Life, Work & Wonder

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  • Some Days All We Can Do Is The Best That We Can

    Some days all we can do is fight best we can!

    I have chronic fatigue that I try my best on a daily basis to fight through. And some days are worse than other days. Today is one of the worser days.

    Larissa woke me up at 8:30am. I was in a deep sleep and dreaming so deeply. And here we are six hours later and I’m so tired. Which makes me so unmotivated. But there is a house to run. And bills that need to be paid since I’m not independently wealthy. Which means I have to try my hardest to soldier on.

    In spite of everything, I think I’m doing okay. I did the dishes and changed the sheets on the bed and did three loads of laundry. I wrote a blog post, I coordinated a pest control call, I prepared for and then had one interview, scheduled a second interview. Now I’m starting to turn my attention back to real estate like I’m supposed to.

    There was a time when it wasn’t hard at all to move. My ex-wife used to tease me like that US Army commercial: “You do more before 9am than most people do all day.” Except that was 25 years ago. Today, 15 years after lung disease and 15 years into Ankylosing Spondylitis, I barely am out of bed before 9 am. And all day long is a battle to stay productive. But whether I succeed or fail, I can honestly look in the mirror and say I do my best. Even when I’m laying down (as I’ve done twice today) I’m hollering at myself inside to get up, to get moving, to keep fighting. Which is why I’ve been able to get (as little) done as much as I’ve gotten done by 2pm today.

    Anyway. I remember reading about chronic fatigue in a magazine in the 1990s and thinking, “That must be hell.”  I had no idea that I too would someday come down with chronic fatigue. And I can indeed confirm that it’s truly hell. Except I’m doing the very best I can to pull myself out of the flames and to at least have a few good moments each day. That’s all I can do.

    Here are to good days. And here is to life. And here is to the will to fight. I wish for all of us good days, and life, and the will to perserve.

  • The Beauty Of Sunday Work

    We worked yesterday, on a Sunday. Because Larissa and I are real estate agents and working on a Sunday is just part of the job. Which honestly makes me grateful.

    I’m thinking of 2019. I was working on a $4 million opportunity for my company, and on the Wednesday before Easter Sunday I got a call from the Executive Sponsor. They’d decided to go with us, he told me, but before they signed the deal the CEO wanted to meet with our CEO. Could our team (including my boss and CEO) meet with the CEO’s team (including the entire Executive team) in two weeks? Of course we could!

    But here’s the problem. Here we were, on the cusp on a $4 million contract that would make my boss’s team numbers for the year, and he was just so afraid that what was technically a formality (CEO handshakes) would somehow go awry. So he insisted we work over the weekend preparing.

    So Easter weekend that year was spent working on a lengthy word document that we could give to our CEO. Among all the standard details about the opportunity and the company, the document included long profile descriptions (including links) for every executive who may attend the meeting. Want to know where they went to college? Where else they worked at? What hobbies they partake in? Their spouse’s background? It was aaaaaalllllll there. It took hours and hours to put this document together, and that was before we started formatting it, which my boss was obsessive compulsive about in the best of times.

    Oh my gawd.

    It was so frustrating, so maddening, such a waste, to work that Sunday. And I had no control over it since I knew to refuse would probably cost me my job since that was the type of company it was. Of course we won the opportunity, but it had nothing to do at all with that document or its formatting or its creepy detail that we invested an entire weekend in compiling or even with the work of my CEO who was actually painstakingly and shockingly quiet and awkward in that CEO handshake meeting.

    That memory created some pain for me for a long time for reasons that go beyond Sunday work.

    But yesterday was different. Yesterday — and working yesterday — was in a strange way redemption seven years later.  Because yesterday I felt sooooo grateful looking back on that frustrating Sunday in 2019. Because the work I was doing was important for our client(s), who were regular people, and more importantly the work was essential and I was doing it not because of a micromanaging detail-obsessed-on-a-pathological-level boss but instead because I myself was choosing to do it. And there is beauty and tremendous satisfaction when we work 100% by choice.

    So yesterday was Sunday. Much of America was off, especially in lieu that it was a holiday weekend. But Larissa and I worked. And I didn’t mind at all and fact it helped me come to peace (redeem) that weekend in 2019 because I realized how much of a better place I’m in today.

