Month: April 2018

Ponder that one for a hot minute.  In our present news/fake news culture, I started thinking about leadership and what makes a good leader.  I couldn’t really sort it out.  There’s just some abstract quality that’s hard to pin down.  Similar to pornography (okay nothing like pornography), it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.  Some leaders are bad bad people but they still have that gift to command an audience.  Charisma.  Je ne sais quoi.  I was thinking of people I know who I consider great leaders.  Totally subjective but hey it’s my blogue.  Many had/have a bit of the crazies in them, which might be a good thing.  Not a cliche.  New voice.  Often times people have a love/hate thing with their leaders because they’re just so compelling.  Tell me don’t tell me.  Guide me don’t guide me.  It starts at a very young age on the playground as the cliques start forming.  In a weird set of circumstances, I became friends with a legendary Ohio State football coach who was a powerful leader on and off the football field.  People were just drawn to him and he knew it and embraced it.  I heard him speak about leadership and his command of the room was amazing.  People were riveted and nothing he said was very profound.  Practical things.  One interesting tidbit I do remember had to do with physical health.  He said if you look back at the good periods of your life, you were probably in good shape.  Everyone smiled as they walked back through the tunnel, and nodded in agreement.  Kind of a mind over matter thing.  If you’re at a good weight, sleeping, eating right, taking care of yourself, the bad things are just a bit easier to deal with.  Taking control of your life.  Being a leader in your own world with your family,  coworkers, friends.  Enemies.  Today a quote popped up on my Facebook page that I’m desperately trying to work into this narrative, but somehow my mind keeps coming up with porn references which are quite funny btw but trying to keep this classy.  And thought provoking.  “You don’t know strength until strength is the only choice you have”  -not Larry Flynt

Not really.  That would be one lame party.  I have lost all perception of time.  Prince died two years ago but it feels like it could have been two months ago.  To his dearests (which he didn’t seem to have too many of hmmmm) it probably seems like a lifetime ago.  I just can’t put things on a timeline anymore without a lot of deep thought into whowhatwherewhen.  I was talking with a group of pretend people the other day (got called out for kind of naming names so being careful here) and got into the ‘age’ discussion.   The PP are younger than me so have their own time awareness. They had gone to the 9/11 Memorial which I would imagine is pretty chilling to those of us who remember every bit of that life-changing event.  Our innocence of the world was gone and made flying an annoying experience.  (Yes I’m quite shallow.)    The PP were saying though how the ‘young’ people at the Memorial were taking selfies and playing around and had no perspective because they didn’t live the event.  It was probably just a history test or term paper to them.  Lost in time.  Most Boomlennials remember the Vietnam war in different ways depending on your age since it dragged on so long.   Even though more than 56,000 young people were killed it’s been pretty much glossed over.  I went to the Vietnam Memorial as an adult and just cried because people were leaving tennis shoes and ball gloves and ‘toys’ and it made me realize for the first time these were KIDS that were being plucked out of high school and sent to the jungle to kill other kids.  As a twelve year old it just seemed like Big Men Soldiers.  No one younger than the wise Boomlennial even understands what a military draft is and it’s scary as heck.  You turn eighteen, get a random draft number, if it’s low sucks to be you byebye.  So back to time perception.  Or lack thereof.  Too hard to place things without some kind of context.  Maybe that’s natures way of clearing out some of the clutter in your brain to keep it current.  Does it really matter when Prince died?  And what is Purple Rain anyway?  Delete

And Facebook.  Yes there is a correlation and I’ll get there eventually.  I hope.  Facebook and Mark Z have been lambasted for privacy issues and basically selling your darkest secrets to the world.  Although I am a truly brilliant Boomlennial, did anyone really think all those targeted ads were just popping up randomly??  I don’t even think FB was trying to hide that it is a data-seeking machine that almost screams at you to tell more….  I have taken a quiz or two (or twenty) to find out where my doppelgänger lives.  Or what my manfriend’s tie length says about him.  (All true).  Silly stuff that is fun and games until it’s not.   The blatant information cultivating surveys don’t even try to sneak in the back door.  You are asked ‘what are twenty things no one knows about you’ or some other data beg.  People answer.  And strong arm their friends into answering with some threatening language alleging you really don’t care about me if you don’t play.  The ads just start popping.  Red lips you say??  Try this gorgeous color that Melania also wears.  George Clooney does want you.  (Also true).  Join this dating site.  Yet Mark Z was grilled by grand-standing politicos who didn’t seem to quite understand what Facebook is,  and MZ was cleaned and shined and used his best serious voice while trying hard not to roll his eyes.  I did it for him.   Geesh.  Maybe because I work in a field that is data driven, I know how little privacy I have.  Unless a person is totally off the grid without a phone or address and eating berries and wiping with leaves, everything/everywhere/everyevery is tracked and pretty easy to buy.  While MZ took the heat, the other gazillion apps wiped their brows.  You might think it’s the beginning of the end, but more like the middle of the end.  Quietly quietly churning through data.  Which brings me to The Four Food Groups.  (Bet you forgot tsk tsk).  FB had one of those little quizzes asking what one thing could I give up.  Choices:  coffee, chocolate, cheese, wine.  Noooo I cried!  More choices!!!  I’ll give up chicken!  Tastes like chicken.  Beef!  Gives me the meat sweats.  Fish!  They are cannibals that eat their own and taste like it.  What is FB trying to learn from me by digging into my modis operandi??   I didn’t take the survey because sadly my will to live would have gone with it.  But it probably would have benefitted me somehow because I actually like targeted marketing.  Let someone else do the leg work.  Here’s a tip I learned too late.  If you are looking for sporting apparel, don’t type in Dicks.   That can never end well….

