The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for September 2010

A Successful Failure

by 2 Comments

One day there are going to make a movie about my life. It is going to be called a A Successful Failure. I don’t know which actor I want to play me but I can tell you that it won’t be Tom Cruise, Gary Busey or Mickey Rooney. Nor will it be Brad Pitt, Nicholas Cage, Ed Norton, John Wayne or Frank Sinatra.

Don’t hassle me about mixing dead actors in with those who are alive. I am well aware who is on the list and who isn’t. Truth is that I don’t really care about the movie. It is nothing more than a silly trick that I use to help me with writing. You see, five minutes ago I was having trouble getting this post started so I needed to find a way to break through a small block. And no it wasn’t because I was lost in thought about cleveland or parts/people related to cleveland. That would have made me laugh.

So let’s talk about the inherent contradiction of describing someone as a successful failure. It sounds crazy doesn’t it, at least from a cursory glance. What the hell does it mean to be a successful failure. Would that describe some loser who has a proven track record of failing at whatever it is they try to do. Well, if you have a limited imagination or are simply unwilling to open your mind than it might sound that way.

But it is not how I would define it. I see a successful failure as a person who has overcome some challenge or challenges and is now…successful. Because the reality is that we all fail at something. Could be school , work, relationships, whatever. We all fail. The question is not whether you will fail but what happens when you do, because sooner or later you will.

My kids know that under certain conditions I will accept failure. If you try your hardest and fail that is ok. Obviously no one wants to fail, but there is a world of difference between failing because you didn’t try and failing because you just couldn’t get it done.

But that doesn’t really cover being a successful failure. Because the way I see it history is replete with examples of successful failures, ya know that story about Einstein failing math comes to mind. But when I think of successful failures I always come back to Thomas Edison and some of his quotes about failure:

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man, and I will show you a failure.

I love those because they make sense to me. They fit my nature. And they are well suited for talking to the kids about life. I want to raise children who don’t fear failure. I have failed at some things before, but every time I did I took something away from it. Every time I did I learned something and I took what I learned and applied it to my life.

Many people look at Michael Jordan as being the greatest basketball player of all time, but the man wasn’t a great baseball player. His attempt to make it onto a big league team failed. That is a pretty good example of a person who is a successful failure.

At the end of the day I still come back to the same places. My interest in failure is really based upon how you respond to it. Do you let it crush your spirit or do you get back up and scream in defiance. As a parent I want children who aren’t afraid of life and are willing to take risks.

And as a person it is not much different. Sometimes I have jumped off of the side of the mountain and done my best to learn how to fly as I fell. Sometimes I didn’t quite figure it out and ended up in some horrific crashes. But every once in a while I found that formula and figured out how to make it work. Every now and then I flew.

So call me a failure if you like, I think of myself as being among that crowd of successful failures we mentioned above. Life isn’t a sprint, it is a marathon and what you see today isn’t necessarily proof of what you will see tomorrow. A successful failure isn’t someone who allows others to define them. They do that themselves.

Blogging For Fathers- The M3 Conference

by 2 Comments

I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle. Been running around since January screaming that 2010 is the Year of the Daddy Blogger and yet I missed the first daddy blogger conference. Missed out on the chance to hang with Cal Ripken Jr. and the chance to meet a few of the boys in person. But though I am disappointed that I couldn’t make it I am ok with it. Not that I really had a choice- and I don’t mean that sarcastically.

Part of being a parent means that you have an obligation to be a role model for your children. The choices you make in how you live your life affect them. Sometimes you have make very hard decisions that are awkward and uncomfortable. But that is part of the job description.

I stayed home because it is Rosh Hashanah, The Jewish New Year, I am in the middle of a work project I couldn’t get out of and because I am coaching my daughter’s soccer team. Our first game is this weekend and I couldn’t miss the game. It is her first season playing and she is far too excited about this.

Even though the decision was easy to make it was still disappointing, but it is also a good teaching moment. Not just for the children but for me. I wanted to go. I wanted to meet some of my friends in person and I wanted to learn more about blogging. I said the very same thing to my son.

