Category Archives: life

how to kill creativity

After writing for this blog for a few years, I’ve noticed that occasionally I’m really stumped for topics, to say the least. I don’t really get writer’s block, since once I have a topic I can usually fly away with it, but I do get stifled on overall themes and ideas. I was trying to come up with a list of ways that my creativity gets stifled in order to fight that tendency. Here they are:

I write for a living. The kind of writing you do in a corporate environment does not encourage any creativity whatsoever. Here is a lovely gem I put in an email: “John Doe - Based on your note, I think the 5/31 date needs to be revised for the 2nd and 3rd issues, and the first issue (negative admin credits) still appears to be ready to be closed pending whatever verification is necessary. These will need corrected close dates, revised action plans if necessary and an updated open/closed status by 6/15 at the latest.” That is not exactly the kind of writing that would draw visitors back to this blog, I think. But I have to do it all day long, every day. Writing like that kills off writing like this.

I watch TV. I have given up watching regular TV and (try to) only watch Netflix, but every now and then I will be distracted by something someone else is watching at our house or someone else’s house. I try not to be tempted, but something about flashing lights and loud noises draws me in. I find these shows fill up the empty, creative and quiet places in my head and replace them with light and fluffy cotton candy-like filling. The advertising pounds away at your senses and fills your head with jingles and multiple jarring images. I have a different experience watching a good movie on DVD, since it can inspire me to think about deeper issues and is not broken up every 10 minutes by commercials asking if I have heartburn or want to buy a new car.

I read too much. I am up to the ninth book of the extremely challenging Thomas Covenant series (which are wonderful books, but the language is very, very dense, to say the least). I read about 70 blogs, dozens of emails and reports and memos and even the occasional children’s book aloud. Trying to pull in and process all of that information can crowd out creativity. I did quit reading any news that was not business or sports-related a few months ago, so at least my attention is not distracted by the latest developments with Paris Hilton. All of this is on top of my work-related reading, which is full of gems like this one I got in a memo today: “If applicable, does the appendix include a listing of all applications processes included in the assessment process and the process conclusion for said processes?” Read that again. Yes, I have to read this kind of writing and reply to it all day long.

I do not write ideas down as soon as they occur. Too often, I have a great idea and tell myself “excellent post idea! Write an article about it this evening!” only to forget it by the time I get home. I make an effort to carry around a small notebook all day and write ideas in it as they occur, but I still sabotage myself constantly by thinking “remember to write that down when you get back to your desk.”

I am still learning to be creative. When I first started blogging about eight years ago, I wrote a virulent political blog that was a huge series of links and videos and random comments and thoughts on almost a stream-of-consciousness basis. If I read an article, I would throw out a link and two lines of commentary, and then move on. Being creative means taking all of the influences you receive during the course of the day and processing them and creating something new, not just consolidating information. Many blogs just turn into link fests, but my favorite ones are usually written by people unafraid to present their own ideas rather than linking to others’.

Football. I used to be a sports fanatic, following the NFL, NBA, MLB and college football and basketball. I even watched the Tour de France and most tennis Grand Slams and golf majors. Other than hockey, I seldom missed a game of any sort on TV. SportsCenter was the wake up call and the goodnight lullaby. Those days are gone – the demands of marriage and fatherhood have crowded them out. However, I still love the NFL so much that I make time for it. I do realize, though, that spending time reading about NFL roster news, watching the games and buying Jets merchandise are bad, bad habits. Nothing about football will help me write this blog, be a better person or be more frugal. Still, I have loved the NFL since becoming a fan of the almost-great Browns teams of the 80s (Brian Sipe and Bernie Kosar, anyone?) although I left them and moved on to the Jets 20 years ago. I have to admit I am a footbaliholic. That barrier to creativity will probably remain.

Learning to overcome these barriers to creativity is part of what I am enjoying about the blogging process; having a small idea and then seeing the words spill out on the page once I get underway writing is a tremendous feeling. But creativity is a delicate thing; it has to be nurtured and coddled, and indulging in any of the behaviors I listed above is a good way to kill it off before it takes hold.

chinese water torture

Tranquility


The biggest mistake most people make in their lives - one that has an impact on their health, wealth, career, education and on and on is a simple one: failing to understand the long-term consequences of short-term repetitive actions. We’re all guilty of it. A soda a day rots the teeth, the guts, adds weight and does nothing to improve one’s life. They are expensive and bad for your health. Borrowing large sums of money for a college degree in Sanskrit falls in the same category. Taking the elevator from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor every day. Failing to deal, mentally, with a stressful daily commute.

