Sometimes I envy the people who don't have televisions. I definitely respect them. Somedays I wish I could be just like them, especially when I listen to the song "Throw It All Away" by one of the best bands ever, Toad the Wet Sprocket: burn your tv in your yard and gather 'round it with your friends and warm your hands upon the fire and start again But alas, I do have a TV. A nice one. With cable. Maybe I really don't believe that TV is evil. Or maybe I'm just too weak to be television independent. Perhaps a little of both. I do know this: TV is easy. Not only as a way to unwind, but …
Art
Life Balance Is A Beach
It’s early in the morning, but the day already promises to be a spectacular one. The sun beams its bright rays through the windows and the fluffy cloud-studded sky is already a perfect shade of blue. Spring break is definitely here, but there’s no break about it. Jenny is rushing around the kitchen trying to simultaneously pack her briefcase and the backpack the girls will take to daycare, trying not to mix items between the two. The last thing she needs is a set of finger paints for her client meeting today. Hannah and Sarah are buzzing around the kitchen table, playing a new game with two …
The Danger of Cartwheels and Car Dancing
It wasn't long after she learned to walk that Lucy started dancing. It began with little head bobs and knee bends. Now, when a fast beat is bursting from our living room stereo, Lucy is the first one to come running. Spinning, twirling, and bouncing, she's a whirling dervish of dance moves. I hate it that we lose that free-spiritedness as we get older. Most of us, anyway. Me included. …
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Why It Might Be Time for a Fancy Dinner
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been married. Keep it up if you received some beautiful dinnerware as a wedding gift that has never seen an actual dinner table. Wow, that’s a lot of hands. We are proud of our fancy china. We display it up on a shelf or in a cabinet specially made for such things. Most of us intend to use it someday, we’re just waiting for the right occasion. Judging by how infrequently we use the stuff, apparently we’re waiting for the Pope or the President or Peyton Manning to call us up and say, “Hey, I was gonna be in the neighborhood. Mind if I stop over for …
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Why You Might NOT Want To Be Like Gary Vee
[This article was originally published over at Dumb Little Man. There is a great discussion to be found in the comments, including one from Gary himself!] I am a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. If you've never heard of him, he became famous for his online TV show, Wine Library TV, in which he brings wine tasting to the masses. Rather than being uppity and condescending, Gary's everyman style is down-to-earth, passionate, and fun. (He's been known to compare wine to various breakfast cereals.) 2009 was a breakout year of sorts, with the publishing and promotion of his best-selling book Crush …
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Don’t Blame the Blackberry
I was moderating a panel on work/life balance a few weeks ago. A woman on the panel, at the height of a very distinguished and accomplished career, talked about the demands of her job and the stress of dealing with the high expectations of her clients. “A group of us finally sit down to a late lunch,” she said, “and in less than five minutes, buzzing Blackberrys are dancing all over the table. And of course, I have to answer it. If I don’t return a call within 15 minutes, my clients go crazy.” Perhaps you can relate to this scenario. How can anyone achieve life balance with …
Our Half-Lived Moments
Are too many of your moments half-lived? As a dad, I often find myself fighting the battle between enjoying a moment with Lucy and capturing it on film. One truth that I think slips by most dads and grandpas is this: As nice as it is to record memories to look back on later, photographing a moment is not the same as experiencing it. While in upstate New York for a speaking engagement, we made some time to visit the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester. Kim and I had been there before, but this was our first time with Lucy. She enjoyed it -- as much as a one-year-old can enjoy …
What’s Your Gold Medal?
We've had several speaking gigs since the Olympics has started and I'm finding it's a great conversation piece for people. There seems to be a common denominator of interest: the individual stories and montages. The most inspiring ones are the ones where the Olympian overcame a major adversity to get to where they are today - whether injury, personal defeat, loss of a loved one, or just years of discipline and sacrifice. If you're not happy for Shen Xue and Zhao, the Chinese pair skaters (and married couple), who finally won gold, then you may not be human. That's simply an awesome story! …
Your Life’s Sexy and Exciting Grande Finale
The end of a fireworks display is always the most exciting. It’s loud, colorful, and frenzied with big, bold activity. That’s how we imagine our lives to look like when we answer the question: What would you do if you only had six months to live? We’d go down swinging in a spectacular grand finale, of course. Go skydiving. Tour Paris. Take a cruise. Visit the pyramids of Egypt. Climb Mount Everest. Paddle down the Amazon. Run a marathon. …
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Life’s Little Traffic Jams
[This post originally appeared on Dad-O-Matic, a cool site for Dads, by Dads.] We bought our daughter one of those little primary-colored push car toys for her first birthday. It gets great gas mileage and holds up amazingly well in crashes, of which there have been many so far. The other day, she got herself caught in a traffic jam. The legs of our counter-height kitchen table and its accompanying chairs gridlocked her into a standstill. With all the might a one-year-old can muster, she pushed and prodded that car in an attempt to break free to the open road. To no avail. …