Lightning Strike

It's been another of those interesting weeks.  Within my circle of acquaintances, there have been a couple of people who have taken some hits from the world and I'm sure the same could be said for most of you.  There are just those weeks when bad stuff happens to the good people that we care about in our lives. I was talking with Megan over the holiday break and she told me that sometimes those things were like lightning strikes: you are standing there looking at a perfectly clear sky one minute and the next minute, ka-boom, you are struck by lightning.  I thought that this was very insightful for a young woman of her age and it obviously made me think.

The thing that I thought the most about was the way I react when these things happen.  Let me be clearer about this.  There are good things and bad things that happen to us, or to our friends, that fall into the category of "lightning strikes."  These can be things like: winning a lottery - $25.00 for example; getting an income tax refund; getting stopped for speeding; or having some type of serious medical situation.  What I want you to see is that these strikes can either be positive or negative.  But for myself, I have a much greater tendency to respond to the negative things rather than the positive. I am much more likely to think about the fact that the wind knocked over my garbage can than the fact that I received an unexpected check in the mail. Does this make me a pessimist? I'm not sure.  I need to think more about that.

However, I think there are some things that I have already learned by watching others and the way they respond to challenges tossed at them by the world, or gifts that befall them.  It seems to me that as I really think about it, the people I respect and admire the most tend to stay centered no matter what comes at them.  They understand that life will give some wonderful gifts, and will challenge them in ways that are often unimaginable.  Staying in the center helps them deal with everything as it comes at them.  On the other hand, I have a tendency to diminish the good things that happen and see the bad things as monstrous occurrences.  Because of this, I tend to have large emotional swings in the way that I encounter the world.

Wow, that is really hard to admit, but there it is, out there for all to see.  Now, what do I do with that?  I would love to say that it changes today because of this epiphany, but that isn't real.  So, because of the time of the year - 2014 is a still pretty fresh - I am committing to looking at things more evenhandedly.  I continue to strive to understand that both good and bad happens to each of us all of the time, and I am going to attempt to stay closer to the center. I know that I will still celebrate the good things and hurt about the bad things, for myself and for those that I know and care about. But, I want to avoid the big swings which make me difficult to be around.  It will be interesting to see how this goes.

On a completely different subject, thank you for all of the positive feedback on the Adirondack chair I put out in my Etsy store last week.  I have heard from several of you, as you consider how many of these you need and where you will put them.  It is nice to know that I can produce something that you all like.  Honestly, I thought they turned out very well.  As most of you know, I am a Weekend Wood Warrior.  That being said, it takes me a while to get things done, since my time to work on projects is limited.   So, if you are thinking that a couple of these chairs would look wonderful on your patio or would work at the cabin, now is the time to take a look around and make some decisions. Contact me as soon as you can.  I want to make sure that when this Iowa winter breaks, you will be able to sit outside, enjoy a beverage (maybe even an adult beverage), and comfortably watch the world go by.  Let me know soon!

Have a great week.

Stories

Last night my wife got one of those pieces of information that none of us likes to receive: a death in her circle-of-life acquaintances.  It is something that happens to all of us, but there are times we think more deeply about it.  For me, this was one of those times.  Dr Bowman was someone I had come to know in the time that I have been in Sara's family.  I found him to be a very strong willed person always willing to have a conversation about anything.  He is one of the people in my life that I only knew tangentially, but for whom I had the utmost respect.  Dr B had many experiences and did many things in his life, but one of the most amazing to me was that he had been one of the Tuskegee Airmen.  Like many who had served and fought, this was a part of his life that he spoke of only in passing and never in much depth.  I believe that for many in his age group, this was the best way for them to deal with what they had seen and what they had experienced. 

As I thought more about this today, I began to wonder how many of the people who had shared his experience were still alive.  The number was actually a little staggering.  Out of the original number of 994, most of the information I found said that there were about 58 living as of December 2010 and another anecdotal piece of information held out a belief that there are only 5 or 6 still alive today.  I certainly hope someone took the time to get as much information as possible from this group. There isn't much time left.. 

