I’d like to claim that the subjects of these blog posts arise only after I wrestle like Houdini in a strait jacket during the night’s darkest hours. While the rest of the world sleeps, the veins in my beet-red forehead pop to the surface, pulsating with creative energy that threatens to tear me asunder. But the truth is, sometimes these blog posts practically write themselves.

Take yesterday, for example.

Due to some unexpected free time and my ongoing need to fill a still-painful void where “Little League Baseball Coach” used to be, I volunteered to serve as a race marshal at my son Everett’s middle school cross-country meet.  The venue–Paradise Beach Park–is probably the most accurately named swath of open space ever named in recorded history.  Who wouldn’t want to high-five a couple hundred, fresh-faced 12 and 13 year-olds on a beautiful Fall afternoon with a panoramic view of San Francisco Bay in the eyes and the pungent smell of non-native plants in the nose? I ran breathlessly to the shared Google Sheet, desperate to claim my volunteer spot before someone else deprived me of this autumnal Americana. Me me me! Pick me! Pick me!

Perhaps I should have recognized all the empty spreadsheet cells where parents’ names should have been as an omen, rather than as merely the latest indication of my role as the best father on the planet.  

Omen Number Two was the bus.  I anticipated–and had mentally prepared myself for this all day–a kidney-pulverizing jaunt on a yellow school bus.  Rather, the parking lot featured a snazzy, oversized, luxury cruiser. Like the kind I would travel across the country in with my band if I had a band and the band needed to travel across the country. And if my band could afford to do that in an oversized luxury cruiser.  I looked for the eyes of the half-dozen other parent volunteers poised to board this behemoth, wondering if they, too, harbored visions of careening over a cliff and smashing on rocks and fireballs and the evening TV news.  But none of them betrayed any hint of dying within the next 10 minutes or so in a completely predictable way.  So like a sheep, I plodded up the stairs, said “hello” to the bus driver who I knew would soon be delivering us screaming and barrel-rolling to the bottom of a ravine, and slid into my plush seat.   

The 2- or 3-mile drive lasted somewhere between 15 minutes and 3 hours. Time stretches and compresses and stretches and compresses during stressful experiences, apparently.  The windshield, already bearing a flatscreen TV-sized-and shaped-crack on the driver’s side, thwacked a dozen tree branches overhanging the swerving curves.  Actually, “overhanging” is generous.  Arguably, these impediments stood well clear of the road, and the municipality tree-trimming crews who seasonally cut back the foliage would never have anticipated this sort of beating. But the moms in front of me kept on chatting, the kids behind me kept screaming and/or gossiping, and the bus driver did not appear to be panicking or laughing or otherwise revealing anything disconcerting. I know this because with every “smack” of a branch, I took a quick inventory of the people around me.

That is, when I wasn’t totally consumed with craning my neck to see how far into the oncoming lane we had intentionally veered to navigate a corner. Typically a blind corner, no less. I tried to exercise some control over the situation. So I launched into lecturing Everett (sitting next to me, mindlessly playing some sort of video game on his iPhone with his legs crossed) about how, “when you start driving, this bus is what you should be expecting to find suddenly right in front of your bumper every time you turn around a blind corner.”  “OK, Dad,” was all that Ev gave me, refusing to compromise his assault on some apparently-important high score. 

Ultimately, the luxurious tour bus successfully wound its way to Paradise Beach Park, though there were some tense moments as the driver bent the laws of physics and psychology in order to negotiate a final turn that a luxurious tour bus such as this had no business negotiating.  So I stepped off the bus happy to be alive, taking in the aforementioned panoramic view and pungent scent of all the non-native flora. The pungent scent of all the native fauna shuffling off the bus after me in running shorts, however, was a different matter altogether.  Nevertheless, I was ready to do my duty, poke my head and arms through the lime green course marshal’s vest, and take up my mission-critical position. 

