self development – Subjects to change

The cool Dad..

I’m not lying to you when I tell you that my favorite television show is a cartoon on Disney Junior called Bluey. The show is about a family of Australian blue heeler dogs and their adventures in raising two small children. First, off it’s actually an Australian TV show that Disney picked up for viewing in America and it reminds me of a cleaned-up version of the Simpsons. It’s seriously funny but always does a great job of passing along a valuable life lesson in the end.

Bandit Heeller is precisely the kind of dad I want to be when I grow. Equal parts goofball that never really grew up and is willing to play silly games and get into mischief while also being able to pepper in solid parenting, encouragement, and life lesson along the way to make sure they know they are loved and prepared to be the best possible versions of themselves they can be. I know your thinking to yourself seriously Brian a cartoon on Disney junior can be that deep or funny, My child likes Fancy Nancy or paw patrol and I’ve never once thought that any part of those shows was enjoyable. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and give it a watch. The first two stories are epically fun and the last one called Shadowlands is an excellent lesson in life.

In my little more than 5 years as a dad and the life lessons learned from Bandit aka Dad on bluey, I’ve decided I want to be the cool dad for my kids. Not the cool dad that lets the kids drink and have parties at the house or the one that lets them run around like crazy whackado’s because coming down on your kids and disciplining them is just not the cool thing to do.

I want to be the dad that can take his kids rock climbing and bring their friends along and show off my abilities so they can brag about how strong their dad is. I want to be the dad that goes surfing with his kids and gets barrelled with all their friends watching. I want to be the house where the kids want to come and hang out because we’ve built an awesome backyard filled with things to eat and play with. I want to be the dad that laughs and jokes and has a good time so they want me to be around.

Because if they want me around and I get invited to do those things listed above I’m there to help, supervise and set an example, and maybe just maybe if I’m lucky figure out how to pass along a little life lesson in there while everyone’s having a great time. I know a time will come when they won’t want to hang out with me all the time but hopefully trying to be the cool dad will push that a couple more years into the future. And with that kind of time, I might be able to pass along just enough wisdom to keep them out of trouble and give them the ability to make choices filled with integrity when there isn’t an adult insight.

Like Bandit says in that first episode about making it too fun, ” Sorry, squirts. It’s a hard one to get right” but I figure if I’m there, we’re laughing and having a good time I must be doing an okay job.

Call to Action

if you’ve got kids under the age of 7 or so watch some episodes of bluey with them. If you don’t it’s fine I watched that entire youtube video before typing this and everyone’s asleep in my house. It’s high-quality family entertainment, and everyone is sure to laugh. These are our favorites ones. The Dump, The pool, Shadowlands, and the Fairy Spell.
Find a hobby that you and your kid can do together. I think it’s best if it’s something that you are both new to, this way you can grow and develop together and watch each other’s development. Might I suggest rock climbing/bouldering.

Betting on the future…

If you distill this journey of life down to its purest form I think you’ll find that everything we do and say is reasoning with the future and its potential outcomes. Were always looking way out into the future dreaming about what could be if we just stay the path. The fundamental problem with the long play is just that it’s long, arduous, and more often than not the progress is so slow that it’s barely noticeable at all.

The good news about a task so huge is that it can usually be widdled down into more manageable pieces. I know this isn’t a mind blowing epiphany as I’m sure you’ve heard a dozen or so analogies about this subject matter, but the question is are you employing those in your daily life.

5 years ago I started down the path of losing weight and getting healthy, there were a ton of mountains just on the horizon but I didn’t focus on those. I tackled the molehills in hopes that I would be strong enough to take on the mountains a couple of years down the path. There was certainly no guarantee that I would ever make it to the base of those mountains and even if I never would have gotten there I would have made significant progress in my life.

Fast forward to March 18th of 2020 aka 5 days into the epidemic I went out to my backyard to contemplate just what the heck was going on and I looked out into a jungle of an overgrown yard and thought to myself maybe this is finally the time when I’ll be able to clear out all this junk and put in all those fruit trees and vegetable plots I’d always talked about but never got around to.

Over a long hot summer, I got out the shovel and the chainsaw and went to town whenever I could find the time. If you want to see what a mountain looks like when it comes to back yards here it is.

I snapped a shovel digging out one of these trees.

