The Take Away

I love dogs and have had some kind of big dog, usually lab size, in my life for as long as I can recall. While I love dogs I also know they’re dogs, not people. I don’t dress mine up, pretend they have human qualities, and certainly avoid projecting too much emotional understanding on them. I do have voices for all my dogs, and I frequently use that voice to engage in two way conversations with them…ah…with myself but that is filler for a slow news day.

Many years ago one of my neighbors owned a dog named Corky. Corky was pure bred Corgi, the official dog of the Royal Family. While pure bred Corgi’s may all be descendents of more historically significant Corgi’s, as I think back on Corky, I believe any claim to his royal lineage would be dubious at best.  Corky was a good dog, affable and pleasant, who had an affinity for back yard rabbits and squirrels, and would spend a fair amount of his time during warm months, ridding the yard of other non-canine mammels. Good boy.

But on a particularly warm evening in late summer, one of the local hooligans and some of his sloppy and mostly slow friends decided, in a stunning demonstration of both cruelty and innovation, to test a simple theory of motivation. They posited a theory that motivation is really just another word for a “stick”. These boys attended Catholic grade school so it was likely these questions arose from first hand experience with nuns. But as is often the case, the big questions that challenge the human race are often answered first, not by academically brilliants scientists, but by a group of idiots with a commitment. After all, one can’t help but believing that the laws of physics were first discovered by teenagers doing something remarkably stupid.  

The thought was, what would happen if one were to tie a bunch of firecrackers to a string, and then tie that 8 foot length of string to the tail of a dog, in this case, her royal majesties Corky?  What is odd to me is that at times like this, how little thought is applied to the future, and I don’t mean the distant future, I mean only a few minutes into the future. You’d think a group of teens, as green and soft brained as they are, would collectively come up with a reasonable insight that this was a bad idea.

It happened all rather quickly, as you might imagine. A string of Black Cats were tied to a string, and then lightly tied to Corky’s tail. During this entire time Corky kept looking at all of us with his usual innocence, and it was only after one of the goofballs started laughing as he was tying the string onto the tail that Corky, however dogs realize such things, seemed to understand that this was going to be something completely different.

Once the string was attached, the fuse lit, Corky started to saunter away..stopping for moment to look back at the rising white plume of a Chinese fuse, and all of the local boys running to a distance that, for just one moment Corky seemed to understand how this was going to go. The first firecracker burst, then another snap, and more snapping..and off Corky went, chasing several of the boys into the back yard. In fact, he past a couple of them as he headed into the rabbit invested shrubs.

There are three speeds a dog has, walking, running, and the kind of panic induced dash that is usually reserved for entertaining nature programs where some poor gazelle is being chased by a hungry tiger. Corky, we learned, was fast as hell. He hit the cover of the shrubs as the final snaps and cracks finished, and a cloud of spent gunpowder arose from the bushes. A couple of moments later, with the “all clear” sounded, Corky emerged from the foliage none worse and, seemingly back to calm.

Every time I think about this I’m reminded of the places I visit to talk to people about engagement and creativity, workplace team work, even social media topics, and how we so often miss the point. Motivation isn’t a fire on the ass, it’s not a big stick and kick in the can, and it certainly isn’t a string with fire crackers attached. The only kind that works for any length of time is to engage in conversations that lead to freedom, as much freedom as we can unleash in our workplaces and our world. When employees are free to make decisions because they’re tuned in, paying attention, and they act out of goodness, then they’re pulled forward, not pushed synthetically. Natural energy is the explosion of mutual interest, it is a burst of choice and a blast of personal responsibility. True collaborative vitality doesn’t require any sticks, it requires less, always less, so that the human beings engaged can step forward and build something beautiful together.

I don’t know what happened to Corky, he seemed to be okay, but I’ll be forever in his debt for teaching me that kindness is always more attractive than gun powder…though certainly less entertaining (Cue sinister laugh…”HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA!”

Harvard Business Review seems to devote a fair amount of ink to the “happiness at work” movement with yet another article appearing today on my LinkedIn home page. A simple Goog search of “happiness at work” turns up a load of links on all manner of well being in the workplace. We apparently want to be happy at work.

