14 days...

Depression control: a huge bowl of Apple Jacks and Kix, with granola sprinkled in so I can say it was a healthy snack; iTunes repeating REM (Shiny Happy People), the Who (Happy Jack), the Beat Farmers (hubba hubba hubba hubba) and anything by the Partridge Family; top it all off with the toasty warm glowing wave of heat radiating from my 8" high sunburned forehead. I am ready for Optimism! Hope, confidence, cheery and cheeky good humor!

Uh-huh.

Who says I'm depressed? Or did they just mean depressing? I have no reason in the world to be down, moping, or sullen. I have it all, and I appreciate every minute of it. Sitting on the couch right now is The Most Wonderful & Beautiful Wife in the World, watching HBO on the 32" flat screen in our air-conditioned Spanish-tiled Martha-Stewart-would-approve home while the Boys are snoring upstairs in blissful slumber. The cat's snoozing somewhere around here too. I live in the most beautiful city in the world (isn't "el cajon" Spanish for "garden of Eden with 90 degree heat and a tattoo shop on every block"?) surrounded by family and friends, beaches and mountains, Disneyland and Tijuana. My kids are smart and good looking, just like their Dad, and The MW&BWITW tells me every day how happy she is. So not only is she Wonderful & Beautiful and Happy, but she's very good at her job and makes enough money to put gas in my truck and still be able to let me quit my job and go back to school.

For the day I die, I'mma touch the sky -- does it get any better than this?

Obviously, I have no reason to be depressed. I didn't even start listing my own stellar qualities, any number of which would lift a lesser man from the darkest depths. (Ok, I could work on humility.) I really do appreciate the blessings and treasures in my life, even the most mundane aspects of life should not be overlooked or taken for granted.

So what do I appreciate? Hmmm...

• cereal with cold milk
• Ringo Starr
• taco night!
• my skateboards
• no broken bones
• watching Her sleep
• the Pacific coastline
• TPetty & his Heartbreakers
• remote controls
• my truck
• "shuffle"
• babysitters
• post-it notes
• #1's good nature
• #2 taking care of #3
• #3's imagination
• Roald Dahl
• strawberry pizza
• the Bro's writing
• OHP breakfast
• superheroes
• walks
• the sun
• sand + water = beach
• Starbucks
• Her smile
• double plays
• John Steinbeck
• road trips
• Van Morrison
• ESPN
• Balboa Park
• Her soft skin
• dreams
• pecan pie
• family sayings
• digital technology
• street football
• movie night
• all-time all-star team debates
• amazon.com
• Ford Prefect
• sunday mornings
• gardens
• late summer evenings
• Abbey Road
• earthworms
• coffee breaks
• e-mail
• bare feet
• play-doh
• libraries
• Springsteen
• spellcheck
• greeting strangers
• globes
• Her humor
• cheeseburgers

...and all without mention of Prozac or Pacifico. See, no depression here! Of course we close with Van Halen's Happy Trails to you....

15 days...

There is more than one way to skin a cat, so they say, and there is more than one way to cause a man to take a long hard look at his life, measure his worth, search his shallow soul, and entertain thoughts of mortality, destiny, and whether his life has been worth spit.

One way, as you might have guessed, is to turn 40. "About 60 years left" sez the Bro. I estimate, based largely on what I eat and the exercise I don't do, I'm good for half that. 30 more years puts me at 70, probably the upper limit of this mortal coil. So I'm on the back side, heading downhill -- slowly at this point, no real momentum, but there is no way to go backwards to that half-way peak. I'm ok with that. What's more fun, waiting in line for 45 minutes behind 80 wet and screaming kids and a fat guy with a hairy sunburned back, or the wild exciting rush of the water slide?

Another way to get a man's attention is through the miracle of Fatherhood; a new dad is made quite aware of his place in the cosmos, how insignificant he is when it comes to the wants and needs of his children and their mother. The blessed event often leads a man to poetry, exalting the beauty and joy of his baby's toes, or to letters, a volume on his new-found maturity and the responsibility of ensuring his wit and wisdom is passed to future generations of his seed. Of course this birth-inspired literary bent is quickly stamped out by the reality of diapers, teletubbies, sibling rivalry, and six billion legos sprinkled like grass seeds throughout the house.

Litigation, jail time, jury duty, any intrusion by the legal system into a man's life. Combat, medical emergencies, divorce. The realization your son is now the better athlete, as your best fastball clears the fence or your fadeaway jumper is smacked back into the gardenias. The loss of a parent. Hair loss. Traumatic events in a man's life lead to introspection, to the search for explanations, a sense of reason and significance in the universe.

Unemployment.

Not having a job, a career, a calling. Not collecting a paycheck. Resumes, applications, interviews. Peel a man to his core, expose his deepest fears and weaknesses. Underqualified, overqualified, not what we're looking for, nothing available at this time. We'll get back to you.

I will be out of work in 15 days. Fifteen days not including weekends, so three weeks left as a man bringing home the bacon. Fifteen more days of work until I am out of work, off the payroll, unable to come in pick up a paycheck. All those jokes about not coming back when someone goes on vacation? I'm not coming back after my vacation. Call in on Sunday to check my schedule? I'm not on the schedule.

