Self-Made, Not Quite

I used to think of myself as a self-made man. I had pulled myself up by my own accord. From starting a paper route in seventh grade to being one of the first in my extended family to get a college degree. I had traveled abroad when no one else had ventured very far. Lived as an ex-Pat in Denmark. Ended up with my own business, real estate investments and then entered the last chapter of my life as a published author.

That was me or so I thought. Raised by a single mother, no male role model in my life, no guidance, no direction, no lucky breaks, just some poor schlep trying to make it on his own. I saw that analysis, not as some congratulatory tour of self, but rather an honest appraisal of my upbringing. Problem was, I had left out the people, places and things that molded me into the person I am today.

Yes, I had done all of those things and I still hunger for success. But it wasn’t just my work ethic, ambition or chance encounters that got me to where I am today. Nor was it some serendipitous turn of events that helped me along the way. Who knew what really happened to me growing up? Turns out that Malcolm Gladwell did and it was truly eye-opening.

In his best seller, ‘Outliers,’ Malcolm Gladwell makes a very convincing argument that “In understanding successful people, we have come to focus far too much on their intelligence and ambition and personality traits. Instead, Malcolm argues in ‘Outliers’, we should look at the world that surrounds the successful – their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.”

It's a fascinating concept and he uses some very convincing examples of successful people like Bill Gates and groups like the Beatles to prove his point. So, it got me to thinking. Were there events, encounters or timelines that helped me along the way? If so, it probably began with a small two-bedroom bungalow my mother built by herself in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The house itself was of less importance than the fact that it gave me stability and a base from which to explore my world. It was a nest I could always retreat back to where I felt safe. More remarkable is that it was built by a woman with a sixth-grade education and a job as a short-order cook. Her brother worked on the house during the day and my mother at night.

Starting a paper route in 7^th grade because my mother needed financial help seemed like a no-brainer to me. It was my first introduction to compound savings, resisting the temptation to waste money on frivolous things and the real possibility of building a nest egg for college.

Of my three Aunts, Coletta was the most successful of the four sisters. Her three sons were always held up within family circles as icons of success. Milton, the insurance executive, Jerry, the Hamm’s Beer supervisor and Ronald (Buzz), the doctor.

In my mother’s rural German Catholic culture, nuns, priests and doctors were considered ‘blessed people’ and above the rest of us. Without a word spoken, the message was very clear. Buzz, the doctor, was the pinacol of success. He went to Cretin High School and St. Thomas College. He was one of the cool kids. I knew I wanted to follow in his footsteps.

Only 265 young boys out of 650 were chosen to enter Cretin High School. Someone dropping out and cousin Milton’s influence with the Christian Brothers got me in as a freshman. Un-denounced to me, I was placed in the non-college track of studies. I was expected to, hopefully, graduate and get a job or enter the service. College was definitely not in my future by their standard of the times.

Yet it was, more than anything else, the environment of an all-boys military school that reinforced my own self-image and desire for more. I certainly knew I wasn’t one of the chosen elites, the best of the best in our class. I wasn’t even in the same classroom with them. But I did become an ROTC officer, joined a couple of after school activities and started to believe in myself.

My savings ran out after two years at St. Thomas College so I transferred to the University of Minnesota and promptly flunked out after two quarters. Uncle Sam gave me a job for two years and St. Thomas welcomed me back, curtesy of the GI Bill. Living in Denmark introduced me to an entirely different world outside of Saint Paul, Minnesota. It also heightened my interest in a myriad of subjects from urban housing to the universality of music. Once back on home soil, I began my real life.

An ad in the Minnesota Daily, student newspaper of the University of Minnesota, caught my eye. It was for a writer at the Minnesota Department of Public Health. Having no other options and apartment and car payment due soon, I took the job. Then a desire for more writing opportunities carried me to public television and my future career in video production and distribution.

When Sharon decided to marry me, I became locked into a lifestyle that has done us both very well. Starting my own business, Sharden Productions, while still working in public Television, gave me the capitol to invest in real estate. Sharon’s mastery of the maternal skills as well her own work ethic reinforced our success as a family entity.

