Author: John

From August 30, 2006:

I was two sentences into Sunday’s edition of Life in Alaska. The Mrs., ever attentive, asked what I was going to write about.

“Well,” I said, “This is a pivotal weekend. We now have enough wood that I’m pretty sure that we can get through the winter on our supply.”

The Mrs.: “You’re going to write about wood, again? John, that’s a bit nuts. I know you’re obsessed, but perhaps that’s the reason that your website dropped 0.02% behind google.com last week as the most popular website ever. Perhaps people are just sick and tired of reading about wood.”

I pondered this. I thought, perhaps, just perhaps, that The Mrs. was right, and I was turning into Bubba from Forrest Gump. She generally is. You remember Bubba, right? Here’s my version:

“You’ve got birch saplings, fresh cut birch, cured birch, split birch…“

Instead of writing about wood again, perhaps I could give a bit of insight into the psyche of the average Alaskan, edify and delineate the juxtaposing paradoxes that are Alaska.

“You’ve got birch stump, birch branches, aspen wood, blocked aspen, green aspen…”

It almost spawned a fistfight, and now my neighbors have taken up positions around the cabin making sure that I never leave again, at least until the riots in downtown Fairbanks finish up. They think that they’ve got me surrounded and cut off from outside contact. I fooled them. I’ve got wireless Internet.

“You’ve got spruce boughs, knotty spruce, dry spruce, black spruce…”

So, I sit here, and realize that yes, as usual The Mrs. is right. Perhaps I should write about something other than wood. It does make me a bit one-dimensional.

“You’ve got spruce branches, spruce needles, pine cones…”

Yes, letting the Fairbanks riots of ’06 calm down is probably the best course. Perhaps I could write next week about wood something else. Maybe I’ll even have a fun adventure to write up. That would (wood?) be nice.

“You’ve got gas chainsaws, electric chainsaws, log milling machines…”

As The Mrs. says, “Quit being so darn obsessed with the wood.”

“And that’s… that’s all I know about wood.”

“We paid him in gratitude and life lessons.” – Psych

There are a few Christmas mornings where you will exceed anything your children could have expected.  Sadly, Pugsley wanted an orbital space laser platform to terrorize continents and set him up as God Emperor, but only got Mario Kart®.

“All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.6, via the Daily Stoic (LINK)

Where is our attitude as we walk through a day?

While I was living in Alaska, I was stopped at the local Safeway®.  The Mrs. had asked me to pick up some child wax and I had to make a left turn in order to go back home.

I was behind a minivan.  The mother turned back several times, yelling at the children.  It took her (I checked my watch) 35 seconds to finally pay attention to the road and make the left turn.  I know, because I timed her.  I was getting ready to honk my horn when I realized – why be upset?  Why honk your horn over something so small?

Imagine how grateful I was when, after following this woman for 8 miles, like a stalker on parole, that I found out she was my next-door neighbor.  Yikes!

I’m adopted.  I’m grateful that I ended up with a family that didn’t want to strangle me.  At least didn’t want to strangle me too often.  I remember learning at the wise age of five that oil was valuable.  So I took all the motor oil in the garage and put it in jars.  Perhaps to sell it.

Or when I was in fourth grade, that I drew a picture of a spaceship so well that my classmate John accused me of tracing it.  I was grateful for that final bit of artistic excellence, since it went downhill from there.

I was grateful that my 7^th grade English teacher hadn’t read “The Forever War” by Joe Haldeman, since that was where that story I wrote (re-imagined, in current Hollywood terms, or plagiarized in normal speak) came from.

I’m grateful for finding The Mrs., since otherwise she would have broken some poor stick-boy.

Of course, I’m grateful for all of the kids, each in their own way.

I’m grateful for little scissors that I can use to trim my nose hair and ear hair.  I’m not especially grateful for the nose or ear hair.

I’m grateful for Maria Conchito Alonso’s role in The Running Man.  And I’m grateful she isn’t in anything else.

