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Once a year I go through a phase. My hair gets a little long and I decide, spur of the moment, I will grow it out! Yes, I somehow find the spirit of Sampson in me and the hair grows, unfettered, ready to fulfill its potential. It usually lasts for about eight weeks, about twice as long as normal between haircuts. Never quite long enough to get past the awkward stage and off it comes. The one time it lasted longer was my commitment to the Joker, and even that was only three months.

So who cares about haircuts? Well, it’s actually a fun thing to think about. What compels me to grow out my hair? It usually happens when things are a little more hectic than usual. Maybe when things have just finished and I’m close to winding down, like during or after a big project. Or sometimes it’s in the middle of a particularly stressful stretch. When I feel like I’m grinding away without an end in sight. Funny huh?

OK, maybe not funny, but telling. As things stack up around me, I grow out my hair. Sampson really would be proud! What’s the saying? When God closes a door, you should stop getting haircuts? No, it’s more like when things seem to be getting out of control, find something you can control…like your hair. Makes sense right? When we were all teenagers, how did we scream out and express our individuality? Clothes and hair. After all, who didn’t have the five-inch spiked Mohawk during sophomore year, am I right?

I know it seems tenuous at best, but from personal experience finding the things to control can be even more subconscious. I’ve written about my commitment towards a more minimalist lifestyle, and yet I realize that I bought stuff, lots of stuff, when other things in my life were out of balance. Don’t get me wrong, of course I love the collecting geek culture, but then I think about all the crap I have stored up in bins, tucked away in boxes, never to be really seen or experienced and I wonder why I spent time and money and energy acquiring those things. At the time, it was all I could think about, a bit obsessive compulsive disorder, but it made sense then. And I believe it comes back to control, having something that I had power over was important as other things spun wildly around me. I may be having an existential crisis over my role in the universe, but the one thing I could count on was hunting for that random action figure gave me serious purpose.

No one is saying haircuts and action figures represent an artificial attempt of controlling the outcomes in your life. Well, maybe I am, a little bit. More than that, things happen around you all the time. Some of them you can influence, some you control, and others are completely beyond your reach, and all of them might impact your life. Recognizing that all three categories factor into your life may help us from shaving our heads or trying to recreate our childhood. It may bring more inner peace and is probably cheaper with better career results. And remember, acknowledging that stuff happens doesn’t require you to submit the cruelties of life, hopefully it just makes it easier to find the solution you’re seeking.

Coming up: Finding a solution by giving up

It’s not exactly hard to get behind that statement. If anything, that statement is cliché at best. Goodbyes do suck, especially when it involves any significant exchange between folks. Family, friends, frenemies, it’s just not a fun experience to say goodbye with any hint of finality. Why do they suck though? Other than the empty feeling they leave in your gut.

For me, goodbyes have evolved over the years. I remember back in elementary school, I was sitting at the lunch table with a group of friends. One of our buddies had an extra big sandwich bag of caramel popcorn. None of us really noticed until he spoke up, not really with an offer to enjoy some delicious Cracker Jacks. Rather, he spoke in stuttered bursts, telling us that his mom packed extra popcorn to pass out to his friends because it was his last day at that school. That’s what I remember about that exchange, I don’t know if I got any popcorn. As you can see, those early goodbyes didn’t exactly strike me with much meaning.

In high school, I went on the Grad Night cruise with the whole senior class. I actually don’t remember much of the cruise, but I did hang out with the high school girlfriend most of the night. This was the relationship that was deliberately kept under-the-radar as her mother didn’t approve of any type of boyfriend. Thus, Grad Night was a boon for me, a whole evening of uninterrupted time with my girlfriend, whoo hoo. By dawn, the buses pulled back into the school and everyone exited. There was still a final gathering in the gym that I skipped so I could send the girlfriend back home. This was literally the last chance I would see some of my high school peers, and I didn’t even think a second about it. So, those goodbyes obviously didn’t strike a chord in me.

