The Blessed Boast
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Some social media posts have been gettin' to me a bit... ----- The caption read “blessed.” The social media posts were of a woman surrounded by her friends wearing designer clothes. Another of her on a private plane drinking champagne with friends. And another sitting in a suite with friends at a world-famous event. Perfect hair. Perfect teeth. Blessed, it read. Blessed? Really? I think what she meant was “More blessed than you.” Or maybe she misspelled blessed and it should read “Boast.” When Christians want people to see how well they’re doing, they post a “humble brag.” I...
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Trophies
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Recap and thoughts from a client call a few week's ago. We were discussing a problem they're having that all of us had a hand in creating. ----- “I didn’t realize it would be so hard.” That’s from a conference call with the leaders of a mid-Atlantic hospital system a few weeks back. We were talking about their young, newly minted doctors. I was putting the finishing touches on a workshop for their spring leadership conference. It seems that medical residency has gotten much easier. Less stress. Less sleepless nights. Less intensity. Less rigor. Once residency is over, the newly minted...
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Our World Needs a Prophet Today
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
We need change. And someone special who can bring it. ----- Another mass shooting last weekend. By the time this airs, there will likely be another one or two. It’s awful that these events no longer horrify us the way they should. I hardly read the story anymore. The details are all too familiar. A young male. An assault weapon. A troubled background. A history of affiliation with hate groups. Concerns by neighbors and employers of mental instability. And, boom. I’ve warned my children: at some point in your life, you’ll experience a mass shooting. Know what to do, I’ve told them. Our...
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Jazz Fest Recap
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Lots of sights and sounds at New Orleans Jazz Fest. ----- My wife, a college friend and I stood amidst the peace and quiet of Jazz Fest in New Orleans last weekend along with what must have been 100,000 of our closest friends. It was a sight. When my wife and I told our friends we were going, they reacted the same was as when I told them we were going to Mexico for spring break – “Oh no,” they said. “That’s dangerous over there. You’re going to get shot.” During my thirty-six hours in New Orleans, I never once felt unsafe. To the great disappointment of my schadenfreude friends,...
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TLAs and FLAs
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Today's Keepin' it Real - the language of insiders. ----- I made a short statement the other day and my son immediately replied, “That’s cap.” C A P. Cap. I’m unsure what it means. It’s either “that’s the gospel truth” or “that’s a boldface lie.” I thought about it for a moment and decided I didn’t want to know. For centuries generations have used hairstyles, vocabulary, music and clothing to separate themselves from adults just like my kids are doing today. We called things “cool” or “grody” or “sick.” Today my kids use Cap and ‘lit’. When I say someone...
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Twins in Mexico
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This week I'm on the heels of a spring break trip with my youngest children - my twins. ------- I’ve wondered how often my teenaged children brush their teeth. After spending a week in a hotel room with two of them I learned that it is much less frequently than I had thought. Spring break was last week. It’s already been quite a year in the Marston household. With a daughter off at college and my wife and son away on a trip with his classmates, the twins and I flew to an all-inclusive resort on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Unlimited smoothies and milkshakes for them. Long days of compare...
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Let's Go!
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Listener's responses from my request last week: ----- To the many of you who pulled your Subaru’s over last week and emailed me, thank you. For those who don’t know, I had a stroke about two weeks ago and am, thankfully, ok. I walked out of intensive care about twenty-four hours later. Other than a fistful of pills every day, I’m back to normal. And as I said last week, it was close and I got lucky. My request last week was what does this all mean? I got very close, received an enormous outpouring of support, and got stuck on the question, “What’s it all mean?” The emails from...
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Stroke of Luck
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
It was big. I got lucky. And I'm not sure what to think about it. ----- My wife and I moved to Mobile in 2007. We had four children ages four and under and needed cheap arms and laps – better knowns as family - to help through this overwhelming time. We committed to staying awhile so my wife and I did our best to invest ourselves in our community. That investment manifest itself last week. Last Tuesday morning about 8:30 I was on the treadmill. About 8:35 I was mumbling, drooling, the left side of my face was sagging, and I was leaning against the wall. About 9:20am I was rolled into the...
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Camping
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
I've been offered an invitation to go camping... ----- Years ago, my wife and I got a deal on some camping equipment. We headed into the North Carolina mountains to a creek camp site and set up our fancy new tent and tried out our new gear. When night fell, we unpacked our fancy new sleeping bags that were rated to keep us warm well below that night’s low temperature, climbed in, and waited to get warm. And we waited. And we waited. Then we started shivering. Teeth began chattering. After an interminable amount of time, I asked my wife what time it was. “Ten PM,” she said. The night...
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Too Much Bottom
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
What my wife and I saw on my recent business trip to a Bahamas resort was more than enough. ----- My wife and I spent four nights at a Bahamas resort on a business trip and here are my observations. Here’s what I saw. First, I remember hearing that most traffic accidents happen within five miles of the driver’s home. Seems inverse of what you’d expect. The reason? When you’re driving through your home territory, you’re so familiar with the roads, the traffic, the scenery and such that you let your guard down. The familiarity and the routine make you vulnerable to carelessness. When...
info_outlineI've been offered an invitation to go camping...
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Years ago, my wife and I got a deal on some camping equipment. We headed into the North Carolina mountains to a creek camp site and set up our fancy new tent and tried out our new gear. When night fell, we unpacked our fancy new sleeping bags that were rated to keep us warm well below that night’s low temperature, climbed in, and waited to get warm. And we waited. And we waited. Then we started shivering. Teeth began chattering. After an interminable amount of time, I asked my wife what time it was. “Ten PM,” she said. The night wasn’t even half over. It was awful. As soon as there was any hint of daylight we packed up, hiked out, drove home, climbed in bed. That was well over twenty years ago. The cold got into my bones that night and has never left. I’ve still not warmed up.
Mankind, and especially Western society, has gotten soft. In fact, a book called The Comfort Crisis documents this and I’m right in the crosshairs of that book. Humans have figured out how to make nearly any environment on earth more and more and more comfortable. Along the way we’ve lost some toughness, some resilience. At the same time, however, I don’t think the solution to too much comfort is to seek discomfort.
And this is on my mind right now as I have, once again, been invited to go camping. I have a certain friend who claims to love camping. And I think he really does. But he has a hard time finding anyone to go with him. He invites me multiple times each year. The reason that no one joins him is that we know camping is not fun. It is unfun. It is the inverse of fun. It is proactively seeking discomfort. And this current invitation involved a five and half hour drive one way to sleep on the cold ground for one cold night and then drive home. And I’ll say it again: Five-and-a-half-hour drive. Sleep on the ground. Very cold night. Drive home. Un-fun.
For two summers during college, I worked in Glacier National Park in Montana. Each summer I planned to become a camping savant. Each summer I camped one time and never did it again. I lay there all night hoping a grizzly bear would come maul me because it’s got to be better than this.
The idea of camping is glorious. Nature and hiking and self-sufficiency and wildlife and all that. It’s romantic. But it’s like horses. I love the idea of being a horse person. But I’ve been around horses. They’re big and they’re strong and they spook easily and run very very fast and I’ve learned that I love the idea of being a horse person. But I have no interest in actually being a horse person. The same is true with camping.
It disgusts my friend when I tell him this, but on a pretty night when the wind is out of the north with low humidity in the air, I’ll open my bedroom window and throw an extra blanket on the bed. And that’s as close as I’m gonna get to camping.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to keep it real.