Up From…

I woke up this morning to an amazing sunrise.  I walked outside to get the Sunday paper and the birds were chirping; squirrels were digging up the lawn looking for last year’s nut or whatever – there was a perfect chaotic stillness all around that I too often sleep through or forget to appreciate.  It was damn near a Disney movie.  I sat down on the hood of my truck to watch the final threads of amber dawn spill through the naked backyard trees and realized that all I was required to do today had already been done.

I settled in to the morning paper bullshit on the front stoop and was pleasantly shocked to see that last November’s Chrysanthemums were peeking through the dirt having apparently survived the winter.  As I celebrated that win, I heard my down the street neighbor Hanoi Will say, Hey!  Did you know I served with Ulysses S. Grant?  I replied, Damn Will, that’s a new one.  Hanoi Will is a Vietnam veteran and every conversation I ever have with him starts with a similar question but always ends with his pontific explanation of Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror.

Will is a late middle-aged, middle-class African-American fellow and I’d call him a friend of mine.  For the record, he has also served with William T. Sherman, George S. Patton, Douglas Big Chief MacArthur, William Westmoreland – effectively anyone who is anyone in the annals of U.S. Military history; it just depends on the day I suppose.  Aside from the Michael Jackson constant, his other go-to story is his plight as a black man in a white man’s army, fighting as he puts it, the white man’s war.  I won’t condescend and say I have any real understanding of what he is ever talking about but some days I get it more than others.  What I always know is that he’s a good man and as far as I can see, the country he fought and damn near died for could care less.

It wasn’t quite 9:00 in the AM and as I was still reeling from yet another manic conversation with Hanoi Will, I determined to read a book that’s been collecting dust on my shelves for years, Up From Slavery.  I won’t break it down for you entirely because I think you have to come to it on your own terms.  If you don’t know, it is Booker T. Washington’s autobiography; published in 1901.  If I’m honest, it is one of those books that almost all liberals own (have never read) and display prominently on their most public bookshelf for the entire world to see.  I regrettably fell into that category until after this morning.  It’s a quick read and should be required for all Americans.  It’s not even (150) pages but it’s packed with information about what it means…what it should mean to be an American.  I’m coming at this from a middle-class white boy perspective – I can’t imagine what it must mean to the African-American community.

I will admit that BTW’s humility and deference to others is off-putting to my 20^th century punk rock understanding of individualism.  I recognize however that it was the only way that a black voice would have even been mildly palatable to a society that had been trained to believe that all black men were wild animals and their only motivation was to ravage white women – what an unfortunate commentary on the values of this Christian nation, right?  That said I can’t deny the power of the story.  I want him to be a bad-ass and kick the shit out of whomever, whatever, but he never does – he never even speaks ill of his oppressors.  It’s a lesson in how to resist from a positive place.  Not only to resist, but to overcome that which is keeping you down.  Can you imagine being a f*@$ing slave?  A slave?  Just let that sink in for a minute.   

If nothing else it’s a lesson in how to overcome, right?  It’s almost an American ideal at this point in time to be disappointed in your life, to feel disenfranchised at some level.  It is true that if you are not pissed off, you are not paying attention because we have made a mockery of what were the founding fathers hopes.  There is nothing that is fair about the free United States of America and having read this book it is clear that there never was.  I can assure you though, that whatever hardship you perceive as insurmountable pales in comparison to what Booker faced.  The mechanisms that you feel are keeping you from realizing your truth are miniscule when compared to the absolute machine that was in place to hold post-Civil War Negroes down.

We all have bad days.  We all feel at times that the circumstances of our lives are conspiring against us, that the world is pissing down our back.  Those days almost always pass, but the next time you feel like you’re having one of those days, I implore you to read Up From Slavery.  It will fill you with understanding of personal responsibility, the value of hard work.  It might not change anything for you but you’ll begin to understand the subtlety and power of race, of what society thinks is fair, even still.  You’ll learn how to advance your agenda against all costs, how to affect a society you’d be proud to be a part of. 

