Nate the Snake

Ever heard that joke? It’s funny. Ask Charlie to tell it sometime. Better yet, ask him to tell you the clown joke, if you have ample time to kill.

Anyway, on to my post. The title is only somewhat connected to the subject matter. Once you’ve heard the joke and read my post, I suppose you’ll figure it out. You’re fairly bright, after all.

As I’m sure most of my close friends will tell you, I’m consistently late for… well, pretty much everything. I have the absolute best intentions of always arriving at a predetermined time, yet I somehow manage to always miss the mark, often by quite a lot. It’s got to be pretty annoying for my friends. I don’t know how much time they’ve actually collectively spent just waiting for me, but it must be significant. Enough to have enjoyed an average length novel, probably.

I have no idea why I’m always late. Part of it, I suppose, is that I overestimate how efficiently I can complete a task. I tend to be optimistic that I can accomplish things quickly and easily, despite my vast experience to the contrary. Simple seeming tasks often end up taking longer than I anticipate.

This bugs my wife a lot. My work schedule keeps me away from home until 7:30 or 8:00 most nights, but due to some tasks taking longer than I planned, I occasionally end up coming home later than I told her I would. She doesn’t appreciate that, which I can understand. I try to call and let her know when I’m running late (I try to do that for my friends, too, but they’ve pretty much come to expect it anyway), but sometimes I think that instead of taking time to call her, I should just keep plugging away at whatever task is at hand and get home a few minutes sooner than I would if I did call. Well, that line of thinking doesn’t really go over well when I explain why I didn’t call.

I think that another reason I’m consistently late is heredity. My parents are the same way. When I was a kid, our family was always the last to show up for church on Sunday morning (a tradition I’ve carried on to my own family, by the way; it’s like a big “faith baton,” passed from my parents to me…). We’d scurry into the nave a couple minutes after the service started and make our way up to one of the front pews (which made it that much worse—everyone had to watch us come in late!). I always figured it was because of my three sisters and all their primping before we ever went anywhere. Turns out that wasn’t the reason—we’re just late people, apparently. Another example of this genetic tendency for being late is that I was almost always the last kid to be picked up from basketball practice, baseball practice, youth group, confirmation class, or just about any other activity in which I was involved as a youth. My parents knew what time my practices, etc., were finished, yet they were almost never there waiting for me afterwards. I nearly always had to sit and wait for one or the other of them to come pick me up. If not for that, though, I guess I never would have had all those nice chats with the evening janitorial staff…

I honestly feel terrible about being so late all of the time. I hate that I make my friends wait for me. I hate that I leave my wife at home, waiting for me to return from work so we can spend a little time together before bed. I really don’t like the stress that accompanies running late all the time.

When Charlie and I went to the National Association of Campus Activities conference in Rochester, Minnesota, this past April, we were running very late, and ended up missing the booth set-up time and… the fun, meet-people time, I think. Turned out to not be such a big deal, but still, it was stressful. I don’t think I was actually late that day, though. There were a couple other problems that delayed us. The first was related to my tendency to be overly optimistic about the amount of time required to accomplish a task—I didn’t plan an early enough departure time for the trip to Rochester. The second was that I forgot our performance contracts, which at the time seemed vital, but turned out to be completely unnecessary (not to imply that it was an unsuccessful trip…). So… even thought I technically wasn’t late (and I should probably point out that Charlie picked me up at my house right at the specified time, leaving me little opportunity to actually be late), it was still my fault that we were late that day.

So I guess I just want to apologize to all of my friends and to my wife and to anyone else who may have been forced to wait for me at some time. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be on time. I promise that I’ll try! In the meantime, it’s probably safest to add at least 15 minutes to whatever time I say I’ll be somewhere. Hmm… Ironically (but not surprisingly), since I ended up writing a bit more than I’d planned, I’m now running about 10-15 minutes behind schedule… I suppose I should go, then.

Adieu!

Matt

Itty Bitty Hibby

My wife and I have now been married almost seven years. We’ve been extremely (some might say sickeningly) happy over those seven years of marriage. We get along well, we hardly ever argue or fight, we usually work well together. We’ve both been fortunate enough to get good jobs with good organizations. We have a wonderful home and the prettiest dog to have ever lived. Our life together is really quite good, and we’ve definitely fallen into the “married couple” routine.

Soon, however, our routine will be drastically and forever changed. You see, we have a child on the way (that is, my wife is pregnant; there’s not some mysterious child in transit between here and wherever mysterious children come from). We’ve known for quite some time now, but haven’t yet had the chance to tell all of our friends. In fact, as I write this, several of my close friends are still in the dark (hopefully I’ll have a chance to tell them before I post this (though I doubt any of them will ever read this; I probably won’t tell them about my blog)). Yet, ‘tis true. Come November of this year, our happy little family will expand by one.