In most cases, one time or infrequent actions don’t cause many long-term problems. If you drink water every day but splurge once a month to have a Coke, it’s unlikely to have any significant effect. If you decide to drop $100 playing the slots at that sales and marketing convention in Vegas, your retirement income won’t be affected. Now this isn’t always true: trying to grab a gun out of a police officers’ belt for a thrill WOULD have some serious consequences.

But in general the best way to understand how people fail is to look at their small, seemingly inconsequential actions on a daily or weekly basis. I know I make multiple small mistakes: I get too lazy to pack a lunch (health and wealth effects); I have coupons but don’t use them; I put off small maintenance activities until something breaks.

This is failure. Not a one-time massive mistake, but the compilation of a million small failures. It’s easier to avoid the large failures, too. Most of us know we probably aren’t going to reap health benefits from trying out at amateur parkour hour. But many of us - myself included - kid ourselves into thinking it doesn’t matter if we sit immobile in office chairs for 8 hours a day 5 days a week 50 weeks a year for 40 years. It will. There’s a reason why ‘Chinese water torture’ worked its way into our language: the small, innocuous drops of water will do damage. The way to avoid this: be mindful.

mindfulness

meditation

I haven’t been mindful in a long time. Mindfulness is the way to avoid the death of a thousand small cuts I wrote about yesterday. I have a phrase I’m always barking at my son (and, given her tendencies towards blissful unawareness, soon will to my daughter): BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS! When I say it to him, I mean it in a simple physical sense: don’t walk into the wall because you’re distracted by a bird. But mindfulness - simple awareness of the march of time and our place in the world - is something that’s been driven out of many of us by an onslaught of input and information.

I’ve had some mild success this year with small habit changes. I quit eating cheese, for example. I love it, but I had become too fond of slapping some cheese on almost anything I ate: eggs, sandwiches, you name it. I didn’t need it, and it usually was overpowered by whatever the ‘main’ food was, anyway. So that habit has helped in a small way.

Mindfulness is a small habit, too. How many hours a day do you spend awake and quiet? Not talking, not reading, not watching TV, not doing something? I can say it’s close to 0 for myself. Maybe a few seconds when I wake? A few minutes before I get home when I switch off the podcasts I listen to?

I have tried meditation and prayer at various points with varying levels of success. Meditation didn’t work for me - I probably didn’t give it enough time. The main benefit I’ve reaped from meditation (Zen methods) was the ability to clear my mind prior to sleep, which turned me from an insomniac into someone who falls asleep in minutes every single night for going on 20 years now; insomnia for me is failing to fall asleep within 10 minutes. Prayer was something that helped me a lot during my early twenties when I became quite serious about Christianity, inspired by C.S. Lewis and my heavy involvement with the community-type activities of my local church. My faith was utterly shattered and discarded during my years in Russia and New York, but now that I’m back in a place of mild agnosticism instead of militant atheism, I look back and realize that I got a lot of value out of prayer as simply an exercise to be mindful of things I should be grateful for, and things I should be remorseful for. It put me in a state of simply focusing on something other than the hammering inflow of information we absorb every day.

I think the solution is simple for most busy people. Find a time during the day when you “stuff your brain” for no other reason than habit. Don’t read a book or watch TV while you eat: concentrate on conversation, or if you eat by yourself, on your food. In the evening, spend 5 minutes looking at the stars or the moon. And it may even sound silly, but use shower time to clear your mind. There are many opportunities for mindfulness during a day, and the rewards are an increase in calmness, lower stress and a clearer mind, better ready to process information once it’s ‘restarted.’ Many people can achieve this mindfulness through prayer or meditation, but even if those don’t work for you, take time to simply do nothing.

and following up on the color of moneyblogging…

I’ve decided that I’m not going to take any more guest posts, or do any more blatantly commercial posts. But. I have already agreed to run several guest posts from nice people before I made this decision, so I’m going to do a flurry of guest posts prior to ceasing guest posts altogether. I didn’t feel that it would be fair to tell everyone that had submitted guest posts to me (and I had subsequently agreed to post) to tell them that I was rejecting their posts. So we’ll have a quick final flurry of guest posts here, and then I’ll be imposing my guest-posting ban, which will be simple: no links. Most guest posters simply want a link back to their site to increase their page rank, and I’ve allowed it, because quite honestly some of these guest posts are decent enough posts; I don’t mind them getting a tiny bit of link ‘juice’ in return for a decent article.

