I'm back. Coming home from vacation is never easy. When you pull up to the house, reality hits you in the face--there's the lawn to be done, weeding to do in the vegetable garden, piles of mail to go through, wash to clean and put away, e-mails to read and respond to, and a host of other responsibilities.
But if we could learn one thing from our vacation and keep it with us, what would it be? I believe that it is important to remember where our ground is in our lives. I'm not just talking about work, but about our foundation. Whatever makes us tick and thrive inside and inspires us to be alive--that's what we need to remember. Maybe it's having a martini with your wife and talking about the future and smiling at her. Maybe it's riding as fast as you can on a bike and hearing your son laughing as the wind rushes in his face. Or possibly it's bracing yourself for the cold ocean wave to crash over you on a hot, humid day at the beach.
Our core needs to be fed. We need inspiration, relaxation, energy, and resurgence. We are not machines. I learned that my attempts to burn the candle at both ends have left me unsatisfied, frustrated, and longing. I long for time. My teenage days are long gone, but I still remember those days reading in the summertime. Being off from school and only needing to work about 30 hours a week. How wonderful it was to have the days to myself and then to work at night and on the weekends. I can't recapture those days, but I can change my priorities. I can remember what's important in my life and remain focused.
We are writers, but we are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, or spouses first. Neglecting ourselves or our families will not make us better writers. No. Such sacrifices will make us shallow, burned out husks of ourselves.
I've learned that it's important to pace myself. To not try to conquer Rome all in one day. That the turtle can beat the rabbit in the race. The rabbit burns his energy out too fast, but the turtle can pull off a victory. In a world in which we handle more than we should, we need to make hard choices. We need to continue at our work, but also know when to put the pen down. We need to remember to have fun.
I have forgotten how to do that. How to laugh and enjoy myself and how it's going to be a battle to find the happy balance between work, writing, and family life.
Do you know what I mean in all of this? It's not going to be easy, but there's much that I could cut from my life. Many might ask: "Why do this blog?" That's a good question. A very good question. When I was younger, I used to write in my journal everyday. I started on my Commodore 64 computer, then went to my Amiga, and then to my first PC. But as I grew older, I stopped writing in my journal because I didn't think I had time. Little did I know that the journal writing helps me settle and resolve issues and come into contact with what I'm really thinking and what my fears are.
I'm afraid of failing and of just giving up. I'm afraid that I will become complacent and become a couch potato and then will fade off into silence and forget what I wanted to do. So now I write. I want my blog to be a testament to how difficult it is to work, write, and raise a family. I'm not looking for a badge of honor. I'm not even looking for your feedback most of the time. But I am looking to share my story with you. For in sharing it with myself, I'll pass a bit on to you. And if you can relate, even if just to a tiny bit to my stories, then I know that I'm succeeding in what I started out to do. To tell a story. My story.
Guilty Pleasures
What song did we dance to? Avril Lavigne’s "My Happy Ending." I’m not a big Avril Lavigne fan, but I love the chorus:
We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it
And all the memories, so close to me, just fade away
All this time you were pretending
So much for my happy ending”
I needed to let my hair down and just release some stress. Music helps heal my soul and I love to put on some tunes and to just belt out a song. Can I hold a tune? Nope. Do I care? No, not really. I’m having fun.
My guilty pleasure has helped me through thick and thin. But before I left for work today and I loaded Avril’s song onto my iPod, I partook of another guilty pleasure: Listening to podcasts. I’m happy, extremely happy, that Apple has released iTunes 4.9. The newest update of iTunes allows you to search through a directory filled with over 3,000 podcasts. You can listen to the podcast or subscribe and have iTunes automatically download the songs and put them on your iPod. How cool is that?
What’s so important about this? Podcasts are content. Excellent content. If you’re tired of what’s on the radio, tune into a podcast. The great thing about podcasts is that there are some wonderful musicians who have their own podcast in order to promote their music. One band who’s rather good in what they do are The Lascivious Biddies. I had first heard about the Biddies on Adam Curry’s podcast "The Daily Source Code. He played the song "Famous" by the Biddies. I smiled and really dug the song.
Why am I talking about podcasts and music and a group you’ve never heard of? There’s a world of content out there that only a few million of us on the planet know about and it’s the wave of the future. That’s sounds pretty pretentious of me to say, but podcasting is fantastic. There’s great shows out there and the best thing about it (for now) is that it’s all free.
Download iTunes, search the podcasts, and listen. Writers have podcasts, politicians, Disney, average people like Dawn & Drew. Don’t take my word for it, check out some of these shows. They’re well worth listening to. And there’s a heck of a lot more out there than the few that I’ve mentioned. There’s over 3,000 shows. Find one, download it with iTunes, and listen to it. You don’t have to be a technological mastermind. You only need a computer, the Internet, and some speakers. Download a .mp3 of a podcast and just play it on your computer. You’ll be glad you did.
Sleep calls. Ah, sleep….
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