When your life is no longer governed by the academic calendar

The AI Blog Post Image Generator tried so hard.

Every weekday morning on my drive to the office, I pass an elementary school. Unless I'm especially early or late, or unless it happens to be a bank/government holiday, the 20mph school zone lights are always flashing as I approach.

Recently, though, for the first time in a while, the lights weren't on.

Initially I didn't understand why that would be. It was 7:45am, prime school arrival time. It was a Wednesday. I couldn't imagine why the kids might be off that day.

Then it hit me.

It was late May. School was out for the summer. The kids wouldn't be back for nearly three months.

It was the first time I realized that virtually every school district around me was on break. It just hadn't occurred to me before.

Not coincidentally, this past year was also the first time since 1998-99 that Terry and I had no kids in school.

For 25 years, we lived within the confines of the academic calendar. Our lives were directly affected by teachers workshops, spring breaks, band concerts, sporting events, and everything else you as a parent experience in the course of the school year.

And now, apart from my PA announcing gigs, that schedule means almost nothing to us. The last day of school – an annual milestone that would have been ingrained in my mind in years past – was irrelevant.

To the point that I didn't even know the kids were on break.

It was strangely disconcerting. Just another little thing to adjust to in our post-secondary parenting lives.

When you're raising kids, there are all kinds of "firsts" and "lasts." And when you have multiple children, the "lasts" aren't truly "last" until your last kid.

Then they go away forever. Just like my recognition of where we were in the year and how teachers and kids had already been set free for the next 11 weeks without me being the least bit aware.

Cut me a little slack. I'm still an empty nester in training.

Why "30 years ago" might seem different today than it did in the 70s and 80s

I will happily embrace any opportunity to post a photo of the cast of "Happy Days."

There are lots of memes floating around designed to make you feel old.

You know what I'm talking about. They'll say something like, "Someone just mentioned '30 years ago' and my mind went, 'Ah yes, the 70s!' But they meant 1994 and now I have to go lay down."

Or there's one that mentions the fact that if the show "Happy Days" were made today, it would be set in 2004 (since the show came out in 1974 and was initially set in the mid-1950s).

The underlying premise seems to be that things changed a lot more between, say, 1950 and 1980, than they have from the mid-90s to the present day.

Is that true?

I'm going to say yes and no.

We'll start with the "no." The Internet alone is a valid argument against 1994 being more similar to 2024 than 1950 was to 1980. The digital revolution has changed how most of us live our daily lives. We shop differently than we did in the 90s, we consume our entertainment differently, we gain information differently, and we communicate differently.

In 1994 I had a landline phone that wasn't that remarkably different from the phones with which I grew up in 1970s and 80s. There was a long line of continuity there.

In short, the Internet has changed everything, and it isn't the only thing about life that has radically transformed in the years since my now-30-year-old daughter was born.

On the other hand, consider this: If you were to walk outside right now and just look around at the cars driving past you, they're not that much different from the vehicles you would have seen in 1994. There are key differences, of course, but I would argue that cars haven't changed as much in the last 30 years as they did in the three decades between 1950 and 1980.

In fact, I think the general sights and sounds of day-to-day life in 2024 are much more similar to those of 1994 than what you would get in a similar comparison between 1950 and 1980.

Again, there are individual differences that are striking. But overall, our external environment over the last 30 years has changed less than it did in the previous 30-40 years.

If that makes sense.

My theory around the apparent pace of change for those of us in our 40s, 50s and 60s is this: We lived through the 1980s and 90s. Those years don't seem that far away, and they're still very familiar to us. So we don't perceive a particularly striking difference between now and then.

But the 1950s? We didn't live through those years. We only know them from what our parents told us and from what we read and hear about them. They are less real and less tangible for us, and therefore they are seemingly much more different from the 80s than the 90s are to us now.

Again, if that makes sense.

All of which is to say that, as with so many things in life, it's a matter of perspective. It comes down to your own personal circumstances: age, experience, and generally how much attention you pay to the world around you.

I will say this, though: I really do have to lay down sometimes when I think about 1994 (which was just yesterday, as far as I'm concerned) being 30 years ago. That stings a little.

The weird magic of the Internet in one 13-second squirrel video

For the last couple of years, my wife has made a habit of feeding the local squirrel and bird population from our deck.

For the squirrels in particular, she keeps a large stock of peanuts on hand to toss out there any time one of our fuzzy-tailed friends comes to the back door hoping for a handout.

