100 Things Retired Guys Should Avoid - sample reading

#8 AVOID FARTING IN PUBLIC

And speaking of old farts, what about those old guys that cut the cheese in public and then look up at the ceiling like innocent children who lie? I remember when I was a kid and my grandpa blew one that sounded like a tuba honk. I was stunned, and took a couple of steps backward. How could my nice old grandpa do such a disgusting thing while I was around? Then he gave me a wink and went on fixing the lawn mower. No pun intended, but I was blown away. I mean, there's just a couple of things grownup people don't do in public and that's one of them.

I can't remember ever being taught about this behavioral restriction but as a kid, I and my pals only let one fly when we were with the guys on a fishing trip or maybe biking around the neighborhood. That wasn't exactly in public. When I got to college and joined a fraternity (back when it was cool to belong to a frat) this changed a little. Drinking beer and farting sort of went hand in hand (so to speak) but you had to be pretty loaded to do it when there were girls around. Nowadays, anything is possible.

Things changed back to a more restrictive nature when adulthood came along and we all got jobs. You can't cut the cheese at a business meeting. It just isn't done and if you do it in an office setting you could get charged with sexual harassment, so you spend a lot of time sneaking out the gas and praying it doesn't melt the wall paper.

Now here comes retirement and along with your first social security check, an invisible declaration of freedom to pass wind any time any where, shows up. Or something like that, because when you go down to the bank to deposit that first check and you are standing in line with several other obviously retired guys, the air is blue and muffled trumpet notes abound. All the guys are looking at the ceiling like nothing's going on and you spot a can of air freshener behind the teller's window.

This is the part where you start thinking automatic deposit might be the way to go here.

The truth is, as you age, the plumbing gets looser as does your self-consciousness level. It's just the start of a dismal future, but why hurry up the process? The time will come soon enough - if you live long enough, that this sort of light wind will be a pleasant memory in terms of what will then be the case. But let's not go there now. Suffice to say, in our determination to have a late life of dignity and a positive self image, blowing farts in public is frowned on.

Besides, it wipes out any believability we might have when it comes to being taken seriously about anything. Imagine this. You're sitting in your car trying to convince the traffic cop that a bee flew in the window and caused you to involuntarily accelerate, thereby breaking the speed limit while you attempted to rid the vehicle of the nasty bug and avert a possible sting - to which you are allergic. Then, as the cop hesitates and surveys the interior of your car with his skeptical glance, you blow a thunderbolt and a smell like the dismal swamp slowly rises around you. Get the picture?

This is the third posting of sample reading taken from my new book entitled "100 Things Retired Guys Should Avoid - A Men's Guide To Surviving Life After Work." As always, I look forward to comments, suggestions and chat.

100 Things Retired Guys Should Avoid - sample reading

#76 AVOID IDLE APPEARANCES

I remember when I was in third grade and my shrewish teacher with the pageboy haircut snuck up from behind, and startled me out of some important daydream by saying in a loud voice, "Ya know, Mr. Becker, idle hands are the devil's workshop."

This was a long time ago, before children were considered people, and lawyers hadn't quite recognized the zillions of dollars to be made by representing kids who had been wronged by adults like my teacher. Nowadays, if a school teacher said that to a kid in public, there'd be a long slim envelope with a law firm's name on it, in the Principal's office by sundown. Be that as it may, the message was - and still is, quite clear. Idling, no matter how old or young you are is considered not only the devil's workshop, but is also seen as counter culture. It's just not tolerated.

The facts are, just like when we are in third grade, as retired guys we have a lot of important daydreaming to do. What most folks don't realize is, daydreaming actually makes quite important and productive contributions to the overall positive well-being of the human race. And this concept isn't confined to third graders and retired guys - although daydreaming at ages between these two groups is usually called "planning."

Now that you are retired and have plenty of free time on your hands, you're going to find that you spend quite a few hours in the daydreaming department. That's okay. Daydreams are good as long as you're not daydreaming about killing your neighbor because he lets his dog bark all the time. That's not a plan. That's a day-nightmare - and of course, fits the bill as the devil's workshop.