It was a few months later though, as the summer wound down and I was having this thing called a long-distance relationship with the high school girlfriend. It really didn’t take long, only a couple of weeks into her semester back on the East Coast and my calls weren’t welcome. Done and done, just like that, cut and dry. If I needed to make-up for all the other callous goodbyes, I guess this is when I paid up on my debt. I was a total wreck. It sounds silly now, a high school sweetheart and all that, but I took it extremely hard at the time. And if we’re being honest, it probably shaped the way I approached friendships, relationships, and battleships, for a long time.

What does this all mean? Over the last couple of months, as I got settled in to the new neighborhood, I would see this one person walking by with some level of regularity. No stalking intended, but I realized she was my next door neighbor and we would cross paths on the sidewalk. Mind you, we never spoke. Not once. Maybe an occasional nod, but no words exchanged. That was the extent of our interactions.

The other morning, pre-dawn, I woke due to some noise outside. I heard some voices, which was strange since it was around 5am. I stumbled to the window to take a peak and saw a taxi parked below. The neighbor was talking to the driver, apologizing to him that there were so many bags. He told her it wasn’t a problem and began loading them into the trunk. She told him that she needed to go to the airport, and soon after, they drove off. I haven’t seen her since. I realized as I stumbled back to bed that she was probably moving away. I realized that would be the last time I saw her in the neighborhood. That’s finality.

And that’s what goodbyes mean to me, finality. That overbearing albatross hanging over your head, the thought that once you exchange those words, there is no going back, there is no rewind, there is no reset, there’s just the knowledge that something ended. Dramatic much?

Over the years I’ve swung back and forth on the pendulum. Some goodbyes are fun and I wish folks the best. Others are painful exercises and tax me in uncomfortable ways. Some goodbyes are temporary, or at least I convince myself they are, some are true conclusion much to my satisfaction. Regardless, the goodbye happens, and I find myself dealing with it however best I can.

Lately though, I’ve tried to let it all go, to be devoid of overly emotional attachment and allow things to play out as they are wont to do. Have I become heartless, tactless, emotionless? Actually, it’s the exact opposite. Realizing that goodbyes suck isn’t groundbreaking, but understanding that the need to control everything in life leads to more sucking was monumental.

See, because having someone or someones exit your life won’t be pleasant, but it will happen. Whether it’s a new job, a family move, a breakup, a tragedy, a great opportunity, really anything, folks leave. Just like you leave when your life calls upon it. We’re all stars of our own lives, and sometimes that means we have to change the setting to keep moving to the next chapter. You can’t, and really you shouldn’t even try, to control anything but your own decisions. If you’re anxiously fighting change, fighting that goodbye, dreading the finality, you’re missing the point of accepting that change happens constantly. Just so happens that this change is a bit more prominent in your line of sight.

So, I try to embrace the change, even if it’s counterintuitive to what my insides are screaming at me. Even better, I try to recognize the emotions and feelings bubbling through me without letting them control my reaction. That’s Zen practice right there, and it ain’t easy. “I am now feeling like hammered dogcrap, but I will not allow those feelings to consume me.” Sounds like a lot of mumbo-jumbo, I know, but once you start getting the hang of it, it’s pretty interesting. Bottom line, goodbyes suck, no doubt about it, but you don’t have to suck along with them.

Coming up: More on controlling the uncontrollable

It’s a horrible affliction that strikes so many of us. Yet, it goes undiagnosed by all, discounted as any type of serious condition that could affect your health. They are the dibble-dabbles and they can strike at any time, but most often right before you are ready to start something important. Need to write your book? Check your email first. Need to do that project? You should clean the bathroom first. Need to plan your future? Better find that remote in the couch first. Yup, it’s procrastination and boy is it a time-suck.

Well of course it is, that’s what procrastinating is, wasting time. Right? Wrong. That’s how procrastination manifests itself, but that’s not what it is. Procrastination is refusing to commit. It’s not indecisiveness, it’s not vacillation, it’s not the opposite of commitment. No, procrastination is the proactive decision to not commit. Sounds all the same, let us dig a little deeper.

