Farewell Mississauga

These are the days of the endless summer,
These are the days, the time is now.
There is no past, there's only future
There's only here, there's only now.

These are the days now that we must savor,
And we must enjoy as we can.
These are the days that will last forever;
You've got to hold them in your heart.
--Van Morrison


Today is the last day.

This is the 365th day of the Best Year Ever, and this is the final post on the BYE blog.

Wow! That was a fast ride.

I'm not going to try to be particularly funny or clever today as we wrap a bow on this thing. Why start now? Today let's just linger together for a few more minutes, Dear Discerning Reader. Let's have one last chat before we go our separate ways.

Many, many of you have been asking me the same two questions for the last month or so. Let me answer them for you now, to the best of my ability.

Is the blog really over after today?
Yes, we're done here, and this is the last post. I'll leave the blog up for at least a little while longer to allow the tardy to read and add their comments. If you leave comments, I'm sure I'll be unable to resist responding to them (your comments are catnip to me), but there will be no new posts after today.

No matter what else happens, I'm going on a blogging hiatus at least until Labor Day. I may or may not resume posting new material to www.hankhenley.com after that. We'll see.

Now that your Best Year Ever is over, what are you going to do? Are you going to get a "real" job again?
I'm not sure. I'm probably going to continue to stay in my office and keep the word factory open for at least a little while longer. I've got a second book I'm trying to finish, and that will take a few more months. But if honest work comes looking for me beginning today, I'm likely to take it and gratefully rejoin the real world. The odds of work finding me without my participation in the process in the current economy are slim, so I'm not too worried about that happening. After I finish Book Two, though, I'm going job hunting in earnest.

I want to finish this thing by addressing one particular Discerning Reader. I don't know your name, your politics, your age or even your gender. All I know about you is you live in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and you kept coming back.

Mississauga, you're my muse.

Shortly after this blog began I began tracking the traffic to it. The tracking page has a nifty feature that places the last one hundred Discerning Readers as dots on a map of the globe. I knew how many Discerning Readers were out there on any given day and where they were coming from. In the beginning, every dot represented a someone I knew personally. Philly was Quincy, Marble Falls was Mom, Wisconsin was Sis, Rio meant Kevin was on a road trip, etc.

In the early days I was excited when I noticed Mountain View, California kept popping up on my map. I didn't know anyone at all there, so it meant a stranger had made their way to this corner of the webiverse and, more importantly, they liked what they found enough to keep returning. I was crushed when it dawned on me that Mountain View was merely Google's automated web crawler searching this site for their own nefarious purposes and not a human being at all.

As time passed real human beings I didn't know began to come here. At some point you showed up, Mississauga, and you have been there ever since. Somewhere along the way, you became my muse.

All of this is for you, Mississauga. As I wrote each day, I would ask myself what would Mississauga think? What would Mississauga like? Will Mississauga find this boring? I did research on Mississauga, Ontario. Really. I know a lot about your city and the people who live there. You're not the idyllic small town I first envisioned, but for me you were the perfect target audience.

Several times out of a growing curiosity I asked you to identify yourself, but you always kept your silence. I don't know why you held your peace, perhaps you just weren't reading the blog on those days, but I'm glad you kept quiet. That way you remained a blank canvas for me to work with.

There were quite a few other regular unidentified Discerning Readers I could have chosen, but I picked you, and I'm glad I did. Thank you! It's okay, you can come out of hiding now, Mississauga. I still want to know who you are. Drop me a line sometime.

I never intended for this blog to have a real audience. I just tossed it out there to see what would happen. You're still a tiny but proud group, but you've been growing steadily all along. We're finishing with our biggest month of readership to date, even though I didn't post anything here for an entire week of vacation and what I posted the first couple of days after I returned was utter crap.

We've had over 6,000 readers and 14,000 page views from a total of 59 countries since I began tracking these things. That's a minuscule number compared to the totality of the great, grand webiverse and probably the kind of traffic Amazon or eBay get in a few seconds; but I'm still surprised I've been able to directly communicate with so many people--friends and strangers alike--from all over the globe.

I'm also more grateful than you could ever know that you stopped by to see me--each and every one of you. I'm going to miss sharing my observations with you. Tomorrow is election day here in Suburbingham, and not doing a post for you about that experience is going to be difficult.

Finally, unlike the writers of Lost, I'd like to end by telling you what I was trying to do with this blog. As with any artistic endeavor, it's up to you, the consumer, to determine if I accomplished anything at all.

I didn't have a clue what I was doing or a plan of any kind when I began the BYE blog. I had the vague idea I was going to somehow use this space to document my experimental drop-out year, but that was about it.

At some point along the way that changed when I realized this blog was turning into something, in my mind, anyway. I realized I was trying to tell you a bigger story with a beginning, a middle and an end. The story was, of course, about what would happen in my year "away"--my year "apart"--but I realized I wanted the story to take you other places, too. I became more intentional about what went into the BYE blog after that.

The big story was composed of many tiny chapters, each making some sort of observation about life today. It was my hope the pieces would somehow add up to a whole. I tried to use humor as a framework for the overarching story, and I hope you got a chuckle or two along the way.

There were plenty of times I forgot all about what I trying to do. I wrote a number of posts just to be silly or express what was on my mind that day and not to make any kind of larger point or advance "the story" at all.

So now it's finished and we've ended our journey together. It's time for us to go our separate ways as we set off on new journeys. I'll miss you, friend.

Good night Mississauga.

The End.

The final lesson--success

Even though it's Memorial Day Weekend, some people who are near and dear to my heart are spending a chunk of it cranking out performance appraisals.

No document in the corporate world is more important, or less read, than the annual performance appraisal report.

At my former employer, we called the performance appraisal form the PPA&D (even when you spoke the name of the form, you could hear the ampersand). I don't remember what the letters in PPA&D stood for. The words behind the acronym were on the form, but the form itself was important enough that the letters didn't need to stand for anything other than themselves to take on significance.

Usually people dropped the opening P when referring to the form and spoke of the PA&D, but never, ever anything as cutesy as the "PAD."

The performance appraisal, at least at every big company I've worked for, is a long, complex and detailed review of an employee's job performance for the prior year. Even though the form can run for 10 pages or more, there is only one thing on it that matters--in the case of my company just two letters. The PPA&D contains a final letter grade for the year. That grade is hugely important since it, in part, determines the employee's salary for the coming year and signals their future prospects with the company.

As a middle manager, I've written a bunch of performance appraisals. I didn't enjoy the process because it made me cynical.

First, my boss would call me from Valhalla to "discuss" the final grade we were going to assign each of my people. Over 90 percent of the time the final grade was clear cut and he immediately agreed with my opening bid. If we disagreed on a close call, which happened once in a while, he would tell me what the final grade was going to be after allowing me a few moments to make my case. It was always clear when the debate was over and it was time to shut up and follow orders.

It took me a while to realize my senior manager boss didn't call me until he had already agreed with his own very senior management boss on what those final grades would be for each person. The illusion I was contributing in a meaningful way to the process was thin indeed after that.

Only once did I feel the final grade I was told to assign one of my people was so far off the deserved mark it made writing the performance appraisal tantamount to committing an immoral act. If you had asked me to participate in an assassination or club a baby seal I would have felt the same way I did about writing that report. I ranted and raved and almost refused to write it. Eventually I caved and wrote the most glowing performance appraisal with a negative final grade in the history of corporate prose. Even though the story ended well and all involved are friends today, I still feel guilt about that one whenever I think about it.

At my company only four grades were possible: SE was the highest grade and stood for "substantially exceeded." At my former company SEs were as rare as hens' teeth and were only used to recognize spectacular job performance. I only gave out two of them in my years as a middle manager, both to the same person.

FM represented "fully met." FM was the most common grade and went out to employees who were getting the job done and who the company wanted to retain.

SE and FM were the only two passing grades.

AQ was the third grade and stands for "acceptable with qualifications." The thing is, AQ wasn't acceptable at all and receiving that rating usually went hand-in-hand with formal probation, a step toward getting fired.

LA was the lowest grade and stood for "less than acceptable." A grade of LA meant the manager had screwed up for not showing that employee the door earlier. I never gave an LA to anyone in my years as manager. I made sure anyone on the path to that rating was gone long before performance appraisal time rolled around.

After the final grade was revealed to me, it was my job to write the "story" in the PA&D that justified the rating. I'm a good storyteller, so that part came naturally. Thank goodness the document was confidential and the people who worked for me didn't share their reports with each other or I would have had some 'splaining to do when remarkably similar data and comments resulted in differing final ratings.

The form itself broke the job down into different areas of performance, each of which got its own grade and was assigned a weighting, depending on how important that aspect of the job was deemed to be. To give someone an FM rating, the data, narrative and sub-category grades on the performance appraisal had to at least appear to add up to that final rating.

This called for some creative writing at times, but this usually worked in the employee's favor. The people who reported to me were in sales, and, in my industry, bad sales years could easily happen for reasons beyond the control of even the best sales rep. Since sales was by far the most heavily weighted category in the sales representative's PA&D, it took some verbal gymnastics to justify an FM grade to a rep who fell far short of their territory's annual sales goal.

