Cursed

“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.’
– Mark Twain

[Ed note: as I’ve gotten older, I’ve increasingly noticed how often people talk adjacent to each other, rather than truly with each other – sort of the adult equivalent of ‘parallel play.’ Arguing a point, both sides become more deeply entrenched, rather than listening to, and staying open to, the opposing position. As I’ve aged, I’ve also become increasingly sure I’m wrong a large percentage of the time. As a stubborn asshole at heart, it takes work for me to put that insight into practice, to admit I’m wrong and to really listen to what others have to say, especially if it’s hurtful for me to hear. But I’m sure trying. It’s always good to know that, if a comment is a bit too close to home, i can always count to four. Or curse.]

July 6, 2015

Snot Nosed

In my younger days, I got sinusitis every winter. It’s sort of a family tradition, enough so that my father and brother both had sinus surgery to prevent it. On their recommendation, I bought a Neilmed sinus rinse bottle five years back. And nearly every morning since, I’ve sprayed saltwater up my nose. Gross as it initially seemed, it worked, and I haven’t had a single bout of sinusitis since.

Until, that is, this week. In the wake of my Juno flu, I’ve been full of boogers, unable to breathe, and coughing up a storm due to post-nasal drip. I’ve drank fluids, used the Neilmed twice daily, tried to rest and generally followed any get-well advice, all to no avail. Which led my father to share a tip he’d received in turn from an ENT colleague: when nasal irrigation with saltwater doesn’t cut it, research backs adding betadine or baby shampoo to the rinse as ways to knock out the biofilms driving the infection.

Though both additives sounded repulsive, I was getting desperate. So I swung through Duane Reade this evening, and picked up a bottle of each.

Turns out, if you mix betadine with saltwater, then spray it up your nose, it stinks of iodine, and burns a bit, but isn’t too bad.

On the other hand, if you do the same thing with baby shampoo, you end up with a nose full of lather. And, for about an hour after, you have a horrific lavender taste in the back of your mouth like you’re sucking an entire package of violet mints, along with intermittently coughing up bubble bath foam.

Let’s hope this combo works. And quickly. As I’m not sure how long I can stand keeping it up.

February 8, 2015

Don’t Sweater the Small Stuff

Each morning, I get out of bed, and look at the morning’s temperature. And, each morning, I have no idea what to wear as a result. Thirty-five years in, and I still have no sense at all of what different temperatures feel like, of when I should switch to long sleeves, of what ‘sweater weather’ is precisely, or of if I need to throw on a light coat. This morning, it’s 61 degrees. What do I put on?

Of course, I realize the temperature/clothing relationship is relative. In the fall, coming down from summer highs, perhaps 61 is cool enough to warrant a fleece; in the Spring, after months of snow, frost and freeze, I’d gladly head out in shorts and a t-shirt. Or consider regional differences: when my parents come in to visit from California, in weather in which I’m still wearing just a sweater, my mother has broken out scarf, gloves and hat.

Still, as with other basic skills I somehow missed early in life (cf., locating all 50 states on a map), I always feel like I should be doing something about the situation. So, in total loser style, I’m taking a ‘quantified self’ approach here, and have begun spreadsheeting the weather, what I wear and how it feels each morning after I walk Gemelli. With enough data, I might finally crack the code of what 61 degrees means, to me. And, in the process of noticing and tracking it every day, I suspect I’m far more likely to actually internalize the result.

Granted, knowing when to put on a sweater doesn’t really justify this much data-keeping; but nerdy, obsessive record-keeping comes naturally for me. You might even say it’s dyed in the wool.

September 16, 2014

Countdown

Last day of 34.

As a birthday gift to myself, I’m dropping my worst habit: bullshitting / lying / ‘selling’ / whatever. It’s gotten me into trouble in the past, and I’m sick of it. I’m calling a do-over, quitting it cold turkey, and starting 35 fresh. Wish me luck.

As Samuel Butler once observed, “life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

July 15, 2014

Hearing Voices

A few nights ago, as I was taking Gemelli for a late walk, he stopped to say hello to a small black-and-white cockapoo.

“She’s very cute,” I said. “What’s her name?”

“Josie,” said her owner.

And I thought, oh, you’re [Jon Ronson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Ronson).

Later, [Google backed me up](http://www.babusinesslife.com/People/Pets/Pet-theories-Jon-Ronson.html). But I was sure from that first word. I don’t know why, but I’m exceedingly good at recognizing people by voice.

I drive Jess nuts with this when we watch television, as I can’t help but reflexively call out the name of the person doing the voice over for each commercial.

You can’t pick your talents.

|  
October 10, 2013

Holiday Reading

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.

\- [“Letter from a Birmingham Jail”](http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html), Martin Luther King, Jr.

When I was in eleventh grade, AP History fell the same period as jazz band. So though I play jazz trumpet fairly well, my American history knowledge is woefully incomplete. In the years since, I’ve tried to piece things together on my own. But until today, I really knew MLK’s writing only through various heard snippets of his “I Have a Dream” speech.

