Joshua Wilner

A Writer Writes

Archives for February 2016

How Hard Is It To Make A Choice?

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A dear friend once said I made them crazy because I would ask a dozen people for their opinion and then ignore what everyone said and do “whatever the hell I wanted to anyway.”

I laughed because there is some truth to that.

When I am about to purchase certain items or make some bigger decisions it is not uncommon for me to research the options and ask others for their opinions.

I do my best to listen to what they have to say and to determine who has shared something that’s meaningful, important and significant.

And then I’ll make my choice and yeah, I still do whatever the hell I want to do. It is not because I ignored everything I heard but because I already had a pretty good idea of what direction I wanted to go in.

You can call it a gut feeling or intuition if you want.

I like to think of it as being a smart shopper but that also means I refuse to let myself get trapped by paralysis of analysis.

Sometimes you make the best choice you can based upon limited information and live with it. Action always makes me feel better than inaction.

decisions2

Are There Really Too Many Choices?

In the good old days it used to be easy to make a choice because you only had a few options.

Now you go to a restaurant and are faced with trying to decide if you really feel like eating a sandwich because there are 27 different kinds to choose from.

But not to worry, because the 100 page menu also offers soup, salad, pasta, steak, Chinese, Japanese and some sort of fusion of all of the above.

It is not any different trying to buy a car, television or new smartphone either.

Are there really too many choices out there is it far less complicated than we make it.

Depends on how you look at it all.

Gladwell’s quote offers a good description of my approach to making choices in far fewer words than I used.

Have I mentioned that sometimes brevity and I are at odds? 😉

How Hard Is It To Make A Choice?

It would be false to say I haven’t ever agonized over a decision or that I never had any regrets about the choices I have made but for the most part there haven’t been many.

Age and life experience and becoming a parent have have helped with that.

The most difficult choices I have made have almost always been centered around being a father but in my 16th year of parenting it is clear that some concerns just aren’t worth the stress.

You never want to make a choice that is going to hurt your kids but as you go along you see that some fears never have real substance.

When you look hard upon them and think about your own life it becomes clear that there aren’t that many decisions that are earth shattering.

Of Apples & Androids

So the agony I went through trying to figure out if it made sense to move from an Android to an Apple smartphone was far simpler for me than for some people.

I struggled for a brief bit about it and then went for it because there was more stress sitting on the pointy fence than standing on either side.

Six or seven years of Android use made it less inviting to move because I know what Apps work best for me and understand how to make the phone work.

I didn’t worry about memory because it was easy to expand with MicroSD cards that I could swap in and out as needed.

And that my friends was really the crux of it.

I was comfortable with what I had and concerned about the memory issue that might come with moving to a phone that doesn’t let you swap memory cards.

But I wasn’t comfortable with phones that seemed to break down 18 months into using them any longer so I made a change.

If it doesn’t work the way I want it to, well in a while I’ll change back to Android. It wasn’t a life commitment.

The Value Of Change

Sometimes the kids ask if we are moving back to Texas or somewhere else and I smile at them and say maybe.

I’m not being coy or trying to tease them about it.

I smile because I didn’t want to move and circumstances forced me to.

Hell, there were a lot of things I didn’t want to do but did because circumstances forced me to.

But what I learned through all of it was how much easier it can be to go through changes when you just roll with it and that some decisions are much easier than we make them out to be.

Some of my ease with it comes from my not caring very much about possessions.

Oh sure, there are some things that are important to me and I hold onto those with the kind of grip that would make a gorilla jealous.

But most things, not so much.

Things come and go.

Time, circumstances and or people can take your possessions away.

But not memories, not experiences, those are yours forever.

So in some ways I have come to value change because it forced me to reevaluate how I look at some things and appreciate others.

Those experiences have helped make me who I am now and will certainly impact who I will become.

I don’t have time to stress out about every decision or to worry about making the perfect choice. I only have time to worry about making the right one.

Is Medium A Good Tool?

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I wrestle with the best way to use Medium.