Anyway, enjoy the next few guest posts as I clear out my queue. They are all from good people doing their best to make it online. And if you are someone with something to say and DON’T care about ‘link juice’ feel free to send me a post - I’d love to host a few posts from people with brip blap kind of thinking - against the grain.

the color of moneyblogging

I’m not nearly as prolific in my writing as I used to be. I started out blogging in 2007, usually putting one sizable post up per day, sometimes more. I guest posted, I participated actively in forums and had a real passion for both the business and art of blogging. I was enthusiastic and enjoyed what I was doing.I’m not nearly as prolific in my writing as I used to be. I started out blogging in 2007, usually putting one sizable post up per day, sometimes more. I guest posted, I participated actively in forums and had a real passion for both the business and art of blogging. I was enthusiastic and enjoyed what I was doing.

I have no doubt if you’re reading here that you’ve heard or read all the same “follow your passion” credos out there that I have. The idea is that you should find something you like to do, and do it - success will follow. The only way you’ll fail is if you can’t apply yourself 110% to whatever endeavor you choose to do.

It’s clear to me that while this is partially true, there is a small gray area between following your passion and the opposite idea: simply find something you can do that’s lucrative enough and do that. I like to kid myself that I’m a decent writer; not great, but I feel that I have a grasp of the language and an understanding of how to write a compelling narrative. You tell me. At one point I had a passion for the craft of writing, and it’s faded away. You know why? It’s not so much that I don’t like writing, I just started to feel that writing brip blap was a job - that I should be targeting keywords, writing to subjects I didn’t care about and putting myself in a crummy position: doing something I had a passion for but in the process of doing it, killing that passion.

So what do you do in my shoes? I’ve read enough blogs that focus on monetization (through ads, affiliate links and other forms of advertising) to know that it’s both possible to find money while producing original (albeit dry) content. I’ve also read enough blogs that DON’T focus on monetization to know that you can have a deeply fascinating blog if you simply choose to write directly to an audience about a subject you care about without worrying about the money.

Where you fail in those models, I think, is if you approach blogging or writing in a half-hearted manner. If Seth Godin and his famously short, no-comment, no ads (discounting ads for his own books) blog suddenly slapped a pop-up ad for lawnmowers in your face, it wouldn’t work. And if ad-driven, highly monetized blogs suddenly expected you to start reading/following/sharing their articles about credit cards as if they were inspirational tracts, they’d have a while to wait before anyone did so, if they ever did.

I’ve approached brip blap in that kind of a half-hearted manner. I’ve got a blog that focuses on a wide variety of topics near and dear to me - weight loss, personal finance, happiness, family and career. These are disparate subjects and it’s hard to find a theme. I have an internal idea of a theme: me. More broadly, though, I set out to write the blog to be helpful. I think some of it has been - I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback on my 101 thoughts on losing 100 pounds, my 8 steps to a six figure career and other posts. That’s the part where I think I’ve been most successful.

Where I haven’t been successful, though, is in advertising. I’ve had more luck than most bloggers, I’m sure - I make more than enough to cover the cost of blogging and have a bit left over for themes or other ‘blog extras.’ But it’s also clear to me that I’m not headed in a direction where brip blap is going to support me or my family. The reason is that I’m not writing the kind of easily monetizable articles I should be, to capitalize on ads or affiliate links.

Now if you’re still reading, you might be wondering if this is some kind of “goodbye” post. It’s not. I intend to keep writing brip blap. But I’ve decided that for the blog to grow, it can only go in one of two ways: I can start putting up articles written by others which are keyword-optimized, ad-focused, etc. I have several such articles ready to go, in fact. Why would I do that? To make money. To treat this blog as a business, not as a personal place to share my thoughts.

