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The Uncertain Years

The most difficult form of parenting to deal with as a child is when the caregiver is inconsistent in their behavior.

Psychologists say this leads to a ‘disorganized attachment style’ for the child. In other words, the child is unable to predict the behavior that’s coming at them and therefore fluctuates from hiding away to clinging too tightly to being despondent. This can show up as depression, loneliness, anxiety, disconnectedness, fearfulness, and rage.

(Do you see where I’m going with this?)

I think we are all experiencing disorganized attachment right now.

If we think of our authority figures as parents — or at least influential people who are dictating what happens to us — our “parents” are pretty goddamn unpredictable right now.

We never know what to expect from them.

The president is the poster child of inconsistent parenting. Even his most loyal followers and his staunchest enemies would come together on this: you never know what he’s going to do next. This indecision, this waffling, this gift stealing, this oh-on-second-thought… it’s exhausting.

But it doesn’t stop there. Politics isn’t the only sphere of uncertainty that’s draining us of our lifeblood.

Right now, our bosses are inconsistent too. We can’t tell if they’re going to praise us or fire us. We can’t take that last performance review seriously. However great we deliver on our promises, we feel like we’ve got a target on our back.

This lack of certainty, this unstable foundation, runs right up the chain of command. Our boss is probably uncertain of what’s coming. They really may have meant that they appreciated you.

But as they’ll tell you on your last day before you walk out the door, it’s out of their control.

Can you believe them? Maybe. It’s uncertain. Everything is.

If you’re unemployed, it’s no different; you’re drowning in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of uncertainty. Is my resume going anywhere? Will they call me back? Are my skills going to be valuable in a month? Will I ever work again?

Uncertainty is the word of the year. Last year too.

It’s like there’s no safe place.

Our leaders — the people above us, whether we put them there or not — are unpredictable as hell.

And we’re all suffering because of it.

The suffering and the abuse wind their way up through the chain. Above and below the President. Above and below your boss. And up further. And down further.

So that’s, like, everyone.

It’s not just a fog. The path keeps changing. The boundaries keep moving. We can’t find the walls. And when we finally do, they’re not there in the morning. And no one is there to tell us where they are or where they’re going to be.

How can you trust anyone?

How can we believe anything?

Putting on the news, going to work, looking for work, it’s like hearing the car rolling into the driveway, feeling the vibration of the footsteps coming up the stairs.

Whether we cower behind the couch or stand tall in the doorway, in our heart of hearts (the only place where truth resides)… we don’t know what’s coming.

And, as any child who’s cowered behind a coach or stood tall in the doorway will tell you, that’s the scariest thing in the world.

Because, unlike our quickening heart and our short, fragile breaths… the door, the stairs, the couch, the gravel in the driveway, that is to say, the house, is not ours.

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The Relentless Reincarnation of Artists (& Scientists)

Close up of a yellow object 3d design

“You’re an artist.”

He said it as a compliment, albeit a bit surprised to see me in this way. Me, the guy writing his resume.

I was busy brainstorming job titles with him. I came up with some ideas he hadn’t thought of. But the real artistry is the fact that I, too, had yet to come up with them.

It’s not easy — generating a 2- to 5-word phrase that stays true to a person’s actual job title while gently hinting at the type of job he wants now. Staying within the bounds of truth, that’s the hard part.

And I love toiling over something like that; it’s like immersing in the depths of language, a secret room, only us word nerds are allowed to enter, getting up close with the big black curves of the letters, climbing over and through them like a wide-eyed kid in a ball pit.

For me, language isn’t a tool. It’s a friend. I truly love words, stringing them together in novel ways, like popcorn kernals on a string. I think that’s how you know you’re an artist, or that you’ve jiust done an art-like thing,:when you finish it, you just want to step back and look at it for a while.

I don’t care if it’s a poem, a painting, or a multi-day corporate events schedule. It’s all art. And you, the creator of that thing, are an artist.

