On New Blog Formats and Sibling Rivalry

Since we were young, my sister Kate has been breathing down my neck.  (She’s not going to like that image!) Though two years and two weeks younger than I, she has been right behind or surpassed me in many (ie. "nearly all") of the typical child development moments and maturation rites of passage.  I like to think this is because she is exceptional, and not because I was developmentally challenged, but its uncertain. 

Case in point: She beat me to learning how to tie our own shoes by exactly one day.  Sounds like a close race and that we had some kind of helicopter mom who chronicled our marks of development with anal precision. Except it was not that my sister was exactly one day younger than I when she mastered the old “loop-swoop-pull,” but that she was two years and two weeks and one day younger than I when she learned.  What a jolt it must have been for this sartorially lazy young 6 (?) year old to see his precocious younger sibling walking around in shoelace Nikes she had tied herself and him still tripping or saddled in slip ons or worse...

“Oh this is something I can do by myself? Wait if my sister can do it…hmm.”

I might still be in those gray wal mart specials if it weren't for her. Watching her gave me renewed motivation and on the day after she learned I learned. Competition is a strong motivator in the Ramsay household, but more on that later.

In terms of so many of the basic things of life, she was earlier and/or has excelled farther.  Potty training, reading, music, SAT, GPA, on and on. I have a driven sister who even now is a wife and a mother of two kids under the age of three, who cooks and cleans with all natural ingredients making time for blogging about it throughout while I am none of those things.  Except for the blogging part...for now. 

 I remember when we were baptized in our home church, and I preceded her by five whole minutes. Basically, she has been getting back at me ever since.  And she goes for the jugular. My friends know that from a young age through college I developed and nurtured what could graciously be called an obsession with sports.  Practiced them. Read about them. Dreamed about them. It became the epitome of Ramsay masculinity to drive and thrive in sports.  But my sister said to herself, why just masculinity?  Never knowing when to leave well enough alone, she added a byline in her resume that I regrettably never earned.  "Former NCAA student-athlete" That's right, lettering in cross country at University of Dallas gave her the dinner table sports bragging right as well.  It seems, even in physical competition, the most sacred of my passions, I will be ever looking to my left on the medal stand (ie. second place. My younger brothers and other sister may think that boastful on my part, but this blog isn't about them.)  

But its okay. I have come to grips with it...as you can tell. No, really!

Anyway, by now you must be thinking to yourself why am I even bringing this up? Do I really have a point with all this “woe-is-me-my-sister-is-so-much-better” self-flagellation? Besides engaging with a blogger who has a wider readership network than my own, (pandering and flattery is apparently how you get read out here on the interweb) is this diatribe merely a cheap replacement for a much needed therapy session? Well, maybe, but bear with me and see.

If you have been with me since the beginning of my so far modest odyssey into blogging, and it's only been about a month so don’t be too pleased with yourself, you have noticed some format changes already.  Indeed, I have added some links to other online places I inhabit, at least occasionally. I have given you an option to subscribe to my blog by email (seriously though, don’t you get too much email already?) And I put up a new profile pic of me from this past Christmas so you know exactly who you are dealing with here.  Yet the most startling update is the happy faces who now smile back at you from my blog’s header.  Surely, you agree they are a welcome alternative to the postmodern, foggy winter morning, random Google image background that preceded them. 

I am pleased tremendously with how it looks…well mostly.  First, the good. Those are the people I love the most. Its my family all caught in various states of mirth reminding me of good times past and promising ones to come. Also, this pictorial introduction gives me great things to write about for the near future.  While I am am not oblivious that undoubtedly most of the current readership of this online journal find their faces staring back at themselves from that header (though two of them can’t read and another doesn’t know how to get on the internet), I am going to project the presence of people who don't know these delightful people and introduce you all to them over the next weeks.  If you can’t wait, you can here a lot about all of them here, where many of their accolades have been compiled in richer and more entertaining prose than...I think we have enough self deprecation for one post.