Why wouldn’t I do that? Because this blog is a lot of ME. Early on I rejected blatant monetization. Recently I’ve rejected almost everything except affiliate links - which seems fair enough to me. If I recommend Dr. Atkins’ book and put an amazon link for it in an article on weight loss, it doesn’t hurt anyone to click through that link and give me a small commission if you buy it through amazon. Same thing with items like Sodastream, which I love, or even the Amex Blue card, which I have used constantly for years and years.

Again, I only see two ways to keep a blog going: make good money or make it a good outlet for your thoughts. Some people do both. I know that I personally can’t write monetizable articles, or successfully place and convert ads. I’ve thrown a lot of junk at the wall over the years - some has stuck and some has not. But generally I haven’t been that successful with ads. I know from my Moneywriters colleagues that it is possible to make good money with blogs, but I haven’t stayed in their league.

Don’t take this as anything more than me thinking out loud. I’d like to recapture the excitement I had about blogging back when I had 100 readers, made $8 a month and wrote almost every time I was sitting still. I’d also like to make $50,000 a year off the blog, not $2,000 (I actually make a bit more than that, but I see the trends headed that way). It’s a conundrum. So you can look forward to me doing a couple of things over the next month or two: first, a large number of keyword-heavy “monetizing” articles that will always be clearly marked as not being from me. If you like ME as a writer, skip over them - they are just there for me to test those waters. And on the other hand if you don’t like long introspective posts like this, which are too much about my thoughts and opinions, well, sorry, it’s how I write best. I’ve really enjoyed Tumblr and Facebook recently, and I think the reason why - again - is that I don’t feel any pressure there to write FOR money.

So if you’d like to help me out, consider using the amazon link to the side if you were going to use amazon anyway, or just keep reading and subscribing. Share an article with a friend if you like it. Send me an email or a message on Facebook or a tweet. Interacting with people on the web is one of the biggest rewards of running and writing a blog like this. Fair winds and following seas, my friends. My next post will be far less serious!

is it better to be busy or have nothing to do?

Being busy or taking it easy at work. It’s a tough choice sometimes. I know that many people think it would be easier to sit in one place all day and do nothing. But it’s not. Another question is whether it would be better to be busy in short spurts, or better to be busy almost all the time. I’ve had my experience doing both as a consultant, and the answer is clear to me.

There’s nothing worse than having nothing to do. Nothing. I didn’t think that when I was younger, but doing anything was always better than having a full day with nothing to do. Doing nothing all day isn’t fun, even if you are still getting paid for it. I have learned, through sad experience, doing nothing – no matter what the pay – is not worth it. Much of a professional life is made up of boredom and ennui. In fact, the main goal, at least in my opinion, of a professional life is to avoid such boredom and ennui.

If you are busy at your job count yourself lucky. If you are busy at your job, and enjoy your job, then count yourself doubly lucky. It’s everything to both enjoy your job and be busy doing it. Most Americans are one, or the other…or neither. The worst, of course, is to be neither busy nor to enjoy your job. This is, sadly, the fate of most corporate workers.

I’m lucky. I’ve done enough consulting work that I am able to select the types of projects that I want to do. Not everyone is like this. Many people have to accept jobs that either do not engage them, or do not keep them busy enough. I was like this earlier in my career, of course. But now I value this ability to stay busy more than almost any other aspect of a job. If the client can keep me busy for the better part of the day, I can absorb myself in my work and do a good job. But if a client tells me, well, we’ll have something to do for you next week, but for now just wait - well, it’s hard to stay motivated, and in fact I’ll likely end up reading the newspaper. And since hippies don’t like the news, I don’t want to end up doing that, either.

I know it’s popular in blogger circles to talk about finding your passion. I know it’s a good idea, and I have like to think I can do the same. But the simple truth is that sometimes busyness can substitute for passion. Sometimes simply staying busy for the best part of the work day can be an adequate substitute for enjoying what you do. Of course if you’re making widgets, and you have to spend eight hours a day twisting a widget head on to a widget body, it’s not fun. But if you have a job that is marginally satisfying, and you can work hard at it all day long, that job is probably more satisfying than the more interesting job which does not keep you busy.

