Serendipity?

Yesterday, the address book in my phone disappeared.

9 years of accumulated data - gone.just.like.that.

Was it backed up?

Ah, another in a long list of “to-dos” that have not been getting done.

The excuse?

In short, I am too busy, too stretched, too tired, too blah, blah, blah...

I don’t really believe in excuses.

I screwed up. I admit it. My fault. I will do better next time. I will reevaluate and find...

The solution?

Well at first, I thought the solution was to focus more, work more, hunker down all weekend, try to get ahead, but then I stopped myself.

Okay, Netter stopped me.

Still, I started to take a second look. Maybe there was a better idea.

It starts with a break which fortuitously Netter and I had already scheduled for this weekend, which has a lot to do with why she stopped me. Who wants a stressed out husband on their weekend break right?

Whew...

Also, time for some sweeping changes on my return...

So at 5:30 today I’m unplugging.

Stop gaping. I mean it.

I’m turning off the notifications. I’m logging out of everything. I’m stepping away from the computer and I’m going to try as hard as I can to stay away from my phone.

Netter tells me I need to learn to say no, to learn my limitations, to learn to give myself a break. “You can’t dwell on what you haven’t done, what you haven’t accomplished,” she says.

And she’s right...

I’m burned out. I’m done. I need to step away. I can’t focus. I can’t sleep. I can’t read more than two sentences in a row, or apparently put more than 3 lines together in a blog post.

This is not the way to move forward.

You can’t change if you don’t do things differently right?

I guess we’ll see what happens...

Have a good weekend!

The Kids Said What?

Today, I'm playing along with my friend Cammie and her Thursday theme "The Kids Said What."

It's a cool way of remembering and sharing all of the cute things kids say when they are little that I won't get to play very often because I have teenagers who said all those cute things before there were blogs to record them in, and now only say things like: "Daddy, can I have some money?"

Recently however, we've had a couple of cute moments.

I'll start with D.

Two Sundays ago I slept until about 4:30 + or - (jealous Cammie?) in the afternoon. When I woke up, Annette and Delaney wanted to go to breakfast/lunch/dinner at Crackerbarrel. I think we called it "brlunner."

Anyway, I needed a shirt to wear, knew I wasn't going anyplace else that day and thought it would be a good idea to wear something different, something I hadn't worn in a while.

I reached way in the back of my closet and pulled out an OSHA orange Tommy Hilfiger shirt with a blue collar, blue sleeve cuffs, (what do you call those on a short sleeved shirt), and a piece of green material under the buttons.

Yeah this was a pretty old shirt, but it was one of my favs way back when so I put it on to go to brlunner.

"What's with the shirt?" D said when I went downstairs.

In retrospect I should have known. Like most Dads my girls alternate between wanting to steal my clothes and wishing I would wear something, anything else than what I have on. D usually falls in the latter camp.

She didn't say much else, but just kept looking at me with eyes that were almost chanting:

"What's with the shirt? What's with the shirt? What's with the shirt? What's with the shirt? What's with the shirt? What's with the shirt? What's with the shirt? What's with the shirt"

About halfway through brlunner I looked down and thought to myself:

What's with the shirt?

I washed it and put it in the goodwill bag when I got home.

Thanks D!

Last week Thursday we visited K at the fair. She couldn't wait to take us to one vendor who was selling CD's where cartoon characters sing your child's name a number of times within the context of their regular songs. Veggie Tales and Sesame Street are the popular choices.

K's favorite is Elmo. Yes, she is 16.

Yes her younger sister was laughing at her the whole time.

No, I cannot adequately explain the sheer joy you could hear as K jumped up and down listening to Elmo sing her name.

I was taken back in time as I heard my little girl say: "Elmo said my name Daddy. Elmo said my name," all the while jumping up and down ecstatically.

The Kids said what?

Rhythm and Tempo, not for Golf only

Recently, I've been trying to make some lifestyle changes, including sleep patterns, eating habits, church attendance, work-style habits, etc... and a lot.

