The duckling had satisfied himself with what he was: Ugly.

He had a good personality. Or that’s what he told himself for consolation. His very weird bleached feathers could maybe seem interesting, but try not to bring attention to them.

It seemed obnoxious and off-putting to be as white and big as he naturally was.

No one else seems to care that he keep himself nice so he stopped making the effort.  

He didn’t work to stay too clean. All the others around him were speckled. Was he supposed to be slovenly?

There was a difference though. He knew the other birds around him were clean. They naturally had speckles, and he could only get them if he didn’t wash.

He liked being clean. He didn’t feel like himself when he was speckled and dirty. But he didn’t like standing out.

Things weren’t comfortable either way. If he didn’t make the effort, he could be speckled and blend in with the others.

Every once in a while he couldn’t stand it anymore and was as clean—as white, smooth and sparkling as he could possibly be. He would strut  around alone, feeling fine and handsome in his natural state.

He felt he had to hide at these times, but he still wanted to  feel his full self.

“How else will I be recognizable to my people?

If I find them.

If they exist.”

# # #

I’m piggybacking on a well-known story. The ugly duckling is a comforting story of the true nature finding belonging and appreciation.

If that duck was trying to find his people, I’ve been trying to find myself again.

I know who I am, I know what I’ve been capable of. But somehow this year I started to let things that made me ME slip away.

I’m getting ready to publish my 5^th book, a handbook. This weekly wonder, this substack is my weekly proof that I’m a writer. Past performance was not enough for me, I keep this blog up so I feel it in my bones. I am a writer because I write.

Although I’ve kept up with writing every week, I haven’t really saved my writing. I have always made a careful point of saving each offering in it’s file. Somehow I stopped this year. Did I start neglecting even last year…?

This year I also stopped tracking my books. I have kept a list of them for more than 10 years.

But this year I didn’t.

What’s happening? How do I explain this change?

Like the ugly duckling that comforts himself in his laziness. I have not felt like myself, and I let things slide.

I don’t ‘know what is possible this year, but I don’t want to settle and not show up as my best self. Come on Ducky! Brush off the dusk and see what you can be. There is a big world out there.The duckling had satisfied himself with what he was: Ugly.

He had a good personality. Or that’s what he told himself for consolation. His very weird bleached feathers could maybe seem interesting, but try not to bring attention to them.

It seemed obnoxious and off-putting to be as white and big as he naturally was.

No one else seems to care that he keep himself nice so he stopped making the effort.  

He didn’t work to stay too clean. All the others around him were speckled. Was he supposed to be slovenly?

There was a difference though. He knew the other birds around him were clean. They naturally had speckles, and he could only get them if he didn’t wash.

He liked being clean. He didn’t feel like himself when he was speckled and dirty. But he didn’t like standing out.

Things weren’t comfortable either way. If he didn’t make the effort, he could be speckled and blend in with the others.

Every once in a while he couldn’t stand it anymore and was as clean—as white, smooth and sparkling as he could possibly be. He would strut  around alone, feeling fine and handsome in his natural state.

He felt he had to hide at these times, but he still wanted to  feel his full self.

“How else will I be recognizable to my people?

If I find them.

If they exist.”

I’m piggybacking on a well-known story. The ugly duckling is a comforting story of the true nature finding belonging and appreciation.

If that duck was trying to find his people, I’ve been trying to find myself again.

I know who I am, I know what I’ve been capable of. But somehow this year I started to let things that made me ME slip away.

I’m getting ready to publish my 5^th book, a handbook. This weekly wonder, this substack is my weekly proof that I’m a writer. Past performance was not enough for me, I keep this blog up so I feel it in my bones. I am a writer because I write.

Although I’ve kept up with writing every week, I haven’t really saved my writing. I have always made a careful point of saving each offering in it’s file. Somehow I stopped this year. Did I start neglecting even last year…?

This year I also stopped tracking my books. I have kept a list of them for more than 10 years.

But this year I didn’t.

What’s happening? How do I explain this change?

Like the ugly duckling that comforts himself in his laziness. I have not felt like myself, and I let things slide.

I don’t ‘know what is possible this year, but I don’t want to settle and not show up as my best self. Come on Ducky! Brush off the dust and see what you can be. There is a big world out there.

When I do my cardio at the gym, I choose a treadmill facing a big window.

