Category Archives: blogging

Writing. It’s hard work…

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Wow. OK. So, the idea of a series of posts codifying what I believe is already off to a rough start. Maybe I tried to lead off a little too aggressively with thoughts on climate change. What was supposed to be tonight’s feature blog post is currently a 2 page ramble on everything from fossil fuels to hunting. I probably should have started off on something a little less all encompassing than the idea of “the environment,” but here we are.


That post is going to take a level of editorial exertion that doesn’t usually show its face here. Honestly it’s probably going to need to be split into about three separate posts in order to make any sense of it at all. Usually it’s a matter of jamming a few thoughts onto the page, running spell check, do a quick read through, and hope I’ve caught the worst of it before letting something go live. This one, though, is in nothing even close to “ready for prime time.” 


It turns out really digging into what you believe and spelling it out in a way that’s reasonably articulate is surprisingly hard to do.
If you’re looking for a preview though, here’s the takeaway: The environment is going to be the most important issue in the 21st century. Through a combination of ignorance, willful disregard, and simple inertia, we’re collectively destroying it. We’re extracting resources at a rate inconsistent with both long term economic growth and continued life on this planet for tens of thousands of species – including our own. Human beings have overcome every challenge that’s ever been placed in front of us. We need to find a way to stop destroying the natural world and the sooner it happens the less awful it will be.

It’s the challenge for our time.

Maybe I could offend everyone…

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For the last few weeks I’ve been pondering on the idea of a new limited series of posts. Maybe six or twelve posts here, expanding on my view of all the controversial stuff that seems to preoccupy our every waking moment.

I’m thinking here of abortion, voting and voting rights, free speech, LGBTQ issues, the Second Amendment, the environment, healthcare and the social safety net, and fiscal responsibility (or lack thereof). I’m sure offhand I’m missing some of the key topics that make people do the crazy.

It feels like good mental exercise to a) Refine my own thinking a bit and b) Likely offend, anger, annoy, or otherwise agitate every single person who reads the blog or follows me on social media over the course of two or three months. I mean with goals like that, what could really go wrong?

So, aside from anything I’ve already thrown out, what are the other grand controversies of the day just begging to be given the once over?

Controversial, unpopular, or downright offensive…

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I took a little heat about that Columbus post a few days ago, but overall, the ratio ran more in my favor than not. That’s nice, but my opinions don’t generally tend to be informed by what I think the ratio will be. Being at heart a traditionalist who also happens to have some decidedly non-traditional beliefs will do that to you. If I were worried about what anyone thinks, I’d keep my mouth shut… and I certainly wouldn’t be sending it out to the internet, where ideas go to live forever.

There are, of course, plenty of topic I chose not to talk about here. I don’t think any of them are particularly wild or outlandish, but a few would certainly be controversial, unpopular, or downright offensive depending on your individual point of view. So, for now, it’s in my best interest to leave them unsaid and unwritten.

The day I’m no longer dependent on earning an outside source of income, however, all bets are off. It should be an awfully interesting day around here when all the filters come off. So, really, this post is just a request for patience. Perhaps extreme patience… but maybe some of those extraordinary rants to come will be worth the wait. Check back in 14 years or so and we’ll all know for sure.

Less than motivated…

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I’ve been struggling to come up with a ramble or rant for tonight. The truth is, despite plenty of things going on in the world, I can gin up enthusiasm for just about none of them… and in the case of the ones that are vaguely interesting, I find that I just don’t have that much to say. It’s not a comfortable place to be for someone whose best means of communication has always been putting words on the page. Still, I’ve decided not to force it.

Whatever motivation I can usually scrape together as 6 o’clock comes on just isn’t there this evening, so I’m going to go ahead and hit pause. Maybe just for tonight. Maybe for the rest of the week. Maybe… well, who knows. 

I’ll be back when I have something to say and the motivation to say it.

Four hundred eighty one…

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As I was fiddling around with last night’s post, I did some tangentially related digging in the archive. I was somewhat absentmindedly thinking about the overall premise for Thursday night’s regular edition of What Annoys Jeff this Week and how out of character it would be to have simply one thing standing on its own. That, inevitably, sent me scurrying down my own internet rabbit hole.

I’ve always thought of WAJTH as a static item. A blast of three very short form topics showing up each and every Thursday nearly without fail. That it consistently shows up on Thursday is true enough, but for the rest, well, memory isn’t always the best guide to what actually happened in the past.

As it turns out, over the last 481 weeks – yes, that’s nine and one quarter years of being annoyed – WAJTW has apparently evolved. The first post, way back on September 1st, 2011 covered four topics. After that, for almost a year, posts swung between four and five topics. It wasn’t until August 2012 that I seem to have adopted the standard three topic format that has dominated Thursdays ever since. Maybe it took me that long to figure out how to condense the week into the three most annoying – or at least the three most easily set to print – things that happened.

I’ve been filling up pages of this blog for so long now, that it’s easy to forget that there really is an evolution of style over time. Looking back at some of those early editions of WAJTW, I like to think I’ve made some stylistic improvements in how I get my points across. Even if they are better written, I was a little impressed with how many of the topics from those first few weeks are still things that annoy the hell out of me on a regular basis. Some things, it turns out, really are eternal.