I know something about jumping up the juice at work since I spent most of a decade on the hustings for the Fish! Philosophy, a kindly video and books about the fishmongers at Pike Market in Seattle who have some good customer mojo. Great product, used by companies around the world, but turned out to be remarkably challenging for any organization to really implement. Happiness at work, it turns out, is more an individual phenomenon, choice, or way of being.

We all want happiness, man, that’s the scope of our lives, to be joyful, connected and just happy, man. But as most of us know, organizations have limited resources to generate happy happy for the unhappy few. What I mean is, if you’re already a whiner, or a belly aching windbag of toxic energy, no program, article, foosball table or casual Friday is going unlock your misery. Happiness at work is entirely different than happiness from our workplace. Sure, having free soda, bonus checks and a great health plan can generate momentary happiness, but if you’re prone to harshing everyone’s mellow none of this is going to matter, your just going to continue to rain on everyone’s parade.

If you want happiness in the workplace, hire people that are happy for crying out loud, and give them some freedom. Avoid weaponizing toxic people by giving them power over others, making them the overlords of the good and happy people.

If you work with a scumbag but you’re mostly happy, my guess is you’ll be happy most of the time. Sure, you can read all the articles and books on happy happy, or pay closer attention to the other preachers of jack-you-up like me, and some of it will stick and work. But if you really are happy, be f**$ing happy! Hold your head up and forward, continue to do fun things, mix it up, tinker around, and keep that goofy smile pasted on your face. THAT one.

Take some risks to stay in the happy, after all if you fast forward your life into the not so distant future, say 100 years, you’ll be 6 feet under and all the hand wringing in the world right now, won’t get you out of the ground later. Why waste it fertilizing the planet with negative s**t.

So, come on! Just be happy you’re here, now, alive and well…man.

I’ve been accused of seeing everything through the narrow lens of performance. It’s a fair nudge against my overtly simple way of viewing the patterns and possibilities of human relationships. But my view of “performance” goes beyond entertainment or doing a schtick for people, rather more closely related to a “promise” or a “purpose”, to “bring into a form” that which we are intent to do.

Everyday our lives are populated by the opportunity to perform, to bring form to our purpose and to act on promises we’ve made. It’s an accurate and active version of the word, and while it is still laden with imagery of dancers, singers, actors or other kinds of show performers, it is also a useful way of thinking about how we direct our energies, where we focus our intent, and how we create and fulfill our potential.

Today, look at those things you “bring to form” for other people. It might be a brand promise, or a family obligation. Perhaps it’s a service moment or a chance to close a sale by providing a good thing for another. These are your performances, and a command performance is really a positive sense that what you’ve done, brought into form, reflects who you are.

I was talking with a young woman on Saturday afternoon about the condition of her life.  Her family is and has been in turmoil for the past several years and while mom and dad are in a cold war, she and her sisters have done their best to keep moving on with their lives, but it hasn’t always been easy. It has resulted in eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse and other “destructive behaviors”.

In the course of our conversation I became aware of how much her language was spiced with constraint, problems, issues and shortcomings. None of it seemed like her own language rather it sounded like therapy, counselor speak, group speak, god speak and a host of other channels not entirely her own. She was channeling from all of those professionals that had lined up to help to get better, to be sober, to get straight, to be real, grow up and get her act together. The problem was, at least as an observer, was that all of this language was in her way, all of the concepts she talked about assumes she’s emotionally club footed, that she is sick, that she’s always going to be on the edge of the next big breakdown, and so my friend lives in fear and anxiety that it all may be true, while at the same time wondering if it also might not be so.

I’m not a therapist, nor a chem-dep expert, I don’t know a lot about eating disorders and I’m certainly not any kind of trusted adviser on family dynamics. However, I do have a sense that language is often deployed in a way that can keep us in the fold of whatever we are struggling against. In other words, we may have issues to work through but at some point all of the “theraspeak” and mumbo-jumbo we needed to get through a rough patch can become part of our own self containing narrative.  I could be wrong.

In the course of the conversation I would ask her “Is that true?”, or “How do you know that is true?”  These questions were about testing the concepts that so many people had tied around her neck. It was clear before long that she was already questioning the limits and that she wanted to describe and re-create herself and to reclaim the language of possibilities rather than the language of handicap and disease. She is very smart and while she may indeed struggle with some afflictions, she is realizing she can claim a healthier approach of her own, one that allows for the very real possibility that much of what has defined her by others may no longer be true.

