You were guilty of committing the same mistake which afflicts ninety nine percent of humankind:  You were too conservative when the situation called for decisive action!  You froze in the batter’s box while a waist-high fastball whizzed by you uncontested.  You took glee in capturing a pawn when a knight was there for the taking.  You asked the Plain Jane to dance when a wet-dream vixen was seated right next to her at the “it” nightclub.  You settled for a putrid outcome when aggressive maneuvering was still possible.  You preened and postured for too long when immediate action was not only called for, but absolutely necessary.  You fucked up, in other words—Fucked up royally!!!—and no silky words or mealy-mouthed excuse-making will change this inescapable fact one scintilla.  You could have had the world by the tail but you aimed lower and instead wound up gripping that malodorous orifice immediately beneath the tail.

Quitting is never quite as difficult the second time around, and the third, and the fourth……and then it becomes increasingly easier each time thereafter.  You become inured to it, accustomed to it, overcome by it—akin to any other undesirable habit.  Like everything else in daily life that follows a repetitious pattern, you become more and more proficient at the art of quitting the more you practice it.  But unfortunately, you remain so close to the situation that—akin to dry rot in wood left sitting unattended for too long a period of time—you are probably grossly unaware this malignant process is happening to you even as your life is ruined from within.

Too often, the easiest thing to do—as well as the right thing to do and the undisputed advisable course of action—becomes the hardest thing to do and impossible to resist, namely…..doing nothing!!!  That’s right, doing nothing!  Don’t interfere.  Don’t meddle.  Stay in your own lane at all times.  Mind your own business but not others’.  Don’t pretend to be informed, even expert, on a subject you know nothing about.  Sit on your hands and just do NOTHING, for God’s sake.  Above all else, resist the temptation to take some sort of action that will wind up harming someone else or cause them unnecessary complications, tribulation, and misery.  Actioneering seems almost instinctive in a crunch but, trust me, it isn’t.  Do what your best judgment tells you to do, which in not infrequent instances is nothing at all.

(Excerpted from the upcoming book “West by Northwest”)

For those of my readers unfamiliar with the culture of northern Minnesota, one prominent statue of Paul Bunyan is situated at the gateway to the uniquely gritty small city of Bemidji, and then there is another equally impressive one located in the fishing mecca of Brainerd not far to the southeast.  Both are appropriately sited, of course, inasmuch as legend holds the North Woods of Minnesota was irrefutably Paul Bunyan’s birthplace and favorite playground.  Not, mind you, Crescent City, California; seeing Paul Bunyan and his sidekick Babe the Blue Ox venerated there seemed woefully out of place and shamefully improper.  Here we were touring in northern California, being inundated with this mellow, laid-back, devil-may-care California mentality, and then the five of us upper midwestern Blahniks were stunned to see hard-working Paul and Babe being celebrated in the midst of all that sloth and succor. 

Shame shame shame on you, thieving Californians!!!  You shouldn’t be appropriating a cultural icon from the North Woods of Minnesota, yes, THAT Minnesota, the blue-collar fantabulous Land of 10,000 Lakes and Bud Grant and Jesse “The Body” Ventura and lefse and lutefisk.  Minnesota isn’t trying to pilfer the Golden Gate Bridge, Baywatch, and the Beach Boys from you now, are they, California?!?!  So stop perpetrating this contemptible ruse on the outside world, you fake, asshole poseurs!!!

No matter how daunting a task looming in front of you may seem—–JUST START IT!!!!!   You won’t know for sure whether or not you can accomplish the damned thing unless you actually dig in and try!  A lot of endeavors appear to be virtually impossible on their surface when viewed from a distance through a long-range lens, but then once you become immersed in the experience a whole new set of possibilities open up that weren’t clearly visible at the outset.  Life is chronically embroiled in a dizzying state of flux, as are the smaller units within it that we more familiarly know as days, hours, and minutes.  Thus don’t ever be intimidated into not starting a scary project out of some irrational fear that you won’t be able to finish it.  Instead, unceasingly strive to remember and embrace this transcendent corollary:  Failing honorably as the direct consequence of a noble effort is nothing to be ashamed of!!!  You did your best—all your body was physically capable of doing—and that’s the only part of the grand equation that genuinely matters!!!!!

A platinum reputation is like a fragile, exquisite clay vase.  Sculpting one takes considerable time, skill, and care, yet either can be permanently and irreparably destroyed in little more than an instant if indiscretion is allowed to rule, however briefly.  Do not allow this to happen.  Tend to your reputation—an innately dainty object—with the utmost care, for if you allow it to get shattered then successfully gluing it back together  as before will be about as easy as attempting to pole vault over the Washington Monument with a baseball bat.

As soon as a moment passes, as good and exhilarating as it may have been, release it and move on to the next.  Clinging to a cherished but extinct moment is little different than embracing but then not releasing your grip on the cold, deceased carcass of a beloved relative, and of course no sane person would ever do that.  You honor the past best by quickly moving on from it.

Love is an emotion so staggeringly powerful and transcendent that mere words have little hope of ever fully describing it.  Keats, Shelley, Joyce…..all the great English poets made a valiant attempt to do so with mixed results, yet their grandiloquent soliloquies fell embarrassingly short of capturing the true essence of love.  Actions are the only arbiter that hold any sway in the matter, and therefore actions are the ONLY barometer to recognize if you are harboring reservations about the depth of another’s feelings toward you.  Don’t be fooled by words, my naïve friend, because words are elusive, deceitful little creatures that are highly adept at the art of disappearing instantaneously into the firmament or, alternatively, they can and will turn on you unexpectedly with guns a’blazin’ in the blink of an eye or the fluttering of an eyelash.  Words simply cannot be trusted.  If her words say one thing and her actions say something altogether different, pitch those  dishonest words in the wastebasket and gird up for seismic disappointment because it most certainly is headed in your direction.  Concrete actions define intimate relationships; too many words pointlessly complicate them.

…..I’ll do it tomorrow, she said.  Yes, yes, I’ll put it off until tomorrow.  And if not tomorrow, then the day after that.  Or maybe even the day after that if my motivation is running low.  And then, through some bilious vagary of fortune, circumstances changed on a dime and tomorrow never came.  Tomorrow was no more.  And with the last dying fibrillation of her heart she thought about tomorrow, and of all the tomorrows that would forever be denied her now and in the future.  And she decided right at that moment with her next to last breath that it might be good to lead life with a certain sense of urgency, and that the future was more a mirage than a reality, and that it probably is not a good idea to procrastinate one’s life away assuming a future that is not guaranteed…..

A HUGE abyss exists between “I had a chance to…..” and “I did…..”.  That’s right, a HUGE abyss which reveals everything you need to know about another’s core character.  About their resolve.  About the strength and substance of their spine.  About their belief in themselves.  About their sense of adventure.  And at the end of the day, isn’t that what life certifiably is:  A behemoth adventure rife with opportunities?  The answer is yes, and the gulf separating wishful thinking from concrete action is even wider than the one separating New Orleans from Venezuela.  Don’t just “talk the talk”.  “Walk the walk” while you’re at it.  Who knows?   You may actually grow to like it…..