This is what got me thinking today. I feel like we lost something with Dr B's death. We will no longer hear about the experiences he had and the stories he had to tell.  The other thing to think about is that this is the case with every human being on the planet.  We all have backgrounds and experiences that are personal and individual.  What is so troubling is that our culture is not one to embrace stories handed down through the elders of the family.  More often than not, we just lose this information.  I find this to be truly a tragedy.  And to make matters worse, some of us, although getting older ourselves, find it very uncomfortable to spend time with the older generation in our own family.  I know that in the last year or two of my Grandma's life, I didn't spend the time with her that I should have, and I am sure that I am repeating this behavior right now with others in my life.

So one of my stories today is something my grandfather taught me that I continue to carry with me.  He told me at a very tender age that not knowing something, and asking for help was not a sign of weakness, but rather a strength that would carry you through much of your life.  This lesson continued has he explained that where this became a problem was if you had to ask, or be taught something multiple times.  I am not sure that he intended this lesson to have the impact that it did, but I still think about things this way, both for myself and for those around me.  The first time is a learning opportunity, and a sign of the strength to ask for help. After that, the not knowing may be a sign that you weren't paying attention.

So, with all of this thought and reflection, what will I do about it?  I am going to undertake a two pronged approach to see if I can change my family's trajectory.  I am going to reach out and spend more time being in touch with aunts and uncles, friends and acquaintances - hearing and telling the stories that made their lives what they are.  And then, I am going to tell the stories whenever I can to make sure that these never die.  If you ask my family, they would tell you I already do this, but it is time for a whole new gear.  Time to ramp up the information gathering and figure out more and more ways to tell stories.  Some of them may even end up in this blog.  Of course, some of them already have.

Well, Dr B, you will be missed by family and friends, and even those of us who only knew you in passing.  I hope that you shared your stories with those around you and I hope that they will pass them along.  I know that I am going to be more aware of the stories around me and I am going to do a better job of telling them and it is because I had a chance to know you.

Recycling

I don't know where any of you stand on recycling; in fact I have friends who think that it is a huge waste of time, but the last few weeks have made me think about this activity again.  If we go back, the reason that I started to recycle was that Sara MADE me.  We were living in Des Moines, in a house north of Drake University and Sara told me that because we only have one Earth, we were going to start recycling everything that we could.  With those words, we began a relentless march to where we are today. 

When we first started, the only thing that got picked up at your curb was garbage.  To take care of anything else required a great deal of personal involvement.  So to meet our goal, we started by learning what recycling facilities were available to us and what items they would take.  In those days, all of the different colors of glass; the metal; and the newspaper had to be sorted.  It was a time when a lot of items had no recycling stream, but we started by doing what we could.  As we moved forward over time, it got easier.  More recycling facilities became available, rather than being at the back of the local dump, and the items that could be recycled increased.  Somewhere along the line, "single stream" recycling happened, with all of the items mixed together and picked up at the curb, just like the garbage used to be.  This is where we are today, and although we have a recycling container the same size as our garbage container, on a typical pick up day the recycling bin is full to overflowing and there is a small bag of garbage in the other.

So, we have come a long way in our recycling efforts - OK, so what.  The leap that I have taken in the last month is in my woodworking.  For several years now, there have been articles out about reusing wood.  The sources are as varied as you could possibly imagine.  Everything from construction waste to pallets that woodworkers and crafters re-purpose.  Honestly, I used to think that I was above that.  Now I will tell you that I was just being silly. 

Last fall, I started a project at home recreating and cleaning up an outdoor space.  The first step was to remove some old cedar fencing.  I had contacted Habitat for Humanity to see if they would take the wood and they said yes, so I thought I had a plan. However, when I removed the boards, I discovered that they were 7/8" thick and in really good shape.  So, at that point, I took everything to the Toybox and put it in the lumber rack.

Sometime later, as I was thinking about what I would like to do for Sara for Christmas, I decided that she might like a couple of nice chairs for that same outdoor space at the house.  After looking around a bit, I found a great pattern for Adirondack chairs in Wood magazine.  At that point, the old fencing came into play, since Cedar is the perfect species for this type of outdoor furniture.  I  surfaced the lumber to 3/4", removing all of the weather, mold, and bird crap and uncovered boards with a lovely patina from years of aging.  I have now completed the project and I must say, they turned out very nice, and the highest compliment was when I told Sara what I had made the chairs out of. She had no idea that it was the same lumber.  It was the nicest thing she could have said. I did not want them to look as though they had been "reused".  I also created some picture frames for posters to hang at the Toybox from the cedar, and I will tell you, they look great too.


