All posts by Thomas Styles

I can’t help it. I have to plug the book I wrote 16 years ago. I hadn’t read it since 2008 so to pick it up and read it again was an awesome journey back in time and when I cracked open the book I wasn’t sure what I would be in for. Me, sixteen years ago. Was I prepared for that? No, but it was a lot of fun.

I’m writing adult fiction now, but when I wrote Racing the Rope, I was a fifth grade teacher and writing several manuscripts for middle grade children. It was who I was back then, and what I enjoyed writing. Also, I was inspired by watching my kids at recess jumping rope. I was also inspired by the diverse and worldly fifth graders I had that first year at the private Catholic school I was teaching in at the time.

In 2006, POD (print on demand) technology was emergent and I took advantage of it. I had my book edited, published, and I sold it to the very kids who inspired it. I also sold 75 copies to a local school district who had me in during their Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser. So, it was a lot of fun. When I wrote it, I didn’t realize Disney was going to be releasing a movie called Jump In with similar themes, but I took that as that as a good sign.

Anyway, I wrote Racing the Rope with my fifth graders in mind and each was a character in the book. Granted, many of the characters were not portrayed in a flattering light. They were sassy, obnoxious, rude, self-centered, gender-biased, and arrogant. So, when I told my fifth graders to try to figure out which character was them in the book, they sought to discover the truth of how I viewed them that year. When they realized who they were, they lovingly yelled at me and we argued quite a bit. Of course, I exaggerated on their most obvious traits for comedic effect, but they observed my point well. My children and I bonded strongly that year, but they were a challenging group. Eleven years old back then, they are now heading toward their thirtieth year! Holy cow.

Racing the Rope tells the story of a boy, Geran (short for Geranium) who crosses gender boundaries when he joins a female-dominated jump rope competition, much to the chagrin of his “all boy” classmates. Though when they find a good cause to gender unite over jump roping, they bond as a whole class to show their love for a teacher’s sick child.

I am more than happy to say that after revisiting the story, I am enthralled to be revitalizing it and adding it to my future roster of proposed publications. It makes me happy because I had written close to fifteen manuscripts during those years, all of which I lost when the floppy disks containing my projects disappeared. Racing the Rope survived, and so it remains as one of the gems of that time period. At least for me anyway.

Feel free to buy it and check it out. Forgive the awful cover art and have fun with the story! Suitable for children ages ten and up. Written for the age 10-12 market.

https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/260561-Racing-The-Rope

As I sat at a restaurant on my own recently, quietly observing the crowd I lost myself in reflective thought. My mind is always racing and my need to keep moving is a base compulsion. Whether in business, writing, conversation, or daily routines, it is an endless feeling of the need to accomplish what I’m doing, and getting on to the next thing. To that end, I only give a specific activity in a given day, a certain amount of time to come full circle before moving on to the next thing.

Some may not enjoy that compulsive feeling to keep moving, but I actually love it because “keeping it moving” doesn’t always mean being on-the-job. I love to slow it down, wake up later in the morning, chill with a cup of coffee, read, enjoy the full moon and the pulsating ocean. When I’m doing these types of things, I’m doing something that helps me reach a goal, even if it is the goal of enjoying the simple pleasures of life. But I won’t sit there all day staring at the stars or making pictures out of the clouds. There is more to do!

That brings us back to the restaurant. Once I paused in my reflections I realized it had been ten minutes and nobody had come to me with a menu, some water, or even an acknowledgement that I was present. That is not all time wasted because reflection is a useful expenditure of time. Yet, I like to micromanage my own time and not let someone or something else do that for me, to the extent possible. Why give up more control in our lives than necessary?

