Pocket Computer

While I didn’t “need” another iPod, I took the plunge the other day and got an iPod Touch. Its capability as a pocket computer is what moved me to get it. The Touch has all the functionality of the iPhone less the phone. Its 5 ounce footprint saves me from toting my 5 pound laptop around much of the time and it is a ton of fun. I visit the New York Times for news on my porch and check the TV Guide for programs on my couch.

With Apple’s ample App Store, there is no shortage of free applications to download to the Touch, including one that allows me to read electronic books on it. My wife and I are headed to New York City for the holidays and I am looking forward to surfing wirelessly at neighborhood cafes during our visit. And I got an email from Delta notifying me that eBay is even sponsoring free WiFi on our flights to and from the Big Apple!

Sacred Time

In the book Sacred Time and the Search for Meaning, author Gary Eberle writes, “Sacred time is what we experience when we step outside the quick flow of life and luxuriate, as it were, in a realm where there is enough of everything, where we are not trying to fill a void in ourselves or the world, where we exist for a moment at both the deepest and the loftiest levels of our existence and participate in the eternal life of all that is.”

A couple of words from his definition leap out at me: luxuriate and participate. It seems to me that what troubles so many of my fellow travelers through time is the patent unwillingness to “step outside the quick flow of life” in order to luxuriate in the languid experience of living. Notice that I didn’t say it is an inability to slow down one’s pace, but an unwillingness to do so, that hinders people from enjoying life by participating actively in it.

I am reminded of a story I heard about a businessman who encountered a fisherman plying his trade and subsequently suggested a strategy for growing his fledgling enterprise. The ambitious plan called for the fisherman to gradually expand his operation until he was ultimately able to slow down, fish at his own pace and spend time at home with his family. The irony, of course, was that the fisherman was already enjoying that lifestyle without the businessman’s plan.

As far as I can ascertain, that is the way many people strive to live their lives: ever chasing after the illusion of success, yet failing to realize the simple pleasures of the life they possess. And the sad fact of the matter is that the life most dream of is much closer than they realize. As the saying goes, it doesn’t pay to climb the ladder of success, only to learn that it leans against the wrong house.

Easier said than done, some may say, but I beg to differ. It is all a matter of how badly one wants a simpler, more meaningful life. People live the life of their dreams all the time. And it simply involves making conscientious decisions on a daily basis that move one closer to the preferred destination. Sacred time is within reach of us all, if we’ll only let go of what limits us.

The Case for Editors

With an intriguing twist of irony, I ordered a book the other day from Amazon titled The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton, who happens to be the director of the Harvard University Library. So what is so ironic about that? Other than the fact that the book is a hardcover that I got for a third off the cover price from the place that has popularized electronic book reading, there was a glaring TYPO on the back cover proving my point that besides the case for books, there also is a case for editors.

White Space

In design circles there is a term to describe the limited use of graphics on a page: white space. A similar term regarding the placement of text is called margin. Whatever you call it, the idea behind it is that specific elements stand out in relief. In other words, an uncluttered background allows the focal point of a design to come to the fore.

My wife is helping a friend of ours, who happens to be a fellow editor, organize her living and working space to better function at home, both personally and professionally. And the first move toward a more beautiful space is to remove the clutter from it. Nothing mars a homescape more than too much stuff and no system in place to corral it.

No matter how cramped one’s quarters might be, any space can be made more livable by weeding out the detritus of life gathered over the course of time. For example, I am one of the more organized people I know, but even I found myself with an odd surplus of electronic gadgetry accumulating in the storage closet of my office.

So I finally tackled the tangled web of cords and discovered that, among several outdated devices, my wife and I had collected one set of earbuds, two cell phone cases, three old cell phones, four cell phone chargers, and five corroded batteries. But the best part of the process was my discovery that a set of Aiwa speakers I had stored work wonderfully with our Apple laptop.

Never mind that I’ve had the laptop for 4 years and the speakers for 24 years and somehow they are only now being united in sonic bliss. The sole reason for their belated coupling can be attributed to the saying: “out of sight, out of mind.” As my wife and I often remind each other, “it helps to know what you own so you can use it.” If I’d only explored our spare electronics box earlier I could have been jamming long ago.

Sense of Place

I got to travel to my home state of Virginia this past weekend and while there I visited founding father Thomas Jefferson’s private retreat called Poplar Forest, outside of Lynchburg. This year marks the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s initial visit to Poplar Forest, one of only two homes he designed and created for his own use—the other being Monticello in Charlottesville—and free admission made it even more fun.

The home speaks volumes about the man and his mind, as it is reportedly the first octagonal home built in America and featured many state of the art amenities, including indoor toiletry to supplement his octagon-shaped outhouses. Of Poplar Forest, Jefferson wrote to a friend: “When finished, it will be the best dwelling house in the state, except that of Monticello; perhaps preferable to that, as more proportioned to the faculties of a private citizen.”

Poplar Forest’s website at www.poplarforest.org hints at the special place it held in its owner’s heart: “Poplar Forest was an important part of Jefferson’s life: a private retreat, situated far from the public scrutiny, where he could indulge in his favorite pastimes of reading, studying and thinking. Poplar Forest [was] a place where he came to find rest and leisure, rekindle his creativity, and to enjoy private family time.”

In a letter written to another friend, Jefferson wrote of Poplar Forest: “I write to you from a place 90 miles from Monticello…which I visit three or four times a year, and stay from a fortnight to a month at a time. I have fixed myself comfortably, keep some books here, bring others occasionally, am in the solitude of a hermit, and quite at leisure to attend to my absent friends.”

What was so special about visiting Jefferson’s hideaway is that it gave me a sense of place and how his home informed and inspired one of the truly revolutionary thinkers in history. It was moving to spend time in the same space that the author of our nation’s Declaration of Independence used to read and study and think grand thoughts.

Thinking of Abundance

I share my thinking on this blog for the creative fun of it and the simple satisfaction that comes from communicating with readers about what’s on my mind. With that said, like any other blogger, or creative artist of any stripe, it always feels good to be validated in one’s thinking and that is the prompt for this posting.

As a longtime subscriber to Fast Company, I am regularly treated to a cornucopia of innovative and interesting ideas so suffice it to say that I was particularly pleased to read a recent article about the business success of Panera Bread [which I had written about in my 06/15/09 posting titled “Mobile Avenue”].

