What to do first

“You want to what?” 

“Fly, Father. I want to fly.”

The wind across the water made a roar. The older man looked anxiously at the younger.

“Look at you, Bill. Look at you in that chair you’ve been sitting in all these years.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m going to fly.”

“Just like that. How? Why?”

Bill’s hair fluttered, just a little, sitting next to the window and all.

“I’m not sure. That’s not the point. I’m tired of sitting. I want to stand. I want to fly.”

“Now you’re getting somewhere, son. First you have to stand, and then walk, perhaps run – probably run. You’ll need speed to achieve liftoff and fly.”

“Now see, there’s where you’re wrong, Pop,” Bill said with a gentle smile. “First, first – first I need to dream.”

The dream of the rhinoceros

Oh. A rhinoceros!

Just before waking Sunday morning, I was looking up a long dark staircase with random people sitting listlessly on a stair here or there. The dream was progressing in usual fashion when at the top of the stairs appeared a rhinoceros.

It pawed and looked down at the people. We were filled with alarm. Should we sit still and hope we weren't noticed or, as some contemplated, should we creep up and slam the door? What if that enraged the rhinoceros and it broke through the door and down the steps, trampling all in its path?

While we were contemplating, the rhino lifted its head, turned proudly and charged away, out of sight.

I awoke in the predawn and did some contemplating of my own. I've never dreamed of a rhinoceros before. I looked at the clock. 4:31. The alarm was set; I had thought of getting up at 5:00 on this Sunday morning and butt-kicking my writing career. I could settle back in for a half-hour's sleep or jump up and get to it.

The nap tempted me for a moment, but then I realized I wouldn't be dreaming of rhinos unless it was time to do some hard-charging.

I got up, made coffee, and sat down to write. I finished this little essay at 4:56.

Run through the weariness

All jumbled in a pile are all the thoughts of morning and left over from the night, and I pick up the pen and open the spigot and let them flow. Here is the memory of a dream about loveless lovemaking in a strange place – how weird dreams can be. Here are the tasks assigned to later in the day and a vague pledge to start those tasks a little earlier today, so they can be finished while the sun shines.

Here in my reading is the dandelion wine-making scene that so enchanted me and raised my spirits so many years ago, still magic, still pulling a thrill from a heart that is less tired than it pretends.

The fingers rebel – “We can’t keep going like this, we are old and creaky!” – or is it simply the rebellion of muscles long unused, called back to their rightful duty and purpose?

Run through the weariness, say the runners, and you will find the second wind on the other side. And sure enough the ache is forgotten when the rush of words is released in the end.

Mission statement

One could hardly find a better mission statement than this:

To explore strange new worlds.

To seek out new life and new civilizations.

To boldly go where no one has gone before.

P.S. We're still not sure how she got inside the fenced-in raspberry patch.

Please, no more Mondays

The puppy stepped forward.

"Don't go," she cried. "All I will do is lie in a chair with my head down, wishing I could burst through the glass door and gallop across the field chasing butterflies and smelling the flowers and everything else I find out there."

"I'm so sorry," the man told her. "But my day will be just like yours."

Planning for winter in the early throes of summer

It is not pessimism to stand drinking in the warm air and smelling the green smells while considering a time when this same vibrant land will be stark and covered with cold white snow and ice. For the winter will come.

We have a finite amount of time to till and cultivate and grow and create and harvest. It is a long time — time a-plenty to grow and build — but not an infinite time.

No time to waste on petty pursuits, or efforts that will prematurely destroy and end life. No, this season is for creation and construction. No time to waste on destruction of another's work or creation.

There is room for all of us to be. There is time to shine in the sun and run like the wind through the green and the warm, knowing full well that the white and the cold are coming to this very same place. Let these days be about life and love.

The time of the dot-dot-dot

This will be the summer when . . .

This will be the day when . . .

This will be the moment when . . .

What is your dot-dot-dot? What is your dream?

When you decide that THIS is the time for dot-dot-dot — that is the instant when it begins to happen.

Choose whimsy whenever possible

I know not what path others may choose, but as for me, give me whimsy or give me death!

When a terrorist hurls a bomb, let it explode in gobs of pink bubblegum, not shards of destruction. When a villain pulls a gun, let it shoot cotton candy.

Who needs profanity when "Oh, Schmitt!" or "Hokey smokes" will do?

Gently, dearies. Let these things be done delicately.

What the puppy knows

The field outside is a lot more fun to explore than this small room with its four walls.

Running will get you there faster than walking.

In fact there is no "there" to get you – just a big old world with so much to see and sniff and hear and taste and feel that you'll never experience it all in one short lifetime.

So you'd better get busy.

