Real Men and Waking Up Early

As I sit here basking in the glow of my 13 inch computer in an otherwise dark room this morning, I’m reminded about one of what I consider to be one of the great tenets of manhood; that is, waking up early.

As a child and then a teenager, I was always amazed each morning at how early my dad woke up. No matter how early I got up each day, without fail, he would already be awake and laying on the couch wearing his Nike hoodie, reading the paper.

The funny thing is… the man is not an early to bed kind of guy. This is a man who regularly stayed up late to watch Letterman in its entirety. The even more amazing thing to me, that I’ve only learned in the past few years, is that he never uses an alarm clock.

I never understood that facet of my dad’s life until recently. You see, for most of my life I’ve told myself a story that wasn’t true. And while I’ve definitely told myself many stories that aren’t true, the story I’m talking about right now is the that I was not a morning person.

For most of my life, I’ve been a snoozer. When I was a kid, my parents had to institute a 10 a.m. reverse bedtime during the summers and weekends to prevent me from sleeping all day. And boy did I ever balk at that one. In college, if I didn’t have early morning classes, I could (and often did) sleep until 10:40 or so no matter how late I stayed up.

That was my sleeping in pattern for most of my life.

A few months ago, that all changed. A guy who’s blog I read, posted about the idea that each of us has several internal stories (plural) which may or may not be true that we tell ourselves which make up our STORY (singular).

I’ve always been a firm believer that our lives are stories, and his post got me thinking about my life and the stories I’ve told myself that maybe weren’t true.

The timing of that post couldn’t have been better. Just a few days earlier, I’d heard a man speak at a luncheon who’s own story really resonated with me. A very successful business man and person of faith, the speaker spoke on the importance of being a man of discipline. A man of discipline himself, he spoke about how men of discipline wake up early: A) because it’s difficult; and, B) because life is short and sleeping through too much of it really is a waste.

The combination of the post about the stories we tell ourselves that aren’t always true and the idea that men of discipline wake up early couldn’t have intersected more perfectly in my life. I left the luncheon thinking to myself, “Self… I want to be a man of discipline even if that means waking up early.”

And so that night, I set my alarm to go off the next day at 5:00 a.m. When it went off, I got up. I read a few chapters of a book I was reading at the time, I prayed, I sat in silence, and I ran a mile. Despite the fact that I was exhausted by 2 p.m. that afternoon, it was a great experience.

It wasn’t until a few days later when I read the aforementioned blog post that I was really able to articulate what I’d already been feeling about my own story as a morning person. Since that time (it was last November) I’ve been re-telling myself that story almost every day when my alarm goes off and I stumble out of bed at 5, 5:30, or (on bad days) 6:00 a.m.

As Ferris Bueller once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Waking up early has been a great help in my attempts to stop and look around every once in a while.

Some mornings I go for a run. Some mornings I take a walk. Some mornings I read. Some mornings I write. Some mornings I reflect on who I am or what I’m accomplishing. Some mornings I think about my marriage. Some mornings I talk to God. Some mornings I just listen for his voice. And some mornings, (rarely but still occasionally) I waste almost 2 hours perusing the Facebooks, or the Twitterz, or my Google Reader RSS subscriptions.

I’m hesitant to say that waking up early has changed my life, but honestly, I can say I’ve seen a marked improvement in my quality of life since last November when I started waking up early.

As a man, I think there’s something deep in my core that calls me toward self-improvement and challenge. Waking up early, though really a small thing, has been a challenge that I’ve taken on successfully. Not only have I had more time to myself each morning for personal and spiritual reflection and development, but each day I get out of my bed before the sun comes up, I reinforce the idea that I have control over and can change the stories I tell myself.

The little victory I’ve had over my sleep story has started to make me question other questionably “true” stories that I’ve been telling myself for too long. It’s amazing how one little victory combined with a few more early morning hours of introspection each day can make all the difference in helping us become the men we want to be.

For me, realizing I could wake up early was not only a victory over a very real physiological and mental myth in my life, but it was also one of many early steps in my realization that I still had a long journey toward becoming a real man… a journey I’m still learning from and enjoying almost every day before most people are even awake.

