to Men’s Warehouse and have myself fitted for the tuxedo I’ll be wearing at a friend’s wedding in July.  See, this is what I’m saying about strange motivation leading to even stranger actions.

But, there is a little more that came from this than just my getting measured for a tux.  The point he made is one that I agree with.  I wouldn’t say all, but I would say some of my fellow students have me wondering about their professionalism.  I guess maybe people approach school differently from how I do, and that’s okay.  For one thing, most other students actually make friends during school, and I tend to stick to business.  It’s hard for me to make a case that they’re totally in the wrong there.

But, since they say this is a competitive business, I sometimes think about the things that might separate me from those around me, and I always come back to the same things, no matter what setting I’m in.  One is work ethic—too many people around my age talk about how busy they are instead of just doing what they need to.  That’s a syndrome that I hope is drilled out of every last one of them when they start working.  I’m of the mind that it’s better to just do what you need to instead of complaining about it.  This is something I heard somewhere else, though I can’t remember where: the only way through it is through it.  (I would add, “So you might as well keep your mouth shut along the way,” hah.)

Another of these “separating factors” pertains more specifically to Talese’s point—I try to be very nice to everyone I come across as I’m working or in school, and treat them with respect.  Some days I fall short, and sometimes it harder than others, but in general, I think this helps.  I mean, sometimes it does lead to crazy, goose-loving activists yammering on for an hour to you, as it did recently.  It is tricky, though, to do that and be kind of brutally honest when it comes time to put together the story, but as long as you’re fair throughout, no one can complain much.

Let me get back to inspiration, though, because I’m spinning off a little here.  In another portion of Talese’s speech, he was talking about how when he left the New York Times, where he had worked for about 10 years, he found himself really interested in writing about the people he met there at the city desk—the reporters, the copy editors, etc.  He said so many segments of the world are full of liars, but when he looked out over the city desk at all the people who worked there, he didn’t see a single one.  The people there tried their damndest to tell the truth, to be objective.  They did it every day and thought that truth and fairness were paramount.  Talese said he was really damn proud to have worked among those people, and to have stayed in an industry with so many people like that for so long.  Now, I’m not sure, but I think he almost started tearing up at this point of his speech, which was surprising because he’s super-poised, and he’s got a little of that old journalist crustiness about him.  Whether he was tearing up or not, his voice raised and cracked a little—it was clear that he meant what he was saying.

This, above everything that happened at the conference, was inspirational.  It’s an extraordinary way to try to make a living is what Talese said, and it was evident in the way many of the other guests at the conference spoke.  These, of course, were people of exceptional talent, who had made it through the tough years of not having much money to speak of.  And, to a large degree, they were speaking to people like my fellow students, who ask questions, over and over, that go like this: “So, how do you do this, and have a life too?  What’s the work-life balance like?  How are we supposed to get out from under all this debt?”

I admit that I ask these questions too, though usually not out loud and never to a professor in front of a whole class.  Mostly, it’s because I know the answers to them.  This isn’t a field you enter because you want to go to happy hour at 5:30 p.m. on Thursdays.  Especially early on, there isn’t much balance to be had.  And, getting out from the debt?  Well, that just is going to take time, and it’s going to suck for five years or more, but by that time you’ll have a decent salary and enough of it paid off that you should be able to get yourself squared away.  The answer to all these questions is the same: you can’t be easy on yourself, and you have to work hard, and you have to sacrifice some things.  (Coincidentally, I’m pretty sure it’s the same answer for success in any field.)

I don’t know if I can really say it in a way that explains it clearly, but it’s really bizarre to me to have committed to this.  I don’t know if really do this sort of thing often or even naturally—I get the sense that lately, I’ve tended run from things, or toward things, or whatever, and I don’t stick around long enough to see them through the harder times.  I’m still less than a year into this, and there have already been hard times, but I’m still here and still wanting to go through the next rough patch when it comes, and hope to be a little better with each assignment.  And, I think the thing that keeps me in that position, and that I hope will keep me in it forever, is that pride that Talese still feels as a 79-year-old who’s been doing this for 60 years—what I’m trying to do, the field I’m trying to be part of is, I believe as he does, extraordinary.  And, that’s inspiring.

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Keep your head down, strive for balance, and walk with one foot in front of the other.

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Are you feeling better now?

If I believe my former self, I’m not really one to make a huge deal out of the New Year and all—in fact, I’ve probably always thought that it’s kind of silly.  That is, it’s just another day, and another year and I don’t completely understand why I’m supposed to be any more hopeful just because I’ve had to change my date endings to “-11.”  And I really don’t have much care for the sort of fun I had last night—full of drinking and profligacy that has me feeling, as Ben Folds would put it, “hungover and old” (although I’d change ‘old’ to  ‘destitute’).  Give me burning wood in a fireplace and “New Year’s Rocking Eve” on mute with some soft indie-rock.  Or, give me Nintendo 64 and Mountain Dews in my friend Eric’s basement.  I’d take either of those over semi-bacchanal any day.  But, anyway, it is what it is.  This is being young, right?[*]

 

All of that said, I, for reasons I think are somewhat unrelated to the actual changing of the year, tend to get somewhat nostalgic or self-exploratory around this time of year (I am, after all, a romantic and I can’t fight it).  For your reference, I think it has much more to do with a let-down from the deluge of family gatherings (which invariably leave me feeling just slightly disconnected) and from the inevitable onset of seasonal affective disorder which, by this point most years, could be in full swing.  This year, having seen Black Swan certainly did not help matters.)

 

If I were forced to look back on 2010, I don’t really know what I’d rate it.  Maybe the cumulative GPA for my (second) first term at graduate school is accurate enough: 3.4 out of 4.  Not great in an objective sense, really disappointing in some senses (it could have been improved with a stronger finish and, given the effort and energy put in toward the early stages, should have been much better—that is, I owed it to the work of the first couple months, which I was actually proud of, to do better in the end), but reflective of the challenges that lay in the path.

 

That last part is important.  It’s been suggested to me that all results must take into account the outside factors that may have had influence on them.[†] So, when someone who certainly cares about me said, “You had a lot going on, don’t forget that,” I listened, and thought about it quite a bit.  Yeah, I did have a lot going on maybe.  I worked, I had my wisdom teeth ripped from my mouth, and I was, perhaps, still recovering from a tumultuous few months (or, maybe even a few years, depending on when you ask me and what my viewpoint is that day—fatalistic or rosy).  What’s more, I was doing something altogether new, parts of which are antithetical to my make-up and natural mode of operation.  Then there’s the whole, “Well, if you were getting straight As to start with, what would be the point of going to school for it?” argument.   (This is, I think, actually a pretty decent contention.  It’s kind of the reason I thought Texas was a total waste of my time—I didn’t feel like I’d develop all that much in that environment—not nearly enough challenge involved and I always do much better when I have something to rise to rather than something I can coast through.)

 

All of that’s fine and good, but to take it and then conclude, “Okay, I did pretty well considering” doesn’t sit well with me.  I’m still disappointed, because there was still room for improvement.  For one thing, there was a lesson that I’ve learned over and over and over again, but still have never actually made any changes based on: When you get lay-ups (in this case, two easy courses), DO WHAT YOU NEED TO TO DO WELL IN THEM.  For me, repeatedly, a lack of engagement leads to a slackening of effort and then a disappointing result at the end.  So, this is one that just makes me feel stupid, because it always happens in school, but would almost never apply to a work setting (for instance, a couple years ago, I would often work overtime, stapling and compiling paper into binders and did so with pride and stoicism not likely to be seen many other places).  I’m hoping maybe it won’t come up again over the next couple semesters, but who knows, I may get an assignment I’m not too thrilled with, and hopefully I won’t feel like that has given me a license to be a slacker.

 

But, I think more importantly, there are a lot of things that, when I force myself to look back on them, I know I can do better.  As far as my future profession goes, there are certain skills I need to focus on, and I won’t bore you with them here (except for one, which I’ll get to in a minute).  And, personally…whoa!  To put it plainly, I have a shitload of work to do in a variety of areas.  First, though, I need to figure out where to focus my energies.  But, it will all come in time, I’m sure.  Or it won’t, and that will be what it is.