4 things I didn’t know on graduation day

[My column for the May 20, 2015, Door County Advocate]

They say time flies, but it really doesn’t. You wake up one morning and suddenly it’s 2015, and the young man who remembers sweltering in the sun in a black robe while Sen. William Proxmire was awarded an honorary degree and a speaker who exhorted us to go forth and do great things is thinking, “Wait, wasn’t it just 1975?”

But of course it wasn’t. A day is a long time, and a year is a longer time, and today marks 14,610 days – that is to say, 40 years – since a full-of-himself, naive young man dove into the real world. For most of those days I have been what people call a journalist – a watcher of events and recorder of the first draft of history.

And what I have learned in all of those days! Here are four things I knew but didn’t fully know on my first day of work as a full-time reporter.

> There are no superheroes, just folks. I walked into a men’s room during a long city council meeting, and a U.S. senator came in and stood beside me. For some reason it was a revelation that nature also calls him during the days and nights.

They’re all just people, muddling along as best as they can, like you and me. Not big damn heroes. Not super villains. Just guys and gals who need to get through the day, feed the dog, sift the cat litter, same as everyone. It helps to remember that.

> You may not realize when you’re teaching. A reporter came in and started telling about the court sentencing she had just witnessed. She needed to share the raw emotion of the defendant, his family’s tears, the victims’ anger. Don’t spend the words speaking them out loud, I said, write them down while the moment is still fresh.

She wrote a great great story, and years later she told people what an important lesson that was. I needed to be reminded I had said that. It made me feel worthy. It also made me fear what I might be teaching on bad days.

> Success is a long-term everyday enterprise. When I ran for state Assembly, I was proudest that both the conservative governor and the leader of the city teachers union told me, “I never knew you were a Republican.”

That was because I had spent 22 years burying my personal opinion and trying simply to accurately convey what people were saying and doing. That was the job. It still is, except when the word “Opinion” appears on the top of the page.

> Every person is different. I have met good thinkers and compassionate people and rascals and scoundrels in every race, color, creed, gender, political party, ethnic origin, orientation, whatever. All of them unique. When we tuck people in a group, we lose sight of who they are.

You think you know what to expect because I’m an older white male journalist who once ran for Assembly as a Republican. Because of those assumptions you’ve done both of us a disservice.

Do yourself a favor: Stop thinking “All of those people are x” or even “Generally speaking those people are y.” Approach every person as a mystery to be solved, because most everything important about that person you cannot know based on the category you’re tempted to tuck them in.

> Oh yes, and a bonus fifth lesson: Never use a credit card. Never. Ever. Never. I’m still paying for that mistake.

It's normal to feel abnormal

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU.

This is just the way your mind works.

If you think you're abnormal and broken, it's because you're normal and perfect.

It's normal to see what's wrong with ourselves and want to make it right. We get in trouble when we thinking "to make it right" is to make it like everyone else. But there is no "like everyone else" because each of us is unique.

Stop trying to fix what isn't broken. This is you. Revel in it! Be the best "you," not what someone else expects.

Choose your fire today, this minute

Every morning there is a choice to be made between light and dark, life and death, sickness and health. Words heal and words destroy. Choose this day, this minute, shall I heal or shall I destroy? The power is in the remarkable organ between your ears.

A choice must be made. Each day you choose life or death, light or dark. Making no choice is still a choice. The universe, they say, is moving inevitably toward entropy – and yes, at some point (in the unimaginable future) all energy will be used up – but you may use the energy at your command to serve the cause of entropy or to build.

Life or death, light or dark, building or destruction. So easy it is to destroy. So beautiful it is to build, to create and preserve beauty, to conserve for later valued use.

Choose to greet the light. Build the fire of warmth, not the fire that burns maliciously. Push, and overcome inertia. Lift, reach ever higher – crawl, then walk, then dance. All of life is art; what are you creating? What does your dance look like?

Light, not dark. In the dark, sounds are strange and unknown. The light reveals the beauty, reveals the joy, unleashes the known, banishes fear, generates knowledge. Serve the light and not the dark.

Good morning. Time to wake up.

152 years on the job and still counting

My column in today's Door County Advocate:

’Tis the season called Sunshine Week, when the news media likes to pat itself on the back and perform exercises in government transparency and write columns about our important role as watchdog. And of course there will come the inevitable observations that the watchdog is a little too much of a lapdog in its old age, is barking up certain wrong trees, and has missed more than its share of instances where the government (or some other institution accountable to the public) has fallen down on the job or misused its power.

This week also brings the 152nd anniversary of the first edition of the Door County Advocate, which legend says Joseph Harris started largely because he wanted a platform to advocate for carving a canal through the narrow isthmus that separated the waters of Sturgeon Bay from Lake Michigan.

A weird side effect of working ahead

I've noticed this in the newspaper business, where you're always working on tomorrow's paper. Sometimes I have to keep reminding myself it's not tomorrow already.