Sometimes a real man does things that are difficult simply because of the discipline it takes to do so. I want to be a real man. I want to be a man of discipline. For me, a big part of that means I wake up early.

What about you?

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NaNoWriMo: A Primer

~by Joey Rodman

For the uninformed November is National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. Every November across the nation and around the world there are thousands of people who sit down and write an entire novel. It’s a competition against yourself. If you write 50K words in 30 days you win.  If you don’t… well, you tried to win. When you think about it, there’s never a loser. I’ve been participating since 2005 and look forward to it every year.

Click photo to visit Sara Gonzales' webstie from where the graphic was derived.

Before you start thinking the things I know you already are, stop and breathe. It’s not as hard as it sounds. It’s almost as crazy as it sounds, but we’ll leave that part aside for now. Deep breath, open mind, positive thoughts…..and GO.

If you’re like most people I know, you want to write a book. I hear this from people often when they find out I write. They say “I’ve always wanted to write a novel but I never have the time.” Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s time. I know some of you are thinking: “Is 50K words really a novel?” Yes.  40K words is a novella, and 50K is a novel. While there are many novels that are much longer, many novels have about fifty thousand words. One of my favorite books of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is about fifty thousand words long. (Also included: Brave New World and The Great Gatsby.)

National novel writing month started in 1999 with a group of 21; last year there were just under 170, 000 participants. In the Oklahoma City area alone we have almost 1000 participants according to the NaNoWriMo website. When you choose to write a novel in November you’re not alone. Writing a novel with the support of others makes it much easier than writing a novel alone. The accountability alone is empowering, but the social aspect really helps to move things along.

Now, down to the nitty gritty. If you’re really considering this, here are 10 things you should know:

  1. It doesn’t have to be good. The point of NaNoWriMo is to come out of November with a first draft, or if you’re a perfectionist like myself, a “pre-first draft” because first draft connotes some level of completeness that I feel I can’t be expected to do in a month.
  2. It’s okay to fail. Nobody really can say anything to you if you don’t finish. They can try but your retort should be “Oh yeah?! Well, how many books did YOU write this month?!”
  3. It’s only 1667 words a day. That sounds like a lot, but it’s really not much. Right now, at the end of this sentence I have over 600 words….that’s about 35% of your daily word count.
  4. When you come to meet-ups it’s not a competition, unless you want it to be. We have all won and lost before, and the ones who haven’t are in their first year too… it’s all about succeeding together. Every once in a while a “word war” will break out which is a short burst of writing frenzy where the timer starts and you write as much as you can before it goes off. Whoever gets the most wins, and who ever doesn’t win got a LOT of new words typed.
  5. You don’t need a plot, characters, outline or plan. Write whatever you want, you can fix it later.
  6. You can’t/shouldn’t edit in November. You’ll never win if you edit while you write. Leave the mistakes in (it’s hard!) and go back later (after November!) and fix them. Be sure to let us know about the really funny ones, we call them NaNoisms. NaNoism: a typo the detonates and takes out the entire sentence around it. See: “the dragon escaped by flapping its enormous wigs,” or “he bowed to thundering applesauce.”
  7. Write now. Since the “rules” say from November 1st to the 30th and it’s already November, start now. Don’t worry about missing a day or two. Head over to the NaNoWriMo website, sign up and start writing. Open up a word processing document, type “Chapter 1” , save it, close it. Go to the NaNoWriMo website and update your wordcount, 2 words. You have officially done better than many people who sign up. Now close your browser and go write your novel.
  8. Come to meet-ups. Jasmine Brothers (our municipal liasion) says: The meet ups happen during November primarily so people can socialize, get away from writing for a bit…or brag, or complain, or run over plot details to try to make them make sense. Some folks chose to write in good company, and word wars have broken out. Someone behind the scenes with NaNo actually ran the numbers once, and it turns out that more than half of all the people who sign up each year never enter a word count. Among the half who do, those who participate in the forums are more likely to make it to 50,000 words than those who don’t…and those who go to meet ups are even more likely than those who only hang out on the forums. I personally think that has to do with the support and companionship you receive…hitting that 50,000 isn’t a solo effort anymore.
  9. Write anywhere. Whether you have a laptop, a spiral notebook, or an old Smith Corona you can write anywhere you are. I take a notebook with me to sort out my plot bunnies and write down ideas when away from home. Plot bunny: a random idea that comes hopping up and demands your attention. These are known to go on to spawn lots of cute little sub-plots, and so can be said to ‘breed like bunnies.’
  10. Whatever you do, have fun. Life is too short to have regrets. If you get stuck come to a meetup and we’ll help you.