That was a lot of bargaining with the future if you ask me. People would come by seeing what I was trying to accomplish and they would tell me I was nuts and that I should just hire someone with a bobcat to dig everything out. Sure this would have been the easy path and put me months ahead of where I am now but when the results come easy you won’t be willing to put the work in the work to maintain what you have.

Hundreds of hours later including taking a full week off from work I rounded the corner on destruction and finally got to a point where I could put plants in the ground instead of ripping them out by the roots. It was 11 months worth of bargaining with the future to get to this point and there’s still a decent amount of finishing touches to do but you wouldn’t believe how good it felt to put a few trees in the ground and then stand back and appreciate how it amazing it looked and just how much blood, sweat and tears went into getting to a rainy valentines day morning when the next chapter of bargaining with the future began.

A couple of the fruit trees I bought should be short term wins and produce fruit this year but several of them are long term investments. Sure I am the happy new owner of a mango and avocado tree but the reality of walking out to the backyard and being able to make a mango smoothie and a bowl of guacamole is still years out into the future and that’s if the weather and ton of other variables decide to cooperate. But you know what all that work I put in digging out giant tree stumps pails into comparison to maintaining the food forest.

My hope is that one day my kids will say. Hey Dad, I’m hungry and I will just be able to point to the backyard and say I’m sure there are several things ready to pick out there.

Call to Action.

search out a local independent nursery this spring and buy a fruit tree for your backyard. Don’t have a back yard? buy a planter box and grow some herbs. It’s super exciting to watch something as small as a seed turns into something that can fuel your body.
Don’t take the shortcut no matter how tempting it is, sure it looks tempting but it will most likely cost you in the long run. Put your head down, put in the work, relish the process and never forget just how miserable the journey was as it will be the best motivator possible to keep pushing forward.

Be Nice or Else…

Mike Tyson might not be the guy you would naturally lean-to for deep and profound insight but he does offer up at least one amazing pearl of wisdom that may be the most profound statement of the last 15 years.

“Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”

I’m not sure about you but this rings true loud and clear to me. Think about it would you say those mean and nasty things to a real person face to face on the street? I seriously doubt it, I know I’ve said some things on social media platforms in the past that I certainly would never say out loud. It certainly is easy to punch away at the keypad and get those aggressive unfounded and downright mean posts out in the world for everyone to see just how impressive and witty your prose is.

If I’ve said it once on here I’ve said it at least a dozen times the internet is a magical place of learning if you search it out. Sure there is a significant amount of weeds in that field of wisdom but that surely doesn’t mean we torch the field or contribute to the problem by casting a few more weed seeds to it. I’m not going to change the world with this little post but my hope is that the next time you start being a keyboard warrior set on leaving a path of destruction in your wake ask yourself this. What good is this going to do? Have I offered up some kind of factual information? or is it even worth it to post this, and how long or upset am I going to get when I start this battle?

Call to action

How good does it feel when someone gives you a genuine compliment? I love it, it brings a smile to my face and can help pull me through the day. Why can’t you be that person who finds ways to say or do something nice for somebody. It doesn’t have to be holding the door open or helping an old lady cross the street it could be just as simple as sending someone a message on social media offering up encouragement and a brief explanation on how you are enjoying what they’re doing. (This feels like I’m fishing for compliments here, I’ll take them if you have them but be sure to spread the wealth”

Any way we slice it this life is difficult and we don’t need to pile more crap on either people’s plates with our keystrokes. Lighten the load with some kind words and you’ll find that giving feels just as good as receiving.

Why, Subjects 2 change?

It probably would have been a good idea to write the answer to this question 40 or so blog posts ago but I’m glad I never got around to it until now.

Like most good brand names and nicknames this one started in a bar. We were talking about a restaurant in town that had undergone its 3rd concept change in about a year and just how expensive it must have been to build out, advertise and open and close that many times. That’s when one of the guy’s chimes up and goes if it was my restaurant I would just call it “menu, subject to change. And then I could do what ever I pleased.” We laughed hysterically at first and then I started thinking about the genius behind that name. I told him how smart I thought it was and that there was a good chance that I might utilize that name at some point in my life, he obliged and then I didn’t think about it for at least a year.

