The face in the mirror

It's important to periodically take a personal inventory and assess what's working, and what's not. If this rare event does take place, I'm guessing that it tends to occur at the beginning of a new year. From this process, new resolutions are made, and occasionally, real change does ensue for a few.

I just completed W. Somerset Maugham's book, The Summing Up, which was his autobiographical accounting of his life, including Maugham's thoughts on writing, literature, philosophy, and religion. Maugham, on the other hand, insisted that it wasn't an autobiography.

The book was much better than I thought it would be. One of a stack of books that my son left in his room upon returning to his MFA pursuits after a visit during the holidays, I perused the worn, dog-eared cover and set out reading through the 189 page book (at least the Signet Classic version).

Like Maugham, I've been reminiscing about my life. While he was 64 and set out to leave a more extensive account than I'm planning, the book and my 48th birthday have given me the push to perform an extensive accounting of the positives and not so positive aspects of my own life.

Additionally, I'm in the process of updating my online presence and soon will have a new website up that I hope will finally pull together my somewhat scattered digital profile and disparate blogging activity. That undertaking has forced me to reevaluate my brand, revisit my bio, and reconsider what services on the writing/publishing side are worth marketing, and the ones that best leverage my skills and strengths. All of this has been very positive for me. It's helped me see how far I've come over the past eight years, providing me with important perspective that all of us should have. Unfortunately, I think most people are unreflective in general and remain content (or maybe, not so content) to get pulled along by the current.

Interestingly, when I first began this journey to reinvent myself back in 2001, I never envisioned I'd be in the place where I'm at today. I could never picture myself motivating other people to move forward in their own lives, by offering nothing more than my own example. Rather than mere rhetoric and talk, my own pathway and progression is a clear example and demonstration of walking the talk. Instead of offering, "do what I say," I prefer to put forth an idea based in experience and reality. More of, "here is something that I think will work because I've seen the success demonstrated in my own life."

As we travel along life's thoroughfare, we learn of new areas that we need to take a fresh look at. In my own life, despite experiencing success with my writing, my career, and embracing a more optimistic outlook, I recognized an area that I had neglected.

We're so much more than spirit and soul--we also have a physical body. I had neglected to care for my own body, and its fitness needs for over a decade. My weight had been trending upward for years, and like many men approaching middle age, I knew I looked like crap, but had believed the lie that being overweight was part of aging.

I'm happy to report that it's possible to reverse many negative aspects of aging by focusing on one area and targeting it for improvement.

While I'm certainly not a medical professional, and nothing that I offer should be construed as medical advice, I would encourage readers to do some reflection and self-assessment from time to time. Committing to self-improvement is a worthwhile goal.

Even better, I think one of the reasons that we have the societal problems and challenges that we do is less about politicians and policymakers, and more about our own inability, or unwillingness to take an honest look at our own lives and embrace positive change. It's far easier to blame others for our problems.

Food, now beer

What’s going on with Portland, Maine? Nationally recognized magazines continue lining up to sing their praises about the amazing culinary diversity Portland possesses, and now the latest aria now cites Portland for its craft beer.

Maine's closest thing to a city first gets written up late in the summer in renowned food mag, Bon Appétit, knighting Portland as “Foodiest Small Town in America.” So what if city folk consider a place with 60,000 people a small town? Size is relative, I guess.

Then in September, NY Times food writer, Julia Moskin, spent a week eating her way around town. Her article was effusive about the cornucopia of innovatively great restaurants in what I'd call Maine's only city—most of them new and decidedly offbeat.

Good food needs good grog to wash it down with. Along comes another respected publication, The Atlantic, and this time, writer Clay Risen, trumpets Portland’s beer and breweries. Allagash gets mentioned, along with Shipyard, and Peak Organic. Several drinking establishments like usual suspects Gritty’s and Sebago Brewing get a mention. So does Novare Res, which I have yet to try, but plan to do soon.

Portsmouth gets a mention for Smuttynose, a craft brew I really like. Risen notes it as a strategic “pit stop” on that two-hour drive between Portland, and Boston to the south. I concur, as I’ve had some great times involving food and drink in Portsmouth.

Maine’s winters are long, and given today’s blast of rain and wind, fickle and unpredictable, but Portland and other communities up and down the state's landscape offer up a wealth of places to eat and drink away our darkest season.