Final word count for this entry? Nearly 1000 words. See? I told you it was easy.

 

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Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch: Keep on Farm Truckin’

My very first car was a red, 1967 Ford Mustang.  Red dust (old paint) clung to every individual who attempted to lean against it.

The vinyl top was mostly gone, and the condition of the seats….well, they were bad.  I was taught how to use a screwdriver on the starter to start it.  Piece by piece the car was revived to it’s almost original state and accessorized with a collection of B. Kliban Cat pillows.  It lasted the rest of high school and most of college then I wrecked it.  Bummer.  It had the coolness factor.  As punishment for wrecking the cool car, my parents bought me a beige Chevy Citation and told me I would be paying them for it.  Definitely not cool. Protection Plans by Nova Warranty keep your vehicle secure.

Fiat Spider

I declined the offer and purchased a little silver Fiat Spider convertible before the month was over.  The convertible top had to be duct-taped in the winter.

The next phase of my car purchases was not as exciting.  My current Saturn Vue has cloth seats, and yes, there are days when I miss those heated leather seats.  It’s not the coolest car I’ve ever driven, but it’s pretty reliable and gets me back and forth to work.  It’s just not exactly what I need on the weekends. If you’re looking for affordable used trucks, then you may check out some used trucks in dallas here. You can also explore the work trucks for sale in San Diego for available units with an affordable price.

Dually

Enter the farm truck.  Ours is a 1993 Chevrolet 3500 known by us as “The Dually.”  It belongs to my father-in-law, and he is proud to drive it to do “farm-type” errands that involve more filth than usual.

The farm truck is essential to life in the country.  Need some lumber?  The farm truck can haul it.  No trash pick up?  No problem.  There is plenty of room on the farm truck.  Wearing muddy boots?  Hop in the farm truck.  The inside is trashed anyway.  No one will care.   When it comes to cool, there is nothing cooler than driving a farm truck…unless it had some cute pillows in the back.

I’m going to work on that.

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Silent Sunday: 10/31/10

Hm, what to do for fun on 10/24/10? "Muddin'!" Okie girls making the most of it in Sparks, OK - photo provided by Micah Owens.
When the ewes put on their bright red fall berries, it looks like Christmas came early. Photo by Red Dirt Kelly, taken at Ruth Roberts' on 10/23/10.
A mommy in central Oklahoma didn't have this on her shopping list! Children seem to be able to sleep anywhere, huh? - photo by a friend of the RDC.
"Yo," I am a Toyota. Photo by Ann White.
Fall visits Oklahoma. Photo by Ann White.
Good morning! - Photo by Ann White.
Q: What's one of the best smells in Oklahoma during the fall? A: Driving behind a hay truck with your windows open. Mmmm. - Mobile phone photo by Red Dirt kelly.

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Macabre Encounters: The Truth About Children’s Literature and Farm Life, Chapter 3

Editors Note – It seemed fitting that I publish this particular post late on All Hallow’s Eve.  I might also mention that this essay is about dealing with death on the farm, and is probably too graphic for the queasy-stomached. (PG-13 rating.)  Please pass on this one if you’d rather think happy thoughts…RDK

I get a little overwhelmed when I think about all the animal death passages I endured during my children’s literature stage of life.  Old Yeller got shot by his owner. Old Dan and Little Ann died protecting their owner in “Where the Red Fern Grows.”  Laura Ingalls ran to the cabin and stuck her fingers in her ears so she wouldn’t hear the pig squeal on butchering day.  Even Walt Disney children’s films don’t spare the gore; indeed, the 101 Dalmations were going to be skinned for their fur.  And don’t even get me started on fairy tales – they are chock full of swords, axes, poison and all sorts of deathly possibilities for both the animal and human characters filling the pages.

