“Ok…all is clear…I’m back in a good mood again!”
Why are we forced to announce how we feel? In an age where children can act up and get away with it, adults are punished by their cohorts for doing nothing more than expressing. It’s become illegal to say, “Stop treating me like a dog.” Actually, I wouldn’t mind being treated like my dogs…Sami, Harold, Sophia and MJ are well groomed and loved more than a fresh cut rose on a wedding day.
We’ve all been there…a strange unexpected twist of fate lands your ten toes in an uneven pile of professional manure and there’s not a soul nearby in the mood to help bail you out.
I once worked with a brilliant General Manager who stood up in a meeting and said, “I understand that Arroe might have gone overboard with his emotions but my concerns fall into the category of which one of you pushed him relentlessly without considering how it would affect the end result?”
His solution was for me to tattle on the bad kids pushing, shoving and kicking others during recess.
Buddhist Monk Thick Nhat Hahn tends to put more faith in a different solution, finding peace in a separate end result. Exposing the evils of others creates a larger wave of destruction. My problem is simple; those who know me have learned there’s an amazing amount of passion put into anything and everything I touch. When the flow of passion is interrupted causing me to deliver a project less than I see, feel and hear…quality suffers and I can’t stand the idea of putting my signature on a performance that resembles second, third or fourth best.
Dylan was right, the times are changing…today’s best is yesterdays worst. We’ve allowed the circles we keep to support a system of bad habits connected to an end result that resembles accepted defeat, “That’s ok God gave me tomorrow to do a better job.”
I can’t stand the word lazy! My stepfather Joe constantly accused my child self of being everything it represents in a Webster’s dictionary. And yet today, through his shared visions, what he saw in me is today’s accepted work ethics.
The solution? Everybody must raise pigeons! You can have twirlers, messengers, fancy ones with brilliant beautiful tails, males that coo coo coo at 2am or big old fat ones that hang out under overpasses. It doesn’t matter! You can learn a lot about life raising pigeons.
Pigeons can come across pretty stupid; they sit on telephone lines in a row of ten, a beautiful hawk flies by, picks one of them up and the other nine don’t wobble, choke or burp up a seed, they sit there and reminisce what Bobby the wanna be chicken was like before his final coo coo coing. Tell me that’s not today’s business world! We’ve become numb to the cut back movement.
I spent the majority of my younger chapters doing nothing more than studying a pigeon’s behavior in public. They eat rocks because it helps them digest food. How many times have you found yourself choking over an event at work and couldn’t digest the day…what was your process of pushing it through? How often do you take it home and take it out on the other pigeons?
Pigeons don’t put up with another pigeons non caring way of living. They’ll raise that right wing high in the air and kick your beak into next week. I once had a pigeon called Broken Wing…some guys from the stepfather’s job shot him down and Joe knew who could mend that cockroach from the sky back to a great life. Oh boy, the bird hood didn’t like Broken Wing, they felt invaded…how dare an injured dude from another nation of birds think about pushing their way into a free breakfast, lunch and dinner!
I invited peace by placing Broken Wing next to a pigeon sitting on a nest…pigeons love to love and nothing says I love the world more than a momma cuddling up to a couple of future coo-ers. Slowly I introduced the injured with the stranded…once on those eggs, you ain’t going no where. At first the mother was, “WTF” but through careful maneuvering the relationship was created when the human figure introduced cracked corn to them…it was a treat for being nice. Which you don’t get any more on the job…it’s always, “Here! This too! Here! I need it by 3pm!”
Pigeons wouldn’t put up with that mess on the floor. Mack Daddy the giant blue with a speck or two of white on his chest would stand in the center of the pigeon circle and go into a dance that seemed symbolic yet commanding…I honestly believe he was trying to convince the others to vote the bad mood makers off the pigeon island.
Pigeons are powerful. A chicken once got up into the coop; they eat everything, including babies. I walked into the hen house the next day and spotted six pigeons standing over the now gone chicken. I often wonder if I was raising Mafia pigeons. No way! I never once heard, “For get about it coo, coo.”
When it’s bitterly Montana cold pigeons set aside their indifferences and huddle. When they take note of a human who’s low on luck or lonely due to nobody believing in their efforts to move forward, pigeons are giving in the way of flying to the cold surface of the ground and looking up at the human as a way of symbolizing the spirit of togetherness. "Dude, you aren't that low...look at me down here." They sing, they dance and they tell tiny pigeon jokes. They come back every day until the injured human is back to laughing again.
I raise doves today…I call them my Jazz. No matter how thick the cloud or thin the desire is to reach for new levels of success…their self created songs have a way of cutting through the bulkiest of walls to invite fresh sunlight to dreams preparing to be born.
Pigeons were once humans filled with amazing amounts of love and forgiveness then sent back to earth to collect more feathers to become stronger angels. Kind of like the Boy Scouts...fist you have to be a Cub then a Webelo and so on.
The next time someone shoves you toward a state of anger…take your view off their eyes and place it on the path a pigeon flies. Never react to someone’s actions…softly whisper a coo coo coo and the world will begin to sing with you.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Misusing or faking power...
Having or wanting power is looked upon as being a connection to temptation.
Power...to be or not to be cannot be unless you’ve agreed to be powerful. So millions if not billions set out daily to hoist their flags over soils governed by a need to succeed and the only way to achieve is to be powerful.
It’s only natural to think of power as being a verbal or monetary command over another person, place or thing. We see it everyday, department heads and wanna-be ladder climbers whose only mission at the moment is to seize control of all available powers.
Holding the power to create lasting impressions caused by a decision is a place of value but not the power I’m discussing.
The power to create enough energy to make it through a Monday is a fully exposed can’t take it back temptation. When you empower your willingness or lack thereof with a powerful surge of inner strength…it is written in the ancient chapters of walking in peace that you’ve taken temptation by the hand and ordered it to walk with you.
The reason why its looked upon as being a temptation is because the majority of us misuse its presence; we up our energy to gain access to a productive day at work which lands a few pennies in the checking account. We cram power bars and drinks into the body knowing the end result will be a body geared toward working out harder which might put an itty bitty bump in the area located between your shoulder and elbow.
We’ve learned to feed off power to the point of making it our daily breakfast, lunch, dinner and desert. Having it makes us feel important especially in the department of me, myself and I.
So what gives? If empowerment isn’t a healthy tool then why are bank accounts emptied daily in the way of supporting authors and motivational speakers? I didn’t say they didn’t work…my words are, “The majority of us misuse its presence.”
How many times a day do you declare yourself depressed not realizing your current energy flow is 100% at a natural level but because you aren’t flying off the walls or rushing through a workday quicker than ice cream melting on a 90 degree day…then you must be depressed and oh well…we’re gonna give up.
Heard a great quote, “The average day moves extremely slow…it’s the years that fly so quickly.”
I know what kind of energy is required to produce a screamer car commercial. What I didn’t realize was how easy it was to abuse it. While in the recording studio, trying to be radio funny, constantly attempting to keep the moods in an upswing formation…I chose to impersonate one of my extremely loud in your face car commercials over the intro of the song the musicians had painstakingly laid down…when it came time for me to drop my vocal tracks…the voice was gone. The entire recording session was shot, money was wasted and the musicians who took the time to be with me walked away shaking their heads because it meant coming back another day, another time.
In martial arts Master Harris taught me a valuable lesson in brick breaking that requires an agreement with the power within. If I’m being asked to slam my right fist through a hard object, the only way I’m going to successfully move my power through it has nothing to do with my biceps and shoulders and everything to do with building a relationship between the object that will soon become two and the person setting their mental goals on reaching beyond the normal.
My double brick break from a pushup position was a total miss every time until I began to respect the energy from within. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I asked the bricks if I could use them in my demonstration. Inside one minute, my next attempt at breaking the bricks was a success because there is something to be said about understanding what it is we create naturally on the inside and respecting it in the beginning middle and end.
Everyone has countless shapes of energy within them…what we’re unaware of is its misuse. While we continue to search for the perfect pair of shoes that give us up up and away, possibilities tend to melt when what we have as an energy maker is put into machine mode and ridden like a work horse through a forest of fields that have been so hard through ignoring the soil that tilling it takes not only this lifetime but the generations that follow.
Take the time to discover what gives you natural energy without having to depend on it only during times of self created crisis and or reasons to harness power from a passerby. Physically find the core of your best day at work and ask it to come back tomorrow because being with it made you happier and much easier to get along with which opened the door for teamwork to work. Which created a path to better conversations with out of control teens. Which fed the rivers of your create ideas enabling them with enough confidence to become more than just a wasted thought.
I abused my inner source of energy yesterday…only to realize today I’ll do my radio show with an injured vocal delivery the average listener won’t pick up on unless you’ve been educated to hear it. Now that you have…you might actually throw something at the speakers my lips are reaching through.
Get to know you and the power created…then teach yourself to stop misusing it.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Power...to be or not to be cannot be unless you’ve agreed to be powerful. So millions if not billions set out daily to hoist their flags over soils governed by a need to succeed and the only way to achieve is to be powerful.
It’s only natural to think of power as being a verbal or monetary command over another person, place or thing. We see it everyday, department heads and wanna-be ladder climbers whose only mission at the moment is to seize control of all available powers.
Holding the power to create lasting impressions caused by a decision is a place of value but not the power I’m discussing.
The power to create enough energy to make it through a Monday is a fully exposed can’t take it back temptation. When you empower your willingness or lack thereof with a powerful surge of inner strength…it is written in the ancient chapters of walking in peace that you’ve taken temptation by the hand and ordered it to walk with you.
The reason why its looked upon as being a temptation is because the majority of us misuse its presence; we up our energy to gain access to a productive day at work which lands a few pennies in the checking account. We cram power bars and drinks into the body knowing the end result will be a body geared toward working out harder which might put an itty bitty bump in the area located between your shoulder and elbow.
We’ve learned to feed off power to the point of making it our daily breakfast, lunch, dinner and desert. Having it makes us feel important especially in the department of me, myself and I.
So what gives? If empowerment isn’t a healthy tool then why are bank accounts emptied daily in the way of supporting authors and motivational speakers? I didn’t say they didn’t work…my words are, “The majority of us misuse its presence.”
How many times a day do you declare yourself depressed not realizing your current energy flow is 100% at a natural level but because you aren’t flying off the walls or rushing through a workday quicker than ice cream melting on a 90 degree day…then you must be depressed and oh well…we’re gonna give up.
Heard a great quote, “The average day moves extremely slow…it’s the years that fly so quickly.”
I know what kind of energy is required to produce a screamer car commercial. What I didn’t realize was how easy it was to abuse it. While in the recording studio, trying to be radio funny, constantly attempting to keep the moods in an upswing formation…I chose to impersonate one of my extremely loud in your face car commercials over the intro of the song the musicians had painstakingly laid down…when it came time for me to drop my vocal tracks…the voice was gone. The entire recording session was shot, money was wasted and the musicians who took the time to be with me walked away shaking their heads because it meant coming back another day, another time.
In martial arts Master Harris taught me a valuable lesson in brick breaking that requires an agreement with the power within. If I’m being asked to slam my right fist through a hard object, the only way I’m going to successfully move my power through it has nothing to do with my biceps and shoulders and everything to do with building a relationship between the object that will soon become two and the person setting their mental goals on reaching beyond the normal.
My double brick break from a pushup position was a total miss every time until I began to respect the energy from within. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I asked the bricks if I could use them in my demonstration. Inside one minute, my next attempt at breaking the bricks was a success because there is something to be said about understanding what it is we create naturally on the inside and respecting it in the beginning middle and end.
Everyone has countless shapes of energy within them…what we’re unaware of is its misuse. While we continue to search for the perfect pair of shoes that give us up up and away, possibilities tend to melt when what we have as an energy maker is put into machine mode and ridden like a work horse through a forest of fields that have been so hard through ignoring the soil that tilling it takes not only this lifetime but the generations that follow.
Take the time to discover what gives you natural energy without having to depend on it only during times of self created crisis and or reasons to harness power from a passerby. Physically find the core of your best day at work and ask it to come back tomorrow because being with it made you happier and much easier to get along with which opened the door for teamwork to work. Which created a path to better conversations with out of control teens. Which fed the rivers of your create ideas enabling them with enough confidence to become more than just a wasted thought.
I abused my inner source of energy yesterday…only to realize today I’ll do my radio show with an injured vocal delivery the average listener won’t pick up on unless you’ve been educated to hear it. Now that you have…you might actually throw something at the speakers my lips are reaching through.
Get to know you and the power created…then teach yourself to stop misusing it.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Thursday, August 26, 2010
I think I can? No! I know I can!
It’s almost Fall in the Carolina’s…tis the time of year when festivals of many line the city streets inviting wanderers from afar to taste new sweets, dance to new beats and participate in the presentation of visual artists who’ve placed paint on a canvas once blizzard white.
Stop! Stop! Turn off the Tinker Bell chimes and put away the self created fanfare one feels when reaching a point of presentation then walk from its array of colors because who in God’s name would want to see what you create?
Um….me.
Closet artistry is fear fed by rivers, oceans, mountains and universes still undiscovered. Once you’ve exposed, “I think I can” to your process…the right side of your personality quickly becomes jealous and pulls from its trunks of funk priceless relics called, “Loser, freak, disconnected wanna be” and every other name you think people call you but have never physically watched their lips put it into motion.
It sucks to be creative! If you think speaking Japanese and Korean is difficult, I challenge you to gently explain to family and friends why you’ve got a constant urge to visit Michaels, Home Depot and Hobby Lobby. The support is brilliant in the beginning because it’s human nature…but how many countless nights do musicians spend alone in bedrooms, living rooms and hotel rooms locked onto a sound only they hear and the night passes too quickly before a single note is left on a device designed for recording?
Until you begin the journey of grasping a better view of where art comes from…you face the daily ache of I don’t know what’s wrong…it just hurts.
Taking the time to study another voice, handshake, finely tuned finger capable of putting pictures on rice should always serve as a great inspiration. If everybody was born to be great…what would great be? Therefore it takes a lot of nearly greats and almost ok’s to invite light the corners of your personal canvas.
Stop racing through flea markets and off campus Targets and begin to allow your inner creative self to recognize a single ingredient of commonality. Luck has nothing to do with putting your abilities on display. If that’s the case why dream? I’ll start collecting rabbit’s feet and football jerseys with the number seven.
Why do some people locate the confidence required to put their work on display?
I’m going to be quite blunt…creative people are known for surrounding themselves with jealous negative people. Ouch! No way! Who are you trying to fool?
In 2002, while taking my first steps into a 2,000 year old art called Karate…instantly I was greeted by individuals that didn’t fit within the heavily promoted view of what Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan shot through theater eyes; where were the high flying kickers? What do you mean brick breaking doesn’t begin until red belt? Are you serious, I can only focus on the front and side kick for the first six months of these studies? Where are the pretty people?
From the outside, martial arts has a certain brand to it that either inspires you or gives you something else to toss into the back of the closet. In my new book Another 1021 Thoughts I write: If you want perfection, don’t take up martial arts. I’m learning about how the mind and body are supposed to be confused. Learn to take it slowly and don’t let anyone know of your personal disappointment. In radio, failure never leaves me with a loss of words. Karate is costing me! Anytime I’m caught beating myself up…I’m forced to do more pushups. Sensei put me face first into the mat and told me to look into the mirror. His words rang out, “Trust that self you are or be defeated before you begin.” Which proves that I am nothing but a frog in a nearby pond—the master of my kingdom until danger nears…then I leap from sight.
All shapes of art should be looked upon as being an avenue of self abuse. We want so bad to express until it’s time to take what we see on the inside and give it away.
September 12, 2002
My first martial arts test
The view is that of a new path, an open window toward better controlling speed, temperament, success and strength. Turning toward my heart and lungs, I no longer see the self I used to be, but rather a changed bird, one that can almost fly. I don’t search for entanglement; I divide everything into pieces, deciding within seconds if what is presented is worth the energy it’ll take to completely change the course of my connection.
What I learned then continues to live today through my other avenues of display.
When was the last time you spoke to the artist inside? How often do you allow yourself to be surrounded by jealous negative people? An email the other day makes its way through my computer page, “I don’t have time to deal with this…I’m swamped.” To which I replied, and please keep in mind I was only trying to help change the path the artist was walking, “I too am swamped but you never hear me bragging about it.”
Not a negative. I could’ve easily written back, “I’m sorry, guess that’s why you make the big bucks.”
If you constantly tell the creative person how busy you are…you’ll never find time to enjoy that unforgettable invisible feeling when a one time thought has become your current reality. The way you treat yourself is how you treat others. Or as my third grade favorite teacher in the whole wide world Mrs. Stephenson once said, “I look into your desk daily not to snoop but to look for ways to help you locate a more organized way to live. A messy desk says a lot…it’s my job to listen.”
Guess that’s why I display daily blogs…although it features bad grammar, misplaced thoughts and words and sometimes I come across crass, too positive and overbearing on the support for the underdogs…it’s just my way of looking through this computer screen to do nothing more than study your desk called life.
You only need one fan of your work to feel like an artist…let that fan be yourself.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Stop! Stop! Turn off the Tinker Bell chimes and put away the self created fanfare one feels when reaching a point of presentation then walk from its array of colors because who in God’s name would want to see what you create?
Um….me.
Closet artistry is fear fed by rivers, oceans, mountains and universes still undiscovered. Once you’ve exposed, “I think I can” to your process…the right side of your personality quickly becomes jealous and pulls from its trunks of funk priceless relics called, “Loser, freak, disconnected wanna be” and every other name you think people call you but have never physically watched their lips put it into motion.