It’s counterintuitive … I know. You’d like to think that you need passion to continue working with fervor. But you don’t. Often, it’s enough to simply be working hard at something you tolerate. I can’t say that I love my client work. But when they keep me busy, it’s enough. The work’s moderately interesting, and frankly I don’t have enough time to sit around and think about what I’d rather be doing. Maybe I’d rather be building sand castles, or working on the next Great American novel, but the simple fact is I’m doing a good job and staying focused on the task and… getting paid.

So tried thinking about that the next time that you are looking for a new job. Focus on jobs that allow you to stay busy. Obviously, you should focus on jobs that utilize your skills and your abilities to the best possible advantage. But past that, you also need to find a job that allows you to stay busy. Trust me, in the long run you will be much happier.

focus

I wonder if other writers/bloggers find themselves having any of these problems frequently:

  1. Coming up with lots of writing ideas and getting one or two paragraphs into each and then finding that the exploration of those topics wasn’t as interesting as it first might seem to be;
  2. Writing something, then thinking it is either too personal or too depressing or too silly or too whatever, even though it might be a good piece of writing;
  3. Becoming discouraged from writing because you’re distracted too often – i.e. simply being unable to concentrate. Incidentally, the book Focus that I mention below made me realize this might be more of a problem for me than I thought it was.

I have all three of those problems, but unfortunately #1 is the one that kills 90% of my writing. I have dozens and dozens of 1, 2, or 3 paragraph blog posts started, 3 eBooks with about 10-12 pages apiece, and 2 novels with one chapter apiece. I started two other blogs besides this one that did fairly well for a while, but I lost interest in the subject matter (one was family/child oriented and the other was focused on the accounting/audit industry).

I’ll have to reread the aforementioned Focus by Leo Babuta again – I read it quickly in two lunch breaks this week – because if you want to do anything well you have to focus on it. Leo’s written a nice little book with some practical tips, which were nice and helpful. The overall theme of focus, though, and why it’s not just an important thing but the MAIN thing in any endeavor really fired off a few of my own neurons. I realize I can focus, simply because I’ve spent a few weeks building an incredibly complex financial model for a client, and they’ve been very pleased with the result. So I know I’m capable of it. But I don’t do it nearly as often as I should, and in certain areas I’ve let my focus atrophy to the point it’s non-existent, which is a very, very bad thing.

Originally this was going to be part of my roundup post yesterday, but I decided it could stand on its own. But even that decision indicates I have a certain start-stop-start-stop mentality of not having a clear idea where I’m headed with something when I start it. I can be very good about focusing on my own habits, but that has to be coupled with a strong focus on goals, which unfortunately change too frequently for me. I’ll have to take my one-habit-per-month plan and start adding goals, not just habit changes. Because sometimes a nice long walk in the park can be pleasant, but if you don’t plan to end up in a certain location – i.e. back at your car, or your house or whatever – it’s not called a walk, it’s called “getting lost in the park.”

green acres 2011

Steve’s note:  This is an older post I decided to drag out, simply because it’s quite amazing for me to read my mindset, about a year before we pulled up stakes and left New York City for a small town in the South… and perhaps it’s a good case lesson in why you shouldn’t be so sure about what you think you’re sure about…

Remember, this is all written late 2007 – the real estate bubble has popped but the financial crisis is yet to come.

This past weekend I took the Brip Blap crew (myself, Bubelah, Little Buddy and almost-out-and-about baby #2) on a drive over to Queens to a birthday party for the daughter of Bubelah’s friend. This couple recently purchased a nice house in a nice neighborhood with nice schools and near to the epicenter of their ethnic community. The house was a fixer-upper when they bought it, so they had to put in some substantial money to fixing it up. They have not yet finished doing so, and the total cost, to date, is over $1 million. Although that is in the almost-worthless-US-dollar, it is still a substantial amount of moolah.

Switch to a couple of days before that. Out of curiosity, I looked on Ye Olde Internet for real estate in a small town in Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia that Bubelah and I have visited and really like. A house, finished in grand style similar to our friends’ house but far bigger with a substantially larger yard was listed for about $500,000. Bigger house, bigger yard, all finished (no fixing up really necessary) for half as much – and probably half the property taxes, too.

