Wise Words and Random Encounters

This morning, in what has proven to be the best decision I’ve made in a long time I went to my local big box store intent on picking up a few Spring flowers.  And when I say a long time, I’m not wholly sure if I mean ten minutes or if I mean one thousand hours or a million years – the construct of time has appreciably changed since we started using the “Q” word, hasn’t it?  Despite “social distancing” being my natural and preferred life posture, I’ve missed you humans a helluva lot more than I ever thought I could or ever believed I would admit publicly.  High-functioning introverts such as I am recharge from reflective time alone, word?  Where others crave interaction, we crave isolation.  When you might go out, I’m def stayin’ in.   I’ve learned this week though that without that requisite, day-to-day social drain, my batteries became overcharged.  Still not willing to internalize that I need other random people, but also recognizing the intrinsic necessity that my hands touch the healing power of the Earth’s soil on some regular basis, away I went.  That specific mission was an abject failure by the way, but we’ll get to that.

I would be remiss if I took full credit for this action.  Full disclosure – the subtle cracks in my solitary armor that I alluded to above, opened into exposed chasms…impassable gaps between my perceived reality and my actual reality by the end of the week.  Gaps become canyons only by exploration, and I’m an explorer so that was a bad deal Friday night.  Introspection overdone, as it turns out and as is true with all the other things – anything overdone is a negative unequaled.  Still, internally unaware entirely and upon reaching out to a trusted friend, I was snapped back…awakened.  She didn’t sugarcoat or give me a pass for being an asshole, but she did have some good advice.  Wise beyond her years as ever, she said I should get out – be IN the world.  The irony, that I had given our entire staff that same advice just a short time before but had not fully heeded it myself was not lost on me.  My days have been spent inexplicably and involuntarily glued to the news – shut it down, she said.  But I’m all about stats and graphs and charts, I retorted – that’s how I make sense of it all.  “You know everything you need to know to stay alive…so GO!  BE alive.” 

Responding to these words, I got vertical and mobile with a renewed cocky quickness.  Still reeling from my self-imposed mania, and with no clear plan of attack – the mission failed.  I wandered the aisles forever it seemed…at least an hour in the garden area alone.  I must have examined, at an almost biological level every single plant specimen on display and refused them all for a myriad of utterly ridiculous rationales.  Indecisive.  Anxious AF for even being there…away from my fortress of solitude or whatever.  Defeated and ashamed, I walked away.

Recently, in the vast and unending time I mentioned earlier, my old friend Marcus Aurelius said a thing to me inside of the immense cavern of my own personal holy shit – I might be losing it this time for real puzzle.  "You have power over your mind – not outside events.  Realize this, and you will find strength."  His words were burning in my brain walking empty-handed back to my truck.  What a shitty Stoic you are homey, said I to myself.  My increasingly public display of having adopted Stoicism as a lifepath hung in the balance of my next move.  Yes.  That is way more dramatic than it should be or needs to be, but whatever.

I mentioned the stats earlier – despite good advice, I’m still locked in on the reg.  I can’t separate my reality from our reality, you know?  Since I started writing this, worldwide cases of COVID-19 have gone from 320 to 336,000+.  That’s a reality that we can’t avoid or reinvent, but there’s hope for us yet.  Here’s why!

As I sulked back to my truck, I couldn’t help but notice a guy struggling to solve his own personal conundrum.  He had apparently purchased a new dishwasher, but the vehicle within which he had arrived to make said purchase was dreadfully incapable of transporting product back to his domicile.  The poor guy had the thing out of the box, Corolla trunk open…he was just standing there looking at the situation like, “what the actual fuck?”  This moment is where my new normal starts to kick in.  I say new because I’ve seen similar events at the aforementioned big box in the past and laughed about it driving away.  Today – in stark comparison, I casually approached and asked, “you good”?  Knowing the answer, I was dropping the tailgate as I said it.  We loaded the dishwasher into my truck, and I followed him to his adorable little house in Little Five Points.  I think I had decided to hook the damn thing up for him by the time I got there, five minutes later.  His young (rightfully skeptical) wife caboshed that nonsense (given the environment) and I dropped their new appliance on the sidewalk and drove away.

