The U.S. spent $100B to ensure the swing of a second hand turning the millennium, did not crash the modern computer infrastructure during the run-up to Y2K. Pending hurricanes quickly clear store shelves of plywood, batteries, bottled water, milk, bread, and toilet paper. Insurance and financial advisers pitch solutions to mitigate catastrophe and reach personal goals.
How do you prepare for the storms of life during...
Read More
Until recently, very little changed between generations. Children would grow up knowing the same world as their parents. Not so today. Our parent's generation lived in a time we will never understand.
My mom walked through former orange groves and watched the construction of Disneyland on her way to school. She experienced some strange family situations as a young girl, her oldest daughter dying in a horse accident, divorce, life as a single parent before remarrying and enduring me.
My dad watched his brother fight polio and wither...
Read More
Pressure creates diamonds.
Poverty, abuse, persecution, racism, death, bullying, and a myriad of other wrongs influence how we encounter the world.
The social norms of the day may have swept events under the rug or threats silenced the reporting. But, you remember and carry these memories in your bones.
Writer, Debbie Millman (@debbiemillman), openly discusses the sexual, physical, and mental abuse she received as a child and youth. Counseling has helped her...
Read More
The theater fades to black. The screen flickers to life and the feature begins. The film whisks me through the standard story arc in 90 minutes. The introduction of the hero sparks empathy and our hero plummets from bliss to chaos. The last quarter of the movie displays the resolution and rising out of the ashes to the new normal.
I am a sucker for a story and my emotions quickly buckle up for the pending roller coaster ride. This plummet over the edge of sanity always gets my heart racing and somehow my eyes leak as if on cue from the director.
We watch our heroes and celebrate their return home. We revel in the entrepreneur's...
Read More
Each pursuit is different, but each follows the story arch of dream defined the struggle and completion. Not every dream story has a happy ending of a record IPO and the founders raising a toast on a faraway beach. The glossy pictures in the magazines make the idea of success a sure thing. After all, the rack is full of new stories each month. As the artist recounts their story; the ten years of anguished uncertainty, living in obscurity, and the families push for a 9 to 5 is all captured in a paragraph or two.
The memes tout the benefits of the failures, setbacks and grind during the pursuit. The reality is, the trials suck. The dark days of the world not understanding what you are creating can be very dark. The creditors are calling, too much cheap pizza, the boot of responsibility to produce firmly pressed on your neck, the stress keeping the gut in a permanent knot, wreaks havoc on the mental state.
I am pursuing a vision and struggle with demands and responsibility of husband, father, and employee. At 46, have the possibilities passed me by, and I should expect to be a dust farmer, dancing on the razor's edge, for the rest of my days until the reaper comes? The unfulfilled and unexplored dreams buried with me. The resistance continues to fire the cortisol to ensure there is no relief and the dark clouds coalesce.
I
must
get
up.
I can do one more rep. I can write one more song. I can code one more string. I can submit to one more publisher. I can practice the fundamentals one more time. The injustices against the dark fingers typing the poetry will not stop the rhymes from changing the world. The slurs hurled because of my caste steel my resolve to upend the corrupt system. I must halt the cycle of drugs and poverty ingrained in the family tree, so I study another page of engineering.
What are the lessons this pursuit is teaching you and crafting your unique story of the one you greet each morning in the mirror?
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt