Monthly Archives: May 2012

Stupid lists…

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I start nearly every day of my life with a list. Sometimes it’s a real list written on paper or filed away in a “to do” app. Other times it’s a simple mental check list of things I want to get done before the lights go out sometime between 10-11:30 that night. The only thing all of these lists have in common is that I haven’t managed to work my way all the way to the last item on any of them since before I can remember. Some days these damned lists are longer at the end of the day than they were at the beginning. That feels wrong on so many levels. At the rate I’m tacking things to do onto the bottom of my most current list, I should be catching up sometime around summer 2015.

Now let’s face it, I’m a pretty productive guy. In fact, I take great and perverse pride in my ability to get things done. Even so, I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t a better way. Maybe it really is time to outsource some of the domestic responsibilities around here so I’ve got a snowball’s chance of getting caught up any time in the near future.

Self censorship…

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Every now and then I manage to write a post here that strikes exactly the tone I was looking to hit. That makes it all the more troubling when you read it one last time before hitting the “publish” button and realize it’s chock full of things you can’t say out loud. I’m not confessing to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby or anything, but it was just one of those moments of clarity that screamed out that things weren’t quite ready for prime time. That wasn’t the first time I’ve had to self censor and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I share so much on here that sometimes it’s hard to remember that not everything needs said as soon as it pops into my head. Blogging is a real double edged sword like that. Things that seem like a good idea while I’m writing them, seem slightly less enchanting after they’ve gone live. I guess that’s the price we pay for instant communication.

As usual, I’ve filed my original post away in the archives and hope that it might someday see the light of day again. Unfortunately, that means for tonight you’re left with this post explaining why you’re not reading anything terribly interesting tonight. Sorry about that. Better luck tomorrow.

Pack Leader (Part 2)

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When it comes to leadership, the first lesson is almost always that your most important job is taking care of people. The same is true when you’re the pack leader. Unfortunately, I didn’t bother going to school to become a veterinarian, so that means for anything other than minor issues, I’m stuck relying on the expertise of others about how best to provide medical care. Now with most dogs, as long as they’re getting quality food, regular baths, and the requisite amount of attention, they’re mostly good until the end of their days. Unfortunately, half of my pack consists of an English Bulldog which guarantees that the vet and I are going to become very close.

Lovable as they are, the bulldog is a walking medical disaster. Eyes, nose, joints, food and skin allergies, and a plethora of other genetic issues plague the breed from beginning to end. I knew that going into the experience as a bulldog owner. I almost feel sorry for the people who see a bulldog pup in the window and take him home without knowing what they’re in for. Winston is a fairly healthy bulldog and in four years his medical bills have run somewhere around $5,000. Trust me when I say that bulldogs are not for the faint of heart. The little buggers will bleed you dry. But they’re cute in their own pug-nosed drool covered sort of way… and hopelessly loyal… and stubborn as the day is long. That’s their charm. And why we tolerate the madding expense of keeping them around.

Pack leader…

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I am the pack leader. I set the rules, provide the food, and make sure we are sheltered from the weather every night. When they get snippy with each other, I restore order and tranquility. So riddle me this, if I’m the pack leader, what makes it ok to poke me in the forehead with your cold wet nose? I know I’m definitely not the one who decided it was ok to wake up and hit the ground running at 6AM on a Saturday morning… but still, here I sit thirty minuets later clicking away at the keyboard while the rest of my pack has curled up on their beds and gone back to sleep. Anyone who ever said that leadership was glamorous clearly never had a dog.

It’s a good think I like mornings… and an even better thing that I like standing on the porch with a cup of coffee steaming in my hand watching the night give way to morning, listening to the horses across the road waking up, and enjoying an hour or two of peace before the rest of the world catches up with me. Maybe the dogs did me a favor this morning after all.

Seriously…

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As a rule, I think people take themselves and the value of what they do too seriously. Heart surgery? Sure, that’s serious business. Making sure prisoners don’t escape from jail, yep, I’ll sign off on that one too. Airline pilot? You guessed it, another example of serious work requiring people to be serious. Sitting in a nice cushy office tweaking version twelve of a PowerPoint presentation somehow fails to rise to the level of seriousness that justifies having an inflated sense of self importance. Lord knows you couldn’t tell that from looking around at a room full average bureaucrats, though.

To me, the only really serious issues are the once that involve life and death. Almost everything else falls into the category of nice to have/do. Some of the other stuff is important enough, I guess, but is it really “serious as a heart attack?” If you have to stop and think about it, the answer is almost certainly no… And that’s ok, because when everything is a priority, nothing ends up being a priority.

What I’m saying is I’m going to need everyone to take an operational pause, suck in a deep breath, and just relax for a minute. I promise that no matter how important you think that PowerPoint slide is, 200 years from now it’s not going to be under glass at the National Archives laying alongside the Charters of Freedom in the rotunda. It’s not even going to be stored in the Library of Congress with your Twitter feed, so take a minute, collect your thoughts, and remember that history isn’t going to give a rat’s ass who we are or what we happened to be doing on a random Friday in May.

Most people seem to find that thought a little disturbing. It disturbed me for a long time until I realized what a gift it was. Once you embrace it, being an anonymous face in the crowd gives you a remarkable sense of freedom.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Asking for volunteers. Send out the email as many times as you want, but no way, no how am I volunteering for a “special project” without first getting the skinny on what I’ll actually be doing. It’s not personal, but over the last decade I’ve learned that sticking your hand up and asking for a surprise almost never ends well.