It sucks to be creative! If you think speaking Japanese and Korean is difficult, I challenge you to gently explain to family and friends why you’ve got a constant urge to visit Michaels, Home Depot and Hobby Lobby. The support is brilliant in the beginning because it’s human nature…but how many countless nights do musicians spend alone in bedrooms, living rooms and hotel rooms locked onto a sound only they hear and the night passes too quickly before a single note is left on a device designed for recording?
Until you begin the journey of grasping a better view of where art comes from…you face the daily ache of I don’t know what’s wrong…it just hurts.
Taking the time to study another voice, handshake, finely tuned finger capable of putting pictures on rice should always serve as a great inspiration. If everybody was born to be great…what would great be? Therefore it takes a lot of nearly greats and almost ok’s to invite light the corners of your personal canvas.
Stop racing through flea markets and off campus Targets and begin to allow your inner creative self to recognize a single ingredient of commonality. Luck has nothing to do with putting your abilities on display. If that’s the case why dream? I’ll start collecting rabbit’s feet and football jerseys with the number seven.
Why do some people locate the confidence required to put their work on display?
I’m going to be quite blunt…creative people are known for surrounding themselves with jealous negative people. Ouch! No way! Who are you trying to fool?
In 2002, while taking my first steps into a 2,000 year old art called Karate…instantly I was greeted by individuals that didn’t fit within the heavily promoted view of what Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan shot through theater eyes; where were the high flying kickers? What do you mean brick breaking doesn’t begin until red belt? Are you serious, I can only focus on the front and side kick for the first six months of these studies? Where are the pretty people?
From the outside, martial arts has a certain brand to it that either inspires you or gives you something else to toss into the back of the closet. In my new book Another 1021 Thoughts I write: If you want perfection, don’t take up martial arts. I’m learning about how the mind and body are supposed to be confused. Learn to take it slowly and don’t let anyone know of your personal disappointment. In radio, failure never leaves me with a loss of words. Karate is costing me! Anytime I’m caught beating myself up…I’m forced to do more pushups. Sensei put me face first into the mat and told me to look into the mirror. His words rang out, “Trust that self you are or be defeated before you begin.” Which proves that I am nothing but a frog in a nearby pond—the master of my kingdom until danger nears…then I leap from sight.
All shapes of art should be looked upon as being an avenue of self abuse. We want so bad to express until it’s time to take what we see on the inside and give it away.
September 12, 2002
My first martial arts test
The view is that of a new path, an open window toward better controlling speed, temperament, success and strength. Turning toward my heart and lungs, I no longer see the self I used to be, but rather a changed bird, one that can almost fly. I don’t search for entanglement; I divide everything into pieces, deciding within seconds if what is presented is worth the energy it’ll take to completely change the course of my connection.
What I learned then continues to live today through my other avenues of display.
When was the last time you spoke to the artist inside? How often do you allow yourself to be surrounded by jealous negative people? An email the other day makes its way through my computer page, “I don’t have time to deal with this…I’m swamped.” To which I replied, and please keep in mind I was only trying to help change the path the artist was walking, “I too am swamped but you never hear me bragging about it.”
Not a negative. I could’ve easily written back, “I’m sorry, guess that’s why you make the big bucks.”
If you constantly tell the creative person how busy you are…you’ll never find time to enjoy that unforgettable invisible feeling when a one time thought has become your current reality. The way you treat yourself is how you treat others. Or as my third grade favorite teacher in the whole wide world Mrs. Stephenson once said, “I look into your desk daily not to snoop but to look for ways to help you locate a more organized way to live. A messy desk says a lot…it’s my job to listen.”
Guess that’s why I display daily blogs…although it features bad grammar, misplaced thoughts and words and sometimes I come across crass, too positive and overbearing on the support for the underdogs…it’s just my way of looking through this computer screen to do nothing more than study your desk called life.
You only need one fan of your work to feel like an artist…let that fan be yourself.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Words of wisdom from Police Chief Rodney Monroe...
Charlotte Police Chief Rodney Monroe saw no walls, felt no need to stop at the base of the unforeseen mountain, didn’t fear walking through a thick cloud that had been lying undetected on the path for thirty six months and counting. The Police Chief held back nothing when expressing with deep regret and sorrow, “You can’t teach stupid.”
There’s no need to burden your life with the presence of heavy seeds invited by such leaves of change, his reasons for sharing can be located in places where newsmakers hang their fingerprints before releasing thoughts and emotions into awaiting computer faces and newspaper headlines.
I don’t come here to report news; I choose instead to listen…
Quickly draping my fingers around the DVR’s remote control I rewound the Police Chief’s quote over and over wanting to make sure I heard every vowel, consonant and word formation…his front forwardness was a declaration to anyone, everyone including myself to stop blaming mistakes and failures on someone other than yourself.
In this current world based on being politically correct none of this should be discussed and yet each of us is affected hourly by the end results of the newly accepted.
Light heartedly we allow the misplacement of time to be no longer of importance. For years Jay Leno has jokingly made fun of Californian’s who take being late and turn it into a reason to relax, breathe in the air, eliminate the rush from your tush and be all you can without hurrying. A major league business owner looks at me every month and says, “Now Arroe…you know when I say Wednesday at 11 AM I really mean it’ll happen sometime this week. I promise to never take up too much of your time.”
This is the farthest of Captain Rodney’s concerns but serves as a great starting place for a poet with a pen to share a vision of how unaccountable we’ve become for the actions we continue to forge into the side of objects that force others to stop, look around and like it or not accept it.
How often during the average week do you fall witness to an action that generated a reaction that your father in his earlier years would’ve found reason to tan your hide for? The one person I never wanted to become was my Stepfather; through my eyes he was mean, hateful, out of control stern and featured a loud mouth that could be heard sixteen blocks from the house. Today, I’ve been taught to talk soft, inviting, easily encouraging, accepting bad for good because nobody wants to stifle creative flow. I pray everyday my daughter’s two kids grow up not wanting to be me, “What a weakling! He’s the wimp on the beach that gets sand kicked in his face cuz its wrong to step up and make right out of what’s been wronged.”
I honestly don’t know how Joe and Vi average are going to take Police Chief Rodney’s vocal delivery, “You can’t teach stupid.”
My martial arts Master has driven deep into our mind body and souls that winning is a choice. Does that mean?
Am I a victim of being too politically correct by not finishing the sentence?
I know if I act stupid in Tae Kwon Do there’ll be an injury, quite possibly one that’ll be carried with you the rest of your life. I know if I act stupid walking in a bank the hired security will be on me quicker than the financial institution whips money from my checking account. I know if I get in the car, don’t buckle my seat belt and drink alcohol while driving 110 mph down a single lane highway the final thought from my father will undoubtedly be, “I didn’t teach him to be stupid.”
I can’t even swat my adult dogs that should’ve known better. I look at Sami and Harold and calmly explain, “I would never do something to ruin your day…why do you continue to run after the squirrels? It hurts my bare feet to run through the forest like that. Please, please stop doing that to me.”
I’m man enough to admit such make nice behavior makes me look pretty damn stupid to the rest of the hood.
I didn’t get smacked around as a kid. I felt a cowboy boot in the rump once or twice but the mere mention of the Stepfather getting angry wiped the stupid right off my determination. Seriously, outside of losing your job…when was the last time your next choice was governed by an act that hoisted you away from looking stupid?
If Master Harris tells me to do 50 push ups…I don’t make noises and run home to pout in the corner. I do them no questions asked. I believe so much in his spirit and presentation of discipline that when I fail to deliver perfect form the next decision is to focus on being better not look out across the room for supporters of being stupid. Stupid isn’t comedy…the only reason why others laugh is because they know you’re a** is grass.
What if accountability became law?
Now that’s comedy! It’ll never happen…those attempting to keep it alive will be told to keep silent or be sent to special training to be shown how encouragement is an act that no longer questions allowing it to become a decision they’ve chosen to make and not you who knows better.
“You can’t teach stupid…” said Police Chief Rodney Monroe on Tuesday August 24, 2010
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
There’s no need to burden your life with the presence of heavy seeds invited by such leaves of change, his reasons for sharing can be located in places where newsmakers hang their fingerprints before releasing thoughts and emotions into awaiting computer faces and newspaper headlines.
I don’t come here to report news; I choose instead to listen…
Quickly draping my fingers around the DVR’s remote control I rewound the Police Chief’s quote over and over wanting to make sure I heard every vowel, consonant and word formation…his front forwardness was a declaration to anyone, everyone including myself to stop blaming mistakes and failures on someone other than yourself.
In this current world based on being politically correct none of this should be discussed and yet each of us is affected hourly by the end results of the newly accepted.
Light heartedly we allow the misplacement of time to be no longer of importance. For years Jay Leno has jokingly made fun of Californian’s who take being late and turn it into a reason to relax, breathe in the air, eliminate the rush from your tush and be all you can without hurrying. A major league business owner looks at me every month and says, “Now Arroe…you know when I say Wednesday at 11 AM I really mean it’ll happen sometime this week. I promise to never take up too much of your time.”
This is the farthest of Captain Rodney’s concerns but serves as a great starting place for a poet with a pen to share a vision of how unaccountable we’ve become for the actions we continue to forge into the side of objects that force others to stop, look around and like it or not accept it.
How often during the average week do you fall witness to an action that generated a reaction that your father in his earlier years would’ve found reason to tan your hide for? The one person I never wanted to become was my Stepfather; through my eyes he was mean, hateful, out of control stern and featured a loud mouth that could be heard sixteen blocks from the house. Today, I’ve been taught to talk soft, inviting, easily encouraging, accepting bad for good because nobody wants to stifle creative flow. I pray everyday my daughter’s two kids grow up not wanting to be me, “What a weakling! He’s the wimp on the beach that gets sand kicked in his face cuz its wrong to step up and make right out of what’s been wronged.”
I honestly don’t know how Joe and Vi average are going to take Police Chief Rodney’s vocal delivery, “You can’t teach stupid.”
My martial arts Master has driven deep into our mind body and souls that winning is a choice. Does that mean?
Am I a victim of being too politically correct by not finishing the sentence?
I know if I act stupid in Tae Kwon Do there’ll be an injury, quite possibly one that’ll be carried with you the rest of your life. I know if I act stupid walking in a bank the hired security will be on me quicker than the financial institution whips money from my checking account. I know if I get in the car, don’t buckle my seat belt and drink alcohol while driving 110 mph down a single lane highway the final thought from my father will undoubtedly be, “I didn’t teach him to be stupid.”
I can’t even swat my adult dogs that should’ve known better. I look at Sami and Harold and calmly explain, “I would never do something to ruin your day…why do you continue to run after the squirrels? It hurts my bare feet to run through the forest like that. Please, please stop doing that to me.”
I’m man enough to admit such make nice behavior makes me look pretty damn stupid to the rest of the hood.
I didn’t get smacked around as a kid. I felt a cowboy boot in the rump once or twice but the mere mention of the Stepfather getting angry wiped the stupid right off my determination. Seriously, outside of losing your job…when was the last time your next choice was governed by an act that hoisted you away from looking stupid?
If Master Harris tells me to do 50 push ups…I don’t make noises and run home to pout in the corner. I do them no questions asked. I believe so much in his spirit and presentation of discipline that when I fail to deliver perfect form the next decision is to focus on being better not look out across the room for supporters of being stupid. Stupid isn’t comedy…the only reason why others laugh is because they know you’re a** is grass.
What if accountability became law?
Now that’s comedy! It’ll never happen…those attempting to keep it alive will be told to keep silent or be sent to special training to be shown how encouragement is an act that no longer questions allowing it to become a decision they’ve chosen to make and not you who knows better.
“You can’t teach stupid…” said Police Chief Rodney Monroe on Tuesday August 24, 2010
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Word doodling...
Challenges…I love them! Would hate to think being a martial artist brought it out of me when I know how seriously irritating it must have been to my parents to raise me. Not your typical punk brat that chased flying footballs rode Stingrays with baseball cards in the spokes or waddled through mud then quickly tramped across a clean kitchen floor.
Nope…I was the monster who constantly asked, “Who, what, where, when and why?” Never settling for the answer shared—there had to be a better solution, resolution and or institution that could show me the truth. The Stepfather constantly warned, “Don’t challenge me.”
Up until 1985 I wrapped up every radio show with the quote, “There’s only one challenge in life and that’s life itself. Never give up because you may never get another chance to play the game of life.”
Challenges…not fights, wars, bar brawls and scuffles. Not motivation through intimidation, Three King beats out two Jack’s and a Joker or being named the winner of America’s Got Talent. As challenging as those might be…the most oddball things tend to inspire me.
In response to the daily Blogged entries someone writes, “You’re passion to write is apparent, I’ve never met someone who could author a two page book based on a cereal box.”
Outside of a few bottles of red wines that constantly look purple and the large jugs of laundry soap whose colors resemble NASCAR’s fastest and finest, the cereal box is one of the largest chunks of advertising found in a grocery store. It has to be! Anything less than a bowl makes my tummy growl and at nearly five bucks a box and an economy that refuses to wake up…stimulating the imagination is what the makers of munch and crunch is having for breakfast.
Standing in the cereal row is like going to a class reunion; every box resembles a chapter of your life. The kid in me nearly began to cry when Target last year revamped the sales of Count Chocula and Boo Berry. Quickly turning to the fiber enhanced dried flakes the body quivered thinking, “Dude! Not today…not in the mood to spend more time running than performing.”
I’ve never told my mother the real reason why I spent so much time sleeping over at friends houses…their parents let them dive into boxes of Frosted Flakes, Trix and anything else that came with six bags of sugar…usually fighting over the free gift inside.
Then one day the makers of Alphabets drove kids freakishly insane by putting a free record on the backside. You couldn’t just rip the thing off; the giant hole left would serve as an open door freeing billions of tiny bites and pieces into your mothers neat and always in perfect shape cabinets and pantry. If you wanted to hear the Archies it meant eating the entire box.
Which I’ve done before; not the cereal but the box. I can’t stand chewing gum, pencils or pens and the thought of sucking on candy puts junk in the trunks of my throat and makes me sound like I need to gargle 24/7. Cereal boxes are chewy without getting gooey on your tonsils. And if you played the game right, sugar escaped the thick plastic cover protecting the flakes inside with a coat of something unique making the cereal box something worth eating without forcing the body into believing it had just devoured used paste.
Cereal boxes are designed to get your attention inside seven seconds or you’re out of there. If magazine and television advertising hasn’t branded a reason to purchase its flavor then the last ditch effort is to make your eyes shout, “Wow! Cereal that tastes like beer! I’ve gotta have this stuff!”
Mom was endless with her stories about cereal, “They are designed to make you fat as a kid so you’ll buy diet pills as an adult!”
I weighed a whopping 159 when I left home after high school…once set free to be me in adult clothes I shot up and up and up. My first wife didn’t bark, scream, yell, or tell me to put down the Captain Crunch. In fact she said, “Let’s eat it for lunch!”
But this is a story about the box not the mock fruits and veggies inside. To this day I love to get a tiny little surprise. I’ll argue with a Wheaties box for hours, “The person you have featured on your front cover doesn’t deserve to be there!” Wait a minute, the clean cut, cool looking gent pasted to the front of this stuff with no scent doesn’t look constipated, “Finally something that works!”
It wasn’t until my heart attack that I began to pay attention to the sides of a box of cereal…you know, the real story, protein, salt, blah blah and some more blah, blah, blah. I’ve read each cereal box like a book and make it a point to stay completely away from that row at the grocery store; and oh how those boxes have reacted! I can’t be the only one who hears voices, “Hey you! I have something for ya kid. Come a little bit closer to the second shelf from the floor…I feature tiny apples and cinnamon. Mmmmm you love that combination it reminds you of your grandmothers house in Wyoming.”
The cereal box I feel sorry for and feel it deserves to be saved by a nonprofit organization is generic. For crying out loud it’s just white! Black block lettering that creates a voice that’s nothing more than a tremble in the wind. I’m completely guilty of buying a box or two just because cereal boxes have feelings too. Tried chewing it one time…I swear to god a chunk of the cardboard is still caught in my back teeth. Cough! Cough!
When I see others with a generic cereal box in their cart I want to get on my knees and pray for flava.
I’ve used cereal boxes to drive in the HOV lane. Dah! Once you’re done, knock a hole in the bottom and wrap it around the headrest on the passenger’s side…instantly you are transformed into a legal driver and won’t be penalized for having only one person in the car.
Cereal boxes! Advertising at its American best. If only we could get ice cream boxes to be so….big! I once tried to chew on one of them…..stop!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Nope…I was the monster who constantly asked, “Who, what, where, when and why?” Never settling for the answer shared—there had to be a better solution, resolution and or institution that could show me the truth. The Stepfather constantly warned, “Don’t challenge me.”
Up until 1985 I wrapped up every radio show with the quote, “There’s only one challenge in life and that’s life itself. Never give up because you may never get another chance to play the game of life.”
Challenges…not fights, wars, bar brawls and scuffles. Not motivation through intimidation, Three King beats out two Jack’s and a Joker or being named the winner of America’s Got Talent. As challenging as those might be…the most oddball things tend to inspire me.
In response to the daily Blogged entries someone writes, “You’re passion to write is apparent, I’ve never met someone who could author a two page book based on a cereal box.”
