This group of about twenty men and women had just spent the past thirteen hours beginning at one in the morning doing the hardest and most physically demanding activities of their lives. Over the last seventeen miles they had run, crab walked, bear crawled, alligator walked, elephant walked, carried a giant fallen tree trunk (for three hours), and even ran for a mile or two carrying another person across their shoulders. When they weren’t moving forward, they had done pushups, squats, lunges, and more. Some of it while standing in a cold river or lake. All of it, while carrying a backpack weighing forty-to-sixty pounds that was never allowed to touch the ground (as well as a couple of additional twenty-five-plus pound weights the team also had to figure a way to manage).

They thought at this point it was over. After a grueling five mile Indian run through the busy streets in the heart of the city, they thought there could be no more. Mission accomplished. That they would get their reward (a small patch and the knowledge of having completed the course) and find a way home. They were wrong. There was more. And, when they discovered this, their faces bore the weight of every minute that had come before. In their eyes, the thousand yard stare of a people lost in suffering and pain. Yet, when the word was given to go that extra mile, carrying a buddy, they rose up, gathered what remained of their resolve, and did it.

I don’t consider myself very handy. In fact, when it comes to most DIY home fix-up stuff, I’m actually quite intimidated. Mainly because I have no clue where to start or what to do if something goes wrong. So, you might imagine what was going through my head when we purchased a house for a price so low that we could have put it on a credit card had the closing company been able to accept them. The caveat being, of course, that it needed a lot of work. Not as much as one might think, given the price. Yet, a fair amount. Enough so that it is things I have never done before. I’m like a deer in headlights.

Right now, our plumber can’t continue his work until the bathroom subfloor is replaced. The Instructions show two people, one weekend, and a skill level of moderate-to-hard. I’m one person, with a few hours, and a skill level of w-t-f. Yet, here I am, about to load up my car with a crowbar, a reciprocating saw, my broken-toes, and a hefty helping of gumption and devil-may-care.

My four year old daughter, Beatrix, always — Always! — tries food she has never had before. Despite the fact she knows she won’t like it. She tastes it, chews it, swallows it, and then decides. It does not matter what it is, she will always give it a fair shot. I contrast this with the large number of people who will refuse to eat something just based on how it looks or sounds. Not my Beatrix.

All of us have struggles, challenges, fears, and other impediments that we must overcome on a daily basis. More often than not, our boundaries are illusions created by the fear of what we are truly capable of. All of us, at some point, push through this fear and learn a valuable lesson in the process.

That, in ways both large and small, we are all superheroes. We move faster than speeding bullets (that we pull the trigger on), are more powerful than locomotives (that we purposefully step in front of), and bound tall buildings (of our own making) with a single bound. A secret identity we don’t ever see or admit to. Yet, when the task calls for it, we step into the booth as a person incapable and step out the other side as another doing things we never dreamed we could.

This essay is dedicated to GORUCK Challenge Class 167. A group of superheroes if there ever was.

I installed a Nest Learning Thermostat in our principle home today. I have to say that I am really impressed all around. In fact, it is one of the most impressive technology experiences I have ever had. I think, one reason for this is the same as one found in most Apple products — magic.

Installation was a breeze for me. I’m normally one of those people who are intimidated by such things. That said, in preparation for it’s arrival I watched the very clear instruction videos on their support page and it eased any fear I had considerably. It made it look so straight forward and easy. It seemed like magic.

Then, initial setup was equally simple and intuitive. There was help exactly where you needed it and clear simple language to guide your way in the few places it was. Every single step had an element of “A Ha!” that is rare these days in most things. And the fact that things just worked provided the “Ta da!” that magic requires.

Then, in the few hours of use, seeing how it operates and begins to learn, is the prestige. We left out for a couple of hours this evening, and arriving home, it was clear it had noticed and began to cool the house down. We arrived home and, in just a few minutes, the heat kicked on and it was back up to temperature within just a few minutes. Magic.

