Time

This last week has been a whirlwind.  Although I typically get up early in the morning, this week I've had to get up, AND get going every day.  In the middle of all of this, I could not help but think more about time as a concept, than I usually do.  I was reminded of the 2011 movie "In Time."  The basic premise of this movie was a future state in which time had become currency, making "time" the way people are paid, and the way that people buy things.  In a strange way, I guess that is really the way things are for us today, with the things that we do either adding to or depleting the time reserve we have.  The movie has a visible timer that tells each person how long they have. While we don't have that, we do know that when we are out of time, we cease to exist.

Wow, I have to tell you that for an old woodworker from Southeast Iowa that was pretty deep.  I had to stop and get a cup of coffee.  But now, fully armed with something to drink, I can move forward again.

I remember someone telling me there is research which indicates that the speed we experience time actually does change over our life span.  When we are young, everything is new and as we create new memories that makes the experience go slower.  This really seems to make some sense to me. I remember summers when I was young that seemed to go on forever.  I remember wishing that we could go back to school because I hadn't seen my friends in such a long time.  Time really did seem to go slower.  The research goes on to indicate that in the middle part of our lives memories compress since we are generally doing the same thing over and over (like work) and that there are fewer new memories being created.  The mind "speeds" through this, giving us the illusion that time is going faster.  As with early memories, I can remember sitting on the porch at a friend's house in Kansas City talking about the fact that I felt like I had lost the 1980's and part of the 1990's.  Very quickly and intelligently, Barb pointed out to me that I was busy working on a career, and quite honestly, trying to save a company.  We failed, just by the way.

At this point, we come to the problem part of this whole theory about time and the speed at which we experience it.  The theory goes on to hold out that as we reach a more mature age, somehow the mind "knows" that we are getting closer to the end of our lives. It focuses more on the things that are happening as though each experience might be the last time that we are doing it.  So....what to do with this?  I know that as I think about this last week, there are only a handful of things that had enough impact to be truly memorable, even now, just a few days later.  I really think that the thing that I need to add to my To-Do list is to spend more time focusing on the things that I do as if they are the last time I might do them.

When we lived in Kansas City, we had an acquaintance who had been on a boat going around the Cape of Good Hope when the boat capsized.  At that point, Bill truly believed that he might be at the end of his life.  Fortunately, the boat righted itself and they completed the trip safely.  One thing I remember about Bill is that he was a great story teller. When he told stories, it was almost as if he were reliving it.  I wonder now if this is because he always felt that he had truly been given a second chance at life.

I am not sure about this, but I am picking up the gauntlet. I want to make sure my mind knows that I want to be fully engaged all of the time, and that I want to remember everything.  So, when we are around each other in the next few days and months, and I seem to be concentrating more than usual ... I am.  I am going to work diligently on filing away more memories and discarding fewer of them.  My goal is to have fewer whirlwind weeks and more memorable experiences.  

Have a great weekend.

How Did We Survive?

In the last week, I read something about safety for our children. It was about swing seats or children's toys, I am not sure which and it struck me that we are lucky our civilization survived.  I mean, think about it, we had Giant Slides and monkey bars, and swing seats made out of boards.  On top of all of that, many of us remember when seat belts weren't even an option in cars and "car seats" for infants actually hung over the back of the seat and had a steering wheel for the child to play with.  We shouldn't have survived any of this.  I want to make sure that nobody misunderstands me here: I am all for children, and all of us being safe, but sometimes you have to wonder if we haven't crossed the line between safe and silly.  I have to admit, some of the most joyous times we had as children were in the wild games of chase on the monkey bars, and yes, often someone ended up in tears from a fall, but I do not remember a serious injury.

My generation used to be able to have fun with two tin cans and a piece of string.  Do kids still play telephone?  Now, I have to admit that there were probably some things that we did that would not be considered smart at this point, and were probably really questionable then.  Some of the things that fall under this category are bottle rocket fights, shooting each other with BB guns (but not from close range) and of course, what about Lawn Darts?  Who would ever think that throwing a weighted, pointed piece of steel into the air and waiting for it to come back down wasn't a good idea?  You have to wonder when they pitched that one at the toy company, who was thinking on that day.  In fact, I have to admit that I have never even seen a set of lawn darts in a garage sale.  This is probably a pretty good indication there was universal consensus that these were a bad idea.