My client sat quiet while I spat out ideas like a painter throwing different colors on the canvas.

“Well…” I said. “It’s an Art and a Science,”

In a sense, EVERYTHING is an Art and a Science. Almost like a chemical compound: Every single thing we do is some parts Art and some parts Science. Sometimes it’s all Art, sometimes it’s all Science, but usually it’s both.

Think of Art as making a new, as-of-yet undiscovered connection.

Think of Science as using a formula to generate a (mostly) predicted outcome.

With my client’s job titles, I was using the Science of words with the Art of arranging them. That is, the mechanics and meanings of each word already existed, but the combinations I created with them were new.

Art and Science. Two disciplines that have played and fought with each other like children, yielding countless moment of joy and frustration.

And then, comes along AI… a distant cousin of Art & Science, greedy and smart.

AI put Science in a headlock. It gobbled up all of them formulas and spit them back out in rapid fire..

A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H+I+J+K+L+M+N…

Science created AI ,but is already falling behind.

And then there’s Art.

AI has taken Art and, perhaps worse than killing it or giving it a wedgie, it has take Art and turned it into Science.

AI writes poetry. AI paints pictures. AI creates multi-week corporate calendars with no time conflicts. AI “thinks up” 50 alternative job titles in seconds.

It hurts.

And not in a selfish way.

Okay, sure, AI is holding out shiny toys for us to play with, but that doesn’t address the hole that it left behind. That greedy cousin of ours stole all our other toys.

The toys of Artists and Scientists. Surgically removed the things we love with precision and absolute certainty, not to mention politeness.

So. Ouch.

But then I think about Basquiat, Warhol, Picasso, Frieda Kahlo, and Van Gogh. I think about John Lennon, and Alice Waters, that guy who painted with his ;left foot, the person who made the Lite Brite, my aunt who secretly paints portraits of things and gives them away, and a brilliant guy at the flea market who designed a picture of Prince using only broken pieces of glass.

Artists, like Scientists, are innovators. They’re activists. They’re entrepreneurs. They’re bold enough to do stupid things. Repeatedly. Until the stupidness out there in the world matches the stupidness in their head. Sometimes they never get there, but on the way, they’re as alive as anyone can be.

We can’t be eliminated. We can’t be out-maneuvered.

As Willy Wonka put it, “We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams.”

We’re being forced to move on quicker than I’d like. We’re being implored to look much farther into the ether. My eyes and brain hurt from concentrating on the horizon.

But we will keep drawing and putting little drops of colored liquid into test tubes.

And coming up with novel combinations of words, until we get it right.

Or at least have a good laugh.

“What about Director of Innovation & Transformation?”

“Sounds like a magician.”

[Lol]

[Lol]

“We’re getting there.”

“Agreed.”

It’s the human thing to do.


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LGBTQIA

Two men hugging

LGBTQIA is a mouthful. It takes a while to say it. It’s a commitment to go all the way through it in a conversation

And when I do (which is always), I’m not doing it to be righteous or to prove my wokeness. I’m not doing it to push my agenda or be seen as a certain kind of person.

Rather, I do it because people I love are part of that community.

My daughter’s bestie is Trans (and so damn cool!). She got her surgery and has never been happier. She makes it worth it for me to stumble through the letters.

A friend of mine is nonbinary and such a good person, committed to a life of selflessness and altruism, so I continue to work at saying “them.” I’m not good at it; I keep failing. I don’t like to fail, I don’t like to not be good at something, but I keep working at it, because if that’s all I gotta do to create a space for my friend, then I’ll do it.

Some of my best and oldest friends are Gay and Lesbian. (I’m pretty sure we can all say this now; thankfully, the L and the G are mostly accepted these days, or at least acknowledged).

But I’m always learning and changing…

A loved one came out as asexual and taught me a whole new way of being and loving. And I’ll be damned if I leave that A off of LGBTQIA ever again. How could anyone expect me to leave it out? To leave them out?! Ever.