There’s a lot that I could say about that singular event, but what I felt inside isn’t something that I can put into words.  Back at the crib, my internal emotional seed purified and buttressed by the karmic payment I’d just made, I found myself reflecting upon the nature of how and why and when we choose to live our lives…every single day in the normal world.  That deep dive made me question why whatever it was that had just happened, doesn’t happen on the daily.  I questioned, in the sober light of day why I don’t more often display publicly what I know is right internally.  Why isn’t this my every day?  Why isn’t this YOUR every day?

I’m not sure that it’s a Stoic virtue per se, but it’s an unavoidable fact of my life that I question.  Every.  Single.  Thing.  The day passed – recharged for sure but still conflicted, questioning.  Instead of my routine Sunday night takeout, I cooked spaghetti…like an end-of-the-world sized pot of spaghetti – I’m not immune to the panic buying phenomenon after all.  In the past few days, I’ve adopted through no voluntarily expression of my traditional temperament and despite my regular consternation, an inescapable desire to interact with my neighbors on a more consequential level.  They are ALWAYS walking their dogs or kids or whatever and I naturally / almost religiously ignore them because of it…because I’m an asshole, I just realized.  Regardless, these days, I step out if I’m not already out there, onto my stoop and say hello.  That’s a helluva thing right there, no?  I.  Say.  Hello.  Me?  Yep! 

A few weeks ago, I got new neighbors across the street in the yellow house that isn’t yellow anymore.  It’s been a minute since I felt like I had a word or more to say to any neighbors across any street.  I don’t know, never met ‘em before tonight…but they’ve got a dachshund so they must be cool.  Tonight, as I was chatting with them like a lunatic hermit from my front stoop, I asked if they were hungry.  Having cooked enough for the entire coming apocalypse, I divided my need by half and gave them what I couldn’t reasonably use.  Maybe I’m not an asshole after all.

I paraphrase once again the wise words of Marcus Aurelius…humans exist for the sake of other humans.  For all my “stoic” training and bluster, I don’t believe that I’ve ever fully grasped that specific ideal before now.  We have a collective moral responsibility to be there for each other in times of need.  Period.

Today was a good day – I needed it.

Me / You / Us

What ever happened to governing?  I've watched (as all of us have) as our democracy became a hollow shell of what the founding fathers intended.  They certainly couldn't envision what 'screens' would become in the 21st Century, but they were aware of the simple basic human tenant that truth and integrity was and should be the core of what America was / is / and should be.  This sounds like the beginning of an anti-Trump rant, but it's not.  He's ridiculous and embarrassing (and most of us agree regardless of the aisle side), but he isn't the problem.  The problem with America today is America.  

"We" created / demanded in fact an environment where a shell of a caricature of a human being could and should become President of the United States of America by virtue of nothing more than our own individual indifference to and in some cases, downright abandonment of actual facts and historical context, in favor of whatever salacious bullshit primetime 'news', TMZ and Facebook told us.  We stopped, myself included caring about the greater good and started caring more about what and who we hated less or more depending on our own natural predilection.  We chose sides, and picking sides is never good.  

I'm not naive: Americans have always been 'opposed' to each other at some level, but those who governed us could usually find a middle ground that suited most of us.  And 'us', the governed mass could usually find a middle ground that we could live with, regardless of the vitriol of the debate.  BUT, we gave up on the founding principal of intellectual debate, we gave up on each other...and by extension, we gave up on this great democratic experiment and by further natural extension, we gave up on our own humanity.  I cannot abide either side decrying the other, because we are all complicit in this crime.  We've allowed our subconscious minds to be co-opted by whatever nonsensical noise is filling it, not by the quietude of actual thought and resultant essential discourse.  We punted on 4th and short with all the fans behind us deep in the opponent's territory and yet we wonder how in 2019 we are facing yet another possible Presidential Impeachment?  Is there any room for respectful debate?  Do we even care?  About anything?

