Going Back

Are you one of those who experiences dread with “Back to _________(fill in the blank).” 

If you’ve checked social media in the past few weeks, you’ve seen adorable photos of adorable kids (and maybe an adorable adult or two) in adorable new outfits holding their little chalkboards telling you what grade they will be in as they head Back To School.

Pictured above: Karlee (Grand-Girl #1) and Aaron.

---

I love Fridays! And I like my job, but I still dread going Back To Work on Monday. I enjoy holiday food feasts, even though the holiday passes and it’s Back To The Diet.

Without a doubt though, when it comes to the dread of going Back, nothing compares to School—for me. Thankfully I haven’t had to go Back To School for several years. Looking back, I’m not sure why it seemed so dreadful.

Maybe it was that summers were so much fun for me. Fortunately I grew up in the day before mosquitoes came from the West Nile and ticks didn’t bring the fever back from the Rocky Mountains with them. The guy selling sub sandwiches wasn’t a pervert and the guy driving the ice cream truck wasn’t a meth addict. We left the house first thing in the morning and didn’t return home until we had a jar full of fireflys after nightfall.

Maybe it was that Back To School brought such pressure. I knew I would be expected to “work well with others,” and “work up to my potential.” I’m sure my parents held some hope that this year might be better. There was so much to remember: locker combinations, homework, teacher’s rules, bus number, which was the “up” staircase and which was the “down” staircase. Does this teacher want homework folded vertically or horizontally? Does the name go in the upper right hand corner, do we include the teacher’s name. I must remember not to ask obvious questions, like: “Why should I write your name on my paper Mrs. Teacher, don’t you know it?”

Maybe it wasn’t so bad afterall. Maybe going Back is a good thing. Maybe it’s good to have something to go back to. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I dread retirement. What will I do on Monday morning? Maybe if I ever do retire, sometime around mid-August, I’ll go to the store and buy myself a new pair of jeans and a couple of #2 pencils, some glue and an eraser just for old times sake. Maybe I’ll write something on a sheet of notebook paper and then I’ll fold any way I want to, or maybe I won’t fold it at all. What is there about Back To School time that brings out the obnoxious, rebellious little devil in me?

Beyoncé & Me

IF THERE WERE A TOP TEN LIST of people that I am not likely to be confused with, Beyoncé would probably be on the list. However, I do feel a certain kinship with her when it comes to being productive. Well, at least we’re both self-certain in our productivity, well-deserved or not.

Maybe you remember the viral Tweet, “We all have the same 24 hours that Beyoncé has”. The Tweet and its various iterations “took the web by storm in late 2013 as the megastar became the figurehead of not only having it all, but being able to somehow do it all too.” — www.infowetrust.com

One of my favorite books of recent days is called “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work” by Mason Currey. Here’s a description:

How do creatives – composers, painters, writers, scientists, philosophers – find the time to produce their opus? Mason Currey investigated the rigid Daily Rituals that hundreds of creatives practiced in order to carve out time, every day, to work their craft. Some kept to the same disciplined regimen for decades while others locked in patterns only while working on specific works.

Making the most of our time is daunting. I have a friend who posts and reposts some of the funniest stuff. Recently there was this:

I’m at that awkward stage between birth and death.

Let’s see if we can think of life in smaller, more manageable chunks, say a day at a time. In Currey’s book he uses his research of journals, biographies, letters, etc. to put together a picture of the daily routines of creative, productive people. The info-graphic folks at www.infowetrust.com illustrated it for us. Here’s an example:

So, I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about hobbies and how important it is too have one. Someone commented to me, “It seems like a hobby could be just a big waste of time.” I suppose there is a danger of that, especially if my hobby were, let’s say, watching reruns of “Law & Order”, a pastime I happen to enjoy. That’s a funny word—pastime.

---

Time is precious, and despite all the advice to “save time”, we really can’t. We have to make the most of it as it comes. The more I’ve looked in to this whole hobby idea, the more I’m convinced that a hobby can be a very good use of our time.

Saturday, for example, we took the Grand-Girls out on a hobby idea I’ve been looking in to. It’s called geocaching. We had a great time for a long time. Before I knew it four hours had passed. It was a wonderful four hours, with three of the most special people in my life. I highly recommend geocaching with your kids or grandkids.

Back to the time topic. Just for the fun of it, maybe you would want to track a few days of your life using Mason’s model. See if you notice some rhythms. Does your daily ritual include an investment in the things that are really important to you? If not, change it. It’s about time. And, just like Beyoncé and me; you have 24 hours every single day.

Pops’ Movie Club

Hobbies, Creative Pursuits and Worthwhile Causes: First Installment. (For some background, read the previous post, Exploring The Deeper Places.)

So the exploration has begun. The quest: to identify pursuits for us Men-Of-A-Certain-Age; things other than watching the 24-hour news channels and becoming even grumpier old men.

Let me go ahead and offer a few disclaimers: I admit some personal bias here. The first ideas that come to mind for me are those things I find interesting, so canning jelly and jam won’t be on the list unless you love it and want to write a guest post about, which would be awesome. Nothing against jelly, but canning it is not compelling for me.

Of course we need to keep our pursuits within the law, relatively speaking. Since About Pops doesn’t dwell in Colorado, marijuana-growing won’t be on the list. Also we need to have some limits set by reasonablenss and good judgement. So hang-gliding, cliff-diving, self-tattooing, and fire-eating probably won’t be on the list. And while it sounds so manly to include hobbies like cigar smoking or chicked-fried-steak eating, if my cardiologist found out I was experimenting in these realms, he would have a heart attack.

You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies - all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies. —Steve Martin

Pursuit #1: Start/Join A Movie Club

This idea is compelling and daunting for me. While I love movies and would welcome the opportunity to watch and discuss with a few close friends, I’m way too introverted to actually join a club. So maybe from time to time I could post a movie suggestion, or you could send me some ideas. Then could watch them individually in the privacy of our own homes.

Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are. —Tom Hanks

Selecting a movie or movies seems to be very important, but tricky. Tastes in movies varies wildly, and judgements are made. For example if I suggested our club start with the movies of Nora Ephron, you might suggest that what I need is a cigar and a chicken-fried-steak, or you might assume I had been smoking the favorite crop of Coloradians.

So how about the movies of John Hughes (the good ones)? Or Wes Anderson? Or Woody Allen. I know, let’s compromise and go with Alfred Hitchcock. We’ll start with Rear Window.

A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it. —Alfred Hitchcock

Maybe we could leave the movies up to a film expert like Robert Osborne. You know, the guy that picks the films for “The Esstentials” on TCM.

Read this from the TCM website:
“Watch the Essentials every Saturday at 7PM CT. Since its inception on TCM in 2001, The Essentials has become the ultimate series for movie lovers to expand their knowledge of must-see cinema and revisit landmark films that have had a lasting impact on audiences everywhere.  Each season a co-host joins Robert Osborne for a special introduction and post-movie discussion about the enduring qualities of a particular film.”

If tonight’s selection is any indication, I feel like we can trust Robert. So let’s start tonight:

EAST OF EDEN
1955 118 Mins TV- PG Drama

It’s a great film and released just as us Baby Boomers were toddling around the house. Here’s a description from the website:

James Dean starred in three films before his tragic death in an automobile accident on September 30, 1955 and the first of these, East of Eden (1955), was the only one released during his short lifetime. An adaptation of the 1952 novel by John Steinbeck, East of Eden was director Elia Kazan’s follow-up to On the Waterfront (1954) and marked his first use of both Technicolor and Cinemascope. The technological upgrade worked wonders for the story’s verdant Salinas Valley setting, where brothers Cal (Dean) and Aron (Richard Davalos) Trask compete for the affections of their taciturn farmer father (Raymond Massey) and the love of a local girl (Julie Harris) in the last innocent months before the start of the First World War. Adapted by playwright turned screenwriter Paul Osborn, East of Eden took as its inspiration the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel, a take torqued even further by Dean’s unorthodox performance (which made him a teen sensation and the industry’s hottest commodity). Dean plumbed deep within his psyche to play the troubled Cal Trask and his unconventional approach to his craft frustrated and angered costar Massey, resulting in a palpable onscreen tension that helped define the fractured relationship of their characters. Toploaded with talent, East of Eden scored its only Academy Award for sixth-billed Jo Van Fleet, in the small but unforgettable role of Cal Trask’s wayward mother. Dean skipped out on the film’s March 1955 New York City premiere and his subsequent Oscar nomination for Best Performance in a Leading Role was bestowed posthumously, an Academy first.

Start the popcorn, dim the lights…

Exploring The Deeper Places

Beethoven was only 56 when he died, but the last decade of his life may have been his most prolific as a composer. Here’s the amazing part to me: he was DEAF during this time. How do you write music you can’t hear?! It must come from a deeper place.

Woody Allen; (put aside for a second any judgements on his relationship proclivities) the man is a comic genius. He has written, directed, and/or starred in like 40 movies. He’s 79 and still at it. He has a movie in theatres now.

In a recent interview, Allen was asked how he manages to make so many movies. “I’m an imperfectionist,” he said. When asked about his being so prolific at this stage of his life: “Well, I am 80 in a few months. Who knows what I can count on? My parents lived long, but that’s not a guarantee of anything. It’s too late to really reinvent oneself. All I can do is try to do good work so that people can say, ‘In his later years, in his last years, he did some of his best work.' Great.’”

Doug Manning is my mentor/therapist/friend. Doug wrote his latest book in his 80s. It’s called, The Back Nine: Life Beyond Retirement. My favorite line from the book, “Aging is inevitable. Getting old is a choice.” 

Wooden Boat Shop in Seattle (photo by Dave Fuller)

Doug speaks of the importance of having a hobby before you retire. As it turns out, it is also important to have a creative pursuit. Maybe they're one in the same. People who do pursue creativity, science now affirms, are happier and healthier. 

I asked Doug why this is so important. He explained that as we age and maybe retire, our world gets smaller. Our network of friends and family usually dwindles. “Without a hobby, or creative outlet or a cause you can give yourself to, your world continues to shrink.”

So if it’s so important that we have a hobby or creative pursuit, how do we make that happen. It seems like most people don’t consider themselves “creative”. I disagree. I believe we all are creative or have the capacity to be. Maybe it’s that our culture steals it from us.

Maybe you’ve heard this old anecdote: The young child of an art teacher asks, “Mom, what do you do?” The mom wanting to keep the answer basic replies, “I teach people how to draw.” The child replies, “Did they forget how?”

I’ve heard that if you were to ask a kindergarten class, “How many of you are artists?” every kid in the class will raise their hand. As you ask that question in each grade in ascending order, the percentage will go down. By the time you reach the senior class, only a few, if any, will raise their hand. You could deduce then that one of the effects of education is teaching people that they are not creative, or at least not artistic.

Billy Collins, former U.S. poet laureate, and my favorite poet, says it seems to be the objective of every junior high English teacher to make kids hate poetry.

So maybe the reason that taking up a creative endeavor like poetry or painting, or writing, or dancing, or photography is so daunting is because we’ve been lead to believe we’re not adequate to the task.

In Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot declaims, “Old men should be explorers.”

I’m going to take Eliot’s advice and explore the possibilities of hobbies and creative pursuits for us men-of-a-certain-age. Because there's apparently more to it than meets the eye or ear.

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas. What are you doing in this area? What did your father or grandfather do?

To be continued...