Monthly Archives: August 2014

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. “Things are bad all over.” For the record, that might be the most dumbass reason anyone has ever given for avoiding taking action. If something sucks, change it. If something’s broken, fix it. If your only contribution is that it’s bad everywhere and are willing to sit around in your dissatisfaction being thankful it’s not worse where you happen to be at the time, well sweet baby Jesus, I’m not sure I even want to know you.

2. Rehash. Once you’ve decided on doing something, just go ahead and go do it. Don’t spend the next three weeks going back over the same tired ground, wringing your hands. There are plenty of new and interesting mistakes we can make without reliving all the old ones indefinitely into the future… so please, for the sake of whatever small sliver of sanity I can muster, can we just move on to new business?

3. Running behind. I’ve been running behind all week. I start the day on Monday 20 minutes late and it’s gotten progressively worse from there. By thursday night the whole damned carefully constructed schedule of events is in serious danger of collapsing on itself. It happens a couple of times a year… my best guess is it’s a function of a lack of sleep finally catching up with me. Sometime in the next few days, but certainly inside the next week, I’m going to have a small meltdown, the system will reset, and things will get back to what passes for normal around here. Getting to that point is an exercise in exhaustion, but at least I’ve been through it enough times now to know more or less what’s coming. Now if I can just keep the thing from stepping all over my weekend, that will probably be my biggest single accomplishment for the month of August.

I got mine the hard way…

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So I was sitting in a meeting a few days ago (because that seems to be my professional raison d’être). I won’t go into the specifics of the discussion, but the general topic was the virtue of in person training versus “virtual” training delivered online. As I was only tangentially involved in the discussion, I quickly found myself engrossed in whatever notes I had previously scribbled onto my yellow legal pad.

What pulled my attention back into the conversation was a crack out of nowhere about not really thinking of academic excellence from people who get online degrees. Now what you should do when someone five steps above you on the org chart says something that ruffles your sensibilities is sit quietly and do absolutely nothing, lest in responding you incur their wrath. Sadly, as many of you know, sitting quietly and keeping my mouth shut is something I tend to struggle with on an almost daily basis.

I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t go to Harvard, or Columbia, or the Wharton School of Business. I took my classes one at a time in the evenings and on weekends, while working full time, and traveling 2-3 weeks each month because that’s what Uncle said he needed me to do… so if you want to talk to me about academic excellence, I’ll be happy to go a few rounds with you on the virtue of an online education. Now I can be as elitist as anyone else, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m the one who got mine the hard way and if that doesn’t satisfy your century old notion about what constitutes “real” education, well that’s ok because I’ll be around long after your Paleolithic point of view is consigned to the pages of history.

I could have said more on the issue. That part of me that likes a good fight desperately wanted to go a dozen rounds, but I had to satisfy myself with looking an individual in the eye and telling them that as the holder of one of these online degrees, I didn’t feel educationally slighted in the least. I scored my point, but it wasn’t particularly satisfying. I didn’t want an apology or even a “present company excluded.” I simply wanted to provide a gentle reminder than no matter how high and mighty, it’s always best to know your audience before firing off at the mouth and losing credibility in the eyes of those who you would lead.

The incredible shrinking staff…

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For most of the last four years my little corner of the bureaucracy has held fairly steady at a total of eight people. Sure that’s a couple short of a full load, but close enough that the job got done without too much trouble. A year ago, one of our host moved on to other opportunities and we were down to seven. A few months ago another chose to go test the waters elsewhere and we were down to six. After that, keeping up got harder. Today, we assembled for the farewell lunch for the next to go out the door and by the end of the week our number will dwindle to five. Life will be harder yet when that work gets farmed out, but I’d be the last guy to condemn anyone for doing what’s in their best interest.

Only a fool would believe that we’ll hold at five for very long before the next departure and the next and the next. There’s a upward limit of doing more with less. There’s an equally fixed limit on even being able to to the same amount with less. Eventually you simply reach a tipping point where you accept less or you apply more resources to bring the scales back into some semblance of balance. At least that’s the way we learned it at my fancy online business school.