If you’re determined to be pissed off about your lot in life, don’t read this book and don’t listen to a word I’ve said.  It will only teach you how to work positively with and understand other people, people that you disagree with on every level.  It will only show you how to pick yourself up from whatever it is…up from your dipshit boss, up from your lunatic husband or wife, up from the shitty neighborhood you grew up in, up from poverty, up from whatever.  It’s imperative to understand that the most successful people on earth didn’t do it all by themselves.  No matter what you’ve heard, everyone has needed and has accepted a hand up.

I don’t think I ever understood…I damn sure never wanted to accept that reality until I read Up From Slavery.  No matter what you’ve heard, everyone has needed a hand up – no one has ever done anything completely on their own, but it always starts with you.  You can’t be helped if you’re not willing to see that you need it.

I walked outside just now and watched the timid sun retreat beyond points westward.  The birds are still chirping, the squirrels are still digging and it remains perfectly chaotically still.

The Act is the Reward

Architecture, if practiced as a business only will kill a creative soul.  Conversely, a creative soul without a business mind will fail as an architect.  That’s one of the many knocks on architects, right?  If you’re an architect or even remotely affiliated with the construction industry in any sense you’ve seen this unfortunate phenomenon firsthand.  By our very nature we are idealistic creatures – otherwise we wouldn’t have chosen this career.  We get tangled in the idea and forget the budget or any number of similar scenarios.  I’ve become the opposite.  Over the last however long, I’ve concerned myself more with profit margins than I have with vision.  I’ve admittedly forgotten the art of architecture.

I’m likely not alone in that realization but the most hardened jaded architect still (if only secretly) believes that a good design can change the world.  Too often, we – and when I say we I regrettably mean I – become consumed with the business aspect of practice; we fall into the perfect trap of staying in business and fail to recognize that we are not selling a commodity.  Yes, staying in business has recently proven to be an art and a skill unto itself that many couldn’t manage and those firms and individuals did not survive the recession.  As distressing as that fact might be, I choose to see it as a Darwinian cleansing of the job.  Almost as a stubborn coalition, we have continued to give the client what they want, not what they need.  My firm isn’t immune to this reality and we are tops, unequaled actually in our market niche, but complacency is the mortal enemy of all things good.  Art should always win the day.

It’s almost unavoidable though that the art and discipline of pure design is forced to take a backseat in a market driven economy, but that shouldn’t make it acceptable.  Yes, there is truth in the futility of reinventing the wheel but if we do not adapt and advance our significance, we are in the death throws of our last days not only as a vocation, but more importantly as a moral standard against which all professionals are judged.  The shitty bit is that it will be a death bed of our own making. 

A friend recently asked me if I still loved what I do.  I instinctually gave her the stock answer, Of course I do.  Though that is indeed true, I was compelled to follow with, but my passion lies elsewhere.  I don’t think that I had given any real thought to my level of satisfaction with my work prior to that exchange in a long time.  It’s just what I do for a living, right?  The avalanche of canvases filling my walls and spilling out of my studio should have been an indicator of this prickly reality – that which I love isn’t fulfilling my creative desires.

I’m not so naïve as to assume that anything I do or say will have a measurable affect on anyone or anything but that’s no reason not to try, right?  To that end, I decided a few weeks ago to stage an internal design competition in my studio.  I created a fictitious client with fictitious parameters, a fictitious deadline.  I filled the program with useless information and gave clear, if cryptic, instruction on the client’s expectations.  I saw an opportunity not only to reignite my own creative vigor towards my chosen path but to set sails more directionally toward the firm I want to be a part of and to ultimately own, my firm.  I use the term my firm loosely, by the way.  It’s not mine in any financial or legal sense, but I most definitely have an interest in the consequence of its future.  I cut my teeth here – these gents gave me an opportunity when most firms didn’t, wouldn’t dream of doing so, so yeah I’m loyal.  I’ve been vocal about my intent on ownership since day one and I’ve been emotionally and psychologically invested from that day to this. 

Back to the competition, I must admit that my expectations for my studio’s performance were next to nil.  There was a lot of bitching and moaning prior to and we have been slammed the last couple of weeks.  Truthfully, I had been preparing myself all week for the holier than though heavy I would have to lay on them about their personal commitment to their professional development and the value of the opportunity and the significance of being an architect and why I’ve been so pissed off about everything lately and on and on and on.  I had epic material prepared, but as they so often do, they surprised me.  They all brought really good, outside the box design to the table.

