I’ve shared before my days sometimes feel like Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray movie.
It’s get up, make breakfasts and lunches, go sit at the computer and create or market. A lot of planning.
It’s routine.
I make fun of Les because when we go out to eat, she picks her same favorite places.
This despite the fact that a new place opens up every couple of weeks, and there are hundreds of tiny grills or café’s we’ve yet to frequent.
When I work out, I run the same route.
Grill the same food. Drink the same beer.
A life full of same, it feels like.
Routine is the key to success.
Have you heard that before?
I wear the same clothes so I don’t have to waste brainpower on what to put on each day.
Routine meals. Routine exercise. Routine writing.
For a million years, the expected kept us safe.
And I think routine allows for thinking outside of the box.
Again, it’s about energy. The brain is designed to work on auto-pilot most of the time.
Ever drive to and from work and joke that the car could find it’s own way home you’ve done it so much.
Or you have done is so much you simply forget the drive?
That is energy conservation in action.
If your brain is not thinking about the drive, it’s free to think about other things.
Like solving big world problems or little world problems.
I run into this a lot.
All last week, all I could think about was moving immigrants from the border into Pine Bluff to shore up the tax base by increasing the working population pool.
My mind was stuck in that loop, working out the issues that an action like that would bring up.
Tracking, for one. ESL classes, job search and placement, housing search and placement, community engagement activities, cultural learning opportunities.
Documenting everything because I really think it could work, and not just for Arkansas’ tiny population.
In reality though, how many immigrants could we import that would make an impact at the border?
That’s the problem with big world problems.
When you get a chance to think about them, they are on the verge of being overwhelming.
Housing is a huge problem, and you can’t trust anyone who thinks they know about it.
Watch one news program and they’ll tell you we’re facing a critical housing shortage.
The next segment talks about a coming wave of foreclosures and another potential housing crisis, with empty homes in every neighborhood and millions of homeless Americans looking for rentals.
And no rentals on the market.
I have to wonder which is it?
Which is what I wonder about a lot of stuff going on in the world.
How can we have 50% of Chinese (half a billion people) that are obese, and the same number in America (half of a half billion) AND STILL have starving kids in both places?!?
Money doesn’t solve the issue.
Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife donated a billion dollars to charities last year, and the problems don’t get solved or addressed.
That’s because a charity’s first function is to make sure the lights stay on and their executives get paid, and then maybe help people.
It’s not just charities. Churches have that same priority.
I sent a proposal to the Mayor and several Pastors about opening the doors of the churches in very poor neighborhoods to address a few issues.
It was a simple solution about community involvement and engagement.
The response was “Who is going to pay for it?”
I think that’s a routine response to most questions about problems.
Which is why the same old same isn’t working.
I’m not sure it ever did.
That’s my challenge to you and me this weekend.
Let’s think outside the box and solve some problems.
Doesn’t have to be big world problems, it just has to be a different approach to something you do.
Start with brushing your teeth with the other hand.
Try something new.
Eat out at a brand new place. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Do one thing you have never done.
You know me, when the world problems seem so big and impossible, I like to focus on the one thing I can control.
Me and my reactions and my thoughts.
I can control those. I can go outside of those routines.
How the GOAT took an out during her Gold Medal Run at the Olympics.
About grit, and determination and representation.
When I realized something.
Maybe she did the right thing.
Not just for her, but for anyone who is attempting a big hairy goal.
Because I’ve quit before.
In fact, I’ve got more DNF’s on my ultra-running records than finishes. (Did Not Finish)
Every time I stopped a race at fifty miles for whatever reason, every time my body stopped working or my mind decided to take a break, I chalked up a DNF.
Didn’t matter that only a few thousand people in the world have done what I’ve done or can match my Ultra record.
I’ve failed more than I finished.
Because I knew a secret about grit, and determination and just F**king life.
There is always another race. Another competition.
Another chance to shine.
Especially if you are as good at the GOAT at any sport or activity or work.
Eminem said you only get one shot, but that’s not true.
You get hundreds of shots.
The stars might not align for you the way they did the first time, or if you’re like me and wake up just a little bit older every day, then your shot may be harder.
But you get as many shots as you can take.
Or as many shots as you can make.
And I do believe that.
I believe we are all in control of the chances we get in life.
There are things we do that can sabotage ourselves, but if we decide on a target, make a plan and work the plan, then nine times out of ten we’re going to hit.
It’s just deciding on what to hit.
After this weird delayed no spectator Olympics, there will be another in four years.
Between now and then, there will be many competitions.
Many chances to win and lose and learn.
Just like life.
Cheers,
Chris
I had to let you know about BRAVO ACTUAL and EPOCH today, because they’re both free and I didn’t want you to miss them if you don’t have them yet.
I started with Lions of Lucerne and got addicted to Scot Harvath.
I was working with the military at the time and the inter-service rivalry that leaks into the pages makes me smile.
Plus, Thor can write the hell out of a story. The entire series is good, and shows how politicians put their needs above the people at the expense of innocent lives against the men and women dedicated to fighting them.
