Author: Ricardo

I started blogging in December of 2008.  One of my dad’s friends asked me, “Why?  Why do you write for anybody to see?”  It was a legitimate question.  I didn’t have a great answer.  I think my answer was something along the lines of, “Why not?  A lot of people do it.  It’s a way of spreading ideas.”  I had read Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” earlier that year and also hunted down and read a copy of his earlier work, “The Idea Virus”.  I’d gotten the message that I had something worth saying and just needed a forum to say it.  I also recognized that I needed to exercise my writing muscles and work towards those 10,000 hours.  So, I started to blogging.

I think my parents read my stuff regularly.  I have a friend from high school who comments from time to time.  I know she reads.  Apart from that, there’s not a lot of evidence that I get a lot of traffic.  A few people have made their way to my blog using key word searches.  I wrote about paella once, and I got some hits for that one.  I think people came looking for a recipe.  Another time, I saw a spike in traffic because I used the word “nipple” in a story about my kids.  That got some attention, but I am sure there was a good deal of disappointment when they realize where they’d been led.  But I keep writing, anyway.

Why?  Why bother continuing to write?  Well, I still have something to say.  The internet still provides the forum in which to say it.  I still need the exercise.  I still want the 10,000 hours.  However, I have found over time that I write fewer and fewer posts each year, not more and more.  To be fair, I write in other forums, too, but even that hasn’t really fulfilled my…desire.  Yes, I have a desire to write, to get better at writing, to use writing as my vehicle for communication.  I just lost my focus, my sense of purpose.  I meandered too far.  I covered too many topics.  I mixed this with that and threw in a bit of that other thing for good measure.  In the process, I lost the desire to write because writing became more chore than pleasure.  Let’s face it: pleasure is good.  I like pleasure.  I want pleasure.  Call me crazy.

In February 2012, I will turn 40.  You only turn 40 once, right?  You only wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say to yourself, “Self, I am 40,” once, right?  Well, technically speaking, no.  You actually wake up 40 365 times, every day for an entire year.  And this year’s a Leap Year, so I actually will wake up 366 times as a 40-year-old man.  Therein lies my new purpose.

For the next 366 days, I will provide you with unprecedented access to the mind of a 40-year-old man living in the United States of America.  I’m talking about unrestricted access into the inner workings of a middle-class, American male.  It’s all yours for absolutely free.  Am I promising 366 meaningful posts?  No.  That doesn’t appeal to me.  Remember: pleasure.  Pleasure and purpose.  That’s what’s driving the change in focus.  Instead, I will provide you with approximately 5 posts a week for 52 weeks.  OK, maybe 50.  I figure somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 or so posts.  Some will be meaningful, and some will be meaningless.  Some will be expositions of the literary kind seldom seen these days.  Others will surely seem like dribble.  This, though, is the beauty of the American male in the year 2012: you get what you get and you’ll like what you get.  My blog, my rules.

So, dear reader (aka Mom and Dad), join me as we explore what it means to be…Man at 40.

Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.

Here are some suggestions for your first post.

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Who has your back?

The answer: nobody.

Nobody has your back. Need examples? I’ve got some scenarios. How about broken promises from managers who ran out the door so fast chasing their own agenda that they couldn’t even apologize to you to your face for failing to come through for you? How about your contributions for the better part of the year going unrecognized because of a 3rd-Quarter change in assignment? How about the guy in HR who chooses to ignore your attempts at communicating with him for months, only to weigh in at the 11th hour to let you know that he doesn’t really support what you’re doing?

Do you need more hypothetical examples? Probably not, huh? You’re already making your own list…

Here’s the thing: nobody should have to cover your back. I can think of few professions and few situations where you actually need someone to have your back. Even then, whatever threatens you in the situation is probably threatening the other person, too. Like in the military, for example. The RPG can take you all out. Law enforcement? A well-placed bullet can take your backup out. Firefighting? It’s fire, for Pete’s sake! That stuff burns without prejudice. No, you cannot and should not ever rely on someone else to have your back.

See, that’s what makes having someone else’s back such a gift. It’s a gift you give others because you know it’s the right thing to do. Some times you sacrifice…big…to be there for another person. You do it without expecting anything in return. You do it because you care. It is that simple.

It is that simple for others, too. People will undoubtedly, inevitably come to your defense, to your rescue. Your world is filled with reliable friends, trustworthy colleagues, and compassionate bosses. It is just easy to overlook them and focus on the recent, intense negative feelings. It’s hard to hunker down and let the wave of misfortune wash over you. If you just have patience and keep your eyes and ears attuned, when the wave retreats, you’ll find yourself in a position to appreciate and give thanks for all the people who are covering your back in the ways that matter.