Positive daydreaming is a pleasure and also, by-the-way, does include planning - so you should make sure to keep daydreaming on your retired guy "to-do" list. Unfortunately, there's lots of people who don't see it that way. These are folks who look on daydreaming as idling. A waste of good old fashioned productive time. They seem to feel that there's some angelic book keeper up in heaven jotting down everybody's earthly productivity, and daydreaming/idling goes into the negative column. They also seem to feel that daydreamers/idlers are somehow infringing on their self important existence. Like perhaps your idle hours might somehow get transferred to their heavenly account and cause them to have a slightly less than stellar after-life. Hmmm.

To make sure you don't idle their time away, your friends and relatives might begin to cook up dumb busy work projects to fill your idle hours. Watch out for this. They may also play the innuendo game by saying things that are aimed at making you feel guilty. Don't fall for that either.

Here's an idea that might help. Try carrying around a purse. Actually, for guys this is called a "bag." Make sure it's sort of business-like and has lots of little pockets and zippers so it looks official. Add a small notebook or sketch pad and a nice writing pen or drawing pencil. Make sure the pad or notebook has some sketching or writing on it so it looks like you actually use these things for productive planning. Now, whenever you feel the daydreaming mood coming on, simply plop the bag right down next to you, open the pad or notebook, have the pen in plain view and then go ahead and start the daydream or idle hour - as you wish. The illusion of productive planning will work beautifully in throwing the daydream nay-sayers off the trail, and who knows? You might actually make a note or two in the notebook. You might just come up with some new invention and make a million dollars. That would really piss everyone off.

This is the second sample read taken from my new almost finished book entitled "100 Things Retired Guys Should Avoid - A Men's Guide To Surviving Life After Work" Thanks for reading and as always - suggestions, comments and chat are welcome.

100 Things Retired Guys Should Avoid - sample reading

#1. AVOID NEGATIVE ANTICIPATION

Remember when you were a kid, how you looked forward to almost everything in a positive way? From the time you woke up in the morning until you went to bed you were looking forward to something, and ninety nine point nine percent of the time what you were looking forward to was either fun to do or good to eat. You spent much of your time anticipating good things coming your way (except of course getting bush whacked on your way to school by that bully, Jimmy Finklestein) and most of the time those good things did come your way. You were experiencing a life of positive anticipation and what's more, you didn't even have to think about positive anticipation to make it happen. It just did. It was a natural part of your life. Wow! How cool was that?

Pretty cool alright, and as you grew older this positive anticipation just naturally followed in your footsteps. You went from kid anticipation for things like playing with your pals, swimming, bike riding, ice cream, root beer floats, fishing, tree house building, camping out, trips to the zoo, corn on the cob, sleep overs (well, I know you still like most of these things, but face it, it's not exactly like when you were a kid) to anticipating big kid stuff like high school and college football games, sock hops, drive-in movies, dating, sex and graduation.

After that you had plenty of positive anticipation about your new jobs, your new car, your wedding, your first child - and your second or third, your rise in the company, trips to the ocean, adult friendships, clubs, your first house. As time went on you had lots of positive anticipation related to becoming a professional in your field, accumulating wealth, making a place in the community, investing, watching your family grow. it was lots of fun.

Then something happened. Right around your fiftieth birthday, negative anticipation started to creep in. One of your good buddies dropped dead from a heart attack. The company got sold and job security became a concern. Who hires a fifty year old? Some investments turned out to be stinkers. That second mortgage wasn't looking like such a good idea after all. Paper work to keep your little empire together started to become a monster. Taxes got spooky. You threw your back out lifting something heavy. You started to gain weight. Your kids got so busy supporting themselves, they hardly had time for a phone call. Some doctor stuck his finger up your ass and found a lump. On and on it goes and life took on a serious note that wasn't part of your positive anticipation program at all.

