You Can Help Me Put My Children Through College or You Can Turn the Page

Last week I started a new venture as the San Francisco Fiftysomething Lifestyle writer for a national online web content outlet called Examiner dot com. I write short articles on topics of interest to people who are about my age living in the San Francisco Bay Area and I earn money based on the quality of the content, click-throughs, and subsequent links to advertising. Please help me establish my presence at Examiner and help me earn money with my articles by going to my page and clicking on some of my articles. Here is the link.

You can subscribe to the page by clicking the subscribe link to the right of my name. If you subscribe, you will get an email every time I post a new article. I have been writing 2 or 3 a day, but don’t know if I can keep up that pace. On Tuesdays, I will be posting a short humorous piece about the Raiders and 49ers called Football Tuesday By the Bay. You can read last week’s piece by clicking the Football topic in my list of most recent articles. On Sundays I’ll be posting another humorous piece under the topic Lighter Side. If you choose not to subscribe, please bookmark my page so you remember to pop over there once in awhile to give me some page views. And spread the word via Facebook, etc., to your friends (especially if you live in the Bay Area).

For those of you who do live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I invite you to send me information about events, activities, political actions, and other happenings that you are involved in. Send links for more information and I’ll try to post an article to draw more attention to your venture. I only started writing last week and I’m already averaging about 3,000 page views per day so there are (amazingly!) people out there reading me. I will be building my presence and look forward to helping you get the word out about your projects in this capacity.

Examiner dot com is nationwide. It is not just a San Francisco thing. If anyone, anywhere in the U.S., reading this, is interested in writing for Examiner dot com, call or email me to find out how to apply to be a writer for them. (If you sign up to write, and say that I referred you, I will get $50 as a finder’s fee.) Thanks for supporting me in my journey as a professional writer.

High Tech Halloween

I almost bailed on Halloween this year. It’s my least favorite holiday. I’m not a costume dress-up person. And giving tooth-rot sugary candy to children just goes against my health-food mom character. Even worse is having the candy around and eating it myself. I do like carving pumpkins, but I don’t have any children to do it with me anymore. Sudi says I need to rent some grandchildren. But I didn’t bail. I stuck it out. I bought candy. I carved the pumpkin and roasted the seeds (best part of Halloween is those seeds). With Ron at the radio station doing his spooky Halloween show, I stayed home alone to answer the door.

Since I can’t hear the doorbell or the sound of someone knocking on the door from way back in my study, I put a sign on the door many months ago that says I can’t hear the bell or knock and gives the phone number. “Call and I’ll come to the door,” the sign reads. And the FedEx driver diligently calls every time he drops off a package (and the UPS driver diligently does NOT call—that’s the difference between FedEx and UPS).

I brought my computer out to the kitchen table on Halloween so I could hear the doorbell. But I forgot the sign on the door. So round about 7:30, when the little tots are back at home counting their candy, the older youngsters start coming around. And the phone starts ringing. Instead of ringing the bell or knocking first, they cut to the chase and call me with their cell phones and shout “Trick or Treat! We’re at your door!” High tech Halloween. Cracks me up. When my friend Jim calls from Oakland to say hey, I ask him, “Are you at my door too?”

Bad Parenting as Reality TV

What is up with the Heene family and their hot air balloon stunt? I am trying to imagine a man so desperate for attention, so desperate to become famous and make millions, that he would jeopardize his family and the psychological well-being of his own children. Where once musicians, artists, writers, dancers, and actors dreamed of recognition and the opportunity to use their gifts to advance the evolution of humankind; now un-evolved ordinary individuals with no apparent creative ability seek fame and fortune through exposure on reality TV. After seeing so many tabloid headlines about the Gosselins, watching part of an episode of that Nanny Show at a diner one night, hearing about the Wife Swap show, and then reading with horror about the Heenes, I am beginning to wonder if reality TV is pretty much all about bad parenting and child abuse. I think I’m going to start a reality TV show called Worst Parents Get Spanked.

