Fire By Sea

They’re for real. Maybe not in the pop culture commercialized sense but there are certainly days when your stock are way up or way down or somewhere in between.

I’m having a below average days. People don’t like me today. I don’t take it personal because I know I’m on a downswing today.

The best thing to do is let it pass. Understand that it just isn’t your day. Don’t be too ambitious on projects or overly excited about an idea (chances are on down days the ideas aren’t flowing anyway).

Here’s the skinny: I’m a publisher, not a web developer or website guy. I’m not great making websites and I’m definitely not passionate about it.

But with publishing, I have the vision. I’ve got a couple of visions. I know they can succeed. They won’t pay anytime soon but long term the returns could be awesome, as well as the alignment with this type of work (and the RESPECT that comes with it = less down days).

Best to go home, forget about work, immerse myself into something completely different — like my family or a movie or both — and then see how I feel in the morning.

Publisher, editor, writer, blogger, leader.

Not your neighbor website guy.

I never thought I’d be a father of a 16 year old daughter. A beautiful and talented one at that. I mean it wasn’t too long ago that I was a young naive boy myself lusting after these pretty young things.

But times they have-a changed. I’m a man now, a father protective of the women in his life, ready to sacrifice without hesitation.

Talk about full circle.

I’ve got a lot to deal with. A lot of kids. Expenses. Pressure. A future to procure. A house to maintain, grass to cut and a business to run.

Will we make it?

C’mon — answer me!!!

Yeah I’ll be honest it sucks. I don’t usually have a reason to write anymore…but wait, it’s write or die, right?

I’m either too tired or too focused on “paying” gigs that the essence of writing slips me. But what I need to realize it that’s it’s the paying gigs that are so easy to get swallowed up by — they’re so vacuum-ish.

But the writing is an exercise and to stay healthy — even at a minimum level (just enough to keep me interested and non-lame feeling — requires me to embrace the medium every single day.

As I start my descent into sleepy incoherence now, I just want to remind myself that I did the consulting thing way back and it totally sucked. I don’t mind giving myself away at first but there has to be strong incremental rewards and incentive, even if I put them there myself (which I obviously will).

The last thing I want to become is a strung-out consultant who gets little respect but works like a dog. It’s exactly the guy I used to work with in Anchorage (was kind of envious at the time but not now): he worked his ass off, had enough for his toys and vacation and that was it — I suppose he was happy with what he had.

I’m not happy with that nonsense. I need basic cash flow to keep business afloat and pay bills, but there’s so much more I’m going for.

Damn I’m tired tonight…

They’re two things that create some problems for me. Let’s break it down:

• Food: necessary, of course, but easy to overdue when you feel unhappy. I tend to overeat when I don’t have faith in myself or the future. The food acts as an anesthetic that covers up (pain) and stimulates some sort of feelings of comfort. Then guilt and discomfort set in, followed by fatness, and eventually, more depression. It’s a body-mind challenge, and a hard one, too because there is all sort of cultural, societal and other influence on how and what we eat. Eating guidelines are important to have but hard to follow.
• Alcohol: something I’ve never really been partial to (didn’t really drink much until my 20s) and still aren’t that crazy about. But I continue to drink it everyday. Granted, it takes off the edge of the day but it too slows me down and depending on my mood, aggravates the hell out of me. Then I have another one. I’m drinking because I feel I have to and that’s just plain wrong.

Food and alcohol are meant to be enjoyed and when there’s no atmosphere or circumstance to enjoy them, they become crutches (alcohol more so since we need food to survive).

I like them in good company, when they aren’t the focus and when there are many other things going on that make life interesting.

Writing. Through thick and thin. The other CB is right: you have to do it anywhere, everywhere and all the time. There is no such thing as perfect writing conditions. Fu that shu.

The reason I bring this up is because I’m living in far less than ideal writing conditions, and by this I mean emotional. It’s hard to write miserable; it really is. But that doesn’t matter; it really doesn’t.

So writing is to be a train in the night, plowing through bad weather, marching without skipping its rhythm, its headlight illuminating the not too distant future.

Keep on writing keep on writing keep on writing goes the train. (7/5)

I have a delicate relationship with coffee. I love the taste and aroma and the bouquet culture that’s evolved around it. But the biological effect of the brew can be wicked.

It all comes down to timing. Do it too early in the morning and, well, I’ll just leave it at that (let’s just say it can destroy a morning run).

Do it too late in the day and the body freaks out, stays up unnaturally late; the mind loses focus (feels like what ADD must feel like) and it just feels bad.

But get a great variety with the right ambiance (this is a huge factor) and coffee becomes one of life’s greatest pleasures. (7/5)

…is truly priceless. It up there with air and water and love. You can’t put a price on time. Once you use it up, it’s all gone and you can never get it back.

You don’t appreciate this stuff until you get older. I think about all the time I squandered in my youth and early adulthood, like all that excessive warez downloading I did. What a royal waste!

Time is infinitely more valuable than money. I watch my kids grow up every day and think, “Now there’s time that will NEVER be replicated. What a gift.”

Money is just money. It comes and goes. It fills and drains. It helps and corrupts. It’s not what I’m working so hard for. I’m working for time. (7/5)

I had a shitty childhood. I watched my dad be completely oblivious to the three childhoods he let squandering and limp by as he seemingly projected his own failed childhood frustrations on our lame and broken family.

The whole thing was a shame, but it instilled in me a full appreciation for each one of my kids’ childhoods.

Everyday I think about how I’m a big part of their childhood and my time with them is actually quite limited in the big picture. So I’ve got to make the best of it for everyone’s sake.

I can’t stress enough how important the concept of childhood is to me. It completely defines fatherhood. (7/5)

The cliche is true — you have to climb the ladder to get somewhere. I’ve been climbing a ladder for a long time now, a ladder that never even seemed like a ladder but rather a never-ending journey into the unknown, all under the pressure of gravity.

So this evening I mingled. And I feel totally confident. And then I think to myself: why didn’t I just think about that when I first started? The solution now seems so simple, but it clearly wasn’t then. Such is growing up.

So now that I’m on the ladder further up than I ever have been, what does it look like? Well from where I’m standing it looks like shit. There is still some much organizing, rallying, etc. to even get to point where my thoughts might matter to other people.

So up I climb, rarely pausing. The ascent is invigorating…