Inside My World...HFireman

Loving The Idea of America

2011-11-12T02:14:00.005-06:00

I truly appreciate that I am an American. I would not go so far as to say that I love America. Instead, I love the idea of America and what this country stands for.

Even if this country is not a perfect place, I can think of no other country in which I would choose to live. Our democratic system has always been messy and contentious. The playing field has never been absolutely level. There have always been social and economic inequities. But at least in the U.S., there is the sense that fairness and equality for all people is something we strive to attain.

Let us never forget that this is a country where we can still dream and hope for a better life. Even in the worst of times, there are still wonderful opportunities to grow and expand our lives. And if the quality of social or legal justice is not always perfect, it trumps justice in most of the rest of the world.

At this writing, we are still a free people, allowed to speak our mind and wield the power that comes with being an American citizen, if we have the courage to exercise that option. In the end, it takes courage to be an American citizen, because when we champion a cause, popular or not, we take a risk. But we are a people who took a great risk in the 1700's in demanding our freedom from England. We continue to take risks, individually and as a nation, and occasionally even rise to the level of being a shining beacon of hope for peoples all across our globe.

I am proud to be an American.

Howard Fireman

Catching the Rising Wind

2011-11-12T00:36:00.012-06:00

Back in the days of sailing ships, sailors dreaded areas of the ocean where for days or weeks the winds would die down and the ship was stuck wherever it found itself. They called such places the doldrums. The captain and crew had to wait until the winds returned before they could move on again to their intended destination.

In our lives we experience periods of time when that very thing happens to us. Something happens to us or someone says something to us and whatever forward momentum we have in our lives is lost for the moment. It is a mental thing. Our mind finds itself unable to function productively. We lose our sense of purpose and it becomes difficult if not momentarily impossible to prioritize anything on our to do list. As a matter of fact, we may experience a feeling of mild depression that causes us to wonder what is the point of doing anything. For people who have experienced depression, this is the bottom of the valley of the roller coaster ride they suffer with regularity.

So what is one to do? First we must find a quiet place away from where one lives and away from the people in one's life... a neutral place with no memories or negative connotations that might distract us. Then, we must remember what we value, what we enjoy, what we believe is important to do and to be. We must remember the place we have found for ourselves in the world where we make a difference. We must remember whatever it is that we do that gives us a reason to get up in the morning and face the new day. And from that we have to extract out those reasons and say them over and over again to ourselves. By doing that, we recapture our sense of purpose and our goals and our dreams and our aspirations. Only when we have done that can we face the world again with some strength and resolve.

So we are ready to face the world again. Now it is time draw upon what we have learned along the way. Most of what we have learned about making it in life came from the hard school of experience. What we know comes from making mistakes and from stumbling. It comes from the painful remembrances of picking ourselves up and redeeming ourselves in our family and in our community. After awhile, these life lessons become less moments in our lives than bullet points stored somewhere in that part of our brain that stores the set of rules for living life from day to day.

What have I learned? Here are the bullet points of my own personal credo:

The mistakes we make are opportunities to learn something important.
Live life one day at a time.
Our life is like a string of pearls. Each day is just one pearl in that string. If I have a bad day, just get through it as best I can. Tomorrow is another day and I will face it when I get there.
My life will never be as good as I want it to be nor will it be as bad as the hypothetical worse case scenario.
Be very forgiving of others. Like them, I say and do things I have regretted doing. People have forgiven me when I did that. Relationships are two-way streets and I must be willing to do the same thing. More importantly, learn how to forgive yourself when you say or do something regrettable.
I am who I am and what I am. I have to do the best I can with what I have to work with.
One of my important goals is to be able to live with the person I see in the mirror.
Establishing a routine in my life is critical.
Having goals (short-term, mid-term, long-term) is absolutely critical if one is going to accomplish anything.
I must never forget my dreams and aspirations, no matter how difficult life proves to be.

I know that there are more things I have learned in my life. Mostly my point is to provide some examples of wisdom we can glean from every day we live. The trick is to keep the list somewhere handy when life throws something unexpected our way, so we don't forget. Our lives are not always going to be wonderful, so that when things get bumpy, these bullet points will help us to keep things in perspective.

So if you find yourself trapped in the doldrums, be ready to sail when the wind starts to blow.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman

Stalled and Inbetween

2011-11-03T19:32:00.006-06:00

Sometimes I have to make concessions to reality and refocus on the things making the greatest demands of me. At the moment, it is all about making more money to make ends meet. That demand is always there, if only lurking somewhere in the background.

I was working on building a new business, a sales venture. Things were beginning move along and there was a sense of momentum, with each passing day. All I really wanted to do was focus on the new business. And I did just that at the expense of my accounting activities.

My wife was growing very anxious as I was bringing in less and less money from accounting... and at the reality that my new venture was not yet producing any income. She made it very clear that I needed to focus on my core source of income from accounting and put off the new venture until we had a secure source of income from accounting.

Well she got her way and rightly so. But for me there was a real cost. Up to the the moment i had to put the new venture on the back burner, I had established a certain rhythm to my days and weeks. And I was feeling a very definable level of excitement at my financial propects as I set out to build my new business. And when I did a short time out to deal with my realities, it felt as if in the immediate moment my whole life was derailed.

The old saying goes that men and women makes plans and God laughs at the folly of it. God gives us aptitudes and abilities that lend themselves to certain professions. In my case one of the things I am able to do with some ease is accounting. Accounting is all right, as professions go. But like everyone else in the world, I would rather be doing something else to make a living. In an ideal world, that would not be a problem. But at the best of financial times, it is never an ideal world. The financial landscape today is particularly not an ideal one.

So here I am, reorganizing my routine... again. Trying to put together a new game plan. And when I am writing my blog entries, I have the unsettling feeling that I am having a conversation with myself. I am not coming up with any solutions yet. I am just putting the facts of the situation out in front of myself, so I can get a good sense of where I am in this moment and figure out what I really need to accomplish right now. This is time for drastic short term thinking. This is survival time. It occurs to me that the reason that I cannot seem to think clearly since I have had to confront this lack of income is that this is a first-things-first moment. Is the reality that I cannot move forward with any other plans or endeavors until I effectively deal with this matter?At the moment, the playing field is anything but level or equal. For me to navigate to what comes next, I have to secure the present. I have to secure steady income in the short term. Then I can look at other options and pursue them if it makes sense to do so.

Yes I am momentarily stalled in my life, but only momentarily. I am in between where I was and where I will be. Now that I understand where I am, I can do what I have to do and then move on to what comes next. However, now I have to go back to focusing on one task at a time and live one day at a time. Before you know it, I will be on my way once again.

A Thirst for Gravitas

2011-09-28T22:32:00.006-06:00

As I do every year during the Jewish High Holidays, I take a brief glance back at the year just past and I take a moment to figure out what I want to achieve in the year to come. This year, there is a new stirring in my soul. As I am 65 years old now and my head is full of gray hairs, I would like to think that I have become smarter and wiser than I was when I was 45 or even 50. But more than that, I would like others to recognize this quality of hard-won gravitas in me.

In my heart, I am not sure that I have earned that level of respect just yet. The truth is that our past precedes us. The mantle of gravitas must be earned over a period of many years. People judge us over time on our consistency and our track record in our professions over a long period of time. People who have moved from success to success to success during their lives gain such respect. People who have lived ethically throughout their lives get points for that as well. The other thing about a lot of individuals with gravitas is that they imbue their lives with a large dose of humility.

With respect to living ethically, no problem there. In part, I pretty well understood the difference between right and wrong from the getgo, although I stumbled from time to time, as most of us have. And in part, it was a healthy fear of getting caught, if I were to choose to cross the line. I really didn't want to pay the price for living recklessly. Living ethically was not the problem for me.

Neither was the matter of making humility a quality of my life. To my mind, an overweening ego is a real liability. People with big egos give themselves just enough rope to hang themselves. As the song goes, the higher the top, the longer the drop. I think I lost most of my ego in a really disastrous session of playing poker, to my best recollection.

But I do have an Achille's heel. For a very long time, I lived my life haphazardly. I wasn't very focused and not very consistent in the outcomes of my pursuits. I wasn't of those people who had a clear vision of what I wanted to do with my life. One year it was one thing and the next year it was completely different one. I would often joke that I could never fully figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up... and I was saying that well into my 50's. So there was no consistency from year to year in terms of the jobs I had or the career paths I took. They say that we learn from the things we do that don't work out. By that metric, I should have been the smartest of men in the world by the time I was 50. Well, I wasn't, because I just sort of drifted for a lot of years in my life, in search of who I was, where I fit into the world and what it was that I should be doing in my life.

Actually, knowing what I know now, I have already figured out that there are a lot of things, both material and virtual, that mean little or nothing in the larger scheme of things. I have learned that less is more and living a leaner life is infinitely better than the alternative. So I can take pride in that I am making some of the right choices and actions in the present. I just have to keep reminding myself that life is about the journey, not the milestones or the destination. Along the way, we are going to be evaluated and judged on how we conduct ourselves during the journey and on the outcomes of our efforts. My mantra now is that I am only as good as what I am doing today, and that critical bit of wisdom keeps me focused, committed and on course.

Needless to say, the jury is not quite ready to come to a verdict. The people who know me too well... like my wife and my kids... are not quite ready to grant me the mantle of gravitas I so crave. They are patiently waiting to see if I stay on track. I can't change my past. But the future has not yet been written. At least I am on my way and with a certainty headed in the right direction. Some lines from Sondheim say it all: if you know where you are going, you are already gone. If all things are equal, this time it will be a keeper.

Becoming Strangers in a Strange Land

2010-12-15T22:46:00.008-06:00

When we wake up and look out each day, more and more we find ourselves to be strangers in an increasingly unrecognizable world. Too much ongoing change and no time to adjust from moment to moment to each new alteration to our realities. As I get older, I desperately realize that I must find a way to somehow minimally comprehend from moment to moment where the world is and where it seems to be going. How else am I going to be able to make the difficult choices and decisions?

Of course, that is an absurd thing to try to do. We live in an age of ever accelerating change. We are bombarded by so many messages, images and sounds every second of every day that we are forced go filter out everything except that which is immediately relevant to our own lives. Over time, we lose the capacity to comprehend the bigger picture. We have our lives to live and little if any time left over a the end of the day to capture the critical information we need to know. So, little by little, we become cultural illiterates in our own society and in our world.

Of course, in time, we will look back and sort out the pattern of the past. We will retrace the path that brought us, we arrogant human beings, to this moment. Hindsight usually serves that purpose. Historians will capture the essence of the past for us and revisionists will put their particular spin on what the historians have written. Hopefully, we will be able to sort out what passes for truth from the bullshit.

However, in the present time, we should still be able to get some sense of where the rushing stream of time is carrying us. Thankfully, the internet gives us easy access to a wealth of information sources. It is a matter of first beginning with defining what we want to know. Then we need to carefully figure out the questions we need to ask, carefully framing the questions and then looking for the answers we seek. We have to allocate the time to do this and time is a commodity which is in short supply for most of us. So we are going to have to give up some of the "pleasures" of life.

What will that get us? Some understanding of what we are up against in the larger world. There is just too much to take in. The environment. Politics. The ethics or lack thereof in the matter of abortion and capitol punishment. Economics. The lousy economy. Wars. Inequalities in society. Education issues. Who is going to win the Superbowl? What is happening in the Arts. Is Global Warming a real deal? And so on... and so on. The best that we will be able to do is to focus on a few things that are important to us and settle for that. If it was tough to be a universal man ( or woman) in the past, it is infinitely tougher to do that today.

We know that the world is being changed in radical ways every day. The period from 1900 to 1930 marked the end of the 19th century take on theater, ballet, music and literature, and the transformation of the Arts into a reflection of what the world was actually becoming in the 20th century. In our own times, evolving technologies have touched the ways we communicate, how we think about things, how we do things, the sounds of our times, our values and how we entertain ourselves. The computer and the internet have forever altered the landscape of human life. We live in amazing and equally terrifying times. We have quite a task before us if we are going to make any sense of our new realities.

I won't begin to even suppose that I can lay out a game plan to do this in this brief posting. But most certainly, I will pose a challenge to everyone who reads this post. Instead of always pursuing some of our more pointless diversions (television, video games, texting), begin to become aware of the world about you. Start asking serious questions when you see something that seems dangerous or very wrong. When you see real problems around you, make a real effort to put your own house in order and maybe even make a difference in the world.

We live in contentious and desperate times. We can rationalize that there is no reasonable way that we can ever understand the changes in the world. And we can be blindsided when things go disastrously wrong. Or we can at least try to make an effort to understand the state of things and make a difference in the outcome not just for us individually, but for our family, our country or the world

The current realities are ever a moving target, morphing minute to minute. We face a daunting task to do reality checks from time to time to take a measure of where reality stands in that moment. But if it is a nearly impossible task, we still have to do it, if we are going to make sure we are headed in the right direction. It is just something we have to do. Not fun, but necessary.

A Day Inside My World

2010-09-30T22:25:00.002-06:00

So everything is not exactly as I would prefer it to be in my life. Oh well! But things are simpler and more manageable. Anymore, it is less about the quantity of life and more and more about the quality of life. These realities served as the backdrop for this day.

Random reflection one:

Next year I will be 65 years old, whatever that is supposed to mean or signify. As I approach this milestone of my journey, I have at least come to terms with certain realities. I probably will never accumulate a fortune in money or material things. I probably won't ever build some impressive empire in business or in any other arena. My persona will fall on the rather modest size. That is okay too because the height that my reputation will rise won't be noticeably high, so I would have a shorter distance to fall when my empire disintegrates.

But I have and will continue to live an interesting life. Life has given more good things than painful or disappointing things. And I don't suffer from the sense that I am alone in the universe. All in all, a situation with which I can live.

Random reflection two:

What if much of what we thought was true about our cultural roots proved to be incomplete or just plain wrong? What if newly acquired knowledge threatened to undermine the very foundations of what we know about the story of our species? How are we supposed to grapple with the fact that some of our most precious beliefs were borrowed from peoples whom we were taught to see as uncivilized or barbaric?

Read the book, 1491. It recreates the world of the Americas, North and South, before the Europeans landed on these shores. The historical narrative of North and South America before 1492 has been rewritten as archeologists and scientists from numerous other disciplines have made discoveries that are causing human history to be rewritten. The Inkas, the Mayans and all the other Indian nations that inhabited these two continents have been shown to have been as civilized and sophisticated as any European or Asian nation that was contemporary with them from earliest recorded history. Ironically, the "New" world contributed far more to the "Old" world of Europe than the other way around. We will never know how much knowledge and science was lost after disease killed over 95% of the peoples who populated the Americas.

I came away from reading this book with the sense of how little I really understand about what I observe in the world about me. How few facts I actually have at my disposal and how what seems to be perfectly reasonable assumption is at some level wrong, because it is based on answers to the wrong questions or on the wrong interpretation of data. I am humbled by how little I really know about anything. I have the sense that I am just a bit player on a enormous stage and the truth that there is to know is a constantly moving target. So much for hubrus as a working strategy in life.

Random thought three:

I don't always have access to a car any more. So I have to take the bus to and from work. The very rhythm of my life has changed. I find the pace of my life has slowed down. I cannot just get up and go somewhere. There is time waiting for the bus to come. Getting from here to there is no longer a straight shot, but indirect and circuitous. It is life in the slower lane and life in which one is more critically dependent on others to successfully get through each day. It is life restructured and revised. It is what it is... not necessarily worse than life with a car, just different.

Playing Dodgeball in the Real World

2010-09-02T22:34:00.007-06:00

We spend so many of your early years preparing to enter the real world, with no certain idea of what we will find there. At some point in our lives we arrive. What we discover is that the world of preparing for the real world and the real world have two things in common. In both venues, we are waiting for something to happen. Both places give one the sense that being there is like playing an endless game of dodgeball.

Truthfully, being a grownup is no more fun than being a kid. I don't get to do everything I want to do or be all the things I want to become. I have merely traded one set of boundaries and constraints for another, only now the cost of breaking the rules has certainly escalated. If one is so foolish as to paint oneself into a corner, one mus take full possession of having acted on some poor choices. And then one has to clean up the mess one has made. At least that is the case for those of us who are not born into privileged circumstances.

And life does feel like a dodgeball game. We make plans, we prepare and we do what we have to do to succeed. Just because we do all the right things to prepare ourselves guarantees nothing. Something completely random or unexpected can blindside us. In the real world, the level playing field is essentially a myth. One must acknowledge that there are certain people whom I call the "golden people." Such people are very talented and intellectually brilliant. They are focused and disciplined. It doesn't occur to them that they can or might stumble. In their mind, they are going to get what they set out to acquire. And they do, with some regular consistency. But for the rest of us, life is very often the stuff of avoiding some incoming dodgeball.

Exploring the many situations we might face or the reason life can be very challenging at this moment wouldn't be especially useful. I would just be pointing out situations and truths that most of already have learned the hard way.

I will say that the one option we can never exercise is to just give up. We will have moments in our lives which are redemptive, triumphant and wonderful. Hopefully, at such moments, we will be able to share those moments with someone dear to us. Our lives are really about those moments, even if such moments are precious and few.

So life is generally going to be a struggle. Oh, well! We should have figured out early on that it wasn't going to be a cake walk. At least there will be moments of clarity and triumph and joy for every one of us.

Another Day in the Journey

2010-08-28T14:56:00.003-06:00

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....."

It seems so strange that I am achieving a moment of clarity at this moment in time. As you will see, I am being forced to live in the moment by circumstances which are utterly beyond my control. Oh well, I am the one who is always preaching to others to live in the moment, so I am being compelled to live according to the standards I established with my own words.

So what is my situation at the moment? Many aspects of my my life are unsettled and lacking structure. This is one of those in-between times... a moment of transition to whatever is supposed to come next. I am struggling to remain focused. More importantly, I am desperately trying to remain motivated. The old objectives that defined what I was trying to accomplish are no longer viable or clear. So add to the list, I need to redefine my goals, objectives... and aspirations. The latter is the one that gives a sense of hope and purpose to whatever I am doing.

As always, I am at my best at a keyboard and staring at a CRT. In this context, I can focus and think clearly. I can accomplish something meaningful working one-on-one in this context. I am a writer, for better or for worse.

So again, where am I in this moment? My business plan was a bust and needs to be rebuilt. I need to get out there and hustle and make money, just to get caught up with my bills much less break even. My car needs about $2,000 worth of work to be drivable. There is no money available to fix it.

Strangely, none of this depresses me or overwhelms me. Almost by habit now, I go into this mode of just saying to myself, "All this is what it is. What do I need to do, in order to get moving again?" This sort of situation isn't going to be a life-ending thing or a business-ending situation. It is what it is. It is a moment at which I have to be proactive and make some hard decisions. I have to get Marilyn on board and then then just move on. That is all there is to this mess. Just life happening.

On a positive note, none of these happenings are going to sink the ship. My life will go. Thankfully, I am now a person who is strong enough to weather this storm and then the next one that comes along. It is just a journey and this is just one day in that journey. My strategy is just to live in the moment and in this case to survive the moment as best I can, without drama and without any sense of tragedy. After all, life is what it is. Just that and little more, even in the best of times.

The Fosse Factor in Business Success

2010-08-12T18:08:00.011-06:00

If you want to succeed and to succeed in a really spectacular way, you can today. It matters not one iota that the economy is flat, that prices in general may be falling and that the percentage of unemployed Americans has not dropped. So what! All that anyone who wants to succeed in business has to remember is that there are going to be great opportunities, even in the worst of economic times. What one has to do is figure out where to find those opportunities.

Of course, there is more to being successful than just identifying and capitalizing on a great opportunity. But in one sense, I am not referring to developing a great business plan or a really effective marketing plan. The real key to succeeding big time, where others may fail or only create a modestly successful venture, is something that a fellow named Bob Fosse understood very well.

Bob Fosse so distinguished himself that he became one of the most amazing choreographers and directors of the 20th century. His credits include such Broadway blockbusters as Cabaret, Damn Yankees, and Chicago. His movie credits include All That Jazz.

Bob Fosse understood that it was not enough just to put in a good days work. Nor was it enough to learn how to do something and make sure it was done correctly. He understood that to stand out from other people, he had to take whatever he was creating or directing and take it to the next level and then maybe to the next level after that. He had to be more thorough than anyone else and to produce works that weren't just good... the artistic works he created were compelling and great. He knew that every moment that he was working in his craft, he had to give 150% of what he was capable of doing and of being.

But more importantly, he knew how to get the very best out of every dancer, actor, cinematographer or film editor with whom he was associated. He had a clear vision of what he wanted to produce. He had a clear vision of how he wanted a piece of choreography to come across or the camera angle to use in a movie scene. Yes, he was a hugely demanding person to work under. But all he asked of a dancer or an actor was to never quit. If a dancer would struggle to master a dance routine, he would be supportive of those efforts to the bitter end. As his alter ego in All That Jazz says to one of the dancers, "I don't know if I can make you a great dancer. But I can make you a good dancer."

He inspired his dancers and actors to be fearless... to go for broke, no matter how things turned out. They trusted him and his vision of what he wanted to create so much, that they were willing to wrap their heads around his ideas and as an ensemble translate his visions into brilliant realities.. Bob Fosse taught everyone whose life he touched to become fearless. He taught them it was okay to push the envelope and try out a new idea and see if it would fly. That is the ultimate and most liberating kind of empowerment.

In my book, that is how one leaves a lasting legacy to the world during one's life. We become uncompromising in building our dreams and we give everything we've got to realize those goals. We are equally uncompromising in asking those who work for us to give us no less. We inspire those who work with us and for us to embrace our vision of what can be. We empower them to become so much more than they ever thought they could become, in the pursuit of the common goals. As individuals, we push the status quo aside and show the rest of the world what can be achieved, if we embrace the right mindset.

Of course, that is a tall order for anyone. To aspire to live at that level, isn't something that everyone can actually do. Or is it? Isn't it easier to work for someone else and let them lay out what needs to be done... and how to do it? Sure. Isn't it easier just to follow instructions, without asking why it is being done or can it be done more efficiently or better? Absolutely. But if that is the path we choose to take, what are we and what is the quality of our lives? How many of us truly want to live ordinary and undistinguished lives?

We will always be constrained by certain laws and certain business/social standards. But we cannot allow constraints to be imposed on our creativity or our visions of what we can accomplish in our businesses. Men like Thomas Edison, Bill Gates or Steven Jobs each saw a vision of the future. They recognized an amazing opportunity and grabbed onto it, never letting go. The rest as they say is history. Companies like eBay, Fedex, Amazon, the Southern Pacific Railroad, the New York Times... and the list is endless, all exist because visionaries saw the future and made that vision a reality.

We find ourselves in times in which too many companies, large and small, now view the future with greatly diminished expectations. The future for the next 18 months is largely uncertain. So they are scaling back their operations and taking a wait-and-see posture, until the indicators give more positive signs in the economy.

So who is going to take the first steps to pull our economy out of the doldrums? Not the corporate giants. Who else than? A few small companies who have a clear vision of the future. A few small business people who have learned to be fearless. Who have nothing to lose, because the banks and the government don't seem to be on their side. Who have only their creativity and a vision of what can be to drive them forward. Who have earned the respect of their employees, suppliers and their customers. Who have inspired and empowered their employees to join them in building a future for the company and for themselves. Who have figured out how to become lean and mean and make things happen when other business cannot or won't budge an inch forward unless it appears to be absolutely safe to do so. Who are going to shake things up and change the way that things are done in the marketplace.

When these visionary companies have made their moves, the rest of the pack will eventually follow.

Take a hard look at the accomplishments of Bob Fosse. Look at what one man was able to do. Consider how much he changed the lives of the people he touched and how much he changed the world by his efforts.

If you are the owner of a small business, what kind of stuff are you made of? What path are you choosing for your company to take? Are waiting to first see which way the wind is blowing? Or are you developing a vision of where you can be taking your company and setting aside your fears to develop a strategy to move forward?

Are you going to be one of the fearless few who will be leading the rest of us into a brighter future? Is your company going to be among those which become the indicators of our economy's recovery?

After awhile, I get the message

2010-08-11T21:07:00.003-06:00

I would go to business mixers and explain to small business owners what I did. That my job was to make them great CEOs of their companies... to teach them how to mine their business records for critical data they could use for making better decisions. Everyone I talked to said, "That's great. I really could use that. But I don't think I am big enough to need that yet." That translates into few if any people hiring me to work for them.

So literally yesterday, I figured out that I was trying to sell services that 99 per cent of the people I was talking to were never going to buy. I was fighting a losing battle. In this environment, people are doing their best just to survive and keep their doors open. Money is tight. Consultants like me are going to have a tough time convincing most businessmen that there is a compelling reason to hire a productivity consultant, at least for now.

My getting the point yesterday is one of those "I've got good news for you and some bad news for you" situations. On one hand, the whole marketing approach I worked out for my business has proven to be a bust. The wrong product at the wrong time.

The good news is that when I go back to the drawing board, I can rethink and reinvent my company yet one more time. I now know that I need to identify a product or service small business owners will buy and which they feel will provide a compelling benefit for their companies. And then I will need to rewrite my 30 second elevator speech and refine it.

I classify this as a mid-course correction. I cannot begin to enumerate all the things I have learned about building a company over the last 8 to 9 months. This just proves that learning never ends. The only difference is that the most important learning we do is probably not going to be in a classroom. Even if we never will earn a degree from the University of Hard Knocks, the curriculum is ever so compelling. I feel so much smarter than I did last year and a lot surer of myself than I did then.

