If you’re going to have 8 dogs in your house, the more of them that are housebroken the better.
Batting .500 really isn’t good enough, and in this case, two out of three IS bad. Don’t ask. 

Software virtualization is only as good as the host application AND the host OS.
Feel free to use that for your Christmas cards next year. You’re welcome. And goodbye, Parallels Desktop, I’ve given you my last weekend if the 28 hour process of exporting my stuff to VMWare Fusion actually works.

I’ve never met a barbecue sauce I didn’t like.
That’s not a challenge. 

If you’re thinking about buying a big American pickup that will later turn out to be a lemon with which you cannot seek remediation through your own state’s Lemon Law because you bought it in a different state to save money and nobody wants to touch your case because of the complexity, it’s easier to just not buy the future lemon. 

It’s hard to not have strong feelings about the auto bailout if you’ve purchased a lemon from one of the Big 3. *cough… Dodge… cough… and Ford… cough*  For me, saving Dodge sounds a little like preserving a vial of polio or smallpox to maintain the noble heritage of polio or smallpox, but I’ve come to realize that my permanent dislike for the company is based largely on my dealership experience and not the manufacturer itself, so I really ought to just let go of it. Maybe one day. I’m not that mad at Ford any more, and for what it’s worth, they started turning themselves around months before the real collapse around election time. And despite their constant strategic gaffes, I actually like GM OK. If they acquire Chrysler, that feeling may change.  

Car insurance is occasionally handy, and your provider may be better than you think they are.

Thanks, GEICO, seriously. I was filled with dread at needing to interact with you after The Big Accident over the summer, and you delivered in every way. Next time I almost die in a spinning, flipping, rolling car accident, I’ll have one less thing to worry about afterwards. It’s truly good to find out that interaction with a giant faceless corporation can actually be  far better than the worst case scenario you’ve imagined - or in my own experience, far better than I would have expected. 

If you’ve been involved with something for years, say, oh, music, that you’re supposed to enjoy, and you suddenly recognize that it has become like this horrible, crushing punishment and you dread every second of your involvement with it, maybe you should either fix it so it’s not so bad or stop doing it altogether, and if you do stop, you might find instant, enlightenment-level relief that affects your every waking moment.
I envision this on a bumper sticker. A dense, nigh-legible bumper sticker. Or something. Anyway, the “fixing it” may provide the same kind of relief, but I may never find out if I’m lucky.  I look forward to trying out tons of new things and filling the music-sized gap in my life, if I even need to. After all, when you remove a bee stinger, do you really worry about the gap that’s left?  

Chinese curses are OK for Christmas cards. 

I’ll be creating a line of them for next year. The first one will be “May you come to the attention of those in authority. Happy Season.”

If you regularly break your toes, try to alternate feet so when you get crippling arthritis in your later years because of earlier repeated toe-mashings, you’ll keep your limping more even.

If I survive, I’m definitely going to have tolio at some point. 

The things you give others can mean far more than you think they do.

Like on Tuesday, this one lady, Natalia, came to our house and it had snowed a lot the night before and the side streets were pretty bad and we were going to meet her at the local grocery store in our pickup and take her and Tyra, my daughter’s best friend, the rest of the way here. But she didn’t bring our phone number so she tried to tough it. Tyra came to the door and came in and started playing, and after about 4 minutes, Anette asked Tyra where her mother was. She said, “Oh yeah, she’s stuck in your driveway. She said she needs your help. She wants you to come out and help her. Both. Both come help.” So I went out first and me and the Fedex guy who just happened to drive by started to push, and we eventually got her partly into my driveway but with the front tire stuck in my drainage culvert and one rear tire 6″ off the ground. The Fedex guy apologized for not being able to help further, and we thanked him and he drove off. Then as we were digging, he came by again with a Christmas gift from one of my clients - the reason he was originally on my street. (He went by the first time because my mailbox had been knocked over again, so he didn’t see the street address.) He offered to loan us a tow strap he had, which we gratefully borrowed. (”Just drop it off at the mail drop at the store, they’ll know me.”) We used our pickup to pull the car out, and everything was good. We don’t have anything that would have worked for towing, so the Fedex guy’s “accidental” or coincidental appearance was actually a direct result of my client’s gift, without the magical appearance of the towing strap, it would have been a whole lot more trouble to get her out. They saved Christmas.

I might post more as I witness the violent transformation of hard, little kernels of experience into the delicious, fluffy popcorn nuggets of wisdom. 

http://www.mullicious.com

Without knowing if it’s intentional or not, I can’t tell if it’s funny or if I should burn it up to allay the bad juju. I mean, even if it was meant as a genuine well-wish from a well-wisher, hasn’t she read any of those “deal with the devil” stories to know that you have to be more specific when you say stuff like that? Or King Midas type myths and parables? 

