Forget About Perfectionism. Pursue Excellence Instead.

For many years, I would walk into my Nonna’s kitchen and be greeted by the aroma of what I thought was the perfect tomato sauce.

In most Italian American households, the ritual of the “Sunday Sauce” was a standard way to celebrate the weekend. But in my family, tomato sauce wasn’t just relegated to Sunday. It could show up any day of the week.

My grandmother’s sauce was so good because of the painstaking work that went into it. When in season, she would clean, cook, and jar bushels and bushels of ripe Roma tomatoes from a local farmer. Those tomatoes would be the base of her sauce.

She would make enough for a year’s supply. The work that went into was so physically grueling that most family members that she called on for help would not be able to keep up with her.

Now that she’s been gone for awhile, and that fabulous sauce is no more, I’ve been trying my hand in the kitchen with my sauce pot, trying to recreate that magic. And you know what? Trying to be as good as my Nonna in the kitchen is a concept met with failure.

Failure because I’ve been chasing that perfect tomato sauce from my youth, but it just won’t happen. Because there is no perfect. There is only good, or great (Photo: a recent pot of my creation).

The perfect is the enemy of the good

While chasing perfection, I’ve learned that excellence is attainable with some work, a little practice, and experimentation. My first foray into the art of sauce making, as I remember, wasn’t very good. A little bland, too much acidity, not at all like the flavor I was trying to duplicate.

But I kept trying. Taking different approaches. Instead of just cooking with olive oil, using a little butter as well. Peperoncino added to salt and black pepper. Then maybe some red wine in the next pot. A little sugar. With pork as a base, and without pork.

You probably get the drift. I was trying to find my sweet spot.

The key is the tomato. While I haven’t tackled my Nonna’s work of turning farm fresh tomatoes into shelves of goodness filled jars in my cellar, I use the best tomatoes I can find. I’ve tried many brands along the road to find what I like, and the San Marzano tomato is superior to all others. The Cento brand is the best.

Yes, they are twice the price of your standard canned tomato, but that’s OK. This is one area where I refuse to skimp. And it’s worth it. While I can’t duplicate the aroma and taste of the sauce that used to simmer on my Nonna’s stove, I come damn close.

Note to my kids

Life is a lot like my tomato sauce . It will never be perfect. The more you search for perfection, the less likely you are to find it. This will make you unhappy. There will always be something bigger, better, faster, more expensive, and maybe…tastier…than what you have.

This doesn’t matter. Don’t even pay it attention. Forget about being perfect.

Try to be really good, even excellent, in what you like to do.
Give it your best shot. Keep trying.
If your “sauce” isn’t good the first time – try it again.
Don’t quit.
Keep “cooking”…with just your effort, that sauce eventually becomes tasty.
Life is good with small, everyday things that you love…like tomato sauce.
Nonna always said “Life is precious”. Take that to heart. Don’t waste it chasing “perfect”.

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Some Guys Have All The Luck

Some guys have all the luck.

Aside from this being a song title for a very good Rod Stewart remake in the musically potent 80’s (1984 to be exact), the above is a well worn phrase that some people are just luckier than others.

You may have been told that many things have nothing to do with luck. You make your luck with hard work and preparation.

You may think when I speak of luck, I’ll write about good fortune in the relationship I have with my wife, or taking the enjoyable journey of watching my kids grow to be adults. In that respect, few people are as lucky as me.

Just about two weeks ago, I was turning 49 as I was coming home in a plane, touching down on ground that had been dusted with the real first snow of the winter. I had been traveling on business for four days, and couldn’t wait to see my wife and kids.

No, the luck I speak of is a little different. For 47 of my now 49 years, I had the great fortune of having not one, but two mentors to guide me through my life. My grandmother, Rose, (with me in the photo below) and my godmother, my aunt Nicolina, were those strong forces.

Although my aunt passed away last year, and my grandmother’s been gone since 2010, their influence will not be going away any time soon.

They always told me to “eat my vegetables“, “waste not want not“, and my favorite “sit down, have a cup of coffee“. But, influence was more than their words. Their influence was action, and the obvious priorities in life.

The great football coach Vince Lombardi had a quote, a mantra that has stuck with me for a long time. In relation to his players, he believed that:

“There are three things important to every man in this locker room. His God, his family, and the Green Bay Packers. In that order.”