You may already know but I’ve been writing a book. In fact, there’s a draft, printed out, sitting on my nightstand that I edit every night. In fact, the last time I put pen to paper, I worked through a dozen pages, great right? Well, the last time was about three weeks ago. Don’t worry though, the next time I take vacation, I’ll finish the editing and also work on the cover art and e-book formatting. Just like the last time I was on vacation. Which was also when I last edited. Except out of the 10 days I had off, I worked on my manuscript for exactly…one day.

It’s frustrating because all the times when I’m busy, all I can think about is how I can’t wait to get this project done. When I’m driving in the morning, I make grand statements of how much work I’ll get done that night. Then those dibble-dabbles hit in the evening. I need to check email and surf the web, I need to eat, I need to catch up on some TV, I need to rest before I get to work. After all that, it’s pretty late I know I won’t get any quality work done, so I’ll aim to do it tomorrow. Then, as I drive the next morning, you can imagine the grand proclamations I’m making in the car. Sigh.

None of this is necessary. When you really want to do something, to get something done, you do it. You want to grab lunch, you go eat. If you find yourself eating later than you planned, it’s because you chose to do something else. That’s how it is, you have a lot more control than you ever think about. And when you choose not to do something, you usually rationalize it, you come with reasons to not do it, you start to dibble and dabble in all the things that don’t matter.

How do you get over it? How do you get past the procrastination? Power your way through it isn’t the answer. It’ll work, but only for a little while. Sooner or later, you’ll burn yourself out, you’ll hit a wall, you’ll fall off the wagon. So what is the answer?

Acceptance. The great thing about acceptance is it goes in any direction you chose. You can accept the lack of progress and commit to changing your outlook. That’s probably the sanest way to go about it. You can accept the failure and give up. Not always a bad thing, like if you’re thinking about running a marathon without shoes. Maybe it’s good to give up on that dream. Or, you can accept that you’re destined to fail and never accomplish anything you set out to do. This mindset gets you one thing: the failure that you so desperately hope to prove true. Regardless of how you deal with it, the bottom line is that procrastination happens when you’re not able to give yourself to the task at hand, whether that be a school project, a work assignment, or a relationship. The key is to not fight the dibble-dabbles, the key is to understand why they showed up and ensuring you don’t place yourself in that situation again. Get it done folks, no excuses.

Coming up: Goodbyes suck

Don’t get me wrong, feeling important actually feels really, really good. When you have someone or some group of folks depending on you and you deliver, wow, what can be better than that? Happens all the time in sports, the winning quarterback gets the Disneyland commercial, the winning shot gets all the glory, the team triumphs to claim victory for an entire nation. It feels good, oh so good. Intoxicating. You want more as soon as the feeling begins to fade. You need more, so you should do more to entice those dependents to shower you with more praise and adulation. It all makes sense, right?

Not really. It’s like junk food, that bag of chips that you pop open when you’re starving. Oh, these taste so good, one more, ok one more, a couple more, chomp chomp chomp. Once you get finished you’re an oily, greasy mess huddled in the corner of the kitchen, plastic bag slowly unrolling itself once again to tempt you with just one more chip. Eventually you walk away, but at some point, you’re going to come back, you know it, I know it, Frito Lay knows it. You admonish your own behavior and swear to control yourself with just one chip next time, failing to connect the dots, the underlying issue of being hungry rather than needing to control your junk food urges.  If you would have just cooked a proper meal you wouldn’t need to binge on that crap, but those thoughts come rarely.

That’s a long-winded analogy, but I’ll do you one better. Back in a life long ago, I worked at an typical office in a depressingly dated office park. If you imagine The Office without any hijinks or tomfoolery, this was my world. Sounds fun, I know.

