Growing older but not up.

My birthday was yesterday. 23. A new year right in front of me.

I got a job this week. A real grown up job. Suit. Tie. The whole nine. Perhaps a new (first) career is right in front of me too.

So a new year, a new job, a whole new life almost.

The only thing I've known over the past 23 years has been school and occasional part time work. However, Monday that all changes and the 9-5 daily grind starts for what most likely will be the rest of my life. And I'll be honest with you; I'm a bit scared. Everyone tells me that if I weren't a little scared, they'd be worried, but it'd be a great deal easier if I knew how the map of my life would read from here on. Am I supposed to be a banker for the rest of my life? When am I going to have time to write that bestselling novel I've been thinking up recently? Am I going to be that man that works for the same company my whole life? The guy that gets the really nice watch when he retires with the company logo engraved on the back?

I really liked school. Kind of one of those loves that you're supposed to let go and if it comes back yada yada yada type thing. It sucked while I was in class and bored or tired. And homework wasn't too much fun either. But now I really miss it and want it back. Walking across campus the other day made me a little teary eyed. A tad pathetic if you ask me, but whatever; I'm a sappy guy sometimes.

But despite all the sentimental junk, I know that I have to grow up. I can't stay a strapping college hunk all of my life. I have to don the suit and tie. I have to build the 401k. I have to have the wife and 2.3 kids and the nice house in the burbs eventually. It's what I want. But it sure snuck up on me faster than I had anticipated. I don't feel like I should be opening this door quite yet, especially since I have no idea what the hell is behind it. Sure the benefits of working at a bank are nice. But it's still the unknown. And it's scary.

Ultimately I know that everything is going to work out well. Probably better than I can imagine right now. I'm a pretty optimistic cynic. I know that I can change careers if I don't love the banking road. I'm still young. I have my whole life ahead of me. Etc.

It still is weird though. I can't deny my nerves heading into these uncharted waters. Which is a weird analogy because plenty of people have said that it's going to be good for me to get my feet wet. So I guess I'll run with this. Why get my feet wet when I can dive in. I mean I was a swimmer in high school. (Yes. I wore a Speedo.)

So new times are coming at me fast. Bring them on. I can handle it. The nerves will wear off sooner than later. The wife and kids and stuff will come in time. Twenty years from now things will be great. Twenty-three will be a scary time, but scary stuff is exciting. Rosanne Cash, Johnny's daughter, wrote, "The key to change is to let go of fear." I can do that. I guess I don't really have a choice in the matter now, but I can do it.

I hope I don't turn into the super business man that neglects the more pleasurable things in life. If I let go of the fun parts of my life, then what's left to live for? The almighty dollar? I'm pretty sure as these new life changes come at me I can still maintain the youthful joy that I've learned over the past few years. But I haven't even started yet, so ask me again in a year or so if I'm still having fun with life in addition to making money and settling down. If I'm not, then buy me a beer and tell me to readjust some things so I can.

I'm ready to move ahead in life, but I don't think I'll ever be ready to stop finding joy in my life outside the work world. I guess I'll find out soon.

Jimmy Buffett once said, "I'm growing older but not up. My metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck. Let those winds of change blow over my head. I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead."

I'm getting older and growing up, but that doesn't mean the fun is gone. I can't wait to see how this unfolds. Thanks for coming along for the ride every week.

This too shall pass...

The recent events surrounding my grandmother's overwhelming health problems have led me to an article I wrote for The Daily Mississippian just over a year ago when my grandmother on my father's side passed away. The emotions I am feeling now are all too familiar and very similar to those from last September. Tootie, as we call my Mom's mom hasn't passed on yet, but the same feelings are swelling within me again.

No pictures this week. Nothing funny. Just a grandson watching his family hurt and the notes he has made on the situation at hand.

Here's the article just as it appeared originally:

As I headed home early Saturday morning for my grandmother's funeral, I found myself wrestling with what my real emotions on the whole situation were. Was I sad, mad, confused? She was old. Really old. And her health over the past 2 or 3 years was unbelievably bad. It was like somebody just hit a dimmer switch one day, and slowly Rosie began to fade. And it, as you can imagine, was really sad for me and my family.

