Author Archives: jdtharp

Thinking out loud…

Posted on by

I’m usually dead asleep seconds after my head hits the pillow. I’m mercifully untroubled by racing thoughts or ponderings once the lights go out. It would be nice to attribute that to some kind of innate superior ability to make my brain shut up on command, but I’m forced to assume it’s just a simple matter of the way I’m wired.

I did have something of an unnerving thought last night just as sleep was coming on, though. Just as I was drifting off, up from the depths, bubbled the questions “Do you even want to keep blogging or is it just force of habit?”

Sure, it’s not the deep meaning of life style question that some people get while they’re lying in the darkness, but it hit hard enough to stick with me once I woke up this morning, so there must be something there even if it’s just the wisp of a passing thought.

The honest answer is I’m not sure. After 3,181 posts I have no idea if I’m actually saying something new or regurgitating the same 20 topics ad infinitum. There’s never been a unifying focus here – no defining characteristic that I can point to and say this is what I’m writing about – unless you count whatever happens to be on my mind any given day as having a particular focus. Maybe it is, but I’m sure the blogging experts would be quick to point out that one man’s opinion isn’t generally something that monetizes well. Of course that’s never been the point here either. In fact, keeping this platform advertiser free ends up costing me a few dollars every year… although I consider it money well spent to keep banner ads from covering every bit of white space. As long as I’m active here, I’m determined to be the only product being advertised.

You might have noticed by now that I haven’t answered my own bedtime question yet. That’s mostly because I don’t really have a good answer. Some part of me would be happy to give it up and claw back the time. Another part is sure that I still have things to say – and that there’s absolutely no chance of my shutting up on issues as they happen. I’m an opinionated sonofabitch – and even when that opinion isn’t popular or cuts against the running tide, I can’t seem to help but give it voice.

All of that means that I’m not likely to go away willingly. I may take a look at the current five-day a week posting schedule, though. I can’t help but wonder if content wouldn’t be a little more fleshed out if I didn’t rush it through every day to hit my self-imposed 6PM deadline. Taking posts in a little more of a long form direction doesn’t seem like the worst thing that could happen – except for my general lack of interest in or skill at editing, which could prove even more painful than writing something fresh every single day.

Sorry if you were expecting something deep. Today has apparently been just a post where I do some thinking out loud. I’m not sure it’s driven anything towards a decision, but getting ideas down “on paper” always helps me clarify what’s rattling around in my brain… even if it doesn’t make for the most entertaining blogging. 

The inevitable Monday question…

Posted on by

Yesterday someone asked me the inevitable Monday question, “What did you do this weekend?” My answer, almost exactly what it would have been had they asked it at the same time last year, was that I did a little yard work, cooked, and spent broad swaths of time reading. With the occasional exception of journeying out on a quest for new (old) books or carry out, it’s what you’ll find me doing on weekends in the summer when the weather cooperates.

My decided preference for people avoidance has almost nothing to do with the Great Plague, although the notion of drowning in my own secretions adds a bit of reinforcing menace. What struck me most over this weekend wasn’t the continued riots/protests/rabble in the streets, which has mostly faded to background noise. The more horrifying scenes played out across social media was of friends and family streaming out to restaurants, bars, and all the other crowded places – as if they somehow believe boredom alone will make them immune and save them from consequences.

I’m not generally impressed with hype. I don’t think COVID-19 is a death sentence for most people. It is, however, a pernicious, creeping illness… and one that can be largely prevented by avoiding places where people gather. People have to work, I understand that. I haven’t been able to completely avoid the office myself. It’s the risk we take to pay the bills.

Heading out for a night on the town because you can’t manage to entertain yourself, you’re just tired of sitting in your living room, or three months of togetherness has made you hate your wife and kids feels like just about the most ridiculous thing someone could do. It’s almost the definition of a high risk, low reward scenario. To each their own, I guess.