Every day I mull over whether I should take old content from JoshuaWilner and insert it there or if it should be a place for new content.

What I haven’t figured out yet is which method is going to lead to fame and fortune, ya know massive book and movie deals that allow me to retire now and not when I turn 109.

The idea is for JoshuaWilner to be my hub and for me to use places like Medium as spokes of that hub.

In concept this joint here will provide more exposure to people who have never seen/read my work and that is why I want to populate it with my content.

But the question isn’t so much about whether it makes sense to put old or new and a combination of those items here as much as it is to ask what is the best use of my time.

Our Most Precious Resource

Cliche or not, time really is our most precious resource and since mine is limited I need to be smart about how I use it.

Don’t misunderstand that to mean that I think everyone else has oodles of time and that I am busier than you, because I am not that guy.

Hell, I have no patience for people who tell you about how busy they are while suggesting that you couldn’t possibly be as busy.

It is dumb and it is bad business, but we won’t have that discussion today.

Instead we’ll focus again on the question in a slightly different way, “what is the best use of our time?”

It is not really something I can answer for you.

I can focus on trying to provide content that is entertaining and educational knowing that is more likely to help build and retain a readership.

But it doesn’t answer the question I need to focus upon, what is the best use of my time.

Is Medium a smart use of my time, or a time suck?

Usewhatyouknow

I added the Einstein quote because the general question here reminds me of something a guy I used to work with would do.

He would throw out stats, buckets and boatloads of stats about all sorts of things.

And when I would ask him what they meant or why they were important he would grumble about me being difficult.

The point of asking why wasn’t to be difficult, it was to understand what we were supposed to do with these numbers.

What significance did they hold?

A Man Of Action

I like activity.

Ask me and I’ll tell you I am a man of action and that I am the guy who will take action and then ask for forgiveness.

Better to try and fail than to fail to try, right.

That is not to say that I was reckless when I was younger and that I never looked before I took the proverbial leap, because I did.

What it means is I recognize now that I can be as effective or even more so by picking my head up to take a look at what is happening around me.

It means I don’t have to go 150 MPH the whole time to get things done because I can work in bursts of energy.

And it means I have learned that sometimes you have to watch, wait and see to figure out whether something works or not.

It is too soon to say whether Medium is going to provide the sort of benefits I want. Too soon to say whether it is just a time suck too.

But it is not too soon to take a hard look at how and where I use my time and to see if it is helping or hurting me.

Now if I can only get my kids to see the value in that line of thinking for their own lives…

50,000 Reasons To Slap Steve Jobs

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Somewhere around the 83rd minute of my telephone call with Apple support I began to wonder if Steve Jobs was buried or cremated because I really wanted to slap him.

Not just once, but many times followed by a significant and severe thrashing with my fists, forearms and and shillelagh.

You might wonder if I saw any problems with this and what they were.

The answer is yes, I saw several.

  1. Cremation makes it impossible to slap a person and creates a huge mess.
  2. I wanted immediate relief of my frustration and even if I was serious in my intention to go after him there was no way to get to him in a timely manner.
  3. If I carried out my desire in this ridiculous hypothetical he wouldn’t care because he would be dead and not able to respond.

Even in death the bastard continued to frustrate me.

Blame The iPhone

It would be inaccurate to blame the iPhone in general for my frustration but precise to say that an issue with new iPhone was and is why I was irritated.

Everyone talks about how simple, easy and powerful those phones are so when I purchased a new one last week it never occurred to me that getting mine set up would require significant amounts of time.

Mind you I expected that it would probably take a few hours to transfer data from my old phone and download the Apps I use on a daily basis.

I didn’t expect it to be plug-and-play except on the most basic level.

What I didn’t know was the mishegoss that would come with it because I used the same Apple ID as my daughter.

I expected it to be simple to change IDs and move on to the very important business of making sure I had the right music loaded and that my Apps were organized, not to mention ringtone.

Can’t forget picking out the perfect ringtone, because a simple ring is so very ordinary.

