Nothing to kill or die for

Thirty-one years ago tomorrow, I was an 18-year-old moody kid.  My mother and step-father’s seemingly happy marriage was exactly 16 days from imploding, but no one knew that yet.  It was just another Tuesday to endure before looking forward to Christmas holidays.

In other words, it was a normal Tuesday morning for this teenager.  He was young for his age, naive in some ways, though he’d lived through a lot already in those short first years of his life.  More than anything, he was insecure.  He’d learned to hide it very well over the previous three years, to mask it, but it had never ever really gone away.

But at this time, things weren’t bad.  Yes, he was moody, but what teenager wasn’t to some degree?  Yes, he thought he knew everything and his parents knew little.  Yes, he thought this was one of the hardest times of his life.  It would be years before he would understand these were some of the best years of his life.

And the one thing that always got him through the worst times.  When friends let him down, when family disappointed him, when life became hard…he could always retreat to his room and put an album on.  Music was his salvation.  Music made all the bad stuff go away, even if for a little while.  Music was rebellion, it was attitude, it was confidence…it was everything he wanted to be and could be, even if it was for the duration of a three-minute song.

Music was life.

So on this Tuesday morning, the teen was, as usual, the first one up in the house, his parents both retired and usually not up for another half-hour or so.  He got up, let his dog out, had his shower, let the dog back in, fed her, then set about getting his own breakfast.

Before he poured out his cereal, he was already turning on the stereo that was set up in the dining room, already tuned to Ottawa’s CHEZ 106, the only radio station worth listening to at the time.

And the teen was delighted when he came in just as John Lennon’s “Imagine” began playing. 

The teen then set about getting his breakfast, singing along with the words, memorized years before and, as far as he was concerned, not only one of Lennon’s best songs ever, but one of the best songs by anyone, anywhere.

Then the teen sat down at the dining room table, opened a Fantastic Four comic book and had only gotten a couple of pages in by the time the song ended.  And then the DJ came on and told the teen that John Lennon was dead, that he’d been shot late the night before.

And I sat frozen, one palm flat on the table, the other holding a forgotten spoon, as the tears first welled up, then spilled over in a torrent.  I couldn’t catch my breath.  I realize now that I was having my first panic attack. 

I don’t know how long I sat there.  I don’t know how long I cried for, but it was quite a while.  Then I got up and called my brother.  He’d heard the night before so he’d had some time to process it.  We commiserated briefly, then I had to hang up.

Around then, my mother came out from her bedroom.  She saw me and immediately asked what was wrong.  Again, looking back, I’m sure she was simply relieved nothing was wrong with her son, but at the time I took her reaction as callous.  Cold.

Though I felt I could barely function, as though my brain had grown cold and sluggish, I still managed to be ready and waiting as the bus stopped to pick me up, the last student before hitting the high school.  I don’t remember what anyone else on that bus looked like.  I wasn’t seeing anything.

I also don’t remember much of that school day.  I know I drifted from class to class.  I know one of my friends, Robert, seemed as upset as I was, the two of us having discovered the Beatles around the same time.

And yes, I know some of it was the fact that I was enamored with the music of not only the Beatles, but of all four musicians’ solo work.  And some of it was my age.  I know how, from an adult perspective, it’s stupid to become so despondent over a guy who, when it comes down to it, wrote and performed music for a living and did some strange events with his strange wife.  I know all this.  Hell, I knew it then.

But my world got a little bit darker then.  It would get much darker before I began to finally see some light again, but this was like the first hint of that.  With those four words, “John Lennon is dead”, I had been led to an abyss that I had only been vaguely aware of previously, and I had been shown a first glimpse of its depths.

And my tour guide was a shitstain named Mark David Chapman.

It wasn’t just that my world got darker, it was the blossom of an idea that there were other people out there that were simply monsters in human skin.  That there were minds out there that were broken and twisted.  That there were some that would hurt you badly, and do it on purpose, and smile as they did it.

This wasn’t the world the Beatles sang of.  This was all the injustices John Lennon railed against, both in speech and in song.

This was this other world, this darker world rising up and muzzling him, shutting him out, cancelling him out.  This was the dark hating the light and swallowing it.

I couldn’t, as that teen, ever express that sudden knowledge, and the paralyzing fear that accompanied it.  I don’t think, before writing this, that I’ve ever had the words to express it.  I don’t feel I’m even doing it justice now.

All I can say is, that teen, that moody, naive, insecure, scared teen had his eyes opened a lot wider that day over three decades ago.  He didn’t like what he saw, and, for a long time afterward, he flinched and looked away, not wanting to believe what he saw.

There’s a lot of good and beauty in this world.  I know that.  But not far behind it, sitting just out of sight, but always ready to rear up and tear your heart out, there’s a lot of bad.  There’s ugliness and terror.

John Lennon fought that ugliness.  He saw it for what it was, looked it in the face and had the courage to stare it down.  To shout it down.

Even knowing that one day, it may get the better of him, he still railed at it.  To quote another singer, he kicked at the darkness til it bled daylight.

I don’t ever think we’ll see his like again.

And all these years later, right or wrong, I still miss the man.

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Working From Home

Prepare yourself, I’m about to confess how big a suck I am.

Last week, I had to go into two different offices on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.  Thursday was the only day I didn’t have to hit an office.

Yes, I work from home most of the time.  I’m lucky enough to work for a very progressive company that embraces workstyles and flexibility.  Actually, I’ve got to say overall, the company I work for is pretty great.  My company puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to Corporate Social Responsibility, and strongly supports diversity in all its forms (and not just from a hiring practice, it’s built right into the company DNA).