  • A Magical 4th Of July On The Greenwater Lakes Trail

    Yesterday we went hiking on the Greenwater Lake Trail. It was, in a word, magical. It was, as Larissa described it, “Liked attending a forest cathedral.”

    Yesterday was, of course, July 4th. An exciting day for a lot of people, a big day for America, a day off for Larissa and I. Three years ago we’d gone on a day hike in Alaska for July 4th, two years we’d gone on a day hike in Washington for July 4th, and both days were fun, so when we woke up in the morning and were discussing what to do for the day we decided it would be fun to go on a hike.

    So over coffee we searched for best hikes near Seattle and within a couple of hours drive, not too crowded, not too long and not too strenuous. After passing on several options we discovered The Greenwater Lake trail not too far away from Crystal Mountain (skiing) outside of Enumclaw so close to the foot of Mt. Rainier, a 100-minute drive from our home. We left at noon.

    And oh my goodness.

    A three hour not too strenuous hike, a few people but not too many at all, and just one beautiful scene after another:

    A church cathedral, with towering old growth forest where the real world seems a million miles away. Honestly, it reminded us in a way of one of the most awesome I’ve ever seen: a natural version of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. How old were some of these trees that welcomed us into their midst???

    A trail along a bubbling river that crisscrossed one footbridge after another.

    A spot where suddenly the river stopped, collected itself into a tranquil sun speckled pool that cast shimmering light into the rocks again.

    A magical lake embraced by luscious green grass. In Seattle, all our lakes are populated with boats and people and geese. Here? Just nature at its best. And the only sound to be heard are birds. Was this heaven? No. But probably it was close.

    A waterfall where the river just chutes over sheets of rock like some kind of oversized Japanese garden creek.

    The hike was 2 hours and 45 minutes and 12,000 steps. But honestly it felt like 10 minutes, just a quick in and out, because it was so peaceful and breathtaking. It was a pretty amazing day.

    I’m so very grateful for the many many great July 4ths I’ve had over the years. Fun times with friends and family at mom and dad’s Whidbey Island place. Fun times traveling. Fun times with friends on their boat last year watching the fireworks. And, this year, a almost-religious time hiking along Greenwater Lake Trail.

    Here is wishing that everyone else had some joy too, if not yesterday than today and tomorrow.

  • Reflecting On My Job Search

    I’ve always been a bit of a prima donna when it comes to jobs.

    Not that I want everything at a job. Or treated like a superstar at my job. But that I just have certain things I don’t want from a job.

    I don’t want jobs that start too early. Or have a windowless office. Or require me to do something I don’t have an aptitude for.

    I don’t like jobs that have too much process. Or have ebb and flow where it’s boring sometimes and hectic others, with zero control of my schedule. Or sit in a Bullpen with a lot to do but where people are distracting me. And I hate “locked” jobs where I have to work in an office 8 to 5 every day with no flexibility to my days or schedule minus pre-determined vacation time.

    I’d love to say this is new. That’s it’s my age. But it’s not. I’ve always been this way.

    Time was I really thought I hated working. But it turned out that I hated working hourly jobs with time requirements and where I was a drone.

    I learned when I went into teaching and into sales that I’m actually an incredibly hard worker. And very determined and quite good. When I’m given flexibility and freedom to do what I think needs to be done.

    I went into real estate. And like it. But it isn’t paying the bills. I need to pad this income. So am looking at supplemental jobs. And am driving myself crazy in the process because so many jobs are either micromanagement hell (one has two syncs per day to keep the manager updated on what we’ve been doing) or have fixed schedules in an office that are 40 hours per week.

    Here is to continuing my search. And not giving in to a job that will make me unhappy. Because I’m 58. I’ve done more than my share of jobs that make me unhappy. And life is just too short, especially at age 58.

  • An Ode To Boomers. We Can Actually Learn Something From Boomers.

    An Ode To Boomers

    I read a scary article this morning. The Colorado River — a major water source for 7 states that include major agricultural areas — is drying up at its source. After increasingly warm and dry years, including last year when there was virtually no snow, the creeks that feed the Colorado River are running dry, and some major reservoirs are at 25% with no snow in the mountains this year to replenish them over the hot summer.

