​I’ve been teaching a friend to play golf from scratch. He was 49-years-old when we started. The only other person I attempted this with is our three kids when they were very young.
 
Teaching someone one-on-one in a complex sport like golf, with all its intricacies, could turn south for many reasons. First, to really teach, you need a level of expertise, which I don’t have.
 
For someone to get good at anything, you have to learn the fundamentals. Then practice, get feedback, practice again, expand the lessons and repeat. The formula itself isn’t complicated. Execution is a different story. And with golf – this frustrating, crazy, counter-intuitive sport – there are so many different ways you can choose to get someone started that it is difficult to even know where to begin.
 
What I did was go back to the beginning. Think through what you want to accomplish: hit the ball where you want it; come to understand which clubs to use in which situations; how to moderate your swing depending on your distance to the whole; gauge yardage; establish a very basic stance and grip you trust.
 
In golf, that’s barely a start. You can get into how the wind affects your ball. The type of grass you get with your lie and how you adjust. How temperature affects the distance of your drives. The list (once you take a friend to the links) is seemingly endless, because there is always more to learn. Which, of course, is one of the great allures of golf.

Both of us have benefitted from this incremental process. As you teach someone, you learn. You understand the purpose behind technique.

The very first day we went to the range after practicing putting, which I’d slimmed down to these two points: distance and direction. Determine the distance and direction, then hit the putt.
 
From there, we started with the wedge, the mostly highly lofted club for the short shots. After getting his stance and grip into a rudimentary acceptable range, I mentioned looking at where he wanted to hit the ball, and how far he wanted to hit it. We took it slow and short. Hit it 50 yards. Which means not taking a full swing.

We worked on that concept. Golf is not about clobbering the ball every time. Instead, each club and swing has its own background. I didn’t want him starting out swinging for the fences. As a former baseball player, he would have loved to swing away.
He whiffed a few times, feebly rolled a few, and occasionally popped a couple in the air as the bag of balls diminished. Several ended up down the hill from the practice box. No one else was there, so we trudged down and I had him hit the ball from a downhill lie.

This was one of those epiphanies – moving from flat turf to a hill. He looked back at me with wide eyes, like, “What the heck do I do now?” And I realized how the littlest things can baffle us and we must adjust, whether in golf or life.
 
I talked him through it, letting him know how the direction and trajectory of the shot would change based on downhill, uphill or sidehill lies. He understood the concept, and nodded, but it will be a long time before he gets that feel.
 
That short conversation sparked my own awareness-raising round – learning by going back to ground zero and coming to recognize why we have to change our mindset so frequently on the golf course to be successful. It’s tremendously difficult. No one, and I mean NO ONE, ever fully masters golf. The sport humbles us all. But golf continues to teach. I’m thankful for my friend giving me this opportunity to learn and grow again. I may not play better, but I know more.

​We’ve been hearing for months about retail going out of business or filing for bankruptcy in 2020. Lord & Taylor; Brooks Brothers; Lucky Brand; Pier 1; True Religion; J. Crew; Neiman Marcus; J.C. Penney. And so many, many more.

Those closures have probably affected you. You might have lost a job working at one of their locations, or you shopped at the store and can no longer do so.
 
Often it seems intangible when you hear about a company going out of business. Their name is in the news for months and months. They’ve spiraled downward for years. And, finally, they have to pull the plug for stockholders or their business partners.
 
When you read or hear about these bankruptcies on the news, they don’t always seem real. On a certain level you understand what is happening, but it doesn’t directly impact you.
 
Several years ago, the death of retail came home to me firsthand. I was working the day in Port Washington, WI, stopping in at the retailers that line their downtown. Like many older small towns, they had a men’s clothing shop.
 
As you might expect, they had some dated suits and sports jackets. They were also up-to-date on many of the styles and offerings of the different types of business casual attire that you could expect in a smaller town setting.
 
The owner was less than optimistic about his future. We talked at length that day about why this was occurring. Simply put, the major variable was the growth of online shopping. He thoroughly detailed the difficulties of providing clothing at a reasonable price that fit quickly changing buying behaviors. He also pointed to the use of the smart phone, where potential customers would check his price, then go online to see what the item could be purchased for from a web site. If he didn’t match the price (if the online price was lower), the potential customer left.
 
And, now there’s Covid. We go from the downward spiral of retail to the death of many retail companies.
 
My wakeup call was GNC. I knew they were hurting. I read multiple articles the past six months about how many stores they needed to close. The one I used stayed open.

I was hopeful. You cross your fingers and think that just maybe the outlet you go to is the one spared the ax.
 
Nope. This past weekend I went to pick up a magnesium powder supplement that I typically purchased at GNC for a very good price. Drove up, and BAM, it him me. “There’s no stock in there.”

The store was empty. No signs. Nothing that said it was going out of business. No direct notice given to my email.
 
I want to support the retail outlets I use. There was no choice though. So, I sat in the parking lot, and went online through my phone to see where else I could get the product.
 
It was sad. I couldn’t chat with the guy behind the counter to see what new products GNC offered. I couldn’t get his input on a supplement or vitamin. Sure, you can read that online, but it’s not the same.
 
More and more we are going to our phone, laptop, iPad or desktop to order something. Read the reviews. Check how many stars there are. Figure out the shipping costs. Tap a few buttons and wait for FedEx, UPS or the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the goods. It’s not the same.

