​Paper products are bearing offspring. They propagate like garbage on the side of the road, insidiously from one or two random pieces to gigantic piles that can’t be tallied.
 
Just look at your desk. Or, if not yours, consider mine: File folders on the right, with mounting materials; 7 mini-notepads to take to meetings and capture ideas, thoughts, to-do’s, contacts; a pile on the left of ongoing projects; and right in the middle, nudging my mouse pad, are those seemingly more important tasks written down on various scraps of paper that get buried deeper and deeper with each mounting day.
 
I fight a losing battle.  Do you?
 
Many years ago, the predictors in society said we would be paperless in the 21st century. We continue to wait for that day. It may still occur. Don’t hold your breath.
 
During the first evolution of information technology, and the creation of electronic document storage and delivery, it seemed progress occurred against the paper mountain. Companies, organizations and bureaucracies made concerted efforts to move activities online. That continues today, but for some reason, paper proliferation seems as strong as ever.  What’s going on?
 
Recently I cleaned off my desk. What did I throw away? 1) An old Chamber of Commerce directory (which means the new one was out, so the old one sat there for over a year; 2) notes to motivate me to do something (clearly they hadn’t); 3) a Rotary member list (getting close to 2-years-old); 4) several trade magazines that had best of intentions of grabbing my attention so I read them; 5) multiple sets of interview notes for stories in various publications; 6) more. There is always more. That’s the problem.
 
After cleaning off my desk, things were nice for days, maybe even weeks. Slowly, the paper breeds again. A few new notes get jotted down, and are put on the middle pile to follow up with clients, colleagues or friends. They are buried by now.
 
When you go to a conference or meeting sponsored by a business or organization, they like to give something out, so their brand is etched in your brain afterwards. One way they do that is by handing you a small disposable notepad with their logo. Seven of those sit on my desk right now. They are like a husband, wife, three kids and two grandkids. They will continue growing their family in the months and years ahead, I’m confident, because they don’t use birth control.
 
Maybe we need an educational campaign to get paper to use contraception. That could be funny.
 
An educational campaign to reduce the proliferation of paper use would have to fight the joy paper gets from breeding. More offspring means they get to spread their word.
 
That’s the major reason for the growth in paper output: Companies looking for more and more ways to get their message or image in front of you. Even if it’s only for a second, and totally disposable, they want to mail you a brochure or hand you a one-pager that briefly holds your glance. Will you remember them? Doubtfully, but you have to throw it away.
 
Or, you put it on your desk, where it sits and sits, developing consciousness and wondering why you don’t pick it up again and ponder its existence: “I am here as a sheet of paper. Therefore, I have significance. Read me.”
 
But we don’t. We read less. We glance more. Images take the place of words. Our mental capacities suffer because they are cluttered, like our desks.
 
I should wipe my desk down daily, or at least weekly, but am not to that point yet. I still think I’ll get around to some of those notes.

​I hate instant replay. It’s killed sports for years.
 
Last week at our workout facility, I situated myself for my first set of ab crunches. TV screens abound. Donald Trump rants on one. Storm clouds explode across another. A third shows an early season major league baseball game. It draws my eye.
 
The pitcher unleashes a curve. Replay. They show it again. Replay with a line drawn from the release to the catcher’s mitt, tracking the ball flight. Another replay demonstrates the other spots the pitcher either hit or missed within the strike zone.
 
In less than five seconds I am bored and focus and tightening my stomach muscles against the force of gravity and time. I ponder this while counting to 30 reps: “Quick, incessant replays destroy baseball.” By extension, this occurs in all other sports.
 
I grew up in New Jersey, just outside New York City, rooting for the Yankees because the Mets were mired in Loserville. As I came of age, the Yanks were winding down, and I remember a World Series, then they too joined the joined the losers’ bracket for well over 10 years. That didn’t stop my support.
 
All the names stay with me, from Bobby Richardson, Mel Stottlemyre and Joe Pepitone to Horace Clarke, Gene Michael, Roger Repoz, Danny Cater, Thurman Munson and Tom Tresh. Some made it from the early part of the 1960s to the 1970s and saw the franchise re-ignite.
 
When the Yanks got hot again in the mid-1970s, my energy and enthusiasm rose with them. So many years in the depths makes you more appreciative of ascension to the top. I stayed a fan all those years, and into the mid-1980s because of the grittiness and clutch hitting of players like Munson and Cater. Though free agency had begun, few players jumped teams year-to-year.
 
That changed in the mid-1980s, and I slowly drifted away as big bucks caused cash registers to ring in the players’ eyes. It became harder to follow your team because you didn’t know the roster from one year to the next. I lost interest in learning the names, checking out their stats or reading box scores.
 
At the time, I didn’t consider replay as a killer of enjoyment. Yet its insidious encroachment on all sports contributes to a lack of desire to watch a game on television. When you see a tag at second in baseball or a dunk in basketball five times in quick succession from different angles, you grow bored. I don’t want to see it.
 
Last spring I watched a college Division III baseball game at our older daughter’s school, and recently I sat through an entire high school game with a buddy to see his son play. Both times it struck me why I LOVE baseball live, but not the televising of it: The pace.
 
Baseball, if it moves along smartly, captures the slower rhythms of life. That’s nice in our explosively-speeded-up world. You take time to watch where players position themselves, how the catcher grabs a handful of dirt to signal the first baseman he’s going to try and pick off the runner. Subtle hints abound, and if you know the game well, it is those things that make it so enjoyable as a spectator (along with sitting in the first row of the bleachers and keeping the scorebook).
 
