Before My Last Breath

Apologies for the sporadic posts. I've been training for the Pan Mass Challenge, a 196 mile bicycle ride from Sturbridge to Provincetown, MA. That and working a lot make the time to write a challenge. Lame excuse I know but whatever...Syl you still listening? (I doubt it). The PMC is a benefit for the Jimmy Fund raising money for cancer research. Visit their website (PMC.org) for more info. I'm still accepting sponsors if anyone is so inclined. Just type in my last name and you can donate online to a great cause. My son Nick has been kind enough to get out on the road with me taking his turn pulling me around at a fast tempo. I marvel at his natural ability and fresh young legs. Maybe next year we'll ride the PMC together. So think of me and the other 5000+ riders making our way across Massachusetts this Saturday & Sunday. And if you have any pull with the weather gods, 70 degrees, sunny, low humidity would be fine. But you know what? It's New England and it will be

Tonight I had the good fortune to be sitting in a room of aware people. It was a gathering that could have been from a thousand years ago. It was a room full of strangers whom I’ve known my whole life. It was the present looking into the future. One of the phrases I heard that stuck with me from this night was “the heart of the unknown”. That phrase unlocked these words, these feelings inside of me that attempt to express the wonderment of playing in the unknown arena that I call LIFE. Think about it for a minute: every moment of every day of every year of our life we are faced with the unknown. From the minute we arrive naked and crying to the last breath we inhale into what will be our final exhalation we have no idea what’s coming next. None. Zero. Not a clue whatsoever. I don’t care who you are or what you do or what strategy you employ to ensure you do know what’s next – you simply don’t know. We can attempt to create a level of security around our existence and from my p

Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since my last post? My mom must think I’m dead even though she lives right around the corner from us and sees me frequently. She pretty much relies on my blog to know what’s up with me. Hi ma! Your boy’s alive & well. So what’s with the gloom and doom headline? Well for starters there’s been this funky weather front stalled over New England making the skies dark and threatening and the humidity high. Rain, thunder, lightning as a looming presence. And people just seem to always talk about it. That’s one part of the G & D. The other is the news. Both the kind you read and the kind you hear. The stock market is most enjoyable to observe. Watch the gossip, then watch the reaction. The economy, the fear, the wars, the up coming presidential race, the housing market, the doping in the Tour, the slumping Red Sox. Oh they won last night – cool. Anyway, I’m not buying it. Any of it. And why would I? Do I need to feed off of the negativity

Once upon a time there was a man who loved birds. Over the years the man had many birds, one after the other. He loved their beauty, and especially loved listening to their songs. He would very lovingly care for each bird as best he could, provide a wonderful cage for them to live in, good food to eat, and sweet water to drink. The man would love to come home after a day at work and talk to his beloved bird, and ask her to sing a lovely song for him. And each bird he kept would sing so perfectly because she loved the man so much. Yet each bird the man brought home eventually died, and not from old age. He would come home one day and the bird would be simply dead in its cage. The man was always very, very sad afterwards. He would mourn the loss for a long time, sometimes for a year or more before he would find another beautiful bird to keep. The last bird the man had was so beautiful and so special that he thought she was the best one yet. She died faster than any of the othe

My oldest brother and I play a game sometimes. He'll shoot me an email with some poetry or an obscure passage from an old Chinese mystic. I'll fire something back, and we'll parry on like this for days. My brother suddenly becomes my muse... See for yourself. drifting in and out of belief about what Is possible two butterflies dance past on an invisible stage leaving me to wonder how things got just so complicated. J

Guess what? No dreams of clients or projects. Wow! Maybe it’s because I left everything I had at my desk after working late last night to catch up on things like writing proposals and doing invoices. Thank gawd for Megs and all the help she recently provided to get my business caught up. No way I could do it all without her energy and assistance. Thanks baby. You da best. If any of you dear readers run your own business you know what I’m talking about when I say it’s pretty much a 24/7 deal. I’m not bitching mind you, it’s just a ton of responsibility to have seven people I’m feeding while figuring out the best way to destroy someone’s house, put it back together nicely and for the amount of money I said it would cost. All while trying to line up more of the same. The trade offs make it worthwhile (don’t they?) yet my mind is pretty much thinking about my business most of the time. However just so you don’t think I need a really long vacation or jolt of 50,000 volts I do find ways to e

I guess this is my week to write about my life as a general contractor since it’s pretty much what I focus on every day. Yup, it’s my job. Last night I dreamt of another client. Just so you don’t think I’m crazed and obsessed I almost never dream of projects or clients. But maybe there’s a good reason I am. Let’s see. In the dream I was walking with the client and looking at the work that we were supposed to complete and that someone else had been hired to finish. I wasn’t that impressed with the quality but the client seemed happy so I didn’t say anything negative. We walked together for awhile. I kept sensing he wanted me to approve of something - not just the work but maybe him or the process we went through. Actually I wasn’t entirely sure why I was there. Now I am. I really like the client I was dreaming of. He’s a good guy, a guy’s guy – someone I could relate to: a father, hard worker, trying to do his best in the world and take care of his family. The only problem is he fired m