He told me that he understood why I would want to see my friends in person but told me that he didn’t understand why I wanted to learn more about blogging. So I looked at him and asked him what he thought was the reason.

In return he fed me one of my lines about how you never stop learning and that even when you are an expert at something there is still more to learn. As you can imagine his story made me smile. Even when you know that your children are listening it is always good to have them provide you with proof that they do listen.

And it was nice to be able to tell him a little bit about some of my goals for myself. One of the big ones is doing something with the blog. After 6.5 years I feel like it is time to change things up a bit around here. It is time to shake it up and force myself to stretch. I can do better and doing better will only help me- but we’ll save that conversation for a different day.

For now let’s say that I am very curious to hear about the M3 and whether people enjoyed it. The daddy bloggers have been around just as long as the moms, if not longer. It is about time that we do something to help ourselves.

The Daddy Blogger Blog Hop is Back

by Leave a Comment

Ok, kids that wacky daddy blogger blog hop is back.

The rules…

1. You need to be a father. New father, old father, soon to be father, want some day to be a father, father…doesn’t matter. You just need to be a dad. (Or a really awesome mom that meets the same criteria!)

2. You must own and maintain your own blog.

3. If you meet the requirements for rules one and two, look back over your posts from the past week, from Friday to Friday. Re-read them all.

4. Choose the post you feel was your particular BEST for the week. It can be funny, helpful, sad, dramatic, deep, light…whatever. Pick the post that most reflects you and what your awesome blog has to offer.

5. Follow the host. That’s me. It’s quick and painless and I always follow back. (This part is optional, but oh so appreciated!)

6. Put your blog address and a short description of the post in the Linky link located below. Be short but concise. (You know…like Twitter!)

7. After you are on the list, surf the posts of the other dads and follow as many as you can. Read and above all else COMMENT! We all know that comments are to bloggers what a keg of Dear Park water is to a desert nomad. COMMENT, COMMENT, COMMENT!

8. Grab the code below, create a new post on your blog, and enter it so you can share the growing list with all your followers. Then just sit back and let it grow!

 

The Review

by Leave a Comment

Here is a quick snapshot of some recent posts. Got a couple of very cool things percolating inside the melon that I call my head. So if you are wondering what I might be thinking you can choose to do one of the following:

1) Stay tuned to this Bat Channel and read whatever it is I write.
2) Email me and ask questions.
3) Text, Telephone and or Telegrams are optional

And for your blast from the past you might wish to read:

My Parents Purchased Cemetery Plots
A Secret For My Children
I Yelled At G-d
M.L.B.F.- Music To Put Me To Sleep

Becoming a Dad

by 5 Comments

IMG_0590

I can’t tell you when we decided that it was time to try to become parents, at least I can’t give you an exact date. Maybe I should have started blogging far earlier than I did. Not sure that it really matters as I remember the important details or at least some of them.

If you’ll forgive the venture into the land of TMI, there was something surreal in knowing that this was not a drill. It was time to find out if the boys could swim. For years I had worked hard to make sure that the swimmers wouldn’t break free and now I was doing the opposite. Now I was worried that perhaps they might not know what to do, maybe I had stupid sperm that would swim in circles or somehow get lost.

It was strange to be worried about that. All those years of being told to be careful, have safe sex, don’t get a disease or pregnant were out the window. At the time only a few of my friends had kids and none of them had any trouble getting pregnant.

In fact one of them is so fertile that her husband only has to think baby and she is instantly knocked up. It is kind of a neat trick, but not nearly as much fun as doing it the old fashioned way, but I digress.

The idea that one day some kid was going to call me dad was exciting and a little bit frightening. I had always wanted children, but it was surreal to think that I had actually reached the place where such things were possible. I wasn’t really afraid of being a bad father- wasn’t concerned with the state of the world. In my eyes it was as safe and as dangerous as it had ever been.