So where am I going today?  Last week I celebrated the birthday of my daughter, which means I no longer have teenagers in the family.  In the midst of this change it struck me that as diligently as we try to protect our children from all of the lawn darts of the world, we still have to send them out there to be on their own.  I had to ask myself if by protecting them in every way that I could, had I really prepared them for the world that they are going in to.  When we went into the world, we knew that a sharpened piece of steel thrown into the air would come back in a manner that could really hurt.  I hope that all of the children we have raised know that.  When I worked for Drake, I remember listening to the VP of Academics speaking to a group of parents at a Freshman orientation.  He had been asked how Drake could assure that this parent's pride and joy would not come to Drake and embrace all sorts of radical ideas.  I remember being glad that I didn't have to answer the question.  But in truly admirable fashion, he explained that if the parents had been educators, and not just providers, they had nothing to worry about and the children attending Drake would grow to be productive members of our society.  I also remember watching parents ask themselves that exact question as though it was not something they had ever considered.

At this point, I believe that I have been an educator for my children and that they are prepared to go out into the world and do great things.  But at the same time, I wonder if they may have missed out on some of the adventures of life because Sara and I were so busy keeping them safe.  There is no doubt that we did the job the best way that we knew how, but still at the end we send them out to tackle the world on their own.  I know they will do great, but over two decades of programming, I will continue to worry about both of them.  I doubt that this is any different than our parents felt, sending us off to cope with the world and worrying about us the whole time.  Time will tell.  In the midst of this though, look out if I ever have grandchildren.  We are going to do all sorts of activities that will get me labeled as the "fun" grandparent.  So...beware.

On the Toybox front, I actually opened an Etsy store this week.  There is only one item out there, yet but it would be my intention to increase my offering over time. It will be fun to let people see what I can make and what kind of quality I believe in.  Heck, maybe somewhere along the line I may even sell something.  Who knows.  Find me at http://www.etsy.com/shop/ToyboxWoodworking.

Replicator

If you have ever watched any of the Star Trek episodes, I believe you will be able to relate to what I want to talk about today.  The topic for conversation today is the replicator.  I remember watching as one of the members of the Star Trek crew would want something and simply enter a code on this piece of equipment and whatever they wanted appeared, as if by magic.  At the time, I believed this happened simply out of the clear blue, but as I have done a bit of research, the replicator was loosely based upon transporter technology, "storing" raw materials in a digital format for later use to form the items the crew wanted and needed.  Well, I think that the time of the replicator is at hand.

I have watched the world of 3-D printing for the last three years or so, waiting for the time that these printers cross the point where they could be afforded by the individual.  I think it is close.  Now, for a couple of thousand dollars you can own a 3-D printer.  I remember buying the first home laser printer for about seven hundred dollars and thought that was expensive at the time.  Maybe in another year or so, 3-D technology will finally be to that point and I will consider it affordable.  It is interesting to begin watching all of the infrastructure come on line to support this new technology.  In the last month I have seen libraries of 3-D renderings released to the Internet. UPS has announced they intend to have printers in all of their store front locations.  This is all amazing, but let me tell you the story that put me over the edge.  I was at a Product Show in Omaha last week.  We were there to talk about the things that we do - fasteners and hydraulic fittings.  The show was slow, as the weather was nice and it seemed that people had made different decisions with what they wanted to do with their day.  In the middle of all of this, gentleman who was older (older than me), come up and start talking to us.  Then he showed us what he was doing.  He had run a fix-it shop for many years, and now he'd purchased a 3-D printer to see what kind of business he could create with that - a true entrepreneur.

When I lived in Lees Summit, an acquaintance whose business was making signs for trucks made a nice living and was very happy with what he was doing.  Then one day, a salesman came in selling water-jet cutting machines - computer controlled machines that use a tremendously high pressure jet of water and abrasive to cut anything from paper to steel.  Tim was not doing anything like this at the time, but he saw the opportunity to build an entirely new business around this technology, and was not afraid to take the risk. He spent the money to try a new venture.  Tim has gone on to build a very prosperous business around the technology, doing work for many in the area and for some of the largest contractors of high tech equipment in the country.  Good for him.

These new technologies will continue to present themselves, and those who are willing to do what Tim did - to go ahead and 'pull the trigger' on a new venture even if they are unsure that it will work - will succeed.  Maybe not all of the time, but they will have more wins than failures.  This has to be the challenge and the marching orders for all of us.  I used to look at my grandfather and know that he had a tremendous sense for the new ideas that were going to take off.  I remember thinking that if he would just jump on one of his ideas it would be amazing what he could accomplish.  I have fallen into that trap before, and we all have to break out of it now.  When we see something that we know is the next good idea, we have to have the courage of our convictions and go for it.  We will not always be successful, but we will certainly be more successful than by doing nothing.  So, maybe not 3-D printing, but the time is now to get my Etsy website up and selling something.  Look for me out there.  It is time to make something happen.