The problem with these stories, however, is that generally the fairy tales (at least those originating from England and the US) have happy endings.  Laura Ingalls got to have fun with her sister roasting the pig’s tale and making a kick ball out of the bladder.  There was something tragically sweet about the great lengths the owners of Old Yeller, Old Dan and Little Ann went to in order to try to save their beloved pets.  And of course, the Dalmations got the best of Cruella DeVille and the family adopted every last one of the orphaned pups.

There is a gap, however, between a literary youth tragedy, a cartoon or a “gently told” story of a little girl in the Big Woods on butchering day…and real life.  These stories were written for youthful audiences and therefore didn’t include the harsh realities of what death looks like up close and personal.  Those experiences came suddenly or unexpectedly in all sorts of ways while growing up on the farm.  Animal death scenes and farm life seem to go together like Alfred Hitchcock and scary movies.  There really isn’t a way to separate the two in my mind.

The stories are many so I’ll only share four short vignettes.  The first one begins at my grandparent’s farm on a day where I was innocently sent to gather eggs from the hen house.  The task is managed by opening the wooden lid of each setting box, taking the eggs left by the hen, or if she’s still there, gently lifting her up and removing the eggs from underneath her.  Sometimes hens peck at the hands entering their box and leave little tiny bleeding marks on those with more tender skin.  I never saw my grandpa’s hands bleed, but my little girl hands did quite a bit.

One day I reached into the box and felt not feathers, not eggs, and not wood.  It felt like – wait, what was that? I opened the lid further and stared at a dark mass of coils for a bit longer than I should have; the sight sunk in slowly, registering through a foggy brain clearly not expecting anything other than chickens.  It was a huge black snake and the coils filled the entire box.

I slammed the lid down and ran as fast as I could to tell Grandpa.  I don’t know how I expected him to react, but he immediately headed to the hen-house and grabbed a hoe on the way.  I followed him wondering what was in store for the snake.  He threw up the lids of the boxes until he found the snake, stuck the hoe handle in through the middle of the coils and lifted the snake up and out of the box like he had done that sort of thing before.  I backed away as he headed out of the hen-house and out to the gravel driveway.  He shook the hoe and the snake fell off.  Uncurling quickly, the snake began to slither away but Grandpa began hacking with the blade end of the hoe, chopping at the snake with a vengeance.

I watched the whole scene with horror, and then let out a scream when the visual went into overdrive.  Evidently, the snake had swallowed five or six eggs whole, and when Grandpa’s hoe hit those large lumps in the snake’s throat, its head raised about two feet off the ground, the mouth involuntarily opened up and spewed yellow yolk everywhere.  I couldn’t look anymore – I turned around and ran in the house.  The image of Grandpa hacking the snake to bits while it spewed yellow goo was burned into my brain, and played over and over in my mind over the next few weeks.

Vignette number two involved a fight with my cat.  I was up in a mulberry tree one summer, my face and fingers covered in purple juice from my harvest, when I heard a horrible screech from my cat.  I looked down to see that it wasn’t my cat making the noise, but a rabbit that my cat had caught.  The poor thing was bleeding and fur had started scattering.  The cat was eating the little bunny!  I dropped out of the tree and began chasing my cat who felt threatened that I was taking her meal.  The cat was fast, but every once in a while it had to stop and adjust the weight of the bunny she was dragging…her prey was half-dead.

I slapped at my cat.  “Leave the bunny alone!  Let it go! Let IT GO!!”  I love my cat, but I wasn’t going to let it have that bunny.  I finally caught the cat in such a hold that I could pry the bunny out of its claws and teeth.  The bunny was stunned and didn’t move.  I was wrestling with the cat, trying to hold it while nudging the bunny along with my foot.  “Run!” I told the bunny… “Run!”  The bunny finally hopped away, the cat scratched me deep enough that I couldn’t hold on any longer, she ran after the bunny…and killed it.

