I recognize the controversy of this only in the fear of the affluent being asked to “subsidize” the health of the less well-off, and in the fear of the politician finding the huge sums of money spent on this social need unavailable for local issues such as bridges, roads, and military bases that are the grease of re-election. However the self-delusion that fails to embrace education in this same wise is amazing to me.

An unnoticed effect is the perpetuation of the corporation that this enables, and I wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye. I left my corporate employment over two years ago, intending to ride out COBRA and then buy my own insurance (a misnomer, since all I really wanted to do was pay for access to the system, and have my catastrophic incidents covered). However I found that because my wife suffers from fibromyalgia, we are uninsurable. I had no interest in returning to the corporate world, but rather wanted to pursue an individual business services practice finanSight. However, I couldn’t, as a civilized man, fail to provide catastrophic health care services for my family and worried that I was trapped. Fortunately I stumbled on COBRA continuation, a Georgia state requirement enforced by the Insurance Commissioner, but had I not worked for a company with more than 50 employees I wouold have been condemned to return to the corporate world. And for my children, with the world open before them, is it right to let the possibility of congenital “defects” allow one to become immediately self employed, while the other is forced to choose between emigration and working for “The Man?”
What will it take to change the terms of the debate? Will it require some catastrophe for us to recognize how uncivilized the most advanced and powerful nation ever created by man is to its citizens? Will a real crisis (not a politicized “debate”) require us to revisit this issue at its most fundamental level and flip the debate to a new paradigm.

Watch it; it speaks for itself. In reply, a friend sent me this:

When I sit in the car pool line at my children’s school and realize not only that mine is the only car unstained by pollen, but that it is the only one without gleaming hubcaps, I wonder what is going on. When I walk in my neighborhood and see the proud owner of a newly constructed house hosing off his front door step, or running his newly installed underground sprinkler system in the middle of the day, I really stop and pause. The other day there were two separate sprinkler systems running on my block, and a third homeowner was washing his SUV with bucket and hose. That people could show such disregard for their fellow humans testifies to the loss of community we experience and to the tragedy of the commons that put us in this mess in the first place (we’ll get to that in a minute), but that they should so prominently display it bespeaks an arrogance and self-conceit that is most distressing. I asked someone I know in the county water system what would happen if they were reported, and was told they’ll get a ticket - like a speeding fine. So for folk with a little money this is simply an honor system, and more realistically an opportunity for many to show that they have no honor but an inflated sense of their importance over their fellow man.

It is this self-conceit that condemned us to the current and I believe ongoing water crisis; if everyone would recognize water as a scarce resource and ration its use, we would have no drought; it is the gross overuse by people who drive the social norm to two showers a day, to having immaculate cars and verdant lawns, and to being members of exclusive clubs with lush golf courses that is the problem. How many people do you know who have really changed their behavior or the consumption for which they are really responsible? And do you really need to use as much water yourself, or to watch the societies and communities you support pour it away as they do?

This message is something I know but it is so easy to drift away from it in one’s own life. I need to practice this in relationships and in work; release the desire, just love, just do what’s there in front of me.

In a previous life I found the same tendency leading me to over-commit to the corporate life at the expense of family.

I find myself truly blessed in my “Bohemian” lifestyle in that I can rise and meditate, spend time on my writing, and during the course of the day intersperse my business endeavors with social, family, and Zen activities. There are still not enough hours in the day, but with a little effort I find that I can touch all of the bases - writing, zazen, professional work, housework, family, marriage, and social - every day. The one great gap is that I would like to be doing more for the community, but I am confident that as the kids grow up and I spend less time with them, this will open up and fill the gap.

Maintaining balance still requires effort, and I often find myself becoming skew and needing to correct, but it is an effort well worth making because it also brings humility and much needed perspective.

In a previous life I found the same tendency leading me to over-commit to the corporate life at the expense of family.

I find myself truly blessed in my “Bohemian” lifestyle in that I can rise and meditate, spend time on my writing, and during the course of the day intersperse my business endeavors with social, family, and Zen activities. There are still not enough hours in the day, but with a little effort I find that I can touch all of the bases - writing, zazen, professional work, housework, family, marriage, and social - every day. The one great gap is that I would like to be doing more for the community, but I am confident that as the kids grow up and I spend less time with them, this will open up and fill the gap.

Maintaining balance still requires effort, and I often find myself becoming skew and needing to correct, but it is an effort well worth making because it also brings humility and much needed perspective.

So to language. The day after Bill and Aedin left, a business colleague (Doug “SilverBulleits” Bulleit) mentioned that he had heard language evolved not for the usually offered reasons of coordinating the hunt, etc., but for gossip. A light bulb went on - why would it not have evolved around sex, the same way so much else did? Would language not be the perfect way for women to coordinate safe homes for their kids, for men to stop another aggressive male from getting too much of the action (a particular problem as man evolved to skillful tool use etc.) Without language sex could have gone completely awry. And of course the side effect that we recognize is morality and social behavior.

That, as John Cleese once said, “Is my theory, and it’s mine.”

I never got very far with the plan: within weeks the good folk at AlphaResults, introduced by a friend, needed some help, and nervously and clumsily I stumbled into a relationship with my first client. But it worked, and I am still working for them. Less than a month later I was having lunch with a former colleague, and he suggested that he could use my help with his business, DCSHealth. He became my second client, and I am still working for him nine months later. And then an old boss called me up to introduce me to a business acquisition team who he was thinking of backing, and I had my third client and was fully engaged.

Along the way I have been writing and wondering why it is so terribly hard to use my network to crack into publishing. Given that I haven’t hit the mother lode yet, I recently decided I needed to turn up the heat on my advisory business. I have done no marketing to speak of, so was just thinking again of how to play that game, when out of the blue the phone rang: it was an old colleague with a nice chunk of work, a client made to order!

The point, of course, is that my name is a brand that carries reliable, recognizable attributes among my business colleagues, and it almost sells itself, but it means squat in the writing world. My wife, also an author, just told me that Michael Connelly should call in his next book. He has a brand and no longer has to try.

It took me twenty years to build my current brand, and while I hope it won’t take that long in this new world, I am certainly in for a long slog. And this time it’s not enough to make the brand work with a few hundred senior folk, it will have to be thousands, then tens of thousands.

I’d better not quit that day job just yet!

The keynotes were inspirational, and the whole illuminating and encouraging. I came home inspired, ready to work on my query letter, and once more convinced of the importance of trying to work within the traditional industry if the intent is to make money: ultimately selling a book is all about marketing, and it is far easier to work with an army of experts on your side. I also joined the Backspace Forum, which at $30 per year is extremely good value for anyone seriously interested in interacting with aspiring writers, published authors, and agents, all of whom will pitch in to help.

And I was wrong in an earlier post: the most important document you’ll ever write is not the first chapter, but the query letter.