Shane Life

Today, People Magazine posted a story online (I got the link from CNN, I swear) in which Vanessa Hudgens (she of High School Musical fame) shares the “secret to her great relationship with co-star Zac Efron.”

There are so many things wrong with this story, but I’d like to tackle her “secret.”

“If you really love someone, you shouldn’t have to work at it,” the actress tells Cosmo Girl! for its July/August issue, reports Entertainment Tonight. “You finish each others’ sentences and have the same sense of humor.”

First of all, it should be assumed that we all know this is a 19-year-old talking about the secret of her great relationship with her 20-year-old co-star. It’s beyond ridiculousness. Hudgens and Efron have been dating since October of 2007. For those of you that are bad with math, that’s less than 12 months.

While a great relationship should not feel like work, you still have to work at it. If I’m going to take a celebrity’s sage advice about relationships, I’ll stick with my boy Will Smith who said:

“Counseling, individual learning, books, conflict resolution,” Smith confided. “It is a full time job to try and be happy. People tend to think that they can go to work for 50 or 60 hours a week and then come home and their relationship is just supposed to work.”

That’s the truth. Why would you spend less time working at your relationship than you do on your career? I know that People’s business is selling magazines and driving traffic to their site, but it’s really irresponsible for them to prop up this lackadaisical attitude toward relationships, especially from a teenage pop star who has been in her supposed “serious” relationship less than a year.

Over the past several months, Alli and I have been doing some pre-marital counseling for a couple that I will be marrying in late July. It’s been a terrific experience because out of all the things I’m good at, I think I’m probably best at being married. It’s not a skill that will necessarily lead to a long, illustrious career, but it sure makes my life a lot more enjoyable.

One of the things that I’ve found is a constant in the couples that I look to as relationship mentors in my life is that if you want to make a relationship or a marriage work, you should work harder at your relationship than you would in your career. When you do, it won’t feel like work. You’ll be happier, your significant other will be happier, and you’ll find that working at a relationship can be the most rewarding thing that you’ll ever do. If I had but one piece of advice to give to couples, that would be it.

That, and don’t get relationship advice from 19-year-olds in People Magazine.

I’ve been working from home this week on a really time-consuming project. I love working from home because I get to work in my cutoff sweats, don’t have to shower, can listen to music as loudly as I want without headphones and I actually get more work done than I would in the office with all the distractions.

I took the above pic with a timer to show what my week’s looked like. Click through to Flickr to see all the notes I put on it of what everything is. Including my sleeping dog. Come on. You know you want to.

Basketball season is over. Mission accomplished. 

So now what? The weather has turned warmer (must be that global warming stuff) and work is crazy. I’m finding that I’m more productive out of the office than in…what does that mean? It means that fluorescent lights are rough on me…that cubicle walls are stifling my creativity.

Fortunately, I work at a company that is understanding of my need for environmental hugs. It helps to be comfortable. It also is awesome to be able to work in these Mossimo cutoff sweat shorts during the day. I’ve been busting my tail to get this presentation done for my upcoming conference this week and I’m looking forward to working on some new projects.

So what now? The Masters is this weekend - one of my favorite golf events of the season. I won’t be able to catch most of it because I’ll be at the conference, but I’ll catch the final round and watch Tiger win another green jacket. 

My last few weeks has been absolutely crazy. I’m looking forward to a little slower pace for a while.

How have you been?

Sorry for the lack of posting. Crazy weekend. Lots of freelance work. Even more real work.

Man, have I ever had a week.

I’m really looking forward to kicking back this weekend…oh wait, I can’t really. I have 3 freelance projects to work on and I still have to figure out why my downstairs toilet is leaking. Plus, I’m speaking next weekend outside of Topeka, so there’s that.

Just when I thought I’d be able to breathe…

However, I’ve committed to tonight of just hanging with Alli and the dog. It’s going to be a fantastic night of pizza, soda, and catching up on our recorded shows. I think we’ve got about 6+ hours of TV to watch. Thank goodness for skipping commercials!

What are you up to this weekend?

When I was a kid, I loved Garfield. I don’t know why, but I think it had something to do with the fact that Jim Davis is a brilliant marketer and released a new book regularly. I liked how all the books lined up nicely on the shelves…they always looked so nice together.

The comic itself isn’t really all that funny. It always relied on the same tired jokes - Garfield loves lasagna, Garfield hates Odie, Jon is an idiot, and of course, Garfield hates Mondays.

I’ve become Garfield in that aspect. Mondays are really difficult for me because the weekends are becoming more and more like extensions of the week, crammed with things to do, places to go, people to see. I am someone who really enjoys relaxing and by the time Monday rolls around, I haven’t yet recovered from Saturday.

The triple skinny gingerbread latte helped this morning, but by noon, I was dragging. It’s now 8:00 in the evening and I’ve yet to leave work at work. My awesome wife made us some makeshift homemade pizza on some naan we bought at Wild Oats yesterday and we’re watching Celebrity Apprentice until the State of the Union starts. Here’s hoping there’s some way that Bush can salvage the last year of his presidency and at least get some sort of a line item veto policy into place that will curb these earmarks (also known as “pork”). That would at least be a start towards getting some sort of stability into the economy…so that our government stops giving places $50,000 for a mule museum. But while I watch, I’ll be working on the 48-page brochure I’ve been spending time on all day long. Good times.

Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays…

It’s back to the old grind today.

Since I used up all my vacation galavanting around Italy and France this summer with my lovely wife, I am working this week.

It should be a relatively slow week. We closed out a couple huge projects last week and I’m getting ready to ramp up some new ones for Q1.

I got some great presents for my birthday and Christmas from my whole fam. Lots of fun books and DVDs, gift cards, clothes…all good times. I’ve been wanting to get a MacBook for a while now and am now chomping at the bit since I have some money burning a hole in my pocket, but after running down to the Apple Store on the Plaza today, I’ve decided to wait until after MacWorld in January before I purchase anything…that way I’ll be in on the latest and greatest.

Did you get anything fun for Christmas?

I’m out of here in a few minutes and I can’t wait! Birthday weekend. Christmas on Tuesday.

We’re off to Council Bluffs for the weekend, then back to KC for Christmas day. I’ll try and post from Iowa, but not sure it’s going to happen.

It’s been a crazy week at work and I’m very relieved that it’s over. Looking forward to a little R & R over the weekend.

If I don’t blog to you before then…have a Merry Christmas!

I’ll be traveling to Atlanta on Friday for the second time this year. I’ll actually be on the ground only for about 24 hours, giving a flurry of 20-minute presentations (8 in 4 hours) and then attending a couple round table meetings before returning home Saturday night.

I wasn’t mad about Atlanta the first time and it’s not like I’ll be experiencing the city this time around. The conference could be in Hoboken or Phoenix or El Paso and I wouldn’t know the difference. The conference is being held at the Airport Westin, so I won’t be venturing more than a mile from the airport.

So it is in the crazy world of the Marketing Specialist.