I have probably not reached a point where I will move exclusively to recycled lumber for projects, but I will tell you with certainty, I will always consider the possibility with projects in the future.  I guess that it is just one more way that we can recycle and make sure that we are sending less to the landfills. 

OK, on another topic, I have to tell you how excited I am about some upcoming wood learning.  In May, through Wood magazine, there is an event called Weekend with Wood.  It is all about learning new techniques and networking with others in the industry and it happens in Des Moines.  I have signed up and registered for my classes, and now that I have done that, I encourage the rest of you to take a look.  If you are interested you should come "hang out" for the weekend and see what you can learn.  I hope that I might see some of you there.

Creatives

In the last few weeks I have been amazed at the creative powers of many of our friends, as well as people across the entire world.  Now, I'm not really talking about people who make the really big discoveries, like curing polio, or cancer, whenever that happens.  Those people and their discoveries are phenomenal in their own right, no question, but I am talking about the creative people who are around us every single day.  The woodworker, the welder, the writer, the photographer -  these and so many others take normal situations and change them or see the incredible in them.  If you want to know what this looks like, take a look at Pinterest or a website like Wood Whisperer.  People are doing some amazing things.

This is one of the things I love the most about what I get to do each day for a living.  I live in a state where people figure out how to do things with a more "hands on" approach than other places.  We have our share of engineers, designers, and draftsmen, but I am continually amazed at how many times I visit a customer and they are upgrading a product in the shop.  This isn't necessarily through computer assisted design (which we do use) but through the tried and tested method of fitting something and then seeing if it works.  One of my favorite examples of this was during a visit to GE Commercial Credit a few years ago.  They had a machine that they lovingly called "The Rubber Band Machine."  This piece of equipment sliced all of the edges off an envelope, discard the envelope itself and orient the contents of the letter in an exact pattern.  Pretty amazing, right?  Well, the amazing part was that when the people there were talking about the machine, they admitted it had been created because someone wanted a machine to cut the end off an envelope.  The rest developed over time and with ingenuity as they continued to say, "Well, if it can do that, can it ..."?  What they ended up with was a machine that could do everything.

As I said above, I get to meet these people every day, and with almost no exceptions, they are the most down-to-earth, grounded folks I have ever known.  I remember meeting a man who developed a filtering system that would separate nearly anything, and the reason he had done it was because everyone told him there was nothing on the market that could do this.  He needed to accomplish this task, so he went after it and in the end had a system others couldn't believe worked.  Earlier this week, I had the chance to go to Iowa State and listen to some young creatives talking about their passion and what they were going to do with it.  Their plans were bold and audacious and I believe many of them will accomplish these plans.  In the middle of this comes the challenge that I have to take to heart, and if you are in my age group, you may want to listen as well.

I have reached an age where I have come to believe that I know what will work and what won't.  This is based upon years of trial and error and watching others succeed and fail.  And, I have a strong enough belief in myself that I really think that I know.  Yet really, in this time in which we are living - with all of the creative people and resources around us, there is no limit other than that which we set for ourselves.  I know this intellectually, however knowing this in my gut is sometimes completely different.  This is the challenge.  I have to stop myself from being the one who crushes new ideas and potential by telling some of these younger people that what they are trying to do will not succeed.  In the presentations I saw earlier this week, there are a couple of ideas that I don't think stand a chance of surviving, but there was a time when I probably would not have believed broadband Internet would exist in most homes or that you could carry computers around in your hand.  I am still a child of a time when a computer filled an entire room and was so hot that you could not be in that same room.  That wasn't so very long ago, either.