And at the same time, I am going to continue to find all that I can find about emerging technologies to try to decide what the next big thing will be.  And when I do, I will probably talk about it here, so you should stay tuned.  Think about the things that we talk about here and decide which one is right for you.  Keep looking to the stars, think about the next big thing, and then talk about it.  If it is not the perfect idea for you, it may be for one of the group that you call your friends, and that is pretty cool too.

Keep looking.

Resilience

This word has seemed to come up again and again this last week in everything I have touched.  It actually began with nature itself and branched out from there.  As we had endured the "dog days of summer" and watched things get dryer and browner, I found that I was obsessing over the weather and its possible outcome.  I'm sure that I was not unlike many others in this.  The thing that I had forgotten was the unbelievable way nature can recover when given a chance.  No more than two days after the first good soaking rain we had in the last two months, I was walking JC, our dog, and was amazed to see small white flowers poking up through one of the pastures we walk past.  Admittedly, they were probably just weeds, but I was struck at how quickly nature comes back and proves that it is ready to grow again.  Absolutely astounding.  I talked to JC about it, but found that she was not as amazed as I was.

Later that week, I was invited to a day of activities and review with one of our regular customers.  They have this meeting once a year for their employees and suppliers.  Much of the meeting is about the past year and the goals of the company going forward, but one of the things they always do is bring in an outside speaker. The speaker typically doesn't come with a message about their specific business, but brings a motivational message.  The year's speaker was Charlie Wittmack.  If you've not heard of him, you should learn more about the man.  He is an extreme triathlete with several very prestigious accomplishments to his name.  Although his story is amazing, that wasn't what truly moved me.  I listened as he described the number of times he failed, or came to the point of quitting, and was able to reach down inside himself and find what it took to continue, or try again.  One of the things that Charlie said to us was that he knew each of us would be able to climb Mt Everest if it was something we decided to do.  Hmm, I'm not sure what I think about that, but Charlie truly portrays resilience.

Most of you know that I have two amazing kids.....not unlike most other parents, but when I think about this word, it really applies to both.  Andrew continues to come up against changes and decisions that come from leaving college and entering adulthood.  In his world, these are big and it has been interesting to watch the way he has handled things and the energy that some of them have sapped from him.  On the other hand, Meg has faced being back in school, leaving a world she loved this summer (at camp) and regaining a full understanding of what college is.  Additionally, she is taking a very full offering of classes and work this year.  The need for resilience is huge.  On top of that, as she continues to work through all of the medical challenges, she wonders why it takes so much sleep.  Being resilient takes effort.

Of course, as I've been thinking about all of this, it has really brought me to question the way we go through our daily lives, and what type of resilience we carry within.  Some time ago, I had a really good conversation with a friend about will power, and whether or not will power was something that wears out.  We came to the conclusion that it is.  Consider dieting - it always seems that you have a great deal of will power at the beginning, and then with time, willpower tends to wane, making it harder and harder to lose weight.  I think that resilience may work the same way. With a really high need to be resilient, the amount you have available gets 'used up.' leaving less ability to come back from challenges.  However, I also believe that if the world gives us a chance,  we can rebuild the amount of resilience we have in our reservoir.  So, the challenge then becomes to get through the tough times and take a breather to rebuild when we get to the other side.  Nothing really new here, but everything I encountered last week brought me to this realization.

At the Toybox, things are really filling up. After all of the items that I completed while off work, the list of work to be done has been refilled.  It is time to get started on holiday gifts for family, and in the last year or so I have been asked for gifts for organizations I support to use as fund raisers.  Additionally, after getting the chest of drawers, Sara has decided she needs a set of drawers next to her writing desk.  There are also a couple of very exciting projects coming up, but as one of them will be a gift to a life long friend, I am going to speak about it very carefully.  Anyway, lots of panel products and lumber to be purchased in the next few months.  This is exciting stuff.  We will have to see if I can stay in front of all of it.

Have a great week.  Tell me what you plan to create as gifts for your friends and family for the holidays.  Get busy, they're just around the corner.

Peaches

Several weeks ago, I had a thought about a blog that I needed to write about the Dog Days of summer, but now that we are either in them, or through them, the idea really doesn't move me.  But at the same time, we had a bag of peaches show up in the refrigerator last week and those brought back a flood of memories that I decided that I really needed to share. So, here goes.