As I mentioned in my post, Panera’s “unlimited Internet access is the drawing card for countless professional nomads like myself who are looking for a cool, cozy place to conduct business.” My point was, and continues to be, that businesses with an abundance mindset will trump those with a scarcity mentality.

As the aforementioned article states, “Mention Panera Bread and fans are as likely to praise the free Wi-Fi as they are to gush about the Asiago cheese bagels. And that, execs at the restaurant chain say, is the point. While its competitors scale back on upscale ingredients, trim portion sizes, and create value menus, Panera is selling fresh food and warm bread at full price, and encouraging customers to linger. That recipe is succeeding.”

The article also points out that while others aim to limit laptop-lugging patrons, Panera has realized that fostering community contributes to cash flow: “And the company has combined that menu with an unpretentious atmosphere—there’s no table service, but also no time limit. As a result, it has become as much community gathering space as a bustling lunch spot. ‘In many ways, we’re renting space to people and the food is the price of admission,’ says CEO Ron Shaich.”

Speaking of Stuff

I came across a thought-provoking article in this weekend’s New York Times magazine titled “The Self-Storage Self” by Jon Mooallem and you can read it at www.nytimes.com. Whether or not you use self-storage (I do not), there is no denying the behemoth of a business it has become.

One of the more compelling points of the article captures the sheer size of the self-storage movement: “After a monumental building boom, the United States now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now ‘physically possible that every American could stand—all at the same time—under the total canopy of self-storage roofing.’)”

As the article further suggests: “Maybe the recession really is making American consumers serious about scaling back, about decluttering and deleveraging. But there are upward of 51,000 storage facilities across this country. Storage is part of our national infrastructure now. And all it is, is empty space.”

I can’t speak for others, but it sounds to me like people need to discipline themselves when it comes to acquiring stuff. Despite average home sizes doubling to more than 2,300 square feet, many people apparently have trouble fitting it all into their super-sized McMansions (that many also have no business buying).

I recently heard that for the typical buyer of a NEW Rolls Royce, it is the 17TH car in their collection! When the vast majority of the world subsists on about a dollar a day, I can’t help but think that too many of us have our priorities out of whack. I personally subscribe to the philosophy that “less is more” and am reminded of the admonition to “live simply that others may simply live.”

More Free Stuff

I saved some of my thoughts about the book Free for a second subsequent post. At the end of the book, author Chris Anderson outlines “The Ten Principles of Abundance Thinking,” and so I list them here:

If it’s digital, sooner or later it’s going to be free. In a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost, and bits want to be free.
Atoms would like to be free, too, but they’re not so pushy about it. Businesses will always find ways to redefine their services to make some things free while selling others.
You can’t stop Free. In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but it is better to take Free back from the pirates, and sell upgrades.
You can make money from Free. Free opens doors, reaching new customers, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t charge some of them.
Redefine your market. Changing your perspective opens up opportunities to make money around your core business.
Round down. The first to Free gets attention, and there are ways to turn that into money.
Sooner or later you will compete with Free. Match the price of your competitors or ensure that the differences in quality overcome the differences in price.
Embrace waste. If something is becoming too cheap to matter, stop metering it.
Free makes other things more valuable. Every abundance creates a new scarcity and when one service becomes free, value migrates to the next level, so go there.
Manage for abundance, not scarcity. As business functions become digital, they can also become more independent without risk of sinking the mothership.

I highly recommend reading Free regardless of one’s personal profession, as the ideas discussed in it are applicable across a range of industries. However, I find them particularly pertinent to those involved in the creative arts. Whether we like it or not, artists must adapt to the digitization of their creations and agree upon an equitable form of compensation.

Free for a Fee

Whether you are a producer or a consumer of media content or both, you cannot afford to not read Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson. The editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Anderson has his finger on the pulse of creativity and commerce like few others.

As Anderson writes, “The new form of Free is based on the economics of bits, not atoms. It is a unique quality of the digital age that once something becomes [digitized], it inevitably becomes free—in cost, certainly, and often in price. And it’s creating a multibillion dollar economy—the first in history—where the primary price is zero.”

“The rise of ‘freeconomics’ is being driven by the underlying technologies of the digital age. Just as Moore’s Law dictates that a unit of computer processing power halves in price every two years, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. What the Internet does is combine all three, compounding the price declines with a triple play of technology: processors, bandwidth, and storage,” Anderson continues.

Anderson is quick to point out the difference between free as in “freedom” (libre) and free as in “price-less” (gratis), i.e. free speech versus free lunch. Of the types of free (gratis) models, perhaps the most familiar one to readers is the “freemium” model, which is free to basic users and offers a premium paid version (think Flickr and Flickr Pro). The key to freemium is the Five Percent Rule: five percent of online users support all the rest.

To clarify an often-misquoted axiom, Anderson writes, “Commodity information (everybody gets the same version) wants to be free. Customized information (you get something unique and meaningful to you) wants to be expensive.” In other words, as long as there is a fee associated with its creation, information needs to be subsidized somehow.

Join the Revolution

Kudos to the good people at Barnes & Noble for finally joining the revolution and giving us digital nomads complimentary online access at all their locations nationwide. Of course, Panera Bread has done this for years [scroll down to my 06/15/09 entry titled “Mobile Avenue.”] And Starbucks has finally begun offering a limited online service of two complimentary hours per day with an active Starbucks card.

Speaking of digital nomads, the Washington Post recently published a story titled “Digital Nomads Choose Their Tribes.” A couple of featured business partners made this insightful comment: “In real estate, the emphasis is always put on ‘location, location, location’ and thanks to ever-evolving technology, we can now be productive from almost any location. And while we understand that there is no place like home, we like to think we have many homes—the primary one being the World Wide Web.”

And a recent New York Times article covered the effort of Baltimore to offer citywide Internet access through a developing technology called WiMax, which delivers the Internet through radio signals broadcast from cell phone towers. It is being touted as a “4G network,” to signal its superiority to today’s 3G networks. While the results are mixed so far, the point is that emerging technology is supporting the mobile lifestyle.

A Renewed Perspective

It has been said that we are each the sum total of all the people we’ve known, all the books we’ve read and all the places we’ve been. And I can’t help but think of how today’s social networking technology is helping us all broaden our respective spheres of influence.

Over the course of the past several days, I’ve spent time beefing up my online presence in each of these areas by connecting with professional colleagues through LinkedIn, posting about the interesting books I have read on Shelfari and listing favorite trips I have taken on TripAdvisor.

