Work Week
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, it's Friday and Cam's brain has had enough. He once wanted to keep going. Now, he's just hoping to make it to today. ----- I can remember complaining that there simply weren’t enough days in the week to get all the stuff I needed get done done. I wished that each day was longer and the work week had more days to it. I wanted a twelve-hour workday and a ten-day work week and a three-day break at the end. That would be preferred, I thought. That way I could get everything done and take a break when it was over. Wow, have times changed. Or maybe I’ve...
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Turn The Page
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, another chapter closes in Cam's life. And he wonders what comes next. ------ John Cougar Mellencamp has a song called Ain’t Even Done with the Night. It’s one of my favorites. That song became a regular part of my days four or five years ago. I’d pick my daughter up from her volleyball practice and as we made the turn from the gym onto the larger road, I’d ask Siri to play it. My daughter would protest and moan. “Not again, Dad” she’d say. I’d sing it loudly. It became our song in a weird way. She didn’t like it, didn’t want to hear it...
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Side By Side
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston continues to be interested in the research he's doing on retirement trends. He's discovered something called a Men's Shed which is different from a Man Cave where men can go and stand next to each other. ----- My work continues to lead me into retirement research. Specifically, how to make retirement fruitful and productive. One of the leading causes of an unhappy retirements is too few friends or no friends at all. Referred to as social isolation, the US Surgeon General said that social isolation is as unhealthy as smoking fifteen cigarettes a...
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Retirement Ready
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston and his buddies are beginning to discuss retirement. Cam's learning, though, that maybe working so hard to get to retirement may not be worth all the effort. ----- The subject of retirement has come with my crowd lately. A few years ago, we maybe whispered about retirement, but now it’s a full-on conversation – when are you going to retire, we’re asking each other. How will you know it’s time? The answer from nearly everyone is “as soon as possible” and “I’m ready right now.” Last week I had breakfast with a lady in healthcare...
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Meeting and Convention Bingo Card
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam’s on his way home from a conference. He began making notes a few days ago about what his years and years of attending conferences has taught him. A bingo card might be fun, he says. ----- I speak at few dozen conferences each year. My audiences are the same – thinning brown haired, slightly overweight, middle aged white guys dominate each room. These are my people. I’ve learned how they like my content delivered and I do it for them each time. If I do it well, it may get me invited back. After twenty plus years, I’ve seen hundreds of events,...
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It's Different This Time
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin’ It Real, Cam admits he feels helpless in today’s political climate but he’s found something he can do. It’s very small, but at least it’s something. ----- I have quite a few friends who, over the years, have tried to persuade me to get out of the stock market due to some crisis or another. “Pull all your money out,” they say, “this time it’s not some run of the mill crisis. This one’s real. It’s different this time.” It’s different this time. We are so often tempted to think that whatever the crisis, this one is different. Rarely, very...
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Large Adult Pool
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam's visit to a hotel on the Gulf this wekend got Cam to thinking about how some people, well, they just don't get it... ----- Tuesday I checked into a hotel in Gulf Shores at the Gulf State Lodge. “Where is the free parking?” I asked. “We don’t have any. You can pay to park or pay a little extra and I’ll park it.” This is the bell staff at the front door. I handed him my car key. “Where is a luggage cart? I have a bunch of stuff to get to my room for my workshop tomorrow.” “Guests aren’t allowed to use luggage carts. Only bell staff.”...
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Mercenaries vs Hessians
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
In today's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston laments the significant changes happening to the things that he once believed were fixed in place. Attitudes and beliefs once firmly held are vanishing. Even predictable things like football rankings have been deeply shaken. ----- To say that our world is undergoing a remarkable paradigm shift today is a ridiculous understatement. Each morning I look over the headlines prepared to be blown away by how formerly predictable things are now upside down or simply gone. On the political front, an economist at a meeting a few years back told us it was...
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Pushing Electrons
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam discusses his largely sedentary life and the fulfillment he gets on the rare occasions he can see the results of his work. ----- Most weeks, my work mainly involves pushing electrons around. I sit at a computer and do stuff. Recently it’s been requests for short training videos for clients to use with their teams. I write scripts, edit scripts and record videos. Other weeks I prepare presentations. Lots of PowerPoint editing, lots of rehearsing content. Lots of time online. Lots of buying tickets. It’s all sedentary stuff. Me plus a keyboard plus a...
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Zip It
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin’ It Real, Cam has a message for parents whose children are playing high school sports as his youngest children enter their final year of high school. Every high school sport is suffering from a shortage of officials and referees. Zip it, he says, please just zip it. ----- The second contact on a volleyball can be a double contact so long as it’s one attempt and doesn’t go over the net. That’s a new volleyball rule set to begin this season. For years parents in the stands would holler “double” whenever they saw what they thought was a double touch on...
info_outlineIt's a rediculous question I ask when getting to know another couple. Their answer tells me a lot. . .
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When my wife and I meet new couples, there’s always a series of get to know you questions. “How did you two meet?” is a standard one. “Tell me about your children” is another. But a question I enjoy asking that tells me most of what I want to know about a couple is this: “Do you change your voice when you talk to your dog?” “Do you have a dog voice?”
If the couple say that they don’t have a dog, or that they only have cats, or that they don’t have a dog voice, I’m going to be on the fence about whether these people are worth getting to know. And I understand if you feel my position is an extreme rush to judgement over a silly “get to know you” question. And you’re right. It is. But there’s something about dog people and their admission to having a dog-voice that makes me think “These people are just the right kind of crazy.”
I can tell when any member of my family is talking to our dog, Lucy. Each one of us has a distinct “Lucy-voice” and no two are the same. Lucy, of course, does not care what voice anyone uses so long as it leads to attention or a scratch or food or a walk.
A well-known part of Presidential polling is that Presidents, or Presidential candidates, who have a dog get increased favorability ratings because of the dog. People tend to like Presidents who have dogs. Remember the number of times Joe Biden was pictured with his beautiful German Shephard, Champ, during his campaign? Those two were all over the media and that was no mistake. Champ got votes for Biden. According to an article on the Huffington Post, dogs make voters think, “He seems like a guy I could have a beer with.” And there’s probably some truth to that.
According to that same article, the first president in over 150 years who did not have a dog was the same guy who orders his steaks cooked well-done and then covers them in ketchup. You can guess who I’m talking about. Amazing what these preferences tell us about people, myself included.
At dinner the other night, I asked my dog voice question to a couple we’ve been friends for a while. They did not answer Yes to the dog voice question, they immediately began talking in their dog voices about their dog. They didn’t think about it, they didn’t hesitate, they instantly replied in their dog voices and begin telling us about their English bulldog, Louise, and how they talk to her and how they treat her and on and on.
My wife joined in talking about our dog, Lucy, using her dog-voice and the three of them talked for a while about their dogs, using their dog voices the whole time.
I observed. I said nothing. And I thought, “Now these people – including my wife – might just be on the other side of crazy.”
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.