Grit

I just finished reading Grit, by Angela Duckworth. Read it!

As with many such books, it left me with a bit of anxiety as I realize that, despite my earlier perceptions of myself as essentially perfect, I have not always been especially gritty, at least not in the ways she emphasizes.

But as I processed that anxiety, I started to realize I have loads of grit. And maybe so do a lot of other people who Ms. Duckworth would not label "grit paragons" because their identifiable achievements are limited.

My grit regarding the best interests of my marriage and family has been, frankly, relentless. Katie will no doubt be happy to discuss with anyone the many misguided forms that grit has taken over the years, but there has never been a lack of effort. My overriding purpose, an essential element of grit, has always been (even if unarticulated) to sustain my wife and children in the purposes of their lives. This has led me to cut short some of my own ambitions outside the home (a decision the book implicitly criticizes as lacking grit).

While the book is great and I agree with essentially all of it, this is the one flaw in its premise: she evaluates grit in terms of the types of achievements many people give up in order to optimize their family outcomes. As such, I am left to feel anxiety about the degree of my own grittiness. But when evaluated in terms of my commitment to family, I have demonstrated high grit. And I am dang proud of it. Many others no doubt deserve to feel the same way.

Yet there is a ton to learn from the book about being the kind of parent I am grittily trying to be. So despite this small criticism, I still give it the strongest possible recommendation. I can always learn and improve and I plan on increasing my grittiness in pursuit of an expanded application of what I understand as my life purpose: sustaining others in pursuit of the purposes of their lives.

Rawalpindi and Disney (Housing Memoir Intermission)

The Rawalpindi International Airport is, let's say, an adventure. The airport and I first met in May 2011, a few days after Bin Laden was found a few miles north. I had just completed several days of training designed to dramatically exaggerate the risk of happening upon a terrorist. And I fully internalized the message.

The plane stopped on the runway, a rickety metal staircase was pushed against it, and then it was a mad dash across the tarmac to the "reception hall." Hundreds of passengers, two guys checking passports, no cultural conception of a queue, and I'm the only one who uses deoderant. Everyone is shouting in Urdu or Arabic. And I'm realizing for the first time that I didn't bother to ask who to look for to pick me up. Oh, and everyone is, you know, a terrorist.

Apparently I didn't blend in, because a guy with a wrinkled, ripped piece of paper with my name written on it in ball point pen approached me and asked, "Are you Tim Hart?"

To which I cleverly replied, "I don't know. Who are you?" So Jason Bourne, right?

Then he goes, no joke, "I see, it's your first time. Yes, I'm from the embassy. No, I'm not a terrorist."

I went full Stockholm Syndrome at that point. Nobody else was offering help, so I agreed to go wherever he was taking me...which was the embassy.

My last, and likely final, meeting with Rawalpindi International Airport, almost exactly one year later, arrived with great anticipation. Before entering 20 hours of radio silence, I talked to Katie. She and the kids were just heading out for Orlando where I would meet them at Disney World having planned the most meticulous 4-day itinerary in the history of the esteemed park.

About 30 minutes before boarding, we were told lighting struck the tarmac and no planes could depart. By the way, it wasn't even raining. Nevertheless, by the time I said a not remotely nostalgic goodbye to that dirty airport, I had already missed the Dubai connecting flight to DC.

So I got to sleep on a faux leather armchair in the $30 per day lounge of Dubai International while Katie added an extra day to our reservation and scrambled to reschedule all the dinner plans and pirate dress ups and so forth.

I remember the customs agent at Dulles welcoming me to America, and I cried. And then I remembered what not being stressed felt like.

Later that day, I got off a shuttle at the Disney World Contemporary Resort and walked into the hotel where my kids were waiting with balloons. I can still feel the hugs. Those were special hugs. The kids didn't let go. Literally. I had to carry all three to the hotel room.

Katie, of course, shared the tragic tale of my delayed flight to the concierge so she could help reschedule everything. So when I met the concierge, she welcomed me home and mentioned that her son, in the Marines, was on his way to Pakistan the next day. I recalled the day a mob marched toward the embassy gate and while we civilians were running away, the Marines were running towards. I shook her hand, teared up, and said, "God bless him." Then she teared up.

Later, we were greeted at the pirate dress up-face paint event with a "thank you for your service" and a "this one's on Disney" because the concierge called ahead.