Although the PA&D looked like it could only deliver an objective and quasi-scientific verdict, it was actually ingeniously designed to give its author free reign to spin data and sell the final grade in a number of clever ways. Lucky for me.

Once I figured out the real purpose of the performance appraisal form was to give the author maximimum freedom to arrive at whatever conclusion he wished, I got very good at writing them--good enough that everyone, especially the people receiving them, could have no doubt the final assigned rating was fair and right and the only one possible.

I always kept the narrative in my PA&Ds as positive as I could. Other than my reps and myself, no one else in the world ever read a word in any of them. Why should an author intentionally alienate his entire audience, I reasoned. My reps devoured every word I wrote and took each of those words to heart, so even gentle criticisms raised in their performance appraisals took on tremendous weight.

After the performance appraisals were distributed, signed and discussed, they were sent to the home office where they were locked up in a vault in the HR department, never to be seen again. Since only the final rating mattered, why would anyone want to wade through one of these dreadful missives?

This is the time of year when my former colleagues write their PA&Ds, and I'm sure some are writing theirs this weekend. Pity them.

The part of the process I dreaded most was the self-assessment. Since everyone in my company, regardless of their position, received a PPA&D, I got one too, and in my job category I was given the additional step of first writing a long-winded self-assessment and give myself a rating in each category.

I hated doing the self-assessment and didn't benefit one bit from the tortured mirror gazing and honest self-appraisal it pretended to offer. I already knew where I had succeeded and where I hadn't in the prior year. I already knew my strengths and was painfully aware of my weaknesses. I didn't want to brag about the things I excelled at, and I didn't want to call attention to the things I wasn't good at.

Eventually, I figured out the real reason for this part of the process--to give my boss something to agree with and borrow from in his own final report. Once I learned to write my self-assessment with the grades and narrative I thought my boss was going to give me anyway, I came to tolerate it.

I intended to talk to you about success today and tell you what I've learned about it in the last year. I was going to tell you whether I feel my odd experiment has been successful and why.

As a framework for the discussion, I had planned to give you my BYE PPA&D self-assessment using the same grade scale and some of the same corporate-speak found in my former employer's actual performance appraisal form.

It would have been cute, it would have been funny and it would have made some serious points about the real meaning of success along the way.

But, you know what? To hell with that. I still hate, really hate, doing self-assessments and wasting my time on long reports pointing out my own strengths and weaknesses.

There's one day remaining in the BYE and I'm still the boss of me for that one more day. I don't have to do a PPA&D this year if I don't want to. And I don't want to.

I've always resented trite motivational posters purporting to define success or explain the keys to it. Most of them come from either the "just do it" or the "you can do it" schools of philosophical thinking.

Unless you're a simpleton, it's not that simple, Dear Discerning Reader. Success and failure comes in many forms. Success is a shapeshifter and is constantly on the move with failure as its evil twin. There is no one key to success and no one way to define it. Success is a ring with thousands of keys on it, and each of those keys unlocks something.

For this one year of my life, I have been free to define success in any way I wish. No one else has had any power to tell me whether or not I've succeeded at what I've done. Can you say that? Have you ever been able to say that? For this one precious year, I held every key on the ring, and coming to the realization of that amazing freedom may have been the most important and empowering lesson of the entire year.

I hereby officially proclaim the BYE to be a success, and I'll let the entirety of this blog stand to document my performance for the past year. There--that's my one-sentence PPA&D.

Final rating: FM

Lesson 7--Faith

They say one shouldn’t discuss politics or religion in polite company, but I’m breaking that rule today since today's lesson-learned concerns faith.

I promise I’m not going to try to convert you to my religious beliefs, but if you’re not up for a discussion of faith and religion, you won’t hurt my feelings if you go away now and come back tomorrow.

Just so you know who you’re dealing with from the outset, let me tell you a little bit about what I believe. I am a practicing evangelical Christian and a member of a Presbyterian church. During the BYE I became an ordained officer in my church after the congregation voted me to the office of deacon for a three year term. Teri and I tithe, and we’ve done so for years. That means we give ten percent of our income to our local church. I know a lot of people, even a lot of Christians, believe that practice is just plain weird.

Evangelical Christians believe the Bible is the Word of God. They also believe Jesus Christ, a man who lived in the Middle East about 2,000 years ago and was executed by the Romans at the urging of his countrymen, was (and is) the incarnation of God.

That’s enough theology for one day and enough background for what follows.

I don’t know who all of you are, so I can’t possibly know what you believe. I know enough of you personally to know some of you are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Roman Catholics, Confucianists, atheists, agnostics and Democrats. I’m sure other faiths have also been represented by the Discerning Readers who have dropped in over the last year, and I’m delighted to have had such a wide range of theological viewpoints represented among our readership.

About this time last year I attended Sunday Mass at St. Germain des Pres, a large Catholic church on the Left Bank of Paris. A proud church with origins dating back to the year 558 AD, the building was sturdy and cavernous. Inside there was room for thousands, yet only a couple of dozen worshippers showed up for Mass that morning. That near-empty church made me sad, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks afterward.

The same thing is true for Catholic and Protestant churches all over Western Europe today. Most are more museums than houses of worship these days. More people visit them to enjoy their architectural beauty and the priceless works of art they house than to lift up prayers to God.

The decline of the church in Europe in recent decades has been stunning. One by one, people all over Europe have stopped going to church as they decided organized religion has become irrelevant to their lives.

It’s happening in America too. The number of people who say they don’t affiliate with any religion is now approximately the same as the number who actually go to any church on any given weekend.

Maybe you think that’s a good thing and a sign that we’re becoming a post-religious, more rational society. I don’t think that at all. I think it’s awful.

Today's lesson isn't something I learned this year as much as it is a reinforcement of what I already knew. Since I haven't been on the road non-stop over the last year, I've been able to do more with and for my church, and I have reaped the rewards of that closer bond.

During the course of the BYE, I’ve become more convinced than ever that close affiliation with an organized religion, any organized religion, is important for health of the individual and also the society they live in. I exclude radical religions that advocate violence from the previous statement on the grounds they are dangerous and not valid religions at all, but any other faith is fair game.

Why?

Looked at from a purely selfish perspective, I’m convinced being a practicing member of some religious faith makes you a better, happier, more productive person and a better you makes for a better, healthier society for all of us. I’m sure of it.

Being involved in your church can be a pain sometimes. For starters, being an active member of a church takes a lot of time.

Going to church eats up all of my Sunday morning. Every Sunday. Then there are our Sunday night small group sessions, my Wednesday night men’s Bible study, my regular Friday morning meeting, Teri’s weekly choir practice, other church “business” meetings, etc.

There’s always something more to do. Even though it’s Memorial Day weekend, we had a church workday today where volunteers showed up early in the morning to spruce up the grounds and do some painting inside. Tomorrow I’m one of the “deacons on duty,” so I’ll be up early to unlock the church for our first service and will stick around long after the second service is over and the last person has gone home so I can lock it back up again.

Once in a while I resent the intrusion on “my” time. Like last Sunday night when I was trapped in church for a communion service with the Lost finale only moments away. Why, I wondered as I fidgeted in the pew, did the guest preacher decide this is the night he’s going to share everything he’s ever learned and extend his sermon by eighteen sub-points and an additional half hour? I love the guy who was preaching that night and ordinarily enjoy his teaching, but why that night of all nights did he have to go into triple overtime?

I stewed in the pew that evening for two reasons. First I was annoyed at the length of it, but I was equally mad at myself for not being able to control my feelings during a time when I should have been worshipping.

The same thing happened with a different preacher a few months before that when the Saints were deep in the playoffs and I missed the entire first half of their game against the Vikings. Most of the scoring came in the second half and the Saints won the game, so all was quickly forgiven.

So why go through all of that work and inconvenience when I could simply stop going to church any time I want? If I did, I’d never miss another conflicting event, I would add hours of extra free time to each week and give myself an immediate ten percent raise in income. Why not just quit going and save the hassle?

Theology aside (and there are deep theological reasons for being an active church member we won’t explore here today), I’m a better happier, more productive person for it. And the society I live in is better for my participation in church.

Trust me, it’s true. Make all the arguments you want about the evils organized religion has inflicted on the world. They’re all bogus. Religious people of all faiths are flawed humans like everyone else and don’t always practice what they claim to believe, but I’d rather live in a world filled with believers (in anything) than in a world absent hope and where no one held any faith-based values.

I can understand the concept of being an agnostic. There’s something honest and appealing about saying “hey, I don’t know” when it comes to God and religion, and that’s the way I felt for a long time.

But there’s something unfulfilling and disconnecting about taking that position too--like you’re missing out on something important. And you are.

I don’t “get” atheism. I don’t get it at all. If there is no God and everything is random and pointless, why even bother? With anything. And how and why is anything here in the first place?