 

So, I guess, despite my disdain for New Year’s resolutions[‡], I’ve made some here.  But, if you are willing to believe me, I’d say that they really aren’t tied in any way to the actual changing of the year, which, I contend, is meaningless, but more to the coincidental timing of things.

 

With all of this in mind, I’d like to talk for a second about a song that I usually pay much more attention to this time of year (this will, in time, get to the “professional development” goal I alluded to earlier, I promise).  The song is “Grace Cathedral Hill” by The Decemberists.  It is, in general, right up my alley—sad, beautiful, and full of imagery.  There’s one line in the song I always end up thinking about every time the year changes over: “Some way to greet the year, your eyes all bright and brim with tears.”

 

Of course, over the past few years, I’ve used this as a means for reflecting on all the “hardships” I’ve perceived myself to be facing.  Its sarcasm always just hit me on a gut level.  This is probably to have been expected, since I’ve spent this time of year during the past few years kind of predisposed to identifying with slight sadness. (Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I spend all my time nowadays predisposed to identifying with slight sadness.)  But, I was just in the shower in a darkened bathroom (this was, I swear, not the intentional move of a sad-sack…I just thought there was more natural light coming in through the window than there was and by the time I got into the shower, I figured I’d just deal with it and turn the light on before brushing my teeth), and I started to think about that song in a completely different context.

 

Yes, I definitely like the song because it’s sad and full of imagery and blah, blah, blah.  And, I like that line a lot, and I like others too for their simplicity, wordplay, and evocativeness[§] (“We were both a little hungry, so we went to get a hot dog,” “Sweet on a green-eyed girl, all fiery, Irish, clipped and curled, all brine and piss and vinegar”).  But, what I like best about the song is what I like best about a lot of things that I like (music, books, movies, public radio programs, etc.)—it tells a story, and does so in an interesting way.

 

And that, right there, is what ties in with my professional goals.  I know I have, at some point in my life, been able to tell a story well (at least in writing…speaking, they tend to meander a little more than most people can tolerate), and have people be interested in it and all that.  I may have even done it in this space once or twice.  But, my default mode of explanation and communication is probably something like what this entry has been—more essayistic than narrative, I suppose.  And, so I need to get better at the whole storytelling thing, but not because it’s all the rage in journalism these days (although, it kind of is), but more so because I respect the form, when it’s done well, too much to not want to take a shot at it.

 

Also, one of my most firmly-held beliefs is that, at least as far as writing goes, it’s much easier to get away with things that might be intolerable otherwise when there’s a great story underneath it all.  For instance, my favorite book, All The King’s Men is my favorite mostly because I identified so strongly with one of the characters and was impressed by mostly all of the language in it (the author, Robert Penn Warren, was a poet laureate, so, this isn’t really all that unexpected, I guess).  But, one thing I didn’t recognize until I got to the last few chapters was how unbelievably powerful the underlying story had been.  I remember the exact moment when I came to this realization, and at that moment, I would say, non-hyperbolically, my mind was blown.  But, this same sort of thing applies to the other milieu I noted above, and it applies to “Grace Cathedral Hill.”  I love those lines because I love the story that’s being told, and I love that it’s told so well in so few words, and that, because it’s told so well, I get to enjoy those lines so much.  You know, it’s all just grand!

 

So, that’s all on the professional mumbo-jumbo, but while I’m at it with the resolutions, I’ll make one more.  I’m going to try to write in this space more often.  If my school/semi-professional writing is the equivalent of a 25-mile road bike ride through the Blue Hills, this place is like a mountain bike ride through the trails of Walnut Creek Municipal Park (i.e., one of the things I did love about Austin).  Mountain biking reminds me that the grueling miles, the highs and lows I’ll experience on a road ride are just extended versions of the intense, root-filled uphills and curvy downhills in the woods, things I enjoy immensely, things I find fun.  It’s too easy to forget why I chose to do this in the first place, why I wanted to go to school.  I like writing, it quiets my brain, it challenges me and it certainly makes me humble (as if my overblown arrogance was of concern for anyone (ha)).  Checking in here once in a while will remind of that, something which I found to be far too easy to forget over the past few months.

 

As usual, keep your head down, strive for balance, and walk with one foot in front of the other.

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[*] Side note: I hate being “young.”

[†] For the moment, this will specifically apply to my semester, but it can be pretty easily extended to the year in general.

[‡] I mean, do people really think it’s okay to strive to live better only one day a year?  Life is not, as a statistician might say, a discrete variable; it’s a continuous one.

[§] Yeah, I just fucking used “wordplay” and “evocativeness” in one sentence.  One of these days, I’m going to stop calling myself out on things like this, though, and when I do, you’ll all know I’ve “made it” as both a writer and a full-on, pompous jackass.  Here’s hoping!

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Transitional Strap-In

Well, it’s been a while now.  I think when I started this thing, I was determined not to let it “de-evolve” into my discussing day-to-day occurrences and things like that.  Actually, come to think of it, I’m not really sure I ever made that determination in this case; that might have been something I said about one of the old sites I’d post to.  Regardless of all that crap, I think I have to spend a little time now talking about day-to-day types of happenings, partly because it’s been so long since I’ve posted, and partly because I think the actual original purpose of this thing was to have a place to put some thoughts down so I (and all four to eight of you reading along) could try to make sense of them, and I haven’t really had any considerable time to do much thinking beyond my day-to-day for quite some time.

So, I am going to take a few moments, or a few hours, now and do that thinking, out loud, or, on the (web)page, and see where it leads.

I’m not sure where to start, but I suppose the beginning is probably a good place.  The last time I posted here, I was in the midst of moving to Cambridge from Quincy.  The first line of that essay I wrote back in 2008 says it all, “Moving can be a stressful process.”  Not sure there’s really much more to say about it.  Actually, forget that, I kind of love moving—something about the sweaty days, and the bruising, and the organization born from apparent chaos—so, I didn’t really find the process itself all that stressful.  The adjustment afterward, on the other hand…whew!

Since all of that’s happened, I’ve learned a number of things—one is that that first line of that essay I wrote would be called a “lede” by an old-school journalist, and a “lead” by those journalists who still buy into the use of jargon, but not so much that they like to spell words incorrectly.  I haven’t decided which of those categories I’ll fit into yet, but I do find myself writing “lede,” but, when I speak, I always think, “lead.”  Mostly, though, I find myself strongly resisting the use of this kind of specialized language in the first place, which, I guess, is nothing new.

Along these lines, I’m presently being required to read a book which discusses style of writing.  Basically, it’s a book about writing, written by a writer, who also interviews several other writers about their writing and the process and all.  It’s hard for me to say this without sounding hyperbolic, but the whole thing has been making my skin crawl.  It’s just, you know, I don’t want to hear writers talking about writing anymore than I like to hear musicians talking about creating music.  It’s unsavory.  It’s weird, too, because I think a lot of musicians, for instance, feel a part of a larger community of musicians, and, accordingly, like to talk about making music and all the rest, and they like the opportunities to talk about time signatures, and harmonics, or whatever the hell it is that musicians like to talk about.  I don’t really begrudge them for that inclination.  In all honesty, it makes great sense—cyclists like to talk about their power outputs and their pedal cadence, frat boys like to talk about how “fucked up” they got last weekend, lawyers like to talk about depositions and torts and shit like that…you know, the list goes on.  People like being part of communities based on the things they do, and like discussing those things.  They like having things in common with one another.  It’s natural.  And, it’s totally not weird at all.  But, I squirm at that thought, which, I guess, makes me what I am—the weird one.  Remember that: I’m the weird one.

