There was a time during the dawn of the parent blogging age in which a trend called Half Naked Thursday made headway among the cool kids.
Fifteen years later some of us remember what it was like with a mix of admiration and disgust, kind of like certain memories of high school.
If you ask me if I participated I’ll answer by sending you pictures but will not confirm nor deny if they are of me any more than I will confirm or deny what pictures I have of…others.
A work colleague today asked me if I am really 50 because he says I have virtually no gray hair. I told him I have a few you can see, assuming I let my hair grow out.
He asked me if I have considered shaving it all off and I said I have and I might.
“Did you not do it because of family members or something like that?”
“I have a hard and fast rule, anyone who isn’t sharing my bed is removed from consideration about how I look or live my life. And even if you do share it, well you don’t get to tell me how to dress or wear my hair.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you sound grumpy?”
“Every damn day.”
I am writing with the sort of reckless abandon I haven’t had or done in a long while.
That is because the muse has been hanging around, almost sitting on my lap and whispering in my ear and when she is close I generally listen.
It is the same tired saw, “make hay while the sun shines.”
Haven’t published everything or made all I publish public because there are boundaries and that edgy part of me is itching to take a bite out of someone’s ass.
Why?
Why the hell not.
Probably because some people have gotten in my way and there are moments when I haven’t any patience to deal with the nonsense.
Moments where I will tell you to get the fuck out of the way or get run over.
This is not to say I won’t politely ask you to move first because I will, but the second time you might get a kick in the ass or find my hands helping you find the floor, proverbially speaking of course.
*****
The young master noted a short while ago that his old man, the guy who would never speak of himself in the third person, was accurate when he said a slightly deeper voice helps generate positive responses.
“Be polite young Skywalker and people will generally work with you. Raise your voice infrequently and you’ll find it more effective.”
Got to exercise the power of the P.
Had a few conversations with my kinder about when to accept No as the final word and when No is not an answer.
Thought about some of those recently because the aforementioned young master bore witness to a couple of conversations in which he saw his old man turn No into yes.
I took advantage of the opportunity to point out people and business often say no because it is an easy way to make people go away, regardless of whether their situation merits a different response or not.
Walked him through the need to be polite, identify the situation/problem, provide background/support for your solution and then ask for them to agree/confirm.
*****
I heard tell of a position in which there are four or five meetings each day and immediately thought that colonoscopy preparation might be more enjoyable.
Some of it is because I like activity and have sat through far too many meetings that fail to help further progress and or lead to productive activity.
I don’t mind meetings with a purpose because activity without purpose isn’t my idea of a good time, at least not in relationship t0 business.
And I suppose I might confess I once sat in a meeting that had been derailed and sarcastically quoted Barry Manilow,
We started a story
Whose end must now wait
Eventually we got back on track, but I don’t know if we ever managed to get that meeting to a place at which I left feeling like we had been productive.
Meetings that go astray often lead me into silent music breaks,
I don’t hear a word they’re saying
Only the echoes of my mind
A short while back I decided Mr. Whitman is spot on with his analysis because so much of ,life is based upon things we have no control over.
Can’t control your genetics or whether you pick up the good/bad from a parent or some other relative in your DNA chain.
So as I wandered around at midnight in a house with sleeping people I reminded myself that though some people operate on schedules that are out of sync with ours there are plenty who don’t.
Nothing unusual about a night owl and those who roam through the awesome majesty of the magical midnight hours.
Life is short, got to live while you can.