So day to day experience has been sending me a message. Apparently for awhile, I wasn't listening very well. I am told that as we get older, we learn to do a lot more listening than talking. Even if we sometimes forget to listen all the time to some inner voice that tells us we are veering off course, sooner than later we will receive the message loud and clear. Hopefully, the message will arrive before we leap off of a cliff into the abyss. .

This is not like falling off the horse and having to get back on. Far from it. It is more about letting the horse take off in a different direction and not reining in the animal. So there it is. I get the message and I have to put on my CEO hat and my marketing hat. Time to revise my working strategies. Time is a'wasting. Cheerio.

Howard Fireman

Stop the World! I Want to Get On!

2010-08-03T22:49:00.005-06:00

A long time ago, when I was going through cycles of depression, I always had a sense of what I was up against. If I was going down, I knew I would be in the valley for awhile, but that sooner or later the depression would bottom out. And then I would start back up. And when I feeling really good, I knew that very soon I would peak and then I was on the way back down again. That was my roller coaster ride with inevitable ups and downs.

Now, there are no highs and lows No mood swings. My moods fall within a pretty narrow range somewhere in the middle. Now, when my best laid plans do not seem to be working, my whole world goes gray and I enter this period of finding it difficult to motivate myself to be excited about very much and I lose my focus and forward momentum. When I am like this, my life just stuck on a plateau and going nowhere very quickly.

When I stall out, I am struggling to find answers. I am struggling to figure out how to rekindle that fire in my belly. And really, it is not the answers I am looking for so much as the questions. I am looking for a reason to feel alive again and to get moving in a forward direction.

Wait now. How is it that I so easily forget how I guided myself out of the era of living with depression? Things I already know.

Take life one day at a time... and if necessary, one hour at a time.
If possible, get through the day and be able to look back and conclude that for the most part it was a good day. Do the same thing the next day and the next day, until good days rather than bad days become my norm.
To get the momentum going, figure out the direction I want to be heading and then just put one foot in front of the other.
Get back among people and stop withdrawing from the world.
Start doing the things that make me feel alive, things about which I am passionate.
Call friends and plan social events.
Set goals. Set the destinations I want to reach in the journey. If I know where I am going, I am already gone. [Sondheim]
Stop being angry about things or at people. I cannot always control what happens to me or how people are dealing with me. But I do have control about how I react to external events or how I choose to react to the people around me. That is a choice I can make to make the going smoother.
Make a list of what I need to do tomorrow. One that is not too long.
I need to smile more and to be pleasant to others as much as possible.
Always remember that life is what it is. Whatever happens, I need to keep my cool and logically figure out what needs to be to deal with a challenge.

These things I know have tumbled onto the page in no particular order. I guess it really doesn't matter what order they are in. This is not a doctoral dissertation. Just a blog entry that I am writing to clear my head.

I know that when I was putting in long hours and was living very obsessively lately, in the effort to build my business, that would work for me for only so long. After awhile, for many reasons, my body would rebel against the abuse to which I was subjecting it. Time after time, I would hit a wall and I had to slow down for awhile.

But I am chomping at the bit to get moving again. My game-plan is to write this and read it again in the morning, when I am not so tired. Anyway, I a ready to be past this funky mood I have been in for 3 to 4 weeks. Enough!

It feels like there is still something holding me back. What is that something? Not entirely sure. However, three things are certain: I am not going to figure out the answer to my dilemma tonight, I need to set an appointment with Barbara Abramowitz, my therapist, and I need to go to bed.

Goodnight.

Sometimes Chaos Can Be A Good Thing

2010-07-29T00:35:00.006-06:00

To say that the last month has been difficult to navigate would be an understatement. For a time, I really did not know why I was doing anything. My consulting business suffered and I had a really hard time functioning from day to day. Is there an upside to all this? There is, sort of. All this uncertainty and chaos served me as a red flag that something was seriously wrong in my business game plan... and in my life. No need to bore my reader with the boring details of all the particulars. Suffice it to say that it was time for me to rethink my priorities.

Putting a lot of time into a project without assessing it critically along the way is very much akin to mindlessly throwing a lot of money at a problem. In neither case will one accomplish very much by doing that.

What is this all about? It is about maintaining forward momentum in any endeavor. It is also about knowing what one is trying to accomplish. Additionally, we must always understand our limitations. As individuals, we are subject to certain limitations.

In the business context, it is about knowing what your core goal is. That core goal is the benchmark against which all strategies and activities must be tested. If doing something in particular does not contribute to the accomplishment of that goal, directly or indirectly, then it is not worth the doing. If a strategy will not get you any closer to realizing the core objectives than you are now, then that strategy should be scrapped.

And then there is that thing about taking on too much at one time. At a buffet, it is so easy to load our plate with much more food than we can possibly eat. The only serious consequences in that situation is that some perfectly good food will be wasted or that we will gain some unwelcome fat. However in business, taking on too much can lead to a really chaotic situation in the least and a scenario that can potentially sink the ship at worst. That is where I found myself not so long ago.

My personal life got squeezed badly. I have stopped doing things which gave me a respite from the push and shove of being in business... and which I truly love doing. I am isolating myself from people whom I would like to cultivate as friends for my wife and me. And the worst of it all is that my sleep habits are totally out of whack. I know that to be true and yet I feel compelled to allow my sleep deprivation to be a dysfunctional symptom of my life at the moment which I choose to tolerate.

I know what some of the solutions are.

Set up a segway which will get me out of the house early.
Set up a segway which will enable me to leave work at the end of the day and put all thoughts behind me.
Set up a schedule and stick with it.
Organize my time to increase productivity and to improve the % of admin/marketing time to % of billable time.
Set a premium on getting a good nights sleep every night.
Restate my goals and keep them in front of myself all the time to stay on track.

It is all very well and good to know these things. The thing about it is that I now have to figure out how to implement each item in the list and a few items that I forgot to list.

However, I am getting away from the central point of this particular posting. This period of chaos and uncertainty was the canary in the coal mine for me. For a few weeks, I watched the canary die very slowly. Then in the last two weeks, I have let my business and my life slow down to the point that I might as well be standing still. So the chaos served a useful purpose for me. I won't get the time I have lost back or the clients and readers of my blog who I have alienated. But as always, the situation is what it is. I have momentarily stumbled.

As always, this is pick-yourself-up-and-dust-yourself-off time. My forward momentum has momentarily been brought to a standstill. It is time for me to pick up the pieces and start out again. It is time for me to put the key in, start the engine on and get going again. A short to do list as the first order of business would be a good idea. But after having done that, it is simply a matter of picking out the most important thing on the list and take care of it... and then go to the second item on the list and so on.

God help me, I am a writer. I write myself out of these mental funks, as I am doing now. Sorry that this is not thrilling content in this particular posting. But this is just one of those functional postings that are mostly personal and mostly important just to me.

Anyway, if you stumble onto my blog and read this, I hope that it is maybe a little useful to you. If not, I have written some really compelling stuff early on. So muck around in the listing of articles and stories I have written. I am sure you will find something to your liking.

Cheerio... I am going to bed.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman

Striking a Balance... What does that mean?

2010-07-15T11:01:00.006-06:00

We say things all the time as if we actually understand what we are saying. For instance, how many times have you said to yourself, "My life is seriously out of balance." My neurons were sparking in my brain today and asked me if I had a clue as to what that really meant. At that moment, I realized that I kind of sort of grasped the concept, but not really.

It occurred to me that there can be many different ways of being out of balance. The most obvious instance I can think of is an actual weight scale with two pans on each side of the fulcrum. The pan on one side of the scale has more of something than the other side. Very logical, certainly useful for a meat butcher or a scientist or a lawyer, and in a way, useful for us as well. Now we have this visual image in our head as we ponder the more intangible idea of someone's life being out of balance.

When you or I think about this conundrum, it is usually in the work vs. personal life context. Not a few of us are workaholics either by necessity, by circumstance or by choice. Our priorities become a tad skewed and we begin to spend more and more time at work. Or we begin to bring work home with us. There is something about being in a business environment that can become hugely compelling. We can begin to believe that what we are doing at work is so important and so engrossing that sometimes it is even better than sex. I suspect this is very much an American dream syndrome. At any rate, it is certainly at the expense of our personal life or our family relationships, both of which take a serious hit. For the first of several times in this posting, I have to point out that when we drift into this situation in our own lives, it is a choice we have made. Even if we haven't made the conscious choice to become a workaholic and just let it happen, that still constitutes a choice, by default.

Then there is that other scenario. We take on too much in our lives. We try to cram twenty-seven hours of things to do into sixteen hours each day. [Of course I know that a day has 24 hours. But optimally we allow ourselves 8 hours of sleep a day.] Days are like rooms. You can only put so many hours of activity into each day, before you start eating into your time for sleep.

Wait a minute! Sleep. As one of the certifiably sleep deprived Americans walking the streets these days, I think I remember hearing that word somewhere or sometime in the past. I don't remember what that is, exactly. No problem I'll just google the definition to refresh my memory.

I apologize for that momentary diversion from the topic of discussion. But that is what happens when one tries to do too much in not enough time to do it. It cannot be done and as we add even more tasks to the to do pile, things just stack up. In this nightmare scenario, we have failed to establish working priorities. We have failed to distinguish what is important to do and what is not important to do. We have not evaluated the items on our to do list in terms of what is essential to do, what is somewhat important to do... and last but not least, what it would be nice to do. When our priorities get skewed or worse, we do not prioritize in planning our schedule, our life can become utterly disorganized, hugely chaotic and utterly unlivable.

At the other extreme, one can never plan anything. The theory here is that if we make no plans, life will take us where we were meant to go. No matter what happens, everything will turn out okay. We don't have to think about anything... we just need to go with the flow, like a tree branch being carried down the stream. We place our trust in the water flowing under the bridge to take us where we need to be. Not a very good theory. This is sort of the play-the-hand-you-are-dealt approach. This sort of life will be utterly random and one's chances of ending up badly are just as good as ending up well. This scenario certainly qualifies for one which is out of balance.

Additionally, one can become an anal retentive person. Every aspect of life must be just so. Everything must be in a particular place. Everything must be done in a specific way, even if the way it is being done makes on sense whatsoever. Every aspect of life is governed by a written-in-stone set of rules and regulations. This approach to life isn't much better. Things are still seriously out of balance for someone who lives this way. True, life is very structured and efficient. But there is no room for joy or spontaneity, when one cannot ever depart from the set routine. The worst downside of this strategy is that one risks being viewed as a totally rigid and an insufferable person to be around. Say goodbye to warm and fuzzy relationships. And God forbid, there should be a single deviation from the set "norm." If there is, as there will eventually be, for the person who lives this way, it is an absolute certainty the sky will fall and life as we know it will screech to a screaming halt.

And then there is the hugely misunderstood notion of the American Dream. A lot of people have interpreted this concept to mean that every one of us has the opportunity to have everything we ever wanted to have. That can translate into possession of material wealth, big cars, status, fame, power or whatever else floats your psychological boat. What this interpretation fails to take into account is that we must also maintain a workable balance between having and being in our lives. On one hand, at our core, we want to become a certain kind of person and we want to live a certain kind of life, that has little or nothing to do with what we have. On the other hand, we look about us and see all the "things" someone else has and we want them too. So it becomes a choice between pursuing a lifestyle or building a livable life. Optimally, we make choices so that the two considerations are in sync with each other. But unfortunately, the more successful we become professionally, that is not always the case. When we have become too accustomed to a particular lifestyle, we are not always willing to give it up, even if we hate the life we are living. We are willing to live that way, accepting that being personally miserable is the price we must pay.

I am not sure if understanding all the ways our lives can be out of balance makes things easier for us. All I have done is define the problem. This is just the first thing we have to do, if we are going to fix what is wrong in our lives. But before we can even begin the process of bringing a balance to our lives, we have to understand why the things we are doing are making us unhappy or no longer make sense to us. So, defining what is happening is a good thing. Let me restate that... it is a necessary first step for us, if we want to build a life worth living.

Coming Back From Burnout

2010-06-30T19:43:00.002-06:00

I returned from a hiatus today. I was away for about 8 or 10 days. Oh, I was still going to work each day and spending time at home. My body was there, but I was off somewhere else trying to recuperate from running hard and furiously at building a business for almost 7 1/2 months. Finally, a few days ago, my body rebelled and shut me down.

I ask for no sympathy. This is an American thing and people in other countries have learned how to work to live, rather than the other way around. I was chasing something maybe called success or euphemistically called the American Dream. But I had come to a screeching halt last week.

What does that feel like? One has no energy. Whatever it was that was driving me forward before had disappeared. One faces the usual tasks with little or no enthusiasm. It becomes a challenge to get through each day at work and get enough work done to justify one's presence there.

And it is also a time of sorting things out. What sorts of things? At this point in time, what is really important and necessary for me to be doing? Why am I choosing to do these things? Am I doing whatever it is I am doing for the right reasons or the wrong reasons? Are there additional compelling reasons I should or shouldn't be pursuing certain goals or getting involved in specific activities? Am I happy pursuing my current goals? .... and a thousand other possible questions. Finally, what should I be doing now, why and where should I be heading?

For me, it takes an act of will to get past these funky periods. When I have more or less sorted out the issues and decided how I am going to put in a fix, I am ready to move on. "If you know where you're going, You have already gone...."(Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park With George.) I make a decision and I am back to the work, full of energy and focus. Like I said, for me, it is an act of will.

I am certainly not the only person to have gone through this sort of thing. It happens to thousands of people every day. When this happens, the situation is what it is. The only option is to sort out the issues, figure out how to fix things, fix things and move one. It sounds like a simple thing to do. But that is not always the case. So one has to dig deep down into one's soul and find the courage and grit to pull oneself out of the doldrums. If I can do it, anyone can.

So, I am back among the functional again. In a day when being dysfunctional is almost fashionable, I will choose to be among the odd ones out. Being functional and happy and productive, that is okay by me.

It feels great to be back near the top of my game.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman

Muddling Through

2010-06-29T09:08:00.002-06:00

Some days are just great, full of promise and hope. Some days are just there, with the challenge just to survive the day one hour at a time until the day is finally over.

Today is one of the latter. But I have learned to preserve a morsel of optimism even in the worst of times, because that small measure of hope is the only thing which is keeping the day from going from bad to worst. Sometimes one has no control whatsoever over the process or the outcome. So what can one do? Just go with flow and do the best one can under the circumstances.

And that is exactly what I am going to do. And that is exactly what you would probably do. So here we are. Two great minds with a single great thought. Very glad to have you on board, fellow traveller.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston, Texas

Picking Up Where I Left Off...

2010-06-27T20:06:00.006-06:00

It is Sunday evening. I should be finishing up some accounting work I could not force myself to finish on Saturday. But here I am blogging. Lack of discipline, you say. Hardly! As a matter of fact, I am starting up once again to post to my personal blog.

Recently I started a business oriented blog, The 610 Business Journal. But that is about work and working. And writing the articles and putting it together is just a part of my Monday to Friday routine. It is professional work, just as marketing activities and doing accounting is work.

Having rediscovered all the work I did here in this blog, I was reminded of what an amazing experience it was to lose myself in creating a new entry. Being a writer is a somewhat strange pursuit. When I start writing a piece, something fictional or a piece about real world things, I never know where the words pouring out of my head are going to take me. I never know when I will stumble on a truth about life or the world which will suddenly appear in the text box. Just as your life and my life is a journey, so is the process of writing a piece of literature, big or small. When I am writing, all sense of time seems to disappear and without realizing it an hour or two will have flown by me, without my realizing it.

You see, when I am writing, no matter the format or the subject, I am looking for understanding. Understanding how people work. Understanding how the world works. Understanding how we allow our lives to go horribly wrong or how we find our way back from losing our way. I am trying to understand the journey of my life. I am trying to come to terms with who and what I am and to make peace with myself. And most importantly, because one thing I can do well is communicate using the written word, to make a small difference in the world. So writing, for me, is a critically important activity. When I am writing, it is a time and a place when I can escape from the world and practice some productive introspection.

We are advised by those in the financial know to pay ourselves first and then pay the people to whom we owe money next. When it comes to money and time, the two commodities are not all that different. For most of us, there are never enough hours in the day nor enough dollars (or pounds or euros or yen) to allow us to live our lives exactly as we would like to. We have "x" dollars in the bank and 24 hours in a day. That's it. No more. No less.

So may I modestly suggest that when it comes to time, we should also pay ourselves first. Okay, you say. But how do we do that? It is really very simple.

Start out with the assumption that you enjoy doing certain things immensely, that have little to do with work or family. Define for yourself that certain something you enjoy doing. For me it is making time to write every day. It could be reading. It could be writing a blog posting as I am doing right now. It could be hitting balls at a driving range. Is can be anything you choose it to be.

Next, when you arrange your schedule for the next day, set aside just 30 minutes or an hour. Set it aside to be your time to indulge yourself in that pursuit. Don't feel guilty for doing so. After having set aside that time, don't give the matter any additional thought. The next day, use that scheduled time to do whatever floats your psychological boat. You will feel so much better... you will recharge your batteries and feel hugely refreshed. Use every allotted second of time for it is your time. After you have, return to the world and do what you have to do to get through the remainder of the day.

I am paying myself first tonight. It really feels tremendously good to be writing to you now. It won't put any money in the bank. But it will make this day a livable one. For each of us, there will be some days which are painful or challenging. For even those days, allowing ourselves this privilege of doing our thing every day, will enable us to survive even the worst that life can throw at us. This strategy certainly works for me.

Understand that setting aside this brief bit of time for ourselves has got to be something that we consciously choose to do. It is a critical decision we make in our life. I do it to keep my sanity and to create an opportunity to find purpose and grace in my life. You can do it for any reason that seems reasonable to you.

So I am back writing new pieces for Inside My World... Don't be a stranger. You don't have to like everything that I write. But occasionally you will find a piece that resonates with you. So come on back, y'all, from time to time.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston, Texas

Returning for a Visit to Inside My World...

2010-06-26T19:37:00.005-06:00

I have not been back to visit this place for a very long time. Reading some of my postings from 2006 and 2007 cause me to ask myself what fellow could have written about such an eclectic mix of topics and peered into the soul with such insight. Sure, I know I wrote those pieces. But that I could have done so utterly amazes me now.

When did I have the time to do that? These days I am so busy growing a business that I barely have time to sleep, much less write blog posting that do not have to do with business. Or maybe the question ought to be, how was it that my mind was uncluttered enough to "see" through the clutter and distractions of each day... to be able to see beyond the everyday, beyond the practical and the mundane.

As I am now, I feel a sense of loss. Yes, I have faced down my demons. Yes, I no longer beat myself for all the things I could have been or should have been. Yes, I have made peace with myself and cut myself some slack. Yes to all these things. But at what cost?

When there was a level of psychological pain in my life, there was a greater level of energy and a heightened level of emotional awareness. If my life was chaotic back then, it also took me to places and to people with whom I would not have otherwise interacted. True, there were moments I almost put my life in harm's way, by choice. What I am talking about is the way that reporters covering a war zone feel while they are there. For them, life will never seem so real or so thrilling or exciting after they leave the war zone and return to "civilization." One experiences this heightened sense of being alive. And that phenomena is a real conundrum.

So I have temporarily returned to this place again. Instead of leaving all my musings within the walls of my therapist's office as I have been doing lately, maybe I will begin to share them again with those of you who stumble back on this literary backwater.

For a time, I am back.See y'all soon!

Howard Fireman

Too Tired to think. Too tired to move.

2010-06-26T19:03:00.002-06:00

It is Saturday. I should be relaxing, chilling out, going to the movies... just doing something that does not fall under the category of work. But that is not what is happening.

Here I am in front of the computer. For at least 4 or 5 hours, I have been trying to motivate myself to do the last little bit of work for this accounting client. I have been losing that battle. I am losing the war.

So what am I to do?

One voice inside me says, put it aside. Get some rest and hit it again on Sunday, when you have recharged your batteries. Another voice says that it is maybe an hour's work, and you will be done. My body and my mind say they hold with the former. Enough is enough. Working five and a half days a week is enough! Stop working and rest.

So what should I do?

To the title of this piece, let me add... too tired to make a decision. I will pull a Scarlett O'Hara.. you know: "Tomorrow is another day." In this case, procrastination seems to be a perfectly logical thing to pursue and that is exactly what I will do.

Decision made.

Howard Fireman

Late June 2010

Distant Islands and Other Places

2009-04-30T12:21:00.003-06:00

Bookstores always provide me with an escape from the stresses and tensions of life. I may not even buy anything, but I will wander through the store to see if there is a book somewhere without which I cannot live. And occasionally I will discover a book that stirs up my wanderlust to go out and explore the world.

Yesterday I came across a book titled 501 Must-Visit Islands. I found a table near the window on the second floor of Borders. Without even realizing it, I got lost in the pages of this book for almost 90 minutes. I "travelled" from North America to Africa to the Middle East to the Mediterranean Sea and back again. I set foot in Santorini and Corfu and numerous distant places I had never been to before. In my mind, I noted the places I would like to visit with my wife, Marilyn. I secretly wished I actually had the time and the money to do that.

Having been a few places outside the US, I already have a whetted appetite to travel to distant places in the world. I have been to London, Tokyo, Hong Kong. Each trip abroad was a wonderfully eye-opening adventure. I met people who lived very differently than I do, but with whom I share more similarities than differences. I got to stand on the very spot where Anne Boleyn lost her head and to look down into the crater of the volcano, Kiluea. Pineapple has never tasted sweeter than in Hawaii and hamburger never cooked worse than in Hong Kong. It was the quest for something different and unknown in these places that made the experience so broadening.

Even sitting here now writing this piece, I am carried away to places to which I would like to go or to go again. I do love London. From the getgo I felt right at home there, when I went to visit my daughter and son-in-law. But there are places that are calling for me to come and visit. From down under, Australia calls. From Europe, the vineyards of France call and the wonders of Paris call. From Italy, Pompeii and Herculaneum and Rome and Venice... all are calling me. Israel... Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Haifa call. Cairo and the Giza Plain and Petra in Jordan are calling to me as well

Theirs are siren calls that take my mind away from the accounting work that I really should be doing. As always, I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. Reluctantly, I must return to the real world of things to do and places to be and expectations to meet. But always lurking somewhere back in my mind is the impulse to stop whatever I happen to be doing, pack a suitcase, get on a plane and go out and see the world, with all it's wonders and splendors.

A Kaleidoscope World

2008-07-02T23:04:00.004-06:00

When we were children, we would find delight in playing with a kaleidoscope. We would put our eye to the opening at one end and turn the tumbler on the other end. With every turn, we would experience a new and completely different pattern of reds and blues and myriad other colors and shapes. After awhile, we would grow tired of playing with the kaleidoscope and put it away.

Sometimes I wish I could do the same thing and turn off the barrage of images and sounds I see and hear at every turn. Ours is a noisy and disorienting world, with fewer and fewer places where it is quiet and serene. It becomes increasing ly difficult to tune out the din of life in the 21st century world. But unlike a kaleidoscope, we cannot set it aside even for a short time. The world will find us wherever we are. On the street, in our homes, in our cars as we drive to work or at work, the visual and audio noise of the world follows us relentlessly.

As I go about my very frenetic days, I may not even consciously notice the sights and sounds all about me. But my eyes and ears are absorbing every image, every commercial, every song, every billboard... every distraction that screams out to me, "Look at me! Hear me! Buy this or buy that!" And little by little, the bits and pieces of sight and sound begin to form an ever changing montage as I move from moment to moment. I may not remember the sign or the song or the television show blaring from the flat screen tv. But inexorably I have been changed and reshaped into someone other than the person I was before. One day, when I will wake up and think a totally random thought that is not something I would normally think, I will have no idea at all where it came from. Somewhere along the way, one of those ever changing impressions I saw or heard found a small unused corner of my brain and took it as its residence, and, as they say, the rest is history.

What should I make of all this? I am not sure at all. But I kn0w that I have been changed by our frantic world. What do I do about what is happening to me? I don't know that I can really do anything at all to change the situation. I am too much of person who loves to be with and around other people. I cannot simply flee from the world and hide in some cave at the top of a mountain or on an isolated island. I guess that this phenomenum is just one of those things in our frantic world that you and I just have to live with as best we can.

The Pursuit of Perfection

2008-06-18T21:27:00.003-06:00

When I got home tonight, on the ten o'clock news, the reporter was interviewing a pediatrician, whose name I did not catch. The doctor was rightfully proud that now in the neo-natal ward that he oversees, 95% of the premature babies go home healthy.

Asked if he was demanding, he said that he pursues perfection. Of course, he allowed that no one can achieve perfection in his or her endeavors. But unless one at least attempts the pursuit of perfection, one cannot ever achieve excellence in the things one sets out to do.

That makes sense to me.

Father's Day 2008

2008-06-15T21:50:00.003-06:00

A lovely day. Took in a baseball game at Minutemaid Park with the kids and my granddaughter. Had dinner with family members and took in the latest Indiana Jones movie. Just took time to enjoy the moment.

Enjoying the moment... I believe that that is one of the very important things we are supposed to do in life. It is what makes doing all the things that we have to do to survive the crunch worth the doing.

