Life, Work & Wonder

Category: Uncategorized

  • If I Want To Live Forever, I Need Only Attend Corporate Presentations From Hell

    What bores you?

    There is the saying that only boring people are bored. But is that true?

    I’ve found in life that I’m rarely bored when left to my own devices. There is sooooooo much to do in life!!!! So many books to read, magazines to peruse, films to watch, exercises to do, hikes to take, places to explore. If I lived a thousand years, I couldn’t begin to cross everything off my list that I’d like to do. So for me, the problem isn’t boredom but sometimes of feeling overwhelmed.

    For me, the only time I feel bored is when I’m trapped. When I was a kid, that meant sitting in class with teachers who dictated what we had to do, or sitting in a class (e.g. shop class) where I had no interest. As an adult, it’s corporate mandated trainings and meetings. Life is an ETERNITY when I sit in these meetings. I feel so bored. So trapped. I feel like if I want to live forever, I should just spend every day in a Corporate Presentation. But who wants to live forever in that way? That’s like an eternity in hell.

    Have I ever left a corporate presentation Zoom call or a training or a meeting where I thought, that was worth my time? Not that I can think of. But I do feel like time has slowed down and that the day was 10 years long.

    So I’m rarely bored when left to my own devices. It’s when I’m forced to waste my time in meetings where I feel trapped and bored. If I want to live forever, I’ll just spend the rest of my life going to corporate meetings.

  • Going To Be A Career Day Speaker

    A week ago there was an email from my kids’ high school looking for adults willing to be a Career Day speaker wherein we prepare a 15 minute presentation about our career and then present it to the students during Career Day. I volunteered to talk about what it’s like being a Seattle Real Estate Agent. Today I learned I’ve been approved and will be presenting. I can’t tell you how excited I am!

    There’s that old joke that more people are afraid of public speaking than death, which means people would rather be the person in the casket than the person giving the eulogy. And time was that I thought I was a terrible speaker and hated giving speeches.

    But I’ve learned in recent years that I’m actually pretty decent at giving speeches when I like what I’m talking about. Following a prescriptive Corporate Powerpoint Presentation with all the typical “look how amazing we are” slides? I’m awful. Giving a QBR presentation? Very hit and miss depending on if I like the team and the presentation isn’t too formulaic.

    But give me a topic I want to talk about, give me some time to ponder how to go about presenting it, and give me an open format to work with, and often I’m decidedly okay giving a presentation and I actually like it and can be relatively funny.

    In late 2019 my moronic manager took my client presentation and tweaked it a short time before I was supposed to give the presentation in person while jet lagged. It didn’t go very well. Partially because he turned it into the same eye-rolling presentation a million other software companies deliver to the poor prospective clients, partially because the last second changes didn’t give me time to prepare the new presentation, partially because the changes ripped apart the flow I’d been rehearsing in my head for a few days before the speech, and partly because of the time I would have been physically (eating) and mentally (breathing) preparing for the speech I was trying to learn his last minute tweaks. When he tried to do the same thing two months later, I ignored his changes and did my original presentation that client presentation went much better (spoiler alert: we lost the first client opportunity and won the second).

    A few months later I gave a presentation to medical students about my experience with a rare lung disease. I had a few weeks to prepare, had an open format to work with, and was passionate about the topic. The result when I gave that speech? It went great! So great that even my ex-wife who was embarrassed by everything I did at the time and was in the audience as a medical student herself even seemed remotely impressed.

    I love real estate. I love being a real estate agent in Seattle. So I’m excited to talk about my career in a few weeks. And excited to talk about my career to a group of high school students who are trying to figure out this career thing. I’m grateful to be given the opportunity and am looking forward to preparing and then giving the presentation.

  • “LinkedIn Lunatics” Made Me Sad In So Many Ways But Mostly For The Mocking

    Last night I was in a weird dream state so I got up for an hour or so and read. Eventually I read a novel but for the first 15 minutes I was on Reddit, and stumbled upon LinkedIn Lunatics.

    LinkedIn is nuts. What with so many people touting their successes and self-proclaiming their godlike abilities, and so many corporate hiring manager expectations that we maintain a LinkedIn profile where we tout our resume for the world to see. And for the past 10 years or so LinkedIn has encouraged anyone and everyone to post, so there are a LOT of posts, mostly self-improvement types where people are like Jesus sharing learning parables and such.

