In the Strangest Places

In my underwear drawer today I found a flyer I apparently picked up on business travel when staying at a Marriott hotel.

It was time management tips, and the Number One tip was "The Compass Over the Clock."

The tip goes on to talk about the madness we all perpetrate on ourselves by prioritizing speed over direction.

I haven't been writing much lately, and I miss it. Taking a deep breath and allowing my personal time and my core values to reconnect is always valuable, and has never not paid dividends in all areas of my life.

Compass over the clock. Try it with me? I could use the support!

Being There

I won’t be posting for a few days, while I reconnect with some good friends and with a good place, Asheville, North Carolina.

All the email, phone calls, tweets and letters in the world can’t replace the warm blooded glory of being there. When all the children are totaled, we’ll have five girls under five; 3 incredible husbands (one each, mind you); and 48 hours of time together, precious time……………

I look forward to bringing back some good authenticity observations from this trip. Oh yes, and some stories about the pleasures of a weekend in America’s Number 1 craft beer city should round it out nicely as well. Sometimes craft beer connects with good story telling. Stay tuned.

Runnin' On Empty

I heard this Jackson Browne classic last night driving home from picking up a pizza and beer. Mind you, this is not quite as unimaginative as it sounds; it was gourmet pizza from Lola’s and Rogue Morimoto. There is something quite comforting about this kind of meal for me on a chilly rainy night. I’ll take it over the finest dining any day.

Runnin’ on Empty is on JB’s album of the same name released in 1977. It was his fifth album, and is unusual among live albums in that none of the tracks had ever appeared on a previous studio album. He recorded tracks on-stage during concerts, but also in hotel rooms, on the tour bus, and backstage. Over 30 years later, it is his best-selling album.

Even as a child in the 1970s, I could tell something was up with this record. I was fascinated by the voice of an obviously still-young man, already cataloguing the phases of his life and his increasingly fragile grip on the belief that he had control over his own destiny.

I’ve heard this song hundreds of times. Without fail, I cannot turn it off when I come across it on the radio. I love the masterful combination of apprehensiveness, urgency, and hopefulness about the inevitable passage of time, and his willingness to keep “running into the sun” at the same time he knows he doesn’t know what he’s looking for exactly or if he’ll ever find it.

This picture of Mr. Browne is from March 2008.