Excuse Me?

It's not intentional, but this year is shaping up to be the year Braddy works hardest on self improvement.


That's the spittle of discipline.

Anyway, you remember when I read Leadership and Self-Deception a couple of months ago? Actually, this might be the book that set the whole tone of the year for me. There's one little bit from the book that I've been thinking about a lot. I can't quote it exactly, so I'll have to paraphrase:

People often get so hung up in their own concerns that they don't recognize that other people have needs. The "self-deception" in the title of the book refers to our ability to objectify others in a professional environment, so that people become either tools for us to use to our benefit or obstacles standing in the way of us achieving our goals. What this means, practically, is that most people aren't really concerned with what our excuses are for failure in the workplace (or in life, for that matter). They only care that we're inconveniencing them.

This understanding that people are usually so focused on their own concerns that they don't have time for my rationalizations has led to two changes in my behavior. The first one is, I'd say, almost unequivocally a good one: I've stopped making excuses. Since nobody cares what they are, if I screw up, I've consciously tried to apologize without justifying my actions and promise to do better next time - which, really, is about all anyone can do.

UNFORTUNATELY, I've also come to expect this behavior from everyone else, which means that I have NO patience AT ALL for other peoples' excuses.

Now, like most self-deluded people, I think I'm right in not accepting excuses. I know a woman who always shifts the blame for her failures. Every time something goes wrong - and I mean every time - she either spends the next half-hour either looking for evidence to exhonerate or just straight up blames someone else for the failure. I kinda lost all patience with her when she forgot to complete a project and then turned to me and said, "Why didn't you remind me?"

If you ask me, that's unacceptable behavior. I refuse to be held accountable for anyone else completing their given responsibilities unless I'm their supervisor in some capacity (which, in this case, I'm not). HOWEVER, I recognize that the way to change this behavior in others is not necessarily through verbal chastisement, and it CERTAINLY isn't through grudge-holding.

Which, I guess, is the ultimate problem - if I get fed up with other people's excuses, it hurts no one but myself.

Catching Up with the Classics: Rear Window

Ever have an uneventful Saturday night, where you hit the streets with money in your pocket that you just have to spend? That's the situation I found myself in this past weekend, and I walked away with a pretty impressive collection of Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Should make meeting my goal a little easier.

Rear Window is the first movie in my remedial Hitchcock education. I'm quickly getting to the point where I can call myself a Hitchcock "fan." The unusual cinematography created a unique movie-watching experience - nearly everything is shot from within a single room, which cultivates a claustrophobic and paranoid atmosphere. And speaking of paranoia, Jimmy Stewart does paranoia very well in a role QUITE different from the one I'm used to seeing him in.

Hitchcock is a master of suspense, and the suspense is strong in Rear Window, especially near the conclusion. Unfortunately, that suspense may be the film's biggest weakness (possibly a weakness in ALL Hitchcock films - I'll have to let you know later). Suspense compels the viewer to fear for the life/well-being/sanity of the protagonist; however, when we already know how things will end, suspense loses it's power over us. I worry that the several long, drawn-out scenes will bore me on a second viewing.

However, we're talking about the FIRST viewing today, and that was a good one. In my mind, Rear Window is an obvious classic, and well worth a look if you haven't seen it.

Beauty in the Details - Three Winks Studio

Once upon a time, I took a stroll through the open house at Poor Yorick Studios in Salt Lake City. While there, I purchased a print from my friend Stacy Young, a fantastic photographer and head of Three Winks Studio. Stacy's a brilliant photographer, who has taken a lot of absolutely beautiful pictures. I've seen a lot of her work over the last couple of years and consider myself to be a pretty big fan, which is kind of a weird thing to say about a person I used to see every Sunday at church.

Here's the picture, for those who are curious:


I LOVE this close-up on the blueberries but my reasoning here's a little strange. Bear with me.

The crowns on these berries are spiked and aggravated, almost as if the berries were violently torn open. Also, the skin on the berry is dusty and a bit discolored. In short, these are NOT an advertiser's blueberries. However, I find I love looking at these berries, which I have a tough time describing as anything other than "honest."

I purchased this photograph in part because it reminded me of a photograph I once saw on Stacy's blog - a portrait of a woman*. Stacy used a lens which captured a lot of the fine details of the woman's face - crow's feet on the woman's eyes and the slight hairs growing out of her cheeks. The woman looked straight at the camera. with a slight smile on her face, and, frankly, she looked stunning.

When I hear phrases like "spikey berries" and "hairy-faced women," I'm not immediately drawn to exclaim, "What a beautiful world we live in!" Yet that's exactly how I feel when I look at the sublime details Stacy captures in her pictures - despite perceived "imperfections," everything is full of inherent beauty that we can see if we only learn to look at things a little differently.

I'm grateful for fantastic photographers who see the world as beautiful and are able to capture that beauty with their art. I keep the picture of the blueberries in my apartment as a reminder that, sometimes, it's our flaws that make us beautiful - a lesson a lot of us would do well to remember (myself included). If you find you need that kind of reminder yourself, I recommend checking out Stacy's blog.

