Adios.

“I wish there was a way to know you were in the good ol’ days before you’ve actually left them.” -Andy Bernard

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• Adios
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No one takes this advice.

When it comes down to it, everyone continues to publish instead of waiting the time it takes to develop groundbreaking content.

Still, every once in a while, someone publishes one of those posts. Among all the just decent ones, a good one breaks through, one that puts into words ideas that take years perhaps to develop, years that most bloggers don’t have the luxury of waiting between posts.

Most blogs have less than five of these kinds of posts, maybe 10 if the blog’s been around for a while. Even blogs I enjoy quite a bit, blogs that consistently have good posts, only have a few of these culmination posts.

Here are a few that come to mind:

• How to conduct your own annual review
• How to become an early riser
• How I became financially independent in five years

Note that culmination content doesn’t always have to be how-to stuff. That just happens to be a good one for blog posts.

But let’s move beyond blogs for a minute. Just about every creator has the opportunity to create or compile culmination content. Sometimes, it’s a book that stands far about the rest or provides the cornerstone for the rest of the books that author writes. Other times, it’s a crowning work of art or just a tremendously valuable decision under pressure.

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo
  
• The championship winning shot in ’98 by Michael Jordan

The reason it’s so hard to take the common advice – “only publish epic stuff” – is that usually, not always but probably 93% of the time, you need all the mundane content in the middle to develop the pieces that stand out.

I’m not saying this to get everyone to pollute the universe with garbage. I guess I’m saying this more to reassure those of us who keep publishing regardless. You can’t be scared of missing.

The other reason I’m bringing this up now, though, is to consider what it takes to create more culmination content. Okay, sure, it can’t all be outstanding, but how can I get more of it to be excellent?

When I look around at the examples of those who produce the best at whatever they’re creating, I see a couple patterns.

First, their drafts still aren’t polished, but they approach their subjects differently than everyone else. They either see and feel nuances that others can’t or they’re able to translate what everyone else sees and feels into a form that few others can.

Digging into this further, it seems like they usually do this by creating some kind of environment, either physically, socially, or mentally (or, more often than not, a combination of all three), that’s different from the environments everyone else lives in. In other words, they don’t rely on themselves to muscle their way into creativity. They surround themselves with an atmosphere that promotes this work.

Second, they don’t try to make everything outstanding, but they look to create complete collections more often than everyone else. It’s not like they slack off – they just know that some content isn’t going to be epic, and that’s okay. They know the middle content can move them toward the culmination content. And then, most importantly, because this is the part that most of us forget, they purposely develop that middle content into culmination content.

It’s easy to get stuck on either extreme, either trying to always work on great stuff, discounting the mundane area completely, or always staying in the mundane area without developing toward anything more. The creators who produce the most culmination content value both sides. They use the daily work to build toward the big stuff. They look back at the daily work to compile their big stuff, and they look back often.

That’s how the good guys do it.

But it’s hard. It’s hard to constantly straddle that middle path. It’s hard not to feel writer’s block when you want something groundbreaking, and it’s hard not to slump into mediocrity when you’re doing the daily work. But that’s where the environment comes in. Without it, it probably is impossible to stay on task the right way. You have to have both, the right environment, which you can engineer, and the right balance between paths, which you can find if you know to look for it.

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I remember Pop telling me to watch and remember. He knew this would only come around once for me. And I knew I should trust him on that.

Late in the game, someone drained a jumper, bumping the Jazz ahead with like 40 seconds left on the clock. Jordan knocked the lead down to one with a layup. From there, in order for the Bulls to win, they needed to both stop the Jazz and score.

And that’s where things got crazy.

The Jazz got the ball to Karl Malone down low, but Jordan snuck around and stripped the ball away. Then, on the other end of the court, Jordan pulled one of most clutch moves ever on one of the toughest defenders on the court.

I was nine years old. I still remember feeling, maybe for the first time, the adrenalin rush while watching the final seconds in a huge game like that. The rest of the world watched too.

With five seconds left in the game, Jordan crossed over the defender and sank the game-winning jump shot.

I was nine years old, but I wanted to be a part of that. In that moment, it felt like everyone did. For the first time in history in fact, the NBA Finals gathered more viewers than the MLB World Series. A year later, I started playing basketball.

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That morning, barely able to swallow water, I created a lesson plan and a review/practice midterm for my class. I knew my students and the teacher who covered would need the help for the upcoming exam.

After that, I called Shabir, our trusty taxi guy. He had one of his drivers take me to the Huwaylat Clinic.

