The Friendly-Shady

(Cell Phone vibration):

Arthur: "Wusup Jud?"
Jud: "Whatupppp? Whatchoo doin tonight?"
Arthur: "Not much; well I've gotta go to this party with a friend of mine."
Jud: "That sounds like fun. Who all is going?"
Arthur: "I'm not real sure. It just one of those thangs; you can probably come, if you want."
Jud: "I dunno; call me when yall are leaving."
Arthur: "Aight man; will do."

Do you recognize this dialogue? You should. It is something, in one form or another, we all do. This is the Friendly-Shady.

In respect to the above example, two things are obvious: 1) Jud didn't have much going on for the night and was down for whatever. 2) Arthur had plans that didn't include Jud and he meant to keep it that way. What wasn't so obvious, but is implied, is the mutual respect each of them had for both themselves and each other. Notice how the dialogue didn't go:

Jud: "Hey, what are you doing tonight?"
Arthur: "Going to a party with another friend."
Jud: "Cool. Can I come?"
Arthur: "No; you won't really know anyone there, I'm a second degree invite, you'd be a third degree invite and I don't want to have to end up babysitting you all night."
Jud: "OK. Thanks for saving me from a night full of awkward non-versations."

The conversation didn't happen like this because that isn't how we communicate; it's much too direct. Instead, we speak more like the first one as Arthur subtly conveys his shadiness in a friendly way. Had Arthur not been friends with Jud, he probably would have just lied to him about what he was doing and said that he'd call him tomorrow. Of course he'd have no intention of calling. It's just one of those things we say.

I, for one, appreciate it when someone friendly-shady's me. It's kind of like when someone cuts you off on the interstate, glances over and smiles and waves. What they're really saying is, "I'm not sorry, but I appreciate your position. No offense, but I've got to get where I'm going and that place doesn't include you."

Communication is so much more than the literal words we speak. Instead, it is an elaborate orchestra of cultural gestures that link us from our individual separation.

Do More Now

...For a further look into the dynamics of "The Degrees of Invitation", visit my new Blog at www.mysecrestvocabulary.wordpress.com.

Recessionomics

What is appreciation, really? And,




Who knows how many good days one has anyway? And,



If he knew that they were so good, then why the hell does he not have them right now and tomorrow and everyday after that? So, then,




Why would one ever even want to know that they are having a good time? And, if so,

Wouldn't we only find happiness in a whisper,

- as if hiding a comment from a friendly foe, like an officer, parent or teacher?

Shouldn't we be enjoying ourselves?

Why not do a good deed for our own sake today?

Phantom Pimples

Even now as an adult, I find that I occasionally get those irritatingly unattractive blemishes of the skin upon my face known to many as Pimples, or, to others, as Zits, or, when it's one that's real, real big and red and full of white puss, "This is my friend Fred."

But they're never as bad as we think they are, are they? Usually, as with the occasional neglect of face washing from a few weeks ago manifestations-of-our-laziness pimples, they are like the red wine stain of a go-to wedding shirt - no one ever really notices it. I notice though. Probably because I know it's there. And I notice the pimples too and it's like they plead with me to obliterate them (similar to how Chris' evil pimple talked to him on that episode of The Family Guy.) Even when they are practically invisible popcorn blackheads that I can feel ever-so-slightly under the skin, they seem to summon me to the nearest restroom where I must "Oh Shit" peer, point blank, into the mirror and RIGHT NOW use each of my index fingers to mash on them from just beyond the perimeter; slowly at first, gradually applying pressure unbeknowst to pain, until, gloriously, the mass of mucous is released from my face and splattered back out unto the restroom earth from which it was formed. Backing away from the OCD trance, I look up into my face with an ere of victory only to observe the undeniable redness in the place on my face where I'd just mashed and the capitulating clear blood clusters that slowly ooz from the cavity of what was once a mere invisible mass of slightly uncomfortable build-up that actually called out to no one but me.

"Had I just waited another day or two until the zit was ripe for the pressing, I could still be outside confidently feeding that pretty little insecure girl red-liquor-drink lines and setting snares by which to try and take advantage of her later." But every time it seems as if it is beyond me to stop myself until it is too late.