When I was young (a long, long time ago) my grandparents were very important and very involved in my life.  My father died when I was not yet ten and because mom still needed to work to support us, we spent a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa.  My grandmother was a wonderful person, but those stories are for another day,  Today I want to tell you about my grandfather.  He was a man who that had only an elementary education, and I remember that he cried at the thought of one of his grandchildren going to college.  However, he was one of the smartest, most hard working people that I ever knew.  Not only did he work for the Keokuk County roads department as the rock foreman, his passion was horses - training and showing them. Rare was the time that we had less than fifteen head around the place that they lived.  This was always a combination of those that he was training and those that either belonged to him or to one of his grandchildren.

About forty miles from where we lived, there was a community that hosted a horse sale one Monday each month.  This community was in the heart of Amish country in Iowa, so the number of horses going through this sale was significant.  The thing that we had learned years before however was that you should never buy a horse from an Amish man.  If they were selling the horse, either they were too old to work or something was really wrong with them.  The event was amazing, though.  Many of you may remember things like this, and for those of you who don't, these were the closest thing to the village bazaar you would see.  Merchants and individuals alike showed up to sell their goods and wares in any and all manners possible.  This was the thing that made this particular day so memorable to me.

Up until this point in my life, I thought that peaches were something that came in a can, bright yellow and smooth, packed in heavy syrup.  What else could they be?  I had never seen them in any other manner.  Well, that day there was a merchant there selling fresh peaches. Grandpa decided that we should buy some to take home so that Grandma could make a pie or something.  He bought half a lug from the gentleman which is twelve and a half pounds, or about twenty-five peaches.  To my surprise, they were not bright and yellow, and, they were kind of fuzzy.  I wasn't really sure what to think about this, but, Grandpa told me that it would be alright, so I went ahead and tried one.

Now ... fast forward to getting home at the end of that day.  When we walked into the house, carrying our spoils as though back from a conquest, there were exactly three peaches left.  We had, in fact, eaten the rest of them throughout the day and on the way home.  When we told Grandma that we had bought them for her to make pies or something with, the look on her face was quizzical.  It took a bit of time for us to admit to her that we had eaten about 22 peaches that day.  At that point, the laughter was nearly hysterical.

This memory has to be the better part of 45 years old now, but each and every time I bite into a peach, I remember the day, the time with Grandpa, and the amazed look on my Grandma's face when she figured out what we had done.  I know that things such as smell or taste are powerful memory triggers.  I have read this time and again over the years, but when something like this happens, it really drives the point home.  My family will tell you that I can become a complete basket case over a movie or even a television commercial if they use the right music and I can remember people that I have not thought of in years simply by walking through a mall and experiencing the fragrances people wear.

I have no idea how we would ever capture any of these things, but if you are like me, you certainly know them when they present themselves.  Stop and enjoy, or at least process the things that act as memory triggers for you.  They are a door to a part of your own history that only opens for you once in a while, but when it does, typically the memories are powerful and as fresh as if they had occurred this morning.

Stay-cation

Like many of you, I look forward with anticipation to our family vacations. We like to get away, see something new, and have times we will never forget with family and friends. We had one of those earlier this summer, visiting my sister in Maine and celebrating time with Jaye and Karen.  Today I am coming to the end of a week that although very different, feels much the same in regards to how time was spent.  This week I had a stay-cation - a time off from work - and the farthest I got from home was the Toybox.  The week was great and although I got a lot of things done, I also discovered how many things there are needing to be completed.

I spent a great deal of time in the Toybox.  The number of projects I completed was incredible. Well, at least I was impressed.  I finished the maple and cherry four drawer chest I have been working on for Sara.  This is a piece to compliment the cherry and maple armoire in our master bedroom.  I used medium stained cherry and tiger maple for the drawer and door fronts and birds eye maple for the carcass.  There is a lot going on with this piece, but I really like the end result.  The other thing I like is that I can see that I have improved my woodworking skills since I finished the original piece.  Things just look better this time.  Some of that could also come from having my shop set up the way I want it, and having all of my equipment "zeroed," so that cuts are the same off any of the equipment.  Anyway, I was very pleased with the results.

Still in the category of work for others, I also finished a trivet for our friends in Kansas City that will be given as a host/hostess gift next weekend (B&V, if you are reading, act like it is a surprise), and I finished two shelves that my god daughter Kristin needs for her studio.  I still need to install them, but at least the construction is complete.

Not bad for a week.  But those are the things I completed for others. While working on those projects, I also completed a storage and charging station for the tools I use on the most regular basis (thanks to Wood Magazine for the idea) as well as a storage rack for my saw blades.

     

The saw blade storage station was built from scrap, so all of the dividers are not yet in place.  I will cut those when more left over pieces show up as I move forward.  So, all in all, I completed three projects for others and two for myself. I also managed to get in a couple of days of just being a sloth at home.  This activity is so-named when Andrew was so lethargic during a summer trip that his aunts compared him to a sloth.  Well, that was me for a day or so this week.  Not bad overall however for getting things done this week.

