I’m about a week late commenting on the Old Spice thing, but who cares. It’s not anything deep or marketing related or anything anyone except me cares about. It is a personal experience that is probably a bit quirky.

My connection to Old Spice is an old college girlfriend who wore Old Spice deodorant. Swear. Everything else about her was girlie except her deodorant.

Anyway, that is my entire interest in the Old Spice brand; a long-ago memory.

You’ve probably seen “two-headed” Facebook profiles or Twitter avatars, where a husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend are posing together for one profile. I’m not a fan. I think everyone should be their own person.

Then I see shows like the Travel Channel where they show a husband and wife both working hard at a diner, pouring their hearts into the business and each other, unselfishly knowing that each is dependent on the other for success. Or couples like my grandmother and granddad who were sturdy Maine inlanders, who worked the farm with each other through a fifty-one year marriage, separated only by a short year when she died in August and he later that June. And I think these people are lucky to have another person who is not separate, but a part of the other. Everything — including their life force, hopes and dreams — is shared.

And I think that maybe I’m wrong.

But most of my experience say “all I ever learned from love was how to shoot someone who outdrew ya.”

For now, I have a single head. I think you should too.

*Hallelujah, written by Leonard Cohen, best performed by Jeff Buckley

Just a general rant and not at all thought out.

I hate it when people “engineer” helping you out to try to make it seem like you can’t do something without their help and then claim massive amounts of credit. “I made you what you are by being here for you” is the rally cry.

But you’re not there when I actually need you; when I am up against a wall or an immovable deadline. When my needs bump into your plans, you find all sorts of reasons why your plans are much more important. In the end, I know if it ever came down to it, I will lose. So, I don’t rely on you for even the smallest things. And you wonder why there is no teamwork?

I feel a bit better. Thanks for listening.

And Joe and I used to talk about it, and we’d say we were so lucky we have this wonderful relationship, we can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in. We can fly off to Rome on a moment’s notice. … ‘The thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment’s notice’ …. And the kitchen floor? Not once. It’s this very cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile.

This is about the most useful quote from When Harry Met Sally…. I hear it in my head every time I watch some episode of HGTV where they show a couple walking though a house they’re thinking of buying and she imagines the garden here and how they are going to entertain all their friends there, etc, etc.

And most of that never happens.

That spare bedroom that was going to be his office is now a junk room and he is working off the kitchen table. The modular sofa that costs way too much that was to be a relaxing chill space almost never gets used. The family room with the fireplace where they were going to entertain friends holds bookcases of old books and photo albums that are never read.

How much space do you really need to live and be happy? Chances are, not much. Not much at all.

I woke up today realizing that I no longer have any friends. It’s not something I planned as much as they all just slowly moved away or eventually revealed their true purpose for befriending me, whereupon I let them quietly slip away. And I’ve gotten too old and too lazy to make new ones.

And except for the odd moment when nostalgia or loneliness grips me tightly, I’m ok with that — with the exception of two people in my life who moved away rather abruptly. But had they stayed longer, we may not even be the occasional friends we are still, albeit tentatively.

I suspect it will probably be a regret I have later in life, that I did not try harder to collect and hang onto friends. But on the bright side, it is sure going to save a ton of money on finger sandwiches for the buffet.

Life coaches and self-described efficiency experts love to craft stuff they say around the almost unquestioned “fact” that “time is money.” Ok, I get it. Really.

I was thinking the other day that most people spend time more foolishly than they do money. They willingly give up time, waste time and kill time far more readily than they give up money, waste money or burn money. What idiot in their right mind would burn a Benjamin on a whim? I wonder why it is easier to give up time than it is to give up money. After all, you can always make more money; you can’t make more time.

What if we were given a deposit book when we were born that has the balance of time we are allotted. We could look at the book anytime we wanted to see how much time is left for us to get done what we wanted to do before we die. Would that change our behavior?

For some, maybe. But for many, I don’t think it would. How many times have you said, “I have all week to get this done” and are surprised it is now Thursday and it still isn’t done “Ah, well, there is always next week.”

Everyone expects they will be given a new tomorrow. But I don’t think knowing how much time you have left would change behavior. It might just make it easier to give up quicker.

I Am from Steven Nicholas Smith on Vimeo.

Not one person considered “I am.” to already be a complete sentence.

I don’t trust artists* who pump out creative work like a gushing oil well. Artists who create prolifically either don’t do it deeply enough or they have minions — who will always remain nameless — help them create their art. One is sloppy and empty; the other is not genuine.

It is painful to create fully-forms ideas and well-crafted art, regardless of your medium. It takes time and genuine empathy to create strong relationship with other people who grow to trust your instincts and vision. And trust they will also share the limelight with you.

In the “always-on” “real-time” “what have you done for me lately” “how many social media friends do you have” world we have created for ourselves, we forget that we can’t rush deep understanding and craft, no matter how much we write; no matter how much we tweet; no matter how much we “connect.”

When we rush creativity, we may have a long chain, but the mettle is weak.**

*Writers, potters, painters, bloggers even…
**The pun was intended, not typoed.. but you really smart creatives are already smiling. Posers, go home.

Is talking about doing something doing it? I run into people (including me) who talk about what they want to do, where they want to go, what they want to build, etc. And I find myself becoming impatient with them and hear that voice in my head screaming, “Quit talking and do it already!”

It is as frustrating as watching a bricklayer build a wall, one brick at a time. In his mind, he can already see the wall. If you watch him work, it is a tedious, agonizing process. But if you step away and come back a few weeks later, the wall is built as if by magic.

We’ve all probably forced action for something before it was ready and the result did not wear well. Perhaps talking things through may be a necessary — thought tedious — part of the process of getting stuff done.

Just in case, I’m going to quit feeling guilty about my talking and dreaming. I may share less out loud, but I’m still talking in my head. It’s a start.