And how would you state it more safely to make it more evil-deity-proof? “May the coming year bring you the changes you’re looking for.” I’m not sure I like that, actually; that’s like another Chinese curse that says “May you find what you’re looking for.” How about: “May the coming year bring you as much change as you want or can handle.” Doesn’t really sound like well-wishing, I guess, still reads like a thinly-veiled Chinese curse. “May your future bring you change, if that’s what you’re hoping for, and no change if you’re trying to remain the same, but good luck with that because stuff changes all the time, and what a weird thing to put on a Christmas card in the middle of winter anyway because the winter is marked by the solstice, which is an important milepost for seasonal change in most cultures. But hey, loosen up, it’s just a wish.” Nah.

In a perfect world, there’d be a Simpsons quote to clarify the situation, but nothing jumps to mind. So, in mining another important repository of knowledge, kung fu movies, I think Chow Yun Fat’s character in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon said (in subtitles), “May your future be fortunate,” and I like the sound of that. Then again, everyone dies in the end of movies like that, so it’s probably a curse, too.

What was wrong with “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy Holidays,” anyway?

Quitting music feels big, but in reality the number of people who are even aware of it wouldn’t fill  into an average Starbucks. (The number of people who actually care or are affected by it would be the number of people in that Starbucks drinking an herbal tea.) And it’s still not a change, in a way; I’ve made something “official,” but if I’m honest about it, I’ve been pulling away for years. The difference is sitting at home and feeling guilty about it or sitting at home and being comfortable with it. Not that I sit around or remain at home during my free time, but whatever.

This marks a rough first year of me regularly practicing meditation. That’s a change, and it’s been nothing but good. The only bad thing about it is that it’s easy to let it drop. Fortunately, it’s easy to pick back up again. It’s not gigantic “soul has been saved” good, it’s more along the lines of “I regularly drink 8 glasses of water during the day” good. Nothing revolutionary, but it feels like the right thing to do and it has a small but cumulative effect. It’s like taking a Vitamin C tablet after eating a Happy Meal and somehow thinking it balances out your deeds, this is the same deal; cutting back on Happy meals, and/or taking that Vitamin C tablet more often is more important than a single day’s activity. Heck, I haven’t even dreaded the holidays very much this year; something’s changing.

Anyway, I won’t list and explain every asinine little change. But I’ve started cooking a lot again. I feel like music took the space of “doing something I should enjoy” without actually providing much enjoyment. So I’d used the time and energy I’d save up for “enjoying things,” and there’s no way to get that back, it creates a weird enjoyment deficit by creating less spare time and filling that reduced spare time with lower quality activities. By stepping away from music, suddenly other things I actually do enjoy have been getting a little attention again. I won’t list all those, either. But I’ve found myself cooking a whole bunch, and the change isn’t that I’m cooking a lot, or cooking again, but rather that I’m fitting things I enjoy into my schedule, intentionally and actively, and not at the expense of any of my real responsibilities.

I feel like music always came at a cost; my weekend, my evenings, my family time outside work, my sleepless nights worrying about specific situations I was dreading, and my sleepless nights worrying about the big picture. I feel like cooking comes at the expense of dirty dishes, and not only will I pay that small price willingly, I usually get some help. One thing I’d always do after a busy period of music is cook a bunch. I never really noticed, but cooking ended up being one of the things I’d really do to unwind after I’d done things I thought I was doing to unwind. Funny.

Since last weekend, I’ve made clam chowder, bagels, slow cooked spare ribs with homemade barbecue sauce, sweet and sour chicken (twice, The Girl(TM) loved it and asked for it, and if she’ll eat it, hey…), fudge, shortbread, flatbread, felafel from scratch, gingersnaps, lentil soup in the slow cooker, and I can’t remember what else. Oh, there was ice cream, too, but that didn’t work out perfectly; I tried to use this “ice cream maker” that Anette has, but I used a recipe off the internet instead of out of the “ice cream maker” instruction manual. I either need to stick to “ice cream maker” recipes, or I didn’t let the main part of it freeze long enough. Live and learn. But I’ve cooked a lot of stuff, just sayin’.

(I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t move toward some kind of food employment, but I think it’s a false path. I really enjoy cooking and learning about food and getting better at it, but there’s a pretty big difference between making cookies with your daughter on a lazy Sunday and getting up at 5:00am for minimum wage to stand in front of a vat doing the same thing. But that’s an oversimplification. My biggest and oldest client is a culinary school, and their 2 main programs focus on regular culinary arts and pastry arts. You’d figure that’d result in a lot of pastry chefs and regular chefs, and you’d be right. But it also sends people in all sorts of crazy directions. In addition to the expected, there are the professional food stylists, the flavor consultants for food manufacturers, the people who go onto Food Network either behind or in front of the camera, the entrepreneurs who start their own little things, food writers for blogs and websites and newspapers, sommeliers, restaurateurs, cruise ship and resort chefs, private nutritionists, I can’t even list them all. So to tell myself I shouldn’t learn more about food because I don’t want to flip burgers is a pretty gross  - and common - for me) oversimplification.)