Now you're sixty five and you try not to get too excited about anything because it's more likely to screw up than it is to succeed. This is negative anticipation. How bad is that? Very.

The deal is, you (and a couple hundred million other retired guys) have fallen for the oldest trick in the cultural book. It's sometimes called the old guy's fear factor. You pass the midway point in your life and you get fearful. So what are you going to do about it? For starters, you can quit watching CNN and eliminate lots of cultural shin-ola that just drags you down. Next, you might familiarize yourself with the whole negative anticipation phenomenon.

What is negative anticipation? It's anything that gets in the way of positive anticipation. Negative anticipation is anything that causes unreal pause, doubt,fear, worry, arguments, depression, loss of sleep, broken promises to yourself, lack of will, lethargy, bad breath and common indignity. It's a retired guy's worst enemy because it ruins your good vibes. Avoid it like the plague.

How does one avoid this evil empire monstrosity? Good question. I recommend focusing on your positive anticipation energy. Some light-weight philosophers in the crowd would call this "thinking positively." Easier said than done. Thinking positively is one thing,but acting positively is another kettle of fish altogether.

Let's try an example. Let's say you have a desire to go to Paris for your seventieth birthday. You've always wanted to visit Paris, but you were always too busy or too broke to make it happen. In all those years you never even got a passport. But now, for some reason, it just seems right that you go to Paris for your seventieth. You've been thinking about this for awhile - even though you haven't told your wife, and you are filled with that old time positive anticipation. It feels great.

But then after a couple of super positive anticipation days, guess what happens. Negative anticipation sneaks in. You start thinking stuff like "Gosh, what if I have a coronary on the airplane? - Or on the streets of Paris? What if my passport application gets hung up somewhere and I have those expensive tickets and hotel reservations in France? What about the garbage bill that comes due while I'm gone? What if I get there and I don't like it? What if my wife hates Paris? What if I get mugged? Maybe I'd better forget the whole trip and mow the grass instead." You know, stuff like that.

I'll bet you never had this kind of negative anticipation when you were thirty five years old. If you'd had the dough in those days, you would have been off like a shot and never given it a second thought.

So how do we combat this situation and go have a nice birthday in Paris? First of all, you have to recognize what's happening and identify negative anticipation for what it is - an evil ruse to get you to drop out of active living. Here's what you do. You fight fire with fire. Be calm and take one step at a time. Don't even open the door to any negative notions - and don't think about consequences. Just think ahead and get that passport before you ever make the first plane ticket inquiry. The passport assignment is the only goal you want to think about right now. Just get the damned passport. think of it as your escape ticket just in case you ever need to dematerialize from Pleasant Avenue South in Wherever, U.S.A. An official U.S. passport will give your positive anticipation department a real shot in the arm.

Step two is to make sure your busy retired guy schedule is actually clear for the trip. I mean, it would be pretty messy if you had a scheduling conflict with your Saturday night Bingo group, ya know? See how dumb this negative anticipation thing can be?

Now you've got your passport and cleared your schedule. Good work. (You might check on your wife's schedule too while you're at it). Next, you book yourself a hotel room in Paris. Not being able to speak French is no problem even though negative anticipation promised it would be. Be sure to get a room in a nice part of town. Finally, you spring the good news on that wife of yours. be prepared for a rush of excitement followed by a rash of negative anticipation. Have nothing to do with the rash. Don't try to solve any problems because you've already solved the big one. That's YOU.

Follow up by heading to your favorite men's store for some decent traveling cloths and then go home and mow the grass. The moral of the story is, if you can approach your daily life in the same manner as you approached going to Paris, you'll be a better retired guy over all. Negative anticipation will never give up trying to blow out your every little endeavor, so you'll have to be on guard all the time. The good news is, however, once you get used to fending off negative anticipation, you'll probably find that you are a much more positive and happy individual.

Thanks for reading. I'll post more of the 100 things retired guys should avoid in the weeks to come. Comments and chat are encouraged.

Book #4 A Men's Guide To Surviving Life After Work.