It remains to be seen how well it will be able to “learn” from us. We are an edge case. Both my wife and I keep irregular schedules that take us in and out of the house often many times a day. We do not have a pattern. Thus, even trying to “teach” it would likely not work. So, I suspect, this will be an interesting real world test. Even if it is not able to “learn” our home and away patterns, the ability to turn the heat down when we are away for a few hours and up in advance of our return will likely be pleasure enough alone.

There is a playground near our house. Relatively new. It is called the Tot-Lot and it is purpose built, as the name would suggest, for children aged five years or less. We take Beatrix, my four year old daughter, to play there several times a week. It has quickly become the neighborhood destination for families with young children.

The play equipment at this scale is age-appropriate but also just a tad bit challenging. There are some slides, a rope net for climbing, a balance beam, a chair swing, and a few other standards one would expect.

Instead of grass, there is a surprisingly soft professional grade AstroTurf. I was dubious of this choice at first. Worried

Recently, Beatrix has really taken to the monkey bars. This took some time for her to try.

“What if I fall, Daddy?”, she would ask.

“Well, you might and that is OK. The best part of falling is that you can get back up and try again.”, I would respond. It sounded good in theory at least.

Her skills and abilities get better with each turn on them. The very first time, with a bit of help up, she would only hang on the first bar. Then, she learned how to jump up and reach it by herself. Now, she can traverse the full set with no difficulty. Each time we go to the playground, she seems to take it just a bit further.

This last time, she added a twist that even I did not expect and managed to find a new level to her ever increasing bar skills. She now jumped from the small platform to the second bar. Deftly grabbing on mid air. Her fear of falling seemingly gone.

The first time she did it, my heart nearly stopped. Yet, she succeeded. I was amazed and proud.

The second time immediately followed the first (I got a video of it this time). She made a couple of cautious attempts before, finally, throwing caution to the wind and doing it again. I was even prouder still.

The third time, she was clearly tired out. Her bravery and confidence overcame her body though so she got up on the platform. This time, no cautious test jumps. She just jumped. But, this time, her hands slipped and missed. She twisted mid fall and landed like a pancake — the whole front of her body hitting the ground at once. It was one of those terrifying parental moments where as you run to their aid you start to wonder what the doctor bill will be.

She was crying hard as I knelt down to help her up and comfort her. I took a good scan and there appeared to be no injury. “You’ll be OK, honey.” I assured. “Does it hurt anywhere?”

She shook her head no. Her crying slowed and then, to my amazement following such a hard fall, she said, “I want to try it again.”

I took a deep breath and realized that this was as much a test to my fear and confidence as it was for hers. I let her go and watched as she got back up on the platform. By the time she was ready for a re-attempt she looked as if nothing happened. I was so proud. I could sense she was too.

She jumped a couple of more times and made it just fine. But, again, on the third time her body could not keep up. She lost her footing and fell off the platform, face first into the AstroTurf. I was sure she broke her nose this time. I rush down and pick her up. She is crying even harder than the first time. I pick her up and lightly caress her face. Marks from plastic grass embedded in her cheeks. I check her nose. It appears to be fine.

“I want my Mommy!”, she wailed.

“Mommy’s not here.”, I said, “Do you want to go home?”

She shook her head yes.

“Well, let’s go sit on the bench and calm down a little before leaving.”, I said. She agreed. So, I carried her over to the bench on the other side of the park, placed her on it, and sat down next to her.

After a few minutes, the crying stopped. She took a final deep breath, turned to me, and asked, “Can I try again, Daddy?”

“Sure, honey. Sure.”

I was even prouder still.

“You’re kind of right on the edge.”, he said sensing my indignant resignation. “I think you would benefit from them today. But, you could get by a few more months before you really need them. Tell you what, I’ll write the prescription both ways. That way, if you decide you don’t want them right now, you can always get the bifocals when you are ready.”