But, to get back to what’s happened since I moved here and started school, here’s a short list.  I have:

• Increased my daily intake of information by something on the order of 500%
• Started reading the news (directly related to the first bullet point), pretty much everyday
• Decided, on a whim, that I’d base one of my “pieces” on a book that’s 650 pages long, and is written in very small font with, probably, eighth-of-an-inch margins, realizing about half-way through saying that this is what I would do for my assignment that I’d probably have to read that fucking book
• Been told, with regard to the proposal that I wrote talking about this “piece,” that I am a “good writer” and a “good thinker”
• In response to those compliments by my professor, patted myself on the back, though not physically
• Started referring to written works as “pieces,” not because I think it’s acceptable, but mostly because I don’t want to “rock the boat,” as it were
• Had a 70-year-old man, a grizzled old journalist who was portrayed by Oliver Platt in that Frost/Nixon movie, recite to me (and my classmates) a poem that he wrote (in, like, the 1970s, and for no reason other than having some fun) about the improprieties of a southern congressman who got caught speeding through Washington, D.C., in a limousine and in the presence of a stripper with the last name of “Foxy”
• Thought his poem was awesome
• Started abbreviating states in ways that don’t really make any sense to anyone but the Associated Press (for instance, Massachusetts is now “Mass.” instead of MA, which the rest of the entire fucking country uses as its preferred abbreviation)
• Wrote my own obituary, naming my cause of death as an “undisclosed heart condition”
• Thought that cause of death was a very clever way of saying, “I’m mixed up, and my heart gave out because of it”
• Went to a lecture at Boston College, realized that I was very, very, very, very glad that I did not ever attend Boston College after simply making two cross-campus walks from and to the T
• Had a professor write, in response to a little introductory exercise that wasn’t all that challenging, “I like your style, man!”
• Thought his response was awesome
• Gone to the dentist’s three times, received a total of seven (7) fillings, and learned that I need to have my wisdom teeth removed which, tentatively, will happen this Thursday (seriously, as of this Thursday, I will have been in a dentist’s or oral surgeon’s office four out of the last five Thursdays, once going to both in the same damn day)
• Learned that there are really good reasons to floss and go to the dentist’s office more than once every two years
• Lost the ability to consume more than two alcoholic beverages without having a crippling headache for days afterward
• Realized that, hey, maybe I don’t really need to drink more than two alcoholic beverages in one sitting that often, or, maybe ever again…
• Had my car towed and almost had my bike stolen
• Spent, roughly, 30% of my time in Quincy, despite the fact that I don’t technically live there anymore
• Not been able to watch Jeopardy at all!

In more general terms, things have been remarkably busy.  I have a lot of reading for my classes that I, for some reason, have been intent on actually doing (this may, or may not, indicate that I’m a more mature student/semi-professional than I have been in the past).  On top of that, I have work for my job, at which I am still part time, that usually takes up at least eight hours per week (but, for which I usually charge about 10 to 12 hours, because I’ve got bills to pay!).  And, in late October, and early November, my company’s sending me to Ohio and Indiana, respectively, to take part in what we call “site visits.”  Basically, I go alongside some Ph.D. guy and this other woman (whose background I have no details about), and take notes and ask questions if anything important gets left out.  While this will be aimed at informing our research reports, I can only imagine it’s going to be somewhat good practice for what may happen sometimes if I end up working in journalism, and because of that, and because I get to travel on the company’s dime to some random parts of middle-America, I’m kind of excited about it.  Also, along with those, I may be sent to Seattle after the semester ends for a similar trip, which would be pretty cool.  Aside from that stuff, the repeated trips to the dentist’s and to Quincy have made things a little extra hectic, as have some minor personal “concerns” that there’s no need to go into here.

I think the word, “excited,” is actually a good way to sum up this whole transition period.  Truth be told, once school started, it was no longer a “transition,” but more like, “Okay, you’re doing this now, strap in!”  I’ve been busy in the way I’ve always wanted to be busy.  I know, in some ways, this isn’t really tenable—at times, I’ve seemingly been so busy and have had so much information passing through my head that I’ve become forgetful (I left my “nerd stick” (my portable thumb-drive thingy) in a computer at the library one night, and had to go back at 1 a.m. to grab it, for example, and I left a book in one of my classrooms last week, for another example).  Even more importantly, I haven’t had really much time at all for introspection, which is kind a stark contrast to what I had in the few weeks leading up to school (an overabundance of “thinking time”).  But, assuming that it settles down somewhat, even a little, I think this is exactly what I want to be doing for the next year plus, and beyond that.  And, that, if I dare say so, is kind of exciting.

As per usual, keep your head down, strive for balance, and walk with one foot in front of the other.

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A Look Back, Vol. 3

In honor of today and tomorrow (i.e., moving days), I decided I’d post a third essay that I wrote in Creative Non-Fiction in the spring of 2008.  If I had to rate it, I’d say it’s not quite my best work, and I’m not quite sure it really does justice to the job I had in the summer of 2007, working for a professional moving company.  But, it is what it is, so here you go.  Enjoy!

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Doing it Manly

Moving can be a stressful process.  There is the tedium of packing and labeling, the worry that every meaningful possession will be irreparably damaged, and there is the anxiety of acclimating to a new residence.  These are things I could have empathized with at one point.  Then I spent a summer working for a moving company.

My coworkers at the company were drawn from two main demographics: college and Romania.  Many of the college students were football players, looking for a summer job which suited their specific (jock) skill set.  The Romanian contingent was provided by some strange agreement the moving company had with some unknown organization (the Romanian government, perhaps).  A rotating group of Romanian immigrants in their twenties came to Watertown, MA, worked as movers as much as possible for two or three years, and then took their earnings back home and presumably started a family.  To this day, I question the legality of the agreement, but by all indications, it was quite amenable to both sides.  I was somewhere in the middle of the two groups; I did not speak Romanian and I was not there to make enough money to start a life in a developing country, but I also did not follow every adjective with the phrase, “as fuck,” and did not spend most of the days talking about drinking, sports and sex.

I was ready for a tough day when I first started, but the sheer physicality of the work was something I could not have expected.  In addition, there were a number of skills which I had no knowledge of.  I was shown very early on how to wrap a chair in a moving pad.  But, after trying my hand at it, I reached an unspoken agreement with the other members of the crew.  Anything which required more finesse than lifting a box was out of the question.  I was much more efficient doing the real grunt work.  This ‘agreement’ came back to haunt me, as I attempted to carry a hope chest with another worker.  I should have known to let someone else carry it when he asked, “How’s your strength?”  But, in a fit of masculine pride, I told him it was okay and I’d be fine.  I was wrong, and as we shuffled onto the truck, I dropped my end of the chest, barely missing my feet and the mess that would have come along if I had broken the furniture.  All told, we worked for twelve hours, climbed copious stairs and received a nice tip.  After driving home, I collapsed onto my couch, put my legs up and just sat for an hour or so, staring at the ceiling, hoping I would not be called in to work the next day.  Of course, I was.

In a lot of ways, the second day was not as bad as the first.  The job was estimated to take four hours, and was in a condominium complex with an elevator.  We loaded furniture and boxes into large cardboard bins, put those bins on dollies and wheeled them to the elevator.  Compared with the stairs and heavy lifting of the first day, it was a breeze.  The challenge lay in dealing with my coworkers.  The foreman that day was Dorel, a seven-foot mammoth who was rumored to have played for the Olympic volleyball team in Romania.  The third member of the group that day was another Romanian named Liviu.  He didn’t say much, but I gathered that Liviu loved pop music as he sang along, word-for-word, with Maroon 5’s most recent single.

Dorel was abrasive at first, assuming that I was privileged and lazy and told me, bluntly, when I was not doing things correctly.  I tried my best to prove him wrong by keeping my mouth shut and doing whatever he asked of me.  I knew from word-of-mouth that these were the things Dorel respected most in his fellow workers.  The rumors must have been true, because Dorel eventually warmed up to me.  At a point late in the day, we were both in the truck, and Dorel told me what it meant to be a professional mover.  In a thick accent he explained, “You get paid well, 13, 14 dollars, but you have to work hard.”  As he picked up a couch by himself, he told me that if I stuck with it, I’d be able to carry things like that no problem.  I wanted to remind him that I was not the Romanian equivalent of Andre the Giant, but I refrained.  Then he taught me how to properly tape a cardboard box.  I tried to replicate his demonstration as he loomed over me, saying, “Do it manly!”  I was not exactly sure what that meant, but apparently I did a satisfactory job.  The rest of that second day was uneventful, and after a harrowing ride back to the warehouse, Dorel told me, “Not bad, for your second day.”  If that’s not a stamp of approval, I don’t know what is.