In the morning dark, the glass acts like a mirror reflecting the inside of the gym. Those people behind me, doing lunges and lifts. I’m locked in place as I run so I see the flit of my pale legs running.

As the sky lights up the jacaranda trees and the houses across the street take form from the mechanical world of the fitness equipment.

There are a few houses and a two story office building. The houses are a unique kind of “found art” material special to my town. During the depression, a creative polish immigrant took concrete-typle material meant for demolitions and repurposed it. He strategically cut and stacked like bricks into an inhabitable house. Then another one. It catches the eye, since it’s not like anything else. It’s precise and even like bricks, but it’s a decent enough house. It’s become cute and the neighborhood is registered as historical “folk architecture.” They do have red tile roofs.

The office building next door was built more recently—maybe 20 or 30 years ago. With two stories and tall smooth columns is evoking a modern Romanesque style to break up the boxy right angles. Next to the red tile roofs, it pleases my eyes and make me think of Roman villas.

This summer we were looking at the ruins of Roman aqueducts in Germany. Germany and Rome had an uneasy relationship, but the Spanish that came over to California appreciated, emulated and kept the Roman flavor going. A whole group of people refer to themselves as Latin—Latin American.

Looking out the window going nowhere as fast as I can I think about those buildings. Architecture is so many things—shelter, comfort and doing business.

The office building is standard underneath the exterior, with ordinary struts and sheetrock inside. They took the time to make it pretty on the outside. I see that it was built so it could be reskinned to show a different style.

What if these memories of Rome wanted squashing? The bones of business could wash its face and put different makeup on very convincingly.

The scrap house couldn’t change that fast. A different roof, yes. But it was deeply what it was and couldn’t change its shape.

And I run. The weight plates clang and people grunt behind me as we all work with the material we’ve found in ourselves.

Before there were YouTube Shorts, there were short stories. With Christmas nostalgia, I have to think of The Gifts of the Magi. Who else remembers O. Henry?

He was the king of the magazine short story, famous for the surprise twist at the end. This story was from 1905. The story showed up in American literature textbooks for decades, it is probably still in some to this day.

The world he shows is grim. Britain had Dickens as the literary evangelist of the street urchin. The growth of the American cities created an outpouring of literature about the working poor, or just straight up homeless.

As was the fashion at the time, he was a socialist back when I was a theory without a lot of practical application. The idea then was to be nicer, share and have compassion on one another. The rich guys are not the heroes. The world might be against eh little guy, but things have a a way of turning out different than you’d expect.

The heroes in this story, are not terribly heroic. They were a young struggling married couple, desperately in love. They want to give each other their very best on Christmas.

The story invokes the three wise men of the nativity. These men study the stars and are so sure of what they know they set off to find what the star indicated.

O. Henry starts with the practical facts at the very beginning:
One dollar and eightyseven cents.

The wife, Della, has managed to save only this much for husband Jim’s Christmas present. She falls weeping at the thought of what she cannot give him. The story if very specific asbout their income and their costs. They don’t have much.

Even today, I have heard people complain about how Christmas is too commercial. Della want to give a good gift to her beloved. She sells the only thing of value she has: her long gorgeous hair. She didn’t earn her hair, it was a gift of genetics that she was able to have hair past her knees. She sold it to buy her husband a chain for his watch.

Jim had inherited his watch, passed from his grandfather to his father and to him. It didn’t have a chain.

And as he cam home to his wife’s shorn head, he is dumbfounded. He hugs her and she discovers that he sold his watch to buy her jeweled hair combs.

The IRONY!

He closes the story saying the Magi would approve of this couple. Hard to agree, since their sacrifices were in vain.

Schoolchildren have discussed and argued what these two should have done. As I review it, I see that there is a bit of arithmetic and home economics in there. It’s a good story for kids to learn from .

I could understand that a socialist would see the materials things as less valuable. And the celestial angels would agree. The point of the gift is that each gave their very best. I’d like to shake both of them and tell them to use their common sense.

Foolish as they were, they did know each other very well. They paid attention to what lit up their eyes. I am sure I will not be as wise as I hope with all my Christmas preparation, but I do hope to see delight in the eyes of those near me.

He’s making a list and checking it twice

Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice

watch out! Don’t get on the naughty list. I want to be good. I would be ashamed to be caught out in some failure, not matching what I’m supposed to be.

The truth is we all fall short. Lord save us from our falling shorts, speaking of the naughty list.