But sometimes it is not how it works out.

דער מענטש טראַכט און גאָט לאַכט.

Der mentsh trakht un got lakht.

Man plans and God laughs.

No need to bore you with the full details of the full two hours I spent on that call or to mention that a full day later the work is not done yet.

Why?

Apple Security

Yeah, the FBI and I are both reaping the benefits of their security system. Thank you magical and mystical manufacturers of the fruit phone.


aboutcreativity

Sometimes people ask me to describe and or explain my writing process.

It is simple, I see and hear words inside my head and I put them down on paper or the computer screen.

Not everyone is satisfied by or with that explanation.

When I was the editor of my college newspaper one of my professors took me to task for not being more specific.

I told them I wasn’t trying to be difficult or adversarial and that when the words flow from my fingertips it requires the same focus as breathing.

I don’t think about it, I just do it.

Doesn’t mean there aren’t moments where it is not hard for me because there are, but those are few and far between.

But I don’t apologize or make excuses for any of this.

I wouldn’t yell at Magic Johnson, Picasso, Mozart or anyone who has a certain amount of skill for doing what comes naturally at them.

It just happens.

BTW, I am not trying to make a statement about my ability or the quality of my work by using the names I included above.

They are there because they help illustrate the point I am trying to make.

Be Your Own Man

My 15 year-old son likes to remind me that he doesn’t need to like everything I like.

That remark usually comes up when I ask him how it is possible for him to be ambivalent about pizza when I love it.

Or when I tell him that he shows some skill in basketball and ought to focus upon it because if he starts practicing now he’ll be much better when he gets older.

I want him to be his own man, to follow his own heart, thoughts and ideas because that is a significant part of learning how to live a great life.

But there are some things he can’t help, such as DNA and the stuff that comes from exposure to his parents.

You see, part of the reason I am so driven about fixing my phone so that it works as it should and as I want it to be is my father.

Yeah dad, I am picking on you again.

If Apple hadn’t told me I needed to wait overnight because of their security issues I would have stayed on the phone all damn day long so that the problem would be resolved.

It is why I spent another hour on the phone with DirecTV about a separate issue. Did I mention that I got my bill reduced by $40 a month?

It is true, that was worth the time.

Anyhoo, when my son tells me he is his own man I laugh a bit because I see some of the same gifts that I picked up being passed down to him.

And to be clear, mom has her own focus on some of these things too, so I’ll include her in this whole rigmarole too.

Time Is The Real Issue

The real problem here is time and the tick-tocking clock in my head.

I have so much to do and so little time to do it in or so it feels.

The chunks of time I lose dealing with the tiny and not so tiny details that life presents grinds upon me.

Part of why I like knowing how to fix and maintain things is because I enjoy working with my hands and using my mind.

But it is also because I like to control how I use my time as much as I can.

Too bad our control is so very limited which is why this post is about to end because I have to call Apple again and finish fixing the last few issues with this phone.

Would You Eat A Kitten Or A Giraffe?

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If life stays true to form at least three of you will look at the picture of the hippopotamus and wonder why the headline asked Would You Eat A Kitten Or A Giraffe?

Should you stop me on the street, email or call me on the telephone to ask why I didn’t use a picture of a kitten or giraffe I’ll respond to your question with one or more of my own.

Not because I am trying to be difficult, adversarial or oppositional but because I am curious about how you approach things.

Most people I know won’t have any interest in eating a kitten and I can guarantee some of them will find the idea offensive and reprehensible.

The goal here isn’t to upset or aggravate anyone. I am not trying to use linkbait to capture more eyeballs or to engage more readers.

No, that headline is based more upon my reaction to some of the headlines I have read.

A Theater Of The Absurd

I am a Jewish kid from the Valley who is doing his best to makes his way in this world.

You won’t find me making claims to be the smartest or wisest man in the world. As long as I am closer to the top of the list than the bottom I’ll be perfectly happy.

I write this not just because I enjoy writing and want to maintain a place to keep my skills sharp but because one day my children might find it interesting to see what I thought or had to say about certain things and moments in life.

