Finding My Friday Again

June 29, 2009 By 33 Comments

The helter skelter of the last few weeks has prompted me to run this particular “Deja Tuesday” post. This was originally written sometime back around mid November of last year. Since then “Finding my Friday” has become one of my favorite phrases.

It is slightly rewritten to reflect the new year and my new understanding of the comma, but is otherwise mostly in tact.

Enjoy!

FridayLife never unfolds quite as expect, and hoping that it will is more than a little like swatting fog. Days unfold, weeks disappear, and we often find ourselves doing our best when we simply catch up and catch our breath. We keep our eyes fastened forward, accept what we see, remain thankful for all we have that is working, and arrange to change what doesn’t.

We cannot stop life from happening. It goes on every day with or without us. It follows us everywhere, surrounding us at all times no different than the air we breathe.

We never know how one moment will drift into the next, so it is paramount we regard our moments as each a possible precursor to the last; forever fixing our face toward the now, while never forgetting to flick our eyes at the horizon and whatever prize we’ve placed beneath, while understanding there are few things we can simply compel to happen.

When big things happen suddenly, there is often unreasonable cost attached.

Like a tsunami, or avalanche.

Life, at its best, happens bit by tiny bit.

Does the caterpillar know what he will one day be?

Probably not.

One thing Cindy has always said, though only now am I hearing it in the way she’s always meant it: “We mustn’t ever skip our steps.”

I love our modern world, but when I can download nearly anything that caresses my mood, how can I remain humble and look patience in the eye? More important, how can I teach this to my children?

There’s an order to life, and to most things we say we want and are willing to work for. Skipping even a single step, often means misunderstanding or misapplying something in the future. If we consider we are here just once, this seems precarious and unnecessary.

My biggest one to grow on during my twenties was patience. Fortunately, life saw fit to outfit me with the ultimate foe of an impatient man: first a girl and then a boy.

I’m more patient than I used to be, but I still have about a million miles to meander.

Last Friday, I was in the middle of telling Cindy about my brand new idea – the new one; the one that would change everything, allow us to scale our next summit, and plant a flag deep inside all future possibility. A good fifteen minutes had passed since the last idea and, since it was getting late, it was perfectly possible a better idea would not arrive before the dawn.

“Sweetheart,” Cindy said, placing her hand on my forearm to stop me from pacing. She gingerly pulled me on the love seat beside her. “You need to find your Friday.”

These last few months have seen me celebrating my new life as a full time writer by piling more and more onto my ridiculously heaping plate. I tackle each week as though the Romans didn’t get it done in a day by choice. There’s a lot to be said for working hard and using every minute, but it is something else entirely when your minutes are misapplied.

But doing my best doesn’t always mean doing my most.

I found my Friday, and fortunately, my Saturday and Sunday sailed into the sunset right behind.

Writer Dad

If you haven’t Subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? It’s free!

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , , ,

Wrapping the Morning Glories

June 11, 2009 By 60 Comments

2973634406_01a9f36383I live in a large corner lot, 9 blocks from the beach…in an ancient house that both Father Time and civic pride seemed to have abandoned.

The house is an old Victorian, a perfect purchase for its original purpose – running a nursery school on the first floor while our family made house up on the second. The house, a hair or two over a hundred years old, has at least a 100,000 tales to tell, few of which I know and none of which I’ll share today. This particular tale takes place just outside the house, specifically along the fence that wraps around the lawn and faces the two separate streets that converge upon our corner.

The fence is not nearly as old as the house. Where I can still clearly see the hidden beauty of our abode tucked beyond the structure’s years, the fence was obviously unattractive when installed. However, it wasn’t lack of beauty that kept me from loving it. From the moment I first saw the fence I knew exactly what it wasn’t, and knowing what it wasn’t gave me an open invitation to cast a wish for what it might someday come to be.