Discerning Reader, I promised at the outset I wouldn’t attempt to convert you to my faith, and that’s true. But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to convince you to at least believe in some faith. Any faith. Pick one. If you believe in something, you will be happier for it and society will be better off. Believe me.

Want to be Jewish? Great. Hindu? Have at it. Mormon? More power to you. Muslim? Join the club, just not the branch that blows up innocent people.

Presbyterians believe that faith in Christ is the only way to salvation. This can make us preachy sometimes, since we want desperately for others to have what we have. I sometimes wish my faith were more democratic like the Unitarians and taught there are multiple paths to the same end. But that’s not the way it is, and I have to accept the whole truth of my faith or none of it at all.

If you want to know more about what I believe, drop me a line. I’d be happy to share more with you. If you live in the greater Suburbingham area and would like to visit our church, I’ll be happy to give you directions and show you around. Just don’t come on Sunday night during the playoffs. We want you to come back.

Lesson six--failing better

I'm sorry to report the Georgia College and State University Bobcats just fell to the Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles by a heartbreaking score of 3-2. This means their season is over. Had they scored two more runs today, they would be playing on national television tomorrow in the NCAA Division II championship game, so this is a huge disappointment for them.

You had a great run, guys. Congratulations on a terrific season. Best wishes to Southern Indiana and UC San Diego in tomorrow's big game.

Now, on with the show.

Not all the lessons I learned during my Best Year Ever were the big, life-changing kind. There have also been smaller lessons along the way.

For instance, you would think shopping in an empty grocery store in the middle of a weekday would be faster and easier than going at peak hours, but I've learned during the BYE this is not true at all.

It turns out the time of day when there are the fewest customers is also the time grocery stores restock their shelves. This means working your way around carts laden with canned goods or reaching over the produce manager's shoulder to snag a few apples.

The few customers in the grocery during school hours fall into one of three basic categories.

First, there are the elderly. Now, I have nothing against old people. I actually like oldsters, especially since I've realized I get closer to becoming one myself with each passing day. But, good grief, why does being old mean that a trip to the grocery has to take up the biggest part of your day? Just watch an old person linger over the canned fruit section and you'll see what I mean. The variety of fruit and the different brands on offer seem to bewilder them, and just selecting a can of peach slices can take up the better part of an hour.

The odds are that old woman ahead of you at checkout is going to pay with a check, and she won't start digging through her purse for her checkbook until the total has been rung up. Please stop it and learn how to use a debit card. Congratulations, Granny--you made it to the 21st century, now join the rest of us living in it.

The second kind of person you'll encounter in the grocery in the middle of a weekday is young mothers dragging around their preschool children. I've been blasted in the past for confessing I don't like young children either in theory or in practice (not you Katie--not you Phil), and a trip to my local Publix yesterday only reinforced my deep and long-held feelings towards them.

I was picking up a tiny handful of items at the nearly deserted grocery store and planned to be in and out in a matter of minutes. I was down to the last item on my list, a few cartons of yogurt.

I spun into the dairy aisle only to find it blocked. One of those "charming" oversize race car grocery carts was crosswise in the aisle. A four-year-old boy was out of the cart and on the floor having a meltdown. His mom stood next to him, attempting to reason with her bratty little whelp instead of beating him into submission as a good mother should.

Since I was done shopping except for the yogurt, I retreated to the frozen foods and pretended to look at ice cream for a few minutes to allow for the tantrum to pass and the cleanup of aisle 14 to take place. When I returned, the mother and her still-sniffling hellspawn were still there and having their special mommy time together. The woman was letting precious snookums pick the yogurts he wanted--and telling him veggie tales about all about the fruits in each one as he fingered the cartons on the shelf with his stubby, snot-infused fingers.

I fled a second time. After taking inventory of every bag of frozen veggies in the store, I returned to find the two had made it as far as the cheeses, so I was able to grab a few yogurts and make my escape.

The third category of people you'll find in the grocery on a school day are the oddballs and troublemakers. They include compulsive couponers (like me) who can make checkout last into eternity, people without regular jobs who have the time to demand extra services (again, me) and the non-functional mumblers (not me) who can bring everything to a stop through their random behaviors. The mumblers include drunks, druggies and crazies who seem to prefer to do their shopping in the middle of the day when there are fewer witnesses.

When you also factor in there are fewer cashiers on duty during slow times, what should be a quick spin through the grocery at noon on Tuesday can easily turn into a shopping nightmare.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about today.

Today's lesson concerns craft, and it's a short one.

I'm a writer for at least a little while longer, and I've learned a lot about the art and craft of writing over the course of the last year.

When I began writing full-time a year ago, I couldn't even identify the fundamental mistakes I was making. Today, I've reached the point in my craft where I can at least see my basic errors, and I know when my writing is dull, uninspired or pointless. But knowing when you're doing lousy work is not the same as doing good work--that takes more time and practice. I've discovered it's very difficult to turn uninspired drivel into sparkling prose even when you know how you're going wrong.

Still, I'm a much better writer than I was a year ago. For proof all you need do is take a look at a random post on this blog from a year ago and compare it to one of my more recent offerings. Go ahead, they're all still there. I'll be waiting right here for you when you get back.

On average the recent posts are better, much better, than when I began doing this.

So that's lesson six, Discerning Reader. Practice is the secret to craft. If you're a writer and you keep spewing out words, eventually you're going to get better at stringing them together. If you pick up a guitar every day and keep strumming and fretting, the sounds you produce will eventually begin to resemble music.

I've passed on a particular quote from Samuel Beckett here before. Mr. Beckett's words have been my motto and source of encouragement during the past year. I'm looking at those words posted to the wall I'm facing as write to you now. "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Practice may not make you perfect, but it will make you fail better.

Author's note: I don't usually post on weekends, but I'll be making an exception this time. I have three more posts I want to write, and there are only three days before the clock expires on the BYE. So if you care to come back on Saturday and Sunday, you'll find there are gifts waiting for you.

Bobcats 3, Screaming Eagles 0

Congratulations to the Georgia College Bobcats in today's 3-0 win vs. the Southern Indiana University Screaming Eagles in the NCAA Division II College World Series.

It was a nail biter, but the Bobcats pitcher went the distance.

The same teams play again tomorrow morning (game time TBA pending the outcome of another game to be played today)in their third straight elimination game. If they win again tomorrow, they will go on to the championship game. If they lose, their season is done.

Go get 'em boys!

On friendship

With less than one percent of the Best Year Ever remaining, The Czech Republic just joined the BYE League of Nations (vítejte!). I wonder if they will be the last before time expires. Prague is one of my dream cities. It's a photogenic place and people who have been there say it is every bit as wonderful as it looks in pictures. I haven't been there yet, but one day I plan to down a pilsner at the U Medvidku Beer Hall.

So far in the BYE wrap party we've discussed lessons-learned about community, time, money and health in my year away from the regular working world. The last three lessons will delve into the subjects of craft, faith and success. Today's lesson concerns friendship.

The other day a good friend let me know I had let him down. I didn't mean to--I was just distracted. He had called me several times--most recently to invite me to go to a golf tournament with him. I have a valid excuse for not returning that call since I was out of the country at the time.

Teri reminded me several times over a period of several weeks to call him back. She had reason to believe my friend was struggling with a few things and needed a sympathetic ear.

I never did make that call.

When I was at his house for a party a few days ago, I apologized for not calling him back about the golf tournament invite, and I gave my alibi about being away on a cruise. He looked me straight in the eye and told me not returning that call was okay, but not returning the other calls wasn't.

Ouch.

I didn't go into it with my friend then since it's not a valid excuse, but I kinda have a thing with phones. I don't like to talk on them much. When I do talk on the phone, I want us to conduct our business and get the conversation over with as soon as possible. If we're together in person, I'll talk your ear off all day long. If you send me an e-mail, I'll bounce back to it right away. But phones? Not so much.

Making small talk over the phone is torture for me. I don't know why this is. It just is.

Special note to Mom: you are the one exception to this rule. I know what you're thinking, and I love both you and our phone conversations.

I'm a compulsive call screener. If I don't know the number or name of the person popping up on my caller ID, the chance I'll pick up is zero. If you call while I'm eating a meal or entertaining friends or writing or even lost in a good book, I won't bother to see who it is. Either Teri can answer or they can leave a message and I'll check voicemail later.

Not long ago I was at a gathering at the home of another friend. The phone kept ringing and my friend kept taking the calls, which interrupted our conversations and the flow of the evening. I found the string of intrusions to be jarring and strange. Some of my friends probably think it's equally strange when I ignore incoming calls during their visits to my home.

Teri also tries to screen calls, but she can no longer read the small print on the caller ID screen without her reading glasses, which are invariably laying somewhere out of reach. As the phone continues its insistent ringing, she stares at the screen with the intensity of an Etruscan haruspex attempting to divine the future from a collection of sheep entrails. A split second before the phone kicks over to voice mail, my frustrated wife picks up without having a clue who is on the other end.

This routine never gets old. Teri gets annoyed when I chuckle in amusement at this ongoing act of futility and farce, but I'm not going to stop laughing until she stops the behavior. Either answer it on the first ring or let the call go, dear, but the divination thing isn't working for you.