    But what makes me sad is the LinkedIn Lunatics subreddit wherein people re-post people’s LinkedIn posts to mock the writer and more often than not include the LinkedIn poster’s name and picture.

    Why the public shaming and mocking? Why include the person’s name?

    Mostly these are regular working people hoping to get someone’s attention so that they get a better job, or more clients, or become respected in some way. It’s a human need to be loved and respected, and this is their attempt to become that in the professional world. Is it weird that so many people essentially brag and act like sages on LinkedIn? Sure. But publicly mocking them in a widely read forum is unkind.

    We’re all buffoons sometimes. We all have our moments where we maybe brag a little too much. Or say something that we think is profound but is actually goofy. And I think it’s awesome that the bottom 99% of people (nearly all of us) in 2026 has a variety of platforms to be heard or seen —- time was 30 years ago the only way to be seen or heard or to express a voice was to be lucky enough to have some editor somewhere decide to share you with the world.

    Reading these LinkedIn posts, I feel like most of the bravado is actually self-talk, as in, “I can do this.” It’s the little engine that should telling themselves “I think I can.” I think it’s great people have a self-contained platform to do this that I can tune out if I want to, and I sure as heck don’t need to mock them. That is a non-public human being that we are mocking on LinkedIn Lunatics. At the very least, can’t they at least scratch out the original name and picture?

  • Rediscovering Raymond Chandler

    In my 20s I loved Raymond Chandler.

    I was teaching high school film study, and in my preparation to teach Film Noir I perused Raymond Chandler’s “Farewell, My Sweet.”

    How much I fell in love with the writing and the character.

    There was a dry wit/humor to the writing, and a cadence that only belongs to Raymond Chandler. I enjoyed that it took place in LA during the 40s and 50s, and that he was a tough decent character in a sea of seedy characters.

    I read one book after another. And I read Chandler’s biography. And then I moved on with life.

    I left teaching. Raised my kids. Found other things to read.

    Last week I was reading the Longmire series. And there is something about that character that reminds me of Philip Marlowe, and something about that writing that reminds me of Raymond Chandler. And I found myself re-reading The Long Goodbye.

    How much I love it.

    Anyway, happiness is rediscovering a past joy we’d put aside. And I’m looking forward to re-reading all of Chandler’s novels over the next few years.

  • Sometimes I Feel Almost Like The Old Me

    Time was I hopped out of bed first thing in the morning.

    I made coffee, ate a healthy (fruit) breakfast, did the dishes, fed the dogs, then either walked/ran or hustled to the gym for an hour before starting my 10-12-hour work day. During the day I moved moved moved, and frankly didn’t have a lot of patience without the drive or energy I had. After the kids were in bed, after I’d read them a story and helped them get on their pajamas, then I’d ready or watch movies or work some more.

    That was before 2011. Before lung disease clawed away all my energy. For two years after that, it was all I could do just to function in life. That was total hell.

    I remember asking my doctor, “Is it hopeless? Will I always feel this tired?”

    He looked me in the eye, and said, “You know, we can look at this way: the old you, the one that was at the top 1% for energy, is gone. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get you feeling better than you do now.”

    It took the better part of five years, but by 2017 I was starting to feel normal again. Nowhere near the old me, but not perpetually overwhelmed and exhausted all the time.

    Then in early 2020 I got Covid. The fever lasted a week, but it taxed the heck out of me and in the six years since I haven’t quite felt the same again, although I felt a heck of a lot better than I did in 2012 and I continue to improve from 2020.

    But there are days I start to feel like the old me. The pre 2011 me. Hyper manic. Energetic. Like the last few days.

    Evy is on break this week. And I didn’t have to volunteer this week. And I am working as my own boss in real estate versus working for Micromanagers From 21st Century Corporate Hell. And the result is I’m feeling good. So very good. In fact, the last few days I’ve felt great. I’ve cooked. I’ve cleaned. Done laundry. Been productive as heck at work. And I start to feel like the old me, the me before 2011.

    It feels amazing.

    I’m grateful.

    I’m grateful I used to have so much energy. Grateful that I know what that feels like (amazing!). I’m grateful that I survived lung disease, and that I feel better today than I did in 2012 and again in 2020.

    Life is a journey. I’m grateful for the journey of the past few days.

  • Sincerity And Groundedness Rules All (My Favorite People To Be Around)

    Who are your favorite people to be around?

    For starters, humans are pack animals not herd animals.