The resolution in this case was that I decided ten minutes was enough time to wait for service, and so I got up quietly and left. Nobody even noticed. This is not the first time I have done this, nor will it be the last. With so many options for dining, why wait longer than you want to wait? We have perfect control in these situations. As such and where possible, I don’t typically wait. I don’t wait in long lines at Starbucks. My mind swirls with wonder when I see someone choosing to wait in an obvious 20-minute line for coffee. I don’t wait at restaurants if servers don’t wait on you in a reasonable amount of time. I don’t wait in grocery lines, opting for self-checkout, even when I have thirty things. I don’t wait in lines of traffic when there is an alternative route that is moving more quickly, even if it means it will take longer to get where I want to go. I don’t work on anyone else’s schedule. I try to shop and get banking, business, DMV, and all other needs done on the computer to avoid travel, lines, and added wasted time. The average person sleeps 25 years of his life, so as a species, we should not consider spending any more time on things that can be done more quickly somewhere or someway else. Or as James Bond once put it, “there is plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.”

Is this impatience? Perhaps. But what is wrong with not being patient if it is quietly (or with noise when I’m on my own venting behind a slow driver) conveyed and does not lead to harm? How patient do we want to be anyway? What does a patient person look like and why are they so patient? You don’t have to be. Take control. Leave, avoid, and look for alternative solutions to save more time.

Keep it moving! The time you save, may be your own.

I am comfortable enough with overseas travel now that I can honestly say, I don’t think I’ll ever book another trip through a travel company again. Not that I actually booked with a travel company this time around. I just bought a Groupon and unfortunately those packages are sold by random travel agencies. They didn’t sell me a tour group, mind you. Tour groups are annoying. All this agency did was book my hotels and flights basically, and then said screw you figure out the rest on your own. Which is fine, but the trip I purchased in Greece was an 8-day excursion to three different locations, two of them islands.

The problem is, the visitation of three locations in Greece is not practical for an 8-day visit. Especially when two locations are islands that require hours long ferry rides…ferry rides that cancel when the wind blows hard. At this point, who knows if I’ll even get back to Athens in the morning like I’m supposed to. So there were numerous problems with the ferry transfers and I spent almost a full day’s worth of travel in the economy section of a ferry boat. Which is actually better than the economy section of a plane, but still not fun.

So, why did this agency sell a tour of Greece to three separate locations given the annoyance that most travelers would have with so much travel in a week’s time? You got me there. I thought these ferry transfers were twenty minute rides, like the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Lord, I never dreamed they would have put me on ferries that were five hours a rip. And then one ferry didn’t go because it was windy. What in the world? Stop it. Don’t sell a tour of several Greek islands for customers who only have a week. What are you doing? Go to Athens for a week. Go to Mykonos for a week. Go to Santorini for a week. But for God sake’s don’t go to all three in a week.

Listen people, travel is easy now. You can find a place you want to go…research your hotels and book them online. Book your air flight. You have GPS to get you anywhere on foot or by car. You have the Uber app that works most places in the world to get from point A to point B, you have apps that translate, and foreign people all around the world who speak English better than many Americans. You can do this easier than you can probably bake a cake. So, don’t use a travel agency. If you do use Gate1. But, I recommend you do it yourself. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and headache. Because at the end of the day, these travel companies are just agents sitting behind a desk while you are out in the world dealing with all the problems they cause with their nonsense. Most of their workers probably never been further than the local Walmart.

You can always email to and I’ll take you on my next trip….well, okay, maybe not. But, you get the point.

Anyway, I worked for a sub shop company for 6 years of my life. I was aged 16-22. I got fired twice because I was a punk kid who knew everything and I used to jump in the trash, but they loved me so always rehired me. In spite of my transgressions, I was a hard worker. No matter what I was doing, whether it was playing an instrument, running a race, sweeping up trash, or making a sub…I wanted to do it right and excel. (Oddly, this initiative never translated to desiring a 4.0 student ranking in college. That’s another analysis to look forward to) But making a sub! Now that’s fun.

Anyway, while working for the sub shop I was trained in the delicate art of sub-making. A slice of the bread. A spread of lettuce, four tomatoes, a spread of onions, a pre-determined number of meat slices or tuna balls, a pre-determined number of cheese pieces (one strip for American, four provolone, two swiss…wow I still remember), the dressing, the final cut, and BAM! Wrap and load.

