Addicted to Checking Email

People of my generation acquired the habit at work.  We didn't face the problem so early in life.  With me, it started when I received my first Blackberry.  Those of us who acquired the habit this way soon realized our new "device" was really a leash.  Every waking hour of our workdays, weekends, holidays, vacation, and even sick days, we were available.  Contact was often made via email--it saved the sender from having to offer the perfunctory apology (sorry for calling you--at this hour, on a weekend, during your vacation, etc., but....),  We really felt obliged to check our mail all the time, whether at work or not.  Thus, we became available to our bosses, colleagues, internal and external customers all the time.  

Anyway, for the past dozen or so years, I have carried a portable device and habitually checked my mail--probably at least every thirty minutes.  When traveling on business, I would sometimes be awakened by some hotel noise or another, and I'd find myself checking my mail before I tried to get back to sleep.  For those of you who believe that such a habit automatically disappears when you stop working fulll-time--not so fast there.  I have been retired and away from work for almost two years, and the habit persisted.

But today, I can tell you I have been mysteriously cured.  As I write this, it has been thirteen hours since I checked my email, and I have checked it only one in the past sixteen hours.  I'm taking the time to write about this in the interest of discovering just how and why this happened.

As I noted earlier, my generation acquired the habit later in life.  We didn't grow up emailing and texting from the age of six.  We were in our 40's before texting was even commonly available.  We're the ones who still punctuate our text messages.  Our Blackberries later became iPhones, although we often still capitalized the "I," since it was the first letter of a proper noun; making it show up as "Iphone," or "IPhone" (unless auto-correct saved us).  But that's just the compulsive punctuation habit manifesting itself again.  

But back to email.  Initially it was almost exclusively business-related.  It was, after all, a phone provided by your employer, etc.  But quickly, personal email began to grow as part of the mix.  The easiest way for friends (and even family) to reach you was to send an email to your work address.  Then they could rest assured you would be seeing it in the next twenty or thirty minutes.  Text messages later took much of this over, but that's another story.  The really big explosion of not-so-business-related email came when we began shopping and buying on the internet.  The merchant would ask for your email "to allow them to send an order confirmation and/or tracking information once your item shipped."  This initial, useful information was promptly replaced by regular delivery of ads for special sales, ads for new products, "newsletters" packed with more ads, etc.  Soon, every business you ever dealt with had launched a newsletter.  Newspapers had "online" versions distributed by email.  You could get the joke of the day, or the word of the day, or the inspirational quote of the day sent to you as well.

This soon became the IT departments' worst nightmare. Too much space on their servers was being taken up by email.  They began trying to ration space, but, if you went to your boss and told him or her this limitation was causing a problem, he or she could go to bat for you and get you a larger, seemingly limitless, allotment. 

The whole thing got out of hand if you didn't perform regular maintenance on your inbox.  You had to go in and read each item (or at least skim it) to know whether to save it or delete it or consign it to a folder (where email messages go to die an even slower death).  All of this took up hours at a time.  Management consultants added to their stock advice on time management the statement that you should only check your email two times per day.  Too late for us addicts--"Are you kidding?  My inbox would be full and messages would start being rejected!"  

Eventually, we began the laborious and only occasionally successful process of "unsubscribing" from newsletters and sales lists, provided you answered a series of questions as to why you didn't want to receive them any more and whether a reduced frequency would allow them to stay in touch.  This process is also labor-intensive and time-consuming.  

But the biggest realization that came to me was that these automated providers of "newsletters," sales ads, online newspapers, inspirational quotes, jokes of the day, etc., were the vast, vast majority of what I'd find in my inbox   These are becoming the only ones you could rely on receiving.  We're all so busy digesting those we either miss or set aside until we have a little more time the person-to-person messages.  On the receiving end, these can also be the emails you were really looking for, the responses to friendly messages you had sent, invitations, questions and more were just sporadic and not-so-reliable, sometimes even non-existent.  This can make the experience of checking your email somewhat less pleasant.  It finally led to me to decide to just check in occasionally, just in case I had received one of those personal replies every so often.  Now, I think I know what cured my addiction.  Good luck with yours.  

Physical Fitness--Me and A-Rod

As I was approaching sixty years of age, I decided to get as serious as I can be about fitness.  I will admit that I haven't had the eating and drinking parts under control as consistently as I could have, but, four years later, I'm still pretty confident I am healthier than I have been in some time.  Once it becomes habit, doing the work is not really that hard.  Some of it is just grinding it out, but when you remember why you committed to it, you "just do it" (to coin a phrase).  Now and again, you look around for some inspiration when or if you become discouraged.   