Need examples? How about the friends who give without expecting anything in return? Or the family that supports you every step of the way? Or the colleague who takes walks with you and lets you vent? Or the confidant who lets you spill your guts without showing any sign of judgment?

Do you need more hypothetical examples? Probably not, huh? I hope you’re already making your own list…

If you aren’t going to be the hero in the epic tale of your life, then who will it be? Your neighbor? The guy down the street? After all, isn’t a hero someone who does something spectacular and outrageous? Isn’t a hero who does something to change the world, to save a life, to alter the course of history forever? A hero is someone much more important that the meek, ordinary people like you and me. Right?

And what’s an epic, anyway? An epic is something majestic, impressively great, or unusually great in size, extent, or scope. It’s certainly not our mundane, simple lives! An epic is a far off adventure. It’s a journey of such immeasurable scope we cannot even…measure it! It is an undertaking of such depth and breadth that it lasts for years and includes an incredible cast of characters! An epic is The Iliad or The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, or even the life stories of Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama. Those are epics. Our lives are just footnotes in the Grand Scheme of Things.

Perhaps. Or, maybe, our lives are epics, too. Maybe our life journeys span space and time and are filled with an incredible cast of characters? Maybe an epic isn’t dependent on buried treasures or fearsome monsters or enlightenment at the pinnacle of spiritual understanding! Maybe it’s driving to Dunkin Donuts every morning, working a full day at the office, and watching “How I Met Your Mother” in your jammies!

A hero embarks on the epic journey, and they continue down the path until the challenge is met, until that which must be done is done. A hero engages the path, overcomes obstacles, and does things he or she would have otherwise thought impossible. After all, that’s what makes the epic tale so mesmerizing. That’s why we bother to tune into it at all.  

What about us?  The common folk?  Do we not meet the challenges?  Do we not slay dragons?Do we not run a troll or two out of town?  We do.  We do almost every day of our lives.  Sometimes, just rolling out of bed counts enough to be considered a Herculean task. What matters most is that we engage the path and meet the challenges, overcome the obstacles, and we do it decisively.  In the end, the thing that matters is that we act like the heroes in our own epic tale.

Life is an epic tale, and you are the hero.

The idea that someone would pay another person to file hardened dead skin off their feet, paint their toe nails, and clip the little vestigial claw-thing off their pinky toe is ridiculous.  Actually, the ridiculous isn’t that somebody would fork over the money for another person to do stuff to their feet that they themselves could do; the ridiculous part is that someone actually does such things for money.  That’s a career?  It’s just weird.  And it’s stupid.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Seriously.  Pedicures are stupid.

Of course, you could say the same about so many things.  I mean, who would pay a grown man tens of thousands of dollars to essentially babysit other grown people all day, checking up after them just to make sure that they are actually doing their job?  Would you pay that much if the people being babysat were experienced at their jobs?  Masters of their trade?  Fast approaching the 10,000-hour mark?  People at that level require less supervision, right?  Less constant meddling?

The truth is that chances are good that there is someone willing to pay good money for the thing that you are willing and able to do.  If you add passion and a healthy dose of dedication, chances are someone is willing to pay even more than that first group of people.  Given the opportunity, most of us elect to pay a premium for the pleasure of receiving the goods and services of a true artisan.  Given the opportunity, most of us can be that artisan…and there’s probably someone willing to pay a premium for us.

For the record, I clip my own vestigial claw-thing, but that’s just because a pedicure is not something for which I choose to pay a premium.  My Wusthof kitchen knives, on the other hand, are a totally different story…

Ever notice how many defunct websites exist on the internet?  Ever stumble across deserted blogs?  I do.  Often.

Our culture of consumption and waste is out of control.  We burn through virtual resources even faster and more prolifically than we do physical resources.  One of the great illusions of the internet and technology in general is that the ether is a place of limitless resources.  That’s simply not true.  Every action we take through technology in the universe of the ether results in a reaction in the “real world.”  All the copper and aluminum and silicon and graphite and plastic and rubber and glass that goes into the gizmos that drive our techno lives come from the Earth herself.  Natural resources are consumed at an astonishing rate to put that little smartphone in your hands or that tablet on your lap.  Forget the packaging and the fuel required to move all the parts from the mining operation to your local Big Box store; the gizmo itself is composed of resources mined, extracted, drilled, and collected from all corners of the globe.  And it’s assembled in a third-world sweatshop at a human cost.

That’s the waste of our physical world.  Is the iPhone 4S better than my iPhone 4?  Sure it is.  Somehow.  But, in the grand scheme of Life, the iPhone I carry with me works just fine.  It does more than I could have ever dreamed a computing device could do when I started programming on my Apple IIc.  I took more photos with that phone this year than I had in the previous…uh…30-something…years of my life.  There are over 2000 photos on my phone.  TWO THOUSAND.  And I’ve deleted quite a few. 

