Category Archives: blogging

Catching up…

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In addition to the 185 work-related emails yesterday, one of the hardest parts of being away is that I fell way, way behind on my blog reading last week. As much as I like to think of blogging as a solitary activity, the reality is that that the community of bloggers is surprisingly interactive. Instead of just a spectator sport, you end up in a round robin of reading, commenting, responding, and repeating. If you follow a dozen blogs and even half of them post every day, after a week you end up with a backlog of something close to literary tonnage. Now that the daily routine is getting back to a semblance of normalcy, I’m wading into the backlog. Let’s just say it’s a good thing that I like to read, because this is going to take a while.

I find summer in general to be the hardest time for a person who wants to spend time reading and writing. Writing in winter is easy – it’s dark by 5PM, it’s cold, and you just don’t feel like you’re missing much while you’re up to your earlobes in words. Summer is a different story, for me at least. It always feels like there is more to do – and those competing interests seem to win out at least as often as they lose. Maybe that’ll change now that we’re reaching the time of the season when hiding out in the cool embrace of the air conditioner is the order of the day.

I’ll catch up on my backlog soon enough… now if I can just shoehorn some quality time for writing back into the schedule, all will be right with the world.

Sunday habits…

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Because you know I’m nothing if not a creature of habit, the very first thing I did this Sunday after getting home from vacation was fire up the laptop, find the five next posts from the archive and load them up here on WordPress. I feel like I owe everyone at least that much given the distinct lack of posts over the last few days. As much as I’d like to say I’m sorry about that I think it’s obvious that I’m not sorry in any way for taking a bit of a break. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy my peace offering… the latest from October 2007.

It’s good stuff… and includes my initial reaction to being an iPhone owner. I’ll bet it’s not the reaction you were expecting.

Sunday jewels…

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OK. I know they’re about 12 hours late today, but I think you’ll find that this week’s edition of posts from the archive was well worth the wait. There are some jewels here. Some real gems. In fact, I’m so sure you’ll be happy with them, I don’t think they need any more talking up… so without further fluffing, here’s what was on my mind in mid-October 2007.

The international edition…

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I get the vast majority of my page views from right here in the good ol’ US of A. No surprise there. One of the fun factoids I’ve noticed recently is that I’m starting to see a lot more international traffic filter through the doors. Now I don’t want to imply this increase is a direct result of a couple of posts talking about the National Security Agency (Hi there!), but that’s more or less when the traffic picked up… and in the best traditions of snarky blog authors everywhere I want to take the opportunity to welcome my new readers from the UK, France, Germany, Canada, India, the Philippines, Australia, Serbia, Bangladesh, Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Mexico, Ireland, Russia, Norway, Finland, Poland, Romania, Vietnam, Sweden, Paraguay, South Africa, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Brazil, Egypt, Singapore, Austria, Cyprus, Angola, Jordan, Malaysia, Israel, Taiwan, and the Bahamas.

I hope you have a pleasant visit here at jeffreytharp.com and find many, many interesting posts for your reading pleasure. Please keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times and remember that all posts on jeffreytharp.com are subject to the copyright laws of the United States of America and traffic here is probably monitored by at least one domestic intelligence agency. Thanks for your interest in my blog.

Your viewing of this site constitutes consent to hold the author harmless in the event of an invasion of your homeland or a drone strike on your house.

Perfectly average…

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It was a perfectly average day. Nothing good, nothing bad, just minutes ticking by until it’s time to go to bed, wake up, and start the process over from the beginning again. I’m not saying that like it’s necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need those average days to smooth out the rough edges of days you spend chasing your own tail. Maybe it’s even more true when you’re brain is already checked out for a long-overdue vacation. And no, I’m not counting the three days I spent on the couch last week as a vacation. I might not be into backcountry skiing or skydiving, but laying on the couch, mouthbreathing, and watching old episodes of House on iTunes does not qualify as relaxing and restorative in my book.

The one obvious down side of being perfectly average is that it doesn’t lend itself to high interest blogging… which is when you get what we have here today, a blog post about blog posts. Sure, I could have probably forced some new topic out of my head and onto the page, but it feels artificial and generally turns out to be even worse schlock than going free form and letting whatever happens happen. I know everyone is use to being entertained 24/7 in the information age, but hey, we all need a day off now and then.

I’m sure tomorrow will be more interesting. It’s hard to fathom two days in a row where there is legitimately nothing significant to report.