I remember running across that bunny tail a few days later.  I picked it up, let it dry and kept it for a while.  “Animal body parts” were fairly common on the farm.  I once found a squirrel tail (probably left after the cat ate it), I found a few rabbit feet over the years, and I would frequently find carcasses of one sort or another in our pasture.  I know there is a food chain, and I know animals do what they do.  What I didn’t know is that some animal parts look like others.

Vignette number three was especially gruesome and I couldn’t get it out of my head for a very long time.  I was skipping along one day, spied a white tail from a rabbit, picked it up and began to inspect it.  When I turned it over, I saw two tiny closed eyes and a baby mouth.  I uttered some kind of creeped-out yell, threw it down, and realized it was the leftovers of one of our new baby kittens, probably eaten by a tom cat who had come back to visit.  I had always heard that tom cats ate kittens, but had never seen tangible evidence until that day.  I felt like throwing up.  Seeing “the food chain” up close and personal, especially when it involved tiny baby kittens, was too much.  I think I probably stayed indoors for a few days.

And finally, vignette number four has to do with cows.  When you lived on a farm, it was common to have people come to your house, ask about hay,  or drive out on your property for one thing or another.  One day I looked out my bedroom window to see a white truck driving around in our front pasture.  The cows were running around and I began to wonder what was going on because there was a man in the back of the truck.  Startled, I realized he had a gun.  Just about that time he raised it, aimed at a cow and pulled the trigger.  A rifle-shot rang out and I saw the running cow stumble, then eventually fall.  I was gripping the window sill…I had just witnessed one of my cows dying!  We named our cows, for crying out loud, and we usually only kept about thirty at a time.  My stomach tightened and I sat down.  I always knew we butchered a cow or two, but I had never witnessed a death like that.  I felt like I had seen a person killed and couldn’t shake that scene in my head for another week or two.

I was recently corresponding with Becky Winsor, a childhood neighbor of mine, and we were talking about the “cow death” experience.  She was one of four sisters and wrote me her “death on the farm” story:

Growing up on a farm was, in hindsight, a very good experience. Over the years, I have put to use many of the life skills that I learned. I won’t lie, it was hard work. We raised cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs, and had a couple of horses. We also got to chop and pick cotton, bale and put up hay, and plant numerous crops.

My memories are however, for the most part, good. One of the hardest lessons I learned came when I was about 10 years old.  My father gave baby calves to my sisters and I. We were allowed to name them, bottle feed them, pet them, and visit them as much as we wanted. This went on for about 7 or 8 months. One day, we came home from school to find that the calves were gone. We were understandably upset.

When my father was questioned about this disappearance, he stated that they had been sold. He explained that we couldn’t keep the calves forever, that this was a natural consequence of raising farm animals. He had to deal with 4 teary-eyed girls for several days. He never allowed us to have our “own” farm animals again. Of course, he never again really complained about the 10-12 cats we had running around either.

What I realized when I read her story was that my experiences were not isolated.  There were (and are) children everywhere learning about death first hand on farms every day of the year.  However, I would venture to say that those lessons are never cartoons, they rarely have happy endings, and they aren’t written by a children’s author with gentle phrasing and puppy grave sites that grow red ferns.

In fact, the doggie grave sites MIGHT just end up like mine.  One day when I was running toward the creek to go play with my brother and my foot dropped about two feet down into a hole.  As I pulled my leg out I saw rib bones lying around the hole, and when I moved my shoe I saw more bones.  THEN I realized that was where we had buried our dog, Peppy, a few weeks before.  Evidently, an animal had dug her up and had her for dinner.  ARGH!  It was so creepy!!

If there is any redeeming value in animal death stories on the farm, it is that the most recent trauma usually replaces the creepiness of the former traumas.  Honestly, that’s the only good thing I can say about the subject.  Well…and, the fact that my clients can tell me just about anything in my therapy office and I’m hardly ever shocked.

Hmm…can it be that there was actually some redeeming value in all those creepy death experiences?  Naw…then it wouldn’t be a Halloween story, right?

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