I'm prepping for my one and only gig as an audiobook narrator

This would be me recording an audio version of my book if I was younger. And better looking. And had more hair.

Over the years, I've listened to dozens and dozens of audiobooks. I discovered early on that just as important as the quality of the book itself is the quality of the narrator.

My favorite audiobook narrator is the late Frank Muller. I can't think of "The Great Gatsby" or "A Tale of Two Cities" without hearing his voice. He brought those works to life for me.

Which is why, when several people suggested I record an audio version of my book "5 Kids, 1 Wife," I initially balked.

Yes, I'm the guy who wrote it, and yes, having had some experience with a microphone, you would think I'm the ideal candidate to narrate it.

But good audiobook narration requires more than just a decent voice and a knowledge of the text. The best narrators are also actors. They understand inflection, dynamics and pace.

Especially pace. I'm a fast talker. You can't be overly fast when you narrate an audiobook. Then again, you don't want to be too slow, either. I'm afraid I'll be so self-conscious about the speed at which I'm talking that I'll forget everything else that goes into making an audiobook listenable.

Still, despite these misgivings, I'm going to give it a go. It turns out you can record, edit and distribute your own audiobook just as easily as you can self-publish a paperback these days. The folks at Amazon make it especially easy through their ACX audiobook platform.

You do need to know how to set your audio recording software to fit within certain ACX-prescribed parameters to make it sound good, but I think I'm just technically savvy enough to manage it.

My goal is to record the audiobook in January and have it edited and available for sale by the end of Q1 2024. It will go right onto the "5 Kids, 1 Wife" Amazon page, which already offers print and Kindle versions of the book.

All I'm saying is, don't expect perfection. And if I end up talking too fast, you can slow down the playback speed on your device.

With all of these caveats, it's starting to feel like any price point for this audiobook above, say, $2 will be a ripoff.

We grew up in such an analog world that the digital one can be a little jarring

One of my favorite subplots in the Harry Potter series is Arthur Weasley's continuous fascination with muggles (non-wizards). He is forever impressed by how they manage to live their lives without the use of magic.

I feel much the same way about the 1980s and 90s. How, I sometimes wonder, did we ever get by without today's technology?

The answer, of course, is that we did just fine. But there's no denying you and I have lived through – and indeed are still living through – a digital revolution that has transformed nearly everything. What we're experiencing is historic in its speed and scope.

I often think about the everyday gizmos and gadgets with which I grew up that are all but obsolete now. Cassettes, for example, are laughably ancient. So are paper maps. And the clock you kept on your nightstand with the little flippy numbers. And Rolodexes.

None of these things has completely disappeared, but they have mostly been replaced by faster digital alternatives. Whereas the old stuff was solid and physical, now so much is virtual. It "exists," but not in the same tangible way typewriters and landline phones and VHS tapes used to exist.

I often think about the early part of my career when I worked in newspapers. I was a print journalist right up until the end of the era in which editors would draw page layouts in pencil on pieces of paper. They would give these sketches to back shop folks, who would then take long strips of typeset text, run them through a hot wax machine, cut them into strips, and physically paste them onto large sheets of cardboard to match the editor's vision of the page.

That's how your daily newspaper was created. It seems slow and crude, but it worked.

Just as I got out of the business, it all went digital. I can't imagine how much faster and efficient it is now.

Time marches on and things change, of course, but the speed of that change in recent decades has been breathtaking. Day-to-day existence now is in many ways nothing at all like it was just 30 years ago.

To the point that I think our generation's experience of rapid technological change is unique in history.

I'm all for progress, but I do wish it would slow down every once in a while and let me catch my breath.

I didn't pose naked for the cover like Britney, and nine other reasons you should buy my book this holiday season

1. You will laugh, either at the content or at the fact I think I'm so funny.
   
   
2. You will cry, either over the content or over the fact I think I'm so funny.
   
   
3. I will agree not to sign the book for you, thus preserving its value.
   
   
4. It has a beautiful cover with which I had almost nothing to do. The best parts of the book admittedly do not involve me.
   
   
5. I make $3.42 per paperback copy sold, which I pledge to use to buy myself apples. This doesn't really benefit you, but as noted here many times before, I like apples.
   
   
6. You can either buy Stephen King's new book or you can buy mine. I was a contestant on two game shows. Stephen's game show count? To my knowledge it's zero. Advantage: me.
   