Malcolm’s book ‘Outliers’ helped me see a much bigger picture called my life. Reflecting back on a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice, I now understand it was also a lucky confluence of many different factors that added to that equation. My dysfunctional yet lean upbringing fueled a desire for more. Education played a pivotal role in quenching a lifetime thirst for knowledge. Controlling my own financial future brought a comfortable lifestyle.

Most importantly, Sharon, as my life partner, conscience, advisor, critic and guiding light gave me the normal family life I never had growing up.  In the end, that’s about as good as it gets.

Snap, Chat, Bingo

It’s a whole new world out there with artificial intelligence. When I used ChatGPT to ask about AI’s effect on transforming key areas of society, the answer was expansive and profound. It mentioned areas such as Work and the Economy, Healthcare, Education, Transportation, Creativity and Media, Security and Surveillance, Environment and Sustainability, Ethics, Privacy, and Society. Not to mention Scientific Discovery and finally, AGI (Artificial General Intelligence.)

My particular area of interest is with creativity and the media. So, let’s put it into proper focus. No, I don’t think artificial intelligence is going to destroy the creative world as we know it. It certainly will change it in different ways; many of which we don’t see or understand at this point in the game. But the world isn’t going to end for us if we have driverless cars and software that thinks faster than we can process information. It’s simply another step in the evolution of mankind.

Actually, it’s a repeat of trends that happen down through the ages. Remember when television was going to destroy the movies? Beta was better than VHS. Video was going to eliminate the need to go to the movies or watch the ‘same old thing’ on television. The Kindle was going to destroy print. Libraries were a thing of the past. Gold and Silver were the answer to an unstable financial world. They aren’t making any more land. Everybody’s getting rich in real estate. An ARM is the way to go verses a conventional mortgage.

If you live long enough, you come to realize that what goes around comes around. If you don’t pay attention, it can also bite you on the ass the second time around and cause undue stress and alarm.

Music producer extraordinaire, Rick Rubin, probably said it best. He said there are really just about five AI companies worldwide that dominate the scene right now. And they get all their information from the same source (much as we do) and that is Google. So, the pot of information is the same; it just comes down to how each AI entity chooses to form, formulate, digest, and spit out their collective treasure trove of information.

The catch is that ‘point of view’ is the missing link here. Rubin’s example is a good one. If you give ten directors a movie script, each will come up with a different movie in their mind. It reinforces my argument that ultimately, in most cases there is one creator of a song, novel, play, movie. Certainly, collaboration is often a key here. But ultimately the core idea was (probably) the result of one person’s thought process, imagination, etc. AI can help or hinder here depending on how it is used or misused.

So, no, I don’t think artificial intelligence is going to destroy creativity. It will certainly change it ‘big time’ in ways we can’t even imagine right now. But like Kindle verses print and streaming killing cable, there will probably be a middle ground that most of us can carve out to co-exist with artificial intelligence.

AI gets personal when it helps or hinders me as a creative person to evolve with my art. Case in point; ‘Agnes.’ This was my story about a love affair between a younger man and middle-aged woman. It was part of an Amazon Vella experiment. The novella was uploaded to the Amazon Vella platform last year. Readers could read the first couple of chapters for free and then had to use tokens (from Amazon) to continue reading more chapters.

The book was doing well until Amazon decided to discontinue the program last Fall. The ‘Agnes’ galleys were returned to me and my editor transferred them to the Kindle format. Amazon insisted on also creating a print version. That is where, I believe, AI came into play. While I can’t prove it definitively, I do believe that Amazon used AI for format the book to print.

While there were no glaring errors on their part, I felt the heart of the story had been missed. The biggest distraction for the reader was the improper placement of spacing between segments in each chapter. This running of segments together caused confusion in following the timeline and sequence of events. It was a small thing but significant if you’re trying to tell a story and want it to flow smoothly.

‘Agnes’ was also a perfect example of a product that looked great on paper but then once created, revealed its shortcomings in many different ways. The illustration on the front cover no longer seemed relevant, the text wasn’t shadow blocked and thus was flat and not inspirational. The subtitle was wrong. The text on the back cover revealed little to nothing about the content of the book.