And we’re back…

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The good news, I suppose, if you happened to miss reading my daily rantings, is that I’m back. The bad news, if you’re me, of course, is also that I’m back.

I’m not upset at all to be back to blogging. It’s the fact that my having anything to say is squarely driven by being back to work after nine days off that’s the problem.

As it turns out, when I’m not spending a large portion of each day screwing around with work, I’m mostly content to putter around the house, knock off an errand or two every day, and otherwise keep myself to myself. I believe I’d be happy to keep that schedule up indefinitely. There isn’t enough time in a standard weekend to really grasp how much better those days are, but when you stack eight or nine of them in a row, the truth outs.

If all goes according to plan, I’ve got just under 14 years left in harness. I’ve occasionally wondered if the blog will survive that transition. I use to assume it would go on as long as I did. Maybe I’ll catch a second wind, but it feels just now like the whole thing could easily find it’s end precisely when the work stops. It turns out the angst and bitching is dramatically reduced by the simple expedient of doing what I want and on my own schedule rather than tinkering about with email and spreadsheets all day. I’m not sure I’ll have all that much to say when I don’t have that to fall back on.

I’d imagine that will be a good problem to have… and I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

A week off…

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I don’t think there’s a single week since I started blogging that I went silent for an entire seven day stretch. I’m not saying that’s going to happen this week, but I will say that I won’t be putting thumbs to keyboard unless I get some really solid motivation over the next few days.

It’s the first time since December I’ve had an entire week off and and so far I’m enjoying not having anything, including blog posts, scheduled.

If you’re desperate for reading material, feel free to dip into the archive. It runs all the way back to summer 2006 and you’re bound to find something to tickle your fancy buried in there somewhere.

2020 by the numbers…

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It’s been a big year at jeffreytharp.com. I mean that in just about every measurable way, because as the year closes out, views are up 52% over last year and more than doubled from 2018. 

Where do we stand, you ask?

  • 260 posts
  • 14,096 views
  • 929 likes 

Views only fell below 1,000 one month once this year, which is attributable to a change in how updates were served out to Facebook. Once I got that sorted, it was back to the proverbial races.

All things considered, that’s not a bad showing for a poky little personal blog that doesn’t have a discernable theme, does no advertising, and basically consists of me using it as a platform to bitch and complain about the utter stupidity of daily life. 

The fact that so many people have opted to come along for the ride – or just follow along to watch the shitshow – is absolutely remarkable. I’d say I’m humbled by it, but since you have been following along, surely you know better than that.

I won’t make promises of grand changes for 2021. There will be no wild rebranding or shift in focus. I fully intend to just plug along doing what I’ve been doing. Hopefully you’ll continue to like it (and recommend it to your friends for their reading pleasure). 

Inner peace makes for dull blogging…

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It’s the middle of the week, a federal holiday buried between vacation days, pouring down rain, and about a gloomy a day as you could find. Businesses are starting to close up and people are beginning to revisit the days of “safer at home” as the Great Plague surges around us. I’ve largely tuned out the 2020 presidential campaign, which I consider over, done with, and not to be gotten back to until closer to the inauguration (aside from occasionally flinging rocks at both sides via Facebook or Twitter).

Put another way, there’s absolutely nothing that I feel a compulsion to talk about today. I’ve taken great pains to make the house a perfectly comfortable retreat from the world. I’m not sure the dogs and I could hold off a Spetsnaz assault team, but for keeping to ourselves through the pandemic whether it lasts a few months or another year, we’re reasonably well set to minimize how much time we need to spend dealing with the world “out there.” 

The days, especially when untroubled by even needing to telework, do tend to blend together a bit though. If it weren’t for knowing yesterday’s vet appointment was scheduled for Tuesday, today would be more or less indistinguishable from Saturday or Monday or the day after tomorrow. I’m a dedicated creature of habit and it doesn’t particularly bother me in any way… but it does make fishing for new topics just a little problematic, which is how you end up with a stream of consciousness mess something like this one.

Fortunately, I can already predict that things will be back to normal tomorrow and you’ll get a full boat of What Annoys Jeff this Week. Some things don’t stop, regardless of how peaceful and docile the week seems. I should probably be thankful for that.

Record setting…

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Sometime around 10:00 last Thursday night, jeffreytharp.com set 2020 as its best year for views yet. That’s not a bad place to be at the tail end of October and the numbers, of course, keep ticking up every day. Say what you want about the suffering of life in a plague year, but having people home, bored, and dinking around on the internet has done great things for my numbers.

I’m sure there are people out there who are making an actual living at this. God knows I get enough emails about “monetizing your platform.” That’s never been my goal here, though. The only reason jeffreytharp.com exists at all is as a venue for exorcising some of life’s daily bile without my brain exploding… and maybe offering up a bit of entertainment along the way.

Sure, making a few coins from it would be nice, but I value my position as an amateur bitcher and complainer. Maybe I could take the whole thing pro, but surely it would lose some of its charm when in the back of my head I’m always conscious of what drives views and spend time worried about who might be offended. That’s just a risk not worth taking, so we’ll keep on as we are… because I feel like there’s going to be a lot of things that need saying over the next few months.