2. Gay marriage. If you’re against gay marriage, then by all means, voice your dissent by not having or participating in one. But in since it’s 2012 and not 1612, could we all just stop for a minute and try not to inflict our own brands of puritan morality on everyone else in the room. If you’re going to call yourself conservative, then act like a conservative and tell the government to butt out of all aspects of our collective personal lives and not just the parts or actions that you personally agree with. That makes you a hypocrite, not a conservative.

3. Underwear bombs. If your God teaches you that filling your drawers with C4 and lighting the fuse is a guaranteed all access pass to all the best parts of the hereafter, you’re doing religion wrong. I’m serious, damnit. Why on earth are you praying to a supreme being that wants you to blow your own naughty bits off? Those 72 virgins aren’t much good to you when Mr. Happy gets vaporized. Asshats.

Fast food, but not really…

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There was a time in my life before I found myself fully entrenched in the middle of the organizational quagmire that is the federal bureaucracy. During that time, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, one of the many jobs I had was flipping burgers at the local McDonald’s. There’s a better than average chance I worked there with some of the people reading this post. Since I spent the better part of four years doing every job in the place from fry cook to cashier, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I can speak from experience, if not with authority on the issue.

If I remember my cheesy video training correctly, it’s considered bad form for a “guest” to wait in line for 35 minutes to place his order and get his food handed across the counter. Sure, if a couple of buses show up, it’s no unheard of, but for your standard lunchtime rush, it’s pretty much frowned upon. Especially when there are only seven people in the line in front of you. This isn’t rocket science after all. We’re putting pre-pattied portions of cooked meat on buns and deep frying potatoes until the buzzer rings for us to take them out and add salt. I’m pretty sure if I took of my tie and dug up my old apron, I could still show you how everything is done.

I’m sure there were extenuating circumstances. There almost always are. Even so, there’s never a really good reason for a burger joint to take more than half an hour to produce a regular menu item… especially when my only option for getting out of line at the point is elbowing my way through to the end or climbing over or under the stanchions. That’s just bad business and the only reason I’ll need to take my business next door whenever I feel the need for a greaseball cheeseburger.

Euro Trash…

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Free and open elections are wonderful things, except for the part where people tend to elect the kind of leaders they deserve instead of the kind they actually need. Getting yourself elected on a platform of more spending, lowering the retirement age, taxing the rich, and saying the hell with the global finance system is pretty much a cakewalk. Politics 101 is pretty much focused on telling the people whatever they need to hear to give you their vote. Unfortunately, Politics 410 is the real world practice of how to govern once you find yourself taking over the plush new office you won in the last election. I suspect our friends in France are going to discover that governing is a far more problematic exercise than simply getting elected.

We live in a wildly interconnected world, particularly when it comes to the economy. Unrest in Europe, bad decisions, and blatant disregard for economic fundamentals will ripple across the Atlantic and wash up on our shores as tidal waves if a balance in the system isn’t maintained. For a hundred years, the United States could be counted on to prop up the international economy in times of distress. This week, this month, this year, the story is a little different. We aren’t in a position to flood the market with liquidity. We’re just barely in a position to eek out positive GDP growth for ourselves, keeping our proverbial head above water as it were… Even that’s required borrowing completely unsustainable amounts of money.

The system, for the moment, is in a perilous balance. Trying to go it alone based on election year promises seems like a sure recipe for upending what small measure of stability the marketplace has managed to achieve this year. I just hope our friends across the pond have the good sense to know the difference between electioneering and governing. If they don’t, well, the global economy and our own personal economies could be a much more brutal looking place a year from now. Might as well open the door on a new bloody Dark Age.

See, and people say I can’t be hopelessly optimistic.

Monday…

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It’s Monday. That means I should write something even if all I want to do is ignore this whole writing thing and vege out in front of the television. It occurs to me that writing is a lot like exercise that way. No matter how much you know you should do it, you head concocts all sorts of new and interesting reasons why you should really put it off until tomorrow. After all, tomorrow you’ll be sure to have plenty of motivation and time and energy to spare, right? You see that’s the catch. It’s always easy to start something, but seeing it through the nowhere land between the beginning and the end is something else entirely. Still, writing is way more interesting than peddling away on that damnable stationary bike I have sitting in the basement. It’s possible that I may have stumbled upon a way to keep myself motivated on these many nights I don’t feel like I can churn out another word. All I have to do is remember that my other option is spending quality time spinning my wheel and going nowhere. Maybe it’s not the most healthy kind of motivation, but on Monday night, I’ll take what I can get.

Jackpot dreams…

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A disturbing number of things I say every week start with the phrase “When I hit the PowerBall…” Usually that’s leading to some discussion of buying an island somewhere in the South Pacific and doing my best to ignore the rest of the world. It occurs to me that my needs are really much more mundane. Sitting here tonight, I suspect I could be bought off with much less than a full-blown lottery jackpot. Sure, the island or a well fortified Montana compound would be a nice touch, but I suspect I’d be perfectly happy just sitting here on the porch with the dogs at my feet and my nose stuck in a good book. I think I could potentially entertain myself like that for years, as long as I didn’t have a tiny little voice in the back of my head reminding me that I have to get up at first light tomorrow to go sit in a cube for eight hours. It seems the better the weekend, the heavier the weight of Sunday night bears down. Bugger all.