Supafly.com

So last week we launched CatholicYouthMinistry.com after twelve consecutive months of hard work. To date, this is the most comprehensive website I’ve lead from napkin sketch to production. The website could’ve been built in half the time, but I wanted to include everyone at Life Teen in the project so they could offer input and get a first-hand experience of how the Web Team manages a multitude of priorities. If this were a web design and development blog, I could write for days about the victories within the project, but this is my personal blog and I’m trying to keep this from feeling like work.

But before I move on, let’s talk about the privilege of having a job. I think it’s only fair that if you are employed right now, you should stop and be thankful for what you have. Be positive in your workplace and do good work. There are many people who would love to have your “worries” in exchange for a paycheck. As my barber told me yesterday: “I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet.”

I am NOT excited to restart classes in the MBA program. I’ve needed this winter break like Wall Street needed a bailout. The high expectations of both school and work totally wore me out in the last months of 2009, and I cannot say that I’ve regained my strength. But like it or not, I have an accounting class on Wednesday.

Sometimes I get confused about how to make priorities in this messy world. I mean, right now there are countless people buried alive in the rubble in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The earthquake has left people with so much suffering…I cannot even imagine. I got home from work yesterday and turned on the news to get a more up close look at what people were going through. The news reporter told the story of a man who lost is wife beneath a collapsed building. The husband pressed his hand against a the rubble and held his ear to a concrete slab hoping to hear her tapping below. The tapping came and went. The husband and the rescue workers prayed and dug. The segment ended with the sad reality that they had not found his wife.

The thought of losing Candyce or Norah shreds my heart. I cannot imagine the pain this guy is experiencing. At this very moment, I am sure he is still digging for his wife. Me? I am at here at Starbucks at the airport typing on my laptop. What’s my biggest problem right now? I don’t want to go to class. What’s your problem?

How am I supposed to reconcile my life of privilege with the misfortune of others?

I don’t know if there is a clear way to keep my own life moving forward while still caring for the rest of the planet. I do what I can, even if it’s not enough. …I pray for those in need. I donate money to worthy causes…I volunteer my time…I try to be a caring friend and neighbor.

I try not to get enthralled in the dazzle of the material world. Because it’s hard to be a genuine person if you are easily impressed by fortune and fame. I do try to be successful in what I do–career, education, investments–but I constantly remind myself that this too shall pass.

Ultimately, I try to be the best husband and father that I can be. If every man made their family their top priority, much of our society’s ills would wash away.

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Honestly, I am still unsettled about this. About how to make daily priorities in such a messy world. I need to pray more about this. And right now I need to finish this so I can get on my plane. Boston here I come.

I am sitting at the Detroit airport on a Saturday afternoon. The gloomy overcast is finally passing and rays of light are warming up the carpeted floors of the North Terminal. I have a couple of hours before my flight takes off and I’m on my way back to Phoenix. I will write until my mind unwinds…and then it will be time to prepare for Monday evening’s midterm.

My ride from Essex to Detroit was pleasant because of the company of my driver, a man named Rene who drove a brand new Chrysler 300—a retirement gift that Chrysler gave him. We talked about the complexity of Labor Unions, and the inability of American automakers to stay competitive with foreign carmakers.

One of the unexpected subplots of my life as an adult is recognizing trends that I willfully ignore. Maybe it’s that adulthood frees me from blindly following the crowd, that is, I am too busy to care. My list includes, but is not limited to, the following: American Idol, skinny jeans, Survivor + 95% of all other reality shows—including my own show—the Real World, and American Idol. The newest addition to this list is the book/movie Twilight. These are facets of modern day pop culture that I am completely comfortable knowing nothing about. I don’t beat people over the head with my gleeful ignorance. Again, who has the time?

The reason why I bring this up is because I’m sitting at the Detroit airport waiting for my connection to Chicago before I’m back in Phoenix. I spent 10 minutes at the magazine stand amusing my mind with words and pictures of pop culture. Twilight is the new thing and I expect that I’ll eventually have to figure why these teenage vampire movies have the attention of every high school girl so I won’t be considered out of touch. But I’m in no hurry.

I moved to the “grown up” magazine section. I read in Time Magazine that Detroit has a 29% unemployment rate. That is one out of every three people who want a job do not have a job. It makes the national unemployment rate of 9.5-10% look like good times. Part of our drive on the outskirts of Detroit was particularly dismal. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to live here. I don’t want pick on the city anymore, but it’s clear that the decay of Detroit is real and shows no sign of stopping.

