Life at 3 miles an Hour

I’m observing these days the idea that adversity establishes priority. This concept takes shape in many different ways. Basically how it works is, in an observational sense, adversity will create barriers in an individuals life. The level of adversity, or the size of the barrier that it creates, determines the effort needed to get over, around, or under said adversity. It is in this effort that is required where priorities are brought to light. For example, we recently experienced a rare and unusual snow storm here in the land of caffeine. People here have a tendency to be very wary of rain that turns hard and slick. A barrier began to go up in the lives of the inhabitants of the great Puget Sound region. Immediately priorities began to be established. These were indicated by answering the question “ how badly do I want to go to…………?” The answer and the actions following the answer indicate a level of priority. In that moment, if you look analytically at the situation, you ...

Do you remember “The Claw”? I’m not talking about the “sitting around the campfire, creepy story so you can’t get to sleep” type of claw. I’m also not referring to the “all you can” eat crab legs type of claw. The claw that I have in mind is the selective force of the universe type of claw found in Pizza Planet. It’s the same Pizza Planet that can be seen in that classic groundbreaking Hollywood achievement known as “Toy Story”. If you remember “The Claw” then you may remember it’s mission to basically select who stays and who goes. At least the little bug eyed alien toys thought so. They worshipped “The Claw”. They believed that their destiny was in the jaws of “The Claw”. Little did they realize that there was someone on the outside who was operating “The Claw” and at least influencing the selection process. I have been that operator during different times in my life. I have been known to hypnotically drop quarters into the slot of one of these machines and try repeatedly ...

I got a phone call late last night. It certainly wasn’t one that I had been anticipating. In fact it called me out of a meeting. The voice on the other end had a bewildered tone. “Dad, why didn’t you tell me that I had a flat tire?” It might be a reasonable question in some other circumstance, however not in this one. He thought that I might have some insight into his inflationary issues since I had changed his tires that morning. The problem with his thought process was that since that time, early in the morning, more than 14 hours and at least 100 miles worth of driving had occurred, primarily by him, and the tire was at its reliable fighting weight of 34 lbs psi. Then it had sat at his place of employment for about 5 hours. In addition to these minor details, in his driving he had been all around his car packing it to go home, as well as putting new registration tabs on his license plates. On top of that, the tire in question was the front drivers side tire, which he had passed nume...

I have an assignment. I should clarify that maybe. I should tell you that I’ve given myself an assignment. It’s the worst kind of assignment for me. It’s an assignment to be creative. I hate those. The whole reason that I quit pursuing the creative arts as a career back in the day was that I couldn’t deal with creativity on demand. It was too difficult to schedule times of creative influence simply to receive a grade which would then justify the exorbitant cost of my higher education. For me it just never worked that way. The way it usually worked for me was that I got graded for the schedule driven junk that I hated while those gems which occasionally came along during odd hours never saw the pages of a grade book. I don’t know how God did it, the creation thing I mean. Six days of continual creativity is more than my brain can comprehend. Writing this blog once a week is almost more than I can handle as it is. The other day I read back, with awe and wonder, through the 8...