The fence sat at the perfect height to obscure the outside world and shield some of the more unbecoming of our neighborhood’s behavior from the forever curious and always wandering eyes of my offspring. Neither Cindy or I would say we overly shelter our children. We expose them to as much language and experience as possible and stroll our streets regularly. Last summer didn’t fill the gas tank on either vehicle a single time. Still, there are plenty of things I’d rather they not see, especially from the supposed sanctuary of a private playground where they hold every right to remain. I would rather they not get jarred from the abundant imagination of childhood by course behavior, too often oblivious to the innocence of children. The problem was, the thin metal bars of the fence were completely see through.

Fortunately, a lifetime living among flowers filled my mind with a solution. Within two weeks of moving in to the house, I drove to a nursery, bought a few one gallon morning glories, then waited for time and our nearest star to harmonize the inevitable.

With my eyes closed I could clearly see: a lush green backdrop against which my children could play, irrespective of the concrete jungle on the other side. But like any canvas worth covering, multiplying the morning glories wouldn’t happen on its own.

Sun and water took care of the tendrils. The tedium was mine.

Each afternoon I would line my chair against the fence and wrap the morning glories through the apertures, weaving a lattice of nature thick enough to canvas a small area at a time, yet thin enough for the future to find its way through. There were times when this routine was relaxing, but more often than not it was a humdrum chore, hard to look forward to and difficult to find pleasure in. But every day I did it anyway, every afternoon imagining the way the fence would one day be – after the ironclad law of a whole lot of a little finally added up to some kind of a lot.

It took about a year and a half for the morning glories to swallow the fence. Now my children play in their own Narnia. The beauty isn’t just for them, nor has it stayed wrapped around the fence. Part of the beauty has woven its way into my mind to teach me a lesson I needed do learn.

I built something else during those long months of weaving and winding, something that went far beyond natural sanctuary. Anyone reading right now can relate.

The colorless drudgery of our days can sometimes blossom with the full fruition of a dream earned. Raising children, blogging, running a household, living a wonderful life. Everything worth loving takes time to create and sometimes the repetitive nature of living threatens to swallow us whole.

But it is always worth it.

The next time you find yourself wrapping morning glories of your own, remember: one day all those afternoons of tedium might finally combine to wipe away everything you don’t care to see.

Writer Dad

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to Have More Time For Marriage With Kids In The Way

January 22, 2009 By 30 Comments

This is a guest post from Corey Allan of Simple Marriage dot Net and Parent to Launch dot Com.

2712331670_cf88013819It’s late in the afternoon and the work to do list continues to pile up. Emails are left unanswered. The new message light is still blinking on your phone. It’s endless.

You get home after picking up the kids in time for a quick dinner, unless it’s take out, again. You spend a little bit of time talking as a family, maybe. Unless there’s a school activity, sports practice, homework, meeting, or something else scheduled.

You collapse into bed maybe hours after your spouse, and wake up to do it all over again.

If you have kids living under your roof, I know you’ve been there.

Today’s family is under a tremendous amount of strain. So is marriage. With all the things vying for our attention, it’s easy to have the important slip through the cracks in order to address the immediate.

Many marriages suffer due to this strain. It’s hard to find time for each other in amongst the schedules and routines of life.

Whether you are lost when it comes to finding even a minute together with your spouse or you are looking for a bit of a spark to take the marriage to another level, here’s a few ideas to incorporate.

1. Create a schedule. Life runs on schedules already, so why not use a bit of this in marriage. Plan weekly dates. Schedule in rendezvous during the week. You may think this will kill the passion and spontaneity… really? You mean that you’ve never spent any time thinking through how you’d like an encounter or date to unfold? By having something scheduled, you create room for anticipation.

2. Tell your kids your marriage is important. Strictly speaking, your kids belong to you, it’s not the other way around. Inform your kids, better yet show your kids that your marriage is important. Go on regular dates. If your family is like mine, your kids are done eating quickly in order to go play, spend time at the table with your spouse after they’re done. Sure you conversations will be interrupted, but it’s a great way to connect.

