10 New Year's Resolutions You Can Break Without Feeling Guilty

By John McDonnell

Most of us start the new year with a lot of big plans for changing our lives, but we lose momentum around January 6 and by the end of the month our resolutions are a distant memory -- and that’s when the guilt starts.

Here is a list of resolutions for people who are good at breaking resolutions. They’re resolutions that you won’t feel guilty about breaking; in fact, you should feel terrific about breaking these ones.

1. Get less sleep. Who needs sleep? It’s a waste of time, and we could spend that time on video games, social networking, email, TV, and any of a dozen other activities that  give us the buzz that makes us forget how tired we are. Besides, if we needed so much sleep anyway, why did God create caffeine?
2. Eat more fast food. Vegetables are boring. Just pound down another burger, fries, and supersize soda and let your digestive system handle the problem of trying to get something nutritious out of all that junk.
3. Avoid exercise at all costs. There is absolutely no reason to walk when you can get in a car and ride somewhere, even if it’s to the end of the driveway to pick up the mail. Gym memberships are expensive, and all those sweaty bodies are no fun to be around.
4. Do not talk to people unless absolutely necessary. People are stupid and they have nothing interesting to say. There is no point in interacting with them unless you have a screen in front of you.
5. Spend more time online. The real world is a place where there are rainy days, demanding bosses, crabby co-workers, and family members who expect things from you just because you’re related to them. It’s much more fun to live in the virtual world where you can be a superhero or hot babe, and conquer worlds with the click of a mouse. Of course, it’s all fantasy, but what’s wrong with that?
6. Do not ever read anything longer than a text message again. What’s the point of books and newspapers anyway? All those words, and really, what are they saying? Stupid stuff about politics and history, science, morality. And poetry -- what’s up with that? Why can’t those people just say what they mean?
7. Run your credit card up to the max. There are so many shiny toys to buy, and if you have a credit card why not use it? Saving money is for sissies. When the credit card bill comes in pay the minimum amount, because, hey, you need the extra money to buy more stuff.
8. Do not practice random acts of kindness. There is no reason to smile at strangers, compliment your co-workers, pat someone on the back, or do anything that might bring happiness to someone’s life. People are just obstacles in your way each day, and it’s a waste of time to take your headphones off and engage with them.
9. Do not have a positive attitude. Life sucks and there is no reason to pretty it up. If something bad can happen it will; that’s just keeping it real.
10.  Do not ever ask Big Questions. There’s too much manufactured excitement every minute of the day to ask questions like: Why am I here? What am I doing with my life? Am I being the best that I can be? Those kind of questions take too much time off the merry-go-round to answer, and it’s easier to just flit from one attention-grabbing item to the next as the day goes by.

There you have it, ten New Year’s resolutions that you can break without feeling guilty. In fact,if you break even one of these resolutions, you can look back next December 31 and figure you had a pretty good year.

THE END

The "Love Handle" Approach To Language

By John McDonnell

If you’ve ever called the fat around your waist “love handles” or ever said a friend was “downsized” when he was fired, you’ve used euphemisms. We all do it, according to Ralph Keyes, author of “Euphemania: Our Love Affair With Euphemisms”. I heard Ralph interviewed on NPR the other day, and I want to buy his book because I love the way we humans try to pretty up the unpleasant things in our lives by using fancy words for them.

I have a graduate degree in English, so I’ve read a lot of poetry, and I’m on good terms with simile and metaphor and the way language can be used to convey reality in many creative ways. I love euphemisms because they show verbal creativity and humor (although there’s a fair bit of hypocrisy in there too).

Like saying “powder room” for toilet.

Or “misspeak” for lie.

Or how about “correctional facility” for prison? “Big-boned” or “full-figured” for fat?

The military is famous for its euphemisms. Here are a few:

“wet work” for assassination;

“collateral damage” for civilian deaths;

“friendly fire” for soldiers killed by their own comrades;

and “soft targets” for humans.

One of my favorite military euphemisms is, “strategic movement to the rear” for retreat.

Corporations can be every bit as euphemistic as the military, though. Besides “downsizing”, modern corporate speak has given us “called on the carpet” for being disciplined, “outsourcing” for sending work abroad, “a market correction” for a drastic plunge in stock prices, a “merger” for a corporate takeover, “negative cash flow” for losing money, and “right-sizing” for laying people off. Actually, the list of corporate euphemisms for laying off employees would take up more space than the Bible.

And then there are the so-called dirty words. George Carlin had a famous comedy routine about the “Seven Dirty Words” you couldn’t say on the air in the U.S. These are words that used to be taboo in polite company, so people would use euphemisms for them. Of course, today the taboos are breaking down, and you can hear many of the Seven Dirty Words on TV and radio every day.

Carlin called euphemisms “soft language”. He didn’t like them, because he thought that euphemisms were an attempt to deny reality. He had a whole riff on why “shell shock” is a better term than “post-traumatic stress disorder”, because it’s “simple, honest, direct” language.

