Planking Across America: Big Sur Edition

It's been rumored that Jack Kerouac was and continues to be the spiritual inspiration for planking.

Think about that for a second.

Done?

Then check out these sublime planking shots, snap your fingers to a bee-bop beat, and ponder infinity:

National Geographic Planking, Natural Habitat, Self Portrait

Planking Nature's Splendor, Assisted Shot

Planking the Plank, Meta-planking, Assisted Shot

Planking the Abyss, ft. Oblivious Japanese Tourist, Assisted Shot

Planking the Unknown, Mind-expanding Plank, Invisible Shot

I'd like to dedicate this planking compendium to Nick and Dan*. Nick and Dan, these planks are for you.

---

*Brian, your dedication is in the mail. I swear! Send me those photos.

One or More Things I Did Today (Saturday edition*)

And Let It Be Known, that on July 2nd, in the year of 2 thousands and 11, I was up to this:

• I woke up at the Kamboj household in San Jose, enjoyed a fantastic bagel at the grace of Jitender (thanks, Jit), and made Brian drive us back to San Francisco in my car (I wanted to be able to fall asleep in the front seat if and when the mood struck me).
• Shelly was kind enough to drop me off at my cousin's place in Kensington.
• The Diegos and I visited a park that featured lots of rebar and tent cities**. Apparently the place used to be a dump, but they've since turned it into a park. Reminded me of this place a little bit.***
• Hung out with the Diegos for a great afternoon of sitting in the back yard, sipping on beer in the sun, rocking in a rocking chair. Thanks, guys.
  
• Invited to their dinner plans, I joined the family for a BBQ down the streets at a friends house.
  
• On the way back home, managed to lose the copy of "Big Sur" (see the 6/28 posting of "OOMTIDT" for more on this) Sarah had lent me, the one that had the wooden bookmark I really liked in it. Whoops. I'll be making a trip to Oakland the next Wednesday I'm in the area to collect those gems from the L&F.
• Important! Met up with a couple of friends (Okay, perhaps sister's friends is more accurate. But I like these guys, too! And yes, this is effectively a footnote in the body of the post. We're (re: the editors) pretty open-minded here at WIDWINW) at a place called "Smuggler's Cove". Not something I typically notice, much less share, but I wasn't the biggest fan of the joint. This isn't Yelp, so I'll leave it at that****
• But anyway, the friends I mentioned were Jessika and Colin. Cool, cool folks. Glad to have seen them. Thank you for the drinks, guys.
• And Jessica Worthington came to meet up with us, too! J-Wo! Now we were grooving. Now we had a crew. Beers at Toronado*****, and a good evening. Jessica, please to be sending me those pictures, 'cuz I need them to make more content for this blog******.

As they say, "It Was a Day".

And I hope yours was, as well.

---

*Look, I think it makes the most sense to take the title, "One or More Things I Did Today" with a grain of salt. Most of the time, I imagine these posts will actually come after the day they're featuring has ended. Why? Well, if I don't wait until the day has ended, I might jump the gun, write about something just for the sake of writing, and then, bam, 11:45pm rolls around and Barack buzzes my cell piece to offer my the VP position. Unlikely? Impossible, really, but you get the point. Rust never sleeps.*******
** Tent subdivisions, really. These places were impressive.
***Kelly and I visited Christiana when we were in Copenhagen back in '05.
****Yep, back down here now. I'm telling you, free-form we are! But the reason I brought you down here was, assuming you're interested enough to read this, for this.
*****Which I would recommend. This might not be Yelp, but we do look to provide for our readers here at WIDWINW
******You might have heard: I'm still angling for a partnership with some Ad Network to sell inventory on my site. If you know of any huge corporation that want's to align itself with me, let me know! Too few ads on this blog as it is. Practically falling asleep over here...
*******A non-sequitor. I just like the phrase.

One or More Things I Did Today (yesterday, in this case)

And Let It Be Known, that on June 29th, in then year of 2 thousands and 11, I was up to this:

• Went out to Oakland and hit up the Trappist. The beer was great, but the conversation was better: my company was two folks I had been friends with in elementary school and hadn't seen for years. Based on how great it was to catch up with Rachel and Ariel, I feel confident it won't be a decade between conversations this time around.
• Added bonus: spaced out on the BART ride back from Oakland, finally emerging from train two stops further than I'd planned. Taxi!
  

As they say, "It was a day".

This Blog, or "Why This Blog Came to Be"

I've been putting off writing this post for about, oh, 13 posts or so, but it's high time I wrote it. No time like the present, and all that.

You probably already know the story, but it goes like this:

I recently left what from the outside looking in was a pretty appealing job*.

I did this in an economy where many people that share many of my characteristics and qualities are struggling mightily to find a job.