As stated, Trump is NOT the issue.  Almost anyone on earth knows more about what and who he is than I do.  I see the nonsense on the periphery, but I'm more concerned about 'me'.  That's the "American" way, no?  I'm concerned about what post-911 / post-Obama / post-rational thought day-to-day USA has allowed me to and in many ways insisted that I become...and as always, by extension what I / it allowed / insisted that you become.  I will be expectedly and maybe appropriately panned for this, but I believe that "we" are better than whatever that / this is.  I've never served in the military, I'm not a first responder, I don't have guns, nor do I believe in personal gun ownership as a basic human right...but I'm as much a patriot as anyone else in this country and I still believe in the greater good of its citizenry.  I'm a believer in the truth and promise of a better day, but nothing in the daily news allows space for that basic human level of positivity and optimism to exist.  Truly, few environments that I inhabit on the daily allow for it either.  The "coastal-elitist-liberals" aren't running this country anymore...they never were by the way.  WE are.  And we've all become or are becoming cynical assholes.

I've been drinking, but I was raised by devout Southern Christians.  My late father wasn't a saint, but he did his best to show me what a "path" looked like.  Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen showed me a little more.

My aspirations...my "path" to be on the cover of Rolling Stone changed into the cover of The New Yorker and eventually evolved into simply being acknowledged as a thoughtful human being slowly and over years of internal reflection.  I still think I'm a rock star, even if it's latent hubris.  I remain committed to becoming a great and important writer, even though I haven't written meaningful pages in years.  Some of those facts and outcomes I could have controlled, but for one reason or another I chose not to.  What I have been able to control is 'who' I am...maybe actually not in the beginning and hardly ever consciously at the time, but I've worked on my 'who' for a lot of years, and I'm proud of what my commitment to that ideal has created.  Which is to say that I'm comfortable in my own skin for the first time in maybe ever.  I deserve all the good things, because I actively choose to live my life everyday.  I choose to act instead of react.  I insist that being positive is a better path than being negative.  I want to win, but I can recover quickly if I lose, because tomorrow is a brand new day full of hope and promise...and thousands of opportunities to seek, give and receive joy.  WE can collectively choose the same thing.  WE are in control.  Epiphanies mean nothing if they don't inform positive change.

It's almost college basketball season and I've got a bluegrass festival this weekend, so it's all good, right?  Right.  Hey, let me tell you something about Sloan Sabbith and my rando Wednesday.  Maybe I should save that for another day...meantime, think about me / you / us, and I'll do the same. 

Wouldn't It Be Nice

This morning, for the first time in my adult life, I inadvertently pulled the thread on my first conscious memory of being aware of a song...like, "knowing" it, you know what I mean?  I was probably (maybe) six or seven years old...digging around in my old man's closet looking for those "Stories of the Bible" film strips we used to watch on the living room walls on rainy days.  (I was the youngest and brattiest so I had to be in charge of setting up the projector and cueing the tape machine.). Mixed in with The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke and reels of Pop's favorite sermons by his Christian heroes, was a well-worn copy of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.  I had seen and ignored it many times before, but that day was different for whatever reason and though I don't know why, I abandoned my search for the films and wound the tape on this, unbeknownst to me at the time, seminal recording.

I've thought about and written about the origins of my love for music many times giving credit to many sources, events and people, but I honestly never thought my dad had anything to do with it.  In reflective hindsight, I'm not sure I was even consciously aware of music prior to that exact moment.  I now realize that those rando few minutes all those years ago triggered a love for music in me that continues to grow 40+ years later.  This morning, a Beach Boys song innocently rotated onto my Sunday morning Pandora station and after the first few bars, I almost literally collapsed.  I hadn't yet connected those dots that I just did up there and it nearly crippled me.  Everybody is a Beach Boys "fan", but Brian Wilson's beautiful and in many ways tragic life has always fascinated me as much or more than the amazing songs he wrote.  This morning for the first time, I was forced to confront the possibility that my father shared that fascination at some level.  You would have had to have known my old man to understand the shocking dichotomy of what I just said.  It hasn't quite been a year since he passed and not a day goes by that I'm not reminded of something that he taught me...it's rare that I discover a whole other new thing.