Outside of a few bottles of red wines that constantly look purple and the large jugs of laundry soap whose colors resemble NASCAR’s fastest and finest, the cereal box is one of the largest chunks of advertising found in a grocery store. It has to be! Anything less than a bowl makes my tummy growl and at nearly five bucks a box and an economy that refuses to wake up…stimulating the imagination is what the makers of munch and crunch is having for breakfast.
Standing in the cereal row is like going to a class reunion; every box resembles a chapter of your life. The kid in me nearly began to cry when Target last year revamped the sales of Count Chocula and Boo Berry. Quickly turning to the fiber enhanced dried flakes the body quivered thinking, “Dude! Not today…not in the mood to spend more time running than performing.”
I’ve never told my mother the real reason why I spent so much time sleeping over at friends houses…their parents let them dive into boxes of Frosted Flakes, Trix and anything else that came with six bags of sugar…usually fighting over the free gift inside.
Then one day the makers of Alphabets drove kids freakishly insane by putting a free record on the backside. You couldn’t just rip the thing off; the giant hole left would serve as an open door freeing billions of tiny bites and pieces into your mothers neat and always in perfect shape cabinets and pantry. If you wanted to hear the Archies it meant eating the entire box.
Which I’ve done before; not the cereal but the box. I can’t stand chewing gum, pencils or pens and the thought of sucking on candy puts junk in the trunks of my throat and makes me sound like I need to gargle 24/7. Cereal boxes are chewy without getting gooey on your tonsils. And if you played the game right, sugar escaped the thick plastic cover protecting the flakes inside with a coat of something unique making the cereal box something worth eating without forcing the body into believing it had just devoured used paste.
Cereal boxes are designed to get your attention inside seven seconds or you’re out of there. If magazine and television advertising hasn’t branded a reason to purchase its flavor then the last ditch effort is to make your eyes shout, “Wow! Cereal that tastes like beer! I’ve gotta have this stuff!”
Mom was endless with her stories about cereal, “They are designed to make you fat as a kid so you’ll buy diet pills as an adult!”
I weighed a whopping 159 when I left home after high school…once set free to be me in adult clothes I shot up and up and up. My first wife didn’t bark, scream, yell, or tell me to put down the Captain Crunch. In fact she said, “Let’s eat it for lunch!”
But this is a story about the box not the mock fruits and veggies inside. To this day I love to get a tiny little surprise. I’ll argue with a Wheaties box for hours, “The person you have featured on your front cover doesn’t deserve to be there!” Wait a minute, the clean cut, cool looking gent pasted to the front of this stuff with no scent doesn’t look constipated, “Finally something that works!”
It wasn’t until my heart attack that I began to pay attention to the sides of a box of cereal…you know, the real story, protein, salt, blah blah and some more blah, blah, blah. I’ve read each cereal box like a book and make it a point to stay completely away from that row at the grocery store; and oh how those boxes have reacted! I can’t be the only one who hears voices, “Hey you! I have something for ya kid. Come a little bit closer to the second shelf from the floor…I feature tiny apples and cinnamon. Mmmmm you love that combination it reminds you of your grandmothers house in Wyoming.”
The cereal box I feel sorry for and feel it deserves to be saved by a nonprofit organization is generic. For crying out loud it’s just white! Black block lettering that creates a voice that’s nothing more than a tremble in the wind. I’m completely guilty of buying a box or two just because cereal boxes have feelings too. Tried chewing it one time…I swear to god a chunk of the cardboard is still caught in my back teeth. Cough! Cough!
When I see others with a generic cereal box in their cart I want to get on my knees and pray for flava.
I’ve used cereal boxes to drive in the HOV lane. Dah! Once you’re done, knock a hole in the bottom and wrap it around the headrest on the passenger’s side…instantly you are transformed into a legal driver and won’t be penalized for having only one person in the car.
Cereal boxes! Advertising at its American best. If only we could get ice cream boxes to be so….big! I once tried to chew on one of them…..stop!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Friday, August 20, 2010
Long distance dedication...
Paging through a paperback from Brian Andreas makes me giggle like a comic book loving kid. I still believe there’s no such thing as comedy; it’s an adjective that best describes the human reaction that takes place when sitting in the center of something you relate with.
Even in the worst of conditions we find space to laugh during unexpected Friday morning meetings, someone changing a lightbulb 18 feet off the ground and the way they stretch their body on a six foot metal ladder rips the chord from your parachute of memories and what about the sight of two orange breasted Robins rubbing around in the dirt like two year old kids after a later summer morning rain.
The things that make us laugh rarely include NBC, CBS and the latest edition of People Magazine.
Brian Andreas writes: He wrote secret notes to people he hadn’t met yet. Some of them aren’t even born but we live in a strange neighborhood and they’ll need help figuring things out and I won’t be around to explain it to them.
Unless you’re a writer, a jotter down of thought thinker, a secret poet, a visionary whose pictures are unreleased…the chances of grasping a happy thought from Brian’s chicken scratch is way off the map. Wrong...
Writers can’t explain why they fork out enormous amounts of chump change on pens and other writing instruments, they just know, if I don’t do it…there’s gonna be an implosion.
Now find someone who feels the same way. Gulp! Ever been to a writers circle? Bigger egos than radio people and yet the microphones they elect to use stand a one in one million chance of reaching an audience. So we come up with brilliant excuses like, “I’m not writing for the present…my words are for those who’ll be born three generations from today.”
I can’t imagine my daughters daughters daughters daughter deciding one rainy Sunday afternoon to reach into a weather proofed box tossed into a dusty corner at Storage Is Us…and pulling out nibblets of what I once penned. In 2065 the IPad and Droid will have gone the way of the Walkman Radio. I can’t fathom what a sheet of paper will mean to them except, “I hate him for killing so many trees because he needed a place to think!”
Lean over and tell that person at work that you love the way they make you laugh.
How tough will that be? The problem with the world rests in the single most important rule you set out to enforce fresh from first grade, “I wasn’t asked to be part of this family…from this day forward I’ll surround myself with people only I like.” I love that attitude! That’s a team leader who wants only the best in success. NOT!
Coworkers are rarely given enough credit for what they bring to your everyday. Who cares if 99.3% of the time they send your patience button into overdrive. The other 7/100th of a second belongs to that unanticipated split second where they utter a mumble and for some stinking reason you laugh so hard you pee your pants.
Take two minutes and swim the route of chapters already written and sink a thought into the side of the ship carrying a mental picture of a friend, coworker or parent that said something so simple and so right that you find just as much funny in its bone today as you did that day.
My brother Teddy was sternly told to keep his eyes open for our runaway dog Cocoa…while the five kids in Mom’s car feared the worst young Teddy believed if he took his index fingers and thumbs and used them as tools to seriously open his eyes wider than wide can be than he’d be gifted with a full shot of the world. What made it a forever picture of a past I never want to change, the meathead found the dog.
When Brian released; He wrote secret notes to people he hadn’t met yet.
Truth is…we all write secret notes but it’s not always to people but rather a future we’d like to one day meet. I call them picture postcards from the heart. They don’t require an eighty six cent stamp and the mail carrier will never bend it, break it or set it next to a package that smells like onions and burnt burgers.
Brian continues, “But we live in a strange neighborhood and they’ll need help figuring things out and I won’t be around to explain it to them.”
All too many times I hear people tell me their personal stories of how a dream or passing thought felt as if their parents were standing next to them. While the body mourns to feel the gentle kiss on the cheek or an always forgiving ear to hear your trials and challenges… Lean over and tell that person who decided one day while standing next to a calm lake or somewhere in the back yard watching it rain sunshine that you love the way they make you laugh…several years after they’ve passed.
Secret notes to people they hadn’t met yet….The adult you.
Arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Even in the worst of conditions we find space to laugh during unexpected Friday morning meetings, someone changing a lightbulb 18 feet off the ground and the way they stretch their body on a six foot metal ladder rips the chord from your parachute of memories and what about the sight of two orange breasted Robins rubbing around in the dirt like two year old kids after a later summer morning rain.
The things that make us laugh rarely include NBC, CBS and the latest edition of People Magazine.
Brian Andreas writes: He wrote secret notes to people he hadn’t met yet. Some of them aren’t even born but we live in a strange neighborhood and they’ll need help figuring things out and I won’t be around to explain it to them.
Unless you’re a writer, a jotter down of thought thinker, a secret poet, a visionary whose pictures are unreleased…the chances of grasping a happy thought from Brian’s chicken scratch is way off the map. Wrong...
Writers can’t explain why they fork out enormous amounts of chump change on pens and other writing instruments, they just know, if I don’t do it…there’s gonna be an implosion.
Now find someone who feels the same way. Gulp! Ever been to a writers circle? Bigger egos than radio people and yet the microphones they elect to use stand a one in one million chance of reaching an audience. So we come up with brilliant excuses like, “I’m not writing for the present…my words are for those who’ll be born three generations from today.”
I can’t imagine my daughters daughters daughters daughter deciding one rainy Sunday afternoon to reach into a weather proofed box tossed into a dusty corner at Storage Is Us…and pulling out nibblets of what I once penned. In 2065 the IPad and Droid will have gone the way of the Walkman Radio. I can’t fathom what a sheet of paper will mean to them except, “I hate him for killing so many trees because he needed a place to think!”
Lean over and tell that person at work that you love the way they make you laugh.
How tough will that be? The problem with the world rests in the single most important rule you set out to enforce fresh from first grade, “I wasn’t asked to be part of this family…from this day forward I’ll surround myself with people only I like.” I love that attitude! That’s a team leader who wants only the best in success. NOT!
Coworkers are rarely given enough credit for what they bring to your everyday. Who cares if 99.3% of the time they send your patience button into overdrive. The other 7/100th of a second belongs to that unanticipated split second where they utter a mumble and for some stinking reason you laugh so hard you pee your pants.
Take two minutes and swim the route of chapters already written and sink a thought into the side of the ship carrying a mental picture of a friend, coworker or parent that said something so simple and so right that you find just as much funny in its bone today as you did that day.
My brother Teddy was sternly told to keep his eyes open for our runaway dog Cocoa…while the five kids in Mom’s car feared the worst young Teddy believed if he took his index fingers and thumbs and used them as tools to seriously open his eyes wider than wide can be than he’d be gifted with a full shot of the world. What made it a forever picture of a past I never want to change, the meathead found the dog.
When Brian released; He wrote secret notes to people he hadn’t met yet.
Truth is…we all write secret notes but it’s not always to people but rather a future we’d like to one day meet. I call them picture postcards from the heart. They don’t require an eighty six cent stamp and the mail carrier will never bend it, break it or set it next to a package that smells like onions and burnt burgers.
Brian continues, “But we live in a strange neighborhood and they’ll need help figuring things out and I won’t be around to explain it to them.”
All too many times I hear people tell me their personal stories of how a dream or passing thought felt as if their parents were standing next to them. While the body mourns to feel the gentle kiss on the cheek or an always forgiving ear to hear your trials and challenges… Lean over and tell that person who decided one day while standing next to a calm lake or somewhere in the back yard watching it rain sunshine that you love the way they make you laugh…several years after they’ve passed.
Secret notes to people they hadn’t met yet….The adult you.
Arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Thursday, August 19, 2010
This missing link has been located
Deep dark and constantly available to be planted anywhere you don’t want is crab grass, long stringy vines with heart shaped leaves in your back breaking water starved flower garden, family members applying for a part time gig telling the tales of the Grim Reaper, your sliding foot in bowling slightly turns to the left the moment you deliver the ball and those below eighteen living free under your roof still can’t undertake the proper position of delivering the trash outside and the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.
I’ve never doubted your ill feeling. It’s always the tiny things that carry the most weight. Look at the list one more time and see if you can identify the common thread that connects these lingering frustrations…it’s called Commitment Creeping.
The big city bank you’ve dumped funds into for 15 plus years creatively has developed new financial charges that now include your mother’s dog Larry. The grocery store chain loves to show off their 22 checkout lines but only two are open. Popcorn at the movie was $9.50 with free refills last week but has mysteriously leaped up to $11.22 today. That’s ok, use your debit card, the bank will hand out twelve dollars and put the change in your savings account.
Commitment creeping is what we live, eat and breathe every day and every once in a while the mind, body and soul accept the challenge while slipping into a pair of Batman Underoo’s to take on the world. Perennial is a very powerful word…like fire ants, you can kick down my mound but tomorrow is always a brand new beginning.
Stepfather Joe wasted tons of hard to locate energy blaring those drill sergeant vocals into my teenage face, “If you don’t do something around here today I’m going to take away your…your…um…what do you have that I can take away?” Exactly…who moves when you’ve got nothin to lose?
The boss, kids, cousins and the fry cook at Walter’s Fine Dining shouldn’t always be on the receiving end of your bad day blues. The father who moans about never getting family time but spends ninety percent of his awake hours playing golf learns the hard way how fast the tiny monkeys grow up. The daily runner and weight lifting workout king that pushes themselves way beyond normal expectations then wrap up the night with a greasy burger with a sack of fries then wonder why the doctor sternly warned them, “There could be blockage in their heart.”
My biggest weakness is chasing dreams; once locked on, nothing gets in the way of reaching for that bright light linked to success. Now ask me about the last time I went home to Billings to see the parental figures. In the same sentence tack on why the weathered old cedar tree cut down at the beginning of spring still sits on the path the deer used to make their way to the winter wheat and clover planted for them to eat.
It doesn’t matter what psychologist, psychotherapist, religious leader or Mafia connection you consult with, they all use the same explanation when it comes to bringing commitment creeping to an end: Until there’s something tragic, dramatic and way over our heads too hard to explain…there’ll never be change.
Fancy gyms with swimming pools, indoor walking trails and nifty neat weight machines and fit and trim diet planning nutritionists love them some quality human spirit from December to March every year. I’m going to lose weight! I’m hitting the treadmill to get this booty in fine shape for summer! No more cake! Forget those chocolate shakes! Chinese food is great but not after today!
Commitment creeping…
The only way to beat it…you’ve got to get sick. Something has to pick up your world like a Yellowstone National Park snow globe and wreak havoc on that tiny bear with her cubs inside.
Don’t you think if the Chicago Cubs truly wanted to win the pennant race the first step would be to stop trading away those that are really good and want to play? The Cubs make millions being America’s biggest losers. The moment they win the love affair is over.
Michael Cera is no different—the constantly whiny voice nerd, loser, freak show that spent his summer talking to RollingStone Magazine about how he’s made too much money and doesn’t know what to do with it will never change unless he’s dumped like Tom Cruise. Look how much better his flicks have become! I loved him in Knight and Day with Cameron Diaz. Tropic Thunder was unstoppably out loud to this moment hilarious.
Ok here’s the thing…you don’t have to wait to get sick or something bad creeps into your unwritten chapters. If you wanna dump commitment creeping be a big boy and girl and cut it loose. The last thing you want to do during that final moment when earth created air slow dances with your hardened lungs is to sit up and cry out, “I forgot to call my Mom on her birthday!”
I’m going through it right now…there comes a time when everything you’ve promised yourself is no longer stacked in Space Saver plastic boxes. One look into your private closet and the only thing seen are the child’s eyes that once stared at you in the mirror softly asking, “So watcha wanna do when you grow up? I’m digging the idea of _______ (fill in the blank)
This is not a midlife crisis! It’s physically making a connection with everything that’s disconnected you from being you. No matter how hard you try Sears will always has a brand new tool you’ll never use but for some stinking reason you’ve got to have it.
In 1997 it was my goal to replenish an inner city forest with a fresh coat of White Pines. Little did I know thirteen years later those six inch seedlings would stand nearly six feet over me. I walk through them as often as I can touching each trunk with the palm of my hand not because I’m their tree Daddy but a passerby who wants nothing more than to wish them a beautiful day. After I’m gone there’ll be a new Poet in the forest…that’s the one that’s going to make it. Through the powers of unexplained nature my fingerprints will remain, convincing the traveler to do only one thing…write everyday.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
I’ve never doubted your ill feeling. It’s always the tiny things that carry the most weight. Look at the list one more time and see if you can identify the common thread that connects these lingering frustrations…it’s called Commitment Creeping.
The big city bank you’ve dumped funds into for 15 plus years creatively has developed new financial charges that now include your mother’s dog Larry. The grocery store chain loves to show off their 22 checkout lines but only two are open. Popcorn at the movie was $9.50 with free refills last week but has mysteriously leaped up to $11.22 today. That’s ok, use your debit card, the bank will hand out twelve dollars and put the change in your savings account.
Commitment creeping is what we live, eat and breathe every day and every once in a while the mind, body and soul accept the challenge while slipping into a pair of Batman Underoo’s to take on the world. Perennial is a very powerful word…like fire ants, you can kick down my mound but tomorrow is always a brand new beginning.
Stepfather Joe wasted tons of hard to locate energy blaring those drill sergeant vocals into my teenage face, “If you don’t do something around here today I’m going to take away your…your…um…what do you have that I can take away?” Exactly…who moves when you’ve got nothin to lose?
The boss, kids, cousins and the fry cook at Walter’s Fine Dining shouldn’t always be on the receiving end of your bad day blues. The father who moans about never getting family time but spends ninety percent of his awake hours playing golf learns the hard way how fast the tiny monkeys grow up. The daily runner and weight lifting workout king that pushes themselves way beyond normal expectations then wrap up the night with a greasy burger with a sack of fries then wonder why the doctor sternly warned them, “There could be blockage in their heart.”