How much more often does this example of self control-lessness play out in our lives? One place I can think of points back to the reason that one whom has a seasoned eye can almost always pick off the insecure, wanting for attention closet whores at parties by noticing their certain little overly-obsessed-with-their-attention intricacies that they appear to be so eager to put on display as if at a booth at a science fair. Among these, which are several, the most apparent is the caked-on makeup and eye shadow and blond streaks in their hair fakeness that makes them look like a Jersey Shore casting call reject. The makeup, you see, when worn in such abundance that the expressions from her face are hardly noticeable, is the phantom pimple that leaves its scar on the appearance of her face more as a manifestation of the means of hiding rather than that that has been hidden.

Of course, there are such imperfections in us all that should be cleverly concealed, right? Clinging to an undeniable intent on anonymity, pimples are ugly and it is deeply ingrained within us, in our survival-of-the-fittest sexual pursuits, to strive to be as beautiful as humanly possible.

However, in our pursuit of physical maintenance and/or improvement do we, at some point of diminishing returns, begin to lose what it is to even look human. Instead, we begin to collectively move toward an articulation of the pop-culture inspired image of of a pseudo-human. (Isn't the definition of Superficiality - to regard only the surface of things.) But the surface of what things, and how is what is attractive influenced? For there is no supreme court Justice of Beauty whom sits atop a tall podium with an iron-clad gavel in hand, passing judgement on all who dare to face the crowd of day.

Instead, it is a subjective rule that's beset in each man and woman yet it is similarly drawn within each of us according to popular culture and the sub-culture within the geography that one lives and the social circle or crew in which one runs.

The pop culture component, obviously, is that which is promoted on MTV or by famous athletes and celebrity movie stars and musicians. The effect of chicken head revolutionaries like Pamela Anderson and The Beatles and the Governah, Arnold Schwarzenegger, impact the way each of us view style and beauty and philosophy and economics and the political issues of the time and what it means to be Cool J like L.L or wear Trucker's hats like Ashton Kutcher. These mainstream artists and even those of them who are merely the faces of art like Miley and Brittney, through the power of mass communication, have cleverly molded the icon of the Cool and, too, of the Beautiful.

And by way of TMZ Television and bloggers like you and smart phones the MJ's (pick one) of the day implant themselves all across America and most of the world into your high schools and colleges and rough street porches and in the Cheers of your choosing where these superficial ideals are perceived and consumed by the masses and purchased by those whom are able and willing to go that extra mile for the sake of the preservation of his or her vanity. In these few brave, cool people is the gavel of the sub-culture borne. For they wear their fake-bake muscles and plastic breasts and Coach purses amidst a confident swagger that draws the rest in like the sun does it's planets and the style portrayed therein bounces like balls contagiously against one another from the earliest adaptors to the mids to the so-two-years-ago-jeans lates and this trickle down continues and the earlies are always buying and trying and the mids keep their calculators on them at all times and the latest of the late adaptors may very well be the least superficial of all, but they surely spend most of their life whining of the ways of the present and nervous in the place of uncomfort that is anywhere outside their safe little existence.

So is it wrong to be that way - to sport an imperfection rather than so blatantly hide it with the efforts associated with fashion. Is it right to be a pho-hawk metro dude who looks like a lady? Or is the right really somewhere in between? If it is right to exist in the Mid, then us waiters-on-acceptance must thank the Pamela's and tanning salon patrons and also those crotchety old stubborn mountain men because without them, either side, then how would one ever know what Beauty is?

Indeed, popcorn pimple poppers have been around since the time of the leaves of Adam and Eve. They exist in every continent and in every culture. For change is a way of beauty and beauty is a human quality and wherever there are humans there will be those who aim to perfect upon our appearance and also our condition and also those, from the perspective of the middle-dwelling masses, who take the aim for perfection just a little too far too fast. The doing so of perpetually changing in an effort to achieve that envied form, sadly, almost always is produced in selfish aims, but the succeeding, gladly, is an infectious being.

"The animal does not lie beneath the thin layer of our skin, but beneath the thin layer of our clothes." Yahia Lababidi

Get in where you fit in, but remember not to fail to Bee Yourself.