   
7. It would make my wife Terry happy. Imagine how good you'll feel making her happy.
   
   
8. My book explains in earnest detail why Chuck E. Cheese plays a vital role in preventing a worldwide revolt among young children. You're not going to get that kind of insight from, say, Britney Spears' memoir.
   
   
9. Speaking of Britney, unlike her, I did not pose nearly naked for the cover of my book, which I consider a great favor to you. The least you can do in return is to buy the book.
   
   
10. In buying my book, you're propping up the economy. I don't want to imply that worldwide financial collapse would be your fault if you choose not to buy my book, but I'm also not saying that's not the case. Just to be on the safe side, you should probably just buy the book.

Click here to purchase the book on Amazon, either in paperback or Kindle/eBook format.

(Since this list likely did more to talk you out of buying the book than anything else, thank you for even considering it!)

The man-boy upstairs

There was a time when seven people lived in our house. It was loud, chaotic, fun, occasionally frustrating, and always exhausting.

Now there are three of us left here: Terry, me, and our youngest son, Jack, a wickedly smart and funny kid.

Or should I say "wickedly smart and funny young man?" Or just "man?" I don't know how to classify Jack. On one hand, he's 6-feet-2 and has had a voice like James Earl Jones since he was about 13. He looks and sounds like a young adult.

But there are times when he seems very much like the 17-year-old boy he is. That's not a knock against him. 17-year-old boys are what they are. Generally speaking, they're not as responsible or as mature as 17-year-old girls, at least in my experience.

Still, Jack has it together in ways I simply didn't when I was his age, and I admire him for that. In other ways, however, he's still trying to figure out a direction in life, which is perfectly fine. He is, after all, only 17.

He's in the process of learning about money and jobs and responsibility and everything that comes with being a legal adult, which again it should be noted he is not yet. Having skipped a grade many years ago, he graduated high school in May at 17 years, 3 1/2 months old.

Given his status as a younger graduate, Terry, Jack and I decided early on that a year of community college would be good for him. If nothing else, it would help him get used to managing his own affairs in a somewhat low-pressure environment before taking on the challenge of a four-year university.

Given his laudable performance on the high school AP Calculus exam, Jack got put into a college calc II/physics class at Lakeland Community College this past fall for which he was not at all ready. He quickly dropped that course and instead enrolled in a regular calc I class, but even that proved challenging for him despite having taken the subject before.

Jack's academic confidence was shot. Like many a smart kid before him, he had never really learned how to study, how to ask for and get help, and how to deal with a daunting academic challenge.

So he dropped both of his community college courses and instead started working to earn some money while figuring out an alternative path for his future. He eventually decided on a career in the trades, and as I type this, he's specifically targeting becoming an electrician.

That's a laudable goal. This country needs tradespeople, and as everyone is quick to point out to him, the money is good.

Is Jack suited to a career in electrical work? I have no idea. I hope he is, because as a parent, all you want is for them to be healthy, happy and fueled by purpose. You can have all three of those things in any sort of career, as they're in no way dependent on exactly how you make a living.

I just wish I could be of more help to him. I wish I could give him better guidance through what I'm sure is an uncertain and perhaps even unsettling time in his life. Whatever he chooses to do, I just want the path to become clear to him.

Jack is in the process of becoming whatever Jack is going to be. As someone who has been down that road already many years ago myself, I think a lot about the emerging man living in the first bedroom on the right at the top of the stairs.

There will come a time when it will all work out for him, I know.

Until then, his dad prays for him a lot.

I've reached the age when, like many dads, I cannot think of anything I want or need for Christmas

Every year until I was well into my 20s, I would ask my dad what he wanted for Christmas.

And every year he would say the same thing: "Case of beer."

He was always just kidding (he gave up drinking in the early 80s), and I always knew that would be his response, but it was like a little ritual we had to go through.

As I got older, this routine of ours got somewhat annoying because I really, truly did need to know what he wanted for Christmas. It seemed so hard for him to come up with something.

Now I get it.

Let it be known that, as I enter my mid-50s, I have no idea what I want for Christmas.

Clothes, I guess. And Amazon gift cards always work. And maybe the occasional classical CD?

