March Gladness

It’s college basketball season, but who really cares? Gonzaga, Duke, UNC, all the other ancillary characters. Most people actually seem to be on vacation or making big moves or grinding through the doldrums of work or forecasting the year’s travel. Some days bring warm sun while others create yet higher snow piles. The world is in chaos and the local feels splintered. Mostly, it’s a time of the year when the here and now so easily becomes an afterthought.

A new candle, a new way to organize the desk. These are the small wins that feel big to me.

Important to Note

Someone reminded me this week that you shouldn’t shampoo your hair every time you take a shower, which got me thinking about all the things that are true but we don’t talk about because they don’t matter. Things like tomatoes being fruits, college stadiums being bigger than NFL stadiums, Diet Coke’s dubious relationship to cancer, and microplastics.

People in various states of malaise sometimes find themselves invigorated by these phenomena, compelled to impart their wisdom on otherwise happy people.

What these not-fun facts really reveal is the compulsions we all have to stay safe, in the know, and in control.

The Dallas Cowboys’ stadium seats 80,000 while Alabama’s seats 100,000, for example. You can take that one for free.

So Close

A nice guy asked me what interests me so much about endurance. Part of it is that so often endurance is not for something else, but a thing unto itself. To endure something is not necessarily to build, or produce, or achieve. It is to commit, to do, and to know that you can do it again.

Spring is so close, summer is so close. It will take endurance to get there, but the sun will soon be shining down more and more, illuminating all the life in the meanwhile.

The World is So Big

The pyramids and the sidewalks and the bus tops and the fields, the skies and the oceans and the deserts and the parks, the shops and the houses and the apartments and the theaters, the ticket windows and the breakfast nooks and the guest rooms and the pools, the innumerous places where you will happen, and oh, the places you’ll go.

Ways to Show Yourself You Care About Yourself

1. Buying something a personal finance expert would recommend against but you know it’s not going to break the bank and you work too hard to not have something you really want every now and then

2. Bathing with regularity and at an unhurried pace

3. Calling friends and asking how they’re doing and responding honestly when they ask you

4. Letting some days be Ls and others be Ws but still showing up for the next one

5. Picking things up and putting them where you want them

6. Lingering

7. Moving slowly

8. Laughing at, and with, yourself

With Love

“Alright girls, we really have to think of something different and special this year for the Valentine’s Day campaign. ‘Love the One You’re With’ was a flop last year and legal is still on my ass about the copyright case it got us into. Cindy, any ideas?” Rebecca asked.

“Well, we’ve been seeing a greater emphasis on expanding the definition of love that’s celebrated on Valentine’s Day, like family, friendship,community…so I was thinking, ‘Love Always, All Ways?’”

“Too woke. Amy?”

“Everyone is talking about Gen Z having less sex because they’re on their phones so much, so maybe something edgy like, ‘Get Off Your Phone and Get Off this Valentine’s Day?’”

“That’s better but still too tonally similar to the ‘Lady in the Streets’ collaboration we did with Brooklinen in 2018. Gertrude?”

“How about, ‘Would it Kill You to Do the F*cking Dishes Without My Asking?! Maybe Then I’ll Finally Stop Withholding Intimacy This Valentine’s Day!’”

“That’s it!”

Generative

Staring at a blank page and writing a terrible first draft is important. To think critically is to wade through the sludge, to sift and revise and refine.

Writing is chipping away at a block of marble until it resembles a person, or anything, or something.

Editing text generated by a software is wiping off a white cereal bowl made for you thousands of miles away, a bowl like countless others, one that, if it broke, would make you feel nothing.

Cutting Corners

The sidewalks are all shoveled, but the corners are all variant piles of snow and slush and mud.

No one owns the corners, the periods of transition and change.

In the messy middle, each of us must find our own imperfect footing.

Missing/Late

One of my favorite artists, Tehching Hsieh, punched a time clock every hour on the hour for an entire year. He took a picture of himself each time, so sheets of timecards and sheets of photos serve as the work’s documentation.

Equally compelling is the relentless discipline and the handful of moments when he misses his deadline. You can see the late time punches, or the missing photo. He marks and includes them.

Usually I send these essays out at 7:00am Eastern Time on Friday. I realized this morning that I had totally missed my deadline.

Late is better than never.

Deadlines come and go, but the work stays.

What to Expect When You’re Least Expecting It

There can be so much lag time between putting something in motion and seeing it done. The returned message, the built project, the delivered good or the sense of peace. So much of it requires small investments in the here and now, followed immediately with a willingness to let go, release, and forget.

I turned down a block this week and thought I had made a mistake. I saw a building I had never seen before. A man came out of it. “Did they remove the scaffolding?” I asked. “Yeah, finally,” he replied.

A day that feels like it will never happen, finally comes.

