Answering the Obvious Questions

Many people, when learning of my intention to take time away from work, ask the obvious question: Why? Or in some cases, they ask the second obvious question: Why now? In this installment, I will try to answer both queries, lest anyone, feline or otherwise, succumb to a fatal bout of curiousity.

First of all, neither I nor anyone close to me is dying, ill or otherwise suffering from some dread affliction. So no worries there. As a matter of fact, I’ve been contemplating some “me” time for a while now. The catalyst for the now part comes principally from my experience attending Priscilla’s university graduation in December.

Being something of a “live in the moment” kind of fellow, I’d not really thought much about how this event would affect me. (Aside, of course, from the extremely selfish notion that I’d have a lot more disposable income from now on.) It all truth it kind of sneaked up on me, as many things seem to do of late. But I digress…

Late last fall, Tonya and I planned a road trip from Calgary to Oklahoma for the first two weeks in December. Our purpose was twofold; to both witness this auspicious event and to pack up Miss P for a “homecoming” trek back to Canada. The plan, as we understood it anyway, was that she would shack up rent-free with mum and dad for a while. This would enable her to start building some career-related experience free from the pressures of fully supporting herself right away. We’d all discussed this rather extensively, so things seemed all set.

A week before hitting the road, Priscilla dropped a bit of a bomb on us. She’d decided that instead of living with us in Calgary she intended to move to Dallas and seek her fortune there. Needless to say, our first reaction was not overwhelming joy. In fact, it seemed capricious and rash. But as the notion settled with me for a bit, I started to see things in a different way.

It really all hit home as I was sitting through her graduation ceremony. I found myself transported back in time some 20-odd years to my own college commencement. I started to recount the years and assess what I’d accomplished so far, all the while trying to remember what I’d set out to do in the first place. I found quickly that my current reality didn’t resemble much of anything I’d envisioned. Indeed, I struggled to remember what I’d envisioned at all.

Now that’s not necessarily a haunting realization, but one that did puzzle my puzzler for a time. (Thanks to Dr. Suess!) I began to understand that my current reality was as much a product of random chance as any kind of planned journey. Priscilla had actually leaped ahead of me in some ways with her bold plan to pursue that which she had clearly wanted for some time – a genuine career working in museums. I both admired and envied her single-minded sense of purpose, and I vowed to find my own.

Armed with this new insight, I started thinking about how I might discover a sense of purpose for myself: my career, my life and those meaningful relationships I believe we all crave deep down. I also realized I needed complete focus, not a “fill in the cracks” approach around my work, which at present doesn’t allow for much mental bandwidth.

So, here I am. All in, for you Texas hold ‘em fans. Six months to sort things out and arm for the fights still to come. I’m not sure what the future has in store for me, but I’m more excited to find out than I’ve been in a long time. Maybe not even since that stifling Sunday afternoon in a gym in Fairbanks so many years ago, decked out in cap and gown and dreams aplenty…

Music Gets the Best of Me (with apologies to Sophie Ellis-Bextor)

I love walking the city at night with my iPod. (A future entry will unequivocally showcase the iPod as the greatest invention mankind has produced to date.) Just me, cloaked in anonymity, striding unabated through the darkness and shadows.  Freedom to observe, unobserved, is an incredibly powerful and motivating sense of awareness.

But without the music, it just wouldn’t work. And there are some great bands with which to create this somnambulistic symphony. Personally, it doesn’t get much better than a mix including the likes of Doves, Rubyhorse, R.E.M., Peter Murphy, Guster and China Crisis – just to name a few.

There is magic in the streets, and the lights displaying passing insights into the world and lives of those who inhabit it. I celebrate the cold, as my black overcoat protects me from the mercury not yet cognizant of the reality of imminent spring. The city has yet to fully awaken from its winter slumber and, yet, there is hope of days spent idly on patios and balconies embracing the sun’s warming rays.

But if truth be told, I revel in the solitude. For however long it is mine I will embrace it, just as I hold the music close to my core. It is the soundtrack of my life, played out across a multitude of scenes and genres, but never part of any awards program or popular accolades. It is a cacophony of my own formulation and as much as part of me as my DNA.

