Category Archives: Life

Stationary hell…

Posted on by

I know a few of you out there are all gung ho about your exercise routines. You run marathons, lift six times your body weight, and participate in all manner of physical exertion. More than a few of you have commented about how the effort leaves you feeling energized and wanting to go harder and do more. See, right there is where you lose me. I’ve tried a lot of it over the years – free weights and machines, walking, jogging (aka my feeble attempt at breaking into a run), stair climbing, resistance training, etcetera and so on. Where these activities leave you feeling energized, they leave me feeling tired, achy, sweaty, and generally like there are a dozen other things I could have spent that hour doing that would have left me feeling more productive for the day. It’s not that I reject the obvious benefits of these activities so much as it is that I find them mostly dull, tedious, and often painful. Hard as it might be to believe, that’s not the exact recipe for keeping me interested in something.

However, my semi-annual visit coming up in January to my Teutonic doctor and he’s going to ask the inevitable question about doing a minimum of 30-45 minutes of cardio a day. I won’t lie to him, because lying to your doctor is just bad policy, so with the impending visit in mind, I’m back on the wagon. And by wagon, I mean the cursed stationary bicycle that lives in the basement and for the last three months has served as an improvised laundry drying station. So at least when he asks, I can tell him with a straight face that yes, I’m doing the requisite number of minutes per day. I’ll leave off the bit about hating every minute of it since I’m fairly certain that’s not medically relevant.

I envy you people who find your exercise regimen personally fulfilling. For me it feels an awful lot like three hours a week that I’ll never get back.

The most wonderful time of the year…

Posted on by

The week of Thanksgiving heralds the arrival of that most magical and wondrous time of year… and I’m not talking about Christmas with its faux joy, peace and goodwill towards people you otherwise can’t stand. I’m talking about the four weeks between the holidays when nothing gets done and everyone is busy burning off what’s left of their annual leave. In short: Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the long march towards the end of the year when there are fewer colleagues around asking reports, wanting to see slides, and generally pretending to be productive. It’s the time of year when the pretense of being productive falls away. Sure, that’s only because there are barely enough people around to keep the lights on, but beggars shouldn’t be choosers.

There are going to be plenty of people running around for the next month trying to put together pick up meetings or cram on one more “special project” before 2014 rolls in, but mostly even they know they’re putting on a show for the sake of appearances. I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who really thinks they’re going to be able to get anything significant accomplished at this time of year. That makes for a low key environment… and low key makes me exceptionally happy.

If I haven’t learned anything else from being a drone these last 11 years it’s that this time is fleeting. Before you know it, and well before you’re ready for it, we’ll be back to the full-on grind. So the advice from your kindly Uncle Jeff? Take some time. Slow your roll and remember that no one ever saved the universe with their PowerPoint slides. Even when you think what you’re doing is important, there are well over seven billion people on the plant who don’t care if you live or die.

Perspective, my friends, is everything.

In the rigging…

Posted on by

I’ve been out of sorts for the better part of the last month. I know that’s coming through loud and clear in my writing (and my lack of writing for that matter). Even my OCD has taken a bit of a holiday as I let things pile up around me. Few of you have ever been in my home, but take my word for it that finding things out of place is an extraordinary rarity. I end every fall with some kind of minor funk, so it’s not unusual or unexpected at least. Top that off with a couple of other issues and let’s just make the blanket statement that October and November this year have been particularly unkind. I wouldn’t say I’ve been a wreck, but I’ve definitely been way, way off my game.

But a funny thing happened at 6:43 AM yesterday morning. Not “haha” funny, but still. That’s when I felt my confidence return. I don’t mean a little bit. I’m talking about physically feeling it pour back into me like it was dumped out of a bucket. And then it was just there; like it has always been in the past.

I don’t know where it went, or what brought it back, but for the first time in longer than I want to admit, I’m feeling like myself again. I’ve got a smirk in my lips, a glint in my eyes, and more than a few sarcastic comments on my tongue. As it should be when all is right with the world.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the rigging nailing my colours to the mast.

Annual history…

Posted on by

It’s that magical time of year where you get to distill the essence of your professional accomplishments down to less than 1000 words and then try not to slit your wrists as you realize how you’ve spent the last 365 days. Whether you’re compiling the annual unit history report or creating a list of accomplishments for your yearly performance appraisal, the one thing they serve to remind you of is how much time you’ve spent working on stuff that you have no actual interest in doing.

I’m the last person on earth to recommend that you need to find personal fulfillment in your profession. As I discovered with my ill-fated sojourn as a history teacher, having a deep and profound love for a subject doesn’t a fulfilling career make. For as much as I love all things historical, I despised most other elements of the job. Still, I’d like to think I’m doing more than writing reports, enduring meetings, and building the world’s most complex PowerPoint briefings.

