Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.
– Burton Hills
Longevity & Happiness
Dressing for work these days is not the same as it was 20 years ago. Back in my days on Wall St. it was about the power tie and the pinstripe blue suit. Now in the world of techology it is about the right jeans, the coat, the shirt that goes untucked, no tie. Yup, that’s how you dress to impress. I remember that first day on the job in NYC when my mentor looked at my suit and told me we were going to leave early and he was going to take me to Barney’s down in the garment district. He had the tailor fit me with two suits, some shirts and some ties, 4 pair of socks and a pair of brown shoes as well as black shoes. He paid for it all. I was shocked, but years later I figured he expensed it. I appreciated the effort but dressing up was never my thing. I always wanted to dress appropriately, but not to impress.
Yesterday morning I threw on my cool jeans and found one of my fitted dress shirts I had worn once before for a party. I forgot the shirt needed cuff links and scuffled around for something to insert into the cotton holes. I found an old box of my dad’s cuffs and picked out two old fashioned ones with Chinese characters that I could not read. When I got to work I forgot about the cuffs. I scuffled through a few phone calls and a slew of emails until one of our foreign engineers spotted me getting some water and smiled saying , “Long Life and Happiness”. I looked at him inquisitively. He pointed at my left wrist and said “Long Life” and then my right, “Happiness”. I smiled. That was appropriate. I now was dressing for success. And I had my dad, the man who gave me all of my life’s rules right there to guide me. Such simple words and yet so powerful. On my left wrist I also wore my yellow Livestrong wristband. Live Strong and Long Life on one hand and Happiness on the other. It felt like those days as a kid when my dad gave me those notes of wisdom. I stared at my wrists as I ate lunch.
Quite frankly I haven’t been happy about many things lately even as I try to maintain a positive attitude. I feel overworked, overburdened and have very little time to contemplate, smell the roses and share some quality time with my family. Staying up late is one of the few times I can empty my mind and take care of the things I need to for my family. What I really need is a good primal scream. Can you do that in a blog? I”ll try and do it quickly. I need to realease the tension in my life.
Please skip the rest of this entry if you don’t want to read my negativity! I’ll be better in my next entry, but I need to do this in order to honor my dad’s wishes of Longevity and Happiness! Okay, plug your ears and close your eyes!
1. My son’s music teacher is a complete nerd who needs to get a life! He’s worse than an abusive sports nut coach!
2. Comcast is so incompetent! Why can’t they just come to my house and fix the problem!
3. What the heck are the city planners doing by narrowing the boulevard I’m living on yet adding traffic?! Someone’s going to get killed!
4. Someone want to give me a raise or help me win the Lottery? …Please 😉
5. Will my mother-in-law please enjoy life and not torment her daughter?
6. Dear protesters, stop blocking my streets! I respect your voice but hate your methods of communication.
7. Dear politicians, stop wasting our money and time!
8. (Quietly looking skyward) Do not put my wife through cancer again.
9.Someone out there…I need 30 hours in a day! (2 more hours of sleep, 2 more hours of work, 2 more hours to spend with my family!)
10. Vacation Gods…where are you?
Okay. Feel better now. Time to go to bed. Longevity and Happiness to all!
“New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” ~Mark Twain
Okay, I’ve been a bit delayed in putting my resolutions down. Quite frankly I’ve been adding and subtracting them over the last few days. Tonight I had my first run on the year so it gave me a chance to really reflect and let them come out. I also had a chance today to watch my favorite movie “Field of Dreams”. My friends who have been in the video business dock me for life as a film critic for enjoying any movie with Kevin Costner, but the movie hits me personally on so many levels that it helped me. It is a movie about faith, believing, and following your passions. Seeing it again helped me finish my list of resolutions. During the movie they play a couple of Doobie Brother’s songs. They don’t play the one below, but it is a favorite and I thought would set a tone for me this year.