He would've been about a month shy of his 21st birthday when Pet Sounds was released and I legit cannot imagine what life was like for him...what he must've been like before Vietnam and all of that.  He wasn't my dad then, and that's all I ever knew him to be.  I would've been in Mississippi for his 74th birthday today had he lived until next Wednesday, but he died on a Saturday in August last year and we put him in the ground a few days later on a wicked hot Monday.  I haven't been the same since. 

It's not all bad though.  In addition to this little surf rock epiphany, his death reawakened within me the curiosity I've always had about the power and purity of one's spirit and the transformational strength of hope that I lost somewhere along my path to here.  His death forced me to remember the responsibility that I have to seek and give joy.  In the months since, I've rediscovered through my memory of him and the nearly perfect example that he gave me of how I should treat every human being on earth with the compassion and kindness and respect that they deserve by virtue of nothing more than their having been born a human being.  People who know me now know that I'm insufferably fond of saying, "Today is a brand new day, full of hope and promise."  That's not something he would've ever said - he wouldn't have dared to be that direct.  I flippantly give credit to my newfound belief in Stoic philosophy but the truth is I'm invoking his memory and celebrating his life every time that I say it.  I'm still trying to and may always be trying to learn to be the type of man he was...to live as simply as he did...to teach in the subtle way that he taught.  He wasn't perfect and he was not a saint.  He was my father though and I wouldn't be who I am today if he hadn't shown me how to be.  The biggest regret of my life is that I never told him exactly that while he was still here.

There's a lot of things I could say...recount old memories and all that whatever.  Those memories are all mine though and they should and will remain between me and him.  I love you old man.  Happy Father's Day.  "Wouldn't It Be Nice" if you were still around? 

Wouldn't It Be Nice

Fifty Years After Folsom

On that chilly Saturday morning, a not quite thirty-six year old guitar player seeking a comeback moment sat on a hack of a folding chair in the green room before taking the stage to a standing room only crowd and reminisced about his path to that point.  Fifty years later, a not quite forty-six year old hack of a guitar player sits on a well-worn couch three time zones east doing the same minus the comeback bit.

In 1953,  a young Air Force staff sergeant stationed in Landsberg, Germany, watched a prison movie with his 12th Radio Squadron buddies that in my mind forever altered the course of popular music.  That might be a little dramatic, but for me I would’ve never acknowledged or accepted Steve Earle, Old 97s, Robert Earl Keen, Dwight Yoakam etc. etc. ad naseum had that moment not occurred and spawned what came after.  Perhaps they would’ve never had the whatever it took for them to be whoever they were as well.  Perchance, had that random movie night passed without him there, this musical world I know would be appreciably different and less than.

His name was J.R. but the military didn’t accept initials as a first name so he changed his name to John R...John R. Cash.  After signing with Sun Records in 1955 he adopted the stage name Johnny Cash, the pride of Dyess, Arkansas – The Man in Black himself...Johnny motherf@#$&ing Cash.  At that moment in time, the die had been cast so to speak whether anyone knew it or not.  John would go on to complete his volunteer service, move back to Texas then on to Memphis, meet Sam Phillips, sign with Sun Records, make bank, become famous, tour with The Carter Family, meet and way later marry Mother Maybelle’s striking daughter June, have a string of hits, succumb to addiction, miss or half-ass years of shows, stumble, fall, burn 508 acres of forested land, get sued by the federal government, get arrested in Starkvegas for picking flowers on private property; in El Paso for smuggling 688 Dexedrine tabs, attempt suicide and likely hundreds of other things I’ve never heard about nor can confirm as truth.  What is true is that he never once served a single day in actual prison.  He chose a path whether knowingly or not and followed it to the end and you have to admire and envy that.  I don’t think I’m writing a history lesson so you can fill in whatever blanks I’ve left.  Truthfully,  I’m not sure anything I’ve written to this point is fact or fiction or simple myth because of who and what he became.  I’m certain that it doesn’t matter either way.