Looking back, Taking Stock, Moving on

2008-06-11T21:51:00.005-06:00

Of late, I have noticed a difference in how I choose what I am going to do with my time. Anymore, I am a lot more selective in my pursuits and in my passions. Since most of my life has already been lived, the time I have left becomes far more precious. So now my choices are made more thoughtfully and with greater care.

I will give you an example. With all the genres of music out there, I don't try to even begin to like or understand most of them. I am sure that there are some types of music I would probably enjoy to listen to very much. But with so many hours in the day, I will stick with my own personal favorites: Broadway music, arias sung by tenors, Jewish music, classic rock, and the music of the Rat Pack... and the songs performed by Eva Cassidy. I am not saying that is what everyone should listen to in music. There are no right answers that fit the need of everyone. But these are the choices that work for me.

For the most part, television has become a mindless landscape of bad taste and less than funny sitcoms. So it is a good thing G'd commissioned man to create DVDs and VHS tapes. Well, the truth is if you search carefully amongst the 150 or so channels on cable, there are actually some very good shows out there. But time is the enemy. Even with television, I need to ration my time in order to see the shows that I really want to see. It is ever so easy to be seduced into watching some show with very little value or entertainment content... and to then keep on mindlessly watching a few more shows, while I just veg out.

The same goes for the books I now choose to read. My taste has changed now and I have to make time to read the books on my hit list. We do not live in a time which affords us the time or the quiet settings to just escape in a good book. To get to actually have the time to read, I have to make the choice not to do something else I would also like to do or not do something I would really need to do [but which I would really prefer not to do.].

Most importantly, I am choosing to work for myself rather than for somebody or some company. I have figured out who I am now and the setting in which I can actually be successful. I have figured out that it is no more scary anymore to work for myself that to work for some company. Either way, there is no job security and I sure the hell am not going to fire myself. The only one who can make me fail is myself, and that is not an option I find acceptable.

I guess this is all really about my choosing about how I want to live my life. I first had to figure out who I was and what I wanted to be and what I wanted to accomplish. That took awhile. But at least it happened for me. Until that happened, I couldn't move on with my life. Now I can.

And of course, it has become clear to me that one of these days I will not be able to work at all, so I had better put some money away for that eventuality. The acceptance of that reality has really enabled me to keep focused and to motivate me to do whatever it is going to take to accomplish that objective.

Looking back, I can see where I could have avoided some of my more regretable choices. I cannot peer into the future with the same certainty or clarity. But at least, I can be a far more functional person in the present. I can navigate the present with greater assurance and can exercise much greater judgment as I am confronted with the next challenging situation.

Life is a most challenging journey. I am making my journey as well as I can. G'd willing, I will be able to take care of those things essential for me to do, to have those moments when I can enjoy those things about which I am most passionate and to make some small difference in the world.

Having spent a couple of years to takes stock of myself and my life, I am now as prepared as I every will be. Now I know the future is not something to be feared or that I must always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I no longer see the future that way anymore. Now, for me, it is just a matter of taking things as they come, one thing at a time. At minimum, each new day is always interesting and challenging for me.

Keep coming back to catch my upcoming posts. I will let you know how things turn out.

Howard Fireman
June 11, 2008

Living Life from a Different Angle

2008-06-07T15:42:00.003-06:00

I used to post an entry to this blog every night. Well past the time I should have gone to sleep, I was sitting here at my computer, working on my latest piece. It was as if it was something I had to do... as if it was a compulsion to write something every day. And occasionally I wrote something that was modestly profound and even good.

Now I don't write very often. I do not post entries to my blog so often as I used to. I am so busy these days that I don't even have time to think about random things, much less about what is happening in my life. I sort of know in what direction I am headed, but I actually have to set aside time now to think about what I am doing with my life and why I am doing it.

But that is not an entirely bad state of affairs. Now I am very focused each day on living each day as opposed to just thinking about what that feels like. And in doing so, I have very little disposable time to stand on the sidelines and observe humanity and the world. I have a business to build, relationships I need to sustain and still be able to keep my own personal affairs in order. I no longer have the time or the inclination to try to solve the world's problems.

That doesn't mean you will not begin to see new postings to this small corner of the internet. In fact, you can count on me making time to write again. Now each moment of each day becomes infinitely more precious. I am already what they euphemistically call a "senior citizen" so I know that sooner than later I am going to kick the bucket. But before I do, I have my short list of things I want to have done. One of those things on the list is to write a few short stories and maybe fit in writing a larger literary project into my schedule. Being a busy person does not preclude me from setting aside time for those things which are really important to me.

That is the real irony of transforming myself into one of those people who is actively pursuing some goals to accomplish. Up to a year or two ago, I plenty of time on my hands. But I foolishly squandered it and time once past can never be reclaimed. Now that I have essentially no free time, somehow or other I am able to squeeze in doing some of the things about which I am truly passionate. I have come to realize that not only is it not possible to have or to do everything we desire, but that it is not even a good idea.

It took me a long time to figure all this out. But at least I did. I can't change the bad choices I made in the past. I cannot undo the mistakes I made. However, I have no regrets about whatever happened to me in the past. My life is what it is. I am approaching life from a different angle now. The things I encounter make more sense to me now and I can usually maneuver around the pitfalls that derailed me so often in the past. I harbor few illusions about life anymore. And my life is better. You might say to me, "Well, sir. You should have figured all this out a long time ago." To which I would say that you are probably right. I should have. But at least I did, even though it was at this late date.

The Drowsy Chaperone Opens in Houston... A Lot of Fun, A Real Hoot

2008-05-20T22:49:00.004-06:00

The Broadway musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, opened at the Hobby Center in Houston tonight. I did not know what I could expect to see as the house went dark. The voice of the disshevelled narrator came out of the darkness and thus began a really lovely evening of muscial silliness and entertainment.

Set in the Roaring 20's, the story of the the wedding that was on, then off, then on again, was silly, predictable, cliched, and wonderful. It was full of merriment and filled with a lot of memorable characters who were improbable and hugely larger than life. And to boot, to a person, every one in the cast sold their character and their song and dance, giving 200% oin the effort. I laughed... I laughed alot and loudly because sometimes, if you push the silliness to a huge extreme, it becomes delicious and simply delectable. I did not have to figure out if this was comedy or tragedy or a hybrid of the two. It was comedy and something entirely welcome after a long and busy day.

These are times when performers who attempt to be funny think they have to be crass, talk dirty or focus on sex. But four letter words in and of themselves don't add much to the mix. Neither does dwelling yet one more time on the upside or the downside of sexual relations which, after awhile ceases to be funny in most contexts.

Drowsy Chaperone has some wonderfully funny lines and situations... and people from scenes grabbed from real life...like the really self-absorbed performer declaring to the world, on the eve of her wedding to Mr Right, that she doesn't want to show off... that is be at the center of attention any more. During her musical declaration, between laughs, you say, "Yeah. Right!" Her song and dance... is a certifiable hoot.

From the beginning to the end, I laughed and I had a great time. This show is what the Broadway musical is all about. There are many styles of Broadway shows. The substance of this show is just pure froth... the kind that one enjoys completely. And having a good time and being completely entertained for a couple of hours... that is what it is all about.

Waiting for It to Snow

2008-03-31T15:55:00.002-06:00

Last Saturday, I was waiting in line to get into the Democratic Senatorial Convention in Houston. It took over an hour for the line to get to the entrance gate and I found myself having a marvelous conversation with a fellow who had seen a lot of the world when he was a teenager. His dad was a teacher and used his credentials to satisfy his wanderlust to see the world. Brian, the fellow to whom I was talking, told me he lived in Cairo during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

While the war was going on, he said there was a story going around Cairo about who were the greatest soldiers in the world. It went something like this.

"Who are the greatest soldiers in the world? The very best soldiers are the Russians. Think about it. They let Napolean march all the way to Moscow. They waited for the snow to come and when the Russian winter had settled in, they drove out the French."

"Okay, who are the second best soldiers in the world? Again, the Russians. Why? They let the German armies march into Russia during WW II and the Russian army waited for the snow to come. And when the terrible Russian winter settled in, they attacked the Germans and drove them out."

"Well, then, who are the third greatest soldiers in the world? Why, the Egyptian soldiers, of course. The Egyptians have let the Israeli army march all the way to the Suez Canal, and now they are waiting for it to snow."

In a way, it is a good thing to know the Egyptian people can laugh at themselves... that they have a sense of humor. That puts a more human face on folks we know about mostly through highly filtered and distorted news reports. Maybe in a lot of ways, the Egyptian people aren't all that different from us after all.

An Alternate History of the Invasion of Iraq

2008-03-27T22:05:00.002-06:00

As I was driving today, I had this rather random thought. How would the course of human history have been altered had the United States not invaded Iraq?

I am setting aside all the pros and cons of why we invaded. For my question, that isn't a relevant consideration. What prompted this odd inquiry was that prediction by Nostrodamus that there would be a third "Anti-Christ" rise after the fall of Nazi Germany. So the question reframed becomes, "How would leaving Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq have changed history?" Or perhaps, "Might an unchecked Saddam Hussein risen to the heights of madness and power in the world that Adolf Hitler did?"

Tonight, I just want to raise the question. Sleep calls me and tomorrow is another work day. But tomorrow, I will begin an exploration of this line of reasoning.

And if you have any thoughts about what kind of timeline world history would have taken, in this alternative history of our post-9/11 world, please weigh in on the subject. After all, in this kind of pursuit, there can be no wrong answers. Let me hear from you.

A Loss... And the Aftermath

2008-03-27T01:38:00.002-06:00

A few days ago, some file in my operating system got corrupted and I was forced to restore the operating system. Needless to say, I lost all my data files including a lot of stored photos I cannot recover and miscellaneous journals and pieces of writing, also lost forever. Strangely, given my present situation, I didn't feel an overwhelming sense of loss. In fact, I felt strangely liberated, like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

I am at the other end of one of those transitional periods in life. I have settled into being someone who is in his sixties. I am trying to reconcile all the good things that come with being 61 with the various attitudes and possessions that go with being someone who is younger. Frankly, I am really willing to give up the angst that goes with "trying to make something of my life." That particular pursuit, I have discovered, too often falls under the heading of be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it. So often, it is never exactly what we thought that something would be... and usually just a touch disappointing.

Anyway, back to the subject of loss. It then occurred to me that I had not really lost everything, because so much of what I had gone through since the auto accident in January of 07 had been saved here in my blog. No matter what I had lost, I still had the good memories of things past. More importantly, I am making new memories. Besides, it is better to be living in the moment than standing on the side of the road reflecting on the life going by.

I Am Back!

2008-03-27T00:57:00.003-06:00

It is two in the morning, March 27, 2008.

Hard to believe that I have not posted anything since December 2007. It would be too easy to say that I was just busy. In truth, I was busy. But that would only tell part of the story. I got caught up in the rat race and in the scramble to make a buck. And also, for the first time, I am figuring out how to be a success at something. My priorities have changed and I see the world so much differently now. I know that this sounds like throwing all kinds of reasons into the answer to the question. But all of these things have been happening all at once and for the longest time it felt like I had no time to think.

Since last September, I have done work for at least three different places every week. Now it is more than that. The routine has been to run from one job to the next, stop by to make sure my mother (98 yrs old) is okay, get home hopefully by 7:30 pm, grab a bite, go to bed and the next day more of the same. At first I loved the pace and more money coming in. And then the routine ground me down and for a time I was really burned out.

Now, I have made adjustments. I pace myself. I do try to get some sleep. I am setting time to get our apartment cleaned up, finally after a year of living in boxes. I am doing my best to find a center... a balance.

The upshot to all that I have gone through is that I got out of the habit of blogging... of making the time to do so. Now, it is time to get back into the groove of every night, posting a blog post... of considering the day just past. Of trying to make some sense of my day or of making a comment on the happenings of my usually ordinary life. Or of noting something that took place somewhere in the world, that struck me as ironic or funny or tragic or just plain stupid. I need to set aside that quiet time each day to just reflect on my life and on world, so that I can always remind myself what is important and what is not.

I guess if I have been a bit off balance for the last several months, it was my own fault. Mr. Bush must have gotten to me, because even when I knew that what I was doing was not making me happy, I just decided "...to stay the course." It has not been a particularly bright thing for Mr. Bush to use that strategy. And definitely not a bright thing for me to do.

I had forgotten that thing I learned not so very long ago. When life gets so crazy and the only thing that seems to make any sense is just to keep up the pace, that is the time to stop right where you are and survey the terrain around you. Look all 360 degrees around you. Get your bearings and then make sure you are headed in the right direction and doing something that actually makes sense to do. And then reset your priorities if necessary and move on once more. No particular rocket science in that strategy.

Anyway, I realize I am just rambling. I just wanted to return to my blog and begin to write again. And to write something that is not simply predicated on selling something to someone or to write a business letter.

Enough! I am back. Look for more to come in the coming days.

Just When I Thought The Worst Was Over

2007-12-16T02:12:00.000-06:00

Somehow, I thought I had managed to get through what could only be characterized as a brutal week. I work Monday through Saturday. I don't have a lot of time to deal with surprises.

Early in the week, I noticed my Yorkie, Spike, wasn't well. His abdoman was swollen and had a hard feel to it. I waited a day to see if the condition would go away and it did not. So I took Spike to the vet. We knew that Spike had some heart problems and he was 14 years old. The veternarian ran tests and an x-ray and said it appeared to be water around the heart and that the x-ray was inconclusive. The may also be a tumor we could not see. So he put Spike on some medication and told me to observe for a few days. Our daughter's Yorkie was staying with us and kept Spike company during the day.

My wife has been out of town all week. I am always a little off, when Marilyn is out of town.

Compounding all this was that we had to move my Mother into assisted living on very short notice. My niece came into town to assist with the move, which was an enormous help, given so much of my time was already spoken for.

It is Sunday morning in the early AM. Moving my Mother has been partially completed and all or us will have a busy day tomorrow getting as much done to finish up.

I thought I was out of the woods... I had survived the week. One should never make such rash assumptions.

Marilyn got back into town Saturday afternoon. With all that we had to do, we did not get home till after midnight.

We opened the door and looked for Spike. He lay on his side on the floor in front of the television. He wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing. He was dead.We looked for Annabelle, my daughter's dog. We found her laying on her side on the couch. She was dead as well.

Both of were stunned and in disbelief. I still am an hour or so after we got home. I don't know what my wife is thinking about the death of these two beautiful animals. I only know I am still in shock and I do not know what I should be doing now... what I should be feeling... So many questions. What happened here? What killed both dogs the same day? Is there anything I could have done to prevent this from happening? I will never know the answers to these questions. It will haunt me for some time that I do not have the answers.

I know that at it's best, life is messy and chaotic and utterly unpredictable. Every time we think we finally have things under control, some higher power sends us a message that in actuality we don't have anything in our lives under our control. There will always be problems and shocks to our lives. There will always be unexpected events that impact us.

That being the reality about life, the very idea... the illusion that we can manage time or control our lives to any substatial extent becomes utter nonsense. Things and people and pets who are precious to us can be snatched away from us in a heartbeat. There is going to be a level of uncertainty in everything we set out to do and in every relationship we hold dear in our lives.

So how are we to survive the "...slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"? Truthfully, we will find no easy ways to do that. Tonight, the best I can do is to try to figure out how to deal with this terrible loss. Spike has been a part of our family for over a decade. How do we explain to our granddaughter that her beloved Annabelle is gone? When I finally experience the wrenching loss of Spike's death, what am I supposed to do? How do I grieve for my poor little fellow?

All I can do is to find the courage and the strength to do what I need to do and to then move on as best I can. Conventional wisdom says that I am supposed to rise to the occasion, whatever that is supposed to mean. What does that mean anyway? And how do I fill the void that Spike's death will leave behind? He was a part of our family. Now he is gone forever. What in hell am I supposed to do now?

We still have to tell our daughter that Annabelle died while staying with us. And in spite of this very saddening turn of events, we still have to keep living each day. So when will my life begin to seem tolerable and manageable again? I don't know when that is supposed to happen for me. Apparently, a dreadful week... or an awful day is not over until it is over... whenever that is.

Harumph!

2007-12-01T00:48:00.001-06:00

Harumph 1

Have you ever noticed how much we are driven to go shopping, when we receive a 40% off coupon for some store or when another noisy emporium tries to seduce us with the announcement of fantastic savings on everything in the establishment? Human nature being what it is, the ploy usually works.

I am no different than most people. When Borders or Barnes and Noble sends me a 40% off coupon on any book or record in the store, I immediatedly print it out and rush off to find something which I can neither live without nor really afford. Forget the fact that I couldn't possibly squeeze one more book into my already crowded apartment. The temptation is always palpable.

There used to be seven deadly sins. Now there is an eighth one: The need to be immediately gratified. The folks who are trying to tempt me to rush down to their establishments and buy, buy and buy still more, know that most people have been infected with this impulse. Don't have the money, they say. No Problem! We will put it on your account or charge it to your Visa or MasterCard. This is the folly that pervades our times... that what whatever we want, not only do we deserve to have that thing, we can have it, even if we don't have the money. No wonder most people in this country are up to their eyeballs in debt.

I am trying to become a fiscally responsible person. I am doing my best not to fall off the wagon and give into my impulses to acquire more things which I want but cannot afford right now. And I do not need to tell you, it isn't easy to keep my resolve. But I am at least trying in the same way that I am trying to lose weight. Sometimes I stay on course... sometimes not.

If I succeed, I will become one of the stalwart, the few... one of those who is conservative in what I choose to spend my hard-earned money on. And if I do actually succeed in reforming myself, to some in our economy I will be viewed as cheap at best or as an economic traitor at worst. Oh well, you can't please everyone all the time. I'll march to Thoreau's drummer and leave it at that.

Harumph 2

Have you ever found a piece of some device on the floor. You don't know exactly what it is or what contraption it goes into. However, you are reluctant to throw it away, because the moment you do, you will find the device to which it belongs and either have to go out and buy a replacement part or simply trash the device itself.

What happens is that we begin to accumulate a bunch of these unidentifiable parts, cluttering up our already cluttered homes.

Is there a solution to this dilemma: to keep or to trash immediately? I am not a good person to ask, because I am always anxious that if I throw away that unidentifiable piece of whatever, I will irrevocably disable a critical piece of technology in my life. My collection of whatevers is still growing.

That Other Something About the Journey

2007-11-24T01:12:00.000-06:00

I have travelled many roads in my life. Some journies I took to follow a dream or to realize an ambition. Some journies I took simply to find out what I would find just around the bend of the road. There were also the journies I took to escape the seemingly overwhelming realities of my life at that specific moment.When one journey ended, another began. I find myself at 61 setting out on yet another stage of my wanderings, less afraid now of what might happen next. Anymore, I do have a fair idea of what can happen along the way and I am a more seasoned traveller now, better able to deal whatever comes my way.

I have discovered a curious reality about the different stages of my meandering travels. Usually I went in a particular direction to accomplish a specific goal. It turns out that the most significant thing that happened to me, each step along the way, was that I was destined to cross paths with certain people, who would become an important part of my life... people who would prove to have a profound impact on my life, for better or for worse. Much like the hero of the television series, JourneyMan, I set out on missions, never fully aware of what I was really going after or what I would encounter. I set out on journies never knowing who I would meet or why it was that I was meant to come to know them. That is the part of the mystery of the future that seems to me to be the most difficult to discern beforehand...and occasionally the most dangerous aspect. It is a critical skill to know how to size up the people we meet along the way.

The smallest common denomenator of our life is a day. Each day is a journey in itself and we will meet so many people in the course of even 24 hours. Which person is going to someone we need to know and to learn from? Which person should we avoid, at any cost? Which person is one for whom we will make a difference in his or her life? After awhile, only hard won experience enabled me to answer those questions with any level of competence. You see, no one ever told me about that other something that I had to be on the lookout for, in the course of my wanderings. I had to learn that for myself.

Thanksgiving Day 2007: A Reason to Be Thankful

2007-11-22T23:46:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving day has come and gone. The family gathering is over and we ate too much, as usual. We enjoyed the annual game of Liverpool Rummy and took in the traditional football games on television. It was a really lovely day, and I have a particular reason for being appreciative and grateful.

This year I came to terms with who I am, faults and all. I have finally been able to like the fellow I see in the mirror. So what, you say. I respond that that is no mean accomplishment. It makes a critical difference in my experience at Thanksgiving. In the past I was there, but I was acutely uncomf0rtable with the other people at the gathering. At the time, I really disliked myself and I projected my own feelings about myself into what I thought other people were thinking about me. I had this profound need to impress or to justify my existence. In short, there was no way that I could just enjoy the moment.

Now I can because I have simply accepted that we are who are, for better or worse. The only thing we can do with our lives is to make the best of what we are given. Now I can, because I have realized that the only thing we have is the moment we are in. We are never given any guarantees that there will be a tomorrow or how many tomorrows there will be. We have no guarantees that any of our dreams or ambitions will ever be realized. The only thing we can have with any certainty are the important relationships we have with others, at least in the moment we are living. And maybe the love we feel for others and they for us. That is about it.

I live in the moment now. I lived in the moment throughout this day of Thanksgiving, Nov. 23, 2007. I truly enjoyed the precious time I shared with friends and family. I am truly grateful that I am now capable of experiencing these moments in a wonderfully positive way. I am a genuinely rich man for that.

Listening to That Gut Instinct

2007-11-07T22:39:00.000-06:00

So many times in our lives, we have to make some really difficult and really critical choices. So we gather the facts and seek advice. But when it comes down to it, we have to listen to that small voice inside of us that speaks to us about the rightness or wrongness of the choices we are about to make.

In such moments, we think about being prudent and cautious. We weigh the pros and cons. We weigh the consequences of taking one road or the other. But sometimes, that gut instinct inside of us points us in the direction that defies common sense or logic. Something tells us that the path less traveled or the course which is just a little more risky is the one we need to take. There is that sense that unless we see what lays just around the bend, we will never forgive ourselves, even if that was the wrong way to go. Sometimes we have to follow that sense of adventure to see where it will take us. Even if we find ourselves back at base one, we will know that we will have given it our best shot and that it was worth every moment of the misadventure.

We can live our lives cautiously and carefully. But then when we reach the end of the road we will have had little to remember and a boatload of regrets for not at least having at least once followed a dream. I ask you, what kind of life is that? I answer, not the sort of life I want.

I'd like a Latte with a Shot of Wisdom, Please

2007-10-30T23:48:00.000-06:00

At work the other day, I poured myself a cup of coffee, in the employee lounge. I put one of those cardboard things about the outside of the the cup to avoid burning my hand and went back to my office. I tried to sip some coffee and couldn't just yet. Too hot. So I set the cup on my desk. This was a cup from Starbucks and I discovered on the back of the cup yet one more place I could go to develop my intellectual horizons.

It seems Starbucks has started printing a series of insightful and erudite observations under the intriguing heading, "The Way I See It..." each one individually numbered. This one was "The Way I see It # 232." Below you will find the text of what I read.

You simply can't make someone
love you if they don't. You must
choose someone who already loves
you. If you choose someone who
does not love you, that is the sort
of love you apparently must want.

-- Israel Horowitz
Playwright/screenwriter, from
his new play, The Secret of
Mme. Bonnard's Bath

Or how about "The Way I See It #235," which makes a cool assessment of the collective wisdom of the American people.

In three decades of polling, I've
found that while individuals make
mistakes in judgment, America as a
whole rarely does. A collective
wisdom emerges from a poll or
vote that is far greater than the sum
of its parts.

--John Zogby
Pollster, president and CEO of
Zogby International

I fear that coffee at IHOP will never be quite as satisfying any longer. Something lost in the trade-off, I suppose. But I can live with this trade-off. I am getting something that will last infinitely longer than the dose of caffeine that I get from the coffee.

The Last Word

2007-10-11T08:28:00.000-06:00

For each of us, as we are about to leave our lives, there is going to be something very important that we will want to say at the very end. This is a marvelous story I heard on NPR this morning on that subject.

A woman recalled that her grandmother had embraced the internet late in her life. She loved to email her friends and send out text messages. It was her way of connecting in a richer way with the world. The old woman lived to age of 96.

On the last day of her life, the narrator and her mother were at the old woman's bedside. Her grandmother was desperately trying to say something, but couldn't. The woman moved closer to her grandmother and the last words the old woman said were: "Delete my email."

The narrator, being a dutiful grandchild did so without reading any of the emails and reformatted the hard drive.

A Thought Worth Remembering

2007-10-11T08:26:00.001-06:00

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Eleanor Roosevelt

A Reason To Celebrate

2007-09-20T21:59:00.001-06:00

I am writing again. I haven't done so, with any regularity for awhile. Now that I am working again the entire rhythm of my life is more regular.

I no longer have time to kill... which is good thing because having too much time on my hands was causing my life to deteriorate. I am wrenching myself off the couch and away from the television set. I am getting back to that life which is most normal for me.

I raise a glass of bubbly to this welcome turn of events. I truly have a great reason to celebrate. I am writing again.

Letting go... Lightening my baggage

2007-09-20T00:33:00.000-06:00

For most of my life, I collected books and articles, magazines and other sorts of memorabilia. In these objects, I wanted to capture moments in time. I wanted to hold on to bits and pieces of significant events that were happening in the world as the history of the world and my own life swept forward into time.

I have stopped doing that. Partly, a reason for that is that I now longer have the space to keep even the things that I have acquired to date. But that does not tell the whole story. There is more to why I stopped collecting than that.

