In the last few years of my consulting career I worked
with two young people (in their 30s) who chronically underestimated how long
something should take and always waited until the last minute. They were chronic procrastinators, in my
view, but there seem to be a lot of people like that. It was almost laughable how predictably they
got themselves into untenable situations while I never broke a sweat. I suppose they did accomplish more than I
did, but the process was rather nerve wracking even to watch.
They ran the risk of “over promising and under delivering,” as the saying goes, while I ran the opposite risk. In consulting, under promising can cost you the assignment. Over promising and under delivering, on the other hand, requires managing client expectations and often “damage control” after gaining the assignment, which takes a lot of energy and fast talking – not my style. I remember telling one of these two young people that the word ‘impossible’ was apparently not in her dictionary.
My style of writing seems best described as “conversational,” with sprinklings of anecdotes to explain or provide examples. Microsoft Word keeps prompting me to write in complete sentences, and being the compliant person that I am, I acquiesce more often than not, which renders my writing somewhat more stilted than I would naturally choose. I also tend to be more theme-oriented than chronological, segueing from topic to topic as one thought triggers another. Hopefully, jumping around chronologically is better than jumping around topically.
I hope my style is not “stream of consciousness,” but
more like interesting digressions, as I allow myself to take rabbit trails here
and there. Maybe I am pioneering a new literary
style! Maybe if I took a writing class I
might know what I am doing! Mark Twain once described the basis of the
American art of writing as: “To
string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes
purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities.” Maybe I’m in good company, at least!
Also, by calling this my memories I give myself permission to be hazy on some things, claiming that I do not remember them all that clearly, or to exclude some things entirely, as if I do not remember them at all (“selective memory”). I have lamented that our elders probably have a lot to offer, but we in our arrogant youth are not interested, or to be kinder, do not have the perspective into which to put the information we can gain from our elders. Now that I am on the elder side of the equation, I can see that youth probably is right not to be terribly interested in what the old folks have to say: partly because our experience may not seem relevant to their lives, and partly because we may not have the skills to express the relevant thoughts in a way that would help – present company excluded, I hope.
Throughout recorded history, as far as I know, the elders taught the young people; older women taught the young women the skills of cooking, sewing, applying makeup, raising children, keeping a household, etc. Young men often followed their fathers into the same or similar lines of work; or learned a trade through the old apprenticeship programs. But technological change came very slowly until the last two generations or so. Now the young people need to teach their elders how to use the electronic devices and social media that pervade our culture – or they need to do things for us older folks.
Things are changing so fast that many in my generation, if they are anything like me, feel overwhelmed and hopelessly behind the technology curve. This is especially so for retired folks, because it is the workplace that provides both the opportunity and the imperative to keep learning and changing. In my last years on the job I recall saying “Now I understand why they say ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’ It’s because the old dog doesn’t want to learn new tricks.” (That didn’t do much to extend the length of my working years, by the way). And given the accelerating pace of change, once you fall behind, you will never catch up unless you are a very special person.
I have been using email for many years mainly, again, because I needed to use it at work. I have an iPhone and can do most of the things I want to do with it. I have dabbled with the GPS feature of it, but don’t really feel like I need to master it. I know how to take and send pictures with my iPhone. I can access the internet via my iPhone, but the writing is too small to use extensively. Since I am retired and spend plenty of time at my desk top PC with large monitor, I don’t generally bother much with Internet access via the iPhone. In one of the humor sections of a recent issue of Reader’s Digest I read: “If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared, what would be the most difficult thing to explain about life today? One answer: ‘I possess a device in my pocket that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers’.”
I joined Facebook and LinkedIn for awhile, but didn’t like the “arguments” I was being drawn into on Facebook, and didn’t need the resources of LinkedIn. I am currently on Twitter, but do not understand how it works. I am following some of my favorite comedians, like Ellen DeGeneres and Jim Carrey. I also get a big kick out of Anna Kendrick, who is not a comedian, per se, but cracks me up nonetheless. She is really unconventional and inventive in a really comical way.
That’s about the extent of my involvement with social media at present. I don’t know how to create a website or a blog. Ryan recently showed me how to download music from iTunes, but I don’t have a headset or an iPod or an MP3 player, so I don’t have much use for the downloads. I didn’t make the transition to laptop computers or tablets. I like the big screen of a desktop PC and the feel of the mouse and keyboard. I don’t play games on my iPhone or the PC due to lack of interest. I have filed our tax return electronically the last few years, using software that is available for free on line. I don’t know if that is what is meant by the ‘cloud’ or not. I seem to pursue and learn about things that I really need, but don’t bother with the rest. We do use the DVR capability of our HD TV, and we use ROKU for streaming TV and movie content to our TV.