The girls’ race started first. From my spot high up a hill, I could clearly see the line of them winding their way up towards my mission-critical position.  I could also see three deer, one of whom had an enormous set of antlers, also watching the runners head in their direction. Let’s call this Omen Number Three. As is the case with just about everything, I began assembling the pieces for this particular parade of horribles, fast-forwarding in my mind to the worst-case scenario: Pamplona at Paradise Beach Park.  I tried to stifle my anxious visions, mumbling under my breath, Look, the lot of us didn’t tumble down and explode in fiery ball at the Bay’s edge, so nothing awful is going to happen here either.  Shut up shut up, Jesus, shut up, would you? (I wasn’t actually referring to Jesus here, just deploying that word as a point of emphasis to myself.)

But as the girls approached the trail that now separated the two Bambi-looking deers from the increasingly-agitated buck with the antlers evolved to intimidate and gore and maim, the Running of the Bulls began to take shape.  The big buck’s head darted around nervously. He pounced around some low gullies fueled by panic or territoriality or both or something, then exploded up and through the unsuspecting group of huffing and puffing and now screaming girls.  I don’t know how the deer picked its way through or over a dozen 12 and 13 year-olds without spearing any of them, but it did.  I half-expected to see a number of the runners approach my mission-critical position 2 minutes hence with race jerseys bearing evidence of grievous bodily injury.  Nothing.  Just a gaggle of middle school girls sprinting down a hill and around my corner, then running on down over the rest of the course.  Then doing it again for a second time, but this time a loop thankfully without the deers. 

The girls finished their race.  And the boys–including Everett–finished theirs. All without further incident. 

Of course during the luxury tour bus ride to school, I peered over the edge of several steep embankments, calculating both the number of seconds it would take the bus to smash onto the rocks at the bottom and how long before the Coast Guard and TV news helicopters would find us.  But there would be no helicopters. 

Twenty minutes later, I stepped back onto the school’s parking lot pretty much depleted. Adrenals squeezed empty from living through the various imagined scenarios of my death, as well as that of all of the kids or just some of the kids, depending upon the scenario.  For their part, the kids were totally fine.  With all of it.  Right back to strategizing about Halloween costumes, homework, and the approaching weekend. 

And so, all is well in the world, I guess. 

But I don’t think I’ll be quite so quick to volunteer for the next meet.  

Thanks for reading. 

I should be thrilled with my lot in life this morning. Instead, as of 10:30 am, I’m roiled in consternation, embarrassment, and even shame.

Where to begin? I’m a 50 year-old white man.  Although my first home was in a trailer park in a depressed Upstate New York town, I have lived for the past 20 years in San Francisco’s tony Marina District–one of the more expensive real estate markets in the country.  I’m arguably a product of elite schools, too: Duke University, CWRU Law School, Babson’s FW Olin Business School classes. I was an active and enthusiastic member of a 150 year-old fraternity in college. My wife is also a product of elite undergraduate and graduate schools.  And we have chosen to send both of our sons to private schools here and on the east coast.  Those schools are undoubtedly “elite,” as well.

I haven’t done the math, but I expect that my family sits firmly within the 1% of US household income earners.  This is due, by the way, to the fact that my wife has continued her daily commutes to a stable downtown law practice, long after my own legal career took a sharp left-hand turn into entrepreneurial endeavors; ventures that make for interesting cocktail conversation, but that hardly made a dent in our family’s net worth.  More recently, I’ve also taken some “time off” in which to write a book (my first), and the challenging process of securing an agent and publishing house will take even more time.

Still, slipping open the envelopes containing our 401(k) statements every quarter reveals a growing nest egg, as the stock market continues its bullish run.  Our kids’ crooked teeth are straightening thanks to orthodontics.  And to good dental insurance. Any illnesses with which we have struggled have been overcome thanks to our easy access to second and third medical opinions. And to good health insurance.  The people who reside under my roof are happy and healthy, by any objectively reasonably measure. 

And today is a day I have looked forward to for weeks. For months. For years, really, since this milestone has been on my horizon for some time.  

Early this month, my wife and I scheduled a small get together to celebrate with friends my recent 50th birthday. That get together is tonight.  I should be unabashedly and unreservedly excited about tonight. But now it feels like a selfish and narcissistic endeavor.  I raise a glass to 50 years of good fortune with my friends tonight, while others continue to strain under the pernicious–and ongoing–effects of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, etc.  At the top of my to-do list this morning sits a need to throw together a proper Spotify party playlist for tonight.  What does Dr. Ford’s to-do list look like this morning?  I suspect just about every woman in the country right now couldn’t care less about digital music mixes. I suspect they feel gut-punched, disrespected, insignificant, and helpless.  How could they not?

