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    • Hopeful Endeavors

      “Hours are like diamonds, don’t let them waste” — The Rolling Stones, Time Waits for No One

      “Remember that your real wealth can be measured not by what you have, but by what you are.”
      ― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

      I sat with this blog post a beat longer, deciding for just a moment to finally stop using this particular time to write and instead do something else with it. It’s an eternal theme of where and when to use one’s time. Who’s to say this is the best use of either of ours, dear reader? Yet it could surely be used in worse ways. How do we spend the wealth of our precious time? Surely, time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me… or thee.

      The answer, I believe, is to spend our time becoming. When becoming we are investing in a future self that is somehow better than the current version, assuring something of a better future. Investing is a hopeful endeavor in ourselves. It’s fair to then ask ourselves, what are we doing with our hours, and will spending them doing this improve my lot? To throw away time is one of the greatest of sins against the self, isn’t it? Yet we all do it.

      Looking back on the breadcrumbs that trace my journey to here, I see who I am and who I once was. I’ve become a better version of myself than the character I was then. But I am by no means a finished product. No, I’m a work in progress just as you are. We may be hopeful in our endeavor to become something greater than who we are now, even as we recognize that some things are best left in the past. We aren’t getting any younger, but we may still find hope in our personal growth, whatever that means to us.

    • Shepherds and Poets

      “For the shepherd the poet is too facile, too easily satiated. The poet would say ‘there was… they were…’ But the shepherd says ‘he lives, he is, he does…’ The poet is always a thousand years too late—and blind to boot. The shepherd is eternal, an earth-bound spirit, a renunciator. On these hillsides forever and ever there will be the shepherd with his flock: he will survive everything including the tradition of all that ever was.” — Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

      “Describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty — describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”
      — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

      We know great poetry, because it feels as eternal as that earth-bound shepherd. We know bad poetry because it clings to us like tree sap, cursed in it’s stickiness. A bad line of poetry haunts us for a lifetime. Great poetry feels revelatory as we discover some truth about ourselves that seems so obvious after stumbling over it. In the entirety of this blog, I’ve written one poem about a kitten who once thought she was a dog (she’s since become decidedly cat-like). I aspire to write like a poet but I save poetry for those who dare more greatly. You know who you are, and thank you for your audacity.

      For most of my life I’ve fancied myself a shepherd; tending my flock, trying not to step in it and eternally minding the weather. Aspirations of poetry are saved for moments of brevity in writing. Poetry for me is the last holdover of a time when I told myself I wasn’t good enough to be a writer, choosing history instead, where looking backwards seemed safer than facing the truth in the present.

      The thing is, Miller and Rilke were both on to something. The worst shepherds have their heads up in the clouds, paying no attention to the needs of the flock. The worst poets likewise dance in flowery prose, searching for clever instead of truth. Great poetry is earth-bound, with a bit of dirt and manure smudges showing the truth of the matter. We must live in the immediacy of the flock and write as if the wolves were just over the rise.

    • Between the Natural and the Divine

      “It is the morning of the first day of the great peace, the peace of the heart, which comes with surrender. I never knew the meaning of peace until I arrived at Epidaurus. Like everybody I had used the word all my life, without once realizing that I was using a counterfeit. Peace is not the opposite of war any more than death is the opposite of life. The poverty of language, which is to say the poverty of man’s imagination or the poverty of his inner life, has created an ambivalence which is absolutely false. I am talking of course of the peace which passeth all understanding. There is no other kind. The peace which most of us know is merely a cessation of hostilities, a truce, an interregnum, a lull, a respite, which is negative. The peace of the heart is positive and invincible, demanding no conditions requiring no protection. It just is. If it is a victory it is a peculiar one because it is based entirely on surrender, a voluntary surrender, to be sure. There is no mystery in my mind as to the nature of the cures which were wrought at this great therapeutic center of the ancient world. Here the healer himself was healed, first and most important step in the development of the art, which is not medical but religious. Second, the patient was healed before ever he received the cure. The great physicians have always spoken of Nature as being the great healer. That is only partially true. Nature alone can do nothing. Nature can cure only when man recognizes his place in the world, which is not in Nature, as with the animal, but in the human kingdom, the link between the natural and the divine.” — Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

      I know: I’m breaking every rule of compelling writing. But this blog was never going to be The New Yorker. It’s a collection of observations and picked up pieces along the way. The writing isn’t the end game, merely an aspiration in a life full of aspirations. Yes, I began with a long quote from Miller, to be sure, but I didn’t have the heart to omit any one part of it. His thought process reminded me of Henry David Thoreau, his observations reminded me of Anthony de Mello.