The beauty part of these brief moments of professional clarity is that they only come on once a year, so for the other 11.5 months I can maintain a blissful level of willful ignorance on the topic. I think in the end, everyone is better served when I’m ignoring just how much time I’m spending on mundane, routine tasks and just keep churning out reams of paperwork on demand… because really, if I were stop and think about it for any sustained length of time, I’d be tempted to run off and join the damned circus.

I’m glad a have a job that keeps me employed (almost) full time… but I’m even more glad I don’t mistakenly identify what I do with who I am.

The big game…

Posted on by

This past weekend was Homecoming weekend in the little part of the world where I grew up. For anyone who grew up within earshot of Cumberland, Maryland the cross-town rivalry between the city’s two high schools is the stuff of local legend. Without rhapsodizing it, the homecoming game is a big hairy deal.

I don’t hail from the mighty city of Cumberland, of course, so I’ve always watched their version of homecoming with something of a bemused look on my face. You know, in the way that people watch others who are taking something just a little too seriously. But it seems to make them happy, so no harm, no foul.

I’m not going to lie, the idea of homecoming being a big deal is a concept that eludes me. I graduated from high school in 1996, went to college, and promptly moved away. Not long after that, my alma mater, along with a few other schools, went defunct. They ceased to be. They are no more. It became a dead parrot. In its place they opened a shiny new school that presumably is better equipped to meet student needs. I say God bless. Seventeen years after graduation, it’s not exactly like I spend a lot of time pining away for my junior year locker. In fact, writing this post has accounted for more time pondering high school than I’ve spent in total since I walked across the stage to get my diploma.

I have great memories of high school. My closest friends today are the guys who were my closest friends then. I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of thing that only really happens in a small town. Maybe it’s because I moved away, but I don’t lose any sleep about what’s happening at or happened to the school I graduated from the better part of two decades ago.

Maybe homecoming is an anachronism – a throwback to a time when you graduated, stayed put, and the social life of your town revolved largely around the comings and goings of the local school. Maybe it’s different if you have kids and it does provide some kind of continuity from generation to generation. Maybe it’s different if your school is something that exists as more than an ever fading memory. That’s a lot of maybes involved in a concept I clearly don’t grasp.

I guess I’ve just never felt the need for a special weekend designated for homecoming. Whenever I’ve felt the compulsion to stroll down memory lane or stir up the ghosts of the past, I just go do it on my own accord. No parade or big game needed. Then again, crowds always make me nervous so it could just be my inner hermit talking out loud.

The not so mysterious case of Comcast sucks…

Posted on by

Well, tonight you were schedule to get the post you should have gotten yesterday… But it seems “Comcast is experiencing technical difficulties that are impacting your cable television and high speed internet service.” Therefore, since I don’t feel like re-typing the damned things with my thumbs, you get another day of space filler. So in conclusion, Comcast sucks.

Yes, I know this is a first world problem… and since I live in the United States and not some remote herding camp in East Dirtbagistan, we’re just going to call them problems from now on. It’s one of the perks of living in the first world.

Misplaced outrage…

Posted on by

I keep seeing how “outraged” people are that stores are opening ever-earlier on Thanksgiving day. Facebook and Twitter are full of posts demanding that retailers stay closed and calling boycott at every opportunity. That’s fine. Whatever helps you get your jollies.

One thing you can trust on is that stores like Macy’s and Kmart aren’t opening because their CEOs are philosophically opposed to Thanksgiving. They’re opening because there is growing consumer demand that they be open. If people didn’t want to start their shopping before the bird gets sliced, none of these stores would think anything of leaving their doors closed for the duration of the holiday.

Growing up in a rural, out of the way community I can remember a time when you were hard pressed to find a store of any kind open on Sunday. Later, most places had “limited” hours on Sundays, say noon-5:00 PM. Today, Sunday is just another day in retail. That’s not because the stores are evil, it’s because it’s what the consumer demanded. Despite what anyone thinks of its merits, culturally speaking Sunday isn’t generally considered a “day of rest” by anyone I know. It’s just the second half of a 48-hour weekend where we’re all trying to get done what we need or want to do.

I’m not sure why anyone thinks it would be any different with Thanksgiving. If you don’t want to be part of the crass commercialization, by all means stay home until 12:01 AM Friday morning. If you think you have a Constitutional right to observing a holiday on the day of the holiday itself, you might want to consider work that isn’t involved in a customer-service related field – oh, and don’t be a cop, or a nurse, or a soldier, or work for a power or water company, or, yes, in retail. I’ve had plenty of jobs where work rudely intruded on my days off, and while that sucks, sometimes it’s just plain unavoidable.