When I saw the news about Donald Trump getting into a kerfuffle with The Pope I had to shake my head.

Same thing happened when I saw Kanye West’s ridiculous plea for financial help from Mark Zuckerberg for financial assistance so that he might “bring more beauty into the world.”

That might not be an exact quote, but it is close enough.

Part of me says I shouldn’t care about his request for help, regardless of how silly I think it is.

He is entitled to ask. Why should I care if people want to pay his bills or do anything to support his efforts.

Not my money.

But then again, part of me says why shouldn’t I have the same opportunity to l0ok for a wealthy patron to support me.

If you pay me enough I can work on bringing more beauty into the world too. Who is to say I can’t do more than Kanye?

He has a bigger platform and more notoriety now, but neither one are indicative of talent or skill.

Life has never been and never will be fair, especially not when we live in a theater of the absurd.

desperation

What Price Are You Willing To Pay For…Success?

I thought about using a different picture and quote, but that quote from the Bard was the one that won.

Still, as a man who loves words it is hard for me not to share a couple of Vince Lombardi quotes that are applicable.

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.”

and

“Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”

But the thing about this post is we have been focusing on the absurd and not the inspirational.

Those same three of you who noticed the hippo/giraffe discrepancy may wonder about whether it is fair to say we have focused on the absurd here.

You may ask if two examples that are mentioned in passing are enough for me to say we have focused on anything.

And I’ll say it is a reasonable question/observation and than remind you this isn’t an academic treatise or court document.

I am not trying to prove anything, I am just commenting on a situation and sharing some observations.

I am just saying that when my kids ask me questions about some of the things that are going on I find the conversations have a different sort of challenge than when they were really little.

Because we live during a time when it feels like there are more opportunities for ordinary people to chase fame/success.

A time where a willingness to do something more extreme might lead to that fame and maybe even some fortune.

So I ask what price are we willing to pay for success.

What is Truth?

What is truth is a different but related discussion.

During a time when conspiracy theories are floated around and supported with fancier clothing than they once had there is a greater need for me to monitor what the kids get into online.

It is not hard to find scholarly work prepared by academic giants, crackpots who pontificate about who runs the world.

I don’t believe in the Illuminati or any sort of secret cabal and I am fairly certain that when I was in junior high I had never heard about them.

But my middle schooler heard about them from some kids in school and asked me to tell her my thoughts on them.

My high schooler has shared other questionable ideas he heard from kids in school too so I have found myself in the midst of multiple discussions about what is truth and what is not.

More than a few moments have been spent trying to answer questions and working on making sure they apply critical thinking and logical thought to what they are being told.

I want them to question what they hear and see but I don’t want it to reach a place where they are unable or unwilling to believe anything.

What I want to focus on are those Lombardi quotes and show the kids how they are applicable in real life.

Maybe it is silly for me to complain about living during a theater of the absurd as if it is a new thing because life has always had its share of mishegoss, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if it is truly different now.

What do you think?

Whose Reality Is Most Important?

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Several years ago I took part in an animated discussion about how to market some particular products and services.

And yes, you can consider an animated discussion as a euphemism for disagreement that wasn’t heated enough to be labeled as an argument.

There were several people involved in this animated discussion of different ages, races and gender.

That particular mix of people wasn’t brought together with any sort of intention or purpose, it was just how things worked out.

But I liked it because it helped me illustrate in very simple terms that sometimes we rely so heavily upon our experience we forget that other people have a different reality than our own.

It Is Not About Being Right

We bounced around ideas but kept coming back to one particular one because one person refused to accept that not everyone used smartphones or a particular social media platform.

“Josh, the only reason you disagree with me is because you want to be right.”

Can’t tell you how many times I heard that or how many times I said it wasn’t about being right.

Fact is one of the best parts about not being in my twenties anymore is I don’t need to always be right and I have no problem admitting when I don’t know something.