As a mobile professional, I particularly benefit from the renewed perspective gained by getting out of my home and interacting with people, reading publications and visiting places. For the purposes of thinking differently, there is simply no substitute for a change of place.

My location of choice today happens to be a café with a steady stream of clientele, an eclectic mix of music and online access to a wealth of information at my fingertips. But it is not so much information as inspiration that I am in search of as I write these words.

I am not sure what it is about leaving one’s usual surroundings that lends itself to creative output but I am thinking it has something to do with the change of pace as well as the change of place. Space and time tend to yield to those who slow down and savor life rather than seek to speed it up.

A Thoreau Primer

I recently finished reading a fascinating book titled The Thoreau You Don’t Know by Robert Sullivan. As a big fan of Henry David Thoreau and his classic Walden, it was fun learning more about his life sequestered in a 150-square-foot cottage he built on friend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s property and lived in from 1845-1847. His book has been called the bible of simple living, a point supported by Thoreau’s own accounting that he spent all of $28.125 to build his home at Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts.

Much like me, he was a writer who had trained to be a minister before turning to writing. An excerpt from Sullivan’s book speaks to this point: “He had written that a writer publishing in the popular press had more influence that a preacher in a pulpit. Thoreau became a writer who was in no camp completely and, as such, eventually learned to write for two audiences simultaneously, the popular press and a reader he imagined to be like himself, who reads obsessively and is always thirsty for spiritual renewal.”

Another similarity is the era in which we each lived. Sullivan writes, “It’s important to think about the economic climate. As the country reeled from market forces, as the gap between rich and poor widened, as people strained to make a living and saw their social and family life begin to change as a result, Thoreau was about to give a very practical answer to the question that Emerson asked, the question that was not just on the mind of philosophers past and present but on the mind of the country: “‘How shall I live?’”

I was particularly drawn to Sullivan’s depiction of Thoreau as a marketplace minister: “Thoreau had trained to be a preacher and, like Emerson, he was one in the end. He was working in the culture, not apart from it, and the culture was the culture of enterprise, as in business. Business was now a moral term, as in the business of your life. Your commerce was your work in resisting the mass culture, what you are told to do. Your profit was your virtue, your principal your principles.”

For the first several years after I left pastoral ministry to follow journalistic pursuits I struggled from time to time with my calling. It was the faithful words of a friend that finally helped me to break through my self-imposed funk: “You are still in the pastoral ministry, you just traded pulpits.” While I may not track with Thoreau’s transcendentalist leanings, I do sync with his message of simplicity, as well as his means of sharing it through the printed word.

Traveling Lightly

I like the simple life. It is a way of living that has appealed to me for as long as I can remember. From my boyhood days of reading My Side of the Mountain, the tale of a boy who ran away to the woods in search of himself, to adulthood readings of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, another tale of a guy who wandered into the wild for a renewed perspective, I’ve enjoyed stories of learning to travel lightly through life.

Speaking of Thoreau, his stated philosophy was simplicity personified: “The rule is to carry as little as possible.” And other kindred spirits include Harper Lee, the reclusive bestselling author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who is quoted as saying, “All I need is a good bed, a bathroom and a typewriter…books are the things I care about.” Amen to that.

Jesus charged his followers to “keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” So what does it mean to live freely and lightly? For starters, I think it means that we own our possessions instead of them owning us. Also, we can’t be drowning in debt if we hope to keep our heads above water. In other words, learning to live with less is key.

My personal journey with living lightly is typified by a move to Cape Cod for the summer of 1985, when I shared a room with a friend of mine in a boarding house just blocks from the beach. I moved there with a couple duffle bags of stuff and, except for the Aiwa portable sound system and the Schwinn ten-speed bicycle I bought, I left there about as lightly as I arrived.

Of course, living lightly as a bachelor at the beach is different than living as a couple in a community but the principles of simple living are the same and can be adapted to fit any lifestyle. Far from an ascetic existence, my life is designed with aesthetics in mind, from the Cape Cod-style cottage I inhabit to the Volvo and Vespa I drive. But I am mindful of the cost of consumption and consequently strive to live and travel as lightly as possible.

Mobile Avenue

I was working the other day at one of my homes away from home, a local Panera Bread near my wife’s office, and I had just headed outdoors to get some fresh air when I noticed that it is located on…wait for it…Mobile Avenue. How ironic is that? If that isn’t a “sign” of the times, I don’t know what is!

What Panera has figured out that the Starbucks across the street hasn’t yet is that unlimited Internet access is the drawing card for countless professional nomads like myself who are looking for a cool, cozy place to conduct business. It was only my second visit to that particular location and both times I bumped into friends of mine who are also consultants needing convenient offsite meeting space and good coffee.

Thankfully, twenty-first century technology gives us a type of mobility that was unfathomable even a few years ago. For example, upon my discovery of the street sign for Mobile Avenue I was able to snap a photo of it with my cell phone and forward it to my laptop computer wirelessly via Bluetooth technology for posting on my blog.

Testing Your Dream

I enjoy books about dreams and I thoroughly enjoyed one I finished today titled Put Your Dream to the Test, the latest by leadership expert and bestselling author John Maxwell. Subtitled “10 Questions to Help You See It and Seize It,” the book suggests you analyze your dream in order to move from merely believing in it to actually buying into it.

As Maxwell points out, it is one thing to dream and another thing to live your dream, and the determining factor is often whether or not your dream has been tested. He gently guides you to answer questions of ownership, clarity, reality, passion, pathway, people, cost, tenacity, fulfillment and significance. In his trademark style, the book is peppered with motivational quotations and moving stories of people who achieved their dreams by practically testing them and then tenaciously pursuing them.

No matter where you might find yourself on the dream continuum, it would benefit you to read this book and practice its principles. Whether or not you have mapped out your dream destination, you will find here the help you need to navigate the challenging detours of life and continue your journey toward a life of passion and purpose.

Simple Pleasures

I just returned from a quick but restful trip to visit family, friends and a client in the Nashville area this past weekend. I was reminded that I had a free roundtrip ticket that had to be used within the week so I called my brother-in-law [who has nine kids] and he agreed to pick me up at the airport on Friday and return me there on Monday so that I could fit in a quick consult with a client before heading home. In between, I was able to visit some friends at the church they pastor.

Whereas visiting six nephews and three nieces may cause some people to cry “uncle,” my brother-in-law and his wife have done a fantastic job of childrearing so it was actually a pleasure to spend the weekend with them. Facilitating matters was the fact that they live on three hundred acres of bucolic pastureland in a restored farmhouse, complete with a spacious guest room, a porch swing and rocking chairs.

