What Do You Get?

In the mid 1950's, singer Tennessee Ernie Ford had a hit with the song "Sixteen Tons". The chorus went, in part, "You load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt." On this last night of 2010, I find myself asking a similar question. "It's the end of the year, and what do you get?" Certainly, another year older, but no longer in debt for the first time in over 40 years! Our goal is to remain that way. What else did we get? A good feeling, the feeling of independence, and the freedom to pursue new adventures in 2011. What else did we get? We got two weeks in Alaska. We got memories of brown bears and wolves, moose and caribou in Denali National Park, of Mt. McKinley exposing its summit through the clouds, of massive ice bergs calving off Hubbard Glacier, and of eagles fishing the Mendenhall River near Juneau. In 2010 we mourned and celebrated the lives of friends and family members who departed this world for the next. They shall not grow older as we grow older. There were none like them before and surely none shall follow in their stead. They are sorely missed. But now, it's 2011 and what do we get? We get the promise of a new year! Where we have met our current goals, we get a "keep up the good work!" Where we have fallen short, we get a "do over." Where we want to re-invent or re-image parts of ourselves we get the opportunity to do so, or to try and try again. And this opportunity is renewed every day. In 2011, I resolve to make the most of every second of every minute of every day -- to be all that I can be, and to live every instant to the absolute fullest. I resolve to pursue every opportunity placed before me. And I resolve to enjoy myself in the process. May you also be blessed with limitless opportunities to be everything of which you are capable.

Multi-tasking -- Who? Me?

I have a confession to make.

 In accordance with the advice of some of the most well-respected authorities on effectiveness and efficiency, I don't multi-task.

Neither do I single task particularly well.

Rather, I tend to ping from task to task like riccochet rabbit, hitting a lick here and a lick there as first one thing and then another captures or forces its way into the center of my attention.  Somehow, in the chaos of bouncing from task to task like a ping-pong ball in a clothes dryer, work gets done. Somehow, in the midst of the interuptions, thoughts get put on paper. Somehow, the analysis get completed and the report gets produced. Somehow.

At the end of the day, I feel like I've spent much of my time spinning my wheels, and I am exhausted.

I am capable of single tasking. If a task is compelling enough, I have been known to pursue it to the exclusion of all else. But such compelling tasks are few and far between, and all tasks, compelling or not, require dedicated time and effort to bring to completion.

Keeping current project and action lists and attempting to order my efforts by those lists helps, but not always.

Closing my door helps, but again not always.

Attempting to keep my desk clear of all except that on which I'm working also helps and I'm getting better at it.

Really.

I'm working on improving my focus, but focus is fragile. I can disconnect from the internet, but can't ignore the person who knocks on the door to ask "Did you get my email?" and then proceeds to spend the next fifteen minutes explaining something for which no immediate action is needed. By the time the subject is sufficiently dealt with, time has passed, focus is gone, and starting over is the only option.

Is there any solution short of mayhem?

Maybe I could seal my door with crime-scene tape. Maybe the answer is to pack up my laptop and files, occupy a table in a corner of the cafeteria or an unoccupied office, and bang out whatever is needed.

If anyone asks, I'm not available. I'm hiding out, single tasking, being productive.

Not a Minimalist

I am not a minimalist. Those who have visited my comfortably cluttered household will agree that I am not a minimalist. I read and enjoy minimalist blogs like Zen Habits, Becoming Minimalist, and even mnmlist.com to name a few. I read of challenges to live for 30 days with only 30 items of clothing, or to pare ones possessions to less that 100 items, or to live in a tiny house or apartment of less than 200 square feet. I have even taken steps to allow me to work from wherever I am to the point that I am writing this post on a netbook from my easy chair with a cup of coffee at my elbow. The point is that few if any of these challenges fits my life style, wants and desires. I desire not necessarily minimalism, but abundance, and not complexity but simplicity. And I desire not the simplicity of earlier times -- I don't want to return to the days of chopping wood, drawing water, and using an outhouse -- but the convenience of today, with central heat, modern plumbing, and inside facilities. Unlike Thoreau, I don't really want to spend two years in the woods contemplating the simple life. I want to live it today in suberbia! I want to live it among things that I enjoy. And, since I can only really enjoy things I use, I want to either divest myself of all of the things I no longer use or bring them out and use them. If I don't use it, I can't enjoy it and if I can't enjoy it, I might as well not have it. Life is too short not to use your best.

Simplify

In his book, "My Life in the Woods" or "Walden", New England transcendentalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau penned the words "Life is frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify." Simplify: Have less stuff, but have better stuff. Have stuff that you really use and enjoy. Simplify: Do less things, but do better things. Simplify: Buy less, but enjoy more. Eat less but taste more. Pack it up and put it away. If you need it, go get it, use it, and assign it to its place. If you haven't needed it for six months or a year, get rid of it. Stuff accretes like barnacles on the bottom of a ship. Let life show you what you really need and let go of the rest. Simplify.