There are times when I couldn't be happier with my decision.

But, the truth is there are times when this freedom and beautiful recklessness** is alloyed with the bittersweet circumstances under which I left Portland, my home for the past 4 years.

I won't go into explicit detail, but due to a number of factors, one of which I've alluded to above, I decided to pack up and ship out.

And that's when this adventure began.

Which is why this blog exists.

Deep stuff.

But anyway, once I decided to do what I've done - a decision, by the way, that I considered for about half a year, making it likely the most diligence I've ever paid a decision in my life - I began planning for the trip that was to come.

The most important portion of that planning, in my mind, was sending an email to very nearly every person I've met over the past 10 years, roughly since I graduated from high school (though some high school chums were in there, too). These people ranged from dear friends I've known for years and have a wealth of experience with, to people I've met only once before, but for some reason must have made an impression on me.***

This email amounted to basically this: "You may not remember me, but I remember liking you, and I'd love for you to share your knowledge and/or time with me in the form of adventures or recommendations". I've pasted the full text of the email below, in case for some reason you didn't receive it****.

It felt good to write that email, great to send it, and wonderful to receive the replies.

I concede that it was a bit of an unusual email. You can take that as you like.

But I truly believed, and believe, that it was a good email to send, that no harm could come of it.

And I was surprised and delighted to receive the replies, which ranged from one sentence recommendations or "congrats!", to multi-paragraph, bulleted treatises on friends-of-friends I could stay with, national parks I should visit, festivals I should attend...(etc. you can get a feel for the sort of responses one might receive if they sent the email below). That being said, I know I shouldn't have been been surprised, considering the caliber I believe I've noticed at some point in the recipients of the email. Perhaps grateful is the more appropriate word.

So, that's basically the story of how this blog got started, why it existed, and why I'll probably keep writing it for the foreseeable future.

Again, thanks for the replies. I cannot say that enough. And even if you replied and you never read this, it feels good and right to give thanks. I will endeavor to repay the time you gave me in some way, somewhere, sometime.

Next blog post: what I'm actually doing***** with my time since I quit my job.

The unabridged email, entitled "This Summer"******:

Friends and Acquaintances,

Good news - I've quit my job, and plan on enjoying the summer while gainfully unemployed and on the road.

I may have already spoken to you about my plans, and we may even have begun scheming for adventures.

If not (or if you want to further elaborate on our previous chats), please let me know how things are looking on your end:

• Want to grab a beer?
  
• What are you up to this summer?
• Any adventures on the docket?
  
• Are you looking for adventures to add to the docket?
• Want to join forces for a bit?

I've set up a loose framework of tentpole events, places, and scenes that I plan on visiting this summer. This, like so many of the good things in life, is a very loose list, and gleefully subject to improvisation. My goal is to make detours, stay extra nights, and bring folks along for the ride when the mood strikes.

To that end, I hope to shoot out an email every couple of weeks or so to reap what I hope this email will sow: new leads. If you've got a friend I should have a beer with in Topeka or a great-aunt I can crash with in Des Moines, let me know. If you're planning on hitting up a Zydeco festival in July, let me know. If I absolutely can't afford to miss some state park / national park / festival/ seasonal phenomenon / brilliant road book / tiny town/ backwoods campground / Midwestern city I would never think to go, let me know. And if you're planning on flying to Halifax for no conventionally-good reason, that's my kinda plan! And: I want in.

I'm hoping this mass email will result in more adventures for not just myself, but a summer enriched by the insights, inspiration, and inclinations of my friends. We may have not seen each other for years, or we may have drank too many beers just last week in Portland. Either way, I look to you because I've known you to be awesome, and I figure you can add something awesome to the pot.

To something I've been wanting to do for a long while. Thanks for reading. Have a great summer.

Cheers,

John

---

*******

*I was working as a media planner on the Electronic Arts business for Wieden+Kennedy, a renowned, independent ad agency based in Portland. I'd been there for just over 2 years, the longest I've ever stayed at a place of employment.
**In some sense; time will tell.
*** Okay, not really "must have". More accurately would be to put it at "clearly did", because I bothered to include them in that email. If you're curious, ask me about that impression. I've got a good catalogue in my head for those sorts of things.
****Shit. If you didn't receive it, my bad. I still think you're cool.
***** Besides writing this inane blog, of course.
****** Yes, I may be either a latter day hippy, beatnik, or space-child, depending on how you want to sum it up. Figuring it all out is one of the goals of this summer.
*******Yes, this is a horizontal line. It demarcates the footnotes from the main blog content. Yes, I used fancy HTML coding to make it. Cue the Jeffersons' theme song, because I'm moving on up!