(That's exactly what they do, by the way. They boldly climb onto the deck and come right up to our door. I don't know how well they can see us on the other side of the glass, but they can at least detect movement in the kitchen, which they take as a sign that a generous human is coming to give them a snack.)

At some point Terry also purchased a little red chair with a screw protruding from the seat. The idea is to fasten a corn cob onto the screw so that your squirrel friends can eat from it.

That's what you're seeing in the video above. One recent Saturday, I walked into the kitchen and saw a squirrel on the deck happily wolfing down a breakfast of hardened corn. I whipped out my phone, shot that clip and posted it on Facebook for friends and family to enjoy,

The next thing I knew, I was a minor social media influencer in India.

I don't know how it happened, but that video (which was posted publicly for anyone to come across) caught on with a group of folks from India. As I write this, it has in excess of 900 Facebook "likes," more than three-quarters of which are from people with decidedly Indian names whose bios suggest they live on the subcontinent.

Also at press time, the video had nearly 5,000 views, a significant chunk of which presumably came from my new Indian friends.

On the grand scale of the Internet, 900+ likes and 5,000 views are as nothing. They barely constitute a blip on the cyberspace radar.

But when you consider that I posted this innocuous little video on a whim, with no other intention than to share a smile and an "awwwww, he's so cute!" with my Facebook pals – only maybe two dozen of whom regularly interact with my content – this feels remarkable.

I don't know any of the folks from India who liked, shared and watched the video, nor do I know any of the Indian names who are suddenly "following" me on Facebook as a content creator.

For all of the not-so-good it creates, the Internet does a wonderful job connecting people who otherwise would never know each other. My short "Squirrel Breakfast" clip is a quirky little case study in that.

Which I think is just wonderful.

And so, for the record, does the squirrel who stars in the video. I asked him.

The kids move out and suddenly you have rooms to spare

One corner of the haven that is my home office. That's our new-ish cat Cheddar in the lower right corner.

One of the things that attracted us when we bought our house in 2003 was the fact it had five bedrooms.

At the time we had five children under the age of 10. A three- or even four-bedroom home probably wasn't going to cut it.

For the next several years, three of the kids would have their own rooms while two others would share the large upstairs bedroom, which the people who owned the house before us used as more of a family room.

Then, one at a time, our children started leaving the nest. When Elissa exited, it was one kid to a bedroom.

Then Chloe fled the coop, allowing Terry the craft room she had so long desired.

The next thing we knew, only Jack was left and I found myself with an upstairs office. And we even had a guest bedroom.

The height of luxury!

Nowadays Jack occupies the big bedroom by himself while Terry and I remain downstairs in the master bedroom. The craft room, office and guest room remain.

Terry and I have talked about the possibility of downsizing, but this setup is just too good to walk away from. (Well, that and the fact that we have the best neighbors in the world on both sides. You can't take something like that for granted.)

My "office" is really more a combination office/music room/library. There I keep all of my books, my sheet music, my saxophones and other instruments, and almost every other item that is undeniably Scott's. Even though I rarely work there anymore – since I drive to the office five days a week – I still love having this room to myself.

It feels like a reward for the years we spent raising children and cramming all of our stuff into closets, attics and storage rooms.

As much as I miss having the kids around, I think I can get used to this.

Biting my fingernails? I do that less frequently now

A word of explanation about today's headline (well, actually a few words)...

(1) "I do that less frequently now" is a line from the old Nickelodeon series "iCarly" that is occasionally quoted in our family. It was originally uttered by Gibby, one of my favorite characters in TV history, in reference to the fact that, as the series went on, he didn't randomly take his shirt off nearly as often as he had in the show's first few seasons.

(2) I am a longtime nail biter. Here's a post from eight years ago in which I lamented this fact and sought ways to break the habit.

Nail biting is one of those things some of us do without even realizing we're doing it. I'll be proofreading something I've written at work, staring at my computer screen, and suddenly find myself chomping down on a long thumbnail. I don't remember putting my hand to my mouth, but there it is.

The result is that my nails always give the impression I make my living manually sorting through shards of broken glass and scrap metal. They're perpetually uneven, cracked, and bitten down lower than they should be.

Until recently, that is. Somehow I have found the discipline to stop biting. I will never be a hand model, but I have finally achieved some semblance of the semi-manicured, white crescent moon nails I see so many well-groomed men sporting.