It was really sad because Rosie was a great woman: a school teacher who drove a motorcycle, a literal "Rosie the Riveter" in WWII and above all a woman with great insight and wisdom. Words really can't do her justice, so I'll stop her story here.

Bottom line is that old people are great. They can give you guidance that stems from real life experience, counsel that is irreplaceable. But the unfortunate thing is that like Rosie, there often comes a time when your elderly family, friends and loved ones start to decline. They stop being that beacon of wisdom that you once looked up to and start becoming more of the family annoyance. They can't do things for themselves. They have to have someone drive them places. They become forgetful, sometimes extremely so. They don't make sense. They stop caring for themselves. Occasionally they become hateful and mean.

So what do you do as a caring family member? Do you move your grandparent or parent in with you? Do you move them to a nursing home? Do you sit and hope they die? Do you ignore the situation and hope it goes away?

Sometimes old people continue kicking it until they are upwards of 80 and 90 years old. They are spry and fun and sharp as a tack. And sometimes they go too soon, before anyone is anywhere near ready to say goodbye. But it seems the growing trend is for these folks to go through that unknown time period where they stop being the person you once loved and cared about so much and become more of a shell with a stranger living inside.

And when they finally do go, it becomes more of a relief than anything. Rosie wasn't really Rosie these past years. The funeral brought the final sense of closure we all were waiting for, but her true "passing on" was a few years back. And unfortunately, I feel like this period before the real death and after the person you once knew has gone can sometimes tarnish your loved one's legacy. Sure you remember the great times, but it's hard to forget the times that person forgot who you were or yelled at you for no reason or told you that you didn't know what was best for them. But I guess you just have to try to remind yourself it wasn't really them talking or just struggle to put it past you. It's hard, but it's necessary.

Hearing my family complain about what to do and how to handle these times is frustrating, but it's not unreasonable. We want our family to live forever as the people we really knew them as, and it is so hard when we realize they can't. So we deal with it in different ways, and sadly, with the complications of nursing homes and assisted living and hospice and similar facilities, we usually just get angry. It's an easy emotion. We can lash out. We don't have to show people we are hurting. We don't have to cry. But eventually the anger stops and you realize you are losing someone special and the gut-wrenching sadness kicks in, and you mourn. And you mourn for awhile. And it's sad. And not much can be said to make it better. And then one day, a fond memory is triggered whether by a song or nature or a book, and everything becomes a little better. You still miss that person, but you can smile and cherish the memories. And it is good.

Don't let the decline of your loved ones consume you with frustration as it often can. It's not an easy thing to do, but honor them by trying. The times will be hard, but remember that this too shall pass.

Smoking: From class to trash?

"It was in a little store a block from our hotel that I bought my first pack of cigarettes. The ones I'd smoked earlier had been Ronnie's -- Pall Malls, I think -- and though they tasted no better or worse than I thought they would, I felt that in the name of individuality I should find my own brand, something separate. Something me. Carltons, Kents, Alpines: it was like choosing a religion, for weren't Vantage people fundamentally different from those who'd taken to Larks of Newports? What I didn't realize was that you could convert, that you were allowed to. The Kent person could, with very little effort, become a Vantage person, though it was harder to go from menthol to regular, or from regular-sized to ultra long. All rules had their exceptions, but the way I came to see things, they generally went like this: Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't. One should never loan money to a Marlboro menthol smoker, though you could usually count on a regular Marlboro person to pay you back. The eventual subclasses of milds, lights, and ultralights would not only throw a wrench into the works, but make it nearly impossible for anyone to keep your brand straight, but that all came later, along with warning labels and American Spirits"

-David Sedaris, "The Smoking Section" from When You Are Engulfed in Flames

I was watching CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks back and the featured piece was one on a famous author. Honestly, I can't remember who it was, but I do remember the anchor asking his wife what it was that first drew her to her long time husband when they were students at Princeton or Yale or some other Ivy. She responded by saying that she was walking across campus and saw him leaned against a column of a building smoking a cigarette. She was immediately attracted because he looked suave, sophisticated, mature. And from that point, it was love.

Of course this budding romance began in the 1950's, when smoking was still an acceptable thing to do. Nowadays if you were to ask a girl if she is attracted to a fellow on a college campus cheefing a cig, you would very likely be met with a no. In fact if you were to ask guys or girls what their major turn offs are, I would wager to say over 75% would not hesitate to say smoking as their first.