is no longer the place to be.  Faaaaarm livin is not the life for me.  After living out of the city for most of my adultish life, I notice the landscape is getting more hostile.  And spooking me a bit.  The deer have eaten all the yummy flowers and foliage, fine.  I enjoy them, and it beats a pink flamingo and sapphire globe on a pedestal.  However, the few have grown into herds as the woods have shrunk with development.  I fully expect to see them laying at my pool eventually.  I already have two ducks that inhabit that every spring to lay their eggs and poop.  And poop.  They must do something else during the day but I wonder.  The dog usually takes care of the eggs slurp but one year they did hatch a litter or pod or something I don’t feel like Googling, and the ducklings were adorable.  However…..they disappeared one by one.  Hmmmmmm.  My dog didn’t eat for a week but he would never be so crude as to act like an animal.  I thought of protecting them but survival of the fittest and all that.  Nature’s way.  Perhaps the ducks will find more suitable quarters this year then chlorine and canine.  And now The Problem.  Coyotes.  The rats of the country.  They’ve attacked my neighbor’s dogs twice, and they have no enemies or fear of humans.  I’ve gone after them with a mug of hot coffee, a yellow truck no less, and the mean glare.  ‘The Look’ used to work on my dearests but not so much on the coyotes.  Which leads to The Bigger Issue.  I am not a gun person.  Nor am I not not a gun person.  (Stick with me here.).  I just never cared.  I’ve shot skeet before and did ok, but never really thought the gun was an actual weapon.  It was fun and a game and probably should not have been accompanied by a keg.  If not for the large bruises it caused on my arms and shoulders I might have persued it more diligently.  Cute camo vests and funky glasses and all that.  Guns, however, are becoming real to me.  People love them or hate them.  Some of the people who love them rarely shoot them.  They mostly collect them and lock them up in big safes, and maybe smell them if they had a bad day.  Into them, but not Into them.  Like a curio cabinet in the dining room.  And then there’s the other side which doesn’t really need explanation.  I don’t want a gun.  If you’ve been reading this blogue since inception you know I probably shouldn’t have a gun.  As they say about martinis….one is not enough and two is too many.  However, I would pass a background check front of the line.  Teacher’s pet.  Maybe because the endless winter is getting to me, and the howling of the coyotes at night is more haunting then enchanting, I feel like a speck.  A very vulnerable speck.  The neighbors are getting a possee together to take out the dreaded coyotes which I understand, but it’s still making me nervous. Not ready to enlist but for once the thought has crossed my mind and I’m not really liking it there.  Newwww York is where I’d rather stay.  I get allergic smelling hay.  I just adore a penthouse view.   Dahling I love you but give me Park Avenue.  Desperate times, desperate measures.  Shudder.

SHE SHOUTS.   Everyone needs someone they look to for inspiration and to roll out the red carpet for them.  And that’s quite a big job and who wants it ugh.  Muse is a term that is underused and undervalued.  It has many meanings from goddess to ponderings to someone’s something something.  A very Important Person once told me that I was one of my dearests muse and it sent me into raucous laughter at a time when nothing was funny and the inappropriateness of time and place made it all the more hilarious.  First,  no one says that. Ever. And my dearest sure wouldn’t ever have thought that or said it to IP.  Pure fantasy.  But what stuck with me was what a great thing it would be to be someone’s muse and I am up for the job.  Bring it.  Many of the great writers had muses and talked about them in their work.  Of course Hemmingway and Fitzgerald were so stoned all the time their muses must have been saints to put up with their sh*t.  Or understood you need to get inspiration from somewhere so have at it.  Even writing a stupid a$$ blogue of one longgggg paragraph needs to come from an inner source.  My Muse musings amuse me if no one else.  (Although my millions of followers are cheering me on.  I hear ya.).  Too often our worth is measured through the eyes of another when we’ve got what it takes to be our own afflatus*.  In mythology, there were nine Muses or goddesses to all those IPs and now I’m a ten!  I got this.

*Google it.  Your welcome.

Now that I have the attention of my millions of followers you know that isn’t really what I’m going to talk about.  I hope.  Much like Seinfeld this blogue is about absolutely nothing.  Or everything.  You pick.  Often I’m having a brilliant thought but get sidetracked by other brilliant thoughts and the path goes haywire.  Just a Boomlennial trying to stay relevant in a millenial world that doesn’t use a top sheet.  They like big heavy duvets.  Which I do too but only in a hotel where I know they are absolutely sparkling clean.   They are they are they are.  And now I’m haywire.  Size matters.  In dogs.  I have/had a huge, mangy, dirty dog that was always on my last nerve.  He smelled, was always salty, muddy, or rolled in something(s)  that even I don’t want to talk about.  He ate the crotch out of my underwear and swallowed.  Just disgusting.  In a last ditch effort to let him live indoors I got him completely shaved #royalty.   And he’s a beauty!  All of the sudden he’s small.  And sweet smelling.  And looks like the young puppy he is and not some big hullabaloo.  Yes that is a word because autocorrect helped me out.  I don’t know what it means but that was the old version of my pup.  J’aime mon chien!  And when you speak French everything just sounds classier.  I am not a Chien person.  There are those that give their beasts just too much space in their lives and that is not me.  Small c.  I’ve always had les chien but they were part of the mix of a family and didn’t get much play.  Last in line. Even though I am now a family of one I still can’t seem to move him beyond (c)hien status.  Which is probably good in the overall picture of not being a crazy Boomlennial.  Le chat would be a whole different level of crazy but I have too much respect for leather furniture to do that again.  Whew.  Mon chien can remain indoors as long as he stays in the back row and doesn’t take too much energy from me.  Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.  La Fin