    There will be people of course who deny it’s climate change. But I believe it takes a lot of denial to maintain that the huge spike in population (the Earth’s population has doubled in my lifetime) along with the related increase in carbon emissions isn’t having an impact. And it’s just scary as heck to think about because to me it increases the risk of worldwine famine, recession and war. I remember back in the early 2000s all the scary news articles that were coming out about the devastating effects of climate change we’d see by 2050. And now we are nearly there. Which means it will be accelerating now decellearating and we’re just getting started. In other words, buckle in.

    How much I loved the movie “Don’t Look Up.” Because it’s actually really about climate change according to the maker, about how we call can see the devastating effects approaching (in the movie’s case an asteroid) but no one is really doing anything about it (except to financially capitalize on it) and the government is denying it’s a problem.

    All of us, including me, are guilty of not doing anything about it other than fretting about it or posting about it or maybe trying our best to individually not AI (like that will save anything). I think this is largely because we don’t know how to do anything about it.

    Which is why I want to give some credit to the Baby Boomer generation.

    In the 1960s we have Vietnam. And other issues. And there were protests, and more protests, and sit ins, and more sit ins, and songs and songs and songs. And more protests. And it took 10 years. And lots of pain and even some deaths. But change finally started to happen.

    So the Boomers actually figured out how to make change. And did it.

    So I want to give kudos to them. And to say we all could learn something from them. And maybe we should take some lessons from them and rise up and demand some changes that may save our environment. Not posting about them (like I’m doing here). But actually doing something about them.

    So here are to the Boomers. That take a lot of flack from us younger generations. But they also deserve some credit. And we should learn something from them about making real change before it’s too late.

  • I’m Grateful That Online Chess Is A Mirror For me

    I love playing online blitz chess.

    Sometimes in life we need a mirror.

    To tell us how we’re doing, how we’re coping, because sometimes even the best of us need a little outside perspective to keep us grounded. For me, that’s occasionally my spouse, who thankfully isn’t afraid to point out my bullshit in real-time when it happens. But a spouse shouldn’t also have to always be our mirror.

    Which is why I’m so grateful I have chess.

    When I have a few minutes and only a few minutes to kill, I play online blitz chess. I like that it’s quick (a maximum of 20 minutes but often less than 5 or 10 minutes), forces me to think, and also provides some competition against strangers (I don’t like competing against friends and loved ones since I feel guilty when I win).

    Despite my chronic fatigue I am restless and impatient by nature, so I want a quick unpredictable game and so play aggressively since it creates a faster game with fewer moments of predictable sloggery. Sometimes playing aggressively means I win quickly, and just as often it means I end up looking pretty silly.

    This is where the mirror is.

    When my head is clear and I’m feeling okay with my current daily life, I win a lot more often than I lose. I beat some pretty good players, often by checkmate, and my score climbs to the 1000s (which isn’t great for a serious player but is okay for a hack like me). When I’m tired or stressed or pre-occupied with something in life? My score plummets. Today it was in the 800s and sinking fast, and I am making some pretty foolish errors.

    This means I have some things going on in my life. Or in my mind. Which in fact I do since I’ve had a busy week of commitments while also trying to send our youngest off to camp for three weeks which created some chaos in our house as we got her ready. I’ve also been working a lot for not a lot of money (a risk of my career).

    When life gets stressful, and my chess score plummets, this means I need to be extra mindful. It probably means my cortisol levels are up, and heart rate is a little higher than average. Which means I need to fight coping techniques. Maybe take some perspective that this too will pass. Or take a night to order some pizza and chill. Or take a nice walk next to the creek near our house. Or to just take some deep breaths.

    I think a part of being a healthy human being for working persons like me (I have no clue at all what life is like to be luxuriously rich and/or entitled), is being self aware. Of knowing when we’re under stress during a particular day or week or even month. Then doing what we can to take extra steps to bring the stress levels down.

    Sometimes (like this week) I’m not aware that I’m feeling more than average stress. In those weeks I’m grateful for a mirror. Sometimes that’s my awesome spouse. But thankfully — like today — it also is online blitz chess.

  • I Find Ukraine-Russia so disheartening

    Driving home from the grocery store today, NPR gave an update on the Ukrainian war. This inspired me to search for updates on the war when I got home, since I don’t often see headlines about it anymore.

