(Not that I haven’t tried 100 times in the past two weeks. Failure: It actually is an option)

Simplicity for me these days means focusing on what I care about the most and letting everything else fade away.

I

love,

love,

love

my children.

T’s new little brother Luke, age two weeks, born Dec 2011

I am calling this Operation Suffer Fools Less Gladly.

Sincerely believe this will save me HOURS in 2012.

Talked with a few girlfriends about this. We realized we are wasting time with these people — time being excessively polite, and then time being annoyed by the whole thing later. Precious time that should be spent with people we really do like and find interesting (my friends and family, that includes you! This post is about those Other People In Life). Which isn’t to say we’re embracing flaming bitchiness all the time. It’s just that we’re too far on the other end of the spectrum, the one that socializes women in particular to always listen attentively, always find something nice to say, and to feel it is their purpose to make the other person feel comfortable.

MISTAKE!

Time for a bit more “you’re wrong,” “that’s not actually true,” and “maybe you should try reading books.”

I’ll let you know how many bricks I get thrown through my windows.

OR!

I’ll let you know how much acting a bit more like a cranky 70-year-old makes my life easier, simpler, happier. You gotta give it to cranky 70-year-olds for not wasting time on stupid shit. If that’s not simplicity, what is?

Of this plan …

My friend A says: Yes! Live authentically!

My sister says: I have serious concerns about where this will lead.

My friend C says: My cousin does this all the time, especially “you’re wrong.”  I think it has helped her be successful in many ways and she seems to completely avoid the sort of neurotic, obsessive misery I tend to subject myself to.

(Clearly you can see why I love all three of these people).

**

Meanwhile in medialand, lookie! I have trouble shutting up about the recession, savings and the environment.

I was in the WSJ: How to Save $10,000 by Next Thanksgiving

And Forbes: Generation X, Time to Reboot

And E, The Environmental Magazine: Meet The Fakers

It cost $22 million to build, and took six years to complete, finished in 2009. The couple lived there for less than a year; at the same time, the furniture company they ran filed for bankruptcy.

The house is now bank-owned, and on the market for $8 million.

Wow.

O.K.

So this is where we indulge ourselves in a brief moment of (your choice): (A) Schadenfreude, (B) “If I had that much money I’d never be so stupid,” or (C) “If I had that much money, I wouldn’t build such a boring, weirdly fake looking house … and in suburban Charlotte, come on.” (That last one is mine).

But now let’s figure out what we can learn from these people, beyond greed = stupid/bad.

The part I can’t get past is that no matter what kind of crazy, money-for-all!!-mid-2000′s loans/mortgages they got, they must have had at least — I’m just making a rough estimate here — $2M+ on hand to qualify for them. For $2 million, they could have built a palace in these parts and owned it debt free. Heck, they could have built a palace for $1 million, owned it debt-free, and had a remaining $1 million fund set aside exclusively for years and years’ worth of home ownership costs like repairs, property taxes and insurance. Obviously, those options — still million-dollar mansion options — weren’t as appealing. Why?

This is where I see their mistakes as a reminder to scrutinize my own choices. At age 32, if I’d used my savings differently, I could be the proud debt-free owner of … I don’t know, a primitive cabin or a trailer or one of those houses in Detroit selling for 7 cents or something. But I don’t want to live that way. I want something more, something nicer.

Sure, in my price range, I don’t think it was crazy to pass up debt-free in exchange for things like running water and relative safety. But once those needs are met, it all comes back to:

How much is enough?

Why do we always want one level better than we have?

Where do we draw the line between debt and material desire? How much debt is “worth it”?

We criticize these people for not living within their means. Boy, did they make it really easy! But are we setting ourselves up to make the same mistakes, albeit on a much, much smaller scale?

Feel free to share your thoughts below. I don’t know the answers to any of these things.

I got the flat checked out at a bike shop, and found the tire and tube were fine, it was an air pressure issue. We don’t own a bike pump (or bikes). My first thought was: OK, time to go buy a bike pump.

And a few years ago, I would have done so without even thinking twice. Being able to buy all the stuff you need is a sign of independence and successful adulthood, right? That’s the message we get.

This time, though, I had a second thought (that’s right: Two thoughts in one day, y’all): Our neighborhood is full of bikers, from triathletes to kiddos. I am friendly with these people. I stop and chat regularly with these people. Why don’t I just ask to borrow their pump?

Why didn’t I always think this way?

What’s something you decided to try sharing or borrowing lately instead of immediately getting your own?

That phrase became, and remains, a guiding force in my life.

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech tells a story to live by. I reread it a few times a year. On the day of his death, join me in doing so now. 

**

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Fall dream: Take my daughter on field trip with her preschool class to pumpkin patch; morning activity schedule includes petting baby farm animals, hayride, picnic lunch. Basically all the shit I sort of live for.