I’m sure the doctor sees people like me everyday. He tells us we need bifocals. But he knows we are not quite ready for bifocals. We are not quite ready to face that truth. The truths we must admit to ourselves are often the hardest we have to tell. He knows that some people, when on the edge, will choose the option that is easier to face and not get the bifocals. Then, they will get their new glasses, realize that they can’t read anything smaller than twelve point type unless it is held at arms length, and thus be forced to face the truth. Then, and only then, will they be ready for them, despite the fact they already needed them.

I’m ready now.

I’m pleased to announce the launch of my new book, enough. It is available starting today in Paperback, ePub, and Kindle format. (iBooks coming soon, Apple willing. ePub works great on iPad though)

This series of original essays help to answer the question, “What is enough?”.

Enough is a very personal metric. Like our center of gravity, each of us must find what is enough by swaying from less to more until a comfortable medium is found.

The goal, then, is not to find what is, or will be, enough forever. That is impossible. The goal is to discover the tools and strategies you need to find what is enough for you right now and provide the flexibility to adjust as the conditions change.

The essays in this book explore many of the methods, practice, and strategies needed to meet this goal and discover what enough means to you.

This book represents years worth of work exploring this topic and writing the book. For those not in the know, that the first draft of this book was written entirely on iOS. So, to some, that may serve as invitation alone to purchase a copy and check out just what is capable on a post-PC device.

I know you will enjoy it and walk away the better for it.

I should also mention that, in celebration of the new release, the price of my first book, Keeping It Straight, has dropped for a limited time. If you have not read it yet I would be humbled if you bought both.

Finally, a heartfelt thanks to Randy, Penny, and Aaron at my publisher, First Today Press, for once again taking my words and turning into something worth reading. If you have a book in you I can think of no better group of people to help you get it out.

Once again that is…

Paperback  • ePub • Kindle

She would awake early to start cooking breakfast for my Great Grandfather “Pa Pa” Handy and whomever else was staying over at the time. Eggs. bacon, biscuits, potatoes, fresh squeezed orange juice, and half of a grapefruit for Pa Pa. Just as routine, not a single pan was waiting to be cleaned by the time any of it hit the dining table. The kitchen looked just as it did before it all started. And, one could be assured, it would be just as clean only minutes after the dishes were cleared.

She often would tend the garden and start the laundry following breakfast. Which, in my child mind, never seemed to take that long. She would return to the kitchen with a full basket of figs freshly harvested from the tree in the yard. These figs found their way swiftly into a pressure pot and then into mason jars for preserves. The kitchen remained tidy the whole time. The only evidence to the contrary were the tools of task being actively used. Once their job was done they always swiftly and effortlessly returned to the place from which they came.

Lunch and Dinner seemed to be a blur of a single meal in her kitchen. As soon as one was served, preparation for the next was already underway. There was never a time in that span of hours that a pot was not on the stove, a pan was not in the oven, or a serving bowl or utensil was not being used. But, as I’m sure you can surmise, by the time it was all served, consumed, and cleared, the kitchen was spot free and ready for it’s business the following the day.

Even more amazing was that everything else got done as well. The laundry, the gardening, the grocery shopping, the cleaning of the rest of the house, and tending to Pa Pa’s growing list of needs as his health began to turn. One woman against a mountain and she managed to plant her flag at the summit each day.

It was many years after she passed that I was able to truly appreciate any of these minor miracles, let alone care enough to dissect how they were achieved. But age, passing time, and having the responsibilities of maintaining a family and household of my own has made me ponder my Great Grandmother’s deft skills regularly. How did she manage to do it? How did she juggle all of those tasks? The demands and needs? No matter the day or her own health or conditions?

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I have some clues — especially in the kitchen cleaning department.

Before she started cooking she filled the sink with soapy water. Whenever she used a pan, as soon as she was done with it, she washed it, dried it, and put it away. Instead of saving up all of those ten to fifteen second actions until they added up to an hour of washing after the meal, she learned in her years of experience that it was better for her to do them right away. That the time following a meal could be better spent on the next task than having the detritus of one create another. Remove pan from oven, plate food, wash, dry, put away, serve.