It’s true that we sometimes use euphemisms to avoid naming unpleasant things. We soften the reality with a euphemism so we don’t have to think about the nasty stuff underneath.

As long as humans exist, however, the situation won’t change. We have an innate ability to see fish eggs and call it caviar, or cow dung and. . . well, you get the idea.

What’s your favorite euphemism?

The Jersey Boys And Me

By John McDonnell

I went to see Jersey Boys last weekend, and it put me in my Birthday Funk.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the show. It’s a terrific show, about Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, and I’d recommend it to anyone.

It’s just that the Four Seasons’ music was the background for a lot of my youth, and hearing all those great old songs like “Walk Like A Man”, “Sherry”, “Dawn", “Rag Doll”, and others made me realize how long it’s been since I was a teenager.

And with a birthday coming in a few days, that time of my life is fast disappearing into the rearview mirror.

This is an annual event for me, a one-day funk that comes a week before my birthday. It’s like a 24-hour emotional virus, and when my birthday comes I’m happy again, but for that one day a gray cloud appears and spreads shadows over my thoughts.

For that one day I look at my life and see only the broken dreams, missed opportunities, lost chances, all the things I should have done or could have done, the times when I should have said or done something that -- drumroll here -- Would Have Made Everything Different.

I run the movie of my life and stop it at critical moments, then sit there in the darkened theater of my mind and say, “Do you remember this, John? The time when you didn’t work hard enough/speak up/follow your heart/know your priorities/play by the rules/grab for the gusto or any of a hundred other things that you should have done but didn’t? How do you think your life might have turned out if you’d acted differently back then? Usually, the answer is, “You would have been a smashing success and everything you touched would be golden. Forever.”

It’s like in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Past comes and harangues old Scrooge with thoughts of what his life could have been if he’d taken a different path.

Jersey Boys spurred some of this thinking because along with those great old songs is a story of four boys from the hardscrabble part of New Jersey who started out with a dream of making it big in the music business in the 1950s, and after a lot of struggle and hard work, they made it to the top. They had the same dreams as millions of other young people of their own or any generation, but the difference is they made their dreams come true.

It’s inspirational, but it also makes anyone facing a birthday after the age of 40 wonder, “Could that have been me?”. When you’re in your 20s you can still tell yourself you’re laying the groundwork to achieve your youthful dreams. In your 30s reality is starting to intrude, but you think, “I’m just a late bloomer. I’ll come into my own any day now.”

When 40 rolls around you start looking up biographies of people, like Colonel Sanders, who became successful in middle age or later. When you get past 50, though, the “late bloomer” line starts to wear thin.

It’s enough to make you get very blue when you have another birthday approaching.

But I know the drill, because it happens every year. I’ll be in this funk for a day, maybe two, and then I’ll snap out of it. I’ll realize that I haven’t done too badly, come to think of it. I’m heading toward my third decade of a happy marriage, and I have four kids who love me and laugh at my jokes. That alone is worth more than a hit Broadway show in my book. My career? Well, it isn’t Jersey Boys level, but it’s perking along, and every day I get to do work that I enjoy -- how many people can say that? 

And hey, if you pay attention to what happened between the songs of Jersey Boys, you realize that it wasn’t all applause and hit songs for the Four Seasons -- all those years of touring took a heavy toll on their families. There are failed marriages, jealousy, heartache, and broken dreams in that show, singing counterpoint to all those hit numbers.

So maybe I’ll tell the Ghost of Christmas Past to bug off, and don’t come back till next year.

And remember the lyrics to “Let’s Hang On”:

“Let’s hang on to what we’ve got
Don’t let go girl we’ve got a lot,
Got a lot of love between us
Hang on, hang on, hang on,
To what we’ve got.”

Is It Nap Time Yet?

By John McDonnell

I remember a time when I wasn’t so sleep deprived. All through my childhood I averaged at least eight hours of sleep a night. In college I stayed up later, of course, but I tried to make up for that sleep deficit by snoozing most of the day away on Saturday and Sunday.

In my single years during my 20s I got enough sleep. Oh, there were times when I pushed the envelope, staying out at a bar till three in the morning on Thursday nights with my friends and then getting up at seven and putting in a 12 hour shift at the bank where I worked. Most weeknights, though, I got a good eight hours in.

All that changed when my first child was born. My sleep pattern was permanently destroyed. Who could sleep when you have a baby in the house? Even if your wife is getting up to feed it, you can’t help being disturbed by that insistent little cry every few hours. And when they get sick? The first time your child has a fever at night? Say goodbye to forty winks then. You’re up all night worrying, if nothing else. You pace around the house, checking the baby every few minutes, watching for the least sign of distress. It’s not a recipe for relaxation, that’s for sure.