At this office we worked on nothing worth describing. However, we did have your typical office hierarchy in place. There was the boss and he oversaw all of us, and all of us had some semblance of a pecking order largely determined by what responsibilities we had undertaken. I was in one group of folks who had taken on larger roles and as such, we were leaned on more heavily. It didn’t help that we were model employees, didn’t complain, got things done slightly faster than expected, came up with solutions that could be applied elsewhere, in general we were doing our jobs and our bosses felt they could depend on us. Good for us. Until we all got laid off. That’s a different story.

Back to the dependability. At one point, the boss decided to move to a smaller office space within the same office park. It would save money on the lease and help us in the shifting economy. Whoo hoo, moving is fun! The boss took two of us, the “dependable” ones, to tour the new space around the corner. We strolled in and it was an empty office space, but it was nice I guess, as nice as an empty office space could be.

One quick aside, our work depended on computing power. Nothing too fancy, but we were all using desktops to do data work. At the very least we needed an internal network to make sure we could all pull from the same database and coordinate our linked computers. It’s important because…

As we walked around the empty space, I asked the bosses how much still needed to be done. He said not much, just physically moving all the furniture and equipment over. I asked the logical follow-up question of how the technical stuff was being handled and I was met with a puzzled look. “That’s a good question, we hadn’t thought of that.” A grin rolled across his face and a welcoming nod, which produced a more puzzled look on my face.

“Are we hiring someone to wire the office?”

“Hmmm, I don’t know. What do you think?” Another grin, another nod.

“Boss, do you want us to try to wire the building?”

“Oh, OK, since you asked.”

To put this in several different contexts, let’s start with motives. My boss was always really nice and paternal to a fault, so this wasn’t some devious trick he laid upon us.

Second, I was slightly intrigued by the prospects of wiring the entire office. I’d never done something like that before and learning it would be interesting.

Third, let me repeat that, I’d NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE! They have trained professionals that run wires and cables all day long. I know, I see the commercials for ITT Tech and DeVry all the time. What in the world was I thinking? What in the world was my boss thinking? This probably wasn’t the best plan.

This led to the next two days, where my coworker and I ran to Home Depot multiple times. We learned it helps to have something taller than a 6-foot ladder and that when you don’t have one, well that’s all we had so we couldn’t complain. We learned that the warning label on CAT-5 wiring includes a note about carcinogenic material being handled. We learned that masks are a necessity when pushing your head into the fiberglass insulation above you. We learned it’s hard to run wire across the ceiling without actually being, you know, in the ceiling. We learned if you’re not going to be up there, tying the wire to a large, round rod and throwing it from one post to the other will do the job.

After two days of literally working in the ceiling tiles and insulation, we had everything wired. We crossed our fingers and plugged in a laptop and found…SUCCESS!! How in the world did we actually succeed, I still have no idea. But it all worked and the network was up and running once we moved over.

I vividly remember our lunch break on the second day. My coworker and I grabbed something fast and trudged our way back to the break room in the old office. We were caked in dust and dirt, face watering from every orifice due to allergies and fiberglass, just not a pretty sight. Sweating from climbing up and down ladders, pushing our heads into the ceiling, throwing wooden rods halfway across the office. It was gross. And one of our coworkers who was similar in age and background but not quite handling the same projects as we were, walked into the break room and said, “Wow, is it fun doing that?”

There was no hint of sarcasm or malice from her. Rather, genuine curiosity mixed with a sprinkle of envy.

“No, this is horrible.”

“I don’t know, sounds fun to me. You guys get a break from this, you get to hang out in the new space.”

My coworker and I were too exhausted and dumbstruck to respond. We literally looked back down and started eating again in complete silence. It’s like we were two guys who had seen something horrible, like the blob or something, and all we could do is keep our heads down.

Let me be the first to say, if you want to run wires in fiberglass insulation all day long, be my guest. However, I understand the sentiment, and sometimes it’s hard to resist feeling the same way. So-and-so is lucky, they get to this-and-that. They are more important than us, but they shouldn’t be. We do the same thing as them, we should get to do this-and-that.