I’m not a Packers fan, but I’ve long been a Lombardi fan. His view on the priority pecking order is spot on. Focus on your God, your family, and your life’s work will make for a more successful, stress free you.

My grandmother and godmother were the poster children for this way of thinking. They had a great zeal toward their faith, a world centered around family, and the work that supported that family.

My opinion? This is not just another pretty Lombardi quote (although there are many). It should be a way of life.

We live in an age that is a constant bombardment of communication. What that translates to is consistent distraction. It becomes easy to feel restless. Impatient. You can take your eyes off what’s most important.

I’m no different. I can be a victim of social media (and other) distractions as easily as the next person. An advantage that I do have to bring me back to earth is the example of the life lessons of two Sicilians that I grew up alongside.

Lombardi would think they got it right. Their time spent here was old school principle in its simplest form, pure in concept and execution. And I observed it from both of them for 47 years.

You know what they say. Some guys have all the luck.

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Growin’ Up – Giving A Stiff Arm To The Face of Life

When you become a new, fresh faced father pacing around the floor in a hospital room, holding your newborn baby in your arms, you have no idea what will happen next.

You have no idea how fast time will pass you by. It feels as if the years have the span of months. It all just happens way too fast.

This has happened to me twice. Twice holding newborns. Twice the feeling of time speeding by, like that rocket ship we all daydreamed about when we were kids.

I watched my daughter run around in our back yard, a little girl. Swinging on her swing set. Now I watch her get behind the wheel of a car, to take a driving lesson, another step into that now brief journey into adult life.

Although sometimes I can feel like a kid, the hard truth is I’m not anymore. Soon my children won’t be kids anymore.

This discovery was made again on the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday. My son and I decided to celebrate the grand tradition of American football that day with a game of “two hand touch” out in the back yard.

Joey had just turned 12, but he’s still my “little guy”, slight of stature. In a wrestling match or a light sabre fight, because of my size, I’m usually the victor of any match physically.

Our game started innocently enough, with some kicks and passes, catches and dropped balls. Just like the real thing. Then he decided he wanted to run for touchdowns. He tried his best on the first few attempts, but with his short strides, I caught him pretty quickly from behind.

On one particular run, I set myself in front of him to stop him once again. No problem, especially since he was running and giggling at the same time.

Then it happened. He stopped giggling (did he put on his mean face?), tucked the ball under his arm, ran full throttle towards me and stiff armed me…his right hand straight into my chin. In a state of shock, I fell flat on my ass as he ran past, scoring a touchdown in our makeshift “end zone”.

I thought I tasted blood, and sure enough, I touched my hand to my mouth and it came away with a small, red streak. After he dumped me to the ground with a text book stiff arm, I came up bleeding!

My son’s a well mannered boy. He apologized to me for making me bleed, and we kept playing a while longer, continuing to have fun. But the results of our playtime speak for themselves.

Growing up cannot be denied, and kids can’t be contained in the backyards of their childhood forever. They break free. Breaking the tackles, stiff arming the obstacles of life, and running for glory.

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The Purpose Driven Blog: It’s All About Me, My Friend

I read frequently that the consensus to have a site that is popular, that people will read, is to be helpful. A familiar buzz phrase is to publish “useful content”. Some writers will even go overboard and put an “insanely” in front of that phrase.

I know writers that do this well. When it comes to business and social media, my friends Marcus and Craig put out some great stuff. If I want to know how to effectively use email or Twitter to its full potential in a business context, a guy like Marcus can show me some ropes.

And although Marcus posts about business, he puts a lot of personality into those words. I’ve never met him off-line, but he comes across as one of the guys, someone I can sit down and share beers with.

Over at his website, Vince publishes excellent food related content in the format of easy, simple to prepare recipes accompanied by mouth watering photos.

His philosophy is simple. It’s easy to eat well at home, without the bloated prices and caloric content of a restaurant.

He’s right. I’ve saved thousands of dollars in the “dining out” category of my budget by following this principle. Reading Vince has helped me do this.

That’s what I call helpful content.

I set out to do the same with my posts, the intentions are there. But, the content that I write that I most identify with are the posts that are about my concerns. Whether it’s about me, my wife and kids, or other members of my family, what I write really has nothing to do with the reader.