Do More Now

Pocketfull of Eyeballs

What are the best parts of a life? Think about 'em: the peanut-butter covered moments that are as refreshing as a green flav-o-freeze on a ninety degree day.
Hmmmm. Breathing in deep with blue-skied filled eyes; these Sunday afternoon porch beers; the late-night sloments; the split seconds of want; the next to last seconds of shaken open romance; the passion-filled chance that something will go as it should; and it does because of a pocketfull of eyeballs of days-past that warrants the capacity for greatness.
Thank you for your wise words; for the trial times and the cold nights; for the irony; for the laughter in the wake of awake mornings; for being there; for not; for...
Give me your eyeballs - LIFE.
Give them to me!
And I will graft them from your every-day-like pieces and take them as my own. I'll take them from your Can I Get bums, your Here You Go professors, your Pastors, your Priests, your airport-bar wisdom-nugget purveyors, your strangers in line or at a wait-bench outside of a noontime breakfast nook and I thank you for the half-smile hey-nods, the good morning, good evening, and good night; for the five broken noses, the car wreck, the wedding handshakes, the funeral hugs, and for the failure and success that shall surely follow.
I love them.
I need them.
And I will take them from YOU every day. I'll pack'em in my jeans pockets till their full as I carve them from your faces. I'll take them from you as if they were already mine. I'll cut them from you as if your head were the pumpkin of my Jackolantern - sharp-gripped with a short white knife; hand in the skull, fingers swimming in your flat, white-seed-guts; in strait lines and on sharp edges; cutting slowly and gripping tightly, deep-questionly slicing, prodding, and feeling the tip of the end of the dull blade with the tip of the index finger of my other hand as the knife delicately cuts.
Give me your soul.
Every one of you.
Give me the negative of yours and it will be the candle-lit light of mine.
These are my pocketfull of eyeballs.
Thank you for them...

For now,

I will go and give them to a blind man on a park bench that is rightly in the heart of the City.

Appreciate More Now

The Handwashing Dilemma

Think about the last time you were in a public restroom. Maybe you were at a wedding or perhaps you were in the can just before a lunchtime meeting with an associate, friend, or client.

In the restroom, walking from the urinal, you finish your business and you're faced with an all-too-common dilemma; to wash the hands or not to wash the hands. It's a dilemma, not because you're in a hurry or because you may have some weird fetish for germs, but it's a dilemma because you know that there is at least a fourty percent chance that a handshake is eminant and if you wash, then it is certain that that shake will be wet or, at the very least, clammy, and the doing so, the offer of a damp handshake, is deemed rude, even if only for a moment. And in that moment, the one that you've lived, by now, about thirteen hundred times over due to mispoke words or mistepped (before a lady) doorways or after unintentional mini-burps. In those dreadful split seconds where your faux paus' hang in the wind like boxer shorts on a flagpole, exposed and vulnerable, your whole social presence is transformed, even if only for a moment, and it is in these embarraced-faced situations that make or break your composure, which is what most people tend to feed from like the obese do from the local Golden Coral. And there you are with this seemingly small question in front of you as the urinal flushes behind and the mirror faces in front: to wash and dry with this proposedly green hand dryer (that never fully works even if I finish the job myself on the sides of my pants or in the inside of my pockets) or not to wash and just brush the 'supposed' germs from the conscience by rubbing the hands together a few times as if Pilot from the Easter story.

I, for one, noticed this little terrerium of a greater dilemma of "What is Truth?" about nine months ago when I was still managing / selling construction projects. Meeting the guy for the second time at a Longhorn off Southside, I arrived first, went to the restroom, went through the 'wash or no wash dilemma', washed, dried with the blow dryer and left the restroom for the restuaraunt to see the potential client, hands folded at the fingers and smiling in a fake way, standing patiently at the hostess stand. As we shook, I noticed the most quaintly peculiar look as his brow lowered wrinkledly and his eyes darted quickly to the hostess who then led us to our table.

Thinking that maybe it was just my imagination but still debating the root of the awkwardness, I began to expirement with people: washing and not washing when leaving the restroom in certain situations; shaking and not shaking; replying "I'm Good" in lieu of "I am Well" and vice versa dependant upon the person; wearing matching clothes some days and not matching on others (yeah right, that's never on purpose). And I tried on these social miscues for people so as to document thier reactions. Since doing so rather consistently for the last three or four months, I've noticed three apparent truths about manners: 1) What is proper varies from person to person and from sub-culture to sub-culture, 2) What is proper to a given individual is instant as it is transferred via the subconscience, and 3) What is proper, even if only for the moment, is definant.