For a while, the job became somewhat regular after those first two days.  Sure, there were long hours full of heavy lifting in the summer heat and there were early wake-up calls, but it seemed natural and predictable.  I noticed that every customer was different.  There were people overwrought by the potential for the slightest mishap, like the guy who didn’t want the refrigerator rolled over the kitchen floor because it might dent the wood (he and his wife hadn’t sold the house yet).  There were people who were calm and laid back, like the young couple who bought us lunch and spoke German with the Romanian foreman.  There were idiosyncratic people too, such as the overly nice woman who was continually amazed by our performance of the most ordinary feats and her silent husband who shook my calloused hands with a light grip and limp wrist.

Sometime toward the end of the summer, I was working in a group with my high school friend Bill and the South African foreman, Tendi.  The customers, Susie and her husband, lived in the wealthy, suburban town which neighbors the middle-class city which I call home.  The husband, maybe his name was Gary, left at 6:30 in the morning to go to work.  It became clear early on that the houses we would be doing work in were just temporary for Susie and Gary.  They had normally lived in an even wealthier suburban town, but were having work done on their house, and so moved out for the year while the construction was completed.  Susie sold life insurance out of her home and I supposed it did make some sense that she couldn’t do that easily with construction going on nearby.  She presented that information in a slightly condescending way, saying, “You don’t know what it’s like to run your own business from home.”

Though I saw her as slightly demeaning and ostentatious, I decided to give Susie the benefit of the doubt, at least for a little while.  Early in the morning, Bill and I tried to move her queen-sized box spring down the stairs, but the ceiling was too low and it would not fit.  Bill asked Susie if she remembered how they brought the box-spring in, since we knew it wasn’t going to go easily down the stairs.  She said, “Up the stairs, of course,” with a tone that implied Bill was a half-wit.  So, we tried the stairs again, and in the process, slightly damaged the ceiling, though it was nothing a bit of sheetrock and a touch of paint couldn’t fix in about five minutes.  We realized shortly afterwards that we could, very easily, lower the box-spring from a second-floor porch.  As we were lowering it, Susie remembered, “Yeah, that’s how they brought it in.”

She never said anything directly to Bill and me about the damage to the ceiling, but later in the day, Bill overheard her talking to someone, presumably the husband and she was saying, “Yeah, well, that’s what you get when you have a bunch of idiots up there jerking things around.”  When I first heard that, I almost lost it completely.  I ran through the scenarios in my head and out loud with Bill.  I could run up to her and punch her in the face and then walk home, because I lived in the next town over.  Or, this would be much more satisfying, I could walk up to her and calmly explain to her that she probably had the smartest moving team in history—Bill and I graduated third and fourth in our high school class, we both attended prestigious liberal arts colleges and Tendi came from a family of South African bureaucrats—and then punch her in the face and tell her to buy some sheetrock and a sense of decency.  As time passed, I thought it more prudent to do and say nothing, but to remember that no matter what my life was like in the future, it is, in no way, OK to be like Susie.

The day was full of snide comments from her, but I made it through relatively unscathed.  At about 7 in the evening, about 12 hours after we had arrived, Gary, the husband, made his way to his new home, just in time to complain about the ceiling damage the box-spring had caused.  In the meantime, Bill and I sat in the cab of the truck discussing the day’s events when a man walked over to the truck and said something into the open window.

“What?” I replied.

“Did you guys park the truck on the grass earlier?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a brand new lawn, what did you do that for?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t do it, you’ll have to go ask our boss.  He’s inside.”  I spoke curtly.  I had deduced that the man was the landlord of Susie’s new rental house, but I was in no mood to discuss the details of our decision to park on the grass.  Instead I spat the answers back at him, full of the teenage attitude and the venom that comes from spending 12 hours doing manual labor and being subjected to under-the-breath verbal assaults all day.  Maybe it was justifiable to be like Susie once in a while.

When Tendi came back out, we asked him if the husband had complained (he had) and we asked him if the landlord gave him a hard time (he had).  Bill and I drove together from the warehouse to our hometown and discussed the day’s events.  We talked about how Tendi seemed a little more sensitive than most of the foremen, and how he took the verbal abuse more personally than many others would have.  Then we recounted all the enraging moments of the day and it became abundantly clear that both of us had also taken Susie’s behavior personally.  There was almost no way to avoid it.

After dropping Bill off, I drove home.  My parents and my sister were on the back porch, having a beer and enjoying the warm, summer night.  They were a perfect audience.  I launched into a thirty-minute tirade about Susie and Gary and about the job in general.  When I had thoroughly vented, I took a shower and realized something which surprised me.  Sure, people like Susie suck to deal with and sure there were some very nice customers over the summer, but none of that mattered.  They weren’t worth getting worked up over.  It was impossible to control who you worked for.  The only thing under your control is yourself.  You have to do it manly.

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Stolid

I bought Joan Didion’s collection of essays entitled Slouching Towards Bethlehem because it contained a particular essay that was recommended to me by a friend (Kaitlin) as I was trying to decide where I’d like to go to school this time around.  I really didn’t know what else I was getting into with Didion, but I noticed an essay, “On Keeping a Notebook,” in the table of contents, and became a little excited; I interpreted the word “notebook” to mean “journal.”

I mention this not because I am going to center this post around Didion’s essay.  In fact, I read it a long time ago, and remember very little about it.  And, since I’m not a real journalist yet and this is my personal space, I can get away with being too lazy to go back and do the legwork necessary to really respond to it intelligently as I continue on with this post.  What I do remember is that it seemed kind of disjointed (possibly on purpose), and it wasn’t as transcendent as I had hoped it would be, and everything she writes seems to be dripping with what I think is intentional cool.  To put it more plainly, Didion reminds me a lot of present day hipsters; that is, she kind of seems to make some sense, but mostly, she really just frustrates me.

I bring this up just because I suppose it’s appropriate to say that at least one person has written about keeping a journal already, and that I am not about to tread on uncharted territory.  And, some might say that she wrote the preeminent essay on keeping a journal.  But, I would not say that and I don’t personally know anyone that would.  (I should add the caveat that no one I know has actually read this essay, to my knowledge.)  I would just say that she managed to get an essay like that published, and that’s about all I’m willing to say on it.

All of this is leading to a confession, but one which should come as no surprise: I have, for many years, written in a journal.  It started about four years ago, although before that I had a livejournal, which doesn’t really count, because it was in the public domain; these handwritten journals (I’m on my third right now–the first got very wet in New Zealand and retired early, the second filled up after three years of service) are much more private, much more personal, and, at times, have been about simply getting things out of my head and into a form that I can process, as opposed to making my thoughts make sense to a somewhat broader audience (which is what I attempt to do in spaces such as this).  I don’t write in them daily, or weekly, or really in any discernible pattern.  There is no predetermined time frame for new entries.  At one point I hadn’t written for two months (somewhat ironically, these were two of the toughest months I’ve ever had).  At other points, I’ve written on back-to-back days, and rather wordily both times.  It’s just a there-when-I-need-it sort of thing, I suppose.  It also provides chances to remember that most school essays were once handwritten and to keep my penmanship within the bounds of readability.

In the past, I have sometimes pored over the pages of the old journals in attempts to learn things about myself, or to remember particular feelings or events.  I don’t know that I’ve ever been that successful in accomplishing the former, but I usually can remember certain aspects of my life with some success.  So, at the very least, it’s a trip down memory lane.  But, in the past week, I’ve reread the two previous journals in their entirety and noticed something kind of alarming.  I can predict the future, sort of.