      Enough justification: Let’s get to the point already. We are all links between the natural and the divine, the problem is that most of us live a life completely distracted and unaware of our essential position. When we reach awareness life makes more sense, our place in the universe is clear, and we live in the moment. This is the peace Miller talks of, a place we immediately understand when we’ve arrived there ourselves.

      “You and I were trained to be dissatisfied with ourselves. That’s where the evil comes from psychologically. We’re always dissatisfied, we’re always discontented, we’re always pushing. Go on, put out more effort, more and more effort. But there’s always that conflict inside; there’s very little understanding.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      I write this blog not as a wise old sage, but as someone who has seen the light and struggles to linger with it. It’s not as if I don’t hear the email notifications poking at me, or feel the frustration of heavy traffic after a long week of travel, but I do put them in a place where they don’t rise to a prominent place in the moment. Peace isn’t a cessation, it’s an arrival. I know I won’t accomplish everything I want to accomplish in a lifetime, but I’m happy with where the journey is taking me. Let the lists of unvisited places be damned: I’ll do what I can in this lifetime.

      “Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barnyard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time.”
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      Between the natural and the divine is where we reside. We navigate living in a world filled with the walking dead: those afraid to truly see the game for what it is. It’s always been about now. It’s always been about the quiet connection with our fellow travelers. To be where we are in the season, firmly in the moment. We overthink the present, feeling it ought be more complicated than it really is. Sometimes it’s as simple as walking away from a partially-written blog post to play fetch with a pup we haven’t seen in a few days, that we may get reacquainted with why we’re here in the first place. It’s surrendering to the moment and truly being at peace with where we are.

    • Leap (Right Now)

      Don’t wanna wait til tomorrow,
      Why put it off another day?
      One more walk through problems,
      Built up, and stand in our way ,ah
      One step ahead, one step behind me
      Now you gotta run to get even
      Make future plans, don’t dream about yesterday, hey
      C’mon turn, turn this thing around
      Right now, hey
      It’s your tomorrow
      Right now,
      C’mon,it’s everything
      Right now,
      Catch a magic moment, do it
      Right here and now
      It means everything
      — Van Halen, Right Now

      Another Leap Day is upon us. Seth Godin’s blog post today suggested this is a great opportunity to leap ourselves. I would suggest something similar. And shouldn’t we take our own advice? Be bold today. Do the thing that we’ve procrastinated on. We won’t have another Leap Day for four years. Imagine, what can we accomplish in that time? Leap.

      When such thoughts creep into my head, a playlist comes to mind. Really, there’s a playlist for everything in my world, and Leap Day is no exception. Today’s theme then must align with the day. What better tune to have in the back of your mind on this day than Right Now? So catch a magic moment. Do it right here and now.

      When we leap, we ought to have a rough idea where we might land. But all leaps have uncertainty to them. That’s why most people never leap at all, but shuffle along in life climbing from one safe landing to the next. That’s fine most days, but shouldn’t we shake it up now and then? Maybe once every four years isn’t enough leaping, but isn’t it a good place to start? We might find we like the journey all the more.

    • The Grave of the Female Stranger

      Alexandria, Virginia is full of history, making it a wonderful place for a history buff to wander about. My early morning walk took me to the Alexandria National Cemetery and the neighboring St. Paul’s Cemetery. Honoring the Union dead was a given, but the lure of my trip was the tragic tale of a young woman visiting the region who died in 1816 shortly after her arrival. The story goes that she and her husband gathered the doctors and nurses before she passed away to have them swear never to reveal her name. They honored her wish and went to their own graves having never told her name. Her husband spent a small fortune on an elaborate tabletop gravestone and then skipped town before the bill was paid. The mystery of the Female Stranger lingers to this day. It’s said that her ghost still haunts the Gadsby’s Tavern, where she apparently died.

      Atop the gravestone is engraved the following:
      To the memory of a
      FEMALE STRANGER
      whose mortal sufferings terminated
      on the 14th day of October 1816
      Aged 23 years and 8 months
      This stone is placed here by her disconsolate
      Husband in whose arms she sighed out her
      latest breath, and who under God
      did his utmost even to soothe the cold
      dead ear of death
      How loved how valued once avails thee not
      To whom related or by whom begot
      A heap of dust alone remains of thee
      Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be
      To him gave all the Prophets witness that
      through his name whosoever believeth in
      him shall receive remission of sins
      Acts. 10th Chap. 43rd verse.

      The unique gravestone is easy to spot, and yet I always seemed to be looking in the other direction as I walked through the St. Paul’s Cemetery. The Female Stranger is not the only soul interred at the cemetery, and I spent some time reviewing the lives of her neighbors on my walk before finally circling back to give my respects to this young lady who’s spirit still haunts the region more than two centuries later. The tokens and coins left behind by other visitors indicate she is more famous in her anonymous death than she ever might have been had her name simply been revealed.

