huzzah
I use the interjection “Yay!” a fair amount, though mostly in text messages.
Then there’s “Hooray!” which I say as well as write.
But far and away, my favorite exclamation is this one:
HUZZAH!
It just … sounds right (pronounced huh-ZAH, with the accent on the second syllable).
It looks right.
What’s more, it feels right, what with that buzzing double ‘zz’ and all.
It’s the kind of utterance that stirs speaker and listener alike, all but demanding a rousing stir of fist.
Aw, go on — say it. (You know you want to.)
HUZZAH!
I believe the first time I heard the word — or at least the earliest association I’ve made with it — was in an early film version of A Christmas Carol. Scrooge turns down his nephew Fred’s invitation to Christmas dinner with his telltale “Bah! Humbug!” After his ghostly change of heart, however, Scrooge shows up after all, upon which Fred exclaims, “Why, Uncle, you’ve joined us! Huzzah!”
And so, Huzzah feels Christmasy to me as well.
Need I further explain my penchant for using it?
Well, today I offer up a hearty Huzzah!
On New Year’s Eve of 2016, I set a goal for myself: to publish a post every week for 52 weeks. This post sees that goal fulfilled.
The thing is, this accomplishment isn’t just about writing.
You see, I’m a pretty determined and disciplined guy by nature. So writing a blog post a week isn’t necessarily all that big a deal in and of itself.
No, this Huzzah is a celebration of many more important things.
It’s a celebration of good health. You see for the year-and-a-half leading up to the holidays last year, I’d been extremely unwell, with a team of specialists unable to ascertain the problem, even as it daily worsened. Since solving the mystery on my own however, barring a couple bouts of recent bronchitis — and, of course, the black pill of death incident … oh, right, and the run-in with the hedge trimmer — I’ve had remarkably good health in 2017.
The return of good health brought back focus, stamina and creativity — all of which had seemed a distant dream almost, a part of myself long lost.
I take none of it for granted.
Meeting today’s blogging goal is also a testament to wonderful friends and family — and to you, dear reader, as well — for many an atta-boy, for sharing thoughts and stories of your own that sparked my imagination, for expressing the personal ways in which posts have encouraged you to make new choices or to remember loves lost, and for reminding me that what I do here matters.
So again, I say Huzzah!
Here’s to each of us creating many more reasons to celebrate in the year ahead.
i think i can
In July, I completed the recording, editing and mastering of the audiobook version of The Best Advice So Far, right on schedule.
By mid-August, the audiobook had been submitted to Audible, approved and officially released.
From the very start — before I’d ever even penned a word of it — I knew that I eventually wanted The Best Advice So Far released in digital, print and audiobook formats. At long last, that vision had become a reality.
Within days of that milestone, and while still on vacation in Florida, I’d begun outlining my next book. And by September 12, I had completed the preface.
It felt strange, after all that had gone into the first book, to be at the very beginning again with a completely new book. Yet I’m excited about it. I can envision, even from here, what it will become.
Thing is, it wasn’t “becoming” very quickly.
Here we are at the beginning of December, and I don’t have even a single completed chapter to show for it.
All the while, I’ve grown increasingly aware that lots of stuff I’d set out to do — some for more than a year now — also hadn’t gotten done. Instead, they continued to scritch-scritch-scritch like proliferating mice inside the walls of my brain.
Well, a week or so back, I declared that enough was enough. It was time to figure out why I was stalemated on so many personal goals.
I’m not lazy. In fact I stay quite busy. So that was definitely not the culprit. I'd even go so far as to say that most people who know me would describe me as downright tenacious.
In fairness to myself, I had attempted early on to get somewhere with several of the tech-related tasks (such as getting the “Like” button to function on my blog posts, a feature that has not worked since the site went live). But I’d been stonewalled or left hanging by every representative I’d contacted. Still, I thought during my recent ponderings, I’m smarter than the average bear. I designed my entire website myself, having learned everything I know about coding on my own over the years. So I knew that, ultimately, these problems were not beyond my ability to solve, whether anyone else helped me or not.
I’m creative, as well as clear on what I’d like to accomplish. For instance, where the new book is concerned, the outline is finished. I’ve got plenty of ideas, which often play themselves out in great detail inside my head throughout the day. And, as I say, I’m plenty interested in and motivated by the topic. Yet for all of that, I was still perpetually finding myself with nothing to show for it.
Furthermore, I’m not a procrastinator. As a matter of fact, I’ve said or typed the following statement about myself so often that it feels almost cliché: I’ve never missed a deadline to which I’ve agreed. And that is absolutely true. (Well, except for that one time I forgot to get on a plane for a major event I was supposed to be running — sorry, Steve — but that wasn’t so much missing a deadline as having sincerely mucked up the date somehow).
That’s when it hit me — the reason so many things in my life had remained undone for so long.
When I decided to write the first book, I gave myself a year to complete it. I typed the final period on the very last day of that year.
The same held true for designing the website. It was time intensive. Numerous obstacles arose throughout. But I’d drawn a line in the sand. I had decided that the site would be completed, come hell or high water, before an upcoming speaking engagement at Penn State. My cousin died tragically the day before the event. And even into the wee hours of the morning of my flight, I was on the phone with the hosting company trying to resolve issues on their end. Still, you’d best believe that site was up and running like gangbusters before I rolled my luggage out the door.