Now, Alex Rodriguez, has demonstrated an inspiring sort of commitment to his own brand of fitness for many years.  Yes, I am talking about the use of illegal supplements.  According to some who went to high school with him, he has been using them since high school--during a six-month period, he was able to increase the weight he could bench press from 100 to 310 pounds, putting on 25 pounds of muscle between his sophomore and junior years. Yes, the drug use began after his sophomore year in high school, according to statements recently made by former classmates.  Are they telling the truth?  Who knows?  This much is clear, A-Rod has not been telling the truth about drug use while he's been a Yankee.  He was once again revealed to be a cheat.  The people who have been accusing him turn out to have been right.  

Could he have begun as a high school sophomore?  Today, according to an editorial in The Staten Island Advance, it is estimated that 75% of illegal  use of steroids today occurs among high school students.  Performance enhancing drugs fall in the same class of offense as amphetamines, morphine and opium do.  There's a reason.  They can kill you.  It takes commitment to fitness to take that kind of chance, doesn't it?  

This week, he even reached another plateau that few reach.  He was the subject of the opening skit on Saturday Night Live.  Congratulations, A-Rod, not very many people outside of politics get skewered on SNL opening skits.

But back to commitment.  It takes dedication to rise to the level of a major league baseball player.  There are millions upon millions of people who, as kids, played baseball.  The most talented among them dream of playing varsity baseball in high school.  Only a few of them make those squads, and even fewer make the starting lineup.  Then, consider how many of the hundreds of thousands who play in those starting lineups in high school, are on successful high school teams.  Then there are the thousands who try out for minor league teams, and how rare it is for a minor league athlete to make his way up to the majors.  I mean, facing those odds, it must take incredible dedication.  So, why not improve your odds by taking steroids?  Only a few, like A-Rod, have the stuff to make that kind of commitment--and stick with it--just so they can hit 600 home runs in the majors.  Who can blame the young high schoolers who look to him for inspiration.   

We should be proud.  We should admire his commitment. Now, when he needs our support, when people are lining up to tell stories about him.  Wanna hear another one?  Now, people are saying he used to give away to opposing hitters the pitches his own catcher was calling for when games weren't that close.  It seemed he was hoping hitters on the other teams would return the favor.  That one is really a stretch, isn't it?  What some people will say to get quoted in the papers.  Poor A-Rod...  And, he's down the $25 million he was going to make next year.  But he's planning to take Major League Baseball to court.  Here's a man dedicated physical performance and fitness.  Kids, I'm thinking you and I had better look elsewhere for inspiration, if we ever need to look beyond those we know and love for the inspiration to keep on grinding it out.  

Grateful For An Amazing Friend

I won't call him by name, because he'd probably object, but I just want to write something about him. Today, he came over to use his new saw and his electric drill/screwdriver and help me put up some built in shelves (in my office for books, a printer and a dozen other items that clutter up a smallish desk).  He then helped cut and mount another shelf adjacent to my outdoor grill.  With his help these jobs were completed in about a fourth of the time it would have taken me.

He just did it because we were talking about how I'm progressing in creating a space to use as my home "office" in what was once a small third bedroom.  Just because you never know how much "sleepover" space you'll need, we have retained the bed, this meant I had to be creative about what I did with the rest of the space. I found a "Murphy" desk that folds down from the wall when you want to use it, and can be folded back up when not in use.  You may think I have wandered off onto another tangent here, but guess who helped me mount the desk about a month ago?  Yet another instance of his just pitching in when he sees the opportunity.

This is a new residence for us, and we handled the move by ourselves for the most part, hiring a truck and a couple of men to handle only the largest pieces.  In any event, on the two days we spent packing and moving, he insisted on coming over to help.  I say "insisted" and I mean it.  He wouldn't take no for an answer.  He is always alert for the opportunity to help his friends in this way.  I have only rarely had the chance to return the favor, because he will often have it already done on his own before he mentions whatever his project is.

f course I am not the only beneficiary, we had an old friend relocate here a few weeks ago, and there my friend was, helping them paint their house in advance of moving in, and helping repair things that needed it and more.  I was able to join him in helping assemble a giant wine cooler/cellar in our friend's garage.  He was there with his electric drill, having the time of his life.  The directions suggested this job could be done in two days with two people involved. I  will grant you there were four of us doing it the other day, but we finished in two hours, partly due to his being "really good at screwing," as we stated it, and partly due to his keeping all of us on the move.  There are likely dozens of others just around here who have received his cheerful, valuable help in the past few years, more so since he retired.

My personal trainer (she is also his) and I were talking about him and I said he embodies paying it forward. She said he had once said to her he was making up for a lot of bad karma from his past.  I've known him for forty-five years, I told her, and I have never seen him behave selfishly.  It's not in his makeup.  We concluded by simply saying how much help he will have earned from so many if he ever is in need.  I hope it never happens, but if it does, I hope the Good Lord or the forces of karma, or whatever guides this world, allows me to be there and pay back just a small fraction of what I have seen him do for others.

