Life is a Test

If the title of this post didn’t make you break out in a cold sweat, please leave your magic super powers in the comments. Because really, everyone hates tests.

I was always good at tests, but I still hated them. Even though I knew I would do well on them, I still got nervous before every single one. Just saying the word out loud leaves a nasty acrid taste in my mouth.

Test.

You hear test, you think failure.

Blech.

A couple of days ago I was freaking out in my kitchen trying to hit a hard deadline while doing dishes and prepping dinner. I had five minutes left to get it all done before I had to rush out the door to pick up kids from school when it hit me.

Life is a test.

It really is. Whether you believe in an after life or not, whether you believe in karma or not, whether you believe in anything beyond your own five senses or not – life is a test.

We might not be getting graded, but trust me, you still don't want that F.

It’s a test of your resolve, of your will, of your good sense.

It’s a test of your planning abilities, your foresight, your cunning.

It’s a test of your strength, both internal and external.

It’s a test of your fortitude, your patience, your kindness.

But most of all, it’s a test of your imagination.

This year I took a giant leap, well several actually. I decided to hedge my bets so to speak and charge forward in multiple complex and difficult directions all at once.

The result has been overwhelming. In both good and bad ways. I cast all my nets at once, and Poseidon filled them all. Now, I could have done a lot of things at that point. I could have cut a few of my lines. I could have accepted my foolishness and drowned, or I could improvise.

Being me, I went all Harold and the Purple Crayon and improvised. I drew myself a bigger boat, stronger ropes, calmer seas. I’m still not safe on shore, and I might never be, but I’m having one heck of an adventure.

Along the way I am reminded daily that life isn’t what happens to you – it’s what you do with the things that are happening. Every day we are all given choices, little ones, big ones, life or death ones. And every day it’s up to us to choose our direction, pick our path, cast our nets. Then it’s time to choose again. We have to choose what to do with the nets that come back, how to view the scenery ahead, what to do at the next fork in the road.

You can choose to sink, or you can choose to swim, or you can grab your purple crayon and draw yourself a yacht.

Why swim with the sharks when you can just sail away?

I’ve been looking a lot at the great entrepeneurs in our country, and their lives proves exactly one thing: Einstein was right. Imagination IS more important than knowledge.

So, where do you imagine yourself being tomorrow, next month, next year, next decade? And how do you imagine yourself getting there?

You have thirty seconds to hit the comment button and begin your reply. Go!

President Taft, Bad Kitty and the State of the Union

It’s been an interesting week in politics here at my house.

It all started last Tuesday when I stopped by Jason Heller’s Taft 2012 book signing. I got there late, as in I missed the whole show and had the pleasure of being next to last in line for a signature. But that turned out to be okay because it gave me ten minutes or so to start reading the book while the line inched forward.

Read it. Vote Taft!

I started by just flipping through the pages scanning words here and there, trying to get a feel for the tone and the taste of the book. When I landed on a page displaying William H. Taft’s first attempts to learn the intricacies of twitter I knew I had a gem.

What I loved most about Taft 2012 was the absolute truth at the heart of it. Jason Heller’s deft satirical portrayal of American politics is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”. Not that Jason is suggesting we start eating our babies, more that he is hinting, oh so subtly, that the state of modern politics is already eating our babies, or at least our humanity, and with it our hope.

And yet, as he points out, we do still hope. We all still blindly, and somewhat stupidly, hope that this race will be different, this politician will be different, this election will bring about true change.

Ultimately Taft 2012 is much less about a “werewalrus” of a man, resurrected after a hundred years to lead our nation to glory, than it is about a simple, humble, honest man trying to navigate the muddy, murky, tainted waters of modern American politics.

In William Howard Taft we see ouselves, our own innocence reborn. Our own desperate wish to believe that the system works, and that it’s looking out for our best interest:

Abby – All three and a half feet and six years of her – piped up. “They showed us a video in school. They make this stuff with smushed turkey. The bones and everything. They make pink toothpaste out of turkey and then color it with turkey color.”
Taft looked at the forkful that hovered a mere inch from his open mouth. “Oh, really? That’s quite an imagination you have, little one! Back in my day, President Theodore Roosevelt passed the Pure Food and Drug Act. Things like that aren’t allowed to make it to market.”

While Taft 2012 explores the deep recesses of American politics, it remains at all times a humorous and lighthearted look at the seedy underbelly. From Taft’s night out drinking and whoring to his secret service agent’s classified notes on “Big Boy” and his antics, the stump speeches, television interview, tender moments with the last living constituent from his era, Taft’s outrage at learning how campaign financing works in the modern era, reading Taft 2012 is like getting an all access pass to the three-ring Election circus. Both touching and terrifying, but ultimately illuminating – it reminds us that politicians are people too. Not demons, not angels, certainly not saviors – just people doing the best they can with what WE give them.

The day I meant to post this review my kid’s pick of the month, Bad Kitty for President by Nick Bruel, arrived on my door.

