www.andrewmackay.net:

It snowed yesterday. It was beautiful. I was trying to explain to my son how heat used to work in houses. The conversation went like this:

“Son, it used to be that when it got cold, people would build a fire to stay warm.”

“Like in their living room?”

“Yes. And the daddy would be up through the night keeping wood on the fire to make sure that the house stayed warm.”

“Daddy, do you have to keep our fire going?”

“No… because we live when we do, our house has a furnace that detects the temperature in the house. When it starts to get cool, the furnace turns itself on, creates a bunch of warm air, and blows it through the house.” I turned and looked at my wife and said, “That sounds like magic. And if we were talking to someone three hundred years ago, can you even imagine?”

God’s been very good to us.

So, I just did what every geek has done in the last couple of months: I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

I have been reading about Steve Jobs since I was young. If I recall correctly, I first saw the internet operating on a Mac (a LGIII, for the other mac nerds out there). I was 13. That was 15 years ago. Shortly thereafter, the school where my parents lived and worked got email access. Shortly after that, we were online. Those 56k connections could really rock. It was around that time that I started reading about Bill Gates (evil) and the Steves, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the creators of Apple (and clearly good).

Reading it all rehashed, with detail and clarity and honesty was profound. I really enjoyed it. Yes, Steve Jobs had a nasty side. He got incredible things done. That doesn’t excuse him being a jerk, but it does help to compensate a little bit for it.

What did I learn? I think the most important lesson from Steve Jobs life and work is focus. Whatever he did, he applied an overwhelming sense of focus to it. He cut through extraneous details and to the core. A lot of that came from great instincts, but even those instincts seemed honed by his ability to focus, to say no to almost everything and yes only to the most important things.

I have a tendency to do exactly the opposite. And the reality is that I end up chasing my tail sometimes as a result. I hope that it’s okay, that I’m still young enough to learn. It’s a lesson I want to learn. Through focus, great things can be accomplished.

Should you read Steve Jobs? It does detail the life of one of the smartest executives in recent american history. If you can’t learn something from him, it’d be a surprise.

The thing about life with a three year old is that you never know which version of the child is going to show up for the day. Waking at 6:15 am may produce vastly different results than, say, waking at 5:54 am. And it’s basically inversely proportionate: the amount you expect things to be better, they will actually be worse.

Even the best days can be tinged with a little bit of lousy attitude. But, some days are just a start-to-finish battle.

And then you remember why you’re doing it. You remember that you’re fighting a battle that parents have been battling for thousands of years, helping their kids to understand the world. You remember that as the adult in the relationship, you’re the one with greater control over their decisions, and that what you’re teaching your child is the ability to control theirs.

And everything is better. Not easy, but better.

My little boy has been working his way through Dinosaur Train of late. (When I explained that we couldn’t go to a dinosaur zoo, because they were extinct, he was pretty heart broken.) I don’t pay a lot of attention once a show passes my initial “yeah, that’s not utter crap” test.

This morning, I thought I heard a dinosaur say eh. So, I stopped and paid attention. I found out that dinosaur train wasn’t just foisting standard dinosaur theory stuff on my boy, it was also doing a little Canadian indoctrination for me. Gotta love it!

My seven-month-old daughter, Grace, has decided to join me pretty early in the morning these past couple of days. Mornings have usually been the domain of her older brother and I. We have a pretty settled routine.

Grace is all about following her whims. As I write this, her joy over finding her ring stacker has switched to anger at it. And anger at her toes for not going easily in her mouth. But joy will come back again any moment. She’ll spot a stacking cup or a ring or something else she likes to play with, and all the frustration of the toes and ring stacker will be forgotten.

Obviously, I’m assigning import to her actions that she can’t. But, as I’ve watched her, I’ve been reminded of how my passions tend to run. I chase after whim. I do not set myself hard after any one thing. When obtaining the ring stacker becomes hard, I get frustrated. But it’s really just transitional frustration as I switch my hopes to something else.

I’ve always had great admiration for people who pursue a goal relentlessly. They are not subject to whim. And that’s not because their hearts don’t try, it’s because they’ve overcome the tendency to distraction.

I need to be more like that.

And one day, I will. Right after I try this new thing called…

And it’s a good thing, too. My son is currently in love with a show called “All About Big Red Fire Engines” and I’ve never seen anything with such poor production quality in my life. They clearly did it all in one take. The kids who are visiting the fire station have the most insanely fake looking smiles plastered on their faces. Luke doesn’t notice. He’s far to interested in the fire engines to care about the production values applied to the video.

His tastes will probably change. He’ll laugh at cheesy things like this in the future. If we do a really good job, he’ll care about things like the quality of the visuals the filmmakers put together, the way the story is told, and the truths the story reflects. Right now, though, FIRE ENGINES!

Of course, this has happened in some ways for all of us. We’re all in process in some way. I grew up despising spicy food. In college, I started to like spicy food. Now, I love spicy food… well, some spicy food. When I was 10, coffee was awful. By the time I was 13, it was the best ever.

There’s hope for me yet on things like John Steinbeck (I’ve started Grapes of Wrath four times without ever making it more than half way), red wine, and bollywood films. Okay, maybe not bollywood films. I don’t know if I can come around on the ridiculous dance scenes. And that’s okay, too.

I love movies and tv shows that feature great dialogue. Aaron Sorkin (he wrote that movie at left, along with The Social Network, Money Ball, the West Wing, Sports Night, and others) has made a career of writing snappy dialogue.

I feel like we hear less and less really good dialogue around us, though. We’re very willing to render ourselves less articulate through whatever means happens to be prevalent. Right now, I think the quality of dialogue is being impacted by the Facebook effect (that is, that everything that happens to me is worth commenting on) as well as by the reduced amount of attention that we pay to rhetoric and discussion.

I lament the loss. I think we’re worse off for it. Wouldn’t it be great to be known as someone who creates great dialogue in real life? I think so. I just wish there was a structured, easy way to get there.

I’d like to write well enough for my insults to be this good:

George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill:

I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play. Bring a friend. If you have one.

Churchill in reply:

Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.

 

source.

So, it tends to start early in my house. I love to watch the Christmas movies that I remember from my childhood in the months leading up to Christmas. Home Alone, Home Alone 2, Miracle on 34th St, The Santa Clause, Trapped in Paradise (if you haven’t seen the last, you probably shouldn’t. It’s apparently not very good. It’s only my nostalgia that lets me see hilarity where it doesn’t exist according to outside arbiters). I love to watch Christmas movies.

I think part of it ties into my adolescence in Puerto Rico. I had a definite thing for sports and movies that displayed snow. My introduction to the NFL had more to do with watching snow games in late November and December than it did with loving the game. I would watch wintry movies and wintry football games and imagine myself in wintry lands.

Do you have a favorite that’s not on my list? I’m always looking to add more. If I could find Holiday Inn (not the lame retread, White Christmas, but the original, Holiday Inn), it’d be on my list of repeats annually. What else should I add?