the tindog coffeehouse

Yesterday, I did the unthinkable. I volunteered to coach my daughter’s soccer team. Which I may have to do by myself with no assistant. And I’m still on crutches with a fractured tibia. And I’ve never coached anything in my life.

I’m an idiot.

In all fairness, though, practice starts in less than a week, and Megan’s team still had no coach. And without a parent stepping up to coach, there’s no team. I couldn’t let that happen. And besides, I got pretty nostalgic thinking about coaching her since my dad coached my soccer team when I was little. (We were the Kongs, as in King Kong. Yeah, we were some bad ass 6-year-olds.)

So here goes, um, something. Good or bad, it’s bound to epic.

Previously:
August, you suck too
Goodbye, July

Boy, it’s hot. This is damn hot. Never got this hot in Brooklyn. It’s like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot.

– Matthew Broderick, Biloxi Blues

I spoke too soon. Yes, I’m glad July is over, but August isn’t turning out much better. First, well… it’s hot. Yeah, yeah, it’s frickin’ August in North Texas, what do you expect? Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Second, my ACL isn’t torn after all. Which is good news. But the bad news is my tibia is fractured where the ACL connects to it (a tibial intercondylar eminence fracture, if you want to be specific). So I have to keep my “Robocop brace” on and locked with my leg fully extended for the next several weeks while we give the bone a chance to heal. Do you realize how difficult it is to function without being able to bend your leg? Try it. It’s harder than you think.

And because of my stupid injury, we had to cancel a week-long vacation we had planned to visit friends in South Carolina. Instead of hanging out on the beach and seeing the sites in Charleston, I’ll be awkwardly sitting at my desk at work with my leg propped up.

So yay, August. Now go away.

Previously:
Goodbye, July

Hello and farewell
I know I broke your heart
Oh come on July, will you never let me down
Everything I took I would only give it back
If I could

– Jackopierce, “Come On July”

What was July like around our house? This:

In fact, even before the month started, I was ready for it to end. I tweeted on June 30th, “I’m ready for July to be over.” I was stressed out and exhausted from work. Christy, who was also working in addition to taking some very demanding summer classes, was just as worn out. And I knew July would just be a continuation of that.

What I didn’t know is that it would also include me tearing my ACL jumping a 4-foot wrought iron fence, an injury that condemned me to the couch for 9 days and put that much more responsibility on Christy’s shoulders.

So even though I’m still on crutches, I’m incredibly thankful that August is finally here. I mean, it can only get better, right?

Confession: I get teary-eyed every time I hear the Jars of Clay song “Boys (Lesson One)”, a series of instructions for life from a father to his sons.

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Lesson one – do not hide
Lesson two – there are right ways to fight
And if you have questions
We can talk through the night

So you know who you are
And you know what you want
I’ve been where you’re going
And it’s not that far
It’s too far to walk
But you don’t have to run
You’ll get there in time

Lesson three – you’re not alone
Not since I saw you start breathing on your own
You can leave, you can run, this
Will still be your home

So you know who you are
And you know what you want
I’ve been where you’re going
And it’s not that far
It’s too far to walk
But you don’t have to run
You’ll get there in time
Get there in time

In time, to wonder where the days have gone
In time, to be old enough to
Wish that you were young
When good things are unraveling
Bad things come undone
You weather love and lose your innocence

There will be liars and
Thieves who take from you
Not to undermine the consequence
But you are not what you do
And when you need it most
I have a hundred reasons why I love you

If you weather love and lose your innocence
Just remember – lesson one

Happy Father’s Day!

Previously:
Defining ‘manhood’

Like a lot kids, I grew up without a father around. My parents divorced when I was six, and my dad moved out of town for work a couple of years later. I still kept in touch with him as I grew up, but it was hard not having him in my day-to-day life. I’ve struggled most of my life to figure out what it takes to be a man, what it means to be a husband and a father. And I think it’s fair to say that at some point in his life, every man wrestles with those same questions, wondering whether he’s good enough or strong enough or smart enough or whatever. The problem is, we don’t really have a good way to determine that.

We have this general notion of “manliness” as being tough, rugged, battle-hardened, and unemotional, and there may be some historical basis for that. As the Art of Manliness points out, such traits were the result of living in a harsh environment with scarce resources:

In a tribe or a society that faced issues of scarcity, where the danger of being attacked by wild animals or human enemies constantly threatened, men were needed to step up and take on the role of hunters, warriors, and protectors. Because of men’s greater physical strength and assertiveness, the lot for these jobs fell naturally to them. But while men may have some natural proclivities to embrace these roles, putting one’s self in harm’s way does not come naturally to either sex. Thus cultures needed a way to prod men into embracing roles which were undesirable but essential to the survival of the tribe.

