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First Entry – Pre Launch Part 1

“All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.”

I am a boat owner! Not only a boat, but a sailboat! And not only a sailboat, but a 30-foot, French-made, world-cruising, deep-sea sailing vessel.  This is a big deal to a Colorado boy like me!

Four years ago, my family and I moved from Johnstown, CO to the deepest of deep south Texas. We live in a beautiful town called Los Fresnos, which sits just minutes from the Mexico border and less than 20 minutes  from South Padre Island. 

I love the tropical, Mexican lifestyle. Good food, lazy afternoons, and burning red sunsets in the warm ocean breeze.  It’s a little strange to me that though I was born in a place of unparalleled beauty: majestic mountains, crystal clear mountain lakes, autumn colors and crisp, cold winter mornings, the rustic vibrancy of downtown Denver; yet I love this place of warm sand, seagulls, and gently waving palm trees just as much as the place I was born.

The sea calls to me. It has to be the biggest cliche of them all, but it’s true. The water pulls at my soul. There is a lonely quiet near the waters’ edge where a man is utterly alone with his own soul.  I have never been to the ocean and not felt creative, at peace, and adventrous. As you stand at the very edge of your world, with all your life’s experiences  literally behind you, the ocean beckons, “Come!” It was inevitable that I would at some point I would need to heed the water’s call.

Being from Colorado, I had no idea what to expect in my desire to find a boat. I could go with the old reliable powerboat, like so many I was familiar with growing up around small lakes and reserviors in the Rocky Mountains. But there is something romantic about sailing, something that ties you to history. Sailing the deep blue sea places you in company with some of the bravest men in human history. With just the wind to power you, and the stars to guide you, sailing makes you a better man, a more resourceful man, a man who learns to interpret, trust, and eventually become one, with the elements of his world.

So I knew I didn’t want a powerboat. I also knew I wanted one big enough to leave the shore. I mean, really leave the shore. She needed sleeping quarters and a means for a crew to survive an honest-to-God voyage to a distant land.

I began my trek into the past in the most modern of ways: I started looking on ebay for what I could expect to spend on a boat once I finally got serious about buying one.  I found a few boats that intrigued me and placed them on my “watch list”, just to get an idea of what they finally sell for. That would give me an added motivation in my day job (financial advisor), to work extra hard to finally earn this vessel of unparalleled freedom.

(You know, “vessel” is a perfect word for a sailboat. It is a means of transportation, yes, but not just a body or cargo. It moves the spirit, carries hope and aspiration, and brings you to a different place than when you stepped on board. But I digress.)

I found a lovely sailboat in Rockport, an incredibly beautiful coastal town about 180 miles north up the Texas coast from my home. She was beautiful, at least in the pictures; she needed work (she is 38 years old), but fit all of my criteria: deep keel made her steady in harsh weather and blue sea sailing, sleeping berths for six, a small galley on board, a navigation desk with maps, compass, sextant, and, being a French-made boat, even a built-in wine rack.

I said to myself, “That is the one. Right there.” But not being ready to purchase, I set it to watch the auction, and see where the wining bid ended up.  It was being auctioned by a wonderful charity called BoatAngel, who receive donated cars and boats, and auction them. Winning bidders are funding their mission work around the globe, and donors get a tax break. Everybody wins, and I highly recommend for those who seek to follow me into this lifestyle, that you start there.

The auction ended, and in our busy world , I failed to notice. So about a month later, as I was clearing our “Watch List” of the dozens of things my son adds to it, I noticed five little words next to the boat that made me sit up in my chair: “This item has been relisted.”

I clicked on the link, and there she was, ready for the taking if I was willing to fight for her:

So I watched the bidding over the weekend, just wanting to see if the price would go crazy or if it would be a great deal. I had a friend who owned a smaller boat check it out and give me his opinion on its listing. I quizzed the charity on the specifics. I studied the oversized photos on the auction in detail. I begged my wife to talk me out of it.

