I think I suffer from the same malady many of us face today.  Time.  Its like a drug.  There isn’t enough of it, I’ve lost track of it, is it the right time, its running out, I cant afford it, and I am wasting it.  You get the point.

Now, none of this is new to most of us.  Every once in a while we look in the mirror but don’t see that 18yr old that we imagine we still look like.  Full of youth and vigor and lacking the lines and gray hairs we see today.  But I can deal with getting older, I really don’t have a problem with it.  What I do have a problem with is that I am not doing all of the things I always envisioned I would have done by now.  That’s not to say I won’t, its just…  I am a bit off schedule.  This is my problem.

I wont bore you with the laundry list of things I thought I would have done by now, but many of them are typical… seeing Europe, sailing the Caribbean, having that corner office, stuff like that.  I don’t think it’s because I’m not capable of doing these things, but haven’t had the time to really devote to getting to them.  Stuff keeps happening and it’s never the right time.

Perhaps it’s the trade offs I’ve made over time.  When I was younger I really wasn’t able to comprehend the impact parenthood would have on my life.  Its all good stuff, I just didn’t know how much of a priority it would become to ensure my kids have the best I can give them.  So I’ve traded my vacations to the Caribbean for vacations to Sesame Street Place and the like.  I’m ok with that too, but I still have “my” stuff to do.

So, for “my” stuff, call it my “bucket list” if you like, I wonder when I will find the time.  My kids are still young and I don’t have the financial wherewithal to pack up the whole family and go to Europe for two weeks.  And we all know that won’t fly with the boss anyway – two weeks off – in a row???.  Maybe what I need to do with my time is try and schedule it.  Maybe if I start to plan on the lower hanging fruit of my goals for now and hope for the best down the road.  But…

What if I am running out of time?  Jeeze that’s a gloomy thought.  Here I am, only 40, and wondering about a final nap on the big couch.  Well, I am hoping that I live for another 40 (or longer if the big guy allows) and that gives me a fair amount of time to get to the bigger things on the list, and maybe by then I will be in a better financial position to take on the larger trips.  Maybe I’ll even be retired before I’m 75 and have a time where I wont be trying to vacation with one foot in the sand and another strapped to my blackberry.    Which brings me to my last point…

This whole indentured servitude to Corporate America, am I wasting my time?  I am trading my time so that the corporate fat-cats can have their fancy dinners and be driven to and fro and fly first class etc etc?  Is my time worth only the paycheck I receive, and to cause me to put off the things I would really rather be doing?  Will I wake up when I’m 65 and wonder why the hell I spent the last 40yrs working in Corporate America??  That scares me.  That seriously scares me… a lot.  Of course, when I look at my kids I know that the sacrifice is all worth it.  If I would trade my soul to the devil to ensure my kids happiness, surely selling it to Corporate America couldn’t be all that much worse.  Could it?

Well, my time is up.  I appreciate your giving me some of yours.  And until next time…  ~cg

From "We Blog Cartoons"

Alright, I admit it.  I have iPad envy… and its not because my iPhone is small.  Well, maybe it is.  Anyway, I was out the other night chilling with the family having some sushi and the table next to me of college kids had a new iPad and were showing it off.  And damn!  It is as cool as it looks on TV.  I haven’t actually had the chance to hold one and play with it but it does look seriously cool.

One thing that can go away is the constant media attention to it.  I can’t turn on the TV or radio without someone talking about iPad this or iPad that.  Its everywhere! Which is probably why they have sold 500k of them already.

Does everyone who writes and article or has a blog feel compelled to write about the thing?  Oh wait.  Anyway, I don’t think I will be able to get a P.O. from the wife to get one anytime soon so I will have to learn to live with envy.

And my iPhone is not small.

This is more of an observation… I had an interesting conversation over the weekend with my step father.  It was his birthday and he was saying he has another 3yrs to go before he can retire.  Of course, I am much further away, but it sparked my curiosity and wondered  how old I would have to be.  The answer is 67.  That is 27 years from now.  27 years is longer than the amount of time from  when I began “officially” working at 16 and today!  I don’t know what to say other than… shit.

Brian Masterson?

Some think it’s all fun and games when traveling for business.  Movies are made about it (Up in the Air, Airplane, the list goes on), books are written about it, and hundreds of stories are told at businesses all over the world. Different cities, different countries, new faces, new adventures.  To be fair, I have traveled more than my share in my short time of business travel, and have visited hundreds of cities and towns around the world. I have visited friends halfway around the world, eaten interesting cuisine, seen some amazing things, and had my share of fun. Someday, I hope my children can experience the same things I have been able to experience.

There is another side of business travel that most either do not know about, or care to think about.  The DARK SIDE of business travel.  From sitting next to and meaninglessly chatting with the nameless (and sometimes smelly) faces on airplanes, to eating dinner on your own (again), getting lost because the GPS you rented is not working, driving through snow/ice, it’s not always glamorous as some folks think it is.  Think about it in these terms – for a normal week long business trip, it takes about 6-8 hrs of preparation –  setting up appointments, booking flights, finding hotels close to the meetings, booking car rentals, figuring out directions to each appointment.  The list goes on.  And this is PRIOR to you even leaving.

So the night before, you pack up, confirm your itinerary, send it to loved ones, recheck it, go to bed.  Next morning, you wake early and head off to the airport.  There of course, you encounter long lines, crying babies, tons of people that are not “frequent travelers” and confused on where they should be, go, do.  Wait in line for your ticket, wait in line to get through security, get patted down because you look like you might be bad news, wait in line to get some food for the plane (because we all know how good(not) and cheap (NOT) the food can be on planes).  Then of course, you get to wait in line to get onto the plane.  Just too much fun.