Like all sports, baseball is an escape. It allows us to get outside our daily lives. We’re fortunate Abner Doubleday invented it. If we could un-invent the replay, we might be able to enjoy all sports for the raw athleticism and dynamic teamwork they present. We’d spend less time critiquing and dissecting, and more time alert and paying attention. There’s a lot to be said for that.

​It’s amusing sometimes to think about the nature of competition, whether it’s in sports, business or life, versus the concept of participating in an activity for the sheer joy of it. We are told to compete from an early stage of life. You should get the best grades. Win the race. Take first place in your team’s conference.
 
Those concepts are ingrained. There is something inside of us that wants to be the best. We take on a challenge and we want to come out on top. That’s human nature.
 
But, we also have this need to commune and enjoy an activity just because.  That might be doing math equations, Sudoku or a crossword puzzle.  You could enjoy playing “Words with Friends” on your smart phone solely to challenge yourself or stay in touch with a buddy. You don’t want to win.  You want to participate. You still want to do your best, but it isn’t about finishing number one.
 
You can go into an event with an easy-going mindset and it is possible to keep yourself even-keeled – like playing golf with your friends.  Sometimes that doesn’t work. Your competitive instincts take over regardless of your intentions.
 
That happened to me this the past year, and I can’t figure out if it’s a good thing or not. Last January, I ran a road race for the first time in probably 15 years. I’d taken up light jogging again and prepared to run a 5K, a little over three miles. It wasn’t long, so my only goal was to keep moving the entire distance.
 
Crossing the finish line, I looked at the time, and saw I broke 30 minutes, so less than 10 minutes a mile, which seemed good for my advanced age. Another local race came up in a few weeks, and I got in that one, and improved my time by 3 minutes.
 
That got me started thinking, “Hmm, I wonder how fast I can go. Can I run a six mile race?” I quickly moved from the enjoyment of participating in a race to challenging myself to see how fast I could go.
 
This became part of my fantasy life. I envisioned training to be competitive with other men in my age bracket, looking up their best times on Google. Immediately it became apparent those were dreams and would not become reality. But the information didn’t fully dissuade me from training in different ways to increase my speed.
 
It’s amazing how you start to think competitively about “how fast can I go.” There are many more physical limitations on my body than there were when I was 35, but being smart, you can minimize injuries and keep building up.
 
There is a human desire to improve and accomplish things, and I think this phase I’m going through ties into that. I want to see how much better I can get at running, and what is my best competitive event.
 
I haven’t figured it all out yet, and probably never will fully since life is always a work in progress. But I’ve quizzed our three kids, who are all excellent runners, about what I should compete in given my running style – size, leg stride, stamina, weight, speed burst ability.
 
There is no magic distance. Too long, and the skinny guys will rip me. Too short and the guys with better fast twitch fiber will crush me.
 
There’s a balance somewhere, perhaps the 800 meter run, we’ll see. Avoiding injuries and building the proper stamina will be telling. Then we’ll find out if the competitive instinct takes over.

​There are several close friends who I regularly dialogue with who engage in a “personal expense” discussion. By this, I mean we lay out where we spend money and wonder where our respective paychecks go. It’s not a fun interchange.

Invariably, that’s because we start writing down dollar figures and see that we spend more than we earn. When you look at the number of newspaper articles that tell you how much of a loser you are when you do that, you quickly feel you fit that bill.
 
Why can’t we save more? Why can’t we spend less?
 
Once your spending habits are ingrained, it’s hard to break them. You go out to eat, so you keep going out to eat. You play golf once a week, you want to keep playing golf once a week.
 
Even when you look at your family spread sheet and say to yourself, “Hmmm, golf is costing $200 a month.  Yikes, that’s $2,400 a year. Better cut that out.”
 
Buddies call who I haven’t seen  for six months, and they want to play the following weekend, so after checking with my wife to see how our calendar looks and to get the family “okay,” off I go again --spending when I should be saving. Even if it’s a great round and spectacular weather, I feel guilty for the indulgence. And the family budget takes a quick dent.
 
You can write your income and expenses down until the icebergs melt, but it’s not going to stop you from playing outside the lines when it comes to your money. Deficit spending abounds.

One friend wrote this recent “unexpected cost” spreadsheet down: Springs on garage door broke, $400; new door handle for front door, $125; anniversary dinner out, $150; spring fertilizing of yard, $35; new BBQ grill, $150; liquor bill for month, $150; Turbo Tax Premier software, $75. Clearly, some of those expenses are not mandatory and could be cut or contained, but still…..
 
During a conversation with a former work colleague, she was lamenting the price of food, car repairs, medical care and insurance rising disproportionately compared to salaries. That disparity is something many of us face, and it’s fueling much of the frustration people feel in just trying to get by in their day-to-day lives.
 
Another friend brought up how he has established a budget for how much he and his wife can spend monthly when going out to eat. In the first three months of this year, they were $200, $400 and $100 over on a monthly basis. Only going over by $100 seemed like a moral victory.
 
We are gluttons. Some things are controllable. Others are not. Even when we move forward with the best of intentions, our over-consumptive behavior takes over, sending us into the deficit death spiral.
 
I wonder how many people keep their monthly budgets. It would be a fascinating survey to administer to Americans and see who has a moral budget backbone.
 
Perhaps everyone needs to set aside an “indulgence” fund annually, to use in whatever fun way you want. That might make us feel better if you aren’t hitting your monthly dollar containment figures.
 
Even pets come into the “unexpected expenses” category when one dies or needs surgery to survive. You don’t save money for that, but suddenly you are faced with an expensive emotional decision, and our emotions typically win.
 
I can’t stop the emotional side of indulgence. But I’ve decided there is one way to save money, and I’m sticking to this one.
 
For the rest of my life, I’m not buying any underwear or socks. That should cover a couple of beers and cheeseburgers.