I’m grateful for the antibiotics that ended the pneumonia that otherwise would have ended me.

I’m grateful for my friends, who I call and burden with my lame, first world complaints.

Oh, and I’m grateful for Predator 2, even though Danny Glover is a nutcase in real life.  Oh, wait, that had Maria Conchito Alonso in it, too?  Okay, she can be in two movies.  But only two.

I’ve done an assessment of my life from time to time, and found that, of all the billions of people on the planet, I’m among the most fortunate.  And I’m grateful.

But sometimes I forget to be grateful.  And every time I do, what fills me instead?  Anger.  Envy.  Pride.  Despair.

And, let’s be real since it’s just you and me.  Sometimes you want to be good and angry at the idiot clerk at McDonalds that has none of the advantages you have.  Sometimes you want to be filled with pride because you won an internet slap-fight with an unarmed man.  And . . . sometimes you want to just give up.

The solution has been gratitude for me.  Go outside on a December night.  Take and hold a deep breath.  Enjoy the feeling of cold as it gives you goosebumps as you look up at the stars on a December morning, and realize you’re the only one seeing what you’re seeing in the frozen air.  Let your eyes adjust, and stare deeply into the stars, and understand:

You can be grateful because it’s good for you, because it makes you feel better.  Or you can be grateful because you should be.  Each of us is improbable – each moment we live on this planet a gift.  So, act like it.

And don’t forget to wax and polish your children daily!!

“I’ll only work with the barely competent.  Takes the stress out of slacking off.” – That’ 70’s Show

Sure, it looks placid – but two minutes after I took this picture the building inspector and OSHA showed up and shut the job down.  No hard hats, no safety glasses, and the building wasn’t even to code.  The foundation didn’t have properly spaced rebar – heck, the foundation was just FROSTING!  The Boy and Pugsley will be out on bail soon.

I can recall only a few holiday (Thanksgiving and Christmas) seasons where I felt a lot of stress.  Anticipation?  Sure.  I wanted the G.I. Joe® Mobile-Adventure® Action© Playset™, but I also sensed that the holidays, especially Christmas, was really about more than just toys and presents.  It was also about food.  And time off from school.  And . . .   Okay, okay, and it was also about family.

With one or two exceptions during my life, I have been pretty stress-free at the holidays.  Now even most of that anticipation is gone:  if I get to see everyone, great!  If not?  No problem.  If I get a great present?  Great!  If I don’t get a single present?  No problem.  If they really like the present I got them?  Awesome.  If not?  Meh.  I’m not going to lose a bit of sleep over it.

But a lot of people aren’t like me:  Thanksgiving and Christmas cause them immense, negative stress.  Stress is horrible, and it is (unfortunately) a gift we often give ourselves.  Don’t get me wrong – there are good stresses:  anticipation, competition, challenges.  These, overall make us healthier, so we’re talking about bad stress.

Certainly there are aspects of life (and stress) that we cannot control ourselves.  I agree – there are things that are visited upon us through life events that are pretty difficult.  Family death?  Job loss? Family (or personal) chronic illness or chronic pain?  Yeah, it’s hard for me to jump out and say, suck it up, buttercup – all is well, because sometimes that stressor is deep and may profoundly impact you – forever.

And stress can kill you – literally.  Bad stress leads to (and this is a short list, there are many more items that could fit):

• Depression – not the economic one, the personal one. This can be devastating.
• Heart Disease – which is the number one cause of life insurance payouts.
• Weight Gain – which everyone wants, right?
• Chronic Inflammation – which goes through and impacts multiple body systems, including your immune system.
• Subscribing to Magazines About Knitting – Don’t ask me why.

But stress can be controlled.  When?

When you don’t care.

Or, rather, don’t have a set of expectations of the way that you think the world should be.  For a large number of situations, our stress is self-imposed.  Your football team isn’t winning?  The waitress messed up your order?  The person in line at the store was rude?  These are really small matters, and why would you be upset about them?  Chances are slim you’ll even remember them tomorrow, never mind next month or next year.  If it isn’t a big deal, I give you the permission to just not care.