What I worried about was that the kids to be would be too much like me. Now before you accuse me of being some crazy narcissist understand that I was the kid who played stuntman. I pushed the limits and did some nutty stuff. It was fun to talk about. Great to tell stories about how my friends and I had done something incredible. The problem was that when I tried to look at it as a father might it made my head hurt.

And now years later it makes it spin. If my kids are as dumb as I was I am going to lose all of my hair and suffer a nervous breakdown. What the hell was wrong with me. I jumped off the roof into swimming pools, out ran the train in my Camaro and jumped over a few bonfires.

But that is part of the joy of being a parent. It is knowing that somehow in spite of all the crazy and stupid things you have done you made it to the other side.

Somehow you got through it all. You have lots of stories of good and bad experiences that you hope to share one day with those kids. Distilled wisdom that you offer free of charge because they are your children and you want them to avoid some of the pitfalls you had to deal with.

The thing is that it will take years before you really begin to find out if the lessons you have tried to pass along have had impact. Decades before you can really assess whether you did a good job in passing it along.

But the good news is that along the way you’ll have one hell of a good time.

All I know is that the past decade has been exceptionally hard and exceptionally rewarding. There have been days where I really have wanted to go back in time and tell that young fool to wear a condom. Really, he managed to avoid getting in trouble in spite of himself, couldn’t he have kept the streak going.

But then they do something, these children of mine. They see me crazed with anger and concern and give me a hug or a kiss. They draw pictures or tell me a story and in seconds I can’t remember being angry. It is good to be dad. It is good to be a father, even if it means paying for a private school that won’t let me retire until I am 235.

Yep, life is pretty good for this dad.

The Fall From Grace

by 2 Comments

“G-d struck down Lucifer and sent him spilling from the heavens and into the Earth. His wings were taken and his appearance went from fair to foul.” It was the first line of the story I had tried to write my sophomore year of high school. I fumbled around with it for a while, tried to find a voice that I could latch onto, a guide that would help me tell the tale.

I was almost sixteen years-old and an avid reader. I loved science-fiction and fantasy, wanted to be like Tolkien and Bradbury. It didn’t seem out of reach or impossible, all I needed to do was find the voice, catch the willow-of-the-wisp that would ferry me across the River Styx, my personal Charon.

Even now you can hear the echoes of the writers that influenced me in my youth. I’d like to say that I made the same mistake as Icarus, that I soared too high, that my flame burned too brightly to shine for long. It would be a lie. My life had long since lost that spark of hope that the youth of the world rely upon. I felt like I was nothing more than a broken toy that had once been shiny and new and now was buried at the bottom of the toy box. I could see glimpses of daylight, but I had no idea how to claw my way back to the surface.

Georgie might have been crazy. He might have been certifiable, but he was my lifeline into the world. He was the reason that I did more than just go to work. He was the reason that I didn’t just lie in bed or in front of the television.

A past love had told me that my affection for Georgie was equivalent to suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome.” She had said the same thing that many did about Georgie, that he would die a violent death and that he would cause nothing but pain to those around him.

I wonder if she would be surprised to see me now, to know that I was the reason he was dead. I wonder if she could recognize me, if any remnants of the love that we had shared remained or if I was nothing more than a dried up husk. Once I had been in love. Once I had felt alive and not dead inside. She wasn’t afraid to look at the darker places inside of me, didn’t think that I was broken, just lost.

And for a time her belief in me had made me feel like maybe she was right, like there might be a place for me, a chance to make something of myself. But that time was so long ago it was no longer real to me.

There is no question that her departure from my life corresponded with my own downward spiral, my own destructive nature took me to places I was afraid to be. The daylight was no longer bright and the sun was no longer warm. When she left it was abrupt and without warning.

She had told me that she loved me. She had promised to never leave me and I had believed her. I had tried to hold on to that belief, tried to convince myself that one day I would come home and find her waiting for me. But the days turned into weeks and the weeks became months and time never stopped moving, but my heart did.