As I said, I didn't go into any of this with my friend when he called me out for ignoring him. I had no excuse for letting him down. I'm disappointed in myself because I've tried to be a better friend to all of my friends over the course of the BYE. I've had a few failures along the way, but I've had more successes. I'm pleased about that.

Mid-way through the BYE I lost my best friend in the world (other than my wife and soul mate Teri) to cancer. For over a decade, Callie the Wonder Dog, our golden retriever, was my constant and faithful companion. And best friend. Teri and I both miss her terribly.

That's a bit much, you might be thinking. A dog was your best friend?

Yes, absolutely!

Anyone who ever met her (and thousands did) knows Callie was more than just another dog. She was special. We picked her on a coin toss, a fateful flip of the coin for her and for us.

I could tell you a million stories about how special Callie was, but I won't do that here today. If you met her, you already know. If you never met her, please take me at my word.

You can define friendship any way you want, but I think the Bible has the best description of the attributes of love and friendship you can find anywhere. Careful readers of the BYE know I'm a believing Christian, although I've made it my policy not to moralize or Bible thump in this space. But today will you indulge me in quoting just a few verses from a modern Bible translation, just this once? I think even the discerning atheist readers among you will like them.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance . . . Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

That was my Callie. She was patient. She was kind. She was never boastful or jealous or proud or rude. She forgave every wrong committed against her. She was only demanding about going for walks or having a bite of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She was forever hopeful and endured every trial she faced. She was always there for me and for everyone else too.

Callie was the rarest of creatures. For her entire life she was loved and she gave love. She knew nothing else in the course of her existence. Can any of us say that? That we have known nothing but love every moment of our lives?

I aspire to be the same kind of friend Callie was to me. I'll never meet the standard she set. I'll never come close.

But I'm a better friend today than I was a year ago, and Callie would tell me I've made a good start. That's the kind of friend she was.

Bobcats 9, Mules 4

Congratulations to the Georgia College Bobcats in their 9-4 win this afternoon over the Central Missouri Mules in the NCAA Division II College World Series.

Tomorrow at 7 p.m. ET Georgia College plays a rematch against UC San Diego. GCSU lost to UCSD in their first World Series game by a score of 3-2. Once again it will be win or go home for the Bobcats.

Becoming a health nut

I'm lucky to have a good doctor. Dr. Marshall is the kind of doctor who takes the time to listen, and he knows how to nag without being annoying.

A little over a year ago I was in his examination room for my regular checkup.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"Not so good, doc. I've got high blood pressure. My feet ache all the time. They hurt so much I'm limping all the time now. Also, I'm too damn fat."

"It's a good thing you came in, because this is your lucky day," Dr. Marshall said with a wry smile. "I've got the cure for all of those things."

Dr. Marshall's "prescription" was for me to lose a bunch of weight, and he launched into a short seminar on the evils of red meat, processed foods, sugar and empty carbs. Because all doctors are intimately familiar with the depth of human frailty, he also put me on blood pressure and cholesterol drugs "to bring down at least a couple of your risk factors." The words "risk factors" used in connection with me sounded ominous.

It took a while, but out of desperation, and with Teri as my role model, we began to adopt a healthier diet and increased our daily exercise regimen. The changes we have adopted are taking hold--slowly and unevenly--but they're working.

I've mentioned here in the past that I have been obsessive about tracking my weight for well over a decade. For most of that time this chart-keeping has been an ongoing exercise in self-loathing.

This morning another pound came off the scale and I'm happy to report I weigh 26 pounds less today than I did on that visit to Dr. Marshall's office. My feet no longer scream when I walk and my blood pressure readings are in the normal range now. I weigh less today than I have at any point in the last four years.

Good news. I can't wait for my next regular checkup.

But I'm still officially and legally a lardass. I have five pounds to go before I'm no longer "obese" according to the body mass index chart. When that happens I will go from being obese to merely "overweight." I'm still a whopping 43 pounds from being what is considered to be a "healthy" weight according to the BMI index. That's a discouragingly long way away.

Did you know a third of adult Americans are now obese? Not overweight--obese. Another 30 percent of us are overweight. That means only about one in three Americans are at a healthy weight.

I'm determined to join the ranks of the one-in-three healthy ones. It might take me another year or more, but, God help me, I will get there. I've come this far, and I'm not turning back. Not ever.

Obese is such an ugly sounding word, don't you think? It's a word I never want to be connected with again.

Today's conclusion in our ongoing series of lessons-learned from the Best Year Ever concerns health.

One of the main reasons I chose to temporarily drop out of the paycheck-earning world was for my health. I was a heart attack waiting to happen at any moment, and I knew it.

I knew I had to make immediate adjustments to my lifestyle if I wanted to continue to live a while longer. I don't think I'm being overly dramatic about this. I'm convinced I was on the cusp of a major health crisis brought on primarily by stress, inactivity and overeating.

I chose to make dramatic changes to effect the transformation. More dramatic than most people would or could. It took some time to really get the ball rolling, but the changes are working.

None of us is promised good health forever, and we all will eventually die no matter what we do to postpone the inevitable. I could live the most healthy fruit-and-veggie-munching life imaginable and still be struck by a bus, develop cancer or die of a stroke tomorrow if tomorrow is destined to be my time. But living healthy changes the odds and can add a few more good years to a lifespan. I believe in playing the odds.

If and when I rejoin the normal working world, old temptations and ways will present themselves anew. I know that. I think the BYE has prepared me for them and my health is now too much of a priority for me to ever turn back.

I've learned that lesson.

I won't bore you with the details of our diet here, but if any of you are interested in the specific changes we've made to our diet and exercise program, I'll be happy to share them with you. Just leave a comment or drop me an e-mail.

Lesson 3--Money

I haven't done this in months and I promise this is the last time I ever will. If you haven't already done so, please click the "follower" button on the right hand side. Becoming a "follower" doesn't sign you up for spam and will have no impact on your life other than to make me happy to see your name there.

Do it now. I'll wait for you.

Thank you.

Last week we covered the first two lessons learned during the last year as I began my BYE victory lap. Those lessons concerned community and time.

Today let's talk about money.

My net income for the BYE to date has been zero. Since I intentionally dropped out of the salaried workforce and wasn't kicked to the curb in the recession like so many others I know, I didn't qualify for a severance package, unemployment or any other government handouts to subsidize my folly.

Prior to the Best Year Ever I made a handsome living, at least by Suburbingham standards. And when you add in Teri's salary, we were doing very well indeed and embodied the American Dream.

Teri and I were both paupers when we married, but it had been many years since we've had to give a moment's thought to money. Except for the first year or two, we always had plenty.

Even though we earned a lot, we managed to spend almost all of it--not always wisely. We were careless with it--sometimes spectacularly so. How about two examples?

One day I woke up and bought a new gold and steel Rolex watch on a whim. I called the local jeweler and asked if they had the particular model I wanted. They did, and I told them I'd be by in a few minutes to pick it up without ever asking the price. I still have the watch, but I rarely wear it. My cheap Timex does the job just fine.

Another time I realized we had just spent way over $10,000 on that year's Mardi Gras expenses when we added up krewe dues, parade throws, costs of entertaining and feeding guests and everything else. Even I thought that was excessive, but we did the same thing the next year and the year after that. I considered it a tax I paid for living in New Orleans.

There are plenty of other examples, but you get the idea.

Money was never the issue. With two good incomes and no kids in the house, there was always more than enough and more was always on the way.

When we began planning for the Best Year Ever, I ran the numbers. The spreadsheet I created wasn't encouraging. Even accounting for a belt-tightening budget and no financial disasters, I calculated we would need to spend quite a bit more each month than Teri's current salary provides in order to sustain ourselves. I think I came up with a $1,500 per month negative burn rate based on realistic budgeting. To get through the year we made sure we had that much in our dedicated BYE savings account plus a little more in padding.

The plan has worked beyond our wildest dreams. After a year with no income we still haven't lost a moment's sleep about money, and we've drawn much less from savings than my anticipated burn rate called for.

I've learned a lot about money in the last year and I want to share some of what I now know with you. Bear in mind that a guy who hasn't made a dime in the last year is giving you financial advice today, so take this for what it's worth.

1. Debt is evil. One of the few smart things Teri and I have done with money is to resolve not to have debts. Other than our house, which is on a 15 year mortgage and mostly paid for, we have no debt of any kind. No car payments, no outstanding credit card bills, no bank or family loans--nothing. If you're not BB&T Mortgage, then we don't owe you a nickel. If we can't pay for it we don't buy it. We began living that way years ago, but living the BYE lifestyle has reinforced the wisdom of that decision. When you're not paying interest to banks, it's much easier to prosper.

2. You really can live well on less. Our income may have dropped dramatically in the last year, but our overall quality of life has improved just as dramatically. Less so for Teri and I don't want to speak for her, but I think she would also say we have lived better in the last year than we ever have before. Our lifestyle is much more modest, but our lives are much more abundant.