I used to feel the need to "understand" the things I read in the newspaper or on television. Awful and terrible things happened in the world every day. I could never fully understand how human beings could do such things to each other, without feeling remorse or regret. Wars. Persecution of those who are different. Indifference to the pain and suffering of others. Greed. Unbridled ambition. The abuse of children. Forcing children to become soldiers fighting for truly dubious causes. Blind hatred and prejudice. The list goes on but I think you get the idea. The only thing that I came to understand is that this is no way to ever comprehend these actions and attitudes. Such things are beyond real comprehension.

Beyond that, in the last 61 years I have witnessed the same distressing things happening over and over again. The names change. The places change. The "noble causes" for which people choose to pursue their crusades change. But basic nature of the events and ideas are fundamentally the same.

So now it is time for me to start breaking up my collections and giving this accumulation of things away so that others can use them. I no longer need them to get a sense of what I see happening about me in the world. I cannot really do a lot to change the inexorable outcomes. And if I try to cry out to stop these injustices, only a small number of people will listen to me and even fewer will join me to change things. And even if I try to fundamentally change the course of a given situation, there is no guarantee that things will not once again deteriorate to what they were before. So all these books and articles no longer serve the purposes I originally bought them to serve.

Now I have to move from collecting things and move on to doing what little I can to make a difference in the world. Even having all these things, much less collecting new ones, will only serve to slow me down.

While I still can, I want to make difference in the world, even if it is only a small difference. That means I will need to have to rethink how I use my time, my energy and my money in the time I have left. Just having things like books or information won't help me hugely. I need to focus on touching the lives of other people in good way. I need to focus on taking action.

So if I am no longer an obsessive collector of things, it is only a sign that my priorities have changed. That is growth. That is personal evolution That is a good thing.

Back to Work

2007-09-20T00:16:00.000-06:00

Next Monday, I will be going back to work full-time for the first time since my job at EV1 ended last December. Certainly I am very relieved about that. But I am a little amazed at how easily I am making the transition back into the "real world" after ten eventful months.

In some ways, it feels like the last 10 months were a dream or something unreal. I totaled my car. I have evolved and have begun to feel more comfortable with my age... with no longer being part of those who are middle-aged.

I am certainly looking forward to being busy and doing constructive things on a regular basis again. I do not like to have a lot of time on my hands.

Somehow, I have the sense that returning back to a more structured life at work should require me to make some kind of transitional adjustment. That is just not happening. Instead this has been a very comfortable and easy segway. Maybe it is because I have changed for the better and taken some hard learned lessons to heart. Maybe it is because my priorities have become more real world and practical. Maybe it is because I no longer allow myself to be the dreamer that I have been for most of my life. Maybe it is simply because I am now ready to move on with my life, instead of running in place.

Whatever the combination of reasons things are what they are, I am ready for what comes next... and that is a welcome change.

Things Change... Again

2007-09-07T08:00:00.000-06:00

For a few months now, since the auto accident in January, we have had only one car. Because Marilyn goes to work early in the morning, I very often had to use the bus to get to town or to work. It really wasn't a huge inconvenience and very often I could get from point A to point B at certain hours of the day faster than if I were driving my own car. Certainly I spent a lot less on transportation as well, what with the high cost of gasoline now.

I actually liked riding the bus. I actually got some much needed exercise walking to the bus stop and on the other end of the ride, to wherever I was going. Someone else was doing the driving and that is no small thing when the traffic is inching along at 5 mph or at rush hour. The best part of traveling by bus was the very simple pleasure of being able to observe the other people on the bus or checking out the buildings and stores along the way, out of the window. You can't do that sort of thing if you are driving your own car. The "eyes on the road thing". I saw my world in a very different way over the last few months... a more leisurely way and certainly a less stressful way. And I learned that my life does not come to an end just because I no longer had a car just for myself to drive. Life goes on, no matter what.

We bought another auto. Two days ago, I was back in the driver's seat. It is back to the good and the bad that goes with driving a car. My life now has a very different feel to it. I can set my own schedule now and am no longer bound to the fixed schedule of the buses. I would like to say that everything is significantly better now, but I can't honestly say that. At most, I can only observe that life is just a little different than it was two days ago. I have made trade-offs and in the process, for all the gains that go with having a car of my own once again, there are going to be losses as well. Ah, well!

The Next Step...

2007-08-19T22:43:00.000-06:00

After having spent a considerable amount of time considering my future, I realized I have been asking the wrong questions.

Throughout our lives, we are evolving, changing, sometimes morphing into a person we have a hard time recognizing. When this happens, we have to reacquaint ourselves with the person we have become. Why we have changed is less important than what we have become. What was important and significant to us in the past may cease to be important or significant.

At the beginning of each of the major periods of our lives, we declare a mission statement. We lay out our most important goals and our individual unique takes on the world. In that mission statement, we define our place in the world and the larger scheme of things. Events and circumstances alter our perception what we really want out of life... about where we fit in.

I find myself having ended one period of my life and now beginning the last part of my brief strut upon the stage. I am not sure which of Shakespeare's Ages of Man I am now in. What I do know is that my old mission statement is no longer a valid statement of what I want or who I perceive myself to be.

I understand myself and the world better now. That is euphemistically called wisdom, not that it makes my understanding my situation significantly clearer. However, whatever I do not understand, I do know that my first order of business will be to rewrite my mission statement. After I have done that, I will at least know what I am trying to accomplish in the end game of my life.

The Shock of Recognition

2007-07-17T21:54:00.000-06:00

We are born. Our parents take care of us. We grow up and have children of our own and we take care of them. And later still, when our parents get old, we are once again caregivers, only now we are taking care of our parents. All too soon, we will be old and our children will be taking care of us. That is one of the cycles of our lives.

We experience a particular sadness in that part during which it becomes our responsibility to take care of our parents. The most obvious reason is that we have to watch the parents whom we love grow frailer and begin to fade, either physically or mentally. However, in some cases, we will feel a greater pain in discovering what sort of people our parents are. As children, we usually idolize our parents. Whatever they do or say, we do or say. Our parents set the standards which will play a critical role in our development. However, after we have gotten older and developed our own opinions and ideas, we begin to see our parents as they are. We recognize their flaws and defects. We discover their most irritating habits and sometimes, over time, will find them impossible to be around for too long a time. We must find some way to deal with our disillusionment with our parents. When it is our time to care for our aging parents, we discover that whatever sort of people they were, the most irritating of their habits are even more pronounced as they get older.

I am experiencing that now. My mother is 98 years old. At heart, she is a good person. But she is, and always has been, very selfish and self-centered. It has always been her belief that the world should wait on her, hand and foot. And she always wanted "only the best," even if the best of whatever she was buying wasn't something she could afford.. or even figure out how to use. Case in point: the Sony VCR she purchased, which was so overengineered that even I had problems using it. In the eight years she has owned it, she has yet to figure out how to play a VHS tape.

She has always wanted to live like the other one half of one percent lives. She never had the money to do that and as a result, most of what came her way in life disappointed her. As a matter of fact, there is not one person or thing or place with which she cannot find fault. My wife and I know that when the three of us go out to dinner somewhere, 99 times out of a 100, she will say she didn't like something about the restaurant, the meal or the service. We always steel ourselves for her inevitable comment, which casts a predictable pall on the evening.

Now my mother lives in a retirement high rise, probably one of the poshest in the city. Is she happy? Of course not, Since no one else on the planet lives up to her expectations, she has few friends and complains about being very lonely. She enjoys remarkably good health for someone her age even though she is suffering increasingly from dementia. She was never an easy person to be around. Now, she can be downright contankerous and irrational. My most enduring memories of my mother will be those of the time I have spent with her these last few difficult years. This is not how I wanted to remember my mother.

I am sixty years old now. Suddenly, I have become very conscious of who I am. I have made a lot of mistakes and have my own fair share of flaws. I wonder how my children see me as a person. Will my children be presented with an equally difficult challenge in dealing with me, when I can no longer take care of myself? Will I prove to be a real pain-in-the-behind that my mother has proven to be? I find that to be a truly sobering thought and a real impetus to make some important and probably difficult changes in my life while I still can. I am hopefully wiser now than I was earlier in my life. But just gaining wisdom is not enough to overcome whatever deficits I still possess.

How do we glean this wisdom? What has to happen to us so that what was incomprehensible to us in life, was finally made understandable? Bill Moyers, in an address he made just after the events of September 11, 2007, provides a clue to the answer. He was reminded by a friend of his that "...while the clock and the calendar make it seem as if our lives unfold hour by hour, day by day, our passage is marked by events-- of celebration and of crisis. They create memories which make in us a history..." The significant events in our relationship with our children and our parents will irrevocably alter the way we see them and the way they see us. Very often we will have to abandon illusions we had about them... to accept their flaws and their fallibility. More importantly, we will also have to accept certain truths about ourselves and to forgive ourselves for not being perfect either.

By its very nature, life is going to be challenging, at every step of the way. I have accepted that at some level I am going to disappoint the people I love the most. There are going to be moments that I will be unreasonable or difficult to deal with. As I see it, the ultimate challenge in the journey from birth to death, is to build loving and supportive relationships and to never take myself or my own importance too seriously. What is one measure of a successful life? It is to be able to be someone who can be taken care of or who takes care of others, with humility and grace. To be able to do that is no small feat.

Wonderfully Useless Info

2007-06-14T22:36:00.000-06:00

My wife asked me to run by Walgreens on the way home from work to pick up some medication for her. On the way to the pharmacy department, I passed by that rack of small format books from Hallmark that are catchy, cute and hugely overpriced. You know the titles I am talking about: Dads; Friends to the End; Fifty Things Worth Knowing.... These books are enticing, long on photos and usually short on text. They are the impulse buys because for some reason one or more of them "grabs us" and against our better judgment we purchase them.

Tonight I bought one called Schott's Original Miscellany, by Ben Schott. It is an accumulation of many diverse and completely unrelated bits of information and knowledge, in no particular order. Most of the information has little or no usefulness for us in our daily lives. One short section lists the knights of King Arthur's round table. Another section illustrtates graphically how to put on a sari. Yet another section explains how the revolutionary government that overthrew King Louis XIV revised the calendar, renaming the months in characteristically Francophilic ways. The author of this compilation doesn't even bother to include an index or a table of contents. So if you are looking for any one thing in particular, there is no easy way to find it.

You might say to yourself that this is not a very useful book, nor are the contents of the Miscellany worth the $14.95 asking price. But I found the book to be charming and interesting and fascinating. Open the book to any page and I can find a really random and fascinating bit of knowledge, which I can enjoy just for the fun of it. Knowledge does not always have to useful or practical. Maybe it is enough that it is entertaining.

Okay! So this slim volume does not have the functionality of say the phone directory. But for me, it has the same appeal for me as the annual Almanacs. These collections of all sorts of lists and facts expand our horizons and deepen our cultural literacy. Being exposed to some of these "useless" bits of knowledge, such as a list of commonly used Latin phrases and their meanings, enable us to read the newpaper, magazines or a book and understand more fully what is being communicated. Even better, understanding the meanings of a list of Yiddish words, might even help us to get a good laugh out of the punchline of a Jewish joke. So in a way these random fragments of human culture might have a usefulness all of their own.

There is so much to know in the world today. I don't know exactly what I will discover as I explore my new book. But I suspect it is going to be a lot of fun and even enlightening as I make my way through this random assortment of ideas. All in all, I think it was a pretty good buy.

Selectively Distorting the Stats to Sell Newspapers

2007-06-04T21:59:00.000-06:00

That newspapers distort the news should be no particular surprise to anyone. The other day, a headline for a story about the conflict in Iraq read:

U.S. Troops Kill Two Children and A Woman in Raid

That headline struck me as amazing in the fact it even appeared. First, it is in the nature of modern warfare that innocent civilians get caught in the crossfire. I am not being callous. Rather I am simply stating an obvious fact. Secondly, when US troops are sent out on actions, they do not do so with the premeditated intention of killing women, the elderly or children.

More importantly this headline ignores other statistics which will never appear on the front page of your home town paper, even though the numbers are obviously more revealing and significant in this particular conflict.

Have you seen this headline recently?:

Suicide Bomber Kills 20 children and 15 Women in Baghdad Market

Probably not. No one keeps a count, by gender and age, of how many Iraqis are killed every day in some bombing in a crowded market place. Please note that these victims are murdered not by Americans, but by their fellow Arabs... by their own neighbors and co-religionists. For most news stories, it is usually sufficient to list the total of dead and wounded. Anymore, such bombings are so commonplace that most of us just sort of gloss over the article, if we even bother to read it.

I am in no way attempting to diminish the needless deaths of two Iraqi children and an Iraqi woman. I am only suggesting that the loss of their lives in no way gives us any true sense of perspective about this egregiously needless conflict.

However, I would like to put forward a modest proposal. Ask your local newspaper to keep a daily count, with a breakout by children, women and men, on the number of people who are murdered every day in Iraq by their Arab compatriots. That would put the death of two children and one woman in a more understandable perspective and give us a better sense of who to cast in the role of the bad guys.

That Thing About Getting Back on the Bicycle

2007-06-01T22:34:00.000-06:00

What does one do, when one's life momentarily stalls out? When one finds no joy or pleasure in doing the things that one was passionate about doing? When life grinds to a halt and one feels nothing... not pain or joy, not passion or complete emptiness... just sort of numb.

First, stop where you are and for a moment do nothing at all. Stop putting one foot in front of the other, mechanically, on the theory if all else fails, it is important just to keep moving forward.

Then, dredge out of memory the hard-learned lessons about life. Start with a list of the things you need to be doing, including the things about which you are passionate. Especially the things about which you are passionate, and include those things on your list of things to do.

Remember that you live life one minute at a time, one hour at a time... one day at a time. Reset the internal rhythm of your life to living in the moment, from moment to moment, hour to hour. While you are doing that, make note of what you are feeling. And make an effort to feel something... anything. Search for the small victories along the way. Enjoy them. Revel in them.

Start with small increments of time. Survive those small increments of time, one after the other. Then, when the rhythm of your life begins to return to a more normal pace, stretch out the increments of time, until you are once again living from day to day, joyously and passionately, conscious of being alive again.

I am thinking aloud, trying to work myself out of a mental slump. This mental process works for me, sometimes. It might work for you. I hope it does.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman

An Offering to My Muse

2007-05-24T22:26:00.000-06:00

I honestly cannot remember when I posted my last entry. My Muse must have felt neglected at minimum, and justifiably upset and angry at worst. It will be necessary for me to make amends to my Muse, because she plays a very important role in my life. She inspires me... moves me to write my thoughts or stories or an observation. More than that, She compels me to write. She is a very demanding mistress.

I wanted her to know that it wasn't for lack of something to write about. Yesterday, I remembered that a long time ago I saw a show on television or maybe read a short story about a time when heroes... people who wanted to save the world from itself, had to go underground. They were pursued by the powers that be and silenced when they were caught. About a man sent to find and silence a certain hero-in-the-making. Something about the sense that the best any of us can do is to hold things together, before mankind screws thing up irrevocably and completely. Also there is the story about Pompeii and the archaeological dig. I have wanted to sit down and write that one for a very long time. And the story of the nervous man on the bus who has a conversation with a seemingly very straightforward and ordinary man... their conversation. So I do have things to write about... things to say.

It would seem that my own life has become sufficiently messy to force me to bring it back under control. So the practical, pragmatic side of me has not permitted me to steal away time for something so "secondary" as posting to my blog.

As usual, as I sit here writing tonight, I am borrowing from my sleep time. But that other side of me... that part of me which coerces me into doing the things I enjoy doing at the expense of doing more "important" things... that side of me has momentarily seized control of my being.

I am reminded that I must at least acknowledge my Muse, even if it is only a pale apololgy... a poor offering at best. I have not forgotten that I am, among other things, a writer. When one has been given the ability to communicate ideas with value to the world, there is an implied obligation to develop and to use that gift to do some good in the world.

With this posting, let it be known that I am back. There will be more pieces to come very soon. I hope that my Muse will accept this offering. And I hope that you, my readers, will forgive me also for my recent absence. I have not forgotten my obligation to use my writing skills. I have just been a little overwhelmed, timewise, of late.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman

Routines... Comfort Food for the Soul

2007-05-09T08:16:00.000-06:00

So often, I have felt boxed in by my routine. It sometimes becomes soul deadening. I can begin to feel like I am trapped... a prisoner to a fixed schedule, and all I want to do is to bust out of it and to just do something different and new.

But the "routine" can be a good thing. My life is not always in balance. Sometimes events and circumstances spin completely out of control. Let's face it. Life can get messy from time to time and when that happens, I find comfort in my established routines at work or at home. I can find certainty and predictability and a sure sense of where I need to be at a certain time. There is a certainty about what should be happening and what I should be doing. If I do not always control every aspect of my routine, at least I need to know what to expect.

My life becomes difficult to maneuver when the routine changes or falls apart. That is how things are for me now. Suddenly I have time on my hands again and now I must decide how to restructure my days and how to once more make productive use of my time. I am drifting from one moment to the next, from one day to the next.

So now the task before me is to rebuild my life yet one more time. It is not that putting some kind of structure back into my life is an especially difficult thing to do. For me, the challenge is to get past the mental malaise and get myself focused once again on what I have to accomplish next. And then I have to make a plan and take that first step in carrying out the plan. Probably the hardest part of this process is getting past just thinking about what needs to be done. Making the decision to act is the toughest thing to do. Once I have done that, the rest is easy.

So I pretty much know that I need to seriously go out and build my business, so I can pay the bills. Time to pull out the calendar, set a date and time to get moving and get a good night's sleep the night before, so that I will be wide-awake and very sharp that day. And on that day, things will fall back into place for me. I will have a new routine to provide the structure for my life and to give me a reason to get up each morning.

Nothing is all good or all bad. In fact, about the only thing we really need to do if our routines become a little too predictable or a bit stale is to change them up just a little. Or maybe all it takes is to occasionally do something different, like eat out or go to the movies or get out of town for a few days.

The way I see it, I am damned if I have structure in my life and damned if I don't. I prefer the former case, because with a structured life, I am like that fellow who is out shopping, who finds himself standing in front of the map of the mall. Somewhere on that map is that small label with an arrow that states, "You are here." Even though I may complain about my routine, from time to time, at least, at any particular moment, I know where I should be, what I need to be doing and why I should be doing that particular thing.

Where in the World Am I and How Did I Get Here?

2007-05-05T09:06:00.000-06:00

A very short piece of fiction.

For a moment, Leo did not move. He couldn't. Something really extraordinary had just happened to him One moment, he was sitting at a table at Starbucks drinking his customary coffee, munching on his scone and reading the New York Times. The next moment, he found himself sitting at what appeared to be a bus stop. The people around him were speaking English... but not American English and they dressed a bit differently then the folks did in Houston. This street was definitely not in Houston or Texas or even the United States.

He tried to gather his thoughts and try to make some sense of this. "They have an English accent," he thought to himself. "England. So maybe I am in England."He had seen a street like this once. Leo searched his memory. Had it been in a movie maybe? A movie...? "Oh yes. Now I remember. It was in Love, Actually," he recalled, "in the scene in which the Prime Minister is going door to door to try to find out where the gir with whoml he has fallen in love lives." So it was England.

He had seen a street like this once. Leo searched his memory. Had it been in a movie maybe? A movie...? "Oh yes. Now I remember. It was in Love, Actually," he recalled, "in the scene in which the Prime Minister is going door to door to try to find out where the girl he has fallen in love with lives." So it was England.

He stood up and shivered a little. There was a slight chill in the air. He looked to his left and across the street and to the right. All the houses were scrunched together, one next to the other as far as the eye could see. Row houses. He had see houses like that in Boston... but this definitely wasn't Boston. No one here had that signature "Baaston" accent. So where the hell was he? Was this really a street somewhere in England?

The people around him were moving towards the curb as a bus approached from the left. It was one of those double-decker buses he had seen in movies and photos. Definitely British. So, one question answered. He stood back from the crowd as everyone else was boarding the bus. Better he should stay right here and figure out what the hell was happening to him.

Leo was the sort of fellow who always had to be in control of his life and this was very disconcerting to him to not even know where he was and what he was doing here.

Suddenly, he became aware that he was holding something in his right hand. He looked and discovered that he was holding a photograph of a row house just like the ones on this particular street. It was a three story affair, dark brown brick and definitely very old. He studied the house trying to recall if he had ever been there before? No, not that he could recall.

He decided to sit back down on the bench again. Seemed to be as good a thing to do as anything else under the circumstances. "This is really weird. I have absolutely no idea of what is happening to me."

Suddenly, he became very concerned. "I hope I remembered to bring my passport!..." He caught himself immediately after thinking that. "I cannot believe that I just thought that. Here I am... somewhere... in a totally surreal situation, and I am starting to stress out over whether or not I brought my passport!... For God's sake, Leo, get a grip on yourself."

Once more composed, he reassessed his situation. "This is totally ridiculous. Totally. I hope that nobody put something weird into my coffee, because this is getting completely out of hand."

So he just sat there for a bit, waiting to see if this street and the houses and the people all around him would just go away... and he would once again find himself reading his paper and drinking his coffee. But nothing changed.

Leo stood up again and surveyed the street more closely. He scanned the houses on the other side of the street to see if any one of them seemed to be familiar. Starting with the houses on the left, his eyes moved from one house to the next. When he reached the house which was directly across the street, he stopped. Leo tilted his head a bit to the right, as was his habit. He glanced down at the photo and back at the house. It was the same house. It was the same house!

"Go knock on the door and see what happens. Can't be any stranger that what has happened so far."

After checking to see that no traffic was coming from either way, he crossed the street. He walked up the six steps to the landing at the top and rang the doorbell. He heard footfalls and then the lock being disengaged. The door opened. An old lady with gray hair and a pleasant demeanor stood there, dressed in a pale blue house dress with small white flowers. She momentarily studied him and then said, "Good afternoon. How can I help you?"

"I am sorry to disturb you. I am not exactly certain where I am." He paused, feeling very awkward, but then continued. "You see, I found myself on this street... and I am not exactly sure how I got here and I was holding a photo of your house...." Another pause. " I know this probably sounds crazy. The thing is I am trying to figure out what is going on and the only clue I have is that I have a photo of your house. I thought maybe you might know something that could help me." He stopped. She must think he is a lunatic... a total crazy, and in a moment she was going to call the police.

"I see," she said, thoughtfully. After a brief pause, during which she seemed to have made a decision about him, she continued, "Well, you do seem to have a problem, don't you. My name is Emily Beasley. And your name is....?"

"Leo. Leo Walters, Mrs. Beasley," he answered.

"Well, Leo Walters, why don't you come in and we'll have some tea. Perhaps between the two of us, we can begin to sort this thing out."

A Stranger Even To Myself

2007-05-03T22:58:00.000-06:00

A lot happening today. Preparations for Mom's 98th birthday. My brother, Charles and Jackie, his wife, in town. A personal commitment for tomorrow night.

Had dinner with them and with my mother tonight. This evening felt a little strange. Over the last several years, I have transformed myself into this pretty efficient person... this administrative kind of fellow. And the sort of place I find myself in often now and preoccupied with is a bank. Who is this person? I do not know this person. My demeanor has changed. The way I handle myself has changed. Why? More than just the anti-depressant I take and the therapy I went through and the auto crash... I have become another person. I have made a major paradigm shift in my thinking.

Tonight I was trying to remember what it was like to be the old me. I couldn't.

I have become the person I set out to become. A consistent person. A reliable person. A self-assured and confident person. A more disciplined person. A happier person. A more stable person. A person who has achieved some balance in his life. A person who has developed a sixth sense about having reached a point at which his plate is beginning to get too full. A person who is prioritizing and scheduling only what needs to be done or which he enjoys doing, for the most part.

Who the hell is this person? Now when I look in the mirror, I do not exactly recognize the person that I see. Of course it is me. But it is the new improved me. And it is only now, after the changes, that I am beginning to fully understand who and what I have become. Not so much a stranger in a strange land, as much as a stranger inhabiting my body... a stranger I must come to know and understand, because that stranger is me.

Some Random Thoughts, Sunday Apr 29 2007

2007-04-29T23:50:00.000-06:00

A Kaleidoscope World

The world is changing so fast and the rate of change is accelerating. Especially in technology. And with technological change our culture evolves and morphs completely beyond recognition sometimes. What we assume to be true or real overnight becomes untrue or invalid. Our cultural landscape becomes unrecognizable and with changes coming constantly and so quickly, we can easily become disoriented. It is as if we are trying to make sense of our world each day by looking through the eyepiece of a kaleidoscope and trying to make sense of the changing pattern of colors and shapes that we see.

The Tsunami World of the Information Age

Pundits have called this time the age of information. So much information. Too much information for any one person to ever be able to process. When my family and I visited Disneyworld in Orlando, one of our group and I took in the ESPN pub on the Boardwalk, near Epcot. On the walls throughout the watering hold were about fifty television screens, each with a different ball game or sport event. It was just too much to try to take in, so I had to filter out all but one screen that had a specific football game. It would have been simply overwhelming to try to absorb the input about each game or event being telecast in that room.

Except for a few isolated places on this very small planet, there are few places in which we will not be bombarded by images and voices and sounds from every angle. The danger is that at every turn we will be swept off our feet by a torrant of images and sounds and words. Every time we try to pick ourselves up and regain our psychological balance, another wave sweeps in and throws us off balance yet one more time. What is real? Who is telling the truth? Does the data support the dire predictions we are presented with? What is important and what is insignificant? Who is good and who is bad? What is good and what is bad? What is real and what is just a mirage? I think this is less an age of information than it is an age of misinformation. Overloaded with conflicting claims, we must sort through all the media noise to sort out a truth that works for us. We probably "know" little more than we did before, but we certainly have a lot more alleged "facts" to sort through before we can settle upon our own sense of the reality of the situation.