I haven't been as successful as I might have liked and I've been trying to figure out why. What am I doing wrong?

Reading my friend Seth Simonds' Primal Stride blog, I've learned a lot about focusing on my strengths, finding what works best for me, and trying to make my adjustments with those things in mind.

Still, whenever I try to make changes I find myself out of whack, no rhythm, no tempo, and I quickly resort to my previous behaviors.

What am I doing wrong? What am I missing?

I found some needed perspective courtesy of my Uncle Dale.

He's a great guy, likes to tell jokes, likes to tinker, has more tools than Bob Vila, and only recently, i.e. within the last 3 years or so has decided to take up golf.

I'm glad that Uncle Dale took up golf mostly because his primary reason for doing so was so he could join us to play in Golf for Joy, our annual outing honoring our daughter Meghan Joy's memory.

But when Uncle Dale gets into something, he doesn't just take it up casually. It consumes him.

Outfits, instruction manuals, DVD's, books, you name it - he's been checking it out and trying to improve his golf game. He is convinced that with enough practice and the right methods, par golf or better is right around the corner.

No really, he believes it. For the non-golfers in the crowd - well, let's just say that while not impossible this idea is a little far-fetched.

Still, I love my Uncle's enthusiasm, his willingness to try anything and everything to improve his game.

When we played together last month he was very excited to show me his new swing technique, the stack and tilt. (The link is for the golfers in the crowd.)

Now, I love my Uncle, but from my vantage point his swing technique looked a lot like the tilt-a-whirl rather than anything resembling a golf swing. By the end of the day I had to confess to him that while I believed there were DVDs and instruction manuals of his method, clearly something was missing.

Last week, Uncle Dale sent a copy of the DVDs and lo and behold I was right. He was doing it wrong.

That got me thinking... (You saw the smoke right?)

As I have developed my own golf swing over the last 17 years, I learned the importance of rhythm and tempo in finding a good golf swing.

Is it possible that I simply need to apply the patience and effort I put into my golf swing to develop a rhythm and tempo for other areas of my life?

Uncle Dale called me last night to ask what I thought of the swing method. We laughed and joked about how he'd been doing it wrong. He said that he had talked to someone familiar with the method who helped him correct some flaws. The new approach took quite a few strokes off his next round of golf.

We talked about how his new swing method was among many not endorsed by golf pros primarily because most want to teach their own thing.

Then I mentioned to Uncle Dale that I thought that there were probably a number of valid golf methods, all of which were just fine as long as they keep some core ideas at the forefront, including:

rhythm and tempo.

"Yes, those are important," my Uncle reasoned, "But not everybody has the same rhythm and tempo..."

Exactly.

There's a saying in golf that says: "If it feels funny, you're doing it right."

This doesn't really jibe with rhythm and tempo, but it makes sense.

I just need to find a way to apply it to myself, to make it my life swing thought.

What's your life swing thought?

Dreams?

Do you ever try and figure out your dreams?

I don't have dreams very often, but when I do they are always and without fail - weird.

Last night, well this morning (I didn't actually fall asleep until about 5 a.m.) I dreamed that I was a coach at my parish, (not that odd) my house was flooded from a faulty roof, (we just got a new roof in November) and this made my Dad angry, (No idea, he hasn't been to my house in over a year).

I got into trouble for yelling at a player and making her cry. (I don't recall having ever yelled at a player to the point where they were even remotely close to crying.) I also calmed said player so well during the course of a ball game she was pitching, (just by taking the ball from her for a minute and looking at her with my "calm down" look) that she won the game and we were both heroes. A major league scout came and said I was totally "in control" of the game and she would definitely want me to run a game for her team (although I haven't been a head coach since K was 7.)

The win and the scout saved me at my trial with the lady in charge of the school, (my high school chemistry teacher?) who allowed me to keep my coaching job once I correctly identified the first commandment, although my father had missed on the eighth.

I was however to remain contrite.

Okay - what the heck does this dream mean? It's been bugging me all morning.