What I meant was...

When you turn 40 you're supposed to take a long hard look at your life, both back down the road traveled and up ahead to see what the traffic is like; if you're lucky/talented/rich both lanes could be smooth and clear, with fresh blacktop and no speed limit, easy to read road signs (children 3 miles, stock split 12 miles), no boneheads cutting you off so you miss an exit and have to make a u-turn at the next one, 8 years and a divorce down the road. If you're like most people (which most of are, hence the term) you look back at a twisted path of potholes and hills, up and down and up and down and how did we make it over that last mountain, how did we make it through that 7 car pile-up? The road ahead doesn't appear any more clear, the construction crews are still laying asphalt and through the clutter and haze there's no telling which way the turns will take us.

But we have to look.

I don't want to. I repeat my mantra of "no regrets, no worries" and appreciate the moment, enjoy where I am and what I have right now. Not one of us is promised tomorrow, right? But there must be an innate self-review board, triggered by the 40 candles to convene and take stock. This Internal Committee reviews photos and press clippings, culls highlights for a video montage, and takes a red Sharpie to The Checklist of Goals and Achievements. Hmmm, not a lot of checks in my accomplishment column, and actually there are quite of few items completely crossed off the list with the notation "not ever gonna happen" ...although to be fair some of those goals were stretches from the beginning, involving Heisman trophies and/or an entire crew of flight attendants. So again I try to avert my eyes, focus my gaze any direction but inward, even though the introspection enzyme is already coursing through my bloodstream, compelling me to rank and rate Past Present and Future.

So as I Ebenezer my way through my life, I have to narrow the search or be overwhelmed. Actually underwhelmed would be more accurate, or simply room temperature-whelmed. It's been ok, nothing to brag or wail about, and that's the way I like it. But I can't get away with it, the ghosts don't let me pull the covers over my head and fake snore until they leave, I have to actually get up and take a look at where I've been and what I've done, how the whole Consequences concept shakes out. As Dad always said every action needs an equal yet opposite reaction ...or was it every action gets a reaction so act fast ...? Something like that. Really, I was listening.

As I was saying...

How does a man measure success?

What becomes of that success, and that man, when his achievements can be erased in an instant, reduced to ashes or rubble no matter how tall the tower and richly appointed the halls, or rendered moot by mere whispers and doubts no matter how pure and stout the heart? What can a man hold in his hands, cradle in his arms, or lift high for all to see where he stood and what he built? Most of our life is wind and sand and water running through our fingers and vanishing at our feet.


the glass must be half empty, cracked twice, and leaking all over the counter tonight...

How you doin'?

"Hey, how are ya, how's it goin', how ya been?"

Well, that all depends on what answer you want, what you really and truely mean by "how are you?"
Do you want the standard "good, and you?" or are you looking for details, maybe narrowed down to a specific category: how am I doing my job, how is my sore foot, how do I feel mentally or emotionally? How is my life overall, on a scale of 1 - 10? And when you're interested in my life, do we just get a sense of the overall, the general everything-ness of my existence? Or do we break it down into categories again, home/health/career/bowling average? What should be the time frame -- last 2 weeks, 6 months, or a composite of the last decade? This could lead to some lengthy replies....

For the record, I'm fine. How you doin'?


Break a life down, separate out the components, divide everything onto categories, and a man can focus on what is really important:

Sex, Sports, Family, Career.

What else is there? You could make an argument for Faith, but you usually don't ask your friends how their walk with the Lord is going, at least not while getting coffee before the marketing strategy meeting, or in front of the family when everyone gets together to meet the new girlfriend. Besides, you're not going to get an honest answer (oh man, sinned with the secretary last week, He is pissed!) or you'll turn the BBQ into a prayer meeting (As a matter of fact, He just burned that hydrangea bush out by my back gate, and told me to share these verses with you...).


Yes, the categories do blend at points: sports and career can be the same, and without sex there usually is no family (for example, my first marriage). In fact sex should be an integral part of each aspect of a man's life, without it the rest will suffer and we have to deal with those "over compensation" issues (see HumVee owners). Unfortunately some people mix the sex/sports/family too heavily (see NASCAR fans).

How do we judge if a man is a success? Or more importantly, how does a man measure his own success? And why would he do it publicly, unless he wanted to sell you something or get elected (I know, same thing).

I cannot speak for anyone else, the public self-humiliators with the dirty laundry tossed out all over the www, or the drama queens baring their souls in a pathetic effort to scrub away guilt or attract chicks, but in my case it's simple: I crack myself up, and no one reads these things anyway.


Bottom line, the high point of my life, career-wise, was being the editor-in-chief of our high school newspaper. Athleticly, it was the Pop Warner championship game in 6th grade, won 18-0 with all three TD's behind my devastating blocks from right tackle. Sex? Well let's just say it had nothing to do with me having the Most Wonderful & Beautiful Wife in the World, or if it did she fell for me in less time than it took you to read this sentence.

Moving right along...