In such a scenario, “manhood” isn’t so much about proving your worth but about simple survival, and therefore the evidence of a person’s manhood is pretty obvious. But we don’t live in such a society now. Very few of us know what real scarcity is, and while we may venture out every morning to go earn a paycheck, that’s hardly the equivalent of hunting for that day’s meal. Plus, many women do the same jobs as men and often earn at least as much or more than their husbands.

Further complicating matters is the fact that divorce and single-parenthood are so common. About 40% of the children born in the United States are born out of wedlock, and half of all children in the U.S. will live in single-parent households at some point before they turn 18.

The result is that traditional gender roles tend to get muddled. Boys raised without a father or older male mentor have no idea what being a man really means. They don’t know how to be husbands or fathers or leaders within the community. And without that guidance, they can struggle their whole lives with a sense of insecurity, never really sure of whether they’ll ever be able to measure up completely.

As Donald Miller writes in To Own A Dragon:

I spent a lot of time believing I wasn’t a man because I didn’t like football analogies, or because I didn’t want to put a cheesy bumper sticker on my car, or, well, because I didn’t have a father. In a way, the guys who are promoting this approach to manhood are pretty innocent. I realize they are just trying to keep guys from yelling at their wives. But when those tactics hit my insecurities, they created a twinge. To tell a guy who grew up without a father that he is not a man unless… and he will automatically assume he isn’t one.

So if we’re not having to hunt for scarce resources for survival and we don’t always have adult male mentors to guide us, how then can we really define modern-day “manhood”? How is a man to know if he is really a man? Miller concludes that “manhood” can, in its simplest terms, be defined in purely anatomical terms; if you’re a male, then you’re a man.

But I think it’s more complicated than that. Miller is absolutely correct that manhood isn’t necessarily defined by a propensity for sports or cars or action movies, but there has to be some way to differentiate manhood from boyhood, to let us know when we’ve passed that threshold from child to adult. And I think The Art of Manliness has probably the best definition I’ve ever seen (emphasis mine):

There are two ways to define manhood. One way is to say that manhood is the opposite of womanhood. The other is to say that manhood is the opposite of childhood.

The former seems to be quite popular, but it often leads to a superficial kind of manliness. Men who ascribe to this philosophy end up cultivating a manliness concerned with outward characteristics. They worry about whether x,y, or z is manly and whether the things they enjoy and do are effeminate because many women also enjoy them.

I subscribe to the latter philosophy. Manhood is the opposite of childhood and concerns one’s inner values. A child is self-centered, fearful, and dependent. A man is bold, courageous, respectful, independent and of service to others. Thus a man becomes a man when he matures and leaves behind childish things.

The apostle Paul essentially said the same thing in 1 Corinthians 13:

For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

Manhood, then, is not just anatomical, and I think it goes beyond mere emotional maturity. It is a choice, a conscious decision to take responsibility for who we are, for our actions, and for our attitudes. Sometimes that transition may involve a specific rite of passage, but more often I think it’s a tedious process, a lifelong series of rites played out daily, weekly, and monthly.

And as I’ve learned, the hardest part of that process is just realizing that it exists.

Previously:
Manly skills
Economist: Marriage is ‘necessary for good economic development’
Single parents cost taxpayers $112 billion

On Wednesday I volunteered at my daughters’ elementary school. It wasn’t the first time I had done so, but for some reason I think I was more aware of what I was seeing, a lot of it good and a lot of it really frustrating.

First off, the third, fourth, and fifth grades are in the process of preparing for the TAKS test scheduled for the end of the month. They’ve already spent weeks taking various practice tests and benchmarking tests, and Wednesday my daughter’s third-grade class spent most of their time going back through a recent practice test and correcting their answers. And this pattern will continue for another two weeks. Because the TAKS scores are the very lifeblood of public schools in the state, every school district in Texas obsesses over the test to the point that it seems like they’re more interested in the test scores than in the actual quality of education that those scores are meant to reflect.

Then came lunch. I guess after having recently watched Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution show (in which the chef sets out to make West Virginia’s public school menus healthier), I was more attuned to what I saw in the cafeteria. If a student chooses to buy their lunch, they’re given a choice between several entrees plus a couple of side dishes and a fruit dessert. They’re required to have at least three items, including entree, so many kids take a vegetable and fruit but then don’t eat it. Instead, they purchase extra chips, ice cream, or slushees and eat those as their lunch.