If the last three months have proven to anything to me it’s that my already low estimation of people as a group was likely too high… and that my desire to avoid them as much as possible is more intense now than ever before.

You won’t see this…

Posted on by

A few nights ago, I was wondering what someone was up to and realized we hadn’t talked in a while. This was a friend from way back there and back then, one who once might have almost been something more, but for unlucky timing, fate, or whatever interceding. It wasn’t all that long ago we carried on endless late-night conversations, just talking about the day that was or what we hoped for tomorrow. Maybe it wasn’t Big Love, but there was a connection there, a real friendship if nothing more.

I guess I was surprised to find we’re not even electronic “friends” anymore. That’s fine. People don’t really change, but circumstances do. I don’t have any expectation of ever knowing or standing to ask for the what or why.

I’m not angry, but I am just a little bit sad. 

I’m not the kind of guy who runs out and makes new friends. I don’t have the energy or interest. It’s why I’ve always put a premium of hanging on to the old ones.

I don’t suppose they’ll ever see this, but I hope our paths cross again someday. I miss their insight and honesty and trusted counsel from someone who always seemed to get what oddities were floating around in my head.

What I learned this week…

Posted on by

There’s not much new under the sun. I suppose there never really is. If reading history is taught me anything, it’s that collectively we have a real tendency to do the same dumbass things over and over again while expecting different results.

With every week that goes by I find myself increasingly at odds with the world. The central pillar of my life philosophy has almost universally been I’ll leave you alone, if you leave me alone. We seem, now, to inhabit a space where even wanting to just be left to your own devices is some kind of heretical commission against one group or another.

It’s utter bullshit, of course. I don’t have much use for people. That’s not based on color, orientation, gender, or anything other than a lifetime of experience dealing with people in groups and individually. With a few notable exceptions, the experience has almost universally been disappointing.

So what did I learn this week? That’s easy. No matter the position you stake out, you’re always going to be the villain in someone’s story. If I’m going to be damned either way, it might as well be for doing what my own conscious dictates rather than capitulating to the mob on either side.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Embedded links. We have you a nice, prettied up agenda. We even tucked the event links into the text of the document so it wasn’t a three line line long ugly-assed URL. But that doesn’t stop several hundred of you from not reading for comprehension and emailing that you can’t find the URLs. I mean how the hell hard is it to either click the embedded link directly or to right click and copy the link to paste it in your browser? Given that two thirds of your contemporaries managed to get it done without our help, I’m forced to conclude that one third of the total are just total mouth breathing wastes of space.

2. Podcasts. I haven’t deleted any social media friends as a result of COVID-19, protests, riots, or political affiliation but in the last week I’ve dropped a shit ton of podcasts that have vered way the fuck off topic. Everyone’s entitled to their position and perfectly free to use their platform to do whatever they want, but if I show up expecting insights on contemporary television and find deep dives on politics and current events, I’m out. I’m headed to my podcast list to avoid the general fuckery on television, not to find more of it. Hard pass.

3. Steady working. So far during the Great Plague, I’ve been steady working. I’ve missed my scheduled vacation and now the couple of days I usually take off immediately following the massive organizational vanity exercise that I’m nominally charged with carrying off every year. Yes, I’ve been working from home… but it’s still very much working and having my head in that space continually. Physically being back “on campus” these last few days just feels like heaping insult atop injury and it’s got me moody as fuck. Plague or not I think I’m going to need to start burning some days off that sweet, sweet pile of vacation time sooner rather than later.

EndEx…

Posted on by

Some will say I’m wrong, but for my money the happiest word in the English language, at least today, is EndEx.

Twelve months of bashing my head against the wall is now concluded – more with a whimper than with a bang. I’m fine with that. It means whatever cockups happened were transparent to anyone who didn’t know what should have happened. Ignorance truly is bliss for an audience.

So the big show is over for another year. Now we’ll unpack it, look at what didn’t work, and make recommendations for next year that we’ll all later ignore. The heavy lift is finished, but I’ve still got a few weeks of living left to do with it’s corpse.