It’s rather daunting to think about. I am going to be completely in charge of another human being’s life (well, probably more like ½ of a human life; my wife, meanwhile, will maintain functional control over my life and her own, as well as the baby’s). This tiny person will be completely dependent on me for its’ survival. If I don’t provide the care necessary, s/he won’t make it. That’s it. Granted, I’m being a little dramatic here—my wife will be around to care for our child, and if I turn out to be a really horrible father, some agency will surely intervene. Honestly, though, the baby’s life will be in my hands. That’s about equal parts terrifying and amazing.

It’s difficult to fathom exactly how much our lives will change as a result of the birth of our first child. Lots of people have told us, “Your life will change forever,” or something similar, but no one has really told us exactly how our lives will change, nor how much.

I’m pretty happy with my life as it is. Don’t get me wrong—I’m tremendously excited to meet my little son or daughter, and I’ve no doubt that I’ll love being a parent. Still, I can’t help but wonder what things I’ll never get to do, or may never get to do again. Will CST ever go on tour? Probably not. Will I ever get to go camping? Eventually, but probably not as often as I’d like. Will I ever pack up the basic supplies, so to speak, and head off into the wilderness to live? Well, I probably would never have actually done that anyway. But now I can’t. It’s not just that I won’t anymore—now I’ll have a little baby who needs its’ daddy. I’m beginning to realize that all of my decisions will carry much more weight now.

I might not get to go backpacking or whitewater rafting or rock climbing anymore. I may only get to go camping on very rare occasions, at least until the kid is old enough to go along. I may not get to buy an old stand of timber in Minnesota and build a log cabin. I probably will never get to go on tour with CST. There are all sorts of things—things I really enjoy, or think that I would enjoy—that I’ll probably never get to do.

I think, though, that the first time I see my child, I won’t care about any of that. I think that I’ll fall in love immediately and completely. If I can hold my son or daughter every day, if I can watch my child grow and learn and smile and laugh, if I can experience all of those magical times with my child, I think I’ll be able to get by without rock climbing.

Having said all that, I think I’ll try to go camping as often as possible (which probably isn’t very often at all with a pregnant wife) this summer. I’ll try to go see movies whenever I can. Maybe I’ll even try to do some rafting or climbing this summer. Who knows. It doesn’t matter all that much, really. I’ll probably enjoy those things more when I can share them with my kid(s) someday. I think I’ll keep my subscription to Backpacker, though.

Matt

Nothing in particular to say...

Greetings, no one. How've you been? I have been quite busy of late. Work, while I enjoy it immensely, has been very demanding the past couple of weeks. Lots of 10 and 11 hour days, running around, etc.

We started a big new program this week, and we're serving free lunch to any kids (under age 18) who show up. It's a USDA-funded program to provide nutritious meals during the summer, when some kids don't necessarily get a decent meal during the day. Each of the last three days we've served over 130 meals, which I think is outstanding. In addition to providing meals, we also do some programming. Usually just a simple, 45 minute organized activity to give the kids something to do for a little while, and hopefully get them out and active. It's a wonderful program, and will benefit kids immensely. There sure are a lot of details to take care of, though. Hence my recent long days of work.

On a completely unrelated note, I was disappointed today to find out that Charlie's and my upcoming show this Saturday night had to be cancelled due to a scheduling conflict. It seems the venue was double-booked, so we were left out in the cold. Ah, well. That sort of thing has happened to us a few times now. It's not the best feeling when we're told, "Yeah, you were on the schedule, but someone else wanted to play that day, so what could we do?" Granted, one of the other times it happened we were bumped for a pretty big name act, so I really couldn't blame the venue. This time, though, not so much. Some band I've never heard of. To be fair, they've likely never heard of Central Standard Time (our band, I mean, not the time zone).

And so it goes with CST. One day we might feel poised to take the music world (or at least the local market) by storm, the next we might feel ready to put away the guitars and sound equipment and call it quits for CST. I don't think we'll do that anytime soon. We do so enjoy performing and playing together, and it's really a pretty easy hobby to keep up, so I guess there's no real reason for us to quit. I certainly don't want to quit. I hope Charlie doesn't want to quit. I hope there are a least a few people out there who would be disappointed if we ever quit.

Well, that's all for now. I'm off to play a little Schweibert and be cool for a while. Until next time,

Matt

Danged newspapers, anyway!

I'm frustrated today. I look forward to Thursdays for a couple reasons. One of those is that the local newspaper's special entertainment section comes out on Thursdays. I really enjoy seeing live music, and am a fan of many local musicians, so I quite enjoy reading some of the stories pertaining to live music. This particular Thursday also happens to coincide with the first show of the Music in the Park concert series, put on each summer by the city of Coralville.