As for the food options, the entrees often consist of chicken nuggets, hamburgers, and pizza, while the “vegetable” sides often include french fries or tater tots. Wednesday’s menu included entree choices of a chicken quesadilla, chicken nuggets, barbecue chicken, or baked potato, and the sides included baked beans, broccoli, and macaroni salad. Most kids, of course, went straight for the nuggets, and I didn’t see anyone brave enough to try the macaroni salad. (Also, by the time I went through the line with the third-graders, the school had already run out of broccoli, so that wasn’t even an option, even if the kids would’ve eaten it.)

I understand, of course, that school districts have very limited budgets, and as anyone who has tried to eat healthy knows, healthier food costs more than unhealthy crap. But there’s certainly room for improvement. If nothing else, it sends a very mixed message to kids: posters all over the cafeteria promote making healthier choices while they serve donuts and waffle sticks for breakfast and Funyuns for lunch.

The biggest frustration, though, was with the kids themselves. Or should I say their parents. It’s pretty easy to read elementary-aged kids. After spending a few minutes with them, you can pretty much tell what kind of home life they have: whether they get generous portions of affection and discipline from their parents, whether their parents are invested in their education, what kind of morals their being taught at home, and how physically and emotionally healthy their home life is. I saw a lot of really young, really overweight kids. Kids with major disciplinary issues. Kids struggling to keep up academically and failing miserably. I’d look at one student’s work and see an effort on par with their grade level and then look at the student next to them and see illegible chicken scratch.

The problem is that time after time, parents are refusing to do the job of parenting. They don’t discipline their kids, they don’t help them with their homework, they don’t sit down at the dinner table each night (over a moderately healthy meal) and talk to them, ask them about their day, invest their time in them. Instead, they put them on a bus to school, expecting the schools to be the parent. The health problems, discipline problems, academic problems — ultimately those are the parents’ responsibility, not the school’s.

Not everything I saw was bad, though. I saw a school full of teachers that still have a real passion for teaching. Numerous parents dropping their kids off with hugs and kisses, some of whom returned later to have lunch with them. And myself, just one of an army of dads who take off work to volunteer at the school throughout the year, not because we have to but because we genuinely care. And of course the countless smiles of kids who felt loved, safe, and appreciated.

It’s easy to pick on the things that are wrong with the public schools, but at the same time it’s completely unreasonable to expect them to be perfect. Undoubtedly, there are things that need to be fixed, but at least based on what I saw, the good far outweighs the bad. I believe that most schools really are doing their best, however they can only do so much. At the end of the day, the rest is up to us as parents.

Previously:
The Texas State Board of Education name game
Academic freedom amendment isn’t necessary
Should evolution be debated in public schools?

(Click to enlarge.)

I finally got around to updating the Rainmeter config on my home desktop.

Details:

• Turned off the desktop icons to show off the wallpaper better. Using the traditional Quick Launch bar instead, which is what I usually used before anyway.
• Wallpaper: Starburst Coffee from deviantArt.
• I uninstalled Rainlender since I really didn’t use it that much.
• Reworked elements from about 3 or 4 different Rainmeter configs, combining them into a single bar across the top (date, time, weather, hard drive free space, Gmail, memory, and CPU usage).

Clean and simple!

Previously:
New computer pics
Time for a new computer

For some reason I’ve been really down the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if it’s a case of post-holiday blues, my workload, the weather, or what. But I’ve been depressed and have constantly been beating myself up.

Staring at the images of Haiti, though, I realize how petty I’ve been. Even in the best of times, the people there live in unimaginable poverty. According to Encyclopedia of the Nations:

Most Haitians live in small, often remote, villages or isolated settlements, with no access to electricity, clean water, or social services. Some rudimentary education is offered by church and other charitable organizations, but the distances children must travel to school, the costs of books and uniforms, and the necessity for them to work from an early age means that illiteracy is estimated at over half of the adult population. Illness can often spell financial disaster, as meager savings or investments such as a pig must be sold to pay for medicines. In some areas large numbers of people are dependent on aid agencies for food supplies.

Existence in the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince is perhaps even grimmer, with overcrowding, disease, and squalor widespread. Those who work can expect to earn no more than US$2 a day, hardly enough to buy food, let alone other necessities. The majority, however, must scrape some sort of living from the informal sector. Figures for child mortality, communicable diseases, and life expectancy reveal the country’s poverty and deprivation. According to the Pan-American Health Organization, approximately 380,000 Haitians—over 5 percent of the population—were infected with HIV/AIDS by 2000.