The audiobook recording was a 120-hour ordeal. Some perfectly good material had to be thrown out simply because my voice tone didn’t match the rest. At one point, due to a software glitch, I lost twelve fully recorded chapters. My heart sank. Honestly, I cried. Then came the painstaking editing phase. Headphones begin to feel like granite. Your eyes go buggy from watching endless neon-green sound waves scroll by, as you seek out every breath and spit crackle and poppy-P, and suppress it manually. And you think you hate the sound of your own voice now? Try listening to it at close range for days on end. Nonetheless, as with every other goal I’d set for myself along the way, I’d wrapped up that recording by the allotted target date.
What’s more, I’ve published a blog post each and every Sunday by midnight for 50 consecutive weeks now. How the heck could I be writing like clockwork in one area, all while watching the new book lie dormant for months? I’m sure you’re catching my drift here.
I’ve heard the mantra often: “If you believe it, you can achieve it.” Thing is, if you’d asked me prior to this revelation whether I believed I’d eventually accomplish the many waylaid goals in my abandoned Jenga pile, I’d have told you unequivocally, “Yes, without a doubt” — even as I expressed my frustration surrounding the mystery of why they hadn’t already been met.
The Little Engine That Could came to mind: “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but to quote Shel Silverstein…
The truth is … I knew I could.
I’d been telling friends as much for a while, and in specific terms. And yet still — nothing was getting done.
Here's the secret. That Little Engine didn’t just think she could.
Looking up is a start. But alone, belief and a great attitude still leave you looking up … from the bottom of the mountain.
Everyone seems to remember “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” Yet the magic lies in one, small seemingly insignificant tidbit that seems to get lost in the all the (lo?)commotion:
In other words, the Little Engine That Could didn’t reach her goal on “I think I can.”
She had a deadline.
I’m famous for telling people, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Wishing doesn’t get you anywhere. I know this all too well. All the same, it somehow came as a surprise once again — and only as the result of much consideration of late — that my sole barrier in many areas was the lack of a clear deadline.
So I set some deadlines.
I told friends, “I am going to do this specific thing by this precise date.”
And — wonder of wonders — stuff has started getting done again. It’s a real live Christmas miracle, I tell you.
(Speaking of which … did you notice the nifty new Subscribe options and “Like” button?)
first things first
In a recent post, I laid out my thoughts and plan for refocusing my time and energy at the start of this new year. So far, I’m pleased to say that, while I haven’t yet completely extricated myself from previous commitments I'd made, I’ve been clear-minded and steadfast in saying “no” more often in the last few weeks, with the ultimate goal of saying “yes” to some bigger, better and ultimately more impactful things.
Let me just say – it feels great.
On New Year’s Eve, I sent out hellos and wishes to many of the important people in my life, as well as asking what each was up to for their celebrations across the country. It sure can make a guy feel as old as he probably really is, hearing from most of your friends that they are staying in on New Year’s Eve, watching a movie, and going to bed early.
An exception among the hum-drum was Chad, who sent back a short text with an image:
I’ve always said … nothing conveys a fun night on the town quite like a picture of some kid you’ve never met sitting in the back seat of someone’s car holding a radiation-green, buck-toothed, neon-pink-eyed, franken-frog-rabbit plush toy.
Nothing like it, I tell you.
In the next day or so, Chad and I caught up by phone. He’d read and “LOVED!” that weekend’s blog post; and I, of course, had gotten the gist of his New Year’s extravaganza via the picture of the Franken-Frog-Rabbit Kid. But we had a bit of time and were in the mood to fill such gaps as remained in our stories.
I’m not much of a partier when it comes to New Year’s Eve. Instead, I’ve made a tradition out of staying home and investing time doing something I’d like to be doing more of in the year ahead. This is not a resolution, per se; it’s just a fun way to reassess and to start the new year off feeling ramped up and ready to go.
This year, while there are many worthwhile things I could have chosen as my New Year’s Eve focus in relation to the book and my goals there, my whole being was set on music for some reason.
For those of you who don’t know this about me, I’m also a singer/songwriter. In fact, I used to record and perform out, writing sometimes two or three songs a week for decades. (I even share some … er … interesting … lyrics from my early teen years in “Chapter 6: Happiness” of The Best Advice So Far.) But as time has moved on, my central focus has shifted to other things. Still, music is and always has been a huge part of who I am.
And so I was telling Chad that this year, music was my siren call. I found myself missing times past when I had friends in the area who owned studios – real ones, not just bedroom setups – and we’d hang out there for hours on end, dreaming, writing, playing with ideas, laying down tracks and, often, walking away with a song we’d created together. Even just thinking about it again now, I get that kind of longing that feels like bubbles rising in seltzer, spreading out through my soul: the longing to create something from nothing.
But those friends of yesteryear have all moved to other states now. It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a decade since I’ve had the experience of collaborating in the live environment like that over music. So this year, as others were gallivanting shamelessly about with stuffed bucked-toothed companions, I was home searching the Internet for musicians and studios in the Greater Boston area, listening through their music and connecting through email or social media with those who seemed they might be good matches. Not only was this fun and inspiring for me, it was productive. I’ve connected with a handful of cool people and am hopeful that I’ll find myself in the studio creating SOMETHINGS out of *nothings* again soon.
Well, this is all very cool (at least for me). But I’ve not yet gotten to the really important bit – the part where Chad said something so simple yet so profound that it’s stuck with me since, guiding many a choice and conversation.