All it takes is one person close to you to share their true self, and you will immediately be confronted with a painful challenge: do I change the way I speak and think, or do I cut out a piece of my heart?

It is painful to be willed out of existence. We are hurting the ones we love.

Let’s be better.

Why wait until someone you love draws up the courage to show you their heart and ask you to say the letters? Isn’t it enough to imagine someone you love needing to do that? Or maybe you can just know that someone you love (me!) loves someone who is part of the community?

Isn’t that enough?

Stepping into the light of the LGBTQIA community is among the bravest things in the world, like walking into a ring of people with swords drawn. It is scary. It is dangerous. But it is necessary, because walking in the other direction leads to a steep drop-off into a dark, silent place.

Dropping into darkness isn’t an option. It is a death.

An involuntary decaying of the heart, not chosen, but forced. And in this banishment, we lose voices and thoughts and love, we lose new love we don’t yet understand, which is so important, because when we seek to understand, we grow. And our hearts become stronger and more capable.

But for some reason, we push all of this away.

We choose not to celebrate. We willfully and quietly cut out a piece of our hearts.

Instead of changing our minds.

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First Breaths of the Morning

Serene frosty morning landscape with sunrise

I woke into a groggy half-sleep with a pain in my chest.

Seduced by the warmth of the covers and the elusive intoxication of drowsiness, I convinced myself that the best thing to do was to stay put and do some deep breathing.

I breathed in and out, and in my sleep-stupor, I imagined breathing in all of the wonderful things in the world – flowers, sunsets, ocean breezes, babies cooing in cribs. I could see everything tremble as I breathed it in. The color surrounding everything was a cool blue. I didn’t breathe in the objects, just the essence of them, the soul of good things.

And when I breathed out it was a dirty brown swirling wind, like exhaust and in the storm I could see the talking heads of bank-rolled politicians, influencers, and scammers all laughing in slow motion against the backdrops of oil slicks, coal fires, traffic, landfills, and most of all prone figures lying this way and that, not moving at all except for their hair, lifted by the tumult. Figures the size and shape of you and me, of everyone we could ever love, have ever loved.

And I swear to you it was so real I was almost afraid to breathe in again, but thankfully when I did, it went back to blue-sky gusts on a sweet spring day.

I went on like this for several breaths — experiencing the dichotomy we’re all forced to suffer through: beauty atop pain, a thin layer of rose petals woven across a volcano.

The pain in my chest went away, but the weight of the world took its place. So many people, down for the count, so many souls not getting what they want. If you dare try to, you can feel the despair. You can feel it in your chest.

Yes, there are good things in this world. Yes, there are good people in this world.

But it seems like the bad things and the bad people are taking up all the space, even the small, sacred space in my own chest.

Jesus.

All this, and I’d barely even opened my eyes.

It takes work to stay positive, to be hopeful in the presence of fallen angels, to be the rose.

Work with me.

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My Birthday & My Birth

My parents were always so inventive with my birthdays. They were mostly at my house or in my backyard, not extravagant, no visiting Disney Princesses or anything, but they were far from average.

The first one I remember is around 4 or 5. My mom made red capes and put our names on the back. We zoomed around the backyard for ours: little superheroes with cake on our cheeks and fingers.

Then, there was the Spiderman birthday. While I was sleeping, my mom (and dad?) threaded black yarn throughout my bedroom. It was a small room, so the yarn went from wall to wall, this way and that, all the way around me, so that when I woke up, it looked like I was caught in a web. But not just any web: Spiderman’s web. I was floored. The whole birthday was Spiderman-themed, and all my friends came over later in the day, but the best part was knowing Spiderman had visited me on my birthday.

Then came the treasure hunts. All over the yard and in the garage, even in the car in the driveway. The clues all pointed to me: things I loved, experiences we had together, moments that happened, objects that were special to me. Someone would read the clue, and then I’d shout out the answer, and we’d all run full speed down the hill, up the hill, across the driveway. My friends probably didn’t know where we were running, but there’s enough joy in running a full sprint, possibly more when you don’t have a finish line.