Choosing Our Words Carefully

Our uttered words, our written words, the images we create... they all can hurt and injure us and others and our world. We have to choose our words carefully and we have to be aware of the effect upon others that the images we create have. Carefully tailored words can lead a nation into a needless war. Carefully chosen words can bring healing to other people. Images and words, well crafted, can bring understanding or can instigate others to act on hatred, prejudice and the aggressive impulse. A song softly sung can lull a child to sleep. A song earnestly sung can mobilize an entire nation to betray whatever civilized impulses and become a nation of morally devoid and ethically twisted individuals. Deutchland. Deutchland. Uber alles.

We must ever be mindful of what we say and what we do, because every word we utter and every action we take will change the world, if only by a little. We cannot take back anything we say or do. The genie, either beneficent or malevolent, will have already escaped the bottle and what follows will become a matter of recorded history. When something bad happens because of us, we will lamely say, "But I did not mean for that to happen. I certainly did not want that to happen. Can't you see that?" Few will believe us, and rightly so.

Our world and human society... everything exists because of a delicate balance of many things. One misstep on our part and that balance can be disturbed. Like a tight rope walker, we have to move though this life a bit more carefully, taking great care in how we act... in what we say, lest something that we do will will become that last straw that breaks the camel's back.

A New Reflection in the Mirror

2007-04-19T22:35:00.000-06:00

I have changed. In previous posts to my blog, I have observed that I have evolved into a very different person than I was before. But it was only today that I gleaned some insight into the new person into which I have morphed.

Best to start out with to the sort of person I was. I had real issues with self-esteem. I was always feeling that in what I did or said, I disappointed other people. There was nothing I could ever do or say that would make any measurable difference in the world, ever. I cannot tell you how many times I felt the need to justify my existence in the universe to other people... and sometimes even to myself. I pursued either the wrong goals or certifiably unattainable dreams and aspirations. Or at least dreams and aspirations which carry with them a considerable personal cost. All I knew is that for most of my life I wanted to be something "big." I wanted a place in history... I wanted to make a difference... in literature or business or anywhere. I tried to live up to the accomplishments of my brothers, both of whom are very talented and very successful. I felt unworthy or praise and when I received it, I felt very uncomfortable. For that, my therapist suggested the simplest of solutions. She told me to simply say, "Thank you." and then to just move one. I was an unhappy mess who pushed myself into a near nervous breakdown about four or five years ago.

Then one day about three years ago, after a very productive year and a half of intensive therapy, I was finally capable of making the difficult decision to do whatever it was going to take to turn my life around and to finally be able to move on in my life. So I just took things one day at a time. I tried to figure things out a little bit at a time and over time my life began to come together and make more sense with each passing day.

Now I am doing free-lance work in business and starting to build a modestly successful business. Once again, I am getting involved in doing things that I truly enjoy. And with regard to relationships, things are good and getting better by the day. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are slowly filling in the empty spots. Now I know who I am and who I am not. I know what I like and what I don't. And I have found out where I fit in the universe and I have learned to make the most of who I am. Most importantly, I now know that I will make a difference in the world, but I will make a difference in my own unique way. My being here on this planet will make a difference, even if it is only a small one. I feel good about myself. Whatever anyone else thinks of me now, oh well! At this moment, life is good. Now as I look in the mirror each morning, I like the person I see.

For the longest time, I was having a harder and harder time remembering what I was like just a few years ago. I was so busy living in the moment that I didn't give the past very much thought. Today I received an email from someone who was very pivotal in my life in the difficult years just before I crashed and burned. Suddenly a lot of memories flooded back into my brain and I had memory flashes of the painfully limited person I was not so long ago. My past stood side by side with my present for just a moment and only in that brief moment did I realize how truly far I have come in just a few short years.

I am looking in the mirror of life right now. I am seeing a new reflection in the mirror. I very much like what I see. Very soon, this new image will be one that I will expect to see. And the one that used to stare back at me will become an increasingly distant memory.

Is this what happens when we grow and change over time? At least in part. We begin to see ourselves a little bit differently with the passage of each day. After awhile, we will have reinvented ourselves and transformed ourselves into people who are reasonably functional human beings. Our past remembrances of what we once looked like just fade away, along with the perceived failures, the pain, the sadness, the depression or the unhappiness that we had experienced at the time. I call that a good thing.

I am very thankful that I was able to muster the resolve, the courage and the strength to risk making the difficult rite of passage one goes through at times like that. I am thankful I had people who loved me and stood by me while this was happening. Not every one does. Not everyone succeeds. Bottom line: I am a very fortunate fellow. That fellow I see in the mirror now... not too shabby. Not at all!

Blindsided

2007-04-07T08:21:00.000-06:00

Every situation in which we find ourselves that involves other people demands that we be acutely aware of what is happening around us.

We have to listen closely to what other people are saying... the nuance of what is being said, the words used, the tone of the other person's voice. We have to always be looking to see what is happening from moment to moment. Most importantly, we have to always be acutely aware of the relational connections between us and the important individuals who play a role in our lives. These people could be in our family or at our office. They could be in our social circle or among those who are among our adversaries.

It is so easy for us to be blindsided in life. No one wants to have to constantly be scanning the people who are nearby to divine somehow what are their intentions or motivations or mood. I do not want to live my life constantly concerned that I have said something wrong or have made a strategic error or that I am witnessing the prelude to the sky falling down. But after a really bumpy day at work yesterday, I am reminded that neither can I obliviously go through the day blind to the realities of the immediate human environment.

In any group, certain people build relationships. A cluster of people are connected, sometimes in very subtle ways. The nature of that connection is not always evident, nor is the depth of that connection. If one says something to one member of that cluster, what was said reverberates across the entire group. And if one is dealing with one member of that group, even if nothing is said, it must be assumed that the other members of that group are observing the moment and judging what they see or hear. A misstep with one person is a misstep with all of them, even if what happened has to do with only one specific person.

So how am I do I protect myself from being blindsided in for example a business situation. If I am working, for instance, with a small group of people, I need to be aware of the ineterrelational dynamics of that group. Do they know each other? If I am dealing with one person within the group, does that person discuss our business with the others? Is anything that happens to one member of the group essentially known to all the members of the group? And if I am dealing with different members of the group on unrelated matters, does a problem with one member of the group become a problem with some of the other people in the group?

The answer can be yes to any or all of the above questions. The trick is to assume nothing, when it is necessary to do business either separately or jointly with a close-knot group of people. Tread lightly whatever one does. If one makes a commitment to one member of the group, always follow through with that commitment, because failing to do so will have an impact upon one's relationship with the other members of the group. They are watching what one does and remembering when one fails to do so. One strategically critical misstep and one might as well not try to do work for anyone in that group.

So how do I prevent myself from being blindsided or making unnecessary mistakes? How do I create the impression that I am a credible person in whatever it is that I am endeavoring to do with other people? How do I successfully sustain relationships with other people that work? How do I get others to see me as a "successful" person? Ain't easy. And the most carefully constructed persona can be destroyed or severely damaged in a heartbeat. But it can be done.

I have learned that there are certain unwritten rules about what it takes to make it in this life. It is important to be on time when one makes an appointment. It is critical to be as honest and forthright as it is possible to be. It is critical that I do the best that I am able to do under the circumstances. It is always important to communicate effectively with other people and keep them posted about what is going on. When I have to work with a group of people, I need to know the nature of that group and what the internal relationships are within that group. I can assume nothing and must always be on my guard not to cop an attitude with people. It is important to be consistent, in the sense of just doing what one is supposed to be doing and not perform erratically, sometimes doing good work and sometimes doing sloppy work. it is important to value one's reputation, because a good reputation is hard to win and easy to lose. I suppose there are more of these rules than I have included here.

I am sometimes blindsided, like I was yesterday at work. Ultimately, I am beginning to feel that especially in the work place I can never let my guard down, even for a moment. I will break one of those unwritten rules, inadvertently, and I my pay a very high price for having done so. Something happened which I did not see coming.

What all of us have to remember, however, is that sometimes we will be blindsided, because certain eventualities are simply not avoidable. Something may be taking place well beyond the scope of what we can know and we become aware of whatever is happening unexpectedly. When that happens, it is simply unavoidable. Ultimately that is how update our database and revise our understanding of our realities. At any rate, when that does happen, it is not a reason to get bent out of shape. The one rule of life that I failed to mention earlier is that shit happens. Oh well! When it does and we are knocked flat on our derriere, the only thng we can do is to dust ourselves off, pick ourselves up and move on.

An Addition to the Unabridged Geek Dictionary

2007-04-05T23:56:00.000-06:00

This acronym is usually used when the the computer user cannot get the computer or the software to do what he or she wants them to do. The problem is that the computer and the software are working perfectly fine. It is something else which is gumming up the works.

PICNIC: Problem In Chair, Not In Computer

So What's The Deal With Global Warming?

2007-04-05T23:05:00.000-06:00

I am halfway through the book, State of Fear, by Michael Crichton. He presents the scenario that the global warming phenomena is not supported by the existing weather data and other relevant data. Crichton asserts that factions in the environmental community have convinced the public and leaders in government that the phenomena is real and poses an imminent threat to mankind. Michael Crichton has the habit of telling cautionary tales about the limitations and misjudgments of science and scientists. Generally he carefully researches his material before writing his books, so I am tempted to lend some credence to his allegations.

This week in Time Magazine, the cover story is about this
very threat and offers 51 things that you and I can do to
head off what are supposed to be the devastating effects of global warming (G.W.) With the huge success of the movie, Happy Feet, the penguin on the cover is sure to resonate with everyone these days. The popular press is fully on the bandwagon to sound the alarm and this particular issue of Time is just one example of this support for the notion that G.W. is, in fact, an unfortunate reality that most of us would really like to ignore if at all possible.

Frankly, at this point, I don't know what to believe. I know only enough about G.W. to be really dangerous. After having read a fair chunk Crichton's book, I am beginning to have my own doubts on the subject. I feel like I need to drop all the extraneous stuff I am doing and do some very serious research on G.W. Right! Like I actually have the time to do that these days when my life has started to accelerate, sometimes beyond my control.

Vice-President Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth,
compounds my confusion. Although the book is heavily
graphic and uses very trendy page layouts, it still makes some pretty persuasive arguments for dangers that G.W. poses to the world. But then I don't have ready access to the data that supported the allegation of sweeping changes on this planet caused by global warming, so how do I know if even Al Gore's work is not a piece of slanted hype on the subject? Well... I don't. But this is important enough of an issue that I really feel that I need to get a better handle on what is true and what is just plain self-serving hogwash.

I am dismayed by this dilemma. It is important for me to know what is really happening out there on the planet Earth. So now, if I were suddenly to find myself in possession of a sweet amount of money so that I could support any one of the factions on either side of the arguments over G.W., I would probably hold off on doing that, at least for awhile.

So what do I think about global warming? I don't know. I still don't even have a clear sense which side is more right. It is evident that something is happening all over planet Earth that bodes badly for all of us. What is that something? It is a combination of a lot of things all happening at the same time. The forces that drive what is happening are a complex set of phenomena that mankind is only beginning to understand.

What am I going to do about this? I am going to educate myself about Global Warming. I need to know what is going on, because if I am going to start prepare myself and my family for the potentially devastating effects of global warming, I need to determine for myself that G.W. exists and that it poses a certifiable threat to all of us. Because I just don't know what is true and what isn't just yet, I am going to just go on living my life as best I can, become a bit more educated on the matter of our weather and if push comes to shove, head for the high ground when the waters start rising. However for the moment, you will find me going to work and doing the things that I have to do... and when I can squeeze out some time, I will be in the internet or at the library, trying to sort out fact from fiction when it comes to global warming.

Rejoining the Ranks of the Sleep-Deprived

2007-04-02T07:23:00.000-06:00

My business is starting to take off now. Gone are the days when I wasn't working and could enjoy the luxury of getting a good nights' sleep. That, my dear reader, has become a thing of the past.

These days, I actually have to be someplace by at least 9 AM to meet with someone, time being money. So with too much to do and too few hours in the day now, it becomes a question of what sorts of things that I do am I willing to give up so that I can get eight hours of sleep. This is a process of reduction. Do I give up some of my writing time or the time I spend with friends/family? Do I watch less television? Do I look the other way when the house gets a little messy? What can I live without?

Someone suggested to me this is growing pains. Just think about it. If that statement is true, then growth in my life means that I will have fewer choices and options. That I have to pick and choose among the things, either professional or personal, that I want to do or to pursue. That's growth?

It all comes down to a choice between living a fuller live and getting less sleep... and learning to accept the limitations on the possibilities in my life and getting a full night's sleep. I guess I didn't read that clause in the contract for my life when I was born. This has taught me to read the fine print now each and every time now. I have learned that live is never easy, but having to make this choice is downright difficult and sometimes very painful.

A Little Known Fact About Passover

2007-04-01T15:53:00.000-06:00

Lines That Were Cut From Wicked, The Musical

2007-04-01T15:31:00.000-06:00

Wicked, The Musical, returned to Houston this past week to the Hobby Center. When the playwright crafts the play, he does a lot of editing and refining to create the final book for the play. What you see below is one of the lines that got cut from the first draft of the work. I don't know. It could have worked, don't you think?

Urban Voyager

2007-03-27T22:25:00.000-06:00

Heaven help me, I love being in the glass and concrete and steel canyons of downtown Houston. More and more I enjoy the opportunity to take care of business amidst the soaring office towers that reach up to touch the sky. There is something exhilarating about walking amidst these majestic giants. There is a throbbing rhythm of the cars and buses going by. I feel alive here.

And the wonderful public art... those oversized sculptures of every sort. In front of one building is a forty foot high bass fiddle, with the suggestion of the player behind. In front of the Hobby Center are two sculptured columns with human faces formed at different levels looking out at this tremendous city.

At yet another corner is a delightfully modern art sculpture... definitely tongue-in-cheek which provides a different scenario from each side of the piece.

There are theaters and restaurants, chic shops... I feel energized when I am in the downtown area and I feel alive.

Maybe that happens in part because there one walks from one place to place. It is too much trouble to go two blocks over or maybe three in a car to conduct business. I prefer to do without it if possible, because life takes on a different pace when I am walking. I become aware of things that are just a blur in my peripheral vision when I am driving there. I discover the small things I miss otherwise: the extraordinary variety of people I see, wonderful architectural details, a fountain or a statue I had missed before, numerous images of buildings and signs piled one on top of the other as I survey the urban landscape in one direction or another. And the smells of the food from the restaurants I walk by are enough to drive me insane. They all smell so good.

Long story short, I experience the world about me so much more intensely when I am downtown. The sights and sounds and smells and colors and the crowds of people... a wonderful kaleidescope of them all mixed together, never the same from one moment to another, thrill the senses in an unforgettable way.

Irene Ryan... A Memory

2007-03-22T11:03:00.000-06:00

I was rummaging through a scrapbook of miscellaneous clippings I have saved over the years. I came across an obit from the New York Times of May 6, 1973. Irene Ryan, who played Granny on the hit TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies, created the memorable character of the grandmother in the hit Broadway show, Pippin. When she passed away in 1973, Bob Fosse, the noted choregrapher, wrote this loving homage to this wonderful actress. I wanted to share this obit with you. Hope you enjoy it.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman.

It Went to the His State of Mind...

2007-03-22T01:08:00.000-06:00

A Fictional Moment...

I had been interviewing about a dozen or so men and women to handle some subcontracted accounting work for my company. My company is a small company, so I only needed someone on a part-time basis. One particular applicant stuck in my mind because looking at him, I had the distinct sense that he really needed the work. It was after he gave me his business card and I looked at it that I knew that I was absolutely right in my assessment.

On Self-Help Junkies and the People Who Write Books for Them

2007-03-15T11:04:00.000-06:00

Now that I am working again, I am coming face to face with that problem of effectively managing my time well. Truth to tell, I am a confirmed self-help junkie, so the first thing I did was go to my book shelf and pull down my most primo self help Bible to refresh my memory how to do that.

When I had a lot of time on my hands, that book sat on the shelf gathering dust, exactly when I should have been using it. Now that I am feeling the time crunch once more, I pay homage to its wisdom and advice again.

I have found that self-help books are like the medication that we are supposed to take to treat an illness or to stay healthy. The medication works only if we take it as it is meant to be used. The same goes for these self-help books that are sitting on my shelves. I must have at least 10 to 15 of them sitting there and I have probably not cracked open more than five of six of them.

At the book store, I would come across a really interesting book on some aspect of self-help that came from a completely different angle. Great, I would tell myself. Maybe I can get a handle of keeping my place clean or managing my time better or realizing my full potential. You know, making those critical paradigm shifts that will propel me into the successful person I was meant to be. And with sincere intentions of reading it, I would buy it and put it on the shelf. Usually, that is about as far as I got with my resolution to improve myself with that particular book.

I think that the men and women who write these books count on other people doing just the same thing. The idea is to sell the book. To the authors, it would be really nice if people actually read their books. But if the readers out there just buy them off the shelf, that would be okay too, because then the authors of these books will be able to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Today, I am going to try to make good on my resolution to actually use my copy of this book on time management. Hey, it is a start. And maybe this time, if I actually take the medication... er, I mean read the book, maybe it will actually do me some good this time.

Back among the living... thinking aloud

2007-03-11T21:50:00.000-06:00

Well, I know that things have come full circle. The bumpy days... the chaotic and bad days are behind me for the time being. Tomorrow, Monday comes once again and I will go to work again. I will then come home. I will work on the items on my to do list. And I will do all this again on Tuesday and then Wednesday, etcetera.

I am back in the grind. For most of us, that is our usual mode of living. That is... we have a boatload of stuff to do and just enough time to take care of just some of the items on that list of things to be done. The ones we don't get to today go onto our manana list. At the end of the day, even in the most normal times of our lives, we will end the day with a manana list.

To keep up with getting things done, even nominally, that is my challenge now. No more time on my hands to kill. I guess I need to pull my copy of Time Management from the Inside Out off the book shelf and reread it. Self-help book time.

All this is good. Right? My life back on track and moving forward. How can that be a bad thing? Anyway, that is what I am telling myself. As Rosanna Rosannadanna always said: If it is not one thing, its another. So relatively normal is good.

Dearest reader, it is time for me to crash. And yes, as the venerable Scarlett O'Hara said: Tomorrow is another day. So good night and goodbye.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman

A Review of the Masquerade Theatre Production of Parade, the Broadway Musical

2007-03-09T00:12:00.000-06:00

The Masquerade Theater brought Houston, Texas an encore production of Parade at its new home at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, from February 23, 2007 to March 3, 2007. They billed the show as "The most important Broadway show you've never seen."

If one just read about the show, Parade would come off as a most improbable candidate for the critical acclaim it received during its brief run on Broadway. In 1999, Parade won the New York Drama Critics Award as best musical. In the same year, the show also won the Tony Awards for best score and for best book, by Alfred Uhry. The show received these kudos even though it is built on the very obscure story of Leo Frank, who was wrongly accused, tried and convicted for the murder of a girl, Mary Phagan, who worked at the plant. Additionally, this was the first major outing as a Broadway composer for Jason Robert Brown,
who had shown great promise in his earlier revue, Songs for a New World. The notable Harold Prince, who co-conceived and directed Parade, must have had the prophetic sense that Mr. Brown brought something special to the task. Apparently he was on the money.

Everett Evans, of the Houston Chronicle, in his review, beautifully summarized the story told in the play.

Set in Atlanta in 1913, Parade introduces Frank as a transplanted Brooklyn Jew, working as superintendent at a pencil factory, ill at ease among Southerners. When a 13-year old factory girl is found raped and murdered, Frank's outsider status makes him a convenient scapegoat. Opportunist politicians [and an opportunistic reporter as well] stoke the flames of anti-Semitism and lingering resentment toward Yankees 50 years after the Civil War. Frank finds himself railroaded into a murder conviction built on false testimony. [Picture to the right: Leo and Lucille Frank]

The play also tells a second, very poignant story, that parallels the events of the trial. Leo Frank and his wife, Lucille enjoyed a polite but very strained relationship. As was the custom of the times in Jewish families, theirs was an arranged marriage. He was a more traditional, Northern Jew. She was a very assimilated Southern Jew, who fit easily into the setting of Atlanta as much as much as Leo did not. As the play progressed, she became his most ardent supporter, championing his cause. In the course of the trial and its aftermath, she grew into a strong woman, whose dedicated efforts eventually resulted in Governor John Slaton commuting Leo's sentence from death by hanging to life in prison. In the course of their collective ordeal, Leo and Lucille came to know and to love each other and find the closeness they had never enjoyed before that. Theirs is a haunting story, which ended tragically. On August 16, 1915, a "lynch mob" of some local officials seized Leo Frank from his cell at the prison at which he was incarcerated and the next morning, hung him on outskirts of Marietta, Ga. Leo Frank was buried in Brooklyn, N.Y. on August 20th, three days later.

If I attend a performance of a Broadway musical, I find that I can still have an enjoyable experience even if the cast is not up to par or if the stagecraft leaves something to be desired. However, if the book for play, or the music or lyrics for the songs are lacking in a significant way, I come away with the sense that I had had a less than thrilling experience. Without these elements, the evening will be a bust.

Like a lot of the other folks who attended this show, I came knowing very little about the show, the music, the lyrics or the relative merits of the play itself. As a practice, I ignore the reviews and never listen to the cast album before I see the show for the first time. All I knew was that the subject matter was the trial of Leo Frank. That's it.

But I have to say that this show was an unexpected surprise. I did not expect it to be such a good play... such a powerfully written play... such an intensive play. I did not expect that it would engage me so completely from beginning to end. Except for a single scene at the beginning of the second act, I never felt the show was slow or off the mark. One scene flowed seamlessly into the next. I was drawn into the world of Atlanta in 1913 and 1914 and I could almost feel like I was there, appalled at what I was witnessing and yet, unable to alter the inexorable outcome. Alfred Uhry, the author, is no stranger to Broadway and he brought his considerable experience and talent to writing this amazing show.

When I read in the playbill that Jason Robert Brown was the composer and lyricist, it did not immediately ring a bell. In seeing the show, I could discern that this fellow possessed uncommon talent. The music was alternatively raucous, poignant, lightly delightful, soaringly dramatic, introspective and wonderfully inventive. The lyrics were equally inventive and served to vividly create the characters for us and to build in our minds the overwhelmingly poisonous environment of Atlanta at the time, the context in which this trial and the aftermath took place.
Helping to flesh out the characters, to set the tone and context of the play itself and to move the action of the play forward in a dramatic way... these are the usual things that I expect the songs in any musical drama to do. And Mr. Brown created music and lyrics that did just that, nimbly and inventively.

A song which amply illustrates his inventiveness is the sequence, Come Up to My Office, in which Leo Frank is dramatically presented as the people in the crowd perceive him. The song transformed him into the absolute antithesis of the quiet, private man he actually was. The despicable villain that the folks of Atlanta were seeing came to life on the stage, and for a moment I was able to see the defendant through the eyes of Leo Frank's accusers. As a member of the audience, I found the moment to be both sobering and fascinating. That sequence in the show served as a painful reminder of what human beings are capable of perceiving and doing when they yield to the destructive impulses of prejudice, bigotry and hatred. Mr. Brown elicited these feeling and perceptions in me, with his wonderfully crafted music and words.

Mary Phagan, around whose murder the entire story revolves, appears only briefly during the entire show. Yet through the song, The Picture Show, early in the show, we come to know her extremely well, even though we come to know her from only a single moment in her life. This is the only song this character has to establish who she was: a spirited, sassy, attractive young girl, who drove a particular young fellow, Frankie Epps, girl crazy. It is a delightful song and provides one of the few light moments of the show.

The crowd scenes on the street and in the courtroom provide another example of how the music and lyrics painted in notes and words the growing anger and frenzy to find someone to punish for the rape and murder of Mary Phagan. With each successive scene, the songs and the lyrics became increasingly dramatic and intense. The music and lyrics capture the surging mob mentality that was mounting to such a fever that the outcome of the trial could have been predicted before it even began.

A reporter down on his luck, Britt Craig, needs to turn his career around. We first meet Mr. Craig when he sings Big News!. In a blues/New Orleans Jazz style number. he energetically paints a picture of Atlanta as a backwater town, where nothing of any consequence ever happens. He sees this trial is a gift and an opportunity make a comeback. In another musical number, his is captured sensationalizing the trial. He proceeds to impugn and misrepresent the character of Leo Frank with unverified allegations. Everything that he sets out to write pours more oil on the anger of the crowd and he poison any possibility that Frank could receive a fair trial. Jason Brown's cynical lyrics make it very clear he is doing this with clear premeditation and an absolute lack of conscience. Other characters from the press, in the play, equally abandon journalistic integrity and milk the trial for all it is worth.

Hugh Dorsey, the solicitor for the state of Georgia in Atlanta, made the decision to get Frank convicted, even though he could not directly connect Frank to the crime. He played to the anger in the streets and he subverted justice in every way, to further his political career and to play to to the local prejudices against Frank, the Jew, Frank, the college educated man and Frank, the transplanted Northerner. His character sings no signature songs or lyrics. But he reveals much about himself in the songs. He is cut from the single piece of cloth which is woven from huge ambition to be achieved at any cost, from a poisonous hatred of Jews, and from an utter disregard for the real word and spirit of the law.