It just so happens that Central Standard Time, my own little folk duo (with my friend, Charlie), is playing one of the Music in the Park (MITP) shows later in the summer. Today I hopefully anticipated seeing our name in a riveting story about MITP. Well, my hopes were not realized. There was, indeed, a brief (and hardly riveting) story in the paper about MITP, but alas, no mention was made of Central Standard Time. A MITP schedule accompanied the story as a sidebar, but we were not listed on the schedule.

How frustrating! Our MITP performance could potentially be a pretty big deal for us. Anywhere from 300-600 people typically attend MITP, and the other group performing on July 21 (the date of our show) has a large local following. That means that we could potentially be reaching a large, new audience, which is no easy thing to do. Unfortunately, many people may not know that we're even playing now, due to the glaring omission in the aforementioned newspaper article. We're supposed to start at 6:00, versus the typical MITP start time of 6:30, so we may not have many people there at 6:00 to see us play. They might all show up around 6:20-6:30, expecting to see the other group, who won't actually play until about 7:20 that night.

Anyway, I'm upset with the whole situation. I sent an email to the author of the article, and I may have been a tad harsh. I don't think I was mean, necessarily, but my message didn't have a very friendly tone, either. I doubt she'll run a correction or anything, so I guess that's that. Hopefully enough people will pay attention to the MITP promotions, see that music starts at 6:00 that particular evening, and come hear Charlie and me play.

In the meantime, feel free to join us for any of our upcoming shows! We have 'em listed on our web site (www.cstime.net), in case your interested. Au revoir!

Matt

Am I Really That Arrogant?

Greetings, and welcome to the first entry on my newly-created blog. I’d never even so much as considered writing a blog until just a couple days ago, when suddenly I decided that it seemed like a good idea. I’ve no idea why I came to that conclusion so suddenly. There was really no life-altering event that made me decide I should record some of my random thoughts for the sake of posterity. I guess I’m just in a mood to clutter up the Internet with more meaningless drivel. Congratulations to you, by the way, for finding it! I honestly have no idea how you would have ended up here, reading these words, and frankly, I won’t be surprised if I’m the only one who ever reads them. Oh, well.

So as I mentioned, I decided out of the blue that I should start a blog. I have a few friends who write blogs, and I guess they must enjoy it, or they wouldn’t continue. I don’t know if many people actually visit and read their blogs, but I suppose a handful of the gazillion daily Internet users out there probably end up finding my friends’ blogs. Anyway, I guess the idea of taking my own unimportant thoughts worldwide is appealing enough for me to give it a go.

As I’ve thought more about the idea of keeping a blog, though, it occurred to me that it’s really sort of arrogant to assume that anyone other than myself would give even half a hoot about my thoughts, feelings, observations, etc., on whatever random topic about which I decide to write on a given day. Why should anyone else care what I think? Yet I (like who knows how many other bloggers) have decided not to be dissuaded by that, and to chug onward with my bloggerific activities.

That begs the question, then: am I really that arrogant? Does my decision to go ahead and start a blog mean that I do, in fact, think that my thoughts are worth the time and effort it requires for others to read them? Do I believe that my blog will somehow improve the lives of others or make the world a better place?

I guess I must be that arrogant. I guess I must think my thoughts are that valuable and worthwhile. That’s sort of a weird realization… I’ve always considered myself a pretty down-to-earth, humble guy (then again, maybe it’s arrogant to think of myself that way; sort of like the line from Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise”: “I know I’m a million times more humble than thou art!”). That must mean I’ve had a skewed self image for all these years. Perhaps you’re thinking even now, “Yeah, you’re a pretty cocky SOB, Hibbard, and it’s about time you realized it.” I hope that’s not the case, but if it is, I’m sorry for being a cocky SOB.

I’ve had similar thoughts in the past—you know, wondering if I’m more conceited or cocky than I realize. My buddy Charlie and I are in a band (Central Standard Time), and we play mostly music we’ve written ourselves. I’ve often thought it seemed arrogant of me to assume that other people would be interested in hearing me sing songs that I’ve written. As with the blog thing, though, I haven’t let those thoughts stop me from performing as often as possible. Arrogant? Well, maybe. In my defense, though, at least a small number of people do seem to genuinely enjoy our music, which is nice.

Ultimately, I suppose, the decision to write a blog or to write and perform music has very little to do with arrogance or with the audience (real or imagined). I think that most folks (myself included) decide to undertake such endeavors for the personal satisfaction and pleasure that it brings. I really like writing music, and I really enjoy singing and playing guitar. Charlie would probably tell you that I must enjoy writing long, meandering missives about nothing in particular (or anything I can think of at the time), and he could show you a very sizeable collection of old emails from me to back that up.

And so I’ll proceed with my blog. I won’t promise to be the most attentive blogger; I’ll probably write somewhat rarely, as I’m moved to do so. I hope you read my posts and enjoy them, but if you don’t… well, that’s fine, too. I’ll probably write them anyway.

Matt