Happy New Year 2010 from the JuiceBar.

The close of the year is a season that defines the phrase … “well it is that time of year again!”  There’s the travel.  The dinners.  The family.  The gifts.  The visits.  The cards.  The calls.

But most of all, the changing of the calendars is one of resolutions and predictions.

Resolutions and predictions.  They define the word Sisyphean.

How many people have actually kept one or more New Year’s resolutions?

What?  You say you have?  Well God bless you.  You are the needle in the haystack, the exception that proves the rule, the lightening that struck twice.

Do us all a favor, won’t you?  How about commenting on this blog and providing some guidance on how that is actually done.  It will give you a chance to help someone.  And it will give all of us resolution weaklings a person to loath besides ourselves.

But enough about resolutions.  How about those predictions?

I’m always amazed at people’s predictions.  We laugh at Madame Soleil but invariably engage in the exact same kind of mindless speculation as the late astrologist and psychic.

And how many predictions have actually come true?  Based on my experience not many.  I confess to having succumbed to the Sirens of prediction in the past.  I spent mindless hours predicting all sorts of stuff.  Predicting is very seductive.  Who wouldn’t be attracted by the pull of being the secular prophet warning the huddled masses of the great works that God has in store for them?

How strong is the prediction impulse?  Well whenever I want to figure out the answer to questions like that I do what millions of other people do.    I “Google” it.

Google “predictions 2010” and among the 8 million entries is the British newspaper The Telegraph predicting the rise of 3D television.  That doesn’t bode well for our house which still lacks a flat panel display, a DVR and Blue Ray.  There’s a ton of predictions by the media about the media.  Newsweek predicts that someone will die on a reality TV program.  I thought that actually had already happened but clearly I’m not current.  Then there were the predictions of Folio’s experts which included one from Paul Armstrong that “overall, the media will still continue to die, shrivel, morph, whatever—it no longer matters.”  I look closer and see that Armstrong’s Twitter handle is @themediaisdying.  Always good to predict something that you’ve already declared is happening.  The ReadWriteWeb predicts “the death of the login”.  I hope that includes the death of usernames and passwords.  Mark Drapeau predicts in O’Reilly Radar of something he calls “ubiquitous crude video content.”  I thought we already had that.  It is called “porn.”  And there were predictions about the economy.  According to the National Inflation Association a “huge crash in the U.S. dollar could occur at any time”.

I feel better now.

The Wall Street Journal’s predictions bordered on the religious when, in its tenth prediction (why are there always ten?) it boldly declares “the world will not end.”  Speaking of , even the Catholic Church got in the 2010 prediction business.  You’d think that they’d have enough on their hands in managing the book of Revelation.

Predictions.  Predictions.  Predictions.

So much time thinking about so many things that we have very little control over.

Here is my anticdote from year-end predictionitis.

We should spend as much time trying to figure out where WE are NOW as we spend on where OTHER people WILL BE in the future.  As Shakespear wrote (I think) “the only thing harder than diamonds is to know thyself.”  If we spent more time taking an honest inventory of where we are we’d be alot more equipped to know what things we need to do to get us where we want to be.

Reminds me of the great line …

Know how to make God laugh?

Tell him your plans.

Or tell him your predictions.

You know it is Christmas at the home of Jerry’s Juice Bar when …

Every chair is occupied and every space on the leather couch is taken.  And somewhere amidst the chairs and couches someone has dozed off … usually on the leather couch.

There is a constant boiling of water for coffee, hum of the dishwasher readying for the next meal, and the sound of someone, somewhere taking a shower, and the picking up of someone’s “stuff”.

Friendly but foreign animals roam from person to person searching for a handout or just a hand that will pet a forehead or scratch an ear.

There’s a mountain of paper waste, boxes, wrappings, turkey carcasses, tins and coffee grounds overflowing the sole garbage can in the back yard.

At any given time someone is sitting and reading, someone is on the computer, someone is watching television, someone is either going or preparing to go, and someone is coming back.

And me?

I get quiet.  I reflect.  I smile.  I wish for things that could be.  And am happy for things that are.

Merry Christmas to all.

Some time ago, psychologists discovered that “grump old men” are smarter than other old men.

Specifically, a report released several years ago suggested “that a disagreeable nature goes hand in hand with advanced vocabulary and general knowledge in old age,” the researchers write.

The older you get, the better you are if you are grumpy.

Welcome to my world.

that is why I’m fascinated with a new book by Barbara Ehrenreich entitled:  “Bright-Sided:  How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America.”

According to a review in the NYTimes, Ehrenriech claims that positive thinking is “just another way for the conservative, corporate culture to wring the most out of its workers.”

According to Robert Gathman in the Austin-American Statesman, “journalist Barbara Ehrenreich mounts a spirited attack on the American culture of positive thinking, arguing that the mass manufacture of feel-good palliatives, by encouraging sloppy reasoning, shortsighted habits and a curiously uncritical identification with the powers that be, is doing more harm than good.”

Feel-good stuff is sloppy.  No pain, no gain my friend!

The problem with happiness — we were guaranteed the right to pursue it in our constitution — is that it is a pretty shallow pool to swim in.

Whatever happened to pursuing truth, justice, peace?  Now there’s something worth living for.

I would have finished the above with “the American way” but that would lead us back to the happiness thing.

Be smart.  Be grumpy.

