Rebellion
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam discussion rebellion in children and how it’s recently hit his home. ----- All children rebel against their family and their parents. I certainly did. I see photos of myself as a teen with hair touching my collar and remember my father telling me over and over again to get it cut. I didn’t and maybe I didn’t because it bothered him so much. I knew my kids would rebel, too. It was inevitable. And much of it’s been the same over time – hair styles, vocabulary, music, and clothing. These are the signs of rebellion. They have been for a long long...
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Thankful
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's keepin it real, Cam reminds each of us AND HIMSELF that being thankful is not a seasonal behavior but an attitude we should aspire to live year round. ----- Today the tone should be, well, thankful. Thankful for my friends and family. Thankful for my health and safety. Thankful for all the food I had yesterday. Thankful that its finally getting cool outside. Thankful that no one else in my family likes cranberries so I can eat as much as I want. There’s a lot to be thankful for but I propose that thanks for these very things needs attention year around. Not a pithy,...
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Go Find This Podcast
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this Week's Keepin It Real, Cam is tired of people not from Alabama degrading and belittling our state. But in this certain case, Cam says, we might deserve it. ----- Go find a podcast called The Alabama Murders. It’s a seven-episode series by author Malcolm Gladwell done under his Revisionist History podcast. I love Revisionist History – it’s been one of my favorite podcasts for a long time but, well, The Alabama Murders is yet another example of someone who is not from here looking at Alabama with shame and disgust. Our state has been the target of this for a long long time....
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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...
info_outlineOn this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston has just returned from a few days in Fort Lauderdale. It's a different world down there, Cam says. One that he might have envied at one point in his life.
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My wife and I returned from Ft Lauderdale Saturday. We were there for a corporate event where I was giving a speech. My client generously offered an extra couple of nights in the host hotel and our room was on the 26thfloor overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I watched the sun rise each morning as I sipped coffee and read. It began as a faint glow on the horizon to a disk coming out of the water. It was nice. My wife and I haven’t had a chance to do things like that recently. Now that the kids are older, we’re trying to take advantage of them. As we left to go on our trip, we told our kids to please not let us find the house in ashes when we returned. We felt that was reasonable. And it was in pretty good shape when we got home Saturday.
South Florida is quite different from South Alabama or, I suspect, most of Alabama. And I guess saying that is simply acknowledging the obvious. I counted five or six different Ferraris which I rarely see around here. I think they’re beautiful. There were lots of Bentleys. There was lots of jewelry on everyone. Lots of senior citizens on the boardwalk late in the afternoon walking together, riding bikes, sitting and visiting. Lot of accents. Lots of people speaking Spanish, and what I think was Russian. Guitar players up and down the boardwalk, busking and playing music they hoped would catch the senior’s attention.
My hope for my wife and my trip was to create not a bucket list for the two of us, but a reverse bucket list. Not a list the things we wanted or wanted to do. I wanted us to create list of the things we could do away with. What we could do to simplify. I’ve said it many times to my wife and kids – we could probably get rid of half of the things we’ve accumulated over the nearly twenty years in this house and never miss them. If you’ve lived in the same place for a while, you can probably relate. How and why did we get this stuff in the first place. And why do I have such a hard time getting rid of it.
I look at all those things those people in South Florida had, especially the beautiful cars, the jewelry, the magnificent beachfront homes and thought “Wow. That’s beautiful. I’m glad I don’t want it.” And that’s a 180 degree shift and about face from the way I once was – I wanted the stuff, the houses and the cars. Today what excites me is getting rid of the stuff I have. And m y wife is kinda there, too. It’s a part of our journey together of what we want for ourselves from here on out. And what we want will change. Likely many times.
Ironically, though, as I say this my wife and kids have asked for my Christmas list – more things I want which includes, partly to my shame, a top hat. Do I need a top hat? No. Do I want a top hat? Yes. In a few years will I wonder why I have it and why I struggle to give it away? Absolutely.
I think maybe I’ve identified the problem.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.