    • Front Loading Productivity and Purpose

      “Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.” — Stephen Covey

      Early risers are normally starting the day a step ahead, while late risers begin a step behind. That doesn’t translate into what each accomplishes in a day, but it does play a part in how we feel. I hate feeling like I’m late for anything. Some people in my life don’t stress about such things unless it’s a flight or other time-dependent circumstance. Who says one is better than the other? But we know which is better for us.

      Productivity isn’t dependent on starting early, but when we prioritize the right things first it helps ensure that those things get done. For years now that’s been writing, reading and my most essential work tasks. Everything else can fall into place, get piled on or slip to tomorrow, but the day will be deemed a success once I’ve checked those right boxes.

      We know what is essential in our day because it nags at us until we’ve done it. Likewise, we know what isn’t all that important too. To borrow a concept from James Clear, we vote for our identity one checked or ignored habit at a time. He would also suggest making good habits easy to complete, and bad habits more difficult. The best way to do that is to front load the most important things and defer the trivial and bad.

      I know a brisk walk or row would greatly compliment my habit stack in the morning, but I often defer this until late in the day where excuses swirl like leaves in autumn. As a result, the fitness routine is inconsistent. Fortunately I know the fix: do it first. Earn breakfast with sweat equity. Those established habits have enough momentum to sustain a minor deferment.

      The question that greets is each morning is, what drives us? Covey was right that our principles push us forward. When we live a principled life we won’t tolerate excuses from ourselves on why we didn’t at least try harder to follow through on our promises. We become less complacent with where and who we currently are and more proactive in getting after our “it”. For there’s no time to waste.

    • Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral

      Over in Killarney, many years ago
      My mother sang a song to me
      in tones so sweet and low
      Just a simple little ditty
      in her good old Irish way
      And I’d give the world if she could sing
      that song to me this day
      Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
      Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don’t you cry!
      Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
      Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that’s an Irish lullaby.
      — James Royce Shannon, Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral

      Saint Patrick’s Day came early for me this year when tickets for The Irish Tenors became available and I quickly opted in. Life is funny that way, isn’t it? Saturday morning I woke up and The Irish Tenors weren’t even on my radar. Monday morning comes around and I’ve got their voices ringing in my head. Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral indeed.

      We have many such moments in our lives. Opportunities to say yes to unexpected adventures or opportunities. It’s easy to say no and just keep on doing what we always do. Routine is our saving grace in some instances, but our shackles in others. We must develop our awareness and wisdom to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em. Opportunities don’t come around every day, as every human who has ever truly lived can attest.

      A good rule of thumb in such moments is to be bold but not reckless. What is the best that can come of this moment? What’s the worst? For something like attending an Irish Tenors concert, there’s almost no downside other than time away from routine—an obvious “hell yes!” For decisions where the stakes are higher, say changing jobs, there ought to be more consideration. But the filters work in either case.

      Attending that concert was delightful. I’m not one to walk around whistling old Irish songs, but I knew plenty of them. To use the French phrase, these are the moments that collectively bring us to joie de vivre and the joy of living. When we are active participants in such moments, especially with those you love, joyfulness is an attainable state. Jump right in and sing along.

    • A Walk on Plum Island Beach

      There are different ways to walk a beach. Some walks are meditative, some are merely workouts, and some are clearly meant for people-watching. The reasons why we walk lead us eventually to where and when. Each beach offers a new lens through which we may see the world and ourselves.

      My bride is a beach bunny at heart, and it turns out our pup is too. We’ve been taking her to a local New Hampshire beach for long walks and she’s grown more courageous with each bold step. She’s no water dog and won’t plunge in like our Labrador retriever would, but she’ll delightfully chase waves and bite at the sea foam. Her joy is ours, and walks on the beach have become a more frequent way of getting her away from the permanent mud season of never-winter-as-it-once-was that is our new reality.

      If Hampton Beach is a long, flat walk on firm sand, Plum Island Beach offers an experience more like Cape Cod National Seashore: soft dune sand plunging steeply in places to the ocean breakers. The dunes aren’t nearly as tall as Cape Cod, but the walk can be just as wonderful. On one end is the turbulent mouth of the Merrimack River, on the other are the dunes and swirling sandbars of Plum Island State Park reaching out into Ipswich Bay. In between are rows of homes ranging from beach shacks to McMansion: beach edition luxury homes. As with everywhere exclusive, money determines the future state of the real estate here. But Mother Nature has a say too.