​ 
One of the things I don’t like about myself is my impatience when technology doesn’t work. I get frustrated, irritated, angry.
 
There’s a lot of impatience in the world today. We want results. We want the pandemic to go away. We want to see progress on global climate change. We want the economy to rev back up.
 
But, like so many other things in life, these changes won’t occur quickly. They will take time. And collectively as a nation, the United States is impatient. We want to see things accomplished yesterday, thank you very much.
 
Events don’t unfold that way. Nor do solutions get enacted and implemented and demonstrate results in the short run. Instead, we must wait. Figure out what went wrong. Go back over the details. Figure out a new path. Put it into place. See what happens.
 
Instead of accepting this as the way change occurs over a period of time, we get hammered over and over about what is wrong. We grow impatient.
 
I think that, in large part, each of us needs to recognize our hot buttons of impatience if we’re going to remain sane in the years ahead. Know exactly what it is that pisses you off. Determine if there is anything at all you can do about it. If not, plan to accept the consequences and adapt to a new reality.

One of the hardest things for humans to accept is when you can’t do something. Particularly when you want to. You’d like to change the outcome, but have absolutely no influence.

That’s at the heart of personal frustration. The gap between what you can do and what you want done.
 
Recently, Wordpress instituted some changes to its platform. I use Wordpress to publish this column. It’s not complicated. That’s a major reason I like it.
 
The changes they implemented weren’t readily apparent recently when I went to download the material for my next article. The system to download an image changed. There was no one there to tell me what was different. I had to figure it out myself, blindly, not knowing which buttons to click or how to proceed.
 
If you’re an IT nincompoop like me, this drives you insane. Frustration. Then impatience. And, finally, you want to destroy the desktop and give up.
 
Amazingly, after toying around, I figured out the new system. It wasn’t overly complicated, just a new way they wanted you to download. Okay.
 
Multiple this by X number of situations you face on a daily or weekly basis, where you don’t know how to fix something, or something has occurred that seems so fundamentally wrong yet you have no direct ability to do anything about it. Impatience and frustration grow.
 
Remember what you can and cannot affect. Bear in mind there is a time to walk about and say, “Screw it.” Go have a beer.
 
Most people, I would argue, don’t step away from their frustrations, instead letting them build up. I am certainly guilty.
 
Recognizing what you can impact, what your talents are, what you can actually DO about something is fundamental to the collective mental health of all of us. If you can master the ability of “not letting it get to you,” let me know your best technique. I’d love to share it. Everyone would benefit.

​Saturday Night Live (SNL) had its series opener this past Saturday evening, and as expected, there was a skit of the debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden. Earlier in the week, I speculated with some friends on how the writers would play the debate. There were so many ways to poke fun at it.
 
We came up with a different ploy than the SNL writers. We decided on a love fest approach.
 
Flip around the arguing, the anger, the talking over the opponent, the interruptions. Instead, show humor from civility. Showing manners. Politeness.
 
“Why Joey, you look marvelous in your suit tonight. The tie is becoming of you,” Trump would lead off.
 
“That’s so kind of you, Donnie. I’ve always appreciated your taste in colors and your shirt brings out the smoothness of your tan,” Biden replies.
 
Chris Wallace’s eyes widen at this point. “Are you gentlemen going to address the issues or stick with the compliments?”
 
“Oh, Chris, that’s such an appropriate question,” Trump continues. “You are the best moderator ever for a Presidential debate. I can’t tell you how much it pleases me that you were selected. What question would you like me to answer?”
 
“How about your supreme court nominee? Do you think you should have waited?”
 
“I like Joey’s idea about postponing the nomination. It has a lot of merit and I will consider it after consulting with my staff to make the best decision for the country. Sometimes, given Joey’s phenomenal positions and insights, I don’t know why I even bother to run for reelection. Maybe we should just give him the election.”
 
“Shucks, Donnie, don’t say that. Give yourself some credit for the state of the country. You don’t get enough accolades for what you’ve accomplished and you should really give yourself a big pat on the back,” Biden says in a soft tone, before putting on his mask, walking across the debate stage and giving Trump a several solid thankful pats on the back with his hand.
 
“Thank you, Joey,” Trump responds, eyes glistening. “That means a lot to me, coming from you and what you’ve accomplished to help make this country great. I could have used you as a role model for our slogan in 2016 given your many years of service to our country.”
 
“Don’t mention it, Donnie. I love that you bring an outside perspective to running the country and have shaken things up. We needed that.”
 
“Are you both going to keep listening to each other and letting your opponent complete his sentences?  I can’t !@#$%^&*())(*&^%$#@)_+)(*&^%$ believe it,” Wallace exclaims, clearly flustered and getting intensely agitated. “This is supposed to be a debate, not a conversation with give and take. Let’s see some blustering and edginess.”
 
“I couldn’t disagree with you more,” Trump responds. “Our citizens have had enough yelling and finger pointing, particularly on social media. They want us to listen and think issues through before responding.”
 
“I’m sorry. Are you done, Donnie? I don’t want to interrupt,” Biden replies.
 
“Certainly, Joey, you go ahead. I want to hear what you have to say before I make my closing remarks.”
 
Flabbergasted, Wallace takes his glasses and flings them at the candidates. “What the hell is wrong with both of you guys? This isn’t Presidential. You’re acting like you’re eating breakfast together at your Rotary Club meeting.”
 
The skit, of course, didn’t happen. If it had, maybe it would start a national discussion about divisiveness.