It’s time to sharpen our pencils, pull out the ledger and take account of the year we just lived through. How are you tracking on your personal wealth goals?
That’s something they never taught you in Accounting 101. But if you’re using any other measure, you’re doing it wrong.
Your legacy compounds daily. Keep investing!
Happy New Year!
On Monday (“Festivus!”), I met a couple of friends downtown for happy hour. Because I’m a cheapskate, I parked at a spot off the grid, where there are no parking meters.
When I came back to the car, I found out my “Secret Santa” had left me a lovely present:
“A free upgrade to my car’s air conditioning? You shouldn’t have!”
“And a lovely glass mosaic too! You’re too kind!”
There was absolutely nothing of value visible in the car… and nothing of value in the glove compartment either, as my new friends soon discovered.
(I can’t believe they didn’t want my tire pressure gauge. Or the owner’s manual for a 2009 Honda CR-V. They’ll regret that later.)
Apparently this is the latest m.o. for “window shoppers” (per my new friends in the auto glass replacement business). They don’t have to see anything of value in the car. They just smash a window, quickly fish for goodies, then move on to the next unsuspecting victim. The car thief equivalent of a scratch-off lottery ticket.
So I saved about $9 in parking fees… and am out $250 for a new window. But tbh, it just as easily could’ve happened if I’d parked at a meter. Downtown was pretty much a ghost town that evening. And I’m not going to beat myself up when it’s the would-be thieves who deserve the punishment.
I hope your holiday season wasn’t quite as smashing!
Santa got me exactly what I wanted!
Seth Godin published the post below a couple of weeks ago. But it’s perfect for the gift-giving and gift-getting extravaganza that will happen in most homes tonight and tomorrow:
The things under the tree are just things. And what you already have — especially if you have family and friends — is more than enough.
It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?
Dr. Seuss
Here’s a great opinion from the artist Rashid Johnson, in a profile from The New Yorker:
“There is no purity for me, no absolute success or failure, and no room for the masterpiece. When I see artists who have made works that are recognized as masterpieces, I see them having to chase those works for the rest of their careers, and I just don’t want that axe to grind. I would rather be seen as an acceptable failure, as the guy that failed consistently and kept going, kept trying, kept exploring. I want to pivot and move and work on multiple things at once, and with that comes a lot of freedom. I think the whole mystery of making art is about choices that are bold.”
Our life can imitate his art. Most of us will never have a “masterpiece.” Which, as Rashid points out, is probably for the best, as having one traps us in a box constructed by others’ expectations.
But we sure as heck can be the person “that failed consistently and kept going, kept trying, kept exploring.”
It’s not the failure that defines us — unless we let it. It’s the keeping going…
Happy exploring!
Our “newest” car is 8 years old. Because I’m a cheapskate.
Our second newest was a 2014 VW Passat with nearly 110K miles.
For the past year or so, it’s been chugging oil like it was doing Valvoline keg stands at an Indy 500 frat party. Both the dealer and another VW repair shop told us we had two paths forward:
a. get a new engine (~$10K)
b. keep pouring oil down it’s gullet until we were doing it every week.
(So much for that vaunted German engineering… it’s pretty sad when repair shops say “yeah, that’s what happens with this model Passat at about 90,000 miles.”)
We chose Option B. But recently, it needed about $700 worth of repairs. I’ve been known to throw good money after bad before (never should’ve gotten swept up in that Beanie Baby mania…), but I do have my limits. This was the last straw. Time to dump the chump. But where? The thought of listing it on Facebook Marketplace made me break out in hives – I’m rarely on the Zuckerbook, I barely know how to use FB Messenger, and I didn’t want to spend every waking hour responding to queries. And I hate haggling.
I got on one of those “find out your car’s value” sites (Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds or ???) and plugged in the particulars. Given the car’s present state, it was probably worth about a grand. But the website also offered the opportunity to click a button and set up an instant appraisal with CarMax. I figured I had very little to lose, so I signed up.
Two days later, I was in their Cincinnati location. I sat down with a rep, answered a few questions, their tech took it for a test drive, and 20 minutes later I had an offer: $2,500. American!
I felt like this was the real-life version of Monopoly:
They did the paperwork, I signed over the title, and 10 minutes later I had a check in hand… and even though it was 17 degrees outside, I walked down the block to wait for my son to pick me up, as I was afraid they’d realize I’d sold them a lemon and want their money back. For once, I felt like the used car salesman, pulling one over on an unsuspecting customer.