It’s remarkable how much cities can change. Downtown Tempe, once a mecca for nightlife and shopping, is no longer a worthwhile option. People would much rather go to Phoenix or Scottsdale to spend money and be seen. I’ve read many articles about the evolution of Downtown Tempe, but it doesn’t seem like anyone knows why the trendy college town just kind of went away.

So I ate at Ruby Tuesday this afternoon here at the Detroit airport. I felt like I owed them a trip because they’ve worked so hard to entice 20 and 30somethings into their establishment with a new menu and a drastically upgrade to their restaurant ‘s image. In short, it seems like they ditched their whole concept and started over. I’m assuming everything is new because I have no personal encounter with the “before” version of Ruby Tuesday, only this afternoon’s “after”.

For my entire life, I’ve never been able to tell the difference between TGIFridays, Ruby Tuesday, and Chili’s, and where applicable, Benegins. My indifference towards these establishments has not always been rooted in snobbery. When I was young, we were too poor to eat there on the rare occasion we traveled out of our small country town. By the time I grew up and had enough of my own money to go out to eat, the last thing I wanted to do in my new big city was to patronize restaurants that became famous for serving predictable food within 100-yards of a suburban shopping mall. So for an entire decade now, I’ve ignored these restaurants.

On the drive from Arcadia to the airport on Friday, Candyce and I passed a new Ruby Tuesday next to an equally new Aloft Hotel (W Hotel’s new line) along Phoenix’s newly Light Rail. It was an impressively urban “Creative Class” snapshot. My vanity was tugged with curiosity. So 24 hours later I ate at Ruby Tuesday here at the Detroit Airport. It was a good meal inside an airport, but I don’t think I’ll make it my Saturday night destination any time soon.

Well, that’s it for me. It’s time to get on the airplane and start studying for my Statistics midterm.

So much has happened in the last couple of weeks. I want to write about it all, but it’s difficult to pull it all together into a tight narrative. So instead, I’ll just write a big list:

1. I just got back from a two-night trip to Dover, Delaware. Although I was painfully unprepared for the cold weather, it was a great trip. One of the priests I met, Fr. Gabage, is a serious art collector. He gave me an hour-and-a-half tour of his collection. I felt like I stepped into the final scene of National Treasure. The collection made most of the stuff I saw last week at the Phoenix Art Museum look like garbage. I could write forever about my concern over modern art, but I’ll try to keep this quick… It is a grave problem when the finest art from a generation doesn’t show any talent. When you strip away the intellectual bullsh!t that artists and their collectors say about the work, you are left with something that is entirely unimpressive.
2. My new favorite thing to eat at the airport is oatmeal. It’s simple, wholesome, and comforting. Starbucks and Cereality serve it up just right.
3. I don’t know how much more news I can handle about the “Financial Crisis.” I’m an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal, especially over the last six months when every day held a new story. But it’s getting me discouraged and I think it’s time to find something else to do with my time…
4. …like saving money. Candyce and I worked together to cut costs–including a different cell phone plan, car insurance, canceling subscriptions–and came up with $96 a month.  That’s adds up to more than $1160 in savings over twelve months.
5. It’s worth noting that when the economy is red hot, it’s cool to be seen living “the good life.” You know, vacations, car accessories, home upgrades, piling up investments. But when the economy is ice cold, everyone decides it’s cool to be seen saving money. Most of the people I know like to keep one foot in poverty and another in wealth. They lean in either direction when they need to, but in the end we’re all in pretty good shape, doing our best to responsibly manage our money as the years of our life pass by.
6. Rumor has it that one of my favorite restaurants is now a victim of a sluggish economy. What will downtown be without Palatte? I am grieving.
7. My six month old daughter has two bottom teeth now. This brings the grand total of teeth up to two. But make no mistake–when she bites you, you are in for some pain.
8. Trends are trends–if you ignore them, you’ll look like you’re just a leftover scrub from a decade past. I’m too old and sensible to wear the super-tight jeans like the trendy boys do, but my jeans are more snug now than they’ve ever been. I’ve been on a lot of business trips in 2009, and I’ve counted myself as one of the more stylish dudes in the airplane. But I’m also one of the least comfortable. I got a flicker of hope at 20,000 feet when I read the January issue of Esquire Magazine. Richard Dorment hinted that 2009 is ready for relaxed clothes:

For the past few years, a man could be forgiven for thinking that some fashion designers really had to be joking. The rib-crushing fit of certain suits, the tourniquetlike taper of so many skinny jeans, all those wacky school-boy proportions: While many in the fashion world were embracing these extreme views of silhouette and fit — the shorter and tighter, the better — those of us who wore their clothes were left sucking in our guts and praying to God that our pants didn’t split. Fashion being fashion, though, the collective mood seems to be shifting — think of it as a market correction — as designers from Bottega Veneta’s Tomas Maier and Burberry’s Christopher Bailey to the duo at Dolce & Gabbana are embracing more sensible, relaxed fits in their spring collections. Not baggy or saggy or overly loose-fitting. No: relaxed, with clothes maintaining a close, easy, and, above all, comfortable relationship to the body.