It was a tiny moment in the grand scheme of all things, but I sat down this afternoon with some friends around a table and talked about architecture; end of list. You just can’t know what that means to me.  Of course it was tempered with budget and client need and constructability but the crux of the conversation was about what it is that we do.  It was personal.  It was specific.  It was about the implication of and veracity of thoughtful design.  It was exactly what I needed. 

In a selfish effort not to be an asshole, I offered my own design up for critique based on the same parameters as the rest of the cadre.  I hadn’t produced an actual design in too many days to count.  I knew as soon as I put pencil to paper that the root of my distress lay not in the quality of my work product, but more so in the absence of my embracing of the work.  As my pulse quickened, I was reminded of why I am who I am and it was as validating an experience as I can remember.  It dawned on me that the reward isn’t the final product.  It’s not the accolades one might acquire.  It’s not that my design will necessarily change anything.  It’s not that I will be able to pay the mortgage this month.  The reward isn’t that I might be regarded as a decent architect.  It’s not that we will stay in business or even that we will get repeat clients on the strength of my performance and grow the business.  The reward is wholly embodied in the act of creating the design.  I’ve known this about art forever, but it never occurred to me to apply it to my career.  The reward is not selling the piece – the reward is the act of painting it.

The act is the reward.  I said this to my studio this afternoon and you could almost feel the gravity in the room shift due to the collective impulsive rolling of eyes.  It’s a hard sell, especially to Millennials but it’s a valid statement and I stand behind it.  The act is the reward.

That singular narcotic moment of creative bliss may only come once a decade, but when it hits, Holy Toledo you know you are alive.  

The Day the Music Died

In the early morning hours of 3 February 1959, an inexperienced pilot lost the horizon and unintentionally crashed a single engine Beechcraft into a snow covered corn field near Clear Lake, Iowa killing all four souls on board, including himself.  If you know anything about anything, you know that this fateful event ended the lives of three musicians – J.P. Richardson, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly.  If you know even less than that, you likely know that this day has come to be known as the day the music died as coined and memorialized in Don McLean’s early 1970s hit American Pie. 

J.P. Richardson was a Beaumont, Texas DJ, an Army veteran, and by all accounts a loving husband and doting father.  Musically, he was effectively a novelty act however and if not for the ill-fated events mentioned above you would probably not know his name (and might not anyway in all reality).  His death, though tragic in every conceivable way is not the stuff a legend makes.

Ritchie Valens was / is an icon in the Latino rock ‘n’ roll community.  He influenced and has been covered by artists as obvious as Carlos Santana and as diverse as the Ramones and MxPx.  I want to be careful not to negate that legacy, but be honest; if you hadn’t watched that shitty Lou Diamond Phillips movie in the late ‘80s would you know his name?  Valens should be celebrated because he gave hope to a still marginalized segment of the American population, not because he won a coin flip with Waylon Jennings and died in a corn field as a result.

Buddy was by far, the most prominent of the three.  I won’t bore you right now with the particulars of his life or music because quite honestly you should already have them committed to memory.  Suffice to say that his significance in the lexicon of rock ‘n’ roll is of a singular and unequaled fashion.  His shadow is indeed long.

Don McLean’s song has never been fully explained and nobody really knows for sure what the artist truly intended and that is entirely by his design.  I’ve always imagined it as a metaphor for what he saw his country going through at the time, during his life.  As much as I’m capable of, I get it.  The 1950s, at least from a white, middle class perspective were apparently a helluva lot of bubble gum and sock hop nonsense or whatever and this calamity was the first that forced the collective to acknowledge an actual reality.  Intellectuals have debated AP’s cryptic lyrics for years and even in the least progressive of circles, the song is regarded as little more than a vehicle to carry McLean’s thesis of America’s lost innocence to a deaf ear.