    Currently, despite more than 4 years of war, Russia controls 20% of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine strikes Russia with drone attacks that are reported in the Russian news. Realistically, more than 275,000 troops have been killed, but it may be as high as 500,000 Russian troops alone, according to the BBC. This of course does not include the civilian casualties.

    It is sobering to me that four years later the war in Ukraine is still taking place. That one man — Putin — who is most likely living safely and well can be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, and extoll four years of misery on Ukraine (and increasingly on Russia).

    There is a certain percentage of humans who are diabolical. Who kill or steal or basically disburse misery for their own gain. What is so fucked up about us human beings is that the masses allow the few to do these things. It’s how we’re wired, not unlike each insect in an insect colony each having their role. After millions of years of evolution, and hundreds of years of incredible gains in knowledge, how is it we’re not better than this?

    So very sobering. It’s a lifetime of supply of content.

  • In A Way, It’s A Resilient Optimist That Excels in (True) Sales

    Today we’re working on what essentially is a Request For Purchase (RFP). Not technically an RFP, but what essentially adds up to an RFP: a potential home seller who we met with already, met with again, gave a listing presentation to, met with again, and now after she went radio silent for a few months sent a list of 10 questions that she wants answered by the three agents she’s considering.

    So much “hurry up and wait” with this person who doesn’t seem able to make up her mind on when she wants to sell, if she wants to sell, and who she wants to sell with. I keep asking myself, are we just wasting our time in meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting and with all these various requests for information for a person who seems reluctant to just make a decision?

    To be honest, I’ve gotten increasingly cynical over the years.

    I think back to a software opportunity I had back in 2003.

    A client was upgrading their hardware and so many of their software vendors were charging exorbitant rates so that the client could continue the same exact software (pre-SaaS days) but on different hardware. So suddenly software that cost my client $2 million to run per year was suddenly going to cost $12 million to run per year although they weren’t going to be actually doing anything differently with that software (same business cases, same number of users, etc. etc. etc.). Of course, the client was very frustrated.

    Of course, I detected a chance to help the client. But jas as importantly, I smelled blood. We could take advantage of our competitors charging so much and look into replacing them for less money.

    It’s hard to remember now, but the economy wasn’t awesome in 2003. Companies were still recovering from their exorbitant spending on Y2K and “e-business” from the 1990s, still recovering from the post 9/11 and post-Enron layoffs of 2001, and just weren’t investing a lot of money in new software. So we software sales reps had to seize any opportunity we could when we could if we wanted to make quota and (like me) pay for our kids’ private school tuitions. And so I sprang into action.

    For four months, I had sooooooooooo many meetings with this client. I overviewed the general idea (replacing the more expensive competitors’ software with our software). I did discovery meetings to find out how they were using their software, then internal meetings to find out if we could indeed replace some of our competitor’s software for cheaper, then showing the client how we would run the software cheaper and doing demos on that software, then meeting with all the various stakeholders at the client site who used the competitors’ software to show them how they would be able to use our software in the same way, and so on and so on. And, by the way, the client was a three hour flight away and this was before Zoom so this meant nearly every week I was flying for three hours each way to conduct all these meetings.

    At any single step of the way, the client could have said, “Screw it, I’m not going to upgrade all my hardware,” which would have meant he didn’t have to deal with the software upgrade fees. Or a stakeholder could have said, “We’re not replacing our software! We’ll just increase our budget to continue running the same software.” Or the software companies we were looking at replacing could have said, “We’ll waive the upgrade fees.” And any single one of these scenarios would have killed my opportunity and erased all my hard work.

    But I continued on. Every week for four months I hopped on a plane, left my beloved kids and home (and car) for a few days, and tried to make magic happen because I believed that I could make this happen and that I would get a nice commission check at the end while saving my client a lot of money.

    Finally, at 6pm on Friday August 29th 2003 (I’ll remember the date for the rest of my life), after a hectic week where we were trying to get this signed before month end so my bosses could meet their monthly numbers and we could keep the higher-than-normal-but-expiring-at-the-end-of-the-month discounts that my desperate bosses had approved, the client signed. I’d done it!! That three hour flight home late Friday night? Some of the best three hours of my life. I sat there in silence, nursing a celebratory vodka soda, reveling in the joy and relief that it was over, grateful that my hard work was going to save my client money and fill my family’s coffers and also give my family a free trip to Hawaii for making quota. The deal was signed. The client was going to benefit, and my company was going to benefit and my family was going to benefit.