In June of 2019, the idea to start a blog was kicking around in my head, I had an idea for what to talk about but didn’t want to pick a name that narrowed potential subject maters to much. I wanted to be able to stay on a path but shoot off on a side trail for a change of view. And that’s when I remembered that lunch at the bar and subjects to change. I had already said I was going to use it and secured his approval through proper barroom protocol so a blog got a name that day.

A title like that gave me Cart Blanche to do whatever I felt like and write on a wide subject of topics and that felt awesome. I was telling you right from the start that this thing doesn’t have a lot of rules, we’re going on an adventure and maybe we’ll learn a few things along the way. And for about 6 months if people asked that was the 1-dimensional answer I gave them about the name.

But then one day out on a run I started contemplating on how change was a constant in life. The weather, our jobs, traffic, and a magnitude of other variables change around us every day. We often perceive ourselves to be the constant in this equation of change and that outside forces should adapt to our needs. That option sounds great but answer this question. When the temperature drops outside do you try and make the weather change or do you adapt to the changing conditions and grab a jacket? How we react to that change can play a huge role in the outcome of our day, week, month, and life. We are subjects to the change happening all around us and our ability to adapt keeps us from freezing in a world that is trying to take us down.

We are here on this journey called life to evolve, grow, and overcome. I want to push myself to unknown heights of my ability and the best way to do that is be ready for the things that are subject to change and learn to adapt to them.

nobody wants to read your sh*t

Not too long ago I would become very distraught over the fact that something I took a great time to develop in writing or in my art didn’t garner the amount of attention that I thought it deserved through social media platforms. It made me want to quit and a few times I had to shut it all off because it had a tendency to be more a destructive force than something that was building me up.

I had quite a few audible credits at my disposal and I figured I should do something with them so I downloaded these three books. An audience of one by Srinivas Rao and the following two books by Steven Pressfield the war of art and nobody wants to read your sh*t. These three books changed my outlook on my art and gave me the resolve to keep being creative.

To be honest, I didn’t finish an Audience of one, it didn’t draw me in as much as other books have but a lesson early on was well worth the price of admission. When you tailor your art to what you think people are going to like you end up with something that you don’t like and more importantly others won’t like either. In other words, I’m writing things and taking pictures of things that I find interesting, hopefully, you feel the same way, and if not there are a couple hundred thousand or so other writers that might be a better fit for you. I’m not mad anymore I’m just trying to be me.

Art of war taught me something that I already knew but wasn’t smart enough to put into practice in this side of my life. If you want to get good at something you just have to sit down and do it. This was common sense to me when it came to building your personal health, I tell people all the time when they ask me how did you get so good at doing pull ups? “I did a lot of pull-ups.’ I’m not really certain why this truth I held dear never manifested itself into this side of my life but what’s important is that I’ve been writing almost every single day since I finished that book. I hope you see a difference.

and last but not least nobody wants to read your sh*t to paraphrase Mr. Pressfield, it’s not that they don’t care or are mean it’s just that they’re busy and they’ll actually have to take the time to read what you wrote and well who has time for that. This book helped me realize that If I want you to read my sh*t I need to make it clear, concise, and have some actual value so that one day after I write a ton of sh*t it might actually be good and worth reading.

This random cocktail of books has been very educational and more importantly set my artistic soul on fire. I hope that you enjoy my photos and sophomoric attempts at wisdom and humor through this blog I’m trying to get better by focusing on the things I like, I hope you enjoy them as well.

Service over Self

Tuesday the 19th of February 1945 marks the 75th anniversary of the storming of Iwo Jima by some 80,000 U.S Marines. This small island in the Pacific played a critical role in the pacific theater and waged on for 36 days killing more than 6,000 American Soldiers.

Four days later Joe Rosenthal snapped perhaps the most iconic war picture from the second World War. The image is of six soldiers from the 28th regiment 5th division Marines triumphantly raising the stars and stripes on top of Mt. Suribachi. Of these 6 Marines, 3 of them would answer the ultimate call of service to their country and leave the island draped under an American flag in the name of ensuring democracy for our nation and for others.