But it was meant to be. After watching the auction all day at work on a Monday (the auction ended at about 6pm Monday night), the price had only risen to about $4,000. With two minutes to go, and my son nearly having a heart attack behind me, I placed a maximum bid of $4,502, and sat back to see what happened. With my son standing behind me, trying hard not to show me his hopes for our victory but telling me over and over to “Refresh!”, we watched the auction count down. Three. Two. One.

I won it for $4150. I now owned a sailboat!

Just a primer

Okay, let’s get it all down and accurate so I can track my goals:

Today’s weight was 244.2 pounds. My GOD, 244 pounds.

I wear a 38 waist jeans, 38 or 40 dress slack. The scary thing is, five years ago, I wore a 32 jean and a 33-34 dress slack.

We moved to south Texas from Colorado in December of 2006. After moving here, and discovering what GOOD Mexican food is, I rapidly added 35 pounds, ended up on blood pressure pills for a time, and look generally like someone plugged my nose and blew real hard in my mouth.

I used to run 4 miles or so each day at my fittest. I now can’t even work up the energy to get DRESSED to work out most days.

I can’t remember anymore what it felt like to be in shape, so I want to record some sensations, emotions, and physical things here also, as a way of remembering what it feels like to be fat. That way, when I’m getting thinner and feeling better, and get the temptation to stop, I can remember what I feel like now.

I plan to start small and grow. Years ago, when I did this to great success, I started with a small workout plan of pushups, pullups, dips, crunches, and RUNNING. I intend to do the same thing again. I will post up my routine tomorrow, and maybe even a horrific picture or two of me without a shirt on, to keep us all motivated to stay away from the fridge.

Found a reason to blog!

Well after 3 years with this blog up, and only 11 posts to show for it (and all of them a bit pretentious, in my opinion), I figured out a reason to write regularly and fluidly.

Three reasons, actually.

The first is, I am committed to lose some weight, which seems to be harder than ever at almost 40.  So this will be a place to track my progress, bitch about working out, and sharing my success stories.

Next, I was recently diagnosed with Adult ADHD. After years of forgetfulness, losing my place in a conversation, and general distraction, I now know what causes it. I have mixed feelings about it, because for a long time I viewed ADHD as a faux syndrome ascribed to boys who were too much like boys for their teachers’ liking. I am going to attempt to work on the issues without getting drugged up, though my shrink (I have a shrink!) says she wants me to at least consider trying them out after a few months.

And last, just to keep a daily work and life  journal. I’m not sure if it will be fully public, and I’m frankly unsure how many people should even CARE what we all blog, but it’s theraputic for me to put into words the hundred channels that vie for attention in my head all day.

Well that’s a start! Be back tomorrow to post on my Sexification efforts, and I meet with my (what do you call them – really? Shrink? Therapist?) therapist in the morning for my second visit. I’ll see how that goes. Hopefully for others out there who struggle with this disorder, it’ll be helpful to have someone give a frank, honest discussion about it.

Until tomorrow, then.

Come Again?

Well it has been almost two years since I last posted to this blog. For a while I had forgotten I even started it. A lot has happened in the last few years in my life and during those raucous times I thought a blog might be the perfect way to disseminate my thoughts and indulge my creative writing “hunger pangs”. Life can honestly get so busy that we don’t stop to take inventory and sort the clutter. I intend for this blog to do that.

So welcome back! I’ve been dusting and spraying a new car smell around to make the place feel a little fresher.

Do I hope you’ll check in and read it? Sure. I even hope you’ll comment when you want to. But I don’t intend to write this for an audience. Rather, this will be a sort of public journal; my one true narcissistic endeavor.

A place to put my thoughts and quiet my mind would be nice. That and a glass of wine as the sun sets on the bay near my home.

Let’s start again.

Make your mark.

So far in life, I’ve learned that you can have the greatest impact without even trying. Or maybe specifically because you weren’t trying. Two work-related examples will prove my point:

(If you work in an Applebee’s restaurant, you’re about to get two very big doses of my store in North McAllen, TX. Call it a “Torgasm”.)