    Take a pack of wolves and then a herd of deer. We don’t think of ourselves this way, but humans and human society are much more akin to the wolves than we are to the deer. We often don’t think so. But even the lowest of the low often have a pecking order within the pack they are trying to protect, or a wound they are nursing that keeps them on the periphery in some way. I think back to Marcy in grade school, who was a notorious tattletale to the teacher or the coworkers who reported to our boss that another coworker took a two-hour lunch while the the boss was out of town — that was unwittingly displaying pack behavior by protecting our order beneath the alpha.

    But there are people who aren’t this.

    They are the people at the social gathering who seem genuinely interested in our story although we’re not in a place to help them at that particular time.

    The people who bring by food when we are sick. Or who never ever say a bad word about us (gossip) to other people.

    Who give more than they take.

    They are sincere people. Genuine people. And caring people.

    I remember this woman named Jen. We were at a party and she remembered meeting me at a gathering two years earlier. She remembered my name, that I had two kids, remembered the details about those kids, and she spent 15 minutes asking me questions about everything and genuinely seemed interested. The sincerity, authenticity and kindness that coursed through her was so strong that it was palpable. Ten years later I can still recall how that felt, and also how she was like that with everyone else at the party. She wasn’t putting on an act and didn’t have an agenda – that’s just who she was. Later, I commented to (my now ex) about her and she said, “Oh yeah, that’s Jen, she’s just the kindest person. Everyone in our social club loves her.”

    I love these rare souls so much. How can the rest of us ever repay someone like that?

    We can’t.

    And those are my very favorite people to be around.

  • Last Night I Made Soup: The Recipe Was Delicious

    I never liked to cook. Eventually, I hated to cook. Finally, I refused to cook.

    In the beginning I cooked because I needed to eat. But I didn’t like it very much. It was just a chore I tried to get through as fast as I could.

    Then I had kids. And kids needed to eat. So for the better part of 20 years I cooked breakfasts, prepared school lunches, and made dinner. And since my now-ex was often gone, I was doing this while also trying to work, tend to the dogs, get the kids to their events and helping them with their homework. It was hell. I became pretty worn down, actually, and I remember in the late 2000s every night in the late afternoon sitting down with an espresso and a cocktail trying to motivate myself to cook yet another meal.

    Then my now ex started medical school. And somehow I was expected to cook for her (and her classmates) too. And to be supportive I did it. And that, among other things, broke me.

    For more than five years, I’ve all but refused to cook. I’ll be an assistant cook (“Rob, would you turn the oven on to 400”), I’ll prep cook (maybe), I’ll clean up, but otherwise I want to eat out at restaurants, eat take away food (note: I’m American but prefer the Brits use of Take Away over To Go 🙂 ), or warm up food, but I all but refuse to cook.

    But yesterday Larissa had a super busy day that went until the early evening. I knew she was tired, and didn’t want to go to a restaurant, and didn’t want to think about cooking food (she normally likes to cook but has been so busy the past few weeks), so I decided to take it off her plate.

    And I cooked.

    I spent half an hour researching “healthy hearty simple” soup recipes. I found one that seemed very very healthy and tasty, and had a prep time listed as 10 minutes. So I went to the grocery store, purchased all the spices and vegetables and broths, came up, turned the music up high, and started cooking.

    Did it take much longer than 10 minutes? Heck yes! These prep times assumes someone has a commercial kitchen with vast amounts of experience dicing and slicing things. But that’s okay. I got into a zen moment, did what needed to be done, and when Larissa got home a delicious soup was waiting for her.

    The recipe was amazing. I will use it again.

    Anyway, sometimes in life we have to break through our resistances. For me, that is cooking. I’m happy I cooked last night. I hope to do it again soon.

    RECIPE: https://www.loveandlemons.com/vegetable-soup/

  • The Best Gift I Ever Received Was A Divorce

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  • AI Stole My Love Of The Em Dash :(

    My sophomore year in high school was 1984.

    1984 was a fun year to be in high school. The 1980s as we think of them were really just starting to take shape, leaving the last remnants of the 1960s (aging hippies) and 1970s (disco) behind. The stock market was booming, “Yuppie” became a thing, and ESPN starting transitioning from table tennis and Australian Rules football to decidedly-American sports like football and baseball.

    I also had an English teacher who seemed obsessed with two things: the novel 1984. And the em dash. We spent two weeks learning about and practicing the em dash.

    There was so much about school I hated because it seemed so pointless to my teen-age brain — multiple choice exams, pep assemblies and Geometry come to mind.