Initially the reason I kept pushing back is every time this person said everyone used their smartphones and this platform I wanted to roll my eyes because it wasn’t how I or my friends worked.

How did I know this?

Because I conducted my own unscientific and impromptu survey and the small circle of people I talked to confirmed I was right.

Because when I asked the women in the room how they felt about walking alone at night or in parking lots they shared thoughts that I didn’t relate to.

I am always aware of my surroundings, but I don’t spend any time wondering or worrying who else is in there.

I just walk.

Now that might sound like a contradiction of not caring about being right all the time, but it is not supposed to be.

It is supposed to help illustrate that our lives and experiences impact our perception of reality.

Why is that important?

Because when you are trying to sell an idea you need to tailor that idea to your audience.

Whose Reality Is Most Important?

That conversation came back up in memory because my children and I spent time talking about the upcoming election and the promises/comments the candidates are making.

It came back up because they are hearing all sorts of different things at school and are trying to make sense of it all.

So I made a point to talk about how our experiences and backgrounds impact this and I asked them to answer whose reality is most important.

I didn’t expect them to come up with the perfect or correct answer because I don’t think it is that simple.

But I wanted them to remember that there is merit in listening and questioning others. There is merit in remembering that people most often establish priorities and objectives based upon what suits and services their needs first.

We’ll never make everyone happy and shouldn’t try to be all things to all people but we shouldn’t forget how people work either.

People aren’t automatically against you, they just have different priorities and obligations than you do.

When you keep that in mind life often becomes easier, or so the theory goes.

What do you think?

You Must Bore Your Readers

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The last time I lived in Texas I didn’t have my own washer and dryer so I had to commute from my apartment to the community laundromat in our complex.

It took all of one load for me to realize I wasn’t interested in having to do that for very long.

So I looked into what it would cost to rent a washer and dryer and figured out I wasn’t interested in paying $40 bucks or more each month to have the privilege of doing my underwear in my own apartment.

As a compromise I spent a few bucks at Costco and purchased 198 pairs of underwear and a bunch of t-shirts figuring if I had to do laundry somewhere else I might as well try to manage the frequency with which I had to do it.

And yes, there were a few times I went commando but having never been a big fan I didn’t do it often.

You Must Bore Your Readers

Some of you know a short while ago I opened up a new blog at Medium because I thought it would be useful to see how that platform works and to see if I could use it to increase the amount of traffic here.

It started out slowly but after a while I started to gain some traction and noticed that I was getting attention on both spots.

Made me feel good and I started to think that maybe, just maybe I had added a new trick to my repertoire and then things took a turn.

Don’t know what happened, but the Medium blog stopped getting attention and this one started going like gangbusters.

The increase here was simple, a couple of places linked to The Digital Graveyard post and boatloads of readers started flowing through here.

Can’t tell you what happened to the Medium blog, other than someone said to me, “you must bore your readers to which I replied, “Your mother is a whore and your father is a drunk.”

Sorry mom, you told me not to lie and I only repeated what I had heard elsewhere.

Or was it, “If you don’t have anything nice to say than don’t say anything.”

Scratch the sorry part, you dropped me in a trash can and dad dropped me in the street.

Those are both true stories, ask my sisters and if they can stop laughing they’ll tell you about how their favorite brother is crazy because I was dropped on my head.

Too bad I didn’t gain any mutant powers from that, just a silly excuse for doing silly things that I only pull out if I think I can get away with it.

Someone tell the guy in the corner to stop snickering about pulling out things only if you can get away with it.

I don’t do that kind of thing and if I did it would only be in the parking lot of fine dining establishments.

Anyhoo…

Liveeveryday

My friend Danny wrote a post about the importance of putting our phones down so that we can experience life that is worth a read.

Not just because someone commented about my comment but because I am tired of people bumping into me in stores and parking lots because they are too busy trying to respond to a text or send out a clever tweet.

At least half of you aren’t funny enough to come up with anything clever so you might as well stop straining your brain.

The other half of you deserve to walk into a pole or into a puddle of mud and to have that moment immortalized on YouTube.