Without going into much detail, because of the previously mentioned laziness and intentional privacy of these journals (what would be the point of keeping them private if I’m just going to present all the information here?), I will try to explain.  Essentially, I can look back in the journal right before particular set of months, for example the aforementioned “two of the toughest months,” and what I have written predicts, in vague terms, what is about to happen.  The line in the journal in this “tough two months” example  goes something like this: “A positive attitude is going to carry me through the next couple months, but if I don’t have one, I’m going to suffer, and the goodness of my attitude right now is certainly not heading in the right direction.”  So, see, I was worried about what would happen if my attitude was poor, and I was pretty sure that it would be poor.  In reality, that is exactly what happened–poor attitude begot poor life outcomes.

It was also kind of strange to go through three years of my thinking about careers, starting when I really had no idea what a career entailed and ending this past year, when what I think is a realistic view of a career started coming into view.  There is a clearly recurring theme–I always ended up back at writing or journalism.  Every single time.  I went through an entire fantasy of law school to lawyer to owning a private practice.  And, a month later, I was back to saying, “So, law school, ugh, not for me, I think I want to be a writer.”  I imagined myself in Teach for America, at an economic consulting firm, at a nonprofit, but it always ultimately came back to writing.  This was, apparently, the plan all along: do something, anything, for two years, then go to journalism school and start writing for a living.

This is certainly something I wish I had realized this before yesterday.  I’ve been sitting here for the past two years, beating the crap out of myself for not having a plan, or a conception of what I wanted to do, and wishing I were one of those people who decided at age 4 that he was going to be a doctor and then just stuck with it through high school and college and medical school.  I spent all this time thinking I was hopeless and directionless, when, in reality, I was doing exactly what I imagined I would do back before I had to do anything (that is, when I was still within the safe confines of college).  So, maybe I didn’t predict those two years perfectly (I mean, really, I spent five months in Texas–how could I have imagined the turns of events that have taken me through the past two years?), but I had the end point spot on.  If I believe myself, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be (well, sort of–2007 Scott would not be cool with my being in Boston, but 2010 Scott is a little wiser…or at least that’s how I’m choosing to argue the case now)–two years out of college, starting a journalism program, embarking on the long journey to, hopefully, a fulfilling career doing something I love to do.

I must say, having all of this come a week before I move into Boston for real (or, Cambridge for real), and just under two weeks from when I start classes, has really brought me some peace of mind.  I don’t feel like I did last year at this time.  I’m not itching to get out of a city I’ve convinced myself I don’t like (yes, you read this correctly–I’m no longer willing to hate DC, because I may end up there again, and I’m going to like it if I do, because I’ll give myself no other choice), I’m not waffling about my program or my future social life, and I’m not dramatically at odds with my family or friends.  I’m not tired of anything, desperately hoping that what I do next will save me.  I’m just ready.

As always, keep your head down, strive for balance and walk with one foot in front of the other.

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Losing the American Dream

I read an article in the New York Times last week, entitled, “For a New Generation, An Elusive American Dream,” and, immediately, became wildly upset.  Even while I was still reading, I started channeling my outrage and ranting across five venom-filled paragraphs that I was going to post on my other, less considered, blog site (the main thrust of which is linking to articles I can make short, sarcastic comments about, or posting videos to songs I am listening to that day), “Just Fake It.”  But, then I thought better of the idea because I believed there was a better, more thoughtful response to be had to the article, although I saved those venomous paragraphs, and I’m sure some of that text will make an appearance here.

With that in mind, I’ll provide a brief overview of the main points of the article so the lazy among you do not have to actually read the piece.  (Of course, if you want to, I linked to it above for your convenience.  Honestly, it’s about 10 minutes of reading, so it could be worth it.)  The article attempts to make the point that, oh my goodness, it’s hard for recent college graduates to get a job these days, even those who have decent academic records and went to a good school.

To make this point, the journalist centers his story around Scott Nicholson of Grafton, MA, who graduated from Colgate the same year I did Hamilton (2008), and has been living at home and searching for a job ever since (that, for those of you who are mathematically challenged, is two full years of job searching).  Aside from his graduation from Colgate, a well-respected university, Nicholson’s accolades include being “winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence.”  In addition to the provision of housing and food, his parents pay all of his expenses (cell phone charges, insurance, etc.), and he has no student loan debt.  Now, this is perhaps the most important detail of the journalist’s portrayal of Nicholson: he had just declined a $40,000 per year job offer from Hanover Insurance Group, which, by all accounts, is a pretty legitimate company (it’s been around for some 150 years), and is doing pretty well financially (not to mention that $40K is nothing to sneeze at for someone with no real work experience).  Nicholson’s reasoning had something to do with not wanting to waste years of his life doing “dead-end” work, preferring instead to start with a corporate position that would place him at the bottom rungs of a career ladder that he could start working his way up.

The journalist goes on to attempt to make a broader argument about the Millenial generation (that is, the generation that I, ostensibly, belong to), based on Nicholson, his and his friends’ experiences, and his viewpoints.  Basically, he extrapolates from Nicholson’s world to the real world, throws in some statistics about unemployment levels for 23-29 year-olds, and talks to an expert who contributes that Millenials are “more risk averse…and more likely to fall behind.”  Regardless of whether the reporter did thorough due diligence on this, his basing a theory primarily on Nicholson is where the argument begins to break down, I think.  What Nicholson wants is not just a job, or even a well-paying one, it’s an uber-lucrative job at a top-rated company (he is shooting for something like his older brother’s first post-college job, acquired a few years ago, which provided a $75K starting salary), something which, realistically, no longer exists for recent college graduates with no work experience.  We are, after all, in the midst of the “Great Recession,” and trying work one’s way up the corporate ladder is of course a lot more difficult when many of the corporations are imploding.

When I was looking for jobs for immediately after college, I too applied to countless positions, and only really came close on two of them.  One was the one I took at the Federal Trade Commission, and the other was with the consulting company started by Neil Howe and William Strauss, authors of the famed Generations, and, more recently, Millenials Go To College.  The latter book played into my interview process.  I was commissioned to read a few chapters of this book (it may either have been just recently published or was about to become so).  (I then had a couple writing assignments which required me to think about what was said, and add any information I could which I thought applied.  I was also asked to write in a style similar to the one that the chapters used.  I passed this test with flying colors, for two reasons: 1) I am an exemplar of writing style mimicry (well, within reason), and 2) I apparently had an inherent understanding of Millenials and all their bullshit, perhaps because I had lived my whole life with them around me.)

I mention all this about Howe and Strauss’s Millenials book because it gave me access to some of their arguments about the Millenial generation as a whole (the book about them going to college took their general insights about Millenials and spun them so college admissions officers would have a better clue of who they were admitting to their schools).  From what I recall (and, last time I tried to talk about these authors and their work, some reader ripped me a new one in my comments section, so I’ll be a little more careful this time), one of the themes that made its way into each chapter is that Millenials, to put it plainly, want the world, right now.  That is, they operate with a sense of entitlement that makes them think they deserve success immediately because of how they’ve worked in school and all the rest.

In this sense, Nicholson is the perfect representative of the Millenial generation.  As he says, “I worked hard through high school to get myself into the college I did and then I worked hard through college to graduate with the grades and degree that I did to position myself for a solid job.”  (For reference, my initial “venomous” reaction upon reading this went something like: “Jesus Christ, cry me a river.  No, scratch that, instead, I say this to you, Scott Nicholson: ‘FUCK YOU!  SO DID EVERYONE ELSE!  AND GUESS WHAT? MOST OF THEM DON’T HAVE TIME TO TELL REPORTERS HOW HARD THEY WORKED; MOST OF THEM ARE STILL WORKING HARD AT THEIR FUCKING DAY JOBS!’”)

But, this is exactly the sort of thinking that seems very common among people of approximately my age (so common, in fact, that the experts, Howe and Strauss, identify it as one of the defining characteristics of the Millenial generation), and which completely frustrates me about being lumped in with all the Millenials—an easy way out is not coming, no matter how hard you worked in the past.  You have to keep working hard, every single day, and even then, you may fall short of where you would have hoped, because of bad luck, or because your opinion of yourself and your work-ethic isn’t quite as accurate as you imagined.