This morning, however, I read through his ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’. If you haven’t read the piece in its entirety yourself, take ten minutes on this holiday day to do so. It’s a great window into King’s mind, an excellent snapshot of America at the time, and a clear reminder of why he very much deserves a national holiday in his honor.

|  
January 21, 2013

Brain Drained

A few years back, Google introduced an experimental Google Labs feature for Gmail, called Mail Goggles. The idea was simple: at certain hours of the day (or, more likely, night), a Gmail user with Mail Goggles turned on would need to answer a series of easy math problems before sending an outgoing message. Back when I was in college, the drunk dial still outweighed the drunk email in overall popularity. But, even then, I’m sure there were enough embarrassing late-night proclamations of love, enough angry breakups entirely forgotten by the following morning, and enough incoherently rambling drunken messages in general to have made Mail Goggles a reasonable idea. In today’s digital world, those Mail Goggles seem like more than reasonable idea, and nearly collegiate necessity.

In my own life, however, well post-college, I’m rarely up and emailing at 3:00am regardless of sobriety. Still, on occasion, I do end up having a drink (or, god forbid, two) at a business lunch. After which, I would usually come back to the office, plunk down at the keyboard, and launch into a burst of unrivaled productivity. Only later on those afternoons, once I’d sobered back up, would I re-read those ‘productive’ emails, and begin to worry that Yale might be calling shortly to request my degree back. I think of myself as someone who can hold his liquor. But, really, even a glass of lunchtime Riesling is apparently enough to knock me down to a roughly fourth grade writing level.

Fortunately, with age comes at least a little wisdom, and, by now, if I’m foolish enough to have a lunchtime drink, I generally manage to stay off email completely for an hour or two after, averting potential disaster.

But, it turns out, it’s not just liquor than can addle my email brain. Two nights back, I came down with a pretty spectacular stomach flu, and proceded to toss my cookies nonstop for 24 hours. Well enough, in fact, that I actually lost about seven pounds in a single day. (Bulimia: it works!) Of course, rapid weight loss is usually just dehydration. And since more of the water in your body is in your brain than anywhere else (your brain being made up primarily of water), it turns out that quickly losing 5-8% of the water in your body (as I just did) probably isn’t a great booster of mental function.

All of which is to say, if you got an email from me yesterday or this morning, and it makes absolutely no sense at all, please disregard. I’ve been easing my way back to solid food, and getting as much fluid as my stomach can currently handle. And I think, by now, I’ve edged up to largely coherent. But, really, I’m in no position to self-judge. So if this post is also a total mess, give me another 24 hours grace period, and accept my advance apologies for anything wildly offensive I manage to pull off before then.

|   
February 3, 2011

Inequilibrium

Early this week, struck by a slew of business insights, I spent three or four straight hours madly scribbling on yellow pads and wall whiteboards.

Certainly, this was a longer stint than most, but nearly all my good ideas, business successes, and small victories trace back to just such frenzied sessions of ‘Eureka!’ idea capture.

These bursts of thinking leave me energized to the point of manic, and I want, more than anything else, to share them. I want somebody else to get equally excited. And, unfortunately for her, the person who usually bears the brunt of that ecstatic, high-speed explaining is Jess.

Though Jess is the realist to my optimist, she’s kind enough to listen supportively, ask interested questions, and only later tell me the full list of problems she immediately sees that I haven’t even begun to consider.

Still, I can’t imagine it’s an easy task. Which might explain why, when Jess walked in to the office, and found me scrawling elaborate diagrams and flow charts on the wall, her first reaction was to roll her eyes, and say, “Beautiful Mind time, is it?”

|    
August 14, 2010

Spare Some Change

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”
-Mark Twain

After thirty years of life, I’ve picked up a slew of bad habits – persistent behaviors that I don’t like at all, that serve me in the moment, perhaps, but never in the long-term.

And what I’m finding is, almost tautologically, those bad habits are bad habits because I revert back to them without thinking, without even realizing what I’m doing. I catch myself in any of them, and it almost seems a surprise – how did I end up here?

So, recently, and on more fronts than I can count, I’ve been trying to break those habits. Trying hard. And, frankly, I’m still doing a mediocre job overall. On many days I make the same mistakes I’ve made on many days before.

But now, increasingly, I see the mistakes as I make them. Not always. And even when I do, I can’t stop myself 100% of the time. Still, I’m starting to see those habits with new eyes. To really pay attention to them. To puzzle over how I built them, and how I can unbuild them.

Imperfect as my attempts still are, I take them as big progress. Because Twain, I think, is right: the only way to leave a habit behind is the way it was built up – one step and one step and one step at a time.

|  
April 3, 2010

Vindication?

For at least the last decade, I’ve been obsessed with lazy eyes. First and foremost, with celebrities who have them – Paris Hilton, Keri Russell, Tina Fey.

But secondly, and perhaps more terrifyingly, with the possibility that I might have one myself. And that, even worse, like the sufferer of persistent halitosis, I’d be the last to know about it.

Obviously, that’s a ridiculous concern. Which I know because I’ve both analyzed enough of my own photos to confirm eyeball alignment, and because, every time I tell someone about my ocular neurosis, they jump in to reassure me.

But fast-forward to a month or so back, when I’m picking out a pair of sunglasses from one of Jess’ client, Jordan Silver, owner of a high-end vintage sunglass boutique. I call in to my uncle (and optometrist) Robert, and ask his office to fax over my prescription.

Diopter. Astigmatism. Prism.

Prism?, I ask.

Yes, Jordan explains. Prism. Correction for a tendency of the eyes to try and pull apart in use.

As in, a lazy eye?

Well, technically, yes. Not the kind (like strabismus) that fascinates me most. But a form of lazy eye nonetheless.

|   
August 16, 2009