So my challenge, and I would invite you to join me if you can, is to support new ideas when we see them.  In meetings I will not be the one who says, "That won't work."  I will be the one who encourages new approaches and suggests that we should take a look.  Often times, if an idea is given some room and time to bloom, it will do just that.  There are so many people right now with fantastic and creative ideas that just need a chance to get going.  Let's do what we can to help these folks along.  Who knows, one of them may help to solve world hunger or global warming.

Everybody keep after it.  We need the new ideas and the willingness to chase them.

Digital Hermit

With all of the press about the NSA listening to all of our conversations or reading all of our emails, it struck me earlier this week that it might be really easy to proclaim that you were going to be a "digital hermit," living off the grid.  This would be reminiscent of the movie "Enemy of the State." The main character had in fact, learned to live in a manner in which he left absolutely no electronic footprint.  At the same time I was thinking about this, I ran into an article about an area in West Virginia, Virginia, and a piece of Maryland called the "United States National Radio Quiet Zone."  This is an area of the US, that due to the work at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory has been declared as an area with no high power transmitters and makes such things as cell phones and wi-fi connectivity a thing of another world.  You can still find a phone booth here since this technology is ultra-modern for its residents.  So, this area would be much closer to the idea of being off the grid than anything we know today.  Maybe the answer is to move to that part of the US.

But hang on.  Wait just a minute.  This would mean that I wouldn't be able to have multiple computers in my home all networked with Wi-fi.  It would mean that I couldn't have a smart phone, or even moving back a generation or two, a cell phone of any kind.  No on-line banking, no texting, no instant messaging, no cars with spark plugs.  Okay, this is just more than I can think about.  On top of that, my generation is only somewhat connected whereas I am sure that if I talked to my children about this concept, they would just quit breathing.  These are all things we have come to take for granted and thinking about going backward is probably not something most of us want to do.  I know it isn't really something that I want to do.  I don't need to hear again the sound of AOL booting up to send a message over a network that is tens of times slower than the phone I carry today.

I have a tendency to long for the simplicity of the past until I stop to think about all of the convenience that comes with the way that our world is today.  I think about the times as a child when I could lay on a hillside and watch clouds go by, enjoying the time for hours. I remember that in my hometown I could be gone all day long and nobody would think about it.  Would I like to have these things back to be part of my life, or my kid's lives today?  Absolutely, but, like so many things, there is a trade-off.  As I watched Andrew and Megan grow up, it amazed me at the size of their world compared to the one I grew up in.  They had friends from all over the world and had lived in six places before they reached high school.  Where I had not flown anywhere until I was in college, my children had flown enough that Megan could tell me that she liked the First Class seats because they were more comfortable.  They had been to Disney World twice. My first trip was with them on their first time.  All sorts of differences that came with time.

I guess that where I am right now is that I value all of the wonderful things of the past, and I also love the things that are in the here and now.  I have wonderful memories of times and of friends that I had the privilege of knowing from before we started to school until after we graduated.  But at the same time, when I left for college, even though I was going to a small university, I was headed to a place that had more people than the community I had grown up in.  Long and short of it, there are pluses and minuses to everything.  I know that my children are more worldly at their age than I was then and I know that they have drug me along the road of "modern," sometimes screaming and kicking.  I must say that I appreciate the help.

Oh, a few last things worth remembering: the snow was always much deeper, and it was a 10 mile walk uphill to school when I was a child and I am sure that this was real and not just the way that I remember it. 

Well, off I go to wrap gifts with Rotary so some kids will have a better holiday.

Have a great week.

Launched

As many of you know, I love the author, Seth Godin.  His words have helped me think through a lot of different situations over the years and given me moments to really stop and think about what I was doing.  I believe he has helped me to be a better leader in my professional life and now, I think that he may be one of the factors that is helping me to move forward in my personal life.  

One thing Seth talks about time and time again is that you have to "ship."  This means that you have to gather your courage and take whatever it is that you have done and put it out there for the world to see.  Honestly, it has been the encouragement of some of you, and the idea of shipping that got me to write this blog in the first place.  I had thought about it sometimes, even taken a crack or two at writing something, but I had never found the courage to put what I had done out there for the world to see, and honestly, to critique.  And then, on April 7, 2011, I was able to find the courage to actually publish the first of these blogs.  If you go back and look at what I thought this would be early on, we have traveled a great distance from that, but I am still putting myself out there, and you are still reading what I have to write.  Thanks so much for that.