When not playing pool or watching videos with the kids, my time was spent listening to relaxing music and reading a good book, either out on the porch swing or in the luxurious guest bed. And the spring showers we enjoyed the first couple of days only served to enhance my refreshing interlude. I retreated for a time of renewal and returned with a profound appreciation for life's simple pleasures.

Going Dutch

One of my very favorite places to visit is Amsterdam, Holland. I’ve only gotten to explore it once, and that was during a long layover on an assignment to Africa, but it left an indelible imprint upon my memory. One of my fondest memories of the Dutch city is its all-enveloping old world charm, accentuated as it is by a strong sense of place that moves to a kinder and gentler pace than Americans abide.

It reminds me of sleepy Savannah, Georgia, where I used to live in a renovated brownstone for three years, only instead of Savannah’s picturesque squares, Amsterdam features scenic canals in its historic city centre. Above is a picture I took of one of the canals during my visit there and on the bridge are several bicycles, which the city of Amsterdam has more of per capita than anywhere else in the world, adding to its charming mystique.

Amsterdam’s laidback lifestyle is cogently captured in a recent New York Times article titled “Going Dutch” by American expatriate Russell Shorto, who writes: “The Dutch seem to be happier than we are. I’ve found that Dutch people take both their work and their time off seriously. Indeed, the two go together. The fact that the Dutch work only during work hours does not seem to make them less productive, but more. I’m constantly struck by how calm and fresh the people I work with regularly seem to be.”

The Changing Bookscape

I blogged about what I call the changing bookscape about a year ago in a couple of postings titled “Print is Dead” and “More Print is Dead,” based on observations from a book with the title of Print is Dead by author Jeff Gomez. I won’t repeat the conversation here but its thoughts are echoed in a compelling article in the Wall Street Journal by writer Steven Johnson titled “How the E-book Will Change the Way We Read and Write.” It is must reading for publishing professionals and can be read in its entirety by visiting www.online.wsj.com.

Media Matters

Over the course of the last couple days I’ve come across some thought-provoking stuff online and at the theatre that I think proves the point that the media matters, perhaps more than ever, as does our use of media in all the evolving forms and formats available today.

I read an intriguing article in the online version of the Columbia Journalism Review titled “Overload: Journalism’s Battle for Relevance in an Age of Too Much Information.” Included below is a brief excerpt from it and it can be read in its entirety at www.cjr.org.

The article neatly summarizes: “The future of news depends on the willingness of journalistic organizations to adjust to the new ecology and new economy of information in the digital age. ‘I think in some ways, we need a better metaphor,’ says Michael Delli Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

‘The gatekeeping metaphor worked pretty well in the twentieth century, but maybe what news organizations should be now is not gatekeepers so much as guides. You don’t want gatekeepers that can say you can get this and you can’t get that. You want people who can guide you through all this stuff,’” suggests Delli Carpini.

Speaking of curators of culture, I saw a compelling movie this weekend called State of Play that juxtaposed the emerging influence of the blogosphere against the fading power of the mainstream media. Russell Crowe plays a veteran old-school journalist and Rachel McAdams plays a new-media blogger, and watching them cooperate to cover a breaking story is interesting and instructive.

Time is Relative

Today is the fifth anniversary of this blog and so I thought I’d commemorate it by posting about the topic I most passionately cover: time and our relationship to it. As today’s title suggests, time is somewhat of a relative concept. It was Greek orator Antiphon who said, “Time is not a reality but a concept or a measure.”

And Albert Einstein explained his theory of relativity this way: “Sitting next to a beautiful woman for an hour seems like a second. Sitting on a hot stove for a second seems like an hour. That is the relativity of time.” In other words, time can be our friend or foe, depending on how we relate to it.

Nowadays, I rarely wear a watch, and then it is more as a fashion accessory than anything else. Granted, the ubiquity of cell phones and other digital devices has contributed to my ability to tell time on the go. But my decision to go watchless is as much a philosophical one as it is a practical one. For me, life is more meaningful when not timed.

The Gift of Rest

About a month ago, a friend of ours lent my wife and I the use of her beach cottage. It was the second time we’d had the pleasure of visiting it, with the other time being about three years ago, and both times we’ve come away relaxed and refreshed. Upon closer reflection, I think it is safe to say that what our friend gave us was the gift of rest.

The nondescript cottage is a simple bungalow located just steps from the beach behind some windswept sand dunes so the surf beckoned for us to come and stroll along its shore. Yet aside from long walks on the beach, we passed our time peacefully ensconced within its shabby chic interior with candlelight, soothing music and good books.

As I reflect upon the time spent at our friend’s beach cottage, I am reminded of Jesus’ admonition to “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.” It could be said that if we don’t “come apart” in order to rest that we will simply “come apart.” In other words, if we aren’t willing to periodically rest from our busyness and activity, then we may prematurely enter that place of perpetual rest, the cemetery.

Words of Encouragement

I was rummaging through an old shoe box the other day that I had labeled “stuff” and came across a stash of cards, letters and notes of encouragement that I’ve collected over the years. I was feeling somewhat melancholy at the time and so it felt good to be reminded of others’ appreciation of me.

What got me to thinking about going through the box was a phone call I received from a former client of mine who wanted to thank me for my kind words to him a couple of years ago at a critical juncture in his life. He shared with me how much my words of encouragement helped him to transition from his architectural practice into full-time pastoral ministry and he wanted me to know of his gratitude.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to hear from him and humbled that the words I spoke to him struck a resounding chord within the sanctuary of his soul. His call was a timely reminder to me of just how much our lives can influence the journey of another through the power of encouraging words.

Attitude of Gratitude

I was trying to think of what to blog about today and then I was struck with an “attitude of gratitude.” It seems that just when I get to thinking about the trials I face I am reminded of how very good I’ve got it. For example, I was at my favorite café this morning thinking about some challenges I am facing and in walked a fellow regular who happens to be blind. Suffice it to say that my perspective was radically changed.

Speaking of challenges, I’ve got several friends who have placed their homes on the market in order to ease the burden of debt, reminding me that my challenges pale in comparison. My business may be experiencing a relative lull but my sister recently lost the job for which she moved to another part of the state a few years ago. She got a couple weeks severance pay and qualifies for unemployment benefits but it is small consolation.