On top of that, I work for one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers,

one of Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures

and the most philantropic company on the planet.

Yes, it’s easy to brag about my employer, and quite frankly, I agree with all of it.  It also makes it harder to do the writing thing on the side when you actually enjoy your day job…

So, when it comes to them saying, “Hey dude, feel like coming into the office a little less and saving money on gas and parking and lunches?” I’m ready to sign up quickly.  And I did.

It makes sense.  My boss is in Montreal.  His boss is in Burnaby.  And his boss is back in Toronto.  So we’re a pretty diverse team, location-wise.  And our team isn’t the exception.  So, really, when you’re dealing with your teammates over the phone most of the day, why do you need to truck yourself into the office to do so?

So, after about ten years of coming into the office five days a week, about eighteen months ago, I was given the opportunity to start working from home more.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it originally.  I mean, of course I wasn’t going to miss the roughly hour-long commute (one way) to the office, though it did cut dramatically into my audiobook progress!  I pounded through a lot of good books over the years.

But was I going to get any work done?

We didn’t have an office space for me to work out of at home.  So there were times when I worked at the dining room table, and times when I worked from the master bedroom, parked semi-comfortably on the bed.  My wife has worked from home fulltime for five years and one of the pain points was when she had a phone meeting and I did too.

Apparently I, uh, talk really loud.

Apparently that’s an issue.

So that’s when I’d hump the laptop and the phone up to the bedroom.  Soon, it got easier to just work from there.  It wasn’t the best solution, but for the once or twice a week I was doing it, it was doable.  And I was getting the work done.

Many people I talk to state they could never work from home, or that they had tried it and it just didn’t work.  Too many distractions.  Not enough work done.  And I agree, I think it takes a certain mindset to work from home.  But, simply for saving about $1000/year on parking alone, likely three times that on gas, and God knows how much on lunches, snacks, coworkers selling Girl Guide cookies, various office raffles and donation asks…I figure I’m a solid $5000 to the good.  That alone is motivation for me to find the discipline to ignore the distractions.

About a year ago, we decided to throw ourselves into a big pile of debt and finish our basement.  And in the process, we created a separate working office for my wife and myself, with a wall separating us.  I was able to pull out all my books that I’d had stored for years and finally get them back up on the walls.  Actually, three of the four walls.

I have a lot of books.

The good thing is, the books went up on the wall that separated the wife from me.  Some added soundproofing, as it were.  It was around the same time that my role changed significantly and I started working from home more like four days a week.  I found I enjoyed the job more, I was more relaxed, I was still productive…basically, all the things you’d want out of an employee.  And I still came into the office when needed, of course.  I just found that when I did that, that’s when I became less productive.

Coming into the office once a week, inevitably you get those that pass by your desk with the, “Oh!  You’re here!  I haven’t seen you in forever!” lines.  And there’s the protracted catch-up conversations, the “got time for a coffee?” requests…of which I’m as guilty as anyone…and the chance meetings in the halls and elevators.  None of these take a lot of time, but they do take time.  Get four or five of them happening each time and you’ve lost a solid hour or two of productive time.

So it’s better to stay home.  Out of sight, out of mind.

Now, my wife and I have adapted quite well.  We both tend to be on the phone a lot, so we’ve set up Windows Live Messenger to send each other messages.  Typically it’s the wife messaging me to be more quiet.

Apparently I, uh, still talk really loud.

Apparently all those books don’t soundproof as much as I anticipated.

Apparently that’s still an issue.

Now, my role has changed significantly again…well, okay, I took a different role with the company this time…so there’s a bit of a transition as I hand off my old role to others.  So, that involved going into the office a lot last week.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s a few upsides to heading into the office.  For instance, heading into downtown Toronto for me means taking the GO Train.  Now, that definitely isn’t an upside.  I despise public transit.  But I was able to get Monday, Wednesday and Friday’s blogs written on the train.

Of course, while writing them, I typically had someone sitting beside me pretending like they weren’t reading everything I was writing, but really they were.  Well, they were until I typed the following:

You wanna know something interesting about blogging?  Yes, it’s you getting yourself out to the world, putting your thoughts out there in public.  But it’s really frigging irritating to still be building them up, composing them, shaping them into the thoughts you want others to read, while some moron beside you on public transit sits and surreptitiously reads what you’re writing because they can’t be bothered to read the book plainly sitting in their lap.  I hate that, don’t you?

I could tell exactly when they hit that part.  They sniffed and turned to look pointedly out the window for the rest of the trip.  I smiled, cut the lines and pasted them into Notepad to save for a future blog because it didn’t really fit with the ones I was writing.  But I digress…

So yes, I was able to get some blog some.  I got to meet some coworkers I’d only talked over the phone with.  We accomplished a lot in the meetings I was involved in.  So, they were definitely a success.

But there were downsides.  It costs me $15/day to head downtown.  So that was $45 in GO passes I normally don’t spend.  Tuesday I drove to a different office.  Easily $20 in gas.  Another  $4 in parking (yes, I realize $ is ridiculously cheap for parking, don’t judge me).  Lunches, coffees, etc.  Probably $100 that I normally wouldn’t have spent.  I know, wah, wah, wah, shut up you whiner.  I told you right upfront I was a suck.  This is just me proving it.

But I guess my point is, we’re creatures of habit.  And my habit is now to consider rush hour or congested traffic as two or three pets blocking the stairs on the way to my office.  Being able to grab a coffee whenever I want, the way I want it (with chocolate milk and brown sugar…yeah, baby!).  Being able to get dinner started early.  Finishing work and not having to spawn upstream to get home again.

My habit is freedom and, ultimately, balance between work and home life.

Really, I work for a great company.