It doesn’t end when they grow out of infancy, either. Children get nightmares, they get sick at night, they have anxieties -- all of which means they end up in Mom and Dad’s bed. It might seem sweet to have a young child snuggle up against you in bed, but the reality is they act like little Nazis, pushing and kicking you in their sleep, till you’re curled up in a ball on the edge of the mattress, your mind full of unsettling dreams about falling off a cliff.

If you have multiple children, like I have, you’re in for years of this, till an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep becomes a distant memory.

Oh sure, children don’t stay in this stage forever, but what happens is they become teenagers, a breed of nocturnal creature who needs to be monitored lest they spend too much time at night on Facebook and not enough on homework. On the weekends they go out at night, which means parents are not allowed to fall asleep until all the teenagers are back and safely in their beds.

Add to this the fact that some of us develop sleep apnea in middle age (ahem), which means that we spend our nights snoring and waking up 50 times an hour at the subconscious level because we can’t catch our breath, and the sweet sleep of youth is gone forever.

There’s a solution for this, and it’s called napping.

I have a relative who has taken an afternoon nap almost every day for the past 40 years. She is a calm, happy person who is relatively free of health problems, and doesn’t walk around bleary-eyed and yawning all day like I do.

There have been many scientific studies in recent years that say napping is good for you. People who nap are happier, more creative, more productive, and less prone to all sorts of health problems. Some companies have actually created rooms where employees can go to nap, with beds, soft music, and dimmed lights. The “Power Nap” is a concept that is catching on in certain industries.

I think it will take a long time before napping becomes popular in the U.S., though. We’re too driven, too caffeinated, to throttle back every day for a half hour nap. Can you imagine the New York Stock Exchange, the ultimate symbol of capitalism, ringing a bell at 3:00 and all the traders curling up with their blankets and pillows to take a nap? No, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Then again, there have been examples of people who take regular naps, even in high stress jobs. I still remember seeing a picture of Edwin Moses, the Olympic gold medal winner in the hurdles, stretched out on the infield at a track meet, napping before his event. And I read an interview with Kevin Costner years ago where he said he took naps in between takes when he was filming some of his early movies.

Well, I just may have to try it. I’ve given up on getting a full night’s sleep for awhile. Things probably won’t change until a few years from now, when my last child graduates from the teenage years. It looks like I may have to start catnapping at my desk, or when possible, stretched out on a couch in my office.

It may improve my creativity, may make me more productive, I don’t know. It may add years to my life.

Until I have grandchildren, and they come to my house for sleepovers.    

THE END

I Could Hear Fine If You'd All Stop Mumbling

By John McDonnell

My Dad was one of those people who loved to sing. He’d sing in the shower, in the car, around the house. He liked to sing popular songs, and he had a good voice, but he never got the lyrics right.

That was because he couldn’t hear them. He was losing his hearing.

This bothered me when I was a teenager, the way he’d mangle the lyrics to my favorite songs. Teenagers don’t have a lot of patience with their parents anyway, and to have a parent who’s hard of hearing is especially trying for their overly sensitive souls.

Which is why I should have more sympathy for my own teenage children, because now the situation is reversed. I’m the one who can’t hear.

I don’t mangle song lyrics because I don’t sing in the shower. In every other way, however, I’m like my Dad. I’m constantly telling my children to “Speak up!”, I’ve decided that most actors these days are intentionally mumbling their way through their movie dialogue, and it’s amazing how bad the acoustics are in my church because I can’t hear more than a fraction of what the priest is saying every Sunday.

In my rational moments I can admit that it’s not the fault of poor acoustics or mumbling actors, but I’m the one to blame for the world getting quieter. After all, hearing loss runs in my family. My father had it, and so did his mother, who was almost totally deaf and had been that way since she was in her 40s.

I should not be surprised that I am losing my hearing.

I’m not surprised, but I am furious.

I joked about it when my hearing started going ten years ago. “It’s selective deafness,” I’d say. “I just can’t hear my wife nagging me about doing chores.” Or, “I can’t hear it when the baby cries at night, unfortunately (wink, wink), so my wife has to get up with her.”

The situation has gotten worse, though. My kids will crank up the decibels when they want me to hear them, or stand in front of me and act out what they want to say, like I’m stone deaf and can only read lips or facial expressions.

Hearing loss is no fun. I notice the same exasperated tone from my kids that I used with my father when he couldn’t hear what I said. They tell me every day that I need a hearing aid. My wife pleads and cajoles with me.

I keep refusing.

It’s a matter of vanity, I guess. I don’t want that little brown button in my ear, but more than that, I don’t want to acknowledge that I’m getting older and I have flaws.

I read once that Bob Hope refused to wear a hearing aid, and it ruined his career after he got older. His pinpoint comic timing deteriorated when he couldn’t hear other people’s lines or the audience response. I also read, however, that Thomas Edison was stone deaf by middle age and said it was a great blessing because he could concentrate on his work, and shut out all the noise of people yakking at him.