But, see, even Nicholson’s grandfather contributes to the delusion: “Scott has got to find somebody who knows someone, someone who can get him to the head of the line.”  I disagree.  What Nicholson needs is an attitude-adjustment, a realignment of his view of reality.  He needs to stop complaining about his plight, and realize that there are people who have worked twice as hard as he has both in school and for the past two years while he’s been middling around in his parents’ house, sending out cover letters to countless companies.  And, then, he needs to emulate that behavior—take a job, work hard at it even if he doesn’t love it, and move on, when the time is right, to something else that will take him closer to the direction he wants to move in.  He doesn’t need a boost to “the head of the line;” he needs to put his nose to the grindstone and work his way toward the head of the line with all the rest of us.

Obviously, I am not a Scott Nicholson fan, and to be honest, I felt as though the journalist displayed some pretty shoddy workmanship in making his argument.  But, beside all that, I think the most alarming part of this whole article is the title that was chosen for it: “For a New Generation, an Elusive American Dream.”  Is this really what the American Dream has been relegated to—a cushy, $75K per year job in the insurance industry, right out of college?  Boy, I really hope not.

As always, keep your head down, strive for balance, and walk with one foot in front of the other.

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Borne on Flag Day

It is almost June 14, which is Flag Day.  I have no idea about the origins of this holiday, and I have no intention of looking them up.  What I do know about Flag Day is that where I’m from it is celebrated in a fashion that transports my hometown through time and space to a kind of 1950s era middle-America town.  Quincy, Massachusetts’s Flag Day festivities are replete with a parade (part of which includes the majority of the city’s youth sports teams marching, in uniform, with their coaches) and a fireworks display that, over the last five to seven years has gotten increasingly more spectacular.

But, what I really know about Flag Day is that the day of the celebration is perpetually my favorite day of the year.  Or, it’s at least my favorite day of the year to be in Quincy.

When I try to think about my hometown, and how I feel about it, and whether I think of it as ‘home’ anymore, I usually find myself at once confused, angry, sad, and, then, tired.  But, for some reason, Flag Day makes sense to me.  This is ostensibly ludicrous, because the events that take place in Quincy during the Flag Day celebration are among the most perplexing things that happen in this place (right up there with unresolved crimes, the guy who legally changed his name to ‘Uncle Sam,’ and former honors students growing up to become bank robbers).  Why, for instance, does this tiny city turn into ‘Anywhere, USA’ on the Saturday before Flag Day?  Why are children forced to display their ultimate athletic loyalty by deciding to march with their soccer team over their junior-farm baseball team, or with the Quincy Track Club over any of the ‘real’ sports teams?  Why do eight owners of Corvettes (all of different years) get to drive down the street in a line with their tops down and wave to the parade-watchers, sandwiched in between the firefighters and veterans of foreign wars?  Why does the city pay for one of the best fireworks programs I’ve ever seen in order to celebrate this obscure holiday, all the while leaving July 4^th untouched?

None of it makes any sense.  But, my place in this city, as a resident, or at least as someone who grew up here, makes more sense to me during that celebration than on any other day.  Since probably 8^th grade or so, it’s really the only day of the year in which I felt like I was right where I belonged while in my hometown.  And, I’m actually pretty certain that I know why.

Although the reasons have changed over the years, the underlying theme that ties them together is where I have spent this day—at my friends Dan and Bill’s house.  At first, I think I was enamored with the newness of it all.  I had marched in a couple parades when I was seven or eight, but after that I never went to the fireworks, I never watched the parade, I was never really even aware that these things continued to happen.  I just had this hazy memory of walking down the street once, with a bunch of people staring at me as I looked stoically up the road, hoping that the walk would soon end, and probably playing with the adjustable strap on the back of my trucker-style baseball cap.  But then seventh or eighth grade rolled around, and I was invited to Dan and Bill’s for a cookout, and to watch the parade, and I watched the Flag Day celebration with new, slightly wiser eyes (surrounded by the flab I had on my face and the glasses I wore back then), and it’s not that I liked what I was seeing (it was a parade—not exactly enthralling for an 8^th grader), but I liked who I was seeing it with—Dan and Bill, and the supporting cast.

Over the course of high school, the supporting cast—their, and in rare cases my, other friends—shifted, expanded, and finally contracted to the point that by our senior year there were only three or four friends there.  During those years, I think I saw Flag Day as a celebration of my constancy as Dan and Bill’s friend, which I self-righteously hung my hat on.  There were different guys from Quincy High’s sports teams that made appearances, different girlfriends, and so on, but I was one of the few (or perhaps the only) that started in middle school and made it through to the end of high school.  When I look back on those years now, I can remember a lot of the things that went through my head.  A few of the years I had most certainly been supplanted as a ‘best’ friend, and I think I was aware of it, and that it bothered me.  But, I think, and I’m sure Dan and Bill will correct me if I’m projecting inaccurately here, that as time went on, the three of us began to realize that Quincy High was not our end destination, and that our lives would likely be better and more fulfilling upon leaving.  I think the tacit understanding of this underpinned our friendship over the last couple years of high school.  So, as the people we hung out with early in high school bought more heavily into pride in leading a ‘Quincy life,’ we began to think about what came next.

If Dan, Bill and I were constants in each other’s lives during high school, that changed to a considerable degree once college rolled around.  They found different, more positive constants (that is, their girlfriends) while I let a lot of the things I had held constant slip away.  I could no longer rely on them, and they had (thankfully) never really needed to rely on me.  Although with each passing year we became less involved in each other’s day-to-day, I think we became better friends because of it.

As a result, my appreciation of Flag Day now is, as it was in college, about reminiscence, and it’s about seeing my two best friends from high school and their constants as we become adults, and it’s about seizing the rare opportunity to spend some time catching up.  And, there’s nothing new about it anymore, and maybe we three are no longer quite the constants we once were for each other, but it’s all okay.  It’s still my favorite day of the year to be in Quincy, because it reminds me of the best parts of growing up here, and that this place is not my end destination, and that my life will someday be better and more fulfilling.

As per usual, keep your head down, strive for balance, and walk with one foot in front of the other.

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A Look Back, Volume 2

In July of 2006, I took a plane ride for 16 hours and ended up in Australia.  A lot of things happened there, but the following is the story of what is probably the most important of those things.  This, like “Summer Rain” that was posted a few weeks ago, was written in my senior year of college, in 2008.

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Down Under Mornings

The mornings were always the worst, at least early on.  At first, I couldn’t understand why, but now I can look back on the daily routine and figure it out with ease.  The mornings were typically the same: First, I’d roll out of bed with the overwhelming sense that this might be the day I decided to throw away the next three months, the breaking point, the one which made me give it all up and go home.  Then I’d call my house.  With the time difference, it was always evening back east (or was it west?).  My mother provided the requisite encouraging words and I told her I was OK, though I was far from it.  This was my battle, no need to worry her more than she already was.  After that, I’d take a long look in the mirror watching my eyes well up and fighting the inevitable with myriad bats of my eyelids.  Usually, I’d have enough of this, lightly hit the wall, and with some reserve summoned up from God knows where, turn on a play list with twenty or so fairly depressing songs.

I listened to Wilco’s song Hummingbird, extracting meaning from the line, “But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans, no one could hear him, or anything.”  I also listened to Tom Rush’s cover of These Days which ends on the line, “Don’t confront me with my failures, I have not forgotten them,” and saw no irony there.  There were other songs too.  Some were written by a man who stabbed himself to death.  Some were written by a man who spent his childhood with an abusive stepfather.  Most were written by people with no terrible stories, but who were sensitive to the fact that they do exist.  These songs ultimately made me feel better, and the days picked up after I listened to them.

That was the early ritual.  It took place every morning for two or three weeks on the other side of the world.  It seemed like it would last forever, but each day the sinking feeling subsided, and eventually, those dreaded mornings became less so.  Instead of waking up everyday ready to quit, it was every third day, once a week, then once a month.  Still, things weren’t all roses, but they improved and I even managed to sneak a few uplifting songs onto those play lists.  There were the resilient words, “I am going to make it through this year, if it kills me” in a song by The Mountain Goats, and there was the undeniably optimistic, “Goddamn right, it’s a beautiful day” in an Eels song.