Every “click” of that camera consumes energy.  It drains the battery.  I recharge that battery every night by plugging it into a wall outlet.  It drains electricity from the grid.  Miniscule amounts, right?  Like any tiny, delicate snowflake, put enough phones on the grid, and you have an avalanche of electricity that comes from…where?  Coal.  Atoms.  Water.  Wind.  The infrastructure that generates the electricity has to come from somewhere, too.  More metal.  More plastic.  More rubber.  More, more, more. 

The space we waste in the ether, in the vast new network of electrons and photons and the manufactured hardware that runs it, translates directly to waste in the real world.  Don’t think that just because your disorganized, cluttered e-hoarders paradise is out of sight and mind…well, it behooves us to remain conscious of the human, ecological, and economic costs of every byte of data we consume.  We’ve simply managed to find an innovative, 21^st Century method to perpetuating our culture of waste.

The definition of insanity I favor: continuing to do the same thing, over and over, and expecting a different result. That’s the one I like best. It’s also the on I live most.

Why do we do that? Why do we continue to expect a new and different result from the same actions and the same set of circumstances?

My theory is simple: we do it because doing anything different takes too much work. Changing the circumstances takes work. Changing the behaviors takes work. Changing our expectations takes work. Change takes work, and work requires energy, and energy sounds tiring so let’s go take a nap and what were we talking about anyway? Wait, I have something to do in the same way I have always done it but…boy, I hope it turns out different this time because I’d really like for things to go more smoothly for me.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

I heard voices the other day. They were voices I’d never heard before, and I liked it. It was refreshing. It was exhilarating. It felt…right.

No worries; these weren’t whispering voices in my head. These were the voices of people I’d never met before. They were strangers, but they had something to talk about. Mostly, I listened. When I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I jumped in and became a part of the conversation. I went from observer to participant, and that changed everything.

I recognized: this is where I want to be; this is where I can make a difference.

As it turns out, when you’re in a room filled with strangers, and you choose to use your voice, you’re in a room filled with strangers who are listening to and hearing your voice. They listened because I had something to offer. They listened because I was talking about things they wanted to learn. They listened because I had the courage to speak up and offer a unique perspective. They listened because we were all engaged in a conversation that we wanted to have. Some spoke up more than others, but everyone…and I mean everyone…was present. They listened, they considered, they discussed. Over the course of a brief two hours, we all listened to each other, and, as a result, we all grew together.

I heard a new voice the other day, and the voice was mine. I liked how it sounded. I want more of that.

Give me more cowbell.

There is, of course, such a thing as being too proud. You know you have crossed the line when the feeling of pride is itself the source of pride. Pride is excessive when it serves to bring harm to another.

Otherwise, don’t feel bad about feeling food about who you are. Don’t feel bad about doing a job well. Don’t get embarrassed when you triumph and someone recognizes it. There are many reasons to allow the positive emotions of a moment wash over you.

Just remember who you are, where you came from, and how many times you have been knocked down. Be proud, be humble, and strike a balance between the two.

It’s hard to avoid cynicism when you’re surrounded by cynical people and the things about which they are cynical…well…sort of deserve the cynicism.  For this reason, I eventually became deaf to ideas about missions and visions.  Both the terms get flung around carelessly, and the results can often be found at the bottom of trash bins, printed on discarded letterhead, squishy globes, and obsolete thumb drives.  The Mission Statement and Vision Statement are both relics of the corporate internal-marketing fad.

It’s unfortunate because there are few things as important to success as the stated mission.  Don’t get me wrong; the Mission Statement is incidental.  It’s the process of understanding, deriving, and stating the mission that really matters.  Once again, the journey, not the destination, provides the ultimate value. 

I’ve driven across the United States.  I’ve driven from the Midwest to California.  I’ve driven from the Midwest to the East Coast.  I’ve driven to Texas, to Florida, and up the coast of Lake Michigan to the shores of Lake Superior.  I’ve always had a destination.  Along the way, I’ve learned that getting to the destination is a whole other part of the experience.  The journey, it turns out, provides just as much, if not more, opportunity for learning, space for incredible experiences.  If I focus single-mindedly on arriving at my destination, I do so at the expense of the countless moments in between here and there.  What a shame that would be, truly.

Ditto the journey of your spirit.  It is imperative that we understand the destination we strive to reach.  Our goals are important.  They provide us with direction.  That’s the Mission Statement.  Planning the journey, executing the plan, changing course along the way to adjust to circumstance, stopping to let the moments happen…these are all elements of getting their, of understanding what it means to state the mission.  When you wrap the experiences up, when you take the time to make sense of all the bits and pieces of the journey…well, then you’re ready to state your mission with clarify and with confidence.

Do you know the mission?  Don’t repeat a statement, make a statement.  State your mission.  Only you can.