My wife and I are among the millions of Americans without health insurance but we have been blessed with extraordinarily good health, we do what we can to take proper care of ourselves, and above all, we place our faith in God as the Chief Physician. Meanwhile, we attend church with others who are facing life and death struggles concerning their health and we are reminded to not only pray for them but to count our blessings also.

A New Era

About a week after wrecking our Honda Accord my wife and I have purchased a pre-owned Volvo C70 convertible. It has all the bells and whistles one could dream of and drives like a dream with the top down. The car is reportedly the safest convertible in the world, a comforting fact given that my last convertible, a Mazda Miata, got totaled when I was chased off the road by a truck.

I’ve always admired Volvo’s reputation for safety and durability and so when it came time to get another car, it was on our short list. Volvo’s motto is: Volvo. For Life. The company started business in 1927 and its founders are quoted as saying, “Cars are driven by people. Therefore, the guiding principle behind everything we make at Volvo is—and must remain—safety.” And the average lifetime age of a Volvo is 20 years, so they last.

For inquiring minds, the car is a 2.4 liter, 5 cylinder, 197 horsepower, turbocharged 5- speed automatic, soft-top convertible. As my wife and I cruised home from church this morning with the top down, we were reminded how much we had missed owning a convertible. It is safe to say that we look forward to making many more such memories.

End of Era

My wife and I bought our first new car on January 2, 1996. It was a burgundy Honda Accord LX that we babied from day one. And it more than lived up to its reputation for quality and dependability. But it met its demise a couple days ago as my wife was commuting home from work. It was raining and the car in front of her abruptly stopped so she had to hit the brakes, causing her to hit the other car.

Fortunately, my wife escaped the accident unscathed, but our car was totaled, as the attached picture attests. Unfortunately, we had discontinued our collision coverage on it about a year ago to save money so we’ll be car shopping for an extra good deal. We put about 188,000 miles on our old car over the course of 13 years. And I am praying that our next car, while not likely a new one, will be as good an investment as our last one.

Designing Spaces

I am intrigued by other people’s work spaces, as they can be snapshots of insight into a person’s psyche or philosophy of design. As for me, I converted one of our cottage’s spare bedrooms into my work space. My office contains four filing cabinets, three desks, two bookshelves, and one supply closet. I am not sure what that says about me, other than that I am an infomaniac.

As the attached picture attests, I am also a neatnick who likes a relatively clean desk and black, white, and grey hues. For fellow technologists, I use an Apple iMac desktop computer and Airport Express wireless router, a Sprint DSL modem, a General Electric digital answering system, a Radio Shack cordless phone, and a Hewlett Packard scanner and printer.

Coping With Busyness

Contrary to popular opinion, busyness is not next to godliness. While it threatens to dupe us into believing that we are invaluable, graveyards are full of so-called irreplaceable people. We all may be busy but we can cope with busyness by prioritizing our personal and professional lives according to the principles outlined in Scripture.

“Everything is permissible for me,” wrote the apostle Paul, “but not everything is beneficial.” The truth is that there is an awful lot that we could do but it is often a matter of whether or not we should do it. After all is said and done, we want to be able to say “no” to good ideas in order to pursue God ideas. Saying “no” to the rest enables us to say “yes” to the best that God has for us.

I read a card the other day that captures the attitude of many: “Jesus is coming, look busy.” It’d be funny if it weren’t for the fact that many of us act like that. But the good news is that Jesus came to reveal a better way and reminded us: “I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.”

Part of the trouble with living in our fast-paced times is that often we allow the busyness of life to choke out our dreams and destinies, not to mention our purposes and passions. Sadly, many of us settle for being an echo of someone else instead of the unique voice that God created us to be. It is helpful to remember that the concert we are called to play cannot be performed if we only copy other people’s music.

Celebrating Holy Days

My wife, Linda, and I have returned from visiting my family in the Palm Beach area for the last several days and I am reflecting on how blessed I am to celebrate these holy days with loved ones close by.

Before leaving for the visit, Linda and I enjoyed one of our very favorite holiday rituals: the annual candlelight service at a quaint church with an old-fashioned steeple that is straight out of a Hallmark movie.

On the way to and from the service, we waved at and chatted with friends and neighbors who live in our Mayberry-esque village of Mount Dora. And the candlelight service itself moved me with its reminiscences as it always does.

Once in Palm Beach, we took our four- and eight-year-old nieces to a matinee movie and ice cream and had the pleasure of treating my mother and father to a breakfast celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary today.

At the close of a year filled with its share of ups and downs, it is a priceless act to recount the blessings of God, and to paraphrase a long-ago advertisement: it simply doesn’t get much better than this.

High Tech and High Touch

The toys of choice for my wife and I this Christmas were a couple of matching Nokia cell phones. The quad-band GSM world phone includes Bluetooth capability, a music player, a camera, a radio, and email functionality, among other stuff. I spent the better part of the last couple days familiarizing myself with its bells and whistles and am impressed with it. But what I am even more impressed with is the service of the local AT&T store manager.

We actually purchased the phones on sale at the Target store across the street but went to AT&T to get them activated. During the process, a store associate unnecessarily got in a hurry and sliced into my wife’s new phone with a razor blade while trying to retrieve it from the vice-like grip of its plastic packaging.

To his credit, even though we did not purchase the phones at the AT&T store, the manager not only agreed to give us a brand new phone but also allowed us to keep the damaged one for its extra battery and memory card. One does not ordinarily experience such extraordinary service, so I am seizing this opportunity to celebrate high tech stuff and high touch service.

Living From Your Sweet Spot

If you are like me and you long to live from your sweet spot in life, then The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success is a must-read. Among its several thought-provoking statements is this gem: “your strengths aren’t what you’re good at and your weaknesses aren’t what you’re bad at.” In other words, if you are good at something yet you feel drained while doing it, then it is a weakness rather than a strength, suggests the author.

From its sleek metallic-colored cover to its inclusion of an enhanced DVD, this latest title from bestselling business author Marcus Buckingham is designed to be an interactive learning experience, complete with a memo pad for jotting insights while reading.

At slightly more than 100 pages, the text part of the package makes for a quick read. However, the author suggests watching the DVD before reading to fully absorb the content in context. The 22-minute film features the story of a boy named Ewan who identifies his strengths by replacing three common myths with revolutionary truths.

