The Confidence of Innocence

by MP MacDougall | Lifestyle Design, Writing

My wife took my five year-old son to the mall last week to shop for clothes. One store had a small table full of Legos for kids to play with while their parents shopped. Perfect for my son – he loves to build things even more than he loves to wander off.

As he was playing, a young girl came up and joined him. He related the story to me after he got home (using an exaggerated whisper voice throughout):

K (urgently): “Dad! I need to TELL you something!”

Me: “What is it, son?!?” (more…)

The Beard of My Discontent

by MP MacDougall | Lifestyle Design, Writing

I’m changing a few things in my life.

This post is part of that – one segment in a personal challenge to write frequently and consistently, to develop writing as a natural habit.

I’m also losing weight.

Notice here that I said ‘I’m losing weight,’ not ‘I’m trying to lose weight.’ I never really liked Yoda, but even I have to admit he pretty much nailed it when he said, “No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.” (more…)

The Timely Death of Television

by MP MacDougall | Lifestyle Design, Writing

When I started this writing challenge yesterday, I had no real idea where I was going with it, other than the fact that I wanted to write more consistently. By restricting my participation in social media until after I write, I unintentionally touched on today’s topic: What crowds your time and makes it difficult for you to write?

I realized that for me, watching TV used to be one of my biggest time-killing creativity leeches. To be honest, we turned off our cable and haven’t watched a show on regular television in at least a year. We realized that we were spending too much time in the evenings, camped out in front of the magic box, allowing our time to drain away while we watched programming that did nothing for us.

So we pulled the plug. (more…)

Write. Every Day.

by MP MacDougall | Lifestyle Design, Writing

I’m always looking for a new way to prod myself to write.

The problem is that the various methods tend to fail after a short time, and I fall back into the tried and true pattern of making excuses for not doing what I want, and then, by default, doing what I don’t want.

Yesterday, I came across an interesting concept that might be more effective for me. John Muldoon had a link to Bradley Charbonneau’s blog that gave me a completely different way of looking at the problem of establishing a consistent writing habit. (more…)

What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?

by MP MacDougall | Lifestyle Design, Writing

The following is a post I wrote in December 2011, and then promptly forgot in an obscure folder on my computer. It was originally intended for my previous blog, but I thought it might fit in here as well. It’s interesting to read what was going through my head more than a year ago, and to measure that against steps I’ve taken since then. Read on…

I have been richly blessed for the past two plus decades to have a career that I honestly enjoy, and that to this point has had the benefit of being different most every day.  I work with people who generally share my sense of humor and sarcasm, which goes a long way toward relieving any potential tedium.  I am lucky enough that my lovely bride is able to stay home and nurture our two children, which is one of the great dreams of my life – being able to partner with my wife to raise our own kids without having to hire someone else to do it.  We have a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, and (at least in my irritatingly obvious case) more than enough food to eat.

Which begs the question: (more…)

Fear and Loathing

by MP MacDougall | Lifestyle Design, Writing

Sometimes I really hate myself.  Not in the sense of “My butt is too big” hate myself (my butt is perfectly sized for sitting on), or “Why can’t I be six-foot-five?” hate myself (I already have enough knee problems, thank you very much); but something more along the lines of “How did I let myself get this comfortable?” hate myself.  My particular strain of disappointed self-loathing stems from the fact that in the quest to be a good provider for my family, I have fallen into the age old trap of “A Good Job with Retirement Benefits.”  It occurs to me that although securing oneself on the all-important career path may seem like an appropriate exercise for anyone with any shred of responsibility and/or ambition, in actuality it is easy for that same career to become much like a narcotic, preventing a person from taking any sort of risk and ensuring that he stays on that career track to the exclusion of other less lucrative, secure, or dare I say it, fulfilling life choices. (more…)