 

Well, again with encouragement from all of you, I am jumping to a completely new level.  I have opened an Etsy store to let people know what is available from Jim's Toybox Woodworking.  So, to use Seth's verbage, I have shipped.  I have told you that I have actually produced something and I am holding it out for public scrutiny.  Just writing the sentence causes me to be just a little queasy.  

In the middle of all of this, I keep thinking about the television commercial talking about big changes later in life.  Well, this is certainly one for me.  I ask that you support me in this venture and if you know of anyone who might be interested in the work that I do at the Toybox, let them know about all of this.  Along the same lines, if you need, or know someone who needs something built to their specifications, remember that I am out here working on the weekends and in the evenings - making sawdust and beautiful finished products.  

Ditch Digger

Sometimes we have a tendency to forget the things that we were programmed with as kids, and then along comes something that smacks us right in the face.  This was the case this week with a note I found while going through some other things.  Some of you may recognize the handwriting, some may not, but this was my mom's penmanship. She wrote this little note about career and kept this on the wall behind her desk. I suspect this gave her something to think about during those times her career wasn't all she wanted it to be.  I read this and then I remembered words my father said to me on more than one occasion.  He told me that he would rather have me be a good ditch digger than a lousy attorney.  Obviously, I ended up as neither of those, but I think that the meaning is something I have tried to carry, sometimes more successfully than at other times.  As an example, I remember going to my ten year class reunion and found myself almost apologizing for what I was doing for a career.  Looking back on it now, that career provided a good living and let me live comfortably within my means. What more can any of us ask?

Tuesday was a long day here, work did not go well and I left in foul humor - just ask Sara or anyone that I interacted with.  If you check with my team, they will tell you that there was some residual left by the time I arrived at our Wednesday morning meeting.  To finish Tuesday off, on her way home from class, the truck Sara was driving stopped working and wouldn't restart.  The good part was that she was safe, the bad part was that we ended up sitting at a Casey's for about an hour waiting a tow truck to take it to Jack's so that it could get fixed the next day. 

That isn't the point of the story. In the middle of all of this, I met a person who was a true joy. His name was Kenny, and he was the driver that the folks at Crow Towing sent to take care of us.  He was the consummate professional, showing the same care for a Ford F150 with almost 160K miles that he would have shown with a just-off-the-showroom-floor Corvette.  All the time that he was doing the work, he also communicated with me as to what he was doing and why, and how things had changed over the years in his business.  I can tell you for sure that if I had needed brain surgery, I would have gone someplace else, but to take care of our truck, you could not have found better care or someone more helpful. 

In dealing with Kenny and our truck, I was reminded of a man who worked with me at Payless Cashways on Hickman Road a bunch of years ago.  His name was Jack.  He came to work as a yard/warehouse person and struggled with the concept of staying busy.  Early in his time there, if he didn't have something to do, he would just stand, or lean, against a bunk of lumber.  I remember working with him repeatedly, helping him understand that there is always something to do, and when people see you standing around, they wonder what value you bring to the organization.  Jack became a very good employee, and a nice person just to be around.  I remember the day he came to tell me that he had gotten another job, a better job in his eyes.  He was going to work at Iowa Methodist as a janitor.  He was the happiest person I had ever seen, and I would almost bet he is still there today. 

I know there are times that I haven't necessarily been happy with what I was doing. There have also been times I wasn't proud of what I was doing. But in hindsight, I do believe that focusing on the career/job and doing the best I could has always been the thing that made it possible for my family to do everything we wanted to do.  I remember my boss telling me one day that if I focused on the current job, and did the best that I could possibly do, the next job would always take care of itself.  Thus far, I've found that to be true. I've watched others who were always chasing the big career and could never quite get there.  I guess that whatever you are, whether it is a lawyer or baker, carpenter or author, sales guy or CFO; being productive, effective, and happy are the real important things.  It helps carry us through the hard times, along with some of the tremendous people that we get to meet along the way.

So, I will go to work tomorrow and remember the words that my mom thought were important enough to put over her desk.