People who look like me are clearly part of the problem. Am I part of the solution?

The tears I shed while watching Obama’s first election night victory were, in retrospect, naive. My excitement a few years later at the seemingly-imminent prospect of our nation’s first female President was equally wide-eyed and unsophisticated.  I did my best to place Trump’s victory in proper perspective in a blog post that made me feel a little bit better, but not for long.  My building enthusiasm yesterday for the hope that logic, common sense, and the rule of law would prevail at these Senate Judiciary Committee hearings has now taken a nose-dive.  I woke up this morning at 4 am sick to my stomach. A couple hours later, I sat helpless and speechless as my wife, tears in her eyes, sat up from our bed after watching the early reports on CNN, then trudged weary and angry off to work. 

It appears we still live in a world run by people that look like me and that have backgrounds like mine.  And mornings like this one serve as a reminder that this isn’t a good thing. 

And so what about tonight? Maybe we should cancel the event.  Celebrating things like a white guy’s 50th birthday seems insensitive at this moment in particular. Tone deaf.  Plus, I feel drained and defeated and even a little bit hopeless due to the past few days. But I think it’s important to march on, to place one foot after the other, to celebrate simply being. To savor the day-to-day, the hour-to-hour, the moment-to-moment. The quotidian. And I’ve also got to continue to resist the temptation to be comfortable, to be complacent, to be numb, to be satisfied. To slip into a state of oblivion. The public spectacle in D.C. over the past couple days has, sadly, revealed how much further we have to go.  In particular, it would appear that people like me–white men, products of elite schools and privilege, the “top 1%”–have a long way to go.

Onward.

Thanks for reading.

I turned 50 the other day.  It’s not so bad.  It’s certainly not what I thought it would be when I was, say, 10 or 20 or 30, or even 40. I don’t feel 50, I don’t think.  But then again, I guess I don’t really know what 50 is supposed to feel like.  I think maybe it’s as much about what has gone on with the people around me, as it is about what has gone on inside me. This guy looks happy and healthy and fulfilled. He is happy and healthy and fulfilled. But this seemingly contented smile at the beach is more complicated now.  Its owner has lived awhile. And I am aware of the fact that I have endured a fair number of emotional gut punches over the last couple years, for example. College buddies whom I love have died. Lying too still in their beds in the middle of the night as their wife pounds fruitlessly on their chest. Jumping from the kitchen window of their Manhattan high-rise in the morning as their daughters gather their backpacks for school in the other room. Another dear friend has begun a battle with a debilitating neurodegenerative disease that I myself could never withstand. Getting word of these sudden, unwelcome developments left me breathless and sobbing on the curb while walking home from Safeway with my wife and younger son. Another time, pulled over on the side of the road, slumped and gripping the steering wheel for strength. And the third, standing weak-kneed and hollow in my kitchen, tears streaming down my cheeks, hands palm-down on the granite counter for stability.

It seems that even if you (or I, in this case) manage to survive and even thrive at the age of 50, the universe will still do its best to extract a toll.  My smile looks the same, but it is different.  Some friends’ smiles are frozen in time now, never to be surrounded by increasingly grey whiskers. Other friends cherish the fleeting ability to flash a smile at all, and will do so even though it exhausts them.  So maybe when I smile now, I smile for each of them and for all of them. And I know there will be more unwelcome developments in the coming years. Perhaps I will even be among them. But in the meantime, I’m gonna keep looking for reasons to smile this 50 year-old smile. And laugh this 50 year-old laugh.