There is a musical and lyrical counterpoint to the mob frenzy. Leo Frank is hopelessly out of place in what he describes as "a place that time forgot." In his opening song, he move totally alone among the crowd of people waiting to see the annual Confederate Day Parade. Everyone else in the crowd is caught up in the moment. In the song, How Can I Call This Home, he bares his soul. He is alone among people he doesn't understand and he wishes only to go home to Brooklyn. He is afraid to connect to these people and in self-defense, buries himself in his work. He even has trouble connecting in any real way with his wife, Lucille. He is different from "them," ... from the people of Atlanta and even from the Jews of the South. He feels different from them. He is seen by the people of Atlanta as the ultimate outsider. But the ordeal transforms him into a human being who can begin to love and be loved... into a person who is not afraid to open himself up and to adapt when the occasion demands him to do so... into a nominally functional human being, which is something he was not, before his nightmarish ordeal. The songs that Mr. Brown creates for Leo Frank chronicle his painful transformation in a quiet counterpoint to the madness which surrounds him.

Lucille Frank also experiences transformation. In her song, What Am I Waiting For?, she reveals that she and Leo enjoy a loveless relationship, living at arms length from one another. Later, as she works behind the scenes to secure Leo's release, she confronts Leo, in Do It Alone. She finally finds the strength to let him know that she feels as alone in their relationship as he does. Fine, she says. If you want to deal with the case against him, all by himself, so be it! And she leave him at the jail. But she becomes a gutsy and strong woman, who courageously continues to champion his cause and late in the second act, the two of them celebrate finally falling in love with each other and lamenting all the time they lost, in the song, All the Wasted Time. It is a lovely and wonderfully poignant duet. Of course, I already knew how their story ended, and I was enormously saddened by the ironically bittersweet character of the moment.

I especially remember one additional moment in this play. Near the end of the play, I had to witness Leo Frank being lynched and murdered. I found that to be a gut-wrenching experience, even though I knew these were only actors on a stage and that no one had actually died. What I also knew was that this lynching did happen nearly 100 years ago. I was just seeing an instant replay of the actual event. It didn't make it any easier for me to witness.

The show ended with the people of Atlanta, a year later, waiting for the Confederate Day Parade to begin. They sang their anthem to the "noble" spirit of Georgia in the finale... the same spirit and mindset that saw the trial of Leo Frank as fair and just. As people, they had not changed. They still hated Northerners and anyone who was educated. The still hated Jews... and blacks. They were still capable of carrying out yet one more miscarriage of justice if they were called upon to do so. I found an overwhelming irony in that song and that sentiment.

When the curtain fell, I could not speak a word. I was emotionally distraught by the events chronicled and the people that Parade portrayed. I tried to find a quiet spot just beyond the main lobby to collect myself. I went into the show utterly unprepared for the emotional intensity of this show. I am not alone in the way I responded to this play. In another review of the play that I found online, the reviewer reported experiencing the same level of emotional distress at having seen another production of this show. For me, this is a true measure of how successful the book, the music and the lyrics of Parade were.

Later, after I had collected myself, I spoke with Kristina Sullivan, who ably played the role of Lucille. She asked me if I liked the show. Before I could answer, she added that this was not exactly a show one would "like." But it is a show which is riveting. Once I was drawn into the story, there was no way I would have been able to will myself into leaving. It was not exactly a matter of enjoying the production. Rather, it was fascination to see how the events depicted were going to play themselves out. Awful and hypnotic, both at the same time.

As to the production itself, once again The Masquerade Theatre has brought the highest values of theatrical endeavor to this show. At minimum, it would have been a daunting endeavor for any theater troupe, director or choreographer. However, The Masquerade Theatre seems to be a group which thrives on such challenges, having brought to Houston productions of Sweeney Todd, Jane Eyre and Jekyll and Hyde. These are not shows to be undertaken by the faint of heart.

The sets were spare and minimal and as The Masquerade Theatre has done in the past, the staging was used to great effect. There were three skeletal structures on stage, one stage right, one stage center and one stage right. The first served as the residence of Leo Frank. the upper level of the center one served as the office of the very zealous district attorney. The structure on the right was alternately Leo Frank's office and a flexibly used space during the rest of the show. Toward the front of the stage on the left stood a riser. The stage was first a street in Atlanta, then a courtroom where the injustice was carried out and later a jail/prison. The total stage was Atlanta of 1913 and the illusion of the city worked wonderfully well with the smoothly conceived blocking of the actors in the course of the show.

Only one scene in the entire show did the blocking and the action seem to be disrupted. In the second act, the scene in which several characters sang "A Rumblin' and a Rollin'", the song presents the attitudes of the African Americans of that Atlanta. The scene really seemed extraneous and to serve no useful purpose in the show. It may have been something of an afterthought on the part of Mr. Uhry and Mr. Brown when they were putting the show together. The show would not have suffered greatly if the number had been cut from this production.

It goes without saying that the final result of the directing, the lighting, the blocking of the action, the sets and the interpretation of this play worked, resulting in a the poignant telling of a very stirring story.

In the end, however, it fell upon this versatile and talented group of actors and actresses to make this production of Parade a certifiable success. As an ensemble, they brought their talent and their experience, their dedication and commitment,... their very bodies, minds and souls to create the players, large and small, in this American tragedy, so that those characters could come alive upon the Zilkha Stage for a brief hour or so.

Luther Chakurian and
Kristina Sullivan

Among the cast members, Luther Chakurian, as Leo Frank; Kristina Sullivan, as Lucille Frank; and Evan Tessier, as Britt Craig, the reporter, stand out as truly memorable in their performances. The characters, Leo and Lucille Frank, certainly presented a large challenge to Mr. Chakurian and Ms. Sullivan. Both of these actors have proven themselves to be notably capable of filling the stage with their presence in the previous productions from Masquerade Theatre this season. The character that each of these actor played in Parade lived inward, introspective lives. Mr. Chakurian and Ms. Sullivan were limited in the range of body language they could employ to build their characters. But somehow each was able to help us see the changes in Lucille and Leo, in the subtle nuances of voice, manner of movement and in his or her interpretation of the pivotal songs which signaled those changes. The Leo Frank and Lucille Frank of Parade evolve as people who are emotionally isolated even from each other to nominally functional human beings who finally find their love for each other.

In the production number, "Come Up to My Office," We watch Mr. Chakurian morph from the Leo Frank of reality into the the demon depicted in the press of the time and back into the insecure, introverted man that he was. Mr. Chakurian's performance in that sequence is amazing... it was a seamless transformation into the imagined predator and back again, and he was equally believable in both personae. That he was able to do this with such apparent ease is a true measure of his skills and abilities as an actor.

The diminutive Ms. Sullivan is a certifiable wonder on the stage. She is made up of some organic stuff that enables her to transform herself into anything she chooses to become. Here she is as Lucille Frank, a fragile person and a very human person whom we can fully imagine as Ms. Sullivan portrays her. Ms. Sullivan becomes a woman for whom we can feel a heartbreaking empathy. She won this audience over in this show, becoming a woman who, from an unhappy and fragile individual, transformed herself into a strong gutsy woman taking on the powers that were and a warm, loving and supportive wife to her husband.

Evan Tessier, on the other hand, played a character who if anything was really over the top. He was either pretty drunk on liquor or inebriated on the opportunity to once again be in the spotlight as the reporter covering the biggest story in Atlanta in recent history. I asked Mr. Tessier if the actual Britt Craig actually felt badly about the role he played in the conviction of Leo Frank. He said that in the research he had done, he found that was really true. In my research on the subject, Britt Craig actually took the side of Leo Frank as the trial was nearing its end. This actor had a lot to play with and could use broad body language to build his character and a very large voice to flesh in his personna. Mr. Tessier created a wonderfully animated fellow whom we did not want to like, but who was not at all an unlikable fellow. Just something of a desperate opportunist who was grasping at the chance to rebuild his declining journalistic career.

Kacy Smith, as Mary Phagan, deserves special mention. The death of her character set this very real American judicial tragedy into motion. Ms. Smith is only on stage for maybe five or ten minutes at most, during the entire show. But in that brief span of time she is able to create the existence of a very real young woman, full of spunk and spirit, who died much too early in her life. Her delightful interaction with Dominic Di Felice, as Frankie Epps, was one of the few moments of the play where the mood was light and happy. Ms. Smith gave us a Mary Phagan full of fun and full of life. When she appears later in the courtroom scene, we are presented with a Mary Phagan transformed and supposedly damaged, as she existed in the minds of the jury and the people of Atlanta. This actress met the challenge of creating her character ably and well.

When all is said and done, this was a certifiably good production. All the elements of the show worked well with each other. The stagecraft, the effective use of lighting effects, reasonably decent choreography, a stellar cast and a wonderfully conceived combination of music and book... together, all these melded into a show which stirred one's soul and which left one emotionally devastated when the curtain fell. Job well done.

Things Seem A Little Too Quiet!

2007-03-02T01:51:00.000-06:00

My days are quieter and less frantic now. I find this new state of mind a little strange and maybe I am a little suspicious even now that all of this is too good to be true. Where is the punch line? When will someone say to me, "Hey Buddy, the jokes on you." But, since I haven't heard any other shoes dropping in a long time, maybe all this is real.

I find it even stranger that I am having trouble remembering what it felt like to live in a life that was chaotic and that always seemed to be just one step away from falling completely apart. The bad memories, the painful memories, the depression... I can't remember what that felt like anymore. Was all that real? Did I dream it? I know I didn't, but I ask myself these questions anyway.

Life is better now. I need to simply just accept the good times with appreciation and with grace. I know that this is just a lull before some distant storm in my life, so I had better enjoy this state of affairs while I can. Strange or not, I like it. I like it a lot.

Postscript:

And Now For Something Entirely Different...

Tonight I saw a show on Frank Loesser, the Broadway composer and lyricist. He was known to have mentored many of the up and coming talents among the Broadway composers. He let them know that he recognized very special talent in them. And after they had worked with him for awhile, they were able to see that in themselves as well. A little sadly, I wish that I would have had such a mentor. I did not. But if I had, I suspect that I wouldn't be harboring just a little disappointment about how my life has turned out. My life is not bad or awful by any means. But I would have liked to have been more than I turned out to be.

Now I Get It!

2007-03-01T00:19:00.000-06:00

When I was younger, I thought nothing of rushing headlong into the unknown future to see where it would take me. If I was going into unknown territory, which happened a lot, I didn't always give a lot of thought to the pitfalls or dangers which may lie ahead. In some cases, I just had not lived long enough to have to experience that should have given me a hint that I was heading into danger. Nor had I taken the time to learn from those who had gone before me.

These days, I proceed at a slower pace. Now I know a few things I did not know before. I know myself better. I understand a lot better about how the world works and about the sorts of people who are out there. I give some thought now to what I ought to do next and make sure I have a plan... and that I have the resources I will need to carry out the plan. And now, I have a better sense of what works and what usually does not work in given situations.

Now I know that it doesn't do me any good to get impatient, to set a recklessly fast pace for myself and, as a result, to risk making avoidable mistakes or to be blindsided. It makes no sense for me to set myself for failure unnecessarily.

Also, all the positive thinking and mindless optimism in the world is not going to bring me success in and of itself. Neither do I want to be paranoid and fearful about what the future holds for me. To navigate the days and weeks ahead, I now realize it s really about preparing myself as best as I can for the confrontations I can anticipate. I will need to have worked through the numbers and whatever I am trying to accomplish, I need to do it as right and as smart as I can.

For me the path ahead isn't as mysterious as it used to be. Nor is it that much easier to travel. Nor is the future something that I should have a debilitating fear about. Experience has taught me about the strategies I can employ to grow the plan and to carry the plan out successfully, all other things being equal. I am now able to proceed with a hard-won confidence and with the sense that these days my chances of succeeding are a probably better than they were in the past.

I have learned to pick my battles carefully and I make sure I prepare properly. Neither of these notions is rocket science. They are just plain common sense ideas. In the past, for various reasons, I didn't get it. Now I do and the fact that I do is making all the difference in the world.

Souvenirs

2007-02-28T10:10:00.000-06:00

Sometimes the iconic things in our life cease to be so funny, charming or pleasantly memorable. A photo on the shelf. A username we coined in jest at a certain point in the past, to capture the moment. Some random object we have kept which triggers a memory of a special time and place in our lives or of a special person.

I move on every day. I change. I grow. My take on the world and on the people who fill my small corner of the world has evolved with each new experience and each new revelation. Occasionally I discover that those things and people I hold dear are not exactly what they seem to be or that I no longer feel the same way about the events or situations that created the original memory... that they are a bit less that I originally estimated them to be. When I do, I feel a pang of disappointment and perhaps loss, because my world has been diminished if only by a small degree. The only true constant in life is change and some changes take from us things we treasure. But by now I should no longer be surprised that some of the things I value may lose their luster over time. It is simply a part of life that this will happen to us.

Very soon, I am going to take one of these iconic souvenirs of my life "off the shelf" and put it away, out of sight. Eventually, I will probably just trash it, because it is one of those things which no one else will want. However, I am not quite ready to do that just yet. I am still holding on to the memories of moments past.

You see, no matter how sad or painful something that happened to me in the past appears to be, now that the realities of that situation are clear to me, I cannot forget that there were some wonderful, unforgettable moments also. I still think about those moments, though not so often as in the past. Such moments in time are precious and rare. Well... maybe I will leave this object on the shelf a little while longer. Even bittersweet memories are important.

Evolving Realities

2007-02-26T10:43:00.000-06:00

Nothing ever stays the same in this world. The realities which define the boundaries of lives are no exception. The realities that define our lives are constantly evolving and morphing into into successfully different forms during our entire lives.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. As people we also evolve and change. When the realities of our lives do change, the context in which we live each day will change. We grow as a person and because of our experiences and the bits of wisdom we pick up along the way, we become a somewhat different person. We still retain the essence of who we are. However with each alteration, we refine our lives or are pushed in a direction in which we were not intending to go. However neither is change necessarily a good thing. Sometimes the situations which we must confront make us weaker or sadder or have the potential to damage some aspect of who we are. Unfortunately, our lives do not come with a guarantee for a happy ending.

However, whether these changes bode good or ill for us, we must somehow respond to changes and make adjustments to our lives. Our personal realities will have changed before we are fully aware that it has happened to us. After we have become aware that our "world" has changed either subtly or immensely, we have to make mid-course adjustments in our behavior, in our thinking, in our actions and in our understanding of how the world works for us. We will have to do this a thousand times in our journey through our lives.

Most of the time, our lives will evolve in a pretty predictable way. For most of us, our lives are not extraordinary lives, in the sense that we will ever bask for very long in the spotlight. For most of us, our lives will be filled with what passes for a normal existence. We will be born, spend time growing up and receive our educations. We will find a soul mate and create a connection to that person. We may have children and raise them. And when we have done that, to enjoy the later years of our lives. We will have careers that will be a parallel journey we will also make. But for the most part, there are more commonalities to our lives than substantial differences.

There is that other possibility. We can choose not to make the necessary adjustments. We can refuse to accept reality and attempt to live in a world that we want to exist, but which no longer exists or which never existed at all. When we choose to do that, we get stuck in place and cannot move on. We end up risking damage to ourselves and to our relationships with the people about whom we care a great deal. We can become angry, embittered, depressed and frustrated that our lives are not working out as we want them to. We are trying to impose our sense of how the world should work on a world that doesn't care a bit about what we think about that subject. And we will suffer because we hold fast to illusions about the realities of our existence. We will pay a fearful price for doing that.

There is a natural pattern to life. First our lives will change and the realities of our life will have changed. In time, we can choose to recognize that those changes have taken place and make adjustments. We can choose not to do that. But like it or not, the context of our lives is going to change over time, and we will have to reinvent ourselves somewhat every time that happens, so that we can continue to be productive human beings and to move on to what happens to us next in this new environment that change brings. That particular reality is unchanging and etched in stone.

Making Sure HIs Heart Is In The Right Place

2007-02-23T23:46:00.001-06:00

To Love or To Be Loved?... That Is The Question

2007-02-23T23:28:00.000-06:00

Last night, on her Oscar Special, Oprah Winfrey paired up important performers to interview each other. Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman interviewed each other in Hollywood. They both came across as personable, very approachable and very charming people.

In the course of their questioning each other, Russell asked Nicole if it was better to love or to be loved. What an extraordinarily difficult question. I actually don't remember how Nicole Kidman answered the question.

But I truly think that all or us need to take a moment and ask ourselves the same question:

For you and I, are we people who find it more important to be the one giving love in a relationship or is it more significant to us to be the one who receives love?

My answer would be that it is as important to be able to give love to others as it is to be able to receive love from others. I need to have both things in my life at the same time for my life to work.

You may see things differently. That is okay too. You have to live your life in a way that works for you. I welcome comments anytime to one of my posts. I would especially like to hear from you on this particular issue.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman

Doing It Right The First Time

2007-02-22T03:10:00.000-06:00

I Owe It All to Dear Great- Great Grandpa Count Dracula

2007-02-22T02:45:00.000-06:00

It is now exactly 2:48 AM. I couldn't sleep so I started multitasking in order to make myself sleepy. Obviously that tactic did not work very well for me, because here I am only now bleary eyed enough to try to fall asleep.

Actually, I know why I am something of a night owl. I always have been. I figured out the source of my problem when I traced back through my genealogy and I see where I got this somewhat annoying habit from. Right there, about150 or 200 years back, Count Dracula appeared in my lineage. If you would have asked me a week ago if I thought I was descended from the actual Transylvanian Count Dracula, I would have called you crazy. But I guess I am. I mean my family chart wouldn't lie, would it? Somewhere along the line, a friendly vampire passed on to me the gene for being a night owl and that is my working theory on the subject of why I am still awake.

My wife has an alternate theory. She thinks that I have just pushed my sleep cycle completely out of synch, because my daily schedule has been completely skewed. And there may be a bit of truth in what she says as well.

Even though I suspect my wife is 100% right and I am not, I am still going to stick to my own take on the situation, at least for a little bit. My theory makes me a much more interesting person, don't you think?

A Moment of Reflection at the End of the Day

2007-02-21T20:22:00.000-06:00

One day has rolled into another. There is a recognizable rhythm to my days now. And things on which I must focus... things to do, people to call, dinner to make... staying focused on finding a job. With Mom starting to fade now, we have to stop by more often to help her deal with situations she can no longer manage on her own. Today was a busy day, but I felt that it was a productive day, too. It is a very pleasant feeling to know that with each new day, I am becoming yet a little more functional once again. The times of craziness and chaos are finally coming to an end.

My life is now punctuated with a welcome predictability. And a remembrance of things of I had momentarily forgotten. And I have added a few bits of knowledge to my accumulated store of hard won wisdom.

After a really tumultuous five or six years, I have learned that one of the hardest things that I have had to do is to let go of relationships and of things which I really thought I couldn't live without.

I reluctantly had to let a cherished relationship just fade away, because it was one of those chance things that happen to us in life that have a very short half-life. Someone comes into our lives at a critical point in time and the two of us help each other to survive a difficult moment. And the difficult moment passes. When that happens, that relationship became awkward and painful... that relationship had no chance to make it after the crisis in both our lives had passed. I went one direction. She went another. Nothing is quite so painful as to watch something very precious wither and die. But then, over time the pain has diminished and now I can accept that this is the way it has to be. What is truly strange to me is that as hard as I might try now, I can no longer what her face looks like. The few things that I do remember of the time we spent together is becoming a distant memory, the stuff of something I must have dreamed or something. Now I realize that this forgetting is a godsend because I have to live in the present moment and holding too tenaciously onto that memory no longer serves any purpose now that I have moved on.

Marilyn and I are getting rid of things we have held onto for years. However, doing that is becoming easier as we are focusing on living our lives more fully rather than having to constantly deal with what to do with the things we have acquired over the years. "Holding on to our treasures" and "figuring out how to pay for those 'precious' treasures" sucked up an awful amount of our time. We just realized just how much time we squandered in acquiring and keeping these things. Marilyn and I now realize that living our lives fully is more important than acquiring things so that we can look good or feel good. Even knowing this, however, we still find it very difficult to part with some of the miscellaneous things we have acquired over the years. In fact, letting go of some these objects can be downright painful, at least until they are gone. And then quickly enough we forget about them and we move on.

Letting go of cherished beliefs is another matter entirely. I will write about this matter in greater detail at another time. I built my whole existence on a set of beliefs about how the world worked and a set of expectations about what my life was going to be all about. For me, being forced to revise my view of the world and to rethink the basic assumptions about my life was excruciatingly difficult. I had to go through eighteen months of painful therapy to accomplish this feat. Thankfully, it was something I desperately wanted to do, otherwise I would have failed in my attempt to turn my life around.

Today, I also remembered that old saw that we either have nothing on our agenda or we have too many things to do and not enough time to get everything done. There never seems to be a middle ground.

Over the last three years, I cleared the decks. I jettisoned a lot of unnecessary baggage I no longer wanted to carry around with me. For awhile I had a lot of time on my hands. Momentarily there was no structure to my life. Soon, I wasn't going to have a job. For better or worse, where we work and what we do defines us and serves a critical support beam in the structure of our lives. On New Years Eve, my job ended and suddenly I really had a lot of time on my hands. Too many changes had taken place in my life in a very short period of time. I was thrown completely off balance for a time.

In trying to find my way back home, I learned to live my life one day at a time. When life is dishing out crap, the only thing I can effectively do is just hold on as best I can, until I can get a handle on the situation. So I just began to take things one hour at a time... one day at a time. Now things have come full circle. I am once again reminded that things go around and then come back around full circle. We go through these cycles of difficult times to good times and back. I am now living in better times. I plan to savor the moment because I am fully aware that my situation can change for the worse in a heartbeat.

I really feel a bit strange right now. I am relatively relaxed... serene... at peace with myself and my family and with the world. I am even at peace with my Mother, who can drive even the most patient person to absolute distraction. I have not enjoyed this very pleasant state of mind for a very long time and I am really unaccustomed to this luxury. However, I like feeling this way very much. More of the same, I say.

This is the end of my day and this is how things are playing out in my neck of the woods. Thanks for stopping by.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston, Texas
USA

When I was rushing about at a

Getting Lost in the Evening News... and Finding My Way Back

2007-02-21T06:51:00.000-06:00

I used to be something of a very addicted newshound. Every day I would pick up a copy of the New York Times and always listen to the news on NPR. My day was not complete unless I had gotten up to speed on what was happening across the country and across the world. Deep down, I may have thought that if I was at least aware of what was happening in the world, maybe I could somehow have an impact on what was happening in other places... or at least see it coming, if some pending disaster was headed my way.

I suffered from a syndrome that goes along with being a newshound. My friends, also inveterate newshounds, and I would sit around and have passionate conversations about what was going on in the world. In the course of any evening, over a bottle of decent wine, we would endeavor to solve the world's problems. And even if we really didn't, we very clearly knew how we would solve the problems we discussed, if we actually had the power to do so.

With my own life momentarily in chaotic disarray, I am focusing on my own problems and issues. If I take the time to make myself aware of anything, I take note of what is going on in my own life and in the lives of the people who are immediately important to me. I have just enough time and money and energy to barely do that. For now, that is enough for me to try to do.

It is not that I am no longer concerned about what is going on in the larger world beyond the defined boundaries of my own existence. I am less fanatical about being "totally informed" because I have realized several things.

First, I couldn't digest all the news that there is to read, if I wanted to. With a deluge every day of new information from the world of politics, science, society, the environment, not to mention the world of arts and entertainment, there is no way I could even catch up 0n even a small fraction of all that news. Even if I could, a lot of the daily news isn't all that important or relevant anyway. With so much to "know" these days, I really need to be somewhat selective in what I try to absorb.

More importantly, I have discovered that from day to day, the news doesn't really change a whole lot. The names in the news may change or the places where the news takes place may change. The new technologies that we use may change a bit and get increasingly high tech. But for the most part, the same sorts of things are happening over and over again, each time a minor variant of what happened in the past. So I no longer get the sense that I am really learning something significantly new anymore.

Besides which, in trying to save the larger world, I was neglecting the more pressing matters in my own life. Having done that, I have paid heavy price and I am trying now to put my own house in order once more. When I have take care of that matter, I will be able to once more take an interest in local and world news. Only when I reach that point, I will try to strike a balance between being aware of what is going on in the world and being aware of what is going on in my own life. If I cannot take care of myself, how in the world can I even try to take on the problems of other people.

I will be like a parent on an aircraft on which the oxygen masks have dropped down in an emergency. I will have to first put on my own oxygen mask and then assist my child to put on hers. That would seem to be the most logical thing to do. But then, like a lot of folks, I did not always do the logical thing in the past. I am trying to be more focused on my own needs so that I can prevent my life from unraveling again. It is a modest start, but it is certainly a move in the right direction. In the meantime, the world and it's problems will have to rock along without me for awhile.

Calling A Truce with the Media

2007-02-20T21:13:00.000-06:00

I am rethinking my own personal relationship with the media. Aha, you did not know that I had a "relationship" with the media. Well I do. Up until now it was an uneasy one, because no matter where I went, no matter where I turned, some form of the media was screaming for my attention. Buy this, want this, come here to this vacation spot, watch this television show, come see this movie, purchase this magazine so that I can have better sex or make more money. I was and am still being bombarded from every angle at every hour of the day.

