Life, Work & Wonder

Tag: love

  • 34 years later, email still uses most of my screen time

    WRITING PROMPT: What app uses most of your screen time, and do you feel bad about it?

    I was 24 — in 1992 — the first time I ever saw email.

    I was working as a teller at a local national bank branch, and one day they installed email on our branch’s shared computer. It was pretty mystical, really. Suddenly, you could go into a black dos based screen, type in someone’s email address, send them that email, and they’d receive it. We didn’t have to send a memo versus interoffice mail, or call the person on the phone, we could quickly type up something, hit send, know that they’d receive it instantly and when they could they could get back to us. It was pretty surreal, actually. Almost magical.

    Very few of us actually needed to send emails, but one day I thought it would be fun to email the CEO of our 50,000 employee company. So I searched and found his email address, then typed a polite email along the lines of, “Hi, I recently graduated college, I’m an employee at one of the bank’s branches, I really enjoy working here and I really love the email access we’ve been given.” I remember word spreading around my six colleagues and they gathered around and watched as I finished the email then hit “Send.” Whoosh.

    Maybe because my dad’s career was always fast tracked and at the time he was an executive at a Fortune 500 company, but I wasn’t intimidated at all by this endeavor. I was on employee at the company, he was in charge of the company, why wouldn’t he want to hear how much I appreciated working for the bank and the email he’d probably authorized? Still, people were amazed (or maybe stupefied) that I’d sent that off, and for the next few hours people would ask, “Did you get a response?”

    Then a response came in. He replied that he appreciated hearing from me, that he appreciated that I chose that bank as my first after-college job, and what were the long term ambitions for my career because maybe he could introduce me to that department? It was a minor celebration among all of us that I’d gotten an encouraging response.

    Except our Branch Manager From Hell didn’t see it that way. Not one bit. I was young at the time, so didn’t quite realize that there were some good bosses, a lot of less-than-stellar bosses, and a handful of spectacularly toxic bosses in this world. 34 years later, I can honestly say she was one of the latter. She was spectacularly bad on morale (for too many reasons to list here). And when word trickled through the branch that I’d received a response from the CEO, she marched up to the front of the branch and asked to speak with me. To make a long story short, she was irritated that I’d sent an email to the CEO. She felt like it reflected poorly on her branch because it showed that maybe we had too much time on our hands, that it was a misuse of company resources, that I’d gone around the chain of command (which wasn’t my intention), and that it was borderline insubordinate. I was instructed to delete the CEO’s email with no response, had a formal notice of unsatisfactory deposited in my HR Records, and was suspended from unsupervised computer usage for 30 days. This might seem like an extreme response, and it was; maybe her only justification was at the time email was still so new people were trying to figure it out and perhaps to her it was a little too much like witchcraft so reacted in kind?

    I learned something from that experience.

    I learned that most people are innately fearful of superiors who are many rungs up on the ladder, and that to be unafraid (confident) around them is actually a potential career booster. I learned that there are a million different unsuspecting ways to trigger a terrible leader. And that email was actually a pretty powerful and awesome real-time tool.

    Over the next 15 years I would use email extensively. To reach out to friends, negotiate contracts, and even to expand my network. I loved that email was instant, that I could put details in emails that most people will read, and just found it to be an amazing communication tool that was actually superior to phone call, meeting or (later) text.

    At a glance, I would say I use other applications more frequently than email. But if I drill down into it that’s not really true for me. I still spend an hour each morning scrolling through my email, reading through the day’s news (including great newsletters by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Morning Brew, Apple News and The Seattle Times). And I still use it to send and receive detailed responses from people I need to have detailed interactions with.

    So I remember that first time using email in 1992. And how magical it seemed to be. And 34 years later I can still say it’s the application I use most and I have no regrets about using it.

  • I Never Ever Thought I’d Experience Divorce (1st of a series)

    The one thing I thought would never happen to me was divorce. Turns out, I was wrong.

    I met my future ex-wife when I was 23, we moved in together when I was 24, and we married when I was 26. For five years the marriage was nice, then for 15 years it was sometimes okay and sometimes frustrating, but always seemed pretty much rock solid. 

    It wasn’t a perfect marriage. My ex wife and I didn’t always align on things like money and aspirations. And we didn’t really align on important things like romance and intimacy. But I always thought we were friends, and for the most part it was a good enough marriage and sometimes a really fun marriage (my ex could plan a fun vacation with the best of them). 