Maybe the most interesting part for me though was what I learned about myself.  I always believed that I worked most effectively in the shop if I started one project, work that project completely to the end, and then start on another.  I've worked that way for years, but it certainly wasn't what I did this week.  This week I worked on one project and thought about, or worked on parts of three or four other things.  This is typically the way that I function at work.  It seems obvious, but the best part of this is that when I got stuck on one project, as typically happens somewhere in the middle, rather than having the project languish and wait, I simply moved to something else while I cyphered on how to move the first project forward.  In the end, I am sure that I got more done during the week than I would have in any other typical week.  What a great stay-cation.

As the week comes to an end and I prepare to head back to work and discover things I should have been involved in that happened while I was gone, I find that even at a more mature age, I can continue to learn about how I think and how I approach that things that are ahead of me.  I have always said that I believe that we are life-time learners, learning every day of our lives, but this week truly pointed it out to me.  I learned this week that it is generally better for me to have several things to juggle, rather than just having one project in front of me.  At work I am much happier when busy than when things are slow, but it works better in my personal life as well.

Alright, stay-cation is over and now back to work. Do you take stay-cations? What things do you like to do?

Embrace the stay-cation.

Near Misses

Last week something wonderful happened.  I stopped at Hy-Vee for a quick grocery run.  I was on my phone, with headphones in place, when I heard someone call my name.  I was totally surprised to look up and see my cousin.  I knew she had moved back to this area in the last couple of years, and yes, I intended to get hold of her mother and get an address or contact information, but I'd been remiss and failed to do any of this.  But right there, standing in front of me, she was loading groceries into her vehicle at Hy-Vee - MY Hy-Vee.

We stood in the parking lot for quite some time, catching up on what was going on and what we had each missed out on.  We discovered that for the last several months ... even years, we lived within four blocks or so of each other.  Our community is not a large community, certainly not a Dallas or a New York, but we had been able for some time now to live this close to each other and not know it.  I was totally amazed.  I gave her my contact information and we parted, truly hoping that we will reach out and do something together, reconnecting to a childhood relationship that we had lost for years.

After we parted, I thought more about the situation and the experience.  The experience was wonderful, but the situation was nearly more than I could wrap my head around.  For the last couple of years, my cousin and I had lived within moments of each other.  How many times had we both been grocery shopping, maybe only an aisle apart, or possibly even passing in the same aisle but too lost in our own thoughts to recognize who was around us.  Did we use the same dry cleaner?  Did we both go to El Mariachi to eat, possibly on the same evening?  This was slightly overwhelming, but not yet mind blowing.  Then I thought about people we pass within feet of every day. Are they someone we knew from an earlier time in our lives, but don't recognize?

In my adult working life, we have moved several times.  I think the count now stands at six times.  In each of those moves, we were introduced to different people we came to know as acquaintances.  These are the folks that you wave at or talk to at church or at Target when you are shopping.  They are the people who bring life and interest to what could be very disheartening; moving from one city to another to do a job.  I have always been lucky as typically this is something that Sara does much better than I.  Then the time comes to move on, and there are a bunch of people you leave behind and really think about only occasionally, maybe at Christmas when you send out cards.  But maybe, just maybe, some of them move too, and you end up close to each other again. If you knew this, you might share time and activities with them again.

On top of this, there is the group of people you spent the first part of your life with, in pre-school, elementary, middle and high school; as well as all of the activities that you took part of in those days.  And college, or trade school, or the military.  All of these folks you have known that were part of your circle and then moved on to other circles.  Wow.  Now it becomes mind-blowing.  At any given moment, people from our past are more than likely nearby, in another aisle of the same store, eating at the same restaurant, using the same dry cleaner and we don't realize who they are.

In the middle of all of this introspection, someone mentioned to me that this is why Facebook is so powerful and pervasive in my age group.  It is a way for all of us to find each other again.  All you need is a name and a little bit of information and you can often either find the person you are looking for, or get connected to someone who knows that person.  This is the connection we are looking for.  The next challenge is to find ways to reconnect with them and stay connected.  This has been difficult for me.  I seem to ebb and flow around this, doing really well for a while, then going the other way and once again, losing people.

I believe in the concept of “Six Degrees of Separation” -  that we are all interconnected by less than six introductions from everyone in the world.  I need to keep refreshing those connections so I don’t discover that I have been missing them at the grocery store.  It continues to astound me what hard work being an adult is.  I really hope that I get it all figured out soon.