My biggest weakness is chasing dreams; once locked on, nothing gets in the way of reaching for that bright light linked to success. Now ask me about the last time I went home to Billings to see the parental figures. In the same sentence tack on why the weathered old cedar tree cut down at the beginning of spring still sits on the path the deer used to make their way to the winter wheat and clover planted for them to eat.
It doesn’t matter what psychologist, psychotherapist, religious leader or Mafia connection you consult with, they all use the same explanation when it comes to bringing commitment creeping to an end: Until there’s something tragic, dramatic and way over our heads too hard to explain…there’ll never be change.
Fancy gyms with swimming pools, indoor walking trails and nifty neat weight machines and fit and trim diet planning nutritionists love them some quality human spirit from December to March every year. I’m going to lose weight! I’m hitting the treadmill to get this booty in fine shape for summer! No more cake! Forget those chocolate shakes! Chinese food is great but not after today!
Commitment creeping…
The only way to beat it…you’ve got to get sick. Something has to pick up your world like a Yellowstone National Park snow globe and wreak havoc on that tiny bear with her cubs inside.
Don’t you think if the Chicago Cubs truly wanted to win the pennant race the first step would be to stop trading away those that are really good and want to play? The Cubs make millions being America’s biggest losers. The moment they win the love affair is over.
Michael Cera is no different—the constantly whiny voice nerd, loser, freak show that spent his summer talking to RollingStone Magazine about how he’s made too much money and doesn’t know what to do with it will never change unless he’s dumped like Tom Cruise. Look how much better his flicks have become! I loved him in Knight and Day with Cameron Diaz. Tropic Thunder was unstoppably out loud to this moment hilarious.
Ok here’s the thing…you don’t have to wait to get sick or something bad creeps into your unwritten chapters. If you wanna dump commitment creeping be a big boy and girl and cut it loose. The last thing you want to do during that final moment when earth created air slow dances with your hardened lungs is to sit up and cry out, “I forgot to call my Mom on her birthday!”
I’m going through it right now…there comes a time when everything you’ve promised yourself is no longer stacked in Space Saver plastic boxes. One look into your private closet and the only thing seen are the child’s eyes that once stared at you in the mirror softly asking, “So watcha wanna do when you grow up? I’m digging the idea of _______ (fill in the blank)
This is not a midlife crisis! It’s physically making a connection with everything that’s disconnected you from being you. No matter how hard you try Sears will always has a brand new tool you’ll never use but for some stinking reason you’ve got to have it.
In 1997 it was my goal to replenish an inner city forest with a fresh coat of White Pines. Little did I know thirteen years later those six inch seedlings would stand nearly six feet over me. I walk through them as often as I can touching each trunk with the palm of my hand not because I’m their tree Daddy but a passerby who wants nothing more than to wish them a beautiful day. After I’m gone there’ll be a new Poet in the forest…that’s the one that’s going to make it. Through the powers of unexplained nature my fingerprints will remain, convincing the traveler to do only one thing…write everyday.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Forget my parents! I became my Grand Dad!
The weakest muscle in my system of choice is a humungous bright red button that reads, “Today you shall lead.”
But! I was having fun just being me! How conceited is that? President Reagan couldn’t have been more correct about the up and comers of the 1980’s, the birth place of the Me Generation.
The only problem is…we’ve grown up and the only shoes available to wear carry the sweat and grind of our parents with a sweet tingle of the figures that landed on this rock in the chapters before them.
Like it or not…it’s time to ride the horse!
Best selling author Seth Godin spells it out like this: There’s a vast shortage of leaders. We need you. For the first time since the birth of the rock shaved into a circle that rolls, everybody on the coworker squad is required to push beyond their personal expectations and lead.
I love filling the long hand painted halls at home and at work with extremely loud shouts, “The cream is rising to the top!”
We’ve never been blessed with so much opportunity; positions of decision making are opening and those who were blessed with the proper drive, dedication and determination are mending the holes in the floor while recasting the molds that shape the foundations we call everyday.
If you’re in the market to feel the force from a true Luke Skywalker, get an intern. Their fired up, vision set on tomorrow attitude adds height to value and purpose. No day passes that you don’t experience something that will never be found in a college handbook. By stepping into the game you’re giving permission to that long ago lost feeling that somehow convinced you to stop trying so hard. By teaching your craft you are reigniting your storm.
Your diced up spliced down mixed around barely getting by concept of the American dream left you in the dust because somewhere along the dusty trails someone said, “Avoid being a leader.”
I remember spending endless hours spinning 45’s and 8-tracks in my Montana made teenage bedroom plastered with posters and album sleeves pretending to be everything to radio’s future. Every class in high school was designed to serve as a stepping stone to making broadcasting not only my career but way of life. Like Eric Clapton, I picked up my musical instrument way too early in life and damn if anyone was going to spoil the end result.
Then I ran into me, myself and I running down the rickety old wooden staircase, tripping on the deeply aged and torn carpet the moment these ten toes touched the living room floor, “So Dude, um, man, don’t you think you should be like your cousins and let fate be the coach of your game? They like, have more records than you, drive faster cars, catch the latest movies while spending late night Friday’s at the Dairy Queen. I’d say trying too hard is making you a loser.”
Seth Godin writes, “Leadership isn’t difficult—the best thing is that you don’t need to wait until you’ve got exactly the right job to build a successful organization.”
Leadership is “not” management. Managers manage a process they’ve seen before.
Leadership creates change that you believe in. Movements have leaders and movements make things happen.
Managers have employees. Leaders invite change. People hate change. Leader’s don’t enforce change they swing open the door and smile, “You aren’t going to believe what I just came across…I honestly believe you have something that would bring to the surface an object of unforgettable proportion.”
Leaders are everywhere…sadly, like the next great novel; movie or unbelievable piece of music, what shall move the masses is hidden away in a box because we’ve elected to avoid our reasons for electing to lead.
Leaders don’t sit behind computer screens and critique. Tall wooden ships made to sail across the Atlantic weren’t sealed together by hopes and wishes but rather leadership with a vision. Even if there was a new world waiting to be discovered, where there are no taxes, religion is still a freedom and police officers don’t sit behind trees and billboards patiently waiting for speeders…truth is, we’d look at the clock, see when America’s Got Talent is on, fudge around with the Wii game system, download a Netflix then nab an already opened bag of week old potato chips and sit on the couch.
And I can’t find the strength to argue with that because if you’re damn good at it that means you are the leader of the booty on the sofa patrol and every great chair needs a 200 pound frame to make those legs worth the purpose of using that particular tree when carving out a piece of furniture that sits up off the floor where the dogs pee nearly 24/7.
So…whatcha wanna talk about now? The mere mention of life being a state of relaxation took the tips of your ambition and shot them toward Wal-Mart, Macy’s, Home Depot and Best Buy…avoiding leadership is so much easier to digest when other people’s products buy you well deserved happiness.
The American dream has nothing to do with buying a 3 bedroom house in a nifty cool friendly neighborhood. If the ATM card is workin…we’re cookin! Somebody pop on some Jimmy Buffett!
How old do you think you’ll be when your dreams come knocking a final time? Paint for me the portrait of the leader that doesn’t look like a manager. It’s a wonder Nintendo or Microsoft haven’t developed automatic toosh wipers that come to you at the toosh push of a button.
It’s the only thing missing!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
But! I was having fun just being me! How conceited is that? President Reagan couldn’t have been more correct about the up and comers of the 1980’s, the birth place of the Me Generation.
The only problem is…we’ve grown up and the only shoes available to wear carry the sweat and grind of our parents with a sweet tingle of the figures that landed on this rock in the chapters before them.
Like it or not…it’s time to ride the horse!
Best selling author Seth Godin spells it out like this: There’s a vast shortage of leaders. We need you. For the first time since the birth of the rock shaved into a circle that rolls, everybody on the coworker squad is required to push beyond their personal expectations and lead.
I love filling the long hand painted halls at home and at work with extremely loud shouts, “The cream is rising to the top!”
We’ve never been blessed with so much opportunity; positions of decision making are opening and those who were blessed with the proper drive, dedication and determination are mending the holes in the floor while recasting the molds that shape the foundations we call everyday.
If you’re in the market to feel the force from a true Luke Skywalker, get an intern. Their fired up, vision set on tomorrow attitude adds height to value and purpose. No day passes that you don’t experience something that will never be found in a college handbook. By stepping into the game you’re giving permission to that long ago lost feeling that somehow convinced you to stop trying so hard. By teaching your craft you are reigniting your storm.
Your diced up spliced down mixed around barely getting by concept of the American dream left you in the dust because somewhere along the dusty trails someone said, “Avoid being a leader.”
I remember spending endless hours spinning 45’s and 8-tracks in my Montana made teenage bedroom plastered with posters and album sleeves pretending to be everything to radio’s future. Every class in high school was designed to serve as a stepping stone to making broadcasting not only my career but way of life. Like Eric Clapton, I picked up my musical instrument way too early in life and damn if anyone was going to spoil the end result.
Then I ran into me, myself and I running down the rickety old wooden staircase, tripping on the deeply aged and torn carpet the moment these ten toes touched the living room floor, “So Dude, um, man, don’t you think you should be like your cousins and let fate be the coach of your game? They like, have more records than you, drive faster cars, catch the latest movies while spending late night Friday’s at the Dairy Queen. I’d say trying too hard is making you a loser.”
Seth Godin writes, “Leadership isn’t difficult—the best thing is that you don’t need to wait until you’ve got exactly the right job to build a successful organization.”
Leadership is “not” management. Managers manage a process they’ve seen before.
Leadership creates change that you believe in. Movements have leaders and movements make things happen.
Managers have employees. Leaders invite change. People hate change. Leader’s don’t enforce change they swing open the door and smile, “You aren’t going to believe what I just came across…I honestly believe you have something that would bring to the surface an object of unforgettable proportion.”
Leaders are everywhere…sadly, like the next great novel; movie or unbelievable piece of music, what shall move the masses is hidden away in a box because we’ve elected to avoid our reasons for electing to lead.
Leaders don’t sit behind computer screens and critique. Tall wooden ships made to sail across the Atlantic weren’t sealed together by hopes and wishes but rather leadership with a vision. Even if there was a new world waiting to be discovered, where there are no taxes, religion is still a freedom and police officers don’t sit behind trees and billboards patiently waiting for speeders…truth is, we’d look at the clock, see when America’s Got Talent is on, fudge around with the Wii game system, download a Netflix then nab an already opened bag of week old potato chips and sit on the couch.
And I can’t find the strength to argue with that because if you’re damn good at it that means you are the leader of the booty on the sofa patrol and every great chair needs a 200 pound frame to make those legs worth the purpose of using that particular tree when carving out a piece of furniture that sits up off the floor where the dogs pee nearly 24/7.
So…whatcha wanna talk about now? The mere mention of life being a state of relaxation took the tips of your ambition and shot them toward Wal-Mart, Macy’s, Home Depot and Best Buy…avoiding leadership is so much easier to digest when other people’s products buy you well deserved happiness.
The American dream has nothing to do with buying a 3 bedroom house in a nifty cool friendly neighborhood. If the ATM card is workin…we’re cookin! Somebody pop on some Jimmy Buffett!
How old do you think you’ll be when your dreams come knocking a final time? Paint for me the portrait of the leader that doesn’t look like a manager. It’s a wonder Nintendo or Microsoft haven’t developed automatic toosh wipers that come to you at the toosh push of a button.
It’s the only thing missing!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Taking the stick out of sticky...
A coworker shared with me a paperback from Artist/Author Brian Andreas: Story People. At the birth of the first page he writes, "Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I'm asleep."
This is why writing, sketching out thoughts, penning out a piece of poetry or doodling a song lyric or phrase everyday is extremely important in all walks of life. Being a self proclaimed author gives you permission to never walk alone.
How can you be when other people's words seep into your skin like an extremely hot Carolina sun leaving you bronzed or completely red from embarrassment?
But I don't know what to write! Boredom instantly sets in when I see my writing hand spell out Dear Diary. I have to be to work by eight, if I write I'll be late, late for a very important date.
Books like this one from Brian entertain the core source of your creative button. Take what he's delivered and react to it like an email: Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I'm asleep.
Ask yourself, "Does this mean I should believe more in dreams? What if it's a negative dream?"
Quickly jump to the other side and be that voice you always hear that carries six pounds of doubt in the front pocket, "Dreams are fake! It's the minds way of hitting Control, Alt and Delete on a laptop!"
Just like an email respond, "My dreams are where my mother visits me so why would my mind want to take that away? I see dreams as being a reason to keep listening, to set out on a different journey by visualizing a simple what if and giving it enough hope so it'll shine in the light of yes I can."
Jump back to Captain Grumpy, "Oh God...I can't stand the idea of spending another workday with a Marvel Comics hero destined to make sure the world knows the cup is always half full."
If being interviewed is too sugary then create a dream quote of your own. We all have dreams, take a minute and make yours a reality. Expose it to the world! From my book Oh God What Was I Thinking:
December 28, 1998: Build an ark my son
If I don't try to reshape the fallen forest—my loving neighbors will do it for me. I wish to help the forest breathe so that any destructive man stays completely away. I wish to preserve the forest—to bring to it a stronger life—to last longer than any one mans dream. I'll plant a forest filled with life and not that of another mans greed.
Turning the page...the goal is to uncover what you haven't discovered. If Brian writes: Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I'm asleep.
How does it make you feel knowing another person's dream with you as the lead actor could very well be the beat you carry until you've proven it isn't true? We meet those people everyday! Something was seen in the dark of night and through that played out thinker stinker you're now a major part of their continued reality.
Or what if it serves as the invisible line that leads you to several sips of unseen happiness? Are dreams nothing more than a Fortune Cookie?
What was Brian really truly trying to say? You don't just burp up a thought. Expressions arrive from experience. Might he have been confronting his boss who sharply accused him of dipping his baby finger into a seemingly large bowl of chocolate pudding in the company refrigerator?
Rather than bore his leader with, "Dude! Smell my finger!"
The confident writer stood tall in his size eleven shoes that resembled Sunday morning slippers and commanded, "Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I'm asleep."
To which the sturdy oversaturated ego driven boss figure quickly replied, "What? Go back to work!"
When it comes to writing don't try to be Shakespeare, Walden or that punk kid in the sixth grade Kevin who delighted every girl with his dictionary memorization plan. Walk up to a tablet blessed with ninety neatly bound evenly lined pages and do nothing more than capture a single breath of air. The only reason why NASA spends billions of dollars every year on the Hubble Telescope is because we've forgotten to participate with our own journey...so let's see what the other worlds are doing so we can point fingers and make up lies.
What? I can say that! Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I sleep.
Purple doesn't have to be purple; it can be a shade off blue with a tingle of red highlights. The best concepts and clues are delivered every afternoon via texting and Skyping...what if what you said was kept a little longer than the seven seconds it took to share it? Human's don't lose their memories when they get older...it's all there, we just can't find the piece of skin the thought was Super Glued to, knowing it would have been so much easier to scratch it into a birthday card or sheet of paper.
I spend more time looking at my mother's handwriting than I do reading the Hallmark moment she purchased for $2.99. It's like staring into her eyes..
.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
This is why writing, sketching out thoughts, penning out a piece of poetry or doodling a song lyric or phrase everyday is extremely important in all walks of life. Being a self proclaimed author gives you permission to never walk alone.
How can you be when other people's words seep into your skin like an extremely hot Carolina sun leaving you bronzed or completely red from embarrassment?
But I don't know what to write! Boredom instantly sets in when I see my writing hand spell out Dear Diary. I have to be to work by eight, if I write I'll be late, late for a very important date.
Books like this one from Brian entertain the core source of your creative button. Take what he's delivered and react to it like an email: Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I'm asleep.
Ask yourself, "Does this mean I should believe more in dreams? What if it's a negative dream?"
Quickly jump to the other side and be that voice you always hear that carries six pounds of doubt in the front pocket, "Dreams are fake! It's the minds way of hitting Control, Alt and Delete on a laptop!"
Just like an email respond, "My dreams are where my mother visits me so why would my mind want to take that away? I see dreams as being a reason to keep listening, to set out on a different journey by visualizing a simple what if and giving it enough hope so it'll shine in the light of yes I can."
Jump back to Captain Grumpy, "Oh God...I can't stand the idea of spending another workday with a Marvel Comics hero destined to make sure the world knows the cup is always half full."
If being interviewed is too sugary then create a dream quote of your own. We all have dreams, take a minute and make yours a reality. Expose it to the world! From my book Oh God What Was I Thinking:
December 28, 1998: Build an ark my son
If I don't try to reshape the fallen forest—my loving neighbors will do it for me. I wish to help the forest breathe so that any destructive man stays completely away. I wish to preserve the forest—to bring to it a stronger life—to last longer than any one mans dream. I'll plant a forest filled with life and not that of another mans greed.
Turning the page...the goal is to uncover what you haven't discovered. If Brian writes: Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I'm asleep.
How does it make you feel knowing another person's dream with you as the lead actor could very well be the beat you carry until you've proven it isn't true? We meet those people everyday! Something was seen in the dark of night and through that played out thinker stinker you're now a major part of their continued reality.
Or what if it serves as the invisible line that leads you to several sips of unseen happiness? Are dreams nothing more than a Fortune Cookie?
What was Brian really truly trying to say? You don't just burp up a thought. Expressions arrive from experience. Might he have been confronting his boss who sharply accused him of dipping his baby finger into a seemingly large bowl of chocolate pudding in the company refrigerator?