It's my hope as well that all of you, at least once, cross paths with someone like him.  He never ceases to amaze, and it is my privilege to call him my friend.

A Winter’s Day On the Island

Walk the beach on a cloudless day

Circum-navigate tidal pools

Feet will get really wet anyway

Shells, crabs, the occasional dog,

Sniffing around a hollowed out log

Drive on home to the chores of the day

Boats in our backyard, fishing for

Same ones that grey old pelican

Swallows up quickly nearer to shore.

Fishermen motor off, calling it a day

Pelicans long since flew away.

Here we sit watching, dining late.

For Dummies, Times Two

Did you know For Dummies is copyrighted and trademarked by John Wiley & Sons?  I learned this today as I coincidentally wound up at the same web site while pursuing two totally unrelated topics.  Not long ago, I decided that among the many possibilities that life offers to someone like me, fishing was one I needed to explore a little further.  It may be that I decided on this path while looking out the window in my current residence.

It seems on any given day, at almost any hour, a bateau may appear in the waterway behind us, with one to four occupants either holding the fisherman's end of a rod and reel or casting a net.  Fish, however, seemed to avoid the fish's end of the rod and reel as I never saw anyone reeling one in or anything else that successful fishermen do with fish they have caught.  The cast nets were being used to capture bait, so I think what they hauled in using the nets does not count as success in fishing.  With that said, I didn't consider asking any of these fisher-persons for advice on fishing--they weren't catching anything.

So, I asked myself, how have I learned most things?  I started by picking up a book and reading about it.  Somehow, that has always seemed to get me started in the right direction (or scared me off completely--see my short-lived interest in skydiving).  So, in looking for the right book, it came to me--there must be a Fishing For Dummies book somewhere.  After looking one up on Amazon, I decided I probably didn't want to wait several days to get my hands on it, so I logged on and found that my local B&N store had a copy.   I clicked on the "pick me up" button, and now I have my copy.  

But, instead of reading it, I decided I needed to pursue my alternate topic--the use of rhythm and meter in poetry.  I learned a few things along the way.  But I just can't hold it back anymore.  Do you know what I discovered?  In poetry, rhythm is all in the feet!  I mean, is it like tap-dancing?  It turns out that the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables are contained in units called "feet." There are five kinds of feet--iambic (x-unstressed, /-stressed), anapestic (/xx), trochaic (/x), dactylic (/xx) and spondaic (//).  

Meter, on the other hand, refers to the number of feet in each line.  This can range from one to eight  (monometer, dimeter, trimeter....octameter).  So, with a little For Dummies.com magic, I found the following illustration of iambic pentameter.  The example they offered was the famous five iambic feet string below:                 

Christopher Marlowe's line from Dr. Faustus:

Duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh

Which reminds me of a conversation I overheard a few days ago--
Dad:  Son, don't touch that cat!
Son:  D-a-a-a-a-d, why not?
Dad:  'Cause we're dog people, not cat people. 

Me, too.

Bookworming FDR, The Man He Became

I just read an interesting book.  After hearing about it and thinking about it, I asked for it for Christmas.  It’s called The Man He Became, How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency.  The book is a biography focused on the period between the summer of 1921, when FDR contracted polio and his inauguration as President in March of 1933.  


It begins by unraveling the notion that FDR “hid his illness from the public."  Instead, it was an ever-present condition that people knew but simply didn’t focus upon every day.  


It reveals that he dealt with the effects of his bout with polio by forcibly trying one thing after another.  He began with denial, a path all of us know well.  It's a temporary one, but, in its best form, it buys us time to adapt to new and challenging realities.  He tried others, beginning with exercising the muscles of his upper body alone and trying constantly to transmit the message from his brain to his legs to move.  Those pathways no longer existed, it seems.  


He tried braces to stiffen his legs and allow him to stand, but he could not raise himself.  He worked himself to exhaustion many times over trying to restore the ability to walk without assistance. 


He was willing to follow doctors' orders only when they shared his goal--to walk again.  If their goals were, in his view, too paltry, he would overdo it, at times to his detriment.  Upon learning that warm water baths seemed to ease the painful contractions that came with his paralysis in most but not all of the muscles in his legs, he rented a houseboat and cruised around the Florida Keys in search of places where he could get in more time in the water and the warm sun which seemed to help him  


He found, in Warm Springs, Georgia, that the mineral springs afforded him the temperature and the buoyancy to stay in the water long enough to allow him to get in much more exercise time.  He invested money and time, and found resources to turn a failed resort into a place there where others similarly afflicted could come to try to restore ability where polio had left only disability.  

