admitting it

Have you ever talked to someone before 2007 who said "I got a terrible deal on my house" or "When I sold my house I really got hosed".  Everybody always got a great deal, if it's a buyer they were an early mover or nobody knew certain things that they knew.  If they were the seller somebody bought it right away or they held out for the right buyer...

The interesting thing is, in 2007, or 2008 or 2012 or whenever people finally bit the bullet and realized that they bought a ridiculously overpriced box to put their other boxes in, people finally started to admit that they had been hosed.  It was because the math was so aggressive nobody could spin it anymore.  I knew a lot of people who lost 40% of their house value.  If you are an average American, many people lost the equivalent of throwing away the next five cars they purchase.

But we are all so tied in to the belief system that includes owning a home that we just grind away.

I moved recently, I'm renting for a grand a month.  Throwing twelve thousand bucks a year down the toilet.  That is how much commission is paid out to real estate agents on the sale of a two hundred thousand dollar house.  I'm not hating on real estate agents, I'm just saying let's be careful about what we consider money down the toilet.

Or there is the roof I'm never going to replace.

Or the 1.3% average property tax rate I'm never going to pay.  That tax by the way is on an asset that is sometimes deprecating.  Imagine if after the stock market took a dive the government told you there was a tax on the gross amount of stock that you owned and they got to decide the value of the stock (whether or not you could sell it for that).  We accept this every year with our homes.

The relativity of money has been lost in two major areas for my generation, homes and education.  We throw ourselves into six figures worth of debt for both and neither are giving us anything.  We are wholesale working for the banks in this country, but hey, at least the rates are low.

The difficult part with renting is right up front you have to admit that you should probably get ahead in some other fashion.  But with home ownership, you can send that check off to the bank and feel like you are getting traction when in fact you almost never are.  The place I live now was purchased for $166k four years ago, the one right down the street (that is exactly the same because we are on original Americans) just went on the market for $95k.  I could rent at a thousand bucks a month for the next six years and that would only break me even, not including taxes, maintenance, realtor fees etc.

But you know what's crazy, I walked past the one that just went on the market, pulled out my cell phone and called the real estate agent.  I started feeling this romantic feeling about owning again.  I started thinking about how much cheaper than renting it would be...

We are brainwashed, I push so hard to try and put myself into situations that only hurt me.  I don't know how to unbrainwash.  I woke up at 5am panicked because I don't think I'm making progress in my life.  Is progress paying a bank most of an income I hate making?

the trolls in our heads

I was reading a great article on one of my favorites, Tim Ferriss.  It was a telegraph piece about an interview done before releasing his newest book, the Four Hour Chef.  The article was good, a fun read and an insight into the actual life that is born from the principles put forward in the 4 hour workweek.

The author's discussion was great of how he thought Ferriss would be an overbearing human machine focused on productivity only to find out that Tim takes four hours out of his day for an hour long interview.   The idea being, we open up time not just to fill it in more.

The most intriguing read was in the comments however.  I am guilty of scrolling down after I finish reading anything and touching on the comments, there is just something about trolls that gives my life balance and meaning.

A particular troll had three great points.  He went by the name reids.  This troll said Ferriss was a ripoff for cheating (there is a section of his first book where he wins at kickboxing by playing the weigh in game to an outlandish level, competing at a much higher weight than his rivals, and just shoving them out of the ring for a TKO).

Now this is not cheating, cheating is when you do something against the rules.  The following year the kick boxing association was so upset they changed the rules so you weighed in directly before the match, if he did it now he would be cheating, doing it then was just knowing the rules better.  Ferriss discusses the difference between getting what you want (just the outcome) or becoming world class at something (years of hard work).  The point seemed to be lost on the troll.

The second thing this pajama clad typist pointed out was that Ferriss was not really a NYT best seller because he got his "legion of followers" to buy copies just the right way to make sure he got on the list.  If you don't think that publishing companies haven't been doing this for years you must sleep with tinfoil on your head.  Secondly, anybody who has a "legion of followers" willing to buy books in any fashion is a NYT best seller, the entire moniker "New York Times Best Seller" is about your ability to sell books to legions of people.

Lastly, he talks about the Tango world championships and how Ferriss just stands there while a pro dances around him, I'm not sure if you've ever seen Tango but that is the point.  Also, isn't Dancing With the Stars just this concept put into action for like ten seasons now?

All of this troll bashing has a point however, and that is the troll lives inside of our head.  The troll in reids case just escaped through his fingers for five minutes after he read that article.  The troll tells us three things, your a cheater, your riding other peoples coattails, and your a fraud.

If you are not cheating you are not paying close enough attention is something put forward by Seth Godin in Purple Cow.  He talks about how an airline who has employees not in a union is cheating and winning because of it.  The point is, where is the fat that has always been there and how can you cut it when everybody else says that it is impossible, that is cheating.  The first time somebody does something new it's cheating, the second time it's revolutionary and the third time is just back to competing the way it's always been done.

Riding other peoples coattails is such a strange thing to fear because it is the hardest thing to do.  Building a tribe and then working together with them is the new economy, and using that tribe to accomplish things is literally why you build it.  I've seen Tim Ferriss use his tribe to work his way on to the NYT best seller list and then turn around and use his tribe to raise six figures for kids in school.  I've bought all three of his books and my life is better because of it, not worse.

Lastly, being a fraud and diminishing what you've already done.  The troll in my head plays this card a lot.  We get energy from momentum, we get energy from having done before, we produce art from energy not from inspiration.  Therefore, the best way for the resistance to keep us from making art and putting ourselves out there is to kill the energy, crush the momentum.