A Memoir of Housing (Part 2)

I used Pakistan a bit ahead of schedule for dramatic effect. We first moved to Arlington, Virginia for the job that took me to Pakistan 8 months later. Katie and the kids stayed in Arlington for another year.

We were the small, poor rental house on a mostly well-do-do street of large owner-occupied homes. Strangely, I cannot come up with any memories of the bathroom of this house, though I suspect I used it. I remember the Oreo that for some reason stayed on the back porch for several months. I remember this because I became fascinated that not even the ants would eat it, which gave me second thoughts about Oreos.

We painted Maddie's room pink, again, but this time, having not hired a professional, I learned about how colors appear lighter in the can then on the wall. She had the Pepto Bismol room.

We barely fit a couch into the basement where one could sit to watch TV with one's knees about seven inches from the TV, which was good because it was only a 19-inch TV.

About two months in, we learned that I would be going to Pakistan for a year, so the subsequent six months in the Arlington house have exaggerated emotional weight in my memory...but not the bathroom. Caleb coming up the stairs with his Calvin and Hobbes facial expressions when he would smell dinner. Glow-in-the-dark dance parties in the boys' room. Walking to Ashlawn Elementary down the little path through the woods at the end of the road.

Then, the bleak day that we told the kids I was leaving. Maddie cried. Caleb was aloof until I said, because I didn't really know what to say, "You'll be the man of the house, buddy." Then he broke down. "I don't want to a man of the house. I'm only five years old." And I realized it was kind of a dumb thing to say.

A few days later I moved to the lonely house. An empty, quiet house. One year in Pakistan. I learned to survive, but I don't want to write about the Pakistan house other than that when I returned to it after my second and final two week visit home over the course of the year, and I got to the house and felt relieved because I was "home," I knew I needed to get out of there. That's when I realized I was dying a slow spiritual death without my family.

The year ended and I met Katie and the kids at Disney World.

A Memoir of Housing (Part 1)

Reflecting on 2018 got me thinking about my married life in terms of the spaces we've lived in. And then I started typing.

We had smallish condo in Cambridge when Madeline arrived in the world. The yellow building on Putnam. We cleverly selected the third floor of a three-floor building with no elevator. Having never previously attempted to simultaneously bring groceries and children up three flights of stairs we knew we'd made the right choice. And taking out the garbage down the narrow, creaky back steps and through the "Silence of the Lambs" basement was a cheerful highlight.

On the other hand, hearing the cheers from Fenway while watching the World Series in our living room was magical. We painted the nursery the lightest shade of pink visible to the human eye. My conservative estimate is that I sang "Give, Said the Little Stream" approximately 18 million times in that nursery.

The kitchen overheard many arguments as Katie and I figured out how to be married. The neighbors might have heard a few as well. I learned that Katie doesn't yell. Rather, she makes her points with heightened emphasis.

That kitchen also hosted the young men of our church congregation every Thursday evening for about a year as we helped them with homework and college entrance exams. That kitchen saw the first steps of two children.

That kitchen heard me say to Katie, "That lump on Caleb's neck doesn't look right." And then we were in the hospital for two weeks. Sacred space.

After adding Caleb and Henry, we moved to a smallish, shabby gray house in Provo so Katie could rediscover the joy of living like a student, but now with three kids and after acclimating to having income. Especially appealing was the vintage heating system (think of "The Christmas Story") that doubled as the wall between the kitchen and living room. Imagine a helicopter taking off from a landing pad that is attached to a rickety old wooden roller coaster and that is the sound of this unique piece of heating history.

The sewage pipe broke somewhere under the front lawn and when we flushed the toilet, that which should have been flushed came up through the shower drain. So we got to stay in a hotel for a few days, which was special.

On the other hand, Caleb and I spent countless hours on the dull brown carpet in the front room playing a game I called "fumblerooskie" with a miniature BYU football. Henry spoke his first word in that dumpy living room: "football." No joke. That was his first word. His second word was "cookie." We raise them right.

The fateful decision to pass up an attractive job offer from Union Pacific on a gamble with Cambridge Associates was made during a rushed and stressful conversation while we were at our sleep-deprived worst, with that insane heater ushering in the apocalypse behind us, like it was trying to warn us. The gamble didn't pay off and I landed on the fall back plan...in Pakistan.