3. Utilize babysitters. If you’re lucky enough to have family close by, let the kids have a little family time while you and your spouse go out. The beauty of this option – the kids get someone new to play and interact with, while you get a break together. It’s amazing to me the number of couples I’ve met that have not had their kids stay over night with family members or friends. Not only do you and your spouse benefit from this time, your kids do as well. They experience an expanded range of people who love and care for them. This can set a foundation for greater self-confidence and growth as they develop.

4. Create secret signals or code words. It’s difficult to have conversations that may lead to deeper, more intimate connections when you are interrupted every five minutes by one kid tattling on the other or needing something from you for their homework or wardrobe. This can be overcome by creating another language or codes to use with each other. This language or code should be based on whatever you would be saying to each other if given the opportunity. If this type of language is not part of your normal dialogue, then it would need to be created all together. It could be as simple as lighting a candle that is centrally located in the home as a signal one of the parties is interested in an encounter. Whether the encounter is sexual or emotional is up to you. Or it could be as complex as learning a second language. How cool would it be to woo your spouse in another language? And if your kids begin to understand the language, they would only discover more about the love and desire you have for your spouse. There are far worse things they probably already know about you.

Kids in the home present many obstacles to passion in marriage, but they aren’t the only reason passion wanes. By overcoming the hurdles of kids, you are faced with what else may be going on in the marriage. The kids can provide a buffer for a stale marriage. If that’s the case, more work will need to be done individually and relationally to address the other concerns.

Marriage is work. But the things in life that require work have more value.

Read more from Corey at Simple Marriage or even better, subscribe to his feed.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , , , ,

Sliding Doors

December 7, 2008 By 122 Comments

“No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.”

~Plutarch

Each of us is the sum of an infinity of thinly sliced seconds, where each one matters, at least to some degree. How could we ever hope to pinpoint that decisive second when things forever changed; the instant the axis of our world shifted and began to orbit in a different direction?

It might be difficult, but can be done.  Tally your life, take it apart, and turn a seemingly impossible task to tremendously simple.

I know the moment my life took its first step down an aisle it would never leave.  I ponder it often.

I pay no mind to the property values of my neighbors or the car I drive.  My family, living, and piece of mind, these are what give my rapture breath.  None would exist without the assembly of moments from this most remembered day.

I was working in a flower shop with my family on the day my life moved from middling to merit mounting.  Our shop lay at the lip of a city I’d scarcely left.  A stranger, a petite lady with eyes like chocolate almonds, had moved to town the previous year.  She had been shopping amongst our flowers for maybe a month.

Every time she passed our vibrant displays and rounded the corner to enter our doors, I’d abandon my knife, rush my phone call, or attend to some trifle that could have easily waited, had it not been in her vicinity.

Our store was in prep until ten, but she always showed up about a half hour early.  “Do you mind if I buy a few things that are already put together?”

She also knew precisely what to ask.

“Of course not,” I’d say, the words always falling behind a smile.

It was my job to keep the early birds away, but she spent enough for me to slither through rules without consequence.

Her visits grew earlier and her totals kept climbing.

I was helping her to the car on a beautiful October day, a fraction less than a month after our eyes first locked.  My arms saddled with blossoms, I saw her sashay to her space from behind a bundle of fully bloomed roses.

I blushed, squeezed by, then laid the blooms across the passenger seat of her red (orange) pickup, Texas plates in a California lot.  I arranged the bunches then turned to face her.  Her enormous coco pupils pulled my hazel ones toward them, like ore to magnet.

I cannot recall the length of this moment, only that a single bird sang and that the perfect note felt like an epiphany.

She slipped something between my fingers.  “I’m going to go broke if I keep doing it this way,” she said.  Words flew from her mouth as though escaping.  “Call me sometime, and we could talk longer, over a cup of coffee.”

Still in the dusty aftermath of my previous liaison, I said,  “I’m just at the end of a relationship.  I’m flattered, really, but I don’t think I’m ready.”

She said something then that only clinical dementia could ever steal.  “Life’s too short to be unhappy.  Think about it, then call me.”

All fifteen syllables sounded like a smile.

I did call, though two weeks drifted from the calendar.  I wasn’t playing games, only intimidated by the strength of our obvious and unexpected bond.  I found my fortitude and made up for my missing days.