It finally looks like I actually pay attention to my nails, which over the past month or so I guess I have.

But I'm running into the sorts of problems I previously associated only with women.

Like broken nails. I'm not growing lady nails or anything, but twice already I've found a nail starting to crack, forcing me to clip and file it down, and then having to wait for it to grow back again to match the length of its neighbors.

And rampant cuticles (NOTE: The Rampant Cuticles would be a good name for a band.) I'm constantly having to push those things down to keep them in check. I rarely worried about this in years past.

And how about the annoying click of nails on a computer keyboard? Again, I don't have Rihanna-length nails or anything, but there's just enough protruding nail to tap the keys as I bang out a blog post or a work email. Both the sound and the feeling are somewhat disconcerting.

I don't know how you longtime fingernail landscapers put up with it.

I have broken ingrained bad habits before, including my longstanding addiction to nose drops, so I know I can make this nail regimen last. It really doesn't take all that much effort.

But that's not to say I don't still consider taking a big bite out of the fast-growing nails on my ring fingers. For some reason those things sprout like weeds compared to my other nails.

It's still so tempting.

It's jarring when the numbskulls you grew up with turn out to be responsible and productive adults

 

This is not the Matt I knew in the 1980s, believe me.

The guy pictured above is Matt Schulz. Or "Matthew G. Schulz," as he's officially known in his capacity as Councilman at Large for the city of Kirtland, Ohio.

I've known Matt (Matthew G...whatever) since about 1975, I would guess. We grew up across the street from one another and spent many hours hanging out. Later we played high school football together and graduated a year apart.

Today is Matt's birthday, an occasion for looking back at the many memories we made before marriage, kids and all the responsibilities of adulthood conspired to limit our communications to sporadic texts and once-every-two-years lunch dates.

Matt is not only a respected longtime councilperson in Kirtland, he is also a civil engineer for the Ohio Department of Transportation. He has a wonderful wife and four great kids. He is, by all accounts, a pillar of his community.

Which is amazing to think about, because when we were kids (and please understand how much love I have for this man when I say this), Matt was a knucklehead.

He just was. We were ALL knuckleheads. I spent my formative years around a group of boys who, in any given situation, would always choose the stupidest course of action.

We threw rocks at each other, ran through people's backyards together, committed occasional acts of vandalism on stopped freight trains, set off firecrackers we had no business playing with, and just generally set the bar very high when it came to being young, dumb and annoying.

Matt was the ringleader of many of these shenanigans. He would later go on to do even stupider things in his life, as so many of us do.

But then he got his act together, earned his college degree, met and married Katarina, and became the upright citizen you see pictured above.

At his core, though, he is still Matt. He is still funny, smart and sarcastic. He became a grumpy old man in his 20s and continues to live up to that title in his 50s.

But he is Matt in responsible adult clothes, and he's someone to be admired.

It's just that I still think of him as one of the holy terrors of Harding Drive, the street where we grew up. The man you see today is a direct descendant of the hellion I once knew, and it's difficult sometimes to understand how he ended up in such a good place.

Such, I suppose, is the product of having a good wife, a mother who loves him, and a faith in God that I know sustains him.

Happy birthday, my friend. In celebration, I will be driving by your house tonight to throw a rock at you.

I'm counting on you having the maturity not to throw it back at me.

Losing your tribe of fellow parents once your kids grow up

If you have a child between the ages of, say, 5 and 17, and that child is active in some sort of group activity like a sport or music or theatre or whatever it might be, there is a good chance you have a parental tribe.

By that I mean a group of people whose kid/kids is/are involved in the same activity as your kid. You see them at ball games or concerts. You drive each other's offspring to practices, tournaments, rehearsals, etc. You may have an active group text chat or even a Facebook page where you communicate.

You sit bundled up in all kinds of weather (if your shared activity is outdoor-focused) and cheer on your team as one.

You are brought together by pleasant circumstances and quickly develop a close bond.

Then your child either walks away from that sport or activity, or else your kids age out of it together, and suddenly you don't see those people anymore unless you make a real effort to keep the relationship going.

There always seems to be something that gets in the way of that, of course. We're all busy. You still run across each other at community events or graduation parties, and you enjoy catching up, but it's never quite the same again.

Our kids were active in a range of sports and musical activities, so we ended up with multiple parental tribes. In some cases these tribes were separated by the distance of many years. We had one group of people we hung out with when our oldest, Elissa, was in school, and a distinctly different set of people we ended up seeing all the time with our youngest, Jack, more than a decade later.