At the same time, worrying about what so-and-so is doing, and whether you should be doing the same thing is an exercise in frustrating futility. Feeling important, that’s an ego-stroking measure that accomplishes so little. Odds are you’ll be overinflating how important you are, and you’ll be simultaneously garnering the scorn of those around you for puffing out your chest and patting yourself on the back.

It’s human nature. To seek the approval and applause of your peers, of your bosses, or respected figures. Yet, there’s a simple thing you can do to make it a bit more in-line with successful humility. Seek to accomplish the best results in your tasks and find the importance for yourself. Don’t focus on the reactions of those around you, focus on your own reaction. Are you doing your best? Are you improving? Are you contributing in a meaningful way that will provide you with a sense of accomplishment? Because if you’re doing all those things, the praise and the attention will come naturally. And even better, the praise and attention won’t actually matter to you, in a strange twist, it’ll become unimportant.

There’s nothing wrong with striving to do a good job. It’s just a fine line in itching for that positive feedback that provides you with a higher sense of self-worth. Here’s a hint, that type of self-worth is fleeting and requires you to seek more and more feedback. Pretty soon, your whole being is devoted to getting that positive feedback and you lose sight of whatever it is you were doing. Take a look at the innovators, the people we call geniuses, they don’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about the external responses. You know this because they’ve already moved on to the next big project or idea by the time you’re giving feedback on their last performance or product.

Be important. With that, you won’t waste your time trying to feel important.

Coming up: The dibble-dabbles

Isn’t that always the case? For those of us who weren’t born under a lucky star, who don’t seem to effortlessly back into good luck and better fortune, doesn’t it seem like the universe has a sick way to get a laugh. I know you’ve thought it. I know I have, too. Sometimes, it just isn’t fair.

Just in general, things never seem to fall quite in place. I remember something as simple as high school schedules. What could I possibly be complaining about here? Well, this is pretty specific but quite illustrative as well. In high school, schedules were widely set before you even knew it. This was because certain classes were limited to one or two periods a day, and if you wanted to be in those, the rest of your day played out without much input. Example? I was on the math track to hit Calculus by senior year, and that meant you could back up to Pre-Calc in junior year, Algebra II in sophomore year, and Geometry in freshman year. At least I think, but regardless of the details, you get the point.

Now with all the other classes I was aiming to complete, like multiple years of a foreign language, hitting AP English, and finding any other “advanced” class my school had to offer, which actually didn’t extend beyond what I just listed, I was already set into a course track that had minimal variation.

However, there was that thing about one OR two periods a day. So while classes like AP English had one course by senior year, getting there in the preceding three years offered a couple options. And just my luck, literally every time there was a chance for this, I was in the class opposite of when my friends took it. So, I was in first period Chemistry and second period Pre-Calc while everyone I knew was in first period Pre-Calc and second period Chem.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand how this seems relatively inconsequential. But I think back to high school, the equivalent to social castes playing out with raging hormones, and I remember how upsetting it was to not be with my buddies. I couldn’t hang out with them, I didn’t share the same jokes, I missed out on their hijinks. And why? Why was I literally the only one on this schedule set-up while every one of my friends was on the opposite? Damn you universe! Damn you!!

So what ended up happening? Did I know anyone in these classes at all? Yes, my childhood neighbor was in these classes. He was a year ahead of me so we never shared any classes together even though we literally grew up going to the same schools together for 12 years. We were best buds, rode our bikes to the comic shop and 7-11 every afternoon, carpooled until we could drive ourselves, and hung out all the time. He’s the one that I found myself driving down Lombard Street with, and he’s the one that ran hills together as we trained for football tryouts. So after a decade of schooling in close proximity, we finally shared a couple of classes together.