I’ve been privileged to know two other Marks who share my love for the sonically eclectic – Mssrs. Beck and Hudgens. They expanded my musical repertoire and turned me on to some great tunes. I’m forever grateful. And I'd be remiss to forego a shout-out to my Mom and Dad, who brought me up in an environment rich with music, from Johnny Cash, CCR and Kris Kristofferson to Neil Diamond and the Fifth Dimension. Not a day goes by that I don’t recall others who have shared music with me and I with them. Know one and all that I am in your debt.

So keep it real and keep a tune in your heart. Life’s journey is the better for it, and so we all are. I’m not sure I realize fully what heaven is, but I know hell all too well: it is a place where music finds neither a home nor an ear. And what a terrible place it must be…

Energy in the Balance

It occurred to me recently after speaking with someone I hold in high regard that I need to look at my world and my work differently. I suspect that’s a bit ethereal, so let me elaborate.

For some time now, I’ve been moving through life thinking that the only way to recover the energy expended in the performance of my daily work was to take time away, be it a holiday or a personal day or whatever. Ironically, like many people, the busier I got the less likely I was to actually take time off. As a result, my own energy balance kept dropping lower and lower, negatively affecting the quality of my work and my commitment to those things I find important.

We all do things that consume energy, often times in excess of our personal stores or reserves. My wise friend told me that time off, in and of itself, may not be sufficiently reinvigorating. In fact, time off almost never provides enough of an ongoing boost to fully regenerate our emotional strength. The key is to build time into our daily work to do things that give energy back. In other words, we need to invest in those things we enjoy and that give us personal satisfaction in return.

This is a very simple concept, yet I find it profound in many ways. In my own life I need to look beyond the tasks and activities demanded of me each day and instead look to create opportunities to work on things I truly enjoy. I should devote a portion of my efforts to activities in which the sheer doing of them promotes a sense of achievement, accomplishment, or in my case, the opportunity to work with others.

For I find that completion of tasks never fully rewards me in the way that working with, through and on behalf of others does. Those occasions when I am able to engender trust, build a sense of shared purpose and truly see the world through the eyes of others are, in fact, my energy replenishment program. And over the next several months I intend to better understand how I can muster the discipline and courage needed to make this purposeful energy balance a part of my everyday life.

Day 1: Life 2.0

I've been thinking of this day for some weeks now. For the first time in 20 years I'm not going to work each day. It's quite a change, if I do say so myself, which is something coming from a self-proclaimed change expert. Instead, over the next six months I will be working on my life from the ground up. Not a nip or tuck mind you, but the equivalent of an extreme makeover.

Today is the start of what I hope will be a journey of self-discovery, of transformation. The expectations of my life to this point have been much like an old wool sweater: practical, dependable, fulfilling of expectations and perhaps even somewhat elegant in its predictability and function. Something from a bygone era strangely antiquated and archaic and utterly out of place.

But now I find the uncomfortable scratchiness and musty smell belies some deeper dissatisfaction that I need to more fully understand. I feel it's time to set aside the old sweater and don something that's more me, or at least something that will enable "me" to emerge. (Whether that's a Hawaiian shirt or not remains to be seen.) It is clearly time to take charge of my own metaphorical wardrobe.

Anxiety over external expectations has displaced my own sense of direction and purpose, and that's exactly what I'm looking to restore. I'm not naive enough to believe I can live a life devoid of external pressures and requirements, but I do hope that I can restore my own motivations and goals to a place of central importance and strength in my life. To once again pursue those things which restore energy rather than merely consume it. It is time for me to establish tomorrow as something to look look forward to with a sense of hope and promise, not with a feeling of grim determination or abject resignation.

So this morning, this new day, I recall the words from that breakfast cereal jingle so many years ago: "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." And while I'm probably screwing myself by not starting it with a big bowl of Total, here goes nothing. Or rather, I firmly believe, something...