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    • The Noble Road

      “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” — Ernest Hemingway

      I was out for a walk on the local rail trail, looking at the ice formations developing on the ledge, when I noticed someone had tagged some of the rock face. My opinion of tagging isn’t positive. It’s someone spray-painting inane symbols of self importance on something that in many cases was more beautiful before the affront. And yet I’m a fan of street art. It’s the same paint, but in my opinion the intent is different. I value order over chaos, and tagging nature is chaos in my mind. Collectively, we must choose a better path.

      I’m a better technical writer than I once was if only because I think more about the semicolon in Hemingway’s quote and the em dash I used to credit him for the quote than I did when I began blogging. But being a technical writer was never the aspiration (no doubt my writing still makes an editor shudder). Being a person who has something interesting to write about is the true goal. Some days are full of growth in this regard, some days leave something to be desired. The road to better continues upward.

      Better in and of itself is useless unless we leverage it for growth and enlightenment. The noble road is a path of goodwill towards others, of mutual support for common goals and uncommon dreams. It’s Kaizen (constant and never-ending improvement of the self) with the aim of arete (that forever evasive personal excellence). We may never reach excellence, but the climb towards it has a nicer view.

      We know that art is highly subjective, and one person’s junk is another’s art. I may not understand or appreciate some art for all that it represents, but I generally find connection in the intent of the work. When an artist aspires towards excellence, it shines through in both their art and in how they move through the world. We can see when someone is on the noble road just as easily as we can see when they’re on the road to ruin. The trick is to rise above the distractions of life and see which road we ourselves are on.

    • The Experience-Collecting Years

      “We all have at least the potential to make more money in the future, we can never go back and recapture time that is now gone. So it makes no sense to let opportunities pass us by for fear of squandering our money. Squandering our lives should be a much greater worry.” ― Bill Perkins, Die with Zero

      I saw an old friend at the local hardware store and caught up with him while juggling my handful of fasteners and domestic life enhancers. ’tis the season for stumbling upon old friends, as every errand seems to offer a harvest of good conversations with acquaintances from different parts of my life. When people get out of their homes more often serendipity offers opportunities we don’t get when holed up behind locked doors. Life is best experienced together, don’t you think?

      My friend in the hardware store asked me where I was traveling to next, thinking of me as a world traveller. In fact, most every friend I see asks me this question. Perhaps I overshare on social media, or perhaps they don’t travel much themselves. Who knows? I feel I don’t travel nearly enough, and that’s a driving force for more travel still. I view myself as a collector of experiences more than passport stamps, but the two tend to go hand-in-hand, mostly because if you want to experience something like climbing the Tower of Pisa or to navigate the labyrinth of the four quarters of the Old City in Jerusalem, you’ve got to travel to them.

      According to the Pew Research Center, only 11% of Americans have traveled to ten or more countries. I’m fortunate to be well past ten, and have a bucket list of countries I’d like to add to the list in my healthy, experience-collecting years. Once we’ve acquired just enough money and time to collect experiences (and it’s often a matter of prioritization), the only other currency to consider is our health. And friend, we aren’t getting any younger. With many experiences, it’s now or never. A Canadian friend, who travels far more than me, has a strategy to go to the farthest, most challenging places now, because when he’s older he won’t be able to do it. That seems pretty logical to me.

      We all have some idea of what a full life means for us. I admire people who are happy staying within the community they were born in, living a full and meaningful life within those borders, but for some of us that’s not quite enough. For we are nomads and adventurers, ambassadors and explorers. The experiences we seek aren’t meant to be for bragging rights at cocktail parties and local hardware stores, the experiences fill some void we feel within us, making us more whole.

      Our handful of experiences offers a return on investment in memories and perspective that is invaluable as we navigate the rest of our lives. In ten years what will the world look like? Will we even be able to cross certain borders? If we defer, will we be able to walk on ancient cobblestone roads or hike up icy trails in that evasive “someday, when”? There’s an opportunity cost to saying no to travel, just as there’s a financial cost to saying yes. I’m not advocating being irresponsible with financial currency, just don’t be too frugal with those health and time currencies. The best experience-collecting time is usually now.