My 3rd book, "Behind The Sausage Curtain" a novel (as I explained on a prior post) has finally passed the editing road bump and will be back on the market

internationally via Amazon in about a week. What a feeling of relief and accomplishment.

My new book entitled "100 Things Retired Guys Should Avoid - A Men's Guide To Surviving Life After Work" is in its final stages of writing. In fact I'm a few numbers short of one hundred things yet, and am discovering that I've run through maybe all of the obvious stuff, so now progress is slower. I expect the book to be out in the fall (2010) and am excited by the possibilities of good sales because after all, this one is chock full of super funny tid-bits that not only act as survival council for retired guys, but also point out lots of wonderfully typical foibles, tendencies, oddities, pre-conceptions, strengths and weaknesses in the guy population as it crosses the border into both retirement and senior citizenship. My hope is that this book will strike a chord with not only us guys who are turning in our keys to the office, but will also resinate with anyone looking for the perfect gift for the senior fellow in the company who is leaving.

I've directed the text at humorous social commentary and slightly outrageous examples to make these points of the commentary easy to digest. After all, this is supposed to be fun reading - and I think it is.

I've divided the one hundred things retired guys should avoid into two groups. Seventy of these things (the first group) are presented in short essay form, averaging two pages each. A few of these are one-pagers and some are three pages in length. The concept is to create a guide book that can be opened at any page, read briefly (or longer) and then put down to be picked up again later. Of course there's no rule against starting at the beginning and reading it straight through. Whatever. The second group (of which there are thirty items), I've entitled "no brainers". These are simple one liners that may seem rather off-handed, but in fact are actually good hamburger helper for the main text.

Additionally, I've developed an archetypical retired guy character in the form of drawings which appear at the beginning of each of the seventy essays illustrating the subject of the essay. I'm very pleased with this work.

In my next blogs I will preview this book for your enjoyment, laughter, criticism and commentary. I should also mention that suggestions in the way of additional things retired guys should avoid are very welcome. Thanks for reading.

Behind The Sausage Curtain My novel.

I finally finished my novel. It was like waking up from one of those long convoluted deep sleep dreams where you are chased by a pack of complete strangers through some semi-familiar landscape with no end in sight, and for purposes you are never quite sure of - but there you are, hoping everything turns out okay. It was both fun and exciting. It was a "stick-to-it challenge that at times made me wonder why I ever started in the first place, but made me feel obligated to the story line and the characters to finish. In fact, there were times when I couldn't sleep because the story and the cast had me in its grip. I will always be happy that I stuck it out and finished the task which ended up to be a 346 page book. It was a three year project of actual serious writing, but in reality if you include the tooling up thoughts and notes and starts and stops and re-writes and goofing off, it was really a 5 year project. I don't know how the big-time genre writers pump out novels so fast. Probably by constant practice - and because I've spent a lot of time on airplanes and in hotels reading genre novels, I've seen a pattern to the plots and story lines. That's okay, it works just fine.

So there it was - this big pile of paper full of words lying on my little writing table and now the real work began. Trying to find a publisher.

I went to the internet and spent several weeks researching agents and publishers who dealt in fiction. There are tons of them and most reside in New York. I also spent plenty of time researching the recommended methods of submitting a manuscript for consideration. Thankfully, the net provides not only lists of publishers and agents, but also advises which publishers and agents are accepting proposals and what they expect to see in terms of proposal packages. Essentially, a writer is told to send a query letter (a cover letter asking to please, please, please, please - consider this manuscript for the following reasons.....). I had an acquaintance - another writer who was enrolled in the local literary center, paying vast sums to get an inside ticket to writing and publishing, who advised me in the art of query letters. There is, it seems, a method involved. It's a method manufactured by the publishing gods in which we earthbound writers must pound the drums and dance the dance under murky skies, and sacrifice time and money and crops and children and whatever else is lying about the house, in hopes of being chosen by the gods to have our little manuscript picked for publication.