But . . . what if work not going well because the boss hates you – and hates you for no good reason?  You’ll remember that.

This really happened to The Mrs.:  She was hired for a job while her manager was on maternity leave.  The first time she met her manager was three months after The Mrs. started.  Her manager immediately hated her.  Why?  Her manager didn’t like the person that hired The Mrs.  The Mrs. lasted only about three more months at that job – she quit – and had stress every day.  Another stressor for The Mrs. was that there just wasn’t much to do at the job – it’s one thing to be busy and have to deal with office politics – it’s quite another when most of the day is filled with . . . nothing.  Her job, for her, had no meaning.

Yes, it’s hard not to care (or have low expectations) if your boss hates you and your job has no meaning.  It’s even harder to deal with this if you’re not fortunate, like The Mrs., and have the ability to quit your job.  But you can decide not to care if you must have the job, because you choose to find your meaning elsewhere, though given the circumstances above, you should probably be floating your résumé.

Let me give an example:  Victor Frankl was an inmate in a WWII German concentration camp.  Pretty awful place.  And he saw that everything, absolutely everything could be taken from him.  Even his life.  Except . . . Frankl saw that the one thing that couldn’t be taken from him was the way that he felt.  His attitude belonged only to him.

From his book, Man’s Search for Meaning:

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day.  On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back.  He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest.  What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old?  Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth?  What reasons has he to envy a young person?  For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

“No, thank you,’ he will think.  ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered.  These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”

If you ever want to feel small, just remember those are the words of a man who lived for years in one of the most difficult environments we know of, and came out filled with hope.

So, from Frankl, meaning is key.  You have to have your own reason for doing what you’re doing.  If you have a reason, you can endure anything.  Amateurs try to treat the wrong thing when they try to give you advice on how to beat stress.  Here are examples of really bad advice:

• Too Much Caffeine – Caffeine doesn’t cause stress. And coffee is awesome.
• Not Enough Exercise – I like to exercise, but lack of exercise doesn’t cause stress.
• Not Enough Sleep – I like to sleep, but lack of sleep doesn’t cause stress.
• Not Keeping a Stress Diary – Now they’re not even trying.

As you can see, these are bad ideas – they look only at attacking symptoms, and not the underlying problem.  Rule 1:  Ignore stuff that’s not important.  Rule 2:  Have meaning and or a purpose.

Everything else is details.

“Look, you two guys are just guys, okay? Mr. White, he’s the devil. You know, he is smarter than you, he is luckier than you. Whatever you think is supposed to happen, I’m telling you, the exact reverse opposite of that is gonna happen, okay?” – Breaking Bad

Yup, that’s a real, live open Blockbuster©.  You thought that all the Blockbusters® moved to Paris to live with a Frenchman named “Louis” in a dingy apartment above a bread shop in a sort of shabby, Bohemian artsy life that involved a lot of angst and cigarettes, but here is one that’s still open.

Pop Wilder was at the peak age of life, 45 or 46, when the big bank in the Midwest called.  They’d met him at a conference, and they liked him.  A lot.  They’d like him to move from being President of his small farm bank into the big leagues.

Taking the job would mean moving away from the small (population at when he got the job offer was about 750 people) mountain farming town where he lived since his birth to a larger Midwestern town (population zillions).  He and Mom discussed it, and he decided he would take the job.  After all, they were shoving his face full of more money (salary comparison in 2017 dollars:  $310,000, and those are American dollars, not those cheap Canadian dollars) than he had ever expected.  And the future was wide open – this was a BIG bank.  He might even be called up to New York if he did well with the Midwest bank, where the money could be even more.