I try to tell my kids the Edison story, but they more likely think of me as Bob Hope -- flubbing my lines every day because I can’t pick up what my costars are saying.

I know I should break down and get the hearing aid. There are advances in technology every day and the newer models are so tiny you can barely see them. And Bill Clinton famously got two hearing aids at the tender age of 51, which helped to make it more acceptable among Baby Boomers.

It’s so 21st century to have something sticking in your ear, right? I’ll just look like one of those people who is so important they walk around all day talking on the phone attached to their ear.

I know all those things, but in my heart I still can’t get used to the fact that I’m now my Dad, getting all the lyrics wrong, saying “Pardon?” even when the speaker is right in front of me, and having my kids scream at me in frustration when I don’t understand something they said to me.

Then again, I guess I should remember that my Dad refused to get a hearing aid for many years also, and that if I really want to be just like him I could go on for another ten years like this, until my loved ones are ready to clobber me because I can’t hear a thing they say.

Maybe I’d better Google “hearing aids”. I think I’m ready.

THE END

How To Squeeze Every Minute

By John McDonnell

The Internet has revolutionized our lives, but it’s also the biggest time waster in the last 10,000 years.

How do I know this? Because I sit down to write and then I get caught up in Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia -- and before I know it, hours have vanished from my life. When I was in Catholic school, these kind of insidious temptations were known as the agents of Satan, and I think the nuns who taught me that were on to something.

I mean, did Ernest Hemingway have to deal with this? Did John Updike? Updike wrote more than 50 books in 50 years, plus reams of magazine articles, essays, and poems -- do you think he could have accomplished all that if he was checking email every five minutes?

Of course not!

Then why don’t I pull the plug on this black hole that sucks the time out of my days? Why don’t I just get rid of my Internet connection so I can produce more work?

Because I can’t.

The addiction is too strong. I can’t go half a day without my Internet fix. I had to take my computer into the Apple store last week and wait a whole 24 hours for them to fix it, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was sweating, unfocused, blithering. I couldn’t concentrate.

When I got the computer back I ran to my desk, set it up, plugged it in, and voila! I was back online, plugged in to the pulsing heart of the Internet.

I guess there are worse addictions.

It’s just that the older I get, the more I realize the most important quality a person needs to be successful is good time management skills.

It’s not talent. It’s not luck. It’s not even hard work, although that’s important.

It’s the ability to figure out what’s important to you each day, write down your goals, and then focus on the steps you need to accomplish those goals.

You can be a blithering idiot and still be wildly successful if you have the simple ability to do that. To know what your priorities are on your To Do list every day, and then focus on getting those items accomplished. It’s just putting one foot in front of the other, that’s all.

It means putting blinders on, and blocking out all the bright shiny things trying to get your attention every day. It means shutting your ears to all the chatter around you. It means not exploring that cool Web site you just stumbled on, or reading “just one” email, or taking that phone call you know will waste the next half hour when you need to be working on your project.

When I know what I want to accomplish, write it down, and take steps to achieve it, that’s when I’ve always felt the most productive. You can sleep easy at night when you’ve crossed off all the important items on your To Do list every day.

The more the distractions of modern life have grown, the more people are looking for quick fixes to deal with them and be more productive. There are time management Web sites now, and tons of software programs promising to help us all use our time better. We can put To Do lists on our smart phones, send ourselves reminders, trade tips and advice with other people on productivity forums -- and yet people are complaining more than ever that there isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done.

It’s really not that hard. Just write down a few tasks on a sheet of paper every day, then get them done. Know what your goals are, and review them on a regular basis to make sure you’re still on track. Learn how to say no to anything or anyone who pulls you away from your tasks each day.

This is not rocket science. It’s something I’ve known since I was 12 years old. I’ve done it at various times in my life, although not nearly enough.

Well, I’m going to do it again. I’m going to buy a yellow legal pad and start writing my lists out every day. I’m going to focus, focus, focus on getting my tasks accomplished. I’m going to change, go on an Internet crash diet. This time I’m going to do it!

Which reminds me, I need to do a Google search to find some good Web sites with time management tips.

THE END

Copyright John McDonnell, 2010. All rights reserved.

The Autobiography Of Mark Twain -- 100 Years Overdue

By John McDonnell

November 15 is the publication date of a book that has been been in the can for 100 years. I’m referring to the first volume of the “Autobiography of Mark Twain”. There’s so much buzz about this book that it’s already high on the best-seller lists of both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. This has to qualify as the greatest marketing campaign in the history of book publishing.

Twain dictated the book to a stenographer in the six years before he died in 1910 and then promptly instructed his literary heirs to put it away for 100 years.

Why the long wait? Twain apparently wanted to speak the truth in his autobiography but he thought his uncensored opinions about people he’d known might offend some of them, and he didn’t want the book to be published while they were living -- or even during the lives of  their children.

