{"id":1363,"date":"2013-08-29T12:23:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T20:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=1363"},"modified":"2013-08-29T12:23:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T20:23:00","slug":"my-way-or-thy-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=1363","title":{"rendered":"My Way or Thy Way?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reading a recently published autobiography by Paul Anka, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/My-Way-Autobiography-Paul-Anka\/dp\/0312381042\" target=\"_blank\">My Way<\/a>\u201d (New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2013), I was taken by his description of Frank Sinatra, for whom Anka wrote the hit song, \u201cMy Way\u201d in 1969. Sinatra had his ups and downs and was both a bigger-than-life character who had indeed lived a life that\u2019s full, but also, as described in the book, engaged in a number of follies, drunkenness, entitlement, and other shenanigans that I don\u2019t much admire.<\/p>\n<p>I love the song, the lyrics touching on many elements of my life, too, but yet it didn\u2019t fully express my feelings: Indeed I did do it my way, sort of. Indeed, about ten years ago I had a virtual conversation with my guardian angel, \u201cBud,\u201d and on reconsideration of all the breaks I was given, we recognized that it would make more sense to sing the song, \u201cThy Way.\u201d But I did make some decisions, I did exercise some will, I deserved some credit. Okay, we allowed that it was fair for me to claim 18.3% of my fate based on my choices. All the rest was Grace. So now when I sing the song, I sing two out of three verses and finish with \u201cdid it&#8230;<strong><em>thy<\/em><\/strong> way!\u201d    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading a recently published autobiography by Paul Anka, \u201cMy Way\u201d (New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2013), I was taken by his description of Frank Sinatra, for whom Anka wrote the hit song, \u201cMy Way\u201d in 1969. Sinatra had his ups and downs and was both a bigger-than-life character who had indeed lived a life that\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}