I know CarMax isn’t in the charity business. I’m sure they’ve got some sort of algorithm that tells them they could sell our old hooptie (or, more likely, individual parts of it) for more than $2.5K. But when you go in hoping to squeeze a grand out of a beater, and wind up with 2.5 times that amount, it feels like winning the lottery. Especially when there was zero hassle, and it took less time than the last oil change.
Oh, and when I got home and was sifting through the detritus that I’d cleaned out of the car before I took it to CarMax, I realized I’d forgotten to remove my Band of Horses CD from the CD player. I called CarMax, they tracked the CD down, and my son picked it up on his way home from work later that week. Rock on!
Not sure where I saw this, so apologies to whoever created it, but it’s worth sharing:
The Universe isn’t interested in your achievements… just your heart.
So let’s all put “be kind, compassionate, and loving” on our list of 2025 goals.
I’m counting my blessings today. And tomorrow. And the next day…
Happy Thanksgiving!
Use your power!
Because love and kindness rule!
The guy in the photo above might look like a surly biker dude, but really he’s a sweetheart – one of the kindest folks you’ll ever meet. [photo credit: Anna Stockton]
Hi name is Chuck Cleaver. Yeah, I know, it sounds like the stage name of a wrestling “heel” in the WWE. But that’s his real name. And he’s one of the best songwriters in the WWW – the Whole Wide World.
Five Saturdays ago, Chuck and Lisa Walker, his fellow songwriter and co-leader of the band Wussy, played a house concert at our house.
It was amazing. Spectacular, in a low-key way. Spine-tinglingly beautiful. They did a lot of songs from their upcoming album. A lot of those songs are tributes to… remembrances of… mournings for… their dear friend and fellow Wussy bandmate John Erhardt, who passed away a few years ago. John also was Chuck’s bandmate in his pre-Wussy band, The Ass Ponys. All those years spent in a van, traveling from gig to gig, turned them into more brothers than bandmates.
Three Saturdays later, Chuck and Lisa and their bandmates played a sold-out show at a local venue. It was only their second time performing as a full band since John passed away.
The love from the audience — and the band’s appreciation of that love — were palpable. Once again, they played several songs from the new album, the one for John. (He’s featured in the cover artwork, and his beautiful pedal steel work is on a couple of tracks.)
“It’s very definitely a record for John,” Cleaver says. “It’s a mourning record. We had to make it.”
— from the Stereogum feature/interview with Chuck & Lisa by Jason Cohen
The album had its official release a week ago Friday… and is amazing (as are all the other Wussy releases… as Jason Cohen said in his article linked above “There’s no middle ground with Wussy: They are either one of your very favorite bands or you just haven’t heard them yet.” I’m firmly in the former camp.)
That record-release Friday should’ve been a different type of release as well: a day of joy… celebration.
But on the Tuesday between their sold-out show and the Friday that their new album came out, Randy Cheek — Chuck’s longtime bandmate in the Ass Ponys — passed away.
I know life is a series of peaks and valleys. But my heart aches for Chuck, who was in the valley so long after losing John, and now, on the verge of a peak moment, got gut-punched back down into another valley. It’s not fair. And it sucks.
“Time is an assassin, when it finally tracks you down
You can’t tiptoe around it or conveniently skip town
So try to face it screaming and beating on your chest
So when it drags you to wherever, you know you did your best
Sure as the sun… ”
— “Sure as the Sun” from Wussy’s new album Cincinnati Ohio
I got to know Randy a tad, during my 97X radio days. He was exactly as Chuck described him: sweet, kind, truly hilarious.
It was nice to see Randy, John, Dave and Chuck back on stage together at the Ass Ponys reunion shows back in 2015. (Two nights – you’re damn right I went to both shows.)
(Jason Cohen’s Cincinnati Magazine article about those reunion shows is here.)
I took Chuck’s advice and cranked up this song that Randy wrote.
Playing Ass Ponys and Wussy tunes… it won’t bring John and Randy back, but it keeps them in our hearts. That’ll have to do.
Dear Friends
Mysterious doorway
Future life
For better for worse
Life’s blessings
In heaven we know
Our own gloriesGlories of the sacred
In the wonder days
The wonder gifts
The wonder story
In the quiet moments of reflection, let us honor Randall’s memory by embracing the beauty of each fleeting moment, knowing that his spirit resides in the eternal tapestry of existence, forever woven into the fabric of our hearts.
from the obituary for Randall W. Cheek, Age 63
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