I arrived shortly before 2:00pm, but they weren’t open. I called our tech guy, Hayden, because he’s helped with information before, even though it’s not his job. He checked the clinic’s website and found out they wouldn’t open until 3:30pm.

Great.

So I waited. I waited until 3:30. But at 3:30, they still weren’t open.

I called Hayden again around 4:00. He talked to Jeff, the next level up in command. Hayden said Jeff said to try another 15 minutes and then just come back to the compound. The fun continues, I thought.

Around 4:10, a Saudi came to the door where I was waiting, looked confused, and then called someone. I asked him if he knew if the clinic would open. He said we needed to go to the other entrance, and the clinic would open in about 10 minutes. Sure enough, 10 minutes later, I was able to get in.

From there, I tried to open my health file but had trouble because I don’t have my health card. Of course, we’re never going to get these from McGill or the Royal Commission.

The receptionist, an unnaturally blue-eyed, Saudi woman, told me to talk to one of the directors. The director had me scan my passport and then directed me to a doctor. The doctor checked me over, including the pain that had been bothering my side for about a week, and then prescribed some medicine to help with my throat, my cough, and that pain around my ribs.

After roughly four hours of process time, the actual visit turned out all right.

It turned out all right until the end. When I was leaving, Hayden said to ask for a referral to the RC hospital so I could get a sick note. So back in I went.

The doctor said he’s not related to the RC hospital so he could only send me over there if it’s an emergency.

“I just need a note to show that I couldn’t go to work today,” I said.

He said he’d already given me a prescription so there’s nothing more the hospital could do. Then he wrote me one of those “he visited the clinic” notes.

At that point, I called Hayden yet again and told him I was just heading back to the compound to rest. I was sick. I was tired. And I was running around doing all this and getting even sicker and tireder. We could sort it out later.

The next day, I went to work. I still had a cough and didn’t feel great, but my fever had broken. It was just a quiz day, so I managed to hang through it. It wasn’t worth going through all the hassle of the phone calls and taxis and clinics and doctors and notes and lameness that surrounded the day before.

Thankfully, my bosses are cool. That, or they forgot. They didn’t take money out of my paycheck even though I never technically got the proper sick note.

It’s never great to get sick, but even with the pay, it’s definitely not okay to get sick with this McGill/Royal Commission contract.

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• The McGill/Royal Commission diaries – Term 1
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Anyway, these are the top ten I can think of now, the ones that actually stuck, the ones I want to pass on to their grandchildren someday.

1. They taught me to read.

Before I could sit up on my own, my mom read to me. She probably read me more books than she read my three other brothers and sister combined. She says it’s one of the best things she did for me when I was young. It might not have worked for everyone, but I’m guessing the success rate would probably be pretty high. I certainly learned to love reading, the ability to go to a different world through stories and learn about interesting things and ideas, from those early years.

2. They taught me to eat anything.

I remember sitting for what seemed like hours at the kitchen table because I didn’t want to eat a tunafish sandwich. Other days, it was canned asparagus, which my dad later admitted was disgusting, or some other vegetable of the day. My parents didn’t necessarily teach me to enjoy all foods, but by teaching me to eat anything, they taught me the value of not being picky.

3. They taught me to be wise with money.

We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. In the early years in Louisville, my dad worked at Sam’s Club during the week and pastored the church on weekends. My mom stayed home and homeschooled us. We didn’t have a lot of money, so I learned to appreciate its value. My dad can remember weighing the price of a cable he wanted for our stereo system. It only cost a few dollars, but at the time, he knew that meant we’d have to be even more thrifty with our grocery money. Those times were good for me because they taught me both sides of valuing money, the save carefully side but also the spend wisely side.

4. They taught me to pray.

On the way to church every week, my parents would pray. Each of the kids in the car would pray too, whether we liked it or not. Most of the time, we liked it, maybe not in the beginning, but it grew on us. It became a way of life and spilled outside the car. When someone was sick, we’d pray. When we lost something around the house, we’d pray. When the day turned out especially well, we’d pray. So now I pray, even when we’re not “we” anymore.

5. They taught me to be thankful.

“Just be thankful,” Momma always said. I didn’t always appreciate that. I probably still wouldn’t, but their lifestyle overall taught me to be grateful for what I have. I can’t remember how many times I thought I was bored because, I thought, I had nothing to do. It took years to realize how much I have, and it keeps me going every day, probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned ever in life.

To be continued on Father’s Day. For now, Happy Mother’s Day, Momma! Thank you for all you’ve taught me.

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