It's like a TV reality contest show. Dancing With The Stars or American Idol or Celebrity Apprentice (without the celebrities) or The Great Race or Survivors.

The publishing and book marketing guru, whose seminar I attended, had some depressing statistics which I can't exactly remember, listing the number of manuscripts submitted and the number actually chosen in a year's time. It was shocking. I said "Wow. The postal service is cleaning up!"

Still, I joined the club and fired off a hundred or so letters, resumes, reasons to read, selected competitors, the first three chapters - or selected "best representative" chapters and a couple dozen complete manuscripts. The folks at the post office got to know me on a first-name basis.

The results were pretty much as expected. Even though I enclosed return addressed stamped envelopes, only a fraction of them were sent back to me - raising the opinion that as the guru said, many submissions get dumped without being read. How about that?

I tried a second round of submissions with the same results. Now I'll say right here that I totally understand I'm no Hemingway. No Steven King. No Tom Robins. I'm just a guy who wrote a book, so that's what it is. I do believe it's worth a read however - so what did I say (after 8 or 10 months of shuckin' & jivin'?) I said "Hey, screw this. I need product, not process. I'm gonna publish this thing myself!"

I repeated the self publishing phenomenon for the second time (recall if you will, the "A Few Last Words" eulogy book episode) and sadly, but predictably, I repeated the editing screw ups and the premature launch of a wildly flawed copy. Really bad, was the fact that I handed out several copies of this disaster. Most people stopped reading it after the first chapter. Several others stopped talking to me entirely. How embarrassing is that? Very. But here's the deal. The good news is that my dear wife finally tied me to a door knob and demanded that I find a professional editor. The excellent news is that there is a professional editor lurking right here in our extended family and my wife asked her if she might take a look at my copy. She said yes. I heard her gasps of astonishment all the way from Sheboygan, Wisconsin to Minneapolis when she opened the pages. A month later, Jeri Dale, my new editor, returned the copy to me with so many little pencil marks and corrections that I had to go for a walk with the dog to clear my mind. Now, a month later,I'm approaching the last chapters of correction and feel super nifty about what I will resubmit to the electronic book maker.

I have learned a bunch of good stuff in the process and will have a wonderful little book to add to my collection. Cool!

As always, comments, remarks, conversation is encouraged.

On a different subject...

In thinking about this whole blogging thing, I decided to take a small break from the publishing adventure and send out my little take on the blogging phenomenon. It really is a new experience for this old artist, and while I'm mostly fascinated by the possibilities (none of which have surfaced just yet), I also find myself slightly in wonderment at the magnetic draw blogging seems to have on the human desire to communicate. Again, fascinating.

Instead of launching one of my wordy bloggy bloggs of introspection and opinion, I will just post the following little poem (regarding the blog) that I recently patched together. It is, perhaps, not great literature, but it says some stuff. Enjoy.

BLOG

Do you blog? Are you blogging? Logging? Flogging?

Hot Dogging? Are you pedagoging in verbose delight?

Can you still speak out loud in a small or large crowd without logging in on a site?

Can you converse without digital candor? Can you say what is right -

without dimming the light of honest conversational meander?

I wonder.

Blogging on line is really so fine 'cause doing it frees me to rant.

To say what I mean without being seen and no one can say that I can't -

just put on the page, my anger - my rage, my personal flap doodle slant

on all things whatever, the dumber the better, and there's never a need to recant.

When blogging gets dicey my language turns spicy - "Take that, you bugger,"

I chant. How cool is that?

Some folks use blogs to clean out the clogs - it's rather like digital rolfing.

And seen in this way, you'd probably say we should just change the name

to Blowfing.

But Blowfers you see, would then charge a fee for their therapeutical

on-line ravings.

The rest of us twitters would all get the jitters 'cause we couldn't pay

for our cravings.

We'd be reduced then to texting - a habit so vexing, it's totally not worth

the savings.

And besides, I can't read your writing.

So let's hear it for blogging - let's all keep on logging those hours of digital mush.