We can’t navigate our way forward if we’re walking backwards. The bad things that happen to us, or the crappy things we do to ourselves and our organizations, can turn into daunting and long shadows. We find ourselves looking behind us, keeping an eye on the shadow that is always following close to foot, making sure we don’t make the same mistakes, that we get a grip on ourselves so that we don’t self destruct. We grab on to books, programs, scripts, guru’s, prescriptions, steps, plans, groups and experts to help illuminate the shadows, to give us strength in the face of such challenges.

While we may need some support with programs and people that can help us conceptualize healthier choices, there is also great strength to be found simply by turning around and facing forward into the light of the future, rather than starring forever into the lingering shadows of the past.

We all need occasional help and support and sometimes that help is heavy handed and tightly programmed, and other times it’s just a few words from a friend. Whatever it may be, the well intentioned help can become a cane and crutch, and over time weaken our resolve and fortitude. If I don’t continually challenge myself to try new things, to cut through the thicket off the beaten path, my creative muscles atrophy and I forget how to jazz. But the more I tinker with new ideas, the more likely I’ve found them. 

To be successful we’ll have to balance the need for scripts and structures against the energy of discovery and adventure. None of our work will be perfect, but better we tinker and try-out new ideas, new innovations and insights than to always remain constrained by scripts we write, or that others have written for us. Better than we define ourselves imperfectly rather than letting others, no matter how well intentioned the voices may be, define everything for and about us. The future, thankfully, is just too big, too awesome and important to move forward feeling so feeble and small.

In all of the years I spent wandering around the Minnesota Renaissance Festival with a dirty face and shit-brown costume I am fortunate that I can count on one hand the number of times someone has threatened to kill me. Now, that may seem to be a roughly high number since I’m guessing few of you have had someone threaten to kill you as a result of something you said. Not so with me. Some things I’ve said have resulted in a bit of blow back, an unexpected rebuttal to what I believed was a joke. I don’t believe I had necessarily said anything wrong, but that I said it to the wrong person. Got it.

My risky brand of performing is one in which the “scene” is not figured ahead of time, not really, it’s mostly a series of improvised provocations designed to incite. I gather a crowd by harassing them with a sort of free association, comedic rant on everything around me. My personae is the Rat Catcher, a kind of medieval Don Rickles lambasting everything and everyone around him. I’ve performed for hundreds of thousands of people over the past 47 years (Yes..I started as a kid), and in only a few instances has someone objected to my comments in a potentially violent way, and most of those happened in Texas. Surprise!

The most caustic of them was an oddly shaped guy (See…already you know this is going in a bad direction) who was ordering pasta from one of the festival food booths. I was sitting on the ground near the counter of the booth, and as he waited for his food I might have mentioned something about his bulging gut and overworked duodenum. He ignored me, which is appropriate in most cases but seeing as this is “interactive theater” I was inclined to follow up on my opening salvo. Just as I stood up, this enormous bowl of hot pasta with red sauce appeared on the counter. I said something that included “shoveling” and “fat, obnoxious ignoramus.” But, I delivered it with a smile.

Much to my surprise, it turns out, a plate of hot pasta and red sauce in the face followed by a verbal threat that my life was in danger of coming to a hasty close, was an early curtain due to bad reviews for those of you familiar with the nomenclature of the theater. The man was quickly escorted off the site by a couple of beefy, thick necked cowboy security guys who were fans of my performance style. I was told later that the man got a little rowdy on the walk out and the cowboys had to “set him straight”. I never found out what that meant…somethings are better left alone.

The fact that I’ve only had a handful of troubled moments given the enormous number of people that I have interacted with as an “improvocative” performer, tells me that most of us have great leeway in how we approach encounters with others. Certainly there are a different set of social rules when performing, yet, playing and engaging others creates a great deal of space for exploring and tinkering with the moments. Regardless of what you do, in most instances if you’re paying attention, you can engage with others with far more vim and vigor than you might think. What’s more, if you do it with patience, love and kindness, you’ll find that others not only want to play with you, but they’ll pay extra to get it.