But seriously, why do we even shake hands? According to my good friend Google, 'the act of shaking hands upon meeting has been around since about 200 B.C. as a gesture of peace showing that the hands hold no weapons. Shaking hands, weather upon meeting, greeting, departing, for congatulations, at the end of a competition, or to seal an agreement, has since been used, in some form or another, has served humanity with a similar purpose: to convey trust, balance, and equality.'

Moreover, let's look at the evolution of the handshake and it's multiple and perpetually forming styles. From the classic, firm and outstreched with three to four up and down motion three to four inch jostles and release, to the "it's been awhile since the last wedding or funeral" handshake and big pat on the back complete with safe wheather-talk questions and followed by an awkward silence, to the slap me some skin friend, up high, down low, with the elbow; to the handpound, once with the fist, 'now blow it up' and bring it back; to the inverted shake with a bring it in for the real thing chest pound quasi-hug that you might give to a 'long time no see' friend in a public place.

The handshake and it's various and perpetually evolving forms are that great little piece of a sub-culture that is often misunderstood yet always necessary in the greeting of friendly or at least 'on the surface of friendly' company. It is a telling of and a listening for that takes place in an instant, as if hitting a major league baseball - seeing the wind and the pitch; seams or no seams; one or two seams; is it strait and fast on the outside corner or is it a change - slow and decieving and destined to be low and late; or maybe it's a curve, starting high and spinning out of control to the dirt. In this moment, if one were to misread the pitch or come in too fast or too late, then the handshake and thus the meeting will begin poorly. In baseball, a half of a second is all one has to decide what pitch and where, when, and if to swing and if you muck it up, then that pitch is gone and your behind in the count '0 and 1.' The good news is that while a poorly read or a badly shaken hand may leave you slightly "behind in the count", you have several other chances to impress or disimpress your adversarial friend or associate or, perhaps, your blind date. (If it is a blind date, in the interest of being polite, be sure to lead her with your arm as you would any girl.)

The next step, prior to even speaking, is your style of dress. As one who typically wears clothes from the last-season sales rack, it still amazes me as to the massive variety of the "right things to wear" available. And as a man that lives a Tale of Two Cities traveling back and forth to and from Brunswick and Jacksonville, I have an interesting vantage point of noticing even the slightest differences in style from one state to another. In Georgia, the Polo horse still stands strong; in Florida, the dragon T. In Georgia, no gel; in Florida, gel (white guys). In Florida, girls still wear skimpy little hot ass little cutoff jean shorts. In Georgia, most women buried thiers just after "Way Down Yonder on the Chatahoochie" stopped playing on country music radio stations. And the back and forth differences continue to colors and shoes and jackets and you get the picture; but wait, theres more.

