by Marty Coleman | Jul 6, 2010 | Earl Wilson, Vacation - 2010 |
Vacations are the sort of thing where you have unthought out expectations of what it should consist of. I don’t mean the destination, I mean the intangibles that you don’t think of in advance, but you expect to have happen. Perhaps you expect that a vacation includes sleeping in late at the hotel while your spouse expects a vacation to include getting up early and seeing the sites before the crowd. Perhaps you expect a vacation to be all planned out, no surprises while your traveling partner is thinking a vacation isn’t a vacation unless it’s filled with unexpected moments and events.
With my first wife and I we had to come to terms with money on vacation. I remember her worrying about money and what we were spending and me getting annoyed at that. At one point it came to me, I had an expectation I hadn’t realized. My vacation was in large part a vacation from worrying about money!
When we get right down to it the best, most rejuvenating vacations are a break from worry, right? Might be worrying about money like I was doing back home, or worrying about obligations and judgment and duties. So, when you plan your vacation, think along those lines and plan accordingly. What do you want to not worry about?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking.” – Earl Wilson, 1907-1987, American journalist. At least I think it was this Wilson. The other choices are a baseball player and a congressman. I made the most likely choice to have a witty saying.
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 2, 2010 | Henry David Thoreau, Technology - 2010 |
Day #5 of Technology Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
A tool is something that helps you achieve a goal. When you become obsessed with the tool for it’s own sake you are no longer working on a goal, but are now serving that tool. It doesn’t matter if it is the car you drive, the computer you work on, or the body you live in. If you are exclusively focused on the maintenance of those things then you are living a stunted life. Never lose sight of what you are doing with these tools, why you have them in the first place.
Are you using them or are you simply an agent to maintain them?
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Men have become tools of their tools.” – Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, American writer, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, surveyor, historian & philosopher
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 1, 2010 | Anonymous, Technology - 2010 |
Day #4 of Tech week here at The Napkin Dad Daily
On the other hand a computer is, ironically enough, a good reminder to take your time, smell the smoking electronics and enjoy life. If you are freaking out about how long everything takes on your computer you either have a slow computer (who doesn’t at one time or another) or you have unreal expectations.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“Never let a computer know you are in a hurry.” – Anonymous
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 30, 2010 | Technology - 2010, Walter Lippman |
Day #3 of Technology Week at The Napkin Dad Daily. By the way, I am up for an award. Check at the end of the blog today for details.
But YOU can still plant flowers if that same steamroller feels like it is running over you!
Machines can perhaps create a desire in you to achieve something. You see a new iPad and think ‘Wow, just imagine what I could do if I had that’. That is desire.
But initiative is something else. It is desire in action. It is doing something with your desire. An iPad, or any other technology, will never be able to give you the initiative. You have to have it, or build it, or borrow it, or fake it, but however you get it, it must, in the end, come from within you.
But if you do find it, in whatever way, then a steamroller is no match for you. Of course, it’s best to avoid known steamrollers (read negative people and situations) but that is not always possible. How you deal with the steamrollers of your life, both intentional from negative people and unintentional from the Universe itself, will be the deciding factor in how far your initiative will travel with you.
The light is green.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.” – Walter Lippman, 1889-1974, American writer, political commentator & journalist.
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 29, 2010 | Joseph Campbell, Technology - 2010 |
And for the most part the corporate world isn’t much different. It isn’t spelled out as exactly as it is in computer code, but it’s severity can also be just as strong.
To survive you have to adapt to that world, understand it’s boundaries and rules and play along even when there is an absurdist logic working within the company just as you have to do with a computer and other technology. For the most part, technology or a company will not bow to your individuality, you must bow to it.
That is why I was never all that great in a corporate world or in getting along with that Old Testament dude!
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“A computer is like the old testament God, lots of rules and no mercy.” – Joseph Campbell, 1904-1987, American writer, lecturer and mythologist. I saw Joseph Campbell lecture on James Joyce’s Ulysses back in 1982. I knew nothing about the book but he kept me, and the rest of the audience, enthralled for 2 hours. Now THAT is a good lecturer!
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 28, 2010 | Max Frisch, Technology - 2010 |
My late father-in-law, Dwight Johnson, who I have mentioned a number of times, was a photography buff. He was always taking photos of the family and of stuff. It was to the point where I sometimes felt he wasn’t really experiencing the event or scene, just recording it for future sharing or memories.
