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 been a tough few weeks. This commentary offers no specifics, but I've learned some things.
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Many years ago, my neighbor in Charlotte, North Carolina knocked on my door one weekday afternoon. His wife had just told him she’s leaving. She climbed her car and drove away. He was dumbstruck and he needed to talk. My wife and I had just moved in. I hardly knew him. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I froze. To my everlasting shame, I rushed our conversation so he’d stop making ME feel uncomfortable. I realized years later he was crying out for help and I failed him. I know this now. And I’ll never do it again. To this day I regret my behavior that afternoon.
When I was a much younger man, I chose to remain ignorant other people’s problems. Mainly because of the way their problems made ME feel. But I now realize that when someone shares their problems, when they confess a deep vulnerability, they’re taking on risk by sharing it. They’re vulnerable and are hoping I won’t fail them like I did my neighbor many years ago. In fact, to be thought as one who might can help is, in fact, a privilege and should be treated that way. I’ve learned. Today I do my best to help; I try to do what I can. I’ve changed.
Folks, there are no awards for bearing deep emotional pain alone. There is no Hall of Fame for keeping your horrific and debilitating suffering to yourself. We say we don’t want to burden someone else with our problems. But how many times have you and I wished, regarding our own friends, that we would have known about something so that we could have tried to help.
Asking for help is not a weakness. Asking for help is the first step to elevating a problem and finding someone who can help you solve it. There’s no shame in it.
To my wife, my friends and my family: I commit to working on a solution when I fall into these vulnerable states. And I do fall into them. I may sound sanctimonious right now, but I’m vulnerable. Deeply so. Maybe we all are. And I commit to not suffering quietly out of pride or shame or embarrassment. To my wife, my friends, to my family; to those who listen to these commentaries – I need you to commit to taking care of yourself, too. I need you. I need to know not only that you’re out there, but that you’ll be there.
My wife has told me many times – there’s a big difference in listening to yourself versus talking to yourself. When you listen, you let the demons in. When you talk to yourself the right way you make yourself stronger. You keep the demons at bay.
Folks let’s agree to talk. To ourselves. To one another. Let’s agree to admit that we all have problems that we can’t solve them on our own. And let’s agree to get through this - whatever it is – by relying on each other. Together.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.