And have a happy day.

I was going to write about swine flu schizophrenia.  But I’m here at D15 at Dulles and have to plead with everyone out there with a cell phone and an ear piece having long and loud conversations with no one in particular while in a crowded public place.

SHUT UP!

And if you find a tall guy with a blue blazer, Landsdowne baseball cap, rumpled dark paints who at some point today will be in San Antonio, do everyone a favor and rip the earpiece out of his ear, grab his BlackBerry and throw it in the nearest toilet.

Flush twice.

This morning at 7:30 am I’m going through security at Dulles.  Not the new underground security but the one by baggage claim for “executive” travelers.  I’m just handing my boarding pass to the TSA officer (who was pleasantly pleasant) and all the sudden I HEAR THIS GUY RAMBLING ABOUT HIS MEETING SCHEDULE.  I turn and look.  There’s a tall guy behind me — I never got his name — staring off into space and talking as if the person on the other end of the phone is on the other side of security … and as if neither I nor anyone else in line is there.  I roll my eyes.  But this guy hasn’t a clue.  He goes on, and on, and on.

He doesn’t even hang up going through security!  Apparently you can put a person hon hold, run your cell phone through the security screen, and still have the other person on the line when you pick up the phone on the other end.  This is just wrong.

I’m hoping I can lose this guy, but I can’t.  I’m on the people mover to Concourse D.  Pleasant silence.  Then I BEGIN TO HEAR HIM AGAIN.  I learn about his meetings.  That he’s going to RTP next week.  Washington DC the week after.  The meetings with Steve Hackett.  That Nan will set it up.  That Dave and Matt are good guys.  Micheal is a jerk.  BUT I HEAR ABOUT ALL THIS LIKE THIS.   I’M IN A PEOPLE MOVER.  I CAN’T GET OUT.

The people mover docks and I’m hoping I can lose this guy but I need some java.  There’s a Starbucks on the immediate left of the landing.  Silence.  Blessed silence.  NOW HE’S BACK.   ANOTHER CALL.  PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

What a way to start a day.

So again, if you have the urge to talk on the phone in crowded, public places PLEASE do everyone a favor.

Don’t.

There are a handful of ideas that to me are as elusive as an autumnal breeze.

One of them is the idea of “priority”.

It is not that I don’t know what is a priority.

It is that I have trouble making priorities a priority.

What made me think of all this is a scribbled note of a quote mentioned at a company meeting last week in New York.  The quote was attributed to Tom “The Dean” Watson.  He’s called “The Dean” because of his role behind Omnicom University.

Watson’s dictum:  “The urgent always crowds out the important.”

I’d say that defines the term “trenchant observation.”

Let’s all put aside the urgent and tend to the important.

I was talking with my wife this afternoon.  It has been awhile.  I was on the road three of every four days over the past two weeks and she’d spent the weekend with the kids in Richmond.

It was good to talk.

And as is usual, my wife did most of the talking.  That’s because she usually has more interesting things to say than I do.

And then she talked about something that floored me.  It is a new mental disorder that, according to my wife will likely be headed to the DSM IV.  For the uninitiated that is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  My wife should know.  She’s a licensed social worker who works for the county mental health system.

The disorder?

Gender disappointment disorder.

That is, people getting depressed, anxious, pissed off, and otherwise mentally unbound because the baby was a boy … and they wanted a girl.  Or vice versa.  Yes, friends, this is a real issue with today’s parents.  This, according to an article in Elle magazine by Ruth Shallitt Barrett entitled “Girl Crazy:  Women Who Suffer from Gender Disappointment.”

As one would think given the source, Elle focuses on women.  Specifically, the article is a series of stories of women who are depressed, medicated, and miserable … all because they had a little Johnny instead of a little Jane.  (Apparently most women desperately want girls, not boys.)

You really have to read this stuff to believe it.  And even after I read it I find it difficult to believe.  Here’s one of my favorites …

“The way society is now—I feel there’s a preference for girls,” says Linda Heithaus, a marine biologist from Hollywood, Florida, who has two sons and is contemplating doing IVF/PGD in the hope of getting a girl. “They can do everything a boy can do, plus you can dress them up. It’s almost like, to fit in, you need to have one.”  Girls, in other words, are boys plus. They can play sports and have careers, and you can dress them in pink and take them to tea at the American Girl café. What’s not to like?

There are no shortage of heated discussions on the subject.  Go to BabyGaga, or Just Mommies or the talk on Digg .

It is easy to wonder what is worse — these women having little boys and suffering mental illness … or these women having little girls and having the little girls suffering a mental illness.

Someone needs to tell these people that having a baby isn’t like going to Starbucks and ordering a half-caf latte.

Hey gals, it is not about you!

“Life is too much with us … near and far.”

A line of a poetry was never so true.

Having failed to respond to email in a timely way, been horribly inconsistent in updating my Facebook page, tried and failed to consistently use my Twitter account, and totally spaced out on our corporate blog and Yammer platform.

In the midst of all this and travel three days weekly and a host of other commitments that make sleep akin to a three week vacation.

I — along with my best friend in Washington — launched a new blog.

It is a appropriately named “What were they thinking:  the chronicler of good intentions gone awry, unintended consequences, and simple bonheaded decisions.”

If you like the JuiceBar, I think you’ll love this.

Let me know what you think.