While many of the Elissa-era parents were enjoying empty nests, we were still doing school field trips, plays, and track meets.

I miss the old group. And now, with Jack having graduated, I miss the new one, too.

What I'm saying, I guess, if that if you're currently in the chaos of having school-aged children, you should recognize and enjoy the connections forged with other parents – people with whom you may not otherwise get the opportunity to hang around.

These connections are fleeting, but they are valuable. They flame out as quickly as they spring up, but they are memorable.

Embrace your tribe. You only have them for a relatively small portion of your life before everyone moves on.

At some point (probably 1990), video games passed me by

Good old Atari 2600 "Combat."

Back in The Day™ (1982-85), I played a lot of video games.

Arcade games, Atari games, Commodore 64 games, etc. The term "gamer" didn't exist back then, but I was one.

We always knew that computer technology was going to advance and that the games we played would soon seem primitive compared with what was to come. But that didn't make them any less fun.

Once gaming systems and the games themselves started taking their expected quantum leaps forward in terms of graphics, sound and general sophistication, that's when I fell off the cutting edge.

Soon, I feel behind even the trailing edge.

After not too many years, I couldn't even see the edge.

It's not that I didn't like video games anymore. It's just that school, marriage, my career, kids and a host of other things got in the way. The spare time I once had available for gaming simply evaporated.

I never realized how behind the times I was until my kids started getting older and we bought them Xboxes.

The games were amazingly realistic. And often (to me, anyway) confusing.

The controllers went from the simple one joystick, one button approach of the Atari 2600 to the sort of thing you would use to pilot an F-16. One button? Try six. Or eight. And two joystick-like thumb controllers.

Then they all became multi-player games in which you wear a headset and talk to your friends (and total strangers) in the middle of the game.

That's when I knew I would never, ever catch up.

One of my favorite things to do on the laptop Terry got me for Christmas is play many of my old, classic games. You can download emulators that allow you to play the arcade and home video games of your youth, which is wonderful.

These aren't reproductions or close facsimiles of the games I loved in the 80s. These are the actual games. The ROMs (as they're called) for each one contain the exact computer code as the originals. There's no difference at all between the Ms. Pac-Man I play on my laptop and the Ms. Pac-Man I played at Galaxy Gardens game room in 1983.

It's mind blowing. And fun.

It also, like so many things these days, reminds me of a simpler time. I am an early GenXer, born in 1969. We are Baby Boomers in all but birth year. We straddled the analog and digital ages. We know what it's like to have one corded telephone in the house AND for everyone in the family to have their own phones, own numbers, etc.

We've seen both sides of the revolution. Some of us are equally adept living in either time period. I like to think of myself that way, but when it comes to video games, I am irrevocably stuck in the 80s.

And I like it that way.

Bringing another cat into the house is way more complicated than I remembered it

 

That's Cheddar soaking up some sun near our front door.

For many years we owned five cats. This was just how it was, and I spent the first few minutes of every morning feeding them, getting them fresh water, scooping out their litter boxes, and ensuring they were all present and accounted for.

Then our three boys (Fred, George and Charlie) each succumbed to various feline diseases in one 16-month period, and suddenly we found ourselves down to two kitties in the house: our girls Ginny and Molly.

As much as I miss Fred, George and Charlie, I have to admit I've enjoyed the relative ease of taking care of only two cats vs. five. All along I've said that as soon as these two ladies pass on – something I hope doesn't happen for quite a while – we would start living cat-free.

No more food bowls, no more litter boxes, no more clumps of fur blowing randomly around the house.

You know where this is going.

A few months ago, my daughter Melanie found a sweet, affectionate orange cat living outside her house. She started to feed and pet him, and the next thing you knew, Mr. Orange was living inside her home along with the two cats she already owned.

This would have been fine except that the two existing felines weren't especially nice to Orange. They made his life miserable, which is all the more sad considering what a nice little guy he is. He loves receiving pets, being around people, and just generally loving everyone.

Mel didn't know what to do. She wanted to find him a new home where he could live in relative peace and quiet, but there were no obvious candidates outside of her family.

Again, you know where this is going.

I had already resigned myself to the fact that Cheddar, as she had named him, would be coming to live with us, even before the formal request was made. Our oldest daughter Elissa offered to take him, but it was agreed that we could offer Cheddar the best home.