    I remember volunteering for the crisis line in the late 2010s, before I realized my marriage was going to end. I had a few callers who were fretting about a failed marriage or a pending divorce, and to be honest it bothered me that I couldn’t really identify with them on that piece, because after all I myself would never be divorced. I’d experienced a lot in my life, including my own near death, but divorce wasn’t going to be one of them, so I felt like that was a gap in my ability to fully help those callers whose desperation stemmed from divorce. So I read a book then two about divorce, so I could have a better feeling of what my callers were experiencing and thus maybe be in a better place of helping them. That was in 2019.  

    Then almost overnight my marriage just fell apart. 

    Like most things that come to an end, it was a gradual then sudden process. It began with some yelling (her yelling at me) then apologizing, yelling then apologizing. In the beginning this would happen about once every week or two. Within a few months it seems like every single day she was just so angry at me about one thing or another. Along the way there were other signs: she started spending less and less time at home, more and more time with friends or focused on her career path, and increasingly she was just ignoring me when we were at home. She started questioning me all the time, usually on the theme of why hadn’t I been more successful in life, with success being defined here as making exorbitant amounts of money and commanding exorbitant amounts of prestige. It was like she’d decided at age 50 that I was a total failure because I wasn’t a roaring success, and she resented me for that. 

    Still, even after 11 months of this, I still didn’t think that divorce was a possibility. It was just a rough patch. It would pass. I even asked if she would be interested in marriage counseling, which she didn’t appreciate at all: “Don’t you see how busy I am??? Why would you ask me that when you know I’m so busy!”

    The moment I realized that divorce was a possibility was the rainy evening she was hollering at me, and then she said, “We’ve been together for 25 years. I don’t want to get a divorce!” Huh?? Clearly divorce was on her mind. 

    To summarize what was maybe the longest month of my life, a few weeks later she asked if we could talk. And she said, “I can’t accomplish what I want to accomplish and be married to you.” And just like that the marriage was over. Something (divorce) a year earlier that I thought was something I’d never experience was suddenly very certainly happening to me.

    I remember the Frasier episode where he says, “My wife left me, and that was painful. Then she came back, and that was excruciating.” The end of my marriage was painful, sooooo very painful, and shocking to live through. And it was a very stressful two year process to get divorced that witnessed me age 15 years in that time (I’d been 51 and looked maybe 40, and then suddenly I was 52 and looked every bit of 52). But ultimately, my life is so much better now that I’m divorced, and it would have been a lot more excruciating in life had my ex wife stayed with me or tried to come back to me (not that either one of us would have allowed that to happen by that point).

    So I never expected to get divorced. But of course life doesn’t listen to me. And then it was so painful, first the very long process of divorce and then the even longer process of healing. Of truly moving on. The bad news is I had to go through that, but the good news is that a) I’m in a much much much better place now than I was during my first marriage and b) I can honestly empathize with and maybe even help anyone who is going through the unthinkable: the premature end of what was supposed to have been a lifetime together. 

    It has been five years. For the most part I’ve moved on, although I still harbor some hard feelings at times. And there is no question that I’m better off. So I am beginning the journey of writing down my process in case it benefits someone else in the mist of a divorce or a failing marriage. This is the first of a series of posts I’ll be making about my failed marriage, the divorce, the healing process, and ultimately redemption as I discovered a much better life for myself in the years after the divorce.

  • 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 Learned That When All Is Taken From Me It’s Coffee That I Miss Most

    What is your favorite drink?

    In 2012 my doctor suggested I give up a lot of foods I love. Just for six months or so, so not for terribly long. But still. It was a lot to ask all things considered.

    For more than a year I’d been mired in hell battling lung disease. I’d spent the better part of a month going through a myriad of doctor’s appointments and tests before spending a week in the hospital as they tried to diagnose what I had (spoiler alert: a very very rare disease with only a handful of known cases at the time). Then I’d spent six months on prednisone and other medicines to battle the disease. Then the real hell began: utter exhaustion as the disease and the doctor’s faded away and left me to pick up the pieces of what had been a normal life just 12 months earlier.

    Turns out all the prednisone I’d been on had created sensitivities to a lot of foods, many of which I love: breads (yeast), chocolate, most fruits and (aarrrgggghhhh) coffee among them. I was placed on a strict limited diet to decrease inflammation and to give my body a chance to re-set. This meant that I had to give up nearly everything I love to eat, including pizza, chocolate and coffee.

    What I learned from this experience is that you can take nearly everything from me, and what I most hated sacrificing was my coffee.

    I love coffee.

    I love waking up in the morning to a cup of coffee. Sipping coffee throughout the day. And a midafternoon espresso to give me a final boost.

    I love the smell. I love the feeling. And I love the experience of coffee.

    To take that away from me was very very hard. And I was so grateful when I was told it was okay to drink it again six months later.

    We learn how important things are when they are taken away. Lung disease cost me my ability to play competitive sports, the political ability (and desire) to thrive in Corporate America, and even my first marriage. But it was coffee that I missed most of all when I couldn’t have it.