In his magnum opus, McLean refers to them as the three men I admired most, the father, son and the Holy Ghost…

I can’t put myself in his mental state at the time he wrote those or any other words, nor can I know what it felt like to be his precursor self; a thirteen year old paperboy folding newspapers in New Rochelle, New York and seeing a headline recounting the night before plane crash.  Between those two points in time however – barely a decade, American life had certainly taken a well documented turn.  The bubble gum and sock hops of his youth, the American ideal as it were had been replaced with unprecedented social unrest and body counts from an increasingly unpopular war in Southeast Asia on the evening news.  That must have sucked, but to reference their passing as comparable to that of the Christian Holy Trinity?  Come on, bro.

That he chose to use this tragic event as the first domino of what he saw as America’s stumble, though artistically valid and possibly dead on point has always irritated me.  He’s yet to come clean about his intent and that feels cheap.

The truth of the matter, at least as I have always viewed it is this.  In no uncertain terms, the events that precipitated the writing of American Pie are heartbreaking but at this point in time, all involved are better off because of it.  Forgive my impertinence, but Richardson was never going to be more than a local celebrity, a footnote in history at best without this.  Yes, I’m sure that fact is of little condolence to his surviving family.  Valens may not have been given his earned and public due as a pioneer of Chicano music and culture if not for that Midwestern night.  Again, there is no comfort for his family in that statement.  Buddy was a star, but there were indications that even his star was waning rapidly.  His widow could care less what I think, but I’m almost glad Buddy died that night.  He was supposed to die then…they all were.  That's harsh perchance, but fifty-five years have passed from that day to this though and I’m okay saying it.

Rationally, Buddy’s best music was behind him most likely.  He had already disbanded The Crickets and begun experimenting with un-rock ‘n’ roll orchestral arrangements.  Lubbock was in his distant rear view and the naïve purity with which he insisted those early records were formed and recorded was a secluded recollection.  His aspirations reportedly were steering him away from music all together and more toward a hopeful career in Hollywood.  He had recently fallen in love with and married a beautiful Puerto Rican girl named Maria Elena, and was only on tour because of a legal dispute with his dipshit manager who was siphoning nearly all earnings away from the Holly’s.  Maria miscarried their first child upon hearing the news of his death.

American Pie is a predictable metaphor and in my opinion should in no way be viewed as anything more than that.  It's a helluva good song, but the hell of it is that this wasn’t even nearly Don McLean’s best song.  His are some of the most insightful lyrical words and music you will never hear.  There are amazing lyrics buried in the grooves of his records that most people have sadly missed.  In spite of the fact that I view him perhaps unfairly as a lecherous douche bag in a business model, I dig that he said what he felt.  Even in the aforementioned mania, this jewel is buried…I was a lonely teenage broncing buck, with a pink carnation and a pickup truck… Who hasn’t felt that way in their life, right?

Did he choose the wrong metaphor?  In my opinion, yes.  His presumed intent was to celebrate, but he ultimately only trivialized all three men AND didn't even mention the pilot.  I’m still a little pissed off about it, but I feel better after writing it all incompletely down – maybe that’s the way Don felt too.  Maybe we would know if he wasn’t so immaturely consumed with and protective of his own art.  As much as you insist that it is, 3 February is not about you Don McLean.

Regardless,

Rest in Peace:

Roger Arthur Peterson

Jiles Perry, J.P. The Big Bopper Richardson

Richard Steven Ritchie Valens Valenzuela

Charles Hardin Buddy Holley (Holly).

You were all good people, and the music has most definitely not died.

Thirty-One Days in January

I'm nearing the scheduled end of this experiment and I can't help but be impressed with my unlikely dedication to it.  There's a certain comfort in the forced repetitive creative that I didn't anticipate.  I'm going to think about that some more before I write about it – meantime catch up on the project at the links below if you're new to the blog.

Thirty-One Days in March (Part 1)

Thirty-One Days in March (Part 2)
Thirty Days in April

Thirty-One Days in May

Thirty Days in June

Thirty-One Days in July

Thirty-One Days in August

Thirty Days in September

Thirty-One Days in October

Thirty Days in November

Thirty-One Days in December

Wednesday – 01 January 2014

Day (1) art.  I hope the rest of this year isn't as chaotic as this little guy is.  If it is, so be it...I'm about to make 2014 my bitch regardless.     