Rather than bore his leader with, "Dude! Smell my finger!"
The confident writer stood tall in his size eleven shoes that resembled Sunday morning slippers and commanded, "Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I'm asleep."
To which the sturdy oversaturated ego driven boss figure quickly replied, "What? Go back to work!"
When it comes to writing don't try to be Shakespeare, Walden or that punk kid in the sixth grade Kevin who delighted every girl with his dictionary memorization plan. Walk up to a tablet blessed with ninety neatly bound evenly lined pages and do nothing more than capture a single breath of air. The only reason why NASA spends billions of dollars every year on the Hubble Telescope is because we've forgotten to participate with our own journey...so let's see what the other worlds are doing so we can point fingers and make up lies.
What? I can say that! Most of the stuff I say is true because I saw it in a dream and I don't have the presence of mind to make up lies when I sleep.
Purple doesn't have to be purple; it can be a shade off blue with a tingle of red highlights. The best concepts and clues are delivered every afternoon via texting and Skyping...what if what you said was kept a little longer than the seven seconds it took to share it? Human's don't lose their memories when they get older...it's all there, we just can't find the piece of skin the thought was Super Glued to, knowing it would have been so much easier to scratch it into a birthday card or sheet of paper.
I spend more time looking at my mother's handwriting than I do reading the Hallmark moment she purchased for $2.99. It's like staring into her eyes..
.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Monday, August 16, 2010
Who will find the cure to this disease?
Shakespeare is no different than Snoop Dog who is no different than Marie Osmond, each of us are Masters of word formation and each who participates learns to exceed the limits of bringing them to the forefront of everyday communications.
By law English is the suggested language on American soil, once set free to roam the streets of local neighborhoods to coffee meet up circles and separate region’s of the nation that give weather guys direction, every word written, spoken, muttered or mumbled has the ability to evolve into a completely erratic definition when compared to its origin.
Big Al from Costa Rica often complained to me, “You American’s are insane to have so many words in your vocabulary. How do you expect me to know what you’re trying to say if what you’re talking about says nothing about what I assume?”
Bad became good somewhere in the 80’s; fat isn’t related to phat, copy has been replaced by clone, unemployed really means self employed and who really knows what’s written in extremely tiny print during television commercials? I see that stuff and instantly hear a voice, “We’re lying to you. We’re making up stories to cheat you. You aren’t reading this so we can steal all your money cuz you signed the contract. Neener, neener, neener.”
Here’s a word that totally takes out the drive for anyone to succeed: Justa
Every walk of life, including yours has used the word. I’ve oversaturated my career with such a harsh, unstable, vulgar presentation of letters that not only leave people’s dreams dead along a nifty cool ocean shore but everything associated with desire, determination and success is pretty much junk stuffed into a trunk then left in a pink bag outside for some nonprofit organization to pick up.
“So Arroe, what do you do at the radio station?”
“I’m justa commercial writer and producer.”
“I heard you’re a published author, what do you write?”
“I’m justa poet who happens to pen things out in long form.”
Justa doesn’t give ambition its rightful justice. By using the word you’re physically cutting yourself off at the knees. During the 90’s if you weren’t Gangsta your music was rarely if ever listened to. More Hip Hop artists have publicly admitted having a rough, tough in your face career first in jail is what gained them strength in the eyes of those who collected the poetic gestures as presented by anyone who was truly Gangsta.
No one was justa Gangsta…you either were or you weren’t. Chris Daughtry has never settled on the idea that he’s justa contestant on some reality music show. The balloon boy’s father last year pulled off the wacky news stunt because of a need to become part of justa reality show.
Arroe is justa commercial writer and producer and yet you or someone you know may be driving a new car because of me. You might have purchased a new sofa, refrigerator, lawnmower or had dinner in a fine restaurant. By eliminating the word justa from my vocabulary it makes reaching a listeners busy life easier to achieve.
An elementary school principal commanded his legion of educators to believe in a single spirit: he should never walk into a class and notice a difference between the teacher and the assistant. Introducing a new word Justan. You’re never justan assistant.
I’m justa a mall store manager. I get through life being justa convenience store 7-11 employee. I’m justa busboy or justa taxi driver. I never hear doctors, lawyers Dale Jr. or Sears service men and women say, “I’m justa…”
By thinking justa you deliver justa.
A major league player in the job headhunter world recently looked across the table at me with anger, fear and determination in her eyes and proceeded to tell me how much she hated her job, “People think they’re worth more than what they offer! Egos are destroying our workforces!”
“Wow!” I thought to myself, “Nobody wants to earn justa dollar.”
Managers, Owners and any other words we’ve created to put more lime in their light have set their standards of wanting so incredibly high that in order to properly and safely maintain any level of success they only want the best for one quarter the price. You can’t knock them for stepping beyond the line that vividly reads justa. They don’t want justa player, they require skilled workers who are blessed with heaping amounts of passion, sickening gallons of oversaturated desire and the holiest of all gifts…endless amounts of compassionate and unconditional dedication…for this price ____________.
I sat listening in a distant corner overhearing a sales person’s pitch yesterday trying to pull in new everyday common people to their soon to be opening gym, “Of coarse our price is low right now but I guarantee our product will soon be the most talked about gym in the southeast and that’s when I will start charging sixty bucks a month per person. I expect greatness which is why you should join…that’s who you need to be your coach.”
He was far from being justa workout buddy. There was no way he was settling on being justa sales pig. By investing in his energy you knew deep inside your soul you wouldn’t be justa number.
People ask me everyday where I find the strength to do everything I do…nearly next to never do I share the answer while looking into their eyes because I have somehow convinced the heart I carry that I’m justa 2nd degree black belt, justa radio on-air fill in, justa doodler on canvas, justa poet whose tapped into a circle of readers as far away as Russia and India. Justa former Montanan who faithfully loves preserving nature inside the limits of a city then teaching young, middle and older in thought people how important it is to listen to the wind.
What in God’s name would happen if we stopped saying justa and put forth the effort to become?
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
By law English is the suggested language on American soil, once set free to roam the streets of local neighborhoods to coffee meet up circles and separate region’s of the nation that give weather guys direction, every word written, spoken, muttered or mumbled has the ability to evolve into a completely erratic definition when compared to its origin.
Big Al from Costa Rica often complained to me, “You American’s are insane to have so many words in your vocabulary. How do you expect me to know what you’re trying to say if what you’re talking about says nothing about what I assume?”
Bad became good somewhere in the 80’s; fat isn’t related to phat, copy has been replaced by clone, unemployed really means self employed and who really knows what’s written in extremely tiny print during television commercials? I see that stuff and instantly hear a voice, “We’re lying to you. We’re making up stories to cheat you. You aren’t reading this so we can steal all your money cuz you signed the contract. Neener, neener, neener.”
Here’s a word that totally takes out the drive for anyone to succeed: Justa
Every walk of life, including yours has used the word. I’ve oversaturated my career with such a harsh, unstable, vulgar presentation of letters that not only leave people’s dreams dead along a nifty cool ocean shore but everything associated with desire, determination and success is pretty much junk stuffed into a trunk then left in a pink bag outside for some nonprofit organization to pick up.
“So Arroe, what do you do at the radio station?”
“I’m justa commercial writer and producer.”
“I heard you’re a published author, what do you write?”
“I’m justa poet who happens to pen things out in long form.”
Justa doesn’t give ambition its rightful justice. By using the word you’re physically cutting yourself off at the knees. During the 90’s if you weren’t Gangsta your music was rarely if ever listened to. More Hip Hop artists have publicly admitted having a rough, tough in your face career first in jail is what gained them strength in the eyes of those who collected the poetic gestures as presented by anyone who was truly Gangsta.
No one was justa Gangsta…you either were or you weren’t. Chris Daughtry has never settled on the idea that he’s justa contestant on some reality music show. The balloon boy’s father last year pulled off the wacky news stunt because of a need to become part of justa reality show.
Arroe is justa commercial writer and producer and yet you or someone you know may be driving a new car because of me. You might have purchased a new sofa, refrigerator, lawnmower or had dinner in a fine restaurant. By eliminating the word justa from my vocabulary it makes reaching a listeners busy life easier to achieve.
An elementary school principal commanded his legion of educators to believe in a single spirit: he should never walk into a class and notice a difference between the teacher and the assistant. Introducing a new word Justan. You’re never justan assistant.
I’m justa a mall store manager. I get through life being justa convenience store 7-11 employee. I’m justa busboy or justa taxi driver. I never hear doctors, lawyers Dale Jr. or Sears service men and women say, “I’m justa…”
By thinking justa you deliver justa.
A major league player in the job headhunter world recently looked across the table at me with anger, fear and determination in her eyes and proceeded to tell me how much she hated her job, “People think they’re worth more than what they offer! Egos are destroying our workforces!”
“Wow!” I thought to myself, “Nobody wants to earn justa dollar.”
Managers, Owners and any other words we’ve created to put more lime in their light have set their standards of wanting so incredibly high that in order to properly and safely maintain any level of success they only want the best for one quarter the price. You can’t knock them for stepping beyond the line that vividly reads justa. They don’t want justa player, they require skilled workers who are blessed with heaping amounts of passion, sickening gallons of oversaturated desire and the holiest of all gifts…endless amounts of compassionate and unconditional dedication…for this price ____________.
I sat listening in a distant corner overhearing a sales person’s pitch yesterday trying to pull in new everyday common people to their soon to be opening gym, “Of coarse our price is low right now but I guarantee our product will soon be the most talked about gym in the southeast and that’s when I will start charging sixty bucks a month per person. I expect greatness which is why you should join…that’s who you need to be your coach.”
He was far from being justa workout buddy. There was no way he was settling on being justa sales pig. By investing in his energy you knew deep inside your soul you wouldn’t be justa number.
People ask me everyday where I find the strength to do everything I do…nearly next to never do I share the answer while looking into their eyes because I have somehow convinced the heart I carry that I’m justa 2nd degree black belt, justa radio on-air fill in, justa doodler on canvas, justa poet whose tapped into a circle of readers as far away as Russia and India. Justa former Montanan who faithfully loves preserving nature inside the limits of a city then teaching young, middle and older in thought people how important it is to listen to the wind.
What in God’s name would happen if we stopped saying justa and put forth the effort to become?
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Friday, August 13, 2010
Today is not a bad Friday!
Friday the 13th….do I really want to write about the evils that lurk in the un-timid darkness at our feet? I mean, this is the prelude to Halloween; preseason scares and bewares. A gentle time to practice the art of startling; bars design special drinks, bosses pretend they’re closing the office early then land another pile of scary I wants and needs on your desk.
Heck! Even Hollywood is MIA.
No Saw XXXVI or Freddie Kruger in Dancing with the Stars. No Michael or fish or alligator adventure about eating people. Nope! We’ve get Scott Pilgrim vs the World with Michael Cera, Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts and The Expendables featuring Sylvester Stallone and his cast of super heroes from Movie City past.
Being horribly afraid of Friday the 13th has gone the way of 8-tracks and 45’s. I blame it on video games! They’ve become so real that authenticity doesn’t stand a chance.
What we need is Hee Haw to come back to TV. Every Friday night they’d sing, “If it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.”
People don’t know what bad luck is any more. The economy changes, out sourcing steals your job, it becomes company policy to sell out to the competition—nobody calls it bad luck…we’ve entered a world of shrugged shoulders followed by a solid, “Oh well…guess it was meant to be.”
It’s like walking into a restaurant that’s rated 85 or C…I’m extremely guilty of being gullible enough to believe the manager who says, “Oh you know how they are…they took note of the broom placed next to the trash can outside and it cost me ten points.” Instantly I feel sorry and pay for it the next day. Not bad luck! Oh well…guess it was meant to be.
A medicine man once sat me down and scolded my behavior of trusting too much, “Medicine doesn’t always mean a quick fix. Medicine isn’t always connected to herbs and spices that enlighten. Medicine can be a single man who hears changes coming so he encourages the elders to move. He once could spot where elk, deer and buffalo roamed convincing followers to put prints in their sand.
Medicine was also a way of thinking…for there to be bad luck you had to live bad luck. If you shared black magic or a curse against someone who might not be so friendly, for it to be experienced through them you had to feel first what was being delivered. Why then play in the depths of Friday the 13th if what’s being created is another reason to take away from the 1/1000th chance of you having a great day?
Oh well…I guess it was meant to be.
I never spoke those words when my stepfather Joe would tan my hide, “You’re right Evil Empire leader of all Universes I shouldn’t have pushed my sister Susan to the floor. It doesn’t matter that she swiped my only copy of The Starland Vocal Bands Afternoon Delight…I guess this beating was meant to be.”
I didn’t work that way! If the Dude wanted to whip me into place he had to work for it! I took off across the front yard jumping over the pitch back, through the homemade wooden boat that always sunk and around the garbage cans in a real alley where it was extremely legal to burn your trash and not take over mountainsides. Once caught he didn’t have the energy to pound common sense into my butt…so what if he took away my rebuilt ten speed that had only two gears…I walked…forward and smiled the entire way.
Parents didn’t like me hanging out with their kids…truth is even my brothers and sisters labeled me too much of a trouble maker. But at least I worried about Friday the 13th! It’s the one day of the year that brought me serious amounts of heeby jeebies—if Jesus was coming I wouldn’t be ready because all my attention was focused on trying to keep bad luck away from the wooden trunks that hid my world.
But things have changed including the self I’ve become. No day passes that I’m not quickly tossing my hands in the air erasing words someone threw up there, “Don’t let the Universe hear you say that! Keep it away from the Universe!” I think it was Oprah who taught me that trick. Maybe Anthony Robbins….then again it’s just me being me and nobody does me better than me who has to explain to the eyes in the mirror everyday that if he can do better to reach out here and make it happen. He never swings at me. I like that guy in the mirror…as long as he’s always there…how can anyone have bad luck on something as silly as Friday the 13th.
No more talk about this being the day that it is! It only exists on calendars found on computer screens, bad business promotional items and things you carry and only pull out during times you either totally forgot or feel like life is running too late. And as I write, those who truly know me are thinking, “The Universe is going to kick his ***.”
I gotta go! I need to locate a front yard to run through! Anyone got pictures of my stepfather’s boat that always sank? It’s not going to be a fun run if I don’t do it right!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com Monday it could be Bob Harper newly inducted member of the Universal Witness Protection Program.
Heck! Even Hollywood is MIA.
No Saw XXXVI or Freddie Kruger in Dancing with the Stars. No Michael or fish or alligator adventure about eating people. Nope! We’ve get Scott Pilgrim vs the World with Michael Cera, Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts and The Expendables featuring Sylvester Stallone and his cast of super heroes from Movie City past.
Being horribly afraid of Friday the 13th has gone the way of 8-tracks and 45’s. I blame it on video games! They’ve become so real that authenticity doesn’t stand a chance.
What we need is Hee Haw to come back to TV. Every Friday night they’d sing, “If it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.”
People don’t know what bad luck is any more. The economy changes, out sourcing steals your job, it becomes company policy to sell out to the competition—nobody calls it bad luck…we’ve entered a world of shrugged shoulders followed by a solid, “Oh well…guess it was meant to be.”
It’s like walking into a restaurant that’s rated 85 or C…I’m extremely guilty of being gullible enough to believe the manager who says, “Oh you know how they are…they took note of the broom placed next to the trash can outside and it cost me ten points.” Instantly I feel sorry and pay for it the next day. Not bad luck! Oh well…guess it was meant to be.
A medicine man once sat me down and scolded my behavior of trusting too much, “Medicine doesn’t always mean a quick fix. Medicine isn’t always connected to herbs and spices that enlighten. Medicine can be a single man who hears changes coming so he encourages the elders to move. He once could spot where elk, deer and buffalo roamed convincing followers to put prints in their sand.
Medicine was also a way of thinking…for there to be bad luck you had to live bad luck. If you shared black magic or a curse against someone who might not be so friendly, for it to be experienced through them you had to feel first what was being delivered. Why then play in the depths of Friday the 13th if what’s being created is another reason to take away from the 1/1000th chance of you having a great day?
Oh well…I guess it was meant to be.
I never spoke those words when my stepfather Joe would tan my hide, “You’re right Evil Empire leader of all Universes I shouldn’t have pushed my sister Susan to the floor. It doesn’t matter that she swiped my only copy of The Starland Vocal Bands Afternoon Delight…I guess this beating was meant to be.”
I didn’t work that way! If the Dude wanted to whip me into place he had to work for it! I took off across the front yard jumping over the pitch back, through the homemade wooden boat that always sunk and around the garbage cans in a real alley where it was extremely legal to burn your trash and not take over mountainsides. Once caught he didn’t have the energy to pound common sense into my butt…so what if he took away my rebuilt ten speed that had only two gears…I walked…forward and smiled the entire way.
Parents didn’t like me hanging out with their kids…truth is even my brothers and sisters labeled me too much of a trouble maker. But at least I worried about Friday the 13th! It’s the one day of the year that brought me serious amounts of heeby jeebies—if Jesus was coming I wouldn’t be ready because all my attention was focused on trying to keep bad luck away from the wooden trunks that hid my world.
But things have changed including the self I’ve become. No day passes that I’m not quickly tossing my hands in the air erasing words someone threw up there, “Don’t let the Universe hear you say that! Keep it away from the Universe!” I think it was Oprah who taught me that trick. Maybe Anthony Robbins….then again it’s just me being me and nobody does me better than me who has to explain to the eyes in the mirror everyday that if he can do better to reach out here and make it happen. He never swings at me. I like that guy in the mirror…as long as he’s always there…how can anyone have bad luck on something as silly as Friday the 13th.