So anyway, I’m thinking of starting some kind of food blog. Nothing fancy, and it’s not like there aren’t a billion already, but it’ll be a good excuse to write and it’s something I care about. It’s not that I think I have secret powers or extraordinary skill - if anything, that’s what I love about it a lot of the time; find a decent recipe, follow the recipe reasonably well, and most people are on a pretty level playing field. I do feel a little pride when I unearth a good recipe or accidentally learn about some food trend I can try out, but even that’s just a matter of luck and spending a little time, nothing special about that. I’ve gotten a lot more into cooking since I had a kid and have become more aware of issues of nutrition, food supply in general, sustainability, all that stuff, and even if I’m going to cook total crap, I love knowing what goes into it as far back the chain as I can go. I’m probably not going to make my own ketchup regularly, there’s only so much time, but as I’ve mentioned before, I really feel like I’m doing something for my family when I feed them. Literally feed them, not earn some money or even just go shopping, I mean warm food on a plate. I love that my daughter Sydney wants to help so much of the time, and I seek out stuff that she’ll either eat or can help with (or occasionally both).

If I can come up with something, maybe I’ll change the world with some new and fresh idea. If I don’t come up with any paradigm-shattering content models, I’m going to start anyway. It’s not the only writing I intend to do this year, but it’s a foothold. And it should be fun.

It’s got me started thinking about other stuff, and I’m working on some skeletal ideas for other blogs. As much fun as it is to ramble about broken toes and quitting music and how much I love the little birdies where I live, I’ve got tons of interests, and I’m interested in forging the discipline of writing regularly about some of them.

I’ve been doing online work of many flavors for years, and I’ve been helping others sort out content and presentation issues as well as marketing challenges for years. I’ve been pretty successful at it, but I never do it for myself. The fact that I can help others is great, actually, and I’m happy to have found an outlet for some of my energies. But to apply some of that energy to my own work is kind of exciting, and in the rare cases where I’ve done it in the past, it’s felt very right. I almost feel as though when I only do it for other people, that I’m only “talking the talk,” and it feels good to walk the walk sometimes. The idea is a little silly; just because you’re a librarian by day doesn’t mean your TV Guides need to be organized in your house or something, but still…

I have a couple ideas that will be quick and easy to start, and I’m asking friends and family for feedback and input about what they’d be interested in reading about and figuring out where that crosses with my own (weird) interests. Not surprisingly, people who don’t live inside my head aren’t as tuned into my current interests as the person who does, but it’s always interesting to get a less biased (or differently biased) view.

So, one way or another, I’m going to do a lot more writing over the next period. If I can land a real gig or two, fantastic, if not, I’ll get my own self busy, and the practice will do me good. It’ll be fun until it isn’t any longer.

I feel better than ever about stepping back from music for a while. It hurts a little bit to say no to people I care about, I have a hard time with that anyway, but it’s not as hard as it ought to be. No doubts, no second guessing. I can’t say I’m going to start selling instruments just yet, but I don’t feel like playing and I am enjoying not-gigging more than I can explain. 

I’ve been reading every spare moment, watching movies with my family (in defiance of the Waldorf School rules that are supposed to eliminate 100% of that stuff form our lives) and I’ve even been doing some cooking again. Sunday, I made some fudge with my daughter, threw together some shortbread that turned out really well, and made a big pot of the best clam chowder I’ve ever made. (And I can reproduce it, it wasn’t just a fluke. Starting with a roux is the key, butter and flour keep it thick right from the start, no need to do any funny tricks at the end of the process; if anybody reads this and cares, I’ve got a great recipe that I start with and customize.) Been making semi-homemade chai - by that I mean that I use chai teabags and not a homemade tea blend - great cold weather stuff. I almost feel like sweeping the snow off my grill and making some barbecue later out in my snowy back courtyard, but the day’s kind of getting away from me - I’d be thawing out something already if I was serious. I’m dimly aware that I should probably be concerned about using 6 cups of sugar and a pound and a half of butter in a single day of cooking, but that’s where I’m supposed to shrug and say something like, “Hey, it’s the holidays!”

It’s been pleasing to have fires going and ashes to empty and pellet stoves to fill and wood to haul in some kind of dumb way. I’m basically the breadwinner in our household (Anette’s doing more and more projects of her own, and we’ve set it up that way by choice anyway), but feeding or keeping my family warm provides me with a much realer sense of actually doing something for them. We have a Christmas tree, Sydney and Anette decorated it (and I should get some photos of the snow and the tree and stuff), and I figured out how to use my wireless network to play music in the living room from my office’s computers so I can play Christmas music when people are interested. 30 years ago, I would have been happily/grumpily trying to figure out which bulb in the outdoor lights had burnt out so I could get them to work again, today, it’s configuring an Airport Express. 