3. Saving for a rainy day is a good idea. Trust me, Discerning Reader, someday it's going to rain. Teri and I have always saved. Even in the BYE we have continued contributions to retirement accounts. We also saved regularly for years in ordinary savings accounts we could access any time without penalty. Without having some money in the bank, we could never have pulled off the BYE.

4. Thrift is a virtue. Since we've both lost significant weight (intentionally, we're not starving) in recent months, a lot of Teri's clothes no longer fit her. The other day she dropped off a bunch of those nice over sized clothes at our favorite thrift store. She came home with eleven "new" articles of clothing that cost a total of just over $20. These are beautiful clothes with designer labels women covet. My fashion-conscious wife has a keen eye, and when Teri wears her thrift store clothes she receives compliments. This happens all the time. Sometimes she shares her secret, sometimes she just says "thank you" depending on her mood. The first time she bought clothes at a thrift store, she was almost embarrassed. Had our life really come to this? Now she knows the thrill of finding a hidden treasure.

We're growing a lot of our own food in my little veggie garden. This year's harvest of yellow squash begins this week and the tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are right behind. We buy meat and fresh produce on sale and utilize coupon clipping databases obsessively before going on our carefully-planned trips to the grocery. If it's not on our list, it doesn't go in the cart. We build our menus around what's on sale and not what we're in the mood for.

The lawn treatment guys no longer pay their monthly visits to my Bayberry estate. Instead I put the fertilizer and weed killer on my lawn myself, and the lawn looks better now than it ever has.

I've got a million of 'em. There's no such thing as an impulse purchase at our house these days.

After living the BYE, I feel I could write a book on the subject of thrift. Maybe I will some day, but the bottom line to thrift is finding acceptable less expensive alternatives, spending every dollar intentionally, being willing to do a little work to save a lot and saying no to all unplanned purchases.

5. Budgeting is a virtue. Every month we have a household finance meeting. At this meeting I present two spreadsheets and Teri creates a third.

The first spreadsheet lists the current value of all our liabilities (mortgage balance) and assets (everything else)and comes up with a net worth figure as of that date. The bottom line number has been climbing nicely in recent months as the stock market has recovered from its crash.

The second spreadsheet details all income and spending from the previous month by category, down to the dollar. Church, utilities, insurance, mortgage, cash--it's all there. We know exactly where the money came from and where it went.

The third spreadsheet takes the most time since we build it on the fly from a template Teri created. We discuss what we will each need to spend in the coming month for routine expenses--food, haircuts, clothing, yard, drug store, going out, "blow" money, etc. Some of those numbers are the same from month to month, but others vary significantly.

Then we discuss extraordinary spending anticipated for the coming month. Is one of us going on an outing to the beach (as Teri is this weekend)? Do we need to buy gifts for anyone? Stuff like that. We fill all the dollars into the spreadsheet and withdraw the bottom line number from the bank. In cash. That money goes into various envelopes for their dedicated purposes, and that's what we spend and no more. When the envelopes are empty, there's no more money to spend on that line item until the next month's meeting comes around.

The system works well for us, most of the time.

6. Money is tied to self-worth. This is the last lesson, and the hardest one. Not bringing in an income over the last year has been a blow to my male ego. For the last twelve months my wife has been the sole breadwinner in our house, and I don't like that feeling one bit. It makes me feel like I'm less valuable somehow--less of a man. I try to pretend it doesn't matter, but it does. Teri makes offhand jokes about this once in a while, and I'll laugh along with her, but it still stings knowing that I'm not the provider for her I was a year ago.

I've found that feeling impossible to shake.

Bobcats hopes still alive

After a 3-2 loss in a hard-fought and rain delayed game vs. UC San Diego over the weekend, the GCSU Bobcats have just defeated Tampa 2-1 to keep their hopes alive in the NCAA Division II College World Series.

They face another tough opponent Wednesday afternoon in a win-or-go-home contest.

Good luck guys!

Swimming with Santa

With your permission I'm going to take a one day break from the navel gazing. There's been too much actual living taking place in my life over the last few days to ignore it all completely. We'll have to get back to our ongoing lessons-learned, blog-closing philosophy seminar tomorrow.

First off, welcome to Kuwait, Lebanon, Argentina and the Virgin Islands, all of which have joined the BYE League of Nations since the close of business last week. Our flag count is up to 58 nations. Wow. Thanks for coming.

What do you think, Discerning Reader, do I resemble Frodo today? I wouldn't be at all surprised if I do, because I'm on yet another quest for my ring.

Sometime over the weekend I lost my wedding ring. Again. I've torn the house upside down, and I can't find the darn thing anywhere. Just like the rings in J.R.R. Tolkien's books, my wedding ring has magical powers. It frequently disappears and reappears at will.

This is far from the first time. I'm always putting my wedding ring in my pocket or in some other unlikely spot where it will go missing for a while. Most of the time it turns up in the washing machine or some other odd place, but once in a while it disappears for days or even weeks. I have a feeling this time it is gone for good.

This is my second wedding ring and the third if you count the wedding band left over from my failed first marriage. I sold that jinxed ring to a Montgomery, Alabama pawn shop a long, long time ago. The pawn broker offered me almost nothing for it and I took his low-ball opening bid. I just wanted it gone. It seemed wasteful to just throw it away, but the pawn broker could have offered me nothing and I would have let him have it.

The second wedding ring is under my old house in New Orleans. I'm sure of it. I was working under there when I heard the clink of the ring hitting a concrete block as it fell out of my pocket. I searched for hours and even enlisted the support of Callie the Wonder Dog, but to no avail. It was as gone as Gollum's "precious."

I hope some archaeologist finds it a thousand years from now.

I picked the wrong moment to lose that ring since it was right before a week long sales meeting out of town. My wife believes my wedding ring is somehow imbued with special protective powers. If I'm alone in public without my wedding ring, Teri is convinced lustful trollops will hurl their bodies at me and attempt to steal me away from her.

Teri somehow has her husband of nearly 19 years confused with Brad Pitt, George Clooney or Johnny Depp since this has yet to happen, with or without the ring on my finger. Last night we had one of those "do you love me?" conversations that I'll bet everyone married more than fifteen minutes has had at least once. Teri denies that the missing ring had anything to do with her mood last night, but I know better.

"I hope you've learned a lesson from this," Teri said after we finished turning the house upside down for the tenth time in our futile search for that stupid band of gold.

I laughed out loud. "Are you kidding? Do either of us believe for a second that I'm suddenly going to stop being absentminded or start being more careful about where I put things? We both know better than that. We both know there will be a next time."

This weekend the temperature reached the mid 90s here in Suburbingham, so it's starting to feel a lot like summer. Teri and I spent some of Saturday doing yard work. It was sweaty, dirty work, but the highlight for me was when I got to use my chain saw.

A tree in our side yard needed to have some dead wood trimmed. That meant firing up the chain saw and climbing on a ladder to cut it off. Somehow I performed this surgery without falling off the ladder or injuring myself in any way, so I'm a winner.

Is there anything manlier than hacking off limbs (tree limbs, not human ones) with a chain saw? Chain saws belch blue smoke and spew sawdust everywhere. They growl ferociously, so, when yours is in operation, all the neighbors know you are engaged in testosterone-enhancing activities. They are heavy and scary-looking and every bit as dangerous to operate as they appear.

Chain saws are awesome. Can I get an amen, guys?

Over the weekend, the beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana was closed.

Oil.

Blame BP or blame the government if you like, but you can just as easily blame any of us who drive gasoline-powered automobiles for creating the demand for huge quantities of oil at the lowest possible prices.

Grand Isle is my favorite fishing spot in the entire world, and I feel ill at the thought of the crabs, fish, shrimp, oysters, dolphins and pelicans suffering right now down there as the oil washes ashore.

It's awful. Just awful.

Most of you will never visit the marshlands of South Louisiana. It's beautiful there in the same stark way the desert is beautiful, and it's almost as inhospitable to humans. Down there the heat bakes your brain and strange biting insects swarm everywhere, but those marshes are one of the richest ecosystems in the world.

I made many trips to that harsh country over the years and most of the time, I came home with a huge cooler filled with speckled trout, flounder and redfish, shrimp, crabs or something else yummy.

I can't exaggerate how rich and full of life the Louisiana marshes are. Once in a while I'd land a bull red weighing close to 40 pounds. There were times we'd limit out on big reds after less than an hour of fishing. Enough fish to cover our grills for weeks.

Those were good days.

Many times we used cast nets to catch our bait. We'd toss our nets into ditches along the highway and quickly fill our bait buckets with small shrimp and cocahoe minnows. If the fish weren't biting or we were feeling lazy, we could load the cooler with dozens of crabs by improvising a bayou crab catcher with just a couple of milk jugs, some string, a few chicken necks and a dip net.

I remember one early morning when I waded into the water off of Elmer's Island, a spit of shifting sand adjacent to Grand Isle. I was all alone that morning in the weak light of false dawn. I waded to an offshore sand bar that was a foot or so under the surface and cast back toward shore into the little channel between where I stood and what passes for dry land down there.