Okay, I know you can’t go around yelling at others or provoking pasta eaters, but you can move boldly in the world by inviting people to play with you, to engage with them wholeheartedly and to do so not because it’s a strategy for getting something, but that it raises the level of good for you, for them, and for this bruised and battered world.

Besides having been a walk about street performer, I’ve also spent a great deal of time working in and around motivational speakers, a group I’ve come to call the “preachers-of-jack-you-up!”. It’s a big revival tent of well manicured individuals, some of whom have a tin stamped story about overcoming insurmountable challenges to becoming the fantastic, super awesome mega best selling whoopty doo they just knew they could be, and a few even sell formulaic tincture to aid with the affects of being a lowly loser in life. Some of these programs are designed to make life effortless, or at least sell something to you effortlessly, and others will give recipients that permanent cat eating crap grin that is so oft pasted upon the faces of the temporarily jacked up. Whew, say amen!

Contrary to my opening stanza, I love motivational speakers and the industry for which I derive a portion of my living. While I remain skeptical of some of the long term value that motivation brings to a group, in the short run it can leave people feeling jacked up, juiced and ready, it can open thinking to new ideas, and even offer (**GASP) a positive balance to the bitching bummer of the daily grind. There isn’t a thing wrong with this, because even though the net gain may sometimes be short lived, some of the ideas tossed about casually can actually stick. I know about this industry, because I’m a semi-reluctant member of this good vibe tribe.

The trouble with the motivational speaking industry is that some members seem to jump on trendy ideas and turn them into shallow fodder for sale.  Take, for instance, the research that seems to support the obvious notion that laughter is good for us. This really isn’t surprising since most of us already kind of know that when we’re happy, when we’re laughing, we’re…ahhh…happy! Right! But the idea of “laughter is the best medicine” is enough to draw the clowns out of the car to promote programs, training initiatives, and products designed to help us laugh more. There is even a class where participants laugh, however unnatural it may be, at something funny.

If we want to have programs in our workplaces, organizations, even in our personal lives that promote good health, happiness and joy, it seems to me we need avoid prescriptions, overlay and strategies since none of these are very natural. Joy, laughter and connection only happen in a meaningful way when it’s natural, when occurs to us in an unforced way, not the laugh track of a classroom or motivational schtick. 

Don’t get me wrong here, I love to laugh and I laugh a lot, but the funniest things to me are likely not the funniest to you. Same holds true for nearly everything in life, since each of us is a unique shape of existence, what we find valuable and useful is often quite different. Duh.  Teaching and training others to be playful is an exercise in futility Providing Foosball tables and pinball machines may make the office look fun, but they really don’t promote the right muscle group. Play and joy happen naturally, and they don’t happen as a result of being strategic or well trained. Leave people alone and create a space around you that respects the choice of others. Toxic people are likely to be toxic no matter what the temperature of the room is, warm or cold. Happy people seem to raise the level of happy in the room, but just try to make the others in the room happy and the results will likely not make anyone, very, happy.

In the TAKE AWAY: Plan Less-Succeed More, I write about looking at our work and personal life not from the question of “what can I take away”, but “what can we leave behind that will matter for both of us”?  This shift puts the emphasis on who we are being and less on what we are doing or getting. Laughter is a nice idea, I like it, and I’ve found that when I’m happy laughter seems to be in close proximity. I doubt a training program on laughter, or a “laugh class” is going bring sustainable chuckling to my otherwise good life. Laughter and joy cannot be prescribed with any success because it isn’t natural. Better still, promote trust and freedom, leave people alone to be who they are best at being, and bring your own joy into the room. If you do, others will be more inclined to share the mojo with you.

“When I was young I used to pray for a bike, then I realized that God doesn’t work that way, so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness.” **Just in case you needed something to get your started.

My third grade teacher, Ms. Hanson, was a miserable old bitty who ruled the small school I attended as a kid with an wrinkled liver spotted fist. She was the kind of teacher that made karma believable and important. I suppose, way back before when, she might have been a descent person but by the time I attended her third grade class at Park Hill Elementary she was two feeble steps away from a cement sarcophagus.