So maybe instead of railing against how “unfair” retailers are being, look around and see how many of your friends and family members are going to head to the stores before or after dinner on Thanksgiving Day. If the answer is more than “none,” go ahead and enjoy living in your glass house… and give it some thought next time you want to buy that discount mattress on President’s day or get the deal of a lifetime from the car dealer on Labor Day, or when you’re going to see a movie on a Sunday afternoon ensuring that some poor employee has to give up their Sabbath to sell you a ticket, make your popcorn, and fire up the projector on time.

Let’s be blunt for a moment: If you are legitimately thankful for your family and friends, does it make a tinker’s damn worth of difference whether you’re all sitting down for a turkey dinner at an appointed date and time or whether you nosh on eggs and bacon at the local diner at 3AM on any other random Thursday? I’m just having a tough time seeing the “so what” of all the commotion.

The Routine…

Posted on by

Hard experience, training, and too many years working a job that involved thinking about all the boogymen out to get us have left me with a decidedly pessimistic streak. That’s probably why long stretches of good things happening tend to make me edgy – or rather they make me edgy when I’m paying attention and not letting myself be hijacked into some kind of irrational exuberance. It doesn’t happen often these days, but from time to time I still let blind optimism drive the train. Historically, those are the moments when I get an abrupt reminder from the universe that it’s patently ridiculous to expect the future to be much more than an extension of the past.

It’s an angst filled lesson. Every. Single. Time.

I’m always a guy with a plan, even though like most plans, mine rarely survive first contact with the enemy. Fortunately, when The Plan slides off the rails, my system defaults back to The Routine – those things that happen week in, week out, day after day, that keep me focused, keep me busy, and keep me from dwelling too much on issues where I clearly don’t have any influence. So yeah, today is going to be about slipping comfortably, quietly back into The Routine, because pondering limitations of The Plan isn’t getting me anywhere.

Force of nature…

Posted on by

I remember their being a line in an Indiana Jones movie where Indy laments reaching the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away. I guess that age comes for all of us eventually, but I was quietly hoping to buy myself a little more time. As it turns out, there’s apparently no bargaining to be done on that score. Time just sneaks up on you and does its thing.

It’s a strange, unnerving thing losing one of the towering figures of your childhood. Even diminished by age and illness, in my head I still thought of my aunt as an elemental force of nature. When I was a kid being with her was like standing in the middle of a hurricane. There was always something going in all directions, but in the center the glassy calm was spectacular. It was really something to see.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few days remembering a time when visits to her house meant cousins coming out of the woodwork, my first horseback ride, fossil hunting, learning how to pick crabs like a “flatlander”, and the supreme joy of making a birthday present out of a beautifully wrapped cookie tin full of horse manure. Trust me on that last one. When you’re 7 or 8, it’s possibly the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. The whole time, she was there pulling all the right strings and orchestrating every moment, making sure everything came off just right. Later she taught me that good wine was always worth the money. And I’m almost positive she’s the one that stoked my lust for seeing the world one Caribbean island at a time.

I’m a firm believer of the power of words, but tonight they don’t feel nearly up to the task I’ve set for them. Tonight they look blank and flat and not at all fitting. Tonight feels like looking at the world from an angle that’s inexplicably not quite right. All I’m left with after four days of trying to find the right words is a deep, hollow sadness at what’s been lost and will never be again.

Feigned interest…

Posted on by

Ah, Friday. One might think this should be the easiest day to feel witty and adventurous in your writing. Maybe it is for some, but for me between the rubber band of the week snapping back, dealing with the typical asshattery one encounters, and my always-present inner sense that something just isn’t right, Fridays are just about universally my hardest day to force something out of my brain, through my fingers, and onto the blank page. I’ve learned to embrace that Friday afternoons don’t give me the warm fuzzy that they seem to give everyone else.

More grudgingly I’ve accepted the lack of a muse on Fridays because typically fewer people are around to read it anyway. Apparently Friday nights are still a big night for people to go do things. Me? Yeah, I’m more interested in getting home and hiding out from the multitude I’ve had to deal with during the week. I’ve always been a little jealous of you people out there who seem to be energized by being around other people. Personally, I find them perfectly exhausting… of course you knew that already. One of the many joys in life for an introvert who’s forced by the way the world works to at least feign a passing interest in socializing.

So what’s the point of this ramble on a Friday night? Well, your first mistake was expecting there would be some point; a moral at the end of the story. Sometimes there isn’t a point. I didn’t set out for tonight’s post to be anything deep or meaningful, so at least in that I can consider it a successful effort.