AI had produced the book but I thought it could also help me create a better version. Previously, I had asked ChatGPT for some ideas about a press release and book club discussion points. It came back with some great lines that I decided to use in promoting the book jacket itself. I think of it as a three-step process.

Chat is when you ask ChatGPT questions. I needed a good subtitle to explain in as few words as possible that this was a story of a younger man falling in love with a middle-aged woman.

Snap are the almost instantaneous answers you get. I do believe it was a combination of sub-titles from Chat GDP and my own imagination that finally helped me come up with several good sub-titles.

Bingo is for you to decide if that answer is right, close, spot on, or incorrect for your particular needs. AI is a digital tool and like most software, the more precise you are with your questions, the better (or more relevant) the answer given. What I had in ‘Memories of first Love’ didn’t capture the essence of the love affair. I had to come up with my own ideas here.

Some of the suggested sub-titles I came up with were:

She was too old for first love

Bittersweet First Love that is Ageless

First Love is ageless

Young love with an older woman

Middle age first love

Love most vulnerable at middle age

Forbidden first love for an older woman

The heart feels love that is ageless

Middle age first love most vulnerable

Sharon had suggested a better cover illustration in place of the wind chime. While the chime did play a connecting role in my storyline, it wasn’t relevant enough to be on the cover. I needed an illustration that showed a couple in love. Vida, my editor, pointed me toward a royalty-free web site with thousands of images to peruse.

As part of the revision of the jacket, I transferred the wind chime to the back cover along with new text material borrowed from AI. Those two paragraphs read:

‘Told with warmth and emotional depth, ‘Agnes’ captures the story of a young man looking back on the one woman who changed everything - a summer romance that shaped his life in unexpected ways. As he revisits those sun-soaked days of youth, readers are transported into a world of innocence, longing, and the universal ache of first love.’

‘Blending nostalgic storytelling with emotional honesty, ‘Agnes’ appeals to readers who have experienced the beauty - and the ache - of a love that never quite faded. Perfect for anyone who still remembers that first, unforgettable someone.’

AI had done a good job of capturing what I was trying to say in ‘Agnes’ and I wanted to use it. So, with the help of AI, Vida, and my own thought processes, I was able to recreate a better book jacket, text that flowed more evenly and a final product that better reflected the story I was trying to tell.

There are still a couple of wrinkles to be smoothed out before we produce this second version of ‘Agnes.’ AI helped and hindered the first attempt. Better use of it as a tool of suggestion made it very valuable the second time around. Lesson learned. More on ‘Agnes’ soon.

Dying Rich

It strikes me as curious and absurd that two of the richest men in the world haven’t attached their names to any kind of charitable, philanthropic agency/foundation/effort. It would certainly seem their only agenda is to accumulate more wealth than anyone else on the planet. Way back when, wealth came in the form of railroads and oil. Today, it takes on a myriad of forms.

We’ve all read about these billionaire’s 500-million-dollar yachts, various homes around the globe, foolish expenditure of money for any number of frivolous toys. But helping other human beings doesn’t seem to be on any of their radar screens. We now celebrate billionaires instead of mere millionaires. What the hell is going on here?

Considering their collective wisdom to attain such a fortune, how did they all seem to miss the bigger picture? We remember John D. Rockefeller as being the richest man in America at the turn of the century because he owned all the oil wells in the country. But we celebrate Andrew Carnegie because he built several thousand libraries around the country with his money. Both made the history books, both were pillars in their own community but only one left an indelible mark on the American landscape.

Steve Jobs, the creator of Apple Computer, for whom I have a great deal of respect, didn’t seem to ‘get it’ until the end of his life. His comments made to the 2005 Stanford Commencement address seemed to sum it all up:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

Why is it that so many people admire the rich and famous but can’t see the emptiness of their lives and accomplishments? That’s certainly not always the case but, it seems, so often the good gets pushed aside for the glitz and glamor and gold. Worshipping at the altar of wealth seems so foolish.