It’s all me, me, me.

And according to many ‘experts’, without the ability to help your reader, your content fails.

I will try to keep the reader in mind with future posts. But I know the only way I have been helpful to you (if at all) is purely by accident. By creating feelings of how great it is to be a parent, or to recreate that glow of growing up in the 70s and 80s (What an era!). 🙂

Really though, it’s all about me.

I need to prop up my ability to remember. Man, the memory goes, and it can go quick. Take the aforementioned 70s – 80s. Those images used to be crystal clear in my mind, in full color, with the voices of my grandmother and other family sharply present.

Now, everything looks grainy, with that color a little washed out, and faded. Memories become less vivid. I want to try to put a halt to that. This blog should help keep memories alive.

This reason is my number one. Whether it’s a post about my godmother, reflecting on a kitchen coffee ritual from the past, or remembering saying goodbye to my mentor, the written word can take what you might have forgotten and bring it all rushing back.

The blog can also act as a great resource for my kids. As my friend Jack mentioned in a comment recently, my children may want to read these words. Why not?

When the time comes, they can think back to a breath taking end to an epic baseball game, the relaxing summer days spent on the lake in their youth, or an unforgettable trip to New York City.

All that will be here waiting.

Yes, it would be nice if I could give you some social media tips or post content that is more business friendly. But that’s not the direction I’m interested in taking. I have a different purpose.

If you read this far, and you’re still sticking around, thank you. I’m here to build a library of words that my kids may appreciate years from now. But I think you can take away a little appreciation as well.

And who knows? Maybe, in the end, some of this may even be…helpful.

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Your Life Is A Great Story. Are You Telling It?

If there is one thing that the march of time does for you, it has an ability to enhance your observational skills. When I was younger, I saw ordinary people for what I thought they were: very ordinary.

Now that I’m…ahem…older, I see individuals around me as anything but ordinary. I wrote about it in a post about my grandparents, about how extraordinary they were. But there’s so much more to see.

As I see it, everyone has a story.

For the bulk of my life, I didn’t think I was anything special. A regular guy (average Joe, if you will) that grew up, went to school, got a job, met a girl, got married, blah blah blah. Just like everyone else.

However, that opinion is untrue. Mine looks like an ordinary life, but there’s a story behind everything. You have them too. How are you telling them? As The Who’s Roger Daltrey once famously shrieked, “Can you see the real me, can you?”

When I was growing up, I lived in a neighborhood that was all about community, culture, and traditions. The kind of world that barely exists anymore. There’s a story behind that.

I was a fat kid that didn’t want to be fat anymore, and I made a decision, after being inspired by a movie, to take control of my life and lose that weight and never gain it back. There’s a story behind that.

I went to middle and high school at a military academy, and struggled to fit in. There was conflict and rebellion, and it ended when I made it out and graduated. Another story.

Instead of getting a college degree, I decided to go to work in the family business. At the time, I thought it the only way to build on a relationship with my Dad. I was a bartender in his restaurant for nearly twenty years. There’s many stories behind that. 🙂

The working hours there were long, and at times went into the wee hours. If they didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have met my future wife one of those nights, while she was out having fun with friends. There’s a great story there.

If we didn’t get married and have our two wonderful kids, I probably wouldn’t have made the move to change careers, which was another struggle. I left my comfort zone behind to make sure I had enough time to spend with my family…and have no regrets.

GabJoeProfile — The two loves of our lives, looking over the Queen of American Lakes.

Notice a pattern?? There’s a story behind that.

You have stories too. Just about everyone I know has a great story. Whether they believe it or not. They can be amazing, they can be tragic. Most of them fall in between. But “in between” is still worth telling. You live a bigger life than you know.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I was under the impression that all of the family that surrounded me were ordinary. That’s just plain crazy thinking. They had some of the best stories of them all. They had memories of living through the Great Depression, of the family farm, of surviving Allied bombing raids in Italy, and relatives that fought in the World War.

Many of those life reflections were shared with me around a kitchen table, told in the simplest of terms. I am grateful to have heard them when the opportunity was there.

Don’t miss your opportunity to share yours. Remember, there’s a story behind that.

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