Fast forward to 74 years and 364 days and you would find me sitting in the jury waiting room at 8:30 A.M Monday morning. I’m pretty sure that no one gets that letter in the mail and thinks to themselves ” Oh, Sweet. Jury duty I’m pumped about that.” However, the level of disdain and utter lack of respect for a constitutional right was appalling by a few of the people who were sitting in that same room with me. One fellow juror who was picked in the group before me was back down in the waiting room a few minutes later and joyously announced he had been removed from his duties and could leave. I later overheard that when asked to take his hat off when entering the courtroom by a bailiff he told him in several words that were not going to use in this blog how he felt about that. Essentially this gentleman and I use that term loosely was rewarded for actions that should have left him sitting in contempt of court for the rest of day.

12-20-2020

A lot has changed since I started this blog post in mid-February of this year. I’ve got quite a few incomplete thoughts saved in the cloud and every once in a while it’s nice to come back and read them and utilize what I’ve learned since hitting save to finally finish out the puzzle.

I remember being so disappointed in a large portion of that room on that Monday in February. I heard a lot of me, me, me this is so terrible, horrible and a major inconvenience for me! Why did I have to get picked for this, I don’t want to be here, I’m going to tell the judge I hate cops, criminals, or whatever I need to say to get out of this. Did I really want to be there doing my part as a citizen of this country, NO, I did not! But when you are called upon to be a part of something bigger than yourself you make the necessary sacrifices to answer that call. And the call of sitting in an air-conditioned room all day is a very lite load to bear by the way.

The men who served in world war 2 didn’t want to leave their families for years on end, they didn’t want to work under the horrendous conditions they faced and they surely didn’t want to die on some far off island in the pacific. But they answered the call for the greater good of America and the world. They made sacrifices to their freedoms that I will likely never understand and hope never to experience. The next time I think that something in 2020 is a horrible inconvenience for me or is an encroachment on my freedom I’m going to think about the guys who raised that flag for their brothers living and dead and remember that I don’t have a leg to stand on.

Wining streak.

We, you, and I are the summation of all of our life experiences. For better or for worse we are where we are at in our lives based upon the multitude of our life’s choices internal, external, and the things that we have absolutely no control over. I came to that realization after walking on the beach earlier this year when I needed to brush the sand off of my feet. The beach aka our health looks like one big giant homogenous thing from a distance when in reality its made up of millions of tiny grains of sand aka life choices when you look a little closer.

A beach just like our overall health and well being grows/diminishes over time oftentimes so slowly that you don’t notice for months or years that things are looking a little different. And oftentimes when you do finally see a difference the change is so big that doing anything to fix it seems like an insurmountable task. This is where the old adage of how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time comes into play. When you’re faced with a huge task in your life the best thing you can do for yourself is do a quick OODA loop.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop#:~:text=The%20OODA%20loop%20is%20the,operational%20level%20during%20military%20campaigns.

Find something small and readily easy to accomplish and get going. When you start small and get an early win that massive obstacle starts to look a little smaller and easier to overcome. Just like it took thousands of choices to get to the point before we realized there was an issue it’s going to take thousands of choices before we ever see a noticeable difference.

It’s taken me 5 years’ worth of mostly positive choices to get to where I am today after years of poor choices. An almost 40-year-old in above-average physical condition. I can run fast, climb boulders and do a ton of pull-ups, and surf a 5’7 lis fish. I’m not going to win ultra-distance races, climb a v6+ boulder (extremely difficult) or break any pull-up records, or get sponsored. And you know what? I don’t give a damn about any of those things. What I care about is having fun, sharing those passions with my kids, and most importantly stacking up one good decision on top of another so hopefully my health/wellbeing stays clean so I can do all of those things for years to come.

External forces remember those from the opening paragraph? I’m not naive, We can make all the right choices when it comes to diet, exercise, and the thousand other variables in our life and still get side-swiped by disease, or for that matter, an actual car could take us out. Life isn’t fair, we’ve talked about this multiple times over in the blog, and that’s why the occasional slice of pizza or Christmas dessert is fine by me. We aren’t promised tomorrow but like the 96-year-old man that I see walking the neighborhood often likes to say

” I woke up alive again today, I’m putting together one hell of a streak.”

When I have the time…

“You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.“

Pink Floyd – Time

It’s kind of interesting how we can sing a song in the car word for word a couple of hundred times in our life and never really pick up on the meaning of the lyrics. So let’s all do ourselves a favor and read the lyrics to this masterpiece of lyrical prose, Its okay I will just hang out and wait for you to get back. https://genius.com/Pink-floyd-time-lyrics

Mind-Blowing, Right? How did we miss that?

