I have a theory. It came to me in a recliner beside my dying father, on the night I was asked to make a promise.
I’m Tim. This is my personal field guide to taking back your attention and building a life you love.
I borrow big ideas, test them on my own life, and write about them here. Take what helps. Leave the rest.
Fair warning: I’m no guru, nor am I all that wise. My brain’s default setting is overdrive, and the narrator isn’t kind on most days. Writing helps me sort out ideas and loosen their grip.
Thursday night showers
I’m leaned back in a recliner that smells like someone else’s urine. The chair has held me for a little over forty days.
About double arm’s length away, my dad lies in bed staring at a wall-mounted TV. A weather report is playing.
“Thursday night showers. Lows in the upper 30s. North winds 10 to 15 miles per hour. Chance of rain 100%. And Friday, cloudy with a chance of rain and snow showers in the morning. Then partly cloudy in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 20s.”
It lasts about as long as it takes to microwave a bag of popcorn.
Then it starts over.
Dad crunches lemon drops as loud as he possibly can, eyes fixed on the TV. We’ve heard the report seven or eight times. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t notice. Each word lands like the first time.
Chemo does weird things to the brain. It doesn’t just go after cancer. It hits healthy cells too. Some people recover. Dad wasn’t going to be one of them.
CRUNCH. His teeth grind together with a God-awful screech that triggers a bit of rage. Which, for the old man, is the whole point. His favorite pastime was messing with people.
The report loops for the fifteenth time.
A notebook sits heavy on my lap. I’m heartbroken, pen in hand, hoping for some kind of insight to capture.
“Thursday night showers. Lows in the…”
Around the twenty-sixth loop, it hits me.
I write it down:
Don’t waste your life worrying about stuff that doesn’t matter, especially in the presence of people who do. We get limited time together. Make it count.
And all of a sudden, nothing annoys me. Not the teeth. Not the report. Not the pee-soaked chair, or the lack of quality care in nursing homes.
For the first time in a long time, I see things exactly as they are. No story about how it should be. Just a dying man, a bag of lemon drops, and whatever time we have left together. I didn’t have a name for that kind of seeing back then. I do now. You’ll hear it on the next couple of pages.
Knowing the sound of those teeth grinding would soon be just a memory made me realize how often I get lost in my own head and don’t pay attention to stuff that actually matters.
When you stop needing people to be anything other than alive, moments with them seem more magical and precious.
The last lucid conversation
The weather report looped as I sat with those realizations.
Then, without warning, the old man rebooted.
“Boy, don’t say nothin’. Keep your damn mouth shut. Don’t know how long I’ll be here. My brain ain’t working right. Can’t find words.”
It’s not often I keep my mouth shut. I kept my mouth shut.
“You got a damn good woman there.”
It’s true. Still is. We’re not married anymore, but we’re still friends. If you met her, you’d know right away.
“And you turned yourself into a damn good man. Don’t be a McAuley and screw it all up like I did when my dad died. Don’t let the anger control you. And promise me something.”
My mouth fell open. Nothing came out.
“Boy, you changed my life. Taught me to see things different. Wish I knew that shit when I was twenty. Could a been better for you. Maybe I wouldn’t have messed it up so bad.
Don’t mess it up.
Get back to doing what you’re ’posed to do. Write. If anyone is crazy enough to change the damn world, it’s you.”
Then he popped a lemon drop in his mouth, crunched it with a smile, and that was pretty much the last lucid conversation he ever had.
His last day
A few days later we moved to the county home. The hospice nurse came with morphine. Every breath left his body with a deep guttural groan. Hours went by with little more than that sound.
My uncle and I sat beside him. At some point, the nurses came to roll him over. When they lifted him up, he let out a sound that could only have come from the pits of hell, and Uncle Chuck and I were instantly on our feet.
We had to leave the room and take a break.
Before I left, I leaned down and whispered in Dad’s ear. I love you, Dad. I promised I wouldn’t let you live in a nursing home alone, but it’s time for you to let go. I need to get back to my family. This hurts too much now. Then my uncle and I walked to our vehicles.
I drove to the trailer to clean out his things and ordered a pizza.