So here go my resolutions which of course fall into some neat piles of Health, Happiness and Wealth (they are the most common according to all the news I watched this year):
Health:
1. Get more sleep! I’ve been averaging 6 hours or less and just need to get more this year!
2. Continue to improve my cardiovascular and running. This year I ran 1126 miles and reduced my avg. miles from the pedestrian 10 minute pace down to 6 and half minutes per mile. I was really inspired by Dara Torres the Olympic swimmer who in her 40s was able to perform at a level she did in her teens.
3. Investigate the small personal health concerns that I have and make sure that I get the answers.
Happiness:
4. Spend more time with the children. I think the health issues this year were a small strain on them as well. For my daughter I want to find an activity that she and I can call our own. For my son, I want to spend more time on his social development. This is a hard one given that both teachers told us that we need to keep doing what we are doing, but I want our children to just know that their parents love them.
5. Rebuild my one to one relationship with my wife. With her cancer having consumed the second half of 2008, our 50-50 relationship really became a 90-10 relationship. It exhausted me and it changed my view of my wife as more of a patient than a partner in life. I want to make sure that we get some one on one time and rebuild the bonds that made our relationship special even before cancer moved into our lives.
6. Continue and expand on my parenting thoughts here in this blog. I don’t want this to seem like a “how you should do it piece” or a “what are the best tips for raising a kid” piece. I want this to be an insight for my children to someday see the dilemmas and decisions I made as they relate to them.
7. Start blogging about my other passions like photography, sports, etc.
8. Take more time for myself. Take those vacations!
Wealth:
9. Secure our future plans. Develop a more secure will and documentation of our assets.
10. Tighten up random unnecessary expenses – Magazine subscriptions, luxury items, extra coffee, etc.
11. Analyze and reconfigure personal debt as needed (Refinance, close accounts, etc.). Save $5-$10 per day.
Well that is it. Quite a bit and I must say, I’d be very very happy to accomplish all eleven. Writing it down does put it out there and hopefully it something I will look back to.
When you are down, look to your children and your children’s children for hope and happiness – Fortune Cookie
I looked at my fortune tonight as my son and daughter read it over my shoulder. My daughter asked me what it meant and my son gave me a wry smile as if I had been rooked by the fortune cookie gods. It is so true to have not just children but to have faimly around you who give you that unconditional love and respect. That ear that will listen or that smile that brightens a gloomy day. You don’t have to have that kind of felling with all your children or relatives because it just takes one.
These past five months have had me running, literally, to keep my sanity and energy. Our children while never less important in our lives have not always been given the attention we’d like to have given them. As a parent you shield them from life’s problems so that they can approach life without barriers and without bias while tryig to provide them with the tools that will help them to survive barriers and bias. one of my more favorite movies in the past 10 years is The Pursuit of Happyness. It is a true story about a single father who did all he could to raise his child in a world that was unkind to him. Ironically it is a story that took place right here in San Francisco and at the time of the real stroy I was a struggling young college intern right across the street.
I’m not homeless, but the emotional adversity has been rougher on me than I thought it would be. Finally after 5 months, my wife’s parents are here to help. The relief in my body is a bit of a shock. I don’t have to worry about my wife every second of the day and the ability to focus more on my children and reconnect with them on more than just a “bedtime story” level is something I really want and need.
This weekend we found an hour between the raindrops to toss a baseball around. It felt good to feel that ball pop in my glove and sting my hand. After an hour, my hand was burning from my 9 year old’s pitches. It felt so good for it to hurt like that. I also took my daughter to go to see the Nutcracker with my mother. For her to get all dressed up and have a day out on the town with her grandmother made her feel special and the smile on her face was all I needed.
So back to that crazy fortune cookie at San Tung Restaurant. It was the most honest and truthful fortune cookie for me. To those who wonder about such things. I am superstitious. I take the cookie that is pointing to me and I never read the fortune until I have full swallowed the cookie. At least that is the rule my cousins always told me to obey.
I explained to my daughter about what it meant and I told them how the game of catch and the Nutcracker were perfect examples of all that I needed to make my life better this holiday season. I know they don’t get it and they’ll still want the latest electronic games and gadgets for the holidays under the Christmas tree, but should they get my good fortune someday when they are my age, I’m sure they’ll at least understand what I was feeling tonight.