So one Saturday Mel brought him over. He lived in our master bathroom for a few days while he got acclimated to his new surroundings.

Actually, him living in the bathroom was done mainly to allow Ginny and Molly ample time to get used to his smell and accept the fact that he would be their new brother.

I read online how integrating a new cat into an existing cat family should be a gradual process. One thing we did, for example, was to feed the girl cats treats on one side of a bedroom door while Cheddar was getting his own treats on the other.

This not only put them in close proximity, the treats also (theoretically) created a positive association for them with their mutual smells.

Slowly we started giving Cheddar more freedom. When the girls first encountered him visually, their reactions were predictable: Light but insistent hissing and facial expressions that clearly conveyed the message, "We don't know what you are, but you are not welcome."

As I write this in mid-April, this is still the state of affairs, though I think Ginny and Molly are coming to the realization that Ched isn't going anywhere and they need to get used to the idea.

Who knows? Maybe in time they'll become pals.

All I know is that I envisioned this process happening much quicker and going much more smoothly. We've done the cat integration thing before, but apparently I've forgotten how reluctant they can be to welcome new companions of their own species.

We had a much easier time when we were bringing home new (human) babies every two years back in the 90s and early 2000s. At least back then the kids didn't hiss at their new brothers and sisters.

I'm sure my wife doesn't take unfair advantage of the fact I can't leave a dirty dish in the sink

I should go back and watch the video of our wedding, because I can't remember the exact vows Terry and I exchanged back in June 1992.

I'm pretty sure the traditional "honor and cherish" was in there, though, which is why I can say with some confidence that she doesn't use my neurotic approach to housecleaning against me.

You can't cherish someone, for instance, and purposely leave the kitchen messy knowing your partner is absolutely incapable of walking away and leaving it dirty.

This is what I choose to believe.

Terry has always been a busy person. In the early years of our marriage, if she wasn't working full time, she was taking care of one baby or another. Or volunteering at the school. Or doing yardwork.

There is and always has been something on her plate.

Which, speaking of plates, is why I never get suspicious when I come home to dishes in the sink and miscellaneous items strewn about the kitchen. This, I tell myself, is not a case of her leaving it all to me, but rather her focusing on another important task with plans to come back later and clean it all up.

The thing is, I have some sort of mental condition that does not allow me to relax knowing the kitchen needs to be tidied. I simply can't do it. I must clean it and clean it immediately.

(Actually, this condition doesn't allow me to relax at all, period, regardless of the condition the kitchen is in.)

This sounds like a positive trait. Something to be admired. After all, who wouldn't want a spouse who tries to do their fair share of housework?

But it's not. It's annoying, both to me and to others. It's why I'm constantly picking up half-filled glasses around the house, dumping them, and putting them in the dishwasher, only to be asked 15 minutes later by a family member or guest where their drink has gone because they haven't yet finished it.

It's why I have to (HAVE to) scrape the pots and pans and put away leftover food after holiday dinners while everyone else is playing a family game I should also be playing.

My insistence on a clean kitchen is not a noble act, it is a compulsion.

It is borderline unhealthy.

Terry knows this. And I know my wife, so I will always give her the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, I also know how smart she is. And how tired she gets by the end of any given day. Who among us can stave off the temptation to sneakily pawn off a chore to our significant other when all we want to do is put up our feet and watch TV?

My wife is not immune to such impulses.

Yet whenever I come home from work and am greeted by a messy kitchen (which really isn't that often), I regard cleaning up as the least I can do in return for the three decades' worth of delicious meals she has cooked for me – and not some devious plan to leverage whatever mental disorder makes me this way.

But she's smart, that one, very smart. And sometimes I wonder...

What, me retire?

Not long ago, Terry and I had an overdue check-in with Dave, our Merrill Lynch financial guy (NOTE: That's not Dave above. That's Alfred E. Neuman. If you don't know who he is, you're probably too young to be interested in reading this post in the first place.)

Maybe the conversation wasn't "overdue," though. I'm not sure how often you're supposed to talk with your money person, but it felt like we hadn't taken a step back and discussed the big picture for quite a while.

While Dave stays in touch regularly, some time had passed since I had gathered all of our account information, sent it to him, and allowed him to run the numbers and gauge our financial health.

The results were encouraging.

Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we're right on track for me to retire in about 11 1/2 years. My goal is to work until the end of 2035 before calling it quits and enjoying whatever comes next.

I'll have just turned 66 at that point and will have been a member of the full-time workforce for two-thirds of my life (that's 44 years for those who didn't have Mrs. Schwarzenberg at Mapledale Elementary School and whose arithmetic skills may therefore be lacking).

That "feels" about right. I would rather not work full time into my 70s, if I can help it, but I also don't want to get out of the game too early, for reasons both personal and financial.

There are several factors that go into deciding how much money you need to sock away for retirement, including the lifestyle you want to lead once you get there. Terry and I want to be able to travel with some regularity, whether it's to visit kids/grandkids or just see the world.

I'm not talking about boarding a plane for some exotic location every two weeks. Maybe "several" trips a year, with most domestic and one overseas.

"Comfortable but nowhere near extravagant" is how I would describe our desired post-retirement lifestyle.

That's somewhat vague, I realize, but it was enough for Dave to decide we're ahead of the curve with our savings and investment plan, given the vagaries of the markets, my presumed ability to continue working for another decade-plus, and all of the other unpredictable realities that come with aging.

This was all somewhat of a revelation to me. I'm 54 years old. I don't think about retirement very often beyond how much I throw into my 401(k) and occasional dreams of touring World War I battlefields in France and Belgium once I have the time to do so (that's likely to be a solo trip sans Terry, if I had to guess).

For the first time, the conversation with Dave made retirement seem like a tangible thing and not just a far-off hope. I've still got a ways to go, and like I said, you never know what's going to come your way. But the fact is, it could happen, and that's fun to think about.

Again, though, as quickly as time passes these days, I still have several career-building years ahead of me, which is OK. We'll get there when we get there.

The closer it gets, the more real it will become, I'm sure.

I need to quit whining, go to bed earlier, and regularly lift heavy things

"The problem is we have a problem. It's not that we don't know what the problems are; we've known those for years. It's not that we don't know what the solutions are; we've known those for years. The problem is we haven't done anything about it." - Former Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson

I usually do this in the caption, but there's so much going on with the photo above that I had to address it in the main body of today's post.

I prompted the AI Blog Post Image Generator with "sleepy guy lifting weights." After several attempts even worse than this, I settled on the image at the top of your screen. I'm fascinated by (a) the bar running through the narrow end of the weight plate and on to...I don't know, another machine?; (b) the situation with the guy's right arm; (c) the condition of his right eye.

Why, you might logically ask, do I continually use such an inferior generative AI tool? The answer is a combination of it being free and my inability to look away from some of the images it creates. I can't stop going back to it.

Anyway, the quote above from Frank Jackson is famous here in Northeast Ohio. People make fun of it, but it perfectly encapsulates what I know to be true about my personal health – and what you may know to be true about your own health.

I am not unaware of the areas in which I fall short when it comes to taking care of myself. I do many things well in the bodily maintenance department, but there are areas in which I miss the mark badly.

Specifically, I don't get enough sleep and I don't strength train.

These are both bad things if you're looking to live a long and vibrant life.

Like Mayor Jackson, my problem is that there's a problem. And I've known for a long time what the problem is. And I've known exactly how to fix that problem.

The problem is that I choose to do nothing about it.

My quality of sleep is good, but the quantity of it is not. I don't like sleeping as much as most other people do. It is, to me, a necessary evil at best.

It's also a key ingredient to peak mental and physical performance. We have to sleep, and we have to get enough sleep. Most nights I get around 6 hours, sometimes less.

I fall asleep almost right away when we turn out the lights, but I also wake up earlier than I probably should. I almost never get the recommended 7 to 9 hours.

I should choose to go to bed earlier, but I do not.

I have also, for many years, chosen not to engage in the practice of lifting weights. My exercise focus has been on cardio activities, and for good reason. A healthy heart is vital.

But so is muscle mass and overall strength, much of which you lose after the age of 35 or so.

I am well past the age of 35.

The dilemma I face is that while I love getting outside and running/walking in the mornings, I do not love the act of lifting weights.

I do not even like the act of lifting weights. I find it as tedious and unenjoyable as I find running/walking to be uplifting and fun.

But as with many things in life, there is an element of "too bad, so sad" in play here. My choice is either to suck it up and start going to bed earlier so I can get up and lift some weights in the basement a few times a week, or to continue complaining about all of this.

I know what I should do. And I think, as I write this on April 9, I'm going to start doing it soon.