On that note, as a newly-minted 50 year-old, I offer three random observations (actually, three random observations conceived by other people; but, hey, they don’t blog) — 

Funnel Cakes Are for Winners.  Another college buddy of mine (healthy, thankfully) recently witnessed his son’s lacrosse team’s evisceration at the hands of a far more energetic, intense, and focused opponent. To his credit, my buddy stood on the sidelines supportive and silent all game, resisting the overwhelming urge to shout instructions or admonitions at the kids’ listless and shoddy performance on the field. In the immediate aftermath of the team’s crushing defeat, my friend expected his son to storm from the game with a belly-full of fire and motivation, eyes burning to do better in the next match.  Instead, his son and teammates turned their eyes to a nearby food truck with “Funnel Cakes” painted on the side. Instead of announcing a warrior’s desire to drink the tears of their next opponent, the boys asked to partake in the sweet puffy pastry.  With this, my buddy finally broke, announcing through clenched teeth, “Funnel cakes are for winners!” Not his proudest parenting moment, no doubt. But fabulous grist for the blogging mill, from my perspective.  And one of us needs to trademark this phrase immediately.  For t-shirts for that whole lacrosse team. And probably for t-shirts for all teams populated by kids who belong to everyone who is 50 years old or thereabouts and who stand on the sidelines as the siren scent of funnel cakes whaffs nearby.  Even at 50, I need constant reminders to let my kids be kids.  The t-shirt will help, I think.  

Lazy People Invented Everything. My younger son, Everett, has never lost an argument.  At least not one in which I am trying to hold down the other end. Now that I am 50, he is 12.  This means that his brain has developed to such an extent that I simply cannot predict where these arguments will go. Areas that modern civilization settled long ago are now totally up for grabs. For example, he is an ardent, and effective, defender of at least half of the Seven Deadly Sins. Thankfully, “Lust” is not currently on the menu; I’m sure puberty will pencil that in down the road.  But “Sloth”? Ev has me half-convinced that sloth is actually a virtue. You see, summer vacation basically means that my wife and I engage in a slow-motion chase with Everett all day every day to get him away from Fortnite, his iPhone, the couch, his bed, Fortnite, his iPhone, the couch, his bed. “Do something!” “Move your body!” “Don’t be so lazy!”  So over the last couple months, Everett has in response developed a theory that “Lazy People Invented Everything.” I know that he is trying to justify and defend his inertia by suggesting there is value in gourging on Cheezits in one’s bedsheets wearing pajamas until dinnertime. I try to resist, but resistance is futile.  Because I think he may be right. All the things we take for granted, and that (at least theoretically) have improved the quality of our lives, arguably have allowed us to become increasingly lazy. Everything. Which means, the argument goes, that Lazy People Invented Everything. I am at a complete loss for a winning counter argument.  But I desperately need one.  Because he is upstairs right now, at this very moment, munching on candy from last Halloween with a sticky Playstation controller in his hands and knock-off Beats headphones on his head. I don’t think he’s inventing flying cars up there. 

Two Christmases Are Better Than One. At the end of the day, after I have curated and placed in front of my family what I consider to be a healthy and heartfelt supper, I am prone to giving in to fatigue. Maybe it’s just hitting 50.  Maybe it’s just the end of another summer day with my boys that I know I should savor, that I sometimes am able to savor, but that typically devolves into the two of them arguing about the slow speed at which they are doling out mashed potatoes onto their plates. Or whose turn it is to fill their glasses from the milk carton. Regardless, my mood sometimes darkens, and I feel myself striding purposefully with clenched fists into my own Funnel Cakeville. In these moments, I have heard someone who sounds like me say something about how I don’t think my sons’ miserable behavior would be any different if I were merely a sperm donor or if I were in prison during their childhoods (or both). This provocative statement–intended to shock my kids back into appreciation or submission or obedience or at least into some state where my wife and I can actually enjoy their company–it no longer works. So recently, I upped my game. Much to my chagrin as I type these words, I have suggested things along the lines of, “Hey, you know, you guys should really appreciate these family dinners when we are all together.  If your mother and I ever decided to get divorced….” I let this sentence trail off, after deploying a higher note with the word “divorced,” maybe even an octave above my normal speaking tone, to enhance the effect. For a time, I thought this new admonition was having its desired impact. But then I learned that Everett was recently overheard whispering from his room at night into my older son’s room, “Hey, Max, do you know what it means if Mom and Dad get a divorce? Two Christmases!!”  