Reality: T develops croup, something I thought went away in the 1800s. Skip field trip to avoid exposing all of classmates to virus. Feeling desperate for fall fix and boredom prevention, find local child-free apple orchard. T pets piglets, and before I can stop it, the piglets lick her fingers and she sticks her fingers in her mouth. Witness what appears to be chicken-on-chicken sexual assault. Being very pregnant and pee-plentiful, have to use bathroom twice. It’s a portapotty. This is where, if I really wanted to, I could describe what it’s like to be inside of a portapotty with a toddler.

Dream: October and November are a blur of apple cider and donuts, pumpkin pie, caramel apples, Halloween candy, hot cocoa.

Reality: I flunked the gestational diabetes test and will be eating low-to-no-sugar for the next 10 weeks.

Dream: I have highly productive third trimester and do not totally space out/enter deep fog like I did last time.

Reality: You guys! I am getting so much work done! Paid work! Life stuff work! Childcare work! And yet, a constant wispy, nagging feeling has settled in, like the sensation of do I have overdue library books to return? This sensation was partially cleared up after receiving three emails from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg library system stating, “You have overdue library books.” A relative who visited recently observed that talking to me these days is like watching live TV that’s airing on a slight delay in case someone swears. Also, for the past month, I totally forgot I have a blog. Sorry! I’m back now. Glad you are too. Hey since you’re here do you know where I put the tablecloth with the fall leaves?

Dream: I plant spinach, mint, garlic before the frost date (Oct 15).

Reality: Too early to judge myself harshly.

Dream: Can applesauce.

Reality: See diabetes and apple orchard, above.

Dream: I spend blissful hours pushing T in the swing in our yard, an activity that was too miserable this summer when it was 90+ degrees every day for five months.

Reality: During first cool-day swing session, a bird craps on my shoulder AND leg. How did it get my leg?!

Anyway.

You know what?

I’m still having way more Fall Fun than I ever did in an office, and feel so lucky to be doing this.

It’s a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house. About 1,200 sq. feet. I actually don’t think 1,200 sq. ft is that small … if it’s brilliantly, efficiently designed. Our 1,200 sq. ft. is super cute and livable, but no efficiency machine. I’ve rearranged it in my head a million times, and we could make it a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house within the same footprint if we really wanted to, but that sounds like a renovation project for someone else. I’ve also mentally plotted out how to sleep four kids in this house (with no renovations) if I had a surprise pregnancy containing surprise twins. We could do it. I am sick.

I don’t think it’s a big deal for two small kids to share a bedroom. I shared a bedroom until the fourth grade, and always shared a bathroom. Surely it was the same for those of you who weren’t only children, right? When did private bedrooms and private baths for all become the norm?

We will move, eventually. I think it’s nice if kids can have their own bedrooms. Not required, but nice. I like privacy too. The rooms don’t have to be big. A shared bath? I tend to think that even if we had a billion dollars, my kids will be sharing a bathroom. We also have a ton of out-of-town guests, which is great fun, and it’d be nice to offer them something more long-term-comfy than the living room couch.

The main reason I’d eventually like a larger house is so *I’d* have a rubber-ducky-and-mini-potty-free bathroom. For myself. And a bedroom that does not share a wall with teenagers’ rooms. I’d also sort of like my own wing. With a library, perhaps? Greenhouse? Doors that bolt from the inside? I can see it all.

But kids sharing space? A crisis? No. We’ll be four people sharing a small house for several more years and it’s going to be just fine.

Hanging out on the back deck, 2009. Photo by Candace Garcia

I feel compelled to say something about the power of companionship and love in unexpected places. My husband Erik is a doting pet person, but not a cutesy one. I was banned from dressing up Boris for Halloween, despite what I swear were fabulous costume ideas. Boris wasn’t our ring bearer, much less a wedding guest. He didn’t “sign” the Christmas card. This is not that kind of pet story.

In 1999, several years before I met him, E’s dad died. E’s dad was a healthy, vibrant and athletically gifted man. The brain tumor was totally unexpected. He was only 56.

In the months after, E, who’d never been a pet owner, decided to adopt Boris as a way to help cope with that crushing and irreplaceable loss. The little schnauzer puppy brought him some joy and comfort during an otherwise unbearable period.

When we held Boris this weekend at the vet’s, and watched him slide, seconds after the injection, from Here into the Out There, I rubbed Boris’s back and thanked him aloud for caring for my husband in a time when I couldn’t be there. I thanked him for being needed brightness in a time of terrible dark. I meant those thanks. I’ll be forever grateful to Boris for a job well done, for helping out someone I love.

Boris isn’t the only one who did a good job. People say you can tell how a man will treat you based on how he treats waitstaff, his mother, and animals. E gets 5 stars in all three categories.

Pet ownership, for all its joys and rewards and zaniness, is also expensive and often inconvenient. For 12 years – longer than plenty of people maintain friendships, stay married, remain in one job – E took care of Boris. He never complained. Never shirked responsibility. Never made excuses.  Never lost his temper. If 90 percent of life is showing up, E shows up. Boris was lucky to have him, and so am I.