* and it's not like I could really justify purchasing someone ELSE'S portrait - that'd be a bit creepsville.

A Question of Timing

So I had a talk with a friend of mine recently who's in a bit of a troubled relationship. My friend thinks they may be at the point in the relationship where they need to... umm... re-evaluate their relationship. However, as much as my friend needs this closure, they aren't sure if their partner is ready to have "the talk."

Back when I was in college, I dated a girl for a couple of months. Things went well for a while, but I eventually got the feeling that I needed to end things. Sadly, around that same time, my girlfriend's nephew died. I felt like it would be a bad time to end the relationship, so, not wanting to add more emotional strain to her life, I opted to keep the relationship going. When I saw her again, she told me she thought it was time to end the relationship, and we broke up. Not even two days had passed since her nephew died, yet she knew that the breakup was the best thing for us.

From this experience (and this is what I told my friend), I learned that the right thing to do is the right thing to do, regardless of timing. Even though I thought I shouldn't break up with my college sweetheart, it turns out that it WAS time for both of us to move on, and we both knew it. My friend, on the other hand, says that they would prefer to wait until the right time, as doing the right thing at the wrong time can have a negative impact.

So I guess I don't have an answer to the issue - as this is probably another one of those "case by case basis" things. What do y'all think here?

Imaginary Numbers

I'm not the math guy. I USED to be the math guy, but now I'm not. I'm the word guy.

Could I be the math guy again? Possibly. I mean, I still have a pretty good grasp on mathematical terms, like imaginary numbers.










Can you name them all?

Goody Goody... Goulash?

Recently I’ve devoted a lot of energy to trying new things – mainly new movies and books, that sort of thing – but I’ve also wanted to try to branch out and develop some new skills. Cooking’s not exactly something I’ve expressed a lot of interest in, but I decided to give it a go over President’s Day weekend. See, several years ago, while serving a mission for my church in the Czech Republic, I acquired this book:

I don’t THINK the turducken was originally Czech…

I LOVE Czech food – all those fattening sauces and dishes dripping with sauerkraut. It’s all delicious. I picked out a recipe from the cookbook – kotlíkový guláš, a simple beef stew – and gave it a go.

I ran into some problems translating the recipe. There were a couple of words that I couldn’t find in any of my dictionaries, offline or on. Words weren’t the only things tough to translate, either. In my experience, Europeans measure most of their cooking ingredients by weight, whereas Americans usually measure volume. Conversions were a bit tricky, but (with a little help from my math-major roommate) I was able to get all the ingredients together.

Not pictured: The frozen pizza I held in reserve, just in case.

I’ve always viewed cooking as a chore. After all, it’s a lot more work to make a stew from scratch than to heat up a can of Campbell’s Chunky, especially when cooking just for myself. Still, I’ve always been able to follow a recipe pretty well – I haven’t ignored EVERYTHING my mother taught me.

Step One: Melt lard in a big pot with bacon. I’m pretty sure I heard Jenny Craig crying somewhere.

The nice thing about stew, it seems, is that once it gets going you don’t really have to pay much attention to it. After sautéing the onions, carving up the potatoes, and browning the meat, I put the whole thing in a pot with some water and let it cook for about two hours – long enough to watch the entirety of Kenneth Branaugh’s Much Ado about Nothing.

Uncovering the stew only to pose for an action shot.

We ate well last night, my roommate and I. The goulash sat in my stomach like a rock for the rest of the evening (I blame the lard and bacon fat). Sadly, I think the dish lacked something. Potatoes, for one thing – the recipe only called for about one potato to go with about a whole pound of beef, which is just silly. I’ll be trying the recipe again, adding a few more spices and definitely upping the veggie count.

But now you have photographic evidence – Braddy CAN cook.

It tasted a lot better than it looks here. Trust me.

The Following is an Actual Exchange I Shared With One of the Doctors I Work For

Dr. Moench takes a seat in the waiting room.

BRADDY: Are you here to check in for an appointment?

DR. MOENCH: Can Dr. Moench see me now?

BRADDY: One moment, please. Braddy wheels his chair away from the desk and then back again. Dr. Moench, there's a patient out here to see you. He's being pretty pushy.

DR. MOENCH: Who is that? I don't know who that is.

BRADDY: I think he's a friend of yours.

DR. MOENCH: Sounds like he's a little testy. I can't see him today.

BRADDY: I'll tell him. Wheels his chair away from the desk and back again. I'm sorry, but Dr. Moench can't see you today. Would you like the number to our intake office.

DR. MOENCH: That's unnacceptable. I want to speak to the president of your company right now.

BRADDY: (facetiously) Sure. Let me take a number and I'll get back to you.

BLOGGER'S NOTE: Kind of a boring week. I'll have more stuff to post next week, I'm sure.