Tag: friends

  • The generation that won’t grow up

    The generation that brought you Friends, who embody extended adolescence in every way, are now seeking to eliminate the label of of middle age.

    Patricia Cohen, New York Times reporter and author of another new study of ageing, In Our Prime: The Invention of Middle Age, might not be overly sympathetic to Berkmann’s plight. The mid-life crisis, she suggests, is a marketing trick designed to sell cosmetics, cars and expensive foreign holidays; people in their 20s and 30s are far more vulnerable to such a crisis than their parents. Cohen finds little evidence for so-called “empty nest syndrome”, or for the widespread stereotype of the rich man with the young “trophy wife”.

    The New Ages of Man, Tim Walker of The Independent, March 6th 2012

    These are my people. I get it. We are fast-approaching our 40s or now ungracefully fighting our 40s by voluntarily putting ourselves through bootcamp-worthy physical pain with names like Insanity and Crossfit. We are middle-age but desire to see ourselves as young, hip, and virile.

    Last year, I reconnected with a high school friend via Facebook. As we caught up on life she was shocked that I married at 21 years old and had kids at 25. She said, “I’m 35 and I have a hard time keeping a gold fish alive, I’m not ready for marriage or children yet.” As we got to know one another I couldn’t help  thinking… What went wrong here? Why did some of us take on adult responsibilities in our late teens and early 20s and others didn’t? Was I more mature than my peers? (Um, maybe in some ways?!?)

    It’s normal that each generation would morph and change things a bit. But I find it interesting that my peers reshaped adolescence, extending it through our 20s and into our 30s to the point that we now call it emerging adulthood and these same people are now denying the existence of middle age, as if this stage of life were not the middle of our lives. Those ahead of us, our Baby Boomer parents, have lead the way. With their tummy tucks, cougars, and second careers, they could be named Generation Denial.

    Here’s what I know. If my generational peers don’t step up to the plate and embrace who they are… our kids will rename us into what we really are, Generation Regret. 

  • From RSS to Today

    Is RSS dying? Quick answer: No

    But RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has a lot more to compete with in 2010 than it did in 2005 when it took off.

    In 2005, the advent of aggregators like Bloglines, Google reader, and even the über popularity of my.yahoo.com made RSS the best way to grow your reach as a blogger. If you could just get them to click that orange button– they’d get your blog post every time you published automatically!

    RSS was king.

    For a few years RSS was one of the easy measurement tools of blog power. As people visited a site for the first time they were more likely to subscribe to a blog if they knew say… 1034 other people already did. (And yes, tons of the names in the Christian blogosphere you know today got known simply because they figured out how to manipulate the Feedburner subscriber chicklet. They made it seems like they had tens of thousands when they really had about a hundred. Tricky, tricky. It was dirty but you bought their books. Sorry.)

    In 2006, the apple cart began to get upset with the popularity of sites which sifted through thousands of relevant RSS feeds within a niche` and curated the niche` into a website. Power wasn’t just measured in your ability to have thousands of RSS subscribers… it became measured in your ability to get your conent brought to the front page. Sites like Boing Boing, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, and Mashable exploded simply by curating their respective niche`. (Imagine editors looking through tens of thousands of RSS feeds and choosing 10-12 things a day to link bait.) Interestingly, since that’s essentially what newspapers and television news folks do, these curators became recognized as legitimate news outlets within their sector. All because they subscribed to thousands of RSS feeds and started to bring the best stuff to the top. Along the way they earned more than your RSS subscription– they earned your trust.

    In 2008 and gaining strength through today RSS has become less important. Why? We don’t need to have tons of content automatically sent to us via an aggregator. Nor do we need the big niche` sites to curate the conversation generally. Instead of subscribing to Mashable or Boing Boing or the New York Times, I monitor my friends feed on Facebook or Twitter. I allow them to go through their aggregators and allow them to be my curator. In other words… I read what my friends tell me to read because they thought enough of it to retweet it or recommend it to me on Facebook.

    Here’s the new reality bloggers, news agencies, and marketers are wrestling with every day: We’ve gone from RSS to FFS.

    What is FFS? I just made it up.

    Friends and Fans Syndication: Delivering your content through relationship-based platforms.

    Learn how to manipulate FFS and you will be king in 2011.

  • Things I’m thinking about today

    Ever just have a hodgepodge of slush in your mind? Here’s some random thoughts this morning.

    – While I still think of myself as a down-the-middle, maybe even conservative evangelical Christian… I’m finding myself tired of the grey haired leaders.

    – As much as I’d like to say I agree with the complimentarian position of women in ministry, I thinks it’s just a politically correct version of it’s older self. I think you can put me in the egalitarian position of women in ministry, if those are my choices. I think its straight up revisionism, chauvinism, and crazy hermeneutics to say women can’t be elders and pastors in churches. (Conservative brethren allow women to practically serve in these roles, they just call them “directors of ministry” and pay them 50% less. That’s sexism.)

    – Speaking of crazy hermeneutics… I think the rapture was made up by someone who liked science fiction. People argue about a pre-tribulational and post-tribulational rapture of God’s people in revelation. I keep reading the New Testement verses about that, and I have to say I think it was made up. I’m still firmly in the pre-millenial camp, but that whole rapture deal?

    – This year’s American Idol is ridiculous. Paula and that new lady are cheerleaders. Seriously, what is Paula on? Randy isn’t say “dog” nearly enough. And the longer this thing goes,  the more I like Simon. At least he tells the truth.

    – I’m officially addicted to the Travel Channel and the Discovery Channel. I could watch them both 24 hours a day.