First cast. Wham! I reeled in a fat speckled trout--the biggest I've ever caught. It was going to be one of those days.

Less than an hour later, with the sun still barely over the horizon, I was wading in chest deep water on the other side of that sand bar when a dolphin began to approach me.

The graceful curve of a dolphin swimming is a beautiful thing to see and I stopped fishing for a while just to admire him, even though his presence was scaring away my own prey. When he drew very close to me, I cast in his direction. I wanted him to know this was my section of the Gulf and he should find somewhere else to hunt.

My cast was closer than I intended, and I missed the dolphin by only a few inches. I startled him. Lucky for me, he splashed in indignation and then swam off.

It was only later that it occurred to me I had just harassed an intelligent predatory sea mammal weighing more than I do while I was chest deep and alone in an aquatic environment to which he was perfectly acclimated. If that dolphin wanted to, he could have easily injured or even killed me. I'm never going to mess with a dolphin again. I'm sorry, Flipper.

The oil company says they're doing all they can to fix the problem. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. All I know is one of the most special places you can imagine is being horribly damaged right now, and it's going to be a long time before things are right again in those marshes.

Louisiana, I'm mourning for you.

Today I went swimming with Santa Claus.

Teri and I have decided that were going to spend one day a week doing something "summery" this year. For the first time in decades, Teri isn't teaching summer school, and my schedule is still, um, flexible, for the time being anyway. The plan is to pick the nicest looking day in the coming week's forecast and go outside and play on that day.

Today was cloudless with temps in the low 90s--the perfect day to begin implementing our new summer plan.

We filled a cooler with sodas, loaded the bikes and beach towels into the Jeep and headed off for the first of a number of summer visits to Trailer Park Beach.

It was great.

After roasting on the beach for a while, we dove into Trailer Park Lake to cool off. The water in this spring-fed lake was refreshing. It was comfortable on the surface and in the shallows, but in deeper water my toes were chilled as I was treading water.

As we splashed around, a stranger sparked up a conversation with us. One of the unspoken rules of Trailer Park Beach is you should only initiate talks with people who have approximately the same number of tattoos you do. The stranger was a little older than us and tattoo-free, so we were comfortable together.

We had a lot in common with Jim, a retired Kansan turned Alabamian. He's a member of a sister Presbyterian church (a topic that is often casually slipped in early into conversations with strangers in the Deep South) and we had some other similar interests.

Jim says he likes to swim at Trailer Park Lake three times a week through the summer--it's his favorite way of cooling off after tennis matches.

Jim was a jovial, even jolly guy, with a big build and a shock of white hair.

After speaking for a while, we said our goodbyes. "I hope to see you again. If you come here later this summer, you might see me, but you might not recognize me," he said.

"Why not?" we asked.

"Because I'll be Santa."

In a few weeks, clean-shaven Jim will begin to grow his white beard and he will transform into Santa Claus when summer turns to fall.

At some point in the fall, he will put on his first bright red sports shirt of the year. That is all it will take to complete the metamorphosis. From that moment until Christmas Day, Jim lives the role of Santa Claus.

Jim/Santa even needs two driver licenses--one with and one without the Santa beard--because he looks so different depending on the time of year.

After we were all back on land and dried off, Jim handed us a red business card with a picture of him in his incarnation as Santa. Amazing. The guy in that picture really was Santa.

As Santa Claus, Jim brings a lot of joy to people of all ages. He said he's had thousands of people ranging in age from infancy to over a hundred sitting on his knee. I don't know how he does it. I know I couldn't set my self identity and my personality aside for that long in order to assume another role, however beloved. It's nice there is someone willing to sacrifice himself for a large part of each year so others can experience a beautiful illusion.

Good luck Bobcats!

Best of luck to Billy and the rest of the Georgia College Bobcats as they compete in the NCAA Division II World Series beginning today. Today's opponent is the fearsome UC San Diego Tritons who come into the game with a record of 51-7.

When the chairman calls

If you're just joining us--what took you so long? If you're late to the party, allow me to clue you in on what's going on here. With just ten days remaining in the Best Year Ever, I've begun drawing conclusions based on my year-long experiment as a mid-career dropout. Today is the second in a series on lessons learned as we run out the clock on both the year and this blog.

Today let's talk about community and how we connect with each other. I'll warn you in advance I'm feeling philosophical this morning, which may or may not make for dull reading ahead. Continue at your own risk.

In the era of the web and Facebook, we are free to build ad-hoc communities that extend beyond physical borders. We are more able to define ourselves and affiliate with other like-minded people than we ever have been before.

Even this blog is a form of community made up of a few thousand members who have come here from at least 54 countries and every continent over the course of the last year. Okay, Antarctica was a bit of a cheat, if you remember that post, but I'm still counting it.

Some of you engage the community by posting your comments or communicating with me directly. Others prefer to read and lurk (I'd love to know who you are, Mississauga, Ontario--you've been here all along). Still others got here as the result of a Google search gone horribly wrong. But every Discerning Reader who stopped by is a member of the BYE community as far as I'm concerned.

Three of my friends and former colleagues joined me in New Orleans a few weeks ago for our annual Jazz Fest pilgrimage. All three have had successful long-term careers with the company I used to work for. Because they are good at what they do, their talents are in demand. They might not say it themselves, but they are important cogs in the corporate machine they serve. These friends work very hard at their jobs, and they care deeply, almost obsessively, about their work.

Months before the long weekend arrived, all three had scheduled vacation days around the Friday and Monday they were taking off in order to make the trip. They should have been free to enjoy a couple of well-earned vacation days without a care or giving a single thought to their work.

That's not how it went.

Over the course of the long weekend my friends attended conference calls, spent hours on laptops clearing out their in-boxes, managed various crises that popped up along the way and responded constantly to urgent requests as they popped in on their Blackberries.

Friday morning we were feeling lighthearted as we drove from our New Orleans base camp (a friend's Uptown home) to the Jazz Fest site. We had the CD player in the car cranked and we cackled like a murder of crows as we looked forward to a day spent in the embrace of friendship and wonderful music.

We were only a few minutes away from the festival grounds when one of the group told the rest of us to pipe down and waved for the CD player to be turned off. It was the chairman of the board calling her with a technical problem in a presentation he was about to give. Somehow she was able to solve his issue over the phone without having a computer in front of her.

The chairman wasn't being inconsiderate by calling her on vacation. My friend doesn't report directly to him and his company has thousands of employees, so he had no way of knowing she was taking the day off. He knew she was the right person to fix his problem, and she did so cheerfully, which is one reason she is valuable to the company.

After a couple of days living in this odd work/vacation world, I found myself becoming annoyed and a bit resentful of all the business being conducted around me. This was our only time together all year. It was supposed to be play time--us time--not work time.

Also, I was a little jealous of my friends, if we're being honest. The feeling of being irreplaceable (even though none of us are) can be both heady and addictive, and I was missing that in my life.

A year ago, I was just as needed as my friends were on that Jazz Fest weekend. Today, I don't own an iPhone, a Blackberry or even a laptop. I don't need any of those things in my life now because nobody needs me that way.

My pay-as-you-go cell phone rarely rings, and when it does, it's not the chairman of the board calling with an urgent request. It's either a wrong number or Teri reminding me to pick up some carrots while I'm at the grocery.

My in-box doesn't fill up with weighty problems to be solved these days.

I don't have a conference to fly to or an important customer meeting to attend.

There are days when I miss that sense of being needed. For a couple of decades, my work was my main community and the focus my life, and, other than my wife, my colleagues were the people I was closest to in the world. They filled my days and occupied most of my waking thoughts.

All that has changed in the last year. As I disconnected from my former career, I've reconnected with other communities and formed connections with new ones.

Work is important, but I had lost sight of other organizations and personal relationships in need of tending. Old friends, new friends, my church, my extended family, the town I live in, even my marriage--all of these have taken on a new importance to me, and I view them in a different light than I did a year ago.

I'm not sure there's anything immoral or even particularly wrong with getting so bound up in your work that it actually takes over your life. If that's where you find happiness, fulfillment, your self-image or even self-actualization, then more power to you.

My former colleagues like to gripe when things aren't going smoothly at work, but they seem generally happy and content with their lives. Their work is the community they know best and the one where they fit in and feel comfortable.

I had reached a point where I wanted to be connected to more than what I did for a living and the people I worked with. I think I've succeeded to some degree during the Best Year Ever. That part of the experiment has turned out well. On Monday we'll look at the flip side of that coin.

In the weeks to come, I'll have to make a difficult decision about whether to rejoin the corporate world and in what capacity. If anyone will have me, that is. Dropping out for a year probably wasn't the brightest career move, but that's a story for another day and perhaps another blog.

If and when I do start working for a paycheck again, I know I'll throw myself into my work and dedicate myself to my job. That's how I do things. But I'm positive I'll never again lose sight of the other communities in my life and how important they are to me.

I've learned that lesson.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Let the navel gazing begin

Nearly two years ago I decided I needed to take a year off from honest labor. Not wanted--needed.