While I believe in the American Dream, I fear there is something missing in that fable of happiness ever after if wealth accumulation is the only symbol of happiness. I’m not talking about mandatory tithing or annual charity drives or fund-raisers of every form and fashion. It’s the idea that sharing one’s good fortune doesn’t have to break your bank or throw you into poverty. It’s simply lending a helping hand where and when you can. It’s giving a little of what you have to someone or something else that doesn’t have as much.

In this country and around the world, one’s level of wealth is often the social, economic standard that most Americans use to categorize other folks. It’s often how we judge other people even though we lie and say we don’t.

In my other hometown, there have been a number of world-famous figures from the world of entertainment who have made their mark on this community. Many have stood out for their philanthropic endeavors, some more than others. One was incredibly generous with his time, talent and money. His reputation was a sterling example of what a ‘classy’ person should be like.

The other, just as wealthy, was known within his circle as the most money-grubbing cheap skate on the planet. It was so bad, he was a joke even to his ‘closest’ friends. Years later, the old timers still talk about the two of them. Two towering icons of entertainment. Both died very rich, one with a legacy of generosity; the other, a skinflint. Go figure?

As I’ve tried to postulate in past blogs, I’ve read enough obituaries to understand what most folks want to remember about someone else after they’ve passed. It’s seldom their fancy cars or house on a lake. More often than not, it’s family, friends, faith and the ‘little things’ most remembered by others.

The true legacy of a person’s time here on earth isn’t counted in dollars and cents and cybercurrency, it’s about how they spent their time and if they were a benefit to mankind. The pursuit of success doesn’t have to exclude others less fortunate. We can all be a benefit to and learn from other generations.

Just sayin.

Women and African Americans

I’ve always had this fascination with World War Two and the subsequent birth of the American Dream. After the war, there were powers-to-be among the military, political, industrial complex that wanted factory production work to continue. This focus on innovation, mass production and the growth of a consumer society all lent itself to exponential growth in the fifties and sixties. Good for some but as this book points out, it wasn’t fortuitous for women or minorities of any flavor.

The GI Bill and other government programs hyper-charged the growth of the middle class among millions of returning veterans.  It foresaw the advent of mass housing production and expansion out from the cities to the suburbs. Innovation in technology and communications soared. But for all the wonderful opportunities that were a part of this radical change in American society, two main groups of Americans were often left by the wayside; women and African Americans.

While I was aware of the role of women and minorities in the massive industrial growth during that period, I didn’t know about the hardships and prejudice both parties suffered during the war.

The book explains: ‘From the fall of France in the summer of 1940 to V-J Day in August of 1945, more than seventeen million Americans, or fourteen percent of the population, served in the armed forces of World War II. For millions more at home, a booming wartime economy produced a remarkable prosperity that ended the Great Depression, sparked a postwar economic miracle, and made the American Dream of suburban homes, shopping centers, and modern kitchens a reality.’

But during the war years, the challenges of housing, continuing segregation, universal child care and other domestic issues also dominated the American way of life. Reporters found that with more than twenty-five million men, women and children crowding into new centers of the war industry, the fabric of American life had unraveled.

The war emergency strained a tenuous racial balance to the point of violence. The social turmoil produced by the war also placed unprecedented pressures on family and home life. In the absence of social and governmental support, working mothers and their children bore a disproportionate burden. Not quite the picture painted by the newsreels seen at the movies or the image of John Wayne that I grew up with.

Advertisements in newspapers and magazines talked about life after the war assuming it would be for everyone. Yet after the war, African Americans found that those opportunities promised often disappeared and women in general were relegated back to the kitchen so men could get their old jobs back again. Masking much of that disparity for woman and African Americans was the economic growth brought on by pent-up demand over the years. I grew up during that economic growth and it seemed all wonderful to me, especially the vibes from out West.

Southern California seemed to be epicenter for the new America that came about after the war. Millions flocked to its golden beaches, lush mountains and deep valleys. Industrial and creative jobs attracted young families, each seeking their own version of the ‘American Dream.’ It was roughly twenty years of exponential growth benefiting many but also still excluding others.

