Real Joe

If you’re never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances. - Julia Sorel

If I had my life to live over, I’d dare to make more mistakes next time. - Nadine Stair

Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is? - Frank Scully

I snagged these and a bunch more “take a risk” oriented quotes from the new issue of O, Oprah’s magazine. Or was it Maxim? I get the two confused sometimes since they’re both mainly about women.

It helps to read these quotes while I’m out on a limb. This weekend, it’s launching the message boards, and hosting a radio show planning meeting. Gulp.

I got a note from the editorial team at Transom yesterday, rejecting my three Joe to Go readings for placement on their web site. They said:

• Kindly and thoughtful, a good reading voice, but subject matter didn’t rise up to a revelatory level.

• Themes were not compelling enough, and perhaps ones that have been explored before. The writing needed more strength to transform the experience into something new.
  
• Delivery is simple, but perhaps so plain as to fade into the background.
  

Bummer. So I wrote them back, asking if I can try again, and the answer was “Of course.” I’ll probably try a longer piece, as that’s what they’ve been putting up on their site.

This rejection is a bit of a bummer since I’m hosting a meeting at my house on Sunday to do some initial brainstorming for a Real Joe radio show. It would’ve been nice to have a little momentum from Transom going into it. Ah well, what can I expect, it’s my first try. They’ve only put up very experienced people’s pieces thus far.

I started giving them a few pointers on their message boards this week since they relaunched them using the same platform I’m using, Web Crossing. I plan to continue to hang out there, as long as I have radio aspirations for Real Joe. They’ve been able to attract some talented and helpful people thus far.

I didn’t post the detailed feedback I got last week from an independent radio producer but I will now to balance what I got from Transom. I don’t wanch’all thinking I’m waaaaay bad. ========
Griff, I liked the CD demo for several reasons. You are a fine writer, you present insights worth sharing, and your conversational style works well on radio. Having said all that, here are some specific reactions:

I hope this is helpful. My quibbles are just that. Overall, I think you did a fine job and sound good “on air.”

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have. - Abraham Lincoln

The success/motivation industry probably has trouble with this quote. “OK, everybody on your feet and shout it out after me - I AM NOT BOUND TO SUCCEED!”

Lincoln’s quote reminds me of Larry Brilliant’s: “You’re entitled to the joy of work, you’re just not entitled to the results” which has been really helpful if I catch myself thinking “…if only… then I’ll be happy.”

It also incorporates the notion of a mission, a calling, while also calling into question any sense of entitlement about results that I might have.

It helps me to reflect on both quotes this week, as I struggle with figuring out how to bring in more income after my contract runs out in April. I found myself feeling a little blue after my dad’s memorial mass on Wednesday, and when I sat down to write, it seemed like it was more due to goofy thinking about my financial situation than anything to do with my dad.

I’ve got some contract negotiations later on this morning. This will hopefully help keep things in perspective.

It was odd going to the memorial mass for my dad yesterday. It actually wasn’t a memorial mass at all. I knew it wasn’t going to be a service dedicated to his memory, with a sermon, et al. But I evidently misunderstood my mother, thinking that the priest would list his name among several others who were being remembered that day. Nope. Just a plain old mass.

I went to chat with the priest afterwards, a guy who was a couple years ahead of me in the seminary (college), and he asked me if my dad was still in the hospital. When I told him he died last December, he said something like “Oh, right, I did see his name in the list for today.”

And then when I noticed that he didn’t even recognize my mother, I figured out what the problem was. He hardly knew her because she didn’t involve him at all while dad was dying, nor afterwards. She’d talked about him frequently as if he was up to date on everything. But it was all a smokescreen. Oh well. One more appropriately sad chapter in dad’s sad life.

I’d intended to spend some time walking around the old neighborhood, but it was cold and windy and the whole church scene didn’t put me in a mood to reminisce about my my childhood. Maybe next week when it’s warmer. I still want to scatter some of his ashes on the property, though. I asked mom about and she said it was fine with her.

The only difference between a rut and a grave…is in their dimensions. - Ellen Glasgow

I’m going to a memorial mass for my dad this morning. His job career was the epitome of a rut. He worked for 35+ years as an inventory control manager for an underwear manufacturer — and basically hated it the whole time. His real talent and passion was art: drawing, painting, design, architecture. He once told me that he didn’t have the confidence to do it for a living, though. I appreciated his honesty about this, even though he later rationalized that it was better to work a job just for money and to pursue your real passions on your own time.

Now that I think about it, maybe that’s partly why he didn’t put much time or effort into his relationships with us kids. His only creative outlet was the house and yard and that’s where he spent his time. That’s where he felt competent.

My mother’s selling the house and property this week and moving out. It’s his monument to himself, she always said — with bitterness. In some ways, it’s now his grave. Maybe we should scatter some of his ashes there before the property changes hands.

I was IMing with one of my sons earlier this week and he mentioned that he wanted to try some personal goalsetting… something that he thought would be good for him, something that he’d never really done.

I had a bit of a twinge (”Shit, there’s another thing I failed to teach as a father…”) but I moved on quickly and suggested that we team up. It’s frequently better to let someone else know what goals I’m working on, I’ve found, and better yet if we’re doing it together — sort of a mutual support and accountability pact.

