One of the reasons I scribble here...

"The idea muscle is like any other muscle: if you don’t use it, you lose it. Leg muscles atrophy after just two weeks of non-use. You actually need physical therapy to walk again. And yet, how often do we really use our creativity? Come up with ideas. Write down ten ideas a day. Does that mean you use them? No! It’s just practice. Throw them out. But I guarantee within six months you will be an idea machine." — James Altucher, a hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, bestselling author, venture capitalist and podcaster, founder or cofounder of more than 20 companies (and 17 times he's failed at company-building, he says), publisher of eleven books, and frequent contributor to popular publications.

After more than a decade I may not be an idea machine, but I write things, inelegant, overwritten, nonsensical this-or-thats perhaps, but about my favorite subjects (M 'n' m) who I love powerfully – so powerfully I can selfishly harness the energy to force into exercise this supposed idea/creativity muscle. I do, in fact, fear it will atrophy. I fear tight spaces too, and panic attacks, and many things, but my worry that everything can wither isn't unreasonable; technically everything does, my loved ones, your loved ones, even institutions and ideas themselves go through summers and winters, if history is evidence. But maybe that's where God comes in. And life is good and I'm grateful, especially for M 'n' m.

No wonder the Cubs signed this guy

M 'n' m's great grandpa was an impressive pitcher and catcher from central Illinois. He threw no-hitters, pitched 10-inning shutouts, you name it. He was a helluva backstop too. The Cubs signed him to a contract but he joined the Army and went to the Korean War instead. They are the greatest generation; there's simply no doubt about it.

Michael graduates from 8th grade today

So it's not high school, but it feels like a time to reflect. So I'm reflecting. Wow, elementary and junior high, done. Eight grades – ten including preschool and kindergarten – kaput, finito, history. Man it flew by. Only four years – high school – left? If this is a hockey game we're in the 3rd period already. Holy shit! Are we winning? Fuck, I don't know how to skate!

If it bleeds, we can kill it...

The first intense movie I watched with my dad – rated R for violence, F-words, jokes I didn't fully understand yet – was Schwarzenegger's 1987 film called Predator. I was a little younger than Michael and it blew me away. (Back then we rented movies as VHS tapes from storefronts with names like 'Dollar Video' that sometimes had an adult section behind a curtain. The good ol' days.) In Predator, Arnold's best-in-the-world team of pro soldiers is wiped out by an unbeatable enemy. Or so it seems. The bad-guy killing machine is an ugly mo-fo of an alien shaped, oddly enough, like a big human. But then there's Arnold. Naturally, Ahhnold goes native, all-in, all-warrior to face the thing, head-on, do-or-die, despite the odds, camouflaging himself in mud (but not enough to hide his overdeveloped muscles), and then, in his warpaint, he whips up a bow, arrows, spears, rope, and booby traps with a knife (Rambo was good at that shit, too). I was so engrossed in the film I wouldn't have noticed if a swimsuit model walked by, or the cutest girl in school (a tossup then, as I recall, between Gina and Shane). What's my point? Do I need one? Why can't I just babble about a movie? Actually, my point is this: I've listed mantras here before, motivational bits, and there's one from Predator I haven't included because it's cheesy, but I gotta tell ya... it's oh-so-good: "If it bleeds, we can kill it." I just can't deny this has an alternative meaning to me and a place in my list of phrases that fire me up. Arnold says this after his team fires hundreds of rounds at the alien, which they can't see because it's cloaked and invisible – they are technologically outmatched for sure – so they don't even know what they're up against, it keeps picking them off and vanishing, but they find a florescent substance on a leaf that can only be their enemy's blood. This is when Arnold says, in his glorious accent: "If it bleeds, we can kill it." Awesome. There ya go. Any sign, any hint of headway, progress, don't give up. Keep going. If you can nick it, cut it, chip away at it, you can finish it. Press on. Back to basics, guts, will. Find a way. Get it done. Because Arnold says so.

The movie also introduced me to a favorite song, Long Tall Sally by Little Richard.

More and more, Michael is acting like a teenager...

... which is expected, naturally, and mostly a relief, given the way I see the world, myself, and how the best and not-so-best among us navigate youth. It's a minefield and a gold mine, both. It's fucking exciting, eye-opening, full of blessings and trials, fun and discomfort. I know my opinions are just that, 'opinions' and, even more disqualifying, 'my' opinions, but I offer them nonetheless. I want M 'n' m to act exactly like teenagers when it's time. I believe a certain aloofness, and willingness to strut and defend oneself and be dismissive of certain things (peer pressure and pestering peers and pestering fears, to name a few) will serve them well. I believe I lacked any kind of real rebelliousness, and now look at me (that there was not a statement of self-flattery by the way, more like a confession of self-mediocrity). So, a little attitude can be helpful. Quite often in fact. Life takes toughness. Mental fortitude, stubbornness, attitude, okay then, just don't give ME any attitude Michael, or Megan, because I'm your father, and I don't take any shit. And if that's not laughable, I don't know what is. I'm not a stern enough father – I'm lacking 'attitude' perhaps! – but thankfully, so far, they're good kids. For that, and for everything else they are, I'm grateful.

A favorite quote...

... although I find it a bit sad and cynical, it's true nonetheless. And from a holy source:

"The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness."
     — Annie Savoy, Bull Durham

... but someone – Socrates? – also said, "The unexamined life is not worth living," and I tend to agree with that, as well. What would I do if I wasn't constantly ruminating? Be more productive and happy, you say? Oh.

More old bits, part 2

It's interesting to read stuff I wrote here years ago, much of it eager and stupid, but I remember the enthusiasm; I still feel it, am grateful for it, so, uh, I got that goin' for me. Here's more old stuff:

I told the kids I was off to meet Papa Mike and friends – and their dogs! – to hunt pheasants. (6-year-old) Megan asked if she could come. I told her she was too young for guns. She said, “Oh, I’ll hunt with a bow and arrow then."