So why am I calling a truce? Because I no longer take the assault upon my life personally. This is not about me. All these voices coming from everywhere are simply attempts to grab an audience. See me, hear me... pay attention to me. People get paid to create magazines and send out emails... to talk on radio and to create television shows to inform me and to entertain me. And every one of those people who do that are calling out to me to stop for a moment and pay attention to whatever it is they have created. They are trying to sell their "product" to me and get me to become part of their demographic. That is just their job. Okay. I have no problem with that.

Because I no longer take what is happening personally, I can now calmly pick and choose which parts of the media world into which I want to tune and for how long I want to do that. I am simply weighing my priorities and making some choices in this regard. Nothing more than that.

In one of his poems, Robert Frost noted that this country was mostly about buying and selling things. In theory, most of what we do in our lives is focused on one of those two activities. Even when we are trying to get a job, what are we doing? We are trying to sell others on hiring us. Why should the media industry be different than any other industry.

In fact, because it is the nature in a global village to have mass media and mass advertising that reaches out to people in every part of the world, even the smallest business situated in a country a continent away can be out there trying to grab our attention from halfway around the world. Some products and messages are so common as to be found everywhere on this planet. Coca-Cola is one such product. We are not surprised to see Coke ads, whether we are in Venice or in Beijing. Also consider, for examples American blue jeans. Blue jeans are pretty much the fashion icon for young people and old people alike, in every part of the world. So whether it is fashion, entertainment, news or cultural values, all are being reflected in and being altered by the long reach of the media. The media is a force unto itself, now, and with the creation of the internet, the media, in whatever form it takes, is powerful enough a force to be truly feared by totalitarian governments, who go to great lengths to limits it's reach.

I figure that the media moguls are sort of like fisherman. They entice us as best they can with some kind of bait and then throw out a huge net. They then reel it in to see how many people they can catch in that net for that issue or that performance or that episode of their production.

Life is always busy and there are never going to be enough hours in the day. Seems that there is no place I can go to buy additional hours that I can use each day. So I am going to have to make hard choices as to how I am going to use my time. Apparently the ball is in my court. So I will have to get a better grasp of the situation and then become a whole lot more selective with my time and my money when it comes to interacting with world of news and entertainment.

First, it makes little sense for me to get angry, to get upset or to resent the intrusion of the uninvited media into my life. In the modern world of the twenty-first century, that is going to happen, no matter what I do. Media spam is increasingly going to be a factor in my life, whether it takes the form of unwanted emails or the form of unwanted noise from the television set or the radio. Coolly and deliberately, I need to set the limits of how much of this very distracting din I want to let into my life and then impose those limitations on everyone who wants my attention.

Secondly, I will need to find a place somewhere where I can find a respite from all the many tentacles of the sensory intruders. I am not really sure where that will end up being. Maybe the library. Maybe the park. It may be as simple as turning off the television set and putting on a cd of my own choosing... setting the tone and mood of the minute. Hell. Maybe I should just turn off all my electronic and digital playtoys and read a book. Hey, that is a thought. A little retro maybe, but a good thought nevertheless.

Maybe now, I can be more at peace with myself. Having made this decision, maybe my life will become less frantic and nerve-wracking, with fewer heart-wrenching decisions to make... such as whether I should watch Las Vegas on television or Grey's Anatomy.. And maybe I won't feel so guilty as often now, because less and less will I have squandered some precious time indulging myself in some of my more guilty pleasures. If I were really honest with myself, I would admit that some of the things I do to pass the time, though immensely pleasurable, aren't really necessary to my existence.

This process of rethinking my life is really liberating. I am weaning myself out of the habit of always having to have immediate gratification while the television is on or there is a coupon in the newspaper for 30% off everything in the store. I won't be loading myself up with a thousand competing demands on my time and my energy. What I really want is to simplify my life and to make each day just a bit more manageable. With this new take on my personal relationship to the media, I am one step closer to accomplishing that goal.

The American Dream... Still Something We Can Realize?

2007-02-17T01:27:00.000-06:00

In the Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 issue of Parade Magazine, David Wallechinsky explored the question, "Is The American Dream Still Possible?"

I have a lot to say about my take on that question. For now, I will give a short answer: Yes. Each of us has the opportunity to pursue and realize the American Dream for ourself and our family. The possibilities that this dream afford us are plain to see, even if a lot of people do not fully understand what the American Dream is all about. The people who immigrate to this country clearly understand the wonderful opportunity this country offers to them and to us who are already here. If we are willing to be focused and to work hard to achieve our goals, all things being equal, we can realize our dreams and aspirations.

David Halberstam, in the preface to Defining A Nation: Our America and the Source of Its Strength, tells the story of Mihaela Opritoiu, a young woman who came to the United States with her husband from Romania. She lived there during the worst years of the Ceausescu regime. After the fall of Communism, she came here to make a better life for herself and her family. On arriving here, she felt very uncertain about where she could live and what sort of work she was going to be allowed to do. Under the Communist regime in Romania one was not free to make these decisions for oneself. Those were not inalienable rights in a Communist country.

And so, knowing no one here [in the United States] and without anyone to meet them, they landed at Kennedy Airport on July 29, 1995 ('a date I never forget,' she called it), and began the long and complicated process facing new immigrants, including the fingerprinting and the myriad forms to be filled. And finally they were done. Completely unsure of herself--what should she do now, surely there were more orders to be obeyed? -- Mihaela turned to the last of the immigration officials and asked him, "Where should I go now?" He looked at her and answered, words she will never forget, "Lady, it's a very big country and it's a very free country--- go wherever you like."

Those of us who were born and raised in this country know this very well. However, maybe we sometimes fail to appreciate how amazing it is that we are allowed to enjoy such freedom and opportunities. Mihaela Opritoiu certainly understood immediately the significance of what that immigration official had told her, because she came from a place where that was not the norm. She knew first hand what it meant to live in a place without these freedoms.

At its most basic, the American Dream is the opportunity to make a better life for ourselves and our family... the opportunity to have dreams and to pursue our ambitions unfettered by unreasonable constraints.

As native-born Americans, we sometimes lose sight of what the American Dream is all about. Why? Because from the time we are born, we are bombarded by some very conflicting messages.

In school, we learn about the ideals that gave rise to this country: belief in the equality of all men and an affirmation of the G'd-given human rights that are protected by our laws and our Constitution. We are taught that each of us is given the opportunity to choose our own path in life and to realize our aspirations, if we are willing to put in the effort it will take to do that. Finally, we are taught that each of us can define for ourselves exactly what it means to be successful. In that matter, in the United States, there is no right answer, only the one which works best for us. The only proviso is that we can pursue our dreams, so long as we do not unreasonably hinder anyone else from doing the same thing.

From the time we are young, we are bombarded by the media with the "propaganda" of our society: advertising and the creations of the entertainment industry. Based on what we see, hear and read, we begin to form our ideas about relationships, about the significance of possessions, about the idea of success and about what is important and significant in our lives. We are told that to be really "in" or really "successful" we need to buy this soap or wear certain clothes. To be one of the "beautiful people," we have to affect a certain look and hang with the right crowd. Worse yet, the agents of the culprits spin myths about what choices we need to make with regard our aspirations, our careers or our family life. They ask us to buy into these myths. And when we do, our understanding of achieving the American Dream becomes distorted and corrupted. After awhile, if we are not able to filter out these false messages, we can begin to lose our way. We can become conspicuous consumers because we buy into the notion that "we deserve" to have the things we want, right now. The quantity and the quality of the things we come to possess becomes more important than the quality of our lives. When we begin to believe that, we have effectively turned our lives upside down and we are no longer fully capable of authentically living the American Dream. We are becoming a Madame Bovary, and like her, we are heading for a fall of painful proportions.

Additionally, if we become fully indoctrinated in this other way of seeing the American Dream, we can begin to think that the American Dream is only about us. We begin to focus solely on our own pursuits and we lose sight of several critical issues.

First, along with the opportunities that we are allowed, we are expected to assume the responsibilities that go with being part of community. We have to make sure that everyone else is allowed to enjoy the possibility of becoming successful. That may mean we have to insure that prejudice, hatred or illegal impediments are not places in the way of others who want to share in the American Dream. Meeting that responsibility can sometimes be inconvenient or put us in a potentially difficult position with people who are important to our own success. But inconvenient or not, meeting that responsibility just goes with the territory. Everyone else is going to eventually suffer if even a single person is deprived of the opportunity to make a better life for himself or herself.

Secondly, we are in danger of achieving success by building a carefully constructed facade. We make sure we "look good." We play the part so that we project the image of the all-American success. Unfortunately, if our lives are nothing more than shams, then sooner or later, people will find us out. When they do, our aspirations go down in flames. We aren't doing something productive, when we focus more on appearance than on substance, in our lives. That is just the opposite of what we are be told by advertisers and the media.

How do we avoid the pitfalls of this situation? By keeping things real. By maintaining a balance in our lives. By always retaining a sense of humility, no matter how successful we might become. By staying true to our own values. By focusing on the quality of our lives rather than the quantity and status-value of the things we possess. By keeping our lives simple and straightforward. By remembering what the American Dream is really all about and, with that in mind, by listening very selectively to the noise coming out of the media messages which try to tell us how we can be more and better, if we will just buy their stuff or if we adopt their value judgments. Please understand that it is still no easy task to resist the siren call of the propagandists in our midst, even if we do all of these things.

In other posts, I have written about some of the potential problems we face in chasing our dreams and my comments have sometimes been a bit despairing. But at no time, when I wrote those observations, did I ever doubt that it was possible to pursue one's goals in life and become a genuinely successful person. I fully believe in the validity and the power of the American Dream for anyone who wants to work hard to achieve it.

However, let anyone who chooses to do that to be very suspicious of the siren call of those who would suggest that projecting a certain image and that possessing the "right" things in life are the most essential ingredients in achieving that success. It cannot hurt to project a good image, to be sure. But nothing in life is ever that easy. In the end, it is not enough just to look good. We have to actually develop our talents, to stay focused, to remain true to our own notion of success and to do the work it requires to realize our own American Dream.

The Fernando Lamas Syndrome

2007-02-15T22:27:00.000-06:00

I find it a bit strange that so many people are focused on appearing to be successful individuals. To make sure that they project that sort of persona to the world, they wear the right clothes, drive the right cars, belong to the right clubs and live in the right neighborhoods. It is almost as if becoming a "success" for them has to preceded by outwardly talking the talk and walking the walk and having the right look

However, even if these folks do this to the fullest, that does not mean that they are in fact certified successes, even in their own estimation. Sometimes, they are just wannabees, who desperately need to be counted among those who have "made it to the top."

The true successes of our society don't need to be constantly told how much of a success they are. For the most part, the individuals in this group accept their accomplishments with humility and understand that recognition is earned. In fact, recognition and affirmation that one is a success must be earned every day. Each of us is only as good or as successful as we are today.

Surprisingly, the most successful people among us are mostly invisible to us. They live simply and quietly. For the most part, they avoid ostentatious displays of wealth, power or fame. To the rest of us, they look no different than us and live their lives pretty much like we do. These folks have gone one step further than most of us with regard to achieving some kind of success in their lives. These folks first defined what it meant to them to be successful. They first figured out who they were inside and what they wanted to accomplish in their lives. Knowing that, they then set out to construct a life for themselves. From such people, we can learn that our successes in life are not the goal but the end product of being self-aware, of being focused, of being self-disciplined and of being willing to do what it takes to get a job done.

Being successful at anything is also a function of carefully weighing our options and, having done that, to make our decisions with equal care, understanding full well that every choice we make will carry with it a price. In making any choice, we had better be willing to pay that price, before making that commitment to action. Precious few things in life are ever free or easy, for if they were, it wouldn't be worth doing them.

A few years back, the performances of Saturday Night Live included a character who was a caricature of Fernando Lamas, a famous actor. In the skits, this stock character was always stylish, sophisticated and incredibly shallow. He would be heard to say somewhere in the skit, "It is better to look good, than to feel good."

It is easy for us to fall into that sort of thinking. We are tempted to say to ourselves, "It is better to look successful and accomplished, than to actually be successful or accomplished." The only problem with that approach is that sooner or later someone is going to discover that we are not what we seem to be. Worse, we can run out of money and can no longer sustain the charade, and we are found out even sooner. In either case, pretending to be something we aren't is a poor substitute for actually doing what it takes to earn the right to be perceived as a successful person. And even more important than having others see us in that light, we have to view ourselves as worthwhile and successful, for if we don't, it really doesn't who else does.

In so many places in the developed world today, appearances are more important than the realities of the situation. Can we afford to believe that it is as important to possess the trappings of "success" as it is to actually be successful? You tell me.

Coming Full Circle

2007-02-15T00:55:00.000-06:00

This evening I had dinner with a dear friend of mine. I had not seen him for quite awhile.

At work he has been swamped by a major software implementation project, which has sucked up his time for the last two months. Myself, I have been operating in survival mode, and I have had had to focus on just getting through each day in one piece, mentally and physically. So as a result, each of us has put what passes for our normal life on hold, and as a result, had not been able to spend much time with each other.

At dinner tonight, both of us concluded that for now the worst of our situations is past. For both of us, life will begin to get better again and to be less stressful.

Anyone who has ever had to deal with bouts of depression understands this only too well. Life seems really centered and good. All of the sudden, everything seems to fall apart in our lives and things go all to hell. Just about the time we think that we are facing situations that can never be resolved, each issue seems to sort itself out and life begins to get better once again.

From experience, I know that my life is like that. I once did have to deal with bouts of depression. I have since beaten that problem and moved on. But I have found out that life is never always good... nor is it always bad. I will rock along and everything is just wonderful, and then a new problem arises. For awhile, things go downhill again, until I figure out how to fix what is wrong or whatever is wrong at that moment just resolves itself.

For those of you readers who have been following my blog for the past two months or so, you will already know I am just coming out of one of those really bumpy patches of life. I know that all things come to an end... even the worst of times that I will have to face.

For you or me, our lives go through these cycles. In one end out out the other. My life falls apart for awhile and after a time, things get fixed and I move on to whatever is going to happen to me next.

Now when I begin to despair or to feel desparate about my life, I can regain my composure and regroup. I can do that now, because if I know anything to be certain, it is that eventually even the worst periods of my life will come to and end and that I can have cause for hope that things will turn out okay, no matter how dire a situation may seem.

I have gone through many such cycles and fully expect there are going to more for me in the future. No matter. Each one in it's turn will come full circle and once again, I will be okay.

Celebrity News - Anna Nicole Smith, A Passing

2007-02-09T06:44:00.000-06:00

Anna Nicole Smith died yesterday. The news surrounding the passing of the phenom filled the airwaves and the newpapers. The internet was abuzz with one report after another.

This morning, on NPR's Morning Edition, one of the reporters explored the reasons why her life has captured our attention for as long as it has. The reporter observed that she could not act, nor sing, nor write. Mostly she was just blonde and reminded us a lot of Marilyn Monroe. She was beautiful and easy on the eye. High school drop-out, stripper, wife to a billionaire, would-be performer, star of a television reality show, the center of a seemingly unending legal melodrama... her antics provided us with an unending stream of entertainment and we kept coming back for more of the same.

Why was that so? I can't really say. Maybe, as the reporter obersved, just because she was famous. And in America, one can be famous for just being famous.

Sunrise and the Dawn of A New Day

2007-02-07T23:17:00.000-06:00

For the first time in years, I feel some feelings rising in me that have been absent for far too long. I am experiencing impatience. I want things to get moving again. I want to start working again. I want to feel like I am living my life again... not just passing through the days and weeks and years, sedated and numb. I want to feel successful again and I feel the need to go after the real American dream once more... the Dream in which we can pursue the opportunity to find out what kind of stuff we are really made of.

Now I am not in a quest for the better car or the bigger house. I am not trying to build my kingdom in whatever industry I happen to land with my next job. What I do want is a decent level of income and a sense that I am finally successful in terms of my own definition of what I believe personal success to be.

I want to feel like I make a difference in the world and I want to like what I am doing, at work and at play. No longer do I want to feel trapped in my own life, because I have created my own cage as a consequence of the mistakes I made. I don't want much... except that elusive sense that I am living the life that I was meant to live, instead of one imposed on me by others or by the necessity to pay for all the unnecessary stuff I thought I needed. Everybody wants that. Few are smart enough or disciplined enough not to fall into the avoidable pitfalls that trip us up along the way.

So, I have reignited that fire in my belly. I have stoked it and soon it will be raging within me. I am definitely going in the right direction. It has taken time to do that and it has not been easy for me to get this far. But I still have a long way to go.

Now it is time for a remembrance of things past... things I knew once, but somehow forgot.

What things?

Rediscovering a passion for living. And a passion for what I am doing. And a passion for the people I care about.

Unwavering commitment to my goals, my dreams, my aspirations.

Developing an unshakable focus which will enable me to stay the course, no matter how difficult things may get for me.

Being true to myself. Being true to the values and the qualities which uniquely define me.

Being kind to myself. Being able to look in the mirror and actually like the person who I am seeing.

Remembering not to be too hard on myself. Accepting that I cannot achieve perfection in the things I do and that I can never achieve perfection in myself.

Realizing that sometimes I will have to forgive myself, if I stumble or if things sometimes do not work out as planned.

Remembering to make sufficient time in my busy schedule for my family and my true friends, because my relationships with them are the only real treasures in my life.

Always remembering and appreciating the people who have helped me along the way to achieve my successes, because none of us make it on our own.

And very importantly, at this very late date, to search out and find positive role-models from whom I can draw inspiration, as I set out to become the person I was meant to be... as I set out to build the life I was meant to live.

Remembering these feelings, these ideas is just not enough. I have to put them back into my life and into my thinking, replacing pieces which may have fallen out from that jigsaw puzzle which is my life.

Everything I will have done so far is just a prelude to the most important part of the process. After clearing my head and clearing my agenda of all unnecessary distractions, I would need to write a mission statement for the rest of my life. I would have to clearly lay out what is important to me and what things I want to accomplish in the years that I still have to live. Only after I have done that can I develop a working strategy to make all my dreams and my hopes and my goals happen, given that all things turn out to be equal.

The preparations made, I will have but one thing left to do. As Jean Luc-Picard, of the Starship Enterprise was heard to say so many times, "Make it so!." I would have to take my plans and carry them out, committed, focused and dedicated to the proposition that at the end of the day, the people I knew in this world will have cause to say that I made a difference in their lives... in the world.

I have learned that my life is not about me and my accomplishments. I am not concerned about my place in history. I just want the rest of my journey count for something more than the amount of money I will have been able to accumulate in the bank before I die.

Please understand that I won't complain if I actually can make a lot money in the years to come. However, I now know clearly that possessing wealth is just a means to an end. There was a great line about that in the musical, Hello Dolly. "Money is like manure. It isn't much good unless you spread it around." And in the end, what I believe should be most important about my life is that I leave behind me a legacy of love for the people who were important to me and that I will have hopefully made a difference in the lives of the people with whom I spent some time during the journey.

So there you have it. I know what I want to accomplish. I have remembered what I need to be thinking about. I have clear sense of what I have to do. Now, all that's left for me to do is just to do what I will have to do, whatever that turns out to be. Sounds simple. It's not.

But then, nobody ever told me that getting through my life was ever going to be a simple or easy matter. Think about it. If it were, in that context, the very notion of success would have little or no meaning. If it were, where would we find any sort of challenge in trying to live each day as caring, decent and successful people?

For me, tomorrow morning will be the dawn of a bright, new day. The sun will rise into the sky. I can sense that this new day is going to be full of hope and promise of good things to come. Very soon, I will finally be moving on, once again. But for now, I have many things I will need to do in preparation, before I can book my passage into the future.

Making Sense of It All

2007-02-06T22:56:00.000-06:00

I haven't been able to make a whole lot of sense out of all the things that have happened to me in the recent past. Maybe, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense if I were able to do that, given that I am still so close to these recent events. Maybe the only way that we can completely make any sense about something that we have experienced is to put some time between ourselves and the event. Only after we have done that can we begin to find the greater meaning to the sum of a cluster of seemingly disconnected events.

Also, there may be another angle to this matter. I was watching Boston Legal on television tonight. In one of the cases considered, a girl was profoundly affected psychologically when she was sexually assaulted. The crux of the case was whether or not she should be allowed to take medication which would essentially enable her to "forget" the pain and mental anguish she continued to experience after the assault. An attorney opposing giving her that right argued that who we are, in a very large measure, is determined by the sum of our experiences. Without all our memories, what are we? What becomes of us when memories, good or bad, are washed away?

Our experiences shape us and form us. A pivotal experience can cause us to radically revise the way we see ourselves and the world or which of two roads to take. Critical experiences alter the way we understand how the world actually works. The good experiences as well as the bad and painful ones.

I have come to believe that a lot of the painful, difficult things which have happened to me over the last couple of months are part of something larger which is happening in my life. I see myself changing significantly in fundamental ways. I don't fully understand the nature of these changes just yet, but in time, I will. But that understanding will come only after this particular scene from my life has played itself out to the end and the next scene begins. Losing a job or totaling my car were just two events which in themselves had no particular significance. Only when considered in retrospect and in context will their meaning eventually become clear to me.

I have been somewhat distressed lately and maybe a little frustrated. I wanted to immediately be able to understand why these things were happening to me, one catastrophe after another, in rapid succession. Why was G'd doing this to me? I was demanding immediate gratification in this matter, and I wasn't getting the "answers" I wanted. Now I am beginning to understand that sometimes we have to be patient and bide our time, until things that happen to us can begin to make any sort of sense.

Thankfully I don't see any new disasters en route to befall me on the current horizon, at least for the moment. But then one never knows how long this peaceful lull will last, so I will keep a sharp eye out so that I can gird myself for the next bumpy stretch before it gets here. In the meantime, I will just have to do what I have to do to keep things on as even a keel as I can.

When I do reach that moment of understanding, everything that I have been trying to figure out will become very clear. And just in time, too. Because right after that happens, I will be starting the next scene of my life. I don't have a clue as to what will happen to me in the next chapter of the story. But I am sure of one thing. It ain't going to be dull. It never is.

Disappointment and Forgiveness

2007-02-05T23:09:00.000-06:00

I wrote earlier today that I believed that the people who loved me the most would always be just a little disappointed in the person that I am. After I wrote that, I realized that even if that is so, under any circumstances that would have been the case.

After that honeymoon period in any relationship is over, each person in a relationship begins to discover the flaws and imperfections in the other person, that they hadn't seen originally. I am not perfect. My wife and my kids and my friends, none of them are perfect either. And neither are any of you who read this post.

Once I was able to get past the irritation I experienced because of the little quirks and flaws that my wife possessed, I was simply able to accept my wife for who she was. And after a time, I began to realize that some of her qualities that initially drove me nuts, were actually very strong and positive attributes. For those qualities which still came across as flaws, I simply allowed that that was who she was and I still loved her for who she was, flaws and all. My wife was having to deal with the same feelings about me. And each of us was even able to forgive ourself for not being perfect. Loving someone and being loved in return makes life a lot easier to get through.

With us, it is not always sweetness and light. Things can get downright testy sometimes. But that just goes with the territory of being married. Because we do love each other and do care about each other, when our emotions settle down, we can forgive and forget and make up. The part about making up is not all that bad and can be downright good, in fact.

Because I am coming out of what has been a really difficult two months, I have had to deal with a lot of uncertainties and concerns. I have not always been able to get immediately past the emotional lows that I sometimes experience, during such times. But no matter what might happen to us, because we know and love each other... because I trust her to be there for me and I for her when that is where we are, then we know that together we are going to get through this rough patch just as we have gotten through bad times in the past. We now know that things are never as bad as we think they are going to be, nor are they as good as we wish they were.

As I have been something of a drama king lately, I can ease off of presenting that persona to the world. I don't have a lot of patience with drama kings and queens. I really don't see why anyone should put up with me when I am behaving like that. Even my best friend must have finally found that to be just a little to much to deal with, even coming from me. He is having to deal with his own problems at this moment. People can and should be expected to be forgiving of what we dish out, only up to a reasonable point.

I guess I am well along the way to recovering from what has been bedeviling me lately. I have used my own particular strategy to work through this period. I am very pleased that whatever it was I did worked. Pretty soon my family and my friends will be able to breathe a genuine sigh of relief, because I suspect that my/our situation will be a lot less stressful and that I will be a lot more pleasant to be around. As to how I feel about things right now, Shakespeare said it better than I ever could: "All's well that ends well."

"...Looking for my way back home again..."

2007-02-04T22:31:00.000-06:00

I just sent off an email to a good friend of mine.

I talked to him about how our past precedes us as we begin each new day. And our past, the recollection of our successes and/or failures, stick in the minds of the people who have known us along the way. I suspect that in their minds my life has come off as a bit underwhelming. I suspect that I will be spending the rest of my life trying to come from behind to overcome in their minds their perception of who I am and what I have accomplished in my life.

I always keep in mind, that no matter how successful a person has been, no one ever cuts that person any slack. We are as good as what we are doing today. Period.