Being a year older, he had his own set of friends in these classes. And being the epitome of a cool friend, he brought me into the fold. I got to sit next to his two cheerleader friends and we all joked around quite a bit. Those were some fun times, seeing the world from a senior’s perspective even though I was junior. They helped me get prepped for senior year, from the stupid stuff like pranks and hooky to the serious stuff like college and graduating. By the end of the year I was sad to see them graduate, but so happy to be cheering them on, if that makes sense.

Back to stupid schedules. There was also the semester after I returned from my broken leg. Second period was the worst because I was in Physiology and Anatomy, again one of those random courses that not everyone took but all my friends did. Except they had it for first period and I was in second period, thank you again universe! It was also in the last classroom of the building, and this building was the farthest away from the quad, and second period let out into our 15 minute break. Seriously? I’m on crutches and I have to hobble my way across the entire school to get to break? Luckily I had friends in second period to keep me company…oh, wait, no I didn’t!

Down the hall, my football teammate did have General Science class for second period. After I came back, he realized I was down the hall and he’d wait for me after class to walk out to break. He was a great guy, funny dude, really good family. In fact, his father stayed with me at the hospital after I broke my leg until my family got there. So his son waiting around for me, cracking jokes on the walk wasn’t unexpected but welcome.

In that General Science class, one of his friends also sat next to him. She was part of the social group we all hung out with, so we knew each other in passing. Quick aside, I actually went to a middle school that was outside of my geographic district. My mom fought to get me into this school, so I had to make new friends there. Then as high school arrived, I fought to go to the school that they were all going to. Just so happened that this high school was also outside of the geographic boundaries, so when we arrived there as freshman, there was a healthy mix of several middle schools feeding new students into this class. Thus, the social circle that I grew into was a mix of my middle school and the other main middle school, a mix of old friends and new strangers.

Back to my football buddy and his friend. He was from the other middle school, but she was actually from the same middle school as me, and yet, we had never really talked before. There were a couple reasons for this. First, I wasn’t really big on talking to the females back in middle school. Don’t get me wrong, I was definitely a ladies’ man…OK, I wasn’t, as evidenced by me using that term. So I was shy, first point. Second point, we never shared any classes in middle school, again, damn you universe! Third point…I absolutely had a crush on this young woman. Goodness, even if we were in every class together, I probably would have never spoken to her.

Back again to the daily walks to break. Soon after I returned to school, my football buddy changed his schedule. Transferred to a different class to get a different something or other. That meant for the rest of the year, I walked with my middle school crush every day to break. How sweet those five minutes became…sigh. It’s like a bad teen romantic comedy, right? It actually kind of sucked as I got healthier and the crutches went away, after all that meant the walk to the quad was quicker. Sigh.

Schedules, back to schedules. By the time senior year rolled around, the majority of the classes I wanted to take were offered only once a day. Things like Calculus or AP English only had one period, and all of us who were on that track had dwindled to a single period anyways. So finally, I had a schedule with all my friends, right? Nope, because my best friends were the ones that dwindled away. Luckily though, after three years of being in the opposite classes, I had made some other friends. We were all in these senior classes together and we all continued to joke around and laugh it up.

In fact, by the end of junior year, I was closing out the English class where none of my friends were and had developed a new friendship with someone who sat on the side of the room. You know in high school, they always like to seat you in alphabetical order to help squeeze the life out of you and drill conformity into your psyche. So, she was early in the alphabet and that meant she always sat in the first row and that meant I was craning my neck back towards her quite a bit by the end of the year.

Come senior year, we danced around the subject for a bit. However, after a summer full of nightly phone calls, we finally sealed the deal at the beginning of the school year, we were finally…going steady! Haha, that sounds so funny and dated. But yes, we were funny little kids “dating” in high school.

Still, when I look back, I know the universe has a target on my back. You see it from the examples above. How could you make high school the most excruciating experience in the world? Screw with my schedule and my schedule alone, so that I would never be able to hang out with my friends. Best friend, years-long crush, and first girlfriend aside, the universe definitely got the better of me on that one didn’t it?

Coming up: The unimportance of feeling important