Missing the obvious because we're too wrapped up in trying to look smart

As I have done for most of my career, I am trying to help people tell a complicated story that (they hope) will justify their existence.

It's not working out very well.

Because to be an effective explicator, one needs actual substance to explicate.  Oh, I can spin things 'round and 'round for a good long time, but eventually the spin cycle has to end. You either wear out the workings of your washing machine, or you realize you never had any laundry in the washer to begin with.

When this happens, and it happens often, I spend a lot of time beating myself up.  "I just don't get it.  I'm not smart enough to understand this.  Why doesn't this make sense, why isn't it connecting in my brain, what is wrong with me?"  I actually get depressed.  I live in fear every day that they will figure out I'm a moron and fire me.  (They haven't -- yet -- in 20 years, but it's still my fear.)

Then the light bulb comes on and I realize it's not me at all.   Maybe I'm not very smart, being just a has-been liberal arts major from several decades past, but I'm not a complete moron.   CEOs have listened to me.  PhDs have listened to me.  Hell, teenagers have listened to me.  The obvious hits me squarely in the face, always a little too late:  everybody is so wrapped up in fear and in justifying their existence, we ourselves are spinning 'round and 'round, going nowhere.

Sometimes I sit back in wonder and awe at the amount of money they pay us to spin nothing; to build nothing; to create nothing.  I watch myself and others complicate things to the point of sheer agony, because the more complicated this stuff seems, the smarter we seem. 

I participate in the dance because I have bills to pay, and people to take care of.  Many of the others are doing the same thing; but I think far too many come to believe the empty words I help them spin. 

My grandfather could point to a building he laid the brick for and say, "I built that courthouse." 

He wasn't a rich man, but he knew what he did.  It was obvious to him.
(And the courthouse is still there, 96 years later.)

It's about time

It’s all about time:  the passage of time, the lack of time, the rhythm and pace of time.

"There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do, once you find them ….” Jim Croce said that in a song once.

In my "free" time, I research my great-great grandfather, a tall, lanky fellow whom family lore claims was a Cherokee Indian, hiding his racial identity.  His story has gripped me for years.  A while back, I had plenty of time to devote to that project. At one point, I looked up from records and websites and worn photos, and realized 16 hours had dissolved away in the blink of an eye.

Then a couple of months ago, I celebrated my birthday, and wondered where five decades had gone: I looked up, and they, too, had dissolved away in the blink of an eye.

Time.

When I started the research project, I assumed too much time had passed since these people left the world to tell their stories. After all, we are kept alive by the memories of generations who follow us. They remember the sound of our voices, the food we liked, our quirks and eccentricities -- all those things that make us human -- what we were like when we walked the earth and loved and laughed and cried and failed.  But those generations, too, have faded, and with them, memories of far more than what’s written in census records and birth certificates. And after all this time, I wasn't sure who would really care.

But I was wrong.

A strange thing is happening. I’m finding distant cousins I didn’t know existed. I’m reconnecting with family I haven’t talked to in years. And I’m discovering that there are indeed people who remember….

… my mother, who is 85
… my uncle, who is 89
… their cousin, who is 87

… people whose memories are peppered with fragmented images and impressions of their great-grandparents and great aunts and uncles. We must draw these memories out, while there is still time.

I didn't expect this project to bring us all together. We’re talking on the phone more often. We’re connecting on Facebook. We’re sharing family photos. We’re shooting emails around.  We're laughing about what we do remember.  We’re thinking about how we are all connected, and how we wish we had asked more questions when we were young, when more of our people were here, before time escaped us.  We wish we could make our children as interested in this as we are; but someday they will be, in their own time, as ours begins to run out.

So many stories to be told.  But there is that paycheck to be earned, and lots of driving to do, and piles of time spent doing what we must do, not necessarily those things that make time fly.

Working from home has its perks

I like working from home.

I don't have to put makeup on in the morning or figure out which top goes with which bottom and which shoes won't hurt today.

Elliott the Office Manager

I can take a "lunch" break and go for a power walk or bike ride and not worry about sweating up my silks.

And best of all, my Office Manager keeps a keen eye on the world for me.

"I write ... sort of ... business stuff... zzzzzzz"

I rent a room in a house for an artists-in-residence foundation. It gives me a place to crash when I have to be here to work. And it gives the foundation a little bit of steady income.

Since I started staying here five months ago, I've met a poet, an architecture professor, and a painter from Korea. The poet is now a friend of mine on Facebook. The professor is off presenting his research in Finland. And the Korean painter -- well, I think she went home, after spending much of her time making sure I didn't eat any of her food in the fridge.

But suddenly, all at once, there are 3 other people here .....

... a painter, who's transformed the garage into his private studio;












.... a performance artist;










and a sculptor I haven't crossed paths with yet.

Being a bit of an oddball myself, I thought I'd actually fit in pretty well with funky people like this. So what's the reaction of the artists when they meet me? "You're not an ARTIST? So why are you HERE? You do WHAT? WHY?"

Good questions.