I used to be a Crocs guy. They were my casual shoe of choice for a long time. By the time I moved out here to this hilltop for retirement, coming on five years ago now, my shoe wardrobe consisted of a whole array of $450 Allen Edmonds work shoes of all kinds. I would say I was 70% into black with the others all oxblood maroon. I found those colors were the most appealing…
The Holding Pen of Life In a recent British movie I watched, the narrator sets up the plot about a man in later life (Jim Broadbent…Bridget Jone’s dear old dad) who will be facing a crisis of his legacy. The comment is a made about the man when he was young and in school that he and his fellows felt as though they were in a holding pen. He goes on by saying that he…
Now You Feel It, Now You Don’t When I was about nine years old and already living in a twelve-year-old’s body, I was playing street football in our crackerbox development in Madison, Wisconsin. Those were lean graduate school days for my mother and family, and I either didn’t have a proper pair of sneakers or was too lazy to go home and put them on, so I was wearing leather-soled tie shoes when I went…
The Basic Basics This morning while showering, i started thinking about the difference between things we need and things we want. Let’s start by admitting that we all in this country are blessed by abundance and have pretty much all that we need at all times. It was Abraham Maslow, who in his now famous 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”, established what we now know as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It may just…
Staying Relevant I have spoken before about the issue of people of a certain age (that would be of an older age like me) dealing with the issue of relevancy. This issue for me is less about desperately trying to find a way to stay relevant, and more about the issue of the decision we must all make at one time or another, or even on a continuous ongoing basis, as to whether or not…
Getting Hosed When you retire, certain things you have taken for granted for many years suddenly come to the fore and take on a much higher level of importance. I’m sure this varies based on where one lives and what interests you are likely to pursue in retirement. But I think its fair to say that retirement has an aspect to it that involves trying to spend more time with nature and for most people…
Western Dreams Like many men my age, I grew up during the cowboy era with the likes of The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Have Gun will Travel, The Rifleman, Bonanza, The Big Valley, Rawhide, Zorro, Maverick, Wagon Train, The Virginian, and even F Troop. If we had dreams in those heady days of the 50s and 60s, they were about being either astronauts or cowboys. I didn’t really think too much about either in a vocational…
Being Unemployed During the forty-eight years since I graduated from business school, I have rarely been without work. In fact, I was always a man in a hurry for some reason, so rather than take off some time between school and work, I finished my 3-credit summer school class needed to finish off my MBA degree on a Friday in June, 1976 and started at Bankers Trust on the following Monday. It’s interesting to note…
The Passage of Time Outside on our deck on the wall of the house where there are no windows, we have placed a large 30” metal wall clock. These days, large wall clocks with a certain artistic statement are not so unusual. You can buy one on Wayfair or any manner of online shopping site and have your choice of countless styles. We actually bought this particular clock to hang over the inside front door,…
Jack of All Trades One of the oldest English expressions is “Jack of all trades” which dates back to Old English in 1390 when, during Medieval Times, it was considered a strength for a man to be knowledgeable and capable in several different skills. One might even suggest that since that was really the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, that the Jack of all trades may well have morphed…