No more talk about this being the day that it is! It only exists on calendars found on computer screens, bad business promotional items and things you carry and only pull out during times you either totally forgot or feel like life is running too late. And as I write, those who truly know me are thinking, “The Universe is going to kick his ***.”
I gotta go! I need to locate a front yard to run through! Anyone got pictures of my stepfather’s boat that always sank? It’s not going to be a fun run if I don’t do it right!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com Monday it could be Bob Harper newly inducted member of the Universal Witness Protection Program.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
If your life was Wall Street you'd be in jail...
Did you know the power of insight is looked upon as being a sword that painlessly cuts through all suffering, fear, despair, anger and discrimination?
Insight isn’t intuition. Insight isn’t assumption, hopes and wishes and it sure isn’t handed to you by palm and card readers who’ve become one with the universal. Insight allows you to fully see what “you’re” concentrating on, not what others are forcing you to buy into.
I’m guilty of seeing the word “insight” and thinking it means “inside”…and how many times have we traded what we want and feel for an object or desire wanted or needed by another because it makes them happy? Isn’t that insider trading? If your mind and body was connected to Wall Street you’d be sitting in a prison cell.
I’m going to use an extremely big word right now: impermanence. And just like that, you’ve tuned out and run like hell through a forest of trees you don’t recognize therefore there’s no path to follow and boom down you go face first into a pile of Montana mud mixed with Georgia clay and there aren’t any manmade chemicals on earth that are capable of washing off your hands, face and fudged up knees.
Impermanence means not permanent or enduring. Related words include temporary and evanescent.
The one thing impermanence isn’t is an idea and please get out of the mode of thinking that it’s a notion. Impermanence is insight. Suddenly we’re being reintroduced to the selves we are, the person who refuses to let go of a notion, a feeling, a fear and crash, boom, pow…your world falls next to you on that pile of Montana mud and Georgia clay.
In an age of constant change the one thing I always hear from a passerby is how demanding we are about latching our hands onto something that’s permanent yet we make everything temporary. Laptop computers, cell phones, video games and music fit quite nicely into the center of our impermanence circle. Temporary, not permanent…it’s here then the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga are gone.
So impermanence is a negative then?
You have the insight to make that twelve letter word a positive; injustice, poverty, pollution, global warming, a bad day at work, a disagreement with a family member or a flat tire. Putting focus on the present and not the past gives you insight about your future.
Thirty three years after first being first introduced to the idea of writing a book called Halloween 78, the project continues to be extremely late to the editor. I’ve used every excuse to stop while feeding a separate engine that keeps the word flow in full forward motion. To perk up my interest, in 2000 while sipping on one maybe ten glasses of wine I killed off a main character…to this day I remember sitting back in the chair and laughing, “Let’s see how good of a writer you are…figure out a new ending.”
A decade later I’ve returned to the project reading visions from a self I no longer am. By putting focus what one assumes is several failed efforts the project faces another delay. Through the use of permanence the insight is to grab this invisible gorilla by the collar and finish it so I can get back to living.
The golden rule has never changed: don’t wait until tomorrow because tomorrow may be too late. We are monkey's in the way of continuing to watch the same stories with different actors in altered movies. Music is no different; modern day Country music is 1977 Fleetwood Mac. While your kids are Hip Hopping to the best in mp3 beats and Itunes rhythms, escaping that past doesn’t stand a chance as long as the guitar resembles Lindsey Buckingham picking and a grinning.
I’ve always believed my stepfather Joe was an angry middle aged man because he didn’t allow himself to love the Bee Gees. Emotions that have been set on fire and or walk the lines of negative vibration can easily be cooled off by regaining the power of insight. Rather than knock those who believe Hip Hop and Rap are evil beings from other planets embrace it by dancing to it. There’s nothing more entertaining than watching Baby Boomers shake the room when Flo Rida sings, “Low, low, low, low…”
People can’t stand the idea of gaining access or accepting insight because it’s always been the one thing tossed at us in the way of; this is yours, only yours, now deal with it.
Dave the intern yesterday said to me, “I’m in radio because my parents have never supported my dreams.”
I laughed out loud knowing how many long hard fights I’ve had with my Mom, Dad, sisters and first wife about remaining loyal to the Hotel California. Interestingly enough, my current wife Lee taught me insight, “Be everything then discover newer ways to be everything and then newer ways to be everything.” Which tells me insight isn’t a one man show; it has the ability to affect the mile markers we keep.
Thich Nhat Hahn tells the story of how important his right hand is to him…it combs his hair, brushes his teeth, pens out poetry; it does everything while the left hand sits over there on the other side of the body doing nothing. Although one would think the left hand has an inferiority complex…you never see the right reaching out to strike it down. The right and left hands are always at peace.
Can you imagine what your left hand is thinking while hammering a nail into the wall? The term is opposites attract not go to war. Impermanence is insight. Being aware of the elements that take your workday down gives you strength to recognize a bad moon on the rise. Someone says to me, “I hate my job!” I instantly reply, “When was the last time you did push ups and sit ups? Freshen up that blood in those veins then come talk to me about how bad your day is.” ‘
Insight is understanding…quit trading your dreams in for other people’s happiness. The one thing Dr. Ronald Mack wanted more than anything was to go fly fishing on a smooth as silk river…his family heard him but they never listened. I miss my mentor so much!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Insight isn’t intuition. Insight isn’t assumption, hopes and wishes and it sure isn’t handed to you by palm and card readers who’ve become one with the universal. Insight allows you to fully see what “you’re” concentrating on, not what others are forcing you to buy into.
I’m guilty of seeing the word “insight” and thinking it means “inside”…and how many times have we traded what we want and feel for an object or desire wanted or needed by another because it makes them happy? Isn’t that insider trading? If your mind and body was connected to Wall Street you’d be sitting in a prison cell.
I’m going to use an extremely big word right now: impermanence. And just like that, you’ve tuned out and run like hell through a forest of trees you don’t recognize therefore there’s no path to follow and boom down you go face first into a pile of Montana mud mixed with Georgia clay and there aren’t any manmade chemicals on earth that are capable of washing off your hands, face and fudged up knees.
Impermanence means not permanent or enduring. Related words include temporary and evanescent.
The one thing impermanence isn’t is an idea and please get out of the mode of thinking that it’s a notion. Impermanence is insight. Suddenly we’re being reintroduced to the selves we are, the person who refuses to let go of a notion, a feeling, a fear and crash, boom, pow…your world falls next to you on that pile of Montana mud and Georgia clay.
In an age of constant change the one thing I always hear from a passerby is how demanding we are about latching our hands onto something that’s permanent yet we make everything temporary. Laptop computers, cell phones, video games and music fit quite nicely into the center of our impermanence circle. Temporary, not permanent…it’s here then the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga are gone.
So impermanence is a negative then?
You have the insight to make that twelve letter word a positive; injustice, poverty, pollution, global warming, a bad day at work, a disagreement with a family member or a flat tire. Putting focus on the present and not the past gives you insight about your future.
Thirty three years after first being first introduced to the idea of writing a book called Halloween 78, the project continues to be extremely late to the editor. I’ve used every excuse to stop while feeding a separate engine that keeps the word flow in full forward motion. To perk up my interest, in 2000 while sipping on one maybe ten glasses of wine I killed off a main character…to this day I remember sitting back in the chair and laughing, “Let’s see how good of a writer you are…figure out a new ending.”
A decade later I’ve returned to the project reading visions from a self I no longer am. By putting focus what one assumes is several failed efforts the project faces another delay. Through the use of permanence the insight is to grab this invisible gorilla by the collar and finish it so I can get back to living.
The golden rule has never changed: don’t wait until tomorrow because tomorrow may be too late. We are monkey's in the way of continuing to watch the same stories with different actors in altered movies. Music is no different; modern day Country music is 1977 Fleetwood Mac. While your kids are Hip Hopping to the best in mp3 beats and Itunes rhythms, escaping that past doesn’t stand a chance as long as the guitar resembles Lindsey Buckingham picking and a grinning.
I’ve always believed my stepfather Joe was an angry middle aged man because he didn’t allow himself to love the Bee Gees. Emotions that have been set on fire and or walk the lines of negative vibration can easily be cooled off by regaining the power of insight. Rather than knock those who believe Hip Hop and Rap are evil beings from other planets embrace it by dancing to it. There’s nothing more entertaining than watching Baby Boomers shake the room when Flo Rida sings, “Low, low, low, low…”
People can’t stand the idea of gaining access or accepting insight because it’s always been the one thing tossed at us in the way of; this is yours, only yours, now deal with it.
Dave the intern yesterday said to me, “I’m in radio because my parents have never supported my dreams.”
I laughed out loud knowing how many long hard fights I’ve had with my Mom, Dad, sisters and first wife about remaining loyal to the Hotel California. Interestingly enough, my current wife Lee taught me insight, “Be everything then discover newer ways to be everything and then newer ways to be everything.” Which tells me insight isn’t a one man show; it has the ability to affect the mile markers we keep.
Thich Nhat Hahn tells the story of how important his right hand is to him…it combs his hair, brushes his teeth, pens out poetry; it does everything while the left hand sits over there on the other side of the body doing nothing. Although one would think the left hand has an inferiority complex…you never see the right reaching out to strike it down. The right and left hands are always at peace.
Can you imagine what your left hand is thinking while hammering a nail into the wall? The term is opposites attract not go to war. Impermanence is insight. Being aware of the elements that take your workday down gives you strength to recognize a bad moon on the rise. Someone says to me, “I hate my job!” I instantly reply, “When was the last time you did push ups and sit ups? Freshen up that blood in those veins then come talk to me about how bad your day is.” ‘
Insight is understanding…quit trading your dreams in for other people’s happiness. The one thing Dr. Ronald Mack wanted more than anything was to go fly fishing on a smooth as silk river…his family heard him but they never listened. I miss my mentor so much!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Yes I am and you can't say anything about it.
Words…they're more important than a best friend. Even if words want nothing to do with you we have no problem making them part of the original plan. We use words to get what we want. Abuse them when we don’t get what we think we needed.
Words make up our everyday. Words can be black and white versus extremely colorful. Words say nothing while often times reaching too far into the T.M.I. zone. Three quarters of the world is texting or emailing and somebody must be snail mailing because I see the postal carrier jeep putting through the wooded hood.
I’m guilty of using too many words. Two completely different people are editing my latest books and both are screaming, “Someone call Roto Rooter! My brain is plugged up and I can’t flush!
Very rarely do we hear “a” word… Twitter gives you enough space to thumb type a quote, unexpected thought or something freakishly odd your father might have said. But nothing really says one…not two, not three, four or twenty six. Just one…kind of like Madonna, Cher and Dido…John is now Mellencamp, as is Springsteen but Dave’s still attached to his last name Matthews.
In her latest film Eat Pray Love, Julia Roberts is introduced to the idea that the majority of us aren’t chasing lost childhood dreams and the be all to everything happy maker that romance novels make billions off but rather a single word that describes who it is we’ve become.
Ronald Reagan: Communicator
Bill Gates: Doer
Neal Armstrong: Achiever
Lewis and Clark: Seeker
Howard Stern: Us
What word are you chasing? How many letters have been forced to stand side by side with no funny business in the hallway to make up your word? Like a soul mate, everybody born before or after January 1, 0000 is linked to a word.
I’m not talking about a word other’s have chosen for you! Jerk, freak, *** and ********** are opinions from the outside world that keeps you from picking your booty up off the dance floor. So whatever word you choose, it can’t be changed by those who surround your everyday. This is about you and only you or if you’re like me, the other 15 me’s inside of me… Does that qualify me for paragraph? No!
My mother: Endless
Stepfather Joe: Enforcer
Look how easy it is to break, shatter and punt kick the rules…no outside opinions! The best part is you aren’t legally tied to an agreement that states whatever word you choose must be shared out loud with the entire class. Your word belongs to you and if you’re like Julia’s character not just any word will do which opens the door for something new to arrive at the front door of your reasons for saying, “I can’t explain why nothing makes me happy.”
Creative isn’t my word because all too often I want to be lazy. Thinker is an endless journey and writer leads to constant change. Masked maybe like Batman but hardly, I’m a Cancer and we’ve yet to learn how to stop wearing our feelings on the shoulders that keep the rest of the world high above our heads. Booger? Nope…rarely picked for the good stuff always wiped in places people can't see until its too late. Tree hugger…can’t…two words. Poet? Ha! Stand in any bookstore and watch how many readers enter that lane of traffic for something great to digest.
One word that only you can decide; there are no rules on how many letters make up what’s made you who you are.
While driving home late one night nearly ten chapters ago a bizarre appearance fell from the lips that have touched the edge of multiple radio station microphones. A word I had never heard, so I raced as well as chased to locate its physical earth evidence and found nothing so like Shakespeare I quickly penned it into the pages connected to a once living tree and have lived by its definition everyday thereafter believing that such a bleep, blunder or child speak suddenly taking shape from places I’ve never been, must mean something…
Kooshatayookooshtah.
Not Native American, Middle Eastern or made from the languages we’re taught in Martial Arts…nope…a goober, juicy slippery slobber, maybe a chunk of meat or a carrot that fell from between my teeth. I have not a single clue as to what any of it meant so I elected to play along and give it a reason to dance. Kooshatayookooshtah means the creative flow.
If you’re lucky you graduate from high school. Luck has a way of running dry through the twenties, thirties maybe your sixties and wow congratulations if you make it past seventy. If the word we choose truly is lucky…will it be like Gmail and AOL and we're forced to attach it to a number: Lucky 21,563. Sounds pretty fricken boring to me.
Maybe this is why dogs spin around in circles…they come within inches of finally discovering that one word they’ve spent an entire bone searching for and just like that it starts chasing their tail. If they catch it and don’t like the word…a dog instantly hits the floor dragging its butt across Mom’s clean carpet.
Maybe that’s my word…Butt. It’s everywhere I go. It can be big, tiny, round or thin, it can be extremely creative in tight situations. Being a butt allows you to make noise. Butts can be the talk of the town or completely invisible. Butts like to be dressed up and at times you can’t get them uncovered fast enough. I didn’t say *** that’s an outside opinion and in this game this butt rules.
Which word is, are, will be, has been, might or could best describe you?
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Words make up our everyday. Words can be black and white versus extremely colorful. Words say nothing while often times reaching too far into the T.M.I. zone. Three quarters of the world is texting or emailing and somebody must be snail mailing because I see the postal carrier jeep putting through the wooded hood.
I’m guilty of using too many words. Two completely different people are editing my latest books and both are screaming, “Someone call Roto Rooter! My brain is plugged up and I can’t flush!
Very rarely do we hear “a” word… Twitter gives you enough space to thumb type a quote, unexpected thought or something freakishly odd your father might have said. But nothing really says one…not two, not three, four or twenty six. Just one…kind of like Madonna, Cher and Dido…John is now Mellencamp, as is Springsteen but Dave’s still attached to his last name Matthews.
In her latest film Eat Pray Love, Julia Roberts is introduced to the idea that the majority of us aren’t chasing lost childhood dreams and the be all to everything happy maker that romance novels make billions off but rather a single word that describes who it is we’ve become.
Ronald Reagan: Communicator
Bill Gates: Doer
Neal Armstrong: Achiever
Lewis and Clark: Seeker
Howard Stern: Us
What word are you chasing? How many letters have been forced to stand side by side with no funny business in the hallway to make up your word? Like a soul mate, everybody born before or after January 1, 0000 is linked to a word.
I’m not talking about a word other’s have chosen for you! Jerk, freak, *** and ********** are opinions from the outside world that keeps you from picking your booty up off the dance floor. So whatever word you choose, it can’t be changed by those who surround your everyday. This is about you and only you or if you’re like me, the other 15 me’s inside of me… Does that qualify me for paragraph? No!
My mother: Endless
Stepfather Joe: Enforcer
Look how easy it is to break, shatter and punt kick the rules…no outside opinions! The best part is you aren’t legally tied to an agreement that states whatever word you choose must be shared out loud with the entire class. Your word belongs to you and if you’re like Julia’s character not just any word will do which opens the door for something new to arrive at the front door of your reasons for saying, “I can’t explain why nothing makes me happy.”
Creative isn’t my word because all too often I want to be lazy. Thinker is an endless journey and writer leads to constant change. Masked maybe like Batman but hardly, I’m a Cancer and we’ve yet to learn how to stop wearing our feelings on the shoulders that keep the rest of the world high above our heads. Booger? Nope…rarely picked for the good stuff always wiped in places people can't see until its too late. Tree hugger…can’t…two words. Poet? Ha! Stand in any bookstore and watch how many readers enter that lane of traffic for something great to digest.
One word that only you can decide; there are no rules on how many letters make up what’s made you who you are.
While driving home late one night nearly ten chapters ago a bizarre appearance fell from the lips that have touched the edge of multiple radio station microphones. A word I had never heard, so I raced as well as chased to locate its physical earth evidence and found nothing so like Shakespeare I quickly penned it into the pages connected to a once living tree and have lived by its definition everyday thereafter believing that such a bleep, blunder or child speak suddenly taking shape from places I’ve never been, must mean something…
Kooshatayookooshtah.
