Archives for July 2012

The Dad Blogging Dance

July 10, 2012 by Jack Steiner 12 Comments

One day when my children ask me to tell them what kinds of books, movies and stories I like to write I will show them the scene above. I will tell them that it is the sort of moment that makes their dad sit up and take notice.

I’ll tell them that it taps into a million different thoughts, dreams and moments. I’ll say that it touches me and it makes me feel and that this is what I want my writing to do for others.

And then I’ll show them a few more clips like this one

and this one

That’s because dad has been dancing in the fire for a thousand years and probably will for a thousand more. It is what I do. It is who I am. It is a part of me and I no longer remember when it wasn’t.

Life Isn’t Fair

The kids and I have been talking again about what is fair and what isn’t. I have done my best to protect their innocence but I haven’t lied to them about life being unfair.

It is not fair. It never was and it never will be. There are moments where it is cruel, merciless and downright mean.

But that doesn’t mean that there is no magic nor majesty. Â It doesn’t mean that we should lie down and give in to the hard times because that is not who we are either.

The point Â and the purpose of talking to them about it is to set the ground rules. They need to understand that are responsible for our own happiness and obligated to work hard to get what we need and what we want.

There is no shame in that. Accomplishment is to be celebrated.

Three Generations

Last night the three remaining men in the family went to see Spiderman. Â Three generations, grandfather, son and grandson took a few moments out of the day to share and celebrate.

I spent a chunk of the night watching the look on my son and father’s faces. I did it because that was magical to me. Happiness radiated from the two of them and I couldn’t stop watching them continue to build the sort of relationship I once had with my grandfathers.

It was beautiful and I loved seeing it grow.

If you are among the long times readers you know that I miss my grandparents, especially my grandfathers. You know that I got to be quite close with them both. They were important to me for a million reasons not the least of which is that I never stopped learning from them.

So how can I not feel my heart swell when I see it happening again. Maybe that is why they both showed up in my dreams last night.

We talked about life and I told them things that I won’t share here. They said what they had to say and I listened.

When I woke up I was happy to have had the time. Don’t care if it was a real visitation or just my imagination because it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I woke up with a deeper understanding of some things.

Daughters

The dark haired beauty is counting down the days until her actual birthday. She throws her arms around my neck, kisses my face and tells me to shave because my face is too scratchy.

I rub my face against hers and she squeals with laughter. She yells catch me and takes off running.

For a few minutes we run from room to room and I make sure to almost get her but not quite.

This girl of mine tells me to sit down because she has written songs and she wants to sing them to me. She makes a point to brush my hair so that it meets with her liking and then she tells me that they are romantic songs but not written for a boy.

When I ask why she is writing romantic songs she smiles. The whole point is to get a reaction from me. I know this game so for a moment I keep a blank expression and then I tell her that I am going to punch all the boys in the nose.

She roars with laughter because she thinks she has me. Ok, maybe she does just a little bit.

I think of a scene in Spiderman in which a father catches a boy in his daughter’s room and think about days to come when that could happen. I am not ready for it, but she wants to grow up now.

Writing/Epilogue

Life has been busier than I like and far more complicated. Â I need to restructure things so that I get more time to write. There are words to be written and stories to be told and I feel the proverbial grains of sand slipping through my fingers with ever increasing speed.

So I am doing my best to capture these moments and burn them into memories.

It is what I do because sometimes I just write.

Building The Blog- What Should I Name My Blog?

July 10, 2012 by Jack Steiner 31 Comments

Unless I am mistaken almost every blogger can write a post that consists of advice for new bloggers based upon the mistakes they made when they were rookies.

Heck, we can probably do that about virtually anything and everything in our lives. It is part of the beauty of life experience. Once you have it you are granted the wisdom to look back and wonder how you managed to survive and thrive in spite of all the stupid crap you did.

When I look back on my blogging experience I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t started in ’04 and had begun now. That is because I started on a whim. I didn’t put any real thought into it. I had heard that there was this thing called a blog and figured that I would try it out.

You can blame that impulse for the lack of imagination in the title I came up with:

Random Thoughts- Do They Have Meaning?

Yep, that is is the winner. If you clicked on the link and took time to look around you’ll see that I still maintain it. I don’t do much there anymore, but I make a point to visit and try to dust it off now and again.

The blogosphere wasn’t populated back then by a million posts about how to be successful. We didn’t talk about ebooks, giveaways or sponsorships. We just wrote posts, created blogrolls, shared links and visited our blogging buddies.

It is different now.

When I decided that I wanted to move from Blogger to a self hosted blog I stressed a bit over what to call this place and whether I should come up with some sort of catchy tagline. If you want to know more about why it is important go read my friend Judy’s post.