So the year is wrapping up, and while work is as insane as it is the rest of the year, everything’s working pretty well. I’ve successfully dodged my holiday dread so far, and can’t think of any reason to resurrect it. On top of that, we’ve been caring for other peoples’ dogs. One dog, Annie, has stayed with us at least a couple times and she fits in great and plays great with Loki, our puppy. And over Christmas, we’ll be watching Krista The Daycare Lady’s dogs - 4 - and we’ve been having “play dates” with them to get everyone used to it. So I had 6 dogs in the house most of the last 4 days. Over Christmas, we’ll have her 2 big guys, Shush and Tiger, plus her two little guys, Bijou and Marley. 8 dogs.

On one hand, it sounds crazy when I think about it, but being in the middle of it is actually pretty fun. Then, we’ll have Swiss vegetarians over on Christmas, so between the 2 little girls, 8 mongrel dogs, and people from at least 3 different cultures, it’ll be fun. If I can find a place to mount my Festivus Pole, we can get started with the Airing of Grievances. (I’m not worried about the Feats of Strength this year.) And - blessedly - no plans at all for New Years. Good times.

In the likely event that you don’t know, Eldorado is a small community about 10 miles outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. There’s almost nothing in between, literally. Some people love it and rarely leave it, some people loathe it and won’t make the 10 mile drive if their lives depend on it; it’s one of those “community association” communities, there are rules for pretty much anything you do to the outside of your house, which is a pain in the ass; in reality, the idea of it is a bigger pain in the ass than living with it, though. Whatever.

Having the luxury (or burdon?) of living in a community with maybe 7,000 people instead of many millions gives me a different perspective on all sorts of behaviors. Not better, just different. No big, diverse sample set to muddy my results, either. I’ve had guests comment on how much better people drive out here; it’s not generally true, people are the same wherever you go. It’s just that the whole rush hour in Santa Fe has 30,000 people driving at once, and that’s probably 30 seconds of traffic in the Holland Tunnel. If, for example, 5% of the drivers are absolutely drunk and insane (I’m guessing low because I’m an optimist), 5% of Santa Fe’s drivers is a much smaller number than 5% of the State of New Jersey. Just sayin’.

People may drive a little differently in New Mexico, and there may even be tendencies specific to Eldorado where I’ve become most familiar. In my area, roads are all 35 or 45 mph speed limits with appropriate slow zones by schools and such. No traffic lights, just some stop signs, and pretty sporadic enforcement; at worst, a cop warns people near the school to slow down occasionally after complaints rack up long enough, then nothing for months. 2 lane main roads and side streets. So there’s not much external pressure to “do the right thing,” and it’s interesting to see how people use the freedom when left to their own devices. 

Last year I found my mind stitching together little personality models based on how people drive, and they work pretty well. A couple examples for Eldorado:

* The Speed vs. Stop Signs Rule. A person who speeds - maybe driving 55 in a 35 mph zone - is very likely to stop at stop signs. A person who sticks diligently to the 35 mph speed limit almost never stops at all stop signs. And I don’t mean a coasting stop (a/k/a “A California Stop” as an Oregonian might call it), I mean not the tiniest hint of even knowing there’s a stop sign there. The cautious-seeming old person who’s braking every 3 seconds to keep their speed from creeping to 36 will also be the one squeal their Subaru Forester around a corner at a speed that even the 18-year-old-jackass version of me wouldn’t have attempted, while the coyote-smashing road burners speeding through the curves suddenly become responsible when they see the red octagon. For speeders, maybe it’s just an excuse to peel out and accelerate again. Not that I ever think that way. The most interesting thing is how little crossover happens between the mindsets; a speed-obeyer never, ever stops, and a speeder/stop-sign-obeyer almost never ignores the signs. Funny.

* The Amount Someone Speeds vs. The Amount They Tailgate Rule. (Doesn’t apply on the highway or any 4 lane road, just 2 land roads.) Around here, the faster a person speeds, the less likely they are to tailgate. Someone going 45 mph in a 35 mph zone is very likely to ride your ass if you’re sticking to the speed limit; it’s a moral imperative or something - the sign might say 35, but if the community rule is actually 45 then you’re personally slapping “real” community members in the face with your self-righteous law obeying. Someone going 60 in a 35 zone will ease off you almost 100% of the time if they discover you while they’re zipping around some blind curve; they were just having some fun or closing the gap, and now that they’ve spotted other people on the road, they’ll just go whatever speed traffic goes. (When the person in front turns off, they’ll speed off again.) The only times I’ve seen people cross the double line and pass, Bostonian road-rage style, it’s been by people who only want to drive 10 miles per hour faster. The guy in the Lotus Esprit never tailgates, just the 18 year old with the 6 year old Hyundai Tiburon. The guy with the old F150 never does it, but the Realtor(TM) in the Lexus SUV does it pretty predictably. (She almost mashed me an my daughter once when we were out for a walk, but that had more to do with her cell phone than the size, shape or brand of her car. And car brand and model is a whole ‘nother story, I’ve “compiled data” on that model for years so don’t get me started.)