A year older

Change and self improvement is mostly a journey of one. While there are significant numbers of people that have chosen to do the necessary work to move forward on their yoyage to wherever--success, self-actualization--regardless of how you unpack the process, there are many others that remain content to stay stuck in their rut. These people wallow in their own pathetic misery, and sure as hell don't want to hear about your weight loss, successes, books you've completed, and goals you are striving for.

That's the double-edged sword that comes when you make positive changes in your own life. If you share it with others, some will want to throw it back in your face, mock your accomplishments, and belittle any attempts not to stay in the same small little place.

January 23 is my birthday. I looked up celebrities that share this symbolic date with me. Most of them are people I know little, or nothing about, and appear to be D-list celebrities at best. I did note that two amazing guitarists--Johnny Winter and Django Reinhardt--as well as Cheap Trick lead singer, Robin Zander were born on this date. I liked learning this, given my interest in music and love of the guitar, an instrument that I occasionally pick up for a season and enjoy noodling around on.

2009 has been a good year, at least its second half. Actually, let me back up. I've been on a journey now for the past seven years. If pressed to characterize where I'm headed, I'd tell you it's to be the best that I can be. Even that doesn't do justice to, or capture my intentions exactly.

I'm somewhat reluctant to expand on that riff right now for several reasons that I prefer not to elaborate on for now. One being that it's early in the morning and I'm not looking to write an extensive post.

I've been pleased with the progress I've made on the fitness front. Losing 52 pounds and getting in shape for the first time in over a decade has been positive for me. By and large, the work I do to make a living is fulfilling and provides me with a meaninful outlet for the skills I've managed to acquire, often by living, and learning from past mistakes. I have a partner that loves me and does her best to understand me in my complexity and allows me the space to breath and grow.

As I move out into the new year, I sense I'm at some kind of crossroads with my writing. I haven't had my usual spark to write that I've had in the past. This may have something to do with having a finite pool of energy and possibly some of that has been siphoned off by my physical pursuits. I think, also, I've been censoring myself. Too often, I find myself thinking about who might be reading what I write, and what would they think of me, particularly if I just unloaded everything, much in the way that I used to, when I started the blog back in 2004, as a place to vent and air my frustrations, which were legion.

I just picked up a book on writing by Nelson Algren, Nonconformity: Writing on Writing. Algren takes aim at timid writing and writers that lose their vitality, in order to conform to society's conventions and mores. The words bite, and seem directed in my way. What is the role of the writer in the world? Are writers still vital, or has any remaining life been bled from the written word by technology's demands for brevity, reducing everything to a cliche, or a 140 character string? I'm not sure Algren's book can answer that, but I hope that it helps in refocusing me and points me in a direction that offers clarity.

My birthday horoscope:

Today's pragmatic Taurus Moon reminds us to use our common sense before embarking on an unrealistic venture. We may feel as if we are at odds with others because the Moon squares the Sun, Venus and Mars, stirring up discord in relationships. Luckily, the dynamic energy can encourage creativity if we aren't overly stubborn. The Moon's easygoing trine to interactive Mercury indicates that communication is the key to resolving the problems of the day.

Panic on the left, paranoia on the right

American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wind. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.

Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our political psychology through our political rhetoric. The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent.

[from "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"
By Richard Hofstadter
Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 77-86.]

Anger and the mediocrity of the ruling class

I’ve begun reading W. Somerset Maugham’s The Summing Up, part autobiography, blended with Maugham’s philosophical observations on life, as well as reflections on religion, morality, and the human condition.

Today, I couldn’t help recalling the passage I read the other night, considering all the hoopla about the special election to our south, in Massachusetts. Written in 1938, Maugham’s observation still rings true, given our usual choice of tweedle dum, or tweedle dee, come election time.

I have known in various countries a good many politicians who have attained high office. I have continued to be puzzled by what seemed to me the mediocrity of their minds. I have found them ill-informed upon the ordinary affairs of life, and I have not often discovered in them either subtlety of intellect or liveliness of imagination.

I keep hearing reports that the voters are “angry.” Angry, angry, angry! What are they so angry about? Maybe these voters need to do some work on themselves and figure out why they’re so pissed, instead of thinking that Scott Brown will be their Mr. Smith.

I’ve given up believing that elections and the politicians that they inflict upon us matter much anymore. I’d much rather focus my energies on the people that matter to me, pursuits that bring me pleasure—like reading and writing—and trying to minimize stress and strife in my own life, which politics inevitably increases. Oh, and stay as far away as I can from angry voters intent on inflicting their ideological anger on me.