The enclosed memo pad includes pages for writing down “I loved it” moments during the day to help identify strengths and “I loathed it” moments to help identify areas of weakness. The book naturally appeals to the college- and career-aged, but people of all ages can glean from the wisdom of its words and the meaning of its message.

Living Counterclockwise Too

Part of living counterclockwise is realizing what an artificial reality time actually is. It is ironic that the clock was created by medieval monks to regulate the routine of daily devotions at the monasteries. And the unintended consequence of the innovation was that the very contraption designed to draw people toward the divine instead became the means used to manipulate life as we know it. In other words, it could be said that religion helped create the concept of time as measured by a clock.

What is interesting is that there are actually two types of time. One type is described by the Greek word chronos (human time) and it refers to time as measured in minutes by a clock. The other is described by the Greek word kairos (divine time) and it refers to the type of moments that are infused with meaning and cannot be conveniently measured.

Clocks may be valuable tools for chronicling the passage of time, but they are meant to be our servants not our masters. To quote the songwriter James Taylor, “the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” Life is not about trying to cram even more activity into an already busy lifestyle. It is designed to be a stroll with Jesus along the sands of time until time is no more.

It is helpful to meditate on Acts 17:26, a powerful scripture from The Message about our relationship to time: “God made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God.” All too often, the human race tries desperately to live up to its name. Do yourself a favor: start to think about time from an eternal perspective and enjoy the journey from here to eternity!

Living Counterclockwise

One of my favorite scriptures in the Bible is the passage of Matthew 11:28-30 in The Message: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”

While we don’t often think of it this way, I am convinced that one of the reasons that Jesus Christ came to earth was to introduce us to a radical way of relating to time. Notice in the passage above that Jesus said the way to learn the unforced rhythms of grace is “to walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.”

One of the amazing things about the life of Jesus as recorded in Scripture is that you never see Him in a hurry. Even though Jesus is the Son of God and has existed for all of eternity, as a human He never yielded to the tyranny of time. Rather than succumb to peer pressure, even from His parents, He was quick to point out that He was not ruled by time.

The ultimate example of pacing oneself through life was Jesus. He knew He only had a limited time here on earth during which to accomplish His mission, yet He daily resisted the temptation to sacrifice the important for the urgent. If He could lay aside peripheral activities for the sake of a prioritized agenda, surely we can do so ourselves.

Design Isn't Decoration

I recently read an intriguing book titled Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney. It is a peek inside the mind of Steve Jobs, the innovative co-founder and leader of Apple, the revolutionary maker of such state-of-the-art products as the iMac, iPod and iPhone.

Part of what stood out to me about Jobs’ thinking is how intentional he is about design. Not design for design’s sake, but the overall process of designing a satisfying customer experience out of the box, which Jobs is personally involved with from start to finish.

I can still remember the sensory pleasure I experienced while opening my first purchase of an Apple product, a G4 PowerBook laptop. The box itself was so cool that I hesitated to cut the proof-of-purchase from it to send for the rebate I had coming to me.

As Kahney states in his book, “Jobs’ pursuit of excellence is the secret of Apple’s great design. For Jobs, design isn’t decoration. It’s not the surface appearance of a product. It’s not about the color or the stylistic details. For Jobs, design is the way the product works. Design is function, not form.”

It is no surprise to me why Apple is making such a comeback in the marketplace. Its breakthrough products represent much more than a pretty interface. Stuff from Apple not only looks better, but much more importantly, it also works better.

Secrets for Success

I am a frequent flyer with Southwest Airlines and am continually amazed at how they succeed by flying in the face of conventional wisdom. As an example, on my last trip with them I was delighted by the availability of comfy leather chairs in the waiting area as well as marble-topped side tables featuring charging docks for laptops and iPods. Wow, now that is superior customer service!

I also read an insightful article titled “Southwest’s Seven Secrets for Success” in the latest issue of Portfolio magazine. The article articulates the success secrets as: 1) One plane fits all, 2) Point-to-point flying, 3) Simple in-flight service, 4) No frills, no fees, 5) Strong management, 6) A relatively happy workforce and 7) Aggressive fuel hedging. It proves why Southwest is popular and profitable.

Island Time

My wife and I just returned from celebrating our twentieth anniversary in Key West at a bed and breakfast that had no televisions, alarm clocks or telephones in the guest quarters. Fortunately, we did have air conditioning to help us survive the sweltering heat and humidity. Yet not only did we not miss the other accoutrements, but doing without them actually enhanced our overall enjoyment of the island visit.

At such times I am reminded of the pleasure of living by what I call “island time.” While we all may not live on a tropical island year round, simply living in rhythm with the ebb and flow of the ocean tide, we can carry the concept of island time into the stream of our daily lives. Life can even be fun.

We should rule time, not the other way around. And technology is meant to serve us, not become our masters. I must confess that we did peek at our cell phones periodically to check the time and we even indulged ourselves by toting along our iPod portable speaker system to enjoy tunes on the trip. But we left our laptop at home and resisted the fleeting temptation to check email at the local café.

Taming Technology Too

Technology yields us many liberties yet we are often quick to forget its limitations. I recently came across a thought-provoking special report in the British publication The Economist titled “Labour Movement: The Joys and Drawbacks of Being Able to Work From Anywhere.” You can read it at www.economist.com.

The report identifies several tentacles of technology, including the tyranny of time: “Digital nomadism will liberate ever more knowledge workers from the cubicle prisons of Dilbert cartoons. But the old tyranny of place could become a new tyranny of time, as nomads who are “always on” all too often end up—mentally—anywhere but here (wherever here may be).”

And the report includes an example of time tyranny that we can all identify with: “It is becoming commonplace for a café to be full of people with headphones on, speaking on their mobile phones or…hacking away at their keyboards, more engaged with their e-mail inbox than with the people touching their elbows. These places are ‘physically inhabited but psychologically evacuated.’”

I periodically enjoy heading down to a local café with my favorite high-tech tools, but I also try to remain sensitive to the presence of other people by visiting with fellow patrons and otherwise being personable. Communication is ultimately designed to draw us closer to others, and using tools in a high-touch way helps us tame the tentacles of technology.