When I first moved to Jax, I moved to Southside and then to Neptune Beach shortly thereafter, which is where I stayed for about two years up until the beginning of July '09. Now I'm back on Southside. Having had the opportunity to see the beaches with each set of sub-cultural eyes, I remember the Handwashing Dilemma-esque situation that we, my friends and I, encountered weekendly. (First, a little geography: in order to get to "the beaches" from the mainland one had to cross the intercoastal waterway, or "the ditch.") Those who lived in town on the other side of the ditch whom often commuted to the beach bars on weekend nights to party were considered "townies" and those of us who lived at the beach were refferred by them as "beachrats." For the most part, it was a harmless rivalry and longnecks and threehorns did play with one another often. Looking back, the amazing thing was our ability to spot a Townie from across the bar or even from across the parking lot. Even more incredible is that, despite the occasional chachie-douchebag dudes, everyone from Jax that goes out at the beach dresses pretty similar. Now this is profound in two distinctly different ways: 1) Being that the beach bars are by far the best bars, people come from all over Jacksonville and the surrounding area to get drunk at them. While the sub-culture and the style of dress in whatever nook-and-cranie part of town in which they live may vary, those that come to the Beach even every now and then to hang tend to have adapted their nightly wardrobe to that which matches the majority at the beaches or at the bar or bars where he or she most frequently hangs. 2) We almost always picked out the Townies from the Beachrats from a distance despite the fact that their dress was similar. This means, to me, that we were picking up on sub-conscience clues to peg them as friend or foe, native or outsider, skeasy beach biotch or easy townie doe. From the blatenly obvious, yet sometimes misleading cues - beachrats drive beachcruisers, while townies park their cars and walk - to the more vague and often more effective subtelties - the comfort-in-my-kingdom squint of the eyes versus the bobble-head-swivel-desperate-search-for-a-place-to-talk-smiledly-nervousness that screams OUT OF PLACE to everyone in the place. I now know all too well because I've slowly but surely become the later - an other-side-of-the-ditch son of the rich in a poor place wearing two and half year old pair of shoes that vaguely match my Polo Jeans and Brooks Bros. collared shirt with the golden lamb laced and hanging from above by a golden rope in his gut, which isn't ironic at all because that is who I am when I am the townie at the beach bars, walking from an eleven mile driven town truck to a place that was once in my element, but is now only an occasional scene where I must wear an out of date chamelion mask and only hope that I can find multiple high fives and, if I'm lucky, one stimulatingly funny conversation amongst the millions of beach cruisers that comfortably laugh and sit and dude-bro-whatup girl-holla-holla-holla at each other in their dreadfully cool dragon T's and board shirts and skater shoes and swagger jacker skater haters and popped collars and gel and hourglass shaped dresses that top out fakely with bleach-blonde hair and blue-contacts blue eyes.

But back to the initial meeting of a friend or not-yet-friend; after a dry and dirty or clean and clammy handshake that may or may not have been the appropriate shaken style, after the all-know half-second glace exchange of the respective digs, there is the initial "hi, how have you been, it's good to see you." Now, the grammatically correct answer to the respective grammatically correct question is, "I'm well, how are you?" From there, it is whitely proper to engage in a sequetially unraveling line of weather-talk questions and short, politely smiling answers in which the allowable topics are the weather, traffic, the resturaunt or establishment or even about the general area of the city if it is one that is foriegn to either one of them (all of which should be obviously agreeable). It's deemed proper, mind you, grammatically - i.e. by a certain group of people who study english and continue to box it in and name it according to what they think is proper.

Back in the days when I used to manage construction projects and back in the days prior when I used to hold concrete pump's hoses, manage sump pump motors, and literally dig ditches to place aggregate (rocks) on hot-Georgia-sun days, the way to aproach someone verbally in the cool 6:30 morning dew covered site was simple - "Mornin" , "Mornin." From there, silence ensued for a second or ten, followed by a strait-faced hilarious story and laughs and banter and there was always a poke-fun at the new guy and one behind-the-back-talk for the foreman until he shows and then the day begins and the stories continue, some true - SOME - but all were as funny as a sheep dog on ice skates.

And on the ball court, there's whole different verbal routine and a brand new cadence. As there is I'm sure in a Ball Room with courtsies and "Good Evening, Madame"'s, as there is a slightly different etiquete entrance speach with each of your circles; at work, home, church, with Mom, with Dad, with the girl you hope to soon "know", with the ex-girl you once knew, with the waitress at Longhorn versus the cashier at Wendy's.

The gist is that many of us live our whole life in accordance to this seemingly endless barrage of Sienfield-esque rules of engagement. We speak, dress, shake, and fake our way through each day as if drone lemmings marching to and from our involuntary appointments speaking, dressing, and shaking involuntarily to a similarly, yet inconsistantly percieved Jody Call, as if to the tune of a military-esqu song so appropriately named, "Manners", by The Unending Attempt to Fit In.