Now the discussion focuses on who’s covering what, who’s going to be out when, of needing to look closley scheduled leave, and how many balls we can collectively keep in the air at one time. Those are hard discussions and even harder decisions, but they’re decisions I have the advantage of not needing to make. Giving up my supervisor’s hat strikes me as a better and better decision every single day. I’m just a poor simple working drone, the part of the equation where the “equal and opposite reaction” takes place.

For me that means it’s time to start making my own hard decisions about what the future holds, what I’m willing to accept as a matter of course, and what I’m willing to push back against. Even if nothing comes of it, it’s probably well past time to start filling the options box back up. I can’t help but think that I’ve seen this movie before. I’d just hoped it would be a little longer before I got to see the replay.

Mmmmm… leftovers.

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The LeftoversI’ve been watching The Leftovers on HBO. For those not following along at home, it’s a series based on what would happen after 2% of the population, men, women, and children simply disappeared. There’s plenty of self-loathing, searching for inner peace, questioning authority, and general social stress, you know, a basic dystopian adventure.

Without giving away any key plot elements, it seems to me that all of the characters are slowly descending into their own personal version of madness. Maybe that’s why I take exception with the show’s premise, especially since the great disappearance included the evil as well as the righteous. It was an equal opportunity vanishing.

I tend to think that if I woke up tomorrow to find 2% of the population had disappeared, I’d largely shrug and think of it as a good first step. When the other 97.999% bugger off, then we’d be in business.

Getting physical…

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I had my first meeting with the physical therapist this past Friday. While it wasn’t as god awful as I expected, it didn’t exactly tickle. Plus, strange people touching me. *Shudder* I think the fact that I didn’t either take a swing at the guy or find an excuse to run away should be acknowledged as a major accomplishment for me.

The last thing they handed me before turning me loose into the world was a schedule for future appointments. That’s fine. Although it would have been nice, I in no way anticipated this being a one-and-done kind of endeavor. I didn’t expect, though, that this was going to be a 3-day a week kind of effort. While that’s bad enough, the very best part is that my scheduled start time on most of those days is the same time I’d usually be leaving the office. I’m sure blowing out the door early three times a week for the next four weeks is one of those things that will further endear me to the bosses.

If there’s any bright spot to the next few weeks, it’s that at least for the moment the joys of physical therapy won’t be sucking every minute of free time out of my evening schedule. If that costs me a couple of days worth of sick leave over the course of the month, that’s probably time off well spent. At least it is to me. Like I said, the powers that be are sure to be less than thrilled with this turn of events. This is one of those times when they’re just going to have to learn to live with disappointment, because when it comes to sacrificing my time or theirs, well, it’s not really a contest. We’ll just have to see how well that theory holds up on Monday when a sheaf of leave requests land on someone’s desk.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Eye Exams. In the interest of accuracy, I should say it’s not really the exam that annoys me. It’s the fact that during the exam, the doctor dilates my eyes and then sends me out to the lobby to look at new frames. Have optometrists every really considered the irony of this? Is it, perhaps, their one big inside joke? I have to take my glasses off to try on new frames, so I already can’t see worth a tinker’s damn and then adding insult to injury your fancy drops have go and turn my vision from bad to worse. So anyway, I have new frames coming, but I really don’t have any idea how they look. As far as I could tell when I bought them, they were just dark smudges high center of my face. That’s a hell of a way to pick something you’re going to wear for a minimum of every one of the next 365 days.

2. Cancellations. I need to start keeping track of the number of hours I spend getting ready for things that end up being cancelled at the last minute. While I’m perfectly happy to not have to sit in a random one hour meeting, I’m never going to get back the three to five hours of prep time it takes to get ready for a meeting that’s cancelled. Worse yet, there’s every chance that same meeting will be rescheduled later in the week or the next and that means the prep time involved just doubled. Everyone is busy, but that doesn’t feel like it should be an excuse for piss poor planning.