In these memories, I have no reason or desire to “tell all” or create scandals or “get even” with anyone or “set the record straight” or anything like that. I am not inclined to reveal any intimate or dark secrets – neither mine nor anyone else’s. Everybody has some. I feel I have less than the average person may have, and I have not given any real thought as to what “issues” other people may have that they would not want revealed. I just want to tell my story in a way that might be helpful, historical, interesting and amusing.
Opinions and points of view are included mainly to provide glimpses into my mind and clues as to what I was like and how I thought. Historical events are for the current generation, and current events are for future generations. I realize that some people are just not readers, and will never know what I have written about. Some people, by their own admission, just can’t sit still long enough. But rest assured, I have not abused anybody in these “Memories” nor discussed personal things that they may wish I had not brought up. Remember, though, that I have a great ability to laugh at myself, and I tend to forget that other people may not.
On the other hand, I know non-readers who can sit through the same movie for the 3rd, 4th and 5th time. I’m not able to do that, except maybe for a fun musical, like Mama Mia with Meryl Streep, or The Sound of Music with the young Julie Andrews. Some people can’t stand silence. They seem to have a physical or psychological need to have the television on for background noise, even while conversing with people. I am the extreme opposite: either be quiet and let me hear what is being said on the TV, or turn it off so I can listen to you. I can’t do both.
So I have my issues, too. If you can’t sit still long enough to read, I must accept that we all have our quirks. I can tell you, however, that a feature length movie comes nowhere near the character development that the related book is able to do. There just isn’t enough time in the movie to do everything the book does. It would be like someone trying to tell my story by outward observation versus the story I have to tell in writing.
I remember in the Shakespeare class I took in Junior College when one of the young students said in class that he had read the first two Acts of the play that we were assigned to read. He sounded like he was somewhat astounded and proud of himself that he had read so much in just one or two days. The teacher picked up on this and asked, “Are you all right? Two whole Acts in one night? Do you feel OK? I knew a guy once who read a whole play in one night!” Now I don’t remember whether the teacher said that “It like to killed the guy” or that he survived well, or what. But the point was made, and most of us found it quite amusing as well as insightful: We were being put on notice that the teacher was not going to coddle us or be easily impressed. The poor young student got the message, too, I believe.
It is amusing and amazing to realize how unable earlier generations were to anticipate the major changes that were coming. In the same way, I hope that some of what I say about the present will be amusing to future generations. There is no desire to persuade the reader one way or the other, and besides, by the time you read it, I may have changed my mind! There is also no attempt here at a family tree.
Upon reflection, it is somewhat of a copout not to deal
with some issues, but I do not feel like I have anybody’s permission to talk
about them just to make these memories more interesting. The news media likes to hide behind “the
public’s right to know” in order to excuse any charges of irresponsibility or
inappropriateness. I’m not going
there. There is also poetic license,
free speech, creative differences, etc, but I hope not to have anything I need
to defend myself against.
I also figured that writing from memory would help me avoid having to research anything. However, with the Internet only a mouse click away, it is pretty simple to verify a fact or get a piece of information. My very first use of it in this connection was to determine whether it was Socrates, Aristotle or Plato who said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (It was Socrates). I can’t agree with that sentiment as it relates to me and my life, by the way, but the process of writing my “memories” has been a revelation for me to some extent. This exercise has caused me to “connect the dots” in a few areas of my life. For example, I remarked to Sandy that my ten years on Long Island, from age 6 to 16 (1950 to 1960) loom so large in my mind, yet represent only 1/7th of my life. It’s as if it is a time capsule caught in black and white photographs in my mind.
I said to her that those formative years must be very important to people, but she said she hasn’t experienced that at all: She sees her life as one long continuum, with no single phase looming larger than any other phase. If she is typical, then my life has been unnaturally segmented in my mind, perhaps because it was segmented, with each phase having little to do with the other phases. Perhaps I am still trying to understand what the boy of the 1950s and the young man of my Army years has to do with my California life. It’s like they are not connected or related. I can’t shake the feeling that I had to mentally isolate my childhood in order to move on with a more normal and productive life in California.
I heard a song recently that includes lyrics to the
effect: “All this time I was finding
myself, I didn’t know I was lost.” That seems to say a lot…or nothing at all.
There is a pearl of wisdom that says, in effect, that as my island of knowledge
grows, my shoreline of wonder expands.
In plain English, the more you know, the more you realize you don’t
know. There is no doubt a formula
regarding the relationship of the area of a circle to its circumference, but
anyway, you get it. Thinking about my
life has helped me discover things I didn’t know I knew!
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