    • Survival Skills

      “That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      “A ship in a harbor is safe but that is not what ships are built for” — John A. Shedd

      I met with several old work friends for lunch yesterday. We haven’t worked together in years, because I left their industry to try something completely different and never looked back. As with old friends we picked up right where we left off, caught each other up on other people, and stepped back into our present lives as we separated. I remember the uncertainty of leaving the industry I was in with those folks, and the climb that lay ahead of me in the industry I stepped into from there. Life offers us plenty of opportunities for growth, we just have to be bold enough to step into the unknown.

      As it turned out, later that evening I went to a holiday party with my current coworkers (I’ve been there a month now). One veteran asked me how it was going and was confused when I said I was still drinking from the firehose. It never occurred to him that my move to this new company would be full of massive change for me, because he’d been comfortably doing the same thing for years. He’s reached a level of expertise in a company that he wants to be in until he retires, and kudos to him for reaching it. I’m inclined to leap back into the unknown now and then. Call me a risk taker or reckless, but for me life is best experienced just out of my comfort zone. As soon as I get comfortable I get bored.

      That doesn’t mean that leaps should be haphazard or foolhardy. We must acquire and then leverage the survival skills we’ve developed in our lives or we’ll sink into the abyss after our leap. Organizations don’t hire people without the skills they need to fill a gap, but they take a chance on people who may have a gap in their experience but otherwise have the skills. Too often it’s us who lack the imagination to see that a gap isn’t a chasm. We may grow into the next version of ourselves simply by leaning into it. The people who stumble are usually looking backwards too much.

      Our lives up to this point have been an accumulation of survival skills that allow us to function and thrive in the complex environment we choose to live in. Where can we sail our ship next? Writing and travel are my personal call of the wild, and the small steps I’ve taken with each are merely an accumulation of skills. You might have a different call of the wild and other skills begging to be tested. The thing is, we’ve heard the call, and we’re often we’re more ready to answer it than we give ourselves credit for. Is that safe harbor really enough? Asking the question usually reveals the answer that was awaiting our attention.

    • More and Less

      “By doing less, you might accomplish more.” — Simon Sinek

      Not that long ago, I decided I hadn’t read enough books this year. It wasn’t a matter of not reading, it’s just that the books I was reading were pretty weighty affairs that took a lot to get through. Serious books, if you will. I still have some of those serious books awaiting my attention, but I’ve mixed in some more fiction recently to make reading more enjoyable again. Reading isn’t a chore, after all, it’s a privilege available to all of us who follow the light.

      We measure our lives through the lens of more and less. I’ve been reading plenty, but not plenty of books. A shift to more pleasurable reading is meant to kindle the fire, if one needs intention at all, but it’s also more fun than slogging through more academic reads. We only have so many hours in the day for someone’s thesis. We must enjoy the pages as we must enjoy our days.

      We can’t expect more than the 24 hours in the day, but we can use those 24 hours better with less: Less distraction, less overindulgence in habits that slow our body and mind, less of the habits we’ve carved out time for that aren’t offering the return on investment we once thought they would. Our reward is more: more productive creativity in our chosen path, more engagement with people who matter most, more energy to tackle the bold pursuits we aspire to add to our days.

      We’re running out of days in the year. It’s a wonder how time flies so quickly. Tempus fugit. We don’t know how many more days we’ll have, just that it’s less than what we had yesterday. Given that, we ought to take seriously these questions of more and less, and work to optimize our time, well, more.

    • A Path to Better

      “Don’t surrender your agency and revert to the numbing day-to-day grind of compliance. You can make things better.” — Seth Godin, This Is Strategy

      If you’ve ever been to the American Southwest you may have been warned about flash floods. It might be beautiful right where you are, but a downpour elsewhere upstream takes all that water that can’t seep gently into the hardened earth into a flow to the low. That in turn creates a rush of water into stream beds and rivers, which turn the clear water muddy and confused. And then the water begins to rapidly rise, sweeping anything or anyone caught in it into the confusion. The only thing to do in such an event is to climb up as high as possible and hold on to something solid.

      There are different kinds of grind. The positive grind is working hard at our craft with a healthy dose of hustle and focus. We know what needs to be done and we get after it. Writing this blog post is one expression of getting after it for me, hopefully the first of a string of positive expressions towards making the most of the day.