I remember one year, my folks took me to Chuck E. Cheese. We almost never went to Chuck E. Cheese. But, like any pre-teen, it was always on my mind. Behind the woman at the counter was a sign that read, “We give quarters for good grades. Show us your report card, and you get free games.” I turned to my parents to see if we could run home to grab my report card cuz I was a bit of a nerd, and my dad was standing behind me with a big grin on his face, and my report card in hand. Aw man. Those quarters may have well been gold.

When I got older, and I didn’t want birthday parties but still sort of wanted birthday parties, my mom would invite all my friends over: soccer friends, school friends, after-school friends. I remember one year she burnt the cake to a crisp, and then she ran out and got another one. But the cool thing was she left out the burnt cake on the dining room table and put a sign on it that said something like “Sad Cake” which made us all laugh. We actually ended up eating that cake too. Since it was burnt, it stuck together real good, which was great for grab-and-go eating. One of us always had a handful of the stuff as we talked about girls and our lame teachers.

From college on, because I wasn’t living at home anymore, both my folks would call and both had the same approach every year, though vastly different from each other.

My dad: “Happy Birthday. You old motherfucker! Lol.” (The lol part was him. Then me. Then both of us. Every year.)

My mom took a more eloquent tack. She was always the first one to call me — never failed. Before I could even say hi, she’d launch into the story of how I was born.

And what a story it was!

I never made it to the hospital. Picture my dad driving 100 miles and hour in a Ford LTD, my mom with her feet up on the dash, doing that breathing thing.

“I was hoping the cops pulled me over!” said my dad.

And then my mom, with her unorthodox way of thinking: “I was worried a trucker was going to go by, look down and see me with my legs spread.”

I know the story well.

I was born in the car, well, just outside of it, in the hospital parking lot. I came shooting out into a pillowcase held by a doctor wrangled by my dad while my mom clenched as hard as she could and tried to keep me away from the world for just a little bit longer — something she never tried to do again. Ever.

I absolutely love saying I was born in a car, just like I love saying I wore earrings to 5th grade, was Class Individual in high school, and was caught on camera asleep at my college graduation.

I like being different.

I’d like to think the whole being-born-in-a-car thing started it all — set me up for life to not be normal — but there are other, more significant factors that shaped me.

Genetics.

And unconditional love flowing in from 2 directions, like a tidal wave, a relentless sunbeam, a beautiful song, reaching into me always and forever.

Thanks, mom and dad, for giving me life. For filling me up when I empty out. And for letting me find my own way, however crooked and untraveled the path.

I’m good.

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Time for Cartwheels

Girl in pink shirt doing cartwheel

I ran into one of the girls I coach in soccer. We’ll call her Sachi. It was off season and we hadn’t had practice in months, so we were both sort of openly delighted to see each other.

She was with a friend.

Sachi introduced me as her soccer coach, which made me feel all warm inside. Then she exclaimed to her friend, busy doing cartwheels, “You should play on my team.”

The friend stood up, wiped her hands on her pants and said.

(And, mind you this is a 9-year old.)

“Sorry. I’m already overscheduled. I have ballet on Monday and Thursday, basketball Tuesday, and a Computer Engineering class on the weekend. Oh, and I practice piano afterschool on Wednesdays, Fridays, and… sometimes on Sunday.”

Whoa.

That’s one ambitous girl.

Actually, she’s not much different than every other kid I know, including my own.

Our kids are doing soooo much!

All I remember as a kid is runnning around in my backyard, playing kickball in the driveway, playing “guns” in the woods, catching craw-daddies in apple juice bottles.

Okay, I played soccer but that was it.

These kids got everything going on.

I suppose it’s our “fault” as parents. Our kids overscheduling is a result of us trying to figure out, in a heated frenzy of afterschool programs and summer camps, what their thing is.