First of all, I am very proud of the Arizona Cardinals. Nobody would have ever guessed that the lowly Cardinals would ever make it into the playoffs this year, much less earn a trip to the Super Bowl. Plus, they played like they deserved to be in the Super Bowl. Had one call gone our way, the championship could’ve been ours.

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My driver from Providence to Cape Cod told me about the time twenty years ago when picked up Franklin Delano Roosevelt III, the grandson of the U.S. president Franklin Dealano Roosevelt, at the port where the ferry arrives on the Massachusetts shore from island of Martha’s Vineyard. There wasn’t much to his story besides the fact that FDR the Third thought he was too good to speak to him on the two hour drive to the airport. My driver explained: “He was an asshole.”

Although I felt like I had to stick up for the grandson of a US President, I couldn’t argue on his behalf because I honestly didn’t know there was an FDR3. Instead, I changed the subject to talk about cars. That lasted for another hour until we arrived in Cape Cod.

Since I’ve been back, I did a little research and learned that FDR3 is a respected economics professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York state–an honorable position within our society. You can see his faculty page on the university’s website.  When I reconsider my driver’s experience with the man, I imagine that both of the guys in that taxi on that random day in the 1980s were unsatisfied with where they were in life. What boy wants to grow up to be a cab driver? And how can even the most accomplished economist not feel like an underachiever when he was expected to grow up to be nothing less than the President of the United States?

I imagine this scene plays out every day in each corner of our society. The characters and circumstances are different, but the consistent theme is reconciling the dreams and aspirations from youth with the tough realities of life.

Several years ago I heard a great story on This American Life a man who played in a 1970s British punk rock band called The Automatics. They had little commercial success, so he moved on to other things in life, eventually became a successful mortgage broker in Beverly Hills. One afternoon while at his office, he went on eBay to find if any of his band’s old records were being sold online.

That moment of curiosity began a story that ended with the discovery that his band’s old records had garnered much attention in Japan, enough fans to warrant a reunion tour through Japan, although he would be the only original member of the band on the tour. So he took a break from his high-dollar job in Beverly Hills and traveled to Japan with his wife to play the songs he wrote in high school. Except this time, he was in his late 40s, and he would play in front of hordes of fans. One venue was so packed with fans that his only way out of the building after the show was to be passed over the crowd.

Host Ira Glass asked what it was like to experience a postponed fame:  “We don’t get what we deserve. We get what we get, and you have to be okay with that.”

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Did the Arizona Cardinals deserve to win the Super Bowl? Yes. Did the Pittsburgh Steelers deserve to win the Super Bowl? Yes. You had two great teams loaded with men who played like champions. Had one call gone our way, the Arizona Cardinals would be Super Bowl champions. But in the end, only one team can win, and it was the Steelers. Maybe next year will be the Cardinals.

It has been one week since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The exuberant speculation about Obama’s presidency is deafening. News reporters and political commentators are beaming about change, hope, and a new beginning for our country.

Depending on who you ask, Barack Obama is more than a president, he is a celebrity, an icon, a super hero, a civil rights leader, or a savior. How can this type of adoration be anything but a speculative bubble, a big disappointment waiting to happen? One man cannot undo the adversity that our nation faces. One man cannot solve every man’s problems. These words may seem negative or even unpatriotic today, but I can guarantee that you will hear this same sentiment grow as each day passes in the Obama administration.

I sincerely hope I am wrong here. I recognize that each president has gifts, talents, and wisdom apart from his predecessors, but each president faces adversity more daunting than anything he encountered in his fight to win the White House.  To campaign as a solution to our problems is one thing, to solve those problems is another.

I will close with this. In all of the news coverage on Obama’s inauguration day, the most balanced perspective came from a twenty-second comment from Ted Koppel on NPR’s Talk of the Nation with Neil Connan:

He is not a foolish man, Barack Obama. He understand that the challenges that confront him now are going to make some of these high flown speeches seem almost quaint in a few months.  He still faces all of the same problems that George Bush faced. Will there be a difference in tone? You bet. They’re already is. Will there be a difference in terms of tactics? Very likely. Is the ultimate strategy going to change? I would be surprised.