David Michael Bruno

Jolt

It's often hard for me to say, "I have had a down-in-the-dumps kind of week." I live in San Diego, for crying out loud. I have an amazing family - a loving and caring wife, three incredible daughters, a faithful dog. I have a job. I ate at In-n-Out tonight and spent time with good friends.

Truth be told, though, I'm feeling low. I think getting my head cracked open by my surfboard and then stapled shut at the hospital was the jolt that put me over the top. But before that, I'd hit a writing slump that has been frustrating. Also I slammed my watch - my faithful altimeter watch - in the trunk of my car. Twice. The second time did it in. And I just cannot bring myself to spend $200 to replace it (originally I got it on sale for much less). And, as I wrote last time, I've been annoyed that I cannot more easily just get things I need, like a replacement watch, which I finally did buy tonight (on sale), but only after fretting about it way too much.

Doldrums do not last, though. I'm hopeful a few days of camping next week with family and friends will help perk up my mood. And perhaps some time to write will help, too. I might say something more before going MIA for most of the week.

Anyone Else Consumer OCD?

Just a quick post to ask, does anyone else struggle with consumer OCD?

This weekend I sold my rock climbing wall to a friend who plans to install it on the wall of his son's room. My plan was to take the money and use it to buy a wetsuit top to offer some rash protection and chill comfort on these dog days of summer when I'll be trunking it for lunch-time surfing. I think a reasonable plan.

Ever since we tried to buy our first car after getting married and I personally looked at ever single vehicle listing in the state of Illinois, I've been a little OCD about purchasing things that I kind of sort of need. Something I don't need? I can usually just grab that no problem at all. Something I could really use? Agonizing.

Not always. But a lot of times this is the case. Perhaps the heat has thrown my good judgment off. Anyway, do you ever have a hard time pulling the purchase trigger when all logic would point you in the direction of just doing it?

Continue the Challenge

I want to be clear about something. I like the 100 Thing Challenge. I think it’s a pretty good idea. It certainly has worked some magic in my life. While I am still tempted to over-consume (especially on a boat or camping gear), for the most part I have resisted unnecessary consumption and felt more satisfied since embarking on the 100 Thing Challenge. And also I think that the idea behind the 100 Thing Challenge is a sound premise: We in America need to shock ourselves out of our conditioned behavior of irresponsible consumption. The 100 Thing Challenge (or any other similar challenge) can certainly help folks gain an awareness they can use to begin living a more mature consumer life.

That said, to this day I’m still kind of dumbstruck by the interest in the 100 Thing Challenge. Every now-again I feel compelled to point that out on my blog. This past week the photo of me and some of my stuff on the cover of USA Today has reignited media interest in the 100 Thing Challenge. There’s something brewing at CBS Evening News, an article might run in the Sunday edition of the London Times, there are some radio interviews in the works. A reporter told me, though I have no way to prove it nor am I sure I want to, that Leonardo DiCaprio really likes the 100 Thing Challenge. Huh?

Here’s the thing that strikes me as hard to understand. I’m a pretty average guy. Our house is a pretty average house. We don’t live in a yurt. There are kid toys strewn across the front of our yard most evenings (to the chagrin of some neighbors, I’m sure). The laundry piles up. There are dishes to be done. Our garage is...let’s just call it “messy.” In fact, the cat puked in it last night and we’ve yet to clean it up. We’ve not been the most financial responsible family over the years. And I’ll confess it: even though I still cannot really surf, I’ve spent some time browsing surfboards online, anticipating the day I can upgrade the board I bought used.

So why? Why the interest? I’ve always thought it would be far more interesting for Sir Richard Branson to take the 100 Thing Challenge. Somehow, lots of folks around the world seem to think that its interesting for an average suburban dude in Southern California to do it. I hope this is why.

I hope that the 100 Thing Challenge is interesting because it’s doable. I can do it. You can do it. And we all recognize that by resisting consumerism we’ll be more free, less burdened. More joyful. The exact opposite of what product marketers contend, as they sell us their wares promising that if we buy, we’ll be less restricted, more unencumbered. More happy. The marketers are wrong.

We’ve all either lived through the 60s, 70s,  80s and/or 90s, or else seen our parents live through those self-centered years, when the national goal was for each and every average person in America to live high on the hog. Do you know anyone who’s happy with their consumer behavior? Know anyone who embraced the philosophy of buying their way to happiness, and actually did? I don’t. I mostly know of folks who have thrashed their lives because of it or who are in the process of going down fast. Or, thanks be to God, average people who are rejecting it.

Maybe the 100 Thing Challenge is interesting because it doesn’t take a celebrity or a politician or some famous person to show that the good life can be good without constantly buying our way into it. It’s possible just to live it.