She was the first person to impress upon me the importance of reading. Of course, it wasn’t just that she wanted us to read, but to read to the class out loud. I had no issue with being in front of the class, I was after all the son of two professional actors, rather I had a terrible and embarrassing lisp, reading out loud punched a hole into whatever confidence I might have possessed.  She didn’t care and seemed to take special pleasure in watching me lisping and stammering my way through “See Dick Run”.

My experience in the third grade class was so profoundly bad, and hostile, that Ms Hanson took the ultimate revenge by keeping me back a year. I was a flunk, a third grade, lisping, attention challenged loser. Holding me back to go through the experience again frustrated my mother beyond measure, and though I don’t believe in such things as an after life, if there were one I’d like to believe my mother was there with clinched fists ready to send Ms Hanson out of the pearly gates of heaven with a blackened eye. But I digress.

After elementary school, and all the way through high school, I took to a microphone every chance I could get. I’d have pretend radio shows, I’d record my voice as I read from books and magazines. I drove my friends and first wife crazy by reading signs and billboards as we drove by them. I practiced, I learned, and most of all I listened, and that is the most important element of all, the listening.

Life is no doubt full of people who stand ready to shut down our sugar shack, to tell us we won’t amount to much, that our voices are bad, that we can’t read out loud, that we are broken. But that’s not who I listened to, instead, I listened to my own voice so I could hear the lisp. I listened to the way words sounded in my mouth, and eventually started exchanging words for ones that sounded better. Eventually, I auditioned to become a voice actor and was accepted the first time around. That was nearly 15 years ago.

The truth is, everyone has something we fight back against. In some ways those conflicts are the things that temper our abilities, that inspire us to climb a little higher, practice a little more and keep at it. If we listen carefully, we can learn from the feedback, both from our own voice but also from those around us. Through refined listening, we come to understand the nuances and know what is good for us and what is just dried out garden variety criticism.

There are Ms Hanson’s everywhere, but today as I step into a big, professional studio to record for a well known brand, I’ll thank Ms Hanson for reminding me that hard work and focus can pay off in spite of those who are anxious to remind us that it won’t.

Today, I make a nice income from being a voice actor, which has as its central requirement, the ability to stand in front of expensive danish microphones and read out loud. While Ms Hanson is long gone and garden food, the lesson she provided me was one of tenacity. If it hadn’t been for her I never would have tried to defeat the monsters of my confidence.

It’s Friday and already my ADD brain is strategically deciphering the codes of possibility. Hmmm, we could meet friends at a very loud bar and engage in shouting style conversations amidst the drunken twenty somethings. No, not this week.  Maybe, Saturday night we could go to the Gay 90’s, a very gay lounge in Minneapolis where we go to dance or watch homos in high heels and evening gowns strut their ducked taped genitalia across the cabaret stage. Sounds good. Or, we could always stay home and cruise Roku or Apple TV. I don’t know.

The older I get, which seems to be happening more often these days, I’ve become aware of the challenges of aging. It’s not that I’m looking or really feeling that old, I mean, I don’t wear old man blue jeans that belt high across my stomach, nor do I posses a single pair Tommy Bahama pleated pants, and nary a loafer with slots for a penny (I did at one time, but thankfully they were exchanged for True Religions and Eccos) still, I AM getting older and it makes me wonder about my choices.

One worries that as we get older we will slowly loose our elasticity, in both mind and body. Flexibility is the benchmark of youth, the ability to dash from here to there, stay up to all hours without paying a deep price, and being able to do all manner of physical activities and still recover quickly. But what if we still have youth and flexibility in us, but we’re much older?  Do we go to clubs or places where we will be the oldest person there and attempt to fit in, or do we stay home and nod off in the easy chair as we read the latest issue AARP magazine and watch “Dancing With The Stars”.

All things equal, I will take the path of most resistance, which is to say that I plan on staying up late, dashing about as long as I can, and hanging out with people who are vital and alive, no matter what their age. Yeah, it will take more time to recover, I might be the oldest one on the dance floor, and it could appear to some that I’m not “acting my age”. So be it. Life is supposed to be precious, and nothing burdens the spirit more than bringing the fence posts in, closer and closer, limiting our ability to move and becoming complacent and rigid. 