Zion's 2018

Having "Spring Break" in March in Idaho is kind of a joke. We're just beginning Second Winter. We wanted something warm and Zion's seemed like the closest such place. We enjoyed it immensely, but the drive-time-to-enjoyment ratio was roughly break even with 14 hours round trip for just a day and a half of hiking. Though I did get to practice my tire changing skills when we picked up a nail exiting Springdale.

My Caleb

My Caleb turned 12 yesterday. Among those who view this blog, most are LDS or familiar with LDS traditions. Age 12 is an important milestone. Later today, I will ordain Caleb to the priesthood. Next week, I will take him to the temple for the first time. Next Sunday, he will participate in passing the sacrament to our congregation.

I am very impressed with Caleb. He is a good young man. I frequently learn from his example. Being his father is a special blessing and privilege.

Posing with his article from The Friend magazine.

Neighborhood Guide

When we got married, Katie already had a higher income than I have been able to achieve in the 15 years since. When Maddie was born, we followed our spiritual feelings at the time and Katie quit her job and stayed home to raise kids. She kept working part-time from home all along, but with income quite diminished. Having her home was a great blessing. As was the additional income.

Always she has talked off going back to full time work at some point but while living overseas it just wasn't practical. And then we decided to have another baby and I recall Katie saying soon after we learned in early 2016 that she was pregnant that we had just postponed her return to full time work by several years. She was sad about this, but we both felt spiritually right about the baby decision and have never had the slightest regret. Michael is a beautiful blessing.

Then, with me feeling consistently frustrated with my work environment, with my bosses unwilling to even discuss our reasonable complaints about our most recent housing and post assignment, and with family developments back home, I followed a spiritual feeling to activate a job search function in my LinkedIn account.

I ignored most of the notifications but responded to a spiritual feeling about a Melaleuca posting. The recruiter replied and we scheduled an interview. Four interviews, including a trip to Idaho, resulted in a job offer. We had been praying for guidance all along and knew that we would accept an offer as long as the salary was in a particular range. It was.

Then we began researching neighborhoods in Idaho Falls. We did a lot of research. There was a time I would have said, "We don't need all this research because the Holy Ghost will guide." But I've learned that we need a lot of research precisely because the Holy Ghost will guide. We asked a lot of questions. We sent my parents to inspect. We had our real estate agent stake out streets and tell us how many kids were playing, and so forth. We followed a spiritual feeling to Stonebrook.

And we followed a similar pattern to this house. It is not a perfect house. Lots of quirks. Lots of evidence of inexperienced DIYers. But it felt right and continues to feel right.

Then our neighbor, who we met because we chose this house in this neighborhood, reached out to Katie because, after meeting us and asking some questions, he knew Katie had specific skills and experience that he needed at work and that are rare in Idaho Falls. Skipping many specifics of the story, Katie is now employed by that neighbor with generous pay and generous flexibility to still be home when needed. Had we not followed spiritual feelings, he never would have known about Katie. He could not have hired her.

God asked Katie to be willing to sacrifice her career. She was. Accordingly, God blessed her with a career she had not imagined. That's how that works...as we sought and responded to spiritual impressions based on sound research.

And it is worth mentioning that I am very satisfied with my new job as well.

Apple A.I. Gratitude

I am a lot more thankful for my life than I deserve to be. Apple's Photo app automatically generates memory slide shows. Over the past few weeks it has given me my year in the Philippines, the trip to Paris, mom's 70th birthday in Austria and Southern Germany, Christmas in Cairo, New Years in Berlin. And I smile. My life has been better than I have deserved. The memories are all happy.

So that last sentence is weird though. Because I remember being not happy several times over the time periods covered by these photos. In some cases, I remember times when I was very unhappy, or really mad at Katie, or super remorseful over how dumb I can be in my parenting. Yet, despite this, all my reflections bring me a sense of contentment, peace, and happiness. I am thankful for gratitude.

I am not any kind of great or special person. I can't even really take credit for choosing gratitude, though I suppose I've tried my best. It came to me as a gift. I am even a bit surprised by the extent of it. I am thankful. I am convinced this gratitude is a gift came from a loving God.

Some say there is no evidence of God. Oh, it's everywhere. There is only to look.

Meanwhile, I am in Shanghai this week and I visited this very fun market today and got Katie some possibly real pearl earrings. They might be fake. But they might be real and they look great. I made sure to get a pic of the garbage sweeper. This market is basically like Nordstrom. People come up to you and ask what you want and you can say almost literally anything under the sun, and then they will take you to that thing. Like having a personal shopper. Then, they pester you about getting more things and it gets a little annoying, but whatever, it was totally fun.