First, I had the lucky misfortune of goofing around with my new digital camera at Christmastime at the store. The camera has a “YouTube” video feature that automatically records – in YouTube format- whatever you want, and then automatically uploads it to YouTube when you dock the camera at your computer.

So, one Friday evening in early January, I was playing with my new camera at work and decided to see if I could figure out how it worked, so I took a video of my cooks smiling and joking, then got some shots of my servers. The video was about a minute and a half long.

True to advertisement, it uploaded just fine, and I long forgot about it. I think even now, it’s only had about 75 views on YouTube. No one even bothered to comment or rate it.

Anyway, about three weeks ago, I was contacted by the ad agency for Applebee’s International, and was asked permission for the video to appear in a national commercial for Applebee’s. Releases and legalities are underway, but very soon, you’ll get to see my team in action. Nationwide.

My company is very pleased. My bosses are no doubt posturing themselves to receive a healthy dose of the praise for one of our own stores being included in a national commerical.

I’m content to let that happen. I did not set out to do anything extraordinary, so I’m not taking extraordinary credit for it. It was a happy accident.

The second example comes from a rather simple poster I made for my store. It’s very important to communite with your staff on a regular basis, particularly in a field like restaurants or retail, because there is a natural degrading process that happens with people who have to serve the public every day. Morale and tempers wear short, and it’s very important for their leaders to say, “I love you. I know what you go through. Keep up the good fight.”

But the way we schedule our people means you rarely, if ever, get them all in the same place at the same time to give that “Pep Rally”. So, thinking over the situation one afternoon, I came up with a simple communication method that will keep everyone informed, even if I couldn’t get in front of them personally – we’d create a 2’x3’ laminated poster that would allow me to communicate all the vitals of the day to the staff. My friend and employee Mike actually gave this poster its name: “PROP” (Pep Rally On Paper).

Simple idea, right? Just a dry-erase poster with boxes on it to communicate various indicators of business success, goals for the team, and a few praises and contests to keep spirits up.

Well, the idea has taken off. My company, a franchise group, LOVED it and said it’s going into all 42 Applebee’s that they own.

Today I got a call from my friend and supervisor Cody that my little PROP poster is now going system-wide in Applebee’s. That means, all 1900 Applebee’s, world-wide, will have this poster in it as the expected means of daily communication with the staff.

Another happy accident.

(In case you’re wondering, there is no monetary reward for my intrepidity.  I’m delighted to contribute in a meaningful way, but reciprocation would finally be nice. They could cough up a raise, though. Or a promotion. Alas.)

I’m told that “I’m being noticed” by the powers that be – at least, in the very small world called Applebee’s. I guess that gratifies me on some level, but still, I go about each day feeling really unused and so far below my own potential. Like an wild cat, caged against its will, pacing back and forth against the bars, peering out and waiting for the gatekeeper to open the door. Hungry not to be fed, but to hunt.

I am genuinely happy that what was really a simple solution to a problem in my own restaurant has resonated so well. I am happy that my superiors are taking notice of my potential to contribute to not only my own store or area, but to the entire company. This little poster was the smallest of the innovations I have planned.

It’s funny – after such lavish praise, I don’t find the emotions I expected to find – elation, or gratitude, or even just a smug satisfaction. Instead, I find frustration. Impatience. Bitterness at the relative insignificance of my contribution, and the lack of ability I have to make real, lasting change beyond the prison of my restaurant’s four walls.

I need to move back up quickly in this business before I reach the conclusion that there is nothing more to do. In the past year, I’ve discovered entirely new things I want to do with my life that are complete departures from my past – fine art photography, for example. Financial planning. Real estate investing. Teaching. I want to stretch the confines of my own mind. I really feel the urge to find and fulfill my full potential. I feel the strong desire to push my limits, and I’m finally finding this industry too restricting. Too political. Too insecure. Too distracted.

