Leave It Behind > Brian Bailey

Merry Christmas

I hope everyone has an incredible Christmas and a terrific New Year's celebration with your friends and family! I will be offline until next year, so here are a few final thoughts.

1. This year's Fellowship Church Christmas service may be the best I have ever seen. If you are in Dallas or Miami, you still have plenty of opportunities to experience it. There's nothing quite like Christmas at Fellowship.

2. Some of our favorite relatives live in Rockford, Illinois. Through the fun of Christmas card updates, we just discovered another reason why they are so wonderful. They have three grand children and their inheritance is a trip to with the grandparents to anywhere in the world! What a perfect idea. It celebrates both exploration and the fact that time with loved ones is more important than money after they're gone.

3. The Blogging Church journey made it's first stop in Anderson, South Carolina. Check out Perry Noble's blog for the full story. The book will start shipping in about three weeks if you want to check it out.

4. The Wii is wonderful! Ben has already received his main gift this year, the Nintendo Wii. The present was for his birthday as well as Christmas, so there was no way we could wait until the 25th to give it to him. Let me just say that it is as amazing as you've heard. Everyone who gives it a try, no matter age or gender, starts smiling and enjoying it immediately. It's simple, elegant, bug-free, and far less expensive than the alternatives. Highly recommended!

5. A brand-new Wall Street Journal debuts on January 2nd. I'm excited to see the new and improved edition.

See you in January!

Bipartisan links

I found two interesting articles on potential presidential candidates this weekend.

Peggy Noonan on Barack Obama: The Man From Nowhere

The New York Times on Newt Gingrich: Gingrich, on a Mission, Has No Time to Campaign for ’08

I respect both of these men because they have the instinct to do something different - to address problems in new ways and have a more meaningful, more substantial debate. Of course, they are equally flawed and will likely succumb to the incessant pressure to approach the race in the same way as everyone else. I was always fascinated to read that Goldwater and Kennedy were considering making join appearances throughout the campaign where they would take part in a lengthy, civil debate. Unfortunately, they never had the chance.

It seems that most people agree that the national political process is supremely flawed, but every four years it returns, little different than before. I want a new campaign this time. Anyone else?

Toys of our own

BlackBerry Orphans from the WSJ.

Some excerpts that will keep you up at night [free article]:

→ A third-grader in Rome, Ga., says he tries to tell his father to put the BlackBerry down, but can't even get his attention. "Sometimes I think he's deaf," says the 9-year-old.

→ The ninth-grade student in Port Washington, N.Y., says she has caught her parents typing emails on their Treos during her eighth-grade awards ceremony, at dinner and in darkened movie theaters.

→ His dad, private banker Ross Singletary, calls it [typing while driving] "a legit concern." He adds: "Some emails are important enough to look at en route."

→ The children of one New Jersey executive mandate that their mom ignore her mobile email from dinnertime until their bedtime. To get around their dictates, the mother hides the gadget in the bathroom, where she makes frequent trips before, during and after dinner.

→ The therapist advised that the family dinner table be an email-free zone.

→ "Even though I'm home, I'm not necessarily there."

→ Jim Balsillie, the chairman of Research In Motion [creator of the BlackBerry], says children should ask themselves, "Would you rather have your parents 20% not there or 100% not there?"

This article, written mostly in fun, is a phenomenal, frightening window into what we've become - addicts who can't let go of work and wear our busyness as a badge of honor. Notice that most of these examples involve children trying to get their parents to ignore email for just 1-2 hours in the evening. According to Research in Motion, the best our children should expect from us is 80% of our presence. We are very important people, after all.

A generation ago, we defined professional success by freedom, control and delegation. Today, professional success is measured by the number of hours, the number of emails, and the facade of indispensability.

Surely we can do better. I think we've decided that relationships and conversations are simply more trouble than they're worth, especially with our children. We have televisions in our SUV's for 15 minute drives (yes, I've seen them turned on during the neighborhood drive to school in the morning). We have Game Boys for the kids so they don't have to interact with us and we don't have to interact with them. How often do you see families waiting for a table at a restaurant - the father using his Blackberry while his son sits next to him playing his handheld. This under the guise of "going out to dinner together."

At some point, most of us considered forcing our children to put down their iPods, Game Boys, and Playstation Portables and experience life with us instead of around us.

Instead, we decided it was easier to get toys of our own.

Read the Full Article

See also: Hand on the Guitar and Present and Accounted For

Letting go of Studio 60

After my post last month, Lori and I decided to stop watching Studio 60 and haven't missed it once. We're watching endless West Wing episodes on Bravo instead and loving every minute of it - wow, what a show! Watching Studio 60 felt like what church used to be for me - my favorite part was when it was over and I could check it off my list.

Today, Dave wrote that he agrees:

I give up on Studio 60. It's dull, childish, plotless, not funny, not heart-grabbing, takes itself far too seriously. Not interesting. Wish they had used the money for this show to buy another season of The West Wing.

Amen!