Go on now, we’ll wait for you.

I really did think of all sorts of crazy taglines and catchy titles. This place came very close to being called The Condom Broke or s0mething similar.

Ultimately it didn’t happen because even though I often identify myself as a dad blogger I am more than just that. So I didn’t want to limit myself or the opportunities that I could see coming from blogging.

So here I am several years later and quite pleased with my decision. I think it worked out and I am seeing good things coming from all this. The community is growing, traffic is increasing and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for all this.

And when I look at my stats to see the more popular posts here I see a broad selection of topics included there. I see that as evidence that proves you don’t have to specialize in one particular area.

Reader feedback time:

How did you come up with the name for your blog?

Are there topics you want me to cover?

Should peanut butter be refrigerated?

How 3,000 Sycophants Made One Man A Better Blogger Part 2

July 9, 2012 by Jack Steiner 9 Comments

Shakespeares "Puck" — Shakespeares “Puck” (Photo credit: dbking)

“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
that you have but slumber’d here,
While these visions disappear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream”
Puck’s Epilogue
A Midsummer Night’s Dream- Shakespeare

Â Your old friend Jack is a simple dad blogger who doesn’t understand the ways of the world. He knows not what he speaks of in business or social media. This is proven to be true by the lack of comments and followers who frequent these parts.

That is two parts sarcasm and three parts rhubarb boiled in rum and sweetened with some sort of sugary something or other. Or maybe it is proof that I suck at math, beats me. I don’t care to think too hard about it.

I still don’t take myself or life too seriously. I still blog first for me and then for you without much thought about whether I post too frequently for some to keep up or if my content is too broad or too narrow.

Here is some of what I know about myself:

I am forty-three and a father.
Sometimes I still feel like I am on the outside looking in.
I am intense. There is a fire that burns in my belly that has never gone out and probably won’t until I die.
Some people like me and some hate me. There doesn’t tend to be much in the way of ambivalence about how people feel about me.
I would prefer that people like me but I don’t care if they don’t. Not enough time in the day to worry about that.
I am a contradiction and sometimes more self conscious than I would like to be.

Here is some of what I know about social media:

Social media is about people, not platforms or tools.
Not everyone reads what we write/tweet/blog/share.
Some people don’t understand whatÂ we write/tweet/blog/share.
People remember how you make them feel more than they remember whatÂ we write/tweet/blog/share.
Some people tell you what to do because they only know one way to do it and are afraid to admit it.

That photo makes me think of some of the blog communities that I have visited. One person speaks and everyone listens but almost no one says anything. At least that is one way of looking at it.

Another way is to say that the community can’t believe the crap this person is shoveling and they are preparing to respond to it.

My preference is to be a part of communities where people feel comfortable to disagree. I am not a sheep and am guilty of sometimes looking down at sheeple.

I will tell you if I disagree. I will try to be polite about it. Sometimes I will fail. I don’t like failing, especially when we are trying to have a discussion. People don’t like it when you make them feel stupid.

If you and your community fling crap at me I might take two handfuls and throw it back at you. If you are really nasty I might even try to rub it in your hair. Blame that on the Jack Reacher gene. 😉

It is not a particularly good trait, but age has helped to eliminate much of it.

How Do You Know?

When my children tell me something is a fact I ask them “How Do You Know?” It is not because I want to be adversarial but because in the Internet age it is critical to ask questions about what we are told is real.

Many people have a bad tendency to believe whatever they read. It is easy to construct a professional looking site and to populate it with content that sounds important.

But that doesn’t mean that it is real, truthful or accurate.

I want my children to take time to think about what they are being told and to figure out what is real. I don’t want them to be suckered intentionally or otherwise.

Some of the “big shots” are fighting to stay on top or trying like crazy to get there. They are throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks. Not a very smart way to go about things, but when people feel insecure they do things.

But what do I know about any of this. I am just a dad blogger who slings words for a living.

You Rush a Miracle Man, You Get Rotten Miracles

July 9, 2012 by Jack Steiner 6 Comments

I don’t think either one of my grandfathers ever watched The Princess Bride but man oh man do I wish they had.

There is no special reason behind that other than I think they would have enjoyed it. More importantly when I said things like “Inconceivable” and “I hate waiting. I could give you my word as a Spaniard” they would have smiled and played along.

Sadly we couldn’t do that with too many movies, believe me I tried. I once said, “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark… and we’re wearing sunglasses” but no one responded with “hit it.”

Granted they both suggested that at some point in my life I should make a point to live in Chicago. It was where they spent their childhoods and where much of my family still lives. I promised that I would do something about that one day and most of the time I am pretty good about my promises.