Song of the Day: Blue Collar Man - Styx

Thursday – 02 January 2014

Local color.

Song of the Day: The Sidewinder - Joe Sample and the Soul Committee 

Friday – 03 January 2014

This looks like a good drawing assignment, no?  

Song of the Day: Amie - Pure Prairie League

Saturday – 04 January 2014

Runaway meat train.  

Song of the Day: Make You Feel Better - Red Hot Chili Peppers 

Sunday – 05 January 2014

Slow Sunday morning.  

Song of the Day:  Sunday Train - Cracker

Monday – 06 January 2014

Random ATL: Sovereign

Song of the Day: Prisoner of Society - The Living End

Tuesday – 07 January 2014

Windshield sunset.  It was barely seven degrees when I took Belle out for her morning constitutional – that's ridiculous in every possible way.  These evening colors don't suck though and that feels like an even trade to me.

Song of the Day: Open Road Song - Eve 6

Wednesday – 08 January 2014

Mediocre pic of today's untitled.

Song of the Day: Roses - Los Lonely Boys 

Thursday – 09 January 2014

In midtown tonight for a Paul Rand MODA exhibit.  Every time I see these sweeping retrospectives of uber-intelligent individuals in similar settings I feel like shit and realize that I've got ground to make up – how the hell can one person accomplish so much in such a short amount of actual time!?  It's irritating, what the hell have I been doing with my life, right?  An abbreviated postscript of lamb chops and bourbon at Shout and the commiserating drive home convinced me that I just haven't found the thread yet, my voice or whatever.  When I do, I will set the market...I'm sure of it.

Song of the Day: Gun - Uncle Tupelo

Friday – 10 January 2014

Cool morning fog. 

Song of the Day: California Dreamin' - The Mamas and The Papas

Saturday – 11 January 2014

Sometimes a puzzle, AM Gold and a deep red are all that's needed to make a Saturday night perfect. 

Song of the Day: Right Down The Line - Gerry Rafferty 

Sunday – 12 January 2014

Today I did this. 

Song of the Day:  Soak The Sin - Blind Melon

Monday – 13 January 2014

The view from this afternoon.

Song of the Day:  A Day At The Races - Jurassic 5 

Tuesday – 14 January 2014

These skeletal jewels have been absent from the ATL skyline far too long but they're coming back with a quickness (and a more vetted investment strategy I trust).  I don't trust it actually, but I dig it.  Best case scenario, this is what recovery looks like.

Song of the Day:  Officer - Slightly Stoopid 

Wednesday – 15 January 2014

At a site visit up in Adairsville this afternoon I realized that you can see the foothills of what I presume to be the Blue Ridge Mountains from the roof top.    

Song of the Day: Slave To The South - The Weeks   

Thursday – 16 January 2014

Random ATL: One Atlantic Center

Song of the Day: For Whom The Bell Tolls - Metallica

Friday – 17 January 2014

Backdoor sunrise. 

Song of the Day: Red Rubber Ball - The Cyrkle 

Saturday – 18 January 2014

This is an unfortunate study in how not to accurately depict a skyline sunset on a small canvas and that is probably exactly why I love it so much.

Song of the Day: Mz. Hyde - Halestorm

Sunday – 19 January 2014

Belle's doing her part to mulch up all the neglected leaves in the backyard before spring comes and I have to rake them all away.  That's a good dog. 

Song of the Day: September - Earth, Wind & Fire

Monday – 20 January 2014

Misty morning 'Hooch meditation.  

Song of the Day: Don't Cross The River - America

Tuesday – 21 January 2014

GDOT is replacing the Northridge bridge over 400 for some reason, much to my delight.  It really is astonishing how easily entertained I am. 

Song of the Day: (No More) Paddy's Lament - Flogging Molly

Wednesday – 22 January 2014

How wonderful this sunrise would have been if not for all of this nonsense crossing the morning sky.  It's still beautiful yes, but just south of epic – this is why I hate power lines.

Song of the Day: Someday - The Strokes

Thursday – 23 January 2014

Random ATL: Monarch Tower 

Song of the Day: Peace Sells - Megadeth

Friday – 24 January 2014

Another amazing January sunset.  I'm loving this winter sky.  

