THE WAY YOU DO ANYTHING IS THE WAY YOU DO EVERYTHING

Agree or disagree, but the way you do anything explains a lot.

If you have an identity crisis do a quick review of the past day to see who you are.

What you did yesterday is who you are today.

Actions speak louder than words, so what did you do yesterday?

Yesterday I wrote 1200 words on getting over big disappointments in life.

I was slightly disappointed it didn’t get read widely and I was anointed savior of the day, but that’s the life of a blogger.

We take our shots. Hopefully my shots won’t come back and nail me? They won’t.

That’s not how I do things.

What I do do is look for ways to get better in everything, like writing.

Toward that goal, and that’s what it is because ‘getting better’ is never done, I watched a documentary.

I think it was a documentary, but it played like a movie with so many cinematic scenes.

It was the doc on JD Salinger, Jerry to his close friends.

Was it schmatlzy and over done? Not for me, but I’m a Jerry fan.

 

The Way Of The Jerry Fan

From the looks of him, Salinger was a tall man with a long narrow face.

From the documentary, he saw a world of phony people, phony ideas, phony this, phony that.

Catcher in the Rye’s star Holden Caulfield had a sharp eye for phonies too, but he was a kid.

Everything a kid doesn’t understand is phony, or weird, or strange.

Then they grow up and make excuses for the phoniness of life and call it ‘getting along with each other.’

If you don’t behave the way you were taught, the way people expect, you might not get along well with others.

Jerry didn’t care one way or the other, he was driven, obsessed, and willing to do what he felt necessary to get his work done.

He was going to get published in The New Yorker hell or high water, and he did after years of rejection.

His story was coming out in the early December issue, which was canceled because of Pearl Harbor and WWII.

He submitted poems throughout the war, writing in those quiet moments of combat.

At Normandy he carried pages of Catcher with him on the beach, calling them his secret power.

Ok, I’m calling them his secret power, like the Bible in the shirt pocket.

 

My takeaway from Salinger the movie:

He had a man-cave with a lock on the door where he couldn’t be disturbed.

If that sounds good at first, it’s not so much when the movie showed his young kids watching the building where their daddy was.

It reminded me of Hemingway’s kids saying, “In the mornings he was inaccessible, in the afternoons too accessible.”

Who doesn’t want a man-cave, a writing room, and art room, a music room, a whatever the hell you want to call it room, with a lock on the door and only one key?

Sounds good until some kind of healthy hit lands, a heart attack, a stroke, a diabetic coma. Then what? Then you die in your little hidey-hole.

No thanks. That’s not my kind of writing room.

Mine, the so-called writing room, is what my wife and I agree on. I have a morning routine in a writing room just like J.D. Salinger.

Do I get all jacked up with interruptions? No. Maybe I should?

Does my super personal space also hold the copier, the file cabinet, and the junk and crap that doesn’t fit anywhere else in my sumptuous abode?

Maybe I’ve got a writing warehouse?

 

What I Learned Already Today

I heard a football coach preface an answer to a question with, “The way you do anything is the way you do everything,”  then answer the question.

It was Oregon coach Dan Lanning on the Dan Patrick Show.

I heard that and looked around my room thinking I need to do a few things better, like clean up the flat surfaces, the shelves, the bookcases, the pictures, floor, but not the dog.

The dog and I went to the dog wash yesterday, lifted together, cleaned up the house for guests, cooked a kick-ass dinner, and welcomed one of the good guys into the fold. (Hey Zane)

I made a list of calls to make, things to do, and places to go; I cleaned up all the droppings of huge trees bordering my property.

The oak drops a load on the ‘private road’ and the evergreen drops needles on my neighbor’s driveway. Needles and pitch that make the needles stick to your car.

What I learned on my own, and with a Salinger boost, is be a good person to your loved ones.

If you get married and have kids, make room for them in your life.

You won’t know the effect you have on others if you don’t show up for them.

You may not know then, either, but why chance it. Show up and shine.

A wife deserves your time. You could say you have responsibilities to spend time with her. She may remind you of those responsibilities.

The kids? They’ll never understand why they weren’t more important to you, why you didn’t find time for them.

I felt that so keenly that my kids once asked, “Why are you always around?”

It made me wonder why. Why was I always around?

The best I came up with was, “Because I’m your Dad. Now I’m wondering who you guys are.”

But they knew. I knew, too. So did their Momma.

What else is there? Let’s ask Holden Caulfield.