Towards Going Analog

I’ve done the digital thing, with the Palm Pilot, GroupWise and Outlook calendars and To-Do lists. But I’m not at my computer all the time and I’m always afraid I’m going to lose my Palm Pilot.
This year I’m going more and more analog. The simpler the better. The smaller the better. I want my personal [...]

An Explanation (Sort Of)

“Yes, ma’am. I had six weeks worth of blog entries ready to post.”
“BAW BAW, BAW BAW BAW BAW BAW–BAW BAW BAW?
“I realize that, but I no longer have them.”
“BAW BAW BAW?”
“Um, the bear ate them.”

But I AM Bored!

I’ve heard at least three people say this in the last two days: "At least we’re not bored!"
This phrase is the standard line spoken by psychotic optimists when things become so busy at work that no one can keep up with the pace. They usually smile or laugh nervously after they say it, their minds [...]

Mastering Time: Radical Rest

Last night, during our Home Group meeting, we watched the DVD version of Rick’s third installment of the four-part “It’s About Time” series.
Since I was sitting in the cushy chair and, since Rick was talking about how we need rest and relaxation (that’s why God made the sabbath), I almost fell asleep. I didn’t. But [...]

Mastering Time: Occupation and Emptiness

I was rummaging around for something else and found this quote. It seems to go along with what I was thinking and writing about last Friday:
“Occupation and not empty space is what most of us are looking for. When we are not occupied we become restless. We even become fearful when we do not know [...]

Mastering Time

“We are running full tilt, in the red zone, and on empty.
“It’s no wonder that marriages are frayed, children are stressed, and the dog is neurotic. We live in a day when the economy demands that productivity climbs upward even as the quality of life spirals downward.
“Computers were supposed to save time and paper. They [...]

Fragmentation and Forgetting

This is just an idea:
It’s surprising how much is just plain forgotten. I can’t remember but a fraction of what happens on a day-to-day basis. This is, I think, is why things seems so fragmented. The more you are called upon to remember, the more fragmented your view of reality. Unless there is a way [...]

Walking

A week ago today we were walking down this pathway to the falls at Tahquamenon. Gale and Joe were ahead of me. It’s not that I had a hard time keeping up; it’s that there was so much to look at, to hear and to smell. It was a glorious day.
Here the path is clearly [...]

Re-Entry into the Blogosphere

So, it seems, I’ve been gone for a while.
This has been a good thing, I think. Do you know how sometimes you need to put some time and some distance between you and the event before you can determine how the event turned out? Or events, as the case might be! This summer, so far, [...]

And, now, where were we?

I haven’t blogged in better than a week.
I embarked a meeting tour of the Upper Peninsula last week. For the life of me, I was not able to connect to the Internet during my tour. It was, more or less, an enforced blogfast. Not only that, because of my driving and speaking schedule, I was [...]

One of Those Mornings

I poured myself a bowl of cereal for breakfast, but we were out of milk.
I made myself a ham sandwich for lunch, but we didn’t have any cheese. I had to wrap my sandwich in aluminum foil because we were out of sandwich bags. Since we didn’t have any small plastic bags, I decided to [...]

About the Poofheads

It's that time of year.
 Dandelions spring up quickly after only a couple of hours of warm weather.
They multiply quickly. I can watch them grow, bloom and go to seed from the comfort of a chair on my front porch.
Sometimes events in my life do the same kind of thing. The lawn of life can be spotted with [...]

Still A Bit Behind

I place a premium on speed and efficiency. I've worked very hard over the years to be able to complete tasks in as short amount of time as possible.
Lately, however, I've neither been as fast nor as efficient as I'd like. This cuts across the entire spectrum of my life at the moment, but I'll [...]

Attention Poverty

I’m finding it very difficult to concentrate.
The weather has something to do with this. The weather is the culprit in many of my moods, both good and bad. It’s easy to concentrate when it’s cold and raining and damp and miserable. It’s more difficult when it’s sunny and the geese are flying north and the [...]

How a Nine Year Old Boy Balances His World

My son, Joe, a fourth grader, brought home a paper he had written in school last Friday, which also happened to be St. Patrick's Day. On the paper was a picture of a "lucky" shamrock. On each of the four leaves, he was to write a wish. Here are his four wishes:
1) I wish I [...]

A Short Explanation

I'm sorry. I've neglected posting entries to my blog and have not responded to comments for better than a week, now. I admit, my performance has been erratic, but there's a good reason, really.
I won't get into all of the details, but the office where I work is going through another "re-organization." This means my [...]

Working the Holiday

The past three or four days have been a blur. I have so many things going that I feel rather fragmented.
My intent was to post summaries of the chapters of Raschke's book on Postmodernism, which I will continue to do over the next couple of weeks. I won't be able to get to the next [...]

Waiting in the Margins

Richard A. Swenson, M. D. wrote a book a couple of years ago called Margin in which he maintained that margin is the opposite of overload. Swenson wrote:
"Despite its timeliness, few people are aware of the concept of margin. [... ] The reason margin has not become a household word is because it has not [...]

A Word Remembered

OK, my last post was a throw-away.
I was without words earlier today and went back to the archives, snagged an old post, copied and pasted the whole thing into the editor and lopped off the last paragraph or two. I then provided an "alternative" ending.
My life has been busy.
So I sat outside this evening. The [...]

Busy Today

This morning I got up early because I needed to work at our Detroit office in the Cadillac Place.
This building was, at one time, the headquarters for General Motors. The building is still beautiful. In fact, most of the buildings on this block–the Fisher Building, the Albert Kahn building, the Hotel St. Regis–were all built [...]