Conversing this way - most bloggers would say, is really one heck of a rush.

______________________

As the poem above indicates, anyone reading this should feel free to make bloggy comments.

Sometime in the early nineties, I hired on with one of the country's major oil companies to design site enhancement for the grand opening of a new property development project they were building on the east coast. Site enhancement is an industry term which translates to something more akin to "industrial decorating". It includes things like staging, lighting, plantings, special events - and in this case building an outdoor ice skating rink in a part of the country that isn't known for cold weather. The project had nothing to do with oil and everything to do with property development. They were building a little town - complete with office towers, a hotel, a theater, and many retail stores laid out on a street grid that resembled (what else?) a nifty little town. There was a central plaza (actually, it's still there - the place is called Reston Town Center and it's just outside of Washington DC.) You can google it to see what it's like today.

The experience lasted 2 years and was something few artists get to experience. The project was very high profile and very important to my employers. I'm happy to say that I performed well as designer & production manager for my assigned tasks and the results of my work were roundly acclaimed. While the design work and the grand opening ceremonies and events were exciting enough, the year of planning was even more interesting because I was part of the overall development program so I attended many long meetings in the special conference room in one of the office towers, where there was always lots of heavy breathing.

I won't bore you with the details, but I'll just say that having a glimpse of things inside this kind of economic power structure was really eye-opening. Not so eye-opening in terms of the scale of the project or the amount of money being spent. (that's kind of a given, under the circumstances). More eye-opening in terms of the sociology and psychology and the interaction of the various players involved in the project. Suffice to say, the people watching was spectacular. This part was so interesting to me - an artist/contractor who was flown up to the project site from my home in Florida on a weekly basis so I could attend the planning sessions, that years later I decided to write a novel using my experiences as a background for a story. I should say right here, that no specifics from real life were transferred to the book - and in fact, the story I ended up with is quite far from anything remotely comparable. Still, the high pressure fumes of those days linger in this writing - which turned out to be an outrageous and hilarious corporate adventure in which the city of Minneapolis becomes home to the nation's first illegal toxic waste dump disguised as an underground amusement park with a nuclear meltdown theme. If you want some good laughs and plenty of Midwest humor, pick this book up at Amazon.com It is entitled, "Behind The Sausage Curtain".

Now here's the deal. This is my third book and my first novel. It is 346 pages long and I spent roughly 3 years writing it. After I got over my initial fears of making a complete ass of myself - I mean, hey, I'm a papa Hemingway fan - the process was super fun. I discovered almost right away that this being a story of the mind (fiction), my best bet at ever actually finishing the book was to let my imagination run free, write the chapters and then reign them in with the realities and language of the characters. Unlike the two non fiction books previously discussed, this thing had a life of its own. Sometimes I just hung on for the ride and sometimes I slogged along trying to remember why I ever started the journey at all.

When the manuscript was finished, I gave copies to six different readers and waited impatiently for their reactions. I also began the long process of manuscript submission to literary agents and publishers. This is a real "pain in the ass" process because first, one must find the contact information necessary to, well, contact these places. I don't know how writers found publishers and agents before the internet wasinvented. Maybe things were simpler then. Maybe a writer scrounged up a list of publlishers out of the library. Perhaps a writer would have a list of a dozen publishers to send his/her manuscript to and when these dozen publishers turned the work down, the writer just went back to his/her day job. Simple. Now, with access to the internet, the problem is reversed. There are hundreds - even thousands of publishers and agents listed on the web. You can spend weeks and months mulling through all these names to find the 50 or 100 publishers or agents who just might be receptive to your new book. I did that. Then I sent a well prepared query letter, a small resume and three chapters of the book to 100 or so addresses. In some cases I sent the entire manuscript. Expensive and time consuming. Weeks and months later, I received back, something like 50 form printed rejection slips and not one little note about why my book wasn't chosen. "Screw this," I said. "I'll publish it myself.

More notes on the "Sausage Curtain" saga, to come - alongwith some "art talk." Comments and chat are invited.