Switch to years earlier and swoop down South to the ancestral estates of the Brip Blap family, sprawling across 3 acres of land in the Deep South. My parents have vacated their home in the South to move closer to my brother’s family (and closer to mine, as well). Their Deep South house – which I am sure they will not mind me referring to as “stylistically dated” (but a very nice home) – is a little smaller than the Pennsylvania and Queens houses, but on a huge lot with practically no property taxes. It might sell for about 15% of the cost of the Queens house. 

So where do you draw the line? I know I could move to Kansas (no offense, Kansanians, I pick on Kansas because of the free land being offered there) and build Neverland II for what a decent-sized single family house would cost in Queens OR a 650-sq foot studio in Manhattan. Bubelah and I have often toyed with the idea of moving to Florida, a place we both like a lot, as well, and I am sure real estate on the beach is a lot more affordable today than it was two years ago. I used to joke about moving to Portugal, but I suspect with the dollar’s value where it is that wouldn’t be much of a bargain.

I think it says something about your core values if you choose to spend big on a place to live. I know there is a point at which we all draw the line, because I don’t see huge numbers of bloggers from the Soft Coasts moving to the heartland, nor vice-versa. Our friends in Queens spent big because they feel THAT IS IT. The home is in the midst of their community, near family, good neighborhood, schools, etc. etc. They have planted their flag, and staked their financial future to it; they will not have financial freedom in the next 10 years (or 30). But they are happy with that decision.

My point? I know financial freedom is not my #1 goal when I analyze it in this context. Bubelah and I could move to my parents’ home in the South and neither of us would need to work at a day job, starting tomorrow. With our various side-income producing ventures, given a little growth, we could probably support most of our needs. The schools are fine (I’m a product of them, and I think I can do sums and read a comic strip as well as the next person). But we won’t do it: family, climate, etc. enter into it but the kicker is really that neither of us can imagine living in a small town anymore. But this does mean, then, that our number one value is not financial freedom, as I often like to say it is. Our number one value may be family, or a more liberal big-city atmosphere, or the ability to eat Turkish cuisine frequently (best.food.ever) – but whatever our #1 value is, it is not financial freedom. So for now, no green acres!

But then… farewell new jersey…

how to defeat fear

2083111412_bd80823f59

When I worked in Bucharest, we’d go out to lunch from time to time. Our office was in a building that had a soup/deli thing on the ground floor. The other option was a McDonald’s about a block away. When you were there in the winter, the sidewalks would be covered by ice - public services like salt and scraping were nonexistent - but that wasn’t the biggest kicker. I had been in numerous freezing cold locales by that point: Moscow, Siberia, Poland, Boston. The real problem was the dogs… and the fear of those dogs.

Wild dogs roamed up and down the streets in our part of downtown Bucharest. I don’t know if they were wild dogs, or just abandoned pets, but they seemed bold enough to be wild and tame enough to shy away at the last second from a human. They were frightening, though. They’d gather around you and snarl and bark and generally activate your caveman brain’s fear of things with teeth.

We’d watch out the windows around lunchtime to see if the local pack of wild dogs were nearby before setting off for McDonald’s. I’m not sure if they would have attacked. They acted fierce, and they looked hungry, but I never saw them attack a person. They were hungry, for sure. If they came close, I’d throw a rock or two. Usually that scared them off. Once or twice it didn’t, and I learned a trick - barking LIKE a dog at a dog freaks them out. They fear that as much as you might fear them. But before you laugh at me, imagine having a pack of 10-12 hungry wild dogs snarling at you and think about what you’d do in that situation.

We would go to McDonald’s, of course. If you can look out the window and see that you’re likely to make it, you may chance it, because you can only eat soup in the company canteen so many days in a row. A cheeseburger starts to look like a filet mignon steak after a while.

But those dogs were frightening. Years before going to Bucharest, while living in Moscow, I had read reports of a young woman torn to shreds by wild dogs a few blocks from my home. You’d have to assume she was drunk, or stoned, or just unlucky. But people do get attacked by dogs, so a pack of wild dogs is not something to shrug at. Week after week (I spent a lot of time in Bucharest) I’d venture by those dogs…sometimes walking through the midst of them.

