Harder to write it than to read it

Every time I'm impelled to behave well by, in fact, adding material to my blog, I have to face the exact same demon: WORDS!

Think about it: words swirl through our minds all day long. We probably have the exact same thought fifty or more times a day. "I'm hungry; where's the bathroom; how am I going to pay for that; has the dog been walked; ohmygod, everything I need for tomorrow is in the cleaners!"

Most of our daily appetite for words are banal and mundane and most assuredly cliche. Even those of us who are pretty good with words (like writers) dry up when we're put under some pressure, especially when there is no paycheck on the table. Blog writing is especially hard. If we have no big following or we don't know who's reading because they don't comment, we're writing in a vacuum, looking into our own navels and saying what's on our minds (and remember the list of useless thinking I gave you above).

Yet I read the blogs like an addict. Some are punishingly biased and consequently not worth the time they take to even boot up. Others are open, nuanced and enlivening. I read Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish daily and David Kuo on Belief Net several times a month (and that's about how often he posts there). But suffice it to say, writing is hard work, not casual play. But if you have the gift of words, you are compelled to write now and then. Invitation: comment!

Authenticity and the 2008 election

It seems that the pundits who are worth listening to (the PBS dudes who talk to Charlie Rose at 11 PM after the children are asleep) think that the only quality any presidential candidate must exhibit to win the US presidency is the power to connect to the everyday person. This makes sense on its surface, but only if you believe the everyday person is actually a voter!

I wish I knew the average American. I don't. I'm too long in the Northeast to recognize the lunchpail Democrats in Ohio as the biggest voting bloc, the ones Obama HAS to connect to, or even women over 50 as so terribly significant (and that's a category where I fit).

I don't recognize the description of rich which Obama gave at the Saddleback forum as over 250K (McCain said over 5MM). I live in Boston and I can figure out how to live on under 100K and still feel rich. I lived on under 12K thirty years ago and I shared space in Manhattan with a roommate and went to museums and outdoor music fairs. I always had plenty of food to eat.

Average Americans are rich by any standards in world terms, but we don't (want to) know it. The statistical comparisons are staggering. If Obama doesn't raise taxes (or Mc Cain) we won't have an infrastructure to leave our children. Our children and grandchildren are paying for a social security they will never get to use. It's time for America to get authentic about how rich and poor we are. We live in an unfair, unequal society and we must sober up from the silly stuff of this election. I think we can handle straight talk. and I think the way to connect to the average American (whoever that is) is to appeal to our sense of fairness and inherent appreciation of truth in the face of shared sacrifice.

I await hearing the details of the Democratic platform. Will it resemble the way we live or will it pander to the imaginary lunchpail people? These are not selfish isolated folk. They are "can-do" and they will follow a real leader. Are we ready to actually elect someone good, or just settle for a loser we deserve?

Tough stuff

This is Tuesday's complaint department:

I have a part-time job where I have to maintain a sane and healthy working relationship with people who "supervise" my work (but can't read my attitude) from 1500 miles south of me. It's a virtual call center for career professionals and I attempt to make sense of a complex network of instructions that occasionally becomes unwieldy. My "boss", the woman who hired and trained me, has to manage 186 people remotely from her perch in North Carolina. She's busy ( she IS a Vice-President, after all), and she has more email than anyone ought to have (or so I hear). She announced on one of our multi-city teleconferences about two months ago that she doesn't get to all of her email. This means she doesn't answer inquiries, so don't bother to send any. As one who had already sent her unanswered email six weeks prior, I can attest to that!

So today I needed to find a document she had sent about two weeks ago and I emailed the head of the administrative staff to get the old info for me to make a meeting connection on August 25th. This admin lady couldn't help me, but asked how she could help me get to the source. So, I emailed the Source, the one who doesn't open her emails, and voila! MADAME picked up the phone and called me. And she was offended I was sending out email announcing she doesn't answer her email!! Well, with that phone call, I guess she showed me!

What's wrong here? It's that I called her on her bs with not answering email and she woke up! God forbid anyone should notice that if you announce on a teleconference that it might take you six weeks to hear back from her that you would seek to get her ear by going around her to anyone who could help you out!

I have a big problem with poseurs! Straight talk about relationships that have to be maintained long-distance is essential for s smooth working relationship. I was kind in apologizing for her misunderstanding that I might have sounded like I was complaining about her, but it's time to get the big picture: hire an admin to read your mail and respond or I'll call you next time!

Big Stuff

My book (and my blog) is nothing if not about building character, and not to be confused with backbone, stiff upper lip or any of the prep school idiosyncrasies.

We spend our lives in behaviors developed from character and we travel over and over again back to its monumental maintenance. Every once in awhile, we get the blessing of a really bad event, (did I say blessing?) or culmination of a series of events, habits or lifelong behaviors that hits us with a WHAMMY!

These are the times that try men's souls. And women's I might add.

I am in the midst of just such a life altering event. Predicament is more the word, for events happen and pass somewhat quickly; predicaments take time to unravel and finally straighten out. The details of my messy experience are not important here: you have one yourself; you will have one soon or you've had one in the not so distant past and you'd rather not discuss it, much less remember it.

The question is what happens on the journey through the mess? How do I behave? I'll give you one simple example. I had to call a lawyer to begin to take care of my predicament, and I was given a referral of someone from a friend who hadn't paid the gentleman when she used him four years ago. I was embarrassed to tell him I couldn't name my source, but I went ahead and told it straight. I wasn't free to tell him. I had rehearsed other nonsense, but told the simple truth.

The victories we find in life come from very small steps, even when we clean up very big mistakes. We die a thousand deaths as we stumble through our years, but we wake up and make a tiny dent in our integrity, one simple sentence at a time.