All I can say is, I can’t wait to read this book. If Mark Twain thought his views were too hot to publish till 100 years later, this should be one entertaining book. Because this is a man who wasn’t afraid of expressing his opinion and writing controversially. As one example, here is his opinion of Jane Austen:

"Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

Early in his career Mark Twain was a journalist in Virginia City Nevada, in the Wild West, in an era when newspapermen would as soon print tall tales as facts, and when duels were still being fought over the opinions expressed in newspaper articles.

This was a man who wasn’t afraid of controversy. His most famous book, “Huckleberry Finn”, was published 125 years ago, but it’s still capable of stirring up passions, and there are still people who want to ban it from schools and libraries because they think  its language is too raw and offensive. He wasn’t afraid to speak out against racism and imperialism in the United States, at a time when those weren’t popular opinions.

Unfortunately, Mark Twain wouldn’t last a week as an author in today’s politically correct world. He’d have people threatening to sue him for libel, editors would refuse to publish him, his speaking engagements would dry up, and he’d have to go on “Oprah” and tearfully apologize if he wanted to have any semblance of a career.

He was not a bland writer. He had personality. He wrote with passion, vitriol, and joy. Towards the end of his life he got a little bitter, because of personal tragedies that started to pile up (the deaths of his wife and three of his four children). There was more bite to his humor than there had been in the past. The one thing about Twain, though: his writing was never neutral, or lukewarm. When you read a page of Mark Twain, you know you’re going to be entertained, maybe angered, but never bored.

And that’s why I can’t wait till his autobiography comes out. If someone who wrote like that his whole life decided his final summing up was too controversial to publish till 100 years after he died, well, it must be a pretty outrageous book.

I’ll take outrageous over lukewarm any day, even if it’s 100 years overdue.

I Am Not Keith Richards

By John McDonnell

So Keith Richards has written his autobiography, and he’s being interviewed everywhere. The infamous Rolling Stone guitarist with the face that looks like old shoe leather has told all in an autobiography that has lots of spicy stories about his wayward life.

Apparently there’s enough detail about his extensive drug use that Disney is rumored to be thinking of writing his character out of the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. “Keef” doesn’t fit in with Disney’s squeaky clean image, even if he is portraying the scruffy, disreputable father of Johnny Depp’s only slightly less scruffy Captain Jack Sparrow character.

If Disney needs a replacement, they could call me. I’m the polar opposite of Keith Richards. I’m a family man, I don’t do drugs, I’ve never been arrested, I don’t interrupt when someone else is speaking, and I shave every day. I’m what’s known as a Nice Guy.

That’s what I’ve been called pretty much my whole life. As in, “Gee, you’re such a nice guy, John.” I never got into fights as a boy, preferring compromise over confrontation. I’ve always been polite, respectful, positive. A Nice Guy.

The trouble is, nice guys don’t make headlines. It’s not a popular thing these days. People don’t aspire to be a nice guy anymore. “Nice guys finish last,” isn’t that the saying? Women say they’re looking for a nice guy, but their actions betray their words because they sometimes end up with a guy that looks like he has a sketchy relationship with things like soap, water, and manners.

There are no nice guys in popular music. Can you imagine a nice guy rapper? Shouting rhymes about how he opens doors for women? Don’t count on that happening any time soon.

It’s not just rap music. Keith Richards and his bandmates have a long history of writing songs that celebrate bad behavior towards women. From “Under My Thumb” to “Stupid Girl” to albums of others, there are very few Stones songs that would qualify as nice guy songs.

Maybe I feel this way because I live in the Northeast corridor of the U.S. Nobody in this part of the world aspires to be a nice guy. In fact, I think it’s actually illegal in New York city. Police are trained to take down nice guys because they’re almost as dangerous as terrorists. A cab driver who let someone switch lanes in front of him out of politeness would probably cause a massive traffic accident.

I’ve heard rumors that there are still some nice guys left in the South, but they’re a dying breed, rapidly being replaced by redneck comedians and Florida State football players.

I could get mad about it, but nice guys are non-confrontational. The most we do is get a little passive aggressive, maybe make a few wisecracks about how ridiculous it looks for a 67 year old like Keith Richards to be wearing leather pants, bandanas, and jewelry in his hair.

It’s just the way things are. Bad boys get all the headlines, while nice guys stay in the background doing all the boring little things that keep civilization from spiraling back into the Stone Age. Nobody wants to read the autobiography of a nice guy. We want to read about the crazy bad boys, the ones whose lives are filled with drama every day.

That’s okay, though. I wish Keith the best. He’s created some great music along with that bad boy image. He’s even given up drugs, or so he claims in his autobiography, and he’s devoted to his family. I hope he has many more years ahead of him.

But if my daughters ever want to marry somebody like him, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy for me.

Should You Declutter Your Home?

By John McDonnell

I grew up in a family of eight, and we lived in a three bedroom house. These were not bedrooms as we think of them today, however. Three of my brothers shared a bedroom that was the size of a walk-in closet in a modern house. My sister actually did live in a closet -- her bedroom had been used as one by the previous owners.