Maybe you’ll really be lucky and you’ll be known as the star of the viral video of the guy sliding on ice in Cleveland.

Excuse me while I apologize to my mom again for being a bit twisted because she dropped me on my head when I was a baby.

Love you mommy. 🙂

*****

It is not all silly snark and tongue-in-tweet talk here.

I push my children to put down their phones and be a part of the world. I actively encourage them to see what is out there for more than just convenient sources of WiFi.

That is something I wonder and worry about.

I am a fan of people watching.

If you spend enough time with me you’ll see me sitting in the corner of a coffee shop watching how people interact and engage with others.

Can’t tell you how many times I watch people walk in with their eyes upon their phone, only lifting them long enough to tell the barista what they want to drink so that they can return to their electronic cocoon.

Can’t tell you how many times I have heard people complain about receiving telephone calls on their phone and how some of them consider it to be rude.

Enough for me to wonder if people are losing social skills and enough to hope I am mistaken.

I didn’t buy 983 pairs of underwear so that I could avoid having to deal with people at the apartment laundry complex.

I did it because I hate doing laundry.

Don’t know if this is the kind of content that bores the readers or if it is the kind the motivates and moves them, but I’ll keep trying to find that magic mix because I am not the kind of guy who just gives up.

See you in the comments.

Death Lost That Race

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The train left the station on schedule.

Conductor took the tickets from each passenger while the driver talked to his buddy about what it must have been like to have to worry about carrying enough coal to keep the iron beast moving.

Using a smartphone those ancient engineers never had he talked and texted his way through the trip never praying or thanking whatever powers may be for the grace he was granted.

He couldn’t hear the hooting and hollering of teenage boys encouraging their friend to drive faster, to beat the train across the tracks.

Tonight, luck beat death.

****

It is always useful to find ways to improve your writing and communication skills.

I joined the 100-word challenge for just that reason. It is hosted by Tara at theThin Spiral Notebook.

100 Word Challenge

Is Confession Really Good For The Soul?

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I am not a Broncos or Panthers fan so I was ambivalent about who won the Superbowl.

Correction, I dislike the Patriots so I was pleased to hear many of their fans carp and cry about Peyton Manning winning another ring.

But I am not here to talk about why I do or don’t like particular people or teams, I am here to share a couple of thoughts and ideas.

Is Confession Really Good For The Soul?

A good friend of I spent an hour talking the other day so that we could catch up on what’s going on in our respective lives.

Midway through they told me about a mistake they made at work and said they didn’t want to own up to it because they work in a place where people look to build themselves up upon the mistakes of others.

I told them I understood because I had been in similar environments and we talked about how it has become cool to encourage people not to fear failure but questioned how many people really mean it.

Because if you look around the world seems to be filled with photos, memes and videos cataloging the failures of others.

In some ways it almost feels as if what is really being said is that “it’s only cool for you to fail when it doesn’t affect me.”

That may or may not an accurate reflection of what is really happening but I have heard from enough people about it to wonder.

youcanfly

I find myself thinking about it as both a father and Everyday Joe.

One of my goals/responsibilities is to help my children grow to become productive and self sufficient members of society so I think about how to help them do it on a regular basis.

That includes actively looking at ways to help them explore the world they live in.

In some ways that is a bigger challenge than it was when they were truly little because middle and high school can be unforgiving about some things.

Might be time to show them the John Wooden video below and have a conversation about it.

A ‘Final’ Thought

Another blogger told me they never want to press publish until they are certain everything is perfect because they don’t want to embarrass themselves.

I understand that too but I fear paralysis of analysis more.

That is not to say I am not cognizant of spelling and grammar errors because I am, but I am also aware that someone might read one paragraph out of 10,000 here and devise an idea about how I am solely upon that.

Someone might spend 10 seconds clicking their way through here and come up with a misconception about who I am and what I am about because of something that has nothing to do with me.

Our control is limited and we have to balance fear of failure and mistakes against that.

What do you think?