* The Pulling Out In Front Of People vs. Driving Slowly Rule. People who force you to hit your brakes when they pull into traffic at the last minute from a side street are almost 100% likely to drive slower than you want to. People who wait until you’ve passed are likely to want to go faster than you, from behind you, once they’re in traffic. Hardly anyone a) waits until you’ve passed and then drives slowly behind you, or b) cuts you off and then zooms off into the horizon. Just never happens here.

For every “rule” I identify, it takes me a long time to come up with the opposite equivalent. That’s because I identify the problems by judging the actions of others (because they’re clearly wrong). So the the mostly-equal-and-probably-just-as-bad opposite doesn’t leap out at me since, for me, it’s the better choice. For example, I’m more of a speeder/stopper than a not-speeder/not-stopper; I have no ethical problem driving a little over the speed limit when I’m the only car on the road, but I have a physical reaction when someone runs a red light or doesn’t stop at a stop sign. It goes against everything that I was raised to believe is right and good in the world. To take a step back, I’d guess that society considers certain kinds of speeding more or less on the same moral plane as running a stop sign. A nominal fine, a point or two on the license. Probably some incremental difference, but one offense will not generate federal prison time compared to the other.

(Why it is that you never see someone in perfect balance is also curious; why doesn’t anyone, ever, drive the speed limit AND stop at stop signs, for example? I know it’s a statistical possibility, and since everyone overestimates both their moral superiority and driving skill, it’s safe and easy for me assume that I’m as close to that perfect balance as anyone out there. But still…)

So as much fun as it is to entertain and amaze with my highly accurate models of driving behavior, I’m finding myself more interested in “paying attention to what I’m doing” lately. Sounds pretty simple, but out here where I can set my cruise control for 75, legally, the drive on relatively straight, relatively empty, relatively well-maintained roads encourages lapses in focus. 10 minutes disappear, and while I’m sure brake lights would have snapped me out of my reverie, it’s a little scary. My complaining about the other people on the road takes my attention from my own driving efforts, and far from helping anything, makes me a subtle co-conspirator in road craziness. I guess another way to say it is that the best thing I can do to make the roads safer is to focus on what I’m doing and not worry about all the terrible transgressions of others.

It’s all probably pretty obvious to some people with a different personality than mine, but I’m a judgemental overthinker, so this is another revelation to me. The weird thing is, when I make a point to, say, stop at a stop sign out here, everyone else at the 4-way stop actually does, too. It’s my secret mission to get people to stop at stop signs where I live by stopping at them myself. No dirty looks at people, no yelling, no positive affirmations, just me doing what I think is right and seeing how it affects the world around me. It makes me laugh out loud when it works, and it almost always works; it seems miraculous. I’m “being the change I envision in the world,” and seeing instant results. Unexpectedly. It’s entirely possible that a lot of the spiritual aphorisms that are tossed so casually around ACTUALLY WORK.

My experiences growing up left me pretty numb to traditional “turn the other cheek” and “love thy neighbor” platitudes, but not because of where they come from or they’re because they’re incorrect or anything. Now suddenly, when I hear one of these phrases tossed around or see it smugly displayed on the bumper sticker of a Prius, I don’t react with instant disdain - I find myself asking, “Is that true?” or “Could that work?”

These processes are all connected in that ball of garden twine that is my brain, and rather than any final (big?) insight, it’s interesting to watch the changes at least. There always have been and always were going to be changes, but I feel like I’m more acutely aware of them than before, and I’m either getting a lot better at deceiving myself, or a lot worse. I even find myself catching myself being judgemental and halting it. Sometimes.

Back to work; it’s Monday, after all.

I don’t know what cosmic law of attraction is involved, but as a mostly private person, I’ve found that the best way to abort a lonely fugue right at the onset is a quick trip to a bathroom, wherever I live, whoever I live with, and whatever I’m doing. If I’m home alone, this trip inevitably triggers my dogs’ collective Spidey Sense; they might forget all about me for a couple of hours if I’m sitting and working, but if I close a door, they leap to attention - “Something’s not right! A door has been closed somewhere!” Instant dog attention. Whining, door scratching, the sound of a multiple dog noses at the door jamb. 