After I’ve spent a whole day reading or writing "today" on stories that will appear Wednesday, and after awhile I start thinking it's Wednesday already. I need to reassure myself that no, I didn’t miss that appointment I had at 4 p.m. Tuesday, because it’s still 2:30 and I have 90 minutes to get there, I’m not almost 23 hours late.

And now, working on a story I plan to release in March, I've started catching myself thinking that it's February already. Fascinating.

I’m trying to work ahead so that the next Myke Phoenix story is finished (at minimum in draft form) when the new one is released. I completed Night of the Superstorm on the day before I released Invasion of the Body Borrowers. Now I’m working through Duck Man Walking, which debuts March 3.

People who write about setting goals often will say that it’s beneficial to envision yourself as already successful. What does success look like? Set your mind and grow into that vision. I’m finding that if I set I mind thoroughly enough while you work ahead, you need to extract yourself from that vision to get back to real life.

Because the story that comes out Feb. 3 is finished, I have to keep reminding my mind that it’s still late January. I find myself thinking I missed Valentine’s Day, but it’s still weeks off. It’s the “tomorrow is today” syndrome played out over a span of weeks instead of hours.

I suspect that’s a beneficial side effect of having a deadline – beneficial because when the task must be done by a certain time, a sense of urgency builds up. This common phenomenon first rears its head in school – try pulling an all-nighter for a project that’s due in a week; it’s a lot harder than pulling one the night before the deadline.

It’s important to stay in the moment and remember to live today fully, but dipping a toe into the future can help make the next moments more focused.

A vacation ends

Princess Dejah, age 5 months, learns the joy of vacationing.

And so attention begins to turn back to those tasks that I perform in exchange for enough income to feed the pets and keep us all under this roof. It has been a week of cooking meals and dog treats, cleaning and fussing about, reading and writing, reflecting and occasionally acting, planning and thinking about plans.

At this time last year I made goals to reduce/eliminate my personal debt, increase the quantity (and sales) of my books and stories, exercise more and lose some weight, read more, and produce more of my own food through gardening and the like.

As with all assessment of goals, I have had mixed success, and any lack of progress can be attributed to the fact that I did not exactly follow good advice about how to set goals.

Procrastination and a lack of persistence seem to be my biggest personal foes. For the second year in a row, I set a goal of producing a monthly, 10,000-word adventure about the superheroic Myke Phoenix. The goal was met not at all in 2012 but accomplished for the first two months of 2013. I have reset that goal for the third time, which means the true test of success may be when I release the third new story in March. Ultimately, of course, that 12th tale in December will be the moment of complete success on that front.

The week away from the quotidian did serve its purpose; the mind is cleared and more or less ready to return to the grind, and some good thoughts have been thought. Sometimes all of the order in my mind is undone before noon on the first day back on routine duty; let’s hope this time around I can fend off the disorder a while longer.

One of my foremost goals is not to neglect this little corner of my universe as much as I have been wont to. Here, I hope to wax on life in these interesting times, my various personal projects, and pop culture in general – the stuff I expose my fragile mind to for recreational purposes (TV, music, movies …) – and I do value your thoughts, too, so please let me know in the comments when I’ve piqued your interest, made you think, and/or bored you to tears.

For now I see I have a few emails to answer, some meetings to plan, and some issues to address as the day job resumes – once more unto the breach, dear friends – and so it goes.

Be bold with your dreams

You're far more likely to go not-far-enough than you are to go too far.

— Seth Godin

Refuse to be Afraid

Some time ago I collected a bunch of blog posts and threads into a little book whose name is still the subtitle of this site: Refuse to be Afraid. Free yourself. Dream. A few people have purchased or otherwise seen the book, and I'd like to believe it's done some small good in the world.

I browsed through it again Thursday morning. It's still timely – probably always will be as long as people use fear to try to control other people. It seems today more than ever, the fear mongers are loose on the streets and airwaves and bandwidth everywhere. And so I'd like to quietly remind you of my little book of pep talks, which concludes with a confession:

A funny thing happened to me on my way toward producing a book called Refuse to be Afraid, designed to help people overcome the everyday and extraordinary fears that stand in the way of their freedom and their dreams.

I got scared.

What if everyone already knows this stuff and I’m the last to figure it out? What if I help everyone overcome their fears and it turns out it was good to be afraid — after all, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t really out to get you? What if I’m just writing a collection of clichés that no one can take seriously? What if — What if — ?

 It took two or three extra years for me to finish this book, because I didn’t follow the advice I was laying out in this book. So I bring you these suggestions from personal experience and to say: I know how you feel. I’ve been there. ...

The evidence that my fears were ungrounded is right here: You’re reading the book I was afraid would be ignored and dismissed, the thoughts that I was afraid to share under my own name.

You can get past your fears, too. It gets easier with every step you take — but make no mistake, the fear will never completely go away.

