The comfort of chains

I love a lot of things in life. I love hot chocolate. Come to think of it, I love cold chocolate. Okay, I love chocolate. But I love other things too. I love black and white photography. I love my family. I love great films, the ones that have meaning in them. I feel like I’m in good company with most of my loves in this world, except maybe one. I absolutely love chains. Not the I’m-in-jail-in-the-1940s kind of chains, but the I-always-know-what-kind-of-food-I’m-gonna-get-for-my-money kind of chains.

It’s true. When I traveled a lot for work I would eat most of my meals out and realized just how much I love chain restaurants. Well, I’m not sure you could say “restaurant” for all of the chains I love, but you get the point. Sure, someone I am with at the time might get me to try some local fare and sure I have learned to love some new foods across this fine country of ours. However, my attraction to new foods never decreases how much I love what I already know I love. Follow?

Picture this: you’ve been traveling all day. You left your bed at 4am this morning, sat in three different airports, stood in poor airline customer service lines while everyone yelled left and right about a delayed or cancelled flight. You make it to your destination without a moment to spare. You run through the car rental center so fast you’re not even sure what car your driving, run to a community meeting you’re facilitating with people you’ve never met and at 8pm your stomach puts it’s foot down. With stress still on your mind and now a stomach revolting from lack of food, I swear to you there is nothing better than the warm glow of a Panera Bread, the distinct aroma of a Chipotle, or the retro atmosphere of Arby’s.

Some would say, how gross, a whole day of not eating and you think Arby’s sounds good. Well, first, you must have never tried their one-of-kind Jamocha milkshake and two, they actually have great healthy options now. Second, the point isn’t what sounds good or not, it’s what I know I love. When the whole world is unstable and you don’t want to risk one more “surprise” in your day, something like a Panera is just the place. I know what I’m getting before I even walk in their four walls. I know what the atmosphere will be and usually what the quality of the food will be. In a chaotic world on the road, it can be my safe haven, for my stomach at least.

Sure the mom-and-pop shops can be great hidden treasures, but for me, I’ll save those for a calmer day. After all, the chain places must have done something right. Even McDonalds started off as one little restaurant.

30,000 ft view

You wake up to the siren in your head that is the alarm clock two feet away. Only in the moment, the solution seems so far. You haven’t yet realized in your mind that you have the power to make that horrible noise go away. You haven’t even started to wonder how much energy it will take to move your arm in the direction it needs to go. Finally your hand makes it to the snooze button giving you those precious extra seven minutes to roll back over and wait for the siren to sound again. As you settle back into the mold of your face on the pillow, one eye blinks open, as if the other is still too tired to work, and you realize that something’s not right.

The sun is shining brighter today. The sounds out your window are more alive than usual. But your clock seems wrong. It shouldn’t read 7:55am. And for a moment you convince yourself that the first 5 on that digital clock is actually a 1; like it is every morning. Then, like a bolt of lighting to the heart, you jump out of bed, muttering something inappropriate under your breath, realizing that your mind control can’t force that 5 back into a 1 and instead of leaving your bed, you should be leaving the house right now.

From that point on, the day heaves itself forward like so many before it. No one will notice that you didn’t have time to shower. After all, isn’t that what they made deodorant for? And thankfully, you have enough sense to keep a toothbrush in the drawer of your desk. Until then, a piece of gum will definitely suffice.

With pants and a shirt on, and the rest in hand, you make your way to the bus convincing yourself you can do without breakfast this morning. You have a granola bar in your bag anyway, right? Maybe you can squeeze in a quick run out of the office and to the corner store between meetings. And the thought actually crosses your mind that if you just stay busy enough, you won’t even realize your hungry. Worst case scenario, you have some crackers at your desk.

By noon, you haven’t even caught up with your email from last night and the ringing of your phone assures you that the run to the corner store is out of the question. By “quitting time,” you’re just getting enough sanity back in your work space to actually accomplish something on that “to-do” list for the day and those crackers that were going to suffice are long gone. As you make your way back home, long after the buzz of the evening in the city has died down, you realize you made it through another day. You feel almost proud of what you’ve accomplished. You almost want to call someone, text someone, facebook someone, or tweet something that says, “Hello world! You might have tried, but I’m still here; still standing. Eat your heart out!”