I still don’t know what I’m going to do this weekend, but whatever it is I know it’ll be fun, it will be late and by Monday morning I’m going to be very tired.

Cool!

I have a good friend of mine that is a professional street performer. Actually, I have several friends who’ve made a living doing street shows in parks, lanes and festivals all around the world. Hell, I co-wrote “Top Performer: A Bold Approach To Sales And Service” a book based on the street performer as an icon of engagement, connection and novelty, and my new book (Shameless…just shameless the way I promote myself…don’t hang up!) “The Take-Away: Plan Less. Succeed More” takes a slightly more critical view of street performance and investigates what we can do to make more time for tinkering, trying out, trying on, and trying over, all components of the top performer…but, I digress! My performing friend is mostly entertaining, but he does the same show again, and again, and again. Even when he’s dealing with hecklers he pulls up put downs and responses that he’s been using for decades.  His show has become an infinite loop with few chances for anything fresh to enter, his show is now a routine habit.

In the world of street performing, success comes as a result of trying on a routine,  seeing how it plays out, then trying over until, voila, a new routine is poured into cement and fixed in place. Most of the street performers I’ve watched are utterly attached to the routines they’ve created, or stolen from watching other performers, and they’ve turned their performance into a novel taxidermy, frozen, perform, repeat, perform, repeat. Geez, you’d think these working “creatives” would be more, ahh, creative! (Let’s face it, many street performers are little more than itinerant beggars, they aren’t actually creative at all, they’re just hungry!)

The problem is the same one that exists in the world of sales and service, what once was successful becomes habit.  Just experiment until you find what works, bolt it down so it doesn’t move, repeat. Habits are just dandy for all of us that want to be highly effective, but at what point do plans, processes and procedures start to kill off the “tinker” in all of us (Tinker: One who enjoys experimenting). If we want work that is energizing and to sustain vital naturally energized relationships, we have to allow for the unplanned, unfocused and distracted insight to find us. How?

Back to the streets. One of the best performers I’ve ever seen is Charlie The Second. When I saw him at London’s Covent Garden, I was astonished by his skills, his ability to enlist the audience in doing amazingly physical feats with him, and his skills at going wherever the impulse took him. He had a routine set, but he tinkered with new ideas on the fly, he invented and created in real time and as a result his show seemed so fresh, exciting and most important, available. (Oh, and he had huge audiences and made a boatload of cash…assuming a fairly large boat, but not like a really big boat because that would defy credibility.)

Whatever work your doing, particularly if you’re selling something (We all are!), you’ve got to leave some space for new ideas to find you and to schedule time for reflection, tinkering, trying out and trying on new activities that have NOTHING to do with selling.  For instance, instead of reading another motivational book or listening to Tony Robbins AGAIN, take an afternoon and wander any museum nearby and let what you see provoke you, push you around, even bore you if it does. This is important because it will give your mind new food, break the routine and get out of the habits and loops that are so particular in your work. It’s a bit like making tea, rather than steeping the same bag ad infinitum, start steeping something new and fresh and…hmmmm, tasty!

The most important part of your job, if you’re selling or serving, is connecting to others in a way that is naturally energizing to both you and your clients.  That connection seems more possible when we can remove the burden of unnecessary habits and loops, to balance the need for being effective with being more improvisational, and to step into our performances present and playful. Sure, we’re going to have routines and transactions, but challenge all of them to prove their worth, and trying clearing off your schedule a bit, and find every excuse you can to be a little more irresponsible, a little more deviant, and a lot more fun.

(I wrote this a few years ago, but I’d like to think of it as a nice preamble to the hot summer days ahead.)

Getting older is like traversing a narrowing ledge that runs across the deeper and more treacherous cliff faces we encounter with age. Wisdom is earned through trial and endless error, which teaches us the necessary caution we believe we must execute to safely arrive to the place were we feel safer and more grounded. Often times we don’t really know we’re dangling over looming disaster, whether it be the chasm of risky financial investments, flirtations that turn to marriage ending affairs, or the more mundane marathon runner whose knees yield to gravity in the middle of a run. Whatever it is, we often navigate the treachery of the highest pass blind to the risks, doing so in such a way as to nearly guarantee a fall of some magnitude. Whether we see trouble before it happens or not, by the time we trip over the line into our forties we start to hedge our bets by taking lesser chances, we start looking down and notice the vertigo that accompanies our advancing age..