But seriously, if I take a cold hard look around, failure is way more common than success. For those following along, I’ve been sitting in my mud puddle of failure lately. I’m not living up to what I wish I could be. It’s a cold and slimy feeling. It’s been a tough couple of years.

I guess if I’ve stuck in the mud, I can make mud pies. There is a lesson in failure

It’s taken me those years, but this week I finished David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me. He tells how he set out to break the record of pull-ups done in one day. He went on TV to break the record in front of everyone.

And Failed. In front of Everyone.

He knew what’s he’d done wrong though, and set himself up for success for the next time.

And Failed. Again.

This time it was serious. There were reasons to call it impossible.

Not for this guy. Since he’d failed so publicly, he gathered all the insults, jabs and criticism and reviewed the video. There is a lot that went right in his failure. He dove deep to see what went right and get a clear view on what he could change to beat that record.

These stories in my mud puddle could use a different angle. He was right. I can walk back these stories I’ve been telling myself of how I fell short and look for how I did well. With some thought and strategy I can do better than next time and get higher on that list.

That would be nice.

This has happened to me before.

A lot of good things happened this last week that I could write about. One big event was going to the black belt test and cheering on my classmates to perservere in the test like I did last year. I had a lot of feelings while that was happening.

It was a year ago. And then it was this exact date December 10th that I had my 2^nd thyroid surgery. I remember shaking with nerves before the black belt test.

And I remember being dizzy before the surgery. I wasn’t allowed to eat, so I was weak. That whole process lasted longer than I wanted.

But that was a long time ago. A whole year ago.

But after watching the test from the bleachers, I could see how intense it was. Split from the memory of my experience and seeing it from the outside, I remembered how hard all the things that came after.

Chris and I once climbed Mt Whitney, the tallest peak in California. There is a part on the trail called the ninety-Nine switchbacks. There are in the middle. Climb up, but there are still miles to go to get to the peak.

Miles to go.

Later, I could look back and see the path I traveled.

Watching my teammates last Saturday, I admired them. I foggily realized I could admire myself too. My fight had continued after I left the mat. I still had to keep my courage to face the knife in surgery twice more.

It until a year later that I had the clearing to look back and see what I’d traveled. I couldn’t stop along the way. There were miles to go.

On the mat, seconds had to be managed as I defneded against attacks. Hours and days had to be managed after surgeries, taking attention to ensure they passed successfully.

Many days have passed since then. The fight has gone out of them. I’m left with a quiet victory.

Like that saying

IF a tree falls and no one hears, did it really fall?

I bore witness to myself. I remember. My classmates remember too.

Some others bore witness to the stuff that came after. Even though it feels like a dream, all this really happened. I feel like I should be over it, but on this year anniversary of the surgery I am remembered how scared I was at the time.

I have to choose what comes next, in this quiet victory. That’s a big part of what I fought for, to have time to choose.

I am never satisfied with what I create. That is what is means to be an artist

I try to make the time. I will cherish the ideas, the vision that comes in my head to create.

Capturing the muse, making it into a reality—I don’t always do it. But if I make the habit—like this weekly wonder essay—some of those idea will become a reality.

Many will slip back into the mist.

Some few I will take the time to realize. I’ll string the material, the words, together to sketch the idea.

Which is never what I hoped for.

It could be better. I could be better. I wish for more time to give it what it deserves, what I can see in my vision of what it could be.

Not just time. I wish I had the skill and the ability

I don’t yet. I suppose time is part of the package that would create the skill I wish I had but I don’t yet

I’m not satisfied. I would like to do better. I’d like to be better.

The drive to create is never quiet. I’ve got a backlog of things I want to make, and more new ideas are still coming.

That’s the reason for the habit of creation. I don’t want to stop up the flow. I know nothing I make will be up to the mark I am thinking of. All the same, something is better than nothing. I spare line sketch might leave the faintest impression of the idea I have, and yet it realizes a suggestion of the concept I’m reaching for.

As I create it, the idea becomes more real to me and the goal seems more and more unreachable.

I come to a point where what I created is enough. I have learned to be content with an imperfect version.

I hope for more, but I have to be satisfied with what I made. Next time, I will do even better. And I”ll have the chance with my habit to keep creating.

Faith in life is the belief that I can do better. Every little bit of better counts. That makes this day something to believe in.