This memory lands home for me these days when I go to add yet-another-task to my list. More often I find myself thinking this — Would I rather add it to the list or would I rather add it to my journal? One is a record of things to do. The other, a record of things already done.

I know what Grandmother Handy would say.

You see, there is a long held, and too often justified, stereotype about African-Americans in this country. That being, that we are always late. In the Black community it’s referred to as “CP Time” — Colored People’s Time. My Grandmother was not the type to ever allow herself to fall into the trap of proving such a stereotype. Thus, the clocks.

But, one may be compelled not to leave the story there but to ask why it was then that all the clocks were set early instead of exactly on time. Good question. I asked the same thing as a kid barely old enough to tell time. Here is what I learned…

She told me that, as a Black person, despite education, despite abilities, despite accomplishments… Despite the sit-ins, strikes, acts of civil and non-civil disobedience… Despite the hard work of all of those who fought and died, those jailed and bailed to be jailed again… Despite all that was done to grant us our “equality” in the eyes of the law… This equality did not exist in the eyes of man.

In fact, simply because of the color of my skin it meant that being as-good-as was not good enough. Because, that very fact made me less so in a real life comparison with someone who was not so colored. Therefore, just to be considered equal, we had to be better. It was not enough to disprove a stereotype by meeting the standard, we had to exceed it. Therefore, it was not enough to be on-time, we had to be early.

Thanks to this, today all of my clocks are just a little bit ahead.

By how much?

I have no idea.

My Daily Pens from Patrick Rhone on Vimeo.

One of the best things one can say about a pen is that it is pocketable. For a pen that one can easily pocket is a pen that is likely to travel beside you. And a pen that travels is a pen that get used.

These are the pens I carry on me daily:

• Kaweco Classic Sport Fountain Pen – Extra Fine Nib – Green Body – JetPens.com — I received word from Brad Dowdy that Kaweco is, in fact, a German brand. Mea culpa.

• Amazon.com: Fisher Space Pen, Matte Black

• Amazon.com: Uni-Ball 207 Retractable Micro Point Gel Pens — In the video I mentioned these were .37mm but, in fact, they are .5mm

• patrickrhone / journal » Blog Archive » Pelle Journal — An Invocation — This is the journal you see in the video.

My friend Brad Dowdy of Pen Addict fame recently sent me this beautiful new Pelle notebook from Jet Pens in an absolutely stunning, refillable, leather cover. He also sent along with it a Kaweco Sport Fountain Pen (which is so great it deserves a longer mention of its own).

I have been using it constantly for a few weeks now but have been struggling to find a way to impart what it is about this journal that has caused me to be drawn to it so.

There is the obvious of course. The rustic good looks, supple feel, and earthy smell of the thick leather cover that will only improve in character with age and use. The fact that the construction of the cover allows the containment of multiple notebooks if one desired. My notebook included insert was filled with thick, creamy, welcoming, blank linen pages that take fountain pen ink (or any other you choose to throw its way) like a champ. That said, I have used one of the other elastic straps to fasten the Field Notes notebook I’ve been using for my book notes. Yes, all of these make it wonderful and an asset.

But, there is something more and I think I might have it figured out…

It is an invocation. A good notebook (and this is true of anything made with a high level of craft and care) should be be more than just a joy to use, it should be an invocation to do so. It should beseech one to fill it. When within reach, it should call to you to grab it, hold it, open it, and pour yourself into it. It should beckon your plans, drawings, ideas, dreams, experiences, doodles, schemes, diagrams, plots — each empty page left wanting without these. And, when you reach the end of a thought, it should entice you to take it further. It should also be though as nails. One should have no fear of taking it anywhere and throwing it in anything. For any journey worth taking is worth taking this journal along with.