Further, in that same process, he developed a feel for the concerns of those around him in Georgia and the rest of the American South that a wealthy scion of a New York family would never have had otherwise.    


He remained committed to becoming able to walk unaided again because he believed he could never realize his ambition of becoming president without overcoming it all the way.  In those days (and society still hasn't completely shed this attitude) a cripple was someone to be shunned, and if not shunned, then pitied.  This would hardly befit a candidate for president.   Through it all, he kept his "game face" on and to those outside his inner circle and family he was incessantly buoyant and cheerful. 

But he began to move forward again only when he came around to accept the reality that others had tried to push upon him from the beginning--that complete recovery was not possible.  He amended his world view and simply wanted to recover sufficient "So that they'll forget that I'm a cripple."  When this became his goal, he could move on in his life, continuing to work on battling the effects, but focusing as well on the political life he loved.   


The story goes that Al Smith, then Governor of New York and Democratic nominee for President in 1926, pressured FDR to accept the party's nomination for Governor of New York to enhance Smith's chances of carrying New York in his (Smith's) run for President.  When asked, FDR was making meaningful progress in Warm Springs, and declined to accept on that basis.  He said he needed two more years in Warm Springs to complete his recovery and realize his goal of walking unaided.  In fact, he had indeed walked five steps across the living room unaided just a few days before.  When Smith and other NY Democrats he could not afford to lose for good continued the pressure, FDR "walked" away from the Warm Springs work and agreed to run for Governor.  In the end, Roosevelt won, and Smith lost--failing to carry New York in his failed bid for the presidency.  

Did FDR learn how to arrange his movements, meetings and appearances as Governor so that he avoided the embarrassment for himself (and those who might be present) of a fall or spill in front of them?  Yes, but his disease and its effects ere never "hidden" from the people.


In the years to follow, FDR became, not an object of pity, but a hero who overcame being "knocked to the canvas (by polio) and got back up to knock out the other guy."  His image as someone who never quit and made the comeback made him a man that people looked up to and who might just be able to bring them out of the Depression.  That image carried him even further when America was attacked by Japan and faced the Second World War. 

Did FDR become a different man in the process?  Of course.  Would he have become the President he did without facing polio?   All of the trials involved shaped the man.  He drew power from his doing something that was extremely difficult.  He defeated the stigma that people with disability faced.  Such an achievement required a fierce will, a lot of wiles and a lot of help. In the words of author James Tobin, "He might have retreated into a comfortable retirement.  Instead he chose to exert his will and exercise his wiles, and that act of choosing, more than anything else, revealed who he was.”[1]   


















---

[1]A major concern I have these days is what I will do/have done with my life since I was diagnosed with PD.  I realize, in part due to some persistent commentary from my dear wife, that I have become a little wrapped up in it, but it is difficult not to have it dominate my thoughts each and every day.  With that said, here I am looking at a story with some possible application to my own life, which I had convinced myself was only half over when I reached retirement (second half of life is what I was referring to when I chose the name for my blog—What’s on 2nd).  

Believe it or not, I went to a life expectancy calculator a short while ago and, after responding to several dozen questions about diet, lifestyle, history of disease in my family; it calculated 90 years of age.   Think about that for a minute.  I “retired” at age 62, and had 28 years ahead of me.  That means, I will have had 68 total years of adulthood (defining adulthood as the year I graduated college) and that more than 40% of my adult years lie ahead of me.         

So, I am asking myself, do I have time to get on with living that life I have imagined?  While I don’t expect to become President (or even, if you’ve read any of my poetry, Poet Laureate), I suspect there are some lessons I (in fact, all of us) can learn to apply here.

Sand and Beach On the First Day of the Year

Sand and Beach On the First Day of the Year

We tramped over expressions of eternal love written in the sand.  I thought of how I'd write my own but never dared take stick to sand, so to speak.  

As we trod the beach we saw strange fish leaping from the water.  Curving like dolphins, but these were smaller, and moving much faster.  We chuckled as we realized these were among the slowest moving creatures outside a shell in the ocean--humans.  

Five young girls pedaled past in single file.  They carried on a longitudinal conversation as best they could.  It was interrupted by a girl reading aloud a text she was receiving.

Later--in the afternoon--we were summoned to the beach again, the sun was making one of its all too infrequent appearances.  By the time we reached the beach, the only evidence remaining of the sun was the reflection made in the water as the sun edged to the west.

One of our party observed "Thursday it was hotter than Hades."  Silly girl, she thinks in Hades it will be in the 80's. 

The sign read: "Three lots for sale--Gulf views."