Song of the Day: Rollerskate Skinny - Old 97's

Saturday – 25 January 2014

My firm is active with The Drake House in Roswell.  It's an organization that sets out to help destitute single mothers get their feet back on the ground after a bad patch of life – it's a hand-up not a hand-out type of deal and I dig that.  Today a group of my coworkers and I built shelves inside of the storage building we'd previously donated to their cause.  In spite of the cold temps, it felt good to get my hands dirty again, to reconnect with my past as it were and to give back to the community in a small way.  With my karmic worth temporarily restored, I went home and watched a gang of Civil War documentaries, napped and listened to exorbitant amounts of Uncle Tupelo.  The what surely is the obvious conclusion to such a day is this little painting above.  I call it chickamauga.

Song of the Day: Box Of Rain - Grateful Dead

Sunday – 26 January 2014

Weatherman says it's going to snow next week.  If it sticks, we're screwed.  Even without any snow it has been a wicked cold January.

Song of the Day: No Sugar Tonight - The Guess Who 

Monday – 27 January 2014

In Savannah tonight for a scheduled day-long tomorrow meeting.  I had acceptable crab cakes, learned a bit about geocaching across the street from this tourist trap and laughed a lot about not much.  It was a good day.

Song of the Day: Dancing In The Moonlight - Sherman Kelly & King Harvest

Tuesday – 28 January 2014

We cut the meeting short, caught the last SAV-ATL flight out this afternoon and I slipped into the neighborhood via secret passage just as epic chaos was happening all around.  I was lucky apparently.  My neighborhood seemed damn near idyllic when I got there and elsewhere babies were being born in freeway medians.  It's dumb how bad barely two inches of good snow is – families separated, motorists trapped, abandoned cars, (8+) hour commutes.  I'll stop short of adding my critical voice to the din but I will say this – we suck at winter Atlanta.  It looks like mañana is def a work-from-home day.  I suppose it's a good thing I stocked wine this weekend.

Song of the Day: Let Me Come Home - Limbeck

Wednesday – 29 January 2014

Snow-day. 

Song of the Day: Burritos - Sublime

Thursday – 30 January 2014

Belle had an unexpected extended sleepover with her moms this week thanks to the wonder of nature.  She finally came home today and immediately went searching for her ball in the backyard snow.  After much deliberate manic tracking, she located, attacked and went berserk with her beloved.  Man I've missed that crazy lady this week.  

Song of the Day: Keep You Right - Blind Pilot

Friday – 31 January 2014

A couple of weeks ago I googled bad-ass wine stoppers...today my bad-ass wine stopper arrived and came home with me.  Happy Friday!  

Song of the Day: Motivation - Sum 41

Unresolved

As is often the case on the front side of a new year, I wax toward standard fare, hyperbolic unfounded optimism, “…ripe with hope and promise…” and all of that fantastic drivel, right?  If you’ve read previous January posts of mine, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  That bewildering excitement has too often been chased by an even more nonsensical series of impossible New Years Resolutions.  Mercifully, I have rarely spoken these assurances aloud so they remain off the record.  Rest assured that they have nearly always failed.  That is the inherent danger in making a resolution and why they are pointless – especially if said proclamation occurs in a public forum – there really is no good that can come of it.  Resolutions set us all up for predictable failure.  So far I’ve successfully managed to resist the pedestrian impulse to make any such declaration, and I feel better for it.  I’ve even resisted writing this until right now; an heroic accomplishment in of itself!

In the interest of full disclosure however, this New Year veracity is no different than any other.  I remain consumed with equivalent wide-eyed optimism.  I continue to be overwhelmed with the triumphant prospect of starting over, doing this one better than the last – who doesn’t want a mulligan sometimes, right?  The difference, if there is one this time, is that this year there is a centering calmness embedded beneath the surface of my bold anticipation that I can’t seem to shake or explain to myself.  I’m starting to realize that this resolution not to resolve if you will, has little, in fact nothing to do with the flipping of a calendar page.  It’s what I feel every second of every day of every week of every year.