And more appealing, when you back up from yourself and look at the whole wonderful ordeal as if a bird on an away-from-it-all perch, the author of the song, The Unending Attempt to Fit In, is as blind and brillient as the would-be son of Ray Charles and Helen Keller. While this Unending Attempt is at the very core of all that is human, he doesn't even realize what he or she means to fit into. If it is a box, then it is an elastic box; always changing; forever expanding in one circle and minimizing in another; perpetually chamelion in color from the outside and also in the in. The threshold between right and wrong, good and evil, coothe and uncoothe, it seems, varies dependent upon the social circle as the wheather varies according to the presence of the sun. And we get so caught up in this neverending tussle of an attempt at vain, fake, correctness until it happens. Until finally, on some rain-skyed day on the northside, God grants us eyes and wings and cold, hungry, poverty and we can see, for but only a moment, the greater truth of the lacking, which is also the giving. Lying flat on the back, eyes to the place in the clouds where the sun should be, peered on only by the bird that may or may not sing, can one realize that the sun, the true sun, weather it's raining or cold or sweat-drippingly scorching, is there; weather we like it or not, it's there; in all of it's terrible glory, it's there; it's always there.

Further, or perhaps, lesser, so is the woman beneath low-clashioned clothes at a high-fashoioned ball. And so is the "I'm Good" introduction acceptance at the "I'm Smart and you're not" alumni convention. And finally, so are the germs on the unwashed hand that you accept everyday without a smirk or snicker because it's dry and thus satisfactory, because something in your right-minded brain says that that's the way it should be.

And how much more often does this dilemma play out in our lives - to act according to the avoidance of immediate WTF-looks and perhaps, still, to satisfy a most acceptable conclusion as we forgoe the action that would otherwise serve the best interest of the greater good? In the friendly-shady invite or the shady-friendly deni'nvite, in big ole fake boobs, in the waive and smile because I just cut you off in traffic, its in holding the door for strangers who are within ten or less steps, and in saying Ma'am or Sir, or in the way one crosses her legs in certain company. All of these and more are indicative of man's means to cope with man. How do you cope everyday? Are we so wrong for doing so?

To do what is best for all is best of all, always?,

Just because it makes people laugh doesn't always mean it's a Good joke,

None of us always wash our hands,

Truth More Now

The Sadiction

The Sadiction, or for those of you who prefer to speak English the old fashioned way, the Sales Addiction, is a real, living, breathing social notion that has swept our nation clean from poor to rich to wealthy and back to poor again. It's the reason car salesman sit in suits on hot Florida summer days, smoking two packs of chiggarettes, lighting the next from the last, playing cards to pass the time between ransackable potential buyers who show up in rent-a-trucks inside afternoon thunderstorms. It's selling door-to-door fifty times over, five days in a row, all for what equates to be about fifteen dollars per hour, sun up till sun down, around town, laughing and grinding and Jammin. It's all for nothing estimates and quotes to fatcat buyers who shop drunk on the gravy that was but no longer is. It's getting the run-a-around; laughing and squinting, squeezing the forehead, and shaking it off; getting kicked in the teeth, getting up, toothless and enamored and eager but scathed all the same. It's a Real Estate hustle for over a month for the sale of just one house that ends up splitting it's commission two ways and then divides by five because "that's the only way the deal could happen." It's the constant "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, Get the F out of my store!, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, nah man, not right now, could you come back later, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, let me think about it, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, I'm Busy, It's too much for me right now, NO, NO, NO, maybe, NO, NO, NO, NO, Yesss!....Initial here, here, here, and please, Mr. Customer, sign here." It's the up-down, back-forth emotional pendulum. It's the leather skin jacket one day and 'brush my shoulders off pimpin' swagger the next. It's a day-to-day self-motivate state of mind. (Go, Go, Go, Go, not too fast, not too slow.) It's counting up ten, starting with one million, nine hundred thousand, three hundred and sixty two, in succession, out loud in the truck and in the head on the way to the door and while waiting in a Dentist's waiting room as this, the counting that is, is the only cure for you're otherwise-stammers or you're dreadfully occasional st-st-st-stutters. It's talking practice in the office with your friends on purpose and at the bank and at the grocery store and the holla, holla, holla, holla at the bar with strangers, all in second nature. It's a structured interest in people; in knowing them in a matter of fifty seconds, in speaking to lead responses, in caring for them but from a distance, in the attempt to control them, people that is, yet doing so delicately enough to shield your doing so from their knowing of the strings that are attached as you wield them in all of the directions that you want them to go; and it's being an actor, too, with tragic sighs while feeling felt-found and also in the silent bursting touchdown dances that must be held in with the face until the customer is at your back and you can finally smile outrageously and fist pump as if Tiger at the Masters. It's a killer instinct stare with flared nostrils that breath quietly as if a Lion in a tall grass field, peacefully looking for limp legged antelopes; peacefully waiting and looking and sniffing. It's being a Bull Shark in a bloody lagoon; breathing and smiling and consuming in a frenzied, jerkheaded rage.............and then silence.
And the rage ends and the sadicted salesman is full and warm and satisfied for a little while until the return of the envied NO's as they keep coming as long as he keeps going and they taunt him, building want for the stimulus created upon the execution of his will upon another, upon the world, and upon himself. Some may define this actualized notion of Allbeing as Power and still others prefer to call it Influence. Either way one may spin it, once you've had it more than once, you need it like a baby calf needs his mother's milk in the morning or as a lonely woman needs a hug and a blanket and a soft kiss on the forehead in the evening or like a twelve-year-old class clown needs a grand applause of laughter in the middle of every day that he is alive.