That green room I mentioned earlier was once the “hanging room”.  That sold out show was the first of two that day at Folsom Prison on 13 January, 1968.  His band, the perpetually locked-in Tennessee Three backed  him perfectly.  The fifteen songs recorded over the next five hours during two exhausting sets would become “Live at Folsom Prison”, possibly the most iconic American record for dudes like me of the last fifty years.  What you don’t know, even if you know all of that is that Governor Ronald Reagan stopped by to wish the band well the Friday before since they were staying at the same El Rancho Motel in Sacramento.  You likely don’t know that Carl Perkins and then the Statler Brothers opened up for him that morning either or that he sang a song one of the inmates he was singing to had written.

Yes, it’s cliché for “dudes like me” to claim an allegiance to Cash thanks in no small part to his lucrative and embarrassing relationship with Rick Rubin in the mid-90’s.  In 1994, Rubin recorded John’s eighty-first album sparking yet another resurgence in his popularity.  Perhaps it was his association with literally the coolest producer alive in Rick Rubin or that he became chummy with Trent Reznor that would allow aging yuppies and early hipsters and pissed-off metalheads and country music hardliners and pop radio junkies and everyone else the world over to finally and fully hear what the “man” was trying to say on the eighty previous albums.  Perhaps, it was pure dumb luck.  Perhaps, it was a global cultural awakening but I doubt it.  Either way, the one thing I know to be true is that Johnny Cash matters – in a time in history where absolutely nothing seems to have any real or lasting significance, he still does.  Cash is, does, will always matter.  His music is, was, will always be important, clear, poignant, honest, real, relevant.

It’s an odd thing to say that something that happened more than my lifetime ago matters to me and my actual life now in any way other than superficially….affected me in a positive way ever, affects me still.  Daily.  I admittedly don’t listen to that record as much as I once did, but I will never forget the first time I heard it.  Listening to it crystal clear digitally this morning doesn’t / couldn’t / will never compare to that first scratchy first time evening.  I was fifteen or sixteen, maybe younger, maybe older – time has a way of distorting a memory, right?

What I know and remember beyond a shadow of a doubt is that it was my brother who put the needle on that particular record that particular night.  As was often the case in my youth, he opened my eyes to a certain and specific different style of music that not only informed and transported me through my formative musical years but more importantly instilled in me a critical discretion of musical value that I maintain still.  Half or more what’s on my constant loop wouldn’t be without my bro’s influence even though he’s probably heard of way less than half of it.  Still, his implied direction gives me a touchstone to which I can compare all music to and evaluate it by.  The Clash, Johnny Cash, The Godfathers, The Smithereens, Motley Crue, Ozzy and everything after…I could go on but the point is made.  Introducing a music lover to good / new music is like breathing air into a drowning victim’s lungs.  The hell of it is that he has no idea what influence he has had on me.

Fifty years after Folsom minus a few days, my brother’s house burned down.  Quite literally to the ground, you know?  There’s nothing left.  He, his wife and first born barely made it out alive. There’s nothing left.  Nothing.  As emotionally connected to my actual soul as I believe that I am, I have no capacity for understanding that depth of loss.  It / this isn’t about me in any way but I can’t comprehend this tragedy.  I can’t reconcile my fervent belief in all that is good with this unimaginable act of devastation.

I’m not sure if it’s guilt in the purest sense,  but I do feel guilty.  Perhaps and I want to believe that this is true that it’s empathy disguised as guilt that I feel.  Either way, I can’t help but feel almost ashamed for not having suffered a similar loss.  My life, by any reasonable measure could not have turned out better – I’m on the exact path I chose once I decided to choose a path and there is zero reason to believe that I won’t continue to succeed…to have everything fall my way, you know?

It makes me question what is real…what really matters and what is truly irreplaceable.  It’s only now occurred to me that the very Folsom Prison album I’ve been enamored with and obsessing about all day and night burned up in that fire that took everything away from my brother and his sweet family.  Among other obvious important lost things, that might seem insignificant.  It is.  It’s not at the same time.

Fifty years after Folsom, life happens.  Sometimes it’s a carnival – sometimes it’s a shit show.  Either way, tomorrow will always be a better day.  Thanks for reminding me J.R.