Not Native American, Middle Eastern or made from the languages we’re taught in Martial Arts…nope…a goober, juicy slippery slobber, maybe a chunk of meat or a carrot that fell from between my teeth. I have not a single clue as to what any of it meant so I elected to play along and give it a reason to dance. Kooshatayookooshtah means the creative flow.
If you’re lucky you graduate from high school. Luck has a way of running dry through the twenties, thirties maybe your sixties and wow congratulations if you make it past seventy. If the word we choose truly is lucky…will it be like Gmail and AOL and we're forced to attach it to a number: Lucky 21,563. Sounds pretty fricken boring to me.
Maybe this is why dogs spin around in circles…they come within inches of finally discovering that one word they’ve spent an entire bone searching for and just like that it starts chasing their tail. If they catch it and don’t like the word…a dog instantly hits the floor dragging its butt across Mom’s clean carpet.
Maybe that’s my word…Butt. It’s everywhere I go. It can be big, tiny, round or thin, it can be extremely creative in tight situations. Being a butt allows you to make noise. Butts can be the talk of the town or completely invisible. Butts like to be dressed up and at times you can’t get them uncovered fast enough. I didn’t say *** that’s an outside opinion and in this game this butt rules.
Which word is, are, will be, has been, might or could best describe you?
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Monday, August 9, 2010
Boogie your way into a better Monday!
The reason why I enjoy autobiographies with a motivational twist usually has nothing to do with the person and everything to do with how those who’ve made it constantly say the funniest most provoking things.
President Ronald Reagan got me hooked on this method of communication—August 11, 1984…while preparing to deliver his weekly radio address on National Public Radio, a typical studio microphone check flipped the political world upside down, “My fellow American’s I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
Before You Tube, Face Book and the Commodore 64, news directors and ratings hounds performed at the height of their daily expectations doing what they did best…locate the next big thing people will talk about tomorrow. This one made it around the world without the aid of the web—the Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun printed an article based on how serious the Soviets took the blunder; they put their Far Eastern Army on full alert. Oops…
Look, I’m going to be honest with you…the best part of radio is the material that never makes it to the air. Who better to grasp that concept then nationally recognized standup comedian Pam Stone? It became her personal mission to guarantee radio listeners the opportunity to be part of broadcast reality way before such realisms became a nightly fixture on prime time TV. It earned her the coveted Gracie Award.
We’ve always been surrounded by strong quotes and misguided sentences with enough push and shove that it’s ripped a hole in the material protecting us from the hot sun or unexpected rainstorm. We depend on Late Night kings like Letterman and Leno to hire the people forced to listen to everything. E Entertainments Soup has become a cable television institution doing nothing more than poking fun of the realms of reality and things we do while running away from the shadows created.
Vietnamese Buddhist Monk and spiritual teacher Thick Nhat Hahn uses words to clarify how simple it is to regain control of the assumed lost path. What he shares within his once living trees is no different than NBC’s Breakthrough with Tony Robbins; its Oprah Winfrey compassion combined with pick your lazy booty ba tooty up and let’s get back to living! Tony has gained the confidence and courage through nonstop learning to speak in single sentences that motivate positive lasting change.
How many people do you know that have placed in the soil their entire plantation of being on famous movie quotes? Star Wars is flooded with powerful knowledge all stemming from already famous quotes from the Bible. Hit up Amazon.com and scratch into the surface of, “Whoa I didn’t know.”
So why all this junk in the trunk talk about blips, blunders, quickly quoted sentences and unmasked reality? I’ve been infected as well as motivated by a quote that was handed to me at six this morning; it’s led to digging deeper into the Georgia clay that stains everything including your little toe.
Look around you…listen beyond sound and catch a glimpse of the stuff not making it to the forefront of on-air broadcast; unemployment in America won’t begin to change until the end of 2012. Nobody wants to talk about helping business owners. Such conversation creates the tiniest of trickles creating fear of hard fought battles that rattle but do nothing in changing our place in history. We take it in, digest its presentation and shoot it through our system before it’s delivered to those who make up what it is we’re trying to accomplish. The economy isn’t depressed…the people are.
The music of the 60’s may have been in protest but in the chapters thereafter Crosby Stills and Nash, Dylan and even Springsteen have proved to be poets with a pen and through their methods of message sharing the earth has moved and Carol King is shouting, “See I told you!”
Today’s music includes Nickelback: If today was your last day; American Idol Kris Allen: Live like you were dying and Tim McGraw: Live like you were dying. We sing and sing and sing along never realizing how powerful such lyrics are to core of reasons for wanting and needing to grow. It’s easier to talk yourself into a depression then it is to be one.
Google modern songs written about dying and thousands of lists appear based on the top ten songs to play at a funeral, top favorites that make you sad, car crash tunes and on and on and on. No wonder Party in the USA from Miley Cyrus was an out of the box success in an age when purchasing music has hit yet another all time low. One problem, we can only handle being happy for three minutes and forty two seconds with a cool fade at the end.
Oh! The quote that rocked my world at six this morning! How can today be the end of the world when tomorrow is already happening in Australia?
I dare you to try and have a bad day…someone in a completely different country has already beat you to it, which would make you a follower and that’s not your cup of tea.
I am who I am because being who I am makes it alright to be plain ole boring me and I like it when I look in the mirror and see _______________.
1. Toothpaste on my chin
2. A rat’s nest of hair my mother doesn’t have to shove a comb through
3. Facial hair I swear grows by the second but we can’t speed up Time Warner Cable
4. Eyes that carry the child’s dream even though I’m dressed in adult clothes
5. Ink on my fingertips from writing but I don’t wash it off because it serves as a
reminder that my most important daily goal has been achieved: write without excuses
In the game of life you are your own Rock Star Roadie, stage manager, songwriter, musician, promoter, promotions director and big rig driver. More importantly you have to be the biggest and best fan of that person standing in the mirror. Make some noise and let your heart and dreams find reason to keep creating new songs to sing.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
President Ronald Reagan got me hooked on this method of communication—August 11, 1984…while preparing to deliver his weekly radio address on National Public Radio, a typical studio microphone check flipped the political world upside down, “My fellow American’s I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
Before You Tube, Face Book and the Commodore 64, news directors and ratings hounds performed at the height of their daily expectations doing what they did best…locate the next big thing people will talk about tomorrow. This one made it around the world without the aid of the web—the Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun printed an article based on how serious the Soviets took the blunder; they put their Far Eastern Army on full alert. Oops…
Look, I’m going to be honest with you…the best part of radio is the material that never makes it to the air. Who better to grasp that concept then nationally recognized standup comedian Pam Stone? It became her personal mission to guarantee radio listeners the opportunity to be part of broadcast reality way before such realisms became a nightly fixture on prime time TV. It earned her the coveted Gracie Award.
We’ve always been surrounded by strong quotes and misguided sentences with enough push and shove that it’s ripped a hole in the material protecting us from the hot sun or unexpected rainstorm. We depend on Late Night kings like Letterman and Leno to hire the people forced to listen to everything. E Entertainments Soup has become a cable television institution doing nothing more than poking fun of the realms of reality and things we do while running away from the shadows created.
Vietnamese Buddhist Monk and spiritual teacher Thick Nhat Hahn uses words to clarify how simple it is to regain control of the assumed lost path. What he shares within his once living trees is no different than NBC’s Breakthrough with Tony Robbins; its Oprah Winfrey compassion combined with pick your lazy booty ba tooty up and let’s get back to living! Tony has gained the confidence and courage through nonstop learning to speak in single sentences that motivate positive lasting change.
How many people do you know that have placed in the soil their entire plantation of being on famous movie quotes? Star Wars is flooded with powerful knowledge all stemming from already famous quotes from the Bible. Hit up Amazon.com and scratch into the surface of, “Whoa I didn’t know.”
So why all this junk in the trunk talk about blips, blunders, quickly quoted sentences and unmasked reality? I’ve been infected as well as motivated by a quote that was handed to me at six this morning; it’s led to digging deeper into the Georgia clay that stains everything including your little toe.
Look around you…listen beyond sound and catch a glimpse of the stuff not making it to the forefront of on-air broadcast; unemployment in America won’t begin to change until the end of 2012. Nobody wants to talk about helping business owners. Such conversation creates the tiniest of trickles creating fear of hard fought battles that rattle but do nothing in changing our place in history. We take it in, digest its presentation and shoot it through our system before it’s delivered to those who make up what it is we’re trying to accomplish. The economy isn’t depressed…the people are.
The music of the 60’s may have been in protest but in the chapters thereafter Crosby Stills and Nash, Dylan and even Springsteen have proved to be poets with a pen and through their methods of message sharing the earth has moved and Carol King is shouting, “See I told you!”
Today’s music includes Nickelback: If today was your last day; American Idol Kris Allen: Live like you were dying and Tim McGraw: Live like you were dying. We sing and sing and sing along never realizing how powerful such lyrics are to core of reasons for wanting and needing to grow. It’s easier to talk yourself into a depression then it is to be one.
Google modern songs written about dying and thousands of lists appear based on the top ten songs to play at a funeral, top favorites that make you sad, car crash tunes and on and on and on. No wonder Party in the USA from Miley Cyrus was an out of the box success in an age when purchasing music has hit yet another all time low. One problem, we can only handle being happy for three minutes and forty two seconds with a cool fade at the end.
Oh! The quote that rocked my world at six this morning! How can today be the end of the world when tomorrow is already happening in Australia?
I dare you to try and have a bad day…someone in a completely different country has already beat you to it, which would make you a follower and that’s not your cup of tea.
I am who I am because being who I am makes it alright to be plain ole boring me and I like it when I look in the mirror and see _______________.
1. Toothpaste on my chin
2. A rat’s nest of hair my mother doesn’t have to shove a comb through
3. Facial hair I swear grows by the second but we can’t speed up Time Warner Cable
4. Eyes that carry the child’s dream even though I’m dressed in adult clothes
5. Ink on my fingertips from writing but I don’t wash it off because it serves as a
reminder that my most important daily goal has been achieved: write without excuses
In the game of life you are your own Rock Star Roadie, stage manager, songwriter, musician, promoter, promotions director and big rig driver. More importantly you have to be the biggest and best fan of that person standing in the mirror. Make some noise and let your heart and dreams find reason to keep creating new songs to sing.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Friday, August 6, 2010
I know! Let's allow others to silence our great day! Not!
Attempting something that’s complicated and always being in a rush; two the most miserable pills to take when wanting to escape the pressures of everyday living and just breathe by way of being creative.
Taking everything negative too seriously; it gives the Master’s of Opinions daily permission to walk into your chapters and stop you from growing.
Assuming what you dream is much much too expensive and there’s no way on God’s green earth you’re going to be able to fulfill your wishes of at least trying.
The weekend is here! Time to create! Pull your motor up to the computer and let’s fill you full of inspiration. Wouldn’t it be great if it truly worked that way? I fake my way through more conversations when people learn of my career then swiftly follow the introduction with, “Say something funny! Talk like a disc jockey!”
The average person is programmed to say that…tell me a radio on-air talent who doesn’t try hoisting the tone of their vocals downward while attempting to pop a happy shot into a listeners incredibly busy day. As stupid as Program Directors claim it sounds…its always fun to notice it’s the one thing a listener remembers about the station they've already forgot.
Let’s put focus on the second group of artist or creative person shut downs…
You don’t have to be in radio or reporting for Channel 400 news to come face to face with criticism or a totally innocent person who’s completely willing to offer a suggestion on how to improve. As my Mother systematically reminds me, “Don’t you dare think what you do is any different than what real people with real jobs face everyday.”
Constructive criticism is a corporate term that gives bosses the legal right to tell it to you straight. Interestingly enough it doesn’t stop at the front door. Your sister has her share mixed in with your neighbors, cousins, minister and sometimes I swear even the cats and dogs give you a look that says, “Bite me!”
Mom’s been involved with the public well beyond the suggested limits; forty plus years of handling bowling leagues while keeping all that takes place behind the scenes moving forward, which has slammed her into many piles of other people's escapes…bowling is about releasing right? I remember Rockin Ray telling me that every time he’d step up to the foul line the head pin was someone he wasn’t in the mood to properly digest.
During a typical week, the average person endures 85% negativity which embarrassingly manhandles the remaining spirit because what little energy is left is dominated by a need not to grow because it takes a lot to pick up your aching tired butt, wipe the dirt off your shirt and look fate in the eyes again and again.
Wanna know how to get by all those evil vibes? Laugh…
When Johnny Joe Barker Face with a bright green booger in his nose stops into your place of creative flow to offer his message…do nothing more than make it a surface hit. Nobody has the right to enter your soul performance. As miserable as it is to painstakingly sit through nag, nag, nag always remind yourself that Perfect Johnny has a hole in his underwear and if he’s rushed to the hospital the doctors will quickly realize he didn’t listen to his mother, “Always wear perfect skivvies!”
Number two: If the bombardment of your day is always in the same place. When Johnny and his boogers show up at the door…invite him to a new place to stand; it takes them off their game. New environments affect bullies too.
Absolutely this is complicated to achieve and you can’t help but rush your way into building a better relationship. Ever heard of AM Stereo? Cool idea but it went nowhere. Nobody wanted to purchase the receiver. By convincing yourself that creating a better place of peace is too complicated, you in essence have refused to sell AM Stereo systems to clients. You could rush out and nab 100 of them but in the end only a few might fall off the shelf.
Why is Face Book, Skype, Twitter and the old fashioned email looked upon as being the solid line that connected the dots between the generations? It’s allowed Tommy and Sally from Farmville Backwoods USA to take their time and figure out a more trusting way to communicate. I still meet people who call the web the work of the Devil. I refuse to believe that because after forty years of searching I finally found my two sisters Jamie and Irene.
Assuming what you dream is much much too expensive kills the thought of being creative. Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot and Sears bank on your doubt. They make it too easy to dabble in tiny projects that make you say, “Wow! I did something!” Then you look out the window and still see the same old backyard that really could use a tiny garden or roses for the deer to eat. I swear that’s the only reason why I planted so many flowers in the front…there’s no better feeling than walking outside and Momma Dear is chomping on her version of a granola bar. Seeing her twin fawns with speckled butts is priceless!
When was the last time you admitted to being happy? Not fake happy! Not Brady Bunch or Gilmore Girls happy…but happy. Family Guy, Married with Children, The Simpson’s, How I Met Your Mother, Everybody Loves Raymond…big ratings winners! Because they are the face of true America…miserable and always willing to swiftly turn a different direction because what you no longer see doesn’t exist. We watch them to relate and that makes us laugh. Comedy doesn’t exist unless you’ve been there.
Which is my way of saying wear undies with a hole in them…how can you laugh at your boss if you didn’t laugh at yourself first?
I will always believe in you…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Taking everything negative too seriously; it gives the Master’s of Opinions daily permission to walk into your chapters and stop you from growing.
Assuming what you dream is much much too expensive and there’s no way on God’s green earth you’re going to be able to fulfill your wishes of at least trying.
The weekend is here! Time to create! Pull your motor up to the computer and let’s fill you full of inspiration. Wouldn’t it be great if it truly worked that way? I fake my way through more conversations when people learn of my career then swiftly follow the introduction with, “Say something funny! Talk like a disc jockey!”
The average person is programmed to say that…tell me a radio on-air talent who doesn’t try hoisting the tone of their vocals downward while attempting to pop a happy shot into a listeners incredibly busy day. As stupid as Program Directors claim it sounds…its always fun to notice it’s the one thing a listener remembers about the station they've already forgot.
Let’s put focus on the second group of artist or creative person shut downs…
You don’t have to be in radio or reporting for Channel 400 news to come face to face with criticism or a totally innocent person who’s completely willing to offer a suggestion on how to improve. As my Mother systematically reminds me, “Don’t you dare think what you do is any different than what real people with real jobs face everyday.”
Constructive criticism is a corporate term that gives bosses the legal right to tell it to you straight. Interestingly enough it doesn’t stop at the front door. Your sister has her share mixed in with your neighbors, cousins, minister and sometimes I swear even the cats and dogs give you a look that says, “Bite me!”
Mom’s been involved with the public well beyond the suggested limits; forty plus years of handling bowling leagues while keeping all that takes place behind the scenes moving forward, which has slammed her into many piles of other people's escapes…bowling is about releasing right? I remember Rockin Ray telling me that every time he’d step up to the foul line the head pin was someone he wasn’t in the mood to properly digest.
During a typical week, the average person endures 85% negativity which embarrassingly manhandles the remaining spirit because what little energy is left is dominated by a need not to grow because it takes a lot to pick up your aching tired butt, wipe the dirt off your shirt and look fate in the eyes again and again.
Wanna know how to get by all those evil vibes? Laugh…
When Johnny Joe Barker Face with a bright green booger in his nose stops into your place of creative flow to offer his message…do nothing more than make it a surface hit. Nobody has the right to enter your soul performance. As miserable as it is to painstakingly sit through nag, nag, nag always remind yourself that Perfect Johnny has a hole in his underwear and if he’s rushed to the hospital the doctors will quickly realize he didn’t listen to his mother, “Always wear perfect skivvies!”
Number two: If the bombardment of your day is always in the same place. When Johnny and his boogers show up at the door…invite him to a new place to stand; it takes them off their game. New environments affect bullies too.
Absolutely this is complicated to achieve and you can’t help but rush your way into building a better relationship. Ever heard of AM Stereo? Cool idea but it went nowhere. Nobody wanted to purchase the receiver. By convincing yourself that creating a better place of peace is too complicated, you in essence have refused to sell AM Stereo systems to clients. You could rush out and nab 100 of them but in the end only a few might fall off the shelf.