You can do the work, you are allowed to Tango, even poorly if you want.  You can write about it, talk about it and face the trolls.  The truth is, the trolls that will come find you if you ever reach fame are just a shadow of the troll you have to fight in your own head everyday you set out to do something meaningful.  Fight the troll, reids sucks, and go do the work.

my pop-pop

Grandfathers

Like most of you I had two grandfathers.  There was my cool grandfather and my uncool grandfather.  Neither were near me for any major part of my childhood, one grandfather lived close during high school but other than that it was thousands of miles.  They were my grandfathers, so I guess I knew them, but one I knew a lot better and one not so much.

My moms dad was not very cool.  I did not know him very well.  His pants never touched his shoes, I don’t know if it was always like that but it was for as long as I could remember.  He would read the newspaper every day from beginning to end.  They called him Pop-Pop, but I never got comfortable with that so I just called him grandpa.  He wasn’t a big fan of noise and until I was twenty two that’s all I was really good at.

He was the older of my two grandfathers, he died at age eighty nine, my freshman year of college, it was track season and my mom told me not to come to the funeral.  His wife died when I was an infant, I’m told I am a lot like her and I’ve cried about never meeting her.

He lived in a giant house outside of Washington DC in the richest county in the United States, but he was never wealthy.  He ran a plumbing company, it lasted forever, my uncle took it over, then it just kind of closed one day and now it doesn’t exist anymore.  He wasn’t that much fun to talk to as a kid, he was so quiet and very serious.  He was just barely too young for WWI and just a little old for WWII.  There are three stories that sum him in my mind and paint the picture of the most important man in the life of the most important woman to me.  I wonder what my three stories would be.

The first story was how he ran the plumbing business, it was just a small town operation and he was the owner back when that meant something.  It was the fifties, sixties, seventies and on.  This was during the height of all things race, and Washington DC was not insulated from the havoc.  He used to hire black men to work for him, and he would go out of his way to make salaries known, because it was important to him that everybody knew he paid his black employees the same.

The second story is short and sweet.  My mothers kindergarten class was the first year they desegregated schools, she remembers it being stressful, she was five years old.  My grandfather, a white business owner who owned a large house and had three beautiful children, whose pants did not touch his shoes, would go into town and sit down to eat with his black friends.  They never got service.  I guess they call those sit ins.

The last story is my favorite.  I spent a month with him in India, he was helping to oversee a hospital being built.  We lived right on the site, the city had three million people in it and there were only five of us white folks, in the whole city.  This was when he was in his seventies.  

He had an acre of land and would mow it into his eighties with a push mower.  He always ate big macs and he was thin until the day he died.  He was once mowing the lawn and had a heart attack, he didn’t want to inconvenience anybody so he drove himself to the hospital.

On his deathbed, at eighty nine years old, he spoke his last words, “I have more work to do”.  I miss him really badly, he would be turning a hundred this year.  He mattered, and the blood that runs through my veins is from his, I hope I matter.  The last one on one conversation I had with him I got into a fight because I told him he was being hard headed.  He was, I’m sorry grandpa and thank you for being so damn hard headed and uncool.

Guaranteed on time and on budget, 2 steps

Here are the two steps to always shipping your art, your product, your service on time and on budget

1) Ship when run out of time

And/or

2) Ship when you run out of money

The more you treat life like this, the better the end product will get and it will still be on time and on budget.  Or just admit to yourself that you actually don't care about the timeline or going over budget.

Preparation or Bombing Irag

I don't know if it is being properly prepared or if it is preemptive, but I do know after the whole preemptive war on Iraq thing that preemptive carries a lot of baggage so we will just go with prepared.

Saddam in the good old days before the beards and spider holes

I am not very good at being a person.  I mean, it's hard to get stuff done, most days just fly past me and the simple stuff seems like the hardest.  Eating good food, going to bed before 2am, not hitting my kids to much (just kidding on the last one, only one of my kids is old enough to get hit and she gets hit just the right amount).

But that is when I realized it is not about doing the right thing, it's about the preparation.  I love Tim Ferriss and one of his main points throughout all three of his books is that environment means more than discipline.  I agree, but I still struggle getting the right environment together.  Then it struck me this morning, if done correctly you are doing everything in preparation and almost nothing when it comes due.

Let's take two examples, eating and raising your kids.

So when I get up in the morning I need to get some protein in my system within thirty minutes of waking up, but I'm not hungry.  What I've realized is, it doesn't matter if I'm not hungry, I'm not eating for right now but preparing for 10am when I haven't eaten, been up for a few hours and now am hungry.  Because then I still don't eat until lunch and at that point I'm all shaky and the only thing that will level out my system is some processed carbs, a lot of them, and now.

Or do you ever see parents of teenagers marvel at their one friend who has teenagers who behave themselves.  The common question I hear is "How do you make them listen?".  The truth is, I was once a teenager, you can't make them listen.  Teenagers are clinically stupid and somehow self aware of that fact and proud all at the same time.  

The way you get good teenagers is by creating a relationship with little kids who are pretty much just boring.  You play with a four year old for hours doing nothing.  You teach an eight year old how to play a sport even though they suck at it.  You talk to a ten year old about their feelings even though how they feel about another ten year is really trite.

I don't do any of this.  But I think I can do better when I realize that I don't need to do something right now, I can do something for the future, and the more I do in preparation the less discipline I need and the easier it will be that when the moment comes I don't have to be smart, I already was.  It also takes a lot of work up front, because for a little while you have to prepare for the future and put out the fires of not preparing in the past.  Just stay focused, do something small that makes your life better later right now, then again in a couple hours.  I believe in you/me.

Good talk, see you out there.