Towards the end, as I mentioned, I snarled at them. They cringed when they saw me coming. I had little fear of them. The first time I saw them I was terrified, and the last time I saw them I was caught somewhere between disgust and pity, but fearless. Not to go all Aesop on you here, but the moral of the story is that even things that seem scary can be conquered. Don’t assume that you will always be afraid. Someday - if you try hard enough, and beat away at it every day - you’ll beat it. Fear is just uncertainty about the unknown.

photo by Javiercit0

tennis, a building block


I wasn’t the greatest tennis player in the world, but in high school I played on a team that was usually in the top 2-3 in our district and the top 10 in the state. My home state was a pretty competitive tennis state, so that wasn’t a small achievement. I was on the varsity team in the 10th grade, playing mixed doubles (basically the #4 guy on the varsity team). I just missed the cut to letter, but by my junior year I was up to the #2/#3 guy on the team, playing men’s doubles, and a few times I even played at the #1 position. By my senior year I was pretty much in a good position to challenge for #1 although there were definitely two guys much better than me on the team (both seniors, like me), and one junior who was probably better although not really “into” it that much – he tended to skip practices and miss tournaments, which obviously meant the coach didn’t trust him much.

I had a love/hate relationship with tennis throughout high school. It dominated my daily life more than anything except my studies, really. However, the day I played my last tennis match as a senior, I more or less quit forever. I think I played sporadically that summer but basically I quit playing for anything more than just idle “hit-arounds” at that point.

But I learned a few thing about sports from those days playing tennis, and some of those lessons apply to life past sports, as well.

  • Tennis is an incredibly athletic sport that requires dexterity, strength, flexibility, speed, endurance and focus. I can’t think of another sport that is so demanding in terms of total physical workouts, except maybe – maybe – basketball as played on a “street” level. A lot of pro basketball and even college basketball is standing around passing the ball back and forth. But you know what? Something that involves your ‘total self’ - be it athletic, mental, or emotional - is worth doing. Parenting is an emotional 100%-all-in activity; it teaches you a lot about yourself, just like tennis does physically.
  • It’s a fairly simple sport. The rules aren’t that tough to understand and at its base the rule is basically “hit it back over the net before it bounces twice.” Nothing like baseball, for example. But just because something is simple doesn’t mean it can’t be perfected. Writing is simple - almost anyone with mastery of the basics of typing, grammar and spelling can do it. With Microsoft Word you can probably even dispense with grammar and spelling, and with some sort of speech-recognition typing even becomes less critical. But just because you CAN do a thing doesn’t mean you can DO a thing. I can shoot a basketball. I can’t shoot over Yao Ming.
  • It’s international in appeal. There’s nowhere in the world where tennis, or some form of it, isn’t a fairly-well recognized sport. There are other sports that approach it, such as basketball, and one that transcends it, football (soccer), but generally it is one of the few worldwide sports. But it’s not as popular in the US as it is elsewhere. The lesson I learned here is that just if something is not valued in your country/state/town/tribe/whatever, doesn’t mean it can’t have value to you. Learn what appeals to you and set your course in that direction.

    • I don’t think I’ll ever take up tennis again. I enjoyed it intensely while I played it, and then I put down my racket and walked away without ever looking back (I took up lacrosse instead). Every activity or interest in life is a step. If that activity continues to lead you forward, hold on to it. If it doesn’t, let it go. I’ve taken up many interests in my life - hobbies, studies, jobs, sports and even TV shows - that I cherished, used or enjoyed and then left behind. Make sure that each activity is a building block, and not a filler - if it’s building you up as a person, it’s never going to be wasted time.

    consumerism and dancing

    One of the lessons I’ve learned from being a father of two is that the relationship between happiness and ‘things’ for children is established early on. You won’t be able to completely sever the mental connection between happiness and the accumulation of stuff, either. As a parent, you’d like to see your children spurn the exciting kiddie t-shirts and the cool beeping toys, but it’s a battle you’re going to lose unless you keep them in a van down by the river, separate from civilization.

    Children are naturally attracted to exciting toys, just as adults are. Things that flash and play music and show us interesting pictures are tempting at any age. We send our son to a Waldorf school, which strictly prohibits the use of electronics in the school (no TV, no computers) and strongly discourages their use in the child’s home (which we, sadly, have not honored as we should have).