Living in a fishing shack over the Gulf Waters next to a marina sounds like paradise.
That’s how Doc Ford lives. He’s a marine biologist who also is a Navy SEAL and specially trained spy trying to live a quiet life working and studying the sea.
Until trouble shows up. The author loves Florida and so do I, so when he talks about the landscape and surroundings, I know the places.
Another series that is hard to put down once you start, White has expanded to several other characters all in the same world, but Doc Ford is my favorite by far.
Why do they call him Cotton, is a question most readers see in every book.
The ex-agent turned bookseller is smart, and complicated and just fun to follow in this International thriller series starting with THE TEMPLAR LEGACY.
I can tell the author does his research and the books are fast paced page turners that touch on topics we all know from history.
Then he gives them a little twist, which makes what we know change, and I like that. Question everything, just like Cotton.
I saw Longmire on Netflix, binged the series, then drifted over to the books and binged them.
That’s where I learned the man can write. It also taught me about pacing, how slow burns can build over time, and inspired me to create my own new series by mixing genres.
Craig’s cast of characters includes the harsh landscape, which is as inescapable as the brutal treatment of the residents of Wyoming and the weather that rolls in off the mountains like something possessed.
Be careful with book one, because once you’re in, you’re hooked.
I could keep going with VINCE FLYNN, BRAD TAYLOR, and have an eye on CJ BOX for my next series, but let me know what you like in the comments so I can find some new stuff to check out.
I found book 1 in Target in California and wondered what it was all about. I picked up a copy, despite thinking it was a kid’s book and got transported.
I love this series.
Present tense.
Part of it is the world that was built and of course, the characters, but I also have a good connection with the movies.
It became a Christmas tradition, and like kids are wont to do, they put it on repeat.
Some people get tired of watching the same thing over and over again, yet each time it’s on, I get a warm feeling of nostalgia, from being curled up on the couch and buried under three babies.
Now that they are grown, I still get that feeling, and I don’t ever want to lose it.
I worked with a friend who would bring his Kindle to the job and read on his breaks. We talked about books and he asked, “Have you heard of Harry Dresden?”
“Who?”
“The only wizard listed in the Chicago phone book.”
So began my seventeen book relationship with the basketball player sized wizard with a penchant for burning things up.
He’s got a smart mouth and no back down and is the sideways inspiration for my own Marshal of Magic series and Sheriff Ben Logan.
I’ve read this series two or three times through, refreshing as each new book came out, and am ready for the next.
Jim Butcher writes sloooow though, and he took a couple of years off to write another series, but book 18 has to be in the pipe because 17 was so good.
A boy in a sleepy little town gets a visit from a mysterious stranger who tells him he has a destiny on the other end of adventure and his world is turned upside down.
My dad got this book as part of an unabridged book club delivery, and I don’t think he even cracked it open.
Door stopper fantasy wasn’t really his style, he tended to keep a Stephen King novel by his recliner.
This was my style though and kept me up late for two weeks as I joined Shea and his brother, and Allanon the Druid wandering through a wasteland of magical creatures.
A lot of it felt familiar, because it was the United States in some future post apocalyptic timeline that the author fleshed out later, where magic was rediscovered with dire consequences.
But that came in later books, this was the one that started it all.
I moved in with my Dad when I was fourteen along with my brother who is two years younger.
He had moved back to Pine Bluff when I was twelve because he wanted to be closer to us boys as we got older.
Or he had been laid off in the oilfields and needed a free place to live until he got back on his feet, and my grandfather owned twelve or so houses.
Dad got one in the country, a little 1200 square foot duplex turned into a three bedroom house.
My brother and I shared an eleven by eleven foot space with bunk beds and being the oldest, I got the top bunk.
We didn’t have air conditioning, just an attic fan so the beds were situated in front of a window so the attic fan could suck cooler night air through the screen.
I’d lay in bed and read this series, listening to the rattle thrumming rush of the attic fan motor pulling that air across my legs.
The Iron Tower is a trilogy that borrows heavily from Tolkien, but that’s okay. There’s adventure, and heart and swords and sacrifice, which may explain how grit is built in the mind of an impressionable young man on sweltering summer nights.
During that same time frame, I would visit a tiny little book store to buy my books or go to Waldenbooks in the brand new Pines Mall.
I would read all the Conan and Tarzan titles, but my foray into fantasy and magic started with this series, Dragonlance.
The companions got together in DRAGONS OF AUTUMN TWILIGHT, and I was hooked. I stayed through the trilogy and the next dozen or so more.
What was really awesome though was when I went to college. There were two guys in the Honors College with me, and we ended up talking about books, movies and reading.
They loved the same stuff I did, and introduced me to the Batman comics.
They were Dragonlance guys, like me, and that little tidbit of shared passion turned us into lifelong friends.
I picked up a copy to read on my Kindle in 2020 because if ever a year needed some nostalgia that was it. I was just as transfixed as I was as a teen.