Now I am a photographer and have Flickr and Facebook and Twitter and a digital camera and an iPhone. Next thing you know I am seeing things the same way. I am wanting to both experience and record the event and I want to share it.
But I always make a point to experience it first, I want to know what it is I am recording. Last night for example we had incredible thunderstorms coming in from the west at sunset. I had to get out in the backyard and take the pics right then or it was over. I experienced the wind, the humidity, the wildly flying birds being blown about. I experienced the clouds taking shape, the light moving around the edges, the rising mountains and deep crevices of the clouds and the flashes of lightning. In some ways I feel like I experienced it even more intensely because I had my camera in hand. I was anticipating, waiting, watching, feeling changes happen.
But I know it is a different type of experience than simply looking at something. But overall I feel blessed being able to share the visual world I experience with others so I am not sure I would change a thing.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Technology: the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.” – Max Frisch, 1911,1991, Swiss architect, playwright and novelist
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 27, 2010 | I Draw in Church, Sketchbook History Tour, Tulsa |
It’s ‘I draw in Church Sunday’ here at The Napkin Dad Daily. I draw a lot. In bookstores, trains, plains, waiting rooms, and my favorite place to draw, church.
She sat in front of us on a warm summer day at church. I enjoyed seeing the cosmic message from the pulpit on the skin of a person right in front of me.
Drawn at All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa, Oklahoma. 6/24/07 © Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 22, 2010 | Communications - 2015, George Bernard Shaw |
I was raised in a somewhat loud, somewhat opinionated, somewhat verbose family. With an Irish heritage we blamed it on the Irish ‘gift of gab’. My mother was loud, funny and quick to throw a barb if she saw something pretentious. My father was argumentative and assertive in his voice and style while still being a charmer.
I married into a family in 1979 that was the exact opposite. They were instilled with a quiet and respectful way of talking to each other. Calm, cool, minimal in outward expression. They believed in saying nice things, well mannered things and not raising your voice.
Can you guess where this is going? My way of communicating, which I had always thought was pretty good, turned out to be so strong and aggressive compared to what my wife was used to, that most anything I said with any outward expression was taken as having much more meaning than I meant it to. She heard anger where I thought I was expressing passion. She heard insistence where I thought I was expressing enthusiasm.
In the meanwhile, my wife’s method of communicating, which I am sure she thought was pretty good, turned out to be so quiet, deferential and subtle that sometimes I didn’t even know that she had communicated at all. The passion she felt came out in such a way that it was easy for me to either not hear it, or dismiss it as not being all that important.
As you can imagine it took a long time before we clued into what the other person was really trying to express. We weren’t ever completely understanding about that and it was an underlying issue among larger issues that led to our divorce in 2000, after 20 years of marriage.
The reason I tell this story is to give you insight and an admonition. The insight might seem obvious to some, but we all have blind spots. Remind yourself that each individual hears uniquely, both sounds and meaning behind the sounds. The admonition follows from that. Do not go into any relationship, casual or serious, with the assumption that your way of communicating is the best way. You might have a good way, but chances are so does the other person. You might have blind spots about how you talk, the words you use, the manner in which you deliver them, that others see and don’t necessarily appreciate or understand.
Evaluating yourself to become better includes evaluating your words and their delivery.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish playwright. Just imagine, he was old enough to be aware during the American civil war (1861-1865) and lived to see WWII being fought and resolved (1939-1945). That is an amazing span of life.
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 14, 2010 | Anatole France, Travel |
Summer is wandering time and I have been surrounded by stories of it this week. I am getting antsy for a road trip of some type!
- My traveling daughter, who has traipsed across the west for the last 4 months, came back in town this week and told of some of her adventures off the beaten path.
- A good blogging buddy of mine is on her bazillionth trip to Pakistan and is great at posting photos and telling of the feel of the place.
- A running buddy just returned from an anniversary trip to Paris and posted photos.
- Another daughter went off to the beach in California.
- Another running buddy went off to Canada with his wife (and happened upon an annual nude bike ride! That cracked them up, big time)
We are not sure what our summer adventure will be yet, but I will let you know!
What adventures are you hoping to experience?
Drawing and wanderlust © Marty Coleman
“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” – Anatole France, 1844-1924, French writer
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 13, 2010 | I Draw in Church, Sketchbook History Tour |
I love seeing people all in a row with strikingly different hair, skin, fabric and style. Church is perfect for that sort of people watching.
Drawing © Marty Coleman
Drawn 7/12/09, All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa, OK
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