Once it’s well and truly in the ground, it’ll be time to start planning for 2021. That effort usually kicks off in June – delayed this year because the Great Plague has delayed everything.

Every year someone cheerfully says, “Oh, we’ll tag someone else with this next year.” It’s a happy fiction, but organizational dynamics tell me that I won’t be relieved of this particular opportunity to excel except by retirement, resignation, or death. So I’ve got that to look forward to in the next few weeks too.

But today is EndEx for Big Event 2020. I’ll be savoring the moment for the next twelve hour or so before schlepping back to the office to deal with whatever fresh hell Outlook brought me overnight.

Half done…

Posted on by

Well, there’s day one in the books. No one set the stage on fire. No one fell down the steps. Lights didn’t fall on anyone. The tech (mostly) worked the way it’s supposed to.

Now that I’m mostly in spectator mode there are obviously things I’d change up a bit – items that made sense on paper but less so under the lights. If that’s the worst of Day 1 I can live with that.

There’s still another day to go. Tomorrow has more people and more moving parts. If something is going to cut loose, tomorrow is really when I’m expecting it to happen.

We’re half done with half to go. I’ll still sleep well tonight, but I’ll wake up tomorrow morning wondering what shit will find the fan.

Getting on with it…

Posted on by

I started working on one particularly benighted project a year ago this month. It was supposed to be long over by now, but thanks to the Great Plague it lives on. It lives on and goes critical for two days starting tomorrow. It will either go well or it will crash and burn over those two days. I don’t see any obvious path to “it went ok.” 

By this time tomorrow we’ll know which path it’s taking… which is why I’m currently sitting here with a gin and tonic staring blankly at the back yard and occasionally tapping in a few words on my phone. We’ve reached the point now where there’s nothing left to do but show up and hope the thing unfolds the way it’s supposed to, that one or more of the key players don’t spaz out, and that the tech doesn’t suddenly, catastrophically fail.

There’s effectively nothing I can do about any of those issues now. Except wait and see how it all falls together or apart. 

I hate the wondering. I hate the waiting. Let’s get on with it and get it finished.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Having no room for subtlety. If the internet wants to agree that all cops are bastards, then by extension we should also agree that it’s ok to define other populations based on a small percentage of the total. Based on this kind of bizarre internet logic, we can also accept, without further discussion, that all whites are racist, all blacks are lazy, all Jews are greedy or whatever your favorite stereotype happens to be. I just don’t have the time or energy to pretend that the world’s great complexities can be distilled down to snappy sound bites or funny, funny memes. The world is too damned complicated for that abject fuckery.

2. The moment before. I can tell the “big thing” is getting close. The phone has mostly stopped ringing. The torrent of email has turned into a trickle. A year’s effort is poised at the edge of the precipice that we must surely tumble down in just a few more ticks of the clock. I love this part because it means the big thing is almost over. I hate this part because there’s virtually nothing to be done now to change the direction we’re headed or the outcomes we’ll experience.

3. Reduced page count. Being back in the office this week has noticeably reduced my daily page count. Losing that hour in the morning and hour in the afternoon that are the daily commute is drastically cutting into my reading time and honestly I’m not a fan. I can’t help but think getting my nose into a book is, frankly, a better use of the constrained resources that is available time. Going back to doing this every day for real until the next plague comes along is just depressing.

Ground beef…

Posted on by

Thanks to being back in the office for the last couple of days I’ve discovered that a day’s worth of talking at regular human volumes is enough to turn my throat to ground beef. Apparently my random muttering to the cat and dogs isn’t doing enough to keep my vocal chords in readiness for actual human interaction.

I’d like to think the solution would be to minimize future conversations. Surely there’s some medical reason I can find a doctor to sign off on contact by text or email only for the next fifteen years. A stretch? Maybe. But it’s not the most ridiculous thing I heard today so anything is possible.