    My son’s classmates are generally the children of - for lack of a better word - bohemian families, who emphasize local/organic eating, vegetarianism, simple living and so on. At the same time it’s clear that all of these children know who Spiderman is. It’s hard to avoid pop culture, and the pop culture is what sucks them in to consumerism. I add to it - I’m a fan of Batman, and both of my kids certainly know who that is by this point.

    But it’s not all bad. I’ve realized that fighting consumerism is a losing battle (unless you’re willing to grit your teeth and fix up that van…down by the river). Parents can, though, teach their children a few key lessons - and take some decisive actions - to teach their children they are more than the sum of the things they own.

    Don’t hide the world from them - or them from the world. I don’t like soda - I quit drinking it years ago and only have it a few times each year. I hope my children never develop a taste for soda, and I won’t keep it in the house. At the same time, I know I can’t keep them from it. I hate guns and gun violence on TV, and I’ve mostly succeeded at keeping them from seeing it. But I do let them drink a Sprite once in a while at a restaurant. I will let them pretend to play swords or even shoot “shrink rays.” You can’t assume that you’ll prevent your children from being exposed to ANYTHING, no matter how repellent you find it.

    Eventually, everything you dislike - politics, illegal or unethical behavior, horrible foods, and on and on - will be in front of them. Prepare them for it. Be interested in their interests to combat those things. After the millionth reading of I Am A Rabbit or Frosty the Snowman I’ve come to appreciate my parents’ efforts to stay interested in my interests growing up (and they still do). If your kid likes dinosaurs, spend a few minutes reading up on dinosaurs and surprise them with some cool facts. Are they interested in painting? Help them learn how to clean brushes. Do they like stories about dragons? Read stories about dragons.

    Get out of the way. Children can’t develop self-confidence if you slather Purell on their hands every time they play with dirt. How confident will they be when they leave home for college if you’ve never let them spend the night away from home? How vulnerable will they be to binge drinking and drugs if you’ve forced your teen to come home at 8 pm on weekends and never let them touch a beer? Sometimes you have to let your toddlers go down the slide and skin their knees. Confidence is developed by failing and and trying again, not by having a parent swoop in to the rescue at the last minute.

    “Neither a debtor nor a lender be”. In Act I of Hamlet, Polonius utters this phrase, which was relayed to me endlessly by my grandfather, and then my mother. I know it seems harsh. Sometimes we need debt - think mortgages. Sometimes we’ll be lenders - think family in need. But I think this phrase rings deeply and profoundly true to anyone who reads it and understands it. There may be exceptions, but debt is to be avoided. Lending to family in need may seem like a good idea, but if you can, just give. Don’t lend money, ever, unless you are prepared to lose it. Don’t ever incur debt - ideally not even for a mortgage but that is sometimes unavoidable. Teach your children this financial lesson and you have taught them 99.9% of what they need to know about personal finance.

    My children, for example, are not each just the child of two parents. They are a person. I made the mistake for years of defining myself by my job, which was an easy error to make. It was exciting - it took me around the world, it gave me a corner office overlooking Central Park and it paid me huge amounts of money. I allowed myself to think I was my job. But you know what? I quit that job eventually and someone else is doing it now. I am still me. It took me a while to rebuild my sense of myself after quitting, but I knew deep down I was not just my job, or my money, or my things. Don’t ever let your children grow more attached to things, and don’t pressure them to be a doctor, or an astronaut. Even the question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ can be dangerous: it implies they need to ‘be’ a career, or a job. Let them be themselves when they grow up. My son has a great answer for this if anyone asks him: he wants to be a person.

    Dance. This is the best advice and the one I often forget; if truth be told this advice is as much for me as anyone. If you teach kids from an early age to love music, and to stand up and wave their arms as soon as they can, they’ll be happier. There are few activities more universal or more releasing than dancing. It doesn’t have to be ballroom, or anything structured. Just jump around. It combines music (happy), exercise releasing good endorphins (happy), being in the moment without distractions (happy), and just being together (happy). Too often as adults we’re tired after a long day, but trust me - if you did nothing else with your kids but dance, they’ll be happy.

    Don’t fight consumerism, or the onslaught of information, or the modern world. Don’t cling to ideas about your own idealized childhood. Just try to throw a few little roadblocks in front of the consumer convoy, and maybe you’ll disrupt your children enough that they’ll veer off the interstate and end up on the scenic highway.

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