Lately, I’m starting to see some of my friends, many of whom are floating around their forties, beginning to notice that life ahead might not be so easy and breezy. They’ve figured out they can’t do the same things they did when they were in their twenties or thirties. Skinning a knee or getting sunburned, perennial problems of youth, now require medical attention; easy injuries are a thing of the past. They are in bed by 9:00 and are more prone to turning the music down, buying an expensive recliner, having a nice TV and chilling to Seinfeld reruns. There is nothing wrong with this, after all, they’ve all worked hard and now want to start enjoying some goddamn peace and quiet!

I was headed to the recliner just a few years ago. I wore my pleated Khakis and Bahama shirts, and had an assortment of loafers and sensible shoes that would be comfortable for any CPA. I had broad but wimpy musical tastes, much of which was rotting my musical teeth on the artificially sweet. My music then was calm and assuring, designed to sooth my anxieties. Sure, I was listening to Eminem, but so were a lot of other pussies. I was on the fast track to middle class ho-hum, and started to blend in to the suburban background of khakis and Range Rovers. I was becoming cliché middle age. But all that started to change when I got rid of the pleats, tossed the loafers to the back of the closet, and discovered music that cut my skin, I found ideas that shoved me around and writers that wanted to shout messages about being free

This spring, Marian and I decided that we were going to have the “best summer of our lives!’ A summer of (mostly) freedom. It was spoken with a hint of arrogance, as if we could actually manipulate time and space to create a summer that would be fantastic. Whatever the reason, it appears we’re doing just that! Mostly, we have discovered the energy that can be recovered through full engagement. We’re turning the music volume way up, skipping the recliner, and we aren’t likely to get more sleep anytime soon. We are listening to music both profane, political and hard to the core. This is no midlife crisis; it is a mid life celebration.

We haven’t done this alone. In the process of waking up our summer we’ve found things we didn’t know we had, like new friends, or new energy with old friends. Nick is one of the many friends we’ve made. He’s a twenty something who has joined us on the summer’s ledge. He’s full throttle and cannot be cleaned up, cornered or claimed. He’s a brother of sorts, the kind of honest ass kicking redneck mofo you want in the middle of a hot summer, he’s the one driving the stupid big pick up truck because it’s loud and he means it. He’s brought a new soundtrack to the drive, music of the sloppy and reckless road trip of youth both cocky and assured.

There is Linda and Amy, both single mothers, beautiful, but for whom fences seem pointless, because they’ll never be contained. They’re both rugged fighters wrapped inside the silk cocoon of feminine softness. Both contain brilliant imaginations and flawed choices in the past, and are using this summer to push off and start over. They hang in there and hang out there, sisters of a sort; the kind of loving, strong and certain types that won’t wither away when the ledge gets tiny and the risks are high. They might stumble about with doubt and longing, but if you wait, eventually they’ll slash through the illusion and emerge more complete. You won’t scare these women easily, she wolves with teeth, a bite and a pair of matching pumps.

The summer isn’t over yet, and Marian and our friends have unhooked the safety belt. We don’t want to keep our arms inside the car for this ride, hell no, bring on the lift, screw the gravity, let’s take that hill again.  I can’t say when I’ll get sleep, or when the quiet will return, I don’t really care. I know only I’ll never be the same, that there isn’t any going back to the quiet, pleated days gone by.

I’ll take my life loud and restless. I want it that way, I want it to burn my skin, to scrape my fucking knee and to be fully awake and in the drivers seat. I don’t want to play it too safe, and I won’t be happy if I can’t feel the raw sliver stuck in my flesh, the sliver of a good life. After all, life is a kind of bungee jump, a spring-loaded jack in the box that can pop at any time. I may be on a fools detour, a poorly advised journey into crash and burn, but I don’t think so, and neither should you. This is the summer of friends, Jack and Jamie, a summer that may leave a bruise, a burn with no tan lines, and blood shot eyes. 

Bring it on. 

Oh, and if you know anyone that might want pleated khakis, a pair of expensive loafers, and some of the worst music ever produced…drop me a line, I can’t hardly wait to get rid of this shit.