If my wife is home and involved with her own affairs elsewhere in the house, nothing will trigger her instinct to count how many Q Tips we have left or catching up on that “moving hairbrushes from one bathroom to another” project quicker than entering a bathroom on the other side of the house. (”Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t know you were in there.”) If my daughter is home, too, all I have to do is close the door, and even though she might be sound asleep or deeply engaged in a puzzle or movie 600 feet away, suddenly she’s on the other side shaking the handle and yelling, “Daddy! The door’s locked! I’m trying to get in and I can’t! Daddy? Can you hear me?” Maybe she has an innate sense of enticing warm water flowing into a bath tub, but her timing is uncanny. To be fair, she does it with my office, too. I’ve had (a thankfully small number of) stressful conference calls as the predictable result. “So blah blah the deliverables blah blah dependencies blah blah very important timelines” “DADDDDDYYYYYY!!! THE DOOR IS LOCKED!!!!!!!! CAN YOU HEAR MEEE!!!????????” If I’m lucky, another adult stops the yelling, which she really doesn’t do except when I’m on the phone. If I’m very lucky, she doesn’t have a friend helping her.

And if I’m home totally, absolutely alone - not even the dogs are there for some reason - then it’s a pretty sure way to trigger that phone call I’ve been waiting for; it’s fair to say that the more involved the visit to the bathroom, the more important the call will be - maybe “telemarketers + toothbrushing,” versus, say, “boss + bath.” (I don’t technically have a boss, but I couldn’t think of any bathroom activities that start the same as “client.” And that’s not a challenge to anyone.) Directly proportional rather than inversely. 

It doesn’t actually matter what triggers the visit to the bathroom, and now that I think about it, it doesn’t actually matter if I close the door. I might be brushing my teeth, shaving, or even just stepping in for a moment to look for a book or the damned cordless phone. Doesn’t matter. The 23.5 hours a day I’m not in one of those rooms, nobody else is either most of the time. Powerful cosmic, karmic forces are put into play those other few minutes, because 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, decades at a time, it never fails. Spiritual laws state that “like attracts like,” but there’s something about “seeking a moment of privacy” that inverts and then magnifies my efforts. Inversely proportional rather that directly. Maybe there are exceptions to spiritual rules, like English has with spelling rules. (”I before E except for something something.” In this case, “Like attracts like, UNLESS THAT ONE GUY WANTS A SINGLE MOMENT OF PRIVACY!!!!! EVER!!!!!! HAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHA!” Something along those lines.) 

At least it’s nice to uncover some kind of natural law that works most of the time.

Anyway, after a bunch of trial and error - mostly error - I found a magic combination of stuff to fix it, and now I’m more or less in the same position I was in at the end of last week. Half of the last day of my tearfully short weekend spent just getting where I used to be.

Once I got that feeling of relief and could move on with my day, it got me thinking; I spent 6 hours just trying to get back to where I used to be, and it never entered my mind to work on making things better than they were before. There are other ways to accomplish what I was working fixing today - other programs that allow Windows to run on a Mac, for example - and I could have taken a chance on one of them and possibly not just fixed my problem but made an improvement in reliability or speed or something. It never occurred to me to try until I was totally done. Once I identified that there was a problem, everything else got blocked out and I developed troubleshooting-tunnelvision where I only considered the narrow range of options that I instinctively come up with for “fixing the problem.” And the way I’ve come to define “fixing the problem” is a pretty common one - I fight to get it back to how it was before. And, when I’m honest about it, I usually settle for “most of the way back,” so things aren’t even as good as before. Necessary or not.

How often do I do that? Pretty often, it seems. I’m sure I occasionally spot opportunities to make things better rather than just get them back to some basic, comfortable level. Actually, I’m sure of it; I do it with my client work all the time. They might ask for one thing, but if I see a way of providing what they’re looking for that might help them more than the specific thing they’ve asked for, I’ll usually suggest it, and sometimes they even take me up on it. But that “working for others” mindset seems to be the main thing that triggers my interest in looking for other answers.

When I’m sick, I just patiently (or not patiently) do whatever it takes to get better. Rest. Have a fever. Drink liquids. Medicate. Herbicate. Whatever. But the goal is always to feel like I felt before, or even close to it.

Same with people; if I argue with my wife or hurt my daughter’s feelings, all I end up doing is working so things were “like they were before.” I never look at it as an opportunity to maybe make things better, I just want to fix them so they’re back how they were.

If I cook something from a recipe that turns out well, I frantically seek out the same recipe when it comes to cooking that same dish again. I mean, I actually do try to improve recipes and things food-related. It’s safe to say that there’s probably a better recipe out there for everything I’ve ever tried to cook, but there are also worse ones, so I tend to stick with a known one rather than take the risks involved with finding a better one. Not exactly life or death stuff, but even with a soup recipe, I find myself clinging to what’s “safe.” I don’t think I’m alone. We form these “safe judgements” about almost everything in our lives. Where we buy gas. Where we casually dine out. The kind of eggs we buy. The kind of movies we watch. Maybe even our political party or religion. It’s not a terrible thing to passively choose what’s safe rather than actively seek what’s good, it’s probably wired into us at some level, but it feels like a slow way to evolve. (Which introduces admittedly knotty questions like, “Just how fast is one supposed to evolve?” or “Is evolving faster better?” or even “Do you really have any say in how fast you evolve, or are you just genetically predisposed to either fight or accept the speed with which things change and the real choices are all illusory?” But I’ll conveniently ignore them.)