That segue ways naturally into my slight hangup about my blog’s new look. Its not a big deal.  I should get over it. But it lingers. What is it that bugs me you ask? Let me say it this way. 

Who do you think designed it for me? 

Take a second.

 I'll just wait.

Yep. Because you are a critical reader and realize now who the other person isin my family who blogs and that person blogged earlier and blogs better than me, then you know that the most ingenious element of this forum for my wistful meanderings so far was the product of...

 
Yes, because of her wizardry with photo editing and her repository of great images of family memories, Kate has helped “spruce up” this one-stoplight-town kind of a blog into at least a stoplight-and-post-office-town kind of a blog, and I am grateful. 

Truth be told I jest at my sister's dexterity for two reasons: a) because I am very proud of her, a unique kind of pride that only big brothers can have, and, b) because the the only way I could ever get back at her for all the years of surpassing me in virtually everything would be to spend several hundred words gushing about her.  She is the source of so much joy in my life...

...and so much encouragement, and not least of which in my effort to start or restart blogging my life.  Also, it was her birthday last week and the baptism of her second child, my niece Lucy June. So life is good with my sister around.

What is more, dear reader(s) (fingers crossed), don’t lament my utter defeat in my unofficial sibling rivalry with my sister, because there are at least two consolations I hold onto.

First, I can be sure at least one person will read this post to its completion, because truly who can resist reading about themselves?

And second, below is the kitchen door frame of the house she and I grew up in, where for much of our upbringing a favorite family tradition was to trace our vertical progress.

Each of my four siblings are on the frame multiple times, but because you don't have a microscope on you, here's a little visual aid...

 

At long last, victory!

(You’ll never catch me on this one sis! God’s got my back.  And it will be okay that I was made six-three and you five-six and three quarters. Happy Belated.  Thanks for the help with the blog. Much love always.)

3 not-so-quicks

Sometimes I wonder if I have the time, energy, and ability to write regularly and sustain a single idea into an entire coherent blog post.  Usually my mind works in fits and starts and I am better at noticing things I find interesting, amusing, heart-warming, inspiring, or a blessing to me.  They take too long to formulate and write rapidly, so I am going to call them "not-so-quicks." I'm just getting the hang of this and I am sure some will be worth more than others, but here they are.

1. Fear and Loathing in the human heart
   What is it about naked manipulations of otherwise seemingly rational people using fear based rhetoric that is so effective? 

And why do I seethe with rage when I hear this kind of argumentation? 

Maybe they work so well because we overstate the argument that human beings are rational creatures. 

Perhaps I hate them because they are better at provoking reaction than producing helpful dialogue. 

Maybe they work so well because they are more about what is unsaid and unanswered.

Perhaps I hate them because it is in the aftermath of these arguments that chaos and disorder play havoc.

Maybe they work so well that they will never be properly banished from sane conversation

Perhaps I hate them so much because I bear the stripes of their irrational fury

2. 9 most difficult leadership positions
Forbes posted an article about the 9 toughest leadership positions. And...

...the moms have it. 

That's right. For hours required, gratitude received, and harshness of performance review there's nothing harder than a stay at home mom.  I think I would have guessed this and not guessed it at the same time.

 On one hand,  full time mothering doesn't have a clocking in and out mechanism.  It doesn't have a union, and, most telling, it doesn't produce a paycheck.  Unless you count soggy cheerios and artwork on the freshly painted living room walls. 

Yet on the other, I have witnessed since becoming an adult how labor intensive having and raising a kid is.  Thankless? Yes. Stressful? Yes. Demoralizing? Often. But do the moms I know regret it? Amazingly, no.

 I'm glad to hear the business conglomerate Forbes identify something paradoxically self-evident that most of us remain blissfully unaware of.  Moms are great!  Here's one who blogs. 
   
