Routines
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Are traditions the same thing as routines, they're just done less frequently? And if the tradition is both loved and hated, what does that mean? On today's Keepin It Real, Cam shares that he both loves and hates them. ----- I have a routine that I practice nearly every day. I both look forward to it and hate it. I wake up shortly after 5am. I have clothes laid out on a chair next to the bed and I dress and go into the kitchen and start the coffee. I fold laundry while it brews. I then pour myself a cup and sit in my morning chair and write in my journal for about thirty minutes. I then...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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,...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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.”...
info_outline
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_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.