    Here’s to life. And here is to life with a fresh cup of coffee.

  • 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/

  • Is There Any More Evidence That Earth Is Hell Than No One Breaking In To Clean Our House?

    It’s a long decidedly-uninteresting story as to why, but our cleaners don’t clean our basement, just our main floor. Which means cleaning the basement is on us, which means in busy times (nearly always) the basement doesn’t get cleaned as often as it should except for our office area.

    This morning I noticed some dirt left by our contractors (or me) next to the basement exit door. It needs to be swept. And it sure as heck won’t get swept today. Yes, I keep a small broom upstairs to sweep by that door, but in my long list of priorities sweeping the floor next to the basement door is not high on that list.

    Which makes me wonder: Why don’t good break-ins happen??

    We’re forever worried about people breaking in to steal our laptops from our office. And it’s possible that can happen if we don’t take precautions like not leaving the laptops in view when we’re not around. But there is basically zero chance of anyone breaking in and stealing the dirt by the back door.Of breaking in and sweeping, or cleaning the bathroom, or upgrading/optimizing our laptops, or vacuuming the couch.

    Which is more evidence that Earth is actually Hell. That somewhere out there in the omniverse at some point in the past we were condemned to amnesia and prison or to hell, and it’s here, on Earth. I love life. And I love our Earth. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hell.

    For example:

    Why is paranoid schizophrenia always bad? Why is it that the unfortunate souls* who suffer from it have misguided delusions that often hurt themselves or others? Why aren’t they walking in an imaginary world filled with happy people who tell them to do amazing things, rather than a scary world where voices tell them to do bad things?

    Why are people always abducted for bad things? For money, or to hurt them? Why isn’t there ever a time where someone disappears and it’s because some good samaritan crazy person kidnapped** them to HELP them by curing their cancer or making them more youthful or something? Like suddenly our friend is abducted, then a few days later they’re returned with that cancerous growth removed?

    Anyway. Earth is Hell. I’m convinced of it. And I need to look no further than the unswept dirt on my floor and how there is zero chance of some hooligan sweeping it away for us.

    NOTES:

    (*) Note: a recently past family acquaintance had this — it’s awful)?

    (**) My heart goes out to the Guthrie family. And also the families of the 90,000 outstanding missing persons cases in the US.

  • A Night Of “Sunset Boulevard” And “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” (AKA The Risk Of Being Kept. Or Suckered)

    Last night, for the first time in maybe five years, we walked two movies back-to-back. It just so happened that both were classics.

    The first was Sunset Boulevard, picked for the primary reasons that we haven’t seen it in a long time, we love it, and it was free. The second was Breakfast At Tiffany’s, which I’ve seen twice (not in a long time) and couldn’t recall either of it other than it was two young kept people who develop a friendship. It was surprisingly good.

    It was interesting that we watched both movies on the same night because there is a similar string in a way. In essence, all the main characters are younger people struggling to pay bills who are at risk of (or dream of) becoming kept people by people with means.

    It is an interesting dynamic in a romantic relationship, a financially struggling person and financially comfortable person. Both people have to be totally grounded (I believe) and noble for it to work. The risks otherwise of course, is that one person takes advantage of the other. This can work how we might expect it to work, wherein the wealthy person exploits the poor person; in Sunset Boulevard, the struggling “hero” as consumed by the wealthy older person until he loses his independence and identity and becomes a virtual prisoner. But it can work the other way too, where the struggling person wraps their tentacles around the poor person.  In my own instance, I think of how I was 20-something with work ethic and a college degree and a savings account who met a high school dropout with bad credit and literally nothing to her name. I feel like she latched on to me and drove me to get what she wanted in life until such time 30 years later that I was no longer capable or needed and so was put to pasture, all the while gaslighting me. I was duped. I should have been wiser. Smarter. I became a victim. It worked out for me in the end (I was free!!!) but I lost 25 years of my life and my health in the process.

    So it definitely can be where a person-in-need becomes entrapped, but so too can it work the other way. So it’s very important always that we enter a relationship with our eyes wide open, and we are aware of the potential dynamics, and we work to stay on sound footing, whether financially or otherwise. Anyway, that was my take.

    I loved watching those movies last night. It was a fun way to relax on a stormy evening. And I liked Breakfast At Tiffany’s a lot more than I thought I would. And how much I wish I’d been wiser about relationship dynamics when I was 23.

  • Pride Is Folly

    Pride.

    There was a time I had too much pride.

    Waaayyyyyy to much pride.

    It was pride that prevented me from being too open and out there in public. For example, I dreaded sales calling because of pride. And didn’t have social media accounts because of pride. And never ever allowed dirty dishes to be in the kitchen because of pride.