The euphoria of ‘happily ever after’ lasted for, perhaps, twenty years before cracks began to appear in the American dream. Behind that façade of the iconic ‘golden state’ were the growing civil rights upheavals and women’s rights movements. The decade of the Sixties blew the lid off that happy smiling white couple and exposed the underbelly of inequality and injustice. Throughout the Sixties great strides were made to recognize the equality of women and African Americans and gays.

While the older generation of women and African Americans had to endure a return to inequality after the war, it was later generations that reaped the reward of their endurance, hard work, and persistence. It’s not perfect now nor will it ever be. But things have changed for the better for new generations of women and disadvantaged groups of people.

My two adult children work in areas of business where women compete equally with men for job opportunities. People of color have made tremendous strides in areas long denied them. While there is still a long way to go, it’s a far cry from the blatant segregation and inequality thrust upon their forefathers before and during World War Two.

While they’re still too young to fully appreciate the sacrifices made by past generations, I do believe my grandchildren will someday come to recognize what their grandparents and great grandparents did to make it a better world for them to live in. It’s a mindset I hope they will pay it forward for future generations.

Better Than Bitcoin

Old(er) age is uncharted territory for me. I’ve crossed that River Styx and entered foreign territory. Like ‘walking point’ in the Nam, it’s one cautious step after another and may the best man live…for another day.

Life investments have been made, squandered, lost, accumulated, divested and set aside. Some things worked out while others didn’t. Mostly what’s left is the residue of one’s collective wisdom and the luck or mistakes to live with for the rest of our lives. One of the few common denominators remaining is the enduring value of friendships.

It’s the best currency around and yet we’re seldom smart enough to recognize or appreciate what it brings into our lives. Who were those kids captured in that newspaper photo so many years ago? What did ‘finding the one’ mean for future friendships and life-long acquaintances?

It doesn’t seem that long ago when the world was a rainbow landscape full of wonderous adventures and opportunities. Each of us set out to become whatever we thought we should be…at the time. The world was our oyster and we meant to have it all.

It’s funny how reality evolves and our past lives and aspirations finally catch up with us. That winding road called ‘life’ is either running smooth as asphalt or rough like gravel. And yet none of us want to get off the road even if the ride isn’t what we expected it to be after all these years.

It’s been sixty plus years since I turned twenty-one and shed my cloak of anonymity to adorn myself with the costume of adulthood. Now I, like so many others, am at a point in my life where reflection is more than a glass of chardonnay framed within a sunset or a cold brew among high school buddies.

My current life style is an accumulation of habits born at birth. For some of us it was modeled after our parent’s pioneering excursion into life. For others, it was a process of discovery, loss, acceptance and rejection. Our life style became us on a daily basis and we weren’t even aware of it. It’s only now that the accumulation of excess and/or scarcity raises its hidden head.

Ernest Hemingway is quoted as saying that life is like a bank account. How you use it is solely your determination. You can withdraw it in a hurry and live a very short life. Or you can be diligent with your withdrawals and live, hopefully, much longer.

We can always try to rectify some of our mistakes or enhance our positive steps but age and reticence to change are usually huge obstacles to overcome. We’ve let life’s ebb and flow (our gypsy muse) guide us in this rhythm of life. For most of us, the process was organic and without a lot of thought. Living abroad, that first apartment and that first step in something called a career.

We find ourselves both benefiting and/or suffering from past investments of our youth. The things we did to ourselves, the deposits we made on our bodies, our finances, our love life and our children. We’re now at the stage of making withdrawals from our youthful decisions and indiscretions.

Those random discoveries got me thinking about friendships; past and present, strong and vapid, present and omnipresent. I thought about the friends I’ve had over the years. Some of them shared isolated points in my life; high school, college, the service and work. Some were but fleeting incisions in the tenderness of my youth. Others were shared experiences like the military; isolated, vacuous, and destined to crash with each discharge celebration where inane behavior in the barracks seemed to make perfect sense back then.

Most of those memories are lost now in that vacuum called life experiences. A few were found again but most are just fragrant memories of a life well spent. Like separating wheat from the shaft, I’d love to rekindle a few of those friendships and nourish them back to the point of commonality we once shared.