      The negative grind is often felt on Sunday night when you know you’ve got to go to a job you hate the next morning. We go through the motions, follow the rules and generally become conditioned to stop caring. The negative grind is a complete surrender of agency. There are millions of people suffering through their days right now—we must not let it be our fate.

      It’s not easy to tear ourselves away from a negative grind when we don’t have a clear path to something positive. The trick is to scramble out of it to something better. This isn’t always easy when we have bills to pay and a routine that locks us into place, but we’ll be swept away with all the rest if we don’t climb immediately. Grab a lifeline and hold on until we find our footing, then take another step and another until we reach higher ground.

      That lifeline is found in positive anchors like writing, taking a class and exercise. It’s a lifeline to agency, which leads to that foothold to higher ground. When the grind begins to feel less clear, when the stream begins to get muddy and confused, we must feel the urgency to take control of our own situation. Ignore the apathy of the compliant and find a path to better. Knowing that we must keep climbing or be swept into the abyss.

    • Life, On Schedule

      “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey

      It’s well-documented in this blog that I’m a morning person. My bride is just the opposite—a night owl who seems to charge along right to the end of the day. I wake up in the morning and she’s done a whole project while I slept. I try to keep pace and have my own projects done when she wakes up. Teamwork makes the dream work, as the silly saying goes.

      Whatever our productivity tools, we must embrace them to do the things we wish to do in a day so often filled with stolen hours. For my bride, a traditional Franklin Covey planner seems to do the trick. For me, the free flow of a bullet journal sets my days straight. Whatever the methodology, a system of scheduling and honoring our priorities each day keeps us on track.

      The thing is, the use of a planner or bullet journal is itself a system. My utilization of the bullet journal slipped away when I went on a long vacation in April and never really got back on track until I changed jobs. I maintained some positive habits during that time, but also some bad habits. For me, returning in earnest to the bullet journal coincides with a refocus on positive change.

      The last few weeks I’ve reset my compass, and with that reset, I’m shedding some habits that were stale for me in favor of habits that will hopefully help me arrive at those new goals. Once those goals are established, a routine must be identified to carry us to them. This is best exemplified by daily habits that are either done automatically or reinforced through a scheduled event. I use the bullet journal to check the desired behavior off once completed, and track it in a habit tracker in the same journal.

      Why all this talk of schedules and routines? Because it leads to a larger life. We can be generally happy with who and where we are and still aspire to grow closer to our version of personal excellence (arete). We can’t get to arete by winging it, we’ve got to build purpose and direction into our days, no matter where we are on our journey. In this way, routine leads to excellence, so long as the routine is scheduled.

    • A World Full of Curiosities

      “Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.” – Lovelle Drachman

      I’m at the tail end of a good book, the kind you can’t put down for the progress you might make reading just one more page. The kind you mourn the finish of as much as you celebrate it. The feeling that passes over me when I finish a great book is similar to how I feel the night before a long vacation comes to an end. You’ve loved the time spent on something worthwhile and expansive, but feel a bit melancholy that it’s over too soon. I suppose life gives us that lesson over and over again.

      Awaiting the finish is a stack of books all vying for my attention. Shall it be more fiction, or back to history, philosophy or science? It’s like going to the buffet line with a tiny plate—there’s only so much time and so much to read. And competing with reading are the holidays, a few movies and series I’ve meant to get to, and the ever-present call of the wild beckoning me to do something altogether bolder with my time.

      Being curious, and not judgmental is more than just a clever way to chat up a darts opponent (Ted Lasso), it’s a way to navigate life in a more enthralling way. Who doesn’t want to be enthralled by life? We ought to put the boring chapters aside more often in favor of the page-turners. Our time goes by either way, shouldn’t it be delightful?

      That brings us to this particular chapter of our lives, which may be fraught with as much boredom or enthrallment as we can handle as any of our previous chapters. Life is what we make of it, as we so often hear. We know that this world is full of curiosities that are simply awaiting our engagement with them. Who are we to ignore all of that by plodding along with blinders on?