He went in to quit, and called the majority shareholder, Mr. Potter (we talked about him earlier, here (LINK)).  Potter told him to stop and think about this – he’d be leaving the town he was born in, the town where he’d grown up.  “Why, Pop Wilder, you know everyone.  In a big city, you wouldn’t know anyone!  And the risk, what if you didn’t do well?  Then you’d be fired in a big city!  To make it easier, why, I’ll match their offer.”

Pop Wilder stayed.  One night, 17 years later, he would bitterly remark that he’d had the last raise of his life 17 years earlier.  Mr. Potter had no viable replacement for Pop, and had been a shrewd and manipulative businessman – playing off of Pop’s fears.  But Pop (and Pop’s name) was what he wanted, but he wanted it only at the lowest possible price.

To give you an example of what kind of a gem Mr. Potter was:  Mr. Potter owned a gold mine, and fired his mining engineer every two years.  He didn’t want the mining engineer to know more than he did about the mine.

Great guy, huh?  I met him once.  I felt like I was in the presence of something H. P. Lovecraft wrote about – some evil eldritch abomination from beyond time.  Or just an evil old dude.

Fast forward a very long time . . .

I was living in Alaska with The Mrs.  We loved it.  We had given birth to Pugsley up there (well, to be honest, I was present, and wrote the checks, so I gave birth, too, right?).  Our house was the right size.  The lifestyle was amazing – guns, gasoline, and woodburning fireplaces.  Plus they even had Internet.

Then an old boss called.

He was looking for me to move down to the lower 48, specifically, Texas.  Honestly, we weren’t interested.  Fairbanks was wonderful.  And I had even said (once upon a time) that I’d never move to Houston.

I told him, “No.  Thanks for asking.  We like it here.”

His response:  “What would it take for you to move this way?”

Me:  “Okay, (NUMBER).”  I arrived at number by adding my salary, my wife’s salary, her bonus, my bonus, and then threw 20% on top.  I thought that my unreasonable request would at least gently shut him down so I could move on and ignore him.

Him:  “Okay, we could do that number, plus a guaranteed 20% bonus, minimum.  And a signing bonus.  And we can move all of your stuff.  But the boss says we can’t buy your house with the relocation package.”

I was stunned.  He called my bluff.  The Mrs. and I spent agonizing hours on this, but finally gave in and listened.  He flew the whole family down to Houston and we looked the place over.  Not to our liking, but the opportunity was so large . . . .

We got back to Fairbanks, and found a job offer on my email.

Me:  “I can do it, but only if you buy my House.”  I secretly hoped they’d stick to their guns and say no.

Him:  “Okay, we’ll buy your house.”

I told my Alaska boss, who was not at all Mr. Potter, that I was quitting.  The company I’d worked for in Alaska immediately raised my salary by 20%, and promised that there would be more to come.  But the opportunity there was working on something much smaller than the new job.

Part of the calculations involved in coming to our decision was Pop Wilder’s life:  he had become stuck in a situation when he didn’t take the chance for significant success, and always regretted it.  In my case, I was going to take the opportunity – it was 100 times bigger than anything I’d ever done.

So, we moved to Houston.  And it worked out okay, even though we still miss Fairbanks.

But it did start me thinking, about opposites.  Staying in Fairbanks would have been easier.  How often is doing the opposite thing from what’s easy the right thing?

I think the answer is:  most of the time.