Maybe that’s the thing about adventure.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, you’ve just got to keep searching for it.
I’ve heard news of a recession. I see inflation. Groceries cost more, gas costs more, used cars are now worth more than when you bought them.
The world feels upside down sometimes.
Except we passed a milestone.
We sent civilians into space and two weeks ago, opened up the stratosphere to commercial space travel.
In those 52 years, we have experienced an assassination attempt against the President, wars in Vietnam, the Gulf, Serbia, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have had gas shortages, and recessions and S&L bailouts.
We’ve had the record highest day in the stock market ever and the biggest drop in history.
We’ve cloned sheep, and I bet we’ve cloned other things, we just don’t talk about it anymore.
We’ve experienced the rise of ecommerce, the rise of Wal Mart, the rise of Amazon and Facebook and every other internet based business.
Heck, our lives have changed so much in the past fifty years, it would be almost unrecognizable to you from that long ago.
Some things still need work.
Gas mileage on vehicles hasn’t advance much since I turned 18.
Why? What’s holding it back?
Real Estate prices are unbelievable in certain parts of the country.
Yet I still get word from Californians moving to Northwest Arkansas who brag about how cheap houses are here. It’s all relative.
Stocks go up. They go down.
Businesses rise and they fall.
Records are made and broken.
In fact, the only thing really consistent about the past fifty years is the advances made in just about everything and all politicians say.
Two things we can rely on.
Advances will be made. Lies will be told.
If we know those two things will be true, we can focus on what’s important.
People in space.
I watched the launch on Facebook and got to see comments.
A lot of them were “why?”
A lot of them said “what a waste.”
Which reminds me to remind you to be careful who you hang around with.
Because there are more small minds in this world than there are innovators.
And small minds will do everything in their power to corrupt and convince the innovators they are wrong.
I know.
I get it all the time.
Not that I’m a huge innovator, but I have big grand ideas every so often.
I mean, even a broke clock is right twice a day.
Take the drought for example.
It’s now a mega drought.
And yet, Ozark Arkansas, a small town in the mountains got 8 inches of rain over the weekend.
How do we take that flooding and channel it all into Lake Mead, the water source for 23 million Americans?
There are one thousand miles between them.
There are mountains and deserts to cross.
But, what if, the solution was simple?
Not easy, but simple.
Line up 1000 water trucks from the Army and move water from one location to the other?
The average tanker truck carries 5000 gallons.
That’s 5 million gallons of water.
Stick a hose in a flooded river, suck it up and drive it across.
It would take a week or less to get it done.
Heck, load up railroad cars with river water and it would be 15,000 gallons.
Have the trucks move it from the rail yard to the reservoir and even if the water crisis isn’t averted, it’s buying time for mother nature to build up the snowpack over the next year.
We could lessen the impact on the eco-system by building sand and coal filters to push the water into first, before it goes into Lake Mead.
How many trips would it take to raise the water level ten feet?
Someone better at math should answer that, but we could take action to meet this crisis head on.
Or it could be delaying the inevitable.
I read a book in 1989 about the coming Water Wars between big farms and city populations and we are on track to make it happen.
Maybe we can’t avoid it.
I mean, there are still green golf courses in Arizona and Las Vegas, despite a twenty year drought.
If golf is more important than clean water, then I’m not sure we are going to innovate our way out of this.
Maybe that’s why we need to go to space, but water’s not up there.
Minerals and precious metals are though.
Blue Origin will evolve from civilian space travel to a mining company in the next fifty years.
So will Space X and Virgin.
Fifty years ago, there were long lines at gas pumps to deal with a gas shortage.
In the next fifty, we may see those lines for water.
We had food lines in 2020 because of food shortages, where there was food rotting on the docks in port cities.
A literal Army of truck drivers could have solved that problem quick.
Hell, a bevy of Bubba’s with 24 foot goosenecks and big trucks could solve that problem too.
Every time there is a flood in Houston, in Louisiana or anywhere on the Gulf Coast, the Cajun Navy jumps into action.
Hundreds of guys with boats run to the problem, launch and rescue people, pets and do what they can to minimize the impact of the event.
So you’re telling me that a bunch of guys and gals figured out how to make a big problem just a little bit smaller before the government even stepped into action?
Politicians lie, and there is no money for them from helping out people in flood zones.
Or helping out people in droughts, apparently.
Because if Johnson and Johnson or the Koch Brothers (minus one, cause he’s dead) decided to donate millions to Senators to solve the drought, it would be top of the list.
Maybe we don’t need as much government as we think we do.
Maybe we can innovate our way out of trouble and fix some BIG problems.
All it takes is the right kind of inspiration.
Like seeing our tiny little blue marble floating in the vast sea of dark space.
Maybe then we would realize this space ship earth is precious and we need to protect it.
We need an army of men and women just like you to make it happen.
We need the inspiration of days like today to build for a better tomorrow.
It’s going to take a lot of work, but I’ve got my tool belt.
Chris Lowry Books 