I picked up the phone around 9:30 on a Friday night, the first week of November.  We talked until the sun was almost a promised fulfilled.

Monday, she left on business, but her absence did nothing to dim our exchange.  Each day after work, we exchanged words across a land line until far past midnight, each minute driving an already expensive hotel phone bill closer toward outrageous.

It was worth every single copper faced Lincoln.

She tore into town that next Friday, not even stopping to change.  We met at a Mexican restaurant in the same center as the flower shop.

That long week was prologue to my present day; a now that can be easily traced to a single moment.

The house we live in was agreed on in twilight as the two of us held hands.  A boy and a girl wait for stories each night at bedtime, snug in the cradle of my lap.  They were baked in her oven from our special recipe.  Our living is made in tandem, because she is yin to my yang and we’ve found ourselves happiest with the fewest possible pauses in conversation.

Our most intimate moments together would have never happened without her strolling into the store, slipping me her card, or telling me life’s too short to spend it even a sliver less than happy.

I often ponder the sliding doors of my life, and all those trails never taken.  Which crossroads would have dropped me somewhere else on the day my fate was delivered?

It is impossible to know.

What I do know is that I wouldn’t trade my fate for affluence beyond imagination.  There is no other life, be it prince or king, that I’d exchange for mine.  I already live a life of abundance and can draw a time line and place my pointer on the precise moment that brought it to me.

Writer Dad

Writer Dad can write as beautifully for you. Click here to hire the best ghostwriter on the net.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , ,

Oktober High-Five

November 20, 2008 By 62 Comments

Oktober 5 is a bit of a mystery.  We don’t know his name, or even the meaning behind his moniker.  This matters not at all.  Few things hold as much gravity as the wisdom in our words, and in that, Oktober has no shortage.  His posts are peerless, each one perfectly pithy.

I’ve encountered no one else online who brandishes brevity as he.  Sometimes, there are no words, only a photograph worth a throw’s more than a thousand.  You can subscribe to his feed here.  Please enjoy his words below.

Oktober 5

At Least My Writing Understands Me

One of the most frustrating things in life is not being understood, or worse yet, being misunderstood. This feeling is often expressed in the words of your typical angst-ridden teen to his parents, “You don’t know me!” It’s true, we don’t know you because you don’t know yourself.

I’m clearly not a parent of an angst-ridden teen; I’m not middle-aged, balding, nor losing my mind. I am, however, the proud parent of a very misunderstood one-year-old boy. Despite his precocious attitude, he fails to realize that his ceaseless grunts and screams don’t translate directly into “I’m hungry” or “I want to go outside” or “I soiled myself and it’s about to leak out all over the place so please change me now.”

Believe me, such misunderstandings have had disastrous consequences. But there is hope. One-year-old boys grow up and teenagers discover themselves. And writers write. We all come to know ourselves.

WriterDad.com has an envious tag line: Life’s better with the right words. Our world is constantly defining itself with words. Even our feelings are being translated into drinkable quantities. The right words help us to be understood, which not only avoids misunderstandings and dirty diaper accidents, but teaches us something about ourselves.

Who better to critique us than our own writing? After all, it knows us best; it is us. Truly, writing is a reflection of us no matter how hard we may try to put forth our best self. When the emails have stopped coming, when twitter-land is quiet, when friends have exhausted their praise, then you are left with something that understands you and speaks to you in a way no other can.

Just as when you look in the mirror you’re the only one looking back, so too when you write your words you’re the only one to account for them. Make them good. Make them passionate. If you find the right words, you’ll find yourself, and there is no better feeling than knowing and controlling one’s self.

Writer Dad

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Finding My Friday

November 17, 2008 By 47 Comments

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?

~Paul Sweeney

Life never unfolds exactly as expected.  Hoping it will is only swatting at fog.  Days transpire, weeks disappear, and we are often engaging our best when we simply catch up, and catch our breath.  We keep our eyes fixed on what’s coming and then accept it when it does; remain thankful for all we have that works well, and arrange to change what doesn’t.