I have struggled for as long as I can remember to figure out where I want to take my life. Just this moment, I believe that I know a part of the answer to that question. I want to take myself to a place and time where I can feel that my life is stable and solid and that there is a positive consistency to it... where the people who know me will have an expectation that the things I set out to do seem to have merit and that I will succeed, because of who I have become. I want to reach a time and place where the people I truly care about will have higher expectations for me than they do now. Certainly, that will be something I will have to earn. But that is the place and and time to which I want to go... a place and time I want to call home.

I was listening to a Debbie Friedman album, the Carnegie Concert album. One track, titled "Save a life and you will save the world" has just finished playing.

I caught the phrase, "... looking for my way back home again..."

I think that is what I am doing now. But I wish the hell I knew where "home" is. I know it isn't a destination marked on any on any map I know of. It is a spot on the road somewhere ahead of me in the future. It would be nice to say to myself, with certainty, "I will know the place when I get there."

If I get there... This is one of those moments I have to stop myself and say to myself, "All things being equal, you will get there. Just take things one day at a time, and then one day, you will reach that place. One of these days. Just don't give up hope."

If only I knew with a profound certainty that, for me, there is such a place as "my home," then maybe I wouldn't have the uneasy feeling that I am still just drifting from one day to the next, without any sure sense of even my next destination.

American Urban Landcapes - 020207

2007-02-02T22:19:00.000-06:00

Houston, Texas, USA

Writings on A Wall...

2007-02-02T22:13:00.000-06:00

Photographed at Disney World
Orlando , Florida
In EPCOT at The Land Pavilion
December 2006

Picking and Choosing... To Veg Out or Not To Veg Out?

2007-02-01T22:37:00.000-06:00

I grew up during the nineteen-fifties and sixties. Television was was in it's infancy and we had 3 channels from which to choose. At midnight, after a last recap of the news, an American flag would appear, waving in the wind, and the stirring strains of the National Anthem of the USA would stream from our tv set. Alternatively, a montage of landscape photos from across our country appeared at the end of the day and the music was America the Beautiful. Like us, the television station shut down for the night.

Entertaining myself meant going to the movies or reading a book. It might mean spending time with friends or my family. Or traveling somewhere by train or by car. I lived about two hundred miles south of Chicago, and I loved to go into the big city to visit family and see the sights and the museums.

Life in the fifties was simpler and in the small town where I lived, the pace of our lives was slower, managable and relaxed. When I was a kid, I was afforded the luxury of having some time to grow up, before I had to become "grown-up". Like all kids my age, I had problems and issues, but none which could compare to those problems with which my own kids had to contend. I had fewer choices in my life than a kid has today. But at least, the world hadn't yet started to change at an ever accelerating pace. Some basic things still remained true and valid from one year to the next. My life was maybe a little easier to live, than is my life now.

Tonight, I have drifted into these nostalgic reminiscences, because I found what I was watching on television sort of irritating. I had watched Men in Trees and Grey's Anatomy. I found both shows sort of short on substance and entertainment value. Like a lot of things in our world, television programming has evolved and changed over time.

I really am not sure why so many of the television programs today put me off so these days. I guess as the world has changed, so have I. I find many of these changes in our day to day life less than thrilling and sometimes very disturbing. Given that what we see on television is a reflection of these changes, that may explain why the shows on tv no longer have so great an appeal to me. Or maybe, it is because I have see it too many times before. There is nothing new or good or fresh being presented to me. But I know that there is a problem when there are times that I cannot find a show I really want to watch from over 100 channels.

That is not to say that I cannot find things to do with my time. The upside of having so many choices of how I might entertain myself is that I can opt to simply do something else. So I do.

I do a variety of things to entertain myself. I spend time surfing the internet and posting to my blog. I have fallen into the habit of doing at least one Sudoku puzzle a day, to keep my analytical skills sharp. I have rediscovered the pleasure of reading books, in their original format, on paper. Occasionally Marilyn and I will go out to a movie, if one looks particularly interesting or entertaining. Recently, we took in Night at the Museum at an IMAX theater. I chill out, listening to my favorite genres of music... mostly Broadway albums and easy listening. And among my favorite of things to do is to spend time with my best friend sharing a nice bottle of wine, when we can carve some time out of our busy lives to do that. And of course, I treasure the time that I can spend with my wife, my kids and my granddaughter.

There is a thread that runs through all these activities. I want to do more than just veg out in front of the boob tube. I want experiences that are richer, more mentally stimulating and more meaningful. The time I spend with friends and family are the best of times, because I can be with the people who mean the most to me. In short, if I am going to devote time to being entertained, I want a return on my investment. I want to put myself into situations in which I am doing more than just zoning out to escape the stress and the issues in my life.

In the US in the twenty-first century, we have no dearth of ways to entertain ourselves. There are a thousand ways to do that. Beyond computers and television, there are video games and spectator sports and clubbing and a long list of other ways as well. In fact, if I allowed myself to do it, I could entertain myself into mental oblivion. I don't want to do that.

There are only so many hours in a day. As Robert Frost wrote, each dayI have "...miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep." With so little time left in any given day to just relax and enjoy myself, I have figured out that there are a lot better ways to do that than to get addicted to forms of entertainment which are fairly empty of content or real value for me. Simply put, I have more important things to do with my time and my life.

Another Piece of the Puzzle Falls into Place

2007-01-31T14:17:00.000-06:00

Especially in the down times of our lives, when we have a little time on our hands, we can put that time to very excellent use. As we are works in progress throughout our lives, we are always looking for the clues as to what makes us tick, as to the person, deep down, that we are.

Today, I was using an on-line tutorial to learn how to do Sudoku puzzles. There are strategies of logic one can use to solve these intriguing puzzles. And I marveled at the ingenuity of each of these different approaches.

It was then that I had one of those "aha" moments. I love to unravel a problem and to find the solution. Actually, I was reminding myself of something I had forgotten. I love to analyze things... situations, accounting problems, a technical problem with the computer or a Sudoku problem. I knew that about myself. It was just something that had just slipped my mind.

Whether it is a moment of discovery of something about ourselves or a moment of rediscovery of something forgotten, something very valuable has happened. For me, it was and is important right now because I can continue my job search with a clearer focus on what I want in a job and hopefully I will have improves my chances of landing one that will be a better fit for me.

My life is very much of a jigsaw puzzle. When I was younger, my parents would assist me in placing in the first pieces in the proper position. When I got a little older, I used these pieces to build on, as I moved on in my life. At every stage of the journey, I was able to recognize the available pieces of the puzzle that I could set in place to fill an empty space in the grid. I am still doing that... discovering or rediscovering something about myself, that I use to better understand who I and what I want in my life.

I build my life, one piece at a time. And for good measure, some parts of me require several puzzle pieces that I will discover each one at different points in time, just in case I forget that particular aspect about myself. That is exactly what happened to me today.

Something Borrowed - 012907

2007-01-30T22:14:00.000-06:00

A Question.

When was the last time something you read made you wonder?

Reprinted from a special advertising section in The New York Times, Sunday, January 21, 2001.

Gazing Into The Crystal Ball

2007-01-30T21:36:00.000-06:00

The road ahead... what lay ahead for me in my life, that is very unclear. Fog shrouds the road ahead, shutting out the sun and the sky and the horizon just beyond where I am.

I truly wish there were such things as functioning crystal balls. Or at least one that could even just give me a hint of what was the right thing for me to do next. Surely, some computer programming guru could harness the powers of probability and statistics, and write the code for the program to predict the future, within an acceptable range of error. Then all that guru would have to do is to embed the software into a crystal ball with an lcd screen. Right! No... very wrong. Ain't going to happen. Like magic wands, for now, crystal balls just don't exist. Can't pop down to Circuit City or the local computer emporium and buy one just yet.

A voice inside of me is admonishing me to be more proactive in my own behalf. Get out there and interview more actively for jobs. I am being reminded that getting a job is like selling anything... it is simply a numbers game. After a certain number of no's, there is eventually going to be a yes. And I should work smart, network... yaddi, yaddi, yaddi. Keep my eyes on the prize. Sometimes, I feel like I am just feeding myself a lot of time worn cliches, and they are starting not to work very well as motivators.

There are a lot of factors at play here. My age and other things. So I will do that "put one foot in front of the other and move on" thing. Not thrilling or inspiring, but at least I will keep moving in hopefully the right direction.

Until I see things more clearly, I will just have to do the best I can for now. I will have to settle for muddling through each day until my options and, ergo, my best possible choices become a little clearer. Meanwhile, I have to deal with present realities. I still have to survive in the moment... to pay the bills, to take out the trash, etc. So I have to really do something proactive in the immediate short-term.

Reality biting me, you see. For now, I will just deal with things as they come and hope for the best outcome.

Before I Call It A Night, A Final Thought About Why I Blog

2007-01-27T03:08:00.000-06:00

I wrote a post awhile back about why I continue to write my blog. I have my own take on the world. I wanted to pick up on those thoughts tonight.

I catch images that no one else sees. I see something or someone, and I get an insight into something I did not understand before. I read something that crystallizes an idea better than anything else I have ever read. I have to struggle with my own life and the way I work things out is to write. So my attempts to sort things out in my own life end up in this weblog. I am not one of the shakers and movers of the world. I am one of those fellows who observes the world as it transforms itself each day and I report those transformations to you.

By updating this blog, I am sharing with you all the sights I have observed, the sounds I have heard, the happenings of the day and the events of my own journey through life. It is my hope that what I share with you may be something you will find useful and interesting. By doing this, I am trying to useful and to give something back to the world, even to people I may never even meet, face-to-face.

The thing I do best in life is to write. And the best way I can share my experiences and observations with you is to write them down for you to read.

More Writings on A Wall - Disney World, The Land Pavilion, Epcot

2007-01-27T02:47:00.000-06:00

Selling our Souls to Realize the American Dream

2007-01-27T01:23:00.000-06:00

People in many countries may express anger or resentment of the United States for things this country has done. But at the same time, these same people very much envy what we have in terms of our standard of living. It is within the grasp of most Americans to grab at least a small piece of the American dream.

To grab a piece of the American dream... what exactly does that mean? It means mostly, if we are willing to pay the price asked, we can possess certain things. For some people, it is the possession of a lot of material things. For others, it is the pursuit of fame, of power, or of social or professional status. In this country, it is usually the pursuit of more... more of whatever it is we want to possess, especially wealth. The more, the better. And for most of us, this can become an addiction, so that no matter how much we have of what we covet most, it will never be enough.

It would be very nice if we could lay the blame on the self-serving corporations who stoke our desires with a constant stream of ads for everything our hearts could desire. But that wouldn't be very fair or honest on our part. We have to acknowledge that these corporations are just giving us exactly what we are demanding. If we have lost any sense of self-restraint... if we have completely lost our sense of perspective and most of our common sense, it is our own damn fault.

So we have only ourselves to blame if we clutter our lives with a lot of baggage we really have little need for. If the shows we watch, the music we listen to and the movies we go to are in general really very mediocre and in general moronic, that is what we have been clammering for. And if the politicians we elect are inept, clueless, corrupt, unresponsive to our needs and in too many cases entirely useless as representatives of the people, we richly deserve what we get out of them. And if as a people, we continue to buy things which we can't afford and which, in reality, we don't actually need, who can we blame but ourselves. And all the while we are hopelessly putting ourselves into increasingly higher debt.

If that were all there was to say about this abysmal state of affairs, I could stop right here. But there is one additional dimension to what we have done to ourselves as individuals. In a free society like ours, we are allowed to make many decisions for ourselves. We are entitled, for the most part, to establish our own priorities as we see fit. As citizens of a free society, we are expected to assume certain responsibilities, to preserve the rights, privileges and freedoms for which so many men and women have fought and died. And one of those decisions we can make is to choose not to accept those responsibilities or to place them very low on our list of priorities.

Too many of us are too caught up in a self-destructive pursuit of the American dream. We get very busy and so focused on building our little kingdoms, that we are very much in danger of losing our values and our souls. Power can corrupt even the most well-meaning of men and women. An addiction to material wealth or success or the pursuit of fame can lead even the most ideal of people to pathways that will eventually destroy their lives. As a people, we are willing to put ourselves into unbelievable levels of indebtedness, just so we can look good in the eyes of others... or worse, so that we can momentarily feel better, when we fear that we have failed to do that. The whole notion of success has been warped and twisted into something unrecognizable and without merit.

It is ironic, that some of the most wealthy Americans are those who live simply and quietly among us. They do not live ostentatiously and they are for the most part really invisible to us. They don't have to prove anything to anyone. And most of them use their credit cards sparingly and wisely, because to do otherwise would make little sense to them.

The rest of of live tenuously, overextended financially, and living beyond our means. For the most part, we have little to show for all the money and time we have squandered to acquire our "treasures." After awhile, after we have realized the terrible price we have paid to buy into the American Dream, all these things which we have acquired cease to have much meaning or value. We discover this terrible truth, usually only after it is to late to escape the costly consequences of our poor judgment.

We have sold our souls. We have compromised the very values which defined us, to pursue success, however we defined that goal. We may have bankrupted our lives in pursuit of something that probably never existed in the first place.

The terrible irony about all this is that the rest of the world wants to be just like us. Maybe we would do the rest of the world a huge favor if we clued them into what they were actually getting themselves into. Better yet, we would do the next generation of American kids coming up a huge favor, if we clued them into the realities of success in America and of the realities about the "American Dream"... that, in fact, that dream can morph itself into a nightmare from which it is truly difficult to extricate oneself.

A Reality Check - 1

2007-01-27T01:18:00.000-06:00

Writings on a Wall... Disney World, The Land Pavilion

2007-01-25T00:11:00.000-06:00

A Last Look Back Before Moving On

2007-01-24T23:01:00.000-06:00

I have made a journey in my mind, since January 3rd, when my auto accident occurred. While I was making the journey, it seemed like one which would never end. But in reality, it was just a trip along a side road on which I had never intended to travel... but I did anyway.

Even at the moment of impact of my car into another car, the experience was surreal. I had been struggling to stay awake all the way from the airport. Just after dusk, driving non-stop on the beltway in the drizzling rain finally lulled me to sleep. I cannot tell you what happened between the time I dozed off and the moment I was jarred awake by the crash. Half-awake, I tried to cut through the fog in my mind. Little by little, I became aware that the air bag had activated and that the car was wrecked. I saw smoke rising out of the engine compartment and I fumbled to disengage the seat belt and to open the driver side car door. I got out of the car as quickly as I could because I feared the car might catch fire.

Looking back, I can tell you what was happening to me that evening and what I did after the accident. But a memory like this plays tricks on me. It is almost as if my memory of the experience is something I dreamed one night, the kind of memory that is fuzzy at best and the kind about which I have to ask myself if it really happened. Of course, I know it did. But I suspect we do not remember traumatic events in our lives with absolute clarity, because our brain will not allow us to do so.

This traumatic event has brought a concentrated focus to my life. In a heartbeat, after I got over the initial shock, I could clearly understand what was important in my life and what was not important. I could clearly understand what was right in my life and what was not right. These realizations have been irrevocably seared into my soul. I will never be the same person that I was before this. As time passes, I will not be so focused on the events of January 3rd and during the aftermath as I am at this moment. But I know with a certainty that now I place an enormously higher value on being alive than I did before the accident.

I always used to think that if we experienced a traumatic episode in our lives, that our lives would be forever scarred or damaged. Now I know that is some truth to that, but that there is also another side to such an experience. In struggling to overcome the effects of such events, we also grow stronger and more focused. Realizing that I could have died in the accident, I come out of all this with a fierce commitment to make the most of what remains of my life. I am able to define my values and my priorities with much greater clarity and what might have been difficult choices in the past, are much easier to make now.

Shit happened. I have paid a high price for my lapse of judgment, but I am alive... and a stronger person for having gone through this traumatic experience. Today was the first day since the accident that I felt like I was living a normal day, from beginning to end. I guess that it is now time to put all this behind me as best I can and to move on. And that is exactly what I am going to do.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston, Texas
USA

Something Borrowed - 012307

2007-01-23T10:56:00.000-06:00

A Question

When was the last time something that you read unsettled you?

from an advertising section of the Sunday edition of the New York Times, Jan 21, 2001

Going From Here to There... Wherever "There" Turns Out to Be

2007-01-22T23:05:00.000-06:00

Well, folks, this is day 2 or 3 of the next part of my life. I have put one foot in front of the other a couple of times now and I am starting to move on.

I have to figure out what the "big" question of the moment is. That is, I need to do first things first, now that the landscape of my life has been substantially changed. So what is that first thing I need to be doing here and now?

I am trying to get a sense of my present situation. For me, it is sort of like sitting in a theater watching the tech crew change sets between scenes of a play. The storyline of the play is that of my life, and I haven't seen the script for the next scene or for the acts to follow, so I am not sure what the new set will look like. Actually no one does, because that part of the script hasn't even been written. All I know is that all the props for my job are gone. The wreck of my Hyundai has been moved off-stage. A few other changes. Nothing tragic or dramatic here. Just life happening, so I am feeling few regrets. Things change over time and that is just how life is.

I am looking to see what is still left on the stage. I see the set for my home and my family. Off to the right is part of the synagogue where I belong and where I am a teacher. A character on-stage bears a striking resemblance to my good friend, Roland. Some of the players who are more or less peripheral characters in the story of my life are wandering across the stage still. Only now there are fewer than there were before.

For the moment, even the tech people are not sure how to replace those things which have disappeared from the landscape of my life. There is an uncertainty about what comes next and I am afraid that is somewhat my fault. I have put off making some very important decisions... I have procrastinated in deciding what I am going to do next in my life. I am running out of time. I am running out of money. And running out of money has forced me to move quickly to find a job. Cash flow, you know. The green stuff is becoming a little scarce.

The fellows on the stage look out in the audience at me for some kind of clue as to what kind of props they should try to find. I tell them to give me a few days and I let them know.

That is how I see all this playing out for me. Sort of like Roxie, in Chicago. Each step towards her trial turned into a splashy Broadway production number. Well, for me, it is the set of play, and nothing can be done until the next scene and the next act is actually written. And I have to make that happen.

You are saying this is all nice visual stuff, but what does it really mean?

At the moment, I am essentially running an inventory of my life. Certain elements of my life have simply disappeared. Some things have changed. What is important is what is still left. What do I have remaining with which to put my life back together again in a rational way that could possibly work out okay.

I do have a wonderful family. My wife, two daughters and their husbands, a terrific granddaughter and a very large extended family. So long as I remember that, I won't feel alone or isolated or without moral support.

I have a few very good and very true friends, which is as much as any honest person can actually claim to have. So again, I am not alone in what can be a very lonely world.

I belong to a small synagogue. The real virtue of that small community is that is is a supportive community that has made me feel that I have a meaningful place within it. I make a difference there. I am valued by the community and I value inclusion in that community in return.

I do some volunteer work and so there is another place in this city where I have a place and where I make a difference.

And most of all, at those times when I can keep a clear head, I have my own self-respect and a healthy dose of self-esteem, without ever going to the extreme of being overly impressed with myself. I have a pretty clear sense of who I am, now.

The only question which remains is what do I want now? Right now?
An important question with an easy answer. I just want to be working again. Once I am working and the money is coming in again, everything else will fall into place, all things being equal. As they say, first things first. Because I am heading towards survival mode, financially, and this is what I need and want at the moment. I have to act on this matter immediately.

So there you have it. What I have in my portfolio of assets. What I need to be doing in the immediate present. Now life is going to become a little easier for me because I know what I need to do asap.

I have taught the kids in my Sunday school classes that the most important thing we can do in our lives is to carefully frame the questions we pose to ourselves, when life presents good times or bad times. If we don't ask good questions, how the hell are we ever going to get answers that are worth anything at all. I just figured that I would follow my own advice.

When things are off-kilter, life is not very much fun at all. I have a lot I will need to do and I have a long way to travel in time before my life will begin to resemble something reasonably "normal." So I will just take things one day at a time, until things begin to turn around for the better.

This is the end of my progress report. Pilgrim's Progress, Chapter 79 or something like that. Stay tuned because the next chapter might just be a thriller... or not.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston, Texas
USA

Winter Poem

2007-01-22T18:04:00.000-06:00

It’s December.

Outside, the sky is cloaked

in muted shades of gray.

Chill winds blow in

from the north

Chill winds of life

blow down through time

and touch my soul.

In my mind’s eye

I see a photograph

of three young girls

amidst new fallen snow

with arms and eyes upraised

in wonderfully unfettered joy.

Their timeless sky is gray.

Their wind is chilled .

And yet

their sunlit souls

are not yet burdened

by life’s truths

we learn o’er time.

Their eyes still seeing

the world about

untainted by

the sadness of experience.

Three innocent young girls

amidst the gloom and chill

of winter’s pall

find only wonder and delight

in falling snow on a winter’s day.

Eventually we all grow up

In time, we lose first wonder

then delight.

We can’t go back

to what we were.

But maybe I can

once more see the world

through their young eyes,

if only for

a fleeting moment

now and then,

so that my poor battered soul

can find a momentary respite

in the wondrous visions

of three young girls

amidst new fallen snow.

Howard Fireman, Written in 2002 or 2003

On the Way to Getting My Life Back on Track

2007-01-21T00:10:00.000-06:00

I cannot clearly remember the last time that I felt really good about things or when I really felt like a nominally functional person. It wasn't all that long ago, to be sure, but at the moment I would be hard pressed to tell you exactly when I did. At the moment, my life has a lot of loose ends. A lot of things have happened to me over the last couple of months. I haven't done a great deal of meaningful writing in that time and as a result a lot of the recent past is something of a blur in my memory.

I can pick out specific events. A very pleasant vacation in December. Two auto accidents and in the second accident, a near brush with death. The company I worked for was bought out and my job disappeared. A moment at a stone-setting at a cemetery when I realized that had the second accident turned out differently, I could be interred there rather than being standing above ground, very much alive. My youngest daughter and her husband left Houston to live in London. But of all the moments in between, I have little or no recollection of at this moment.

But I am going to recover from all the setbacks and shocks to my life. I know that I am finally starting to get things back on track because I am doing something I haven't done in awhile. I am starting to frame the critical questions I need to be asking myself. In such periods of our lives, we have to start with asking ourselves well-framed questions... important questions... focused questions. Why? Because if we don't ask those sorts of questions, we can't find the answers/resolution to our problems and issues.

I guess I already knew that. It is just that I have had to contend with a lot of things of late, and I wasn't thinking very clearly. What I needed was some distance from all the setbacks and distractions. With each passing day, I am being given that distance and I remembered tonight what questions I needed to be asking myself right now.

I seem to have lost any sense of structure to my life. How am I going to rebuild that structure so that once again I will have something to which I can look forward every morning?

What do I need to do to get organized again?

What do I need to do to get employed again?

What do I need to be doing to feel good about things again?

What do I need to do first, then second, etc?

Who do I need to help me get through this impasse in my life, because I will not get on with my life only on my own efforts? I am going to need the love, encouragement and support of my friends and my family to get through this.

Even in the best of times, there are going to be problems and obstacles to be overcome. I have been through periods like this earlier in my life, some of which were a lot worse than this one. I got through them in the past and I will get through this particular bumpy part of my life in one piece and in good spirits.

I am starting to feel a little better. That is definitely a good thing. However, now it is time to do something very proactive about this situation. It is time to roll up my shirt sleeves, get off my rear end, find the answers and most importantly, take corrective action. It is a start. Only a start. And in large measure, it will mostly be up to me to do this. And I will say a prayer or two as I struggle back to reestablish a fragile equilibrium in my life. It certainly can't hurt my cause.

I am going to give myself time to heal. It took awhile for my life to get this messy. It will take some time for me to make things right again. I am going to have to just take things one day a time. With each passing day, things will get a little better and in time, I will be able to breath a little easier. It is just going to take some time.

To Syfox, I want to say, thank you for stopping by from time to time and caring about what happens to me... for being such a thoughtful friend. To Roland and Sinath, please know that I could not have gotten through this without you. And to my daughters, Heather and Jennifer, to Parker, my beloved granddaughter, to my son-in-laws, Ben,and Tino, and especially to my wife, Marilyn, I love you all so very much and I profoundly need you all to be a part of my life. Your love, devotion and support are the most important reasons that I have for wanting to keep going, when my life has become difficult.

Life is never easy, but I have never been willing to let my spirit be broken by anybody or anything. And I am not going to start doing that now. I will keep you posted regarding this particular pilgrim's progress.

Kindest Regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston, Texas

Life At A Standstill

2007-01-16T13:15:00.000-06:00

My life has been on hold the last few days. This is a very critical time for me right now and it is not a good thing that this should be happening to me just now.

I have to get a job... and I needed to get one yesterday, figuratively speaking. I have a couple of projects that need to be done for other people by a deadline which is fast approaching. I wanted.... needed to write some posts to this blog in order that I can get past the auto accident and I can start to move on again. My home is cluttered and needs to be cleared of a lot of "stuff" that I really don't need to keep anymore. And of course the meals need to be cooked, the trash taken out, the bills paid, etc. Even the normal day-to-day things have been put on hold while I am in this mental paralysis. This is not a good time at all for me to be putting my life on hold.

I cannot tell you why this is happening. Truthfully, I do not want to waste the time it will take to figure that out. Not really important. I have things to do and I have to move on asap.

What is that old adage probably from China? It might as well come from China or at least Japan. Most everything else does these days. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. So, my dear readers, with this post, I am taking the first step. Not a huge resolution, to be sure, in this new year. But an important one. Time to move on now. Thanks for listening to me and helping me work this out. Will get back to my normal posts maybe tonight.

I owe you one.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston, Texas
USA