Meanwhile, my family and I live in a nice house in a nice suburban neighborhood. We have electricity, heating and air-conditioning as needed, clean water, plenty of clothes, and more than enough food. Our kids are getting a great education in a public school only a mile from our house, and I have a full-time job that pays well. We also have health insurance and easy access to some of the best medical care in the world.

We’re blessed beyond measure. And yet I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks feeling sorry for myself. Why?

The earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince on Tuesday was simply tragic. My heart is broken for the countless numbers of people impacted by the devastation, for the thousands who died, and for the possible millions who are left homeless. I’m thankful, though, that even in the midst of so much suffering, God is still in control. That much, at least, I can take solace in.

More photos here.

Yes, I know I’m a week late in saying it, but Happy New Year. Now can I start out the year with a little honesty? I mean, we’re friends, right?  Here goes…

I’m a failure.

At least according to the world. I’m not rich, I’m not famous. Heck, I’m not even “Internet famous”. And I probably won’t ever be. I don’t have thousands of Twitter followers or Facebook friends, and chances are, no one is even reading this blog post. I have a steady but mostly unfulfilling job that consumes the best hours, days, and years of my life but nothing that even closely resembles a social life outside of that.

Donald Miller talks in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years about viewing life in terms of telling a story, with a narrative arc that includes overcoming obstacles in order to get what you (the protagonist) want. He writes on his blog:

A story involves a person that wants something and is willing to overcome conflict to get it. If you plan a story this year, instead of just simple goals, your life will be more exciting, more meaningful and more memorable. And you are much more likely to stick to your goals. For instance, rather than saying I want to finish getting into shape this year, I’ve written down that I want to climb Mt. Hood with a couple friends. I have a vision of standing on top of the mountain in May, taking pictures and all that. Now my goal has a narrative context. That’s just a simple story, and I’ve planned some stories that are far more difficult but I only use that as an example. If my goal were to lose twenty pounds, I doubt I’d stick with it. But when you have friends flying up from Texas to summit the mountain with you, you’d better believe you are going to be hitting the stairs. I have to, because it I don’t, my story will be a tragedy. Again, stories give goals context.

That’s great advice. But it depresses the hell out of me.

(We’re still being honest, right?)

Why is it depressing? Because it’s a lot harder to say than to do. Because I feel helpless and worthless and trapped and alone. And that sucks.

I know I’m not supposed to admit that. I’m supposed to “engage my audience”, “cultivate my online community”, “build my personal brand”. I’m supposed to read more and blog more and network more and do all the stuff that will drive traffic and generate bigger numbers. Because I’m told by the people on the Internet that that will make me a better person.

Instead, after taking a 3-month break from Facebook, I quietly reactivated my profile and promptly unfriended half my friends. And I actually made a conscious decision to blog less, not more.

It’s not that I don’t want friends; I do, absolutely. Everyone wants to be liked and appreciated and respected and lauded for their achievements. But as much as I like love it when people take the time to read my posts and even take the time to leave a comment, this blog was never meant to attract an audience; it was meant for me, as an outlet. If others stumble on it or want to follow along, that’s great.

So by any quantifiable measuring stick, I’m a failure. I’d like to say I have all these grand goals ahead of me for the year, but I’m not making any promises. I will, however, continue to try to be the best husband, father, and Christian I can, even if that doesn’t really mean anything to most people in this day and age.

And, well, there you go. If you’re still reading, I’m sorry if I’ve totally bummed you out. But I think it needed to be said.

Previously:
A little social network housecleaning
A different checklist

It’s hard to believe, but it was 10 years ago this week that I first went to work at Microsoft, the ink on my new MCSE certification still fresh. To this day, I’m still not sure how I made it through the rigorous interview process, but somehow I made it on as a “blue-badge” (a full-time Microsoft employee, as opposed to the “orange-badge” contractors that mostly walked through the door), hired to provide professional server support from the still-under-construction Las Colinas campus in Irving, Texas.

I arrived just as Windows 2000 was being released to manufacturing and just in time for Y2K. It was also right before the dot-com bubble burst in early 2000. Indeed, in the two years I worked there, I saw the glory days of the late ’90s — a time when working at Microsoft meant swimming in lucrative company stock options and bonuses and work was something you did between foosball tournaments — give way to the harsh realities of the falling stock market, before regaining a sense of hopeful optimism with the impending release of Windows XP.

It was from my cubicle that I watched the presidential debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore in which Gore touted his infamous “lockbox” and where I watched the ugliness of the 2000 election drag on with all its “hanging chads”. And it was from my cubicle where I witnessed the horror of September 11th. But it was also a place where I made numerous friendships and countless memories.

