Practitioner
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam wonders if we have what it takes any more. If the thumbs up button is as far as we'll go or as much as we'll do. ----- David Brooks wrote a column in the New York Times last week calling for a, quote “comprehensive national civic uprising.” There are well over four thousand comments with most being something along the lines of “Yes. It’s about time. Someone should do something.” Brooks’ says the Trump administration has gone too far, that we are indeed in a constitutional crisis, and it’s time to act. But, I wonder, do we have what it takes to...
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Prom
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam tells us that based on a series of recent events, he has two people he'd like offer up as potentially superb spies. ----- My twins are high school juniors, and prom was last Saturday night. The event went something like this: For my son: He brought his Joseph Banks suit downstairs about noon. It looked like it had been in a pile on the floor since he last wore it in March. There was a button-down shirt with it. My wife took the clothes and began steaming the wrinkles out. She asked “What flowers did you get your date.” A blank look. “Go to Publix and...
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To AI or Not AI. That Is The Question.
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keepin' it Real, Cam reports on a writer's conference he attended last weekend where a good part of the conversation was about using AI. All the writers, Cam reports, choose to not use it, preferring to remain "pure." ----- I attended a writers' conference last Saturday. Writers are a curious breed, convinced their unique perspective on describing something as mundane as a sunset is groundbreaking and essential. I love them. But they’re weird. This year, though, a frequent topic was artificial intelligence – how do writers use it, if at all. Speaker after speaker claimed they...
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Get The Joke
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam and his wife were at a wedding reception last week. It was beautiful. One conversation, though, has stuck with him. ----- My wife and I stood with a young man at a wedding Saturday night as he lamented the lack of turkeys to hunt at his camp. There were no gobblers, he said, and he was a bit down in the mouth about it. “Why,” my wife asked. “In the spring,” he said, “the hens move to a different place where they like the environment for nesting. The gobblers follow. And wherever those hens go, it’s not on our property. I wish there were something about our place that the hens...
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Judges Of The Truth
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
It's been a long week for Cam. He's going to get paid one hundred dollars for two days of work that he is required by law to perform. He didn't enjoy it but it wasn't because of the low pay. ------ In grade school I never wanted to be the one to pick teams. I was afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. It’s ridiculous, I know. I like to get along. I like to see people succeed. I’ve never wanted to be the arbiter of someone’s else’s happiness. That responsibility scares me. Monday morning, I was selected as a jury member for a federal trial. It was my first time doing this. I was one of...
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Meaningless Conversations
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston shares what exhausts him and how a good conversation is hard to find. ----- It was 1,000 one-minute conversations. A collection of people who all were within a degree, maybe a half a degree, of separation. Hardly a meaningful chat and as the event wore on, the meaningfulness of the chats dwindled further. For so little conversation, it was exhausting. I think maybe that conversations that skim along the veneer of content are more taxing than digging into content. I don’t know. But when I left, I was completely spent. I’m like so many other people...
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Happiness
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keeping It Real, Cam recounts his birthday week which has some unexpected surges of happiness. ----- Happiness is fleeting. It never lasts and I’m not sure it’s supposed to. It’s different than joy and contentment and pleasantness. Happiness bubbles up from an unexpected place and last such a short time. And when it arrives, it sometimes brings tears. Living in constant happiness would render us nearly helpless. It immobilizes you. Living in joy and contentment is great with, hopefully, unexpected surges of happiness from time to time that render us speechless. For my...
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The Ft. Lauderdale Accord
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam explains the Ft Lauderdale accord and how it's telling him that it's time to move on. ----- My wife and I will be empty nesters in eighteen months. If all goes according to plan, in that time our youngest two will graduate and head to college and if looking back is anything like looking ahead, these next eighteen months will fly by. If you’re a regular listener, you know that my wife and I have four kids. We purchased this house with a family of six in mind. With only two kids left at home, it’s already a lot of space and in eighteen months it will be...
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Paraty
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keepin It Real, Cam reports back about his most memorable event on his recent trip to Brazil. He traveled a long way to come back with this... ------ Cachaca is a Brazilian alcohol that was first made by the slaves the Portuguese brought to Brazil. It’s sugar cane based. Very sweet. And like gumbo, red beans and rice, jazz music, and the Mississippi delta blues among other things, it was what the poor people created due to a lack of resources and that the wealthy people eventually wanted. Crazy how that works so predictably. It’s like clockwork. Anyway, my wife and I were...
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Procrastinating Like a Champion
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Today on Keepin' It Real, Cam looses focus and finds his mind wandering about an upcoming trip instead of focusing on what need to be done. ----- My day today will be spent studying Brazilian demographics. And I know what you’re thinking: How did I get so lucky? I mean, come on, most of us have to work but you get to spend your day studying Brazilian demographics. How is that fair? Friday, my wife and I leave for a week in Brazil. I’ve been invited to speak at a conference next week in Sao Paulo. These types of invitations are rare for me. While at a conference in November, a young...
info_outlineI have an idea for a business. Make up words customers can't understand then upcharge 75%.
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I think our dog is constipated. She rung her tinkle bell early early in the morning to go outside and she just roamed around the yard in a hurry with her nose down. I have no idea if this is what a constipated dog looks like. I’m assuming that’s her issue. She appears to want to do something but…can’t.
The tinkle bell hangs next to the back door. The dog rings it with her nose when she needs to go out. In the wee hours my wife or I stand bleary-eyed in the door waiting for her to do her business in the bushes. The dog’s been trained, Lucy is her name, by the way. Lucy’s been trained to ring the bell then do her business in the bushes, not in the yard. It took about six months of my wife demonstrating this process for Lucy for Lucy to finally catch on about what to do and where to do it. Those six months, by the way, were quite awkward with the neighbors, as you can imagine.
None of this would matter so much if I weren’t so very tired. I had my stroke about three months ago and it feels like every doctor in town has sensed an opportunity to run a test and send me an invoice. Yesterday at the doctor’s office the check-in document asked, “what are you here for?” I wrote, “something to do with taking a picture of the back of my heart through my throat.” Of course, there’s an official title for this test using a big giant series of important sounding words but I’ll get to that in a moment.
In a shocking example of a customer service failure, when I was called to the front desk the attendant had her very large computer screen turned with its back squarely facing me. I couldn’t even see her. My first encounter with a human in a place I didn’t want to be was not with a human, it was with the back of a computer screen with a disembodied voice somewhere on the other side. It was so shocking I took pictures of it on my phone. It was clear the computer screen was much more important than the patient. No reason to actually see me, or welcome me, or smile at me, or make eye contact which took me from not wanting to be there to angry about being there.
Anyway, the drug they used to sedate me was milky white. I asked about it when I saw it in the syringe. They said, “It’s white because it’s lipid based.” What? If I ever start a new business, it will be one using words and providing explanations that mean nothing to the customers. Businesses that use their own language can charge more than businesses where customers actually understand answers to their questions. I’ll create a business, use some Latin-sounding words, drop them into customer conversations, and upcharge at least seventy five percent.
Anyway, the sedation lingered all day and at eight PM I fell into bed exhausted. Until the tinkle bell began ringing and I wished my wife had demonstrated for Lucy how to hold it.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.