It’s not as though every situation must always and absolutely present opportunity to make things better, faster, and stronger. But there’s a way to learn from almost everything that happens. I find that the less I know about something, the bigger chances I take and the bigger leaps I make in the progress, and the more I think I know about something, the more conservative my improvements. I mean, that’s actually how things are supposed to work - there’s a bigger leap from “not playing an instrument / playing an instrument” than “playing in instrument well / playing an instrument more well.” (Isn’t there?) But how much of that is self imposed? We all know that our progress is supposed to slow when we reach a certain point, but how much of our slowing is just living up to our own expectation? (Note to self: Insert rambling about theoretical, unimportant questions here, i.e. “How does one judge just how much progress they’re making at something, and when is it enough?”)

Problem solving is easy, and it feels like the time pressures and multitasking lifestyle a lot of us live forces us to be pretty modal, and when we troubleshoot, we need to kill those problems as quickly as possible so we can pick our kid up from school or get gas or stir the soup or get back to work. Bike has flat tire? Fix flat tire. Battery dead? Change battery. In the interest of “solving the problem,” I find I actually gloss over what caused the problem to begin with most of the time; it’s actually one of the things that helps me fix my own computer - I don’t actually care why something happens, I just want to fix it. I can usually accomplish B without confronting A. Sure, it was just a technical issue with a technical solution I arrived at through trial and error and a determination to repeat the same thing over and over until it worked, which it eventually did. But the real issue deal could also be said to be “how I work.” Might that not be worth really evaluating?

I’m really intrigued by the thought that there are obvious opportunities to learn things and do better around me all the time, and I that just don’t see them. For example, I just said some cross words to my wife about something unimportant. She might not even care, I’m not sure she even noticed, but if she did notice and she does care, my first instinct will definitely be to “fix it,” to do the work that brings things back to where they were. That ignores the obvious question, “Is where we were that great?” Or better, “Is where we were so good that it can’t be improved?” What if I look at what caused my cross words - specifically my own role, not all the other circumstances I can and will use to justify my actions - and try to do more? What if I can spot something that would help me fix some little quirk in myself - take something bad I’ve done and use it to actually do a little better in the future? Seems hard to implement 24/7, but suddenly communication between 2 people who know each other well could actually be communication and not the scripted action/reaction that it’s so easy to fall into.

It probably sounds dumb and lofty and conceptual, but for the moment it seems to me like I’ve understood the relationship between a hammer and a nail for the first time. We’ll see how it works.

Phase two will be pulling back from people I know and like and have been playing with. There’s not much going on now, so it’s no big deal yet - nothing to say no to. But I will when the time comes. I’ve been laying the groundwork for a while, so I don’t feel like I’m going to be ambushing anyone, and nobody really depends on me for anything so it’s not like I’m botching up anyone’s living. People will still seem surprised, partly because I’ve been having issues so long that people tune them out and don’t take them seriously, but that’s fine. I’m finding that telling people I’m “taking a break” yields no resistance, but telling people “I’m quitting” is a more threatening notion and raises lots of arguments that I’m not really interested in. This is not a cry for help or fishing for praise or encouragement. If someone realized that running made their knees hurt so they stopped running and started searching for another activity, nobody would fault them, so I’m trying to present it more like that when someone wants to argue. In truth, I feel strong and expansive, not weak and retreating, and there’s something that feels incredibly good about breaking the loop I’ve been in with music. At the same time, I’m so totally empty and filled with dread when it comes to all live music and everything that’s involved that there’s not really any question. I’m tired of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results; that creates pain. Duh. So rather than sweet talking myself into more of the same, I’m deciding to try something different. Whatever it is. I shouldn’t have an anxiety attack when I recognize a possible gig phone call on caller ID; that seems like a bad sign.

As a result, my music calendar is empty except for one possible date at the end of this week. That’s it.

In theory, I worry about my decision. “What if?” What if I change my mind? What if I miss it? What if I’m wrong? Those are purely thoughts, and I can count them and organize them and evaluate them. But when it comes to the real feelings involved, it’s cut and dry. No debate, nothing fuzzy, nothing vague. This is a rare occasion where my brain leans decisively either left or right, and it’s unfamiliar. And welcome. And it’s not like I make any important part of my living from it these days; I’ve avoided depending on music, and on the down side, that’s required me to pursue fallback plans that have worked out pretty darned well. But on the positive side, I’ve been able to remain involved as long as I have by effectively slowing the eventual complete burnout.