We want our kid to have a thing — a go-to activity that they’re good at, that serves them like a loyal friend, carrying them through high school, college, and beyond.

And to get there, they have to try stuff.

And these leagues and camps and enrichment programs have proliferated into every crevice of free time surrounding school.

The result? A 9-year-old girl who politely declines a soccer invite from her friend.

I talked to Sachi a little longer — the usual stuff: can’t wait to see you in a week, you been practicing? Did you know, we got Alice back, I’m lucky to have you as my center midfielder…

And then I walked away, so I could get back to my group and they could get back to cartwheels in front of the pizza place.

And that eased my thinking mind.

Gotta make time for what’s important.

But you gotta leave space for cartwheels too.

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Lessons From a Crumpled Napkin

flat lay of wrinkled pink mulberry silk paper on a dusty pink paper background captured with natural backlighting

I remember the first time I got in trouble at school. It was in the cafeteria. Grade school. We sat at those massively long tables, 8 rows of ’em, with the teachers patrolling the edges like border collies.

I’m not sure how it started but Matty P, my best friend in the whole world, threw a napkin at me. So I threw it back at him.

We didn’t get much farther than that before Mr. Serbent — a hulk of a man — called us out, well me…

“MR FLAMER!”

He hovered over me in his short-sleeved button-up, face already read in preparation for the yelling.

“YOU THINK IT’S FUNNY TO THROW THINGS AT LUNCH?”

I was 8, so like, yeah.

“SINCE YOU AND YOUR FRIEND LIKE THROWING THINGS SO MUCH, HOW ABOUT THROWING THAT NAPKIN INSTEAD OF GOING TO RECESS. “

It wasn’t a question.

He put us, of all places, in the back hallway of the kitchen, behind where the lunch ladies served food, a place we’d never been. No student ever has.

He pointed a finger at me. “YOU STAY RIGHT HERE. THE TWO OF YOU.” And he slammed the balled up napkin into my hand.

Matt Shrugged.

I waited for Mr. Serbent to walk away and threw it right at Matt’s face.

He dodged it and laughed. Ran back a few paces to retrieve its, stealing a quick glance into one of the doorways. Then launched the ball at my head. I ducked. And laughed.

It went on like this: trying to peg each other in the head. And of course the crotch.

We did just about everything you could with a napkin: played volleyball, made hoops with our arms and shot three-pointers, un-crumpled it and threw it up, which made it nearly impossible to catch. But, boy, was it fun to watch the other guy try.

We probably threw that thing 100 times in a 100 different ways. Taking breaks to let the hair-netted lunch ladies walk down the hall and go wherever that hall led. They’d come back with massive bins of beans and crates of milk.

For whatever reason, they didn’t treat us like criminals. One offered us milk, the good kind — chocolate. We got smiles.

It was all good. We tried kicking it to each other, punting a napkin ball. Making field goals with our arms.

Then, Mr Serbent showed up again, like a Gorgon coming up through the earth. He pierced our silliness with second-nature disdain.

“YOU BOYS ARE STILL HERE? IT’S SECOND RECESS ALREADY.”

Meaning we not only skipped our recess, we were now skipping our afternoon class. To throw a napkin.

We stood motionless.

“WELL, GO ON, GET TO CLASS. But I want you to think about WHAT LESSON you’ve learned today.”

We took off in a fast walk, waiting until we were out the door to break into a full sprint, giggling like crazy. I jumped up and kicked my feet off the wall. Matt slapped a poster.

Lesson? Um, yeah. We learned some lessons.

Anything can be fun when you’re with your friends.

You can do a lot with a little, even if you only got a napkin and a hallway.

Cafeteria workers work hard.

No one can make you feel bad about yourself. Only you can do that.

Even when you think you’ve exhausted all of your creativity, there’s always more. There’s always a new way to play.

I don’t know about Matty P., but I felt a little lighter in class that day, like I’d just discovered a secret that even Mr. Serbent didn’t know about, like I was smarter than the people who wrote my thick, heavily indexed textbooks.