New York’s Hottest Club

This place has everything:

• Copious amount of happy, well-paid staff

• Hooks under the bar

• Happy hour until 7pm

• Fries with 3 sauces

• Dim, warm lighting

• On a side street but near a major subway station

• A cheeky yet elegant name

• A cheeky yet elegant wife after whom the restaurant is named

• A one-sided one-sheet food menu

• A leather-bound cocktail menu

• Low music

• An environment in which cell phone use is not only gauche but universally condemned

• A table available

Act Now

Many companies will encourage you to buy now because the price is sure to go up later. “Think of the money you’re saving,” they’ll say as you spend it.

The only arena where this logic is fully honest is when it comes to time. If you don’t spend it right now, it’s a loss you can never recoup.

The New Year often brings with it the Same Challenges. But if you Act Now, just think of the time you’re saving.

Resource Center

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We hope you’re inspired to be empowered to take control of the direction of the resources for you. And remember, you can always send an email to NOREPLY@PeopleConnect4U.com. No one will answer you, but maybe just typing it out will help you identify what it is you really need.

What They Don’t Tell You About Getting Older

It’s actually reinforced quite often. People tell you that time moves like a roll of toilet paper, disappearing faster as you go. They tell you that your body starts to hurt in odd ways and then in painful ones, that it’s harder to get a job and that your face gets wrinkled and that your relationships change and that suddenly you don’t recognize the celebrities du jour.

They also tell you that you gain wisdom, that you stop concerning yourself so much with the opinions of others, that some financial stability goes a long way and that each milestone age is the new 30. They tell you that if you’ve chosen what and who you love, then there’s nothing better than looking back on a life well lived.

What they don’t tell you is that no matter how much you’re told, it all comes as quite a surprise. The wisdom gained is hard fought, the body aches appear suddenly, the relationships change in devastating ways and the looking back on one’s life is as much a reconstructive exercise as a reflective one.

Few things that matter make sense. The joy lies in the doing despite of, even if, and again.

Quality of Life Determinants

1. Ability to make your home warmer or cooler

2. How often you eat what you’d like to eat

3. Flawless plumbing

4. Fast wifi

5. Friends that will answer your call

Rearrange

The fantasy of starting a life anew overlooks the reality that we can really only build new lives with pieces of our old ones. With each move we bring all the things that made the previous home feel as such. Bruises and scratches and losses ensue. Days and weeks and months are spent rearranging the new place to feel something like the old, the same paint on a new canvas.

The real fantasy of transformation is one only realized subtly and slowly. It’s found in the gradual shifting of one’s orientation to the world, from one of defense to one of curiosity.

I have no idea if this is true. But as I write amongst all my earthly possessions strewn about, I couldn’t help but wonder.

Beginnings

Hugs

Well wishes

Small gifts

Short speeches

Last walks

Last looks

Goodbyes

Doors

Locks

The bumpy, bumpy road it takes to soar.

Air Traffic Control HR

Team,

As you know, we are closely monitoring the ongoing government shutdown and continue to be appreciative to all of you who continue to show up to work without pay. Rest assured that we remain hopeful that back pay will one day be issued - though, like anything in life, this is not promised.

For those of you who have not showed up for work, please continue to do so. We just got word that we need to cut some of our staffing numbers. Your chronic absence is actually a welcomed convenience in this instance.

Many of you may be wondering what lies ahead for the holiday season. I advise you to start now in embracing and promoting manufactured platitudes such as, “the holidays are really about being at peace in one’s own heart,” because no one is going to be able to travel anywhere to see anyone.

None of us ever planned to get into this career. In that sense we’re not unlike adult film stars or drag queens. The only difference now, of course, is that those guys are still working.

Happy holidays to all. I’ve be laid off until further notice.

Safe(?) travels,

Deb

How I Feel About Everything

A plan in advance is nice, but so are good surprises. Bad surprises are bad.

I like to know when someone is meaning what they’re saying. It’s okay when they’re not sure what they’re saying. It’s worse when they know what they’re saying but not saying it.

The morning is for business and the evening is for pleasure. The middle is dealer’s choice.

Thursday night is better than Friday night, though Friday night is very great. Certainly better than Saturday.

Feelings are like the weather and the ocean and sometimes they’re incredibly beautiful and give you reasons to gaze with hope toward the future and other times you wonder when their torment will end and how will you possibly recover.

Money is a very important element but becomes more abstract the more there is. Remembering the real impact of money is important.

Relationships are our only forever homes, and the most challenging and rewarding one of all is that which we cultivate with our self.

Bigger Fish

Yesterday I visited the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame and Museum in Hayward, Wisconsin.

It’s main attraction is a giant fish statue the size of two or three school buses, one you can walk up into the mouth of much like the crown of Lady Liberty.

At the top I observed the humble but manicured grounds of the outdoor exhibit sprinkled with plaques and other larger-than-life lake fish. Beyond sat the weathered Hayward water tower, and to my right the still waters of the nearby river.

I had gone there by the recommendation of a friend and presumed the giant fish would be unmistakable from the road, but it really did blend in. The browns and reds and yellows and oranges of the trees hid the monstrosity. It almost looked decent.

The indoor exhibit included walls of fishermen holding giant fish of varying species. You could almost smell them.

It was a nice reminder of the legends among us.