What to do? What to do.

I'm in public relations/marketing. In this industry, I am a lucky one: my main task is to to promote tourism in a state that has a lot to offer as far as pure, untouched, raw outdoor adventures. That tourism impacts real people in local economies. At least, that's what I tell myself.

In this economy, or any for that matter, I'm truly thankful for anyone who give me a job and a paycheck.

But, at the end of the day, selling a message doesn't make me feel like I'm floating my boat entirely. You might say, it makes me feel a bit waterlogged.

I've always wanted to make a greater difference; to impact people. Should've stayed in education: don't have the patience for it.

I don't think I'm alone; don't think I'm the only person in our society who doesn't feel fulfilled by sitting at a desk and spinning products and messages all day.

So what do we do? Saddled by student loan payments and debts (not that I always pay mine), we're sort of tied to that desk. Tied to the system that requires us to be politically correct on our social media profiles, to keep our mouths shut in the office lunchroom when we hear people rip on Christianity, to feign interest when co-workers talk about pop-culture and television dramas, to act like we don't have an opinion when pop-culture informed political opinions are expressed.

What do we do?

I have some strong ideas for myself. Of course, all these ideas require a great leap of faith and some serious startup capital.

As soon as I secure the latter, I'll grab onto that faith and jump, wildly, into what exactly it is I'm supposed to do.

Little Old Ladies

Traveling home for Christmas, there was a cute little old lady in the airport with three suitcases.

"I'm going on a cruise with my best friend from Sacramento," she told the attendant who was kindly helping her. "The cruise will leave out of Florida, but we'll spend a day in California."

Her voice was high; her eyes bright. Excited.

She made me smile. Probably in her 60's, her independence seemed in tact.

She also made me think:

1. About growing old.
2. About relationships.

It's no secret that I can be a bit of a tyrant. I get tired and cranky. Tired of myself; tired of the shit that piles up, faster and faster, daily. All this shit I could really do without. Things like filling out insurance forms; paying late fees for $50 parking tickets; meetings about meetings; my dear friends who can't just buck up and ditch the losers who've been fucking with their heads for as long as we both can stand to remember. Yes, all this shit I could really do without.

But, the fact is that we have to deal with this stuff as we get old. Fact: we all only keep getting old.

The more grace we have in handling life's shit seems to positively impact our relationships as well.

So, handle your shit, be graceful and manage your relationships, and you just might find yourself on a Florida cruise, having the time of your life with a great friend when you're 66.

Can it just be that easy?

No Country for Real Men

Where have all the real men gone?

The question makes me sound like I've just returned from Lilith Fair and it is 1996. But over the past five years, I've lived in Louisiana, Tennessee, Oregon and now Idaho, and in my travels I've collected some observations, in breadth and depth, of how 20- to 30-something males in our country present themselves publicly, dress, act, socialize, behave towards women...

Just a few observances that beg the question...

Grown men strutting around in spandex, tight spandex, at the gym. Lots of guys spend more time styling their hair than I do in the morning. Men getting manicures. Guys wearing skinny jeans (Fonzi had nothing on these dudes). Driving wee little cars. Keeping their hands soft and their suits pressed.

But it's more than just those materialistic things. It's a shift it values. It's men opting to live like partying frat boys long into their 30s - shunning relationships with women so they can party with their 'boys' forever. It's men who try NOT to act masculine, as if they're fearful they'll turn into George W. Bush and start talking Texan if they act like they have some balls.

Correct me if I'm off-base, but there's been this palpable cultural shift away from anything masculine. A male isn't supposed to "act like a man," anymore. Try to define masculinity from a traditional sense, and then apply that definition to some of the young men in your own life. How's that work for you?

To me, Paul Newman was the epic modern man. When he passed at 83, dying from lung cancer, Men's Journal wrote an article in memorium of Newman. This excerpt from the article may shed some light on my questions:

"Newman’s generation was different. Where John Wayne was big, hard, stubborn, self-assured, and self-righteous, boldly lumbering into action, Newman and his confederates were small, soft, malleable, self-doubting, and ironic (about the last word one would use to describe Wayne), sliding their way edgewise into a scene. This attitude was identified as cool, and it was. Where the previous generation of actors always seemed to be on a mission, these young actors were disdainful toward everything — everything, that is, except themselves. They certainly didn’t believe in missions, and their contempt was a large part of their appeal to other alienated young men in the 1950s and early 1960s. What they had was a sense of superiority, as if they had understood something that the John Waynes hadn’t; namely, that nothing was worth the kind of energy Wayne and the others expended, nothing was worth the sacrifice or the risk or the faith. Not anymore."

So what is the result of that disillusion with traditional values?

Just as men like Newman shifted away from the precedent set by the likes of John Wayne and Clark Gable, are modern men going to shift further away from Newman's essence of masculinity? Sure, Newman didn't give a shit. But at the end of the day, he oozed testosterone. He was very much a man and he didn't have to do anything to achieve that very distinct existence.