Running free with two of his favorite people, 2011

We’ve been sharing good memories, stories about the way Boris seemed to build forts out of pillows and ran like a cantering horse. The time we tested out baby equipment before T was born by putting Boris in the Ergo carrier and bouncy chair. The time Boris came in from his night-time pee with a headless squirrel in his mouth, and my screams echoed up and down Chicago’s North Shore.  It’s funny, when E and I first started dating, it was pretty casual – my family said they started hearing lots of stories not so much about this nice guy I’d met, but about his dog. The joke was that I had a crush on Boris before I had one on E. Who would have guessed we’d end up a family? Now we have a daughter who happily shrieked “Bor-zis” before she even tried to say Mommy. No offense taken.

Boris buddy, I know you’re in dog heaven, eating sausages and riding in open-windowed cars all day long; breathing easy, legs strong. Thank you for everything. We’ll always miss you.

Most popular post: If you want to quit your job, you will find a way. This has been my most-read and most-Googled post for more than a year. I can completely relate to anyone who’s ended up really bored or miserable in a job, especially if it was supposedly their always-career. A reminder that there IS a way to do almost anything if you’re willing to deal with the tradeoffs, and that we have more control over our lives and choices than we think.

Most controversial post: Anything asking Is Global Warming Real? is fair game for debate. My feelings are still the same: I think it’s real. I don’t know for sure. I can appreciate the skeptics. Either way, it doesn’t matter to me. Even if temperatures were stable, that doesn’t justify away dumping toxic waste in streams, using chemicals that kill wildlife, trashing what could be reused or recycled …

Most helpful post: Still get tons of web hits from folks looking for Ways to Reuse Old Bedsheets. Lots of amazing reader ideas in the comments of this one! Glad it’s been so helpful for people looking for ways to reuse rather than trash. For me personally, I got the most help from putting a question out to you all: Greening my life, what should I do next? 

A post whose success surprised you: Safe to say I didn’t expect my short post on Beets vs. radishes would, nearly two years (!?) later, be the top-third viewed post of all time. People Google that very question — Are beets and radishes the same thing? — almost daily and end up here. It’s nice to know I’m not alone in my agricultural ignorance. One of my goals was to learn all about growing vegetables, from what time of year they’re planted to the soil they prefer to all the variations they come in. I’m happy to report I can tell all sorts of things apart now, and will be passing on to seventh grade shortly.

A post that deserves more attention: Although these posts actually got a great number of hits, I still can’t sing enough praises for the many cool guest posters I’ve had over time. You know, sometimes I feel really meh about blogging. Think to myself, why not stop? It’s not like I’m working toward X or something. But hands down, the thing that keeps me from pulling the plug is the community out here. Two guest posts that still get a lot of traffic: The Unexpected Happy Housewife and Our Reverse Retirement.

The post that you are most proud of: I don’t know if this is the “right” answer, but I sure was happy when hours and hours of work finally led to the healthy recovery and adoption of a stray I took in while 34 weeks pregnant, Itchy the Dog. Many readers offered great encouragement and advice along the way. Thank you!

Your most beautiful post: Nothing’s more beautiful to me than seeing my daughter happy. MOM DORK MOMENT. Happens.

O.K., now time for me to tag five simple living bloggers I’d love to see make similar lists.

Consciously Frugal — my SoCal sister, she’s funny and wicked and brilliant and always looking for ways to simplify, beat debt, figure out how things are sourced, and take down the man. Love her.

Life of a Novice — Allison. Whew. She grows healthy food in her orchard. She has a baby. She has horses. If you’ve ever done even one of these things, you know how incredibly time consuming it is. Now imagine doing all three. What can I say, she kicks butt and takes cute pictures to boot.

Thrift at Home — Margo catalogs living a simple life in the sweetest way, with lots of clever repurposing and thrifting ideas, and images of happy afternoons.

Move to Portugal — Laura’s all about the same themes — simplicity, frugality, living freely — but her twist is, well, that move to Portugal.

Alexis Grant — not technically a simple living blog, but writer bud, traveler and entrepreneur Alexis always has good posts about making your own luck and breaking free from the ‘regular’ working world.

Happy browsing!

Danny’s Song

Kenny Loggins

People smile and tell me I’m the lucky one, and we’ve just begun,
Think I’m gonna have a son.
He will be like she and me, as free as a dove, conceived in love,
Sun is gonna shine above.

And even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with ya honey,
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes,
And tell me everything is gonna be alright.

Seems as though a month ago I beta chi, never got high,
Oh, I was a sorry guy.
And now a smile, a face, a girl that shares my name,
Now I’m through with the game, this boy will never be the same.

Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with ya honey,
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes,
And tell me everything is gonna be alright.

Pisces, Virgo rising is a very good sign, strong and kind,
And the little boy is mine.
Now I see a family where there once was none, now we’ve just begun,
Yeah, we’re gonna fly to the sun.

Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with ya honey,
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes,
And tell me everything is gonna be alright.
Love the girl who holds the world in a paper cup, drink it up,
Love her and she’ll bring you luck.
And if you find she helps your mind, buddy, take her home,
Don’t you live alone, try to earn what lovers own.

Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with ya honey,
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes,
And tell me everything is gonna be alright.