Been thinking about my grandparents for obvious reasons and not just because of the unveiling. It still hasn’t completely sunk in that they are all gone now and that every generation has moved up a notch.

It sounds kind of silly, but I sort of think of them as being on vacation.

The Cemetery is About Life

If you watched my vlog you heard a couple of moments me talking about the cemetery and how quiet it was. I don’t mind quiet. I am comfortable in silence but there are moments where I want to hear something, where I want sounds of life.

The cemetery brings that out of me sometimes. It is not because I am scared or uncomfortable, but because it feels like there are a million people lying around me and everyone of them has a story to tell.

I am interested in people and that includes the dead. They have stories and as someone who loves a good tale it is hard not to be able to hear them told. So sometimes I wander around and read the tombstones and imagine what their lives might have been like.

I look at the dates of their birth and their death and think about how in some ways it doesn’t matter when they were born, they weren’t much different than us. It doesn’t matter if they are a hundred or a thousand years older than we are, they still had many of the same basic desires.

They wanted a good life. They wanted companionship. They wanted friends. They wanted family. They wanted to love and be loved.

If there were differences between them and us some of them might have been in the details, but not the big stuff.

The Big Stuff Never Changes

If you are a curmudgeon like I am you might be persnickety about that last subhead. You might say that times and technology have impacted people and our desires.

I suppose there might be some truth to it but I am still willing to argue that people always wanted companionship, that they wanted to be in love and to be loved. Read the books of the past and see what they talked about and you’ll see that some things never change.

It is why you find that certain slogans are good for business no matter what time period we live in. It is why businesses work so very hard on telling their stories because humans love stories. We love storytellers.

My grandfathers were among the best storytellers I knew. It is part of why they were good salesmen. They knew how to listen and they knew how to speak.

It is too bad they aren’t still here. It would be nice to have an MLT sandwich with them and to catch up. They’d tell me stories about what they are doing now and describe the bosses they had when 50 years ago.

Inevitably I’d listen to a tale that confirmed that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

It Is About Life

July 8, 2012 by Jack Steiner 10 Comments

Cemeteries are for the living. More on this later.

Apparently the video below did not upload with the two sentences above. That is unfortunate because if it had this would have made more sense.

The Excuses We Make

July 7, 2012 by Jack Steiner 39 Comments

“You know, we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of lives while they are happening. Back then I thought, Well there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that was the only day.” Archibald (Moonlight) Graham
Field of Dreams

“Dad, I don’t understand why you have to play ball so often. Can’t you skip a night?”

The speaker was my son. It was a legitimate question and one that deserved an answer, so I gave it to him.

“I try not to miss because I can’t play like this forever. There is going to come a time where my body won’t let me play this hard. I have already felt the changes. I can’t play like I did when I was 25 and am not willing to go quietly into the night.”

It is not the first discussion we have had about this nor will it be the last. When you are 11.5 you only have a cursory understanding of what it means for your body not to respond as you want or think it should. The mysterious aches and pains that come after forty some odd years of life haven’t hit you. When you are 11.5 you wake up, stretch and are ready to go.

That doesn’t always happen in your forties.

I explained that I am in decent shape but not great. I told him that I have been playing hard for as long as I can remember and that eventually the pounding catches up with you. Years of impact can’t be ignored, but we can have some say in the matter.

“So why don’t you just eat healthier food, sleep more and take better care of yourself?

I didn’t have a good answer for that question.

Excuses

I shrugged my shoulders and told him that I have developed bad habits that I want him to avoid. I am responsible for most of the challenges that I face. You can say that some of my responses to said challenges are because I responded like my friend Moonlight Graham.

There are other days. There will be other days. There have always been other days and there always will be until there aren’t.

It is a lesson that I have learned the hard way. I have stood graveside and buried friends and relatives. I have said goodbye to relationships and jobs that I thought would always be there and then they weren’t.

These words sting a bit because they make me sound foolish and naive, but I can’t hide from them. We only have so much control about the people, places and things in our lives.

Sometimes things happen that we cannot stop nor influence in any meaningful manner.

I don’t like the feeling that comes with not having done enough, or at least the sense that I didn’t. One could argue that sometimes you do all that you can and things still fall apart.

That is true. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you give your best or your worst because neither will change the outcome. The only thing they can do is help you sleep at night. That is something whose importance shouldn’t be discounted or forgotten.

Responsibilities

Just before we finished our conversation I explained to my son that I have a responsibility to my family to take care of myself. I play ball because it helps me physically and emotionally.

I do my best to try to balance the time needed to take care of me versus that of taking care of my family. No one wants to gain one and lose the other.

But I didn’t tell him that the very few regrets I carry with me are major and that I see the root cause as having believed there would be other days when there was only that day.

You can see the clip with the scene I mentioned in the video below:

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