Throughout the course of my stay abroad, I had some notable mornings.  There was a time I awoke at five to find my next door neighbor knocking on my door, demanding that I go for a walk with him at sunrise.  Though he was really not offering me a choice, I declined.  For a moment I worried about his mental health, but then I started running through the horror stories which might have happened had I acquiesced.  Would he have tried to hold my hand?  Would he have stabbed me and thrown me in the nearby lake?  Or worse, would he have expected me to walk with him again?

There was another morning, this time in New Zealand, where I boarded a train at six, headed to a seaside town to do typical tourist stuff.  I was surrounded by a rowdy group of Kiwis who managed to drink about fifteen beers each in the three hours I spent with them.  At one point I was offered a table dance by a very drunk fifty-something woman.  Her beau, who looked like Gandalf the Gray after a thirty-year cocaine addiction, didn’t seem to mind and was certainly not willing to help me out of the situation.  He just laughed, exposing the ten or so teeth he had left and fortunately, the woman did not follow through on her offer.

There was also a rainy morning in Sydney where I walked two miles in forty-five degree rain to get to a surfing lesson.  After the walk, I thought I’d never be warm again and the thought of hopping in the ocean was less than thrilling.  The stay in the ocean actually warmed me, but the lesson was delayed as someone pointed out a circling fin just outside the breaking waves.  The instructor called all the beginning surfers out of the water and explained that he’d never seen a shark come that close to the surf before.  It was just cold enough on the beach for me to believe him and when he determined it was safe to go back in, I ran back to the water with no hesitation.

On another morning, I was set to participate in a race which would combine map-reading, running and sleep-deprivation.  I had spent the previous ten weeks training for the race with people in my dorm, Burgmann Hall.  Each dorm broke their runners into seven four-person teams to compete in different divisions.  Division one was the hardest, where the teams ran for about 12 hours and up to 80 miles.  I was going to compete in division six, which was more reasonable.  We had to run 15 to 20 miles.  Though I had been training for a long time, there were still runners who I hadn’t met on my training runs and three of those people ended up on my division six team.  There was Duncan, the 19-year-old heartthrob, Mostyn, a 23-year-old graduate student who had spent some time in the Australian military and Macka, who was a hired-gun.  He had moved out of Burgmann a couple years before, but the rules allowed him to run with us.  He had done the race a number of times, whereas the rest of us were all rookies.  Aside from their unusual names, they were a good group, and though I had only met them a week or two before the race, I felt comfortable with them on my team.  Duncan provided some confidence, Macka provided experience, and Mostyn seemed like he’d be able to provide some toughness.  I was just hoping I could pull my weight.

The actual race started at one in the morning, with a walk to a bus whose windows had been covered with trash bags.  Then we put on blindfolds as the bus pulled away for a three-hour drive with the purpose of making the participants completely disoriented, as if I were not already.  In reality, it was a three-hour lesson in nausea avoidance and conquering the fears (of the dark, of small spaces, of urinating in public, etc.) you never thought you had.  During the ride there were a few rest stops, in which the runners were given the following directions: “If you need to relieve yourself, put your hand up, but do not take off your blindfold.  Someone, most likely a young woman, will lead you out of the bus with a soothing hold on your shoulder blades and then let you know when it’s safe to go.  Then, when you’re done, you’ll let her know (that’s if she hadn’t been watching the whole time) and she’ll walk you back onto the bus and ask you where you were sitting.  She’ll ask this despite the fact that you have a blindfold on and don’t know where you were sitting; and besides, you would sit on the floor if she told you to because those hands on your shoulders are the only physical contact you’ve had in months.”

Then the bus continued on and we finally reached our destination, a non-descript dirt road in the middle of the East Australian countryside.  My teammates and I removed our blindfolds, gathered and hatched a plan as we shivered.  It was an arid area and at four in the morning on an early spring night, it was cold, and we were dressed for movement, not standing around.  Without much deliberation, we decided on an initial course of action.  Duncan and I would go scout the area, looking for any clues we could find.  I ran down the road and looked in a mailbox for a letter.  Miraculously, I found one, but the address on it made no sense, so I moved on but found nothing promising.  Luckily, Duncan was more helpful and his clue, the name of a small river, gave us our exact location, which Mostyn and Macka were responsible for deducing.  Now we knew where we were and the race organizers had given us the exact location of the finish line.  All that was left was to plot a course and run for it.

We ran at first in the dark, and though we had headlamps, we decided against them and ran by moonlight.  Soon enough, the sun came up, and this time I was glad to have the opportunity to watch the sunrise.  The frost gave way to dew, which made its way easily through our breathable sneakers.  The first major navigational decision was between cutting across farmland and running a longer route along a road.  We decided farmland was the way to go and as we crossed our first cattle grate, trying not to break our ankles, we set a group of cows on a stampede.  The good thing about cows, I learned, is that they are timid and will run away from you if you invade their space.  This, however, is not true of their male counterparts.  About twenty minutes later, we came across two large bulls that were grunting and howling (or whatever it is that bulls do).  My teammates and I got the impression that if we continued on, we would most likely be charged.  We decided to hop over a barb-wired fence, the first of many, for a little separation just as the bulls started kicking up dust and blowing steam through their nostrils.

We ran across the farmland for several miles, and as the sun continued to rise, the day grew warmer.  As we neared the end of our run on the farms, my teammates pointed out some hopping animals with dark fur in the distance.  Duncan casually explained to me that they were wallabies, not kangaroos, and Macka said something like, “You wouldn’t see that in America, hey?”  When it was time to leave the farms and head onto a four-wheel drive road, we climbed over a fence with a sign that read, “Private property, keep out.”  I said something about how if we had been in America, we probably would have gotten shot a long time ago for trespassing.  My teammates each offered a small chuckle, which is more than the joke deserved.

Toward the end of the race, it seemed as though the four of us were one entity; our footsteps fell in the same rhythm, and each of us took turns setting the pace.  As we approached the finish line, we were behind another team by less than a hundred yards.  However, a last minute directional risk gave us the edge.  We ended up taking a much shorter route and finished about thirty seconds before our competitors.  Running up to the line, I started swearing uncontrollably as the slight increase in pace brought my legs dangerously close to cramping, but once we crossed in first place, all the pain went away and the swears were replaced with more affirmative grunts and cheers.  Crossing the line was a moment of clarity, and in that moment, my teammates were all united.  It was as if all elements of the run—the sunrise, the countless hops over fences, the wallabies and kangaroos, the crossing of a river which wasn’t as dry as it was supposed to be, and winning—were a summary for all the time and energy and nerves that went into preparing for it.

After we finished, Duncan inquired jokingly about my outburst of curse words close to the finish line and I explained my cramped situation.  Mostyn and I looked over the map we had used to plot our course and attempted to determine how far we had actually run.  I talked to people from my dorm’s other divisions and we shared details from our respective races.  Every now and then, I asked Macka how the scores were looking, and we discussed whether our Burgmann Hall had a chance of winning the overall competition for all seven divisions.  Occasionally, I was asked to rehash the race’s events for some of the fans who had driven to the finish area from our dorm.  In the hour or two after the race, I talked to more people than I had in months, my sociality fueled by endorphins and shared experience.

As the day went on, however, I retreated, and watched as my teammates and other people I had spoken with conversed easily with the growing number of fans in the finish area.  Suddenly, I realized that though I thought my mental state had improved, this morning did not differ much from those early ones.  The problems were still there; I was utterly alone across the globe, and knew it was completely of my own doing.  The only thing that had changed was that I wasn’t as vulnerable to them.  Sure, I was alone and reticent in the midst of a gregarious people willing to talk to anyone about anything, but it didn’t bother me so much.  In fact, I began to take pride in it.

My unrelenting silence marked the last month or two of my stay overseas.  In fact, it might have marked the entire trip, but it was only after the race that I became comfortable with it.  I realized then that I was having all the discussions I wanted to, though they were not with other people and they were (usually) not aloud.  I convinced myself on that day, once and for all, that I was going to be alone there for the rest of the time, and no matter how hard anyone tried, I would not let them in.  I had enough people in my life to connect to.  And after all, wasn’t that the reason I went there in the first place, to extract myself from the social?