Solving for 'X'

When I was a young man, I lived in small-town Mississippi with a close friend of mine – he was family really.  We had grown up together; both the ideological, outspoken, nonconformist, wild and rebellious sons of devout Christian preachers.  We shared similar dreams that we had unsuccessfully chased in Southern California as soon as we had escaped high school together.  A helluva lot sooner than our youthful hubris would allow us to believe was possible, we failed and had retreated back east, back home; with the tattered remains of our adolescent hope, a six-foot python and whatever else we could cram into the back of his ill-tempered Nissan Pulsar to that same small Mississippi town that we had endeavored so desperately to evacuate; lost and defeated together.  We settled into my parents hastily renovated garage and set about plotting our next move.  There was a time and this was that exact moment in time when we saw the world through the same lens.  That time has long since passed and as it turns out has possibly no bearing whatsoever on what I sat down to say but since I started here, allow me to finish the thought.

Our garage accommodations quickly become yet another cage and he moved on: first to Scott Street and later out to Old Highway 8.  Family runs deep in the South and he was as much my brother as my brother is so I trailed not far behind.  There are early-morning, admittedly drunken conversations on the back porch of that Scott Street shack that are as clear in my memory as what I had for dinner tonight – exuberant, passionate declarations of what we saw then the world to be and how we could fix it.  Because of a hyper-confident belief in our personal worth, neither of us had ever seriously considered college.  Ours was a wisdom that only experience could provide and even though in hindsight we’d experienced next to zero then, our confidence in that belief and in our inherent human ability remained unshakeable.  We didn’t always see eye-to-eye but as a rule, we respected the other’s opinion.  You might not remember this, but there was a time when humans had actual conversations.  You held a belief and had a faith and a voice because of what you housed inside your heart and head, not because of what the internet told you.  Whatever the conversation, there was always a component of it rooted in the idea of change.  That conversation stretched from that failing back porch into the construction job we worked for my old man, to the ride home from church, to driving all night to find the thing and walking the rest of the way home when we couldn’t.  The last time I saw him in Alexandria, the fire of our conversation was as stoked as it was the first time on some random tailgate deep in the random forests of some lost Mississippi.

At some point, his focus became more clear than mine and our life paths diverged.  I haven’t spoken to the man in ten years or more at this point – couldn’t tell you where on earth he may even live.  His words and thoughts and truck stop wisdom during those never ending porch nights and road trips and drunk walks however left an undeniable, indelible mark on my subconscious that I’ve only recently fully internalized and only now am able to attribute to him.  Take a bow old friend…you finally made the argument I’d never let you win back in the day.

A French philosopher much smarter than me once said, “A goal without a plan, is just a wish.”  I ask you this – have truer words ever been spoken?  A guy I used to know once said the same thing progressively across the years of conversation I mentioned above.  It’s a tricky thing to know what you want, isn’t it?  I don’t think I’ve personally always | maybe ever known explicitly what I wanted and most days I question if I do still.   The ever-changing personal, professional and emotional landscape of a normal, fully-formed human’s life, typically allocates a remarkably tiny and surprisingly inhospitable sliver of soil for the seeds of any true actualization to be sown and an even more restrictive environmental window for said seeds to gestate.

I don’t often frame my thoughts within or with any regard honestly to the construct of math not only because I suck at it but moreover because “math” as a thing is useless in an age where all the answers are a mouse click away.  It’s the logical equivalent of learning Latin – what’s the point?  My 9th grade algebra teacher would shudder if she heard me say those words but we’ve lost touch since that time I threw a jack-o-lantern through her front door in ’87 anyway so whatevs.  What I do remember of what she tried unsuccessfully to teach me was this, “No matter what process you use, you always have to find a way to isolate ‘X’ on one side of the equation so you can find its true value.”  Despite fifteen-year-old-me’s vocal objection, algebra does in fact have real-world applications but only if one chooses to evaluate the equation from a different perspective.