“You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today…” That’s what us millennial’s like to call a #truthbomb. I think everyone would agree that in your twenties and early thirties you are invincible, tomorrow is a guarantee and you can worry about getting exercise and eating healthy when you get old.

There’s a line in a classic Simpson’s episode where Homer says ” That’s a problem for future homer, and boy I don’t envy that guy” as he mixes up some mayonnaise and vodka before hitting the floor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQvvmT3ab80

Hopefully, we haven’t stooped to that level of denial in our lives but I’m here to tell you that our chickens do eventually come home to roost and we will have to answer to our past indiscretions eventually.

This 21st-century life is so incredibly busy that it’s no surprise that we put something like consistent exercise and healthy eating way back down on the list of priorities. One salad and a 5k run won’t give you six pack abs and a clean bill of health on your annual physical just like a burger, fries, and a double IPA won’t make you fat if you eat it once. The choices we make for better or worse when it comes to diet and exercise are cumulative. They happen so slowly that often times we don’t notice that we are making progress or losing ground.

Change is here to stay and if you aren’t looking around and being conscious of the small decisions that you make today, tomorrow, and the next day you’re going to wake up and find ten years have got behind you and you slept right through the starting gun.

My why in video format.

Yesterday I wrote about “concepts” and the two things that are constant in life. The first was, Change is constant and the second is things fall apart. Shortly after I posted that video I was looking at My Facebook page and my mom shared the following video. I know I ask you to do a lot of things but I really think this is the easiest and maybe the most impactful way to show you the message that I’m trying to get across. Watch till the end and grab some tissues.

Epic, right? It made me tear up a little bit as well. I could not have scripted a better advertisement of why I make the decisions that I do every single day and why I’m trying to encourage others to make similar long term life choices as well. Life has very few constants as I mentioned earlier, Things are going to change and eventually all things fall apart and don’t function quite like they used to. We have the power in our daily choices to slow down the progression of the later of the two constants, Were never going to stop the aging process with any amount of superfoods and kettlebell exercises but the choices you make today, tomorrow, and 30 years from now could keep you around and active for your loved ones.

Yes Virginia, There really is enough…

Of all of the ism’s capitalism is the least terrible of the options. No one is altruistic enough to run a socialist nation, communism works but isn’t scalable so that leaves us with the least moldy banged up loaf of bread after the shelves are nearly bare. Capitalism with all its faults it inst really so bad if everyone is trying to play the game in a relatively fair manner. But as all of our mom’s and dad’s told us when we were kids ” Life isn’t fair” In fact there’s a mathematical theory called the Pareto Distribution that goes on to prove that life and capitalism for that manor are in fact unfair, its just a rule of life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution

I’m not a burn it to the ground and start over kind of guy, I like capitalism. I want you to buy my art so that I’ll have more money in my bank account, I want to spend that money on the things I need and to provide for my family. (Notice I said need and not want.)

I’ve come to the realization that through my almost 4 decades on this planet that the greed and desire to collect more and more stuff is killing our spirit and forcing us into a self-imposed state of anxiety, debt, and depression. Think back to yesterday when we read Steinbeck’s letter on Christmas. To paraphrase he said, If I wanted to tear apart a nation I would give them plenty and watch them tell themselves apart. Fast forward to the late ‘90s and the movie fight club gives us this gem about the American condition.

“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”

Believe me when I tell you that I’m not going to sell all of my worldly possessions and move my family into a yurt and swear of the western world and capitalism to start a more perfect system of fair trade bartering with other like-minded individuals. What I’m trying to do is purchase less, be more thoughtful in the purchases that I make, spend my money wisely, and more importantly invest with companies who are socially, environmentally, and governmentally aware of the choices they are making and how they run their businesses.

When you go with just a little less stuff, a little less expensive stuff and you figure out how to stretch your dollar a little further you’ll often find there really is enough for you and a little extra to go around for the betterment of your neighbor. The act of giving to others is a selfless and selfish act in the same breath, what you give to others is often paid back to you several times over in self-worth.

I’m not crazy enough to think we can influence fortune 500 CEOs to think this way tomorrow but if you and I start living this mission our children’s kids may just live in a world where that loaf of bread called capitalism isn’t quite as moldy.