3. Exercise. Take one look at me and you’ll know this body isn’t a temple, except maybe to Bacchus. With my back out of sorts most of the spring and a good part of the summer, there wasn’t much, if any exercise happening. Doing much more than sitting in a nice hard backed chair for more than 15 minutes at a clip left me pretty hobbled. Now, if only so I can get the doctor to stop scolding me, I’m back to spending time on the bike every night. Sure, I can stick my nose in a book and make it tolerable, but deep down I still think of it as a waste of 45 good minutes I could be using to blog, or work on the next short story, or any of the other things I try to cram into the few hours between getting home from work and collapsing at the end of the night. I envy you people out there who look forward in anticipation to your daily exercise. I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point where I see it as much more than another “must do” activity sucking time away from the things that I really want to spend my time doing.

What do you want?

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Six months ago as part of the annual mandatory evaluation process that pretty much everyone who has ever had a job goes through, I got asked a variation of the most common question ever put to an employee – What do you want out of your career / What are your goals? When faced with that question most people give the stock answer about gaining more experience, growing their position, and taking on more responsibility. That’s the answer everyone expects to hear when they ask that question. The call and response of that question are so ingrained in the professional world that they’re practically boilerplate.

I guess sticking to a script was never one of my strong points. When an idea pops into my head, there’s always a good chance it’s going to come flying out of my mouth in the form of words. The ones that came hurtling out of my face in response to what should have been an no-brainer kind of question still make me smile six months later. That’s probably because they formed the most honest answer I’ve ever given to that kind of question. The look on my interlocutor’s face made veering wildly off the party line all the more worthwhile.

So if you’re asking yourself by this point what is it I want out of my career or what my goals are, the answer is surprisingly simple. As best I remember, it went a little something like this:

I want to stash enough cash away to buy up 20 or 30 acres of West Virginia; a little property, maybe with a stream running through it, with lots of trees, seclusion, and a strong gate at the end of the driveway. A little cabin, a wood stove, solar panels, and not much reason to come down out of my own personal Walden. I want to spend the days writing and the long summer evenings sitting with the dogs on the porch with my feet up watching the sun drop behind the mountains. When it snows I want to not care how long it takes to melt or how long it will be until I can leave. I want to not be driven by a relentless morning alarm, six meetings a day, and an inbox that never empties. I want to balance the scale a lot more towards life and way less towards work. Those are my goals, since you asked.

Trust me, that’s not the kind of answer your boss is looking for when they ask the question. It’s not the answer I should have given and it’s certainly not the one I’d recommend anyone else giving. It does however, have the virtue of being the first time in almost two decades of work that I answered that question honestly. I still feel kind of good about that.

The meeting…

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I’ve been trying to schedule a meeting since about 7:45 Monday morning. If you’re a regular reader around here, I think my general feeling about meetings is fairly well known. What I haven’t done, perhaps, is give you a glimpse into why I think they are enormous time sucks from which there is no hope of escape. The following events are true. They took place in the first week of August 2014:

Monday:
-0745- Received email informing me that I had to attend a video conference on Tuesday afternoon.
-0750- Forwarded video conference information to the people responsible for scheduling such things.
-0900- Followed up via email with the people responsible for scheduling such things.
-1230- Informed that the people responsible for scheduling such things no longer had access to email.
-1235- Contacted the people responsible for scheduling such things via phone. Informed that there were no video conference lines available
-1245- Contacted the people responsible for scheduling such things in three other buildings.
-1430- Received confirmation that there were no lines available anywhere no matter how many times I asked.
-1515- Informed by person scheduling the meeting that they were moving the video conference to Wednesday morning.
-1600- End of Tour.