Don't be afraid to be the class clown,

Don't fear the word NO,

Composure is Power,

Do More Now,

The Young, Poor, and Happy Sadict

Ego Breakfast

Yesterday I had a ride-along with a potential employer. On a muggy hot day, we drove from Daytona Beach, Fl to Orlando, Fl to B.F.E., Fl and finally back to my truck in Daytona. The guy who was to show me the ropes, Bill, was nice and I could tell that he used to be interesting. He had a good way with people, a pure salesman, and he had a pretty good sense of humor. Though, later in the day, while driving between the 10 something businesses that we visited, I could see in his voice a slightly telling creek that suggests a saddened boredness. Prior, at lunch, I quizzed him on his present state. On the up end of a flattened-out rollercoaster, renting alone at the beach at 42, a runner and a Nascar fan, nice-natured with a good relationship with his son and Ex, he failed my happy quiz.

In Bill’s defense, however, the job is legit. The company sells chemical cleaning solutions to industrial facilities at a great profit in a great niched system. The benefits of the job include salary, truck payment, and an opportunity to make a very significant commission. The problem, for me, is the product – SOAP. Do I really want to be a soap salesman? (Me, a strong, smart, passionate man with the potential to change the world; me, as humble as I am cocky; me, a once to-be-when-I-grow-up professional baseball player / astronaut?) Do I have it in me to lay down my pride so as to again pick up a paycheck?

I think that this is a dilemma that I have in common with about sixty-one million and seven (61,000,007) Americans – Swallow my ego, my pride, my passion, my freedom for the sake of survival. How many of us eat a daily Ego Breakfast for the sake of keeping our home and making a truck payment? Many, eat this breakfast selflessly and so honorably as they do it for the sake of their kids or their parents or their significant loved one. Many more, still, swallow their once-passionate pursuits of doing for the sake of an extra 1,000 square feet and a boat payment as they keep up with the Amercianized greed-gravied Jefferson’s. What is the value of your ego?

How many people sleep on sidewalks under the Life section of Sunday’s newspaper, wearing brown-streaked Hanes and an old, brown Falcons toboggan with their ego well in tact? Probably not that many. And there is the bitch of the dilemma – where is the threshold to the point where there is no turning back? At a certain point, the preservation of things like passion and freedom that exist inside one’s figurative ego can crush a man under the weight of the real money-needing world. Conversely, similar to the saddened boredom inherent in Bill yesterday while on the road in the blue Honda, too many people live out their life one Ego Breakfast at a time in a constant state of denial and in the ignorance of their one-day regret.

I read a good short story the other day that does a great job to annunciate the Dilemma that I describe. Many mid-twenty unemployed and newly employed world citizens are faced with this dilemma. The story, How Much Land Does a Man Need by Leo Tolstoy, describes man’s incessant need for more in lieu of what is his inherent place. While I by no means promote life-complacency, there is a Josh-Implied lesson within the story that should not be missed or misinterpreted.

“Each man has a unique set of skills that is his talent. His talent is created by and improved upon according to his interests. His interests are given from God in his nature. He is Free only in the doing of his true interest.”

If you have to eat your Ego for breakfast, do it for but a short while and drown it with extra syrup,

Pursue your personal passionate freedom with your pride intact,

Do More Now