    • The Thing Speaks For Itself

      I’m not a lawyer by trade, but I still believe in law and order. In legal doctrine there is a Latin phrase, “res ipsa loquitur” that means “the thing speaks for itself.” We may apply that phrase to many things in the world right now, and shake our heads at how we got here, but ultimately we must begin with what we can control. When it comes to our own behavior, the law is our standard for who we want to be in this world, and order is our routine or system, best seen in the daily habits that make something of our days.

      Bill Belichick has a philosophy that every New England football fan can recite in their sleep; “It is what it is.” Applied to our lives, these two phrases clarify where we are. The good, the bad and the ugly are all laid out for us. It is what it is, and the thing speaks for itself. We may add, “We’re on to Cincinnati”, as Belichick also famously said. For those in the know, that means what’s done is done and we’re only focused on this next thing now.

      But we can’t just flip the script and move on to whatever the next thing is in our lives without awareness of where we are, how we got here and thus, what to change in our way of doing things that will put us in a position for success on that next thing. To change we must know what needs to change. Jim Collins calls this confronting the brutal facts, that we may move from good to great.

      We’re close to the end of the runway on this year. What have we done with the time? No doubt there were some brilliant moments, but also a few stumbles. Which habits held up? What’s fallen by the wayside that needs to be changed or revived? Whatever we’ve done, whatever we’ve become, the thing speaks for itself. So what are we going to do about it?

    • Buried Treasure

      I know, you never intended to be in this world.
      But you’re in it all the same.
      so why not get started immediately.
      I mean, belonging to it.
      There is so much to admire, to weep over.
      And to write music or poems about.
      — Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

      I know that there’s darkness in the world. I know that my time in it will draw to a close one day. I can hope that day is long from now, but really, who knows? And so I work to make something beautiful of this day, even if the world never finds it—it will be my buried treasure awaiting discovery. Perhaps this blog post, perhaps a photograph, or maybe the way a passage I underlined in a book long ago, that escapes even me.

      The snow is accumulating, layering above the frozen lawn, hiding those stubborn acorns and oak leaves that fell after the very last cleanup. There is never a last cleanup, they whisper. Life is a cycle and we are merely surfers catching a wave in our time. We aren’t meant to wrestle with infinity, it’s always had the advantage of waiting us out. Those holdout acorns have become buried treasure too.

      Each day I find some small project to finish. A book I thought would never end, a bit of paint on the wooden trim, a call I’ve been reluctant to make, a paragraph written and re-written in hopes of being published one day. Maybe, like those acorns buried under the falling snow, our work will be frozen in time awaiting some moment in the sun. Our best treasure still hides within. We must stop hiding and venture out into the world, while there’s time for such things.

    • The Gap Between Tolls

      I was thinking about the old expression,“If you get onto the wrong train, be sure to get off at the first stop. The longer you stay on, the more expensive the return trip will be.” The source is a bit sketchy, as so many great quotes are. Most likely it’s been refined by time and many iterations, in much the way that we are. Anyway, the quote: It came to mind while I’ve been navigating this particularly eventful year. And as you might have guessed by the position of said quote at the beginning of this blog post, it prompts a story.

      Scrolling through LinkedIn to see what my network was up to, I came across a person I’d managed once upon a time. He’s a C-level executive now, on the board of a few companies, a real model of success in the world of corporate ladders and hustle. I wondered at the journey he’s had in the gap between when I last saw him at my going away party and now. He got exactly what he wanted back then, and I wondered at the price he paid for it. For every journey has a toll.

      The thing is, I can quietly celebrate his accomplishment without any bitterness at having not arrived at the same place myself. That going away party was my first step away from corporate ladders and hustle. My own journey carried me to the sidelines of high school basketball gyms and track meets and dance recital venues. When I traveled for work, my free time didn’t take me into bars or golf courses, but on side trips to waterfalls and old battlegrounds quietly awaiting a moment with someone who remembered the toll paid by the participants back in their time. There are plenty who would point out that my focus on family and micro adventures demonstrated a lack of hustle for business success. Delightfully guilty, thank you. I was never one to pay the toll of a C-level executive, and yet I haven’t taken a vow of poverty either.

      Our journey to personal excellence is ours alone. We know that comparison is the death of joy, yet so many look at where someone else has arrived at without considering the toll they paid to get there. The gap between the toll he paid to reach the C-suite and I paid to be present with my own priorities is profound. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I wonder if he still feels the same?