Tuesday:
-0745- Received email invitation to newly scheduled video conference on Wednesday morning.
-0800- Called the people responsible for scheduling such things and was advised by all locations that I was SOL.
-1000- Contacted by the people responsible for scheduling such things to tell me that a line had become available.
-1100- Advised by echelons higher than reality that we didn’t want to talk about Issue #1 in a public forum.
-1115- Informed meeting organizer that I was not prepared to discuss Issue #1 and requested I be excused from attending the meeting.
-1200- Received email confirmation that I was no longer required to attend the meeting.
-1230- Released the one available conference line back to the people responsible for scheduling such things
-1555- Received phone call from meeting organizer informing me that my attendance was now required, but instead of Issue #1, I should discuss Issue #2.
-1557- Requested a “give back” of the one available conference line from the people responsible for scheduling such things
-1600- End of Tour
-1601- Looked around wondering if I had any of the slides left from the last time I had to discuss Issue #2
-1607- Threw my hands up in disgust and departed for the day.

Proposed Itinerary for Wednesday:
-0730- Check email to see if the people responsible for scheduling such things were able to give me back the one available conference line.
-0735- Begin looking for slides related to Issue #2
-0800- Swear violently and possibly throw something.
-0925- Fill coffee mug with fresh “go juice” in effort to stave off inevitable madness.
-0930- Wander halfway across the county to the place where they keep the one available conference line
-1030- Attend meeting and discuss Issue #2. Or not. Depending on what’s in my inbox in the morning.
-1200- End meeting knowing nothing more about Issue #2 than I did at 0930.
-1600- End of Tour.

So as you can see, my visceral hatred of meetings isn’t just something I came up with as an excuse to write a book. It’s a goddamned self defense mechanism.

Duck… duck…

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One of the perks of working where I work is that the whole area is something of a wildlife refuge. Eagles, turtles, deer, all manner of animals are at home inside the fence. Of them all, perhaps the most obnoxious is the Canada geese that never seem to know what side of the road they want to be on. That’s bad, especially if their wanderings happen to intersect with a road you’re trying to use. It’s like the little hoodlums can sense when you’re in a hurry and take great pains to subvert your efforts.

When they’re on the wing Canada geese are majestic enough; flying in their “V” formation, honking like there’s no tomorrow. On the ground, there’s nothing majestic about them at all. They’re winged shitting machines with no regard for anything or anyone.

I bring that up because this morning the entire walkway from the parking lot to the front of the building was peppered with goose feces. Hundreds of piles of reeking, slimy, stepped in goose turds. That’s what greeted me on the way into the office this morning. If I’d have been caffeinated enough in that moment to realize the universe was sending me one giant, stinking warning sign about what the day was going to be like, I could have avoided great angst and gnashing of teeth today. I’m going to be taking that as a lesson learned.

Culling the herd…

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This morning, I did something that should have been done a long time ago – I culled the list of blogs I follow as well as the ones I link to here. It was painful.

As an active blogger since 2006, no one knows better than I do the challenge of keeping a blog alive week after week, month after month, and year after year. Writing, even when you don’t want to is work. Keeping content fresh and topical is a killer. I tend to think most people who start blogging just have a few things they want to get off their collective chests, or think that writing is something they want to do, or just get busy doing other things. I get that.

I’ve written before about bloggers that just disappear. As a reader, you learn not to take it personally when one of your favorites just stops posting. Still it’s a decidedly unfulfilling way for things to end. That being said, you can’t hang out forever expecting that someone is going to realize they haven’t posted in months or years and suddenly get back to the grind.

While I had some time this morning, I ruthlessly slashed the blogs I had bookmarked, followed, and linked to over the last decade. I can’t tell you how many there were to begin with, but right now there are less than 10 still on the list. To put that in perspective, well under 10% of the blogs I started following over the years are still active. That’s more than a little disappointing, especially because even a few of those are on the cusp, having not posted in the last month or two.

So there you go. Life happens. Bloggers move on. Not me of course, because I refuse to be one of those who just fades away quietly. I like to think my last post will catch me in full rant and provide the internet with the full list of reasons I’m giving it up for good. I’m fairly sure that when the time comes to fold my tent here at jeffreytharp.com, it will be for a far better reason than I just ran out of stuff to say.