But before you get the chance, you walk back in the house and see that your laptop is buried with the pile of clothes you promised yourself you would wash last weekend and the contents of the sink are starting to create a new neighborhood aroma. Soon though, the fatigue of an over-worked mind and sleep-deprived body catch up to you and you find yourself filling the mold your body left this morning in the blankets and pillow on your unmade bed.

For many of us this is our life…well, from the two-ft view at least. Just like the alarm clock in the morning two feet away from our face, we’re forced into daily lives that only let us focus on and comprehend our two-ft views. Since recently quitting my job, I’ve had a constant theme of the opposite. What’s the opposite of two feet, you ask? Well, it seems to be 30,000 to be exact. It’s the 30,000 ft view with which I’ve been trying to look at things lately. It’s so difficult but so important to remove ourselves periodically from the two-ft view and instead look at things from the 30,000 ft view, the proverbial “bigger picture.”

Yes, it’s easier to do when you quit your job and physically remove yourself from the two-ft view, but not impossible while you still have your job. In fact, I used to fly a lot with my previous job and when possible, I would always choose the window seat. One of the most enjoyable moments of any flight was looking out the small window to your side. I would watch as the pavement of the runway blurred with speed and at a certain point, you could feel the weight of the plane disappear from the ground as the air caught the wings just right and lifted us upward. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing in life, hoping that if we just go fast enough at the right angle, we will catch flight.

Either way, as others quickly returned to whatever would keep them busy for the next few hours, I would watch out that window. Maybe its some god complex, but I would watch as everything got smaller. The people running from the bus to the office, late for another meeting. The cars with parents headed to drop off kids who were already late to school. The grocery stores and shopping malls with their doors being swung back and forth in anticipation of increased sales. The soccer games on the local neighborhood field. Everything got smaller the higher you went, until finally, you reached that 30,000 feet cruising altitude. Then things didn’t seem to matter so much. The email I couldn’t get to send from my computer before getting on the flight. The voicemails I didn’t reply to yet. It all seemed to be down on the ground with those busy people. It was in the two foot view; but me, I was up at 30,000 feet. Sure I was in a tin can going 500 mph at 30,000 ft, but still, I was at 30,000 feet now.

At 30,000 ft my life has different meaning. What does your life look like at 30,000 feet? When you step back from your two-ft view, what does your life look like? Is it what you hoped for? What you want? Are you proud of what you see? I truly hope it is a life you’re happy with and one that you’re proud of. But if it’s not, I encourage you to make the change you want to see.

So this week I ask:

If you could make a change in your daily life, in your two-ft view, to better your life, to put you further on the path you want to be on, what change would you make? Would you simply exercise more each day? Pray more each day? Would you move closer to your family? Or maybe switch careers or go back to school? What change would you make?

Question of the Week: The Beginning...

I was a Resident Assistant (RA) during college. You know, the person on each floor of the college dorm whom you either avoided like the plague or was the first person you would run to when something was wrong. During that time I learned a lot about how best to create community among a very diverse group of people. It isn't always the easiest job. Among other challenges, you're fighting the already unnatural and difficult setting of the college dorm. There's nothing quite like living in an already cold and sterile environment to really enhance the community building challenges...all those blank walls with the same door repeated down the entire hallway.

As I entered the real world and moved to Washington, DC, I learned that life can be as cold as those stark hallways and sometimes all we need is some more community...a chance to take a minute away from the go-go-go and a chance to talk, think, laugh with one another. It's my hope that you'll check back in with this blog weekly to see and participate in an old tradition to help build that community...the good 'ole QOTW, or Question of the Week. I'll post a thought/question here each week and look forward to building community from your thoughts and responses. It worked as an RA, why not with this diverse group of people as well.

To start things off, I'm going to start with the all too familiar theme of TIME. Something that no one, especially those here in DC, can never seem to have enough of. How often have you heard, "I just didn't have time to get to that?" Well this week, many of us in the country got that ever prized possession of an entire extra hour in our day. For every person who has ever said, "If only I had one more hour in the day," congratulations! Daylight Savings is upon us again and on Saturday, your day came...and went. And I'm sure you each used it to the absolute fullest, right?

So, the QOTW is: If you could "pause" the world for an alloted amount of time in which only you remained in motion, do what you wanted/needed to do and then "resumed play," how long would you need to keep everything paused? What would you do?

I look forward to your answers and thoughts.