Tim's Favorite Things 17

Though I suspect few have missed it, the blog is back with my favorite things I discovered or experienced for the first time in 2017. Enjoy.

1. Home ownership--I now have only one hobby: being a home owner. I suspect the novelty will wear off at some point, but I have very much enjoyed Saturdays of yard work, learning to change shower cartridges and leaky faucets. Raking leaves and shoveling snow was less awesome, especially since I have trees that lose leaves at different intervals. So on my third pass of raking up leaves I apprehended the necessity of a leave blower. Similarly, minute 138 of shoveling brought a revelation about snow blowers.
2. Living in a neighborhood--My kids ride their bikes unsupervised! Friends drop over spontaneously! We rode around in the back of a firetruck singing Christmas carols! High-rise living was not for us.
3. Hillbilly Elegy--It even taught me about my own life in unexpected ways.
4. iOS 11--The AI-generated slideshows set to music are just the best. But I am somewhat less committed to the Apple ecosystem than I have been.
5. Dunkirk--Best film in years, IMHO.

The Idahoan Harts of Boston

I've been thoroughly pre-occupied by my new job, house hunting, car shopping, furniture shopping, moving in to new home, watching eclipses, lawn mower shopping.

Here is the house:

All told, I feel like we have been expert shoppers. We held out at the Toyota dealer until they offered $5k off a brand new 2016 Sienna to make room for soon-to-arrive 2018 models. Now they are eagerly awaiting the arrival of our 2014 Highlander from Manila and are talking like they want to make me a very good offer for it such that I could walk away with a 5- or 6-year-old Camry (or similar) without any debt (to accommodate my 7 mile daily commute).

Meanwhile, we got the house at about 5 percent below comparable per-square-foot prices in the neighborhood. It has an "unfinished" basement that is already framed, wired, and plumbed. So we can easily add two more bedrooms an entertainment room. We paid no closing costs and received a $5k cash rebate from the seller at closing, which converted one bedroom from old, hunter green carpet to new hardwood and bought a very nice washer/dryer set with enough left over for the upcoming purchase of a very comfortable couch.

I bought a Honda lawn mower. Brought it home, set it up. Pushed it from garage to grass, decided I hated it, returned it, drove to my parents' house, put dad's lawn mower in aforementioned Sienna, mowed my lawn for free. I don't like self-propelled lawn mowers but apparently that's all they sell in Idaho Falls.

We watched the eclipse.

It was better than advertised. The difference between 99 percent and total eclipse cannot be overstated. Whatever you were planning to do on April 8, 2024, change that plan and get to the path of totality. Worth it.

Michael likes his new backyard.

Indeed, we all love it. The peace and quiet of Idaho Falls is such a welcome contrast to the noise and crowded bustle of Manila. We just love it.

So Much Grateful

As the Filipinos say, I am so much grateful for our year here. There were stressful elements, to be sure. Traffic in Manila is truly a nightmare. No, seriously, you have no idea. I work five miles from home and have a 90 minute commute, 3 hours if it's raining. Walking is not a viable option for reasons I will leave to your imagination.

But Filipinos, as a group, are really the best; optimistic, hard-working, respectful. And they are always so much grateful for everything.

Katie and the kids are gone. As of Friday, the house is packed out and completely empty except for a couch, a bed, and two suitcases of basic living items. Just me and the cat (who is turning out to be a pain to get back to the states). Lots of time to reflect.

With the house empty, as it was when we first arrived, I recall all the excitement of those early days here. And it reminds me of what we liked about this lifestyle that we are leaving behind. I enjoyed the constant excitement of a new place and a new challenge. I will miss that. I will miss getting to know new peoples and cultures.

And in this case, I will miss specific people. Katie hired Tin as a household helper. Katie hired her over more experienced candidates because she felt right about her. A year later, Katie and Tin wept as they said goodbye. When the others were gone, I thanked Tin for taking care of my wife this year. She wept again. At the end of each day she would say, "I go-wing now, sir."

And I will miss my Boy Scouts. I almost didn't accept the new job out of loyalty to these great young men. We had them over every Tuesday night and they comprise a uniquely outstanding group.

I am so much grateful. I go-wing now.