I figured out years ago that the place where I could make the greatest impact -for good or ill – was in my own life. Rather than those poor disillusioned souls who go out to change the world, I realized that my own greatest enemy was my own ability, and that the place where I would find the real challenge was in changing me. Making me into the person I know I can become is how I begin and end each day. My self-respect comes in great part by how well I use my time, intellect, and skills, compared to my potential. I seldom win that comparison.

I grew up and am growing old in the restaurant business, and fight hard every day to give it the dignity it rightly deserves but never receives. It stands to reason that after fifteen years of not only working in, but seriously studying this business, I’d have the equivalent of a PhD in this field. I know its systems, finances, human relations, legalities, operating necessities, and how to pull a profit in almost any situation.

This business is like many others that require diligent practice in addition to instruction. It’s a skill-based business, not a knowledge-based business. It’s about having good instincts. Success here means years of trial-and-error, self improvement, false starts, and sleepless nights. It’s a really difficult journey. It’s made easier by those who have made it to the other side, who can now turn around and tell the next in line where to step, and where not to step.

At some point, the apprentice must become a journeyman. The journeyman must become a master. The student must eventually become the teacher, or the lessons risk being lost forever.

After so many years of running a business, developing my people, and creating permanent solutions to nagging problems, I want to finally take what I’ve learned, turn it around, and give it back to the next generation of leaders.

If I cannot do that, the last decade and a half has been in vain.

Work and play.

I’ve been working a lot lately, and pursuing a new career option for me, so I’ve been lazy about getting this new blog updated. I am sure most of the blogs go the way of the Do Do for the same reasons, but not this one! Here are a few new samples of some of my recent photography work:

This was taken of the Port Isabel, TX lighthouse. The lighting is natural. I’ve taken shots of this lighthouse many times, and usually it stands pretty majestic. This one came off sufficiently creepy.

Some of my recent stuff is fast becoming some of my favorites so far. This is one of the great shots I got of sea gulls on South Padre Island beach about a year ago.

This was taken literally today – I haven’t titled it yet but it’s by far my most proud photo so far.

 

And finally, for this entry, a bit of a Musing:

 ”Is it irony that ‘monosyllabic’ actually has five?”

Musings…

Someone once said, back in the early ’90′s, that the advent of email would make brilliant writers out of all of us. They opined that the fine art of the English language, almost lost to convenience, would find its renaissance in the world of internet communication.

The bastard was wrong, horribly wrong.

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Now that I’m approaching 40, I’m more tolerant but also more cranky. No, that’s not a dichotomy.

I think in our youth we find intolerance with those whose views of the world differ from our own (gay/straight, conservative/liberal, chunky/creamy).

As young people, we seek identity, so we group our world into comfortable little clusters of “us” and “them”. As we get older, though, I think we grow comfortable with differences in opinion and motive, but less so in someone’s words and action. Now, it’s “think what you want, but damn it, do what you say you will do.”

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Pick up the damn phone and say hello. Stop text messaging already! You look staggeringly silly pouring your soul out to 12 buttons on a phone made impossibly small by technology. What an evil, cruelly impersonal way to communicate - with license-plate style acronyms. Text messaging has reduced us to a binary contact point somewhere far away.

And since when did it become more convenient to click through each button’s choices to spell out “Hello” instead of just SAYING, “Hello?”

However, in the spirit of the time in which we live, I offer an acronym of my own: PUTFP! You figure it out.

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Capital letters = SHOUTING.

So if I say, “Hmmmm,” is it the same as saying, “HMMMM”? Can you shout a “Hmmmm”? And if you can shout “Hmmmm”, what would it sound like?

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If a tree falls in the forest, and it falls on a Sierra Club member, would I smile secretly? Probably.

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On that note, Al Gore is the personification of the word, “hypocrite”.

And you all know I’m right.

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If the IRS can locate a tax evader in the rugged mountains of Alaska, and the ICE can find an illegal alien working part-time in a restaurant kitchen in rural Iowa, where the HELL is Osama Bin Laden?

Boca Chica Sunset

Taken at Boca Chica Beach, september 2007.
This is an original photograh.  All images (c) 2008 Jeremy T. Torgerson. All rights reserved.