Bad Kitty - Welcome to the Dark Side of Politics.

If you have kids and you haven’t read the Bad Kitty series, stop reading this right now, speed to your nearest bookstore and buy them. Right now. It’s okay. I’ll wait.

Alright, everyone back?

If Taft reminds us why we all hope, if Taft recalls our humanity, if Taft restores our faith, just a little, in the ideals of the American political system, then Bad Kitty shreds them like a set of cheap curtains, reveling in our worst fears and ugliest truths.

Bad Kitty is also running for president in 2012. No, not national president (Hello, she’s a cat, and she’s not over 35 years of age.) She’s running to become president of the Neighborhood Cat Club so that she can work to finally do something (horrible) about those darn stray cats coming across the neighborhood border and eating all the good garbage.

Bad Kitty wins the primary by being the best baby kisser on her side of the street. Then she proceeds to try every dirty trick in the book to win the election. She’s a mud-slinger extraordinaire posting attack ads on YouTube, hissing and spitting during the debate. In fact she gets so worked up trying to make her opponent look bad that she completely forgets to talk about the issues.

Funded by a super-pac she appears unstoppable. But is she? The Neighborhood Cat Club offers a write-in candidate. And, cats being cats, they all vote for themselves. It’s up to the outgoing president and his absentee ballot to break the seven way tie. So what will the former president think of Bad Kitty’s election tactics? You’ll have to read to find out.

Reading these two books back to back told me something about the State of the Union that President Obama echoed in his speech. We the people know that the system is broken. We the people want our politicians to be held accountable. We the people would like our government back, thank you very much. However, we the people can’t quite seem to agree on what exactly that means.

It doesn’t mean all hope is lost, it just means we all need to put down our picket signs, drop the rhetoric, stop the sloganeering, and talk. Actually talk. Because, at the heart of it, we all want the same things – (real) food on the table, a (safe) roof over our heads, roads we can drive on, educated children leading the next generation of innovation in our nation, access to health care…

We are not so different from Them. And You are not so different from Us. Maybe, just maybe, if we all stop shaking our fists at each other we’ll be able to reach over and shake hands WITH each other…

In the meantime…

Honesty in Politics? Impossible? Maybe Not.

Stretching Time

Time.

That elusive, elastic, unmanageable, unwieldy, unpindownable thing.

Everyone I know wants more of it.

Except, of course, when they’re in the doctor’s waiting room, the DMV, the bank, the post office during the holidays, the grocery store the day before the super bowl… Then we wish it would just speed up so we could get the heck out of there and get on with our lives already.

I don’t know anyone these days who doesn’t think they could use just 4-6 more hours a day. Or, failing that, then just a couple more days a week.

Recently, I tried an experiment. I decided I was going to try to stretch time. Because I admit it, I’m one of those people who just needs more.

Stretching time, or breaking it?

So, I decided I would get up an extra hour earlier to start. I’d use my extra hour for my own writing. Then, at the time I normally wake up I’d go upstairs and wake up the family and get everyone ready for their days.

In a stroke of pure time stretching genius I also let my kids convince me that they were old enough to walk to school alone. Shazam – another 30 minutes added to every day!

Then, in a moment of raw zealotry I thought, well heck, I can also squeeze in an hour of work after the kids go to bed. I can do my revisions then, or critique that manuscript that’s been staring at me from my computer for weeks, or I’ll finish that editing job and get it turned in.

I can do this. I can stretch time. I am God, hear me roar!

And that’s when it happened. I didn’t roar. I snored.

Getting up at 5am isn’t stretching time, it’s just rearranging it a little. Now instead of blacking out from sheer exhaustion at 10pm, I’m out at 9.

And working after 7 – yeah right, I don’t even have a brain left by 7pm. Seriously. In the place where my brain should be is just this tingling blurry buzzing sensation.

By seven about the only thing I’m good for is a snuggle on the couch for an hour or so and then another thirty to sixty minutes of reading in bed.

I tried critiquing the other night, but I was too tired and grumpy to be helpful. Every time I hit a snag in the story I just wanted to hurl it across the room and scream. I couldn’t think anymore, I just needed to be carried away somewhere new, somewhere nice, somewhere with adventure, somewhere people use spell check before asking others to read their work.

So, my conclusion is that you can’t really stretch time. It’s a finite thing. Even if we could stretch time itself, we can’t stretch our brains and bodies to match.You might be able to do it for a day, a week even, but then – total collapse.

Rearranging time though? That’s a different story, and it’s a good idea to try it. I get way more of my own writing done now that I have my morning hour where everyone leaves me alone and I haven’t yet had to face my “Today” list. (Like a to-do list, only everything on it actually has to be done today.)

That extra thirty minutes my kids have given me in the morning is great for cleaning out my inbox and organizing my thoughts and plan of attack for the day.

But none of it means I actually have MORE time. Because, believe me, after 15 hours of “go-go-go” I’m done.

Stick a fork in me.

I can make my clock tell me any time I want, but I can't make it give me all the time I need.