Anyway, for efficiency sake, making subs in record time correctly was important to me and the company. Why? Because if you ever waited in a McDonald’s drive thru line pretty much….anywhere…it’s easy to observe that the extra $10 an hour per employee doesn’t buy efficiency. Just more whining. That’s another blog entry too.

It must have been my early knack for offering efficiency in service that drove me to want to be the fastest sub maker in the company. As it turned out, the sub company hosted a huge event at the Marriott, and I qualified for the sub making races. Yahoo! I forget my qualifying time, but I was making a sub in under ten seconds.

First prize was $1000. Second prize was $500.. Third prize was…a golden coke bottle. What? Well, you can guess by the title where I placed, but there is a story for this.

You see, they provided brand new bread knives for the competition. So, on go, I picked up the shiny serrated knife and sliced not only the top of the bread off, but my finger as well, leaving a gash that I temporarily ignored because I was too busy trying to win the race. And guess what…with blood spatter all over the sub and cutting board, I won the first round! Don’t worry, nobody ate the tainted sub.

Anyway, I knew I had to compete in the semi-finalist round so I bandaged up my finger and shoved my extra-long, puffy digit into the glove, and pressed on. Unfortunately, with the bandage hinderance, I was not able to secure my place in the finals. Yet, I did win third place in the company, which earned me the honors of a golden coke bottle along with a couple of stitches.

I still have that coke bottle today (along with a scar on my finger). The bottle and battle scar serve as a reminder that we must never give up. In spite of the blood, sweat, and tears. We must always press on.

*featured picture is not MY coke bottle. I’m abroad so had to act quickly to bind a substitute picture.

Ongoing adventures remind me that from lemons we must make lemonade. In my previous entry I made mention of being left on the side of the road by the taxi driver in Mykonos because I only had cash to pay for half the distance. (You’ll be happy to know I figured out my PIN and now have plenty of cash!).

Today, I was woken from sleep by the hotel manager with a series of bangs on my door. Flashback time. The travel company I booked with (GVV) never provided me tickets for the ferry from Athens to Mykonos, to Santorini, and back to Athens. Keep in mind this was all part of the vacation package. They provided no details of ferry departures, and provided me with no tickets. So, while in Athens, I was woken by telephone to tell me at 6:30 in the morning that someone was there to bring me to the ferry. Since when? There was no time to pack or catch the ride. So she left. I had to make my way by taxi to the port, pay for a ticket that should have been included, and basically make my own way to Mykonos.

In Mykonos, I thought to get ahead of the game by seeing if the hotel had any tickets or any idea when my departure to Santorini was. No idea. I call GVV. No idea. They referred me to Tour Greece. I call Tour Greece and they say sorry and they will send someone with tickets the next day at 9:30. Port departure is at 12:50. Sounds like a plan.

Back to today. The hotel manager bangs on my door at 10:00 a.m. I scurry to the door and he says the 12:50 ferry has been cancelled and I have ten minutes to get to the port to catch the only ferry out for the day. Yes, ten minutes to pack up my hotel, find a taxi, get to the port (a fifteen minute ride), and get on the boat. Apparently I’m the only one that can do math in Mykonos. Of course, nobody ever left tickets at 9:30. Apparently they cancelled all ferries after the early one due to wind.

My only choice…stay in Mykonos. Thankfully, the hotel had the room still available, but I have to pay out of pocket for the night! What’s more, they told me ferries may continue to be cancelled due to wind for the next two days!

As I eluded to in my last blog, nobody cares that I’m stranded. Nobody cares that I had to pay for ferry tickets and hotel rooms that were already paid for.

So, what do I do? Write, relax, sleep, sip coffee and enjoy Mykonos another night…or two…promising that the only complaining I will do is to the travel company to be reimbursed and to my blog audience. Outside of that, life is good! It’s not always good, but when it’s not, power through it.

–Styles