Downstairs, there was a living room, dining room, a half-bathroom the size of a telephone booth, and a modest kitchen. After a few years we converted the garage into a TV room, but by today’s standards it was a tiny house for eight people.

And yet, it never seemed cluttered.

My mother liked things neat, and she trained the children to pick up after themselves. We had no multi-purpose furniture: e.g., the kitchen table had nothing on it except food. The flat surfaces in the house were always visible and uncluttered. There were no areas that looked like the back room in a junk shop.

Then why do I live in such a cluttered house?

My house has three times the space of the one I grew up in, and yet all that space is taken. There are stacks of mail on the dining room table. Sports equipment, lawn furniture, and power tools litter my garage. I haven’t seen the surface of my desk in years. And you don’t want to go down in my basement. That’s the place where old computers, toys, and furniture go to die.

How did this happen?

I like to tell myself that it’s because I’m a creative person and we creative types are not orderly or fussy about small details like having space on the kitchen table.

That could be true, but it’s also probably because my family has more of the detritus of modern life, more stuff than I had as a child.

How did I get all this stuff? I was raised in a family where my father grew up poor in the Depression, and he always acted as if he thought he was going to wake up one day and it would be 1933 again. He thought the world was crawling with people out to take his money, and by God he wasn’t going to let them have it. If my Dad spent money on something there had to be a dire need for it, and you were expected to use it till it wore out.

These days, when I’m looking for a book or a user’s manual or a gadget and I’m searching through all the clutter, I often find things that mystify me. “When did we buy this?” I ask. Or, “I didn’t know we had one of these,” or, “What is this thing?” Even, at times: “Did we actually spend money on this?”

I try not to be a sucker for every sales pitch that comes along, but my resistance breaks down more than I realize. You can’t get me to buy a pair of pants I don’t need, but for computers, gadgets, gardening tools or books I’m an easy touch. The rest of my family has different buying weaknesses, but what it all adds up to is that we play a vital part in the economic well-being of several Chinese villages. 

Combine that mentality with a reluctance to throw things out -- in my family, if we own something, it’s understood that we keep it till the sun burns itself into a cold, dark cinder and the universe implodes -- and you can see why there is so much clutter.

I know you’re saying there’s always eBay or a yard sale to get rid of the stuff, but that involves making multiple trips to the dark corners of the basement, organizing, collating, and actually looking at things like those Sesame Street sing-along videos we kept for 20 years since our kids outgrew them, and once that happens we get teary-eyed and decide we can’t part with them, so they go back in the box for another 20 years.

Maybe that’s what clutter is, the accumulation of sentiment. It’s the souvenirs we pick up along the way, and no matter how trivial they seem, they all have meaning. Even that electric bill I found in the back of my desk drawer, the one from the first apartment my wife and I lived in, is hard to throw away because it has meaning to me (“Honey, do you believe how little they charged per kilowatt hour back then?”). I can’t part with the stuff I’ve been dragging along, no matter how much it’s slowing me down.

Someday all this clutter will be thrown away, or it’s going to end up in the closets and desk drawers of my children, just like clutter has been passed down to me from my dead relatives. It goes on forever, does clutter.

Maybe that will be my ultimate legacy, my gift to future generations. My great-grandchildren will have things like restaurant receipts and old magazines and the model airplane I built in 4th grade to remember me by.

That will probably give them a more accurate picture of my life than anything else, because what is life all about anyway, if not clutter?

THE END

Soccer Memories

 By John McDonnell

In a few weeks my daughter’s soccer career will be over. She plays for a college team, and this is her senior year. Her school is a six hour drive away, so my wife and I have only seen a handful of her games in four years.

We will be driving down to see her play the next two weekends, and it will be an emotional time for us.

Whenever I sit in the stands and see her playing at the furious, physical pace of college soccer, I can’t help but think of the little girl in a ponytail who started playing at four years old on a coed team where the boys wouldn’t pass her the ball, and she seemed more interested in picking dandelions than in playing her position. The ball would routinely pass her by while she stared at cloud formations, and the adults would try to refocus her by jumping up and down on the sidelines and screaming.

Has it really been 17 years since then?

I’ve seen a lot of soccer in the intervening years, and it’s a sport I never played or really cared about before. My high school didn’t even have a soccer team when I was there, and it was a sport I thought was only played by people with names like Reinhard or Carlos.

When your child likes a sport, though, you dutifully learn everything you can about it, and become the world’s biggest fan. I coached my kids in soccer when they were little, trying to hide my ignorance with a few insider terms I learned from books. “One touch!” I’d yell, not really sure what that meant, but it sounded good.

I stopped coaching when the kids were old enough to raise their eyebrows at some of my strategic moves, which was usually when they hit 9 years old.