There is an unspoken known, inextricably tattooed on the collective DNA of western culture – we quite literally want the world, and we want it now.  Americans especially simply will not tolerate or accept deferred gratification and this is why I think most resolutions fail.  None of which is to say that one shouldn’t strive to do or get or be resolved to whatever it is that turns their gear, I’m simply saying that one’s resolve shouldn’t coincide with the start or end of any human record or collection of occasion and damn sure shouldn’t be allowed to fade as time tick tocks away. 

Through exhaustive research, (that I’ve clearly fabricated within the confines of my singular runaway subconscious) I’ve determined that this is exactly why New Years resolutions too often fail.  Immediate gratification is the only course we know: it’s not even necessarily our fault at this point, it just is what is.  1 January you might say something like, I’m going to lose fifty pounds this year! 8 January: I’ve lost four pounds, go me!  15 January, you’ve gained two pounds back and by lunch on the 16^th, you say Fuck it, I want a cheeseburger.  End of resolution.  It’s the American way. 

A resolution of nearly any variety is often too abstract and/or too lofty a goal to attain overnight.  It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon, right?  Hell, it’s not even a race – life isn’t a race!  My old man used to tell me that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I’ve admittedly been blinded by my resistance to the obvious religious connotation of that statement since its first utterance, but I’ve started to understand it in my own way.  It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.  It’s not what you want to be, it’s what you are.  It’s not what you wish for, it’s what you have.  It’s not who, when, why, where or whatever else, it’s what are you doing to change it?  That’s a helluva lesson Pop, and it’s likely not at all what you were trying to teach me, but I dig it.

Allow me to digress.  At this very moment, there are north of 3.9 million job openings in this country and they range in skill-sets from garbage collection to CEO.  And yet, December’s employment absorption numbers were barely 490,000.  Why?  Of course, if you are unemployed, you are likely more suited to something above the station of garbage collector and of course, you are likely not qualified to be CEO but somewhere in the middle might fit, eh?  Maybe you are, as unfortunate as it is, forced to start climbing from a rung lower on the ladder than your expectations insist.  But to get to where you rightfully belong it should be a minor inconvenience.  Life’s not a race, but we do need to start running just the same.  If we could fill those 3.9 million jobs tomorrow, there would still be nearly 7 million American citizens without work and that sucks.  But can you imagine the collective sigh of relief this country would take if we graduated nearly 60% of those on the public dole to gainful employment?  It wouldn’t solve the problem, but it would be a meaningful, if not epic first step.  I’m not sure why I felt compelled to frame my argument through the tragic metaphor of unemployment, but I just did.  So there’s that.

The point remains intact though.  If it’s still not clear, here it is in black in white: incrementally improving your life every day is the only way to improve your life.  The only person that needs to know anything of it is you.  Every single virgin grain of sand that passes through the skinny bit of hourglass is a novel opportunity, a second chance to make it right, whatever that might mean to you.  I resolve every morning to be a better whatever than I was the day before; a better person, a better artist, a better son, a better friend, to be more compassionate, to think more often and deeper, to read, to make, to be.  I rarely succeed at any of those aspirations and that’s perfectly acceptable.  I’m still too quick to judge and dismiss, I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, I make mistakes, I fall down.  But I pick myself up and dust off.  I make amends if to no one other than myself.  I make peace and move on wrapped in the swaddle of this one unavoidable fact – the story is never told until worms crawl into my eye sockets and suck out what’s left of my brain and not even then if I’ve lived a full life.

Every sunrise brings the promise of a new and better whatever it is we want but only if we recognize and accept the gradational victories of our every day, only if we can comfortably reside in the uncomfortable interstitial space between yesterday and tomorrow.  Don’t for a second think that my long view isn’t as center stage and as powerful, if not more so than it has ever been.  It’s not that my expectations or goals have diminished – if anything they have been amplified.  I’m still intent on making 2014 my bitch just like I was 2013 and every other year prior (and every year after).  I am though more focused on the day-to-day, minute-to-minute aspects of that master plan.  It’s easier and more productive to spotlight my energy on making Friday better than Thursday than it is to obsess about my demeanor upon being finally recognized as the “coolest mother*&$#!@ alive.”  Life is not a race.

I’m as unresolved as ever and that is exactly as it should be.