As I move past 50, and the realities of spending that amount of time on this earth continue to make themselves known to me, I will be on the lookout for more Funnel Cakes, Lazy Inventions, and Double Christmases. And I hope you will too. 

Thanks for reading.

This is my view this morning before the others are up and before a full day of 12 year-old baseball players begins. I’ve nearly made it to the bottom of my navy blue mug of coffee, when I decide to sneak in a quick, app-enabled “mindfulness” session; noting how strange it is to click the “bubbling stream” toggle to the off position. I don’t need the pre-recorded bubbling stream humming in the background of the meditation guy’s directions. I literally have a gurgling stream at my feet. So for 5 minutes, I use my son’s iPhone earbuds that I scrounged from the living room table earlier, cross over from one side of the stream to the other on well-placed stones but wearing hastily-chosen flip flops, slide a couple potted plants over to the side of the seat of a wooden bench, and meditate.

I press “play” on a session from one of the half-dozen apps gathered into my “Meditation” home screen folder. While wearing a layer of Patagucci gear because it’s a little chilly still. And vaguely annoyed (and annoyed with the fact that I am vaguely annoyed) that I am not wearing my Fitbit to measure how far my heart rate drops while meditating. The Fitbit ran out of juice last night, sending me on a fruitless power cord search in the dark, in unfamiliar environs where the light switches are unknown to me and I don’t want to wake up my sleeping, jet-lagged wife. The Fitbit now sits hooked up to the cabin’s electricity in one of the outlets, I can’t remember which one at the moment. And it’s all the way across this bubbling stream there. Despite looking painfully out of place, and totally aware how dependent I am upon technology and wearables and a disembodied voice telling me to “sit and know that I am sitting,” I force myself to close my eyes and breathe. Ahh.

But my mind darts around even more than usual. I even flicker my eyelids open at regular intervals, to defend against any sort of sneaky retribution from my brother or son. Both of whom would be entitled to sneak up on me and scream in my ear due to last night’s series of jump-scares, rocks thrown in the pond surreptitiously to mimic fish jumping while the guys fished, and generally tense, I’m-going-to-be-scared-at-any-moment-where-is-keir-hiding-now? vibe that I whipped up without mercy. So sure, I’m meditating. But I am also on edge with every sound around me that might be my brother in the grass behind me (it wasn’t) or that might be the creaky front screen door opening (it wasn’t).

Plus — and yes, this is exactly the wrong kind of “mindful” for which to be shooting while meditating as I am — I catch myself being mindful of an unpleasant scene captured yesterday at home on our driveway security camera. Late last night, my wife called my attention to some activity recorded earlier in the day (12:39 PM, to be exact). As she slept, I spent half an hour scrolling through the NestCam video footage while lying in bed. Then another 15 minutes composing a rant for my neighbors to read on the NextDoor app. It appears that an upstanding citizen sauntered into the little vestibule in our driveway in broad daylight yesterday, pee’d in my bushes, furtively took two drags from a little pipe, then went speed-walking off in a westerly direction. I’m guessing crack, but really I don’t have any idea. And I’d probably be nearly as irritated if he were puffing on a perfectly legit cigar.

“Sit and know that you are sitting,” my meditation guru reminds me from my son’s borrowed iPods. Ahhh. The stream bubbles on. I can smell the coffee in my mug. Pure bliss. Then my mind wanders to the day ahead, which features a long-ish drive to my younger son’s tournament baseball games outside Cooperstown. I’m antsy because for some reason, the games that I dutifully plugged into my iPhone’s calendar last week (Ev Game 1, Ev Game 2…), careful to ensure that I applied the proper time zone and that I “invited” my wife so that she didn’t need to do all this plugging, well, those entries have disappeared from my calendar. Totally freaking disappeared. It makes no sense. The thought of having to resort to re-doing all this calendaring is near-debilitating.

“Breathe and know that you are breathing,” he tells me. And I am in heaven. For perhaps 10 seconds. Before I am really able to settle back in, and while sprinting through an abbreviated “body scan,” I note that my ass is soaking wet. The little potted plants I slid over to claim a spot on the bench have left me a damp reminder as to why they were placed there in the first place. This bench is meant to be decorative. Not for sitting on, no matter how eco-friendly the sitter’s (now-wet) fleece pants.