So: you’re scared. So am I — some days more than others. The first step was recognizing that almost all of the time, I was afraid of nothing. I learned that fear is an irrational and useless emotion. It is a seductive and dangerous force that urges us to stay in our comfort zones: Anything more than the quotidian, the familiar, is scary — sometimes a little scary, sometimes downright frightening.

But you were made for more than this. Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream. And you will succeed.

There are at least three ways to get hold of Refuse to be Afraid, four if you include searching through my blogs for the original entries.

You can find the Kindle version.

You can find the .epub version for other ereaders.

You can have the good old-fashioned paperback.

Yes, this is a pitch for you to separate yourself from a few pennies. I continue to believe you could use this message for those days when you've had enough of the overwhelming message of the age: Be afraid! It's a scary world! You can't protect yourself from the monsters! We can rescue you!

They're lying to you. Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream.

Fire yourself today, please

This article by The Robert D. Smith is a remarkable slap upside the head and shot across the bow for anyone who thinks their lot in life is out of their control.

This is your life! This is not a dress rehearsal or a practice run. This is the real thing. Time is limited. You are on a deadline. It ends at midnight tonight. ... It is time to start acting like your butt is on the line. Fire yourself today if you don’t show up, and measure up. Then hire the new you tomorrow ...

Stop acting like you’re protected from your own incompetence. That is a lie. You are an individual and this is your life. Period. 

 Read the whole article here.

‘Creative processes are like stew’

Sara Groves

I have a book-sized, faux-leather-bound journal that I write in while sitting in the easy chair four feet away from the computer screen. I write in it with a quaint little device called a pen.

Our computers and smartphones are the most amazing tools that have emerged in my lifetime, but I think there’s a downside to staying plugged into them constantly.

Around the time that I launched into what became my novel The Imaginary Revolution, I began taking regular time to sit with the book full of blank pages, using it to think and create without electronic assistance. Some of my better ideas, essays and stories have flowed from the pen and into the paper journal before being translated into electronic bits and bytes.

One of my favorite creators, Christian singer-songwriter Sara Groves, addressed the need to unplug in an interview about her album Invisible Empires, and specifically the song “Obsolete,” where she writes in part, “Are you and I an apparition/Flickering up on the screen/Sending out our best transmissions/Waiting in our velveteen?/Tell me you can really see me.”

“I was trying to process my own feelings about technology – which stresses me out. It makes me feel like I’m not doing enough. In a way you're aware of what everyone is doing on their best day. Everyone is putting themselves out there, everyone is advertising, everyone is Madison Avenue for themselves. I have a hard time with that. I have a hard time doing it for myself – Troy [her husband and business partner] does it for me.

“I’m not on Facebook. When it came out I felt a divine message - I very clearly felt the Lord say, ‘You’re not going to get to do that. Right off the bat I’ll set you free.’ Part of me wants to do it, but there’s a bigger part that feels relieved.

“‘Obsolete’ is a reflection on ‘what are we doing?’ Not to say that the Internet is of the devil, but I hear people say things like ‘I couldn't live without my phone or the Internet.’ I don't want to demonize everything, but I do believe that we worship the things that we made with our own hands … Eugene Peterson talks about doing slower things, which are actually the way that your brain is made. I’ve been reading articles about the rapid-fire influx of information – that just the ding on your phone tells your brain that new information is coming and you literally lose your train of thought the moment that bell rings. Your brain is hungry for the new information, but the way your brain works the creative process are interrupted.

“Creative processes are like stew; they have to come to a boil. It’d be like trying to cook something but turning the oven on and off. I’ve been feeling that recently – having difficulty writing and feeling peace. I feel frenetic. A lot of this record started with the idea of ‘Obsolete’ and it's a very precious song to me – my favorite song on the record.”

Give yourself permission to walk away from the screen and turn off your phone. It doesn’t have to be for a long time – just long enough to think things through and reacquaint yourself with yourself.

Free yourself from the electronic web for a while, and dream.

Think you can!

If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.

Those words attributed to Henry Ford speak to the power of your mind.

Decide that you can do what you’re setting out to do, and it will be like the powers of God and the universe align to help you get it done. Your desire to make it happen will give you the enthusiasm, and your belief that you CAN make it happen will be infectious.

Decide that you can’t do what you’re setting out to do, and you will quit worrying about it. The only risk you take is that for the rest of your life, you’ll have a little bug behind your ear, whispering, making you wonder: Maybe you COULD have done it. But you won’t – because you think you can’t.

So what’s it going to be? Do you think you can? I’m on your side – I think you’re right. I know you can do it.

Just remember your biggest enemy is that little nugget of doubt that wonders if you REALLY can. Keep that little nugget in a cage, or else it will grow. If it grows too much, it can stop you in your tracks.

Because if you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.