So when did smoking become such a nasty, vile thing to do? When did it go from a normal, everyday thing to something frowned upon by the masses? Was it the health issues, the fact that it will probably kill you one day? Was it when secondhand smoke became a bigger issue than smoking itself? Did everyone just decide one day in the 80's or 90's that it was to become the quintessential sign of a classless person? I don't know, but I am curious.

If you watch Mad Men, you see that the three things that permeate every episode are sex, alcohol, and tobacco. But the former two are rarely considered as nasty in today's society as the latter.

Sex in the 1950's was as taboo as you could get. Hell, Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds. But Ricky loved a good cigarette. So did Lucy. But now in cinema and television, the guy that gets the most girls is king while the people that smoke are almost automatically associated with being the "bad guy." I just finished a novel (Yes. Dan Brown's new one. It's entertaining. Cut me some slack.) where one of the antagonists was always mentioned to be smoking cigarettes, running her tongue over her filmy, yellow teeth. Weird how times change.

So obviously modern culture says that sex is OK. Do it a lot. With a lot of people. This is the message that MTV and other networks send to kids with their sexually driven shows and frequent condom commercials and the like. But on these same networks we see the commercials for Truth, the company seeking to obliterate the tobacco industry. Those commercials are disturbing. It makes you not want to smoke. And while I understand that condoms reduce unwanted pregnancies and STDs, do you think that when nearly every show on prime time has some sortof sexual content, that people who watch it immediately think, "safe sex?" No. They think sex.

So is sex the new, more appropriate substitute for cigarettes? Probably not. Is it more OK by today's standards than smoking? Yes. Was it the opposite in 1954? Yes. Is this weird to you? Probably.

So when the people that thrive on the sexual dominance of our culture, the promiscuous ones, the ones that aren't safe about their escapades go to the doctor for their STD check, they can likely mark non-smoker on their info sheet. Whew. No lung cancer for that 25 year old. But gonorrhea doesn't seem much better... Hmm.

Now what about alcohol?


Mad Men features a lot of scotch whiskey. Delightful. The mark of a truly sophisticated man is a glass of Johnnie Walker. On the rocks or straight? Doesn't matter. And what better accessory to that glass of scotch than a fine tobacco cigarette.

But again, in our modern society, it doesn't work the way it does in Mad Men. Alcohol is the forefront of the advertising world, not tobacco. Beer, wine, liquor, whatever. It dominates television, magazines, newspapers, etc. It drives people from high school to late adulthood. Adults crave the drink after work. College kids crave the beer every day. High school kids go out of their way to find someone to buy them booze. And this is fine and dandy with most people outside the uber-traditionalist evangelicals. But alcoholism numbers are increasing. DUI and drunk driving accident incidents are high across the country. Despite the negatives, alcohol is still something our culture drives into the heads of every person within ear shot or eye shot of any form of media. And most people don't think twice about it.

But is the Winston Cup an alright name for Nascar? No. It advertises cigarettes. Can you have a Marlboro add in the paper anymore? No. It's inappropriate. It encourages something unhealthful. Something that can kill you. Alcohol could never do such things. It's the magic elixir that society loves. Sex could never harm anyone either. It's an emotional and physical connection that rarely produces adverse effects. Cigarettes are the only thing today that can harm people. Cigarettes and driving or riding without a seat belt.

So should we eliminate advertisements for alcohol or condoms? Should we nix shows with sexual content? I don't think yes is the answer to either. Sure those things can harm people. Just like cigarettes do. But some people know how to use alcohol and sex responsibly. Unfortunately some others haven't the slightest idea.

Do you get where I'm going with this?

When a person, we'll call him non-smoker, learns that another person, smoker, is a user of cigarettes, there is a stigma that is immediately ingrained in non-smoker's mind. It's that smoker is low class, trashy, someone that wants to have his nicotine fix to make things a little easier. So how is that different than the business man who has his Dewar's everyday upon returning home from work to ease his mind? How is it different than the guy that prowls the bar looking for a one night stand to fill his emotional tank for the week?

Don't get me wrong. Cigarettes are bad. They will mess your body and life up. But won't alcohol and sex do the same thing if used improperly or too much?

