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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
Arrogance
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, there are some arrogant folks showing up in Cam’s life these days. They don't’ commiserate with Cam’s struggles. Instead, they gloat... ----- This is a commentary about a specific kind of quiet arrogance. It’s in the background. But you know it when you hear it. These people are “just reporting the truth,” as they may say. It’s not truth. It’s haughty arrogance. And I’ll tell you where I’ve run up against it recently. The first is citrus arrogance. I planted a satsuma tree in my yard many years ago and it has never produced one satsuma. I...
info_outline
Lucy
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam and his family grieve the loss of their family pet. It was sudden. Their dog, Lucy, was with them for nine and a half years and they buried her late at night in the back yard. ----- The saying is that our dogs will greet us when we get to heaven. I sure hope so. We lost Lucy, our family pet of nine and a half years last night in what was one of the most tragic and heartbreaking nights I’ve ever been a part of. What was diagnosed as kennel cough turned into something different. At 9:30 I was preparing for bed. At 11:30 I was shoveling dirt on top...
info_outline
Talent Was Never The Issue
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This week on Keepin It Real Cam Marston has noticed a trend amongst his empty nester friends and what their hobbies become once the kids are gone. The predictability of it gives him comfort. ----- In my part of the world, the female empty nester is an interior designer or painter who has been caged by her responsibilities as a mother and once the kids are gone, they finally step into their lifelong artistic fulfillment. It’s a distinct pattern around here. The number of friends my wife and I have who start throwing paint on a canvas or buying furniture at market after the kids are gone is...
info_outline
Haters
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston got some blowback from a social media post this week. He asks us, "How do you deal with haters?" ----- One year ago, I set a goal to paddle board across Mobile Bay. I completed that goal in May. The second part of the goal was to write about the challenge and be paid to have it printed. That was completed last week when the story was carried in Mobile Bay Magazine. I will get a small payment in a week or so. A year’s planning, researching, note-taking, exercising, preparing and lots of paddling later, the goal was entirely met. Pretty cool....
info_outline
The Power of Cheese
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam and a client discuss employee retention issues and he shares and idea that may get you through any business turmoil that may lie ahead. ----- On a call with an upcoming client this week I was discussing one of their challenges. They’re having a hard time recruiting and retaining young talent. “But here’s something we did recently,” my client said, “that may have some sort of impact. We added a snack pantry to the office kitchen and it’s been a huge hit.” "Tell me more," I said. “Well,” she said. “Our young employees know they should...
info_outline
July Fourth, Twenty Twenty Five
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keepin It Real, Cam wishes us a happy Independence Day and reminds us that on July 4th, 1776, nearly thirty percent of the population didn't want it. ----- Happy Fourth of July. Our nation’s independence. It’s a big deal. I don’t think we feel it today like generations did in the past. The significance of it is likely lost on many of us. Those that fought in wars have a different type of appreciation for the Fourth of July but there are so many fewer of them today than there were. In 1980, about twenty percent of our population had served in the military. Today that number is...
info_outline
How Do We Get Off This Wheel?
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
A beach conversation earlier this week caught Cam's attention. And he asks if we've ever had so many known solutions to a common problem and ignored them? ----- At a family event earlier this week I asked eight members of my extended family who liked their work. Six people did not their work. Some hated their jobs. Some were just ready for something new. And some were actively looking for new jobs but only something they’d enjoy and were struggling to find anything that they thought they’d enjoy. One had weeks to go before retiring at age sixty. Rather than go to sixty-five, he decided to...
info_outlineAfter thirty years of the same family tradition - I give some thought to the future.
-----
For the thirtieth year in a row my SUV left my garage headed for the North Carolina Coast the second to last Saturday in July. If we weren’t in it, it would go by itself. It’s what we do. It’s what the car does. And it was packed tight with everything from fishing gear, to bed sheets, to food, to 150 oysters in the shell on ice, two cakes from Bake My Day, and a case of get-along juice, also known as wine. My in-laws have rented a house on Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina every summer and we are all expected to be there – there were sixteen of us.
Question for you – Name one spouse you know or have ever even heard of that’s vacationed in the same place, in nearly the same house, with the same people, on the same days every summer for thirty consecutive years. Unless that person is me or my sister-in-law, that person doesn’t exist. I can’t speak for my sister-in-law, but it makes me… Well… I don’t know what it makes me. Honestly, it makes me afraid for my life to declare that having vacationed in the same place, in nearly the same house, with the same people on the same days for over half my life that I’m now ready to do something different. It wouldn’t go over well.
It's this week at the beach every year plus a few weekends in the fall at my father’s camp in Clarke County, Alabama that I’m reminded of the great disparity in penalties for loud noise in the nighttime versus loud noises in the morning. This does require some explanation:
I go to bed early. After about nine PM, I’m useless and am eager to get to sleep and start again the next day. However, some of my family like to whoop it up at night and at 9pm they’re just warming up. They make lots of noise. They’re having a ball. But little consideration is given to those of us that retire early. There’s little penalty applied for keeping us from getting to sleep or waking us after we’ve fallen to sleep.
However, the reverse is not the true. I’m an early riser. And early risers must tip-toe through the house, careful to not make a sound or else face the wrath of the late sleepers. Their being inconveniently awakened by the early riser’s God-awful sounds of the unloading of the dishwasher or the brewing of the coffee are intolerable fouls against the family’s 30-year-old tradition. I’ve come to live with it. It’s a small price to pay. It’s not a big deal. But there’s some sort of economy that needs to be flushed out regarding penalties for preventing sleep versus penalties for awakening sleepers. Small penalties are applied for preventing sleep. Large penalties are applied for awakening sleepers. Its’ not fair but we live with it.
How long will this yearly tradition last? I don’t know. My children have grown such that we now need two cars to make the 22 hour round trip. And if we decide stop one year, we’ll know when that week comes because the SUV will go anyway. It’s simply what it does.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.