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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineOn this week's KIR, Cam Marston wonders if he could do the same thing for fifteen years and know, just know in his bones, that it would pay off.
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I’ve just watched the documentary on Steve Martin called "Steve! A Documentary in Two Pieces." I’ve always liked Steve Martin.
What caught my attention the most is that he did his standup act for fifteen years. The vast majority of that time, his audiences were very small. In one video clip, he’s counting the number of people in the room during his act – there were fifteen people there. He got what he thought were big breaks that bombed, in one case opening for Anne Margaret in Las Vegas and after he finished his act all his belongings had been put in a box outside his dressing room.
However, the last stand-up comedy act he did was at the Nassau Coliseum outside New York City where he sold it out three nights in a row – 45,000 people each night. After the third night, he walked off the stage, never to do that act ever again. He was at the top of his game. It took him fifteen years to get there. And then he was done.
Question: Who of us have the will, the fortitude, to persevere for fifteen years – fifteen years - with the hope – actually, the confidence – that what we’re doing will ultimately pan out. When giving up or changing course is a very real option but we chose not to do it because our vision of what could be is so strong. I’m not sure I do. How many of us can see the need for a change, or see a change coming, and get out in front of it, remain confident amongst the failure and rejection, and never waver.
A number of times during the documentary Martin says that he did his act because he had few other options. The little money it brought in was all he had. Those interviewed, though, said he was waiting for society to catch up to his humor. Steve Martin changed standup and comedy and humor. He could see the change coming, but the vast majority of society wasn’t aware that a change was happening. Martin saw it coming, ever so slowly, so he kept going.
It's one thing to ID forthcoming changes in technology and how to get ahead of those changes to profit from new products – think Steve Jobs and the iPod – but what Steve Martin did was predict a change in the ethos of the United States following Vietnam. He had a hunch people would be different. And he kept at it. And, in time he was proven right.
What’s the moral of this story? Someone like that is out there amongst us right here and right now. Doing something we think is foolish, or that doesn’t seem funny, or saying something that doesn’t sound smart or goes against the grain of society. We ridicule them or cast them aside or, more likely, just ignore them. But they keep coming back. Perhaps, we should take a look.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.