It’s been a grand adventure, as every part of parenting has been. I’ve had to learn skills I never dreamed I’d learn, play roles I never thought I’d play, speak a language I never knew before.

There have been injuries, games played in the pouring rain or freezing cold, games that were won or lost in the last seconds, stubborn coaches and mean-spirited opponents, medals and trophies won, friendships forged, tears and laughter in abundance. I put thousands of miles on our car shuttling my kids to tournaments, stayed in budget hotels and ate too much fast food. I gave up weekends to man the hot dog stand when our team hosted tournaments, pushed my creaky joints to the limit in backyard workout sessions, shelled out thousands of dollars for uniforms, team fees, equipment, cleats and whatever else my soccer players told me they absolutely had to have.

I’m sure I’ll reflect on that sitting in the stands this weekend. I’ll look at that woman who’s flying down the field with the smile on her face, the same one she had when she was five years old, and I’ll cheer her and wonder at the mystery of time, that it seems like only yesterday when she was picking dandelions in the middle of a soccer field.

I’ll probably shed a tear too.

It’s been a great ride.

The Lost Art Of Conversation

By John McDonnell

My wife has cousins in Ireland, and they came to visit last week. We did some sightseeing, went out to a few restaurants, took them shopping.

Mostly, though, we just talked.

The Irish have a gift for talking. Words flow out of them with the ease of a river flowing downhill, and if you stop and ask directions of a stranger in Dublin, like we did last April when we visited, you’ll probably get a story along with the directions. Indeed, the cab driver who took us to the airport was as glib and expansive as a standup comedian.

Last week we spent a lot of time with the Irish relatives just sitting around the kitchen table, drinking tea and talking.

It reminded me of how little we do that in America these days. I don’t remember the last time my family sat around the kitchen table with anyone and just chatted. We’re always too busy to sit down, there are too many deadlines to meet, schedules to keep. My children don’t know what it’s like to talk without purpose, to simply talk for the sake of talking.

It wasn’t always this way. When I was a child in the 1950s and 60s my grandparents, aunts and uncles would regularly stop by our house and visit for awhile.

They would sit in the kitchen or the living room and talk. Conversation was something that was valued. The children sometimes took part, sometimes not. Even if we were too busy to sit and talk, we could still hear the conversation from wherever we were in the house. I remember many times being sent upstairs to do my homework, but instead sitting on the floor in the hallway listening to my aunt tell stories about her pals in the Notre Dame Subway Alumni, or my uncle and father talking about playing stickball in the street in South Philadelphia when they were boys during the 1930s.

There were arguments, too -- during the Vietnam War years there were raging arguments about whether we should be involved in that war, and during the Watergate years there were many heated discussions about Nixon’s crooked machinations. When John F. Kennedy died there was anger and sadness, but the conversation was a way for them to vent their feelings at a time of tragedy.

I learned a lot listening to those conversations. I learned about history, I learned about morality, I heard a few secrets that I wasn’t supposed to, I learned how to be part of a family, a community, how to be a human being.

I worry that my children are not learning those things.

Where is the art of conversation today? Is it flourishing through text-messaging, Facebook postings, e-mail, instant messaging? Technology lovers will tell you these social networking tools are a good thing, that they’re helping people to make connections, to stay in touch with folks who live far away, to reestablish ties with friends from long ago.

In a way that’s true; through Facebook and e-mail I’m reconnected with high school friends I lost touch with 25 years ago. It’s nice to chat with them online, but these short, truncated messages, a few sentences on a screen, are not the same as sitting down across from someone and talking with them for an hour or two. Social networking is good for short bursts of information, quick hits, an update or two. An in-person visit with someone is different. When you have time to relax and just chew the fat you never know where the conversation will lead. It can twist and turn, loop back on itself, strike off in new directions. You have time to tell a story that everyone’s heard before, without the fear of someone impatiently looking at his or her watch.

The Irish know this. They pay no attention to the world and its busy rush when they have a chance to talk. A story or an anecdote is worth taking time out of your day for. A visit and a chat are important things. Talking, just talking with no particular point or sales pitch or punch line to deliver, is a good thing in itself.

I miss those days in America.

The Waves At The Shore

By John McDonnell

When you lose someone you love, the wound heals but the scars never go away.

This past weekend I took my daughter to a soccer tournament at the Jersey Shore. The rest of the team stayed at a hotel, but we stayed at my mother’s summer home. It’s been in our family for over 50 years, and some of my earliest memories are of summer vacations spent at that house. It’s the one thing in my life that I still have from my childhood, because it’s basically the same house that I remember going to as a five year old.

So, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at what happened.

All weekend I kept noticing white haired people everywhere. Older men and women, walking to the beach, riding bikes, strolling along the main street at night, waiting in line for ice cream cones, eating lunch at the local sidewalk cafes. I took my daughter to Mass on Sunday morning, and we were surrounded by senior citizens. There was a choir, and they were the picture of serenity in their sky blue robes and their white hair.

