How you can help

Do you personally know Walter Cronkite?
Do you know someone who knows WC?
Do you have any similar tips on how you have gotten to meet WC?
Have you ever taken on a silly project and succeeded? How did you succeed?
Have you ever taken on a silly project and failed? Why did you fail?
Please link to this blog, in your blog and ask if anyone knows WC...

Some Challenges

1. I have to learn how to change my voicemail greeting
2. I have to get in touch with WC
3. I have to convince WC that this is a worthy venture
4. I have to stay motivated
5. I have to convince friends and family that this is not a worthless waste of time
6. I have to document accurately my progress
7. God Forbid, but what if WC falls ill or something like that.
8. God Forbid, but what if I fall ill or something like that
9. What if tomorrow someone, maybe even WC himself reads this webpage and my journey wasn't really that hard, how will I deal with that emotionally?
10. What if nobody cares?

How I envision this happening.

So I picture myself somehow getting in touch with someone in the Cronkite camp. Maybe through a letter, or the six degrees of seperation. Then I assume that somepoint before the official end of summer that WC will be in Manhattan (where I work and very near to where I live). At that point I could meet him with my cell phone in hand (must remember to bring cell phone). Then I will have a quick chat and he will record the greeting for me.

WHY?

I am 30, going to be 31 years old. I have a fairly comfortable life. I have a decent job. I have a beautiful wife. I live and work in the greatest area on earth. My life has become predictable. The same food for lunch, the same exercise routine that barely works, the same attempts to find motivation while sitting in the second hour of a strategic planning meeting, and so on and so on.

My life has become filled with two thing normalcy and obligations. There is no whimsy. When I was 21 my life was filled with failed and successful attempts at dubious ventures. I would keep checklists of Seinfeld episodes I had seen, I would make mixed tapes with titles such as Music to listen to while riding in a Helicopter (Even though I have never ridden in a helicopter), I would commit hours to improving my Frisbee Golf game, and worst of all I studied and wrote a lot of Haiku. Now my life is seriously lacking whimsy.

Summer is the time for whimsy. Why do you think taxes are due at the end of winter? Why do you think that picnics take place in summer? Why do I find the need to constantly write in rhetorical questions in summer? I don't know.

I had been thinking for a some time of a whimsical journey to take on this summer. Something that will have no value, except in the journey itself. Something that will take some effort, but not a backbreaking amount of effort. Something that will force creativity, force me to interact with new people, and something that will most of all force me to answer the question "And why would you do something so silly?" and I could answer in an almost Hilary-esque "why not."

Last week on the official start date of summer, I was emailing back and forth with my cousin, second cousin actually, about life and stuff, and the perfect challenge arose. Could I get Walter Cronkite to record the outgoing message on my cell phone's voicemail? Currently, I have my awkard cracking voice stating, "Please leave a message after the tone thank you very much." In coming posts I will discuss how I envision this happening. Why W.C.? and how and what I have done to accomplish this. If you want to help please post a comment.

Until then I now raise my virtual glass of champagne and offer a toast to whimsy...