We cannot stop life from happening.  It goes on every day, with or without us.  It follows us everywhere, surrounding us everywhere we go, no different from the air we breathe.

We never know how that first drift will flutter the next, so it is paramount that we regard our moments as each a possible precursor to the last; forever holding our head in the now, while never forgetting to flick our eyes at the horizon and whatever prize we’ve placed beneath, while understanding that there are few things we can simply compel to happen.

When big things happen suddenly, there is often unreasonable cost attached.

Like a tsunami, or avalanche.

Life, at its best, happens bit by tiny bit.

Does the caterpillar know what he will one day be?

Probably not.

One thing Daisy’s always said, though only now am I hearing it in the way she’s always meant it: “We mustn’t ever skip our steps.”

I love our modern world, but when I can download nearly anything I’m in the mood for, and less than a decade from losing the nearly altogether, how can I remain humble while looking patience in the eye.  More important, how can I teach this to my children?

There’s an order to life, and to most things we say we want and are willing to work for.  Skipping even a single step, often means misunderstanding or misapplying something in the future.  If we consider we’re here only once, this seems precarious and unnecessary.

My biggest one to grow on during my twenties was patience.  Fortunately, life saw fit to outfit me with the ultimate foe of an impatient man: first a girl and then a boy.

I’m more patient than I used to be, but I still have a million miles to meander.

Last Friday, I was in the middle of telling Daisy about my brand new idea – the new one.  This was the one that would change everything, allow us to scale our next summit, and plant a flag deep inside all future possibility.  A good fifteen minutes had passed since the last idea and, since it was getting late, it was perfectly possible that a better idea would not arrive before the dawn.

“Sweetheart,” Daisy said.  She put her hand on my forearm to stop me from pacing, then pulled me down on the couch beside her.  “You need to find your Friday.”

This last week saw me celebrating my new life as a full time writer by piling even more onto my ridiculously heaping plate.  I tackled the week as though the Romans didn’t get it done in a day by choice.  There’s something to be said for working hard and using every minute, but it’s something else when your minutes are misapplied.

We will find our success.  It will happen because we are willing to wake up and give our best every day, but doing my best doesn’t always mean doing my most.

I found my Friday, and fortunately, my Saturday and Sunday sailed into the sunset right behind.

Writer Dad

Sean Platt is a ghostwriter for hire, specializing in ebook design and press releases.

Namas Daisy has a lesson from the geese.  Both Daves and Tara are getting fit in front of the whole internet.  Check out their awesome new blog, BLOG TO FIT.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Farewell

September 23, 2008 By 65 Comments

Man’s feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell. 

~Jean Paul Richter

Our goodbye was written slow.  Ideas were added to a marinade in my mind, where they swam for hours without rinsing.  

I’m not an emotional writer.

I often write without pause; thought in time with keystroke.  I can type for twenty minutes, crack my knuckles, then type for twenty more.

Yet it is surprising to me, though I’ve been doing this for nearly a year, that I routinely catch myself on the verge of tears as I am reading something to Daisy for the first time.  I never sob, just speak with sudden seams, surprised because I did not feel a thing as I was writing.

The farewell was different.

From the moment I sat at the keyboard, my heart was burning fuel. 

Any regular reader of Writer Dad knows the value I place on words.  I’ve never written a post just to publish.  The letter needed to explain what has happening, along with the why, and the when, and the how.

The letter is a document that will stay in our family forever.  A thousand words that sparked our migration.  Not to place to much portent on a straightforward adios, but I soon realized I wasn’t writing a simple goodbye.  

I was penning a farewell address.

Everything pooled into the first draft.  I typed without ties.  Words sat for a day, then multiplied.  When the farewell was full, I sliced it in half, rinsing it of every dispassionate syllable.  

Our departure served also as introduction.

Our families know me as Mr. Sean, a wordslinger for sure; but only from the pie hole.  They’ve never known me to throw it down quite like I do for you guys.

The last thing I wanted to deliver was our weekly newsletter.  

Nothing clinical.