• Exercise vs. Couch – it’s obvious that sitting on the couch and eating Twinkies® is generally more pleasurable than exercising until your thighs are on fire and sweating buckets, but study after study (dating back 4,000 years to Egypt, where the first article appeared in Healthy Pharaoh Today) shows that, while more fun, couches kill.
• Full vs. Hungry – Imagine the feeling after a Thanksgiving feast . . . and now imagine it killing you. Yes, nobody likes feeling like they’re really hungry, but recent studies have shown that food deprivation is awesome for you, both short term and long term.  I’m mean, not starving to death long term, but rather periodic fasting.
• Party vs. Work – Hard work may pay off in the future, but partying always pays off now. That’s exactly the right answer if you’re running for congress.  Everyone else wants to see the work first.
• Discipline vs. Freedom – It’s hard to make a plan and stick to it, day after day, for months, especially when it looks like it’s not succeeding. But how many times did that one extra attempt push a person from failure to success?  Stephen King would be a dead drycleaner except for trying one more time (LINK).
• Thrift vs. Spend – Saving money is hard, when there are so many shiny things to buy, and so very much PEZ® to eat. So very hard.  But it will allow you to buy even more PEZ© when you are old, like me and your Doctor says you shouldn’t have it.
• Kindness vs. Selfishness – Okay, there have been a few moments in my life when I’ve cut loose and allowed myself to be horribly selfish. Those days are generally weekdays.  Or weekends.  And often occur during the Summer, but also Winter.  And Fall.  And Spring.  At least I try.  On alternate leap years I really try. See also:  Courteous vs. Rude.
• Honor and Loyalty vs. Cowardice – A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man but one. But I also bet a live guy wrote that?  Anyway, it’s tough to show honor and loyalty in a world that values neither.  So much easier to give in.  My problem is I have to look myself in a mirror and see the guy on the other side.  So is it my cowardice of not being loyal and honorable that keeps me loyal and honorable?
• Morality vs. Licentiousness – Apparently Hollywood hasn’t heard of “morality,” at least based on the most recent headlines. Maybe someday someone will make a movie about that?

The easy road is downhill.  Challenges are hard.  Letting go of the comfort of the warm bed on a cold morning is hard.  Growth and achievement require effort.

Do the opposite of comfortable – that’s where living a heroic life starts.  Or maybe heroism starts on Skyrim® or Assassins Creed™?  But heroism does start with taking a chance.  Being bold.

When was the last time you took a chance?

“Patients sometimes get better.  You have no idea why, but unless you give a reason, they won’t pay you.  Anybody notice if there’s a full Moon?” – House, M.D.

Proof time is fleeting.  This is now 205 pounds (that’s sixteen metric tons) and is going to college in less than twenty-two months.

If you live to be 80 – you will have lived through 1042 full Moons (maybe 1043, depends on when in the month you were born).  That seems like a lot of full Moons, but if you’re, say, 28, you’ve already burned that number down to 677.

How many of those full Moons will you see?  If you’re part of today’s smart phone obsessed majority, not many.  Here’s a pretty powerful quote from Paul Bowles’ book, Sheltering Sky:

Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.  And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really.  How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it?  Perhaps four, or five times more?  Perhaps not even that.  How many more times will you watch the full Moon rise?  Perhaps twenty.  And yet it all seems limitless…

In a point I’ve (tried) before to make:  You’re dead.  What, exactly, are you going to do about it?  How are you going to live . . . today . . . to justify all that you are?

Inside each of us is our vision of ourselves.  It’s not as the world sees us.  It’s as we see ourselves.  And our minds are powerful tricksters.  Jordan Peterson (I’ve written about him (LINK), (LINK), and (LINK)) spoke in one video I watched about treating a girl with anorexia.  She could easily distinguish, say, which book or piece of paper was larger, but she could see no difference between the size of her thigh and that of Dr. Peterson.  So Peterson had her trace her thigh’s width while sitting on a piece of paper.  Then he had her trace the width of his thigh.  She was shocked that his was so much larger than her emaciated thigh.

You know the type of person that you think you are – what kind of person does the outside world see?

I think that as we (as a society) become more enmeshed in the inner and virtual world, we become somewhat apathetical to what goes on in the actual, physical world.  I’ve talked with multiple parents of high school aged children and their parents are concerned:  the kids don’t seem to want to do anything.  They’re enjoying life, but the drive to perform and achieve seems to be missing.

“Where is he going to school?”

“We’re just trying to get him out of high school.”

And the Moon keeps circling the Earth.

How do you feel about yourself?

Does the world see you the way that you do?

What are you going to accomplish before the next full Moon?

There are no guarantees.

Get going.