    But I came to love the em dash.

    The em dash is awesome!! It is punchier and a lot more sexy than a colon or parentheses. And as a person who is often told by countless people in his life that he has undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder (even in a time when everyone thinks every human has Attention Deficit Disorder) how much I love that I can change my thought or direction during a sentence by simply putting in an em dash. Plus, very few people use the em dash in practice, so I’ve discovered over the years that very very few grammar nazis add their two cents about my use of em dashes.

    Then AI came along. And perhaps AI was partially coded by a former 10th grade classmate. Or it took a lot of its knowledge from 1984 textbooks. Or it just has it out for me. Regardless of the reason, AI thought, “Hey, I’m going to use this em dash thing. A lot!”

    Now I frequently am asked if AI has done my writing for me. And commentors on Reddit etc. have insisted that I used AI to write my writings. Why? Because apparently the em dash is a dead giveaway for AI. Not only have I seen countless pundits making this observation, but recently I’ve seen articles in Apple News and other sources about the proliferation of the em dash in AI.

    Now I’m afraid to use the em dash. Because I don’t use AI to write — writing is one my great joys in life — and I don’t want people to think I’m lazy and rely on AI to do my writing for me.

    Years ago I remember the Seattle Times writing about a lovely fishing and swimming spot that it considered a hidden gem. A few weeks later there was a letter to the editor wherein a person who’d been going to that spot for years complained that spot was now overrun by people who’d seen the article. “I wish I could ruin something you love,” the writer said to the editor. Now I kinda of know how that person feels — the em dash has been tainted for me.

    Sigh.

    First world problems.

    I guess a life wherein a big problem is the tainting of the em dash is a pretty good life indeed. For that, I’m grateful.

    COMMENT/NOTE:

    • No use of AI was used to write or edit this post 🙂
    • This is a re-post from my LinkedIn profile post.

  • My Struggle With The Balancing Act As Social Media (AKA A Natural Goofball Trying To Reign It In)

    I’m a bit of a goofball by nature.

    It’s largely genetic.

    My dad (who is long retired and nearing 80) is by nature a clown. Although he wore a tie and reigned in his goofy behavior during the work day, as a kid he was voted “Class Clown” and as an adult at night he became a natural ham.

    For me, he was the dad who at a crowded restaurant stepped up to the front desk and pretended he was the snobby host, much to the laughter of the crowd when they learned he was just a patron like the rest of us. He was the Huskies fan who mowed a big “UW” into Cougars-loving neighbor’s lawn to the laughing delight of all the other neighbors. People love him and his antics. But at work he was someone else. I first witnessed this when I joined him for lunch at work 30 years ago, when he seemed very serious and people called him “Mr. Mathison.” I had never seen that side of my dad before.

    Time was in my 30s and into my 40s I tried to reign in my own goof behavior. But I find it increasingly hard in this era of social media and the ability to post words anywhere and everywhere. One where as agents or professionals we’re encouraged to post often to build a platform.

    For example:

    • Last week, I wanted to post a video of using children’s clip clops to navigate between houses to keep my shoes dry during a rainy day.
    • I wanted to post a mock video of ways to help our children cheat on tests better, saying this was the real way of helping them get ahead in 21st Century Corporate America.
    • I wanted to post an AI-generated video of a superhero real estate agent (me) saving a tree from crushing a client’s house, not unlike the infamous Vern Fonk videos.

    Of course, a calmer head and my wife (and real estate partner) stopped me. “Would you want a goofball negotiating for you?” My wife asked. But it’s hard.

    I’m in some training the past couple of weeks. “Social media, social media, social media,” we’re told. But I don’t want to do social media to self-proclaim how amazing I am. Or to add yet more seriousness to the world.

    I want to be spontaneously me. And genuine. And for me, what is genuinely normal is being a good at what I do but also being a total goofball who doesn’t take himself too seriously. Because work is work, but social media takes itself too seriously. There are too many pundits and influencers out there who proclaim they are The Stuff.

    Me? I want to do the social media thing as a sign of respect to my trainers. But I want to do it my way, much to the chagrin of my respectable wife (she wisely asks, would you want someone who is goofy on social media negotiating for you?). In the end, I guess I’ll choose to do it more anonymously (here). And not so much in a professional forum.

    In other words, I’ll try my best to be serious with a tie on (figuratively speaking) who then mows a giant UW into the neighbor’s lawn at night.