The reality is, I have just about everything I could want. I don't have expensive tastes, and any time I want something, I just buy it for myself.

If I were particularly smart, which I am not, I would hold off on these types of purchases from, say, September onward and allow my family to get these items for me.

But of course I forget and just buy whatever I want whenever I want it. Then this time of year rolls around and someone in the family asks what they can get me and I'm stumped.

I suspect something similar happened to my dad all those years ago.

Which is why he always ended up getting the cheap plastic desk set or picture frame I would buy from the elementary school Santa Shop. (Come to think of it, that's probably the stuff he loved the most.)

The point is, I hate making a Christmas list because I don't need anything and I really don't even want anything. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men. I'll take a heaping helping of that, if you can swing it.

Otherwise, I don't know...case of beer, I guess.

Three days in the office, two days working from home = perfect (for me anyway)

Back when I was in high school, the only reason you were ever home at 10 in the morning was if you were sick or if it was a holiday.

Then I had kids of my own, and as time went on I watched as they enjoyed the benefits of increasingly flexible school scheduling. It culminated with our youngest, Jack, spending far more of his senior year in his room than he did in a school building.

COVID was largely responsible for the shift in scheduling philosophies, of course. But I was still amazed at how late Jack would wake up some days and still be at school in plenty of time. He would drive to school, attend one class, and be back home less than an hour later.

When I was a lad many moons ago, I left for high school at 7:10 in the morning and it would be at least eight hours before my parents saw me again. Even longer if I had football or track practice.

Being at home in the middle of the day felt weird.

The same has been true for most of my working life. I came into the professional world in the early 90s, when we still worked in an office five days a week for 9 or 10 hours at a time and only came home sometime after 5pm.

AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY.

Actually, I don't know that we "liked" it that way, but it was the only way we knew. Our parents had worked the same sort of schedule, so we figured it was just how things were.

Then along came the pandemic, and suddenly those of us in the white-collar world had options. For a period of time we only worked at home. Then, when the restrictions lifted, our employers started bringing us back to the office a day or two each week.

Now remote work is the norm. Or I should say "hybrid" work is the norm, with many (most?) professionals working some combination of days each week in the office and other days from home.

For those of us at Materion Corporation, our in-office days are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Which of course leaves Monday and Friday as work-from-home days.

Again, maybe it's just the world in which I grew up, but I find this to be an almost unbelievable setup. On Mondays and Fridays, I can be productive working from my upstairs home office while having the flexibility of doing laundry, emptying the dishwasher, running a quick errand, etc.

Then I can see, interact, and generally bond with my co-workers in person during those mid-week in-office days.

Two days a week I'm home when "The Price Is Right" comes on and I don't even have the flu. That's mind-boggling for a card-carrying Gen X-er.

Having experienced so many five-days-in-the-office years, this balance of two days home and three in the office feels ideal to me. Some of my younger co-workers think the ratio should be flipped, or that we should be four days (or even fully) remote.

And maybe they're right. All I know is that Jack's wacky school schedule seems less and less bizarre to me as we get deeper into the Age of Remote Work.

I must be getting older and softer when it comes to the extended celebration of Christmas

For many years, I stuck to a hard and fast rule whereby I would never, under any circumstances, listen to Christmas music before December 1st.

I wasn't being a Scrooge or anything. I just felt the tendency to extend the celebration of Christmas back into November (or, in some cases, even starting in October) kind of cheapened the holiday. I have a lot of great memories from Decembers past and didn't want to water down future memories by making Christmas two months long.

If that makes sense.

Now, however, I'm not so strict. I've been listening to Christmas music since Thanksgiving Day. I haven't minded seeing decorations go up "early" on houses and in stores. And I've generally been much more OK with a somewhat longer holiday season than I was in the past.

So what changed? What switch flipped?

I hate to say it, but I think it's an age thing. Not that I'm ancient at 54, but there are a lot fewer things on which I'm "hard and fast" than there used to be.

If people want to listen to Christmas music in October or November – or July, for that matter – where's the harm?

Heck, if I want to listen to Christmas music any time of year, who cares? Christmas is what you make of it, and a rousing chorus of "Sleigh Ride" six weeks before December 25th will only negatively affect my experience of the holiday if I allow it to.

Granted, "Jingle Bells" in mid-summer still feels a little strange to me. But hey, you do you.