So you get there, rent your car, take your train, get picked up, whatever your means of transportation may be for this leg of the trip.  Head to the hotel, first meeting, and so on and so forth.  This of course assumes the airline has not lost your luggage. This goes on for days and in some cases a couple of weeks.  No sleep in the hotel, wake up early to construction; eat a crappy FREE meal at the hotel, and the days starts again.  Honestly, there have been trips where I literally forgot not only what room number I was in, but what HOTEL I was staying at.  At the end of the day you eat alone or sit at a bar and talk with some stranger that is in the same situation as you.  Small talk, blah blah blah.  Gets old, you know?

As I mentioned initially, frequent travelers may say they have their share of fun on the road.  However, each trip is not just a joy ride.  Live one day in another man’s shoes, they say, and you will truly have your eyes opened to a whole new world.

It’s what we do, and we love it.

Here's to you MTV!

Well, its official.  MTV has announced their focus on Millennials, casting aside Generation X… the generation that made MTV.  Sad news indeed.  I’d like to give a big FU to MTV.  Not just for this recent admission, but for the crap they have been broadcasting for the past 20 years.  There was a time when MTV was about music television.  It was certainly a revolutionary, but simple, concept that changed music forever.  Play popular music but with supporting video.  It changed everything.  No longer were we sitting by the radio listening to music while doing something else.  Now we were completely focused on the music as a total sensory experience.  And when I say focused, I mean sitting like a zombie starring at the TV, one music video after another… completely enthralled.  It was a perfect formula and our generation shaped it.

Then something along the way happened.  Something terrible.  MTV changed focus from what made them great, music television, to a soap opera channel.  I blame the Real World and it was all down hill from there, recently culminating with Jersey Shore.  While this metamorphosis was occurring, MTV did still try to retain the Generation X market via MTV2.  This worked for a while but ultimately failed.  I want my MTV!

As I mentioned, we shaped MTV, but in a way it shaped us as well.  It changed how we absorbed music and how we responded to it on a social level.  Do you remember going into school on Monday after seeing the latest and greatest new MTV Video over the weekend???  MTV Network President Van Toffler said “Millennials are really about authentic reality and family” and that MTV “played up the camaraderie and famliy elements on Jersey Shore to appeal to them”.  What???  Has he seen Jersey Shore???  If this is any reflection on what Millennials are about, or if they are at all being shaped by MTV’s content… God help us all.

Certainly on some level I can understand MTV now focusing on Millennials.   They spend the most time in front of the television and apparently care far less about music than our generation had.  I wonder though, would Gen-Xers spend some of our prime time viewing hours watching MTV if there were still something that appealed to us?  Its hard to say because, despite their recent admission, MTV cast us aside many years ago.  So, again MTV… FU.  How’s that for cynical?

~cg

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently ran a mini-series of articles about Generation X and Retirement written by Maria Panaritis. I know what you are thinking, we are still way too young to really worry about retirement.  So many things can happen that are out of our control between now and retirement, there isn’t much sense sweating it too much.  Well, if you haven’t been thinking about retirement, its time to start.   Now, I don’t want to bring you down but… reading this may.

Between making less overall than our parents did (accounting for inflation etc), the housing market just plain sucks, Baby Boomers taking forever to retire and eating up social security and basically sucking the life out of the economy, and don’t forget the cost of health care; Maria points out we are pretty much SOL.  And lets not forget about the melting polar ice caps, but that’s for another bitch session.

Maybe it is time to just roll over and accept the fact that we are screwed on so many levels?  Never!  If Generation X knows anything, its that we can expect the worst and there isn’t much we can do about any of it.  But don’t give up hope, somehow we always persevere.  ~cg

If you are like me, you don’t really feel the love at work.  Treated as a commodity with the ever present threat of corporate layoffs which seem to hit people by lottery since the “dead wood” has already been culled through the previous 5 layoff rounds.  It gets old.  I would like to reassure you that there is hope!  Many of us forget that a large part of today’s workforce are Baby Boomers, and guess what… they aren’t getting any younger.  Take a minute to read this article from October by Kelly Sharp called  Gen X- Small But Mighty which talks about the Baby Boomer workforce of today.

What I especially like is the point Kelly makes about the number of Baby Boomer employees in the workforce today who are planning on retiring in the next 10 years, but the number of Gen-X employee which will back-fill them is fewer than the number retiring.  Now, this is no panacea but its at least a glimmer of hope.  One point Kelly does miss is the fact that many Boomer employees are working further into their 60’s than their parents generation, which certainly doesn’t help the Gen-X workers waiting for promotions.

Well, I could stand a little more appreciation at work – even if it is only through attrition.  ~cg

P.S.  I just ran across this blog on Roberts Virtual Soap Box called Why we (non-boomers) hate our jobs.  You should definitely check it out.  And while you are there check out his list of people he would like to see die in 2010 in his Top 10 Wingnuts Whose Deaths I’d Celebrate, 2010 Edition.  He has Glenn Beck as #1 and I couldn’t agree more!

I was reading an interesting blog by Buzz at buzzmusicmedia.   He talks about how he, as a Gen X’r is feeling irrelevant.  He makes a couple of very good points.  How is Generation X represented in the media?  Not by the likes of babyboomers Katie Couric and Brian Williams!

And he makes a second point.  As Generation X members we are starting to fall into that crevice (much like the one between the cushions of my couch) where we are too old to hire and too young to take a pay cut to compete with the likes if Generation Y.  “Companies are suggesting the HR people not hire someone over 30 these days because of financial needs of the company are paramount.”  Hiring someone over 30 certainly wouldn’t please Wall St. and we wouldn’t want that – Boo-Hoo!

Hang in there Buzz!  Maybe CBS will call you and offer you Andy Rooneys job.  The only prerequisite is an abundance of ear and eyebrow hair.  ~cg