Almost exactly a year ago, with the initially-reluctant support of my loving wife, I did exactly that. There were a lot of reasons I felt I needed a "break" from the life of a traveling salesman. I had a bunch of different titles along the way--senior sales representative, national publishing consultant and district manager being just three of them--but a traveling salesman is what I was.

For decades, my former employer didn't give its salesmen titles like "National Publishing Consultant." People who did what I did were called simply (and honestly) travelers. Today more than half of the people who do what I did are women, but a few decades back they were almost all sales-men.

And travel I did. I've been down thousands of highways and byways on my quest to bring treasure into the corporate coffers. I've taken more flights than I can count. I've spend several years of my life in hotels and motels ranging from squalid dumps to luxurious palaces.

After a couple of decades of that, I knew I needed to get off the road for a while. I needed to think. I wanted to chase a foolish dream. My physical, spiritual and mental health all needed rebooting.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you'll see a countdown clock that tells you how much time is left in the Best Year Ever. As I write this, a little over 11 days and just three percent of the year remain. The countdown clock has been there since the beginning, but seeing it now adds a sense of urgency to the proceedings in this space.

Yes, Discerning Reader, we're coming to the end of this journey together, you and I.

Every so often, Teri has asked me to share with her some of the lessons I've learned along the way. Until now I've always declined her requests. "It's too early," I would say. "How can I know what I've learned until I've completed the experience?"

With just a handful of days remaining, I suppose the time has come to start drawing some conclusions. Let's take this one subject at a time, beginning with the subject of time. I already know we're going to explore the subjects of health, money, craft, fulfillment and achievement in future posts. I'm sure a few other ideas will pop into my head along the way, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

We mark time constantly--minutes, hours, days and years--but somehow we trick ourselves into forgetting it never ever stops passing.

Clocks are so precise we can almost always know the current time down to the minute. I'm writing this from my office and there are six devices within my eyesight that can tell me the current time--a watch, a cell phone, an iPod, the computer, a Dixie Beer wall clock and a clock radio. They all agree with each other within a minute or two.

That there are six different time-telling devices in this room tells me that time must be very important to me. If this is so, then why would I ever allow myself to waste a moment of it? I'm surprised and dismayed at how much time I waste watching mindless television at night when I could be spending that time reading, writing, conversing with someone I love or simply enjoying the night air.

Time moves so quickly. You don't notice how fast time flows when you're young--at least I didn't. But when you wake up at 50 and realize that you have already used up most of your allotted time on Earth and have only a handful of really good years left, time no longer seems to be your ally.

This year has blown by. I literally have difficulty believing that it's almost over.

Most of us develop patterns that allow us to live the illusion time isn't really passing, or, if it is, it is just moseying along. Get up, do some work, go to sleep; repeat. One day can seem very much like another if you do the same things often enough.

Even events that mark the passage of time, like New Year's Eve or birthday celebrations, give us the illusion of time standing still, since one can be very much like the other. Every year that ball drops on Time's Square and you pop the cork on that bottle of champagne. There may be one more candle on it, but that cake looks a lot like last year's, doesn't it?

Things seem the same from day-to-day and year-to-year. Your neighborhood looks pretty much like it did last year. There might be a new drugstore on the corner or that pizza joint that wasn't very good has shut down, but your surroundings haven't changed that much. The person you see in the mirror looks like the one who was there yesterday, last week or last year. Time seems to amble, carrying you with it. Nothing ever changes. Not really.

It's all a big fat lie.

Tempus fugit, my dear Discerning Reader. Time isn't your friend. She lulls us into thinking she is gentle, when she is anything but. Time is a cruel bitch and your mortal enemy. Time doesn't flow; time flies!

Want proof? Try taking a look at yourself in a picture taken 20 years ago. Teri is the curator of our family memories. She keeps our photo albums and framed pictures of us taken over the years are scattered through the house. In our bedroom is a photo of the two of us taken on our wedding day.

Most of the time, I don't even notice the picture is there. It's just a part of the background scenery. When I do pause to look at the picture, I hardly recognize the two children in it. We were about 30-years-old on the day that picture was taken, but those two people looking back at me really do look like children. They have no clue. They have so much to learn.

Teri and I have been fortunate to travel together to some exotic places, and, for some reason I never grow tired of looking at the remains of old structures. Mayan ruins, the Coliseum in Rome, the ancient city of Ephesus, the Acropolis--seeing and touching these old things fascinates me in a way I can't really explain.

Here's the real lesson from seeing all of those grand old structures. One reason people travel great distances to see these things is because so few of them are standing. And the ancient edifices that continue to stand are only pale shadows of what they were in the days when they were new.

Let's do a mental experiment together.

Wherever you are, take a good long look around you right now. How much of what you see existed just 100 years ago? The building you're in? The furniture in the room? The trees out your window? The stuff on your desk? The books on your shelf?

You?

You might be able to see an object or two that has existed for an entire century, but the odds are against it.

Now take a second mental survey of your current space. How much of what you see do you suppose will still exist 100 years from now? Unless you're reading this in a museum, not much, I'll wager.

One of my most prized possessions is a small copper coin. Basically it's a penny. It's Roman and was minted sometime between 337 AD and 361 AD during the reign of Constantius II. The coin wasn't worth much then and it's not worth much now. Teri bought it for me for only a few bucks over a decade ago.

In a world where almost nothing you see will exist in 100 or even 50 years from now, it is special to see and touch something created by man that is essentially unchanged in the nearly 1700 years since it was made.

That's my first lesson, Discerning Reader; and it's an ancient one. Tempus fugit! Time flies, so you ought to make the most of what little time you have.

This year is almost gone and I'll never get it back. I can't tell you how much I'll miss it once it has passed.

Secrets are scarce around here

It's been a long time since I've done this. I just realized that I'm most of the way through Academic Affairs (working title), and I haven't posted a single sample of it for you. Let's fix that today.

Here's a bit of today's output from the word factory. Please bear in mind that this is rough first draft stuff, Discerning Reader, and it hasn't been prettied up yet.

Here's what you need to know: Eli, the acting police chief of the Alabama Tech Police Department, is returning to his police car after attending his Thursday evening history class. I think you'll pick up everything else you need to know from the context of the conversation that follows.

Hope you like it:

---------------------------------------------------

When he returned to his unit for the drive home, he saw her waiting for him in the passenger seat.

“I thought I locked the car before I went to class.”

“You did. I had the spare on my keyring. Not sure how it ended up there.”

“Well, it’s your last chance to break into a police car. I have to turn it in tomorrow. What’s up, Sandy?”

“Just checking on you. I had to stay late in the lab, and I knew your class would be ending about now. Your car isn’t difficult to spot. You doing okay?”

“I’m not sure. You?”

“I’m fine. Missing you a little. Okay, I’m missing you a lot. I even miss that stupid cat of yours.”

“You having second thoughts?”

“No. I’ve made up my mind. I want a divorce.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll get a lawyer and you get a lawyer and we’ll work it out.”

“Do we have to do that? Can’t we just call Harvey and have him take care of it for us? We both like him. It’ll save a lot of money if we handle this like civilized people.”

“We’re grown-ups, Sandy, and we need to behave like grownups. We have a bunch of stuff to split up, and we should protect ourselves as we would in any business transaction. We don’t have to drag it out or make it ugly, but let’s use some common sense so there are no regrets later.”

“I guess you’re right. Can I have Harvey?”

“Sure. I’ll call Derek, then.”

“Good. I was hoping you’d use him. Tomorrow’s your last day, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“I’m worried about you, Eli. I heard you bought out the bourbon section of the ABC store this afternoon.”

“It was rum, and it was only two bottles.”

“What are you going to do with rum?”

“Drink it, I guess. Some of it anyway.”

“You haven't had a drink in your entire life. Now I really am worried.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve got a few options I’m considering. A couple of them involve moving.”

“Moving out of Constantinople? Where?”

"Maybe another college town somewhere. My professors want me to go on to get my PhD in history and they say I can get into any program I choose. So that’s one possibility. Also, I’ve been offered a job in Puerto Rico.”

“Puerto Rico? I don’t believe it.”

“I’m giving that one some thought. Also, I’ll be flying to Washington tomorrow to interview for a government job.”

“FBI or CIA? It has to be one of those two. I’ll bet it’s the CIA.”

Silence.

“I knew they’d find you eventually. I just wonder what took them so long.”

“What makes you think this is the first time they’ve called?”

“Well, is it?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you interview before now?”

“I already had a good job. I had a marriage. My life was here. Things change. There isn’t much call for secret agents in Catahoula County or on any university campus, Sandy. You don’t need a secret agent until someone has a secret. You may have noticed secrets are scarce around here.”

Sorry, I couldn't resist--Crank it up and click play

Where the boat leaves from

See, the problem is that you're right there, and there's a perfectly good island somewhere.
--Zac Brown

Yesterday afternoon we returned home from a week long cruise and, twenty-four hours later, I can still feeling the gentle rocking of the ship as I write this. No kidding--it's an odd feeling.