Here, Let Me Share This With You

I'm reticent to blog about articles I've come across and enjoyed, because I'm afraid this pattern will result in lazy posts* where I just pass along someone else's work**, don't add anything to the table, at which point my posts will be diluted and no one will want to read them, and I won't want to write them.***

With all of that being said, I'm sharing this article, both because I didn't encounter it on the web (I read it in a magazine at this fabulous coffee shop in Oakland called "Farley's East. Highly recommended), and because I found parts of it to be particularly touching.

Vanity Fair Article On Stieg Larson's (Dude Who Wrote Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) Life and Death By His Partner

*Of course, the very genesis of this blog was the acceptance that sometimes you'll never do something until you sit down and do it.
** This was actually the model behind my second attempt at blogging. And with this post as an example, glad to see something carried over!
*** Although, no one is reading this blog anyway, so none of that matters. Let the white-labeling of internet pages I've Stumbled Upon begin anew!

My First Post of The Day...

... is not really much of a post. I just wanted to reassure you that I'm still into this blogging thing.

One or More Things I Did Today

And Let It Be Known, that on June 28th, in then year of 2 thousands and 11, the original "One or More Things I Did Today" was published in John Griswold's blog.

And so:

• Began reading Big Sur by Kerouac. So far, so good. Never could get into On The Road, so I'm pleased to find I'm getting into this showing of Jack's. 40 pages in, I'm struck by how something written nearly 50 years ago could feel so fresh. And I'm making the typical mistake (or typical stroke of brilliance, depending on how you look at it, or if you care to look at it) of seeing shades of myself in the subject matter, things that ring truer and more familiar than I would have expected.

As they say*, "It was a day".

*Or rather, as this blog will say going foward. Remember: this is the first (and in all reasonable likelihood, only) installment of OoMTIDT.

Book Club: Deep Economy

Welcome to the inaugural post of Book Club, the posts where we look at books that I'm reading.

In this case, it's a book I'm finishing, which is to say it's a book I just read. So it fits the bill of book club. But I digress...

Deep Economy

Wow. A fascinating book, one that brings this question to the table: is too much never enough? Which is to say, is More always Better?

If you've read any of Thomas Friedman's books, it's incumbent on you to read what amounts to a counterpoint, found here in Deep Economy.

The book in a nutshell:

• The current growth model the rest of the developing world is following is that of the Western world, and primarily that of the US
• Based upon what is accepted as gospel in liberal circles*, the consumption of natural resources this growth requires - as well as what is currently an average individual level within the US - will continue to push us as a planet down a road we cannot afford to go down

In certain ways, Al Gore beat McKibben to the popular punch here. You've seen/read Inconvenient Truth, this is not new to you.

But where Deep Economy goes beyond, in a very compelling manner, is painting a picture that provides some very reasonable alternatives to the model with which most of us who would ever come across this post are currently familiar. These options run the gamut from "Go Back to Portland" to "Hey, that seems to make sense", though honestly the methods themselves - as well as the tenets that inspire one to pursue them - will likely be a tough pill for a lot of folks to swallow, at least initially.

Other points:

• We (Americans) have much more on as average individual (seems like a contradiction in terms - sorry, I'm keeping it in here) now than we did in the early post-war boom years, and yet, based on some convincing (I'm not going to list them here. go read the book if you're curious) metrics, we're less happy now than we were then. We've got more, but it feels like less, in some sense.
• There is a range we can consider between having too little and too much. This is happy medium we can shoot for.
  

The good news (at least according to McKibben)? We can still change. It's not hopeless.

Added bonus: McKibben, like Michael Pollan, is a wonderfully polished writer. His sentences are enjoyable to read.

If you're interested, here's more on Bill McKibben.

Until the next Book Club,

Yours

*One that, for the purposes here, I'm certainly cheerfully sitting Indian style within

Update: Just checked out McKibben's website. Deep Economy was published in 2008. Between then and his latest book, we apparently missed the boat on making substantive changes. Crap.

Sustainability in Blogs

So I was sitting here thinking about my next blog post, and it hit me:

This blog is already the most successful blog I've ever had.

It's true!

Think about it:

1. If I keep up this rate of posting, not only will I never find time to find and commit to another job, but I'll also be posting a new post, like, ever 12 minutes or so.
2. That's hundreds of posts! Thousands!!!
3. Based on what I've seen today, I have no reason to believe this blog will go the way of its predecessors.
   
4. 4 posts in under an hour!!!
   
5. Did I mention this blog is going be like Malcolm Gladwell, Ira Glass, Thomas Friedman, the Freakanomics dudes, and insert name here, only all wrapped into one and better and in one convenient place? Because it is.
   

And then I realized:

1. There is no way I can keep up this feverish posting pace.
2. Not all of my posts will be completely irreverent* and profoundly pointless.

Until my next post,

Yours.

*no guarantees here.