Making It Up As I Go Along

Making It Up As I Go Along

 

I was the oldest child in my family and I always felt like I was making it up as I was going along. My friends with older brothers and sisters seemed more confident and cool. They seemed to know what to do most of the time.

At 65, I still feel like I’m making it up as I go along. It’s true that the kid you were is still in you as you age, but he or she is just not in charge anymore–that is, if you’ve been lucky to grow up enough. The older I get, the more there are moments of confidence and feeling cool.

That kid’s priority was friends. One winter at the big outdoors and camping trade show downtown around age 11, I won a raffle for a 3-week long stay at a summer camp in northern Minnesota. I got a letter from my parents telling me not to take the bus home because they were going to pick me up and take me and my brothers “Up North” to “The Lake.” I was furious. I loved the camp, but I needed to get back home to see my friends. So I threw the letter down one of the shitholes in the 10-stall outhouse (yes, it was as fragrant and embarrassing as it sounds) and pretended I never got it. Not long after the bus home arrived in the Twin Cities airport, the counselors figured out they were stuck with me for the 4 hour ride all the way back to the camp. Don’t know what I was thinking I was going to do once I got home and nobody was there. A freakin’ idiot, making it up as he went along.

Around age 18 or 19, I was dumb enough to combine LSD and hashish and go to the local IMAX theater (the “Omnitheater”) when it first opened in the early 80s. They didn’t allow you to leave once the show started and, once the strobe light Big Bang simulation began, I realized I was in big trouble. I was freaking out, keeping my eyes closed a lot, making up how I was going to survive the 45 minutes without screaming my head off. I later had a similar experience when a friend gave me a joint laced with PCP on the way to his mother’s wedding-all he and his older sister said was that it was “mint weed.” Sounded fun to me! I sat across from my church’s pastor and ate a really cheap chicken dinner. The pastor kept asking me how college was going. I had no idea if I was coming off OK and it was like I was watching myself in a movie making up answers. I kept whispering to my buddy “Am I cool? Am I cool?!” He whispered back that he would ask his sister and she said I was doing fine. I soon excused myself to go to the men’s room and then went to the car and threw up on the parking lot until my gut burned. And just like that–bam!–I was stone cold sober and felt normal again.

After I graduated from college, I hitchhiked from St. Paul to Newark, NJ, to catch the “People’s Express” airline’s $100 flight to London. The trucker I rode with never said a word and then kicked me out about 1:30 am, 10 to 15 miles outside of Toledo. He yelled, “I’m tired of your shit!” because I asked him 10 minutes earlier to turn down his music. I was in the sleeper and the speakers of his new stereo were blasting in my ears as I bounced from wall to wall. He must have been embarrassed that he had no clue how to do it but the teenage helper he had with him figured out how to switch off the 2 sleeper speakers and leave on their other 2 speakers for me. The trucker kicked my backpack into the ditch and yelled, “…and I figure you owe me $50 for taking you this far!” I said, “F**k that–I’ll give you $10 now and the rest when we get there!” He stormed off and left me there with the stars and mosquitos. I was definitely making it up as I walked along, watching his lights disappear down that dark road.

Donald Trump was/is definitely making it up as he went/goes along. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I respect him for it. It seemed so refreshing to see that approach in a US president after all the previous placeholders, doing their duty to uphold the established order without causing any due alarm in those who are really in charge.

But, of course, he’s never been smart, mature, or experienced enough to make it up as he goes along. His first term was a disaster and his second is another clusterf***. Improvising well takes years of discipline and acquired wisdom.

Anyway, I bought the first new car I’ve ever owned just over 10 years ago. Actually, I leased it and a few more since then. All of which has been kinda weird. I used to drive around the metro each day and put almost 20,000 miles on a car each year; it was wonderful not to worry about the car and just focus on my job. (Since the pandemic, I switched to Telehealth for most of my time with clients.) One thing you learn when you drive all over the Twin Cities metropolitan area for 20 years visiting people in their houses and apartments, in hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, jails, treatment centers, and whatnot is how many lakes and parks there are hidden behind the main roads and freeways you normally speed down without a second thought. Another thing is: when you first walk into a new client’s home, you have to be really good at making it up as you go along. I was once attacked by a client having a mental health emergency that started before I arrived during a first intake visit and I quickly improvised a way to get out of there before she could hurt me or launch my shoulder bag out the window (it was close, though!).

One of my best friend’s sons died in his sleep about 12 years ago. I’ve tried to help him make it up as he goes along, and he does the same for me. My son-in-law took his own life in 2016 and then my pregnant daughter and her two labradors came to live with us. Of course, we were all making it up as we went along together. My 9-year old grandson is pretty good at it already, in fact. He now lives with his mom, his adoptive father, and 5-year old twin brothers…and I’m happy to say they’re all pretty good at it. Twins give you no choice but to make it up as you go along. My family has lost several other people since the pandemic started (but not to COVID) and we’re doing our best to make it up as we go along. Like so many families have experienced, it was difficult to manage hospital visits and funerals in those conditions.

Here at Formal Rhubarb, I’m going to share what 65 years have taught me, I will also share what I’m still learning. I hope you enjoy it, find it useful, and, if so inclined, contribute and add to it. In other words, I’ll assist you to make it up as you go along, and I’d appreciate it if you assist me and everyone here, as well.

Let’s face it: we all arrived just after the 14 billion year old universe became aware of itself in the 19th Century. We call it evolution. And the evolution of consciousness.

Now, in the third decade of the 21st Century, despite the fact that all of history’s wisdom from the world over is available to us at the press of a button, things are so complex and moving so fast, and the stakes are so high, that, together, we have no choice but to make it up as we go along.

[By the way, that’s my great-great grandfather, Nels, on the right side in the photo above, next to his younger brother and father. He decided to leave Sweden with his wife, two small children, and my great-grandfather who was in the womb for the long boat ride. I guess you might say that making it up as you go along runs in the family.]

For more on the Formal Rhubarb philosophy and approach, please see:

Part 1: Roll Up for the Magical Mystery Tour of Your Soul

Part 2: When You Get Hit By Life, Ask “What’s the Counterpunch?”

Part 3: The Formal Rhubarb Difference that Makes a Difference

Part 4: Bringing Medicine Back to the Tribe

Part 5: No Book Has Just One Chapter: Re-Author Your Life & Make a Difference