When the media tried to interview Falcon Heene about his day hiding in the attic, he threw up. Twice. It doesn’t take a child psychologist to figure out that having his dad expect him to lie on national TV made Falcon sick to his stomach. Thank goodness for him and his own conscience that he finally said “We did it for the show.” (Anyone remember that 1999 Peter Weir movie with Jim Carrey called “The Truman Show” about the guy who grew up on a reality TV show without realizing it?) While real artists and celebrities who earned their fame with sweat, blood, and guts work hard to protect the privacy of their family life and to give their children a wholesome childhood, reality TV chasers do whatever it takes to exploit their children for profit. The upshot for the Heenes may be that their children are taken from them by Child Protective Services. And I have to ask myself if the Heene boys are better off in the system or with their whacked parents, who believe in aliens and that the world will end in 2012. Usually, I would say with the parents. In this case? Run, Heene boys, run.

Life Without TV

When we moved to the Ranch in 1991, we could get only 3 TV stations and the reception was so bad that usually all we could see was snow. I was, of course, delighted. As a writer, I have always considered the TV my arch enemy. We rented a lot of movies and watched them as a family. There were a heap of favorites that we watched repeatedly. My children played outdoors and engaged in creative pursuits. It is not surprising that they grew up to be writers, musicians, and artists.

We did get satellite service after about 10 years out in the boonies. But we discontinued the TV service every year in April during Turn Off Your TV Week and we didn’t turn it on again until September when the football season started. No laying around on the couch in the summer and watching TV for my children. And when we did have satellite TV service, during the winter, we had rules about how much TV was allowed per day and per week. We still watched a lot of rented movies. That TV is a time suck. I can’t understand how people can leave the TV on all day as background. What a lot of inane racket. I would always tell my children to turn the thing off and read a book, play music, or draw a picture. TV is the antithesis of creativity. To this day, I still think that my children watched too much TV. In reality, we had far less TV in our home than in most.

Last week I emailed Sudi to ask if he had watched a TV show that his sister recommended as being pretty funny. I was astonished when Sudi replied that he doesn’t watch much TV, doesn’t care for it, and is happy that we had little of it when he was growing up. Wow. Sudi is not much of a reader, but he went on to say he was looking forward to reading a book he had selected for his English class at college. He warned me not to get too excited. (“It’s just one book, Mom.”) Nevertheless, I’m still trying to wipe this sappy grin off my face.

10,000 Hours to Success

What are you an expert at? In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about what factors contribute to the success of wildly successful people, like Bill Gates. One of the crucial elements contributing to success according to Gladwell is 10,000 hours invested in doing. He attempts to prove that this is the threshold of time needed for practice and/or experience that tips the balance. For example, he describes how, in the early 60s, the Beatles played all night every night at a night club in Hamburg, Germany so that by the time they returned to Liverpool, they had played together for over 10,000 hours. They were pros. Gladwell shows where Bill Gates got his 10,000 hours of computer programming experience by the time he was in his early twenties. Doing the math, to get the 10,000 you’d need to do about 20 hours per week for 10 years or 40 hours for 5 years (hope I got that right—I’ve only put in six and a half hours at math).

Gladwell’s 10,000-hour theory is compelling. He cites a study done with musicians. Those who became brilliant professional pianists had put in the 10,000 hours at a fairly young age, while those who were teaching music or playing for pleasure while holding down another job had not met the 10,000-hour threshold.

If we buy Gladwell’s theory that to become an expert in something we need to have 10,000 hours of experience, I find it interesting to consider what that makes me an expert at. There are not many things I have spent 10,000 hours doing. Sleeping. Reading. Doing laundry perhaps. (I may have put in 10,000 hours laundering diapers back in the day.) Seriously, I would say I’ve invested that 10,000 in writing, and also in grant writing as a separate expertise, and definitely in active parenting (I mean real parenting, not just being a parent). Ron has put in the 10,000 studying music, more specifically R&B and Soul. What about you? Where have you invested your 10,000 hours?