Thanksgiving -- It's a Tradition

Thanksgiving is perhaps the most American and most traditional of all holidays celebrated in the United States. Older than the nation itself, the roots of this tradition run deep. On the fourth of December in 1619, Captain John Woodlief led thirty-eight newly arrived colonists to a grassy knoll along the James River and instructed them to drop to their knees and pray in thanksgiving for their safe journey to the new world. That day, the men of Berkely Parrish proclaimed that "We ordain that the day of our ship's arrival at the place of plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly kept as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God. Two years later, in 1621, another group of English Colonists celebrated their bounteous harvest with a feast of Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It is from this celebration that we get elements of the tradional menu of turkey, cranberry sauce, corn pudding, and pumpkin pie. Family has always been part of the tradition, and somewhere along the line football got added to become an essential part of the feast, as did shopping the day afterward. My personal Thanksgiving tradion is to write a list of things large and small for which I am truely grateful. The big things are easy: life, the love of my family, interests and ideas, continued employment, friends and shared experiences. This year, I am very thankful for two weeks in Alaska with my wife and her sister and brother-in-law. As a result of those two weeks, I find myself newly thankful for bears, both black and grizzly, and for wolves, carribou and moose. I refer to my list throughout the year whenever I need an attitude adjustment. For me, that's the important part of thanksgiving: the conscious act of remembering, recording, and giving thanks. I am, among all people, most richly blessed, And most profoundly grateful.

My Father's World

Had he lived, we would be celebrating my dad's 100th birthday this month. The world in which he drew his first breath was different than the world in which we live today. As was customary for the time, Dad was born at home in the small village of Browningsville, Maryland. Like his father before him, Dad grew up in the house in which his grandfather had also raised his children. In that house, which still stands today, water was pumped by hand from a well twenty or so feet from the kitchen door and carried to the house in a bucket. Hot water, for washing or doing dishes, was heated on a wood stove which also served for cooking, baking, and heat in the winter. As a boy, Dad's job was to keep both the water bucket and the wood box full. I would later perform the same functions for my grand parents who lived there for most of the 67 years of their marriage. In the winter, the downstairs was heated with wood and the upstairs with whatever heat escaped to it through the ceiling. On cold nights, sleepers would rest under two or three thick quilts while frost formed on the inside of the windows. The fire would die overnight, ensuring that one woke up to a cold house. Dad received his elementary education in a two-room schoolhouse build on land donated by his grandfather. For high school, he walked the three miles to and from Damascus. And, while not exactly up hill both ways, there is one significant summit at the midpoint. Dad became a farmer, a grower of tobacco, which was the money crop, and also enough wheat and corn to get the animals -- the horses and a flock of chickens -- through the winter. In the beginning, he worked the land using horses. He also planted enough potatoes for the winter and a sizable garden. Dad's first tractor, a 1940 John Deere model B, was useful for plowing, cultivating, and pulling stumps and other heavy objects but wouldn't go slow enough to pull the tobacco planter, so the horses, two big white Clydesdales named Harry and Jimmy, stayed around until 1949 when dad bought a John Deere model M. During his lifetime, Dad lived through two world wars, survived the great depression, witnessed the advent of the automobile, the telephone (and its evolution from hand-cranked monster to direct distance dialing), household electricity, indoor plumbing, radio, and television. He watched the airplane develop from an interesting toy to a means of transportation that eventually outpaced and ultimately doomed the passenger railroad. At age 61, he actually allowed himself to fly on one. And when the Concorde flew into Dulles International Airport for the first time, Dad was in his back yard in Frederick, MD. to watch it make its final turn inbound over the Frederick Airport. He told his young niece who was with him "You are seeing history," and she was. Dad saw the economy and his community change from agricultural to suburban and his land increase in value until it was no longer economically viable to farm it. Today, most of that land and area are grown over with ticky-tacky houses. The way of life Dad knew and lived has all but disappeared from the area in which he lived, all in less than 100 years. Growing up when I did and where I did put me squarely on the cusp of a lot of the changes I mentioned here. Although I was too young to work them, I remember the horses, and I really did learn to drive on a John Deere tractor! I remember how to split wood and keep the wood box full, and how to carry out the ashes. And I remember the warmth and comfort of sleeping under a pile of quilts with only my nose sticking out while frost forms on the inside of the windows. But I also remember the inconvenience of having to go outside to use the bathroom, and of heating water in which to bathe on a wood stove, and splitting and carrying wood, and stoking the fire for heat and a hundred other things that were normal parts of life at the time. There is a certain nostalgia involved. If I had to, I could live that way again, but I'm not sure that I would want to. Maybe, I'm getting soft. Or maybe, I am as much a man of my times as my Dad was of his. As my children observe my 100th birthday, I wonder what changes they will remark that I lived through. I look forward to being there to listen.

Veterans' Day

A haiku: We stood together For Liberty and Freedom, Sacrificing all.