I planned to place our parents behind the eyes of our passion so that they might not only understand our intention, but cheer us along.

Here are three excerpts to set the tone:

If there’s something I thought I knew then, that I’m certain of now, it’s that Daisy and I were born to work in tandem.  Like bow to fiddle and key to lock, symphonies sing and doors open when our thoughts find themselves breathing into open air.  

If we want the equation to balance, we must alter the variables on either side.  Otherwise, we will never render dreams to reality.

A life well lived is done with an open mind, and a readiness to risk.  Though this conclusion casts our future into uncertain shadow, it is the shade we require. 

The letter did exactly what it needed to do.  The response was next to perfect.  

I couldn’t have written that letter two months ago.  I wouldn’t have had the need or the ability.  I’m learning fast.  Practicing every day.  Here, for you guys.

Thank you all for being here, and driving me toward something better.

Writer Dad

If you enjoyed my words, please subscribe by RSS or Email.  If you’re a Stumbler, please consider Stumbling.  Thanks.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

Hi, My Name is Sean (Not Seen).

September 22, 2008 By 134 Comments

“Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years.  We grow old by deserting our ideals.  Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.” 

~Samuel Ullman

I’d like to thank my parents for the name.  It’s nice.  Like my nose, I never appreciated its true character until I was old enough to understand that looking or being like anyone else is the worst possible purgatory.  

Last week, I penned the most significant thing I’ve thus far written.  Not the best, but certainly the most monumental.  

It was a letter to lift my family from one hilltop to the next.

Three years ago, Daisy and I left our jobs.  We were working too long, not moving forward, and needed life to graduate. 

We opened a preschool.  Daisy left her job at the school district, I left mine at the flower shop.  Daisy was leaving security, benefits, and a full classroom.  I, my family and the daily soul food of a million petals (The shop is gorgeous.  Flowers EVERYWHERE).

Our tiny school is wonderful, but it’s impossible to move forward if we cannot ever take a step.  Workdays are ten hours, plus set up and tear down; five days a week, with no vacation outside a long weekend, for the last three years.  

During this time, the children (students) are constantly learning.  No television, ever.  The children get music, math, reading, and writing, and all of it’s fun.  Computer time is given to every student two years and over.  We do an outstanding job, but it is positively exhausting. 

A lot of comments have questioned how I balance family life with writing.  Presently, not well.  Not as I should.  

That’s what this is about.

I write when my children sleep, or on the weekend.  This means sleeping at midnight, and wearing the Macbook as permanent weekend accessory.  

Neither is acceptable.

Daisy and I are closing our small family preschool at the end of this year; hitching the wagon with the young ones, and heading into frontier. 

My heart tumbled as I wrote the farewell.  The week tangled my stomach, as it seemed the sand took longer to slip through the glass.  

Friday evening, we hit send.

Response was fairly immediate, and overwhelmingly positive.  Our parents, though sad, were thrilled for us.

I started this blog as Writer Dad instead of Sean, because I didn’t know where writing would take me.  If it removed me from the families whose lives I am a part of five days a week, I needed to know they’d hear it from me.  Not stumble across it.

I haven’t told them about Writer Dad yet.  Shock precedes awe.  They’ll know soon, and when they do, I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you guys.  

Please be warm, they’re really nice people.

Tomorrow, I’d like to talk a bit about the letter.  It was an important piece of writing, crafted with intent.  I think writers (that should be all of you) will be interested.

Writer Dad

If you enjoyed these words, please subscribe by RSS or Email.  Thanks.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Crabs Don’t Walk Straight For a Reason

August 13, 2008 By 40 Comments

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

~Confucious

These next months are all transition.  As our family moves from one life to the next, we must maintain the best of what we’re leaving behind, and anticipate the strange tide of an unfamiliar fate.  

Life well lived should blend consistency with adaptation, we are slaves to evolution after all.  We get one life, it should be glorious.  I want my family to take risks, aim high, and be thrilled no matter the outcome, so long as we tried. 

Daisy and I make a habit of never sitting still too long. 

In our time, we’ve made subtle shifts with modest regularity, penciling in a seismic tremor every few years. 