More Print is Dead

Due to time and space constraints, I saved some of my thoughts about the book Print is Dead for a second subsequent post here. At the end of the book, author Jeff Gomez outlines “Five reasons publishers will still exist in a digital age” and so I’ll list them:

Find talent…With millions online, finding anything worth consuming is getting more difficult. “With so much content already out there, and more being produced each day, publishers will fill an important need and perform a valuable service by reaching into the digital slush pile and pulling out the pearls.”
Support talent...The Internet is great for making an initial splash, but not for turning that splash into a career. “So while it’s sometimes too easy to get an audience online, that exposure is only really useful if it’s in support of something that users can interact with apart from the vehicle that brought the initial exposure.”
Edit talent…Even geniuses need editors. “Without editors, books or electronic texts will simply be blogs in a different package.”
Expose and market talent…As more authors are discovered online, more authors are promoted online. “Using the power of the Internet, publishers will do numerous things to expose and market writers to online communities, including creating banner ads, interactive websites and blogs, as well as performing outreach to bloggers and Internet reading groups.”
Pay talent…The Internet creates communities, but it doesn’t pay them. “What publishers will continue to do is sell the works of artists in the marketplace, and then pay royalties on those sales.”

I highly recommend anyone involved with the publishing industry to read and digest the book Print is Dead. It is one of the top couple of books I have read about publishing and I can unequivocally state that it is an invaluable guide to the uncharted territory that lies ahead for writers, editors and other wordsmiths involved with the creation of content.

Print is Dead

To give credit to whom credit is due, I learned about the book Print is Dead on Thomas Nelson publisher Mike Hyatt’s blog located at www.michaelhyatt.blogs.com/fromwhereisit. I pay attention when someone of his stature describes a book as “must reading,” and it did not disappoint. The premise of the author, Jeff Gomez, himself a publishing executive, is not that books are bound to disappear, but that the delivery of books as we know them will change radically, namely via digital systems. In other words, the news for past, present, and prospective authors is “digitize or die.”

I had read about half of the book on my way to speak at a recent conference for aspiring authors, and without having come to this part of the book, I found myself saying to them that “if you don’t have some sort of online presence, then you may need to rethink your viability as an author,” even going so far as to query, “if someone Googles you and finds nothing about you, do you really exist?”

An excerpt of the book, the chapter titled “Writers in a Digital Future,” is available for free download at http://printisdeadbook.com and it echoes my thoughts exactly: “Authors who choose not to take part in any sort of online promotion or to curry online exposure, and are unwilling to do things like start a blog, post clips on YouTube, have a page on MySpace or otherwise engage an Internet audience in any meaningful way will find themselves at an increasing disadvantage.”

Trying the Flip

As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and the enclosed one is of my latest tech toy, the Flip Ultra Camcorder. If the elegant design of the device doesn’t sell it, its utter simplicity of use closes the deal.

I first heard about it last month via the weekly “Circuits” newsletter distributed by New York Times technology columnist David Pogue. You can learn more about the Flip at www.theflip.com.

As Pogue succinctly stated, “Instead of crippling this ‘camcorder,’ the simplicity elevates it. Comparisons with a real camcorder are nonsensical, because the Flip is something else altogether: it’s the video equivalent of a Kodak point-and-shoot camera. It’s the very definition of ‘less is more.’”

According to Pogue, the Flip has been the top selling camcorder at Amazon.com since its debut about a year ago and it has already garnered about 13% of the camcorder market. I am loving mine and sold my mother on getting her own after she saw how user-friendly and fun it is. Try the Flip, you’ll like it.

The Plenitude

While on a business trip a couple months ago I picked up an intriguing book in the MIT Press “Simplicity” series called The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff by Rich Gold. For the uninitiated, “plenitude” means “the abundance or plentiful supply of something.” In terms of the text, it refers to all of the “stuff” we each create and consume on a daily basis.

One particularly golden gem of insight that I gleaned from the book had to do with the concept of creative artistry: “The art flows from personal vision and from a unique sense of self. To many artists, art is more a calling than a profession, though one still needs to be trained in it, and there is certainly a business side.”

That statement liberated my thinking by giving me permission to create as an artist with a uniquely personal perspective and interpretation of life as I see it and not simply as a producer of commodity. As Gold suggests, “Without artistic vision stuff tends to…commodity…and…if you are merely producing commodity, you’re dead.”

Time to Live

With today being Leap Day, I am reflecting on what a gift it is to me. Today is an extra day to do whatever needs to be done, but it also is a gift wrapped as extra time to live. As I am staring down the deadline of a major project, I am very thankful for the added time today affords, but even more than that I am grateful that today gives me that much more time to spend with my wife and enjoy the good life that God has seen fit to bless me with.

Less is More

As I have been planning my year, I’ve reflected about how little I actually need to enjoy life, particularly as it applies to my library. I love books but I estimate that I presently own more than one thousand volumes, half of which I’ve never read and a quarter of which I’ll likely never read. With that said, I have made it my regular practice to clear out books in the latter category to make room for ones in the former and to create space for new acquisitions rather than buy more bookshelves.

Alas, with the big annual used book sale coming to my hometown this weekend, I am challenged to discipline myself anew. But what I’ve actually been considering lately is drastically reducing the number of volumes in my library so that virtually all the books I own are ones that I’ve either read or realistically plan to read in the foreseeable future.

Regarding my philosophy of “less is more,” I recently read a relevant posting by Richard Watson on the Fast Company Blog: “One of the key challenges for the twenty-first century will be how to cope with the almost infinite amount of information that will be produced. According to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, one of the most valuable skills in the future will thus be the ability to select and synthesize information. This in turn means the ability to develop criteria for filtering what’s valuable and what’s not will become highly prized.”

Making a Difference

As I post my last entry of the year, I am reminded of an excellent book I recently finished reading titled Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Rather than use this space to highlight its salient points, I instead am inspired to share some instances from my own life this year in which I was able to influence someone else’s life for the better.

Earlier in the year, my wife and I bought an Italian motor scooter called a Vespa. I was so enthused about the scooter that I posted an entry about it on a Vespa forum and included a picture of it. Much to my surprise, I later heard from someone in the Netherlands that they changed their decision about which model to buy based on my glowing review. Suffice it to say that I never dreamed I would help sell an Italian scooter in Holland!

Another example of influence comes from closer at home. On Christmas Day, my wife and I had her parents over for a special supper. After our meal, she and her mother got out the sewing machine to mend a garment and I gave her father a guided tour of the Apple iMac computer we got earlier in the year. He later informed me that as a result of my passionate referral, he went out the very next day and got his own iMac to enjoy!

I could share many other examples of the power of influence but these two seem particularly powerful to me since they involve relatively pricey purchases in the thousands of dollars. While I admit that influencing buying decisions isn’t as big a deal as helping change someone’s daily behavior, helping someone get a good deal does make a difference to them.