It’s Sunday. You know the drill…

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Maybe if I didn’t still have a head full of crud, I’d take the time and effort to come up with a more snappy title for today’s post. Sorry, but you’re not getting that level of effort this morning. I mean you don’t always expect me to bring my A-game right?

The good news from today’s trip into the archives is that we’ve wrapped up the posts from September 2007. September ends more with a whimper than with a bag, but in a blog that’s just a play-by-play of what’s going on in life, that’s to be expected. October is looking a little more interesting so far. The first two posts you’ll see were apparently written when I was still professionally ambitious and not nearly as cynical as I am today. I’d almost forgotten there was a time like that. Maybe once the posts from the archive series is complete I can backtrack through the blog and point to the exact moment when I threw up my hands in disgust and decided to focus on other things.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy your time in the archive today as much as I have. We’ll return to regular programming tomorrow.

September blahs…

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It seems that late september back in ’07 was the tip of the iceberg in my ongoing mission of living a better life through the liberal use of the medical arts and sciences. Join me, won’t you, as memory lane leads everywhere from a Memphis emergency room with a presumed heart attack to a run down office in a rough part of town where they do drug screening for Uncle Sam. Maybe it isn’t the most exciting topic I’ve ever nailed to the door around here, but I think it’s pretty damned funny… especially in hindsight.

We’ll be making our way into October next week, so enjoy what’s left of September 2007 now. And don’t forget to comment if you’ve ever had a heart attack that turned out to be just a really bad case of gas. Happy Sunday!

Why we blog…

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I got an email this afternoon from “a new media agency headquartered in the UK” wondering if I was “interested in selling advertising space on jeffreytharp.com.” The sender promises that advertisements would be unobtrusive and that they can pay an annual upfront payment for the advertising space. While the email does track back to an IP address in Uxbridge, England it’s safe to say that it qualifies as one of those sounds too good opportunities.

The truth is, I’m not blogging for advertisers. I’m not blogging to sell banners or to generate click-throughs or even to climb in the Technorati ratings. Mostly I’m blogging because I think I can turn a pretty phrase now and then and it seems that people are kind enough to humor me by reading it on a regular basis. If I happen to sell a few of my own wears in the process, so much the better – but this blog isn’t now and never will be written for the sake of generating a few pennies of advertising revenue. The complete lack of a coherent campaign for selling my own book should pretty much tell you where advertising falls on my list of priorities.

I think everyone that blogs harbors some kind of secret dream of being the next breakaway hit… and while it would be incredible to be on the receiving end of millions of hits a day, if I get there through the merits of the written word, that’s awesome. If it take shilling for some advertising company, well, I’ll keep my day job (at least 4 days a week) and enjoy the 20-30 people who check in around here on a regular basis.

Archival quality…

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It’s Sunday again and I know everyone has been eagerly awaiting their taste of what live was like way back in 2007. I’m happy to present for your perusal, five new (old) posts – the first five from September 2007. From what I can piece together there was alot of travel work work going on during the first half of the month – so interesting that apparently I forgot that September 11th was a thing. Fortunately the drudgery of business travel didn’t keep me from finding something wrong with the neighbors and being sure to tell the whole world about it. Overall, I think it’s a good cross section of the day-to-day mundane thoughts and the more epic ranting that you’ve all come to know and love over the last seven years of blogging.

Without further delay, enjoy your taste of September 2007.

Blank page…

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Some days no matter how hard you squeeze, the old brain just doesn’t have anything to give. That’s when you end up with one of these rambling posts that doesn’t seem to say anything and ends without ever coming to a satisfactory conclusion. Maybe it’s not true for every blogger, but for me, I don’t think there’s any greater enemy than the blank page… except maybe when that blank page coincides with a completely empty bucket of ideas. Maybe I should just embrace the nightmare and take a day off every now and then, but I can’t shake the feeling that it would be cheating somehow. Even a habit as deeply engrained in my schedule as blogging every day enjoys a perilous place on my much-valued daily schedule. Miss it for a day, or two, or five and God only knows when I’ll get it back in the lineup. One of the many joys of being a creature of habit, I suppose.

So yeah, there’s plenty going on in the world, but to continue with what seems to be the theme of the week, the worse the news gets, the less I care about the world and the more I care about me and mine. Maybe that’s a character flaw… or maybe it’s a thousand generations of human history screaming that the best any of us can really do is making right by our own circle of family and friends. Then again, I’m just a half-assed blogger so you might want to take that with a grain of salt. I, on the other hand, will be taking it with a cool refreshing rum drink.