“Now gently open your eyes,” he tells me. And with that, it’s over before it really began. I don’t think I ever even got to the “know that you are sitting” part, if I’m being honest.

On the plus side, my Fitbit is charged, no one has managed to sneak around to the bushes behind me, my fleece pants will dry out on their own, and the kitchen’s coffee pot is still pretty full. Now I need only navigate my way back across this raging fjord, relying on the fragile footing of my flip flops. Perhaps I will stumble into the stream. But at least I will know that I am stumbling into the stream. If I knock my head on a rock while falling down, I will know that I am knocking my head on a rock and falling down. If I drown, I will know that I am drowning. This meditation stuff is simple….

Four years ago during our first Cooperstown trip, I managed to book on Airbnb a rental house which, I am 75% certain, was haunted. I did not do so purposely. In that house overlooking Lake Otsego, I stumbled on an especially troubling portrait (dare I say, self-portrait?) of a monkey, hidden away in a side room (the painting, not the actual monkey, I don’t think). This was my Exhibit A (of many) in support of my haunting theory. It seemed to me that Mr. Monkey was in charge.

Probably he still is and probably that house is still haunted.

Which is why, during my online search for a rental home this summer, I carefully combed through all of Airbnb’s search filters, ensuring that I did not check any suspicious boxes described with any remotely troubling words. And if these words were already pre-checked due to some malevolent algorithm, I promptly unchecked them. “Desolate,” “Mysterious,” “Old Hunting Lodge,” “Used as a location for ‘Paranormal Activity’ movies,” and so on. Uncheck, uncheck, uncheck. Nothing but whistling robins and babbling brooks this trip. Whew.

So here we are, back in the Cooperstown area. I got up a bit early this am, and went for a short jog to town and back. I saw no other human beings walking or otherwise ambulating to, from, or in the town of Andes. This was actually a rather pleasant experience, allowing me to pause periodically and snap a photo or two of the Insta-worthy architecture and landscape. The yellow Victorian at the top of this post is a charming example of the local environs. Plus, I could pull out my iPhone and do this without the slightest hint of self-consciousness or concern that I might be invading someone’s privacy. Snap, jog, snap, jog.

Except that I did feel self-conscious near one particular photo stop. I had the unmistakeable feeling that I was being watched. Carefully. I spun my head around, saw nothing, no one, and continued on my way.

It was only later, when scrolling through my iPhotos over a coffee, that I caught a glimpse of something unnerving about that charming yellow Victorian…

And now I see that this time around, apparently, the Lady is in charge. Move over, Mr. Monkey. God help us. And I think I’m going to have to quit Airbnb.

Well hello there, milestone.  How you been, life signpost?

Duke and Syracuse University square off tonight in a March Madness’ Sweet Sixteen matchup. I last wrote about this spine-tingling college hoops rivalry a little over 4 years ago.  At the time, I was raw and reeling from my grandmother’s sudden death, and yet newly-inspired, too, to create this here blog and start documenting my day-to-day.  Trying to emulate my grandmother’s inexhaustible good humor and optimism.  I called it a “quixotic quest for the bright side.” At the time, my sons were 12 and 8 years old, in people years.  Our dog was 1, also in people years.  My wife and I were, ehm, younger, too.

That was four years and a couple hundred Lemonade Chronicles blog posts ago. So the game got me thinking: What has happened in my life since then? Well, on the negative side (and it remains difficult not to tackle this end of the ledger first), my family and I have lost loved ones and dear friends. Some older and therefore perhaps not entirely surprising.  Some far younger, and therefore entirely surprising.  Neither category seems fair, of course.  And while these people are gone, it’s safe to say we think about them all, just about every day.  Still, these heartbreaking losses have served as rallying calls for my tribes: My college buddies, my wife’s family.  We have grown tighter and more appreciative of one another as a result.  Doesn’t make it hurt any less, I suppose, but it is something to grab onto while staring at the ceiling at 2 in the morning.  Or while stumbling over an old Facebook photo depicting a smiling face that smiles no more.