    Looking back, it was such a long shot. I can’t believe it actually happened. I don’t know that I’d believe today like I did back then, that I would pursue it as doggedly today as I did back then, because the reality is I’ve seen too much since then. I saw the time that a rep was on the verge of winning the deal and — boom — the client was acquired and so the deal was called off. I saw the time when my peer did everything I did in 2003 and was about to ink a major deal with a 6-figure commission check except she was laid off before the deal was inked because the Suits In The Ivory Tower wanted to make their profit numbers so cut sales headcount. Not long after she was let go, the deAL was signed and our company got its money but another rep got the commission check for my peer’s amazing work. That’s the stuff that keeps me awake at night. That I hadn’t experienced or witnessed back in 2003 so believed anything and everything was truly possible with enough perseverance.

    Anyway, I’m realizing that to be a truly passionate sales person, a person has to be a resilient optimist to the extreme. To believe. To doggedly pursue. To doggedly jump over every single hurdle while continuing to believe that when all their hard work is over the contract will be signed and everyone wins. They have to be like Teddy Roosevelt Jr. on D-Day when everything seemed to be going awry and he said, “We’ll start the war from right here” then started doggedly moving forward in the face of (literal) death.

    Thinking on all this, I’m proud of myself. I’ve done it. I’ve done it more than once. I’ve done it as recently as the past few years, doggedly pursued the impossible and then come out ahead. And if I’m honest with myself I’ll do it again despite my reservations. In fact, we’re going to submit this pseudo-RFP and win the listing.

    And as much as anything, I believe this: a great sales person (not a lucky one, or a right-time-right-place one, but a great one, a truly great rainmaker, must be the resilient optimist to the extreme.

  • For A Few Moments, The Best View Everr

    At a glance this is not an amazing view.

    There’s not an ocean. Or majestic mountains. Or people doing amazing things. Or exotic wildlife.

    But for me, for today, it’s just the best view ever because it means I’m relaxing on my butt in our yard surrounded by trees and listening to the birds. It means for a few minutes I’m not toiling or adulting. Or sitting indoors to escape the clouds. Or have some asshole idiot boss telling me what to do. That I can just be in nature (while still in the city!) and be in the moment and just take a deeeeeeeppppppp breath of fresh air and relax.

    Here are to moments like these. And just the best view ever for this particular moment.

  • The Secret To Life Is Being Happy Where We Are

    What’s a common misconception people have about happiness?

    I believe in my heart of hearts that life is a test.

    Something (God? Allah? Vishnu?) somewhere in the greater omniverse has dispatched us to this beautiful hell to see how we do.

    And one of those tests is, can we be happy on our own regardless of circumstances?

    The first month of when I volunteered for the Crisis Line was training. And I’m still amazed by this one person in training, who had a childhood from hell living in the projects and even watching his best friend get killed when they were 13, yet he had a positive outlook on life and was smiling.

    Here I was, thinking I’d had challenges because I’d been a late bloomer with extreme ADHD so was getting teased (for being small) and getting yelled at (for being distracted) and forever feeling frustrated because I had to work twice hard to prove myself to coaches because of my smaller size. Turns out, I had an amazing childhood with a boring neighborhood and parents who put food on the table every night and no violence other than the occasional school yard stuff. Who was I to be unhappy?? I don’t think I’ve complained about my childhood ever since meeting that person.

    Some people need stuff to be happy. A great car, a great house, more money. Other people need experiences to be happy. Great travels and great foodie experiences. And still others are just never happy at all.

    But for me, I believe the true test is if we can be happy where we are with what we have right here right now. No matter what. And by happy I guess for me I mean contentment and experiencing some moments of bliss.

    In my 20s and 30s I was rarely happy. I had something to prove, I had things to accomplish, I always felt like my life was falling short (especially when I was in my 20s working low paying jobs while other people my age were making millions playing sports). I took a huge step forward in my 40s. I’ve regressed a little bit in recent years but am working to get back to being happy and content at all times and in all places.

    To me, that is the definition of true happiness. Anything otherwise is just a misunderstanding of what actual happiness really is, and what life is really all about.