Halfway through the second slice, the nurse called and said he was getting close. So I hopped in the truck and headed back to the home. He took his last breath while I was on the way.
Just a few days before, I had promised him I wouldn’t screw it up and lose a good woman. I broke that promise a few years after he passed. That’s another story for another time.
I made him one more promise. I told him I’d get back to writing. I broke that one too, for a while, in a very me kind of way. You’ll see.
Anyhow…
What I learned in that chair
The most valuable resource in the universe is attention.
It’s easy to spend most of your life with your attention focused on the wrong things: worry, noise, being right, figuring things out.
For one long night in a pee-soaked recliner, I got it back. And for a while I was able to keep it focused. But eventually life showed up, and I got distracted.
Attention is easy to lose. It gets taken by social media feeds and headlines, by other people’s agendas, by our own old stories. A quiet war is fought over it every day, and most of us don’t even realize it.
Fast forward to today. I still struggle to keep my attention focused. The narrator in my head is loud, and he’s had me convinced of some things about myself for a long, long time. I’ll introduce you soon. You might recognize him.
What’s stolen your attention?
Social media? An argument you replay in the shower? A to-do list that never shrinks, or a worry that loops while the people in front of you wait? Elections? Something else?
Wouldn’t it be nice to get your attention back and be able to consistently focus it on what matters to you?
It starts with noticing.
How’s the water?
In his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace tells the story of two young fish who meet an older fish.
“How’s the water?” he asks.
The young fish swim on, and one asks the other, “What the hell is water?”
Wallace admitted he’s not the wise old fish. Neither am I. I’m still learning to see the water.
Here’s the thing about water, though. Surfers don’t just swim in it. They learn to read it. Then they learn to ride it.
Then the water changed
At fifty years old, I got a clean slate. Not the inspirational kind. The legal kind.
A clean slate is either the best thing that can happen to a guy like me, or the most dangerous. If I don’t pay attention, I know exactly what gets written on it. Same old story, new notebook.
Or I could do what the old man asked.
Pay attention. Write. Make it count.
So I’m running an experiment. A plan small enough to fit on a napkin. A few big ideas from people way smarter than me, tested on my own life, with honest notes on what works and what doesn’t.
I don’t know how it’ll all shake out. That’s kind of the point.
Here’s what I’m writing on the slate.
If you’d rather see the map first, keep scrolling.
What is this?
A personal notebook, made public one page at a time: stories from my life, ideas I’ve borrowed from people smarter than me, and experiments in attention, energy, and doing the work.
Who is it for?
People I know and love, and people like them: thoughtful adults who feel the ground shifting and want a practical, honest way to adapt without panic or hype.
Why I’m doing this
First, for me. I want to change how I show up to what shows up.
Second, for the people I love. If something I learn here helps one of them, it was worth writing down.
What I can control is my attention.
So I’m practicing taking it back, and building a life I love. I’ll share what works for me, and some stuff that doesn’t.
The loop: Pause. Get Stoked. Flow.
Pause
Attention. The most valuable resource in the universe. Take it back, step out of reacting, and see what’s actually true. No spin.
Get Stoked
Energy. Love the life you’re living, then let yourself see what you want to create, and choose it. Stoke is warm, not wired.
Flow
Results. Hold both pictures, what you want and what’s true, and name what’s in the way. Then do the next rep. Show up. Learn as you go. Take the path of least resistance.
The name soul surfer comes from treating surfing as a practice for learning: be aware, respect people and places, and build patience, kindness, and discipline (Brad Melekian, Surfer, 2005). Timothy Leary added the edge: ride what comes, but don’t just kick back. Take responsibility for creating the future.
The path
- A clean slate. Where I actually am. No spin.
- Pause. Get Stoked. Flow. The napkin, and the thousand words behind it.
- It gets louder. Why it falls apart on day three, and the promise I broke.
- The Manifesto. Everything I borrowed, and from whom.
How I work
These are experiments, not advice. I’ll tell you what worked and what didn’t. I’m just a guy figuring it out for himself. A guide, not a guru.
Follow along
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Love your face.
Tim
PS. This one’s for you, Mikey. I miss you every day.