      Plum Island is not an easy place to walk nor an easy place to live compared to other beaches in the area. Just as wealthy homeowners in the Hamptons on Long Island struggle with beach erosion and the fickle protectiveness of sand dunes, the people who dare to build homes on Plum Island face the same challenges. One day you’re living in paradise, the next you’re living through a nightmare of storm surge and wave action. It’s an audacious act to live in such places, emphasized with insurance rates that discourage the casual investor. It takes disposable income to have such homes in such places as this.

      Plum Island State Park prohibits dogs, so a walk to the end with the pup was out of the question, but there was plenty of beach available for our power trio. Walking towards the Merrimack River, we met a couple walking three dogs of their own. As soon as they said their dog’s name I knew it was a locally-famous author but kept it to myself. We all seek out the beach for our own reasons, and often it’s to get away from who we are further inland. We had a small reunion on the return and went our separate ways.

      Every beach has its own story to tell, just as each beach walker does. I wonder sometimes why we aren’t walking more beaches, and promised myself to add beaches to the collection of mountain summits, waterfalls and historic sites I’m collecting on my life experience list. The time bucket for such activity is now, isn’t it? We must venture out while we’re blessed with good health and a desire to do something with it. Perhaps we’ll see you out there too?

    • Why This?

      “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. ― Marcel Proust

      Yesterday I wrote of writing every day no matter what. The streak is very much alive and will be until the day it isn’t. The underlying question is why? Why do this at all? No fame or fortune or other such ego stroke. A blogger can’t even state they’re a novelist. Plenty of helpful people in my life would like me to lump a bunch of these blog posts into a series of books. Honestly, once they’ve been released into the world the words aren’t ours anymore. Perhaps that’s why they come so freely? No paywall or subscription necessary. This is just me in the moment, telling friends what I’ve stumbled upon on my journey.

      Writing is discovery. It’s finding something new within ourselves each day and bringing it to the surface. It’s surprising ourselves and others that we’re still at this thing. It’s the occasional comment from someone you hadn’t realized was paying attention at all. Writing is processing the complexities of the world and our place in it and putting a stake in the ground for who we are at this moment in time. I write these words without truly knowing where they’re coming from. We surf in this way with the Muse, along for the ride pretending we have some measure of control.

      Writing leads to an increased power of observation. It leads to new books and podcasts and small corners of the past that most people drive by on their way to someplace else. If awareness is the key to being present, then self-awareness is knowing when to shut the hell up and understand what is happening in the moment. When we write we’ve channeled that awareness into words. Here’s another time stamp of that dance.

    • Favorable Conditions

      “We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

      For years I didn’t write because the time wasn’t right to write. Now I write every day, no matter what, and the words flow. It’s not ever about finding the perfect opportunity to do it, it’s about simply doing it. Always ship the work, as Seth Godin would put it.

      So what of other things? When will the workouts be more consistent? When will the pergola be fixed? What of the broken window that’s been nagging? Life is full of things we say we’ll get to someday, when. Every one of these deferred promises pile up one atop the other on our mind, rising to the top, sliding downward for another promise until they are wrestled to the top again. A lifetime of deferred promises is no way to live a life. Do what must be done and throw the rest away.

      “You can do anything, but not everything.” ― David Allen

      Looking back, it’s clear that momentum plays a big part in where we are now. We are what we repeatedly do and all that. Does that make it excellent or merely routine? Repetition for its own sake can be our salvation or our ruin. If I only write when conditions are perfect for writing this blog would be published every month or two, maybe with a longer break while I took care of some other things. Perhaps that would result in better content, but I should think it would mostly result in lost momentum and another promise broken. Do the work, whatever the situation, and ship it.

      The thing to defer is the excuse. I’ve promised myself many times that I’ll stop writing this damned blog over and over again when things get hectic or I’m on a vacation or I’m amongst friends and family and the time used for writing feels better served elsewhere. What’s one day off from the routine? Ultimately I push something out anyway, just to check the box, written in a hurry on my Jetpack phone app and most definitely not perfect. Tomorrow I can quit this routine, just not today.

      Which leads back to that pile of promises weighing me down, nestled just so on the back of my mind. There’s a distinct loss of stability when we become top heavy. The answer is to shed ourselves of the things that don’t matter all that much in favor of the things that matter a great deal. Break down the latter into manageable bits and chip away at them no matter what.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.” — James Clear

      At some point we look back and realize that we’ve been doing that thing we promised ourselves we’d do for a good long time. It dawns on us that it’s become part of our identity, not just empty promises but clear examples of who we’ve become. Something as simple as reading and writing and taking a walk every single day make a huge difference over time. We simply must begin and persist in perpetuating the myth on our hero’s journey to whom we will become.