To put it in perspective, my perspective, I am 100% confident that if you gave a girl two attractive men to choose from as a potential boyfriend or even husband, one that had slept with over 100 other women and one that was a smoker but had only one previous serious relationship, she would likely pick the man-whore because smoking is "so gross" in her opinion. Who knows what guy A has going on down south, but at least he doesn't have yellow teeth or smell like a cig.

Will things change? I doubt it. Smoking will be obsolete within the next 25 years or so. Mark my words. It's just something that society used see nothing wrong with that has become the ultimate sign of repulsiveness.


Note: This observation only applies to the USA. Europe is a whole different cup of tea. And don't get me started on the fact that people probably think smoking or its advertisements are worse than the violence in the media these days.

Live music in a college town: A young boy's quest to be hip

Sometimes I really want to be hip. Like indie, skinny jeans, greasy hair hip. But then I look in the mirror and the relatively normal guy that looks back at me silently screams, "You can't be. You're not cool enough." So I don my polo shirt and my not skinny jeans and go on about my daily life.

But every now and then, I try to push myself into hipper territories. Certain films and stores often catch my eye as a chance to be a little bit more like the cool "I don't give a crap" kids. Heck, even my wardrobe takes momentary lapses into the hipster world. Occasionally a pearl snap shirt. Never skinny jeans though. I tried them on once. Seriously though. Not a good look for me.

While I want to be cool like this, it's hard to just do it without people noticing that you're trying a bit too hard. So normally I just sit at home and drink my Pabst and listen to my obscure bands by myself and pretend that I'm cool. But often my roommates or my girlfriend or my friends feel it necessary to kill my cool buzz and remind me that I'm not.

So when opportunities arise, as they did last night, for me to dip my feet in the indie waters, I usually jump.

Last evening I ventured to the Square of my quaint little college town to check out a band that's getting a good deal of press amongst some pretty influential hipsters these days. Blogs, satellite radio, magazines, the whole nine yards really. I had sampled a few of their tunes on the world wide interweb and just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And I wanted to be cooler.

Wavves is a duo. A guitarist/vocalist and a drummer/psycho. The front man is under 5 feet 5 inches tall. Supposedly he has Napoleon syndrome. He's short and likes a fight. Word on the street is that he whacked the lead singer of The Black Keys with a beer bottle not more than a week ago. But a rumor can't be proved, despite what Wikipedia might tell you.

I arrived at the bar 45 minutes before the opening band goes on. A good friend accompanied me, one who is more hip and cool than I, and one who is in with the other hip and cool people of Oxford. By going with him, I could get some real insight into this scene I feel so attracted to.

We milled around. Mingled if you would. And finally posted ourselves up at a table within view of the stage. As the band began, we decided that a standing view will probably make for a better evening, and thus made our way towards the startlingly slim crowd of 60 or so. Within minutes, we got separated and being in no hurry to reunite, I decided to take in the concert by myself.

Unfortunately, I got a little distracted by the people around me. So many people to watch. Such a good chance I will look creepy. What's a wannabe to do? Well I stared at people anyway. And I laughed out loud. By myself. In a bar full of people. Yes. I laughed.

There were no more than four or five dozen people in the small venue, but so many categories of people were present. You had the "really into music" types that smiled their big goofy grins and danced like crazy men to the music being played, the words of course being inaudible. Then you had the uber-hipsters that were too cool to show emotion, but were probably just as pleased as the aforementioned music buffs. Also present were the local celebrities, the townie musicians or producers on the cusp of making it big, arms folded, critiquing every move those on stage were making. And then you had the girls. The ones that are in love with rockers or writers and just want to be near them in some capacity. Alt-groupies if you would.

(Three fellows that had obviously come in the bar trying to find a party made a brief appearance but unfortunately found no welcoming arms for their giant Abercrombie logos and gelled hair.)

And then there was me. Three Coors heavies in. Not very indie. Not very hip. Yet happy. And entertained. Not necessarily by the bands, but mostly by the people around me. The ones I think are so mysterious and cool.

I'll never be that cool. But that's OK.

For insight on how to be hip or at least listen to cool, obscure music, check out Hipster Runoff, a blog that will tell you everything you need to know.