Experiencing A Way Forward

A neighbor unwittingly helped me figure out a problem with the 100 Thing Challenge. It’s the problem of experiential knowledge. There is much I can say (and will continue to say) about living more simply than American-style consumerism encourages us to live. Ultimately though, realizing the benefits that come from toning down consumption is a hands-on kind of knowledge.

Quite a few of our neighbors have noticed the surfboard on top of my car the last couple of weeks. In houses all up and down our street there are “Dave is surfing?” conversations going on. I struck up a chat with one neighbor about this. I explained that I don’t yet “surf,” but mostly just paddle around and get tumbled by waves. Then I asked him if he surfed.

“After about forty times trying,” he told me, “I finally caught a wave and turned down the line and rode it like the way you see the guys riding waves. I could look back and see the wave breaking behind me.” Then he made the comment that stuck with me. He said, “I finally understood. Now I got it - why they’re so hooked.”

I’ve had an experience like that before myself, not on a surfboard but nevertheless in water. It was the one time I went fly fishing. We hired a guide in Colorado for a day and spent the morning learning the ways of rivers, flies, and how to cast. It was much different than the lake fishing I was familiar with. Some time that afternoon I wandered upstream alone. I watched the river. I thought about the guide’s crash course on entomology. I noticed the quiet eddy across the way where a trout surely had to be restfully anticipating its meal. I worked the line out smoothly back and forth. All the noises of nature hushed for just a few moments, long enough for the line to spread across the surface of the river, the fly to briefly drift, the trout to swiftly move through water and leap through the air. Wouldn’t you know it, I had caught a trout fly fishing. Every sound imaginable, including the shock of the guide making his way upstream to help me land the fish, rushed back into my ears. “Now I get it,” I thought. I understood what all those fly fishermen are talking about.

Some things you just cannot wholly explain with words. That’s not a good reason to remain completely silent. It’s only an admission that life itself is more powerful than anticipation or reminiscence.

Most of American-style consumerism extracts profits before or after life happens. We pay to get ready. And we pay to remember (or else we pay in order to get more the next time). We rarely have to dish out money when we’re actually in the moment. Living a good, meaningful life usually doesn’t cost much when we are actually doing it.

I know I’ll never be able to fully explain the joy of living a non-consumerist lifestyle. And I am pessimistic, believing that the forces of American-style consumerism would never buy into a simplified life. There’s no profit in it. No big break. No headline news. So living a better life will always go a little against the grain of our dominant culture. Yet I am completely certain of this: if you stop participating in consumerism’s ruckus, in about forty tries, or maybe six months, you’ll “get it.” You will experience a different, better pleasure. Most of us will never look back.

In Year 37

Thirty-seven years after I was born and raised in San Diego, on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 4 p.m., I surfed for the first time. Throughout my life people have wondered how a native San Diegan like myself could get through nearly four decades of life without ever surfing (truth be told, without ever having held a surfboard). I’ve never been able to say. It just happened.

Even now, I doubt my efforts to learn to surf this summer would have much force if it were not for a few life circumstances. I’m no longer a practicing entrepreneur, having sold my stake in a company I helped build. Thus my work hours are not of my own choosing, which means my loyal mutt Piper and I no longer run a few miles each morning. He’s sad, and I’m out of shape.

Instead of “working for myself” (entrepreneurs like to say they work for themselves, but that’s probably the falsest of all the claims they make), I now work for Point Loma Nazarene University, which happens to sit about three hundred feet above and a quarter mile east of the Pacific Ocean. And I work with a non-San-Diego-native surfer, who’s my de facto instructor.

The last reason that’s motivated me to take up surfing is harder to explain. It’s probably a mixture of middle-age restlessness, desire to overcome challenges and fears, a longing to fill my life with activities that are both physical and natural, the pleasure of doing something that impresses my young daughters, and accomplishing a goal that seems as unlikely as any I can imagine. “Waterman” is the least-likely moniker anyone who knows me would call me.  I do also have a sneaky suspicion that the next six months of attempting to surf might provide metaphors for my book about the 100 Thing Challenge and simplifying my life.

Though it did take two purchases to get into surfing: a wetsuit and a surfboard.

Four times. That’s how many times I’ve paddled out. It has taken only four attempts at surfing to conclude that I need only two things to learn to surf this summer. Humility and time. Likely a lot of both, though probably mostly humility. The third time out, I strained an oblique. The fourth time out I aggravated it, and added an egg-sized knot on my right foot from getting hit by my board. I managed to catch about three waves I’ve ridden on my belly, though I do plan to stand up eventually.

More to come...