The Gift of Time

My wife and I recently returned from our autumn retreat to the pastoral mountains of North Carolina, where we had the good fortune of being housebound by the weather a good deal of the time. While visiting family there, I had a couple days of downtime to savor the insightful writing of author Ellen Vaughn in her latest book, Time Peace: Living Here and Now with a Timeless God.

Among her more piercing insights are this gem: “If we believe what we say we do—in a huge, sovereign, good God who created all things, including time, and has ordained both our days on earth and our entrance into eternity—we will not be anxious about time. We are in fact rich in it. We can enjoy God’s present. We can relax, and smile.”

As I write these words I am reminded of even more timeless wisdom found in “The Message” paraphrase of the Book of Acts 17:26-27: “He made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God.” I particularly love the phrase, “plenty of time and space for living.” As we all enter the busy Christmas season, I pray we slacken our pace long enough to celebrate Christ and unwrap the gift of time.

The Need for Speed

In The Age of Speed, author Vince Poscente presents the contrarian view that speed is not necessarily what ails us as a society. It is our failure to leverage speed that afflicts us, he suggests, and harnessing the power of speed is the secret to not only surviving but thriving in today’s time-crunched culture, keeping us ahead of the curve.

Featuring counterintuitive insights and provocative research, the book challenges readers’ assumptions about the nature of speed and its influence upon our daily lives. “We’ve been warned of speed’s potential to create problems, but we crave its benefits, so in many ways, we have a love-hate relationship with speed,” writes Poscente. “But to get the full benefit of speed, we have to detach our perception of ‘fast’ from the notion of ‘busy.’”

According to Poscente, it is only when one becomes agile by anticipating opportunities, aerodynamic by multitasking effectively and aligned by living authentically that one is able to succeed in the age of speed. He stresses the need for readers to heed the call to harness speed lest it become a burden instead of a blessing. Speed read the book and reap the benefits.

Trend Watching

It’s been a while since I shared about trends so I thought I’d highlight the latest issue of Trendwatching located at www.trendwatching.com/briefing. As the brief itself states, “Find out about the ‘why’ of trend spotting, the mindset required, the resources needed, the process of embedding trends into your organization and how to actually apply them.” And note that there is a big difference between watching trends and mere fads, which are here today and gone tomorrow. Trend watching, on the other hand, should ultimately lead to profitable innovation.

Joie de Vivre

I finally took the plunge the other day and ordered a couple of books from Amazon and I was not only pleased with the service but my selections also. One of the titles I got was Joie de Vivre: Simple French Style for Everyday Living by acclaimed restaurateur Robert Arbor. I read it over one weekend and found it as delightful as I had hoped it’d be after reading sample pages using Amazon’s “Search Inside” feature at www.amazon.com.

The book’s title, which is French for “enjoyment of life,” captures the essence of its message: life is meant to be savored one sip at a time, not gulped down indiscriminately. Arbor is a French expatriate who has owned and operated several successful French-style eateries in New York City and still maintains a residence in the French countryside.

What I loved about the book is its elegantly simple approach to living a life full of meaning and merriment with the ones we cherish. Coupled with artful photography from the author’s wife, the book’s chapter titles are arranged in a type of culinary order, from the French love of breakfast to gardening, farmer’s markets and other simple pleasures.

For the cuisine-minded, recipes are sprinkled throughout the text, but in an unobtrusive manner for those of us more inclined toward the message than the menu. As Arbor writes, “A big part of comprehending 'joie de vivre' is understanding that enjoyment in day-to-day life is the true key to happiness. Finding happiness in small things means that ordinary days are filled with pleasures rather than obligations.”

To Be Continued...

My television viewing, that is. My last post dealt with both of our televisions dying within a two-week span last month and how it caused me to consider not replacing one or both of them. And after much thought and prayer, the verdict was to replace the primary one and dispose of the secondary one.

However, during the course of researching a prospective replacement online, I came across an advertisement for a local family-owned and -operated television repair place. The good news is after the manufacturer suggested that I carry our primary set to the curb, I was able to get it fixed, and to the tune of about a hundred bucks, much less than the cost of replacing it with a new one that had less features.

As for the secondary set, it was indeed carried to the curb this morning, and I am already feeling much better about owning only one television. Also, we have resolved to be even more discerning when it comes to what we allow through our eye and ear gates. Our guiding light is a favorite scripture of mine: “Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that’s where life starts [Proverbs 4:23].”

Tuning Out Television

After eight years, our primary television gave up the ghost the other day. Fortunately, I was able to finish watching Wimbledon, which I look forward to every year, on our secondary television. However, at thirteen years of age, it also has shown signs of quitting. All of which has gotten me thinking about either not replacing them, or at least only replacing one of them and severely limiting the time spent watching it.

My wife and I know firsthand what it is like to live with little or no television in the house, as she grew up in a household largely devoid of the one-eyed monster, and I grew up in a rural setting where we were lucky to get good reception of the three major networks, let alone cable or satellite. And for the first five years of our marriage, the only television we had was a ten-inch black and white set with antennae, which we actually boxed up during our first year of Bible school.

What I’ve been reminded of lately is how little I’ve missed television. In its place, my wife and I finally broke out our vintage Scrabble set to play for the first time in our married lives, and on our nineteenth wedding anniversary no less. We’ve also read more, listened to more music, hosted friends for a pizza and game night, ridden our scooter around town, and enjoyed a host of other fun, albeit low-tech, activities.

One of the books I’ve read pointed out that the average American spends four hours a day watching television. That adds up to more than one day every week, two months every year, and a decade by age seventy, that we spend glued to the tube. I for one think that is too much, and we are contemplating what to do about it. So, stay tuned for details…

The Voice of Authenticity

I had a life changing experience the other day at a training conference at which I spoke. One of the other speakers, a voice specialist, stated that the most important aspect of a message is “authenticity,” which made me think about my message slated for the next day and how I would present it.

Rather than try to gloss over some trials I had been going through, I decided to be authentic and share my struggles with the audience. The resulting experience was one of the most rewarding of my life, as the message resonated with people in a profound way and led virtually all of them to share with me later how much it had touched them.

And speaking of authenticity, I also read an article by Mark Batterson in Ministry Today that articulated what I had been wrestling with: “Life is too short and leadership is too challenging to try to be two people! At the end of the day, I’d rather be disliked for who I am than liked for who I’m not.”