The authoritarian voice of the teacher fell a little softer on my shoulders. I raised my hand a lot more after that. I wasn’t afraid to be wrong.

I’d endured the reverberating reprimand of Mr. Serbent and come out the other side, not just alive, but more confident, less fearful of the rules.

As if handed a paper crane to unfold, unaware that there would be a message inside, but invigorated by the unfolding itself.

Some things take time to learn, but you can still celebrate the beginning of the discovery.

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The Phrase We’ve All Started to Say

“I appreciate you.”

I hear it all the time now, a new closing statement, presumably evolved from the more impersonal “I appreciate it,” or “Much appreciated.”

Hooray! We’ve replaced the “it” and the understood “you” with the actual “you.”

As in, “I appreciate you!”

And it works wonders. Doesn’t it?

I certainly feel warm and gooey when it happens, which, thankfully, is a lot.

And it’s not just a good feeling that’s happening.

With some eye contact and gratitude squeezed into the cracks between us, we can form bonds.

We can forge contracts that override the rules forced upon us.

For we are the rule followers and the rule breakers. It’s up to us.

With our voices aligned and the slow, steady murmur of our heartsongs, we can rattle the foundations of skyscrapers, if we choose to.

We can topple the penthouse suite.

It’s already happening.

On a walk in my neighborhood, a woman — who invited us to her Carnivale competition (which we went to) commented on how the evil in the macro is creating good in the micro. That is, the cranked-up oppression of our nation’s fascism is, by the laws of physics, bringing us closer together.

I can feel it. Can you?

Keep your voice in the chorus.

Raise your hands in defiance, and in joy.

I appreciate you.

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Cross-Outs & Kid Questions

My daughter caught me gazing lovingly at my dry-erase board, which was covered with multi-colored to-do lists.

“I can erase the stuff that’s crossed out, if you want,” she offered in a way children often do when they’re trying to be involved in that stuff daddy does in his office.

“No, thanks, hon,” I said, recognizing a teachable moment immediately. “Cross-offs are an essential part of success; they show me what I’ve accomplished.” I leaned in to get her full attention, which was already waning. “Accomplishments need to be celebrated; they need to be reflected upon. At least for a little while.”

I stopped there. I wasn’t going to tell her how prideful reflection leads to gratitude, which is the lifeblood of happiness. She’s 9 afterall.

When I’m feeling particularly accomplished, I’ve gone so far as to take a picture of my dry-erase board, crystallizing the moment in time, my past-self, a work-in-progress to remind me how many things I’ve had to do to get where I am, to become who I am.

“Well, can I draw on it then?”

The markers were out of her reach. She looked around for a chair, which was covered in papers. Then she looked back at me.

“How long you gonna be?”

I pointed to the dry-erase board, with a sheepish shrug.

“Really?”

“Well, not all of it.”

I probably could do most of it if I put my head down and grinded through, but there are more important things in life, the kinds of things that don’t make it on the to-do list.

I got pictures of those things, too. 🙂

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Artists, With And Without Art

Close up shot of flames

Is a writer who doesn’t write still a writer?

Is a musician who doesn’t play still a musician?

What about a filmmaker? If they’re not making films, are they still a filmmaker?

In other words, does being an artist run deeper than the deliverables?

Are artists walking through the world with different eyes and different brains?

Seeking novelty over scale

Choosing beauty over abundance

Driven to innovate, innovate, innovate

To breathe in what already exists and exhale what doesn’t

To live in every moment

At all costs

As if they are creating art constantly, whether it comes out into the world or not

Some of their greatest works, still inside, always inside, like a warm fire burning, a secret never told

And is this something to want?

Staying lit

Exerting energy to fan the flame

All that energy

Taken away from other things

Earthly things

Practical things

It’s a silly commitment

Like refusing an electric heater for a match

Only because the flame lives and dies

And in between those two finite points of existence, it dances.