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.

Can you imagine for a moment how many people John Lennon scared while writing Imagine? Not the end product, but the process that went before it and probably long afterwards in his head, in what he shared with others close to him. When you start deconstructing things that others around you believe as ultimate truths, you force them to either think or hide.

Most people choose to hide. And what they choose to hide is in rationalization and denial.

Never share your dreams with “practical” thinkers. You’ll just scare them into thinking you’ll do something nutty.

I don’t get sharing of every space when you are in a relationship. Apparently, about 38% of people in relationships think that spying on their lover is a good idea, maybe even necessary.

Wow.

Ok, so for the record, here are the areas of my life that are never ok to snoop into. Ever.
Cell phone, laptop, any email accounts, wallet, journals, briefcase, iPad, glove compartment, dresser drawers, pockets, mail, any furniture in my office, bank accounts, social media accounts and private parts of my blog, including drafts. And I will never share my dog. Ever.

In exchange, I will never check out any of yours, including your purse. Don’t ask me to answer your cell phone, pick up your email or open a letter and read it to you. And it will never be ok to “hop on your laptop quick.” I just won’t do it and I expect the same from you.

It’s not that I have anything to hide, but that I need space to be entirely free to be me. Most of what you get is stuff that I have worked out enough in my head to feel comfortable with either defending or accepting compliments for. The other stuff is just not ready for me to put out there, no matter how close we are.

Just who I am. I suspect there are others just like me.

Against my better judgement, I commented on a post in Simone Grant’s blog, Sex, Lies & Dating in the City. It was about men putting their work first. Almost immediately, the comments to mine used the old cliché, “very few people on their deathbed wish they’d spent more time at the office.”

Ok, those people are not me and that is not what I was talking about. Nor do I think Simone was talking about that kind of work either. The kind of work I know is that which is you and you with it, like being a painter, an artist or a writer.

All the writers and artists I’ve ever known who have died only had one deeply honest regret; that they did not have enough time to finish that book or that painting. Work to them was never work; it was the expression of who they are and they know that death will give them a voice that only includes what they were able to leave behind. A deathbed is only an urgent need to finish, to leave a complete opus of one’s existence.

Unless you know that that kind of work, you will always see a rift between who you are and what you do. And you will always feel that tug and allow yourself to be tugged by all the wrong people who demand you be less than who you really are.

*To date, I have known only two women who truly understand this. You know who you are.

Last night, I watched Up in the Air starring George Clooney. I had all sorts of reactions on many different levels because for a chunk of time, I was Ryan Bingham (the traveling part, not the hatchet man part.)

And I knew a lot of other Ryan Binghams. And the reality that each of us shared that not one of us would ever admit in public was that it was not the being away from home 200+ days of the year that killed us slowly inside, but the going back home at the end of every trip. Yet we told ourselves and those around us that we traveled to support our families, that we were doing this all for them, that we missed our kids, our wives or our girlfriends.

But we secretly loved the road.

I miss my Ryan Bingham days.

Today is my birthday. I tell you this not to fish for birthday greetings, presents or cake, but as a lead-in for an observation of human behavior that just hit me today.

I received a birthday greeting from someone who had been reading my blog, unbeknownst to me. I don’t know how long she had been reading or when she first got the urge to tell me she had and what she thought of my thoughts, but I’m glad that she found the excuse of my birthday to let me know that I have been a small influence on her.

Then I got to thinking about how many times I found myself wanting to stop a complete stranger at the local grocery store and say, “You have very beautiful eyes” or make an observation like “You look sad, is there something I can do for you today?” or dropping a complimentary comment on a blog/twitter stream without creeping them out or thinking this old guy is trying to pick them up. I just think sometimes an unsolicited compliment — things that only happen in the movies but that you wish would happen to you — may be just the thing another human being needs at that very moment.

But I never do it. I really, really want to, but I never do.

I wonder how many other people want to reach out and tell me something without expectation other than I say, “Thank you” and become positively influenced by their noticing me?

And so I think we take the opportunity of a birthday or an anniversary or other some like social marker to poke our heads out of our shells and say, “I think you are an amazing human being because of this.” Because on your birthday, that is what you hear. Because on your birthday, it is safe to reach out and touch the soul of another human being without the fear of recoil.

Now, we just need to tune our ears to hear the same thing at other random times, without occasion. I doubt much we will; I doubt much I will take a chance myself. But I will be screaming those compliments I should be sharing with you in my head.

And to my new friend who summoned up the courage to compliment me today, thank you. I hope you don’t wait a whole year to find another excuse to reach out.