There was a simple reason for all these seniors. It was October, and the families with young kids were gone from the beach community. The kids were back in school, the adults back at their jobs and houses and lives at home. The community was given back to the older folks, the ones who’ve retired there or who own summer houses that they use after Labor Day, when the young people go back to their busy lives in the city. Some of them may even have come down for vacation in October, preferring the quiet of fall to the noise and heat and cotton candy atmosphere of summer.

Looking at those older people, I suddenly had tears in my eyes. Why did this affect me so?

Because my Dad wasn’t there, and he should have been.

My father died 17 years ago, at the age of 70, cut down by mesothelioma, a lung cancer caused by the asbestos he was exposed to as a young man in the construction industry.  He died only 18 months after retiring from his job, and he never got much chance to spend time at the seashore house he loved.

He had put off his retirement till he was 69, working a few extra years to put more money away, but he fully expected to have a long retirement.

It never happened. He got his diagnosis in May, and died in September. He had one last summer to enjoy the seashore, but after a couple of weekends in June he was too weak to go back. The last time he was there he sat in his favorite chair and just looked around at the seagulls wheeling overhead, the cedar trees rustling in the breeze, and the families walking to and from the beach.

It was a tragedy, but I had put it out of my mind. I hadn’t felt the sadness in so long I thought it was gone forever. It came back, though, in a heartbeat. In the blink of an eye I was right back in the middle of it, my chest aching with the weight of tears, my eyes burning, my throat closing up.

When you’re a child you don’t think about endings. I was a child for a long time, but now I realize nothing ever really ends. You think it does, but it’s never really finished. All it takes is the right circumstances and you’re right back where you were before. Time is circular that way.

I don’t have an answer, or a neat ending, for this essay. I wish I did, but all I can say is that growing up is not easy, and that nothing is ever finished. The waves beat against the shore the same way they have for thousands of years, and the way they will for thousands more. You can lose yourself in their rhythm, or you can stop and focus on the passing of time. You can rage about the injustice in the world, or you can put it out of your mind and concentrate on the minutiae of daily living.

But it’s never really gone. 

Hack

By John McDonnell

Hack.

That’s what I am.

Not somebody who tries to take over other people’s computers. Not an incompetent golfer. Not the act of trying to cut through a dense jungle. Look up “hack” in the dictionary and you’ll see those kinds of definitions.

No, I’m a hack writer. “A person, an artist or writer, who exploits, for money, his or her creative ability or training in the production of dull, unimaginative, and trite work; one who produces banal and mediocre work in the hope of gaining commercial success in the arts.”

That’s me, with one exception. I’ve been a writer all my adult life, and I’ve always written for money. I’ve always been on the payroll somewhere, or freelancing for someone, bringing other people’s ideas into fruition on the page, doing other people’s work, in exchange for a paycheck.

The exception is this: Have I done dull, unimaginative, and trite work? Not if I can help it. Wherever possible I’ve tried to make the writing come alive, to inject my personality into it.

That’s not always possible when you’re on someone else’s dime. In those kinds of situations, sometimes you have to just shut up and do the work. However, I’ve always tried to do the best job possible, no matter what the circumstances.

Why did I become a hack writer? Because I love writing. I learned to read and write early, and I never stopped loving it. I love the world of words, I love books in all their forms, and I love the act of writing. If nobody paid me for my writing I’d probably still do it for free, sitting at my computer stringing words together till long into the night.

The other reason is that I did it to pay the bills. It was a way to make money, and I had a family to help support. The money was decent, and things were fine for many years, but its gotten to the point where I’m tired of submerging my personality. Sure I love writing, but I want to do some writing for me, to exercise my personality. I want to see “By John McDonnell” on a piece of writing I did. When you spend your life writing what other people want you to write, you’re in danger of becoming nothing more than a ghostwriter, a particularly appropriate word. I don’t want to be a phantom, a spirit who leaves no concrete mark on this world when he walks out the exit door for the last time.

I want to write about me, John McDonnell, for a change. I want to write about my hopes and dreams, triumphs and failures, quirks and idiosyncrasies.

So that’s what this is about. It’s about me as an individual. But it’s also about you, if you’re tired of submerging your personality because other people want you to, or because you were always a good boy or good girl, or because you didn’t want to offend, or whatever other reason. Maybe you want to write something totally stupid for once in your life. Or say something you’d never say in public. This is a place to do that, to celebrate individuality, to break out of your shell.

I have no idea what direction this blog is going in. The postings will not be directed at a marketing “niche”, and they will not be SEO friendly. This blog is not designed to rank high in Google, or any other search engine. It is a haphazard, stumbling, random thing that will talk about whatever’s on my mind at a moment in time. It will probably be ungrammatical and even incoherent at times. I’m going to write my posts rapid-fire, and I won’t care about niceties. This is about emotion, individuality, personality.

It’s not about hack writing.