Before we get started today, I have a couple of bits of blogkeeping to take care of.

While we were away, Macedonia, Estonia, Chile and Trinidad and Tobago all joined the BYE league of nations, bringing our flag count to 54. Welcome--I'm so glad to see you! I've been to Estonia and Trinidad and Tobago. Both were charming places to visit in very different ways. I haven't been to Macedonia or Chile yet, but they're both on my wish list. More about our latest additions to the League of Nations on another day.

For those of you who posted comments while I was at sea, they're all available for reading now, and I've removed the comment moderation setting I set up in my absence. I've never had to remove a comment on this forum since you are both a thoughtful and civilized community, but I didn't want to risk the random wacko wandering in and posting something nasty or inappropriate while I was offline.

The picture above was taken at sunset one day last week as we sailed somewhere on the Caribbean. That's the only holiday picture I'll post here and I won't force my vacation slideshow on you, Discerning Reader. If you really want to see more pictures from our cruise, I've just posted a bunch on Facebook. If you're interested, you can "friend" me there (if you haven't already) and check them out.

I'm also not going to write a cruise review here, but if you have any questions about where we went or what we did, feel free to ask in the comment section and I'll be happy to respond ad nauseum.

Before we left on our cruise, Laurie, a dear friend and discerning reader, rendered her verdict on mass market cruising after hearing our plans to go on one--"I've never been, and it doesn't appeal to me."

I totally get and respect where she's coming from. I won't call Laurie a travel snob but only because she and I share the same sensibilities about what makes for a "real" travel experience. And a week on a cruise ship in the Caribbean ain't it.

Laurie and her ex were our companions several years ago on a trip to Italy. Together we rented an apartment in Bologna and used that lovely city as a jumping off point to travel the country on our own by train. It was a wonderful adventure and the antithesis of the kind of pre-packaged travel experience you'll have sailing on a giant cruise ship.

Teri and I sailed out of Tampa on the Carnival Legend with over 2,300 other passengers and something like 900 crew, so we were very much two cash cows in a great big herd on this trip.

It doesn't get much more mass market or lowest common denominator than Carnival Cruise Lines. Our fellow passengers on the Legend represented a broad demographic swath of America with regard to age, ethnicity and income level. NASCAR rednecks, pushy New Yorkers, boyz and girlz from the hood, Asians, Hispanics, American Gothic Midwesterners, country clubbers, old folks on scooters and every other "type" you can imagine were on the passenger list.

If you want to discover what America is really like, all you need to do is hop on a Carnival ship heading toward Honduras. The passengers on this ship represented the true face of America in 2010 AD. If you didn't like the people on board our ship last week, then you probably don't like Americans.

Here's what you learn about Americans when you're confined on a boat with 2,300 of them:

We do like our vittles. Oh my Lord, too many of us are so incredibly fat! A quick trip to the Lido Deck buffet at noon shows how this sad state of affairs has come to pass. I can't believe how much food some people piled onto their plates when faced with an infinite variety and supply of it. It was kind of disgusting, really.

I'm no role model on this score, and I'm no svelte bathing beauty. I gained weight along with everyone else on the cruise, but Teri and I came home with a fresh determination to resume the healthy eating regimen we have been practicing all spring.

Apparently, if you're between eighteen and thirty years of age, it is now mandatory to sport at least one tattoo. They're all on full display poolside. Tattoos make great conversation starters. Everyone has a story behind theirs and their owners are dying for you to ask.

Cruising is the best way I can think of to reinforce any stereotypes you hold. I'm just saying. It was strange and almost comical to watch this play out with an 88,500 ton ship as the stage.

In addition to being too fat, Americans, by and large, are loud, fun-loving, self-centered, outgoing, generous and decent people. That's how the world sees us, and it's true for the most part. I'm proud to be an American most of the time.

Carnival advertises itself as "The Fun Ships," and we really did have a great time last week. The ship was beautiful, the food was great, the drinks were cold, the weather was sunny and warm, the staff was terrific, the shows were enjoyable, the islands were tropical havens--what's not to like about any of that?

Teri and I spent a little time while we were away reflecting on lessons learned during the Best Year Ever and plotting our course for the year ahead. A week spent at sea was the ideal environment for us to conduct that important piece of family business.

It may not have been our usual exotic adventure away from the huddled masses, but it was a pleasant escape and we came back refreshed and energized. What more could you ask of a vacation?

You got worries, you can drop 'em in the blue ocean, but you gotta get away to where the boat leaves from.
--Zac Brown

Peace, love and great music

I’ll be escorting my bride on a bit of much needed (for her, at least) vacation therapy on the high seas next week, so the BYE blog is going dark until May 17th. There’s internet access on board the ship, but it’s very slow and crazy expensive, so I’ll spend my blogging time by the pool with a boat drink in one hand and a trashy novel in the other instead of having my usual conversation with you, Discerning Reader.

When I return, the countdown to extinction for the BYE blog will begin in earnest. I always intended for this blog to cover the events of a literal one year period. My Best Year Ever officially commenced on June 1, 2009 and it will end on May 31, 2010. I’ve thought about extending the blog into June and beyond, but there can be only one Best Year Ever and this has been it. When my best year ends so will this blog. There will be no point in continuing to document something that has already passed.

We’ll get all weepy and sing a few verses of Kumbaya together when we say our farewells in a few weeks, but I do want to let you know now how much I’ve enjoyed our time together--even more than I thought I would. The greatest compliments I’ve received about the BYE blog have come from strangers and near-strangers who have told me that coming here has been like having an ongoing conversation with an old friend over a cup of coffee. If that’s how you truly feel, then I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.

Speaking of the high seas, eight of us are now signed up for a five night cruise in December out of New Orleans. Inside cabins have dropped to just $249 per person for five nights of room and board. You’re welcome to join us. If you are at all interested, just drop me a line and I’ll fill you in on the details.

I know I’ve been blogging about New Orleans and Jazz Fest all week, and you’re probably ready for me to move on to another topic. I promise I’ll drop the subject after today, but I do have a few final things to say about both the city and the festival.

When people ask me about the best time to visit New Orleans, I always tell them they need to go three times to get a true feel for that odd and wonderful place: once at Mardi Gras, once at Jazz Fest and once when no big event is in town and you can eat and explore away from the maddening crowd. It helps if you know a local who can give you some perspective on the strange things you’re seeing and steer you away from the tourist traps and dangerous parts of town.

New Orleans can cast a spell on some people. With New Orleans, you either get it or you don’t. If you get it, the city can touch your soul. If you don’t, you’ll be very happy to leave.

I mentioned seeing 36 music acts in my four days of Jazz Fest this year, and I want to leave you today with general impressions of a few of my favorites.

Van Morrison. This was, simply put, the best set of music I’ve seen in my life. I’ve never seen a more masterful performance than Van Morrison and his band delivered at Jazz Fest this year, and that covers a lot of ground.

Morrison is one prickly Irish SOB. He barely spoke to his audience. Instead he let the music speak for him. Most of the talking he did was to growl orders to members of his superb band, often in mid-song, when they weren’t following him to his satisfaction. I wasn’t a huge Van Morrison fan before this year’s Jazz Fest. I am now.

Sonny Landreth is my favorite guitar god. He’s a Jazz Fest regular from Cajun country who plays a Strat like you won’t believe. I’ve seen him back up other groups (like Jimmy Buffett) any number of times, but last week I got to see him twice playing lead guitar with his own band. I saw him on the big stage at Jazz Fest and also up close up in a New Orleans nightclub that doubles as a bowling alley, which was the perfect venue.

Mr. Landreth can do things with a Strat you’ve never seen before or even dreamed were possible. It’s a joy watching someone that talented performing at the peak of his powers. If you’re in Chicago next month you can see him play with Eric Clapton. Should be a pretty good show.

Ruthie Foster is my new go-to soul sister. I’d never seen or even heard of her before last week. What a voice! She’s so strong and so confident!

Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys (pictured above) are hands-down the best zydeco band on the planet right now. Only Beau Jocque and the Zydeco Hi-Rollers even come close to being as good as the boys from Mamou, Louisiana. The last time I saw Steve Riley live, the recording of that set won a Grammy, and they were even better than that last week with a wailing horn section backing them up (weird, but cool). If they show up in your town, by all means go.

Steve gets bonus style points for personally answering his e-mails. I had a question about how to get a particular song he played in this year’s set (“7 Nights 2 Rock”) and he bounced back with the answer within a few minutes. Turns out he had recorded it in one of his side projects.

Kirk Franklin. Mix gospel, pop, rap and abundant energy and you’ve got this guy. I only caught the tail end of his set, but it was enough to blow me away. I wish I’d gotten there earlier.

Band of Horses is a young rock group from Seattle on tour now with Pearl Jam. I liked these guys a lot, and I think they’ll be around for a while.

Blues Traveler. John Popper & Co. can still bring it live. Great show.

That wraps my review of Jazz Fest 2010. We’ll see you again in a week or so. In the meantime, in the words of my friend Mark (pictured), here’s wishing you peace, love and great music.