    Pride brought my spirit down when there was a flaw with my house or car. It made me sensitive (and lash out) at criticism (“f— you!”). It made me fret too much about silly statistics, like batting average or shooting percentage or quota attainment percentage. Who cares what I batted in recreational softball??

    It was pride that embarrassed me when my (now ex) wife promoted her business and herself, like that time she stood on the street corner and handed out Halloween candy with her business card on it. I remember having to quietly work so hard to swallow that pride, to let her do what she needed to do without commenting that it was embarrassing seeing my last name being handed out on a street corner.

    And it was pride that drove me to always look my best, to make sure my hair was good and my body was firm and I stayed youthful looking.

    In short, pride made me worry too much about how people perceived me.

    Then lung disease grabbed me in 2011. Put me in a hospital bed. Made me tired. Nearly killed me. Then, by some incredible undeserving miracle, it loosened its grasp on me and retreated, sparing me and letting me not only live but live without an oxygen tank (a 50/50 chance)!

    Maybe best of all, when lung disease retreated, it also took with it my pride. Which I think is a good thing. In fact, it’s a great thing.

    I could care less how people (except Larissa) perceive my career. Or whether they remember me as a good athlete or smart or not. Or see me as attractive or not. Who cares?? What does it change or matter??

    In 2019, when my hurtful ex-wife chose trying to shame me about various things rather than just honestly saying she wanted to move on with her life (i.e. chose gaslighting and shaming rather than transparency), I guffawed at her. “I won’t be judged by you,” I said. “I beat lung disease. What the f— have you done?”

    That was the moment I realized that I was truly confident. That lung disease spared me from the judgement of others. Because when we’ve faced the specter of death, not much in life can scare us after that.

    Now I don’t care how people perceive my career. Or think I’m goofy. Or roll their eyes at my goofy rambling face-book posts.

    It’s incredibly liberating.

    Today I made myself vulnerable. Posted on Facebook and Instagram and my LinkedIn page that I was holding an open house tomorrow. 15 years ago there is no way I would have done that, but today I only felt happy that I could do my best to promote Larissa’s client. It felt good.

    Meanwhile, I could care less if ultimately people on LinkedIn think I’ve had a successful career or not. I know the truth. What do I care how some random person perceives me based on my profile? This also feels good.

    Pride is folly. Because at the end of the day we’re all human and vulnerable and fallible. No matter how perfect we are or rich we are or even strong we are, we’re just a bout with lung disease or cancer away from death. This is humbling. And it’s beautiful.

    Here is to being pride free. And the incredibly luck that is beating terminal illness. I’m so grateful.

  • PROMPT: What’s My Favorite Thing To Cook

    What’s your favorite thing to cook?

    How much I admire people who love to cook.

    Larissa enjoys cooking, especially for the people she loves. She does not mind after a busy day of work migrating to the kitchen and investing an hour surrounded with pots and pans preparing a meal. For me, that is utter hell.

    I remember when the kids were young. My ex-wife was never ever around. Ninety percent — or more — of the days she was gone early and still gone late, volunteering, on a trip somewhere, or (supposedly) working although she never seemed to bring much money home. Which meant the cooking was on me. I cooked the breakfast, and prepared the lunches for school, and then when it was evening preparing dinner was on me.

    How much I hated to cook.

    I disliked cooking before the kids were born, but that dislike became utter disdain after the years and years of drudgery in the kitchen when raising a family.

    I remember after a long day of work, and it was 5pm, and I needed to help the kids with their homework, and I needed to prepare a meal, and I didn’t know where in the heck my (now) ex-wife was other than she wouldn’t be home, and just being sooooooo worn out. I would make myself a drink, and make myself an espresso, and I would drink the drink and drink the espresso and think, “I can do this. I can do this.” And then I’d do it. I’d make tacos or burritos or chicken or quesadillas or burgers, then the kids and I would sit and eat and laugh about various things (we were always telling stories and laughing, and that memory makes me smile just typing it here). Then I’d clean up, help them with their homework, read them a story or watch a movie with them, then we’d go off to bed to start it all over again the next day.

    When I’m asked, “What’s my favorite thing to cook.” All those memories come roaring back. And I feel so much love for my kids. And resentment toward my ex-wife. And so much gratitude (and admiration) for my wife who cooks so often for us. And so much gratitude for my parents, who prepared meals for me for nearly 20 years.

    But most of all, what I think is this: my favorite meal to cook is any meal I don’t have to cook at all. 🙂

    DISCLAIMERS:

    • This was written 100% organically without the help of AI.
    • I hate to read what I’ve written, which means this was at best quickly scanned for blatant errors. I apologize for any and all typing errors.