So what of men these days?

Perceivably natural things like men whistling at women in public are squelched in our uber-PC society. (Ask the men in Spain, it IS natural for a man to need to whistle at a woman. And, as a woman, I quite enjoyed that freedom of expression as it existed in that fabulous country). We've declared men who like big things, be them trucks or power tools, and relish in simple things like hunting trips and piddling in a well-organized and well-stocked tool shed "ignorant" or "redneck."

I wager a lot of women would rather date such a "redneck" as opposed to a man who trotted around in spandex at the gym.

See, while I believe our fabulous country is certainly large enough for the truck-driving rednecks and a spandex-wearing intellectuals to co-exist, it doesn't seem that's how the trend has developed. The herd has, for the most part, seemingly donned the skinny jeans and the spandex.

Perhaps more loners remain than I really know. It is a huge world - perhaps we can still be a country for real men.

Where the Wild Things Are - Review

Over the Halloween weekend, I took my niece to see the film "Where the Wild Things Are."

She is five.

She's also wicked smart, naturally.

The movie was clearly produced for adults like myself, currently in their 20s or older, who had the book read to them when they were wee.

I think my niece 'got it,' though. As I said, she's pretty sharp. Could've been the pound of Halloween candy she ate while we were trick-or-treating, but she lasted through the entire thing and even paid attention.

My niece's parents are divorced. She lives with her mom, a single mother; my sister, who also accompanied us to the movie. My sister didn't like the movie. While it was a little bizarre for five year-olds, I was really impressed with the following points (whether my niece was or not):

- Relevant. Relationships can get really jacked-up. Even if you're not a young boy, sometimes it feels like you're "where the wild things are." No one communicates. One person tries too hard. One person gives up. More often than not someone just ends up tearing down the house or floating away on a sailboat in the middle of the night, heartbroke, but running fast away in a rage. The relationship between Carole and KW, and even Max and Carole, played out this very real complexity of life in what I thought was a stunning manner.

- Artistic. I loved the stark cinematography. The very raw, natural colors. The contrasts between the forest, ocean and sand. Pretty moving. What kid, or adult, doesn't want to run away from real-life complications and live among nature? Maybe pile-up with a bunch of soft, furry, warm wild things that would keep you safe throughout the night.

Okay, so there was an overriding threat that one of the wild things would up and eat Max at any time. But aren't there always little fears that dwell on the outer-rim in our lives?

Where the Wild Things Are was poignant. It served up that bitter-yet-somehow-soothing reminder that relationships are just complicated. Sometimes, they don't work out.

Sometimes, we can imagine ourselves off to where the wild things are and pretend like we are kings of the universe. But life is still tough. Relationships are still imperfect. They still may not work - even where the wild things are.

But at the end of the day there are people in our lives who love us, no matter what love we lose in other relationships. And no matter what, those people will always welcome us home with loving, forgiving arms.

Chemo Cut

Went to a local library's book sale last Saturday.

It was a shiny fall day. Lots of families out and about. Blue skies. Falling leaves - cliche sorts of things like that. My yearning for a good mood was jockeying for position against the sense of self-pitying heartbreak that still rears its senseless ugly head every now and then.

Could've looked through those piles of books all day. Although it did cross my mind that if I ever manage to write a book and get it published, it may just end up on a $1.50 table.

No matter, Rick Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin' was on a $1.50 table, and that's a priceless story. I snatched up that copy - the 3rd I've bought. The last copy I bought for and left with The Ex. It made him cry. He never finished reading it. Think the stories of alcoholism and wild men who couldn't pony up to being a man to a woman, or a father to a son, hit too close to home for him.

At the sale, the volunteers, robust grandmothers with aprons, were only accepting checks or cash. One lady asked if she could use a deposit slip, as she was out of checks. That made my heart happy, remembering my own mother using a deposit slip at the local grocery more than a handful of times when I was a kid.

Upon my turn to pay, I loaded 12 books into a plastic bag and paid $17 for them.

As I was getting change for the $20 I'd given, the next cashier over said,

"Is that a chemo cut?" to the patron across the counter. The short-haired woman paused and said, "why yes, yes it is."

Without a pause and knocking books askew, the cashier, who upon further inspection, had rather short hair herself, leaned across the table and grabbed the short-haired patron in a strong, passionate embrace.

The room stopped.

I glanced at the husband who stood softly, close to his wife, hands clasped across his front.

The cashier asked into the short-haired book buyer's ear, "what kind?"

I heard the woman say "breast." as

Remembering my manners and not to stare, I took my books and went back out into the day that was no longer a cliche, but instead a wide-open reality that was full of hope, promise, and offered every reason in the world to champion a good mood.