Category Archives: blogging

General interest…

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So that wraps up the first installment of From the Mailbag. I don’t know if it was good for you, but I enjoyed getting away from my normal ranting and raving for a bit. So thanks to those who sent requests, questions, and suggestions. You guys always hear whatever happens to be on my mind, so it’s been interesting gleaning a little insight into what you’re thinking about too. I think the mailbag is probably something that I’ll revive from time to time since the metrics are telling me that people liked reading it as much as I liked writing it.

As far as what’s on tap for the rest of the week, I don’t have any really firm ideas yet. Thursday I’ll try to flesh out What Annoys Jeff this Week, but other than that it’s a wide open canvas. From the Common Market hovering on the edge of the abyss, to the President Clinton poking President Obama with a sharp stick, to dingoes finally getting the credit they deserve for eating babies, there’s plenty going on in the world that should keep me occupied for a few days… and if none of that interests you, well, tough. You had your opportunity to decide what topics show up around here and now it’s back to whatever warped version of reality pops into my slightly addled brain. Smell ya later.

Taking requests…

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There are about fifty of you who are going to get this delivered to your inbox. Another thirty or forty will see it on Facebook. A handful will be suckered here directly from WordPress because I used the magic keywords. For a blog with no theme other than whatever happens to be on my mind on any given day, I’m pretty happy with those numbers. Unfortunately, that also represents one of the real challenges for a blogger. Unless you’ve got an extraordinarily engaged group of readers it’s a bit of a one way conversation. Well tonight I want to change that up a bit and I need your help to do it.

For a limited time only, jeffreytharp.com is taking requests. If there’s an issue you want me to weigh in on, something rant-worthy that I’ve missed, or a topic you just want to see me ramble on about for a few hundred words, leave me a message down in the comments box. This should be fun for everyone, right? Look, I can’t promise that I’ll write a thesis on everything, but I’ll do my best to give whatever ideas you have the patent pending Jeff Tharp treatment.

So come on and help a guy out… Because if you don’t this is going to look like the douchiest post in the history of the internet and I’m sure none of us want that.

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.

Diminishing Returns…

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If you’re a blogger, one of the best ways to know how nice the weather is is taking a look at your daily site visit logs. In the middle of winter, when the nights are long, your number of views goes up. Same thing at the height of summer. Everyone is inside hiding from the heat. In the spring and fall, though, those are the doldrums. That’s when the floor really drops out and people have better things to do that putz around the interwebs checking out what people are bitching and complaining about that. All of that might not be strictly true of course, but that’s the pattern I’ve noticed over three years of watching these things. Maybe you don’t notice it on big sites that get millions of hits a day, but around here we pay attention to things like that.

Now if I were an unscrupulous web denizen, I could fill my tag cloud with phrases like “hot lesbian cheerleaders” and probably bost my numbers a bit, but realistically I’d rather keep bringing in people who are interested and interesting. I’m not always concerned about quality over quantity, but that’s how things are here at least. I wonder, though, how much of spring and fall doldrums are caused by readers having better things to do and how much it’s caused by bloggers who are just as interested in doing something that doesn’t involve sitting in front of a monitor. Like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

But now that it’s cold again, I’m expecting your jerks to check in more often, mkay?

A change is gonna come…

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I started this alternate blog on February 14th, 2011 mostly in an effort to shed some of the frustration of working in an environment I increasingly found to be intolerable. The good news is that I’m now working in an office that’s much more tolerable, even if it’s still plenty annoying. The bad news, of course, is that regular run of the mill annoying doesn’t necessarily lend itself to great narrative. The worse news is that I’ve made the decision to hang up my spurs for a while and focus on other writing projects I’ve been struggling to find time to take on.

The bottom line is that this will be my last regularly scheduled post here at Apathy is Green

I want to take the time to thank those of you who joined me on this adventure. Thanks for reading and commenting. Thanks for reminding me that no matter how stupid things get, they’re just as bad if not worse somewhere else.
I don’t think this is goodbye forever, because the chances of me shutting up that long are pretty slim. Of course I’ll check in from time to time and whenever something really gets under my skin, I’ll be right back here railing against it with every bit of indignation I can muster.

I’ve still got a few ideas up my sleeve for future projects, so hopefully this won’t be the end, just a start in different direction. Eventually I hope to unify all of these posts under my “official” blog and in my own name. Who knows what the situation will look like in five or ten years, right?