I actually put something called “Goal Posts” in my Real Joe business plan over a year ago, and it suddenly occurred to me that here was an opportunity to try it out. So yessterday I created a Goal Posts folder in my about-to-be-relaunched-yet-again message boards, and opened a private “Wigley” folder in there for the two of us to get going. And by the end of the day today, he and I had both posted our goals for the week.

The ironic thing was that his goals each included a little reflection/journal-type paragraph. None of mine did.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it onto future generations. - George Bernard Shaw

A few years ago, I worked on a mission statement for my life and part of it reads, “…and a legacy of contributions to work and community that help make the world a better place and that live on after me.” Sounds kind of corny and probably too Covey-ish but it’s still my best working definition of what an afterlife is. Shaw’s metaphor is way more elegant.

Tonight, I’m thinking about the part of the torch that my dad passed to me, since his birthday is tomorrow. He would have been 81. I’d like to think he’s smiling at me now, approving as he watches me struggle, pleased that he can take some credit for whatever good might come out of my life.

Dr. Drew on the pitfalls of TV shows like Survivor: Spare us from this “reality”

I’ve not watched any of the reality shows but I’ve read plenty about them, especially criticism. But this is the first piece I’ve read that points out that these shows succeed in part because of the prevalence of a lack of emotional attachment and empathy in our culture… and that they may help to make things worse.

I wonder how much my sons find these shows attractive. And I wonder how empathetic they are as young men. I think they’re probably more empathetic than I was at their age, but I sort of have this uneasy feeling that I’ve come up way short in the way of modeling empathy for others as they were growing up.

If only Hollywood would out itself
“Right now, there’s a teenager somewhere in this country standing in his parents’ basement holding a homemade noose. He has tied it to one of the rafters, and he’s working up the courage to hang himself. Somewhere else, maybe a mile away, maybe 1,000 miles away, another kid is sitting in a closed garage in the driver’s seat of her parents’ SUV with the windows down and the engine running. Waiting to die.”

I never thought about it, but I other than Ellen DeGeneres, I can’t name any current, big name movie stars or sports stars who are gay or lesbian. If one of my kids were gay or lesbian, I would think it would help them a lot if it was more culturally acceptable for celebrities to be out of the closet.

To arrive in the Rocky Mountains by plane would be to see them in one kind of context, as pretty scenery. But to arrive after days of hard travel across the prairies would be to see them in another way, as a goal, a promised land. - Robert Pirsig

One of my sons returned from New York last week and before he left, he was aghast when I told him that we still had 18 inches of snow cover here in Northfield, and at least a foot in the Twin Cities. I laughed at his misery and then I remembered this passage from Pirsig’s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, one of my all-time favorites.

I told him that it’s much better to be here for the entire end of winter, with all its miserable crusty snow, mud, slop, and late-season snowstorms and cold fronts (it was -15 windchill this morning). Spring, as it finally arrives, then becomes so sweet. If you’ve been in Florida or someplace warm the whole time, it’s nothing special. The seasonal contrasts here in Minnesota are something I increasingly appreciate, and I’d love it if my kids felt the same.

He couldn’t imagine what the hell was wrong with my geezer brain, so I told him he’d have to read Pirsig’s book. He said he’s not all that interested in motorcycles, but when I told him that it really was a philosophy book, he expressed interest. I was surprised to find the entire text of the book on the BMW club web site. I was also surprised that the value of my first-edition, hard cover copy is over $400 now.

This book seemed to have a big impact on me, now that I think about it. Maybe now’s a good time to re-read it and try to understand why. It should be a good source of quotes for Joe to Go, too.

I got a very detailed email feedback letter yesterday from a nationally-known, independent radio producer. Other than reading too fast, he really liked my demo CD and encouraged me to plow ahead.

I met early this morning with my local independent producer friend Paul. We just seem to jell, as our ideas fed into one another continuously as we brainstormed about what the pilot could include, based on what the show & Real Joe might be in five years. We decided to have a planning meeting in the next two weeks, with five other local guys who’ve expressed interest in helping on the pilot.

Later in the morning, I got an email reply back from an editor at Transom.org, saying my CD was circulating among the editorial team. It occurred to me that it might be helpful for them to see the email feedback from the independent producer so I phoned him to get his permission, he approved, and off it went.

And then this afternoon, I met with a guy who co-produced a series of 1 hour radio reports on spirituality last fall for the very same outfit that turned me down for seed funding last week. He’s got two more in the works, but then the foundation money runs out and he’s waiting to hear on other sources of funding. We seemed to hit it off, and even talked at length about the recent deaths of our fathers. He seemed very interested in what I was up to with Real Joe so I gave him a bunch of background material, including the CD. If he continues to be interested, I’m not sure where to take it. Maybe it would be brainstorming on how to relight the plan for a show demo with the committee. Or maybe there might be interest from a foundation in funding a Real Joe radio pilot. The guy who’s trying to find foundation money for his project is the very same guy I had lunch with two weeks ago to talk about a project related to my current consulting gig. We seemed to hit it off as well, so maybe if the three of us got together…

Anyway, I’m psyched about all these developments today, even though I have considerable anxiety about where my income will be coming from after May 1. I guess I’ll just have to make room in my head for both and try not to let either one diminish the other.