I’ve rambled to this point and if I know anything about myself, I’ll stray from the path again but meantime, ask yourself this, “What is it that I truly want?”  What is your ‘X’?  Life is a complicated chaotic race against time, right?  Is it even possible to know what the soul truly wants anymore?  I’m not sure.  I am sure however that if one is able to see clearly enough through the fog of war that is the daily grind then there is a pathway to anyone’s goal.  It doesn’t really matter what that goal is as long as you are unflinchingly focused on it.  That’s your ‘X’.  My boy from way back?  His focus was simple, singular and laser specific – to get the hell out of Mississippi.  Once he had isolated that desire, he quite literally filtered every second of his life through that ideal.  Every decision he made from that point forward was evaluated by asking one question: “Does this get me closer to or farther from my goal?”  He followed that thread to the end of the spool and it changed his life forever.

Your ‘X’ doesn’t have to be earth-shattering or life-changing or even overtly complicated but it probably is.  Otherwise you would have already just done the damn thing, right?  The critical and likely most grueling component of the equation is identifying your actual ‘X’.  Equally if not more torturous but absolutely essential is having the constitution to wholly commit to it and maintaining the requisite discipline to follow the path to its end.  If it were easy, everyone would be fully satisfied with every aspect of their lives and there’d be no need to have this conversation.  That’s not the case though is it?  It should be said that I’m seeking the same solutions you are.  My writing this isn’t indicative of anything other than that.  I don’t have the answer and I’m an authority on very little – I’m just talking this out.

I conducted an exercise with the staff at my work recently where I asked them a simple question, “What would motivate you to do a better job?”  It was to be a vehicle through which I would ascertain if our firm was as good as we in leadership constantly try to convince ourselves that it is.  (It is by the way.)  The responses were fascinating and spanned the spectrum from uber-thoughtful and well-intentioned to flippant and absurd.  They were all incredibly valuable and not only afforded me a deeper insight into our employees’ collective and individual mindset but also comprised the framework of the 50-page Studio Culture Assessment I delivered to the principals.  There is a tremendous value in providing a human being the opportunity to voice their opinion and I’m confident that the recommendations I made as a result of this exercise will pay huge dividends down the road and make us even “better” than we already are.  That said, through no fault of their own and possibly directly because of the manner in which I framed the question, they almost all completely missed the point of the exercise.  What motivates anyone isn’t a physical thing I don’t think – there has to be a deeper internal force in play.  I don’t think it’s even something as vital as money.  It’s not a more flexible schedule, a better insurance plan, more comfortable chairs or any other tangible thing.  Identifying what motivates you is the first step on the twisting path to understanding what it is you want, need, deserve.  Whatever it is that motivates a human being to get out of bed in the morning and participate in this world is the foundational cornerstone of their ‘X’ whether they realize it or not.

There is a fundamental human necessity for all of us to identify what “motivates” us.  What is the point otherwise?  Why bother enduring the often grueling catastrophe that is human existence if one doesn’t have a vision for the future?  How can you even pretend to play if you’re not fully aware of the reward you seek?  How do you know if you’ve had a good day if you don’t have a context within which to frame it?  How can you solve the equation if you don’t identify and isolate the primary variable that will give your life value?  I’m fond of saying that the purpose and focus of my life is to get better at it – that’s really hard to do if I don’t know what “better” is.

If there’s a point to be made here it is this:  life is a son of a bitch and you have to try really hard every single second of every single day.  Buckets of rain will fall.  You will lose a helluva lot more often than you will win.  Even if | when you are fully self-aware, the strength of your convictions will not guarantee that your voice will be heard.  Even if you have the tenacity, conviction and discipline to follow your path to the end, your path will most certainly be fraught with impossible obstacles.  Even when you display an adroit capacity to weave your own perfect tapestry, the threads that bind your dreams to reality will invariably become undone.  The sun will rarely be on your face.  The wind will never be at your back.  The finish line will scarcely ever be in sight.  Every single second of every single day will be a battle.  If your ‘X’ means enough to you, nothing I’ve said above or anything that occurs subsequent will matter.  It’s your game – do your thing.

Get focused.  Identify your ‘X’.  Solve for it.  Move forward and find the next one.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”