Why is Face Book, Skype, Twitter and the old fashioned email looked upon as being the solid line that connected the dots between the generations? It’s allowed Tommy and Sally from Farmville Backwoods USA to take their time and figure out a more trusting way to communicate. I still meet people who call the web the work of the Devil. I refuse to believe that because after forty years of searching I finally found my two sisters Jamie and Irene.
Assuming what you dream is much much too expensive kills the thought of being creative. Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot and Sears bank on your doubt. They make it too easy to dabble in tiny projects that make you say, “Wow! I did something!” Then you look out the window and still see the same old backyard that really could use a tiny garden or roses for the deer to eat. I swear that’s the only reason why I planted so many flowers in the front…there’s no better feeling than walking outside and Momma Dear is chomping on her version of a granola bar. Seeing her twin fawns with speckled butts is priceless!
When was the last time you admitted to being happy? Not fake happy! Not Brady Bunch or Gilmore Girls happy…but happy. Family Guy, Married with Children, The Simpson’s, How I Met Your Mother, Everybody Loves Raymond…big ratings winners! Because they are the face of true America…miserable and always willing to swiftly turn a different direction because what you no longer see doesn’t exist. We watch them to relate and that makes us laugh. Comedy doesn’t exist unless you’ve been there.
Which is my way of saying wear undies with a hole in them…how can you laugh at your boss if you didn’t laugh at yourself first?
I will always believe in you…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Thursday, August 5, 2010
When fate orders you to stop...keep walking forward.
Amazingly, I’ve heard as well as used every excuse written about why today isn’t a good day to be an artist. Everything from not being in the mood, too tired, totally burnt by a demanding career, its no longer fun when its turned into a business to always being introduced to people who love your creations blessed with horizon chasing visions but can’t find the nickels, dimes and dollar bills required to help you pay for the stifling price of the canvas and paint.
A newly designed modern art gallery in New Orleans loved, loved, loved my Charleston pieces, “Nothing’s captured the essence of the Ravenel Bridge like your paint brush.”
Two extremely important things should’ve served as giant stop signs in the core portion of the soils that keep my ego starving artist way popping up wild flower and grapevines:
1. A gallery from New Orleans wanted art that kissed the unforgettable beauty of my most favorite city Charleston…you don’t visit the Outer Banks of the Carolina’s to purchase works that resemble New York City. Collectors purchase fish pictures.
2. Nearly every bank in this great nation was folding, jobs were being tossed out like extremely hot over-microwaved kernels of popcorn—Gallery’s aren’t museums, you’ve got 90 days to make waves.
Although I did verbally ask on several occasions why the Charleston pieces seemed to be more important than the other expressions fed by multitudes of colors and subjects; the answer I kept getting back, “Because I love them.”
That’s the only thing an artist wants to hear, “I love them!”
Due to the recession the gallery opened nearly two months late totally missing the Fat Tuesday rush. Nothing moved which prompted an evil email from the owner who proceeded to tell me every reason why my art sucks will suck and should never be touched again. To which I gently replied, “I love it when my paint brush moves people into showcasing their true feelings. My job is done. You have been motivated to be great!”
Probably not the best thing to send…so I did my best to make it up to the gallery—I penned out a nice letter to the owner of the gallery: I’m so sorry to have taken up so much space during your incredible grand opening. I have found someone who wants the art…they’ll be in today to take it home for free. Please let them have it at 100% no cost. It’s on me.”
The strange twist to this creative mix up is what artist’s tend to miss when they’re completely focused on making a buck rather than releasing what they see inside to a world they may never meet. The woman that visited the gallery had seen my art via the internet and had spoken several times of one day owning a piece. I remembered she was from New Orleans…so I wrote to her and said, “You make me smile knowing you want what a gallery doesn’t need.”
I never heard from her until one day last year an email from her husband said, “My wife loved your Charleston pieces, she hung them by the windows believing she could always see that unstoppable bridge on the horizon. She passed away a week ago in the very room those paintings were displayed. Thank you for sharing your rainbow.”
I’ve heard as well as used every excuse written as to why today isn’t a good day to be an artist.
Everyday born is a new sunrise to chase and within its rays that reach from sea to sea there’s always going to be someone that needs your art more than you. It’s not yours to keep…you were born to share it. There’s never a recession inside someone’s heart when reaching to hold a reason to touch a sky seen by an artists eye. For what an artist invites is an act that spoken words can never explain therefore we try to communicate with paint.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
A newly designed modern art gallery in New Orleans loved, loved, loved my Charleston pieces, “Nothing’s captured the essence of the Ravenel Bridge like your paint brush.”
Two extremely important things should’ve served as giant stop signs in the core portion of the soils that keep my ego starving artist way popping up wild flower and grapevines:
1. A gallery from New Orleans wanted art that kissed the unforgettable beauty of my most favorite city Charleston…you don’t visit the Outer Banks of the Carolina’s to purchase works that resemble New York City. Collectors purchase fish pictures.
2. Nearly every bank in this great nation was folding, jobs were being tossed out like extremely hot over-microwaved kernels of popcorn—Gallery’s aren’t museums, you’ve got 90 days to make waves.
Although I did verbally ask on several occasions why the Charleston pieces seemed to be more important than the other expressions fed by multitudes of colors and subjects; the answer I kept getting back, “Because I love them.”
That’s the only thing an artist wants to hear, “I love them!”
Due to the recession the gallery opened nearly two months late totally missing the Fat Tuesday rush. Nothing moved which prompted an evil email from the owner who proceeded to tell me every reason why my art sucks will suck and should never be touched again. To which I gently replied, “I love it when my paint brush moves people into showcasing their true feelings. My job is done. You have been motivated to be great!”
Probably not the best thing to send…so I did my best to make it up to the gallery—I penned out a nice letter to the owner of the gallery: I’m so sorry to have taken up so much space during your incredible grand opening. I have found someone who wants the art…they’ll be in today to take it home for free. Please let them have it at 100% no cost. It’s on me.”
The strange twist to this creative mix up is what artist’s tend to miss when they’re completely focused on making a buck rather than releasing what they see inside to a world they may never meet. The woman that visited the gallery had seen my art via the internet and had spoken several times of one day owning a piece. I remembered she was from New Orleans…so I wrote to her and said, “You make me smile knowing you want what a gallery doesn’t need.”
I never heard from her until one day last year an email from her husband said, “My wife loved your Charleston pieces, she hung them by the windows believing she could always see that unstoppable bridge on the horizon. She passed away a week ago in the very room those paintings were displayed. Thank you for sharing your rainbow.”
I’ve heard as well as used every excuse written as to why today isn’t a good day to be an artist.
Everyday born is a new sunrise to chase and within its rays that reach from sea to sea there’s always going to be someone that needs your art more than you. It’s not yours to keep…you were born to share it. There’s never a recession inside someone’s heart when reaching to hold a reason to touch a sky seen by an artists eye. For what an artist invites is an act that spoken words can never explain therefore we try to communicate with paint.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Get your eyes off the rearview mirror!
While checking out the world premiere of Step Up 3D last evening, one of the films main characters Moose shot to life an old proverb that’s been featured on over 649 million websites and yet to hear it again makes it as fresh as a late night the light is on in the window Krispy Kreme:
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive.
During an age of being bombarded by too much work and not enough play, such key phrases have somehow gotten shoved into a cardboard box and donated to the cities recycling system.
My friends Maggie and Tom find tremendous pleasure in traveling everyday…the last time I looked at a calendar I’d say they’ve spent a little of a quarter of their lives in an RV holding hands and cuddling up to tremendous levels of inner peace, solitude and well kept small town secrets that make your heart scream, “Oh neat!” Then it’s quickly off to the next place.
Master Harris from Martial Arts University constantly punches into our egos that every person in class is on a separate journey and not one of them is or will ever be the same. He teaches us focus while building a heart body and soul that grows into a quality driven machine that moves up, over, through, around any mountain that believes it stands a chance to keep you from reaching that next place…
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive.
Maybe that's why my Stepfather Joe never finished building our house near Optimist Park in Billings, Montana. It didn’t matter how embarrassed I was to bring friends over…the end result became my 48 year old self who has yet to meet another man whose mind works like his, constantly thinking, planning and bringing “simple’ to the forefront of realities bite. The downside of such bravery is the label: Never a Master always a Jack of all trades.
The credit card crisis in America is based on this nations first generation becoming addicted to, “I want it now or else.” The only travel the majority of us see is hopping in the car at 6am and hauling tail to a job where fake smiles and plastic handshakes are the key to winning. Hey! Winning is a choice. Fake it to make it. The problem is, the art of being a great actor is studied by all and very quickly your undercover strategy is identified and defused before the right foot is placed in front of the other.
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive. Is anybody really traveling? Sit in the food court of the nearest mall and the view is much too much too damaging to digest—we aren’t traveling…people are running away from. Ouch!
Modern ways and means have made it completely possible for us to overload every 24 hour period with too much travel, making it extremely difficult to learn how to properly pick it up and preserve its behavior during the moments you first met. Nobody remembers their first kiss anymore...its hard to think of what happened five minutes ago.
Why do grown men have a midlife crisis? It usually takes place during that unexpected sunrise when you suddenly realize there aren’t too many summers left on the map of everyday living. So you race as fast as you can, sacrificing all you’ve got, laying claim to every reason why you deserve to have and to hold and in the end…you can’t put any of it in the final box someone else will pick out for you.
If carmakers truly want to capitalize on aging Baby Boomers and the Gen Xer’s noisily standing next to them…quit building classic automobiles people can’t afford. Give me back the Dodge Rambler, the AMX, red and white 74 Ford pickup with giant mag wheels you fire up on every corner, the Chevy Nova that had enough guts to rip your dreams apart at take off then somehow put your life back together at the next traffic light.
I want to own the very car Rob, Tony, Neil and my sister Susan would cruise the Point in on a late, late Saturday night while cranking up new bands called Van Halen and AC/DC. Then make up horrible fibs and stories to share with the average everyday police officer that pulled us over because someone got caught sipping on homemade wine, which invited the law protectors to open the car trunk and there they sat, baseball bats and BB guns.
I want to see the reinvention of the Evil Knievel action figure that jumped over backyard ditches or Stretch Armstrong that went and went and went, Nerf living room basketball tournaments and the innocence of looking at your parents and screaming, “I can’t wait to move out!” Only to hear them reply, “I’ll get the luggage and help you pack.”
High school felt like forever, once free we turned our twenties into everything our parents said no to. We grabbed the mop and bucket to clean up the mess in our thirties only to notice life truly does begin at 40. Except the body no longer bends at the knees like it used to so we sit around with know it all doctors who claim they can fix anything only to learn their journey has invited more pain.
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive.
What if…for one week…we exercised our right to use the tool called deprivation? No living in the past. No past memories of the men or women we once loved. No music from ABBA, Fleetwood Mac and KISS. No photographs stored on Face Book for people you don’t know to point their finger at and laugh. No recipes your Grandmother shared during summer break. Not even the quote your cutting edge father spouted out while attempting to educate the future you’ve never truly gained control of.
A week to enjoy travel not the arrival.
A friend wrote to me claiming, “Since your sickness last year, you’ve traveled farther than any other time in your life. Your books are getting published; you're recording music in a real recording studio, your voice is heard all over the world on radio and television commercials, you are now ordained and write as well as deliver messages to brides and grooms, you should be extremely proud of everything you do.”
Stop…what do you think my reply was?
Don’t judge a book by its cover. I’ve spent the past year doing what I should’ve been doing the entire way. I’ve done nothing new but will the moment I catch up to everything I set aside because for some reason I honestly thought radio was the chosen destination. Everything I do was discovered years ago…I’ve not made such a find nor can I until this part of my life is given air to breathe…then we can move forward.
Not a midlife crisis...I'm traveling! Forward...
Now I challenge you to get the job done so you can find room to do what makes you just a free as Tom and Maggie. You only have a few more summers left. Get it out of your box of maybe one days and get back to living.
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive. People make money off your reasons to hold onto a past you can't change. Every CD, DVD, car, painting, whatever stinks like something you've already done, the sound of cha ching is ringing through their discovery of living off your left overs.
Move forward! Ok...you can stop rolling your eyes now. I'm done. I need a flashlight to get me off this soap box. Paul McCartney had one! See how easy it is!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive.
During an age of being bombarded by too much work and not enough play, such key phrases have somehow gotten shoved into a cardboard box and donated to the cities recycling system.
My friends Maggie and Tom find tremendous pleasure in traveling everyday…the last time I looked at a calendar I’d say they’ve spent a little of a quarter of their lives in an RV holding hands and cuddling up to tremendous levels of inner peace, solitude and well kept small town secrets that make your heart scream, “Oh neat!” Then it’s quickly off to the next place.
Master Harris from Martial Arts University constantly punches into our egos that every person in class is on a separate journey and not one of them is or will ever be the same. He teaches us focus while building a heart body and soul that grows into a quality driven machine that moves up, over, through, around any mountain that believes it stands a chance to keep you from reaching that next place…
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive.
Maybe that's why my Stepfather Joe never finished building our house near Optimist Park in Billings, Montana. It didn’t matter how embarrassed I was to bring friends over…the end result became my 48 year old self who has yet to meet another man whose mind works like his, constantly thinking, planning and bringing “simple’ to the forefront of realities bite. The downside of such bravery is the label: Never a Master always a Jack of all trades.
The credit card crisis in America is based on this nations first generation becoming addicted to, “I want it now or else.” The only travel the majority of us see is hopping in the car at 6am and hauling tail to a job where fake smiles and plastic handshakes are the key to winning. Hey! Winning is a choice. Fake it to make it. The problem is, the art of being a great actor is studied by all and very quickly your undercover strategy is identified and defused before the right foot is placed in front of the other.
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive. Is anybody really traveling? Sit in the food court of the nearest mall and the view is much too much too damaging to digest—we aren’t traveling…people are running away from. Ouch!
Modern ways and means have made it completely possible for us to overload every 24 hour period with too much travel, making it extremely difficult to learn how to properly pick it up and preserve its behavior during the moments you first met. Nobody remembers their first kiss anymore...its hard to think of what happened five minutes ago.
Why do grown men have a midlife crisis? It usually takes place during that unexpected sunrise when you suddenly realize there aren’t too many summers left on the map of everyday living. So you race as fast as you can, sacrificing all you’ve got, laying claim to every reason why you deserve to have and to hold and in the end…you can’t put any of it in the final box someone else will pick out for you.
If carmakers truly want to capitalize on aging Baby Boomers and the Gen Xer’s noisily standing next to them…quit building classic automobiles people can’t afford. Give me back the Dodge Rambler, the AMX, red and white 74 Ford pickup with giant mag wheels you fire up on every corner, the Chevy Nova that had enough guts to rip your dreams apart at take off then somehow put your life back together at the next traffic light.
I want to own the very car Rob, Tony, Neil and my sister Susan would cruise the Point in on a late, late Saturday night while cranking up new bands called Van Halen and AC/DC. Then make up horrible fibs and stories to share with the average everyday police officer that pulled us over because someone got caught sipping on homemade wine, which invited the law protectors to open the car trunk and there they sat, baseball bats and BB guns.
I want to see the reinvention of the Evil Knievel action figure that jumped over backyard ditches or Stretch Armstrong that went and went and went, Nerf living room basketball tournaments and the innocence of looking at your parents and screaming, “I can’t wait to move out!” Only to hear them reply, “I’ll get the luggage and help you pack.”
High school felt like forever, once free we turned our twenties into everything our parents said no to. We grabbed the mop and bucket to clean up the mess in our thirties only to notice life truly does begin at 40. Except the body no longer bends at the knees like it used to so we sit around with know it all doctors who claim they can fix anything only to learn their journey has invited more pain.
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive.
What if…for one week…we exercised our right to use the tool called deprivation? No living in the past. No past memories of the men or women we once loved. No music from ABBA, Fleetwood Mac and KISS. No photographs stored on Face Book for people you don’t know to point their finger at and laugh. No recipes your Grandmother shared during summer break. Not even the quote your cutting edge father spouted out while attempting to educate the future you’ve never truly gained control of.
A week to enjoy travel not the arrival.
A friend wrote to me claiming, “Since your sickness last year, you’ve traveled farther than any other time in your life. Your books are getting published; you're recording music in a real recording studio, your voice is heard all over the world on radio and television commercials, you are now ordained and write as well as deliver messages to brides and grooms, you should be extremely proud of everything you do.”
Stop…what do you think my reply was?
Don’t judge a book by its cover. I’ve spent the past year doing what I should’ve been doing the entire way. I’ve done nothing new but will the moment I catch up to everything I set aside because for some reason I honestly thought radio was the chosen destination. Everything I do was discovered years ago…I’ve not made such a find nor can I until this part of my life is given air to breathe…then we can move forward.
Not a midlife crisis...I'm traveling! Forward...
Now I challenge you to get the job done so you can find room to do what makes you just a free as Tom and Maggie. You only have a few more summers left. Get it out of your box of maybe one days and get back to living.
It’s better to travel than it is to arrive. People make money off your reasons to hold onto a past you can't change. Every CD, DVD, car, painting, whatever stinks like something you've already done, the sound of cha ching is ringing through their discovery of living off your left overs.
Move forward! Ok...you can stop rolling your eyes now. I'm done. I need a flashlight to get me off this soap box. Paul McCartney had one! See how easy it is!
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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