It makes me reflect; am I ungrateful? Is my ego undoing me? Am I cutting off my nose to spite my face? First, I am not ungrateful, or I don’t feel so. My quitting music is about the present and about the future; I regret very little in my past, and I’m thankful for the people music has put in my path and the places I’ve been and the things I’ve tried. But I’ve had very few great musical experiences. Very, very few. People get involved with their passions to have great experiences; I’ve given this music thing 3+ decades, and I don’t feel like I have another 3+ decades to wait, so I’m ready to try some other path or paths to positive experiences. It would be different if I knew what I was waiting for and just losing patience, but I don’t have any idea; all I know is I repeat the same things that make me unhappy and wait for them to suddenly make me happy for some reason, and the novelty of the process has long since worn off.

I realize that I should enjoy the “journey” and not the “destination,” and while it may seem that I’ve missed that point, that’s actually a driving force behind me stepping away. I’m not trying to get to some specific place where suddenly everything’s good, I’m just openly recognizing that I kind of hate the journey that music places me on. So I’m changing it. And I don’t feel particularly egotistical about it. I know that I’m good at what I do, and I know that playing OK is probably the 80th bullet point on the list of stuff it takes to make a living off music, and the 79 bullet points that are higher up are mostly stuff I’m not interested in. I never have been, and I am even less these days.

2 funny things that are happening as a result. First, I realize how deeply I enjoy NOT playing, or not playing gigs at least. When I have a conflict that prevents me from playing or I turn something down, I get a profound sense of enjoyment and accomplishment that playing a gig never, ever brings. A glow; a physical sense that I’ve just done something good for myself. It tells me that I’ve been sleepwalking through my involvement with music. I don’t work hard to set up my own projects and bands and gigs because I dread a lot of what’s involved, so I ride the coattails of other people’s work and projects. I do what’s required and with care - I do have pretty strong work ethic, regardless of my feelings - but I have been doing gigs in my present because I have been doing them in my past and for little other reason. If gigs are for fun and money, and I don’t need the money and I don’t find them fun, there’s not much reason to keep doing them. Is there? I’ve heard all the stuff like, “But you create because you’re DRIVEN to create, for the LOVE of it!” I’m DRIVEN to drink beer and LOVE fried food, too; does that mean that I have absolutely no say in whether or not I partake? Doing something because you absolutely have to is not the same thing as doing something because you absolutely adore it. There’s a difference between unhealthy, addictive behavior and joyfully participating in a passion. Isn’t there?

The second thing is that within minutes of deciding not to gig any more, I found myself in my office/studio doing a much needed cleaning and fixing up my music setup and just playing, and loving it. A cork pulled out of a bottle; a feeling of enjoyment and growth just from playing. New, calm music pouring forth. New ideas, new directions, just new. So I intend to just keep playing and enjoying that I enjoy it for a little while. No agenda, no business plan, no gigs, not even any sharing with others. Just me, playing by myself and for myself. For a change, and for the better. It’s a weird feeling, playing music for enjoyment, and actually ending up enjoying it. This kind of enjoyment has become distant and almost unfamiliar for me, and my intuition was telling me this me should not be the case. So I think I’m on the right track.

Who knows where I’ll be later today, next week, next year? All I can do is make the best decision I can right now based on who I am and what I feel at this moment, and for now I’m a little in touch with how I feel and what I want to do. “Quitting” is not quitting in this case, it’s drawing a line in the sand, closing one door with the hope and the intuition that I’ll find another one to open. Maybe I’ll start playing “new age” music or learn the blues for real or start singing. Well, I’m not going to start singing, but you see what I mean. Maybe I’ll learn some classical pieces I’ve shunned, if it feels right.

All I know is whatever I’d been doing hadn’t been working for me, regardless of how it appeared. It didn’t feel right at several levels, and rather than discovering that just now, I’ve just decided to stop ignoring the not-feeling-right. And in doing so, I feel that I suddenly have a feeble, but real foothold on something else that - working or not - actually feels right. I suspect that at some point, I’ll eventually evaluate whether it’s “working” by thinking about whether I’m making money off of it and that may change my new and novel feelings about it all. But at many important junctures in my life, just doing what feels right (once I discover what that actually is) has taken me in new and important and unexpected directions. After feeling off base for a long time, I feel like I’m starting to see hints of a path and I’m very interested in seeing where it goes.

Enough. Now to think about some changes in how I feel about my “day gig.”

Since the solar materials rotate, you eliminate many of the placement issues that come up with a solar array, and unlike bigger windmills, it doesn’t have to be shut down in heavy winds or rotated to take advantage of the wind direction. Unless it screeches like a howler monkey, the cost may be the biggest downside.

The company is called Bluenergy, it’s worth a look. The costs appear to be competitive with other small-scale “get off the grid” kinds of setups, but their cost estimates seem a bit high. Whatever.