    – I’m trying to be more green by taking the trolley to work in April. The mile walk back and forth to the trolley stop won’t hurt me either.

    – I can’t wait for it to warm up a bit more so I can swim at the Kroc Center.

    – The last month has been amazing on the stock market. Seriously, one of my stocks gain 25% just this week.

    – Call me a hypocrite. But I made $1 per share on Ford in the last 2 months. Easy money! I think GM is going out of business in the next 6 weeks. But Ford and Chrysler are going to make it.

    – I wanted to pull an April Fool’s joke on YS, I really did. But after I saw all the online jokes I was glad I didn’t.

    – Speaking of work… I’ve been wanting to run around screaming about how excited I am about new stuff we’re doing. But people there already think I’m nuts so I didn’t.

    – I like my iPhone, a lot.

    – The other day I had dinner with Gary Shell from our church in Romeo. He asked me if I had any regrets about this move. I feel bad about it but I laughed. No regrets. I’m not the kind of leader who second guesses himself much. But I do miss our friends, big time. We are trying to scrape together a plan to go to Detroit in July.

    – Baseball season is upon us, I’m calling it. Cubs win the World Series. 6 games.

    – The kids Spring Break begins today. I doubt we’ll make it through April without a trip to Disneyland.

    – When Jesus told his disciples, “Take up your cross and follow me” before the crucifixtion… what did they think? Is that kind of like U2’s new song, “Get on your boots?”

    – Stoney still hates the water. He’s the only labrador retreiver in the world who won’t swim.

  • Dinner with the Bailey’s

    Kristen and I are having one of those fun weeks that is also really busy. Other than Dave, we’ve not had many visitors since our moving to San Diego. That has been both good and bad. Good in that we’ve been forced to find new friends… and we’ve been doing that. Bad in that we miss so many of our friends.

    Yesterday we had a chance to catch up with Bill and Shannon Bailey. Back in fall 2007, Kristen and I had the chance to spend a week on their boat, the Pacific Catalyst. It was a great week of fun and relaxation for us as we explored the San Juan Islands. The San Juan’s are a group of islands that create the border between Canada and the United States in northern Washington. During summers they lead adventure cruises in Alaska but in the spring and fall they like to lead trips near their home in Friday Harbor. We shared hilarious memories, including Shannon’s attempt to get me into a sea kayak. I fit, barely. As Bill described, my belly formed a perfect seal which didn’t need the kayaks skirt to keep out water. And I’m pretty sure you could hear a suction “pop” when I got out a couple hours later.

    Bill and Shannon are some of the most hospitible people I’ve ever met. You know someone has the gift of hospitality when they make you feel completely comfortable in their space without effort. Within an hour on their boat you feel at home.

    We felt at home in their company about 8 seconds after they came to the YS offices yesterday. We tooled around the offices (They’ve been youth workers forever and have known YS and the conventions for about two forevers.) then we headed out for an early dinner at Casa de Pico in La Mesa. It was fun to re-connect with them and linger over dinner, not wanting it to end. We caught up on life, ministry, YMX, and shared some stories. We even connected their lives to the life of a staff member at our church. (I love that small world feeling in the Christian world!) It was one of those nights that Kristen and I really needed.

    We came home feeling very normal when we’ve not felt normal in a while. There are times when we feel like we’ve been in San Diego for a while and everything seems routine and as if we fit in. But the last few weeks we’ve felt very much like foreigners on a vacation that lasted too long. Tough to explain that emotion. But if you’ve ever moved and had to start over in life… I think you’ll understand. San Diego seems like home at the end of a long trip when we come home. But we have a long way to go until we can comfortbly declare “we’re from San Diego.”

    Perhaps that what was so odd living in Romeo? We felt like we were “from Romeo” almost immediately and maintained that small town pride as long as we lived there.

    At the end of our time with Bill and Shannon we said our goodbyes and made plans to meet up again this fall in Washington. I hope we get to spend more time with them on the Catalyst and I hope we get to see orcas this time!

  • Sometimes your best idea is stupid

    Case in point…


    This is why you need really good friends. We all need people in our lives to tell us when we’re investing in stupid stuff.

  • People long for someone to talk to

    I am sitting here at a local eatery quietly writing. Unintentionally, I’m observing the people around me. Here’s a fascinating observation about the world we live in.

    Directly in front of me is a mother of a 1 year old interviewing a babysitter so she can go back to work.  It’s pretty clear that this married mother of a one year old needs someone to talk to. For the last hour she hasn’t stopped talking. She has shared with this stranger all sorts of personal information dating back to getting pregnant with Elliot. I keep thinking, “Does this babysitter need to know all of this? Does any of this have anything to do with her role as a babysitter?” Of course it does. This mom wants to know that her babysitter understand her. She wants to know that she is hiring a co-parent. In a way, she is hiring a friend. She needs to know that this person is trustworthy. And for this lady, being trustworty includes listening to her yack for ours at a time.

    More importantly, my observation is that there are a lot of lonely new mom’s out there. This mom needs a playgroup, she needs a Bible study, she needs a church family, and most importantly… she needs to get a life outside of Elliot.

    The reality is that if people don’t have someone to talk to on a regular basis, they’ll go crazy. God created each of us to connect with others, we crave human interaction that is empathetic and just says “uh huh” 200 times per hour. It’s kind of like sleep… when we don’t get that on a regular basis we just data dump on the nearest person who will listen. In this case it’s a babysitter. But it could just as easily be her cable guy, the checkout person at the store, or a random person at Starbucks.

    What can we all do to help this happen for new moms?