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...
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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...
info_outlineCam spent Monday evening at a big party for a small group of twenty-one year olds. To say the least, times have changed. Here's what he saw.
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A moment after midnight on March 4th, 1990, I stood on a barstool and declared loudly to the packed bar that I had just turned twenty one years old. I was in Boulder, Colorado. A moment later the bouncer had me by the shirt and said, “That means you used a fake ID to get in”, which was true. I was nearly carried, my feet barely touching the ground, to the door and tossed into the street.
Oddly enough, the same story happened to my wife, long before we met. It was a stroke after midnight on July 13th, 1991, and she was on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her declaration was not made atop a bar stool. She was greeted by cheers from her friends and was bought a round of drinks.
In both instances, our parents were not there. And, in both instances no evidence exists that any of it ever happened.
Monday night in Oxford, Mississippi, I was with my favorite oldest daughter in a bar called The Summit. All her crowd was there plus more. She and her friends who had turned twenty-one over the Christmas break banded together to celebrate. My wife and I were invited. We were, in fact, encouraged to come. Decorators created an Instagram-able background including a balloon-arch and streamers. There was a platter of cupcakes in the shape of 21.
Picture books were created for each of the birthday girls. The girls wore bawdy signs around their necks for the night. After a couple hours, my wife and I sensed the tide turning, the energy increasing, and a bar full twenty-one-year-olds were about to begin doing what bars full of twenty-one-year old’s do. My wife and I paid our part of the tab, hugged our daughter, posed for countless photos with her, and got the hell out of there. This is a low estimate, but approximately 55 million billion photos were taken in the two hours of the party.
This is not the way I would have wanted it, I kept thinking to myself. But the truth is, I didn’t have a pocket full of magic back in 1990. While it was her celebration, the cell phone and its camera, this magical device, drove the show.
I read somewhere that today mankind takes more photos in one day than we did from the invention of the camara roughly two hundred years ago to today.
The picture books she was given were made quickly compared to what it would have taken back in 1990 – imagine developing 35mm film, duplicates, photo booths. The sign she wore was full of images, printed as a whole, and laminated. It certainly took some effort, but simple compared to what it would have taken back in the day.
As much as I wanted to flinch, she and her whole party were a reflection of what technology has created. A natural consequence. Said another way, while I’d like to think differently, had the technology been available, I would have probably wanted the same. But I am indeed happy my parents weren’t there. And I am indeed very happy no evidence remains.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.