Really, I will. Or, by the time you read this, maybe I already have.

First, though, I should probably hire Frank Jackson as a consultant to help me better understand the problem.

Three ways to develop a taste (or at least a true appreciation) for any artform

Last night, my daughter Chloe and I were at Cleveland's Severance Hall to hear the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra perform Camille Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 2 (featuring rock star pianist Lang Lang) and Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique."

Or at least I assume we were. I'm writing this in early April, and that's what's on the calendar for May 2. I have a partial season subscription to the Cleveland Orchestra. I use it to nurture my love of classical music and to spend time with my daughters Elissa and Chloe, who accompany me to these concerts.

I did not grow up a fan of this style of music, you understand. It's something I developed beginning in my early 40s and that continues to grow today through constant listening and reading articles about these works written by people who know what they're talking about.

I don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to classical music, but I do, as they say, know enough to be dangerous. I'm constantly buying CDs off of Amazon and eBay to hear recordings of certain pieces you just can't get on a streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music.

I really can't enough of it.

Like I said, though, I was intentional in developing this artistic interest. I wanted to better understand and appreciate it starting around 2011, and I'm pleased with the progress I've made these past 13 years.

I have so much more to listen to and understand, though, which is the part I love. There's never a shortage of new stuff to discover.

If you have a similar potential interest in something artistic – whether it's music, visual art, dance, poetry, or whatever – you may benefit from doing three things that helped me get started as a classical music fan:

(1) Begin with the stuff you know you like
In my case with classical music, this was Tchaikovsky (unapologetically emotional, melodic, accessible) and Beethoven (familiar, powerful). Listening to those two well-known composers early got me acquainted with common forms like symphonies, chamber music and piano concertos. It also taught me to listen for and identify themes and recurring passages and how cleverly they can be used in a piece. Most important, though, starting with music I already somewhat knew kept me coming back and allowed me to develop a real thirst for more.

(2) Get a book or check a website for beginners
Every artform has a set of books or online articles for those who want to learn more about it. In my case with classical music, I own four books that were indispensable in helping me understand what I was hearing and directing me toward the most important works. In case you're interested, those are:

• The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Classical Music
• The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection
• The New York Times Essential Library of Classical Music
• The International Guide to Building a Classical Music Library

(3) Go and see it live when you can
If you want to learn more about painting or sculpture, you have to get to an art museum to see the medium up close and personal. If dance is your thing, find a live ballet performance. In the case of classical music, you have to hear a good orchestra play in person. You just have to. There's nothing else like it. I'm spoiled having a world-class ensemble in my backyard, but there are plenty of highly skilled orchestras in every state/province and country. Get thee to a concert hall (or museum, or live poetry reading, or dance theatre...) and your understanding of your chosen artform, much like the Grinch's heart, will grow three sizes that day.

I'm increasingly behind the artificial intelligence curve

My brother Mark knows a lot about artificial intelligence (AI). To the point that he's considered an "industry thought leader." (That link, in which Mark talks about the business use of AI, is worth your time.)

To be clear, what Mark knows is generative AI, which our friends at Wikipedia define as "artificial intelligence capable of generating text, images, videos, or other data using generative models, often in response to prompts."

AI that creates stuff for you, basically.

We all use AI more than we think, whether it's a digital home assistant (think Alexa), facial recognition on our phones, or browsing the recommendations Amazon has for us based on our shopping history.

More and more of us are also using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, and I really want to tell you I'm one of them. I am, after all, a corporate communicator. My people have helped lead the generative AI revolution in recent years.

But I would be lying if I said I was an AI power user. Or even a regular user.

Honestly, it just doesn't occur to me to use AI tools day to day in my personal or professional life. ChatGPT is incredible (most people don't understand what it and similar apps like Claude and Microsoft Copilot can really do), but it's simply not top of mind for me.

There's also a certain Lazy Old Guy factor at play. I don't always want to make the effort to learn new ways of doing things, especially when the old ways serve me just fine.

(Of course, Mark is 12 years older than me, and he doesn't seem to have any problem learning how to use these tools to their full potential.)

The more I read about generative AI and its growing importance in 21st-century society, the more I worry I'm missing out.

There's an easy way to fix that, I know. I just need to get with the times and become an AI guy.

But hey, my brother uses it often enough for the both of us. For now I'll stick to my method of doing things, which I know is SO 2018.