The cliché that you can never have too many friends dissolves over the pages of Facebook where collecting friends can be a cybergame for some folks, devoid of meaningful contact and concern. Having friends on Facebook isn’t the same as having real friends who care and share and actually want to be somebody in your life. Big difference there! For some folks it’s like grade school best friends.

I guess that’s why I want to continue seeking out old friends and acquaintances who might share my own values and interests. The past can’t be replicated nor ignored. It can be accepted for what it was even if we couldn’t see it at the time. It’s all cloaked in that most evolving, trans-lucent, vapid metaphor called relationships. Together they fill our thoughts and dreams and aspirations with dream-like illusions we’d like to believe in. It’s a game we play on a daily basis as we go about the business of living.

Maybe I’m just trying to replicate some of what I captured early in life when playground antics caught a reporter’s camera and made the front page and added to the serenity of those long-forgotten friendships. If it’s true that a life well-lived includes many friends, then I want continue adding to my roster.

They say true wealth is all about good health and friendships. If so, I’d like to be a very wealthy person.

Treasure Hunting

It could be old age or the memories piled up inside my head that draw me back to my first office/cave in the basement. It’s like a treasure chest of flashbacks that seems to happen whenever I return to my past life down there. While it’s not derelict real estate yet, the home of Sharden Productions, Inc. and various real estate ventures has long since lost its strategic placement in my daily life.

This nest of all things me was created many years ago when the children were finally settled into their beds each night, Sharon was working on office material upstairs and family life for both of us was busy, busy, busy. We had recently moved back from Maryland and comfortably ensconced in our new home in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

This man cave of sorts is where I escaped every night to focus my attention on my other life outside of public television. It was, at once, bill-paying central, dealing with landlord and apartment management issues, tenant concerns, reading to escape, writing to explore, and trying to stay on top of life in general.

Now that both Sharon and I have entered our ‘it’s time to purge a lifetime of collecting’ phase, I find myself returning, once again, to that basement treasure chest of memories; good, bad, remembered and long-since forgotten. Most of the treasures can be found in the books and magazines collected over the last forty plus years. A slow meandering perusal keeps tripping old memories long locked in that vast vacuum called ‘the past.’

This return journey to wonderful storytelling began with 1950’s male tabloids, Jack Kerouac travel tales, bicycling and running books, biographies, and a lot of reference material for past novels written. The dust and desert heat of the old West was never far away. Each book pulled me back to another time and place in my life. They were all good, often complicated treasures, soon forgotten in the encapsulating rush of daily life.

Rereading some of that collection has been a real joy all over again. It started with ‘Wanderer’ by Sterling Hayden then moved on to ‘I See by My Outfit’ by Peter Beagle. ‘The Fume of Poppies’ was one of the first novels that explored young love with all of its complexities and sad outcomes.

The list goes on and on. Adventure novels like ‘South by Java Head’ and ‘HMS Ulysses’. Self-maintenance ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ and ‘A Yaqui Way of Knowledge’ by Carlos Castaneda. Religious reflections by Malcolm Boyd with his ‘Are You Running with Me, Jesus?’ and poetry by Leonard Cohen among others.

Since I was in the television/video production business, my shelves held years of past productions. Work tapes, scratch tapes and all forms of analog reference material played prominently during that period. Movies on DVD and VHS played a prominent role in entertainment back then.

My enthusiasm for N-Scale model railroading never proceeded beyond collecting lots of magazines and building a ton of scratch-built homes, buildings, trestles, and other assorted railroad structures. In one corner of my desk over 700 of my blogs are now captured in hardbound books for future readers?

Next to my office in the laundry room, I’ve carved out a corner with an old Dell PC used primarily for scanning photos, etc. to digital images and scratching out writing ideas. The purging continues with old files, analog material, and collected mementoes; most of them heading for the waste paper basket.

So, whenever I can carve out some evenings, the treasure hunting continues, the memories keep spilling out and time marches on. It was the best of times and it’s always fun to stumble across some mementos of those periods in my past life.

Life is good.