This notebook fulfills these qualifications and more. I have been treating it as prescribed above and it continues to reward each time I do so.

I walk to our local grocery co-op (2.5 blocks) no matter the weather. I walk to our local bread shop (4.5 blocks) and wine shop (4.75 blocks). On a nice day, I walk to a small independent bookstore I love (6 blocks). The great little park , recently refurbished after years of city neglect, where my daughter likes to play (3.5 blocks). When the time allows, I enjoy meeting a friend for beer at a great restaurant and bar with a fantastic selection of beers (5 blocks) which I enjoy more than the one with less selection across the street (100 feet). These places are designed for walking to. They have limited parking if they have any dedicated at all. In the time it would take to get in the car and navigate traffic, one could be there already on foot.

What I love most, beside the walking itself, is the occasional friend or neighbor I run into. And, even when I don’t, most of these shop owners and barkeeps are friends and neighbors as well. For this is where I find out the news that matters most — that which is happening right around me…

“Did you hear about the break-in just around the corner?”

“What’s the deal with the two seemingly competing chocolate shops opening on the same street two blocks from each other?”

“Mr. Councilman, sorry to disturb your coffee. Can I ask you about your vote against the stop reminder I asked about for the pedestrian walkway?”

Thus, though a walk may be only a few blocks it can sometimes take an hour if I’m in no hurry which is just fine with me.

Increasingly it seems, so many of us live in places without sidewalks. So many suburbs and exurbs we are moving to are without them. So many of these communities we build are purposefully absent this integral part (in my mind at least) of community. Though I can’t imagine a worse fate then to be somewhere without them, I increasingly feel in the minority.

The planners know that less people want them. They are moving out of the urban area for a sense of country living. Part of which means, in their mind, to have lawn that extends to the road. Even though that road may be a asphalt beach. Sidewalks are simply a reminder of all those things they are trying to venture from.

These concrete paths are not technically ours. They belong to the city — the community. Even the ones that are just in front of where you live you must share and allow others to pass through. As such, you must maintain them despite this domain. You must shovel them when it snows. You must keep them free of ice. You must pay the cost to repair if damaged. More people, it seems, would rather have a few feet of green space instead. One that they own outright and can tell people to get off of when crossed.

Because there are less sidewalks in these places, people tend to make their connections elsewhere. At work or at the kids hockey practice or at the dog park. They tend to know their actual neighbors less. There are few opportunities to do so since they never cross each other’s paths except within the protected bubble of vehicles and traffic laws. They drive to all the places they need to go. Which are the similar to the places I go but all decidedly further away and designed for cars. Upon return, they go straight into the garage and then shut the door.

They turn on the TV before dinner to get news that is happening half a world away and consider themselves informed. Why should’t they? For the news they may get from conversations with people who do not live near them might as well be the same distance and equally as relevant. And because these connections are with people who live not near us they must discuss what things we have in common which does not start with community for there is none.

I wonder too if our communities in the virtual world are following this same path.

My first sense of being “online” was on a dial up connection to a local BBS. I knew the people there offline as well. It was small enough that one could. The topics discussed were often a continuation of the ones we did when we were together. If there was a problem that needed sorting (or a quarrel that needed moderating) one messaged the sysop who, once again, was a friend as well as neighbor. There were sidewalks there.

Then AOL came along. The first suburb. A place where you could form relationships, of a sort, with people from all over the country. They were not neighbors or people you would likely see in real life. Yet, you felt like you knew them just as well. You felt like you were being informed about things that mattered. And, as long as you stayed there, there were sidewalks.

Now we have Facebook and Twitter. The exurbs. Communities and relationships that span the globe. People on the other side of the planet that we know better than those real humans right next door. We can now know the first hand, on the ground, news of a community in Iran in real time. Or assist in the search for someone we barely know who has gone missing and is feared dead. Are we building sidewalks here?

If you pressed me to come up with one reason I feel so drawn to a service such as Path versus the rest is that it feels like a sidewalk to me.