When I returned home, I had trouble adjusting.  When people come home from such an experience, they often dwell on the good times they had abroad, traveling at will, making new and exciting friends, the ability to forget about the normal academic consequences of their actions, etc.  My experience wasn’t like that.  I was on a budget, my school had a strong academic program, I made no lasting friendships and so, my readjustment issues were not because of the loss of a typical semester abroad.  They were not, either, because of the time change, or the “reverse culture shock” I’d been warned about, or even the fact that I was no longer in a land I had learned to love and appreciate, though these things affected me in the short-term.  Instead, it was because my solo adventure had ended, and no matter how hard I tried at home, I would never be alone.  There would always be friends, there would always be family and there was no escaping it.

During those early phone conversations with my mother, we talked about how things might improve if I made some sort of meaningful connection to at least one other person.  Back home, I was surrounded by connections and suffocated under the weight of them.  In Australia, I was removed from all that.  I could listen to my friends complain about each other or to stories about my mother’s family and their dysfunction and then I could shut down the computer or hang up the phone and be done with them.  I had no plans to keep or situations to deal with and that’s what I ended up loving about my time abroad.  Yeah, I was alone and thoroughly disconnected, but I was also free.  The challenge, upon returning home, lay in balancing the social connections which were missing in Australia and the independence which was hard to find in America.  I ultimately found the balance and managed to sneak away from friends and family from time-to-time, whether it entailed a solitary run, or simply putting my headphones on and turning the volume up on one of my Down Under play lists.

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As always, keep your head down, strive for balance, and put one foot in front of the other.

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A Look Back, Volume One

So, I have a few essays that I wrote in my senior year of college, and, because I’m sort of proud of some of them, I thought I might start sharing them here, depending on how long they seem in blog form.  I figure it’s probably best to start with what, I think, is the best written of all of them.  I’m doing this despite the fact that it’s kind of a heavy one.  But, you know, I spend a lot of time being kind of flippant and irreverent, and it’s nice to be genuine once in awhile.  Without further ado, here is the first installment:

Summer Rain

It rained a lot that summer.  I played on a men’s league baseball team and it seemed like every day we had a game, my father and I would spend the morning checking the weather report and discussing the possibility of a rainout.  No matter the outcome of our conversation, the rain always seemed to stop just in time for my team to play.  The fields were always soggy and poorly maintained and were always in cramped neighborhoods full of three-decker houses with no space between them.  There was always a police car stationed nearby, presumably to watch the park’s basketball court for fights or drug deals or anything else suspicious.

I had been on my college team that spring and saw the summer team as an opportunity to improve my skills.  Instead, I spent three or four nights a week on the bench, listening to men in their twenties make sarcastic comments in thick Boston accents and watching them put enormous wads of tobacco between their lower lips and gums.  I said as little as possible and secretly wished every game would be rained out.  But, I stayed on the team for the entire summer and though I would have rather spent those hours with my friends, I did not complain to anyone.

One night, it must have been in July, I sat with my legs outstretched to avoid the muddy water which had pooled up underneath the bench.  I noticed my father slowly walk into the park, holding a green chair, folded into a carrying sack.  If he had been at home, he would have been carrying another bag, with a tube connected to his body.  Since he was out in public, he wore a bag discreetly attached to his leg instead.

He wore baggy jeans and a green flannel shirt, despite the night’s warmth and moisture.  He sat alone near right field.  I walked over and we had a brief conversation about the game.  I probably apologized that he went through the effort to come when I wouldn’t be playing that night, and told him that I wasn’t sure how we scored our runs.  He can remember the details of any sporting event, but that skill has always evaded me.  When the game ended, I helped him out of the park, carrying my unused baseball equipment on one arm and the folded chair on the other and told him I’d see him at home.

About a month earlier, when he was in the hospital, I drove in with my mother to visit.  He was still getting over the anesthesia and made frequent trips to the bathroom because of the nausea.  He was weak, and tired, and didn’t say much.  His fellow science teacher, Roland, and my father’s best friend Phil were there as well.  The visit turned into a meet and greet; Phil, my mother and I were introduced to Roland and I talked to Phil about how I liked my first year away from home.  There were a few comments on the details of the surgery, how long the recovery time might be, how my father was feeling, but most of the conversation avoided those things.  If I pictured a gathering of these people in almost any other setting, my father would be smiling and gregarious.  He would outshine all of us.  But, during the visit, all his smiles were forced and most of his words were apologies for being so reserved.

When I was in seventh grade, my father taught me in science class.  He was not in school the day his father died, so I must have found out sometime later in the day.  My grandmother, my father’s mother, had passed almost exactly a year earlier.  I remember her funeral vividly, perhaps because it was the first I had ever been to.  I tried to prove my manhood by making it through the service without crying.  I saw my father crying for the first time that day and ultimately, I succumbed to the sadness which surrounded me.

I don’t remember much from my grandfather’s funeral.  My father read something in church, maybe a eulogy, maybe just a passage from the bible.  Either way, he made it about three quarters of the way before choking up.  What I do remember from my grandfather’s funeral is the ride to the military cemetery.  The day was gray and raw. The ride took over an hour and I stared blankly out the window for its entirety, no thoughts in my mind.  The burial service was short in comparison.  My father’s immediate family was presented with a triangular folded American flag and there was a twenty-one gun salute and a trumpeter who played Taps.  The song’s notes cut through the cold, wet air and I winced with every change in pitch.  My father stood with his brothers and sisters.  I stood a few feet away with my brother and sister and mother.  Though we were not actually far apart, the distance between my father and me was overwhelming.  I wanted to stand next to him.  I must have imagined his strength would block out the trumpet notes and the gunshots and the pain and sadness they conferred.

At the end of that rainy summer, my sister was married.  Her wedding was during the hottest week of the summer and the church was not air conditioned.  My father had been laid up most of the summer.  There had been complications and corrective surgeries.  If there had not been, he would have spent the summer golfing and working on the house.  What he dislikes, more than anything, is downtime.  He is not comfortable relaxing.  There is always something he could be doing.  That summer, all he had was downtime.

The wedding reception was held in an outdoor tent at a local golf course.  The squelching August heat lingered throughout the wedding-party pictures and the cocktail hour.  Before my father gave his toast, the skies opened up and rain poured down.  It bounced off the ground and into the tent and the catering staff rushed to lower the tent’s sides.  The intense rain passed within a half hour and took the heat and humidity with it.  When the rain stopped, my father gave his toast and opened with a line that went something like, “It’s been a hell of a summer and this has been a hell of day and I couldn’t be happier.”

The following fall, I decided to stop playing baseball.  My experience on the men’s league team had been the final straw.   I had sat on too many benches and had watched too many teams I cared about lose, and make excuses, and I could not do it anymore.  I hesitated to tell my father because I knew he would be crushed.  As I told him, I could not help thinking about all the hours he had spent over the years hitting me fly balls and throwing batting practice.  I could not help thinking maybe I owed it to him to keep playing.  If he agreed, he did not show it; he apologized for not having a better understanding of what my time on the team had been like that summer.  He told me he wished he’d been feeling better.  Then, he would have been able to show more concern for how I was doing.

I had played baseball for as long as I could remember, and the decision to stop playing tore me up.  But, it meant nothing when compared to what my father faced that summer.  He was penned in the house and resigned to the couch for most of the day.  He did everything with a varying degree of discomfort.  He never complained.  Instead, he apologized, as though he were somehow responsible for the cancer which brought the surgery and for the unlikely complications which extended his discomfort.

I know I was wrong at my grandmother’s funeral.  Being a man is not about suppressing emotions.  It is not about being invincible.  Rather, it’s about being able to break down completely and still have the strength and reserve to pick up the pieces.  It’s about carrying yourself through pain and discomfort without a modicum of self-pity.  It’s about driving to your son’s baseball game when it would be much more comfortable to stay at home.

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