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me. It’s be a gas.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Missed milestone…

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In the mayhem and chaos that has been the month of February, I have to confess that I completely missed a major milestone for jeffreytharp.com. You see, February 13th was the two year anniversary of landing here on WordPress and making the leap into hosting and managing my own domain. I don’t mean to make that sound more complicated than it really was. Basically all that means is I registered the site, pointed it towards WordPress, and then set up a few widgets. Oh, and then paid for the privilege of not advertising someone else’s service as part of my web address. Everything costs, even here on the internet.

What I’m trying to say here is that two years ago, I got serious about writing for the first time. I’ve always had the bug, but this is where I found my voice and turned something I’d largely been doing for myself into something that would be seen by an audience. That’s a huge step, even when the audience is mostly made up of family, friends, and a few random people that discover you by accident. Writing here has led into other opportunities to contribute and work with other writers and to take on other “spare time” projects that I wouldn’t otherwise have attempted.

Writing is a deeply introspective act. It’s a force for refining and clarifying where you stand and who you are. It’s also a tremendously time consuming pain in the ass. I’m glad I’ve never stopped to calculate the amount of time it takes to churn out four or five new posts a month, let alone what it’s taken to throw in on those other projects. I can see now why it’s only the one in a million who ever make any money doing this. I have a new appreciation for even the worst of the hack writers who have managed to scrape out a living based on the written word.

I’ll resist the temptation to go into the usual list of statistics and just say that it’s been a good two years. Site visits are up, comments are up, and pretty much any meaningful metric is up from this point a year ago. Writing in a lot of ways is its own reward, but knowing there are people out there interested in what you have to say is decidedly a feather in my cap. Thanks for sticking with me. Let’s see how things look a year from now.

Embargo…

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I make a point of being just as honest and open here as is realistically possible. There are, however, some topics that I don’t feel perfectly free to touch on in a public forum. As life-long writer it’s frustrating because getting thoughts down on “paper” is the way I tend to think through things. On the other hand, that instinct is balanced by there just being things that don’t need to be put in print for general consumption. The social contract here on the internet is that we all tend to expose far more of outselves to the public sphere that was common even ten years ago. It’s become so ingrained that most of us don’t even think about it as a matter of course. Be honest, how many of you have actually taken the time to figure out how to use the privacy settings on Facebook to really control how much different people or groups can see about you? I’m betting that there aren’t too many hands raised out there. I’m not making a judgement call on that by the way. When your name is your web address, you pretty much give up the right to criticize how anyone else manages their online privacy.

The last thing I’ll say is that you shouldn’t read too much into this little post. It’s mostly been a quick thought exercise while I try to get my head wrapped around a few things, so with that I now return you to your regularly scheduled weekend.

Turned to mush…

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Hard as I’ve been trying to write today, I think it’s time to confess that my brain turned to mush before I even managed to leave the house this morning. Sure, it was firing well enough to do some editing and crank out a couple of emails, but it just wasn’t in a place today to do any heavy lifting. If you spend enough time writing, you’re going to have days like that now and then. It’s always good when they show up on days that don’t require that much editorial horsepower, though, since needing to write and not being able to squeeze anything out ranks right up there with any other kind of constipation on the ol’ Annoy-O-Meter. Since the week looks like it’s going to be more about exerting editorial influence than actually creating anything new or interesting, it might just be a good idea that it’s getting a period of pronounced mush out of the way now instead of showing up later when I really have something to say.

As a reader, I’m sure these occasional bouts of brain cramping are even less interesting for your as they are for me, but since there’s no real solution other than slogging through them, I’ll just keep plugging away until I hit on something that resonates. In the meantime, I think the best course of action is to find some mindless drivel on television and let the gray matter get some rest.

10K…

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According to the handy little section on metrics that WordPress provides, I’ve been plugging away here for 24 months now. The reason I bring that up is that sometime in the last day or two, the page passed the 10,000 visitor mark. As always on these little occasions, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who’s playing along at home. Sure, Google hits that in a fraction of a day, but since I’m not really providing any function or service other than freelance ranting, I’m plenty pleased with the numbers the way they are.

After the week long break for Christmas and the eternal head cold that made focusing on writing something close to impossible, I’m hoping that thing will get back to what passes for normal around here pretty quickly. Since the sick appears to be passing from debilitating to merely annoying, I’d say we’re on the right track. So that’s a long way of saying I’m hoping to ease back into the whole writing thing. Bear with me as I blow out the cobwebs and get back to business.