Our pending adventure rests on a fault line. 

Daisy’s lived everywhere; I’ve lived in the same burg since before I could walk.  She’s taught abroad, packing her rucksack with lessons learned in many countries, on several continents; I’ve rarely left my city. 

A craving to travel, born long ago, is now roaring inside me. 

I want to see everything I haven’t, learn what I don’t know, and visit places that will fill me in a way that the same half a million street signs stuck deep in the concrete of my own city never could.  Being able to find success as a writer, means my office can fit in a knapsack. 

Who am I kidding? 

In another three years, I’ll be slipping it next to my wallet. 

Few things are as romantic as the thought of working wherever I am, whenever I happen to find myself there.  And though success from the keyboard is a matter of when not if, this period is paramount to our preparation. 

Right now, we are hermit crabs looking for a bigger and better shell.  We engage in daily discussion about what’s hiding behind tomorrow’s shadow, but sometimes we get anxious for the sun to illuminate an obvious direction. 

But Writer Dad, wouldn’t overnight success be wrong?

Yes, it would.

Just as nine months of pregnancy prepares the body for the sleepless nights and new, exhausting lifestyle, we need this time to draw ourselves together.  

The biggest difficulty is knowing when to pull the plug.  We have families that are depending on us.  When our world changes, theirs will too. 

We know we’re going, but we’re not sure when. 

In the meantime, we must continue to look our clients in the eye, do the best we can to educate and nurture their children while they’re with us, and believe that everything is for a reason, and all in good time. 

A hermit crab must be sure his new home is right before he leaves his old one to the tide.

Writer Dad

If you enjoyed my words, please subscribe.  I promise I’ll be back tomorrow.

Filed Under: Etcetera Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sink or Swim

August 7, 2008 By 92 Comments

“Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten, the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.”

James A. Garfield, American President

Sink or swim.  If you’re out in the middle of the ocean, those are your only two choices, right?  Head for shore, or wait and drown.  

Life isn’t much different.  

If we see something in our horizon, and we want that something, then it’s not enough to simply wait.  Providence is not often so kind.  It’s up to us to pump our arms and swim for it.  The chances of that special something bobbing beneath our nose before we’re snorting bubbles is, perhaps, only slightly better than the odds of winning the lottery.  

I loved my last job.  I loved the people I worked with, and enjoyed the surroundings of each of my days.  I was good at what I did, and I liked the way that success made me feel.  

So why did I leave?  

Because I was treading water.  Once I asked myself the hard questions, I couldn’t lie about the answers.  When I realized I was doing the dog paddle, I knew it was time to get out of Dodge.  

My new job is no different.  I love the children I teach, and the families they go home to.  But there’s a low ceiling above me, and four walls that I can only leave if I’m scurrying from point A to B and back again.  

Life is too short for so much restriction.  

It’s a new dawn we’re living.  Anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence and good time management can carve a life for themselves that doesn’t have to conform to the standards set by the last several hundred years of the ruling elite.  And I’m not talking about those lucky souls endowed with some incredible skill.

I mean anyone who knows how to breathe.  

Too many people are perfectly content to simply survive rather than live.  Go to work, collect your check, buy the things you need (along with a mountain you don’t), refinance, buy some more, sweat when the economy buckles…

It’s not enough.  

If your life isn’t working, then change your behavior.  Go on a diet, it doesn’t have to be food.  Do without, go hungry.  Decide what you want out of life, and then figure out how to get it.  I know what I want, and I’ve given myself a year.  Every one of you can call me on it if I’m not living as I say by the time my shirt’s sticking to my back next Summer.  Scratch that, I doubt I’ll be wearing a shirt much of next Summer.  

Just think about it, whatever your situation.  If you’re out in the middle of the ocean, and you haven’t started to swim… start.  

I promise it’s not too late.  

Writer Dad

If you liked my words, please subscribe.  I promise I’ll be back again tomorrow.

Check out the rewrite of this post, “Sink or Swim.“

Filed Under: Fatherhood Tagged With: , , , ,