It was a stressful job, and I can’t say I fully miss it. But I learned more there than I have at any other job I’ve ever had. It provided invaluable experience that I’ve taken with me in the years since leaving, and I’m grateful for the time I was given there.

I was working at Microsoft at the time. Usually I’d listen to the radio on the way to work, but for some reason on the morning of September 11, 2001, I didn’t.

I showed up for work a little before 8:00 AM, and the office was still pretty quiet. I walked down the row of cubicles to say hi to my friend Larry, and I found him staring at his monitor. “Did you hear about this?” he asked. Of course I hadn’t. “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center.” Oh my God! How awful!

I got back to my desk and pulled up any news website I could get, trying to find out what happened. Normally, there were TVs at the end of the rows permanently tuned to MSNBC, but none of them had been working for a week or so. And now I couldn’t reach any of the major news sites (msnbc.com, cnn.com, etc.) as they were all flooded with traffic. I was able to get some information on the Dallas Morning News site, though, and kept reloading it over and over to try and get the latest updates. This was a terrible accident!

Then came the news that another plane had hit the other tower, and we understood that it was no accident.

Within the hour, a third plane hit the Pentagon, and it was clear we were under attack. By that time the TVs had been turned back on, and we split our attention between them and any other news we could get online. Everything seemed to be pretty chaotic.

And then the south tower collapsed.

I couldn’t believe it. It was all so surreal. For a few moments I sat there thinking how there would only be a single World Trade Center building now and how strange that would be. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

Then came reports of a fourth plane down, this time in rural Pennsylvania, possibly the result of a hijacking that had been thwarted. But when would it end? How many more planes were still in the air, and what else could happen? And then shortly after that, the north tower of the World Trade Center gave way.

Throughout the rest of the morning, we could only watch helplessly as we tried to grasp what had occurred in such a short amount of time. The phones, which were typically pretty busy at that time of the day, were quiet, but there were a few calls coming in here and there. We handled them the best we could, but our minds were clearly not on our work. At lunch, everyone gathered in the cafeteria, where the company had agreed to buy everyone’s meal. Everyone around me was angry and could only talk about getting revenge on the people who had carried out the attacks. But I was silent, barely able to hold myself together. After I was done eating, I went to my car and broke down in tears, and then I prayed; it was the only thing I could do.

I got home that evening and hugged and kissed my wife. At that time we usually didn’t eat dinner at the table, but we did that night, turning the TV off in order to have a break from the news for a few minutes. And I prayed again, for our nation, for the families of the victims, and for my daughter Megan, who was only 5 months old at the time.

It’s been 8 years since the attacks on September 11th, and I can still feel the gut-wrenching fear, confusion, and overwhelming sadness that I experienced on that day. And that’s a good thing. We should never forget.

God Bless America.

Over the weekend, I closed my Facebook account. Technically, it’s “deactivated”, meaning I can log back in and reactivate it later if I choose. I’m not sure I want to, though.

It wasn’t a rash decision; it was something I had considered numerous times before. And honestly, even as I clicked the button to deactivate it, I had mixed feelings about doing so. But I did it anyway.

Why? I think I finally just ran out of patience with it. Every single thing I did on the site, whether I changed my profile picture, posted a photo, or updated my status, resulted in some kind of response from someone, and the responses weren’t always welcome. Just this weekend my “friends” told me I looked like a serial killer, offered me unwanted (and not very accurate) medical advice, and tried to coax me into a political fight. Between that and the never-ending barrage of Facebook quizzes and other nonsense, I had simply had enough. (And I’m not the only one.)

I want to like Facebook, I really do. I believe there’s a lot of value in it as a tool to be able to keep up with friends and family members. But there has to be a boundary, some kind of line at which sharing becomes over-sharing, some point when it becomes best just to keep your opinions to yourself. And within the “safe” and “trusted” walls of Facebook, it seems like people don’t care about such boundaries. You’re their “friend”, aren’t you? Therefore, they’re free to let you know you remind them of John Wayne Gacy. Because that’s what friends are for.

I’m not saying, of course, that people shouldn’t speak their mind online; please do, even if I don’t agree with you. But even online, if you can’t say something nice (or even interesting), it’s often wise to not say anything at all.

I’m sure at some point I’ll probably reactivate my account, but if I do, changes will be made to how I use the site. But at least for now, silence is golden.

Previously:
Why I joined Facebook and LinkedIn
How to play the game of ‘Blog-Facebook-Twitter’
A little social network housecleaning