3. "Do you mind..."
Recently I had a conversation at a cafeteria where I work.  I stepped around a person in line waiting for her order to take one of the pre-prepped gyros on the counter.  I was not cutting, rather she had ordered something that needed a second to prepare.  (I don't have that kind of patience, especially when I am hungry.)  As I reached passed her, I asked the perfunctory,

"Do you mind if I grab one of the..."

"Yeah sure!" she replied reactively.

  A captive to my grammatical upbringing, I pulled back quickly and she noticed, looked at me for the first time, and smiled shyly. 

"I mean, of course I don't mind...I never know how to respond to that question." I apologized for asking a confusing question, reached again for the sandwich. 

It was a funny exchange that broke the normal etiquette of a lunch line with its perfect mix of affected politeness and ineffective attempts to mask annoyance.  I have never stumbled into a conversation by "stumbling" into a conversation like that, but maybe there's a way to redeem the imprecision which creeps into random conversation because our minds are somewhere else. 

So whether its answering "good" instead of "well" when someone inquires of your health.  Or trying to emphasize something by saying "irregardless" rather than "regardless." Or perhaps, as I have been guilty, exposing one's ignorance that the word "penultimate" does not by any means mean "Very Ultimate," maybe these slight linguistic faux pas have a deeper purpose while not meaning what we mean. 

So if you are ever in the back of the line and ask the penultimate person in front of you to grab something briefly and be away, and he responds
"I could care less."

Smile and ask "Could you? Or Couldn't you?"

Then introduce yourself.

"The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship?"

You know something. I almost gave up this idea of blogging again, because I couldn't think of a good name for my blog.  I still don't think I have found it yet, but I have decided its not worth failing over, and its not going to make me or break me as a blogger. 

"A good title is the title of a successful (blog)." -Raymond Chandler

As a way of coping with my title block, I have reverted to the default mode of writers when they need distraction: research.  Yet still puzzled about this eponymous dilemma, I decided to see if there were any other writers who have shared my problem.  Like a support group of sorts. In my search I came across an article of some great works of literature and films which have titles their authors did not originally intend.  So these well known paragons of Western art were purportedly conceived, written, and edited without the title they now bear which is as much a part of their reputation, and in some cases moreso.  More people have heard of, know the story, and understand the cultural weight of "War and Peace" than have actually read it.  And why not? Its a blindingly long book.  But the interesting thing is that for its entire creation, it was not "War and Peace" at all.  Its "working title" was "All's Well that Ends Well." (Yeah, like the Shakespeare play!) Beyond that being a cool piece of trivia, it left with me with two ideas and amazingly, a "working title" for my blog.

  1) Thank God for the editing process.
 

  2) If "War and Peace" could originally be called "All's Well That Ends Well," then my blog could be called pretty much anything I chose and it wasn't going to make it more or less worth reading. (link)
 

And yes, my search for something to distract me from how much I was failing as a blogger though I had not yet decided to blog led me to this gem (#10)   That's right, even the original title for possibly the greatest film ever flat out stunk.  And at that moment, after reading that this classic, my favorite movie of all time, was originally called "Everybody Comes to Rick's" I had an epiphany.  That's what my blog should be called.  Why? Because that's what my blog needs right now to get me going.  It needs a title that works.  Incomplete, imperfect, not quite right, but something. 

If you haven't seen it, you should.  Its a great movie and there's lots of reasons why. But a big reason I love it is how it explores the idea of hope. In what "Everybody Comes to Rick's" became, everyone hoped.  The hope for a visa to get to a new place of safety and opportunity.  The hope that a cause would not be crushed by fascism.  The hope that you can really run away from love. Likewise a working title drips with hope, especially if its acknowledged as a working title at the onset. In the case of this blog, maybe somewhere in the future the real title will hit me like a piece of falling sky. Maybe not.  Its not going to keep me from beginning.

Yet every journey, whether its to the new world or a new blog, begins with small steps and requires a little luck.  So if you are with me from the beginning or from somewhere along the way. Welcome.  With a little license taken, (and its the digital age so why not) I'll leave you with this

It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die.
The world will always welcome (bloggers)
As time goes by.