My kids have gotten older.  One has moved away, willingly, to a boarding school on the east coast.  Max is trudging through his 4th Nor’easter at the moment, as I type on my MacBook Air sitting in our San Francisco backyard, pant legs rolled up since it’s a little warm in the sun. Our younger son Everett is in 6th grade and none-too-happy about the fact that the white hot parental spotlight shines only in his direction. At least it seems that way to him. And my wife and I probably want to perpetuate this myth, because Everett is the sneaky one.

I’ve continued to coach Little League teams for as long as my sons’ birth certificates allow. I’m in my last season right now, in fact.  The number of times I’ll get to remind a player to tie his shoes or to show me where her baby tooth recently fell out? Dwindling. Honestly, this coaching thing has been going on so long (13 or 14 years now), I verge on panic when contemplating its sudden absence from my identity.  At times, I find myself fantasizing about returning to the pitching mound someday to coach my grandchildren’s Little League teams.  This gives you an idea of how bent I am about this phase of my life coming to an abrupt halt in a couple months.

I’ve been writing a book inspired in-part by my Lemonade Chronicles blog.  I wrote a 500+ paged manuscript, covering 4 years, then cut it down to 8 months, in the process realizing that a health scare had played a more prominent role in my psyche than I knew.  The manuscript is currently in the hands of a half-dozen “beta readers” from whom I fear I will learn that my book is actually awful.  Even if they like it and their constructive criticism doesn’t leave me dry-heaving, there is still the matter of finding a literary agent, publishing house, and readers willing to pay to read what I write. Wish me luck.

Since my first Duke-SU post, I have worked at three startups, none of which left me with a feeling of doing something meaningful.  Which probably explains, in part, why I have taken the past year off to focus on writing this book.  The book is now “written” — or at least the hard part of putting something together that lasts 254 pages and has pretty pictures such that I can hand it to someone with sort of a straight face.  So suddenly, the gobs of time each day spent pulling my hair out and shuffling around hundreds of pages of draft writing lies empty.  So I find myself, tentatively, exploring the possibility of a new adventure. Something ideally complementing this dream of mine to be a guy who regularly writes and publishes books that people want to read, and maybe goes to neat little bookstores all over the place to meet and talk with those people.

A large part of my family has, rather surprisingly, left Syracuse altogether.  My sister, mother and step-father, all gone. Living in North Carolina. A good example of how things you assume will last forever, well, they usually don’t. I have been trying to figure out how to go to North Carolina to visit, and while I have been doing so, my nephews are getting older in their Instagram photos. I have yet to step foot in my mother’s year-old house, to say nothing of the home my sister and brother in-law have lived in for several years now.  I tell myself that I am busy with book writing, and being a husband and a dad, and coaching Little League, and walking the dog. But perhaps I am simply not a very good son or big brother.

Both may be true.  Take tonight:  As an example of how far things have come, I actually will miss watching this milestone college hoops game.  I won’t be watching it live in a bar downtown with a couple college buddies, backslapping each other and yelling.  I won’t be the object of some purportedly good-natured text taunting from my far-flung, Syracuse born-and-bred, family members. I won’t be giggling over funny texts shared among a sizable group of other college buddies, each live-texting the game with relevant comments and with totally irrelevant comments of the sort I dare not publish here (or anywhere for that matter).  In fact, I will take the extreme step of shutting down my iPhone and burying it in a backpack until later this evening.  Or perhaps until tomorrow morning.  Because I won’t see this game until my rendezvous with TiVo ’round about 9pm tonight.

Instead, I’ll be standing in the third base coaches box, cheering on my Little League team’s players.  It’s not even a real game; just a hastily-arranged scrimmage.  Earlier today, I contemplated skipping the scrimmage myself in favor of the yelling and backslapping and harried texting. For about 15 minutes.  But then I thought about my Little Leaguers, down in the mouth from their 3rd consecutive rained-out game. And I knew where I belonged: On the field with my gaggle of 11- and 12-year olds, shoelaces untied and baby teeth still rooted. The hoops game can wait.

Thanks for reading.