The other day I heard, “Daddy is always happy.” It was (6-year-old) Megan’s sweet voice in the backseat, and she said it again, pointing out a thing to her brother, as she often does, “Daddy is always happy, Michael.” One of my proudest moments as a father

(8-year-old) Michael wants a gecko for Christmas, a real lizard. I think I’ll put this one on Santa while I still can. On Christmas morning: "Hmm, Legos but no gecko? Sorry, Bud, Santa’s gettin’ old, his memory’s probably shot. And he's probably depressed; you know, depression's more prevalent in northern latitudes..."

(9-year-old) Michael’s been taking an archery class offered by the park district. It takes place in a school gym. A bunch of kids with longbows, nice ones, powerful, I figured nothing was safe: the basketball hoop, scoreboard, conference pennants, clock, storeroom door, lights overhead; all of it behind or above the targets. But so far, no inadvertent damage.

(7-year-old) Megan likes broccoli but she’s picky about its freshness and greenness; it must be perfect. A single decaying floret and, "There's a brown spot here," she says, squinting, glaring at the poor vegetable. "It's rotten," she adds, and I know a door has slammed in her head. It's a pinhead of discoloration. I tell her it's nothing to worry about; it's rinsed, steamed, safe as can be, and tastes the same. But none of that matters now; she's a brick wall. I hope Meg scrutinizes men this way. If she can detect – or even imagine – the tiniest flaw, it's rotten! All rotten!

On the way to a birthday party, (6-year-old) Megan said, "Dad, you don't have to stay at this party with me. I'm a big girl now. I don't need daddies anymore." My heart thought about shattering, then it smiled. It would be swell if Megan always needs me, even just a little, forever.

I have been laminating scraps of paper that I've collected over the years. They are handwritten notes that say things like, "I WOT DODDY RIT NOW, I LOVE MI DADDY." That one's from little Megan and it's more valuable to me than anything else I have on paper, except similar notes from Michael and my grandfather's WWII letters.

(I wrote this five years ago; who knew he'd be President) Birthdays come and go, things fossilize, glaciers move, Donald Trump's hair would even crack or unravel! in the time it takes my children to tie their shoes... when we're in a hurry to go somewhere.

Megan is a crumb factory. The most prolific and industrious of its kind.

I saw this quote recently: "Parenthood immediately makes you a hypocrite."

I thought about Grandpa Byard over the holidays; he was missed, of course. (I wrote this after Christmas 2012.) Michael’s baseball team had a game on the Saturday morning I awoke to the sad news; there was a voicemail from my mom that she couldn’t finish. I am not exaggerating when I say Michael began to hit the baseball during that game, that Saturday, consistently, confidently; he suddenly became a tough out. Now he's comfortable and fluid at the plate; he fights and fouls off tough pitches and crushes good ones. He has a nice swing and sees the ball well. Just stating the facts here. Grandpa Byard signed a contract with the Cubs and played in their farm system before he served in the Korean War. He would be pleased that they finally won a World Series.

Men's Journal magazine profiled the world's 25 most adventurous men...

... and a few things surfaced about parenthood and fatherhood. And Mars.

Jimmy Chin: Yeah, my parents had a fairly fixed view of what I'd be: lawyer, doctor, professor. They had me playing the violin at three, swimming competitively, and starting martial arts at 5. But I also had that rebel phase – well, not phase, 'cause I'm still in it – where I got expelled from my boarding school.... I had a problem with authority. My dad was so strict that he was the only person that I feared, so everybody else was like a joke.

Richard Branson: I think sometimes when you come from a conservative background you want to rebel a little. I dropped out of school at 15 and learned early in life that saying yes was a lot more fun than saying no.... I was damned if I was going to sit around watching television...

Ben Stookesberry: My father was really good at reverse psychology: He'd tell me I couldn't do something to give me a shove. He'd been hoisted into the family lumber business and had that dream that I'd follow my passion in some way. He passed away in a car accident when I was 21, but the day before we lost him, he got to watch me on the river. I remember how happy he was...

Jimmy Chin (when asked how his parents took it when he announced, after college, he intended to live out of his car and climb Yosemite): Well, they stopped speaking to me for a while, so not great. I'd told them it was for a year, to get it out of my system. But then one year turned to two, which turned to three or four, and I was doing expeditions in the Himalayas and, well, you know, there went law school. (But his mother got over it, apparently.) So we were in the Karakoram Mountains, on these walls that hadn't been climbed because it was a war zone and no one had gotten access. We were sending back daily dispatches via satellite phone when I took a big fall, and my teammates were like, great, let's post that! Two days later, we're about to summit and we see this team of soldiers at the base of the wall. We're all freaking out – are they here to arrest us? – till one of them goes: "Jimmy Chin... your mother wants to know if you're okay?!" Somehow, she'd gotten hold of the brigadier general and demanded they send a team to check on me. It was the most mortifying moment of my life.

Jimmy Chin: We've evolved not to just sit and let our fingers do all the work. We're programmed to do certain very physical things, and if we don't do them, we get depressed and sick. If you don't get in the sun, and feel the bite of cold, you start to dull or fucking die. Steel sharpens steel, and I'll never forget it. That's something my dad taught me, and I'll teach my kids.

Richard Branson: Ten years ago, Larry Page and I posted an April Fool's Day ad asking for volunteers for a one-way mission to Mars. Within four hours, 10,000 people signed up! Needless to say, we had to come clean about it being a joke, and I can tell you, a lot of those people were sorely disappointed. But one day in the not-too-distant future, there will be a one-way journey to Mars, and that will be the ultimate adventure.