Life, Work & Wonder

Tag: autobiography

  • If I Had One Wish For A Single Skill, It Would Be Drawing/Sketching

    If you could instantly master any skill, what would it be and why?

    How much I admire people who can sketch or draw.

    My friend Jon growing up was an amazing sketcher. While we all talked, he was often sketching on scratch paper. Maybe it was a character he’d imagined, or the view outside the window, or a memory, but he was always sketching something to perfection and we always admired what he sketched.

    I also remember reading the autobiography of the great 1950s independent filmmaker Samuel Fuller. In his diaries he often sketched, and his notebook from his tour in Europe during World War II was filled with little drawings to document his days that really captured my interest and I thought really quickly expressed to me what his experiences were.

    How much I admired this.

    I’m not a drawer. I’m that person who can’t draw a stick figure well, and can’t even really draw a straight line, and was often teased in art class for the (lack thereof) quality of my work although being teased about that didn’t bother me since I couldn’t help it. Luckily I can write okay, but it takes “a thousand words” (wink wink) to cover a picture and it’s easier I think to listen and draw then it is to listen and write, which means a person can be a part of a conversation while drawing.

    I also admire those people who can sketch out the vision they’re trying to convey. Maybe plans for the garden. Or a particular door. Or a place that they visited. Me? I have to describe it in words which is harder to convey in every day life.

    I have many weaknesses but I’m a faster than average sprinter (not the fastest sprinter, just faster than the average weekend athlete). I can’t take credit for it, I was just made that way. And just like the average person can’t will or train themselves to sprint as fast as me, I know from experience that I can’t train or will myself to draw as well as the average person let alone to become a gifted drawer. How much I wish that I could train myself to sketch things well and to sketch them quickly.

    Anyway. That would be my wish. Everything else that I’m not good at I’ve made peace with. But I do wish I could draw well.

  • It Ain’t No ‘Call Me Ishmael’ (AKA The Opening Sentence Of My Autobiography)

    You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

    In another life I was a teacher.

    And for some reason I thought it would be awesome for the kids to teach them, “Moby Dick.”

    Who does that? Who takes a 17 year old high school student, someone who has their ENTIRE life ahead of them, and says, “I’m going to teach you Moby Dick!”

    I did.

    Those poor kids.

    And to their credit they didn’t rebel. They didn’t mock me (at least not to my face) or refuse to read another word. Day after day they came to class, had a smile on their faces, rolled up their sleeves, and worked on their assignments.

    I remember the last day of the unit. I thanked them for being patient with me through the book. That it had been a long slog but that they’d stuck with it and I was grateful for that (because students WOULD rebel if they don’t buy in to a unit or a teacher). Then we watched the movie, the one with Patrick Stewart. When the opening line of the movie was “Call me Ishmael” the students cheered.

    That was one of the great moments of my teaching career. Because they had actually stayed with me during Moby Dick AND the powerful opening line to Moby Dick had actually stuck with them. Resonated (maybe) with them.

    “Call me Ishmael.”

    It’s such a great opening line. Simple. Direct. Even layered and symbolic (Ishmael also means “wanderer”).

    For me, that is the great opening line of any novel, one that can be aped or matched but never surpassed. And, for me, when the students cheered when that line was said in the movie was one of the great professional moments of my life.

    I’m asked, “What would be the opening sentence of your autobiography.”

    And to that I’d say, first, there is no sentence I could ever write that would match that book. And, second, I can’t say anyone would ever care about my autobiography since I’m just an ordinary person who has had mostly an ordinary life:

    • My dad was a banker who wore a tie, my mom was a CPA.
    • I went to public schools in a mid-size city.
    • I was mostly a B- student, I played sports but neither terribly good nor too terrible, I had some friends but no more than an average person.
    • I’ve had a middling career that was neither terribly good nor too terrible. I know for a fact I was pretty exceptional at strategic sales early in my career, but am very mediocre at it since 2011.
    • Now 50 I’m neither rich nor poor, and just like most 50 somethings am trying to figure out which side of the Hill Of Life I’m on (the up slope or down slope).

    In short, I’m pretty average in every way. And that’s just fine by me.

    So, I guess, my opening sentence(s) would be, “I’m pretty ordinary in every way. And that’s just fine by me.”

  • My Autobiography Title Would Be “Ugly Boy” (AKA Takes A Licking And Keeps On Ticking)

    If there were a biography about you, what would the title be?

    As a teen, I was teased a lot about my looks.

    But my favorite tale is the time in eighth grade when my classmate burst into class. “Hey everyone, get this!” He called out to the class. “Tony’s grandma was looking at our yearbook last night and stopped and pointed at a picture and said, ‘Now that boy’s ugly.’ So Tony looks who to see it was and it was Rob!” Of course, I’m Rob in that story, and I can still hear the laughter from my classmates.

    To make a long story short, that was a painful comment but I kept my head up. And I have many many faults, but I’m a reasonably confident person who didn’t let that teasing about my looks in my formative years bring me down and in fact had a lot of fun in my teen years. I’m actually kind of proud of that if I’m honest, that I hung in there and resisted the urge to withdraw from the world despite some heartless ribbing along the way.

    I’ve had a lot of luck in my life. But I’ve also had my share of times where I was kicked in the groin. I had undiagnosed autoimmune disease as a kid but somehow emerged from that reasonably productive as an adult. My first marriage was to a selfish narcissist who eventually kicked me to the curb after extracting every morsel that she possibly could from me but again I emerged from that too (and today am re-married to a much better person). And perhaps luckiest of all, I was diagnosed with a potentially terminal (50/50) lung disease at age 42 but not only survived that but emerged from it mostly okay.

    So I feel like I’ve lived a lucky life where I have so much to be grateful for, but also one where I’m frequently called “Ugly Boy” (mostly figuratively but one time literally) that I have had to stave off and then emerge from. And I have done just that.

    I feel so fortunate for all that. So grateful for that. I am proud to say that I was called “Ugly Boy.” And that I emerged from that a-oh-kay 🙂